I grasped onto Jonathon’s shirt, suddenly feeling extremely frightened. The sensitive hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
And then everything went black.
So black, that even I couldn’t see anything. It was like I was blind.
The fabric of Jonathon’s shirt was wrenched from my fingers and I whimpered. I fought against my instincts to cry out his name for fear of giving away our location.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat, creeping forward, but then it felt like I was falling, falling, falling.
“What’s happening?!” A voice I didn’t recognize cried out.
“It’s an illusion,” Gabriel’s gravelly voice responded, “just don’t move.”
“It feels like something is biting me!” Another voice screamed.
It seemed that each of us was experiencing a different thing.
I flailed my arms, unable to ignore the sensation that I was falling.
Just as quickly as it began, it ended.
My chest rose and fell heavily, as if I had just run a marathon. I looked around, in search of familiar faces, and found my whole family present.
“What was that?” I asked.
“It was an illusion,” Gabriel repeated, “meant to distract us.” He looked around wildly, checking to see if we’d lost anyone.
A voice called out, “Dane! Dane! Where are you?! Dane!”
“This isn’t good,” Gabriel closed his eyes, rubbing his hands over his face. Choosing to ignore the distressed calls of the female as she searched for her loved one, Gabriel nodded, “This way.”
We walked at a snail’s pace, our footsteps silent.
I wanted to ask Gabriel if he was sure he knew where he was going, but I didn’t want to make him mad, and now wasn’t the time to start questioning him. We’d trusted him up to this point and he hated the Originals more than we did. If Gabriel said he knew his way around the compound, then he wasn’t lying.
I reached out, skimming my fingers along the metal wall, careful to keep my eyes on Gabriel so as not to get lost.
The hallway we were walking in, that was still descending further beneath the earth, opened up wider until we were standing in a cavernous room with ten more hallways branching off of it.
Coming out of those hallways were hundreds and hundreds of Guarde.
We all stopped dead in our tracks.
“Well,” Mason clapped his hands together, “it was nice knowing you guys.”
With that said, he charged forward, and a war like no other began.
Chapter Twenty: Clash
In the past, I’d always been on the sidelines, but now I was in the middle of this battle, fighting for my life…fighting to get my daughter back.
A hand closed around my throat from behind, lifting me into the air so that my feet didn’t touch the ground. I kicked blindly at the person holding me, clawing at the hand that held me. I was pulled against their chest and they braced their other hand around my neck. The muscles in my neck strained as they pulled. My eyes connected across the room with Jonathon’s. I watched as horror filled his eyes.
Like a weakling, I closed my eyes, not wanting to see that look in his eyes.
My throat was released and I started to fall to the ground, catching my self on the balls of my feet.
I spun around, hissing as my teeth elongated in anger.