Page 84 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

“None of this is working. They’re not like us.”

Rollick turns to him. “We’ve only tried a few strategies so far.”

The other man grunts. “We’re risking everything over?—”

He cuts himself off with a jerk of his head, but the frustration in his voice digs into my bones. What’s his problem with us?

Rollick looks as if he may have restrained an eye roll. As I set the platter aside, he strides toward his shadowkind companions, gesturing for them to gather with him near the front cabin.

“If you’re so concerned about using our time effectively, you can use that thick head of yours to generate some other possibilities.”

Kudzu lets out a huff, but he follows, along with Cinder and a couple of the others. The tentacled man—Torrent—appears out of the shadows to join their cluster.

Pearl leans closer to me, giving off a whiff of a smoky rose scent. She raises her finger as if to touch one of the marks on my chest, but I step back instinctively, releasing my shirt so the neckline springs back up to cover them with a jostle of my pendant.

The shadowkind girl claps her hand to her mouth with an abashed expression. “Sorry! I just—I’ve never seen something like that before.”

“Me neither,” I say dryly, eyeing the woman.

She’s awfully nosy. Is that a succubus thing or just a Pearl thing?

Her smile springs back into place, and she waves to the slim guy who helped bring the silver platters over. “Billy, come meet them!”

The guy walks over to us tentatively, his pale eyes gone wide beneath his chaotic brown waves. As he gets close, I realize that two of those waves aren’t hair at all.

He has spiraling horns protruding on either side of his head, closer to beige than brown and poking too high to be disguised by his locks.

“Billy’s like me,” Pearl announces, slinging her arm around his narrow shoulders. “Well, he’s a faun, not any kind of cubi. But he hasn’t been in the mortal world much. So many fun things to learn.”

The horned guy’s gaze roves over all of us, including Andreas and Jacob as they cross the deck to rejoin our group. His voice comes out breathless. “Have you ever gone in a plane before? This is my first time even on a boat. They say you can swim in the water, but I don’t know…”

He tugs at a lock of his hair, glancing toward the ocean with a nervous expression. A pang reverberates through my chest.

I know what it’s like to feel like a newbie in the world, even if not quite the same way as this guy.

“We haven’t actually gotten to experience a whole lot so far ourselves,” I say. “Most of our lives, we were locked up in one building.”

Pearl tsks her tongue. “That’s so unfair of them. You have all this amazing world to run around in and they shut you up in one tiny little part of it.”

Is that why she’s so overeager too—because she hasn’t spent much time around people? Or mortals, as the shadowkind seem to call us?

That could explain the lack of manners and personal boundaries.

Dominic must be thinking along similar lines. “Where do you go when you’re not here? I take it shadowkind don’t start out in our world?”

Pearl laughs. “Oh, no. We come into being in the shadow realm. We can only get here through rifts. I need to make the trip, because I’ve got to feed, but I only became, like, a year ago.”

Zian’s brow knits. “You’re only a year old?”

She motions to her curvaceous body as if putting herself on display. “We come the way we’re always going to be. No growing up. We weren’t there, and then we are.”

“Like magic,” Andreas says dryly.

Pearl claps her hands. “Yes. Just like that.”

Billy ducks his head awkwardly, his face turning ruddy beneath his light brown complexion that’s a lot like Dominic’s. “I’ve been alive for longer than that. But I can’t mingle with mortals when they’ll notice these.” He motions to his horns.

Jacob cocks his head. “Can’t you just think them away like Rollick does with his claws?”

“Oh, no,” Pearl says. “We can’t leave our shadowkind selves behind completely. Everyone’s got one thing that sticks.”

She pushes up one fluttery sleeve of her dress to reveal a band of glittering gold that winds across the normal creamy skin. “It goes right across my chest to my other arm. But I can cover it up, or people think it’s a strange tattoo.”

“Some of us can hide our sticky features better than others,” Billy says.

“Yeah.” Pearl squints at all of us. “But you five don’t seem to have any at all.” She glances at Dominic. “Well, except for you, but you said those only grew in later. That’s got to be a hybrid thing.”

Footsteps rap across the polished wooden boards toward us.

“Keeping our guests entertained?” Rollick saunters over to our end of the deck with an amused expression.

Pearl grins at him. “Someone should with those grumps around.”

The mention of the “grumps” brings back the knot in my stomach. I hesitate and then force out the question. “Why are some of them bothered by us? It seems like they’re upset that you’re helping us at all.”

Rollick pauses before he answers, which makes all my nerves twinge with apprehension. He’s trying to decide how to tell us something we won’t want to hear.

“Our community, such as it is, has some… mixed feelings about hybrids,” he says.

Zian glances down at his brawny frame. “They don’t like that we’re part human?”

“Not exactly.” Rollick appears to weigh his words again before continuing.

“None of us have much experience with beings like you. Honestly, before you showed up, I was only aware of three other hybrids in the entire length of my multi-millennia existence, and two of those were almost immediately snuffed out by our de facto rulers.”

My body tenses. “They were killed ?”

Rollick spreads his hands. “I’m sure it’s difficult for you to understand from the inside.

But to us, on the outside… You’re the ultimate wild cards.

You’ve already seen some of that. You have powers that can rival our own—in some cases, overwhelm most regular shadowkind—and none of the weaknesses that can keep us in check. ”

“We can’t jump into the shadows like you,” Jacob points out. “We can die .”

I can tell from the edge in his voice that he’s thinking of Griffin.

“Well, you may be able to do the former with some training. And we can die too, just with a fair bit of difficulty.” Rollick offers us a crooked smile.

“So, they’re… jealous of us?” I ask, still trying to wrap my head around where the resentment is coming from.

Rollick chuckles. “Maybe a little. But it’s more that you’re a threat. Past hybrids have proven difficult to control, as you yourselves are finding with your abilities. We don’t know how destructive you might become—toward us, or toward mortals, which will draw attention to the rest of us.”

Pearl nods, her voice dropping to an awed whisper. “They say the last hybrid nearly burned up the whole planet.”

My jaw goes slack. “What?”

As my gaze slides to the grim figures watching at the other side of the deck, my spirits sink.

No wonder they’re so hostile. No wonder we’ve seen signs of fear from even the powerful shadowkind.

We’re an unknown quantity, and one that could screw them up and screw them over in ways they can’t even prepare for.

We’re lucky Rollick is sticking his neck out even this much.

My next question tumbles out, propelled by a sudden chill. “What do the others want you to do with us? Do they think you should kill us too?”

Rollick snorts. “Don’t worry about that. I can see that you’re not on the verge of burning up the whole world or anything so catastrophic.” He gives me a meaningful look. “At least, as long as you give those powers more practice to make sure you have a grip on them.”

As I squirm internally at his insinuation, he rubs his hands together. “In any case, Torrent has set off through the waters to head back to land. He’ll make some inquiries along with other associates of mine to see if we can’t track down these facilities your guardians are running.”

Zian perks up. “We’re going to go rescue the other shadowbloods?”

“We’re going to see if that’s a feasible course of action.”

I should feel victorious. That was my idea, and Rollick is actually pursuing it.

But I can’t shake the uneasy weight the conversation has placed on my shoulders.

He didn’t say that the other shadowkind don’t want us dead, only that we shouldn’t worry they’ll succeed in making it happen.

Is he the only thing standing between us and a total slaughter?

If the humans who made us think we’re too dangerous to exist, and the shadowkind they’ve fought against feel the same way… where can we possibly belong?

Monsters exist, sure. And it turns out my guys and I are the only thing the monsters are scared of.