Rage and Ruin by Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,176

gotten in here earlier, taken the risk, because these people...

We came to the end of the staircase, and the smell of rust and rot increased as we walked into a room. Flickering fluorescent light cast shadows along rows of wide lockers. Doors were ripped off, benches toppled over. I looked around, realizing we must be in the old locker rooms, where the Nightcrawlers had been...incubating.

There were no ghosts in here.

Cayman walked through an archway into another opening while Roth stood near me.

Something occurred to me. I reached out and pressed a hand against the bare brick wall.

The wall vibrated under my palm, and a heartbeat later, a golden glow washed over the walls and ceiling and then disappeared, revealing what Roth had suspected we’d find that day in the tunnel.

The entire school was full of angelic wards. “This trapped them here.” I pulled my hand away. The wards remained. “Those people could’ve been good. Just needed help crossing over. They could’ve even been spirits, because some of them weren’t in their death states, but they all looked wrong.”

I had no idea if Shadow People could do that, but as I looked back at the stairwell, I accepted what I’d known the moment I saw the ghosts and spirits. “They’ll all about to become wraiths, and...”

“It’s too late.” Roth said what I didn’t want to. “Ghosts and spirits are the soul exposed. It’s more vulnerable in death, when decisions and actions become permanent. It’s like they’re all infected, and it’s incurable.”

Heaviness settled in my heart as I tore my gaze from the stairwell. There was no one left here to save.

“Guys?” Cayman’s voice rang out from the other side of the wall. “You’re going to want to see this.”

Roth and I exchanged looks before walking toward the opening. “This is where the Lilin was born, sort of in a nest. It’s the old showers.”

We stepped into a bare room, and I could make out Cayman kneeling. “What’s up?” Roth asked.

“Found something. A hole. There’s light down there.” He rocked back. “No way down other than to jump, but looks to be about ten feet. Was this here before?”

“No.” Roth edged around the eight-by-eight opening. “This is new.”

“Should we check it out?”

It took me a moment to realize Cayman was speaking to me. I nodded. “I think we have to.”

“All right.” Cayman rose. “Meet you down there.” He jumped, and after a moment, he signaled the okay.

I went next. My landing sent a poof of dirt and dust into the air. Coughing, I stepped aside so Roth wouldn’t land on me when he came through the hole a few seconds later. As the dust cloud settled, my vision adjusted to my surroundings.

It was brighter down here, lit by several spaced-out halogen lights on raised tripods and torches that jutted out of earthen walls.

That was a fire hazard if I’d ever seen one.

The place was a man-made cavern of sorts, opening into a larger space where the ceiling was far higher than the hole we’d jumped through. Piles of rocks and mounds of dirt were stacked and pressed to the walls. Several tunnels branched off, and I suspected at least one must lead to the tunnels we’d been in outside the school. But my attention was snagged by what was situated toward the back of the cavern.

Pale white rocks were stacked on top of one another, forming a six-foot-tall archway. The opening wasn’t empty. At first, it looked like a blank space, but as I stared, I realized that the area wasn’t stagnant. It moved in a slow churning motion, and every few seconds, a sliver of white whipped through like lighting.

“Is this what I think it is?” Cayman approached the crudely made arch.

Roth came down the center of the cavern. “If you’re thinking it’s a portal, then you’d be correct.”

My breath caught as my gaze bounced from him to the archway. “That’s a portal?”

“Yes,” he answered.

I’d heard of them but never seen one before. I didn’t imagine many had.

“It’s limestone.” Cayman stepped around it, nearing one of the tunnels. “And you guys discovered there are ley lines through here?”

Realizing Zayne must’ve filled him in, I nodded. “There’s an actual hub in or around this area, where several of them connect.”

“Damn,” Roth murmured. “With the limestone and the ley line, that makes this one Hell of a conductor for power.”

“Limestone is like a sponge, soaking in energy all around it, both man-made and electromagnetic, even kinetic and thermal energy. Everything that’s happened in