Page 239 of Shadowblood Souls
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 helpme. 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?
