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Sorsha sputters and swipes her wet hair back from her face. “I can’t send a blast of fire after him through this. Now Ireallydon’t like this jerk.”
I push past her and Jacob. “I’ll try to get to him.”
My pulse racing, I dash across the slick stone floor. My supernaturally powered muscles can propel me forward faster than anyone other than Zian, and the water can’t interfere with my banshee scream if I project it with my mind.
As I hurtle onward, my soaked clothes dragging at my limbs, my irritation grows. It fuels the new shriek building in my lungs.
Balthazar can’t get away with this. He can’tget away. I have to stop him.
We’re so fucking close.
I shove myself off the tight walls and around a corner—into a widening of the tunnel that’s almost a room. And six figures step out in a line, blocking my way through.
I jerk to a halt, staring through the continued spray at the determined faces forming a barrier between me and Balthazar, however far ahead of us he’s gotten.
There’s Nadia, her thick black pixie cut slicked to her skull with the water. And Tegan, the little twelve-year-old whose perpetually wide eyes gleam with a hardness that makes my stomach clench.
Devon stands with them too, and three other teens I vaguely recognize from the island facility but whose names I never learned. Fellow shadowbloods.
Why are they looking at me likeI’mthe enemy?
“Move!” I gasp out. “I’ve got to catch up with him.”
“We have to do this,” Nadia replies tightly. A familiar silver manacle gleams around her wrist—around all of their wrists. “We can’t let you go after him.”
Sorsha and Zian hurtle into the room behind me. I can sense the other guys not far behind.
With a jolt of panic, I fling out my arms. “Don’t hurt them! They’re the ones we’re here to save.”
Except the shadowblood kids seem to have the exact opposite idea.
Nadia’s eyes flash with an unsettling light. “Go back! Get out of here!”
“I can’t,” I retort, tensing to push between her and the others. “I have to—”
I move to spring in mid-sentence—but the young shadowbloods beat me to the punch.
It feels like a punch: the blaze of light that rushes at us with the thrust of Nadia’s arms. My vision blurs to gray, and a blast of air sends me crashing into Zian.
A rumble sounds behind us. Dominic’s voice calls out, taut and frantic. “There’s more water coming—enough to flood the tunnel!”
Hasty footsteps pound away from us. I stagger, blinking hard and seeing nothing but drifting blotches. A gush of water gathers around my feet.
Jacob swears and stumbles past me. “Zee—how close are we to the surface? Can we break through the wall?”
Zian must be as blind as I am, but apparently his X-ray vision still works well enough for him to judge. “Not far. Hit it hard!”
I fling myself after them, lending my own strength to the task. Jacob slams out his telekinetic talent and Zian batters the stone surface with both his arms and his searing eyes.
The rumble rises. The wall cracks and crumbles.
Just as the roar of the wave reaches the room, we burst out into the cold night air. I snatch at my sense of Andreas’s presence and Griffin’s. Dominic latches on to us with his tentacles.
The water rams into us from behind, sending us tumbling partway down the rocky slope in a jumble of limbs. My butt jars against a boulder.
I rub my eyes, fragmented vision returning. As I shove myself to my feet, I spin toward Griffin.
The look on his face as he pushes the drenched strands of his hair away from his eyes makes my heart sink. He turns his head toward the mountainside.
