Page 65 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Nine

Riva

T he purple, horned man—I assume, because he looks more male than female with that square jaw and those bulging pecs—glowers at the five of us. He’s standing just a few feet from the apartment’s front entrance, but I know none of the guys would have opened the door for him.

He got inside without them needing to.

A shiver runs through my ears as they sharpen into furred points. My hand that’s holding the towel closed around my torso clenches tighter. Claws prick through the nubby fabric and spring from my free hand.

Those are the only weapons I have. My knives are in my discarded cargo pants upstairs, and all our guns are piled in the duffel bag near the intruder’s feet.

If a blade or a bullet could do anything against a creature like this anyway.

I slide one foot back, bracing in case I need to spring. All my attention remains on the intruder.

His horns, glowing eyes, and purple skin aren’t his only inhuman features. All he’s wearing is a black strip of fabric like a loincloth around his hips, and a short tail with a devilish tip protrudes from a gap in it.

The tail lashes back and forth like he’s a pissed-off cat. And as I watch, his immense form rises several inches off the floor.

He’s hovering in mid-air. A ripple of energy washes over me, jangling through my nerves.

I don’t need to strain any of my senses to recognize this man as a monster.

“What do you want?” Jacob demands, his voice taut enough that I can tell he’s nervous. One of the dining-room chairs floats next to him as if he’s readying it to hurl at the intruder.

I’m guessing he was responsible for the smashing sound I heard, via the vase now lying in pieces on the floor a few feet from the purple beast.

The monster bares his teeth in what could maybe be considered a grin if it wasn’t full of so many sharp, ominous fangs.

“I came here to ask you exactly that question,” he says in a guttural rumble of a voice that shakes up my insides even more. “I heard you’ve been hassling beings who’d rather be left alone.”

His gaze slides over us again, and his mouth curves into what is definitely a frown. He adjusts his pose in the air with a twitch of his muscles.

As if he’s preparing himself in case he needs to go on the defensive. A strange wobbly sensation travels down the center of me.

Nervous pheromones lace the air, but I think most if not all of those are from my men. Maybe monsters don’t give off the same kinds of chemicals humans do.

But I can see that this beastly man is definitely a little afraid… of us. What the hell?

Andreas’s eyes have flared with their own reddish glow, but it fades as he focuses back on the present. “We didn’t mean to bother anyone. We were just hoping to ask a few simple questions.”

The creature lets out a derisive sound. “Your approach hasn’t sounded all that peaceful to me. What are you? Where did you come from?”

Zian folds his brawny arms over his chest. The wolfish hair that’s sprung from his neck and the tops of his shoulders ruffles with a flex of his muscles, but he’s managed to keep the full wolfman face under wraps.

“How’s that any of your business?” he asks with strained bravado. “We didn’t go breaking into anyone’s apartment like you just did.”

“Unexpected situations call for unexpected measures,” the monster retorts. “You want to ask some questions? Answer mine, and maybe I’ll have a little advice for you.”

There’s a sneering note to those last words, but his stance remains wary. What exactly is he afraid that we might do?

The guys hesitate, but I don’t see any point in drawing out this confrontation longer than we need to. It’s not as if we need to worry about this beast reporting what we tell him back to the guardians—and anyway, I wouldn’t be sharing anything they don’t already know.

I lift my chin a little higher, tucking the ends of my towel under my armpit to free both hands. “We were being held captive by people who made us… kind of like you. We managed to get away from them, but there are a lot of things we don’t understand about our powers.”

Dominic speaks up in his usual softly even voice. “The people we ran from don’t want to tell us anything. Mostly we’d like to get better control over our abilities.”

“People,” the purple giant says. “You mean humans?”

The five of us exchange a glance. “As far as we know,” Andreas says.

The monster’s lips curl with what looks like disgust. “And they made you? From…” He shakes his head as if he doesn’t even want to consider the possibilities.

“We don’t really get it either,” Jacob says, sounding peeved. “We wouldn’t have ‘hassled’ anyone if we did.”

“But you’re part human, part shadowkind,” the beastly man clarifies. “The two mixed together?”

“Shadowkind?” I repeat, confused.

His gaze veers to me, and he flashes his fangs again. “That’s what we call ourselves. Maybe your makers called us ‘monsters.’ Most humans use that word.”

Gosh, I wonder why that would be.

But his words send a quiver of rightness through me at the same time. Shadowkind. Like the shadowy haze that seeps from our wounds.

I swallow thickly. “They called us shadowbloods.”

The monster—shadowkind—whatever he is—makes a sound like a snort. “And what do you bleed? Red liquid or black smoke?”

“Both.”

Somehow he manages to look even more upset about that fact than he already was. He draws back toward the door.

“I’m not interested in playing anyone’s mentor. I just look out for my city to make sure no one’s stirring up trouble.”

“We’d stir up a lot less trouble if any of you would actually talk to us,” Jacob mutters.

The beastly man glares at him. Then he pauses, a more pensive expression coming over his fearsome face.

“I have heard that there’s a powerful shadowkind down south who caters to odd ones. He has a hotel—in the city called Miami. You could go down there.”

I can’t tell how much he’s trying to help us and how much just hoping to get us out of his territory.

From the twist of Dominic’s mouth, he’s wondering the same thing. “How would we find the right hotel? Who is this guy?”

“I believe his name is Rollick. But I don’t promise anything.” The purple giant shoots us another glower. “Leave the shadowkind here alone and go ask your questions someplace else.”

His gaze falls on the small duffel full of our confiscated guns. His lips draw back in a silent snarl.

“You brought mortal weapons. Is there silver in some of those?”

I have no idea why he’d object to silver—or whether we’ve got any fancy firearms. But the monster doesn’t wait for an answer.

“You’ll be a little less trouble without these.”

He whips the bag off the ground into his arms. Then he blinks out of existence just like the two monsters we tried to interrogate earlier did, taking our entire stash of guns with him.

“Shit,” I mumble.

The room’s ceiling fixtures are shining brightly. So much for my hope that light might help us keep the monsters in one place.

When he doesn’t reappear, the tension wound through me releases just a little. I pull my claws back into my fingertips and hug myself over the towel.

“Well,” Andreas says wryly, “that was a fun little visit. I guess bullets won’t do much against things like him anyway.”

Then his gaze slides toward me—and jars to a halt. The other guys glance over too, and suddenly a different sort of scent wafts through the air alongside the heat that’s sparked in their eyes.

I’m abruptly aware of my wet hair sending a trickle of water down my back… and of the fact that I really am wearing just a towel. My body is totally naked underneath.

The towel only falls halfway down my thighs, and the two ends have opened to show a triangle of flesh almost to my hip. Damp patches cling to the sides of my breasts.

I try to tug the fabric over more of me without flashing any extra skin in the meantime. “I didn’t know what was going on—I didn’t have time to get dressed.”

Jacob is staring at me with his normally cool eyes searing, as if he’s on the verge of marching across the room and peeling the towel right off me. I’m torn between the conflicting desires to recoil and to welcome that hunger.

Zian makes a rough noise and jerks his head to the side.

Dominic clears his throat, his tan cheeks gone ruddy, and tears his gaze away to look at the other guys again. “It seems like at least in this city, the monsters communicate with each other. Look out for each other.”

Yes, thank God, let’s focus on something other than my state of undress.

I nod. “I don’t think it’d be a very good idea to try to approach any others around here. I don’t know what abilities that guy had, but he felt like he had a lot .”

“Yeah.” Zian frowns at the spot where the purple shadowkind was floating, still keeping his eyes carefully averted from me. “Do you think we should believe what he said about that guy in Miami?”

Jacob seems to shake himself out of a trance. He grimaces. “He just wanted to get rid of us.”

“He was pretty specific about it,” Andreas puts in, and pauses.

“I mean, maybe this Rollick monster—or shadowkind or whatever—is actually a dude who eats humans for breakfast and our new purple friend figured that was an easy way to eliminate us for good, but I’m pretty sure a Rollick with a hotel in Miami actually exists. ”

“Did you see anything in his memories about that?” I ask.

Andreas shakes his head. “There were some dark, murky moments that I couldn’t make much sense of, and some where he just appeared to be watching people around the city. One time when he beat up a smaller, creepy-looking dude for reasons I don’t know. Nothing very useful. I didn’t have much time.”

“That’s okay,” Jacob says. “We can look up hotels in Miami, see if we can figure out which place someone named Rollick owns before we head all the way down there.”

Dominic exhales with apparent relief. “Yeah. Get all the information before we make a decision.”

Jacob cuts his gaze back toward me, with another flare of heat that flushes my skin. “And you’d better go finish your bath, Wildcat.”

He says it mildly enough. But maybe because of that show of self-control combined with his obvious hunger and his use of my old, fond nickname, an unwelcome ache forms between my thighs.

Yes, I had better.

I whirl toward the stairs. “I’ll be out quick to hear what you’ve dug up.”

Then I flee from the longing that tugs at me from each of my men—and the answering pang rising up inside me.