Page 154 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Six

Dominic

A s the thunderous sound splits the air, I throw myself into the shelter of two broad tree trunks. That might be the only reason I escape being knocked right off my feet.

As it is, I sway and clutch at the nearest branch to keep my balance. Shrieks and grunts carry through the air from all around me.

The mark on my sternum prickles with echoed pain. Riva’s fallen somewhere out there—fallen hard.

My heart lurches. I push myself around the trees, searching for her slim form in the chaos.

My gaze catches on Jacob first. He’s sprawled on his ass in the middle of the path, his hands raised, his face tight with fury.

He’s aiming his telekinetic power at the helicopter. But the same instant that becomes obvious to me, the chopper sweeps by overhead—and drops something from a hatch in its belly.

A strange, glinting net plummets over the path, large enough to slam into Jake and a few of the younger shadowbloods who’d tumbled around him. An electric hiss ripples through its metallic strands, and their bodies jerk with spasms.

Fuck. He won’t be able to toss the helicopters away while he’s being electrocuted.

Where’s Riva? I can’t tell if she’s even okay.

But if she can aim a scream at the guardians?—

I scramble forward through the jungle and glimpse her farther up the path near the crest of our section of hill. She must have fallen to her hands and knees, but she’s shoving herself upright with a wobble.

Zian has reached her already. He grasps her elbow to steady her—and the helicopter whips by again with another glittering release.

Riva and Zian try to spring out of the way, but they don’t quite clear the edge of the net. The electric current jolts through their bodies with a searing pain that jabs into me.

The helicopter circles around. Clancy’s voice booms from the loudspeaker. “Stay where you are, and we will collect you. There’s no need to make this a fight.”

My jaw clenches. He’s already turned it into a fight himself.

But how the hell are we going to hit back when the shadowbloods with the strongest talents are tangled up in electrified cords?

I shove through the underbrush toward Riva, careful not to expose myself on the path where another net could catch me. She’s struggling, trying to claw her way free.

But the moment she jerks one shoulder out from under the twined ropes, another electric shock sizzles through her limbs. Her cry hollows out my gut.

She slumps next to Zian, whose head is lolling with a dazed expression.

I have to help her—I have to help everyone. But what can I do that won’t get me shocked and stunned too?

I swivel around, hastily taking stock of who’s stayed free of the nets.

Up by the crest, Griffin has pulled back into the shelter of the trees on one side of the path. Celine stands across from him, only about ten feet from where I’m poised, her face lifted toward the two helicopters as they hover in search of a landing spot.

She’s obviously not going to be any help. She’s the reason the assholes found us.

Ajax and Devon crouch deeper in the jungle beyond Griffin, but neither of them have talents that could destroy or deflect a helicopter. Glancing farther down the path, I spot Andreas several feet behind me with his arms out as if to shield George, who’s ended up next to him.

Drey is staring up at the choppers. Then his gaze drops to meet mine, his face taut with strain.

“I can’t see any of them to mess with their heads. I can’t project memories unless I’m looking at my target.”

Maybe it doesn’t matter. If the helicopters can’t land anywhere nearby, we’ll have a chance to make a run for it.

The thought has just passed through my mind when another earth-shaking boom reverberates from one of the choppers. With an unsettling creaking sound, several trees topple over farther along the crest of the hill, past Griffin’s position.

With another thunderous impact, the same thing happens beyond Celine. She teeters on her feet but spins toward the sound with a smile that looks like relief.

The helicopters descend in unison toward the makeshift landing pads they’ve apparently created for themselves. My pulse drums frantically in my veins.

The second they’re on the ground, who knows what else the guardians will throw at us.

We’re running out of time. I have to do something .

I’ve got to use the talents I have, however I can.

I haven’t formed more of a plan than that before I’m sprinting forward, charging toward Celine.

She brought them here. She’s loyal to Clancy.

If I’m going to take back some kind of leverage for us, who better than her?

My tentacles fling forward over my shoulders in anticipation—but before I’m close enough to touch her, Celine flinches.

In the same instant, a rush of thrilling energy smacks into me.

My steps stumble. Did I just suck away some of her life without even touching her?

If my powers work from a distance now… I don’t even know how to grapple with the mix of awe and revulsion that rises up at the possibility.

There isn’t time to mull it over now. I flick a tentacle in the helicopter’s direction but feel nothing at all.

It only worked across a distance of a couple of feet. Still not all that useful in a fight… except as I intended to use it anyway.

But taking a hostage only works if the threat is obvious.

As Celine sways on her feet, I hurtle the last few steps toward Celine and slam my tentacles around her.

One grips her by the throat. The other pins her arms to her sides.

I yank her toward me, staying in view of the closer helicopter that’s just touched down but partly sheltered by the trees. I’m not risking the chances that they have some way to fling one of those nets at me even from the ground.

Celine gasps and struggles in my hold. I tighten the tentacle around her neck enough to make it hard for her to speak, holding back the urge to drink in more of the energy my suckers can sense thrumming through her frame.

“Stay still, and we all get out of this,” I say in a low voice that’s more ragged than I’d like. Even going this far has made me queasy.

She might have betrayed us, but she’s really still a kid. I can’t totally blame her for being scared after everything she’s experienced.

But I can’t think of any other way to get us out of this standoff—or at least buy us enough time that one of the others can figure something out.

The roaring whir of the helicopter blades cuts out. I pitch my voice to carry as far as possible.

“Don’t come any closer! I’ll kill her if you try to take us.”

Celine starts to squirm again, and I drop my voice so only she can hear. “They don’t want any of us dead. If you decide to go back to them after the rest of us have gotten away, I won’t stop you.”

The guardians have always avoided any kind of attack that could kill us in the past. We’re valuable property, after all.

With so few of us shadowbloods, they wouldn’t want to lose any of us completely. Especially not one who’s both proven her loyalty to them and shown that her skills have a clear use in the field.

Celine doesn’t appear to believe me, though, because she keeps twisting against my hold, forcing me to tense my extra appendages even tighter.

Clancy’s voice resonates from his loudspeaker. “I don’t think you want to do this, Dominic.”

I can only make out the front half of the helicopter from my current position, its windows tinted too dark for me to decipher any figures inside. Even if Andreas joined me, he won’t be able to help.

“I don’t want you to take us back to the island,” I holler back. “You try to grab any of my friends, and you can say goodbye to the rest of your shadowbloods.”

He doesn’t know what I’m capable of, not really. Sometimes I’m not even sure what I might do.

Celine lets out a choking sound. A shudder I do my best to suppress ripples through me.

The guardians have to back off—they have to?—

Clancy breaks through my frantic thoughts. “If that’s the price you want to pay, it’s up to you. It’s the six of you who matter the most.”

The creak of a hinge and the thump of multiple sets of feet travel through the air. My heart stutters.

He doesn’t care. Are the younger shadowbloods really expendable to him?

Celine whimpers in my grasp, a hopeless expression coming over her face. That’s obviously how she’s taken his words.

She thinks I’m actually going to murder her now.

My gambit wasn’t enough. He’s calling my bluff—and I’m not sure killing her would do us any good even if I wasn’t bluffing.

A tiny whisper in the back of my head asks if maybe I should find out. I’ve never sapped all the life out of another human being purely for my own satisfaction before.

And this girl has already betrayed us once. Should I give her the chance to do it again?

I recoil from the impulse, yanking back my tentacles as a cold sweat breaks on my back.

No. No . I’m not a fucking murderer, no matter what else the guardians made me into.

At the same moment, Griffin steps forward, across the path, where he’ll be in view of both helicopters. There’s an unnerving intensity in his gaze.

He must have set down his cat sometime before. His arms are empty, one hand pressed close to his side as if he’s concealing something against the fabric of his pants.

“Let’s stop all the resisting now,” he says, cool and even but loud enough for everyone including Clancy to hear him. “You should have known you were never getting away from the guardians. I led you to them before, and now I’ve led them to you.”

I stare at him in bewilderment. But he said—he said it was Celine who signaled them somehow. She admitted it.

He was upset with her. She ran to greet them.

And now he’s saying?—

Celine whirls toward him. “You traitor! You ruined everything.”

Fury vibrates through her hoarse voice, and understanding hits me in an icy smack.

Griffin’s using his power on her—he’s making her angry at him. He’s tricking the guardians so they’ll trust him and not her?

Or was he using his ability to manipulate her before, when she confessed, and he’s been working on a way to get us back to the facility all along?

After everything Griffin’s told us and how well I once knew him, my kneejerk reaction is to reject that thought. But I have no idea what his full plan is either way.

I never would have thought he’d have turned on us in the first place.

The only thing I’m sure of is that the guardians are the biggest threat we’re facing. I take a step back into the trees, watching for their approach and bracing myself to fend them off if need be, as well as I can.

Celine marches part of the way toward Griffin and stalls there, wavering. “You’re such a fucking asshole!”

“I’ve done what I needed to do to get by,” Griffin replies, so calmly it’s hard to imagine he could be generating all the rage she’s showing at the same time. “Now it’s time to go home.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you .”

Clancy’s voice carries through the jungle, unaltered by the loudspeaker this time. He’s close.

“Let’s keep our tempers cool and think this situation through rationally. We can all go back to the facility. No one will be punished.”

Griffin nods as if agreeing with him. “It’s for the best for everyone.”

Celine lets out a sound that’s close to a growl. She snatches a rock off the ground, large enough that she can’t totally close her fingers around it.

“All you think about is yourself. You let us go through all this shit, and now you’re laughing at us.”

My pulse kicks up another notch. Should I try to use my power?

I twist my tentacles, testing the atmosphere around me, but no one’s close enough for me to latch on to their energy now. Maybe Griffin will lure Clancy close enough that I can take him down?

But if that’s what Griffin intended, it isn’t how things go down.

“It was silly of you to think you could ever have things your way,” Griffin tells Celine.

She barks out a wordless rasp of fury and launches herself at him with the stone raised.

As she comes, Griffin jerks up his lowered hand. A blade flashes in the sunlight.

He’s got a small knife, maybe taken from the hotel kitchen. He’s prepared to stab her with it—in what will look like self-defense.

It isn’t really, though, it occurs to me with sickening clarity. He’s basically reeled her straight toward that blade like a fish hooked on a line.

Is this some kind of revenge for her betrayal? Or?—

“Griffin!”

A body hurtles up the path, singe marks darkening pale skin and hair, arms heaving forward.

Jacob managed to break free from the net to race to his twin’s protection.

The wallop of his power slams into Celine before Griffin’s knife can. Her body whips backward, her neck wrenching to the side with a crack of her spine that rings through the air.

“Jake,” Griffin says in a pained tone, his eyes wide with shock.

Jacob stumbles onto his knees. “I couldn’t let her…”

Then a stream of electricity crashes into my back, and my brain short-circuits to blackness.