Page 582 of Shadowblood Souls
Another bolt slams into Willow’s temple where she’s waving her summoned roots onward. Bits of skull and locks of hair fly out with the billow of essence. She’s thrown into the sapling and sags down its frail trunk.
Another blast of Nadia’s light blurs my sight. A cacophony of yells and snarls and grunts reverberates around me.
Then a sudden sense of silence despite the din, as the final siren crackles and stops.
Oh, no.
With a louder bellow of rage, the shadowbloods we were trying to contain erupt into more purposeful motion. They lash out at our ring of Firsts and shadowkind with every power at their disposal.
Some speedy form dashes through our forces with a flash of a blade. The shadowkind he passes blink into the darkness to dodge it or hunch over with gushes of essence from the stab wounds.
The tang of Tegan’s toxic smoke reaches my nose. I swivel to see her exhaling a vicious cloud toward Zian and a few of the shadowkind.
My hand leaps to my remaining syringes. Grasping it, I leap toward her.
Not quite fast enough.
A huge, brown-furred form barges at her from the other side. Fang pummels the girl who’s less than a third his shifted bearsize with one of his massive paws and tears into her neck with a wrench of his brutal teeth.
No—please, no. But even as my wordless plea tumbles from my mouth in a gasp, Tegan crumples, her head lolling from her shoulders at an angle that makes it clear no life will ever come back into her vacant eyes. She hits the asphalt with a splash of her blood.
My lips part wider. I suck the air into my lungs, a scream bubbling up my throat.
I don’t know how to pick apart allies and enemies in the chaos around me, but I can freeze them all. I can halt the carnage in its tracks.
And then what? How the hell are we going to disentangle ourselves? At some point, we have to move.
A burly figure charges into view, another of those crossbow-guns clutched in his hands. It’s one of the teenaged shadowbloods, a vengeful laugh hitching out of him as he pelts the shadowkind with silver-and-iron bolts. More cries and grunts ring out.
Was that Lance’s voice? Pearl’s?
Tears sear up behind my eyes, but I have to protectsomeone. The shriek that was building inside me tears up my throat, and I propel it toward the boy with the gun.
My power socks him right in the skull with more force than I probably needed to use even against a fellow shadowblood. A swell of pain surges from him into me as the bones splinter and pierce the flesh around them, as his nose crumples in and his jaw cracks.
Nausea hits me along with the punch of energy. I’m not here to torture, only to protect whoever I can.
I yank at the energy coursing through my scream and jab one of those splinters deep enough into the boy’s heart to sever his life.
The sensations flowing from him blank out. He topples over to join the other corpses now littering the ground.
I don’t have time to wallow in the guilt that clutches my chest. Gulping another breath, I prepare to cast out my shriek again.
Before the first hint of sound can pass from my lips, a body slams into me from behind. I fly forward, just barely catching myself with my hands before my face smacks into the pavement.
My chin still catches on the gritty ground, a slash of pain spreading through the skin. I swallow a sob and shove myself up and around to face my attacker.
Whoever shoved me has already moved on. But through the melee, I see something worse.
Booker has emerged from the building where I left him in supposed safety. He’s walking toward the battle with nothing at all to protect him from the weapons and powers being flung around.
His face has gone pale, but it’s set with resolve. There’s no sign of the easy-going surfer-dude attitude in him now.
Somewhere in the fighting, one of my earplugs popped out. So I hear his voice perfectly clearly when he raises it over the clamor of the fray.
“Nadia! Nadia, please, you’ve got to help us stop this craziness. Please, come talk to me.”
I step toward him. “Booker, get back into one of the buildings. It isn’t safe for?—”
