The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(49)

Jared lifted his hand and I took it. There was darkness ahead, creeping and pooling, and it swallowed us whole. A spell.

One I’d been through before, only last time I’d been with Ethan. We stepped out of the other side of the darkness. Moved down a hall, past torchlight and a room that looked to be a guard’s room. Jared shifted to the side and I kept moving forward. Hands reached out of the cells on my right, and I found myself reaching back.

“Gregory?”

“Wild, you shouldn’t have come back.” His voice was weak.

Come back. “I was here before?”

“You were,” said a voice I knew and shouldn’t have been surprised to find at the bottom of a dungeon. Adam stepped out of the shadows. “And you should not have come back.”

Jared snarled. “I’ll take care of him. You get the other kids. There’s a way out if you keep following the tunnels.” He tossed me a ring of keys.

Adam shook his head. “Jared, you should know better by now. You can’t beat me.”

Jared grinned. “Maybe not, but you can’t beat us both. We have you now, Adam.”

Both? If I was getting the kids out, who was he referring to? Footsteps approached us from behind, and I couldn’t help but turn and look. Director Frost stepped out of the same darkness from which Jared and I had emerged. It was unmistakeably her, but her skin was unlined. An illusion?

She smiled at Adam. “Indeed. He cannot beat us both.”

Jared launched at Adam and the director looked at me as the two men tumbled down a tunnel to our right, the sounds of their blows and grunts fading quickly. “Get the others out. We will deal with Adam.”

All along. Adam had been orchestrating this all along.

I nodded and hurried to the first cell. Gregory was so eager to leave, he fell out when I opened the door. I caught him with one hand and dragged him with me to the other cells. All the missing kids were there, including Colt.

“Thought you could avoid dancing with me at the graduation, did you?” I asked.

His eyes were haggard, but he smiled at me. “Never. I’d never run away from you.”

“Sweet, really, but can we get out of here before they take us all?” Gregory snapped his long fingers up in my face. Same old Gregory.

“There should be one more kid. They brought my sister in.” I spun around, counting the cells, but there was no one left.

“Maybe they already got her out? They kept everything dark, we couldn’t see who took us, or who was in here if they were quiet,” Colt winced as he spoke, the bruises on his jaw a testament to Adam’s violence.

A bellow followed by a wall-shaking boom stopped us in our tracks.

“You all go.” I paused and then shook my head. “Look, go out the way I came in. Through the darkness and up the stairs. It’ll be faster. Get to the mansion, tell Ethan and the rest of the crew that I’m here.” I pushed the missing kids back through the darkness. Not the way the director wanted them to go. But I knew for sure it was a way out. I didn’t want them to get stuck.

And I wasn’t leaving until I found Sam.

I waited until the kids—more of them than I’d expected— disappeared into the darkness, led by the one vampire in the crew.

A burst of warning cut through me and I spun, pulling my blade out through the pocket of my skirt as I turned. I stopped the blade only a breath away from Jared’s heart.

“Good stop. You sent the others out?” He tipped his head toward the tunnel Director Frost had pointed out, away from the stairs. I nodded, lying, though I didn’t know why.

“What about Adam?” I looked past the vampire in time to see Director Frost drag Adam out by the scruff of his neck.

Her face wasn’t the only thing that had changed—her body was lithe, young and fit. She smiled at me. “I see the confusion. Put your blade away, and let me explain just what has happened here.”

Rory’s note flashed in front of my eyes.

I didn’t put my knife away. Adam rolled his head toward me, blood dripping from his face in a continuous flow. Frost dropped him on the ground. “He’s no good without his wand, like most from the House of Wonder.” House of Wonder? I’d thought he was a Shade. And then it hit me.

He was like Colt, one of the rare people who straddled two houses.

Adam lifted his head. “Run. Get out.”

He was telling me to go.

Oh crap.

Jared’s hand shot out and clamped on my wrist. “Don’t even think about fighting me, Wild. You’ll lose. And my love over there needs you intact.”

Frost laughed. “Oh, the look on your face, Wild. You are trying to put the pieces together, but you can’t, can you?”

I jerked my hand, trying to free it from the vampire’s iron-clad grip. He grinned at me. “You aren’t going anywhere. You and the other kids are going to go permanently missing. But the cause is good, great even.”

The urge to fight, to slash at him with everything I had, was overwhelming and it took a great deal of effort to hold it down. I needed answers before I cut his lying tongue out of his face. “You don’t have my sister here, do you?”

He shook his head. “No, but it was an easy way to make you ignore your natural instincts, wasn’t it? You are a child yet, untrained if strong.”