Page 223 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Eight

Riva

S ilence cloaks the craggy slopes of the mountains along with the thickening dusk. I draw up my legs on the rock ledge where I’m perched and hug my knees.

Sorsha has used her fiery powers to warm the area of our camp against the cold of the season and the altitude, but gusts of biting wind penetrate it here at the edge. I curl my fingers in my wool gloves and tune out the discomfort.

Inside, I’m focused on my sense of Balthazar’s presence using the talent I’ve once again borrowed from Griffin. A small laminated map of this stretch of the Carpathian range sits on the gritty rock beside me. I don’t even look at it as my finger taps a slow path toward our location.

The six of us shadowbloods, Sorsha, and a handful of shadowkind including Rollick arrived in the mountains yesterday.

We made a slow, careful trek to the campsite Rollick’s people had picked out as they investigated the area, following a route they also picked out to avoid any of Balthazar’s more distant security measures.

We’re right at the edge of his sphere of detection now. The mountainside base lies about a hundred feet below me, invisible at this distance other than a narrow stone lip Crag pointed out to me that he said is the top of the entrance.

While we’ve been staked out here waiting for our enemy’s arrival, the other shadowkind working alongside us have spread out in a wide ring around the base.

They’ll report back to Rollick if they notice anything that could interfere with our plans—and interfere themselves if more manpower arrives from outside the base.

If we’re really lucky, one of those powerful beings will spot the maniac himself and end his life before the rest of us need to move one inch farther. But I’m becoming increasingly sure there’s no chance of that.

Andreas comes up beside me and sinks down onto the ledge. “Still getting closer?” he murmurs under his breath.

I nod. I first charted Balthazar’s movements toward the base around the middle of the afternoon, from someplace in northern Russia where Toni confirmed he has property. We became increasingly sure he was coming specifically here and not some other place to the south as the hours went on.

Now he’s only a few miles away. And he’s slowed down as if he’s making a final approach. But Rollick’s people haven’t reported any sign of him back to us.

“He’s almost here,” I say, matching Drey’s soft tone. “But he’s got to have some secret way of arriving through the mountains, or one of the shadowkind would have seen him.”

Andreas glances around over the steep mountain slopes. Up here, there’s barely any vegetation other than patches of coarse grass and an occasional withered shrub.

He motions to the landscape with a flick of his coppery-brown hand. “There are a lot of nooks and crannies across the mountains. Areas it’s hard to see unless you’re right on top of them. We’d need thousands of beings to keep an eye on every entry point.”

And Balthazar is still moving fast enough that my ability to pinpoint his location doesn’t do us much good. By the time I’m sure of one exact location, he’s already left it behind.

All I know for sure is that he’s on his way, and he’ll be arriving within minutes.

I lean forward a few inches to peer down the slope through the hazy twilight. “Obviously he wasn’t coming by helicopter. At least not using the helipad we know about.”

There’s a smooth stretch of rock about a hundred feet below and to the left of the base’s most obvious entrance, with scuff marks indicating it’s been landed on before. Back when Balthazar didn’t have to worry about his former shadowblood captives coming after him, I guess.

I turn my attention inward again and let my finger fall to the map. The side of the tip brushes the bump I marked to indicate the base.

My pulse hitches. “He’s practically inside.”

Andreas raises his head. “Time to move out, Tink?”

“Let me just… Let me just make sure he’s staying there.” I wouldn’t put it past the psychopath to suspect we were tracking him and fly by overhead just to confuse us.

We can’t make any mistakes with this plan. And our time to pull it off properly will be so limited.

It all comes down to the six of us and Sorsha, really. After further examination, the shadowkind decided it was too risky to try to carve a path through the protective metals embedded in the rock around the base. Especially when the associate Rollick was hoping would contribute never turned up.

I hope that’s not a bad omen. Rollick assured me that he never explained exactly what he needed the shadowkind he reached out to for, that there’s no way he could have betrayed our intentions to anyone, but the reminder that even his connections are fallible leaves a queasy sensation in my gut.

In the end, it all comes down to surprise. Balthazar can’t know we’re coming. And ripping up the mountainside is the kind of thing that’s awfully hard to hide.

We’ve got plenty of power of our own—partly thanks to our former captor. I smile grimly to myself.

I’m looking forward to demonstrating the results of his efforts on the man himself.

The next fall of my finger lands directly on the bump. I wait a minute, counting out the seconds in my head, and reach my mind toward my sense of Balthazar again.

Still right on the base. He isn’t going any farther—at least not immediately.

I push to my feet, my pulse drumming behind my sternum. “All right. Let’s do this.”

We tramp up the slope to the small plateau where we set up our inconspicuous camp. At the sight of me, my other guys hurry over to join us. No one says a word, but anticipation laces the cool air.

Rollick and Sorsha come over as well. The demon studies my expression. “I take it that it’s time.”

I swallow past the nervous lump in my throat, my hand rising instinctively to where my cat-and-yarn charm is tucked behind my coat. “Yeah.”

“Well, you know the plan. We’ll be here to lend whatever help we can.”

Andreas looks us over. “Does everyone have what they need? We’ll want to get moving as soon as I’m finished.”

The guys incline their heads all around our loose circle. Drey reaches for Dominic first.

Thanks to the procedures Balthazar put us through, Andreas can turn other people invisible as well as himself. But the effect only lasts so long—and he’s stretching his strength to the limit working his power on all seven of us.

When we tried it out back at the Spanish mansion, the invisibility held for less than an hour.

We hoped that swapping the power between us so we could each work it on ourselves might make it more potent, but we quickly discovered that as soon as Andreas passed it on to anyone else, his own invisibility faded.

So we’re stuck with a time limit on our concealment. And we worked out who Drey should erase first based on who can most easily fall back without screwing up the plan.

He works quickly through our group, moving to me and Sorsha last. She’s got the most firepower—literally—out of all of us, and I’m the swiftest and fastest killer.

I’ve returned Griffin’s locating skill to him because I don’t have any map of the base to use it on. But he has his own methods of finding Balthazar now that the man is close.

His soft voice carries from the seemingly empty space where he’s standing. “I can feel him down there—the same kind of impressions I got from him in the villa. He’s tense but pleased about something… in an unnerving way.”

“Probably plotting how many people he’s going to send his army to murder next,” I mutter as my body fades from view.

Andreas gives my arm a quick caress as he lets go of me, and we set off.

The six of us shadowbloods can keep track of each other through our awareness of our powers. Sorsha follows along with a faint tendril of warmth she wraps around my invisible wrist.

We clamber quietly down the slope past the ledge where I tracked Balthazar’s movements. Past a surveillance camera that’s got nothing to see and motion sensors reliant on visuals.

But those aren’t the only security measures Balthazar has taken against beings who aren’t affected by silver and iron. Closer to the base entrance lies a ring of pressure sensors.

Zian lets out a quiet hiss to draw us to a halt. There’s a faint glimmer of ruddy light as he uses his vision to sever some of the wires.

Sorsha will be melting others with her phoenix fire, but she doesn’t give any visible sign of that. Only a brief waft of heat gives any indication that she’s done her work.

She clicks her tongue to indicate that she’s finished. We can’t talk at all now, not when we aren’t sure how closely Balthazar might be monitoring audio around his hideout.

Two men stand guard in the arch of the entrance carved into the mountainside. The heavy hooded parkas they wear against the mountain chill work in our favor.

As Dominic saps the life out of them from a short distance, the ruff of their hoods hides the slackening of their faces. Jacob uses his telekinesis to “walk” them back against the stone walls. He snaps off shards of rock that he jabs through their coats from behind to hold them steady.

To any watching cameras, it’ll look as if they’re simply leaning at their posts.

A quiver passes through the air as Zian accepts Jacob’s power. Getting the door open without setting off any alarms depends on him.

With Rollick’s connections, the demon was able to dig up various purchase and construction agreements and determine what sort of locks Balthazar favors. Zian spent the better part of the last two days studying their inner workings.

I can only stand there, nerves twanging, while he peers through the steel slab of the door with his X-ray sight and brings Jacob’s telekinesis to bear on the intricate pieces.

For a minute, there’s nothing but the howl of the wind beyond the doorway and a deepening chill that Sorsha can’t risk warming away when we’re this close. Then, after a muffled exhalation of relief, the door whirs open.