Page 212 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Thirty-Three

Riva

A s we follow Rollick the rest of the way down the tunnel, questions tumble from my lips. “How did you find the secret route?” comes out first.

Rollick opens his mouth, but before he can answer, another shadowkind glimmers into being next to him. With a bounce of her glossy blond curls, Pearl beams at me.

“The people from that high house had to come down to civilization sometimes,” she says. “So I worked a little of my succubus charm…”

She sways her rounded hips suggestively and giggles. Even her laugh is pretty.

I cringe at the thought of Pearl having to get up close and personal with any of Balthazar’s men. “I’m sorry it came to that.”

She shrugs. “Hey, I’ve got to feed one way or another. I enjoy it more if it’s helping a friend at the same time!”

Her cheerful attitude seems to brighten the rocky passage more than the supernaturally conjured ball of light hovering alongside us does. Hearing her call me a friend sends a bittersweet pang through my gut.

I wasn’t that great a friend in the last few days she knew me. I nearly killed a shadowkind who’d been a much better friend of hers—and nothing but kind to me too.

But she came to our rescue anyway.

It’s hard to phrase my next question without it sounding like a criticism. “The fire started a while ago… You were only just coming up this way now?”

Rollick’s chuckle rolls through the narrow space.

“Why didn’t we get our asses up there sooner, you mean?

Pearl’s little foray gave us the location of the entrance and the code to open it, but failed to uncover the fact that the hidden door was made out of layers of steel and iron so thick I couldn’t even handle it long enough to haul it open.

We had a little delay tracking down a nearby mortal who could do the job for us. ”

I sense Jacob’s frown in his voice, traveling from behind me. “ Someone was up there already, right? Sending out the fire?”

Pearl claps her hands together. “Oh, you’ll meet her soon. She’s great. She could have opened the door for us, but of course she was busy by the time we realized.”

“She” not “They.” My eyebrows rise. “Was it just three of you on this rescue mission?”

Rollick shoots me a sideways glance tinged with obvious amusement. “Still can’t make out your sort-of brethren when they’re in the shadows, hmm?”

Oh. My gaze darts to the dark patches filling the cracks and crevices in the rocky surfaces, my pulse wobbling.

Who knows how large a force he brought along if most of his shadowkind companions are sticking to the shadows?

Not that I’d want them all to emerge right here. The tunnel feels claustrophobic enough without a bunch more bodies crammed into the tight space.

The thought of the unknown beings who’ve come with the demon brings up one more uncertainty I’m even less comfortable voicing. I grapple with it for a minute before finding an approach that doesn’t make me wince.

“What happened to the six younger shadowbloods we broke out of the facility the last time we saw you, before the guardians captured us again?”

We sent those kids off to the waiting shadowkind Rollick was leading, intending to follow them and regroup. Intending to save them.

Clancy showed us photographs of the kids sprawled in the forest as mangled corpses. But he lied to us about so many other things.

He’d have wanted to lie about that.

Rollick shows no sign that it’s even occurred to him I might think the escapees were harmed.

“Oh, I ended up bringing them back to the hotel, since it’s as good a place as any to stash people who have nowhere else to go.

They’ve been enjoying a lot of room service.

I’m not sure how much the free food and the beach life has been helping them recover from their former captivity, but I’m reasonably sure it hasn’t traumatized them further. ”

My breath rushes out of me. “So they’re all okay.”

The demon glances over at me more directly, a faint furrow of confusion marring his brow. “Of course. The hard part was you getting them out of that underground bunker slash lab slash whatever else it was.”

If I never have to tell him that there were a few weeks when I believed that the shadowkind under his watch murdered those kids, I’ll be ecstatic.

“What happened to you?” Pearl asks me with typical awed dramatics. “You went back in and then you just… never came out again. We waited as long as we could—I didn’t want to leave.”

Andreas answers for me. “The guardians had set a sort of trap for us and knocked us out. I’m not sure how they moved us out of the facility, but when we woke up, we were in a totally different part of the world.”

He’s tactfully left out Griffin’s role in that trap, which is probably the right call, seeing as the shadowkind haven’t met Jacob’s twin before. I’d rather not sour their first impression of him when we all understand the choices he made and his regrets about them now.

“Did you see anyone coming out at the bottom of the hill?” Zian breaks in with a hint of a growl. “The maniac who had us trapped up there got away from the fire.”

“I could feel him heading down a different path for a while,” Griffin adds. “I’ve lost my sense of him now… I never had a very strong grip on it.”

Rollick shakes his head. “We didn’t see another entrance near this one. But we didn’t look very hard. Some of my people waited at the base of the hill as backup—if anyone they weren’t expecting came barging out, they’ll have caught him.”

Pearl bounds ahead faster. “There’s the door! Phew, I can’t wait to get out of this place.”

She has no idea how much I share that sentiment.

We pour out into cool, fresh air on rocky terrain spotted with straggly grass and hunched shrubs.

Most of Rollick’s “backup” shadowkind must remain in the shadows keeping watch, but one familiar figure wavers into view with a smile already springing to his lips. “You found all of them! And one more.”

Billy the faun pauses and blinks at Griffin, tilting his head with its dark waves of hair and spiral horns at a curious angle.

My feet jar to a halt. As I stare, my throat constricts around my voice.

The last time I saw Billy, he was a huddle of broken limbs streaming smoky essence. Because I’d caught him in my shriek, mistaking him for an enemy in the midst of a larger attack.

I can’t see any sign of the injuries I dealt to him. His light brown skin is perfectly smooth, his youthful face still full of eager excitement.

He notices me staring, and his smile turns a little tight, as if he’s afraid of what I’d have to say to him. “I’m glad you’re okay, Riva.”

I can’t help sputtering a ragged laugh. “I’m glad you’re okay. I—I’m so sorry. What happened before—I wouldn’t have meant to?—”

Rollick interrupts my stumbling apology with a brisk wave of his hand. “We can talk about our past mistakes later. Come on—you should see what we’ve made of your prison.”

He sets off toward a low hill dotted with a few leafless trees. As we hurry after him, Billy shoots me another smile, this one more shy than anything. “I know,” he says quietly, as if those two words can absolve me of every way I screwed up.

I’m not sure I deserve his forgiveness that easily, but now obviously isn’t the time to start flagellating myself.

Rollick stops at the top of the rise and turns to face the towering hill. The rest of us gather around him.

When my gaze lifts to the top of the sheer cliff the villa’s grounds were perched on, my jaw goes slack.

The jutting stone precipice looks like a gigantic candle, the entire plateau at its top ablaze. The flames surge up toward the sky all across the hilltop and even partway along the drawbridge that was lowered as some of Balthazar’s people must have aimed to escape by the road.

I can’t believe anyone still up there could possibly be alive.

Zian lets out an awed whistle, and Jacob gives a crow of delight.

A fresh wave of triumph surges up inside me. Take that , you fucking psychopath! How the tables have turned.

My satisfaction dims slightly at the thought of Toni. Was she able to make it out?

We might not have if it wasn’t for her help.

Then a glowing form materializes right overtop of us with a warble of fire and moving air.

The woman drifts down to the ground across from us, her scarlet hair streaming from its loose ponytail and the massive wings that stretch from her back flapping lazily in the breeze. Every “feather” on those wings is a lick of flame.

As her feet touch the earth, her wings contract and vanish. In the space of a heartbeat, she looks like a mostly normal if striking human being.

She folds her toned arms over her chest and glances back at the hill. “I think I did a pretty thorough job of it. There’s nothing up there but cinders now.”

When she returns her gaze to us, a glint dances in her copper-brown eyes as if they hold their own flames. “And this bunch must be the shadowbloods I’ve been hearing so much about. I guess I’m not so special anymore.”

I stare at her, momentarily struck dumb.

Rollick steps between us and the fiery woman with a wry grin. “Sorsha, these are the shadowbloods. At least, the oldest of them. Shadowbloods, this is Sorsha—the one other hybrid being I’m aware of in existence.”

I manage to reel my jaw back in. “You said you couldn’t get in contact with her.”

The demon arches his eyebrows. “You’ve been gone a while. I kept trying.”

He tips his head toward her. “Like all of you, she isn’t bothered by inconveniences like iron and silver protections. That’s why we went with fire as our weapon of choice.”

Sorsha laughs. “That’s me, phoenix for hire. Not that I’ve ever bothered to charge you for these epic battles you keep roping me into.” She taps her lips. “Come to think of it, I probably should. You’ve got plenty of dough to cough up.”

Rollick rolls his eyes at her. “If you find yourself low on funds, I definitely owe you a few favors.”

“Oh, where would the fun be in cashing those in just yet?”