Page 94 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Five

Riva

A ndreas stumbles, a splotch of red blooming on his shirt sleeve. Even as the foil-wrapped food falls from my hands and I leap to him, more bolts hiss through the air.

Another strikes him across his temple, digging a gouge through his dark skin. Then there’s a clattering sound like a shower of hail.

I fling my arms around Andreas to pull him closer to both the nearest wall and the ground. Dominic is already racing over to us, his face tensed.

As I press my hand to the wound on Drey’s shoulder, as little as I can do for him with my touch, my head jerks around to seek out the source of the shots.

Jacob is crouched on the ground between the rest of us and the depths of the alley, his hands raised defensively. Several more gleaming bullets whip toward us and crash into the forcefield of telekinetic power he’s pushing them back with.

Those aren’t tranquilizer darts. Someone’s trying to kill us.

A clammy sensation squeezes around my gut.

“I can’t see who’s attacking us,” Zian says in a rough voice, his head swiveling as he scans the narrow street. “It looks like they’re shooting from someplace above. There!”

There’s a flicker of movement by a window. An arm jerking out, flinging something down toward us.

Alarm blares through my nerves. “Get out of here! Onto the street—where there’s more people.”

We hurtle out of the alley like one being, desperate for the shelter the crowded throughway can provide. Whoever’s attacking us, they won’t risk shooting innocent bystanders, right?

A boom reverberates from behind us, jolting the ground beneath my feet. I sling Andreas’s arm over my shoulders, holding him awkwardly with my lesser height even though my muscles are up to the challenge.

He curls his fingers into my shirt but runs alongside me, only swaying a little. But the sight of the blood streaking down the side of his face makes my stomach churn.

Dominic dashes next to us, gripping Drey’s hand. “I need something—” he gasps out. “The wounds are too deep—I have to get the energy from somewhere.”

Oh, hell, I didn’t even think of that.

The people on the sidewalk jerk away as we plunge into their midst, murmurs and exclamations rising up in our wake. I don’t need to understand the language to recognize that they’re disturbed.

Who wouldn’t be?

I spot a sapling growing from a pot on the far side of the street. That’s got to be enough, right?

I jab my hand toward it, and Dominic veers in that direction. Zian and Jacob thump along behind us.

“We’ve got to get farther away,” Jacob rasps out. “Whoever they are, we don’t want them following?—”

He doesn’t even have time to finish his warning. Hollers ring out, bouncing off the bright pastel storefronts.

Dominic lunges forward and smacks his free hand against the tree. I let Andreas slump against the pot and spin around.

A squad of figures in military-style uniforms are barging into the street from the same direction we came from, a few of them right out of our side-street. Whatever they’re shouting to the pedestrians clogging the wider throughway, the crowd is parting.

People are hurrying off in either direction. Cars grind to a halt, some of them backing up to navigate nearby cross-streets.

The soldiers raise their guns and point them straight at us.

“Shit,” Jacob hisses through his teeth. He catches my arm and pushes Andreas forward, herding us toward another street just a few buildings down.

Then his hand lashes out behind him. Two of the figures running toward us topple like action figures kicked by a toddler.

The other soldiers are barking orders at each other. They dodge their fallen companions and start shooting again.

More of the bullets ping against Jacob’s hurled power, but one whizzes right past my ear. I swallow a yelp and throw myself faster toward the corner, yanking Andreas with me.

The wound on his arm has to be killing him, but that’s better than him being literally killed.

As we dart around the bend, I fling a quick glance over my shoulder at the uniformed combatants pursuing us.

They all look like locals. I don’t see a single metal helmet either.

They aren’t guardians. So who the hell are they, and why the fuck are they trying to kill us?

“What’s going on?” I manage to say as we barrel past the bystanders on the less crowded street we’ve turned onto. “We haven’t even done anything!”

Dominic drags in a breath, his forehead already shining with sweat—probably because he’s managed to seal Andreas’s injuries enough to slow though not stop the bleeding.

“They’re saying something to each other about monsters. About the ones they were warned about.”

The clammy sensation from before turns into blades of ice lancing through my gut. “They were tipped off.”

Like the gangsters who came at me back in Miami—except a dozen times deadlier.

At least one of the shadowkind in Rollick’s crew took a page out of his disgraced colleague’s book.

Ursula Engel did tell us there were other organizations dedicated to ridding the world of shadowkind. One of our supposed allies must have found a local group and pointed them straight at us.

They found a way to arrange our deaths without having to risk their own hides even slightly.

Jacob lets out a string of curses through his gritted teeth. My own fury, sharpened by a sting of betrayal, surges up through my chest.

We never did a thing to the shadowkind. All we asked for was whatever help they’d freely give.

We turned to them instead of turning on them like our creator wanted, and they repaid us by trying to destroy us just like she did.

My power reverberates through me with the prickling of a scream at the base of my throat. But everywhere I look, I can’t help seeing the startled civilians darting away from us as more yells echo from down the street.

Whether this group of monster hunters are actually part of the military or they’ve stolen uniforms to make it look like they are, they’ve found a winning strategy for clearing their way. My talent isn’t as easy to aim as a gun, though.

Even as it claws at my lungs, begging me to pay our attackers back for the pain they’ve already caused the man beside me, I gird myself. I’m not going to tear through all these unknowing people on a rampage.

I don’t even know if doing it would save us. Who can tell where more of these assholes might be coming from?

All at once, I’m wishing I had tormented a few crabs and the other creatures Rollick would have set in front of me. Maybe then I could have chosen who I ripped into.

We shove toward the opposite sidewalk where there are still enough confused bystanders around to offer us some cover and hurtle onward into a broad courtyard that opens up in front of us.

But our attackers have obviously been warned that we wouldn’t go down easily. Another half a dozen of them come charging into view from the far end of the courtyard.

I whirl around, but the figures behind us are marching into view, closing in.

The two groups are trapping us between them. How much longer will Jacob be able to hold off even one set of bullets?

Andreas touches his still-bleeding forehead. “If I could mess with their minds—I can’t concentrate.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say urgently.

Zian waves his arm, his voice low and urgent. “Guys! Over here!”

We dash forward to an alley he’s spotted at one of the unguarded corners of the square. The thunder of more gunshots blares behind us.

A body slams into me from behind. We spin, my claws springing out, and then I see it’s only Jacob, wrenching me to the side.

Wrenching me to the side… while blood bubbles from the bullet he just took to his ribs.

He took it for me. Shielded me with his body when his power couldn’t offer enough protection.

“Jake,” I mumble, still scrambling forward.

His pale blue eyes dart wildly from side to side. “Just go. Go .”

“Dom!” I call out instinctively as we throw ourselves into the dingy alley.

But our healer is already a few steps ahead, still helping Andreas along—and he’s got nothing in this gritty laneway to draw energy from except himself.

If Dominic falters, then we might all be dead.

Jacob hustles along behind me, but his breaths sound labored, his steps uneven. Steadier footsteps and another barrage of shouts carry from the road beyond.

The lane swerves, giving us a momentary reprieve. We push ourselves faster, swing around another bend?—

And find ourselves staring at a six-foot-tall wooden fence that blocks the entire passage ahead.

Zian lets out a snarl and hurtles toward it like a battering ram. He hits the fence shoulder-first.

The boards crack but hold in place.

As he backs up to try again, the rest of us hurry over around him. Jacob lists to the side, clamping his hand against the bullet wound on his torso.

And at the same moment, the first of our pursuers springs around the bend.

Bullets boom out. Jacob grunts and casts out his power, but not quite fast enough.

Even as I leap toward the wall, a metal bolt catches me in the back. It sears into my chest with a blazing pain.

My lips part. A croak tumbles out of them.

I can’t get my breath. My lung is collapsing.

“Riva!” Jacob cries out, and sputters a sound that’s as much groan as growl.

Then something else groans, with a grating earthen quality. The sound resonates all around us, behind us, stretching through the alley.

Zian rams his shoulder into the fence again, and three of the boards shatter completely. I stagger toward him and trip over a stone.

I spin to catch my fall against the stone building beside me—and gape as the far end of that building comes crumbling down over the man who shot me like a landslide.

It’s Jacob. He’s lifted his blood-drenched hand alongside the other, the muscles flexing through his arms as he hauls the entire three-story structures on either side of the alley off their foundations.