Page 163 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

We can do this. We can protect these people, as much as this mission is really designed to protect them, lull Clancy into a brief complacency, and then strike at him too.

The scattered scrubs and gnarled trees give us enough shelter that we can steal halfway down the slope without being seen as long as we stay close to the ground.

We move in spurts, Griffin gesturing when none of the men are looking in our direction and he can sense a lapse in their wariness, holding up his hand to stop us when they start to turn our way.

He’s scanning the emotions of everyone in our vicinity—including the insurgents staked out in the two-story buildings that give them a higher vantage point over the village and its surrounding terrain. After a few minutes, he pauses and lifts his hand toward me with his forefinger raised.

Jacob has taken out one. Seven more to go.

It’ll be slow going for Jake. He has to know exactly where his targets are, and he can’t risk them noticing something’s wrong before he gets a grip on them.

He’ll be relying on seeing them through windows, but at least they should be staying near those while they keep watch.

As we crouch in our new positions, close enough to the sheep pen that the pungent odor of manure laces the air, Griffin raises his hand again and again.

Two down. Three. Four.

I study the men stationed around the villagers. None of their faces betray any heightened concern.

One of the insurgents patrolling farther out strides past us, just twenty feet from our crouched position. Next to me, Lindsay quivers.

I think I can direct my scream at both the men around the hostages and the five who are patrolling the outskirts at the same time without my control slipping. They’re far enough away from the main cluster of figures that it shouldn’t be too hard to distinguish them.

But if Jacob and Zian can deal with some of them first as well, that’d be better.

Griffin indicates five gone, and then six. After he lowers his hands, he picks up a stick and draws a Z and a line in the dirt.

We don’t dare speak here, but I understand. Zee managed to tackle one of the men on patrol.

Two more are left in the buildings near the courtyard, four on the outskirts, nine surrounding the villagers. We’re closer and closer to our goal, and so far, no alarm has been raised.

A murmur carries from the group of hostages. Some of the figures near the edge of the huddle are stirring.

The voices that reach my ears hold the edge of a hushed argument. I tense, spotting a woman clutching at the arm of the man next to her.

Is one of the villagers thinking of rebelling? Can’t he see the insurgents will simply shoot him?

But the locals don’t know that we’re already in the process of freeing them. He might assume they’ll end up dead either way.

Two of the terrorists march over. One of them barks something in a language I don’t know at the source of the disruption.

The villagers go still, but it’s too late. And what the insurgents do is even worse than I expected.

The one who spoke reaches into the huddle and yanks a kid out by the elbow—a little boy who can’t be more than five or six years old. He squeals and babbles in terror as the woman who must be his mother grasps after him.

The insurgent hefts up the kid, dangling, and points his rifle right at the boy’s face.

My gut lurches, and my lips spring open before I’ve even thought about it. But Lindsay is even faster.

The dirt beneath the gunman’s feet juts upward in a sudden bump. He stumbles, losing his balance, and the kid slips from his grasp.

Griffin’s face has gone taut with concentration, no doubt trying to rein in the violence. But the other men scramble to snatch up the kid, and one grabs another child from the far side of the huddle.

Her cry wrenches at me. I might not understand their words, but their harsh voices tell me they’re determined to punish the villagers for even considering resisting.

God only knows what’ll happen if they start firing. Maybe they’d cow the rest of the villagers—or maybe they’d provoke a larger rebellion that will end with them slaughtering so many more.

The boy wails as he’s jerked around toward the second man’s rifle, and I can’t hold back any longer. All the anguish of watching the villagers’ pain bursts from my lips in a monstrous shriek.

The sound peals out of me and hurtles across the landscape to smack into my targets. The hunger inside me twitches and yawns, eager to be sated after weeks of denial, but I narrow the jabs of my power to lance only into the nine gunmen poised around the hostages.

I can’t feel the more distant patrollers right now—and I’m afraid to loosen my grip even enough to seek them out. This has to be enough.

Please, let my fellow shadowbloods manage to handle the rest.

My power radiates through all nine men, freezing them in its clutches, but I can only tear apart one at a time. I pitch the shriek louder, harder.

My latent senses know exactly how to break and rend each victim for maximum pain. My scream rips through one body and another, shattering bones, splitting sinews and organs.

The agony ripples back into me, flooding me with an exhilarating strength.

For a long time, the pleasure that came with the pain I deal out has horrified me. But in this moment, knowing how many lives are at stake, I give myself over to it.

I need the strength. I need every bit of might I can get to ensure the larger massacre never happens.

These men would have murdered little kids. They were willing to kill every person in this village to get their demands met.

They don’t deserve the life I’m tearing out of them.

My fingers dig into the dry earth, claws jutting out. Body after body crumples in their ring around the hostages.

I’m distantly aware of cries and shouts, but I can’t even decipher where they’re coming from while my focus is trained on my targets. I have to trust that my friends and colleagues are holding their own.

Then there’s only one left. The man that first hauled the little boy out of the crowd, the one who stumbled at Lindsay’s shove.

I propel a sharper scream from my lungs, snapping his feet, then severing the tendons at the backs of his knees. Raking destruction up through his body swiftly but methodically.

Drinking down the last swell of agony before his life blinks out.

Then I sway forward, my own body caught in the rush of power. The sound fades from my throat.

Griffin touches my back, helping to ground me. His voice spills out in a rush of relief. “We got all of them. Jake and Zee and the others caught the sentries before they could hurt anyone—Sully helped divert them with his illusions. We?—”

“Someone’s coming!” Zian’s frantic holler splits through the air from farther away. “I can hear it.”

The words have barely left his lips when I hear it too—the roar of what sounds like a dozen engines. I leap to my feet, thinking that if we can just hurry the villagers to safety in time, it won’t matter.

But I don’t know where we could take them that is safe. And as I straighten up, a barrage of brown armored trucks careen into view over the top of a nearby ridge.

Did the insurgents here realize something was wrong in time to summon reinforcements, or were these men already on their way? Are they even with the original terrorists, or are they some new hostile group?

It doesn’t matter. A hail of machine-gun fire blares across the landscape, and all I can do is yank Lindsay down with me as we flatten ourselves to the ground.

Our battle isn’t over. It looks like it’s barely even begun.