But she isn’t fighting us—shewouldn’tstand a chance if she tried—
Full understanding clicks in my head. She’s stalling. Because she’s waiting for something else.
Before my thoughts have quite caught up with me, I’m spinning around. I dart across the living room to the chair where she was sitting when we first came in.
My fingers dip between the chair arm and the table where hers did in that brief, odd gesture I couldn’t make sense of and then forgot—and catch on the edge of a button hidden beneath the lip of the table.
Engel’s posture stiffens. I whirl around toward the guys.
“There’s a control here—it’s got to activate some kind of alarm system. She’s signaled for someone to come.”
All of the guys immediately jerk into defensive stances. Jacob’s gaze turns searingly cold.
“Who did you—”
Before he can even finish spitting out the question, a swarm of dark-clothed figures swing into view from above and smash straight through the high windows in a shower of shattered glass.
Thirty-Four
Riva
As I fling myself away from the windows, glass shards slice at my hoodie, one scraping across my jaw. Heavy feet thud onto the ground inside Engel's house with enough force that the floorboards tremble.
With the ear-splitting booming of the first shots, a broad hand snags around my arm and yanks me farther away from the intruders with supernatural strength. Zian and I tumble toward the kitchen island, propelled by his backward lunge.
He was standing ten feet away when the attackers burst in. He leapttowardthem rather than away just to pull me to safety.
A bullet whizzes across my upper arm, clipping me and searing through my skin. As I bite back a yelp of pain, Zian grunts, flinching where he’s still gripping me. My heart stutters with panic.
“Here!” Jacob’s voice rings out, taut and furious. Scraping, creaking sounds surround me, mingling with the thunderous rattle of the gunfire.
I roll onto my feet and spin around, flicking my gaze over the chaos that now surrounds us.
The other guys dove down by the island too. Jacob’s turned this spot in the middle of the house into a sort of triangular fort, with the sofa and the overturned dining room table yanked close by his powers to form the other two sides.
The reason we haven’t leaptbehindthe island is obvious from the cacophony of sound battering my ears. Some of the shots are blaring from the kitchen. Others from the front of the house, opposite the living room.
Our attackers entered from all sides—front, back, and up from the basement. We’re surrounded.
And those are actual bullets, not any kind of tranquilizer. Blood is soaking through my hoodie from the shallow gouge in my arm, and Zian—
Zian’s right shoulder has completely sagged, a splotch of red blooming fast around a bullet wound right where his shoulder meets his chest. I can’t tell whether the bullet is still lodged inside or tore straight through, but if it’d been even a few inches farther to the right…
He almost died, pulling me to safety.
The figures shooting at us almostkilledhim.
Something Engel said echoes up from the back of my mind with chilling clarity. The disdain in her voice when she talked about the guardians.I knew they’d only want to recapture you.
In the moment, I’d thought she’d meant as opposed to letting us keep our freedom. The sickly certainty coiling in my stomach tells me it was just the opposite.
She didn’t want us to even survive.
The prickling vibration resonates through my chest. I clench my jaw against it and force myself to focus on the battle.
The initial barrage of gunfire has dwindled for just an instant. One benefit to being surrounded is that our attackers can’t pelt us with bullets wildly without significant risk of hitting their colleagues.
Of course, the benefit only lasts as long as they can’t get close enough to shoot us like fish in a barrel.