Page 26 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Seventeen

Riva

T he guys mentioned before they were getting Zian and Dominic up to speed on the basics of driving so the responsibility didn’t all fall on Jacob’s and Andreas’s shoulders.

Zian must have caught on quickly, because he steers the SUV out of the campus without running us into any lampposts or trash bins, although a few times it’s a near miss.

The vehicle sways with another sharp turn, and the engine roars as he presses on the gas again. I bump against Andreas’s shoulder where he’s thrown himself into the back seat with me and realize that shoulder doesn’t look totally… right.

I blink, doing my best to focus through the muddle in my head, and my stomach lurches. He’s technically visible now, but I can make out the seams in the seat and the edge of the window through his translucent body.

His hands have clenched on his lap. When a shudder runs through his lanky frame, my gaze shoots to his face.

His eyes are wide, gleaming with fear.

“Drey?” I say, my throat tightening with the same emotion.

His voice comes out in a strained rasp. “I’m trying. I can’t quite…”

His body wavers, becoming closer to opaque and then more translucent again.

I don’t know how to help him—I don’t even understand what exactly is happening—but I can’t just sit here and watch him struggle. My hands shoot out to grasp one of his, squeezing it tight between my fingers as if I can hold him fully in this world.

“You’re here,” I say, more babbling than with any clear strategy. “You’re here with me. I can see you. You’re going to stay right here with us.”

Andreas stares down at my hands clamped around his. His breath evens out a little.

I give him another squeeze. “Don’t you dare go anywhere. This is where you belong.”

A shaky laugh spills out of him, and then he inhales deeply. With a couple more heaves of his chest, he’s fully solid again.

His gaze lifts to meet mine, so fraught I don’t know what to say but can’t tear my eyes away either. “Thanks,” he says roughly.

I swallow and force myself to loosen my grip on his hand, my fingers sliding away from his. “What was that? Are you okay?”

“Seems like it, now.” He sags back against the seat with a humorless chuckle. “Every new talent has to come with its fun side effects, huh?”

His body was acting up like that because he was turning himself invisible earlier? I haven’t seen him do that before—but then, I guess I wouldn’t necessarily know about all his abilities.

He couldn’t do that back when I was in the facility with him, though. How often has he practiced using the skill? It sounds like he didn’t realize it could mess him up that badly.

Zian’s panicked voice draws my attention to the rest of the vehicle. “Uh, where exactly am I going from here? What’s the plan, Jake?”

It’s Dominic who answers, from the middle seat where he’s kneeling next to Jacob. “Get on a highway. The first one you find. We want to get away from this city fast. The rest we can figure out later.”

He’s clutching Jacob’s shoulder. As I look at them, he gives the other guy a shake.

Jacob barely moves, sitting so rigid he might as well be a mannequin.

My pulse stutters. Something’s gone wrong with him too.

I scramble past Andreas to the middle seat, falling back against the door when Zian swerves again. My head knocks into the edge of the window, and a hiss of pain escapes me with the spinning of my thoughts.

Andreas is grabbing my arm to steady me a second later. “Dom, you’ve got to heal her. The poison was getting to her even before the fight.”

Dominic’s gaze darts from me to Jacob—who remains totally motionless other than a brief blink of his staring eyes—and back again. He must decide my situation is more critical, because he reaches over the arm of the seat to press his hand against my sternum. “Try to stay still.”

“Easier said than done,” I mumble, but I let myself lean against the door, hoping the manufacturers didn’t cut any corners with the lock mechanism on this thing.

Between that and Andreas’s supportive grasp, I manage to only jostle a little while Dominic’s warmly soothing power flows through me. My strength solidifies in my muscles; my stomach and my thoughts settle.

When I feel like I’m stable enough that I won’t be causing more problems than I’m fixing, I pat Dominic’s arm to indicate that he can stop. As he draws back, I hold on to the back of his seat and peer at Jacob.

From this angle, I can see that Jacob’s fingers are flexing where his hands are braced rigidly against his thighs. A tendon tics in his jaw, every plane of his chiseled face pulled taut.

An uneasy shiver ripples through me. “Is he going to be all right?”

Andreas frowns. “He pushes himself too hard sometimes—just keeps going and going until he bottoms out.”

Dominic’s forehead furrows as he studies his seatmate. “He isn’t normally quite like this. It’s nothing physical—nothing I can tackle. It’s like his mind is stuck in one place.”

He touches Jacob’s arm again, trying to jostle him out of it, but at the same moment, Jacob’s hand outright clenches. And the front passenger seat starts to crumple over.

The steel frame inside the padding groans as the fabric frays. Zian flinches, the SUV jerking to the side before he recovers his grip on the wheel. “What the fuck?”

“Jake!” Dominic says, pitching his voice loud even though he’s right next to the other guy’s ear. “The fight’s over. Snap out of it!”

His yank of Jacob’s arm and the wave of his hand in front of Jacob’s face don’t interrupt whatever the other guy is caught up in. With a creaking sound, the headrest pops right off the seat back and smacks into the glove compartment hard enough to dent it.

What’s Jacob going to aim his powers at next—the doors? The engine?

He could have shattered the windshield just now if the headrest had shot off sooner.

The urgency of the situation propels me forward. I scramble past Dominic and plant myself right in front of Jacob, sitting on his knees and gripping his face between my palms.

“Wake up, Jacob! We’re getting away. You don’t want to hurt—” Well, maybe he does want to hurt me, but not the others. “You’re making it harder for Zian to drive. You’re freaking out Dominic and Andreas. And me. Stop it!”

The twisting metal shifts from groaning to shrieking. Jake’s eyes don’t even flicker.

Wincing, I extend my claws from my fingers and take a quick swipe across his jaw.

Four thin lines of blood spring up in his pale skin, and Jacob’s muscles jump. The metallic screeching halts. His eyes sharpen into focus—and fix right on me.

In that first second while I’m poised over him, our gazes locked and our faces just a couple of feet from each other, my emotions scramble like someone’s taken a beater to them.

The last time I was this close to someone who looked like him, it ended with a kiss and then catastrophe. My body is caught between the conflicting urges to lean closer and wrench myself away.

But only for a second, because then Jacob moves—slamming his hand into my throat to heave me against the back of the driver’s seat. He pins me there, his eyes flaring with icy rage. “You fucking traitor!”

Some distant part of my mind asks, Haven’t we already been through this? I smack at his arm and squirm against his hold, not wanting to do any more physical damage than I already have.

Dominic and Andreas dive in, and between the two of them they dislodge Jacob’s arm enough that I can flounder to the side and push myself away.

“She was helping you—helping us,” Andreas is snapping. “For fuck’s sake, dude, you almost wrecked the goddamned car.”

“I—” Jacob’s gaze shoots to the deformed passenger seat, and the harshness of his expression falters with a rush of bewilderment. He looks at his hands and then at me again.

“How do you think they found us?” he demands. “She must have alerted them somehow.”

“What?” I burst out. “ You’re the ones who’ve been putting us out there, interrogating people and stealing stuff. I’ve spent this entire time trying to convince you to lay low!”

“She didn’t exactly have much of a chance to send any messages either,” Dominic reminds him in a steadier, quieter voice. “She hasn’t been alone except in that one room, and Zian checked her carefully for any kind of devices.”

At the mention of the fifth member of our group, my attention jerks to the driver’s seat. Zian’s fingers are clutched around the steering wheel, his knuckles pale with tension. Through the windshield, the wide stretch of shadowy road ahead suggests he found his way onto a highway, at least.

But just minutes ago in the fight, he wasn’t himself any more than Jake or Drey were just now.

“Are you all right, Zian?” I ask quickly. “You didn’t get hurt in the fight or—or anything?”

I don’t know how else to ask about lingering effects of his transformation, but his grimace suggests he can guess what I’m getting at.

“The monster’s back inside,” he says with a trace of a growl. “Nothing to be afraid of right now.”

Even though “monster” is exactly the word I’d normally have used to describe how he looked in his beastly state, my mind balks at accepting it—or the bitterness in his tone.

“You’re not a monster,” I say automatically.

All Zian responds with is a dismissive snort.

Jacob slumps in his seat, looking exhausted, but he still manages to aim one more glare my way along with a caustic mutter. “Still not convinced I shouldn’t have killed you when we first caught you.”

I wish those words didn’t sting as much as they do.

Andreas scowls at him and tugs me back to our original seats. He tucks his arm around me, but I’m too twisted up inside to let myself relax into his offer of comfort.

Jacob isn’t totally wrong to be angry. I might not have called the guardians down on us, but if we’d gone with his approach and headed straight to Kansas, we’d never have been back at the townhouse to begin with.

I was the one who argued that we should stick around the campus for another day or two. If I’d given in, we wouldn’t have faced that attack.

And neither would Brooke. She’d still be alive, smiling and hanging out with her friends, studying for her double major and going out dancing…

The memory of her bloody body rises up in the back of my mind, and queasiness that has nothing to do with any poison bubbles in my stomach.

One more death of someone I should have protected that’s now on my shoulders. One more stupid mistake.

There’s a stretch of uncomfortable silence, and then Dominic speaks up, his voice low. “I suppose we should drive toward Kansas now, since we’re already on the road.”

Jacob lets out a huff. “As long as the traitor didn’t tell the guardians all about that too.”

I resist the impulse to kick the back of his seat. It’s not that hard when I’m weighed down by guilt.

My other impulse is to argue against the plan, to point out all the reasons we’d be safer staying away from anything to do with Ursula Engel. But after the battle I was just part of, can I really say that’s even true?

Somehow, the guardians tracked us down to that townhouse on a university campus where we hadn’t gotten into trouble with anyone. We’d only been living there for a week.

Who’s to say there’s anywhere they couldn’t trace us to?

Even that rich prick with his off-the-grid, waterfall-top cottage wasn’t impervious to intruders, so how the hell could anyplace we hole up ever be totally safe?

But it’s not just that. I think I understand now why getting answers is more important to the guys than staying out of danger.

I already knew they’d changed since I last saw them, but I hadn’t realized how much. Their powers have expanded and shifted… and so have the consequences of those powers.

How much more are they struggling beyond what I’ve even seen so far? What have they done or think they might do that they want so desperately to find a solution to?

Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Find Engel, get her to explain what she and the other experimenters did to make us what we are… and hope that somewhere in that explanation, there’ll be a way to fix us too.

To make us something better. Less erratic. Less monstrous.

Is it possible she’d know how to turn off the thing inside me too? The brutality that wants to claw its way out and…

All those bodies around the arena. The sickening angles they were broken and contorted into. Like someone had taken joy in mutilating them…

I rub my eyes, willing down another wave of nausea.

It wasn’t me. I didn’t want to do that. I can’t even say for sure I did.

But the knowledge pricks at the back of my mind: If I ever let that rage loose again, it will be my fault.

My guys have changed, and so have I, so maybe we’re not so different from each other after all.

I don’t want them seeing the thing inside me; I don’t want it ever coming out. But it’s possible I should have let them see more of me if I wanted them to trust me, instead of trying to prove myself with strength and stubbornness.

At the very least, I can admit that I’ve been wrong and that their quest matters to me too.

“I’m not a traitor, but I am sorry,” I say into the silence that’s fallen in the car, the words coming hesitantly. “I’ve been arguing with you all about going on this search for answers the whole time instead of just believing you that it was important.”

“No kidding,” Jacob grumbles.

I ignore his remark. “I can see—I can see why it is important. For you and for me. I’m not going to try to convince you against it anymore. I say we get to Ursula Engel and take back all the things people like her stole from us.”

“There,” Andreas says, his arm tightening around me. His light tone sounds a little forced. “Destination settled. Now, have I told you all about the woman I met who…”

As he spins his story to diffuse the tension hanging in the air, I close my eyes, and picture a future where this mess could all be just a memory too.