Chosen (The Warrior Chronicles #1)(81)

Then, unthinking, just reacting, he gave it.

A pure pulse of energy rocketed out from their two bodies, powers matched and equal, one specializing in finesse, the other now realizing he had something else. A raw, uncompromising punch of knock-down strength. He didn’t crunch or twist or stab. He DESTROYED.

The cluster of minds couldn’t even scream out the pain. They were trapped in it. It thundered into their bodies, shaking and twisting them into gnarled things that could no longer be recognized as human. Other Inkna, standing with swords or knives, trying to bring them down while they were caught in the mental bombardment sank, screaming. Those on the outskirts yelled until they were hoarse, bashing their heads into walls to escape it. Wave after wave of teeth chattering power surged out, pounding the Black Shirts and anyone unlucky enough to be in the way.

Shanti could imagine what people saw: Cayan standing in the wake, a strong man clutching to him a fierce looking woman, pillars amid the destruction they wrought. The ground was littered with bodies in red uniforms, blood oozing from eyes or ears, faces screwed up in agony as their life blinked out, eyes staring blindly at the sky. Behind a screen twenty spans away lay a pile of bodies wearing black uniforms, their minds dead.

It was then that Leilius stopped. His mind registered sorrow and hurt and panicked impatience. He had found Sanders—or at least learned the location. Shanti still couldn’t get a reading on Sanders’ mind, which worried her.

“To me!” Cayan boomed.

Shanti stepped away but turned to him, a question in her eyes, her hand on Lucius’s shoulder, helping her Chance up.

“Go. I need to give direction, then I am right behind you,” Cayan said with a nod.

And she was gone.

Chapter 44

“What was that?” Betty’s voice had a slight tremor to it.

The metal door to the cell was open. They had propped Sanders up on a chair, tied in so he didn’t fall off. Three Black Shirts stood around Betty. Littered on the ground were Steaphen and Jasan. They looked dead but their chests were rising and falling. They were breathing but it was shallow. Barely hanging on. Like him.

“There are two,” someone answered. “They can Join.”

“We can Join!” Betty shouted. “Take them down!”

“They took down all eighteen of the Sarsher. At one time. They are too powerful!”

“Eighteen… No one has that kind of power! There must be more. Where are the archers?”

“You sound worried,” Sanders mumbled. He couldn’t feel his body.

“How many?” Betty was in his face, pushing at his chest with a knife. It pricked his skin. He knew this because his chest was bare and small dots of blood welled up where the knife touched.

“Well, there’s the girl. And it seems she has trained the boy. So—” His body wracked in a cough. When he regained his breath he finished with: “So you’re f**ked.”

“Stop laughing!” Betty screamed.

Chapter 45

Shanti descended the stairs two at a time. She could feel Sanders now. Pain, misery, he was flirting with death, barely hanging on.

Anger so hot she couldn’t control it welled up from deep within her. All the pain from the last year was resurfacing, and she was about to put a face on the man responsible for killing her love. Not the same man, surely, but it didn’t matter. They were all the same as far as she was concerned, and he would pay.

“Two running up. Kill them!” she hollered.

Sterling was in front, Lucius behind. She had inherited another Chance. Sterling was thoroughly on her side because he trusted she was thoroughly on his. His loyalty now encompassed her, and it was a deep well of loyalty indeed. Cayan had picked some good officers. Not that that was a surprise.

“Lucius, three running after. Let me know if you can’t handle them. At the end of the stairs we go right.”

“Yes, S’am,” Lucius said.

Sterling didn’t understand the title so he just grunted.

They turned the corner; Shanti didn’t have to do anything with her Chances on the scene. Cayan was making his way down with five others. Sanders was dwindling further still. Two others were dying at his feet. Four enemy surrounded him that were the walking dead, they just didn’t know it yet. Sometimes she loved breaking the bad news.

“Sterling, two more headed your way. They will appear around the corner in three…two…one—“

The first got an arrow, the second a knife punched through the gut and ripped upwards.

“Turn left.”

The tunnels were well kept and scrubbed, but dark. It was below ground, so there were no windows. No natural light. Hopefully Sanders wasn’t half mad already.

Rage bubbled. She still had to make it out of here, so she couldn’t expend all her power. But oh Elders, she wanted to. She wanted to take the enemy’s sanity apart by threads and light each one on fire.

“Right,” she barked. “Now peel away.”

Sterling did exactly that as she walked into the large room. There was a row of cells, the low light getting trapped in the crannies of the stone walls. The smell of sweat and urine accosted her. She stopped in front of the first cell and felt a piercing in her shoulder, something glancing off bone. If she wasn’t so enraged it probably would’ve hurt.

Sanders was on a chair, completely naked, blood oozing down his chest from four different points. It looked fresh. He was filthy and covered in his own waste. His eyes were half open and unfocused, his mouth was turned up in a laughing grimace, and a wheeze that could have been soft laughter bubbled out of his mouth.