Page 3 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

One

Riva

I t’s been four years, eight days, and I don’t know how many hours since I last saw my guys.

One of my current jailers cracks open the door to my room just wide enough to toss a bottle of water my way. The din of the growing crowd in the arena down the hall rises and then ebbs when he shuts the door again.

The bottle lands with a sloshy thump by my feet. I reach for it, the heavy shackles dragging at my wrists, and pop the cap immediately.

My throat is parched. Normally my keepers leave me with a few bottles on hand, but I finished my last one this morning, and the pricks didn’t even bother to deliver a beverage with my dinner.

But obviously they expect me to be properly hydrated for this week’s cage fight. Wouldn’t want the star of the show giving a sub-optimal performance.

The lukewarm liquid slides down my throat, not half as refreshing as I’d like it to be. When I’ve finished chugging, I toss the empty bottle back toward the closed door with a grimace.

I roll my shoulders and glance toward the workout area of my room, but I usually give my body a break the day of a match. I only did a light round of stretches and cardio on the mat this morning.

I need to preserve my energy—both to win the fight and to make sure I win it my way.

In the past several months, the boss who runs this place has been arranging increasingly volatile opponents. If I’m going to meet whatever unpredictable moves they’ll throw into the mix, I have to be fresh and sharp.

My gaze veers to the TV mounted on the concrete wall, the only entertainment I’m given in my new prison. I don’t get to pick the content. From breakfast time until lights out, it broadcasts a steady stream of different shows that I assume my keepers chose.

All I get to decide is how much I tune in.

I don’t want to watch the gaggle of friends on the screen right now laughing and clinking glasses, even with the sound diluted by the voices filtering through the wall from the arena. The image makes my stomach twist with the thought of how much I’ve lost.

I close my eyes, and for a moment, Zian is here with me. His dark brown eyes glint fiercely as he cuffs me lightly in the ear. You’re going to take these assholes down, even if you’re a shrimp.

I haven’t managed it yet, I say to my imagined version of him.

I picture Dominic standing nearby, watching us with his usual pensive gaze. You’ve done everything you can, he says in that careful way of his as if he’s measured out every word. They haven’t given you many options.

They haven’t. Except for the fights, I’m restricted to this room and these cuffs. I’ve seen enough guards march me to and from the arena to know the boss keeps a large force.

I could tear through five, maybe ten of them, sure—but then what? I’d end up riddled with bullets, with no chance at all of getting back to my guys.

Or worse, these bastards might report back to the facility that the property they sold is failing to meet expectations, and the guys would end up bleeding on my behalf too.

One of them has already died because of my failures.

The memory of Griffin’s crumpled, bloody body flashes through my mind, and all my muscles tense against the prickle of tears. I don’t want my keepers seeing the slightest vulnerability in me.

But not even the imagined figures in my head know what to say about my horrible mistake.

What if the other guys aren’t still alive? What if?—

My chest constricts. Without further thought, I flick out a claw and scratch it across the inside of my arm, just below the armpit, where dozens of matching scars crisscross my pale skin.

I’ve done this test before, so many times, but I need the visible confirmation.

A tiny trickle of blood spills out—and so does a wisp of black smoke. As I stare at it, my left hand drops to my upper thigh, where a tattoo marks my skin beneath my sweatpants.

The guys all had the same image etched in black in the same spot: a moon with a droplet dangling from its upper tip. The guardians pointed them out to us during our swimming lessons.

That tattoo shows that you all belong to the facility. You do your best for us, and we look after you.

Yeah, right. That worked out so well for us.

But the six of us are connected in other ways too.

I will even more memories of the guys to the front of my mind. Drey’s broad grin. Jake’s incisive gaze. Dom’s steady voice. Zee’s feral scent.

The tendril of smoke seeping from my arm trembles and then unfurls toward the wall in a thin but steady stream. One tiny piece of me relaxes.

We discovered this trick while messing around during one of our outdoor training sessions. The strangeness inside us seeks out its match if given a nudge.

We are blood .

As long as the smoke I bleed moves toward a target when prompted, I know the guys are still out there. Still someplace where I can find them.

If I ever get out of this shithole.

Pulsing bass draws my attention back to the TV. On the screen, characters bob and spin to the music at a house party.

I gaze at them for a few moments, but the sound doesn’t stir even a fragment of the urge to join their dance. There’s only one reason I move my body these days: to survive.

As the song fades out, the deadbolt rasps over again. Three guards walk in with guns and tasers at their hips. The empty water bottle crunches under a boot-clad foot.

I stand up, an ache of tension forming in my gut. The guards move briskly and silently to usher me out into the hall where more men are waiting, but when I inhale, whiffs of stress taint the air.

They’re more anxious than usual—I might even catch a note of outright fear. But then, when the squad of guards came to escort me to last week’s fight, I was keyed up and on edge because I’d realized yet another year had passed with me stuck in this place.

Another year apart from the guys who are my blood—the guys I love. Another year of failure.

That night, one of the guards pressed closer to me than I liked, and with my temper frayed, I elbowed him with more oomph than I intended. From the crack of bone when he slammed into the wall, I assume I broke his arm.

So I guess I can’t blame them for feeling extra cautious tonight. I’ll just blame them for everything else they put me through.

“Nice night, isn’t it?” I say, glancing at the men around me for any hint of a reaction. Any clue that could help me, no matter how small. “Sounds like a good crowd out there. I bet the boss is so happy.”

“Keep quiet, freak,” one of them snaps.

The others ignore me, not even meeting my gaze. Their expressions look stern, impervious, but the prickle of fear in the air intensifies.

I could kill at least five of them before the others took me down, and they all know that. None of them wants to find out if they’d be among the unlucky ones.

My attention moves on to rove across the hall, but I’m as familiar with the details of this corridor as I am with my room. That air vent is too small for me to fit. That steel door leads only to a windowless storage room.

If there was an easy escape route, I’d have found it years ago.

The furor of the crowd gets louder as we approach the arena. My pulse skitters, just for a second.

It does sound like a big one, and plenty worked up already, more so than usual. Just who am I going up against tonight?

In the back of my head, Jacob gives me a cool smile. The chiseled planes of his face look so much like Griffin’s it’s painful, but his voice is more forceful than his twin’s ever was.

No matter what they throw at you, you’ve got this.

I summon the cool composure I first developed during rounds of sparring at the facility. For the next half hour, nothing matters except the fight.

The guards in front shove open the door to the arena. A blast of unmuffled sound smacks into me alongside a riot of scents.

More than a hundred people—mostly men, but a woman here and there too—are poised on the chairs all around the fighting ring. They’ve been talking, both in friendly conversation and in argument, and the moment they spot me, their excitement rises.

A few whoops of encouragement reach my ears, but plenty of scoffing and guffaws come too.

“Look at that little thing. How’s she going to beat anyone?”

“He’ll crush her like a twig.”

“They’ve got to be kidding with this. Where’s the real fighter?”

Those are the newbies in the audience—the ones who’ve never watched my previous matches. The ones who know hush them ineffectively, but they’ll find out how wrong they are soon enough.

My five-foot-one, one-hundred-and-five-pound frame is what makes me such a big draw and earns my keepers so much money at the betting table. No one ever seems to get tired to the spectacle of me taking down an opponent twice my size.

I let the voices wash through me, unaffected by them or by the stink of sweat, stale beer, and adrenaline that permeates the arena. My focus is narrowing down to the raised platform ahead of me. I stare straight ahead as we walk to the ring.

Just as we reach the steps, an icy wave of dizziness washes over me. I have to lock my knees for a second so they don’t wobble.

I grit my teeth in annoyance. Get a grip, Riva.

I can’t let anything these people do get to me. I can’t do anything but win .

A guard unlocks the door on one side of the metal cage that surrounds the ring and shoves me inside. Normally I’d keep my balance without a hitch, but tonight I stumble just a bit.

Another flicker of cold shoots through my nerves, fracturing my concentration. What is wrong with me?

A hulking man with scars zigzagging across his bare chest and arms postures at the other side of the cage, clad only in horrifyingly neon green training shorts. He spins the machete he’s selected from the weapons he was offered and laughs like he doubts he’ll even need to use it.

Only my opponents get the benefit of a weapon. It’s to make the fight a little fairer for them, though they rarely see it that way at first.