Page 100 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Nine

Dominic

R iva slumps onto the deck, her face drained of all color. The features that had gone rigid as she let out her scream slacken; the white sheen fades from her eyes beneath her plummeting eyelids.

There’s chaos all around us—yells of horror and anger, shadowkind looming on the deck in front of me, plumes of dark smoke gushing through the air—but my entire world narrows down to the woman I love. A splinter of her anguish spears through me from the mark on my sternum.

Before I’ve even processed that I’m moving, I’ve dashed to her side.

A shudder ripples through her body, and then she keeps shivering despite the warm air, like she’s freezing. When I touch her arm, her skin feels clammy.

I yank off my trench coat without a second thought and crouch down next to her to wrap it around her trembling shoulders. The ocean breeze licks over my exposed tentacles, but right now I don’t give a shit.

The rest of the world barges into my awareness, as much as I’d like to keep tuning it out.

“You see?” Kudzu is hollering, stomping toward us with his sinewy muscles flexing across his tall frame. “ She’s the fucking monster. We have to destroy her before she?—”

My tentacles have already lashed out to defend Riva as well as I can. Andreas steps in too, his face taut but determined, and from the splashing and sputtering that carries from below the boat, I’d imagine Zian and Jacob are doing their best to fight their way back to us.

The second shadowkind being that leapt onto the boat has stepped back to the railing, his eyes bulging with fear. But the other springs forward, joined by the one of their group that’d stayed on the dock before, scrambling after Kudzu with seething hisses and murder in their eyes.

Oh, fuck.

Then Riva raises her head. She doesn’t seem to see the monsters bearing down on us—she focuses on the railing as if she can see through the hull to the dock beyond.

“Billy—is he—” Her gaze yanks to me. “Can you heal him, Dom? I tried to stop before it went too far…”

Three raging supernatural fiends are storming toward us intent on ending her life, and she cares more about the life she almost took. She’d send me to protect him rather than have me stay here defending her.

I don’t feel like I have a lot of choice, though. I snatch up the knife she dropped and shove between her and Kudzu a second before the massive guy barrels down on her.

“Don’t touch her!” I snap, tentacles whipping around me, knife hilt clenched in my hand.

He could probably pummel me into the deck without breaking a sweat, but he’ll have to if he wants to get to Riva. He’s not setting one fucking finger on her while I can still stand in the way.

The shadowkind man snarls with a hint of a smirk, as if he’s glad he gets to bash through me first?—

And then a voice so deep and dark it sounds like it’s echoing up from the depths of hell reverberates through the air.

“Get away from the girl.”

The rush of supernatural power that comes with that order washes over me in a prickling wave that sets all the hairs on my body on end.

Kudzu jerks around, his body clenching up like he’s been punched.

A monster stands on the dock, glaring at the shadowkind on the ship with eyes like smoldering coals and razor-pointed teeth glinting in his grimace.

The inhuman figure has to be well over seven feet tall, muscle-bound beneath his ruddy skin, two long black horns curving upward from the sides of his head.

My mind jars against the image, my thoughts scattering.

Then Kudzu says, in a cringing tone, “But, Rollick?—”

“Get. The fuck. Away from her,” the monster says in a firm but almost sardonic tone that does remind me of the demon’s voice, even if this version is way more booming.

Is that… is that what our benefactor really looks like?

I guess he’s called a demon for a reason.

There’s no missing the brutal energy that radiates off him, even more potent than in his human form. The shadowkind on the deck fall back, one of the smaller beings wincing as if Rollick’s demonic presence outright hurts her.

And just like that, it becomes very clear why he’s the boss. Even if his associates sometimes turn a little mutinous.

“Billy,” Riva says again, louder—a wrenching plea.

“He’s alive,” Pearl’s voice calls up from the dock, unusually squeaky with strain. “He’s— It’s not good.”

The demon that is Rollick meets my eyes and jerks his head toward the dock as if to say, Well, get on with it.

I don’t want to leave Riva, but knowing that someone is helping Billy in ways she can’t obviously means more to her than keeping me here. Rollick’s influence seems to be holding his comrades at bay.

My stomach knotting, I dash to the side of the boat.

As I straighten up with my approach, the crumpled bodies on the dock come into view. They’re even more unsettling than I expected from my glimpses while Riva’s scream cut through our attackers.

I can barely make out the heap of matter that was once Cinder through the streams of smoke gushing off her corpse. It looks as if her flesh is disintegrating into the smoke essence.

There’s a knob of something there that might be a knee. A long, lean chunk that’s probably her torso, though contorted beyond recognition.

I drag my gaze away to the other, smaller form huddled closer to the shore.

Billy is at least still identifiable as the slender, horned faun. His head appears to be intact, though it’s tucked toward his chest with a twisted grimace.

But the rest of him…

The gleam of a rib juts from one side, right through his torn shirt. Both of his legs sprawl bent at unnatural angles.

Wafts of essence trail off his wounds. Pearl is crouched over him, tears shimmering on her rosy cheeks, her pale hands flitting over him as if wanting to piece him back together but not knowing how.

No, that’s not good at all.

I shove open the gate and push down the ladder so I can rush down to the dock. The rickety surface bobs under my sudden weight.

Jacob and Zian are just pulling themselves onto the boards farther down, adding to the unsteadiness. Jake swipes his hand back over his drenched hair and stares at the boat as if he’s about to launch himself back onto it, his eyes blazing like ice-blue flames.

“If those fuckers touch Riva?—”

“They know better,” Rollick says in that echoing demonic voice that sends another shiver under my skin.

I dash over to Billy and sink down across from Pearl. My tentacles swing forward, one of them tucking around his waist, and the other trailing through the air.

“I need—I need an energy source,” I rasp out.

Rollick snaps his fingers. “Kelp, get the kid some fish. Now .”

An eerie warbling sound carries up from below, with a tremor of the dock. Then a gleaming fish as long as my forearm flips out of the water onto the boards next to me.

I don’t question it, just smack my other tentacle around its scaled body. The suckers clench on, and life races into me in a tingling torrent.

I compel the energy through my body and out the other tentacle, pouring every shred of the life I’m absorbing into the broken man in front of me.

Billy’s shadowkind body doesn’t feel the same as the people I’ve healed. Instead of catching hold of solid bones and organs, the healing power I’m sending into him seems to pool through his entire form. Like it’s condensing inside him, making every particle of him stronger and more solid.

Whatever it’s doing, my efforts appear to be working at least a little.

The rib vanishes into Billy’s body. His legs morph back into a more normal configuration.

The plumes of essence taper off, but thinner ribbons of smoke keep winding upward.

Another fish flops onto the dock, and my tentacle flicks to that one, nudging the desiccated corpse of the first into the water. I yank more life energy through me, but I can’t tell if my renewed efforts are actually fixing anything in the muddy sense I have of Billy’s internal state.

My voice comes out in a croak. “I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know if I can do anything else.”

Pearl smooths her hand over Billy’s tan forehead. To my relief, I spot the halting but visible rise and fall of his chest with a breath.

“I think—I think he needs to be back home to totally heal,” the succubus says, and glances at Rollick.

The demon nods. “There’s a rift just down the coast. Take him as quickly as you can. You’ll be able to find me later.”

Pearl gathers her friend up in her arms and murmurs something by his ear. A second later, they both waver out of sight into the shadows along the dock.

My chest feels hollowed out. I look up, my thoughts shooting back to Riva, and find her standing near the railing, watching.

She still looks sickly, and in my first glimpse, another shiver ripples through her frame. But she pulls my trench coat tighter around her and draws her back up straighter as if ready to face judgment.

Seeing her in my clothes sends a strange wobble through my gut that’s not at all unpleasant. Somehow I manage to reach the ladder before Jacob or Zian do, hurtling up the rungs so I can sling my arm around her.

Riva leans into me, taking comfort in my embrace. Just like that, I’m complete.

I don’t care that my mutations are out for everyone to see. I don’t care if I look like a monster to anyone looking on.

I am what I am, and I am hers. If she can love me like this, then I’m damn well going to figure out how to at least like what I’ve become.

“Are you really going to just let them off after what she did to Cinder and the wimp?” Kudzu demands, scowling down at Rollick but, I notice, not daring to step right up to the railing.

Rollick’s attention shifts to the gangly shadowkind with a mild glower. Before my eyes, his body contracts.

The ruddy skin pales to a peachier tone. His frame shrinks to a more realistic six-foot-and-a-few.

The horns vanish, and an elegant suit reforms over the planes of now more subdued muscle.