Page 187 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Andreas glances at me. “You can freeze them with a scream without seeing them, right? If we want to paralyze everyone in the car.”

“I think so.” I swipe at my mouth nervously. “I haven’t tried quite like that before. And I don’t know what’ll happen once any of you go inside too.”

Jacob cracks his knuckles. “We’ll just have to find out. You lock them down, Zee and I will wrench the outer door open, and we take it from there.”

I restrain a shiver. “I’m coming with you. If I need to adjust my power, I want to be able to do it with the targets in sight.”

“I’ll be there too,” Andreas puts in with a crooked grin. “It never hurts to have an invisible ally on your side. I wish I could pass on the ability to you too.”

We talked about that potential strategy when we were first discussing the job, but while Drey’s ability to make objects he’s touching disappear might extend to human bodies as well, so far he has to be touching them to hold them like that. We can’t compromise our maneuverability that much.

And it’s not like the guards will somehow fail to notice us busting our way in through the door, no matter what they can see of our bodies.

It’s on me to go first, to clear the way. I slink to the front of the roof like Zian did and brace my hands against the ridge at its edge.

Six men. Six human figures within the boxy shape right in front of me. I need to pin them all with my scream.

I fix my gaze on the dark shape of the train car and let a vibration of my anger ripple through the softer emotions that’ve grounded me. My lips part automatically.

The nearly silent shriek warbles up my throat and rushes out into the air. It whips through the steel walls of the secure car.

My heightened senses spark with the awareness of the three—now five—now all six of the bodies my power latches on to. A tremor of pain careens back into me before I clamp down my self-control.

I hurt one of them—snapped his shin bone. Through the knot of guilt in my gut, I remind myself that it could have been worse.

I can’t talk to the guys while I’m emitting my banshee scream, so I simply dip my head to let them know it’s done. They all file past me except for Griffin, who crouches down at my side.

We talked about this next part as if it’d be simple. Well, I guess it is simple , in terms of how straightforward the act is, but it’s definitely not easy .

Jacob, then Zian, and then Andreas—wavering out of sight as he goes—clamber carefully down the side of our car. They take the wide step across to the secure car one at a time.

But there’s no ledge along the side wall leading to the door they need to open. With the train rushing along the tracks, it’s not as if they can stand on the ground for leverage.

How are they even going to reach it while the car is in motion?

As Jacob and Zian bend their heads together in muttered conversation, my throat starts to prickle. The hunger inside me is gnawing at me for more shards of pain.

No. Not yet. Not today.

I’d like to say Not ever , but no part of me really believes I can do away with the vicious need inside me forever anymore.

Zian boosts Jacob onto the roof of the secure car—slowly, so no thump gives away our presence—and then repeats the gesture for Andreas’s invisible form. He hefts himself up after them using his supernatural strength.

They creep to the edge overlooking the door. Zee sprawls on his stomach and manages to lean down far enough to grasp the handle.

I think—I fucking hope—that Andreas is holding on to his legs to make sure he doesn’t slide right off. We could die here without taking a single bullet, skulls smashed on the ground whipping by below us.

Jacob makes a furtive gesture, peering down at the door. Then the metal starts to groan.

He’s wrenching at it with his telekinetic powers while Zian hauls with his wolf-man power. I push a little more emphasis into my scream, wincing at the thought of automatic gunfire.

But my shriek holds. And Jake has gotten even stronger since he shook up an entire mountain.

I don’t know whether he undoes the lock or simply breaks it, but the steel slab of the door crumples as he and Zee pull. Like it was made of nothing more than cardboard he’s dented to the side.

Zian jerks back a few inches for better balance and grasps Jacob’s hands. Without missing a beat, he swings Jake in through the opening.

Griffin sets a tentative hand on my back. I almost forgot he was there.

“I’m keeping them as calm as I can manage,” he says, just loud enough to be heard over the clatter of the train. “Are you going over there too?”

That was the plan. An abrupt jolt of panic shoots through me at the thought of maintaining my shriek while making the jump.

But I told the guys I’d be there with them. And I might need to be if they’re going to make it through alive.

I risk a shallow gulp of air with only a waver of my shriek. Then I spring across to the opposite car.

Zian has already tossed himself inside after Jacob. I assume Andreas has followed them, one way or another.

Hooking my hand under the doorway, I stabilize my fingers and then fling myself around the frame with a hasty tumble.

I land on my feet with a lurch of my chest—and a hitch of my shriek. One of the guards braced around us twitches his gun closer to aiming it at Jacob.

Shit. I steady my voice and motion hastily at the guys I can see. Zian snatches the handle of the inner door while Jacob tenses in preparation to exert his powers?—

And the car thumps over a broken bit of track.

The floor heaves under my feet, tossing me onto my ass. My shriek breaks completely.

As I suck in a gasp of air, one of the guards tackles me to the ground.

He slams my head into the floor face-first. My mouth is crushed against the metal surface.

I couldn’t scream again right now if I wanted to.

At least not the usual way.

Panic flares through my thoughts in the split-second when I’m captured, and a bolt of heady defiance races up in its wake. In the back of my mind, I see Dominic slumped on the hospital bed, waiting for us.

Dominic, who healed me even when he thought he should hate me. Dominic, who was the first boy to ever kiss me without a disaster. Who showed me I could be loved without everything I cared about falling apart.

I will not lose him. I refuse to lose any of them.

A flare bursts within my skull, and this time it’s as if my brain itself shrieks, hunger and fury and desperation melding together in a silent, mouthless wail of vengeance.

The man holding me down buckles with a pained grunt. I taste the crack of two ribs and the puncture of a spleen before the understanding catches up with me that I’m really doing this somehow.

I’m screaming without even opening my mouth.

I jerk around, lips clamped tight, my mental shriek expanding to collide with the other four guards on this side of the doorway.

One of them has his gun under Zian’s chin. I break his hand.

The other two have converged on Jacob. As I fracture one’s pelvis so he drops to the floor, Jake twists his hand, and the other man’s knees give beneath him.

Not a killing strike. We haven’t disobeyed our orders.

Two of the rifles soar out the doorway into the night. Andreas is tossing them away so there’s no chance of the guards turning them on us again.

I start to reach for another but hesitate, unsure how easily I can keep my hold on our opponents with this newfound dimension to my power.

Jacob and Zian kick the other weapons out of the train. Zee pauses to stare down at me. “Riva?”

I have to control the men inside the smaller room too. I close my eyes and push my awareness and my mental shriek beyond the wall.

There. There. They seize up in the grip of my power, pain flooding me just from their bewilderment and fear.

I wave a hand vaguely toward the door. The guys leap forward.

Jacob and Zian haul that door open inch by screeching inch. They each tackle one of the guards inside, smacking them hard enough in the right spot to knock them temporarily unconscious.

Which is a good thing, because a headache is starting to expand through my brain with the effort of the telepathic scream.

“Fuck!” Jacob snaps from inside. “There are too many goddamn security boxes in here. Which one is the hard drive in?”

Zee must scan them with his X-ray vision. “Here,” he says. “But I don’t think—the door on this thing is too small and thick.”

He hesitates, and I can’t help looking up even as I pin the remaining injured men with my power.

Zian blinks. Then his eyes spark, and a glowing line sears through one of the panels embedded in the inner wall.

Our wolf-man’s powers have grown in new ways too. The line crackles through the metal in a rough rectangle, which Jacob yanks out with his telekinesis the second it’s complete.

Andreas reappears. “Come on. We just passed the marker by the side of the tracks. Let’s get out of here!”

Zian tucks the sleek metal case of the hard drive he’s retrieved against his chest, sheltered by his arms.

Jacob turns in the doorway to look toward the car behind us. “Griffin! We’re leaving.”

Zian stiffens for a second and then slings one arm around me too. Squeezing me against him with as much care as he gave our cargo, he leaps into the brush along the side of the road.

He hits the cushioning of the shrubs shoulder-first, his brawn sheltering me from the worst of the impact. As I scramble up, three more thuds sound in quick succession.

The silent scream fades from my mind as the train whisks the guards away from us.

I let out a rasping sound and clear my throat so I can speak. “Everyone okay?”

Jacob mutters a curse. “I think Griffin sprained his ankle.”

“I’ll be fine,” his brother replies. “The hard part is over, right?”

Yes. We just have to get to the planned meetup spot, deliver the hard drive to Balthazar, and…

And what guarantee do we actually have that he’ll fulfill his side of the deal? A deal made with a madman?

As the guys gather around us, Griffin limping, my stomach sinks like a stone. My gaze catches on the vague shine of the device in Zian’s arms.

Balthazar wants it. He wants it enough that he played his trump card to force us to get it.

Why can’t it be our trump card now?

I wet my lips, a weird mix of hope and trepidation tickling through my veins. “Before we go back… I have an idea.”