Page 83 of Caretaker

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I pulled my cell out and called Clayton, but it went straight to his voicemail. The same with Rhys, though I hadn’t really expected him to answer.

My left arm throbbed and ached and distracted me when I needed total concentration, and my attempts at ignoring it were getting harder to do.

“What happened to your arm?” Angus asked, noticing.

“I think it’s broken,” I told him. “Guards jumped me.”

Rage flared in his eyes and his face hardened. “The guards have a lot to answer for.”

Indeed they did. My injuries were the least of it.

I expected the prison to be on lockdown, but not only was it not locked, the double doors were all wide and gaping, and the side doors were unlocked.

And as we slipped into the prison, the first bomb exploded. The sound was a distant boom, and I stood still, squeezing Silverlight, as I waited to see if more followed.

None did.

“There are sections,” I said, as though they wouldn’t know. “We’ll have to go through each one and free the prisoners.”

“Each section is controlled by a panel in a locked room,” Angus said. “The place is old and the sections are the weakest, but it’ll take too long to get to all four control rooms.”

“Then we’ll need to hurry,” I answered, almost running to keep up with Angus, my arm screaming with each step. Leo stayed at my back, silent and quick.

We saw our first group of armed—but terrified—guards five seconds later. We rounded a corner and spotted them at the end of the corridor, heading straight for us.

“Leo,” Angus said, calmly, “you got your mojo back yet, my friend?”

Leo cracked his knuckles. “It’s trickling in. Stand aside, puny werebull.”

Angus hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me against the wall as Leo clenched his big fists and then charged the oncoming guards.

I yelped as they fired off a few wild shots, fearing Leo would be shot down before he could so much as taste his newfound freedom.

But Angus tightened his arm around me. “Watch, honey.”

The giant dropped suddenly to his knees and with a roar that caused plaster and dust to trickle from the ceiling, he punched the floor with one massive fist.

The floor began to crack. The guards yelled and turned to run, abandoning their guns as the cracks in the floor raced toward them.

The floor didn’t open up and swallow them, but the cracks were like fingers of electricity, sort of, like vines of killing power. The long, lightning cracks slid under the guards’ feet, and they climbed up their bodies in fast spirals of gold, then seemed to cut through them like thin, lethal wire.

And when the guards lay scattered across the floor, sliced into pieces, the lightning flew back to its master. To the giant.

His fist turned golden and bright, lit from the inside, as his power dived back inside him. Then he turned to look over his shoulder at Angus and me, and his face, for one brief second, was lit with a beauty so bright and wonderful that I nearly fainted to see it.

My head buzzed, dark spots danced in front of my eyes, and I swayed—had not Angus held me so tightly, I would have fallen to my knees. I blinked, my breath whooshing from my lungs, and when I looked at him again, his face was once more the plain, thick face of his people.

“Did you see it?” I asked Angus, my voice a squeak of awe.

He nodded, swallowing hard as he stared down at me. He said nothing, but astonishment was in his eyes. Yeah, he’d seen.

How long, I wondered, had that light been hidden? How long had he been masked, thrown into the darkness to wither and suffer with a silver spike in his skull?

I hoped the island would be destroyed. It needed to be destroyed.

We just needed to get off it first.