Page 185 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Fifteen

Riva

I thought we gave a pretty good performance of working our asses off and coming up short. But when we step out of the car onto the villa’s grounds, Toni is waiting for us in the thickening dusk with the expression of a disapproving headmaster from some boarding school story.

“The four of you couldn’t manage to retrieve one briefcase?” she asks tartly.

I study her warily. “They reacted too quickly. I’ve never had to use my powers like that before.”

Jacob comes up to rest his hand on my shoulder as if he thinks I’ll need his protection. But Toni only lets out a brisk huff. “You can give your excuses to Mr. Balthazar. Let’s go.”

She motions for us to follow her into the house. As we tramp through the wide hall toward the drawing room, Zian spares a longing glance at the kitchen. “Can’t we get something to eat? We haven’t?—”

“You’ll talk to Mr. Balthazar first. He’ll decide what to do with you next.”

My own stomach grumbles despite my best attempt at appearing unaffected. We had a hasty lunch of sandwiches on the trip over to the job site, but nothing except bottles of water for our return.

Would we have found a feast waiting for us if we’d pleased our captor rather than disappointing him? I can all too easily picture Balthazar’s people keeping a delicious spread shut away to spoil rather than offering it to us after our failure.

Waste is nothing to him. He’s wasted kids’ lives for the sake of making a point.

My throat tightens, but as we march into the drawing room, my roiling anger overwhelms any fear or grief. I’m tired of letting him hurt me.

The drawing room is empty other than Dominic’s slack form. The screen hasn’t risen from the table.

Andreas sinks into one of the armchairs and sprawls out in an attempt at looking casual. He’s hiding his own uneasy nerves, but he’s apprehensive enough that a flash of the emotion quivers through the mark that binds us.

“We’re here,” he says nonchalantly. “Where’s the boss?”

Toni swivels on her heel. “He’ll speak to you on his own schedule.”

Jacob’s head jerks around as she heads for the doorway. “Where’s my brother?”

“Griffin wasn’t part of the job. He doesn’t need to account for it.”

She leaves without another word. The rapping of her shoes against the tiled floor fades away down the hall.

The guys and I glance around at each other. Zian rests his hand on his stomach, his mouth slanting.

Technically we could stroll back over to the kitchen and make ourselves a meal. There’s no one here to stop us.

Other than whoever’s monitoring us through our bracelets and whatever other surveillance equipment Balthazar has in place.

None of us even moves toward the door. He has us that cowed.

I flex my jaw to keep from clenching it and pitch my voice a little louder than normal to be clear that I’m not talking to anyone in the room. “We’re here. If you want us to tell you what happened out there, let’s get on with it.”

All of us wait in tense stillness. No one arrives, by screen or in person.

Jacob stirs and starts to pace through the room. “He can’t send us on impossible jobs and then get mad that we couldn’t pull them off perfectly.”

“Maybe he’s not mad?” Zian says, his tone doubtful despite the hope in his words. “Maybe he’s just really busy.”

Andreas pushes himself up straighter in the chair. “Toni was upset. I don’t think that’s a good sign.”

I swallow hard. We all agreed, and I don’t think any of the guys even hesitated, but defying Balthazar was my idea.

We probably could have retrieved the briefcase if we’d given it our all. If Drey hadn’t sent more guards running out the moment we launched our assault.

Balthazar can’t know that. But if he even suspects it, does it make a difference whether he can prove his theory?

Do I wish I could go back and carry out his job properly?

No. I don’t know if that fact makes it better or worse, but the thought of having fulfilled his mission and presenting his prize to him makes the rage in my gut sear twice as hot.

We have to fight somehow. We have to be more than his slaves.

I drift over to Dominic’s bed and rest my hands against the transparent shell. The machines buzz and beep. His chest rises and falls with a halting breath.

How long can Balthazar keep him like this? In the soap opera I used to watch with avid attention, people would fall into comas for years—decades, even—and then wake up like they’d never been sick. Other than sometimes they’d lost all their memories.

But those were silly stories with only a loose connection to reality. I have no clue whether a human being really can survive unconscious for that long.

Is Dom at all aware in the cage Balthazar has made of his body? Can he hear us, think about us?

My lips part. I’m going to say something; I just haven’t decided what yet?—

A sharper beep blares from one of the machines. I flinch, and before my eyes, Dominic’s body seems to sag even more than it had before.

My heart leaps to my throat. “Dom!”

I’m smacking the shell that covers him before I’ve even thought about what I’m doing, as if the bang of the impact might wake him up.

It doesn’t, of course. He just lies there with more color leaching from beneath his light brown skin as the machine spews its frantic alarm into the air.

The other guys rush to join me. Jacob stares down at Dominic, his hands braced against the shell. “What happened?”

Zian’s eyes have gone wide. “Is he okay?”

The only answer I can give both of them tumbles from my lips like a moan of horror. “I don’t know.”

I spin around, searching the room I already know is empty. “Help! There’s a doctor around here somewhere, isn’t there? Someone needs to look after Dominic!”

My strained plea splits through the air… and is met only by the whir of the screen finally rising from the table in the middle of the room.

I dash over to it, my fingers curling into my palms, claws I can’t will back into my fingertips pricking my skin. Balthazar controls everything here—if Dominic has taken a turn for the worse, our captor can order someone to save him.

But when the screen flickers to reveal Balthazar’s bulky form, his expression is utterly detached.

Doesn’t he already know that something’s gone wrong? He’s got to have alerts connected to the medical equipment—hell, he’ll hear the shrill beeping through the transmission right now.

“Something’s happened to Dominic,” I burst out before he can say anything. “You need to send your doctor—now.”

Balthazar blinks at me languidly, showing no more concern than before. “I don’t need to do anything simply because you say so. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

“He could be dying,” Jacob snaps where he’s hustled over beside me. “How does that help your master plan?”

Balthazar simply sets his broad hands on the desk in front of him, interlacing his thick fingers. “As far as I can tell, none of you are proving to be all that useful to my plans at the moment. Or you wouldn’t have returned empty-handed.”

A chill stabs through the center of me. “We tried. We almost got shot out there—there were too many people. You didn’t want us slaughtering them all.”

“Oh, I think you held yourself back a little more than just from murder. I suppose I should have expected as much, but I can fix my mistakes. It isn’t that hard to ensure you’re sufficiently motivated.”

Sufficiently motivated . My gaze flicks toward Dominic, and I think I might vomit if I had anything in my stomach.

Andreas steps forward, his handsome face harder than I’ve ever seen it. “What did you do to him?”

Balthazar lifts his shoulders in a measured shrug. “I withdrew a little of my support. His body will keep fighting to live, but it’s a losing battle now. I’d give him a week or so.”

No. My claws dig deeper into my palms, but I barely feel the jabs of pain. “Why? What do you want from us?”

An eerie smile crosses Balthazar’s lips. “Ah. Now you’re interested in giving me what I want. Perfect.”

A vase whips off a side table and smashes against the wall. The tick of a muscle in Jacob’s cheek is the only sign that it was his talent on the fritz.

He glares at the screen. “Tell us what the fuck we have to do so you’ll save him.”

“And so impatient now.” Our captor lets out a light chuckle that brings the thrum of a scream into the base of my throat.

I don’t want to shriek him dead, though. That wouldn’t be concrete enough. The urge grips me to rip out his own throat and dance in his spraying blood.

If I could reach him. But I can’t—I can’t.

I’m so sorry, Dom. This is my fault.

Andreas’s voice only wavers a little. “You have our attention. Are you going to ask for anything from us or not?”

Balthazar lifts his chin, triumph glinting in his eyes. “There’s something I want very much. Something it’ll be very difficult for you to get. You may die in the attempt. I expect you to risk your lives as necessary. If you come back empty-handed, there is no deal.”

A spurt of hope rushes through me only to sputter out a second later. “And then what?” I demand. “Then you’ll heal Dom just enough so that he’s back in his coma like before?”

Is that really better? We don’t even know if he’s still with us.

He could be nothing more than a husk of a body, another tool for Balthazar to manipulate us.

The sense of fatalism that filled me during our last job rises up again. Whatever Balthazar is trying to do, we haven’t been able to make any dent in stopping him. I know his intentions can’t be good.

It might be better for both us and the rest of the world if we were all dead instead of doing his bidding.

At least that’s one way we can screw him over.

The glitter in our captor’s eyes sparks a little brighter. “I can do better than that. If you bring me what I’m after, I’ll revive him completely.”

My heart stops for a few seconds before it lurches back into motion. “He’ll—he’ll be conscious again? Talking, walking—everything?”

I hate the smug smirk that curls Balthazar’s lips now. “Everything. Is that a good enough reward for you?”

The swell of emotion that crashes over me knocks the breath from my lungs. I don’t like the man in front of me seeing the tears that spring into my eyes. I hurt and hope and grieve like a hurricane passing through me.

It floods the vacant space my anger burned away inside me. I’m drowning in so many feelings that’d gone dead in the past few days.

In a distant part of my mind, I find myself remembering what Jacob said to me that night on the boat in Havana when he brought me the severed hands of the men who’d tried to kill me. When he meant to cut off his own arm in penance.

He told me how empty he felt after Griffin supposedly died, empty of everything but rage. That he’d wanted to kill himself and had only held back to get vengeance for his brother.

And then he saw me racing toward a train that could have been my doom, and so many other feelings broke in. I cared, so fucking much.

My own fury is still burning inside me, raised from a simmer to a raging boil. How dare this asshole dangle our friend, this man I love so much, in front of us like a fucking carrot on a stick?

But it’s not the only sensation swaying me now. It’s not even the loudest.

Balthazar has slammed me back into full awareness like the impact of a speeding locomotive.

I do love Dom, with everything in me. I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to see life light up in his face, to hear his voice, to receive his smile.

There’s more love in me than there is anger, even if the rage drowned it out for a little while.

Is this how Jacob felt, the way he cracked, when he saw the train hurtling along the tracks toward me?

The hollow emptiness with its caustic simmer before… is that how he spent four whole years? After just days of it, I already ache all over.

I lift my head and swipe at the tears that have trickled over my cheeks. Balthazar gazes at me with an expectant air that sets off another flare of anger.

Not enough to change the answer I have to give, though.

I glare back at him. “Fine. I’m in. What do you want us to steal for you?”