Page 81 of Imprisoned with the Vampire King

It would crack.

It was only a matter of time.

I pressed my hands against the wall of the solitary hallway and focused everything I had on taking the magic down. Dante stayed with me, his back pressed to mine as he watched the hall.

The pain was fierce.

The drain was intense.

And the pressure was utterly hellish.

But I took down the magic, thread by thread, until there was nothing in the hallway but walls and doors.

"Take—me—back." I took deep gasps between every word. My lungs were on fire. Hell, every part of me was on fire.

For the first time since I'd met him, Dante Dusk looked scared as he jogged back to the elevator with me.

No one was shouting. If they were, I couldn’t hear them.

My vision blurred too much to see anyone's faces, but their auras said they were losing hope. I hated that, but there was nothing I could do to give it to them. All I could manage was the elevator. The fucking elevator.

It was already full when we reached it.

I had the plates broken and the magic tied to each of them in record time, and it rose.

My eyes burned as I called it back down, and barely managed to send another group up again.

The wall I'd built was shaking consistently. I felt every slam of Reaper's magic against it like an elbow to my gut.

A few lifeless bodies sat at the foot of it.

Reaper was attacking the barrier like the man was possessed, and I didn't even fucking blame him.

Dante was holding my full weight as I unraveled the brutalized magic in the ceiling above us, pulling and pulling and pulling. The tears and rips made it so much more complicated, and so much more painful.

I pushed through anyway.

The next group was the second to last one. The one before mine and Dante's.

The guys he trusted the most would be with us. The handful who had been guarding me the whole time, and helping keep everyone else from losing their shit.

I couldn't let them get trapped down there with us.

I wouldn't.

I exhausted every last strand of magic I had, getting the second to last group up, then forcing it back down.

I was out of energy when those doors opened. Completely fucking out.

But there was still magic left in the ceiling.

Tears dripped down my face as Dante held me to his chest, his arms locked around me in an iron grip. I couldn't see my wall, but I could hear and feel the collisions.

Reaper hadn't gotten through yet.

We might actually make it.

"I think I see a crack," one of the guys warned us. I was so lost to the pain of unraveling magic that I heard, but didn't process.