I desperately wanted to run to Roran, but I could see his direction in his eyes:Don’t move.
We couldn’t let them know who meant what to whom. I had to stay near Carolee, Vitas and several of the others.
“They’re all up!” one of the guards outside our cage called.
There was a clank, a bang and then water fell from the ceiling in a torrent, rinsing all of our vomit down to the center where there was a drain. It took a few minutes for the floor to be clean, but it was gone, and so was the stink.
We were all drenched in the process.
I had to stay alert, pay attention. Like a desperately intricate sword fight, I needed the details of the fight.
First, they must have knocked us out in the forest. Probably with blowguns and darts and fast-acting drugs.
Next, they moved us here.
Whereverherewas.
Then they knew when we woke up, everyone down to the person would vomit. That meant they knew this drug very well. And knew what it would do to people. Druids.
I wondered how it would work on vampires.
And last, this was not their first go-round, because they had a drain in the floor and a water system in the ceiling for rinsing out the puke.
Carolee jerked away from the bars in the next instant and rubbed her arm.
“What?” I asked quietly.
“It’s…galena. It’s coated in galena.”
All of the druids in the cell heard her quiet words while a shiver of fear ran up my back.
If the bars were coated in galena, they really knew what they were doing. This was a holding cell to beat all holding cells. It was designed to keep a magic wielder from their magic.
Galena never responded to magic. Ever.
Every druid child knew that.
No one went near galena. The scientists at the university called it anore, a chemical mélange they could boil down and extract a dull, malleable metal namedleadfrom. It was useless and dangerous.
Vitas’s head swiveled around to the door next to him. There was a handle, but nowhere to put a key.
The guard laughed and tapped the wall next to him. “Don’t bother. The lock is over here.”
Vitas and I shoved our magic at the keyhole and—
Nothing happened.
The entire locking system was laced with galena—lead. Nothing would obey us.
This was avampirejail.
The vampires couldn’t affect it, either.
They hadn’t seen druids in as long as we hadn’t seen vampires. So whatever they used on us would work on them.
I cursed that I didn’t have a notebook to write all this down. Dorian and the rest of the temple masters needed all this information.
Just as I was going to move toward Roran, the guards in the room snapped to attention.
