“You also.” She brushed her fingers briefly over the weeping angel on his bicep. Not even the angels would be able to help the people within this building if they harmed anyone she loved.
She stayed beside him as they inched their way into the hallway. From the outside, the place appeared no bigger than a 7-Eleven, but within it felt much larger. She stepped onto the door Julian had shoved into the building and walked over it to the other side.
Her eyes pulled out the pinpricks of light filtering in from behind them as they moved further down the concrete hall with doors lining both sides of it. With its nearly foot-thick walls, the building looked like it had been designed to withstand a bomb.
She saw nothing to indicate where the stakes had come from and realized they must have been from either people throwing them or weapons firing them, perhaps both. The reason the stakes hadn’t fired right away was because the people had probably had to scramble out of the way of the door being thrust at them. That delay had most likely saved Julian’s life and the lives of some of the others.
Their attackers had fled somewhere else and were preparing to prepare to launch a fresh attack on them. Quinn’s shoulders tensed as her eyes swung rapidly back and forth, searching for any hint of danger in the cool, damp building.
The silence filling the building was broken by the squeak of someone’s sneaker against the concrete floor. A few of those closest to her jumped at the sound, but they all continued onward.
The coppery tang of blood and something harshly anesthetic made her nose wrinkle and her throat burn. Beneath that, she detected the odor of earth and mildew. Julian had said The Commission liked to go underground, and judging by the earthy scent, there was far more to this place than met the eye.
“Smells like they’ve continued their experiments,” Chris said from behind them.
Quinn’s stomach curdled when she realized the cause of the caustic smell permeating the narrow hall.
“Yes,” Julian muttered as he stopped her before she could step in front of a closed door.
Turning her to the side, he settled her beside him with both of their backs against the wall. He reached forward with his hand, twisted the knob, and shoved the door open. He waved his hand in front of the open doorway, but nothing shot out at him. Tipping his head back, he searched the hallway above them. Quinn followed his gaze, but she didn’t see any cameras on the walls.
Still, she knew they were being watched. Julian waved his hand in front of the door again before stepping into the open. Quinn moved with him, offering her body as a target too. She braced herself for the stabbing pain of wood piercing her skin, but nothing shot out at them.
Beside her, Julian became as still as stone before turning away from the room. Quinn’s brow furrowed as she examined the gray room. Wires dangled from the ceiling above the metal table within. Julian had been strapped to a table like this at one point in his life; she’d glimpsed it once when she’d been feeding from him. Fresh rage bubbled within her. Her fingernails dug into her palms as she vowed retribution for all that had been done to him.
She turned away from the doorway and walked beside him as he made his way further down the hall. Her heart ached for the rigid set of his shoulders and the locked position of his jaw. No matter how vicious he appeared right now, she sensed the distress coiling through him.
She wanted to touch him, to offer him some comfort, but this was not the time or the place for that. Instead, she sought out the thread of connection to him that Julian had told her about earlier. Like a single strand of a spider web, she felt the fine thread binding her to him with her power.
Unknowingly, her power had continued to flow between them in a pathway she’d never realized she’d opened. She stroked briefly over that strand, sending a subtle rush of power into him. His head turned toward her, and his eyes flashed with blue before becoming red again. Some of the tension eased from him as he gave her a brief nod.
Quinn turned her attention back to the hideous hallway and the building. A bead of sweat slid down the back of her neck as she fought against breaking into a run and searching out their enemies in order to just get this over with. She kept waiting for something to jump out and attack them, or some new trap to spring, but it remained strangely calm within the hall.
They passed two more rooms like the first one, but all they came across was more of The Commission’s hideous torture devices. Arriving at another door at the end of the hall, Melissa strode forward to stand beside them. Melissa pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit on it as she studied the door.
“In the vision I had out on the field,” she whispered, “I saw the mines and I saw this door. I think there may be another explosion tied to this.”
“Wonderful,” Quinn murmured.
“It’s not as thick as the first one,” Julian said. “I can get through it on my own. Tell everyone else to move back.”
CHAPTER 25