Page 64 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Eight

Riva

“ Y ou’re not welcome in here anymore,” the stately woman says from the front entrance of the lounge.

We stall on the threshold, where she cut us off. The back door had locked behind us, so we’d come around thinking maybe we could get something out of the portly man or even find the woman in the green dress after all.

Instead, our way is blocked.

Jacob lifts his chin. “Why not?”

The woman raises her own head at a haughty angle, a little taller even than Zian thanks to her heels and being up a step from the street. “We don’t allow anyone to harass our patrons. Leave before I have to take further measures.”

Oh, shit.

We retreat down the street, Dominic moving to join us. An uneasy vibe runs between all of us.

Andreas is frowning. “Someone must have looked out back while we were confronting the guy.”

“In the split-second we had him before he disintegrated,” Jacob mutters, and glances at Andreas. “He didn’t just turn invisible—not like you do anyway.”

Andreas nods. “I still have some kind of physical presence. It looked like he simply wasn’t there anymore.”

Zian makes a discontented sound. “How the hell are we supposed to get any answers out of them if they can disappear in a snap?”

Dominic has been watching and listening silently, and must be able to put enough of the pieces together to understand what happened. “Whatever skills one monster has, the others don’t necessarily have too,” he points out. “We don’t share many abilities.”

I pull myself straighter with a renewed sense of purpose. “That’s right. We just have to find another one.”

The slight movement pulls at the lingering wound on my side with a jab of pain. I think I broke the scab again when I leapt to search for the vanished monster-man in the alley.

That’s fine. It’s a reminder of how dangerous any of these creatures could be, considering I got the sadistic power inside me from their kind.

“Come on,” I say to distract myself from the deepening ache. “The more ground we cover, the more likely we’ll find someone tonight.”

As we head back to the car, Jacob nudges Andreas. “Did you see anything interesting in the monster’s memories?”

Andreas grimaces. “I only dipped in briefly, just long enough to pick up a name that seemed meaningful to him. I was trying to avoid freaking him out. Looks like we did anyway.”

The guy did act particularly startled right before he vanished. What was that all about?

“He’s probably not used to people who seem human recognizing what he is,” I say.

We pile back into the car, me taking the front passenger seat again. I want a good view so I can notice anyone who gives me that weird quivery feeling right away.

Jacob takes the wheel this time, his hands squeezing tight around it. He’s pissed off that the woman barred us from the lounge.

“Maybe when we do find another one, we should try a more diplomatic approach first,” I suggest, a little tartly.

Jacob lets out a huff, but he doesn’t argue. “Let’s see who we find before we make any decisions.”

We cruise along the streets through the thickening night, sticking to the commercial areas with shops and restaurants. It doesn’t seem likely monsters would be hanging around in the middle of a residential street.

Do they own houses? Do they hide away in caves in ravines and forests?

We have no idea how these things even live. Engel said they were like the supernatural beasts from stories, but how much of those stories are true?

Plenty of pedestrians are still out on the streets, most of them in pairs or groups. I watch a girl who looks about my age rush up to a cluster of other women and throw her arms around each in turn.

I almost had a girl friend. Brooke, our neighbor on campus, tried to be there for me.

Maybe if we’d stayed there, eventually she and I could have become BFFs or besties or whatever the current word for it is. But because she was trying so hard to be there for me, she got caught in the crossfire when the guardians found us.

I can’t make any friends other than the uncertain ones I have right now. It’s too risky—for them far more than for me.

The thought sends a jab of loss through me that’s sharper than the ache from my injury. I swallow thickly and keep skimming my gaze over the sidewalks outside.

We’re passing the thicker shadows of a large, treed park when one of those quivers finally races through my veins again. I jerk forward in my seat, biting back a wince at the jolt of pain that sears through my side at the sudden movement.

“There,” I say, pointing toward the far end of the park. “There’s someone… Someone’s sitting there next to that bench.”

The figure is barely more than a lump of layered fabric topped by frizzy hair, but there’s no denying the increasingly familiar sensation tingling through my blood. Jacob parks by the curb, and we walk over cautiously.

It’s a middle-aged woman, hunched next to the bench with a grimy blanket pulled around her shoulders. Dirt smudges her plump face.

She looks like a homeless person. Is that a disguise she’s putting on, or can a monster actually be down and out just like a regular human being can?

Or are my senses going haywire, and she is just a regular human being?

Zian prowls ahead of the rest of us, his muscles taut beneath the preppy clothes he’s still wearing. He shoots us a look with a swift nod of confirmation.

He can sense it too. I’m not going crazy—well, any crazier than I might already be.

The woman stares up at him with a scowl, even less friendly than the guy we tried before. I aim a warning glance at Jacob and step past Zian to stand in front of her.

“Hey,” I say in the warmest voice I can manage, and think that I should have volunteered Andreas for this role rather than me.

Too late now, I’ve already committed.

I force a smile. “We were hoping we could ask you a few questions. Because… we think you’re kind of like us.”

The woman’s gaze flicks over the five of us. Her scowl deepens.

“I’m not an info booth,” she says in a dry rattle of a voice.

I hold up my hands, tuning out the increased ache in my side at the motion. “I understand that. But we’ve been pretty out of the loop when it comes to… unusual stuff. Things those people wouldn’t understand.” I wave vaguely toward the pedestrians sauntering by on the other side of the road.

Andreas must be able to tell I’m floundering a bit, because he comes around beside me to join in with his smoother warmth.

“We don’t want to make any trouble for you.

Just to get a little advice on using certain skills that we wouldn’t want the average person noticing.

You have some experience with that, I’m guessing? ”

His smile looks a lot less stiff than I’m sure mine does. His eyes stay their normal dark gray, not attempting to scan her mind.

He doesn’t want to freak her out either. We don’t know what she might be capable of.

The woman studies us again, her tongue flicking over her lips, and a shudder ripples through her pudgy frame. She pushes abruptly to her feet.

“I’m not having anything to do with you.”

“Wait!” Jacob snaps, lunging forward.

As the woman rushes backward, away from us, his hand snatches at her arm. An instant later, his fingers close around nothing but air.

The woman is gone, wisped away as abruptly and completely as the man in the alley.

Jacob glares down at his hand and then at the spot where the woman disappeared. “Seems like they can all give us the slip just like that. Fucking hell.”

Dominic shifts his weight on his feet. “It’s getting late, and we don’t really know what we’re dealing with. Maybe we should head back to the apartment, get some rest, and do some new planning tomorrow morning.”

My throbbing waist thinks that’s a great idea. All I want is to flop on a bed away from the guys and will my emotions back into order as well as my body.

“Dominic’s right,” I say.

His glance my way looks a bit startled, but Zian nods too, if with apparent reluctance. “We’re not getting anything done like this.”

Jacob sighs. “Fine. There’s got to be a way to make these pricks stick around and talk.”

Andreas cuffs him lightly on the shoulder. “We’ll figure it out, Jake. We haven’t come this far for nothing.”

The Airbnb he was able to arrange for us is located in a dingy neighborhood on the outskirts of the city proper, which is probably why it was available on such short notice. But it’s got three bedrooms with four beds between them and a pull-out sofa, so at least there’s enough space for all of us.

One benefit to my guys’ newfound sense of generosity is that they announced that I should take the main bedroom that comes with its own ensuite bathroom.

The moment we’ve stepped into the boxy three-story house we’re renting the top two floors of, I pull the pistol out of my waistband to leave it with the duffel of weapons and make a beeline for the stairs.

Even after sitting still for the drive, my side is still aching. As I reach the staircase, I adjust my backpack on my shoulders, careful not to let too much weight rest on that side.

I mustn’t be as subtle about it as I intended, because Dominic speaks up from behind me. “Are you feeling okay, Riva?”

“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Just tired and kind of disappointed. I’m going to go take a bath and chill out.”

In theory, that should stop any of the guys from insisting on keeping me company. In actuality, Andreas follows me up the stairs to the door to my bedroom.

When I pause with my hand on the doorknob and raise my eyebrows at him, he holds up his phone. “I figured out how to download music onto the prepaids. I could show you if you want to have some tunes going with your bath.”

There’s something so hopeful in his dark eyes that my stomach twists with my refusal. “That’s okay. I think silence might be good right now.”

I just want to get away from all of them, to have some space where I don’t have to keep my vulnerabilities walled off. Where I’m not constantly having to remind certain parts of me that these guys are as likely to hurt me as help me.

Andreas nods, his face only falling a little. “Maybe later.”

“Yeah.” I might actually like that, even if I don’t feel like telling him so right now.

He pauses, his gaze searching mine, and his voice drops. “You know if there’s anything you think of that I could do—that would make you happier or feel safer or anything —you only have to tell me, and I’ll make it happen. Whatever it takes.”

The tightness in my stomach climbs up my chest to squeeze my throat. When he looks at me like that, talks to me like that, I can’t totally suppress the memory of the night when everything went so horribly wrong.

Of the part before everything went wrong, when he made me feel like I was someone worthy of being cherished rather than punished. When he told me he loved me in the same voice he used just now.

And then I found out he’d been pretending to support me from the start just to see if I’d betray some secret evil agenda.

The boy I knew before, the one who could always find the right wry remark to break a sour mood, the one who’d enrapture us with dramatic retellings of tales he’d read and movies we’d watched—or, once we started our missions, true stories pulled right from the minds of people he’d crossed paths with…

He would never have been that callous and calculating with his charm.

I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t entirely know who these men actually are anymore.

My teeth set on edge. “I don’t know what it would take for me to totally trust you again. I don’t know if I ever will. But me telling you to do something and having no idea if you’re just going through the motions definitely isn’t going to work.”

Andreas winces. “Fair. But the offer still stands, whether it helps you trust me or not. I won’t try to rush you.”

He steps back, and I slip into the bedroom.

The moment the door closes behind me, my breath rushes out of me. I toss my backpack on the bed and peel off my sweater.

Lifting the hem of my tank top, I find that a little blood has seeped through my latest bandage. Thankfully I grabbed some gauze when the guys weren’t looking at one of the stores we stopped at for supplies, so I can re-dress it.

After that bath.

The wafts of steam that rise from the running water settle my nerves. I let the sensation carry my mind away from everything but the scratched-up but deep tub.

I hadn’t been sure I’d actually enjoy baths, considering anything more than a brief swim is about as much water as I can generally appreciate. But anytime I’ve been dunked before, it’s been in water with at least a bit of a chill.

Turns out even the cat-girl can find an approximation of a hot tub relaxing, at least in small doses.

I still have some of the bath stuff Andreas bought for me, so I toss the plain kind of salts in as well. Then I sink into the hot water.

It encloses my limbs in warmth and licks around my neck. I slide down until the back of my head is completely submerged. Then I loosen my braid and let my hair flow out around my shoulders.

My hand moves to my cat-and-yarn necklace, nestled against my sternum, making sure it’s still holding together. I haven’t taken it off since Jacob gave it back to me.

Then my fingers drift lower to trail over the tattoo of the crescent moon on my outer thigh. The moon with the dark droplet dangling from its upper tip—the one all the guys have too.

Shadowbloods, Ursula Engel called us. Because we were made with essence from the things she saw as monsters woven into our DNA, and we can see it in the smoky stuff that wisps from our veins when we bleed.

Maybe it’s fitting that the full monsters seem to somehow merge into the shadows when we try to confront them. Would it be easier to restrain them by daylight?

My mind lingers over that idea, contemplating scenarios. The heat of the water lulls me into a mild daze.

But when a thud and a shout carry through the walls from downstairs, I spring to my feet in an instant.

“Back off!” Zian growls, and there’s a smash that could be from either my guys or some unknown intruder.

My heart thudding against my ribs, I snatch the towel and wrap it around me as I race through my bedroom. I burst into the hall, charge down the stairs to the living room—and jerk to a halt on the bottom step.

All four of my guys are poised there in defensive stances, staring at the new fifth figure in the room.

A figure that’s eight feet tall with horns poking from its purple skin and menace glowing in its ruddy eyes.