Page 54 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Two

Riva

T he glow of the laptop screen turns Jacob’s face an even eerier pale than usual in the darkness of the train car. He glares at it and lets out a string of colorful curses before shoving it away.

Andreas glances over at him from where he’s sitting by the wall and raises his eyebrows. “You didn’t really think the genius scientist would forget to put password protection on her devices, did you?”

Jacob scowls. “It didn’t seem like she got a whole lot of visitors she’d need to worry about prying into her stuff. There was hope.”

He leans back against the stack of crates behind him, swaying a little with a bump on the tracks, and folds his muscular arms over his chest. “You’ll just have to scrounge up another hacker for us.”

Andreas tugs at the length of rope he picked up in the train yard and has been winding into knots to pass the time. “I can do that, as soon as we figure out where we’re landing.”

The smell of sawdust itches at my nose. I draw my knees up to my chest where I’m sitting across from Andreas and risk a question.

“Do you figure we should stay in Canada for now or head back to the States?”

We decided before we hitched our ride that it was better not to try to cross the border right away, not when we’re so close to where the guardians may already realize we’ve come over. But we haven’t picked a final destination yet.

Dominic stirs where he’s been slouched near the car door. During our short wait for the train, he drained some of the life from a towering pine tree to heal up the other guys’ wounds a little better, but the effort seems to have exhausted him.

His voice comes out steady enough, if typically quiet. “The guardians never sent us on any missions outside of the country. They’d probably expect us to cross back to more familiar territory.”

Zian lifts his head from where he’s been sorting through our collection of firearms, consolidating ammo where he can. “As far as we know, all of the facilities were in the States, right? The guardians probably know their way around better down there too.”

Jacob nods. “I think we should stay up north while we regroup, until we’ve decided on our next steps.”

His cool blue gaze slides to me, as if he wants my approval of the plan. As if my opinion suddenly matters to him after weeks of sneering at any suggestion I made.

He admitted to being an asshole and an idiot, with something like an apology… after he tore into me so brutally I had to run straight at a speeding train to make sure I didn’t unleash my shrieking power on him. That was only a couple of days ago.

I don’t know what to believe. Especially now that they know just how brutal I can be.

I press my elbow against the wound on my side—starting to seal on its own with the heightened ability to recover that all our bodies have, but still sore when I prod it. The pain lances through my torso, grounding me.

As I open my mouth to make a brief comment of agreement, the train car lurches. My arm bumps my side harder than before, and what comes out instead is a strained squeak.

All four of the guys sitting around me stiffen. A whiff of nervous pheromones reaches me.

I snap my mouth shut, my stomach flipping over. But I knew we weren’t going to avoid this subject forever.

There’s a moment of silence other than the rattle of the train over the tracks. Then Andreas speaks up, with a weird mix of wariness and concern in his tone.

“What happened at Engel’s house—you didn’t tell us you’d developed new abilities too.”

I drop my chin to my knees, staring at the scuffed floor rather than holding his gaze. “It’d only… come out once before. I didn’t want to think it would happen again.”

I close my eyes and add, “I didn’t want to think I’d done it in the first place.”

I hadn’t wanted my guys to realize I had something so horrifying in me. So much for that.

There’s a rustle as Dominic pulls his parka closer around him in the cooling evening air. “It didn’t look like you just killed them,” he ventures.

My throat constricts, but I don’t see any point in lying about it.

They saw everything. We might as well get it all out now so they can be as revolted as they’re going to be.

My voice comes out scratchy. “The power latches on to any place it can cause pain. Like it feeds off hurting people as much as possible before they die.”

“With that scream.” Jacob taps the floor. “Like a banshee.”

“A what?” Zian says.

I can hear Jacob’s baleful glower without even opening my eyes. “Don’t you remember that big fat mythology book we all passed around when we were kids? The one Griffin loved.”

His voice goes just a little rough with those last few words, mentioning his twin. My hand rises automatically to grip my cat-and-yarn necklace, the one Griffin gave me.

The only thing any of us has left of him.

I can’t grip it too hard, though—can’t snap the rotating pieces open and shut like I used to when I was feeling tense. I broke it during that last argument with Jacob, and he was only able to partly fix it on his own.

As I let myself take in the darkened train car again, Dominic tilts his head to the side. “Weren’t banshees the ones that screamed to warn that death was coming? I don’t think they did the actual killing.”

Jacob shrugs. “It’s not as if our powers fit into neat little boxes. I don’t remember any monsters that grew poison spikes and moved things with their minds.” He runs his fingers over one forearm where his deadly spines can emerge.

The guys lapse into another momentary silence. Then Andreas fixes me with his gaze, almost like he’s going to peer inside my memories, though no ruddy light comes into his dark grey eyes.

“That night at the farmhouse,” he says carefully. “When you ran toward the train… You said you didn’t want to hurt us. You were trying to stop the new power from coming out?”

I have the urge to curl up inside myself, to recoil from the question. But he obviously already knows.

I got so close to the verge that night, a little sound burst out of me. I saw him flinch. He’s putting the pieces together.

I make myself speak. “I was—after everything?—”

The words clog in my throat. After we had sex. After the shadows in our blood tied us together.

The act felt so precious in the moments after—until I overheard Andreas admitting that he’d gotten close to me just to dig for information. To figure out how much of a traitor I was.

He’s apologized too. He’s claimed that he wasn’t trying to use me when we melded together like one being. But I don’t know how much to believe that either.

I swallow thickly and propel myself onward. “After what we did, my nerves were all keyed up, my emotions whirling—and then with the argument, it was even worse—I didn’t want to hurt any of you, not like that, but I could tell I was losing control.”

More silence. I hug my knees tighter.

This is the worst. Not just the pain I can wield and revel in, but that some part of me was ready to inflict it on them.

No matter how awful they’ve been, they didn’t deserve that—that all-encompassing, soul-rending torture.

Zian clears his throat. “So you… you would have let that train kill you…”

He doesn’t seem to know how to go on.

“I wasn’t really thinking,” I mumble. “It was the only way I could stop myself for sure.”

That’s how bad it was. That’s how close I got to tormenting the guys who were my only family, who I swore to protect, in the most horrific way imaginable.

I brace myself for accusations or recriminations. So I’m not at all prepared when Zian pushes away from his pile of guns and hunches down by my feet.

“We hurt you so badly,” he says raggedly, his face so low to the floor his forehead must brush the gritty surface. “With everything we said, the way we’d been treating you—and you still would rather have died than hurt us.”

My mouth opens and closes, my voice dried up in shock.

Zian goes on in my silence. “I’m so sorry, Riva. I should have been better. I shouldn’t have trusted anything the guardians said. You were always there for us, doing everything for us—I am never going to forget that again.”

I stare at the massive man kowtowing his apology to me for several beats of my heart before I can even process what’s happening.

He isn’t horrified. My confession has made him more regretful?

“Zee,” I say softly, and don’t know how to go on. My heart is aching as much with the memory of times he snapped at me as with the anguish he’s expressing now.

He hasn’t so much as lifted his head, as if he’s waiting for some kind of judgment. My hand reaches out of its own accord toward the short tufts of his silky black hair.

My fingertips graze the top of his head, and Zian jerks away from my touch. Just an inch, but enough of a rejection that I yank my hand back.

“Sorry,” he mutters to the floor. “Sorry. I?—”

“It’s okay,” I say before he can go on. I’d rather not hear him explain why he’s so adverse to me touching him.

He regrets a lot of things, clearly, but that doesn’t mean he wants to get cozy with me either.

Zian eases up a little, his dark eyes searching mine. They’re stormy, but lit with enough hope to send the ache in my chest jabbing even deeper.

I fumble for a fuller answer. “We’ve been through a lot. All of us. I don’t really know where we go from here. But I’m not asking for anything.”

At this point, I know better than to ask for anything.

Zee pushes upright, looking as if he’s not totally satisfied with that answer but uncertain about what he would want instead.

By the door, Dominic draws himself a little straighter, his expression tightening. “You used the power at Engel’s house. Are you sure… Are you sure you can control it now ?”

He obviously isn’t. And that’s fair—that’s closer to the reaction I was expecting.

I set my chin on my knees again. “No. That’s why I want to understand everything Engel told us. How she made us—what she made us out of. I was hoping I could get rid of it, but if I can’t, then there’s got to be a way to at least rein it in more.”