Page 239 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty

Griffin

B y the time we get within ten miles of the wayward shadowblood group, Riva doesn’t need to borrow my locating talent for us to keep track of them. I can taste their erratic fury even from that distance, like wavering blasts of a scorching wind.

The caustic emotion prickles through my awareness, setting my nerves on edge. I’m used to picking up on other people’s feelings, and I’ve absorbed some horrible sensations, but nothing that eats at my insides quite like this before.

It’s like acid, burning away at my thoughts, at every gentler feeling inside me.

What must it be doing to the people who are experiencing it firsthand?

From where I’m sitting next to Andreas at the front of the SUV that’s carrying us, Sorsha, and a bunch of ephemeral, invisible shadowkind on our quest, I point to the right at an intersection. “They’re that way.”

The glow of streetlamps and late-night bar windows streaks over our vehicle through the darkness. A giggle passing between a swaying group of friends filters through my window from the city street.

Riva stirs impatiently in the seat behind me. “How do the shadowbloods feel?”

“Angry.” The word pops out before I can shape it into something fully accurate. It isn’t a fraction enough to convey what I’m picking up on.

As another prickling wave washes over me, I swallow and try again.

“I didn’t realize how angry they were when I was sensing the fight with you and the guardians in the forest. Or maybe they weren’t that angry yet, when they’d only just seen Balthazar killed.

It’s like… like there’s no room for anything else in them.

It doesn’t stay the same—it shifts and takes on different flavors, but everything is tainted by it. ”

In the rearview mirror, I see Jacob’s mouth twist. I catch the hitch of guilt that hits him.

“That sounds like how I felt,” my twin says.

“When I thought you were dead and that Riva had set you up for the guardians and turned on us. I did horrible things when that rage was gripping me. If I… if I could be that harsh with people who were my friends, who knows how far they’ll go against strangers they never cared about at all? ”

There’s a rustle of movement—Riva taking Jacob’s hand. Compassion and pain mingles with those memories, but a whisper of relief passes through my brother at her gesture.

Dominic leans forward from behind the driver’s seat. “Can you calm them down with your powers?”

My stomach tightens. “I tried in the forest, and you could see it didn’t work very well then. But it might be easier closer up.”

With each surge of fury that sears into me, I believe in that possibility less.

Sorsha rolls her shoulders where she’s sitting in the very back next to Zian. “Maybe we should have brought along the kids we already freed. They grew up with some of the others—they might know what to say.”

“No,” Riva says firmly before the phoenix’s last word has faded from the air. “Booker tried to talk Nadia down last time, and she didn’t listen at all. The others might even be angry that the three of them came with us. The powers they have can’t protect them from an attack. This is our fight.”

Sorsha nods, but I taste the tendril of doubt that winds through her other emotions. She’s letting us call the shots when it comes to our fellow shadowbloods, but after what’s already gone down, she isn’t totally convinced we’re right.

I don’t think Riva is completely sure either. She’s just desperately hoping to find a way through this mess that doesn’t involve slaughtering children.

I point the way at another crossroads. “We’re almost there. A few more minutes, I think. They haven’t attacked yet. They’re agitated but not the way it’d feel if they were in the middle of actually fighting.”

As soon as Riva determined what direction the wayward shadowbloods were heading in, it wasn’t hard for us to figure out their next target. The internet holds plenty of accounts of a group of anti-monster vigilantes who gathered together here in Memphis, Tennessee to patrol the city.

They got a lot of publicity after a couple of them riddled someone’s pet wolfhound full of silver bullets, taking it for a supernatural beast in the dark. But with the current atmosphere after the “monster” attacks on other cities, the backlash wasn’t enough to shut the vigilantes down completely.

They’ll be out sweeping the streets with the tools Balthazar arranged for them to get, and the shadowbloods are hunting them in turn. Just as we’re hunting the shadowbloods.

Thankfully, it looks like we got here before the bloodbath. The shadowbloods are moving slower as they search, giving us time to catch up.

We leave behind the bars and sounds of late-night revelry for quieter streets with wide-spaced houses behind sprawling lawns. The sense of anger thickens until I can almost see it clouding the air.

“Just—just a couple of blocks farther and I think one street to the right.” I clear my throat, the swelling emotion choking me. “Drive another five blocks and then double back so we can meet them head on. I’ll try to settle them down.”

As Andreas pushes the engine a little faster and my friends ready their stances to spring into motion, I extend my senses outward. Rather than simply absorbing the emotions around me, I focus on the most calming memories I have and push the feeling out toward the raging presences nearby.

Softly lilting music. Petting my now-lost cat, Lua, while she curled up on my lap. Waking slowly in the same bed as Riva, drifting out of sleep with her contentment twining with mine.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of peace in our lives, but my talent lets me amplify those impressions and intensify them. I pour all the serenity I can summon in a deluge toward the forty or so figures stalking the suburban roads.

The wave of calm sweeps toward them, propelled by my will—and smacks into their fury as if their anger is a solid wall of flame. The rage disintegrates my efforts before the emotions I’m projecting even start to penetrate it.

I close my eyes and push harder, maintaining the delicate balance between holding on to my own inner calm and bringing the necessary force to bear. My awareness tickles across the inferno in search of a gap, a momentary lapse.

Nothing. I try to expand the sense of calm even broader, to turn it into a tsunami large enough to overwhelm the flames, but the feeling of peace starts to fragment. I’m stretching it farther than I can sustain.

I jolt back into the physical reality of my seat and find my breath coming with a rasp, my forehead damp with sweat.

Riva reaches around the back to touch my arm. “Are you okay, Griffin?”

I manage a shaky nod. “Yeah. But I can’t—I can’t get through the anger. It’s too much.”

Jacob shrugs, his voice terse. “We do things the other way, then. Take out as many of the criminals as we can. Then the kids will have to listen to us, however long it takes.”

That’s the plan. But picturing it sends a lurch of nausea through my gut.

I have trouble seeing how it’ll all come together without some kind of disaster. The best we can hope for is a better disaster than the one that’s already in motion.

“Here we go,” Andreas murmurs, and swings us around a corner.

As we hurtle toward the mass of rage, my queasiness grows. I motion to the intersection up ahead. “That street. No more than a hundred feet away.”

Riva stiffens. “Park right in the middle of the road so they can’t keep going.”

The SUV jerks to a halt at the intersection, blocking any traffic from the street beyond my window. Headlights gleam across the dark asphalt.

Without speaking, we ease out of the vehicle. No one wants to be confined to that small space when we’re not entirely sure of all of our opponents’ supernatural abilities.

Several shadowkind materialize around us.

Rollick glances at the darkened windows of the shadows around us and appears to judge it safe to shift into his massive, ruddy-skinned demonic form.

Steel’s metallic scales ripple across his entire bulging body, and Thorn whips out his wings, his eyes glowing red.

Staying sheltered behind the van, Billy—who insisted on coming along even though he isn’t a fighter—brings his panpipes to his lips and starts to play a soothing tune. It’s a nice thought, but I doubt it’ll settle down the rampaging shadowbloods any more than my efforts could.

The silvery notes spill out into the night and are swallowed up by the growl of the approaching cars. An assortment of vehicles—an SUV, a couple of vans, a station wagon, and a pick-up truck—roll to a stop a few houses down from where we’ve set up our blockade.

For the first tense minute, we get nothing more than the low thrum of the still-running engines. The shadowbloods must be communicating with each other—flashes of confusion, frustration, and even starker anger flare through the roiling impression of continuing fury.

There’s a creak as the back doors on one of the vans swing open. We all brace ourselves. Sorsha hasn’t lit any balls of fire yet, but a sharp heat wafts off her skin as if she’s restraining herself.

A bunch of the shadowbloods must have been crammed in the back of that van. Several figures move toward us between the vehicles. I recognize a few of their faces from the island facility, including Riva’s friend Nadia and the scrawny girl who isn’t even quite a teenager yet.

The whole group is kids, I realize. The new adult shadowbloods have sent out the ones they know we’re least likely to kill.

No silver bands show on their wrists. They must have figured out how to get Balthazar’s manacles off.

Nadia steps to the front of the group, her chin high, her hands balled at her sides. “What are you doing? Get out of our way.”

Riva shakes her head. “You can’t go around killing people all across the country. That’s just as wrong as what they were doing—and you’re going to make everyone else even more scared of ‘monsters.’ How does that fix anything?”