They all stared at me strangely as I told them about the information I stumbled upon and my insane theory.
“No way Arc is responsible forthis,” Marcus growled. “He’s been trying to free them for years. It has to be the other one. Whoever runs this place is keeping him to use his powers.”
His blind faith in my mate made my anxious heart settle in my chest. “We need to find that door. If they’re keeping him somewhere, ithasto be there.”
Marcus’ eyes drifted to the side as he let out a sigh.
“I don’t know…Doesn’t it all seem too easy for you? I mean, now we know why the guards all act like mindless beasts and why your powers don’t work on them…It has to be hard to play with the mind of someone who’s already under mind control. But there are so many prisoners we could free…”
The light in his eyes dimmed.His lovers. Both of them were Earthwalkers. Both of them were never found after they disappeared. They had to be here too.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you miss them. We—”
Savi waved at me. “We could move toward the restricted door and stop to free the ones we find. Offer them to either fight with us or give them the way back to the cave while they wait for us to come out and lead them back to the camp?” she signed. “The more we set free, the more fighters we’ll get to free the others. We’ll move faster this way.”
Marcus turned his head to me, hopeful.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, it sounds like a good idea. Let’s just hope they’re not all too broken to fight…”
Chapter 35
Lola
Iwiped my blade on the sleeve of an unconscious guard, mimicking the twins and Marcus before looking at the absolute mess.
We could barely walk around as the ground was littered with bloody bodies. Dark red and black blood splattered the walls and us, painting a pretty macabre picture.
“What I don’t understand is that they don’t even try to call for backup,” Marcus mused, crouching to inspect one of their faces. “I mean, we keep finding them in clusters…Why not call for the others? We’d be vastly outnumbered.”
“It’s like they’re mindless. They see us, and they attack as one,” Savi signed. “Like one brain controlling them all at the same time.”
“Then Marcus is right,” I said. “Why not order them all to attack us? Why wait until theyseeus before they actually jump at our faces?”
“We need to move before that theory is put to the test,” Marcus said, standing up and pointing at a lone door at the end of the corridor.
We all walked through it, expecting another group of guards behind it and not much else only to freeze at the sight in front of us.
“FuckingHell,” Marcus murmured under his breath, eyes wide as he took in the scene; dozens of cells, filled to the brim with battered Divines. Their gaunt faces looked worried as they stared right back at us, pushing their bodies as far as they could from the door cell and piling themselves on top of each other against the far wall.
The girls took the bunch of keys dangling in Marcus’ hand and rushed to the first cells, working on unlocking it.
I checked the map I doodled. So the Divines werehere. It meant the Earthwalkers and the few humans were on the other side. We could find and free all the ones that weren’t under any sort of mind control.
The girls were patient with them, trying to silently express the reason we were here. That they were all safe with us, and they shouldn’t be scared anymore.
I took a step in their direction. Might as well make myself useful so we could free them as fast as possible and move on to the next ones…
Marcus grabbed my wrist. “Wait, hold on.”
He pulled me back toward the door, voice dropping to a controlled whisper.
“You’re not going to like it.”
I frowned. “Tell me anyway.”
“We need to prepare in case your first theory is true. Arc was missing with Dimitri, and didn’t come back with him. Dimitri is shaken up about this place. ArccontrolsHellrisers, and the guards here are all demons that look completely lobotomized and—”
“Wait, are you suggestingArcis behind all this? After telling me the opposite just moments ago?”
