Page 206 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Thirty

Riva

W hen all six of us are standing in the back garden, as far from the villa as we can get, the guys look at me with an unspoken question. They know better than to ask out loud when Balthazar could hear us, but I’ve got to give some kind of explanation for dragging them over here.

“I had an idea—it might sound kind of strange,” I say with the improvised excuse I came up with while Griffin and I gathered everyone. “We should meditate, all of us together, and maybe the right idea will come to us that way.”

It’s an excuse for our silence while we work out the rest. Jacob gives a bemused snort, but they all nod.

“Sure,” Andreas says, with a sparkle in his eyes that tells me he knows perfectly well I’m up to something else. “Can’t hurt to give it a shot.”

The new awareness of the shadowy bonds between us remains, the whispers of energy tickling my senses. Are they picking up on the change too?

I think they must have. I don’t have the vivid understanding of their emotions that hit me in that moment in the pool, but quivers of curiosity and anticipation have filtered through the connection between us from the first moment Griffin and I went to talk to them.

I suspect they also know what must have happened to cause that shift. When Jacob saw Griffin and me together, his lips twitched with a knowing smirk that erased my worries about how he’d react to our new closeness.

We’re all together, all meant for each other. No need for competition or jealousy.

And that might be true now beyond what any of us could have predicted.

I sink down onto the grass below the level of the nearby hedges, folding my legs. No one will be able to see what we’re doing from inside the house, and Zian will hear footsteps before any intruder gets close enough to spy.

After what I experienced with Griffin, I thought I might feel the need to sit at the center of our circle, the hub to the wheel. But now that the guys are here with me, we settle naturally into a simple ring with me alongside them.

The deeper connection might have blazed forth from my body, but it tingles between us now not like spokes but a more intricate web, tying all of us together. The guys’ essence reaches out to one another just as it does to mine.

Good. If I’m right, then that means our advantage is even bigger than I’d hoped.

While we were assembling our group, my mind was whirling through the possibilities of how I’d begin my demonstration. I need something that’ll be clear—and clearly not from me.

I wet my lips and extend my hand toward Andreas at the opposite end of the circle.

He starts to shift toward me as if he thinks I want to grasp his hand, but I shake my head. I suspect we can do this without physical contact.

It’d be useful to know for sure.

If you asked me to describe it, I’d have to say the impression of shadowy energy that winds through each of us is pretty much the same, in every way I have concrete words for. But there’s a vibe to each of the guys that’s distinctly them .

Just as I always know where each of them is through my marks, never confusing one tug of sensation with another, I’d feel that it’s Andreas’s essence I’m reaching toward even with my eyes closed.

I do close my eyes then, concentrating hard on the whisper of energy he gives off. It’s not all one sound but two separate murmurs. I can taste the idea of what they offer on a level below conscious understanding.

I grasp hold of the one I want and yank it into me.

The power flows into me without resistance. It coils through my own essence, etching the patterns of its function inside my skull.

It tells my body how to use it. All I need to do is hold that thrum of energy tightly and contract in on myself, peeling my presence out of view.

Zian lets out a startled grunt. My eyes pop open to find all five of the guys staring at me.

Or not really at me. At the spot where they saw me a moment ago, before I appeared to vanish.

Dominic’s head swings around toward Andreas, but Drey gives a sharp shake of his head to indicate that he didn’t have anything to do with my vanishing. His eyes have widened.

Zian cranes his neck around as if searching to see if I’ve simply slipped away. Jacob studies the spot where I’m sitting with a calculating air.

Griffin knows I’m still there. I must show up to his empathic sense as clearly as ever.

He lifts his hand and sets it on my shoulder. Showing the others that I haven’t moved.

Did he already know what I did back in the pool, when I stole his talent from him just for a moment? Or did he only figure it out now, seeing this?

I push myself back into visibility—and nudge the thread of essence I grasped back into Andreas. He looks down at his hands and then back at me, speechless.

We can’t say anything about this out loud. If Balthazar finds out we can trade talents…

Before I can follow that unnerving line of thought any farther, Jacob shoves his hand toward me. Offering himself, watching avidly to see the results.

I might as well confirm this part for them before we try anything else. I focus on his energies and tease out the more potent one to wrap through my limbs.

Oh, that’s a power all right. It vibrates through my nerves almost as insistently as my urge to shriek.

I glance around for a suitable test object. My gaze locks on to a planter that’s a few feet long, set in front of one of the hedges, its flowers wilting.

At a motion of my hand and a heave of the borrowed power, it lifts several inches off the ground.

The weight radiates into my body, but I can feel even without any further practice that I’ve taken in the strength to lift and shake so much more than this one object.

Discomfort twists in my chest at the thought of stealing so much of Jacob’s power, though. I release it and let it stream back into him.

Shocked silence has descended over our group. None of us could have expected this.

I have no idea how to explain it. I doubt even Engel suspected that raising us so closely, allowing us to bond so deeply on every level, would mean we’d find ourselves able to exchange our powers as well.

I glance at Dominic, whose forehead has furrowed with a pensive line. I know he’ll handle any experiment I offer him cautiously.

Catching his gaze, I touch my chest and move my hand toward him—but not as if I’m asking for something from him. As if I’m trying to pass something over.

Startled comprehension lights in his hazel eyes. They become both more intent and more distant as he focuses on me.

The whisper ripples through my veins, as if I’ve shed a layer of fabric as filmy as gauze. Dominic stares down at his hands and flexes his fingers.

Claws spring from the tips.

An awed laugh sputters from his lips before he catches himself. As he tests the supernatural speed that came with my bodily powers, swiping at a nearby hedge, Griffin turns to Zian at his other side.

At Griffin’s gesture, Zee blinks in confusion. Then, with a lift of his eyebrows, he nods.

Griffin hovers his palm next to Zian’s arm, his face tensing with concentration. Then he lowers his head.

His body twitches, and muscles bulge across his arms. Dark fur sprouts from his neck. His face warps with the start of a wolf-man muzzle before he reverses the shift.

Throughout our ring, bewilderment falls away in the wake of exhilaration.

For several eager minutes, we don’t do anything except borrow one power and then another: Jacob burning a few tufts of grass with Zian’s X-ray vision, Andreas bringing the blades back to green life with Dominic’s healing touch, Zee adding Jake’s toxic spines to his arsenal, and on and on.

As the thrill tapers off, we sort ourselves back into the powers that belong to us. Using the others’ talents doesn’t feel quite as natural and innate as my own—I don’t think I’d ever feel comfortable trying to keep any of theirs for an extended period of time.

But in the short-term? The possibilities are endless.

Dominic pulls out a paper and a pencil, because of course he’d have thought about alternate methods of communication when I indicated I wanted this meeting. He scrawls a hasty question at the top.

How can we use this in the escape plan?

I wet my lips. That is the big concern, the reason I wanted us to see what we could do.

Unfortunately, I haven’t come up with a definite answer on my own.

Jacob takes the paper from him and adds a comment. Whatever we do, they’ll try to stop us. We can swap powers in the middle of a fight to take them by surprise.

At Zian’s motion, he passes the paper over. The larger guy scrawls a question. The real problem is how to get Rollick’s people up here to start the fight, right? If we do anything on our own, someone will knock us out before we get very far.

We sit for a moment in grim silence. He’s right, and exchanging our abilities doesn’t get us any closer to discovering the secret route up the mountain or opening it to the shadowkind we want to bring in.

I reach for the page next. We can’t leave the grounds while we have the manacles on. But if Rollick can burn everything up, that could destroy the security systems too. Or at least we’d be able to work on the problem without anyone left to trigger them on purpose.

Griffin nods and makes a follow-up note. We just have to not get burned up too. Maybe combining our talents in a new way could make that easier?

Andreas cocks his head and beckons for the paper. I pass it over.

Do you think your power could shield against the heat of a fire like it has against bullets? he writes, with a pointed look at Jacob.

Jake frowns and lifts his shoulders in an uncertain motion. I don’t know if we want to gamble on a use of his power he’s never attempted before, especially not with a supernatural fire that might be more potent than anything we’ve encountered in the past.