Page 244 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Three

Riva

“ A re we sure that Nadia and the others will show up here?” Booker whispers to me through the dark as we crouch by a sawdust-streaked window.

I pause to bring up the glowing map on my phone and concentrate on my sense of her: the confident, wry teenager I knew on Clancy’s island and the being of blinding light and anger she’s become.

The fall of my finger is proof enough. “They’re coming closer. She is and whoever’s with her, at least. Last time I checked, Devon and Tegan were there.”

I slide the phone into my pocket. I shouldn’t check again—they’re less than ten minutes away at the pace they’ve been setting so far.

We don’t know exactly how far they’ll have spread out or how quickly they’ll keep moving. I don’t want anyone catching a glimpse of my face in the glow.

We didn’t bother with invisibility for this ambush, not when we need Andreas’s talents for other purposes.

It wasn’t worth tiring him out for a small benefit.

Both the siren sounds and Nadia’s glow have shattered the concealment he can offer us before, so the effect probably wouldn’t have lasted long enough to make a difference anyway.

The darkened buildings we’re hiding in should be shelter enough until the rogue shadowbloods arrive.

And the rogues have every reason to venture into this part of the city.

Ruse and Pearl visited the local vigilante group this morning and used their persuasive skills to cajole them into making a couple of public comments online about the site they planned to sweep tonight, supposedly to warn regular folks away.

And then the incubus and the succubus cajoled the same monster hunters into deciding to go to a totally different part of the city so they won’t actually get in our way.

Booker frowns as he studies the rain-slick pavement outside, gleaming under the security lamps. The drizzle stopped an hour ago, but everything’s still pretty damp.

“What if people come wanting to see the ‘monster hunters’ in action?” he asks.

I put on my best reassuring voice. “That shouldn’t be a problem. Ruse and Pearl and a few of the other shadowkind who wouldn’t be much help in a fight are patrolling the edges of the construction area. They’ll send off anyone who tries to come right in.”

The setting we’ve chosen for our ambush should be the perfect venue. The university is building a new set of dorm buildings, the outer shells complete but the innards still mostly raw wood with occasional stretches of drywall.

The construction workers all went home for the day before dinner time. Pearl coaxed the security guard into staying in his office at the edge of the site. There should be no one here but us monsters, hybrid and otherwise.

We have all the details worked out. I should feel confident. But uneasiness creeps over my skin. I find myself reaching for my cat-and-yarn necklace as if holding it will somehow make things more likely to turn out right.

My discomfort is partly from not being sure just how far the raging shadowkind will go to see through their rampage. And partly from the claustrophobic feeling the unfinished buildings give me.

That’s a benefit, really. The strip is set up like a cul-de-sac, a row of townhouses on either side of the narrow road with one more set at the dead end farther down. Once the other shadowbloods drive in, it’ll be easy to block them off.

But I can’t help thinking of the other university campus we hid out on, back when my guys and I were first on the run. The one where we were ambushed in the night by a squad of brutal guardians.

It didn’t look much like this. Those townhouses were dull concrete rather than the ruddy bricks that cover these outer walls. They were shorter and broader.

There were the little patios in the back, in the alley where the guardians launched their attack. Patios that held planters where Dominic tended to a tiny garden.

The angles of the shadows and the tight press of the buildings feel familiar, though. When I blink, memories flash through my mind of Brooke, the student next door who did her best to make friends with me. To protect me from the tensions she picked up on between me and the guys.

The girl who died with the stab of a guardian’s blade just seconds before my outstretched claws could save her.

No one has to die tonight. We’ll interrupt the other shadowbloods’ powers, knock them out every way we can, and cart them off in the truck that Rollick’s parked nearby. His people have spent all day outfitting a warehouse to hold the rogues, contain their powers, and keep them subdued.

Among the shadowkind lurking in the buildings around me, there’s a being called a lamia who can put any of our opponents to sleep with a touch. Steel—the scaled demon—revealed that he can shoot out a paralyzing force from a short distance that’ll last a few hours.

If that’s not enough, I can temporarily freeze the rogues with my shriek; Jacob can lock them in place with his telekinetic power. Willow the nymph volunteered to send the roots of the saplings spaced at even intervals down the street shooting from the patches of earth to bind them.

That’ll buy us the time to use the powerful sedative in the syringes we’re all carrying. Toni gave us the name of the drug the guardians found most effective for using on us.

It’s necessary, even if turning to yet another of our former captors’ tactics turns my stomach.

I’m not super keen on having Booker here either. His aura-sight hasn’t developed into any kind of talent useful for self-defense. But he and the other two shadowblood kids we rescued insisted on coming along.

They know the rogue shadowbloods better than we do—a lot better, in the case of the other kids. After some arguing, Rollick put his foot down and pointed out that we should give them the same kind of choices we wanted for ourselves.

I still don’t like it.

One of the kids has ended up playing a crucial role in the ambush. As I shift restlessly on my feet, a quiet voice forms inside my head.

Griffin says the nearest ones are just a minute or two away, Ajax says. We should put our earplugs in now.

Once we’ve sealed our ears, he’ll be the one passing on all communications between us using his telepathic talent. If any of us needs to say anything, we’ll think it at him first, and he’ll relay the message on.

I know he’s said the same thing to Booker, because the teen next to me reaches to his pocket for his plugs. His face looks yellowed in the dim light, and I don’t think it’s only because of the jaundiced security lamps.

His girlfriend is on her way, and he can’t be any more sure than I can that we’ll save her this time. Or that she won’t do something horrifying while we attempt to.

As I pull out my own earplugs, distant, raucous laughter reaches my ears from somewhere behind me. I freeze, tracking the sound as it filters through the walls.

One risk of an ambush on a college campus: drunken partiers roaming around.

One of the patrolling shadowkind must redirect the wanderers. The sound fades away. I take a few slow, steadying breaths and shove the plugs into my ears.

The industrial-strength brand we found is incredibly effective, but they don’t give me total silence. Shutting out all external sound only heightens my awareness of what’s going on inside me.

My breaths woosh in and out. The thud of my pulse quickens.

I curl my fingers around the device we picked up following Toni’s specifications. With one jab of a button, it’ll flood the street with a piercing wail that should shatter the focus of anyone who can hear it.

We got three of the devices, just in case one fails or one of us is attacked before we can activate it.

Sorsha holds hers where she’s waiting as backup by an unfinished window on the third floor of another partly-constructed townhouse.

Crag the gargoyle carries a third where he’ll be perched on one of the nearby rooftops.

Backups upon backups. We can’t let this confrontation go wrong.

I move to the doorway where we’ve left the door ajar and scan the street through the gap. Maybe I’d be able to make out approaching motors by now if I could hear any sound outside my body.

It should be an increasingly urgent approach as the rogues chase the illusion of monster hunters. Andreas watched all the video footage he could find of the vigilante groups so that he could project accurate images from those memories into the rampaging shadowbloods’ minds.

If it all worked out, they’ll have caught glimpses of their prey ducking out of view up ahead here and there, leading them on toward this construction zone. Confirming the story that the hunters thought the site was ideal grounds for an extermination.

Ajax’s voice peals into my head again, sounding louder amid the outer silence.

We can see the first of them now. They’re just coming into the cul-de-sac.

There’s a minivan… A big pickup truck with a bunch of them sitting in the cargo area…

A little delivery truck it looks like they stole from a flower shop.

As he rattles off that list, the first of the vehicles creeps into view. The black minivan looks like a shadow itself on the darkened street.

It rolls to a halt by the curb only a couple of buildings into the dead-end area. Of course, the rogue shadowbloods still think they’re hunting the hunters. They’ll need to be on foot for their main attack.

Which also works in our favor. We don’t want them close enough to their vehicles to make a run for it like last time.

Of course, it won’t be long before they can’t get anywhere on those wheels anyway. As soon as they’ve left the vehicles behind, Jacob will be applying his ability to the engines, snapping and cracking vital components so the motors won’t run.

I suspect he’s looking forward to breaking a few things, even if none of them will be skulls.

The figures gather around the vehicles before prowling forward as one large mass. I make out facial features here and there as they pass the pools of lamp-glow.

It looks like the criminal shadowbloods are still using the kids as a sort of shield. Nadia, Devon, and Tegan walk on the edges of the group alongside other teens and preteens.

I catch sight of the skull-and-snake tattoo emblazoned on the scalp of the group’s apparent leader, who we now know is named Cutler. The hazy light glances off the scarred brow of the man Griffin spoke to briefly, who he said another of the shadowbloods called Omar.

There’s a lamppost with neon orange caution tape wrapped around its middle, about two thirds of the way down the cul-de-sac. That’s our tipping point—when the last of the shadowbloods is past it, we launch our attack.

Most of them are staring into the shadows at the dead end of the street. They pick up their pace, maybe seeing another projected memory that suggests the hunters are in the buildings down there.

My palm turns clammy against the siren device. I wet my lips, keeping my body tensed and motionless.

The group moves past the marked lamppost—the first several figures, then more, then the last forms bringing up the rear…

I wait until that last foot steps past the post’s thin shadow. At the same moment, Ajax’s voice rings through my mind. Now!

I hit the button with more force than it probably needs. The device shivers in my hand.

Its siren wail splits through the night, so loud and piercing I can make out a faint screech even with the industrial earplugs blocking the sound. I can only assume that Sorsha and Crag have set off their devices too.

The mass of prowling shadowbloods breaks apart. Kids and criminals alike stumble, their hands clutching their ears, their faces twisted with agony.

A few of them swipe at their eyes too. Andreas will be filling their heads with a jumble of other remembered images now, a nonsensical mishmash designed to confuse.

I bolt past the door and race toward the group of them, setting the siren device down on the curb. My hand reaches to the syringes hooked on my belt.

The faster we can get them all knocked out, the safer we’ll all be—them included.

The shadowkind are doing their part too. Stretching roots ripple across the pavement from where Willow has appeared by one of the saplings. One body and then another crumples to the ground as Steel and the lamia send out their talents.

The plump woman with sleeping powers is just reaching toward Devon when a massive figure looms in the middle of the chaos. My heart lurches.

One of the criminal shadowbloods has morphed into an unnerving blend of giant man and snake. His hairless scalp gleams with mottled scales—which cover his head like a shell except for his slit-pupil eyes and tapered muzzle.

He’s got no ears. The siren isn’t affecting him.

In the instant I realize that, he aims a contraption that looks like a blend between a crossbow and a gun at Steel. I’ve seen those before—in the hands of the would-be monster hunters.

A gleaming metal bolt that must be silver and iron shoots from the weapon and stabs straight into the demon’s broad forehead.