Page 99 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Eight

Riva

J acob and I don’t speak, only dash for the door. One of my hands fumbles in my cargo pants’ pockets for a knife; the other flicks its claws free.

I don’t know how much good either of those weapons will do me against the monsters and their powers, but I’m not going in unarmed.

Jacob must have the same thought, because the purple spines that hold his poison spring from his forearms. He takes the stairs two at a time, every movement honing to brutal intensity.

I can see in each stride the vulnerability he showed me falling away, his icy confidence snapping back into place as he prepares for battle.

This is what his anger did for him. It gave him armor to face all the shit the guardians threw at him when he had nothing else to hold him together.

I still cringe at the memories of how he aimed his rage at me, but I’m not sure I can say I wish he’d never had it.

Andreas was already hurtling up to the deck ahead of us. At the rasp of footsteps behind, I glance over my shoulder to see Dominic following us.

His tan face has taken on a sickly tone, but he manages to shoot a tight smile at me.

We burst out into the warm morning air on the deck, right on each other’s heels. On this small yacht, there’s barely room for us to fan out in a semi-circle without bumping into the railing.

Zian stands with muscles bulging threateningly in the middle of the deck, facing the dock. His face is still mostly human, but his wolf-man fangs jut from his mouth, claws twice as thick as mine arcing from his fingertips.

In the crisp early sunlight, five figures watch us from the dock, a few steps away from the bow of our boat.

Cinder has her slim arms folded over her chest, the fingers of one hand drumming the opposite elbow. Kudzu matches Zian’s aggressive pose with his ropier muscles flexing.

I don’t know the names of the other three, but they stood with Cinder and Kudzu when they kicked us off the ship.

It’s almost definitely one of those five who pointed the hunters at us.

There’s no sign of anyone potentially friendly to us. How did this bunch track us down?

Why did they track us down? Did they realize their human dupes didn’t perform adequately and decided it was time to finish the job?

As that last question passes through my mind, a tremor of caustic energy wakes up at the base of my chest.

These beings wanted us dead. They cast us out, treated us like we were the monsters.

My mind feels jumbled from the wrenching conversation with Jacob, but one clear, quivering thread of resolve winds through my body.

I am not letting these fiends hurt any of us again.

In the split-second of that decision, a sixth figure materializes farther up the dock, just across from our yacht’s hull. Rollick studies us with a typical air of nonchalance, but there’s a fiery smolder in his eyes that I don’t like the look of.

“See,” Kudzu says in a brusque tone. “I told you they’d all be here where I saw the one guy.”

Rollick lets out a dismissive sound. “That’s hardly an impressive revelation. I’d have been more surprised if they’d split up.”

Cinder hisses through her teeth with an electric sizzle. “They’ve made a mess of their stolen boat too. Blood and body parts all over the place. They’re beasts .”

I wince inwardly at the reference to Jacob’s gift.

His jaw only hardens. “I took care of the real beasts. The ones you sent after us.”

One of the other shadowkind scoffs. “You can’t blame us if you’re such a hazard the local hunters caught on the moment you stepped on shore.”

A choked guffaw tumbles out of me. I know we aren’t that noticeable.

“We’ve roamed all across North America before now and never been attacked by anyone other than guardians… oh, and the thugs one of your crew paid off to kill us.”

The tremor spreads through my limbs beneath my skin. I want to tear through every one of them—but I don’t know if I can.

I don’t know how bad the backlash might be if I try and fail. I could make things even worse.

And there’s still a chance—Rollick has stood up for us through everything, hasn’t he?

The demon is eyeing us with the same edge of skepticism I sensed at first glance. “You did make an awful mess of this city. Pulling down entire buildings, leaving mutilated bodies strewn around parking lots.”

Andreas raises his chin, and I remember that Jacob said Drey came with him on his mission tonight. “We did what we had to do to protect ourselves. It’d have been a lot less messy if your people hadn’t set us up to be attacked.”

“And if they hadn’t kicked us off the ship in the first place,” Zian growls.

A fierce crackle runs through Cinder’s voice. “We were protecting our own. You’re like rabid dogs—and we all know what humans do with those. Is it so awful for us to take the same tactic?”

Her sneering words fling me back to Ursula Engel’s living room, to hearing the woman who created us call us abominations she couldn’t wait to see slaughtered. My claws shoot from my knife hand, pricking into my palm.

“We didn’t ask to be this way,” I snap.

She narrows her eyes at me. “You’re not trying very hard to rein yourselves in. You’ve been arguing with Rollick every step of the way.”

“Well, forgive me for not wanting to go around torturing random creatures for my own training.” My claws dig right into the flesh of my hand, the pang of pain grounding me just a little against the internal claws scrabbling to break free from my lungs.

The shadowkind woman in front of me isn’t an innocent creature. She’s made it amply clear that she’s my enemy.

But lashing out at her is exactly what they all expect, isn’t it? It’d be an excuse to justify slaughtering us all if I can’t carry through.

And then where will we be? Stuck here in a country we’re not familiar with, where only two of us even speak the language, with resources that’ll quickly dwindle and possibly more hunters already on the alert?

“We all make sacrifices,” Kudzu mutters. “It’s obvious you’d rather hold on to your delicate sensibilities than do what’s necessary to keep anyone else safe.”

I can’t hold back a snort. My delicate sensibilities?

Maybe when I was two years old, if then.

Jacob has turned his full attention on Rollick. I can tell from the tension in his stance that he’s braced to whip out his telekinetic talent the second it’s needed.

“What about you?” he demands. “They tossed us out against your orders, and that’s just fine with you?”

Rollick’s voice turns slightly brittle. “No, it’s not. And they’ll face consequences for their actions. But that doesn’t mean I can’t reevaluate my own decisions in light of new information.”

“You’re really blaming us for fighting back when those hunters nearly killed us?” I burst out. The quiver of a shriek climbs partway up my throat, nipping at my vocal cords.

“Your methods appear rather overblown compared to the actual threat. I have mentioned at least once or twice how important it is that we keep our abilities under wraps around the regular mortal population.”

Cinder nods sharply. “Exactly so that more of those pricks don’t decide to take up arms against us.”

Dominic speaks up, his voice as even as always but propelled with more force than usual. “We wouldn’t have needed to fight at all if you hadn’t tipped them off. It wasn’t because of us. None of us had done more than walk up the street and buy some dinner.”

Kudzu grunts. “It makes a lot more sense that you fucked up than that we went running to ally with humans.”

“Except one of you already did before,” I remind them, my temper flaring hotter. “It wouldn’t even be the first time this week.”

Rollick swivels on his heel to contemplate his companions. “It is true that there’s a precedent for sending murderous mortals after this bunch. If you deliberately provoked them, then?—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cinder breaks in, her words warbling with frustration. “Let’s just end this. She’s the biggest problem.”

Her slender forefinger jabs at me, and in the same instant, the four shadowkind standing with her spring into action.

Kudzu and one of the beings hurl themselves right over the railing onto the deck of the yacht. Another flings his hand forward, and blazing light sears across my eyes.

I throw myself down on the floor to dodge any other attacks, braced to strike out or roll away. Dark spots stay hazed across my vision.

Jacob lets out a yell, and one of the figures on the deck goes flying all the way across the dock to crash into the rocky shoreline. But Kudzu charges at Jake and heaves him over the side to plummet into the water.

Blinking hard to try to clear my eyes, I lunge at the gangly shadowkind man—but Zian shoves in front of me with a roar. He slashes at Kudzu and reels backward with a bone-cracking punch to his wolfish snout.

Andreas blinks in and out of view, jabbing a knife at Kudzu. But another of the shadowkind has leapt onto the deck and kicks him in the ribs with a spike that juts from the back of her heel.

Kudzu rams Zian over the railing after Jacob. And Cinder steps to the edge of the deck with a current of electricity hissing between her hands.

I leap to the railing, my stomach flipping over. She’s going to electrocute them—burn them to oblivion right there in the water.

Because they rushed in to help me . They’re going to die because they wanted to defend me from the only real villains around here.

The furious anguish of that realization tears up through my chest. The scream explodes from my mouth at full throttle.

I don’t even have to think to deflect its effects from my men now. The vicious thing inside me recognizes them from the thrum of our blood, the torture already entwining us through our shared history.

Inflicting more of that torment isn’t what it wants. It wants the monsters who tried to tear us down to suffer, every possible drop of agony wrung out of them.

My scream reverberates across the yacht and the deck, slamming into all six of the shadowkind who confronted us. I can taste them yanking and flailing against its grip like bugs on flypaper—and my hunger doesn’t know how long I can hold them.

I might not have much time to drink down all the pain this part of me is craving.

My fury narrows down onto Cinder first, my nerves buzzing at the electricity still sizzling in her hands. My intent rips through her from feet to forehead.

Hit her as hard as I can. Batter her, break her.

The shriek still ringing from my throat twists her ankles and shatters her kneecaps. It digs through her innards like a jagged blade.

Split open her ribs. Dislocate both her shoulders. Then blast her menacing skull right in two.

Send her crumpling into the smoky mishmash she’s actually made of.

Just as my attention jerks away from her crumpling, mutilated form to latch on to a new target, a slim form bursts out of the shadows at the foot of the dock, racing toward us.

“Leave her alone! You’re making her?—”

The focus of my scream veers to the newcomer, pummeling him with a hitch of breath and a shock of alarm through my senses.

More, there’s more of them than I thought—I have to crush them all before?—

“Riva, don’t!” a voice I vaguely recognize cries out. “It’s Billy! He wanted to help; he was trying to?—”

Billy . The name sinks in through the shriek that’s echoing through my mind.

The delicate frame that’s cracking so easily under the pressure of my voice, the horns poking from the jumbled waves of hair?—

Horror hits me like a wave of icy water. I wrench myself backward and trip onto my ass—but the impact of my body against the deck breaks the momentum of my scream.

My voice cuts off with a stutter. And I stare with pulse thrumming and throat aching at the two smoking bodies sprawled across the dock.

The one I meant to destroy—and the one that tried to be my friend.

The cry that tumbles out of me next has no pain in it but my own.

No. Oh, no.

What the fuck have I done?