Page 245 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Four

Riva

S moky essence plumes up as Steel’s bulky form crashes to the ground. The demon’s body sprawls lifelessly on the asphalt.

A cry breaks from my throat that I mostly hear from inside my head. I whirl toward the shadowblood shooter with his reptilian face, the sound condensing into a killing shriek in my lungs.

But before I can heave it from my mouth, searing light lances into my eyes. A voice that must be Nadia’s hollers as loud as the siren as she flings her blinding power in all directions, even harsher than I’ve felt it before.

With my vision whited out, I stagger and bump into a body beside me. I can’t tell if they’re friend or foe.

My men are around me—I feel their presence through the marks on my chest. The little quivers of emotion that reach me echo my disorientation.

The rogue shadowbloods must be blinded too, but how much does that matter when they were already put off balance by the piercing sirens and Andreas’s projected memories? Nadia isn’t hurting them so much as putting the rest of us on an equal playing field.

Ajax’s voice careens through my thoughts. Sorsha wants to know what’s going on down there. Do you need her to step in?

Do we? At that point it’ll become a barbeque rather than a rescue mission.

My heart stutters with the sense of our plan falling apart. Not yet, I think at Ajax. We might still be able to pull this off.

I swipe at my eyes and grope through the scene that’s alternately blotchy and completely hazed with more bursts of Nadia’s light—and the sirens dwindle.

With my dulled hearing, it takes me a second to realize that they haven’t all gotten quieter. It’s just that one has cut out completely. A victorious shout rises from the stumbling crowd of shadowbloods, telling me the destruction was purposeful.

I don’t know how they did it, but one of our opponents managed to use their power to cut off the device.

It’s true that we don’t know where all of them came from before they were turned into shadowbloods or what they’re really feeling under the anger. We also don’t know most of the powers they can wield.

We thought we orchestrated this battle with every advantage, but in some ways we were going in blind from the start.

My vision clears enough for me to make out one of the shadowblood teens just a couple of feet away from me. I jab the syringe I’m still clutching into his back and squeeze.

He spins around, making me lose my grip, but the effects are already kicking in. Even as he tries to spring at me, his knees buckle under him. He topples over unconscious on the ground.

One more down, God knows how many more to tackle.

Ajax’s voice reaches my head again. She says it looks bad down there. She’s heading in.

No, wait ? —

Before I can finish my protest, fiery wings flash against the sky above us. Sorsha’s voice rings out. “Clear the crowd! Give me room!”

Room to burn them all. My gut lurches in recognition of her meaning, but I heave myself backward instinctively. No part of me is interested in getting incinerated.

But I can’t help letting loose my protest aloud at the same time. “No!”

Where’s Nadia—Tegan—Devon? Can I at least pull them to safety? If they were away from the former inmates’ influence for a little while, surely?—

Sorsha swoops lower, her phoenix fire sweeping an orange glow and a waft of heat over our milling bodies. Has she hesitated because of my protest?

She raises her hand to fling out a stream of flames. At the same instant, a feral bellow like I’ve heard during our past fights with the rogues careens through the air.

In the milling crowd, I catch sight of the man with the skull-and-snake tattoo—the one Nadia called Cutler, who seems to be the leader of the rampaging shadowbloods. His head is tipped back and his mouth stretched impossibly wide.

His roar must carry a supernatural force. Something invisible smacks into Sorsha, snapping her head to the side. Her body sways off-kilter.

“Sorsha!” With a roar and a swish of black feathers, Thorn hurtles out of the night. He catches the phoenix woman in his arms before she can drop from the sky.

I don’t know what that jolt of power did to her, but it’s obviously disabled her for the moment. And as I whip back toward the crowd of wayward shadowbloods, the second siren cuts out.

More silver bolts flash through the night from the crossbow-gun the snake-man is wielding. Some rattle against the asphalt, and a couple strike his own allies, but in the space of a few heartbeats, one carves a smoking path through Crag’s gargoyle thigh as he plummets to join the fray.

Another bolt slams into Willow’s temple where she’s waving her summoned roots onward. Bits of skull and locks of hair fly out with the billow of essence. She’s thrown into the sapling and sags down its frail trunk.

Another blast of Nadia’s light blurs my sight. A cacophony of yells and snarls and grunts reverberates around me.

Then a sudden sense of silence despite the din, as the final siren crackles and stops.

Oh, no.

With a louder bellow of rage, the shadowbloods we were trying to contain erupt into more purposeful motion. They lash out at our ring of Firsts and shadowkind with every power at their disposal.

Some speedy form dashes through our forces with a flash of a blade. The shadowkind he passes blink into the darkness to dodge it or hunch over with gushes of essence from the stab wounds.

The tang of Tegan’s toxic smoke reaches my nose. I swivel to see her exhaling a vicious cloud toward Zian and a few of the shadowkind.

My hand leaps to my remaining syringes. Grasping it, I leap toward her.

Not quite fast enough.

A huge, brown-furred form barges at her from the other side. Fang pummels the girl who’s less than a third his shifted bear size with one of his massive paws and tears into her neck with a wrench of his brutal teeth.

No—please, no. But even as my wordless plea tumbles from my mouth in a gasp, Tegan crumples, her head lolling from her shoulders at an angle that makes it clear no life will ever come back into her vacant eyes. She hits the asphalt with a splash of her blood.

My lips part wider. I suck the air into my lungs, a scream bubbling up my throat.

I don’t know how to pick apart allies and enemies in the chaos around me, but I can freeze them all. I can halt the carnage in its tracks.

And then what? How the hell are we going to disentangle ourselves? At some point, we have to move.

A burly figure charges into view, another of those crossbow-guns clutched in his hands. It’s one of the teenaged shadowbloods, a vengeful laugh hitching out of him as he pelts the shadowkind with silver-and-iron bolts. More cries and grunts ring out.

Was that Lance’s voice? Pearl’s?

Tears sear up behind my eyes, but I have to protect someone . The shriek that was building inside me tears up my throat, and I propel it toward the boy with the gun.

My power socks him right in the skull with more force than I probably needed to use even against a fellow shadowblood. A swell of pain surges from him into me as the bones splinter and pierce the flesh around them, as his nose crumples in and his jaw cracks.

Nausea hits me along with the punch of energy. I’m not here to torture, only to protect whoever I can.

I yank at the energy coursing through my scream and jab one of those splinters deep enough into the boy’s heart to sever his life.

The sensations flowing from him blank out. He topples over to join the other corpses now littering the ground.

I don’t have time to wallow in the guilt that clutches my chest. Gulping another breath, I prepare to cast out my shriek again.

Before the first hint of sound can pass from my lips, a body slams into me from behind. I fly forward, just barely catching myself with my hands before my face smacks into the pavement.

My chin still catches on the gritty ground, a slash of pain spreading through the skin. I swallow a sob and shove myself up and around to face my attacker.

Whoever shoved me has already moved on. But through the melee, I see something worse.

Booker has emerged from the building where I left him in supposed safety. He’s walking toward the battle with nothing at all to protect him from the weapons and powers being flung around.

His face has gone pale, but it’s set with resolve. There’s no sign of the easy-going surfer-dude attitude in him now.

Somewhere in the fighting, one of my earplugs popped out. So I hear his voice perfectly clearly when he raises it over the clamor of the fray.

“Nadia! Nadia, please, you’ve got to help us stop this craziness. Please, come talk to me.”

I step toward him. “Booker, get back into one of the buildings. It isn’t safe for?—”

He swipes his hand through the air to dismiss my concerns. “I only want to talk to Nadia. Nadia, where are you? Please. I love you. You know that, right?”

A lump rises in my throat—and Nadia’s statuesque frame sways into view through the grappling bodies. Her pixie cut sticks up in tufts between strands slicked to her scalp with sweat or maybe blood. Her eyes look wild, the pupils over-dilated.

She stares at Booker. “You’re here.”

He nods, a gentle smile spreading across his face that’s totally at odds with our surroundings. “I’ll always be here. I miss you. If we could just?—”

Something hisses through the air. Booker’s plea is cut off in mid-sentence with a bloom of red in the middle of his throat.

A bloom of blood around a glint of metal. Someone’s shot him with one of those crossbow bolts.

Booker staggers and coughs. More blood sputters up over his lips to dribble down his chin.

With a cry, I dash over to him. My call for help vibrates up my throat as forceful as any scream. “Dominic! Anyone—we need a healer!”

Nadia gets to Booker first. He collapses into her arms, his jaw working but no more sound than a ragged gasp escaping his mouth. More blood spurts across her dark gray sweater.

“No,” she mumbles. “No, no—Booker, no.”

His head slumps forward. His eyes glaze. Nadia’s fingers clutch at his back, but when his legs give, she has to sink with him to the ground.

I come to a halt over them, not knowing what else to do. He’s gone. I’m not sure even Dominic could save him if he got here now.

Anguish for both the boy I couldn’t save and the girl grieving him clogs my lungs. For a few seconds, I can’t breathe.

Nadia strokes her fingers over Booker’s cheek with a choked wail. She stares at the blood that’s still pulsing from his throat to soak into her clothes.

Then her gaze jerks up toward me.

Fury hardens her features. She lurches upright, her lips pulling back from her teeth to bare them.

“You brought him here! You got him killed! You don’t care about any of us!”

My jaw goes slack. I don’t know what to say in the face of her rage. Can’t she see that it was one of her allies’ bullets that killed him?

But Booker couldn’t have taken that bullet if he hadn’t come here with us. If we hadn’t been trying to stop her and the other rogue shadowbloods.

“I—I’m sorry,” I stammer out. “Nadia, I swear, I only want to help you. I?—”

She lets out a scream that’s pure agony and flings out her hands. Light so sharp it gives off tangible heat blazes out in all directions, not just from her palms but every inch of her skin.

She’s close enough that her fingers slash across my cheek. In the instant before I flinch backward, my skin sears with a physical burn.

“No!” she screeches. “You’re all the same. You’re all against us. You fucked us up and you screwed us over and you should all fucking die!”

I’m not sure who all she’s talking to right now. From the groans and yelps around me, she’s hurting her fellow shadowbloods as much as the rest of us.

But she definitely means me. Girding myself, I reach for her again, but she whips her hand straight toward my face.

An even sharper spear of light spikes straight through my eyeballs. My forehead and cheeks sting with the sensation of scorching. The pain echoes the agony that laced her voice, shooting straight into my brain with the fizzling of my vision.

The pit of my stomach hollows out. In every way that matters, I think my friend might be gone too.

Then a heavier force rams into the back of my head, and the blazing light gives way to total darkness.