Page 444 of Shadowblood Souls
A chill stabs through the center of me. “We tried. We almost got shot out there—there were too many people. You didn’t want us slaughtering them all.”
“Oh, I think you held yourself back a little more than just from murder. I suppose I should have expected as much, but I can fix my mistakes. It isn’t that hard to ensure you’re sufficiently motivated.”
Sufficiently motivated. My gaze flicks toward Dominic, and I think I might vomit if I had anything in my stomach.
Andreas steps forward, his handsome face harder than I’ve ever seen it. “What did you do to him?”
Balthazar lifts his shoulders in a measured shrug. “I withdrew a little of my support. His body will keep fighting to live, but it’s a losing battle now. I’d give him a week or so.”
No. My claws dig deeper into my palms, but I barely feel the jabs of pain. “Why? What do you want from us?”
An eerie smile crosses Balthazar’s lips. “Ah. Now you’re interested in giving me what I want. Perfect.”
A vase whips off a side table and smashes against the wall. The tick of a muscle in Jacob’s cheek is the only sign that it was his talent on the fritz.
He glares at the screen. “Tell us what the fuck we have to do so you’ll save him.”
“And so impatient now.” Our captor lets out a light chuckle that brings the thrum of a scream into the base of my throat.
I don’t want to shriek him dead, though. That wouldn’t be concrete enough. The urge grips me to rip out his own throat and dance in his spraying blood.
If I could reach him. But I can’t—I can’t.
I’m so sorry, Dom. This is my fault.
Andreas’s voice only wavers a little. “You have our attention. Are you going to ask for anything from us or not?”
Balthazar lifts his chin, triumph glinting in his eyes. “There’s something I want very much. Something it’ll be very difficult for you to get. You may die in the attempt. I expect you to risk your lives as necessary. If you come back empty-handed, there is no deal.”
A spurt of hope rushes through me only to sputter out a second later. “And then what?” I demand. “Then you’ll heal Dom just enough so that he’s back in his coma like before?”
Is that really better? We don’t even know if he’s still with us.
He could be nothing more than a husk of a body, another tool for Balthazar to manipulate us.
The sense of fatalism that filled me during our last job rises up again. Whatever Balthazar is trying to do, we haven’t been able to make any dent in stopping him. I know his intentions can’t be good.
It might be better for both us and the rest of the world if we were all dead instead of doing his bidding.
At least that’s one way we can screw him over.
The glitter in our captor’s eyes sparks a little brighter. “I can do better than that. If you bring me what I’m after, I’ll revive him completely.”
My heart stops for a few seconds before it lurches back into motion. “He’ll—he’ll be conscious again? Talking, walking—everything?”
I hate the smug smirk that curls Balthazar’s lips now. “Everything. Is that a good enough reward for you?”
The swell of emotion that crashes over me knocks the breath from my lungs. I don’t like the man in front of me seeing the tears that spring into my eyes. I hurt and hope and grieve like a hurricane passing through me.
It floods the vacant space my anger burned away inside me. I’m drowning in so many feelings that’d gone dead in the past few days.
In a distant part of my mind, I find myself remembering what Jacob said to me that night on the boat in Havana when he brought me the severed hands of the men who’d tried to kill me. When he meant to cut off his own arm in penance.
He told me how empty he felt after Griffin supposedly died, empty of everything but rage. That he’d wanted to kill himself and had only held back to get vengeance for his brother.
And then he saw me racing toward a train that could have been my doom, and so many other feelings broke in.I cared, so fucking much.
My own fury is still burning inside me, raised from a simmer to a raging boil. Howdarethis asshole dangle our friend, this man I love so much, in front of us like a fucking carrot on a stick?
