Page 8 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Five

Riva

T wigs and dead leaves crackle under the guys’ thumping feet. I can’t see much except the darkened ground flying by below.

When I try to lift my head, I jostle even more awkwardly against Zian’s shoulder, but I catch a glimpse of flashlights streaking through the trees behind us. The guardians are giving chase, shouting to each other as they follow us.

The guys have taken a smart approach by diving into the forest. We’ve all trained for moving swiftly over uneven terrain, them probably much more recently than me.

The guardians can’t outpace us with vehicles amid the trees, and the trunks shelter us from bullets unless our pursuers manage to get closer.

But where are we going from here?

I was so focused on getting the guys out of the facility, with frantic adrenaline driving me from the arena all the way here, that I haven’t taken much time to consider what we’d do after I accomplished my initial goal.

All I know is I want to get us away from our captors, someplace they’ll never find us again.

Which means we’re going to need to put more distance between them and us than we can accomplish on foot.

Zian hurtles steadily onward, his breaths brisk but even with the rise and fall of his chest against my thighs. He’ll be pacing himself, though—restraining his strength so he doesn’t outrun the other three guys.

I can only make out fragments of their forms in the darkness, but at least one of the others is panting now.

I bite my lip against the urge to demand to know what they’re planning next. The quieter we are, the more chance the guardians will lose track of us during the limited night we have left.

There’s muttered communication between two of the others, and Zian veers with them to the right without adding any comment of his own. He leaps straight over a log like its nothing more than a twig.

I concentrate on balancing my weight against him for as long as I can bear to shut off my thoughts. But eventually, I can’t help raising my head for another glance behind us.

What I see makes my pulse stutter. The faintest of glows is hazing the sky beyond the treetops, making the branches stand out in silhouette against what’s now not black but a dark blue.

Dawn has arrived, and it’s only going to get brighter.

Beneath the treetops, the forest is still dark as night. The guys must notice the emerging dawn, though, because they all push forward a little faster.

I can’t hear any sound from our pursuers now, but glints of their flashlights still show in the distance. They’ve quieted down to focus on the chase.

If we dare to stop, they’ll be on top of us in a matter of minutes.

All at once, we burst from the trees into a clear stretch of field. A sharply cool wind whips over me, licking across my back.

As the guys swerve farther to the right, my heart thumps faster with the sense of increased exposure. But in a few seconds, I understand why they’ve emerged from the cover of the woods.

We’re dashing along the edge of a low cliff now—a cliff that looms over a four-lane highway. A couple of cars zoom by, but the road is mostly empty at this early hour. Headlights sear across the darkened landscape.

One of the guys sucks a breath through his teeth with a hiss. Another lets out a wordless sound of encouragement.

They’re all ahead of Zian now, so I can’t see them, but all at once, he starts running even faster. Then, with a heave of his chest, he launches us into open air.

A startled gasp breaks from my lips. He adjusts me against him as we plummet, cradling me closer to his chest. When we hit the ground with a smack, my body is tossed into his, cushioned by his brawn.

The impact is still hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. His grasp loosens, and I squirm out of his arms to take in our surroundings.

We’ve landed on the flat bed of a moving truck, one that’s roaring along the highway at what’s got to be seventy miles an hour. The other guys have leapt on around us, Andreas swaying a little as he rights himself.

Dominic lifts the tarp that’s covering the cargo of logs, which only covers one half of the truck bed, and motions for us to take cover under it. I scramble over, knowing we don’t want the guardians seeing where we’ve gone if they make it to the cliff before the truck has zoomed out of view.

The moment we’re inside our makeshift tent, I turn to face the guys. My gaze locks with Jacob’s.

His handsome face hardens, a cold glint forming in his eyes. Without any warning, he throws himself at me.

The movement is so sudden and unexpected from a long-lost friend that my reflexes scatter and my muscles don’t do much more than twitch before he’s slamming me to the ground.

My arms shoot up instinctively then, but his hand is already clamped around my throat and pressing in hard, cutting off my airway with a shock of pain.

Jacob glares down at me, his gaze pure ice now—icy hatred. Frigid enough that I shiver even as I squirm to shove him off.

Under normal circumstances, I could overpower him easily. But I’m tired from a night on the run, and he’s got to weigh nearly twice as much as I do.

My wrists and ankles jar against the invisible hold of his telekinetic power. My thoughts are still too scrambled for me to come up with a coherent strategy to get him off me.

What the hell is going on? Why would Jake want to hurt me?

“So we got our freedom and you too,” he says in a flat voice. “It’s our lucky day. And now I get to?—”

“Jake!” Andreas snaps, his tone sharp enough that Jacob’s head jerks around, it’s so unusual from the normally easy-going guy. “Get off her. We need her. She’ll know things.”

What is he talking about? I squirm more urgently against Jacob’s hold, an ache digging into my lungs and my vision starting to waver.

But even with the choke hold he’s got on me, the press of his muscle-hardened body against mine stirs a trace of old longings laced with horror.

I’ve wanted him this close to me—but not like this. Nothing like this.

“Drey is right.” I recognize that quiet, even voice as Dominic’s, though he’s out of view.

Jacob swears, spittle hitting my cheeks. Then he shoves away from me as quickly as he sprang at me, as if he can’t stand to be touching me for a second longer.

His striking features have always looked chiseled, but right now they might as well have been carved out of marble. He jerks a hand toward Zian.

“Stay by her. Watch that she doesn’t make a run for it.”

I stare at him and then at each of the other guys as Zian moves to stand sentinel over me, holding up the highest point of our makeshift tent. A strange energy crackles through the air between us, suffocating even now that my airway is open.

I’m surrounded by the guys I’ve spent more than four years dreaming of saving, all of us tucked into this cramped space little more than an arm’s reach away. The awareness of their presence sends a giddy shiver over my skin even as I grapple with my confusion.

When I try to speak, my throat throbs. I swallow and cough and swallow again, and then manage to say hoarsely, “Why would I want to run? I—I came for you . Of course I figured we’d stick together. That’s how it was always supposed to?—”

Jacob steps toward me as if he’s considering strangling me after all. “Shut up .”

How can he be the same guy who once grinned so fiercely at me as we planned our winning tactics for a game of capture the flag? Who’d watch me spar with eyes alight with appreciation and call me “Wildcat” when he applauded a win?

Have the guardians done something I can’t even comprehend to the boys who were once mine?

My bewilderment brings heat to the back of my eyes, but I clench my jaw against it. Breaking down in tears isn’t going to help anything.

I need to stay calm and focused, and we’ll get through this.

We have to get through it.

The guys have simply been watching my reactions. Andreas rakes his fingers back through his tight curls. His copper-brown skin has grayed, and I don’t think it’s just because of the dimness beneath the tarp.

“We know, Riva,” he says. “Did you think they wouldn’t tell us? That we’d just assume you were dead or something?”

I honestly had no idea what the guys would know about my whereabouts, but no matter what they believed, I expected them to be just as happy to see me as I was to get back to them.

I peer up at him, meeting the dark gray eyes that always used to shine with amusement or friendly warmth. “I don’t know what you mean. The guardians took me away after— I guess they figured we were less likely to attempt another escape if we were apart.”

It was a mistake to include a female.

Jacob lets out a scoff so ragged it’s almost a snarl.

Dominic eases closer, hunched beneath the tarp even though he’s the shortest of the guys, the plastic a few inches above his head. His dark hair hangs loose from its usual ponytail, but his pale greenish-hazel gaze is as pensive as it always was.

“There’s no point in lying,” he says in the same softly measured voice as before, bobbing a little with the vibration of the truck. “We heard about the deal—and everything.”

My hands ball at my sides, but I will my frustration down. “It sounds like the guardians were lying. What deal? What ‘everything’? I just broke you out of that torture building?—”

Jacob snorts and can’t seem to restrain his caustic remarks any longer. “ You ? When we found you, you were manning the control room, probably trying to figure out how to put the building in lockdown so we’d never make it out.”

“Why would I be— I went in there to let you out, because I had no idea you’d already managed it.”

“You had the door barricaded,” Zian puts in, his words coming out in a low growl. “It seemed like you were trying to save yourself.”

“Yeah, from the guardians.” I gesture vaguely. “I’d already taken down one just getting into the building. I didn’t know how many more were still inside who’d interfere.”