Page 369 of Shadowblood Souls
Clancy escorts us into a slightly larger room with a row of five chairs spaced wide apart along the middle of the space. As the guardians lead each of us to a chair, they position themselves between us.
Our collaborating is always what Clancy’s been most worried about. He’s not taking any chances.
Will he let us even be in the same room together again after this?
My worries form a pulsing ache in my stomach. I swallow against the collar and wince at the choking sensation.
Clancy strides to the front of the room where a large screen about five feet across hangs on the wall. He picks up a control from a small metal side table and paces past the screen.
Griffin hangs back by the side table, watching. His face remains as blank as it was during our first reunion here.
I can’t tell if he’s still feeling anything at all.
Even if his ploy with Celine was meant to help us, could the chaos of the fight have screwed up the progress he’s made? Sent him back into his closed-off state, every flicker of emotion automatically dismissed?
Clancy clicks a button, and the screen lights up, though it’s only a flat, pale gray at the moment. He swivels to face the five of us.
“You have not abided by the terms of our agreement. I’ve offered you the opportunity to do something incredibly constructive with your powers while learning how to use them in the best possible ways, and you threw that generosity in my face.”
The choke-collar suppresses my derisive laugh.
Generosity? He was using us to fill his bank account.
No awareness of his hypocrisy shows in Clancy’s expression. He taps the controller lightly against his thigh, considering all of us like a professor contemplating the expulsion of a bunch of disruptive students.
“You must see now how impossible striking out on your own is,” he goes on, with a condescending edge that raises my hackles even more. “You were never meant to have normal lives. Youaren’tnormal. But if we work together, you can have something better than anyone else in the Guardianship would be willing to offer you.”
Does he expect a response?
Jacob and Zian stare at him dully. Andreas can’t see him at all.
Dominic sits in the chair next to me, a shiver running through his tentacles and his mouth set in a flat line. His gaze darts around the room, but I’m not sure what he’s looking for.
And with my voice cut off, I can’t answer even if I wanted to.
Clancy squares his shoulders with an imperious air. “I’m hoping that you’ve learned your lesson, and we can move forward as I planned. But I can’t allow more diversions. I have a mission that some of you will be sent on, one you should want to see fulfilled as much as I do. You can accept that challenge with full cooperation, or I’ll assign you to continued testing until we find an effective way of harnessing your powers and ensuring your compliance.”
Thatdoesn’t sound ominous at all. I contain a shiver of my own.
Jacob manages to cock his head with a trace of alertness. But there’s still a faint slur in his voice from the drugs. “What mission?”
Clancy brings up an image on the screen—a video, panning through a dusty village of ramshackle huts and a few cars that look at least three decades out of date. The only detail giving away the modern time period is the high-tech army tank standing off to the side in the first shot.
The scene is mostly brown and gray except for the blotches of deepening red that scatter the ground… and the bodies slumped there. The camera takes in a few dozen corpses, fresh enough that blood still seeps from some of their wounds.
Men. Women. Children. All of them dressed in simple tees or blouses, ratty jeans or canvas slacks.
Despite my resistance to anything Clancy wants to show us, my chest clenches up in horror.
Clancy motions toward the video. “The national government of the country where this slaughter took place has been dealing with a large group of hostile insurgents for several years. The group’s current MO is to hold an entire rural village hostage, killing the civilians one by one until the government complies with their demands. When the military has attempted to intervene, the insurgents use the villagers as shields and have mostly escaped unscathed… while leaving no survivors behind.”
He rests his cool gaze on us. “Government officials heard of my services and reached out to me. They expect based on past behavior patterns that the terrorists will strike again within a week. To ensure the villagers’ safety and push back against the insurgents to discourage or even prevent future attacks, they need a team with skills beyond their own.”
And that’s where he wants us to come in.
The worst part is that the sight of the decimated village tugs at my heart. Iwouldwant to protect people like that if my powers could shield them.
But how can we trust anything Clancy says now? Who knows what other ulterior motives he could have?
