Page 210 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Thirty-Two

Riva

“ D ad—wait!”

The words make me want to vomit even as I force them from my throat. But it’s the only thing I can think to say that might get Balthazar’s attention and divert him from his murderous goal.

I’ve never called anyone “Dad” before. And he—he won’t have heard that name addressed to him since his son died.

In the momentary silence, I catch Griffin’s empathic talent from him. Just for a few seconds, long enough to extend my awareness and trace the churn of emotions that matches the tone of Balthazar’s voice to some point I can’t distinctly define but can tell isn’t far away.

He’s here. Below the hill’s plateau with us. Maybe behind the other door we saw—the one that was locked?

I push a whiff of sentimentality toward the man before I release the ability back to Griffin. If I’m lucky, if Griffin understands what I’m aiming for, he’ll keep up the same strategy on my behalf.

No more rocks careen toward our heads. From the corner of my eye, I see Dominic relax slightly, getting a momentary reprieve from the need to project a telekinetic shield.

How long will that reprieve last?

Finally, Balthazar’s voice returns, warier but also less arrogant than before. “Do you have something to say to me, Riva?”

I pitch my voice to carry, not sure exactly how he’s hearing my response. Not letting myself care that the guys will all hear it perfectly clearly too.

“Please, let me come back. I was surprised before, and scared, but I don’t want to die like this. I never even got to really know you. Can you give me another chance?”

My voice wavers of its own accord. I’m genuinely scared—scared and desperate and not sure this attempt will even work… and hating that I’m trying out the tactic at all.

But I have to. I have to use every card in my hand.

Play along until we can escape. That was always the plan.

I just didn’t know how hard it’d be to take on the final role our captor could ask from me. The one he almost begged me to step into the last time we spoke.

You can stand beside me. We’ll work together and set things right. Don’t you see it?

“You said ‘me,’ not ‘we,’” Balthazar says in the present. “Are you asking only for yourself, then?”

“Would you let any of the guys come back with me?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

He chuckles. “I can’t trust any of them near me. I can’t even trust you .”

But I’m the only one with his DNA woven into my body. His and his wife’s. The last living reminder of the woman I suppose he loved, in whatever warped way this psychopath is capable of.

I make my tone meek. “I know. I’ll do whatever you ask me to. Before… I didn’t know how to wrap my head around the idea of having a real family. I’m sorry I ran away from you.”

The man who’d call himself my father doesn’t really know me. If he did, he’d realize that I’d never really abandon my guys, not even to save my life.

My stomach churns around the lie. Oh please, let the guys remember my devotion to them like they didn’t when I was forced to leave them before.

Traces of wrenching fear waver through our bonds, but I don’t know if it’s for me or for themselves.

“What are you doing, Tink?” Andreas croaks, but I think I catch a flicker of a smile from him in the fading firelight. I want to believe he already knows the real answer to that question.

I pretend to ignore him. And also Griffin’s pleading, “Moonbeam?” which cuts me to the core even though if any of the guys can tell what’s going on inside me, it’s him.

Balthazar finally speaks. “Come along then. But don’t think I’ll be careless enough to give you an opening to hurt me.”

“Thank you—thank you so much!”

I turn my back on my guys—and grope through their mingling energies for the one power that could save us all.

Dominic’s voice rasps out. “You don’t have to do this, Riva.”

He might even mean that, not just be helping to sell my story. But I do have to.

I do, or we all die here while Balthazar sneers at our downfall.

I say nothing, just trudge up the tunnel.

Most of the rocks fell directly on the section where Balthazar caught us, but a few stray stones lie on the increasingly darkened path. As I push myself up the steep slant, my calves burning, I nearly trip over one I didn’t see.

“I’m coming, Dad,” I call out to keep him focused on me. “Just can’t see much in here.”

He won’t shake loose any more projectiles with that “fail safe” of his until I’m out of the passage, right? He wouldn’t want to risk cracking open my head—not his daughter’s, not when she’s finally accepting his mercy.

Once I’m out, he’ll bury the guys like he’s promised.

So I need to take care of this problem before I leave the tunnel.

The light behind me fades completely with a curve in the passage. I run my fingers along the walls, feeling my way.

And aim the penetrating sight I stole from Zian through the layer of stone at my left.

I’m not attempting to burn through anything right now, only to use the incisive vision that lets him see through solid surfaces. After a few attempts, I catch a glimmer of light a few feet through the rock.

There’s another passage parallel to this one. I glimpse it in brief flashes—carved stairs in contrast with the uneven floor I’m stumbling along, occasional light fixtures mounted on the ceiling.

An escape route rather than a secret passage, meant for a man with higher standards than he offered his shadowkind collaborators.

And somewhere along that passage, I’ll find the madman himself.

It’s so dark in my tunnel that I don’t see the door Zian tore through, only feel a slightly more forceful draught of air when I get near it. I cast my gaze toward the wall again and have to clamp down on my jolt of surprise.

There’s a whole control room of sorts at the start of the other tunnel, presumably behind the locked door we saw. Screens and electronic consoles gleam along the stone walls.

And by one of those consoles, peering at a screen I can’t make out, stands Balthazar, intent as the grizzled lion he’s always reminded me of. His hands are braced over a keypad.

The vision flickers away in my surprise and my lack of practice with the X-ray vision. I pause as if to briefly catch my breath.

Leaning one hand against the stone surface, I pull my scream into the back of my head. I have to launch my attack fast, before Balthazar catches on that I can use my power on him even while he’s theoretically beyond my view?—

But as I lift my gaze to the wall to focus it on the man who’s my father and my tormenter, a tickle of frantic, aggressive pheromones reaches my nose.

Two facts click into place in my head in the split-second I register the tang.

They can’t be coming from Balthazar, because the chemicals his body gives off could never penetrate this stone. Someone must be just beyond the broken door to this tunnel.

And that someone has nothing good in mind for the person they must be waiting to ambush…

Me.

My head jerks around just as a gaunt body hurtles through the ragged opening.

Matteo still has the benefit of a little surprise. I might have started to catch on, but I had no time to really brace myself.

“She’s doing something!” he calls out in a thin voice as he jams a gun to the underside of my chin. He’s got a plastic contraption fixed over his eyes—some kind of goggles to help him see in the dark? “She’s got a trick?—”

Fury and anguish flood me as swift and scorching as the fire that consumed the villa. In that instant, any revulsion I still held about using the most vicious part of my powers fades away.

This man reveled in how far he could stretch my talents, how much pain he could force me to deal out. He should be happy to experience firsthand what he celebrated so avidly.

The shriek peals from my mind in a torrent so scathing my nerves rattle with it. But even as my rage of retribution pours out of me, my thoughts are still down the passage with my guys, knowing I’m here for them as much as myself.

Matteo warned Balthazar that I’m going to attack—that I can. I have no idea what our captor will do with that information.

I’m going to carve every scrap of pain I can out of Matteo to bolster my strength—but I have to do it quickly.

Just this once, I’m grateful for this asshole’s “procedures,” all the exercises and tests he pushed on me. My mental shriek hits him and starts at precisely the perfect spot, shattering every bone in the hand holding his gun.

As the pistol slips from his suddenly flimsy fingers, Matteo cries out. I slam my silent scream into his throat next, smashing his vocal cords but not cutting off his breath.

I’m not letting him die just yet.

My power rips through him with brutal efficiency. Crack his kneecaps. Slice the skin between his toes and along the arch of his foot. Carve a path from his stomach up to his ribs.

Everywhere it’ll hurt the most. All that agony streaming into me, fueling the power I’m inflicting on him.

The rush of exhilaration sweeps me through a few ragged breaths. I might have kept going a little longer, taken in even more strength from his pain, but the ground beneath me trembles with a distant thunder.

Fuck. Balthazar is done waiting—he’s set off the rockslide again.

My final silent shriek blasts apart Matteo’s heart. I shove his disjointed body off me, letting it thud lifelessly to the ground.

The agony I absorbed thrums through my limbs. I spring to my feet and dash through the broken door into the entry room.

As I spin toward the door with the lock, my renewed strength propels the X-ray vision I borrowed from Zian through the thick steel. I have to find Balthazar—I have to shatter his heart too before he can do any more damage?—

I can’t see him. I make out the hazy screens and the lights blinking on the consoles, but he’s ducked out of view.

He must be somewhere near the controls. His voice resonates through the underground chamber. “Whatever you think you’re going to do, you don’t need them anymore.”

No .