Page 138 of Shadowblood Souls
So there ought to be ways that we can too. Ways to make it easier to contain my urge to shriek when I get angry.
Ways to ensure Andreas doesn’t fade away after he uses his ability to turn invisible. Ways to tame Zian’s wolfish rage.
Maybe even a way to get Dominic’s tentacles to shrink back into him instead of growing.
Dominic rubs his chin. “It doesn’t seem like anyone at the facilities would know. Engel made us, and I don’t think she ever shared the full process with anyone else.”
“We’d have a hell of a time trying to go straight at the guardians on their home territory anyway,” Andreas says.
Zian hesitates and then catches my gaze. “What about—the place they sent you to, after we tried to escape?”
I suppress a shudder at the thought of the cage-fighting arena where I was held—the weekly matches against armed men twice my size, the shackles that weighed down my arms in between, and the mix of fear and hatred that emanated off my keepers.
“They didn’t know anything,” I said. “I’m not sure they had any idea what I was other than, to them, a freak.”
Jacob’s eyes narrow. “We need to pay them back too. They’re going to regret everything they put you?—”
“They already regretted it,” I break in, and jerk my gaze away. I don’t want to watch their expressions while I admit this. “That’s the first time my new power came out. I took out the boss and all his people who were around… and the whole audience.”
My shoulders come up defensively, but I refuse to outright cringe. The memory of that much larger massacre still makes me queasy, but it got me free. It brought me back to my guys, even if our reunion hasn’t exactly gone the way I hoped.
If it wasn’t for the carnage I dealt with my scream, I’d still be in those shackles in the room where the boss kept me, all alone.
There’s a moment of silence, like the other guys aren’t sure what to say. Then Zian grunts. “Good.”
Jacob’s mouth curves into one of the hard little smiles that until recently were normally aimed at me. This one is on my behalf. “Yes. They got what they deserved.”
I’m not sure the other two guys feel quite the same way, but Andreas at least changes the subject so we don’t need to dwell on my past brutality.
“If we can’t get more answers about our ‘monstrous’ talents from the people who put them into us,” he says, “what if we asked the things that have their own talents?”
Zian knits his brow. “You want to talk to themonsters?”
Andreas holds up his hands. “I’m just saying, they’re the only other direct source of information. We don’t have to make friends or anything, just find one or two and question them.”
As his suggestion sinks in, I find myself nodding. “And we don’t know how monstrous those monsters actually are. Engel said they’re horrible… but she thoughtwewere horrible too.”
The guardians are against the things they call monsters, and they want to enslave us. So we share at least one other thing with the creatures: a common enemy.
“We’d still need to be cautious,” Dominic points out.
“Of course. Trust no one.” Jacob rolls his shoulders as if he’s warming up to launch into an interrogation right now. “Any idea from her notes where we’d be best off looking for these creatures?”
Dominic tilts his head to the side, studying the screen. “It sounds like most of the ones that mix with humans regularly like to do it where there are lots of people to blend in with. So a big city seems like it’d be our best bet.”
Zian relaxes a little. “That’ll mean more people for us to blend in with too. Should we stick to Canada still? What’s the biggest city up here?”
“That would be Toronto. Bigger than most of the cities in the States too.” Andreas glances around at us with a slow-stretching grin. “What do you say we head a little farther east to do some monster-hunting?”
Five
Riva
“This is part of downtown too?” I ask, peering through the windshield at the buildings we’re cruising by. “How much of it is there?”
Andreas laughs from behind the wheel. “I told you it was a big city.”
He brakes at a red light and glances over his shoulder toward the guys. They’re crammed together in the backseat… because Zian insisted I should get to ride shotgun even though his bulky body needs the space way more than I do.
