Page 130 of Shadowblood Souls
Zian stuffs the guns into the sack we found and peers around us through the walls of the car with his X-ray sight. “I don’t see anything strange nearby.”
A squeal pierces the air as the train’s brakes grip the tracks. Dominic peeks out through the door again and motions to us when the coast is clear.
We hop out into the thickening night and slink along the side of another, motionless train to get a look at our options for transport.
As Jacob pushes ahead in his typical mode as our self-declared leader, Andreas touches my arm—just a fleeting gesture to draw my attention. He slows purposefully, and I match his pace even as tension winds around my gut.
What does he want?
He ducks his head with a slant of his mouth that looks more embarrassed than anything else and then glances sideways at me. “I realized—we got so caught up in the moment that night—I didn’t even think about protection. Do we need to worry that you could be?—”
I catch on before he even finishes the question.
“No,” I interrupt hastily, my cheeks flaring. “The guardians fitted me with some birth control thing before we started going on missions, and they’d updated it just a few months before we tried to escape. It should still be working.”
Even if it wasn’t, with the stress and physical strain of my captivity at the cage-fighting arena, I haven’t had a period in years.
“And that was the first time I ever… did anything like that,” I add awkwardly, not really wanting to put a name on the act out loud. “So no diseases or whatever to worry about.” I pause. “At least from me.”
It’s hard to tell in the dim light from the security lamps up ahead, but I think Andreas’s face flushes beneath his coppery brown skin. His gaze drops to the gravel-strewn ground.
“There was only once before for me, and it was—the guardians arranged it, a couple months after they took you away. I think they figured we needed some kind of outlet. I didn’twantto. But they would have been careful about health and all that.”
A rush of cold washes over me. My feet stumble for a second before I recover. “You—theyforcedyou? All of you?”
My gaze flicks to the guys ahead of us, but Andreas is already shaking his head. “They tried, but it… didn’t go so well. That’s why it was only the once, and only me.”
His voice has gotten strained, but I have to ask. “What happened?”
Andreas’s jaw ticks. He raises his head, but I can’t tell which of his friends he’s looking at. “That’s one story that is definitely not mine to tell. You should just know, while you were dealing with all that crap where they took you… a lot of shit went down for us too.”
I’d already realized that, but I’d had no idea the guardians had gone that far.
Jacob motions to us, and Andreas picks up the pace to catch up. I follow him, my stomach churning.
Just how badly did our former captors damage the boys I loved?
And was it too much for them to ever really be those guys again, even if they want to?
Three
Andreas
Igrip the handle of the door between our motel room and the adjoining one, and catch Dominic’s eyes where he’s sitting cross-legged on the bed. He looks a little bizarre, slouched there in his parka that disguises the bulge of his extra appendages.
He doesn’t like any of us seeing his tentacles more than we have to. As if hiding them will make them less real.
“All good?” I mouth at him.
He nods, our phone pressed to his ear and his other hand resting on the laptop’s keyboard. Then his attention veers back to the computer.
“Okay,” he says to the woman on the other end as he taps a few keys.
The hacker I managed to connect with—by searching the right kinds of online forums for the telltale signals I’ve learned—is theoretically going to walk Dominic through the process of cracking the laptop’s password from a distance. We decidedDom was the best choice for that job since he’s definitely got the rest of us beat when it comes to staying calm and focused.
I don’t want to see what Jacob or Zian would do to the computer after a few frustrating failures.
Me, I’d probably get distracted wondering about the hacker’s other exploits and wishing I could peek inside her memories from over the phone.
