Page 9 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Andreas cocks his head. “I don’t remember seeing any bodies lying around when we left.”

“I shoved her into a storage room so the body wouldn’t tip off anyone else!”

“So there’s also no proving it now—very convenient,” Jacob sneers.

Why are they finding this so hard to understand?

I just barely keep my voice steady, my throat getting ever tighter with an ache that digs way deeper than any of the pain Jacob inflicted with his physical attack.

“Why do you think the guardians went rushing out of the facility in the first place? How do you think you got your opening to break out of your cells? Why the hell would I have been doing anything other than trying to help you?”

Have you all gone fucking insane ? I restrain myself from adding.

What did the guardians do to them? How have they warped the guys I loved so horribly that they don’t even know me, not properly, anymore?

Jacob glowers at me, his expression so stark with loathing it cuts me right to the core.

“I don’t know what enemies those assholes have made who might have decided to mess with them.

I do know that you bargained with the pricks for better treatment, gave up my brother as a fucking blood sacrifice, and then waltzed off to enjoy your cushy new privileges someplace you never had to see us again. ”

I’m shaking my head before I’m even consciously aware of the movement. Is that what they really think?

“I’d never have done that. How can you even believe— They caught us. Right outside the facility while we were waiting for you. We’d done everything according to plan, but they must have known and been prepared…”

“Why don’t you tell us what exactly you claim happened that night?” Andreas says, still unusually terse.

I drag in a breath. Are we going to get somewhere now?

“Griffin used his ability to make one of the guardians want to open his door and then mine, just like we discussed. I knocked the guy out, but he didn’t have keycards for the other floors. So we went up to the control room and opened all of your cells.”

Zian nods slowly. “They opened.”

Jacob flicks his glare toward the other guy before aiming it back at me. “And then?”

“Then we headed out to make sure the front yard was clear. We thought it was at first. Griffin couldn’t sense anyone nearby, and I didn’t see or hear anyone. It must have been a sniper who shot him.”

A lump of grief blocks off my voice for a second before I recover it. “And then a bunch of guardians all rushed in, and they shot me too, and zapped me with tasers so I couldn’t move…”

One of my hands lifts to my shoulder instinctively, but I know before I say anything more that they won’t find my scar convincing—not if they’re doubting everything else I said.

The guardians patched me up well before delivering me to the boss of the arena as merchandise. The remnant of the bullet wound looks more like it was a shallow stab mark, not a shot.

“That’s all that happened?” Dominic asks.

My mind flits momentarily to the kiss—that giddy, glorious, stupid act that might have cost us everything. Every nerve in my body balks against admitting that one factor in my carelessness.

It doesn’t make a difference… other than making me look pathetic.

“That’s all,” I say. “Obviously I wasn’t alert enough—you have no idea how much I wish I’d picked up on the threat in time?—”

Jacob folds his arms over his chest. “And where did you supposedly go that’s kept you away for four years?”

I grit my teeth at the “supposedly” and force them to relax.

“The guardians sold me to some crime boss who ran underground cage matches. I became his star fighter. It was either fight or they’d kill me, and if I was dead I wouldn’t have been able to come back for you.

He kept me under tight security. I never left my room there except for the weekly fights. ”

A ragged laugh sputters out of Jacob. “Such a fantastic sob story—and how perfect that you did it all for our benefit. How long did it take you to come up with that script? What a load of absolute bullshit.”

I stiffen against a flinch. “It’s not bullshit. It’s what happened.”

There’s a stretch of stony silence between the guys. I can’t tell if any of them are even really considering that I might be telling the truth.

Whatever story the guardians beat into their brains, they must have framed it awfully well. But still.

These were my guys. We were all each other had—we were in it together until the end.

We are blood.

They should know I’d never have turned on them.

Zian glances at Andreas, the tarp warbling against his hands as the truck sways around a curve in the highway. “Can you check her memories? That’d give us a quick answer about what really happened after.”

Andreas grimaces. “Not particularly quick. There isn’t much science to it, remember. I don’t have much to narrow it down.”

He lifts his chin toward me. “Do you have the name of anyone who was at this cage-fighting place—this crime boss and his goons who made you fight?”

I wince inwardly. “No. They barely talked to me, and I didn’t get much chance to overhear anything.”

Jacob shifts his weight with a shudder of the truck bed. “Isn’t that convenient too?”

“Not really,” I retort. “Since I’d like to be able to prove to you that I’m not some kind of murdering traitor.”

Andreas’s mouth has remained twisted. He clasps his lean hands together in front of him. “I’ll try. Maybe I’ll find something.”

He doesn’t ask my permission, just fixes his gaze on me.

The Andreas I knew would never have invaded my head without making sure I was okay with the intrusion. But when I look up, the ruddy glow of his power is already flickering in his eyes, as if the process of delving inside my head requires some part of him to burn.

I can’t feel him inside my skull, but my skin itches with the knowledge that he’s shuffling through fragments of images and conversations. But if it means he stumbles on the truth about that night, then it’s worth it.

We hold there in silence through a few more jostles of the truck and the brightening of the daylight seeping through the tarp. Sweat beads on Andreas’s forehead. His eyes jitter, and he yanks his attention away from me with a swipe of his sleeve across his hairline.

“I didn’t come across anything definitive,” he says to the other guys, his voice gone rough. “I got one glimpse of a cage fight, but no way to tell how often they were or whether she volunteered for it.”

“Then we stick with what we know.” Jacob scowls down at me. “And what we know is this bitch is a manipulative schemer who’d stab us in the back too the second she gets the chance. So why the hell don’t you let me finish what I started?”

“Jake,” Zian says, and then doesn’t seem to know how to continue.

Andreas speaks up again, sounding weary but firm. “It’s a sorry state of the world when I’m the voice of reason around here, but like I said before, we need her. If she’s been working with the guardians right there in the facility, she must know things about their plans and how they’ll operate.”

Dominic inclines his head slowly. “She could know what steps they’ll take trying to track us down, so we can evade them better.”

“Exactly. And who knows what she’s seen or heard that could help us with the next phase?”

“What next phase?” I demand. “And I don’t know anything about what the guardians are doing, because I haven’t even been in the facility or seen any of them for four years until last night.”

The guys all ignore me. “Then we hold on to her until we figure out what we can get out of her,” Zian suggests.

I want to believe there’s a tiny bit of hesitance in his voice, but at this point I’m not convinced that’s more than wishful thinking.

Jacob’s lips curl as if the idea of keeping me around disgusts him, but he sighs. “Fine. But she is going to get what’s coming to her one way or another.”

He swivels on his heel and stalks to the edge of the tarp. Lifting it, he gazes out over the brightening landscape beyond the truck.

“Traffic’s starting to pick up,” he says. “And the guardians will probably be able to guess we ended up on a vehicle going one way or the other along this highway. We should get off while we can without being noticed and continue the conversation far away from here.”