Page 31 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-One

Riva

I ’m lucky that Zian can move as fast as he does, because he catches me right before I crumple into the puddle of grossness I just spat up.

There’s a flurry of motion around me: Zee tugging me off to the side and resting me against the wall, Andreas rushing over with frantic questions about how I’m feeling, Dominic coming to stand over me with one hand deep in his pocket.

And Jacob, of course, walking up behind Dom and sneering down at me like I’m the one who poisoned me. “This isn’t really the time for dramatics.”

I’d give him the middle finger, but my limbs appear to have transformed into lead, too heavy to lift. Andreas pats my cheek firmly, and I blink at him.

His face doubles before my eyes, and I sputter a choked giggle.

He glances up at Dominic. “When was the last time you healed her?”

I can’t focus on Dom’s face—my head won’t lift either—but his voice comes out tight. “Yesterday afternoon. It has been a while—but she didn’t say anything. She seemed fine.”

“Maybe if she couldn’t tell you hate doing it, she wouldn’t pretend she’s fine until she’s literally falling over.”

“I haven’t been refusing. I can’t help it if I’m not jumping for joy—I’m doing as much as I can.”

“Well, if you wiped the poison completely from her system this time, we could all stop worrying about it.”

Jacob cuts in. “And then we’d have to worry about her taking off on us instead.”

“You can’t really think?—”

“Guys!” Zian breaks into the conversation in an urgent tone. “Look at her. I think Dom had better heal her somehow right now.”

My chin has come to rest against my chest. A weird shudder is running through my body. I’m sinking and drifting away at the same time—and then a hand rests against my sternum just below my face.

The warmth that flows from Dominic’s touch brings me back to earth and my body back into focus. My heart thumps steadily; my breath flows in and out.

There’s a floor beneath me. A wall against my back. I’m still here. I haven’t gone anywhere.

Dominic rasps something to the other guys about getting him “more,” which doesn’t totally make sense to me, but my mind is still too hazy to follow what’s going on. Footsteps stomp one way and another.

A second rush of warmth washes over me, and my vision clears. Yes, I’m sitting on the floor, in the hall under the wavering lights powered by the backup generator. A sour smell laces the air—oh, right, because I puked.

I make a face and manage to push myself upright and away from the puddle in the same motion. Dominic straightens up too, brushing what looks like more dust off his hand against his parka.

He doesn’t meet my gaze. Andreas said he hates doing this—hates having to heal me.

I tried. I tried so fucking hard not to need him, but it didn’t work.

Andreas touches my arm tentatively. “Are you doing okay now?”

My face flushes with shame. I was doing just fine until… until I wasn’t.

“Yeah,” I say roughly. “Sorry. It caught up with me too fast. I’m fine.”

My gaze flicks back to Dom. “Thank you.”

He gives a slight nod in acknowledgment. I can’t read his expression to tell whether he’s pissed off or just tired.

Jacob strides past us. “Let’s see what the hell we’ve stumbled on here.”

As the rest of us follow him down the hall, I tuck the no-longer-necessary flashlight into my pocket. “There’s a control room that looks a lot like the one in the facility—both of the facilities I’ve seen.”

Andreas’s mouth is still slanted at a worried angle, but he perks up with curiosity. “Are there stairs going farther down?”

“I haven’t seen any, but I wasn’t specifically looking for them. I wanted to let you all in first.” I kick at the dust on the floor, sending a few fluffy bunnies floating into the air. “I don’t think we have to be on guard for anyone still working here, though.”

Zian snorts. “Not unless they float and are really bad at cleaning.”

We pass the room where I dropped out of the ceiling and continue to where it branches out much like the ventilation system did. Down the passage to the left, we come across several rooms with thick control panels that send a shiver of recognition through me.

They look like the locks we had on our cell doors.

The rooms aren’t locked, though. The doors stand slightly ajar. Peeking into one, I find myself staring at a low table, a plain dresser, and a crib.

Everything’s covered in the same thick layer of dust we’ve encountered in the rest of the underground building. The furniture is as barren as in every other room—nothing hanging on the walls, no trinkets on the desk or dresser, no blanket in the crib.

There are marks of life, though. A shallow dent in a wall as if a toy were flung at it with greater than expected strength. Notches in the finish on the crib’s slats as if the wood was tested with budding teeth… or claws.

I tear my eyes away and move to tug open the dresser drawers. Those are empty too, just a faint plasticky scent drifting up from them.

“They stripped the place down but must have decided it’d be easier just leaving the larger pieces behind,” Jacob says from the doorway. As he takes in the room, his face remains a rigid mask, betraying no emotion.

Six of the locked rooms have the same layout. Exactly six. A queasy sensation unfurls in my gut that I don’t think Dominic could heal.

A couple more doors down, we arrive at an office that’s more compact than the larger meeting-style rooms near the entrance.

The furniture is nicer, though: an old oak desk that actually smells like wood rather than plastic or metal, a heavy leather rolling chair, a couple of tall bookcases that match the desk.

The bookcases have a little motif carved into the upper section of the frame, like a forested skyline rippling with the points of evergreen trees. It reminds me of the preserved clipping of the cabin in the woods that we found in Ursula Engel’s things at her former workplace.

A sense of certainty settles over me. “This was her office. Engel’s.”

Andreas runs his fingers through the dust on the desk. “She owned the property, and this is the nicest workroom we’ve seen so far. She must have run this place.”

“It sounded like she was pretty important to the facility, right? Or at least she used to be? She made a lot of the decisions?”

“Something like that,” Zian says in a low voice, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “It was hard to tell from the snippets I heard. You don’t think…”

“This is where we started,” Dominic fills in when the larger guy doesn’t go on. “This was the first facility, from when we were too young to remember. We must have moved when we were still really small.”

An uneasy silence settles over us all. What are the chances that his explanation isn’t accurate? The guardians up and moved once before, after our escape attempt. There’s no reason they couldn’t have other times in the past.

Once upon a time, a woman named Ursula Engel bought this property, had this structure built, and held the nicest office. This was her project.

And she raised six very unusual babies within these walls. Why? Where did we come from?

What did she want from us?

“Did she leave anything at all behind that’s useful?” Jacob asks, pushing into the room. “Zee, check for any compartments in the walls.”

Jacob starts testing the bookshelves for moveable panels. I peek behind the bookcases and then crouch down to peer beneath and behind the desk before checking inside the drawers.

In one of the lower drawers, my groping fingers catch on a small paper wedged right at the back. It tears a little as I tug it free, but when I smooth it out on my lap, it’s still perfectly readable if faded.

My pulse stutters.

“What’s that?” Jacob demands, turning toward me, but my throat has constricted too much for me to immediately answer.

It’s only the size of a post-it note, but I recognize the handwriting from the box of Ursula’s things, a distinctive mix of curly and spiky. And that handwriting has formed my name at the top of the note.

Riva

54 days – 9.5lb – 20.7”

First smile today. Like she was so pleased to see me. Lots of cooing. Lovely to hear.

My fingers tighten around the scrap. Am I imagining the affection in those words?

It sounds like… like she actually cared about me. About how I responded to her.

About whether I was happy enough to smile and coo.

Who was this woman, really? And if she raised us from when we were infants, if we mattered to her… why can’t I remember her?