Page 117 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Four

Riva

T he swaying, reed-like strands of plastic sparkle with pink glitter. I eye the narrow opening, tracking their movements in the breeze.

There’s a dip in the ground under them. If I roll into it—a little to the side to avoid that root—at just the right moment…

I brace my limbs and then launch myself. As I hit the ground, I tighten my muscles to squish my compact body as small as it’ll go.

The pink-and-green strands flash by over my face. Then I’m shoving forward and leaping onto a jutting tree branch to avoid a pool of more glitter—this stuff neon yellow—on the far side.

I crouch there for a moment, breathing hard but with a sense of satisfaction I wasn’t totally prepared for. The branch starts to wobble, warning me that it’s part of the course’s training too.

With a rasp of my feet against the bark, I spring off and slip along a narrow path between the trees. I spot the trip wires seconds before I reach them and hop nimbly over each, just dodging a spinning disc that’s careening back and forth along one of them.

It’s done. I dart out into the field beyond the jungle with a sigh of relief.

The sun beams down over me, comfortingly warm. My nerves jangle from the high alertness I kept all through the stealth course that’s part of this island facility’s grounds.

Flopping down on the soft grass, I breathe the warmth and the new stillness in deeply.

I can do this. I can lie back and rest, knowing I made it through the course successfully.

Knowing I got to choose to run that course to begin with. Clancy escorted me from my room in the mountain facility this morning after a brief talk, but once we reached the grounds, he told me I could explore and try out anything that interested me.

He wanted me to get comfortable here. To see what he’s offering and what the life he’s talking about could be like.

I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of a guardian offering me a choice.

I told him I’d give his training style and his missions a try, because it was either that or stay locked up and be prodded like a lab rat. The decision was pretty simple.

But is it possible this option could actually be… good?

I’ll feel surer about that when he lets me see my guys again. How much can I really trust him when he doesn’t totally trust us?

Of course, he’s right not to trust us. If I knew how to reach the guys and had a clear way of getting us and the other shadowbloods out of here, I’d take it in an instant.

But the mountains that surround this crater-turned-valley look ominously steep. I don’t know how far we’d have to go beyond their ridges to find the island’s shores—or what avenues for further escape we’d find there.

How is Clancy bringing in people and supplies? Helicopter? Boat?

I have no idea which direction we’d even want to go in.

So for now I’ll play along, make whatever observations I can, and stay ready.

And if he really can help me get a proper handle on my sadistic talent while I’m here, I might actually leave better than I arrived.

Footsteps rustle across the grass toward me. I sit up in a snap and find two of the younger shadowbloods wandering over.

They hesitate at my sudden motion before continuing toward me. The younger-looking one, who I can’t imagine is even in her teens yet, strides forward boldly even as her eyes widen to take me in. A cloth bag swings from one of her hands.

The older one, who I’d guess is in her late teens, comes at more of a stroll, her eyebrows slightly arched beneath the fringe of her dark pixie cut.

The wry expression contrasts with her statuesque bearing, tall and solidly built but elegant as well.

But what stands out the most is her neon pink T-shirt.

“Did you make it through the whole thing with no glitter at all?” the younger one asks breathlessly, swiping her fawn-brown hair back from her pale face.

I guess they were watching my explorations.

“I think so.” I get up and hold out my arms for them to examine me.

They both circle me. The younger girl leans in to tap something on my black tee that I grabbed from the assortment of workout clothes I found in my room and giggles. “Nope, that was just a bit of lint. You really made it! I always get a little dusted.”

I look her up and down. “I’d imagine I’ve been training a while longer than you have. Also, it helps being tiny.”

Even the preteen has a couple of inches and maybe ten pounds on my five-foot-one frame. Her companion is at least half a foot taller than me.

“And fast,” the older girl says with a smile, and dips her head, the sun shining off her high brown cheeks. “I’m Nadia, and this is Tegan. You’re one of the First Gen shadowbloods, right?”

The capitalization of the words comes across in her tone, like it’s an official rank. A shiver that’s a weird mix of uneasy and proud tickles under my skin.

I shrug. “Yeah. I guess I am. My name’s Riva. Have you been here on the island for a while?”

Nadia shakes her head. “I think it’s been a week? I’m not great at keeping track.”

“Yeah, same.” Tegan peers at me again with those big eyes that I’m starting to think are just permanently wide. “Is it true that you and the other Firsts were going around with the monsters ?”

I blink at her. “You know about the shadowkind?”

The guardians never told me and my guys anything about the “monsters” we were supposed to be training to fight. We only found out what our expected purpose was when we confronted Ursula Engel.

Nadia’s eyebrows arch higher. “Shadowkind?”

“That’s what they call themselves,” I say. “The beings the guardians call monsters. They helped us. Well, some of them did.”

My mind darts back to the photos Clancy showed me of the dead kids. The bodies that could have been the two girls in front of me if they’d been held at the facility we broke into.

Tegan claps her hands together. “Of course we know about them! The guardians told us that’s why they’re working us so hard. So we can go out and stop them. Nadia’s even done missions to kill them.”

The older girl grimaces with a tug at her vibrant tee. “That wasn’t anything wonderful. I don’t even know what the ones I took out had been doing. I shot them with some special bullets from far away… But it was better than what the guardians would have done if I’d argued about it.”

I can imagine—they probably threatened her friends, her fellow shadowbloods, like they did with me and the guys.

Why did the guardians send our younger equivalents out so much sooner than us? What made them change their approach?

The two girls obviously don’t realize there’s anything strange about it. I swallow that question.

Curiosity itches at me about their talents, but if I ask about theirs, they’ll want to know mine… and the thought of trying to explain my brutal scream to sweet Tegan makes my stomach clench up. Instead, I focus on something more immediately important.

“How’s it been since you got here? No one’s treated you badly?”

“It’s great!” Tegan crows. “We get to come outside all the time, and the guardians working with Clancy are way nicer than the ones before. And the food is SO much better.”

Nadia nudges her. “You forgot to get out the snack.”

“Oh, right!” The younger girl grabs the cloth bag she set down and opens it up. “One of the kitchen staff made brownies for a treat. I was going to see if you wanted one. Or two. However many you’d like.”

She smiles at me so shyly but eagerly that I have to smile back. Then my stomach gurgles.

“Sure. Seems like I’ve worked up an appetite.”

She lays the bag down on the grass between us, spreading the opening wide so we have easy access to the several slabs of chewy chocolate stacked inside. I pick one up with instinctive wariness, but it smells and feels like perfect fudgy goodness.

When I take a small bite, it tastes like that too, chocolate heaven melting in my mouth. Normally I’m more of a sour-flavors gal, but I can go for sweets when they’re this delicious.

But as I chew, a pang shoots through my chest.

Dominic would love these. Has he gotten to have one?

I can sense that he’s somewhere within the mountain facility right now, but nothing about how he’s feeling or what he’s doing. I guess he can’t be in too much distress, because I seem to pick up a trace of particularly strong emotions, but that’s not a huge comfort.

It’d be awfully nice if these marks operated like walkie talkies.

As Tegan hums happily over her own brownie, two other teens who look around Nadia’s age amble toward us. The guy, whose tan skin and spiky blond hair make him look like he’s walked out of a surfer movie, tsks his tongue in mock-offense.

“You didn’t think to tell me you had the goods?”

Nadia scrambles up in a much more awkward motion than I’ve seen before, her cheeks reddening as she sweeps up the bag. “Of course you can have one. And you too, Celine.”

She nods to the girl who’s trailed behind him. From her features, I’d guess she’s got a lot of Chinese or Vietnamese in her genetics.

The guardians seem to have liked to experiment with a variety of human ethnic heritages. I suspect Nadia is mostly Native American in background—as much as you can call it a background when we were constructed in a lab rather than out in the real world.

Celine smiles widely with a swish of her long ponytail, the red flecks in her black hair catching the sunlight. “Thanks so much!”

Something about her tone jars me. Like the chipper inflection should remind me of Pearl’s bubbly personality, but it doesn’t hold as much warmth as I’d expect.

But then, who could blame her if she’s a little on edge in this place? It might be nice compared to other facilities, but we are still technically captives.

Nadia is mainly focused on the guy anyway, her gaze lingering on his face as he raises the brownie to his full lips.

I might not be the most socially experienced person ever, but soap operas have more than prepared me to recognize a crush. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I’m looking at right now.