Page 165 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Thirty-Three

Riva

I leap through the doorway to rejoin the others. The hostages have scattered across the village, ducking into the other buildings. Doors thud decisively.

Not a single additional gunshot rings out. No armed men appear around the boundaries of the courtyard.

I wait for several beats of my heart, my ears pricked, but no further catastrophe descends on us.

We did it. It wasn’t tidy, but we did it.

Zian has slumped down on the ground, his face returned to normal and shining with sweat but a broad grin baring his teeth. Jacob is hobbling over to him with Tegan helping balance him.

“We have to get out of here,” I say, knowing my voice will carry through their own ankle bands—that it’ll tell Clancy that I survived even if my own monitor didn’t. “Regroup with the guardians—Dominic will be able to heal you too.”

I pause with a fresh punch of nausea. There’ll be no healing George.

I’m just opening my mouth to speak again when a faint rustle reaches my ears. Jacob has whipped his arm upward before I can even turn around.

The purple poisoned spikes jut from the side of his forearm—and spring free. They zing through the air like a set of darts and spear the insurgent who was still alive enough to drag himself to the doorway across the chest.

The man sprawls, his eyes glazing. The gun he was raising toward me slips from his limp hand.

Jacob stares at his arm. “I— They’ve never done that before.”

I swallow thickly, thinking of the power that pealed through me just moments ago, more than I’ve ever felt in my life. “Our abilities are still evolving, apparently.”

Jacob’s mouth sets in a slanted line as if he isn’t sure whether to be happy about that development. Then he motions me toward him.

“You’re right. We’ve got to get going. I’m pretty sure whoever hired Clancy would rather we cleared out before they show up. Where’s my brother?”

As we tramp across the courtyard, Jake, Zian, and I all pause briefly to confiscate a weapon. We don’t speak about it, not when our voices would be transmitted straight to the guardians, but the solemn glances we exchange say enough.

We still have another fight ahead of us.

Griffin, Sully, and Lindsay emerge from the brush along the slope to meet us as we hurry over. Griffin makes a beeline for his twin and lifts Jacob’s arm to support him.

“I can manage,” Jake mutters, but I think I see him relax a little at the same time.

Sully glances at the sheep pen with its blood-stained earth and mangled corpses. He doesn’t need to say anything.

My shoulders tense. “I did what I had to do.”

His jaw works, but he nods.

Jacob lets out a rough dismissive sound. “Better us than them.”

Lindsay is scanning the courtyard behind us, her face tight with worry. “Where’s George?”

Zian winces. “He—when the new trucks first showed up, spraying bullets everywhere—we didn’t get to shelter in time.”

I hate the shadow of anguish that crosses her face. She’s silent for a moment and then asks, “What about the hostages? Are they okay?”

My mind trips back to the scene in the building I just unleashed my powers on. A few of the bodies that remained after the hostages fled were villagers, but most of the corpses were the terrorists I destroyed.

“Almost all of them,” I say, turning that fact over in my mind. The insurgents decided not to punish too many of the villagers even though everything had gone wrong.

Griffin directs us toward the van we arrived in, concealed about a mile away. “They were greedy. I could feel it, the whole time—the bunch of them were angry when they saw what had happened, but mostly they were still hopeful, hungry… wanting whatever it was they demanded as ransom.”

“They didn’t want to lose too many of their bargaining chips,” I fill in with a shudder.

Zian lets out a rasp of a chuckle. “If they’d given up after our first round, they would have lived too. Guess they got a little too greedy.”

“Maybe it works out better for Clancy this way. He’ll get everything he’s owed.”

I keep my tone even, but I know the guys pick up on the extra meaning in my last words. We all know what he’s earned from us.

Griffin nods. “Andreas and Dominic will be worrying about us, but they were ready for whatever might happen. When they see us and what state we’re in, they’ll jump in to help.”

They’re waiting for us to take the lead in our rebellion, he means, and then they’ll pitch in however they can. That makes sense.

We’re the ones who’ve had the chance to arm ourselves. We’ll have the most room to maneuver when we make it back to the temporary base Clancy set up to monitor the mission.

As the cluster of trees that hide our vehicle come into view up ahead, my mind starts spinning through the possibilities. But even once we’ve clambered in and buckled up, I’m still not sure.

With their injuries, Zian and Jacob won’t be able to maneuver quickly. Griffin isn’t much of a fighter, no matter how he was trained.

I’m going to be the key, again. That’s just the way it is.

Clancy and his guardian colleagues have Drey, Dom, and a few of the younger shadowbloods with them as their own kind of hostages. I don’t think they’d hesitate to go as far as killing the younger ones if they realize we’re defying them.

It’s only the six of us Firsts they really think are valuable, after all. Clancy proved that when he all but dared Dominic to kill Celine.

And they won’t be kind even to Dom and Drey if they catch wind of our rebellion too soon. Our friends won’t be able to help us if they’re drowning in agony.

I need to tackle him first. Without him giving the orders, it’ll be so much easier to deal with the others.

Where would he make a fatal misstep that could get him killed? What is he afraid to lose, enough that he might act without thinking?

The answer soars up from the depths of my mind like a signal flare: It’s us.

That’s all there is to it, isn’t there? He’s spent his entire career working to get us under his control, and now we’re essential to taking on the savior-hero role he’s obviously been dreaming of.

There has to be a way I can use that fear.

I reach into my shirt to pull out my cat-and-yarn necklace, allowing myself to carefully click it open and snap it back together. The simple, familiar rhythm melds with the rumble of the van’s engine.

The start of a plan forms piece by piece. I can’t see how it’ll end, because so much depends on exactly how Clancy reacts. But the longer I sit with it, the surer I feel.

“When we get back to the base,” I say quietly, “wait for me. Then do what you need to.”

Jacob squeezes my hand from the seat next to me, and Zian lets out a grunt of acknowledgment from behind. Behind the wheel, Griffin doesn’t give any visible sign at all, but a flicker of emotion passes through me, all warm acceptance.

A wordless message that says all it needs to.

Clancy’s base squats on the side of the dirt road, a military-style truck attached to a long trailer with most of his monitoring equipment, both of them painted in camouflage colors. As we crest one last hill before it comes into view, his even voice crackles from our radio.

“Park twenty feet away and walk the rest of the distance. Enter through the back of the trailer.”

We’re not using the guns we grabbed, then. They’re all too big to conceal under our clothes.

Griffin cruises to the indicated spot and parks. We clamber out and head toward the trailer.

I hang back, letting the others go ahead. Dragging my feet across the ground as if I can’t quite lift my feet.

Clancy knows I’m not dead, that my monitoring band must have simply been broken. He’ll have no idea what else might have happened to me.

He’s probably already been on edge, hoping that my ability to speak coherently means there isn’t an outright emergency.

Well, he’s going to get an emergency now.

As our procession comes up on the attached truck, I purposefully stagger. My knees buckle under me.

I fall, catching myself with my palms in the dirt and swaying. A groan breaks from my lips.

“Riva!”

I don’t think Jacob even needs to fake his panic. He lurches back to me as fast as his wounded leg allows, his face paling.

Zian follows with a defensive snarl, his gaze skimming the landscape as if searching for new foes.

I slump over on my side, letting my head loll. And through the slits left by my nearly closed eyelids, I see Clancy burst from the truck.

I hadn’t known if he’d simply send Dominic racing over or come himself. Maybe I should be gratified that he cares enough, even if it’s for totally selfish reasons, to stick his neck out.

Although it might not even be his motivation alone. Griffin heard my instructions too—he’s smart enough to have realized an extra shove of panic would work in our favor.

Even so, a sudden pang of loss ripples through me. This man has been a monster to us, but he’s also the only guardian who’s ever attempted to give us anything remotely close to a real life.

We’re giving up on that dream the moment I go through with my plan. We’ll be nothing but fugitives again—nothing but monsters ourselves.

To them. I know, with a resolve that steadies me through the pang, that we can be so much more for ourselves than even our new keeper ever imagined.

Another guardian hustles out behind Clancy. As they race over, I shudder and go limp again.

“Come on, get her legs—we’ll carry her into the back for Dominic,” Clancy says to his underling, his voice taut with concern. He bends over to grasp my shoulders.

My claws slide from my fingertips. It’s now or never.

For the little bit of good he tried to do amid the bad, he deserves at least to have his death witnessed.

Opening my eyes, I whip my arm upward to rake my hand across Clancy’s throat.

His blood splatters down over my face and hair. There’s just an instant before his body crumples when he stares down at me, shock and denial and the briefest flash of emerging rage contorting his features.

You asked for this , I think. You wanted us too badly to let us go.

As Clancy’s dying body hits the ground, the other guardian starts to yelp—but the sound is lost in the crack of Jacob’s talent wrenching her neck around. Before she’s even fallen, I’m sprinting for the trailer.

I throw open the doors to total chaos. Andreas and Dominic must have taken their cue and run with it.

Three of the guardians are circling each other and yelling in what sounds like bewilderment. Dominic has a stranglehold on another with one tentacle.

Another sprawls at Andreas’s feet, still twitching from the jolt Drey must have given the man with the baton he’s snatched.

I lunge forward, determined to end this now. To end everyone who’d have continued our torture.

I’m not sure the guardians even know what hit them. I sever one’s throat and plunge my claws into another’s chest, and then Zian is there behind me, bashing a skull into the trailer’s floor.

Dominic’s jaw clenches, and the man he’s clutching purples as the tentacle around his neck squeezes and sucks the life out of him simultaneously. Andreas yanks a knife from one of the other guardian’s belts and jabs it into the back of the man he toppled.

We stop, all of us panting. My nerves jangle through my body as if waiting for another shoe to drop. “That’s—that’s all of them?”

“That’s all,” Dom says, quiet and grim as he releases his victim.

I exhale with a sound like a sob. My knees wobble for real this time as all the pent-up stress and effort catches up with me.

We don’t know what country we’re in or where we’re going next. But right now, we’re more free than we’ve ever been before.