Page 137 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Seventeen

Griffin

T he twining melodies of violin and piano swell through my room. They wind around me as I lean back in my armchair.

The music stirs emotion in some people. I’ve seen videos of audiences weeping while listening to this song.

But nothing rises up inside my chest. My heart beats on at the same steady pace.

I used to put on music like this to test myself. To confirm just how deep the guardians’ training ran.

This is one of the rare moments when I can’t help thinking I might prefer it if I noticed it getting to me just a little. If I knew the things that affect other people could still affect me, if only slightly.

A normal person would be irritated, even angry, that Clancy was taking so long to come talk to me. I told the guardian who tried to bring me and Riva to dinner that I wanted to see him immediately, in the firmest tone I’m capable of.

But it’s been… hours? Definitely at least one of those.

My sense of time has gotten foggy with the fading of my emotions, as if feeling things about what was happening helped define those events concretely in my head.

By any measure, it’s been a lot more time than immediately . My thoughts won’t settle until I can address him directly.

And yet with each passing minute, my heart thumps on in the same steady rhythm. My gut stays relaxed.

The tension in my mind doesn’t seep beyond my skull.

Maybe he’s gone to talk to Riva first, which might be fair, and that’s what’s keeping him.

At the thought of Riva, one of my hands brushes over the other unbidden. The graze of my fingertips over my knuckles doesn’t summon even a ghost of the sensation I’m unconsciously seeking, but it does provoke a flicker of memory.

Her hands, tucking around my own. Her fingers stroking my skin.

The tiny but heated quivers that shot through my nerves and had my pulse momentarily hitching.

The memory in turn provokes a faint twinge of aversion. No, that shouldn’t happen. No, that’s nothing I want.

The source of that reaction is buried so deep now that it doesn’t contain any emotion of its own, only a dull impression of recoiling within my head.

What am I recoiling from, though? It was Riva— It was good.

The urge to walk straight to wherever she is and feel it again nibbles at the edges of my mind.

No.

Even feeling things because of her can be a problem. Those kinds of feelings could be the worst problem.

Couldn’t they?

I rub my forehead as if the gesture will sort out my uncertainties.

All I know for sure is that Clancy created a problem much bigger than any turmoil inside me. How could he have thought it made sense to send me to Riva as if I could take Zian’s place in his disturbing plan?

Unless Riva was wrong, and that wasn’t what he intended after all.

If it wasn’t, if he has nothing to justify, why hasn’t he already come to tell me that?

Jacob would be furious. I’ve felt my brother’s anger, sharper and harsher than it ever was when I knew him before.

I’ve felt it aimed at me. How am I going to make him understand that I was trying to keep him safe in my own way?

I thought, once we could see each other again…

At a plaintive meow, I lift my head. Lua is stalking over to me, her tail standing straight and her ears perked in anticipation.

My cat might not be able to talk, but I can instantly tell what she wants, although I can’t read animal emotions at all. Even without the inner insight, she’s so much simpler than any of the human beings I encounter.

As she rubs her cheek against my leg, I reach down and give her a gentle scratch down the length of her spine. With an encouraging meow, Lua jumps right onto my lap.

She stretches out in her favorite spot, squeezed into the narrow space between my thigh and the arm of the chair, and offers up her white-furred belly for more pets. A smile crosses my lips as I oblige.

It isn’t the same as feeling something, but I get a general satisfaction out of knowing I can cater to her needs. Make her happy.

That the emptiness of my body doesn’t stop me from showing I care in the ways I can.

When I told Clancy I was bringing Lua with me from the facility I’d been kept at before, he started to ask if that was really necessary. The look I gave him stopped him halfway through the question.

I’m not totally sure why the guardians who worked on me after the escape attempt brought her to me as a kitten, but she’s mine now. She counts on me.

And maybe I need her a little bit as well.

At the knock on my door, Lua twitches in surprise and then goes right back to purring avidly. I scoop her up and get to my feet, reaching to switch off the music.

“Come in.”

I know it’s Clancy already, well before he opens the door. Every person in this place has a different feel to them, and I’m more familiar with his overall air than most.

He steps inside and stays by the door, his arms folded loosely in front of him. The fact that I have no emotions roiling in my own chest makes me twice as aware of his own, as detached as I am from the visceral sensations of them.

He’s apprehensive but mostly calm and determined. Prepared for this to be an uncomfortable talk but assuming everything will be smoothed over without much difficulty.

I hope he’s right.

“I take it your visit with Riva didn’t go all that well?” he says. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

I study him, watching the outward signs of his mood even as I monitor him from the inside out.

“It was going fine until she got the idea that you were hoping us re-establishing our friendship would lead to something more. Was that the larger plan? That she might warm up to me enough that she’d want to have sex with me, since she isn’t going to with Zian? ”

My straightforward question sends a flicker of discomfort through the older man. As if his intentions would be any better or worse depending on how I phrase it.

He adjusts his weight. “I can see I pushed too hard with the two of them. I wasn’t going to force anything. But if we’d reached that outcome, getting more data on the connections she’s been able to form within your group would have been a welcome side benefit.”

“And would you have encouraged me to talk with her at all if it wasn’t for that possible ‘side benefit’?”

Clancy simply avoids answering that question. “Griffin, you know the work we’re trying to do here—how difficult it’ll be. I’m looking out for all of you, searching for every possible advantage.”

A pang of self-righteous defiance resonates through his emotions. He’s on the defensive—because I’m getting at the truth, and he doesn’t want to admit there could have been anything wrong about his plans.

My fingers continue their rhythmic stroking of Lua’s fur where she’s sprawled in my arms, but my thoughts jitter as the new information shuffles into my understanding of the situation.

He was using me like he tried to use Zian. He didn’t even tell me he was trying to use me.

I wouldn’t have thought he’d go that far. Just hours ago, I was telling Riva he’d realized his mistake.

Clancy sighs. “If you talk to her again, you could help her warm up to you with your powers, couldn’t you? I know you couldn’t intervene very well with Zian, but her hesitation is much less… aggressive.”

I frown at him. “I tried to calm Zian down when he went into that rage because I was afraid he’d hurt someone, not to make it easier for them to hook up. To push Riva to feel happier around me…”

That would be just like forcing myself on her, wouldn’t it? Worse than doing it physically, because she wouldn’t be able to see the attack and ward it off.

A flinch ripples through me, my thoughts narrowing down to a surge of denial. “I don’t understand why you’d ask me that. It’d be a horrible thing to do to her.”

So horrible a twinge of nausea ripples through my gut, as if just for an instant I’m actually feeling that horror.

Clancy shakes his head. “Sorry, it was a reflexive thought. Obviously as soon as you left, your influence would fade, and that could have adverse effects that would counteract any progress we made.”

Adverse effects? How about the fact that she’s one of my oldest friends, and there is no universe where coercing her into any kind of intimacy, even only renewed friendship, would be seen as anything but morally appalling?

The flicker of emotion has vanished, but my abhorrence at the idea hasn’t wavered. I need to be completely clear about this.

I draw my posture straighter. “Even if it wouldn’t fade, I would never do that to her. She’s my friend . I’m here to stop people from being exploited, not to do it myself.”

“Of course, of course,” Clancy says, holding up his hands. “I won’t mention it again.”

He’s uneasy, but I can tell from the way he’s eyeing me that it’s only about my response. He doesn’t feel any concern or guilt at all about the tactic he just suggested.

What if Riva was right about that too? What if I’ve failed to recognize just how detached this man is from us ?

Does he still see us as so subhuman that he can’t be trusted to have even our basest best interests at heart?

The other accusations Riva threw to me flood through my head.

I find myself saying, “You know, she’d be happier naturally—they’d all be happier—if the Guardianship gave them even more freedom.

Chances to go out into the wider world for their own reasons, to do what they want, not just for missions. ”

Clancy exhales in a huff. “You of all people should realize how dangerous that could be. We can’t risk it until we’re absolutely sure they wouldn’t give in to their more violent impulses.”

I fix my gaze on him even more intently than before. “Well, what about me? What if I wanted to have some time for myself? I’ve never hurt anyone. My powers can’t do any permanent damage.”

“You’re a key part of getting our operations into gear, Griffin,” Clancy says without missing a beat. “I hope you wouldn’t try to bow out on us when we need you to make sure we achieve everything we’re aiming for.”

He’s dodging the question again. He could have said I could take a brief trip, or that he’d be willing to arrange something in the future, but instead he’s saying no while doing his best to make it sound as if he’s only being reasonable.

James Clancy is a very controlled man. I’ve never sensed his emotional state going wild the way Zian or Jacob can.

But the impressions I pick up from him still tell a story. And right now, I taste not just the fear I can assume is about what might happen to the world if shadowbloods were allowed to roam freely through it, but also an anxious twinge of anticipated loss.

He doesn’t want to let go of us. And not because he cares about us all that deeply, it’s clear.

Because we’re the key to his grand master plan, and he can’t carry it out properly without us. We’re tools he’s counting on putting to use.

He hasn’t shown any concern about what I might be going through that I’d want to ask that question. Any sign that my happiness matters at all to him beyond carrying out his goals.

Has he ever? Or was I so caught up in the idea of fixing everything that’s gone wrong, making a better future for us all in alignment with his vision, that I never paid enough attention before?

“I want to do what’s best for all of us,” I say, an answer that’s both true and that I know he’ll accept.

Clancy gives me a tight smile. “I’m glad to hear that. Don’t worry about this whole situation anymore. Or about Riva. She just needs time to fully grasp the bigger picture.”

He leaves without checking if there’s anything else I hoped to ask him. The door clicks shut behind him.

Clicks shut and locks, because I’m never allowed to go looking for him .

For a few minutes, I stand in the same place, running my fingers over Lua’s back and under her chin, gazing at the door without really seeing it.

This facility and the missions carried out from it were built off Clancy’s vision… but they wouldn’t have happened without me. Without me, I doubt any of the guardians stood a chance of catching up with my former friends, let alone capturing them.

At the time I was sure I’d made the right decision. That it really was best for them and me as well as him.

I have no gut feeling to guide me, no innate sense of whether these are the results I should have expected, but fuck, do I wish I did.

What if I’ve actually screwed up our lives all over again?