Page 111 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Thirty-Five

Riva

A yelp of warning breaks from my throat, as if the guys won’t have seen the threat in the same instant I did. I propel myself backward?—

And bang against a set of steel bars that’ve just dropped from the ceiling to cut off our access to the doorway.

They’ve locked us in. Was this a trap?

We all duck low instinctively to make ourselves smaller targets. Tranquilizer darts whiz through the air only to be smacked to the side by a wallop of Jacob’s telekinesis.

I have only a second to register that the guardians are wearing something odd under their usual helmets before one of them tosses a hissing cannister our way. A plume of blue smoke gushes up into the air around us.

Gas masks—that’s what they’re wearing. They think they can knock us out this way instead.

Zian sputters and aims a brutal kick at the cannister, sending it spinning past our attackers. The smoke wafts away from us with another push of the invisible force Jacob can conjure, but a hint of dizziness prickles through my mind.

Several of the guardians let out startled shouts, shaking their heads as if trying to clear them. When I glance at Andreas, his eyes have flared red.

He’s confusing them with projected memories. But there are so many of them, more tramping out of a door at the other end of the hall.

Dominic yanks out his pistol and fires at our adversaries, but the power Jacob is hurling out to deflect their assault carries bullets from our side too. Dom flinches as the projectile ricochets off the wall.

Shit. We can’t shoot at them without opening ourselves up to their own ammunition.

More darts fly. My ears catch the click of another cannister.

If we don’t figure out something fast, we’re going to suffocate in here.

The thought sends a jolt of panic through my nerves. I sway on my feet, claws out to slash at anyone who dares to come close, knowing it won’t be enough.

The vibration in my chest reverberates through my lungs with a swelling scream.

I could end them all—but they know that, they’re tossing everything they can our way to stop me first. If I’m doing this, I have to cut them down now .

But they’re not the only ones with us in this hallway.

Nervous eyes peek from one of the doors that hasn’t been thrown fully open. As my power resonates through my bones, I can feel them—the ones like us, the ones with shadows in their blood, shut away in this place for so long.

I can’t save us by killing them too. And my scream…

It prickles up my throat, and I clamp down on it. My body balks like it did before when Rollick tried to get me to practice my powers.

But with my next gulp of air, laced with the desperation of all my men around me, my mind latches on to a different memory.

Last night, under Rollick’s supervision. Letting out a sliver of a shriek and lancing it through one creature and another.

There are too many guardians. I can’t hit them one at a time.

But I shielded my guys before. I know them—and I know the kids huddled behind those doors too, in all the ways that matter most, enough that my blood could lead me here.

I won’t strike at them. Not the ones like me.

I’m not a killer. I’m a protector .

Images flash beyond my eyes of all the moments I’ve shared with my men over the past week. Not just battles and bloodshed, but tenderness too.

Showing Dominic I adore him even with his strange new features.

Stepping back into Andreas’s arms with forgiveness.

Stopping Jacob before he sliced himself open on my behalf and bandaging his wound.

Cuddling up to Zian on the plane just hours ago, proving that whatever he’s able to offer me is enough.

I can heal in my own ways. I can defend and champion.

And I will do that now.

I part my lips and let my power out.

The shriek bursts from my throat and blasts down the now-crowded hallway. I aim it past the bodies that pulse blood and shadow together and stab it into every figure before me that’s only human.

Human and totally monstrous.

My hunger surges up to saturate my nerves. I wrench through one body and another, devouring their pain, letting the satisfaction of it drown out any tremors of guilt.

All my focus, all my self-control stays on keeping my vicious talent on target.

I’m distantly aware of my men moving around me, not frozen in shock like the first time I let my fury loose.

Zian braces himself in front of me, guarding me from any physical attack, smacking away a dart that careens my way. Jacob heaves one cannister and another back toward their source, his power warbling down the hall as he compels the noxious gas away.

At the back of the crowd, the new figures who barge into the hall stumble into their colleagues in the grips of memories that aren’t theirs. In the muddle Andreas is casting over them to distract them for the few instants before my scream catches hold of them too.

And Dominic crouches next to me, one tentacle wound around my bare hand, another clasping the neck of an injured guardian who collapsed on the floor after he attempted to charge us.

My healer is flooding me with more and more energy even as I drink down the giddying waves of pain I’m dealing out as well.

We’re in this together, and we’ll leave together. More of us than came.

Strength thrums through my muscles. The shriek belts on and on as bones snap and tendons tear and?—

And then there’s no one left. No one who deserves my rage.

My legs wobble with the sudden rush back into normal awareness, but it’s all eager adrenaline, not a hint of weakness. When Dominic touches my side to steady me, I’ve already caught my balance with a flare of urgency.

“We’ve got to get the kids out. There could be more guardians coming.”

There’s no way the staff here didn’t manage to contact their colleagues elsewhere, right? But we don’t know if anyone was close enough to help all that quickly.

It’s better not to take the chance.

We hurry down the hall, yanking open the doors that the guardians weren’t hiding behind. I find a skinny, dark-complexioned girl who can’t be more than twelve and a stout, redheaded boy who looks maybe fifteen.

“Come on,” I say, beckoning to them. “We’re getting you out of here. No more tests. You’ll be free.”

As they stir to their feet, apprehension and hope flashing across their faces in tandem, Zian gives a shout of triumph and fishes a controller from one of the mangled guardian’s pockets. He hits the button, and the barred gate rises.

Andreas ushers two other kids out through the doorway. “Let’s take only a couple each,” he shouts over his shoulder. “We need to be able to protect them.”

I nod. “And hurry!”

Dominic directs two more kids toward the training area. As I encourage my shell-shocked charges to follow them, motioning toward the door to try to avert their gazes from the bodies on the blood-stained floor, Zian wrenches open the last of the cells and frowns.

“That’s all of them down here. Only six?”

I pause in the doorway and glance at the boy, who looks slightly less terrified than the younger girl. “Was it just the six of you in this facility?”

“I—I’m not sure,” he says. “We didn’t always train with the same people. They came and went.”

Well, six is better than none. Six is a start.

Maybe the guardians didn’t manage to make all that many more shadowbloods with Engel’s adjusted methods after all.

Jacob kicks the last of the still-smoking cannisters into one of the empty cells and yanks the door shut to seal the noxious smoke away. He turns to Zian.

“Go with them! Make sure they get to Rollick okay. I feel like there’s something else important down here—come back as soon as you’ve dropped the kids off and we’ll see what else they’ve been hiding.”

I don’t love leaving him on his own, but getting the kids to safety matters more. “Don’t go too far,” I order him.

Andreas and Dominic have already crossed half the cavernous room. I hurry my charges along as quickly as I can, not wanting to slow down the others’ escape by calling for them to wait.

They vanish into the stairwell, and we dash after them moments later. The kids finally come out of their stunned state enough to pick up to a run.

I wonder if they’ve been drugged like the guys say they were after our first escape attempt, their senses dulled.

We’ll see them free of that internal prison too.

We scramble out into the short upper hall. Muffled grunts carry from the control room where the man we tied up must have regained consciousness, but I ignore him.

Zian pulls ahead before we race outside and wedges a stone in the door to hold it open. As we approach the mouth of the cave, we both scan our surroundings quickly.

I catch a few shouts off in the distance, and the flames are still crackling as part of Rollick’s distraction. But there are no guardians I can see or smell nearby.

A spark of victory lights in my chest. We did it—we saved them.

There’s no one left here who can hurt any of us.

Andreas and then Dominic lope past us back toward the facility, their kids already safely passed on. I wave my two charges on toward the gleaming phosphorescent line.

“We have friends here who are going to make sure we all get out of this place without the guardians catching us again. Stick with them, and the rest of us will join you soon.”

Pearl and a shadowkind man wave to us from just beyond the boundary, the succubus bouncing eagerly on her feet. I shoot Pearl a quick smile and give the kids a gentle nudge toward them.

“These are the last of them.”

Pearl returns my smile brightly. “Are you coming back with us, then?”

My sense of Andreas and Dominic through my marks tugs at me. I think of Jacob still searching below, and shake my head.

“We’re going to give the building one last check and then we’ll be right with you.”

As the shadowkind figures hustle the kids onward through the woods, I wheel around with Zian by my side and dash back into the cave.

That’s it. All six of this facility’s prisoners are in protective hands now.

But maybe we can hurt the whole organization of guardians even more if we just look a little harder. Find out whether they’re holding other young shadowbloods elsewhere.

We could be only just beginning this war.

The upper hall of the hidden facility is empty—I can feel that Andreas and Dominic have headed downstairs. They weren’t there to hear that we’d already gotten all of the kids who were being held here, but we need to get back to Jacob anyway.

I dart into the stairwell, and Zian stalls in his tracks behind me with a confused grunt. “What…?”

I start to glance back at him, but Jacob’s voice carries up from below. “Riva—hurry! We’ve got to deal with this fast.”

I have no idea what he’s found, but my heart lurches with a sudden jolt of panic so sharp it practically shoves me toward him.

“Come on, Zee!” I holler, and take off down the steps.

Jacob has pulled off his black cap. His blond hair gleams in the florescent lights as I dash after him around the twists in the staircase, a couple of levels above him.

He marches past the third-floor landing to the fourth basement level and pushes aside the door there. I run after him, propelled by the still-growing wave of anxiety.

What have the guardians been doing down here?

I barge into the fourth-floor hallway just in time to see Jacob disappearing past a door partway down. His voice carries back to me. “This way! Quick!”

I spring after him and burst past the door. My momentum hurls me forward a few steps before I slow, realizing I’ve come into a narrow, empty room that appears to have no other exits.

Transparent panes shoot from the walls on either side of me. They smack into place, hemming me in.

With a stutter of my pulse, I slam my fist into one to smash it.

It’s definitely not any normal kind of glass. My supernaturally powered blow doesn’t open the slightest crack.

My gaze jerks to Jacob, who’s standing beyond one of the panes, expecting him to be launching himself at it from his own side. But he’s just standing there, watching me.

In the space of a thump of my heart, I notice a few things.

There’s no cut marking his cheek where I deflected the jab of the guardian’s knife.

His slicked-back hair curls a little longer around his ears than seems quite right.

His clothes, though all black, don’t totally match mine. The collar only reaches the base of his throat instead of covering his neck.

And his eyes. The pale blue eyes that’ve seared into me with anger and lit up with joy look utterly empty in a way I’ve never seen before, not even at his worst.

The bottom of my stomach drops out.

That’s not Jake.

The man who isn’t Jacob pushes his mouth into what looks more like an imitation of a smile than the real thing.

“It’s been a long time, Moonbeam.”