Page 546 of Shadowblood Souls
“And that’s what Matteo regretted?” Riva asks.
Pearl shakes her head. “Nope. He was all torn up about how he’d lost his boss’s trust by inviting them in. I guess Balthazar laid into him too in the moment and then never stopped giving him a chilly attitude afterward.”
Yeah, that fits my impressions of the guy. Matteo was just as sociopathic as his master and worked his butt off following the prick’s insane demands.
Riva’s eyes gleam with anticipation. “That’s perfect.”
My head jerks toward her. “How, exactly?”
She swats my arm in response to my skeptical tone. “The last time Balthazar and the guardians interacted, he treated them like an enemy. All they know is he’s gone rogue and he apparently wants nothing to do with them. Don’t you see how that plays into our hands?”
Zian’s eyes widen. “It might not be too hard to convince them that he’s workingagainstthem. That they’ve got to take action to save themselves.”
“Right.” Riva grins. “Now if only we could nudge his new shadowbloods to rain down a little destruction near wherever the Guardianship’s top dogs are hanging out to make the threat more immediate, we’d be golden.”
Rollick looks up from his laptop. “Who says we need his shadowbloods? We’ve got perfectly good ones right here.”
Andreas glances around at the rest of us. “You’re saying thatweshould rain down some destruction?”
The demon shrugs. “Nothingthathorrible. Just some superficial but suitably unnerving devastation.” His gaze slides to… me, before he glances around at the others again. “I’ve heard your telekinetic prodigy can shake entire mountains. He should be able to shake up the Guardianship too.”
Wait,I’mthe one who has to set this plan in motion?
Everyone else turns toward me expectantly. Zian raises his hand as if he’s in class. “I’ll go too. I can bash and burn things up a bunch.”
“You could borrow my talent for siphoning energy,” Dominic says in a subdued tone. “Or I could come along.”
And then silence falls as they wait to see what I’m going to say.
I swallow hard. I didn’t like this idea when Riva first pitched it, and I still would rather have a million miles between me and any of those fuckers with their helmets and vests.
But there’s a plea in Riva’s gaze. And where the hell am I leaving us if I say no?
It’s not as if I’ve got a better suggestion. At least this part of the plan involves sticking it to the pricks.
I grit my teeth and then force the words out. “All right. Tell me where to go, and I’m in.”
Thirteen
Riva
My heartbeat doesn’t quite even out until I see Jacob and Zian emerging from the car outside the mansion. Rollick reported that he’d gotten word their covert mission had gone as planned, but after seeing how resistant Jake was to the whole idea, I couldn’t help tensing in anticipation of some disaster.
I know all too well how vicious he can be with people who’ve provoked his rage.
I push past the doors to meet them. Jacob strides over to me with a tight smile that shows he’s still not happy about the situation, but he doesn’t show any signs of guilt.
“It was fine,” he says brusquely. “We bashed up a couple of buildings, left an obvious message, and got the hell out. The worst any of the people got was a splinter.”
Zian huffs. “They deserved a lot more than that.”
I grab his hand and squeeze it. “Well, there’ll be plenty of time to seethatjustice done after we’re finished with Balthazar.Come on. Are you hungry? You’ve got to be tired after all that traveling.”
Rollick sent them in a private jet from a nearby airfield across the ocean and back again. Does jet lag even set in when you’re only in the other time zone for a couple of hours?
Jacob shrugs and slings his arm around my waist with a vaguely possessive air, as if he doesn’t want Zian to hog all of my physical attention. “We had a four-course dinner on the flight back. And a nap. I feel about like I would if I’d been here the whole time.”
As we walk into the mansion, the other three guys come into the hall to look Jake and Zian over. The softening of Griffin’s expression reassures me more than my own observations of the duo.
