Page 228 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twelve

Jacob

W hen Riva finishes speaking, her words bounce around inside my skull, refusing to totally sink in. Every muscle in my body has tensed as if preparing to fight off the enemies who aren’t even here.

“You want us to ask the guardians for help?” I spit out, the idea sounding even more absurd when I say it out loud. “The assholes who kept us in cages and treated us like lab rats?”

Riva folds her arms over her chest, looking totally unfazed by my reaction. She was probably expecting me to be at least this pissed off, if not more. “Not exactly asking, and not exactly help. But bringing them into the mix could be useful to us.”

Annoyingly, Dominic has to make it all sound reasonable in his usual thoughtful tone. “I can see her point. Balthazar was part of the Guardianship for decades, since they were founded. There’ve got to be people there who know him way better than we do.”

I swivel toward him. “Better than us maybe, but we’ve got his closest assistant on our side. What could they know that Toni doesn’t?”

Not that I like relying on the bitch who stood by while he tormented and killed shadowbloods either, but at least she’s admitted she fucked up. And she’s already here.

Andreas rubs his jaw. “She saw one side of him, but they’ll have seen others. There’d be people there he interacted with more like equals than a superior.”

I throw my hands in the air. “Who the hell cares? We can’t trust them farther than we can kick them! Didn’t we all learn our lesson when we ran to Engel for answers?”

The memory of our creator turning on us merges with all the moments the other guardians hunted us down, and anger crackles through my nerves.

Several of the books hurtle off the nearby bookshelf to smack against the opposite wall.

I close my eyes, my hands clenching. I’ve got to simmer down. No one’s going to pay attention to my opinions if my talent is going haywire like a toddler having a tantrum.

Griffin takes a step closer to me. My twin’s voice comes out so gentle it almost makes me angrier. “I don’t think Riva has any intention of trusting them. But it makes sense that you’d hate the idea. None of us want to have anything to do with the guardians.”

“I know,” I mutter, willing my body to relax. “I just don’t—I don’t want to see us make another mistake.”

Riva aims a soft smile at me that’s worse than Griffin’s reassurances. “We’re not doing anything yet. I’m only saying we should talk about the possibilities. They’re… a potential resource, like Rollick always puts it. Maybe we could use them like they wanted to use us.”

Dominic nods. “Balthazar definitely wouldn’t suspect that any contact he gets from them has anything to do with us. He knows that we hate them and that they’d never work with us as allies.”

“Exactly.” Riva smiles brighter at him. “If we can manipulate them into passing on information or influencing his actions, they might be able to create the opening we need without him or them having a clue that’s what’s going on.”

When she puts it like that, I can understand why she’s excited about the possibility. It’s not like we’ve gotten very far against our psychopathic former captor so far.

He has all the resources, all the plans in place, and we’re playing catch up. Drawing in the guardians to our benefit could give us a leg up.

Even if imagining reaching out to them in any way makes me want to smash every piece of furniture in Rollick’s elegant mansion.

I heave a sigh, expelling more tension with the breath.

“Okay. I know we’ve got to consider every possible plan that could give us an advantage.

But I don’t think the shadowkind are going to like it either.

The guardians wanted to exterminate them just as much as Balthazar does, even if they weren’t as ballsy about it. ”

Riva shrugs. “I guess we’ll have to see what they say, then.”

If I was hoping that Rollick would see things my way and quash the plan before it even got off the ground, I know I’ve lost the second a startled but awed laugh spills from his lips.

He leans back in the leather chair at the desk in his mansion’s home office, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Of course you’d figure there’s a way to make use of even your other enemies. I’d love it if these guardians of yours could lend us a hand against their own interests. Seems fitting.”

Zian, who caught up with the rest of us as we searched the demon out, frowns pensively. “Are your shadowkind friends going to be okay with it? A lot of them already seem kind of unsure about working just with us .”

Riva has brightened at Rollick’s approval in a way I can’t help appreciating. I’m not in love with her plan, but nothing could shake my love for her.

She bounces on her feet with pent-up energy. It can’t have been easy for her spending so much time putting together plans rather than springing into action.

“We wouldn’t really be working with them,” she says. “We’ve just got to find a way to get them acting on our behalf without realizing it.”

Rollick flashes her a smile. “Exactly. But first we need to locate the people who’ll decide on those actions. You said the man who brought you to that island is, ah, no longer in the picture, correct? He was the last of the other founders in this Guardianship?”

Andreas nods slowly. “He was theoretically at the top of the ladder when he had us running missions for him—but the guardians had other levels of authority. There was a guy who came to visit him… Richmond, that was his name. He talked about a board that I assume he was on, who had the power to take control over the organization if they decided Clancy was screwing things up.”

Riva claps her hands together. “Then we need to find the board. They’ve got to be running things now.”

I grimace. “I wonder what they think of all the havoc Balthazar’s already wreaking thanks to their experiments?”

“They might not know he’s behind it,” Dominic points out. “He’s been pretending it’s monsters making the attacks, right? He hasn’t been in contact with them for years—they probably have even less information about his current activities than we do.”

Rollick is typing a text into his phone with one hand while the other taps at the keyboard of his laptop. Apparently epic multitasking is among his supernatural skills.

“Your guardians aren’t generally secretive enough about their presence to escape shadowkind notice,” he says.

“It helps that they’re so fond of their protective measures, which we can’t help picking up on.

And having the name of someone on this board…

I may be able to dig up contact information and locations they’re presently working out of within a matter of hours. ”

I shift on my feet with a prickle of my own restlessness. “We can’t just call them up or barge in and order them around. Why would they pay attention to anything we say or do? If they know who we are, they’ll never listen to us. And if we don’t tell them, then we’ll only be strangers.”

“Hmm. There are various methods of persuasion, some more subtle than others.” Rollick snaps his fingers and raises his voice at a pitch that makes my eardrums wobble. “Pearl?”

The succubus must have been lurking nearby, because it can’t be more than ten seconds before she pops into being next to his desk. “Yes, boss?” she asks with a typically cheeky grin.

My stance starts to tense again. Our grand plan is going to rely on her ? I mean, the succubus has been nice to us and all, but she never seems to take anything all that seriously.

Rollick clearly doesn’t share any of my concerns. “You did a good job getting that lackey of Balthazar’s to cough up the info about the hidden route inside the hill,” he says. “We might have more intensive need of your skills soon.”

Her grin only widens. “Sounds good to me. What’s up?”

Riva steps in. “We’re going to track down the current leaders of the Guardianship—the organization that all the guardians belong to. That Balthazar used to as well. I’m hoping we can use them to come at him from a new angle, one he won’t expect or be ready to defend against.”

“The Guardianship,” Pearl repeats, and her bright eyes go momentarily distant. “You know, that guy of Balthazar’s said something about them when I was working my charms.”

Okay, maybe I sold her abilities short. I stare at her, wishing I could push myself right into the memory like Andreas would be able to. “What? I thought Balthazar had nothing to do with them anymore.”

Pearl dips her head in acknowledgment. “Oh, he doesn’t.

It was—” She glances at Riva, and her smile falters for a moment.

“I told you before how when I’m seducing someone, they always seem to end up blabbing their big regrets to me afterward.

One of this guy’s big failures had to do with the guardians. ”

Everyone’s attention is trained on the succubus now. Rollick makes a circular motion with his hand. “Go on.”

Pearl sucks her lower lip under her teeth as she appears to think back. “He was someone in pretty tight with Balthazar. One of his top dudes. But he was worried the big guy would never give him any responsibilities outside of the science-y stuff he was mostly focused on.”

Dominic’s eyebrows rise. “Wait… Did you manage to get your hands on Matteo ?”

Pearl blinks at him. “Yeah, that was his name. Is that important?”

A sourness laces my tongue and turns my stomach. Something thumps on one of Rollick’s shelves in the instant before I rein in my power.

That fucking smug prick and his sick “procedures.” It’s his fault almost as much as Balthazar’s that we’re in this mess.

“Matteo was one of the two employees Balthazar seemed to count on the most at the villa,” Riva says quietly.

“The other one being Toni. He was in charge of trying to expand our abilities—and he’s probably the one who worked out whatever treatment Balthazar’s using now to produce his new and stronger shadowbloods. ”

Pearl wrinkles her nose. “Ugh. He did seem like a creep. We should be looking to take him out of the picture too.”

The corner of Riva’s mouth curls upward just slightly. “I already did.”

Rollick chuckles approvingly. Probably the thing I like most about the demon is the fact that he appreciates my woman’s brutal side as much as I do.

Pearl hesitates and then lets out a bell of a laugh. “Well, that’s taken care of then.”

Dominic clears his throat. “You never told us what he said about the guardians.”

“Oh, right.” The succubus rubs her hands together.

“Apparently a couple of years ago, after Balthazar went off on his own apart from this Guardianship, Matteo figured it’d been long enough of his boss playing lone wolf and that they’d make progress faster if they continued collaborating with the guardians at least a little.

So he set up a visit with some of the head honchos, thinking Balthazar would be pleased with his initiative. ”

I can’t imagine that psycho being “pleased” with anyone’s inspiration other than his own. “Let me guess. He was wrong.”

“Oh, yeah. When Balthazar saw the Guardianship people, he told them off with a bunch of insults and threats… It was so bad Matteo was sure he’d have a hard time coming back even if he changed his mind later.”

“And that’s what Matteo regretted?” Riva asks.

Pearl shakes her head. “Nope. He was all torn up about how he’d lost his boss’s trust by inviting them in. I guess Balthazar laid into him too in the moment and then never stopped giving him a chilly attitude afterward.”

Yeah, that fits my impressions of the guy. Matteo was just as sociopathic as his master and worked his butt off following the prick’s insane demands.

Riva’s eyes gleam with anticipation. “That’s perfect.”

My head jerks toward her. “How, exactly?”

She swats my arm in response to my skeptical tone. “The last time Balthazar and the guardians interacted, he treated them like an enemy. All they know is he’s gone rogue and he apparently wants nothing to do with them. Don’t you see how that plays into our hands?”

Zian’s eyes widen. “It might not be too hard to convince them that he’s working against them. That they’ve got to take action to save themselves.”

“Right.” Riva grins. “Now if only we could nudge his new shadowbloods to rain down a little destruction near wherever the Guardianship’s top dogs are hanging out to make the threat more immediate, we’d be golden.”

Rollick looks up from his laptop. “Who says we need his shadowbloods? We’ve got perfectly good ones right here.”

Andreas glances around at the rest of us. “You’re saying that we should rain down some destruction?”

The demon shrugs. “Nothing that horrible. Just some superficial but suitably unnerving devastation.” His gaze slides to… me, before he glances around at the others again. “I’ve heard your telekinetic prodigy can shake entire mountains. He should be able to shake up the Guardianship too.”

Wait, I’m the one who has to set this plan in motion?

Everyone else turns toward me expectantly. Zian raises his hand as if he’s in class. “I’ll go too. I can bash and burn things up a bunch.”

“You could borrow my talent for siphoning energy,” Dominic says in a subdued tone. “Or I could come along.”

And then silence falls as they wait to see what I’m going to say.

I swallow hard. I didn’t like this idea when Riva first pitched it, and I still would rather have a million miles between me and any of those fuckers with their helmets and vests.

But there’s a plea in Riva’s gaze. And where the hell am I leaving us if I say no?

It’s not as if I’ve got a better suggestion. At least this part of the plan involves sticking it to the pricks.

I grit my teeth and then force the words out. “All right. Tell me where to go, and I’m in.”