Page 255 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Thirty

Riva

I f I’ve learned anything from my twenty-one years as a monster, it’s that killing is never as easy as you’d imagine, no matter how naturally it comes to you.

With Cutler’s warning shout still echoing off the high ceiling, my banshee shriek bursts from my throat. My power shoots forward to smack into the mass of shadowbloods standing around the makeshift machine—but a few of them have already leapt away.

I don’t have time to divert my focus to them. I’ve got to deal with the ones I have, or they could all end up turning the tables on us.

A blast of Sorsha’s fire roars toward the twenty or so figures my scream has locked in place. I wrench at them one by one as quickly as I can, snapping necks and sending shards of skull through brains without catering to my inner hunger’s desire for extended pain.

The fire consumes most of them before I need to shift my focus that far and ripples over the few corpses I’ve sent to the floor as well. They barely even had time to yelp.

A knot of guilt condenses in my gut—and a flare of blinding light sears through the room.

Obviously Nadia was one of the rogues who sprang out of range. I sway, swiping at my stinging eyes, knowing that the light will have brought my body back into visibility too.

Now I’m a target as much as the remaining rogues are.

Heat and smoke flood the room from the inferno of burning bodies around the supposed weapon. Then a wordless bellow splits the air, followed by an ominous creaking sound.

Blinking hard, I scramble sideways mostly on instinct. My vision is still blurred.

The air whooshes against my skin, and one of the concrete columns that lines the room crashes to the ground, just a couple of feet from where I’m standing. Broken concrete shards fly out to jab at my limbs.

“Let us out!” a voice hollers—I think it’s Cutler.

With another wordless roar, the gymnasium door rattles, the hinges groaning. A bolt of fire shoots toward it.

When I look again, the thick slab of the door looks fused into the frame. But Sorsha didn’t manage to hit Cutler. I can’t see him or any of the other rogue shadowbloods who escaped our initial attack.

If Sorsha were here alone, she could send the entire room up in flames. But if she does that now, she’ll incinerate me and Jacob too.

She won’t risk it, not unless it looks like the rogues will break out of the building if she doesn’t act.

I’d want her to, but I’d really prefer the battle doesn’t end like that.

I back up to the relative security of the wall to at least give me protection from behind. My gaze sweeps across the room, the images fragmented even now that my sight is clearing. The raging flames make the shadows dart and gyrate.

Cutler lets loose his earth-shaking bellow again. A crack ripples through the base of another column—the one Sorsha was braced behind.

As my pulse jolts with panic, the massive concrete tower careens toward the door. He must be hoping the weight will smash it open.

But Jacob sees it in time. A sudden shove of invisible force heaves the column to the side. It crashes to the floor several feet to the side of the door, shattering a couple of the nearby crates into splinters.

The ground shakes beneath me with the impact. I stare through the smoke as well as I can.

Where’s Sorsha now? I didn’t hear any sound of pain—but she won’t be able to move very far with her dizziness.

My eyes catch on movement by one of the far columns—a man, flitting from one to another.

That must be the thug whose supernatural talent is immense speed. It’s not surprising he fled in time, but we can’t give him the chance to strike back.

I draw a shriek into my throat. The second he dashes to another column, I send my killing scream pealing after him.

My power rams into his slim frame and yanks him to a halt. If he makes any sound, it’s lost to the warbling of the fire.

I clench my hands and will his heart to burst.

Even as that man crumples, Cutler’s voice rings out. “It won’t do you any good. Even if you kill all of us here, you can’t destroy us completely.”

A chill shivers through my gut. What’s he talking about?

There’s a scuffing sound and a thud. Jacob calls out to me and Sorsha: “Got another one!”

Twin streaks of flame lash out from where Sorsha must be poised now, somewhere behind the fallen column. A cry breaks the air, but I can’t tell if she dealt a fatal injury.

Another blaze of light fills the air, and a hiss I think is the phoenix’s reaches my ears.

“Nadia!” I yell as I crouch down to make myself an even smaller target. I don’t think reasoning with the girl who was once my friend is going to work, but I can’t stop myself from trying. “Don’t do this. You don’t want to hurt even more people.”

Cutler lets out a vicious laugh. As I blink furiously, I catch a glimpse of him hurtling toward another column to ram the thick blades that’ve emerged from his shoulders into a crack he’s already opened up there.

I try to focus on him and aim my shriek, but spots are still swimming across my eyes. He charges out of view.

His sneer rebounds off the high ceiling. “You care so much about saving the assholes who do nothing except hurt ‘monsters’ like us. You’re as bad as they are, trying to exterminate us. But we were ready for shit like this.”

“What are you talking about?” Jacob snaps. There’s a thud, and then a resounding crash as yet another column falls. The shudder of the floor throws me off balance.

The flames from the incinerated corpses are dwindling, but smoke clouds the room even more thickly while my vision clears again. I brace my hand against the floor and sputter a cough as the haze prickles into my lungs.

A spurt of fire lances through the wafting clouds, but if it connects with any of our opponents, I don’t see or hear any sign of it. I slink along the wall, my ears pricked and my muscles braced.

I don’t think there can be more than three or four of the rogues left: Cutler, Nadia, and one or two others who haven’t shown themselves in any identifiable way. We’re so close to ending this catastrophe—we have to see it through.

My heart thuds painfully hard against my ribs. I ease past one of the fallen columns—and a boy leaps over it, straight at me.

My shriek bursts from my throat with a startled hitch. The boy’s arm jerks as a bone fractures while he collides with me.

I roll to the side the second I hit the ground, tossing him off me. Before I can make another sound, the boy’s head wrenches backward with a snap of his spine.

My gaze darts up to find Jacob several feet away. His expression is taut and the purple, poisonous spines protrude from his forearms through his shirt.

But for once he looks completely comfortable with his ferocity. He simply nods at me and spins around to search for the next threat.

One of Cutler’s supernatural roars reverberates through the walls. The doorframe shudders in its fused state.

“You might as well give up,” I yell in the direction the bellow emanated from. “You’re not getting out of here, not alive.”

The tattooed man lets out a scoffing sound, somewhere by the smoking remains of the mock weapon now. His voice travels as he prowls through the smoky room.

“It doesn’t matter whether I get out. We left a few friends behind, along with our maker’s serums and pills and instructions. If we don’t come back, they’ll raise up a whole new army of monsters to rain hell down on you—and everyone else who deserves it.”

My heart lurches. Oh, fuck, no. Unhinged shadowbloods creating even more shadowbloods and roping them into their psychotic cause?

I don’t even want to think about how much worse things could get.

We can’t kill Cutler. Not right away—not before Andreas or Ajax can search his mind to find out where they’ve left their back-up stash so we can destroy that too.

As my mind scrambles for an answer, the former inmate heaves out another room-shaking holler and yet another. With the second bellow, the doorframe jolts a few inches, pushing back from the cement of the wall.

He’s trying to crack the whole frame right out. We can’t let him run away from us either.

An idea starts to formulate in my head. But I need my allies on board with it.

“Let me deal with him,” I shout to wherever Jacob and Sorsha are now. “Don’t burn him or?—”

“As if they even could,” Cutler interrupts, and throws his voice into another booming roar. At the same moment, Nadia floods the room with dagger-sharp light.

My vision whites out, and metal groans in concrete. With my pulse thundering through my veins, I hurl out a shriek just ahead of the last place I heard Cutler.

I assumed he’d run toward the door as it starts to fall—and I was right. My scream latches onto a figure in mid-stride.

His lips part. I’m not sure I can hold him firmly enough to stop him from heaving one of his bellows at me. He could shatter my body like he has the wall.

I focus all my attention on the cord running up his spine and twist it right at the base of his skull.

A flare of pain shoots into me and then cuts off. The second I drop my voice, Cutler crumples to the ground with a thump.

I’ve paralyzed him—he shouldn’t be able to move a muscle… or his vocal cords.

I just have to hope I didn’t cut off his functions so thoroughly that his vital organs will shut down too. I don’t know anatomy with a surgeon’s precision.

“Leave him!” I cry out, afraid Sorsha might have missed my earlier plea. “We need him alive.”

A sob peals out from somewhere in the mess of fallen columns, followed by a growl of anger. “You’re the monsters,” Nadia cries. “You attack us and torture us, just like?—”

“No!” I ease closer, trying to get a clear sense of exactly where she is. “We don’t want to do any of this. I hate that we’re doing this. But you were attacking so many other people.”