Page 122 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Eight

Riva

T he lit windows stand out on the face of the mansion like signal flares in the dark night. But we have to avoid those beacons until we’re inside.

Jacob topples the last of the three men who were stationed outside the isolated home with a snap of a vertebrae straight through the spinal cord. His power catches the body so it slumps quietly on the ground rather than hitting the lawn with a thump.

That’s what he’s spent the past two days practicing, while I’ve been climbing more walls, slipping silently through shadows… and doing my best not to kill mice.

Oh, and one of Clancy’s guardians did walk me through the fastest ways to kill a person with my claws using a dummy. But when she saw that my cage-fighting days had driven those skills home even deeper than my previous facility training, she decided I was good to go.

I always left my opponents alive if I could, but if it came down to me or them, I needed to know how to end the fight quick.

We stalk swiftly through the darkness to the back of the sprawling two-story mansion. Clancy showed us a rough blueprint of the place—there’s a room at the back that the people he’s sent to observe never saw the light go on in.

Whatever our targets do in there, they don’t do it at night. It’s our best chance at entering without alerting anyone.

The second-floor window is closed, and I bet it has a latch on the inside too. But Jacob simply stares at it, and after a moment the sliding pane eases upward with a faint rasp.

I don’t even wait for it to be fully raised. I leap at the side of the building, digging my claws in the way I’ve rehearsed, and fling myself up toward the window.

My ears pick up the tiny scratching of my claws, but I don’t think even Jacob will be able to hear the noise below, let alone anyone inside. The second I reach the window, I whip my arm over the ledge to brace myself and lift my other hand to carve open the screen.

I roll inside through the opening I’ve made, peer through the darkness to confirm that the small room holds nothing but scattered cardboard boxes, and whirl toward the window while unstrapping the coil of rope from my waist.

Jacob’s always been able to move small things very precisely and larger things with great force, but he doesn’t have enough control with something as heavy as a person to lift them fifteen feet in the air with no chance of them thumping against the wall.

So he won’t be flying himself or anyone else through windows anytime soon.

Although when Clancy talked us through this part of the plan, I got the impression that Jake was making mental notes to develop that skill too.

I drop the rope, and Jacob catches hold. Bracing his feet against the bricks, he heaves himself up with careful steps until he can scramble in after me.

We glance around the room, our eyes adjusting to the more enclosed darkness. He reaches into a box and lifts up what at first looks like a rag.

No, it’s a shirt—a kid’s shirt, that could fit a six year old.

My stomach clenches.

Another box I glance into holds an assortment of basic toys—dolls and plastic cars and building blocks. My throat constricts to match my gut.

Clancy said the slavers don’t appear to bring the kids to this house, but they clearly stash some supplies to do with their business.

Jacob glances at me with a determined expression, and I nod, squaring my shoulders. I may have led the way into the house, but for most of the mission, he’s going first.

He’ll “dispatch” every person we see who’s part of the slaving ring, and I’ll stay ready to leap in if Jake’s subtler approach to offing them goes wrong.

Zian’s X-ray vision would have been helpful here too, though I guess he might not have even fit through the window. And Clancy is still determined not to let too many of our group work together.

As we steal over to the door, footsteps creak on the floor outside.

Jacob tenses. He cocks his head, judging the sound, and nudges the door open a sliver to get a look outside.

The next thing I know, there’s another faint crack , and he’s yanking a limp corpse into the storage room with his powers.

I catch the body to help break its fall, and we lay it together on the floor. Even slack with death, the face catches on a memory.

It’s one of the men from the pictures Clancy showed us. Not the boss, though.

Jacob must recognize him too, because his mouth twists into a grim smile. He catches my gaze again as if to check that I’m still good and returns to the doorway.

The hall outside is empty now. We slip along the thick rug, finding the spots where we can set our weight without provoking creaks of our own, to a room farther down that voices are filtering from.

With my ears pricked, I decipher three different voices. I don’t think Jake will be able to drop all of them before the last can sound an alarm.

He’s going to need me too.

I touch his arm to catch his attention and hold up three fingers followed by a gesture toward myself. Jacob grimaces, but he nods in reluctant acknowledgment.

He isn’t going to gamble both our lives by overestimating his abilities.

To my surprise, instead of leaping straight in, he reaches to me and clasps my hand. Tentatively at first, as if he’s afraid I’ll yank away—like I probably would have a couple of weeks ago.

But I squeeze his fingers in return with a strange wobble through my pulse.

We’re going to do this together. We’re good together when all the other shit is out of the way.

We position ourselves in front of the door. My muscles coil.

Then Jacob flings it open in one brisk motion.

I don’t pause for even an instant to make sure he’s handling his part of the problem. I spring straight at the man who’s standing the farthest on my side of the room, my claws slashing out to strike his throat.

As I catch his fall while blood gurgles out of him, two more bodies slump at my right. One sways in Jacob’s hold, but he manages to push it toward an armchair that muffles the impact.

I scan the faces in the lamplight and swallow a twinge of disappointment. All three were in Clancy’s file, but none of these are the man in charge either.

He’s the most important one. If we don’t get him, he could just start his business all over again once he’s hired more people.

Thumps carry up the stairs from outside the room, a voice rising alongside them. The words are in a language I don’t know, but they have the cadence of a question.

Jacob and I fall into position silently.

The door still stands partly open. The moment the newcomer is close enough, Jacob grabs him with his power, snaps his neck, and drags him inside with the others.

We shut the door behind us and pause to listen in the hall. No other sounds of human presence reach our ears from the rooms around us, but more remarks travel up from the first floor, along with a tinkling of music.

We have to hurry. Who knows how soon the rest of the inhabitants might start to think it’s strange that their companions upstairs have been so quiet?

The banister on the broad staircase only offers partial shelter. I spot a couple more men and a woman—one of the two women included in Clancy’s photos—sitting on a leather sofa in a huge living room, laughing at something on the TV.

This time, I don’t even need to look at Jacob. He reaches back and rests his hand on my foot, nudging me ahead of him.

He can do his work from here. I need to get closer if I’m going to be speedy enough.

I dart the rest of the way down the stairs and flatten myself against the wall by the living room entrance. When I’m ready, I make a quick gesture to Jacob without shifting my attention from the room’s inhabitants.

I trust that he’ll act the moment I signal him. And as I hurtle into the room, the first of the men is already crumpling.

The second man starts to yelp, but I cut off the sound with a swift slash, tearing open the woman’s throat as well before she can do more than flinch. Blood spurts out over their sagging bodies and splatters my black clothes.

We still haven’t found the boss. Is he not even home right now?

Clancy wouldn’t have sent us in unless he was sure we’d find our main target, would he?

Jacob descends the stairs. We creep through an empty dining room and out into a wide hall that leads to a kitchen and a few other closed rooms.

The clink of dishes carries from the kitchen. We venture closer, our eyes peeled.

Two figures are moving around between the gleaming stainless-steel appliances and counters. Both the woman and the man are dressed in plain clothes, aprons tied over them, no jewelry or weapons.

And if that wasn’t enough to suggest that they don’t fit with the house’s main residents, they’re in the middle of unloading a dishwasher. They must be part of the household staff that Clancy mentioned.

I’m about to move on in the hopes that we can ignore them completely when a man walks into the kitchen from the back door, his confident stride and posher clothes marking him as a target rather than a servant. Shit.

We don’t have time to retreat to an easy hiding place. And maybe it’d be stupid to try to continue our assault with the kitchen staff here anyway, when they could potentially wander into the other rooms and stumble on a body at any moment.

At least this way, we control when and how they find out.

Jacob focuses on the man, who’s already ambled halfway across the kitchen. As the faint, fatal crack sounds, I hustle into the room.

The kitchen staff spin around, the woman letting out a gasp of surprise at the sight of one of her employers toppling. I press my hands to both of their mouths.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” I whisper in as low a tone as I can manage. “We just want to stop them from taking more kids. Get out of here, and don’t come back.”

They both nod, wide-eyed. The man rushes out through the back door first.