Page 128 of Shadowblood Souls
My throat constricts, but I don’t see any point in lying about it.
They saw everything. We might as well get it all out now so they can be as revolted as they’re going to be.
My voice comes out scratchy. “The power latches on to any place it can cause pain. Like it feeds off hurting people as much as possible before they die.”
“With that scream.” Jacob taps the floor. “Like a banshee.”
“A what?” Zian says.
I can hear Jacob’s baleful glower without even opening my eyes. “Don’t you remember that big fat mythology book we all passed around when we were kids? The one Griffin loved.”
His voice goes just a little rough with those last few words, mentioning his twin. My hand rises automatically to grip my cat-and-yarn necklace, the one Griffin gave me.
The only thing any of us has left of him.
I can’t grip it too hard, though—can’t snap the rotating pieces open and shut like I used to when I was feeling tense. I broke it during that last argument with Jacob, and he was only able to partly fix it on his own.
As I let myself take in the darkened train car again, Dominic tilts his head to the side. “Weren’t banshees the ones that screamed to warn that death was coming? I don’t think they did the actual killing.”
Jacob shrugs. “It’s not as if our powers fit into neat little boxes. I don’t remember any monsters that grew poison spikes and moved things with their minds.” He runs his fingers over one forearm where his deadly spines can emerge.
The guys lapse into another momentary silence. Then Andreas fixes me with his gaze, almost like he’s going to peer inside my memories, though no ruddy light comes into his dark grey eyes.
“That night at the farmhouse,” he says carefully. “When you ran toward the train… You said you didn’t want to hurt us. You were trying to stop the new power from coming out?”
I have the urge to curl up inside myself, to recoil from the question. But he obviously already knows.
I got so close to the verge that night, a little sound burst out of me. I saw him flinch. He’s putting the pieces together.
I make myself speak. “I was—after everything?—”
The words clog in my throat.After we had sex. After the shadows in our blood tied us together.
The act felt so precious in the moments after—until I overheard Andreas admitting that he’d gotten close to me just to dig for information. To figure out how much of a traitor I was.
He’s apologized too. He’s claimed that he wasn’t trying to use me when we melded together like one being. But I don’t know how much to believe that either.
I swallow thickly and propel myself onward. “After what we did, my nerves were all keyed up, my emotions whirling—and then with the argument, it was even worse—Ididn’twant to hurt any of you, not like that, but I could tell I was losing control.”
More silence. I hug my knees tighter.
This is the worst. Not just the pain I can wield and revel in, but that some part of me was ready to inflict it on them.
No matter how awful they’ve been, they didn’t deserve that—that all-encompassing, soul-rending torture.
Zian clears his throat. “So you… you would have let that train kill you…”
He doesn’t seem to know how to go on.
“I wasn’t really thinking,” I mumble. “It was the only way I could stop myself for sure.”
That’s how bad it was. That’s how close I got to tormenting the guys who were my only family, who I swore to protect, in the most horrific way imaginable.
I brace myself for accusations or recriminations. So I’m not at all prepared when Zian pushes away from his pile of guns and hunches down by my feet.
“We hurt you so badly,” he says raggedly, his face so low to the floor his forehead must brush the gritty surface. “With everything we said, the way we’d been treating you—and you still would rather havediedthan hurt us.”
My mouth opens and closes, my voice dried up in shock.
