Page 424 of Shadowblood Souls
Griffin closes his eyes.
For the space of several more breaths, we waver in bewildered anticipation. Then a form materializes between two of the nearby hedges: the portly, chestnut-haired shadowkind man we saw by the outer wall several days ago.
He’s staring at us, his expression twitching between a smile and flickers of echoed bewilderment. Understanding hits me.
Griffin must have sensed the man was here at the villa—I told him what we’d seen. I bet shadowkind emotions have a distinctive flavor compared to any other visitors.
I also told him how the man ran away when we tried to talk to him. He’s used his emotional compulsion to make the guy feel like hewantedto appear to us.
But the supernatural being is clearly fighting Griffin’s sway. Jacob’s eyes narrow, and the man’s limbs lock in place.
Keeping his attention trained on the man, Jake motions to me. “I don’t think me physically holding him will be enough if he decides to leave. You froze the shadowkind with your scream once.”
I did. A chill washes over me, remembering that moment—the moment I slaughtered one of Rollick’s associates who’d turned on us and then almost killed Billy, the sweet faun who’d only been trying to help.
But Jacob is right. We’ve never been able to stop shadowkind from vanishing into the shadows by physical force in the past.
My scream is the only thing that’s ever totally constricted them. I can use it if I have to.
Griffin’s persuasion seems to be keeping enough of the man’s good will for now. I blurt out the first questions that pop into my head before I can’t use my voice to speak anymore. “What are you doing here? Do you work for Balthazar?”
“Work?” The man’s lip curls with a hint of a sneer. “Oh, he makes me work.”
Griffin blinks, and something in the man’s demeanor changes, his chin lifting at a more defiant angle. I tense to let out a scream, but the shadowkind doesn’t make any other move.
It isn’t us Griffin’s encouraged his defiance against.
“What do you do for him?” Andreas asks.
A twitch ripples through the man’s rounded frame. “Not anything it’d be good for me to talk to you about.”
Zian steps forward. “Do you know a demon named Rollick? Or a succubus who works with him—Pearl?”
The blankness of the man’s expression answers the question before he opens his mouth. I break in before he needs to. “If you know anyone who’d help us—we’re trapped here—Balthazar has worked with people who want todestroybeings like you. We’d help?—”
The shadowkind man cuts me off with a derisive snort. “You’retrapped?”
Those two words say enough. I’m abruptly certain that the being in front of us, whatever his supernatural powers are, feels just as imprisoned by his association with Balthazar as we do.
How the hell did our captor manage that?
“Please,” Ajax says quietly, but I’ve already caught the shift in the man’s posture. He’s shaking Griffin’s emotional hold.
And I’m not sure it’d really be in our best interests to force him to stay any longer.
My lips part anyway, but before I can decide whether to make one more plea or to shriek his compliance, a horrible crackling, tearing sound bursts through the air from behind me.
Sully cries out with a choked sound, and Booker yelps. I spin around to see Sully flailing, his hands dangling from severed wrists, blood and dark essence pouring from his gouged forearms where his bracelets have ripped them open.
Like they did to Lindsay. Oh, fuck, no.
I leap to him like I did with her, even though I couldn’t do anything before. Horrified adrenaline rushes through me, giving my awareness the heightened, disorienting feel of a nightmare.
Blood streams over the grass, painting the blades crimson. The meaty metallic smell saturating the air turns my stomach.
At the same time, the shadowy smoke billows upward, draining him in a very different way.
I clamp both hands around one of Sully’s arms, willing myself to find a way to hold his flesh together, to stem the tide. But like with Lindsay, the gouge is too wide, too deep.
