Page 80 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Seventeen

Riva

A t a thunderous groan from above, I fling myself to the side and duck at the same time, my arms whipping up to shield my head. Which is the right move, because an instant later, shards of glass careen through the air like shrapnel.

One sliver slices across my shoulder. As I grit my teeth, the pain shoots through my chest.

A hand clamps around my elbow and yanks me farther to the side. The jolt sends a fresh pang through my shoulder, sharp enough that I can’t suppress a yelp.

A voice I recognize as Jacob’s swears. There’s a clanging sound nearby that could be another assault or his power lashing out—I can’t tell which.

The parking garage has fragmented into wavering shapes. With the nearest set of lights shattered, shadows drape our section around the RV.

I glimpse Rollick and a few of his people tensed and staring off toward the garage entrance just before Jacob tugs me the rest of the way around the RV to relative shelter.

He’s loosened his grip. As soon as he stops, he whirls around.

His gaze searches my body until he spots the cut. It’s shallow, but blood is trickling down my arm.

Jacob’s face goes rigid. One of the rearview mirrors snaps off its bracket like it was made of Styrofoam rather than steel.

Okay, that move was definitely him.

The other guys rush around to join us, their expressions panicked.

“Dom!” Jacob barks, low and terse. “Get over here. Riva’s hurt.”

Even after everything Dominic said to me last night, my body balks at the thought of him extending his powers. “I’m fine. It’s shallow, nothing?—”

But Dom is already next to me, his fingers curling around my upper arm just below the cut. The worry in his eyes and the whiff of fear he gives off stop me from protesting further.

As the warmth of his healing ability washes over my shoulder, Zian and Andreas close in tighter around us in defensive stances. They both shoot me concerned glances before peering across the dimmed parking garage.

“What the hell is going on?” Jacob mutters. “That wasn’t any accident.”

Zian’s muscles flex. His frame grows a few inches in a partial shift with a spurt of fur along the back of his neck.

His voice comes out in a growl. “There’s someone up near the entrance. A bunch of people.”

A chill prickles through me. “Guardians?”

He pauses. “Yeah. It’s got to be. I think I can see a few helmets.”

“Fuck.” Andreas glances toward the RV. “Let’s get out of here. We can drive right through them if we have to.”

The words are just leaving his mouth when an ominous warbling sound rises up from the RV’s engine area. Like a rush of flames has just flared up inside it.

The image flickers from my memory of the fire started by one of the younger shadowbloods when the guardians ambushed us at the Airbnb.

I snatch hold of Dominic’s sleeve and yank him with me. “Get away from it!”

All five of us hurtle forward, staying close to the concrete wall. The next second, the RV’s hood blasts open with a burst of fire.

We’re still close enough that the heat singes my skin. Zian lunges in front of me, wincing as a few bits of smoldering debris must hit him.

Our attackers must be a squad of guardians—they’ve managed to find us again. Did they track our presence to the garage after we left last night and lie in wait hoping we’d return?

Or have they developed some new way of finding us that takes them even less time than before?

Flames dance across the RV’s inner workings. It’s obviously we’re not driving our house-on-wheels anywhere anytime soon.

But no footsteps come pounding across the concrete floor. I can make out several figures mostly poised by the far end of the garage now, lurking in the shadows on either side of the entrance, but they make no move to charge.

“Why aren’t they coming at us?” I murmur.

The answer comes to us in the form of a shout echoing beneath the low ceiling. “Jacob, Andreas, Riva, Zian, Dominic. It’s time you came home. You don’t understand what you’ve gotten yourself into. Those monsters will eat your souls.”

I flinch at the sound of my name, but as the man goes on, understanding sinks in. They’ve realized we were talking with shadowkind here.

“They’re afraid of completely storming the place in case the ‘monsters’ fight them,” Dominic says under his breath, coming to the same conclusion.

Why aren’t the shadowkind already attacking the intruders after their aggressive arrival?

I look to where Rollick is standing and find him as tensed as we are. He doesn’t look particularly afraid, but his mouth is set at an uncomfortable angle like he isn’t at all pleased about the new arrivals either.

The few shadowkind who’ve kept their physical forms around him are watching his reactions. Cinder tips her head toward him and says something I can’t hear.

They’re all braced for a sudden movement, twice as on edge as he appears to be.

They haven’t decided what to do. The guardians raised us hoping we’d be able to destroy shadowkind—they probably have other methods of striking out at our tentative allies too.

Even if those methods aren’t particularly effective, why should the “monsters” we’ve turned to take the risk on our behalf? They could just vanish into the shadows and pretend this confrontation never happened.

My lips part… but I’m not totally sure I want to appeal of Rollick to help us get out of this standoff.

The guardians know a lot more about the shadowkind than we do. They’ve clashed with them who knows how many times.

They’ve seen enough horrors from the creatures they call monsters that they believed raising partly monstrous warriors to defend the human race was a reasonable measure.

And we’ve already seen horrors, haven’t we? One of those shadowkind paid off a bunch of goons to try to murder me, just to test how we’d use our powers.

Rollick responded to that overstep by gouging his colleague’s throat.

And just now, the demon was cajoling me into exercising my twisted powers. Insisting that I need to inflict more pain, refusing to try any tactic to simply keep that talent under wraps, no matter how much I hate it.

Was his insistence really for my benefit or for his, because some part of him enjoys seeing pain dealt out?

The guardian’s voice rings out again. “Stop fighting and return to us, and we’ll make sure you’re safe. They can’t touch you at the facilities. And anything they’ve already done that you might not even know, we’ll fix it.”

A creeping sensation tickles up my bare arms. I hug myself, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

Is it possible? Could the shadowkind have inflicted powers on us that we haven’t even noticed?

Of course they could have. They can slip in and out of shadows, move through the world totally invisibly. There could be thousands of them around us right now that we have no idea about.

Who knows how much else they’re capable of doing without giving any sign at all?

Jacob’s face has hardened even more than before. “I’m not going back to that fucking prison,” he says under his breath. “ Those monsters killed Griffin.”

I swallow thickly. I don’t want to go back to the facility—to one of the facilities, since it sounds like there are even more than we know about?—either.

“Can we get past them on our own?” I ask. “Without the RV? Zee, do you know how many we’re dealing with?”

Zian squints through the dim light. “I think I’ve counted twelve inside. But we’re too far away for me to look through the walls. There could be more ready to rush in if they have to.”

To my surprise, it’s Dominic who speaks up in favor of the shadowkind. “If we’re going to ask Rollick and his crew to help us, we’d better do it soon, or they might just leave.”

I glance at him, taking in his taut but always handsome face in the wavering light from the flames still licking up from the front of the RV. “You think we should trust them?”

Andreas’s mouth tightens. “We don’t know what kind of deal we might be making if we ask for that kind of help. What it might turn out we owe them after.”

“I don’t see any way we’re fighting our way out through who knows how many guardians and other shadowbloods too,” Dom says. “Not on our own, not when they’re ready for us, right between us and the only escape route. Maybe some of us would make it… but that’s not good enough for me.”

My stomach knots. I shake my head. “No. We stick together.”

We are blood . The words we used to say to each other as kids and teens resonate through me.

I’m not ready to say them yet, not ready to call the guys who hurt me anything like family again, but I’m also not going to sacrifice them for my own escape.

My gaze slides back to the cluster of shadowkind, just as Cinder blinks out of view, along with one of the shadowkind men whose name I didn’t get. My pulse hitches.

They’re already starting to leave, deciding they have no dog in this fight. Why would they want to listen to the guardians talk to them like that?

They’re our blood too. We’re half shadow, half human like the guardians.

How can we know which side has our best interests more at heart?

What if neither of them does?

Zian stiffens, more fur sprouting along his shoulders as he does. “A few more guardians just came in. One of them was carrying something—it looked like a gun, but I’ve never seen one that big.”

A shiver ripples through my body. Our time is running out.

As if to add emphasis to that suspicion, the man hollers at us one more time, sounding a little impatient. “You can’t trust them. They’ll use you and spit you out. Make the smart choice and end this now.”

The slight edge in his voice raises my hackles. Use us and spit us out —isn’t that exactly what the guardians have done all these years?

Why am I even considering believing a single thing they’d say?

The shadowkind might not have the exact standards of morality I’d prefer, but only one of them has actually tried to hurt us. The rest, as far as I can tell, have genuinely been trying to help, whether I’ve liked their advice or not.

Footsteps are starting to scrape across the concrete now.

I suck in a breath, my heart thumping, and turn to the guys. “I think we know who our real allies are, even if they’re not perfect. We can’t do this alone.”

The guys all nod except Andreas, who hesitates. Then he tips his head too with a grimace.

The second I get his acceptance, I spin toward Rollick. He’s waving off the massive green-skinned man, turning on his heel as if he’s going to leave too.

Shit.

“Wait!” I burst out, darting over. “We—we can’t fight them off alone. We still need your help.”

Rollick halts and raises his eyebrows at me. “You want to throw in your lot with the monsters who’ll steal your souls?”

I make a face at the wry note in his voice. “We’re more like you than we are like them. Please. I don’t know how we’re going to get through this without you.”

Rollick makes a gesture, and a few more shadowkind materialize around us. A quiver runs through my veins with the sense that there are definitely several more lurking unseen.

“What exactly do you want us to do?” he asks. “Our methods aren’t necessarily pretty.”

My guys have come up behind me. “Give those assholes everything they deserve,” Jacob says in a caustic tone.

“But not the young ones,” I jump in with a skip of my pulse. “The teenagers—they’re like us. They’re being forced. Just—just scare them off. The guardians knew what they were getting into. I don’t care what you do to them.”

Rollick nods. “Fine. Let’s get this done before it turns into an even bigger mess.”

“Do you want—” Andreas starts.

The shadowkind near us have already leapt into the shadows. I gulp a breath—and then the chaos starts.

There’s a clang and a crunch of smashed bone. Shouts that sound more panicked than irritated bounce through the garage.

By the entrance way, the figures scatter, dark shapes rearing in their midst.

A clawed hand severs a helmet-clad head right off its neck. Electricity crackles through the air, and two bodies seize up in spasms.

The smell of burnt flesh reaches our noses. My stomach churns.

“Should we… go help them?” Zian says with an uncertain expression.

Dominic shakes his head. “I think we might just get in the way.”

We thought we were skilled fighters, but we’ve got nothing on these, well, monsters who can leap in and out of shadows and wield their powers and supernatural strength with total confidence.

There’s a boom, maybe from that gun Zian saw, and a large black mark appears on one of the cement columns. The shadowkind don’t even slow down.

Gurgles and pained grunts fill the air. I spot a few figures fleeing out up the entrance ramp, away from the bodies now littering the floor.

That’s what we called down on the guardians. That’s what we asked for.

I’m as responsible for the carnage here as I was when my scream wrenched through our attackers before.

But I can’t say I regret it. Not when the vision of Griffin crumpling flashes behind my eyes.

Not when I think of all the torment they put us through over the years and the stories the guys have told me about what happened after I was dragged away.

The guardians don’t see us as anything but tools. They’d kill us too if they didn’t want so badly to use us.

Two final figures scramble out into the streaks of sunlight. Several shadowkind emerge into view among the slumped corpses.

“Some army,” one of them mutters disdainfully.

We hustle over to join them. My gaze skims over the fallen guardians—and jars on a smaller, skinnier form.

It’s the girl I spotted during the ambush in Toronto.

Her dark hair fans out around her pale face, which is smeared with blood. Her chest has been gouged open, innards spilling across the ground and puffs of smoky essence drifting up.

Nausea rolls over me. I cringe away and jerk my attention toward Rollick. “You weren’t supposed to kill the kids.”

Rollick glances at the girl and shrugs. I can’t read the emotion behind his dark blue eyes.

“In every battle, there’ll be a few unexpected casualties. It’s rarely a scenario that allows perfect precision. Would you rather that was you brought down by the mortals we just saved you from?”

A shiver runs through me. “No.”

But I didn’t exactly want this either.

Did we really make the right choice?

Rollick doesn’t allow us any time to debate that question. He makes a sweeping motion toward the entrance.

“Mortals or not, they managed to find us here—and slip past my sentries, which I’ll have to investigate. Clearly I underestimated this group. We need to get you out of Miami, now.”