Page 560 of Shadowblood Souls
Seventeen
Riva
As the scarred shadowblood thug strides toward us, Zian jerks closer to my side, more visible by the second just like I am. His lips pull back to show his wolf-man fangs.
My pulse is racing so fast my chest rattles with it, but I hold up my hands. “Wait! We’re on the same side as you. We got rid of Balthazar to set you free.”
I can’t tell if the hulking shadowblood even registers my words. Fury flashes in his eyes—and a figure outlined in fire descends from the sky to plant herself by my side.
Sorsha’s phoenix flames sear away the invisibility Andreas had cast over her. She takes in the swarm of shadowbloods around us, a ball of fire hovering over one hand and her scorching wings unfurled from her back. “Back off. The fight is over.”
The several shadowbloods who’d been watching the confrontation freeze. Even the man who was stalking toward ushesitates, sizing Sorsha up. Through the tears in his coat from the fighting, I see his muscles flex.
One of the other former inmates, one with a tattoo of a skull in a snake’s embrace emblazoned on his shaved scalp, pushes toward us. Thick, bone-like blades protrude from his shoulders—they ripped through his clothing as they emerged from his body.
He jabs his hand at us. “You were working with the Guardianship—the fuckers who made all you young ones. You turned on our own people to helpthem.”
A few gasps from around us tell me that the kids in the crowd hadn’t thought the situation quite that far through yet—and find the revelation even more shocking than our accuser does.
I raise my chin, keeping my voice loud and steady. “Weusedthe guardians. When we tried to get at Balthazar by ourselves before on his own territory, he was too prepared.”
A thin, scratchy voice wavers out from my left. “You tricked him. You trickedus!”
My head jerks around. Tegan has come up beside Nadia, her hands clenched at her sides, her pale face gone even more sallow with horror within its frame of fawn-brown hair.
Oh, God. I didn’t even realize she was here. The kid istwelve, for fuck’s sake. What was Balthazar thinking?
I already know the answer to that question, so sure it turns my stomach. He was only thinking about his ends, his goals, and to hell with how it hurts anyone else.
“We killed him for you,” Zian protests, looking more bewildered than threatening now.
I motion to my bare wrist. “The manacles don’t matter anymore. Sorsha can burn out the mechanisms. You don’t have to do any more fighting for?—”
“Why the hell wouldn’t we want to fight for him?” the tattooed man interrupts. He holds up his meaty hands, the thinleather gloves he was wearing splashed with blood. “Hefreed us from life behind bars. He gave us the power to do whatever the fuck we want.”
A figure drops from one of the trees at the edge of the pavement—Jacob, his form hazy as his own invisibility has started to fade with the passing of time. “He used you like tools, just like the guardians always did with us. Hewasone of them and only left them so he could be even worse.”
“Now they’re all dead,” I add, motioning to the bodies strewn around us. “Like Sorsha said, it’s over.”
The scarred guy close to us aims a sneer my way. “I don’t think so. I liked the work he gave us. And it sounds like you expect us to stop.”
My heart lurches. But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that the hardened criminals Balthazar picked out to do his dirtiest work are the kind of people who’d enjoy bashing up buildings and leaving carnage in their wake.
I always knew we might have to fight his new shadowbloods as well as the man himself. I hadn’t expected it to go down quite like this, though.
My gaze darts to Nadia. She’s still poised with her hands raised as if ready to blast us with another bolt of light. As if she thinks she might need to.
The taste of ash coats my mouth. “Nadia, you know what Balthazar was like. You saw what he did to Lindsay—to Sully—what he always threatened to do to you.”
She shakes her head with an odd twitch of her eyes, as if they refuse to totally focus. “He cut out the weak ones. He found a way to make us stronger.”
“Yeah!” Tegan says, stirring restlessly from foot to foot. “He made us as powerful as you Firsts are. Maybe more! Like we always should have been.”
Nadia rolls her shoulders with another twitch, and her tone turns harsh. “You’re jealous. He said you probably would be. You liked being the strongest shadowbloods, seeing the rest of us so weak and pathetic. You wanted to always be in charge of us. Now we can fight back for ourselves.”
Her voice takes on a fiercer rasp with those last few words, and ice forms around my gut. I can imagine Balthazar indoctrinating the kids, telling them lies over and over that fed into their insecurities and regrets.
During the time when we all lived together, some of them admitted to me that they longed for more power. That they felt useless, expendable. And it wasn’t as if they could see any chance of living like a regular human instead.
