Page 41 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Eight

Riva

T he second Andreas leaves the basement, his borrowed jeans hastily pulled back on and his tight curls still rumpled, the room feels achingly empty.

Sitting on the bed, I rub my arms, but that only rekindles the memory of his hands running over me, his body moving against mine, reminding me of what I’m now missing. I’ve become a live wire, my nerves risen up through my skin so that every sensation is twice as sharp.

My claws are still out; I can’t quite will them to retract. The scent of our shared desire still laces the air, thickly enough that I taste it with every breath.

My blood thrums on through my veins, pulsing with an exhilarated energy I don’t know where to aim.

I touch the spot on my collarbone where Andreas said I was marked. A fresh tingle ripples through my body.

I can sense him—vaguely, but with enough of his flavor that I know it’s him. He’s standing still, high enough above me that he must be on the second floor.

That’s all I can tell, but the knowledge sends a new thrill through me. If we’re separated again, I don’t need to cut myself open to track him now.

Did it happen simply because we had sex, or was there something more to the heightened emotions of that collision that bound us together more tightly than before?

Can he sense me too?

A smile touches my lips, and the washing machine rumbles to a stop with a harsh beep.

Apparently I’m on laundry duty since I’m the one stuck down here. I spring off the bed and go over to move the damp clothes to the dryer.

It’s a small load, so it shouldn’t take long. I can’t wait to get back into my regular clothes. This dress makes me feel like a dwarf.

Someday, maybe I’ll have a proper wardrobe, multiple outfits to pick between… that I don’t have to leave behind after just a few days because brutal guardians launch an attack. Not that I have high fashion aspirations, but a little variety would be nice.

As I set the dryer running, a whiff of a different sort of emotion reaches my nose. The tang of stress hormones unfurls through the air.

Those aren’t coming from me, and there’s no one else in the room. Frowning, I turn my head and prowl through the space, trying to follow the trail.

I end up underneath a vent for the furnace, which isn’t currently running. Another waft of tension prickles into my lungs from above.

The vents will run all through the house. In my overly sensitized state, a trace seeping down from the higher floors must feel like a lot.

But how upset must the guys be for even a trace to trickle all the way down here?

I push up on my toes toward the vent and realize I can make out voices too. Way too faint and muffled for me to distinguish any words, but they’re obviously raised, curt and hostile.

Is Andreas arguing with the other guys—about me? I guess it would be an argument if he’s trying to convince them to stop being such jerks.

I shift my weight, uneasiness coiling around my gut. I don’t want him fighting my battles for me, all alone.

If he’s arguing on my behalf, I should at least be there to back him up.

I don’t really expect to get anywhere, but my restless feet carry me up the basement steps, my nerves outright buzzing now. My fingers clutch the knob—and it turns smoothly.

I freeze for a second before understanding hits me. Drey didn’t bother to lock the basement when he left.

He didn’t see any reason he needed to.

A pang of joy thrums through me alongside my apprehension. I can go up there and stand with him, then.

Before I can think any farther ahead than that, my body is already rushing forward. My bare feet pad across the worn floorboards to the main staircase and up it, moving swiftly but silently with the stealth that comes automatically to me.

The voices come into sharper clarity as I hurry upward. Andreas is speaking, so terse his tone alone makes my heart ache.

Then I register what he’s saying.

“…the whole reason I started ‘getting cozy’ with her was so she’d open up about things she wouldn’t have told us otherwise. I held up my end of the deal. Now you’ve got to listen.”

What?

My legs lock at the top of the stairs. I stare through the doorway into the shadowy bedroom ahead of me where Andreas stands by the bed.

All three of the other guys are poised around him, but he’s facing Jacob, whose gaze slides from Andreas to me. A glitter even chillier than usual lights in his fierce eyes.

“Yes,” he says, giving Drey a smile so sharp it could flay skin. “That was the deal. And now she knows it too.”

Andreas turns, his gaze snagging on mine. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

My feet propel me forward, one step and another, through the doorway. Then I can’t bear to get any closer to him.

My own voice catches in my throat before I force out the question. “You were acting friendly just to trick me into telling you things?”

Andreas’s expression goes sickly. “It wasn’t like that, not exactly. And it isn’t like that now.”

“It was exactly like that,” Jacob interjects, focusing on me again.

“We had a little conversation right after we arrived at the college, while you were locked up in your room. I wanted to keep you out of our investigations, but Andreas insisted that we should get you involved so we could see if you’d give something away in the moment.

He promised he’d convince you to trust him so you wouldn’t be as guarded. ”

Pain lances right down the middle of me. My fingers flex at my sides, the tips aching around my claws.

“You argued in front of me about whether I should come along,” I say, my voice not much more than a rasp.

Jacob brings out his vicious smile again. “Yes, we did. We had to sell the idea in a way you’d believe. And it gave Drey his first chance to play your champion.”

They staged the whole conversation. They all knew.

My gaze jerks to Zian and to Dominic, and their tensed expressions confirm it. There isn’t a hint of surprise from either of them, only trepidation about how I’m going to react.

“Riva, I swear that has nothing to do with tonight or—or—” Andreas stumbles and then recovers. “I believe you. I realized we were wrong. I?—”

“He’s very good at it, isn’t he?” Jacob interrupts. “Got you to let your hair down and everything.” He glances at Andreas. “You can stop now. I can’t see how you’ll get anything more out of her than you already have.”

“Will you shut the fuck up, Jake?” Andreas snaps, but my mind is already spinning back through our interlude in the basement.

He brought up Griffin. Told a story about guilty secrets. He prodded me about there being something I hadn’t told them about the night Griffin died.

That whole thing—the affection he offered, the supposed confessions he made—it was all to lull me into thinking I could open up.

Did he come up here and tell them just how very much I opened up to him? Jacob is talking as if he knows everything.

“Why would you— How could you—?” I don’t know how to voice the question that’s choking me. There’s a wail lodged in the base of my throat, expanding with a dull throbbing.

I loved you. All I ever did was love you, and you all…

Jacob narrows his eyes at me. “You actually think you deserve better?”

His sneering tone sparks a spurt of anger that sears up through my chest. It rattles through my ribs and grips hold of the vibration building at the back of my mouth.

My hand shoots up to close around my pendant. My thumb clicks the cat and yarn apart and together, apart and together, but the rhythm does nothing to settle the anguished fury that’s thrumming through my nerves, rising to a roar.

I could hurt them just as much as they’ve hurt me. I could tear them a-fucking-part.

I glance at Dominic and Zian again, my voice hoarse. “Are both of you okay with all of this? Really?”

Zian’s mouth opens and closes and opens again. “We needed to know—we needed to be sure…” he says weakly.

Dominic’s face has hardened with tension. “We’ve had to look out for ourselves.”

Themselves. The four of them together and me on the outside, where they’ve shoved me as hard as they can.

My teeth grit. The prickling vibration jabs its way up my throat.

No. I close my eyes, willing down the vicious urge that’s shaking me from the inside out. But I’m too raw, too churned up already. I can’t get a grip on it.

And Jacob’s voice follows me into the darkness behind my eyelids. “You don’t have to play our friend anymore now. You’re not getting anywhere with that. So let’s see who you really are already.”

My lungs ache to scream right back at him, to show him what he’s daring me to do. To make him wish he never mocked and berated my misery.

No, no, no .

My thumb wrenches at my pendant again—and the joint cracks. The two pieces fall apart in my hand, the ball of yarn tumbling against my palm, the cat still dangling from the chain around my neck.

I broke it—Griffin’s necklace.

Like I broke him. Like I could break all of them if I just let myself?—

“Riva,” Andreas is saying, and I get the impression he’s been talking longer than I’ve been hearing. “He’s being a fucking idiot. Listen to me. I?—”

He takes a step toward me, and my body recoils. A sliver of a shriek hitches from my throat.

I clap my hand over my mouth, but I see him wince. I taste the pain that one brief smack of the power in me provoked.

The thing squirming and thrumming inside me craves more. It’s clawing its way up from my chest, on the verge of exploding.

I am going to destroy everything, and part of me is going to revel in it.

Jacob steps toward me too, his eyes glinting like ice. “That’s right. Tell us how you really feel.”

I yank my gaze from him to Andreas, who’s frozen in his tracks. He’s looking at me as if he can see the storm of emotion raging inside me—or maybe it’s so close to the surface now it’s written all over my face.

I back up, and the door slams shut behind me with a heave of Jacob’s talent. He stalks closer with that cruel smirk I want to scratch off his face.

Break him, twist him, make him suffer. And the rest of them just standing by, watching him hurt me. Lashing out in their own ways.

Show them all what real pain is.

No .

The protest barely stems the surge of rage inside me. My vision starts to haze.

I have to get away.

My hand shoots out, snapping the chain with the movement. The necklace slips from my fingers and clinks onto the floor.

“Stay away from me,” I gasp out. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

But I also do, I do.

And the only escape from the pressure howling through my body is to throw myself toward the window that’s between me and Jacob.

My shoulder slams into the pane first. I’m hurtling fast enough to shatter the glass and careen out into the open air.

Shards slice across my arms and calves, but I barely notice those tiny pains. For a few seconds, I’m in freefall, hurtling through the air.

My body rotates on instinct, and I hit the ground with a puff of exhaled breath and a jolt through my limbs.

Voices are already carrying from the building behind me, my name ringing out through the jumble of shouts. Panic races through me ahead of a renewed roar of anger.

They’re going to come after me.

They won’t let me go.

My legs propel me forward. I sprint across the grass as fast as my feet can fly, veering away from the lane and the road.

Farther down, near the train tracks, scattered saplings offer a tiny bit of cover. I race toward them automatically, my pulse thundering in my ears, my lungs shuddering with the power that wants so badly to burst out.

I’m a monster. Only a monster would want to put the men she’s loved through the agony I can sense I’m capable of.

Only a monster would enjoy the idea.

My name pierces the air again. Someone’s hollering at me to stop.

No, I can’t. I can’t.

They’ve poisoned me and beaten me down with words and lies. Maybe they’re monsters too, and not because of the powers inside them.

Maybe I’d be right to destroy them.

Shut up!

I just have to get away, far away, and then…

And then what’s left? My whole life has been them, us.

We are blood .

If we aren’t, if I’m nothing to them, if everything I thought we had has been washed away, how can I be anything other than a monster?

My legs pump; my feet pound against the uneven ground. A different sound emerges from up ahead: the rumble of an engine.

The train’s lights flash between the trees. It’s whipping toward me, just seconds away.

Tears blur my sight, and still the hunger inside me to deal out a deluge of pain screams on and on. It won’t let me go either.

Not while I’m still alive.

I don’t think. My body swerves of its own accord, closer to the tracks. To the one simple solution that could kill both the monster and my own agony.

It’s gravel rattling under my feet now. The train roars toward me with a blare of its horn.

I fling myself onward to meet it, and one final cry penetrates the anguished haze in my head.

“Wildcat, no! ”

Jacob’s voice. Jacob’s old nickname for me, that he hasn’t used once since I found him again.

It hits me like a plea echoing up from the past, yanking me back to where I always thought I was meant to be.

What the hell am I doing?

I wrench myself to the side, but it’s a little too late.

The full force of the speeding train catches the side of my body. It whips me around, knocking my arm out of its socket, shattering my ribs.

Pain blazes through every particle of my being as I crash into the grass beyond the shoulder. Then my mind fizzles out.