Page 221 of Shadowblood Souls
My gaze travels over the faces of Rollick’s colleagues, and every single one of them stares back at me with hardened eyes and determined expressions.
They waited until he was out of reach, and now they’re staging a mutiny… against us.
“This is ridiculous,” Jacob snaps. “It’s not your call to make.”
“I’m the one in charge while Rollick is away,” Cinder says. “So yes, it is.”
She snaps her fingers, and sparks shoot into the air.
As if summoned by the display, Pearl and Billy burst into being on the deck next to us. Pearl’s normally coiffed locks swing in frantic disarray.
“What are you doing?” she demands, facing the other shadowkind. “You can’t just?—”
“As if you newbies get any say,” Kudzu sneers at them.
Billy squares his narrow shoulders and steps toward him. The faun is a full head shorter than the smallest of our antagonists, but he doesn’t let that stop him from glaring at them on our behalf.
“I might not have spent much time mortal-side, but I know that Rollick wouldn’t like this. If you have a problem with what he thinks is right, why don’t you?—”
Kudzu slams a fist into the smaller man’s face, hard enough to send Billy’s slender form flying across the deck. Billy crashes to the floor with a groan and smoky essence pouring from beneath the hand clamped across his nose.
“Hey!” Zian growls.
He steps between Billy and the other shadowkind while Pearl dashes to her friend. Cinder sends up another threatening spurt of sparks, and a chilling rush of air sears over us from one of the other beings.
My heart thumps so loud it reverberates through my entire body. In a detached sort of way, it occurs to me that us leaving isn’t want these shadowkind really want.
They want us dead. They want to know for sure we’ll never cause any problems for them.
But they’re still wary of us. They’re not totally sure what we’ll do if they attack us the way Kudzu just lashed out at Billy.
They’re settling for running us off to preserve themselves. If we make it a fight, I don’t know how long they’ll stick to caution.
I don’t know if any of us would survive that fight, outnumbered and against monsters who have a hell of a lot more experience wielding their powers than we do.
Dominic has rushed over to join Pearl and Billy, his tentacles shifting beneath his trench coat. “Is he okay?”
“He’ll heal,” Pearl murmurs. “But it’ll hurt.”
Billy’s gaze seeks out mine from across the deck. I can see anguish in his eyes that isn’t just because of his broken nose.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I—” He shoves himself to his feet, glowering at the other shadowkind again. “We’re not letting you do this.”
My gut wrenches. The shadowkind who’d befriended us are willing to fight too, and their companions clearly aren’t afraid to pull out all the stops to shutthemdown.
“No!” I call out before anyone can throw any more punches—or sparks, or whatever. “We’ll go. Just let us grab our bags, and then we’ll leave.”
The guys’ heads jerk toward me. I aim a determined look at all of them, willing them to follow my lead.
Jacob’s eyes flash, but his shoulders come down through what looks like sheer force of will.
“What she said,” he bites out, turning back to the shadowkind.
“Fine,” Kudzu snarls. “You have five minutes to get your things and get the fuck out of here. But we’ll be taking your phones first.”
So we can’t get in touch with Rollick. My stomach balls tighter.
He holds out his hand, and I can’t see any option but to pull the device out of my pocket and toss it at him.
