Page 169 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Three

Riva

Z ian stares down at the drop beyond the stone wall for several beats before straightening up with a hopeless expression. “We’re not getting anywhere that way.”

My fingers curl around the edge of the wall, my claws scratching the limestone blocks. We’ve been exploring Balthazar’s expansive “villa” and grounds for the better part of the afternoon, and nothing we’ve seen has given me any basis to argue with Zee.

The stately mansion is built on a narrow hilltop amid the churning sea of rock I saw from my bedroom window. The plateau that holds it and its patios and gardens drops away into a nearly sheer cliff on all sides.

There is a gate at one end, beyond a row of nearly manicured hedges, with a narrow bridge that connects the plateau to a lower one with a gentler slope. But it was built with a drawbridge in the middle. A drawbridge that’s currently raised.

Even I couldn’t hope to jump the entire thirty-foot gap beneath it.

Sweet smells fill the air from the flowers and waxy-leaved trees still vibrant in the cool autumn air, but I can’t take any enjoyment from the atmosphere. My stomach is knotted too tight.

I dig my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and turn to face the others. The mountain breeze tugs at the strands of hair it’s worked free from my braid.

“He picked a location even more secure than the island,” I say with a humorless smile.

Nadia rubs one of her bracelets. “And trapped us with these awful things too. They’re not bracelets —they’re… they’re manacles, without even needing chains attached.”

Her brown face is still a little grayed after her dose of the sedative, but she makes the declaration in a typical dry tone. We’re all nervous about how our captor might be monitoring our conversations, but I have to think he knows we’ll discuss our predicament.

If he’s listening in, he’ll probably enjoy hearing us despair.

The only thing we have to be careful about is if we do stumble on an opportunity to get the fuck out of this nightmare.

She has a point about the bracelets—or manacles, as I can’t help thinking of them when I look at them now. I can practically see the metaphorical chains tying us to the villa behind us and the madman who brought us here.

“It’s a nice place for a prison,” Booker says, attempting an easy-going attitude but offering a smile as pained as mine. “Fancy old house, free run of it—even a pool.”

I glance toward the rectangle of turquoise water in the middle of the nearby patio. I dipped my fingers into it during our survey and discovered it’s heated to make it appealing despite the cooling weather.

I take to swimming about as well as the average cat, but water has been useful to us before. We disguised our conversations when we were conspiring against Clancy using the warble of the island’s waterfalls.

If Balthazar is following our voices through the bracelets, I suspect they wouldn’t pick up much when submerged.

Not that I have anything to say right now that would make it worth taking a dip.

I lift my chin with all the defiance I can summon. “We have to make the best of it while we’re here.”

I’m not sure if I manage to sound confident enough to be reassuring. Seeing Nadia’s shakiness after she came to, Booker’s concern for her, and everyone’s anguish over Lindsay’s death has left me feeling even more overwhelmed than before.

How am I supposed to help the younger shadowbloods hold it together when I’ve got a deluge of my own frustration and grief washing over me?

But it’s because of me that they’re here. Balthazar took advantage of the escape attempt I planned, of the fact that I’d gotten rid of Clancy.

He made it sound like he’d have taken control eventually anyway, but who knows whether he’d have succeeded.

My thoughts dart to Dominic’s slack form within his plastic shell, and my heart wrenches as if pulled toward him.

Andreas peers up at the house. The two-story building forms a vast C around a central courtyard. We’ve determined that our bedrooms are all in the eastern wing, with an elaborate kitchen, dining room, and other common areas including the drawing room that holds Dominic’s hospital bed beneath us.

In our search, we’ve come across a few doors that remained locked to us. We haven’t been able to venture into most of the west wing so far.

Drey speaks in a low voice, almost lost to the wind. “Are we figuring that Balthazar is actually here ? That room he sent the recording from—it’s somewhere in the western wing?”

“Yes,” Griffin says immediately, equally quiet. When our gazes all flick to him, he offers a subtle shrug. “I don’t know him well enough to identify him just by feel. But someone over there was feeling things that matched how he presented himself in the video while he was talking to us.”

Jacob is still a bit sallow from his own sedation, but at his twin’s remark, his eyes light up with vicious enthusiasm. “Could you tell exactly what room he’s in?”

Griffin shakes his head, frowning his apology. “I only have a vague sense of direction—and even that only because there aren’t many people other than us and him in the area.”

We start wandering across the tiled patio toward the front of the house. Zian’s mouth pulls into a grimace. “It’s a shitty trick, keeping Dominic messed up like that. If they let him wake up, he could heal himself!”

“We don’t know if he can wake up,” I say, even though the words hurt coming out.

Andreas kicks at a pebble and sends it rattling across the stones into a planter.

“Dominic was always worried that he didn’t pitch in enough, only hanging around to act as backup.

But we needed him so much. We couldn’t have gotten away with half the stuff we’ve been through if he hadn’t been there to patch us up after the injuries we took. ”

It’s true. I want Dominic back with us for his own sake, to have his pensively sweet presence beside me. But I also never fully realized how many gambles we made in part because we knew we could afford to take injuries that otherwise would have killed us.

Oh, Dom…

I bite my lip and reach out to squeeze Nadia’s shoulder, meeting her eyes and then the other younger shadowbloods—Booker, Sully, and Ajax. “We only just got here. We haven’t had much time to figure things out. But we have each other. That’s already better than the island.”

Under Clancy’s rule, we only saw each other in random shifts, confined to our solitary rooms in between.

A hint of a smile touches Booker’s lips. He slings his arm around Nadia’s waist and gives her a little squeeze. “That’s right. No getting rid of me now.”

She manages to snort even as she leans into his embrace. “Looking on the bright side. I should be good at that, huh?”

My attempt at a pep talk hasn’t soothed all of the kids. Sully shudders, gazing toward the gate and the truncated bridge beyond.

“It’s fucking crazy,” he bursts out abruptly, his face flushing. “That asshole is totally fucking psycho. He’s going to end up slaughtering us all like animals, like he did to Lindsay?—”

He cuts off his own rant with a snap of his mouth and bolts toward the gate.

“Sully!” My pulse hiccups, and I launch myself after him.

Over a distance, I could outrun any of the younger shadowbloods—and most of my guys as well. But my initial shocked hesitation and Sully’s desperation give him all the head start he needs.

As I dash after him with other footsteps thumping after me, he’s already throwing himself at the shoulder-height gate. He flings himself up and over the bars.

I reach him in time to snatch at him, but I only catch his sleeve before he’s wrenching away.

Wrenching away… and taking just a couple faltering steps farther before he teeters. He sprawls forward at the edge of the bridge.

His name rasps from my throat. “Sully.”

There’s no point in yelling it now. He couldn’t respond even if he wanted to.

Within the span of a few heartbeats, he’s slumped on the dusty pavement, unconscious.

Nadia sucks in a sharp breath. I turn abruptly to look at the others—especially the kids.

“Balthazar told us that if we go past the walls, the sedative will automatically kick in. It doesn’t do us any good testing it.”

There aren’t even any guards posted by the bridge. We don’t see any of the villa’s staff until we draw back into the garden with an anxious air, trying to figure out what to do about Sully, and a couple of men in trim blue uniforms come trotting out with a stretcher to collect him.

“Where are you taking him?” Booker calls out to them as they carry Sully back to the house.

They keep walking as if they haven’t even heard him.

I feel as if my entire stomach has solidified into a chunk of stone like the blocks surrounding us. Andreas glances at me and tucks his arm around my shoulder, but the warmth of his embrace barely penetrates my skin.

The sense I had when Balthazar spoke to us this morning stabs even deeper through me.

This isn’t like any of the other times. He isn’t like a regular guardian.

How the hell are we ever going to get out of here?

Fuck, how can we even think of getting out of here when Dominic can’t leave his enclosed bed?

Those are the thoughts traveling through my mind when another man emerges from the villa’s main doors.

This one is dressed in regular clothes: a black mock-turtleneck and dark gray slacks that hang a little loose on his gaunt body. Every movement highlights the sharp angles of his joints. You’d almost think he was a robot constructed out of giant toothpicks.

He strides over to us with an air of brisk authority, the breeze ruffling his salt-and-pepper hair. A tuft of a pure white beard points down from his chin.

He stops about ten feet away and snaps his fingers at us. At me , it becomes clear a moment later.

“Riva. Come.”

Like I’m a dog he’s bringing to heel. My posture goes rigid, another flare of the anger that’s feeling increasingly futile searing through my chest.

“What for?” I ask. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”