Page 174 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Six

Riva

T he limo grinds to a halt outside the grand facade of a towering hotel, which is lit up against the night. I gaze up at the looming stone face through the vehicle’s back window.

I’ve always been aware that I’m on the petite side, but on this rare occasion, I feel particularly small.

Which might be silly, because my slim body is wrapped in a dress with so many ripples of satin I might as well have expanded by half. The dainty heels I found waiting on my bed alongside it will give me a couple of extra inches in height as well.

An ostentatious necklace dripping with gems encircles my neck. It only makes me miss my cat-and-yarn charm more.

On the seat across from me, Sully gives the hotel an anxious glance of his own and tugs at the bowtie of his tux. He looks like he’s ready to puke.

Jacob reaches over from his spot at my side and folds his firm hand around mine. With his blond hair perfectly slicked back and his muscular frame filling out a tuxedo of his own, he’d set my heart racing for much more enjoyable reasons if I wasn’t focused on the brutal purpose of our visit.

When I look over at him, he catches my gaze and holds it with his usual unshakable intensity. “You’ve got this, Wildcat. We’ll watch for any problems and make sure they’re taken care of before you even have to think about them. And if anyone hassles you, they’ll regret it.”

He flashes a grin that’s tense but determined. I’ve seen what happens to people who try to hurt me in Jake’s presence.

One time it ended with a heap of severed hands poured onto my bed.

I squeeze his fingers in return, mindful of the manacles still hugging our wrists—under the sleeves of the guys’ tuxes, under the satin gloves I’m wearing. But I don’t think I’m going to say anything our captor doesn’t already know, if he’s listening.

My voice comes out in a murmur. “I don’t want to do this.”

Jacob lifts his other hand to my cheek, his gaze searing into mine. “I know. We keep having to pick between a whole lot of shitty options. But I’m with you, no matter what.”

I don’t doubt that—it’s hard to imagine now that there was a time when his declaration of loyalty would have made me snort in disbelief. We’ve picked our way out of a lot of the shit we were already mired in.

It would be nice if for once we could clamber out into something other than an even bigger heap of crap.

A solid partition separates us from the driver, but his voice filters through a speaker. “You should proceed inside now.”

Yes, we wouldn’t want to make Balthazar impatient. I grit my teeth and push open the door.

I don’t know who our captor is in the wider world or how he might be associated with any of the people heading into the hotel around us, but no one questions us as we march up the steps and through the opulent lobby to the ballroom where a gala is being held.

He’s arranged for our acceptance here somehow.

Stepping into the vast room under a dozen twinkling chandeliers, I have to pause to catch my breath. There are people everywhere , all of them dressed as fancily as us, most of them at least twenty years our seniors.

It’s a far cry from the elegant party Andreas set up for me back on Rollick’s yacht, partly in apology for distrusting me before. Only five of us and two of Rollick’s shadowkind allies attended that gathering, in a room that seems tiny in my memory compared to this one.

My gaze darts over the faces around us, both taking stock and searching for one in particular.

The one Balthazar has sent me here to murder.

The thought makes my claws prick at my fingertips. I hold them in and drift deeper into the ballroom with Jacob and Sully trailing behind me.

No one pays any attention to us, but I guess that makes sense when they’re so busy paying attention to whoever the most prominent figures in the room are. Most of the attendees have gathered into clusters, several vying to chat with the people who’ve ended up at the center of those knots.

The scents my heightened senses pick up as I circulate through the room carry the tang of both excitement and tension. People have a lot of fraught expectations from this night.

I catch snippets of conversation as I pass—talk about bills and policies and programs. It’s some kind of political event, but that’s all I know about why they’re here.

A waiter passes with a tray of champagne glasses. I snatch up one so I have something to occupy my hands and to help me blend in.

I raise the rim to my lips, pretending to sip as the rising bubbles tickle my nose. The bitter smell makes me want to grimace.

And then I spot him.

When he prepped us for this job, Balthazar showed me several photos over the screen in the drawing room. He didn’t tell me the man’s name, but knowing the shape of the face with its deep-set eyes and knob of a chin was more important anyway.

My target is one of the sought-after guests with his own cluster of devotees. As I watch from ten feet away, he lets out a chuckle and motions with his glass of wine.

Whatever comment he makes that I can’t make out, it gets his colleagues twittering too. The man from the photos smiles warmly at them.

Nothing about him looks particularly villainous. For all I know, he’s a perfectly decent human being.

Balthazar wouldn’t tell me why he wanted the man dead either. A far cry from Clancy, who made an extensive case for us putting our talents to use when he sent us out on a mission.

No, my motivation for going along with our new captor’s orders is very simple. Either I kill this man, or Balthazar will kill one of the shadowbloods back home. Maybe more than one, if he’s pissed off enough.

I could call his bluff. I mean, there’d have to be a point when he ran out of leverage.

But then where would I be? Standing in a deluge of blood, knowing it was my fault?

What would be the point of defiance if all I get in return is Nadia’s death, Dominic’s, who knows who else’s?

I have no idea exactly how many of us Balthazar might decide are expendable after all.

So while I have nothing against the knob-chinned man I’m surreptitiously eyeing, my throat tingles with a contained shriek ready to be unleashed. A shriek every particle in my body wishes I could aim at the psychopath behind the screen back in the villa.

My target gradually circulates through the room, picking up new fawners and leaving some behind to pursue other objects of interest. He doesn’t look particularly concerned, but I notice a couple of men keeping pace with him from a discreet distance, buff under their slightly less swanky suits.

Bodyguards? How important is this particular man?

No doubt that’s why Balthazar sent me on this job. I won’t be going at him with my claws and supernatural strength.

With my scream, I can kill him from across the room without anyone having the slightest idea how to shield him.

And if anyone does realize something’s off before I manage it, Jacob and Sully can distract them with their own talents.

Marble columns stand along the edges of the room, some of them hung with velvet drapery. I’ll slip away into their shelter when I’ve decided to make my move.

Not yet. If Balthazar thinks I’m nothing but his tool, he’s even more of a lunatic than he’s demonstrated.

I ease closer to my target’s cluster of conversation, wanting to get some idea what they’re talking about. What he’s all about.

Why our captor might want him dead.

At first, I only catch some comments about a dinner some of them recently attended and a concert they’re looking forward to next week. Then one of the women close to my target leans in with an awed smile.

“You’ve done so much for fossil fuel interests in the face of all that pushback. People should look to you as a role model!”

The knob-chinned man laughs and waves off her compliment, and a bunch of his other colleagues heap on similar praise. Someone scoffs about “clean energy” as if it’s a ridiculous idea—“As if there isn’t always a price to pay somewhere.”

My knowledge of current politics is incredibly limited, but I know what fossil fuels are. Does Balthazar object to oil and coal, or is he holding something else against the guy?

As I continue meandering after them, I pass a woman who has the tip of a pen cap poking from her half-open purse. I brush closer and deftly retrieve the pen it’s attached to.

Jackpot. Now I need something to write on .

I keep my ears pricked in the meantime, listening for other clues. My target gets into a discussion about funding and donations that I don’t really follow.

Then a couple who appear to be together split off from the cluster to drift in another direction. The woman glances over her shoulder and shakes her head at her partner.

“They say he’s got a good chance of making VP next term,” her partner murmurs. “Rising up the ranks fast.”

Is that why Balthazar wants him gone?

There’s too much information, too many scattered pieces I don’t know what to make of. Frustration coils in my gut.

I have to do something. Surely someone out of this mass of wealthy movers and shakers could stand up to the asshole who sent me here?

I eye a pamphlet left on one of the side tables and several crumpled napkins I know will only be dismissed as garbage before Jacob taps my arm.

He presses a thin cardboard edge against my palm. I peek down and see it’s an index card, just a couple of words jotted on one side.

We didn’t discuss the idea I came up with on the flight over here, but he must have noticed me stealing the pen. He can guess what I’m up to.

I pause at a side table as if examining more of the pamphlets and surreptitiously scrawl out my message. Sadly, there isn’t a whole lot I can say to whoever I deliver my plea to, but I do my best.

Investigate Mr. Balthazar , I scrawl on the back of the index card. I don’t even know his full name. There are kids being held captive in his villa.

I fold the card once and look for a reasonable recipient, my stomach starting to churn. I settle on the man who told his wife that my target was rising up the ranks.

If he’s interested in that man’s career, then there’s a decent chance he’s at cross-purposes with Balthazar. I hope.

Gliding past him with as much grace as I can summon, I slip the card into the hip pocket of his tux. Not a single indication can have passed to my captor of what I’ve done, even if he’s listening through my manacles.

The moment the card is out of my hand, the overwhelming urge to get out of the ballroom weighs down on me. I’ve done everything I can to save us.

Let’s get the awful part over with and leave everything else behind.

I move toward the columns as I planned, ducking behind a swath of velvet close enough to my target that I’ll still be able to see him. Jacob and Sully linger on the far side.

Standing at a gap between the fabric and the column, I fix my gaze on the knob-chinned man.

He might deserve this fate. It’s just as likely he doesn’t.

I know for sure that none of my fellow shadowbloods back at the villa deserve the punishment they’ll receive if I don’t go through with the job. I grip that certainty tightly, willing down the sear of guilt in my gut as well as I can.

My lips part. The vibration oscillates up my throat.

I was already learning how to pitch my shrieks quietly before Balthazar ever kidnapped us. I butchered an entire pen of sheep across a courtyard without alerting the terrorists I was building the power to slaughter.

My sessions with Matteo have honed my skills even further, faster than I’d have expected. Maybe because I’ve never let myself purposefully stretch the limits of my supernatural abilities before.

I was always too worried about how the guardians would exploit them. And yet here I am.

My hands ball at my sides. I drink in the air and think about Balthazar.

His arrogant smirk as he reminded me of the consequences of disobedience. His blasé tone when he talked about what Dominic was good for.

His stupid fucking face, so totally unperturbed, as Lindsay flailed and died in a pool of her own blood.

I will do this for him, but only because I have to. Only because I have to believe that eventually I can do it to him.

When I propel the pain-seeking scream from my mouth, it’s the thinnest of whispers. No one would hear it unless they’re standing right by my lips.

And because I’ve also been practicing adjusting how it hits my victims’ bodies, I aim it right at my target’s heart.

The thing inside me that revels in pain clamors for me to twist and torture. But I clamp down on those urges and give the hunger only the brief satisfaction of ripping the fleshy chambers in two.

The knob-chinned man jerks to a halt with a spasm. His hand flies to his chest; bloody spittle flecks his lips.

His adoring entourage lets out its own chorus of screams as he crumples to the floor.

And the three of us shadowbloods meld back into the crowd, heading for the lobby. A sour taste laces my mouth thanks to the dirty work I’ve just carried out.