Page 146 of Shadowblood Souls
Riva looks at me. I clamp down on my power with all the will I have in me, every muscle going rigid.
I’m going to defend her. I won’t be one of the things that’s threatening her—not ever again.
Get your head on straight, Jake.
The storm of emotions I still don’t know how to master roils on inside me, but nothing else breaks. I feel as wiped out as if I’ve sprinted a mile just from tamping it down.
I’m way too out of practice at feeling things.
Andreas nudges us all on down the street. I breathe evenly through my nose, letting the chilly night air wash over me.
In that moment, I wish I was back in the forest. Nothing but trees around us and bare earth beneath my feet.
Then Riva freezes in her tracks a couple of steps ahead of me.
We all halt too. She points toward the other side of the street, farther down.
“That woman there,” she murmurs. “The one with the green dress. I think she’s what we’re looking for.”
Seven
Riva
Idon’t know how to explain it, which is too bad because the guys will probably think I’m insane. But the longer my gaze remains on the woman down the street, the surer I am that somehow she’s one of the creatures Engel would have called a monster.
A quiver runs through my veins, small but tangible, like the faintest breeze rippling the shadows in my blood. Like I recognize her on a bodily level even if I don’t with my eyes.
Then she’s vanishing from view, slipping through a doorway on a storefront near the corner.
“I could just… feel it,” I say to the guys, who are staring after her from where they’re standing around me. “That there’s something about her that’s like us and not like regular people.”
Zian nods slowly, his eyes wide. “After you pointed her out—I think I could sense it too.”
He shoots me a hopeful smile, and my mouth returns it automatically. My heart skips a beat at the gleam of affection inhis eyes even though the rest of me knows it doesn’t mean what I want it to.
What Iusedto want it to.
The other guys still look puzzled. Maybe it makes sense that Zian and I would have the keenest awareness of other beings that are kind of like us, since we’re the ones with the most honed physical senses in general.
There’s always been something a little more beastly about us than the others, at least in the most literal sense.
The feeling isn’t even all that strange. A different sort of shiver passes through me like an icy finger down my spine.
I’ve had the same sensation of recognition before. I had no idea what it meant at the time, but during my missions, there were at least a couple of people who set off that tiny quiver through my blood.
And that skyscraper in San Francisco—the one I couldn’t help stopping and staring at, what must have been almost ten years ago. Was that a place built by monsters, or for them?
The clap of Jacob’s hands brings me back to the present. His gaze is fixed on the building the woman slipped into.
“Let’s go see what she is and what she can tell us, then.”
His gaze flicks to me, but not in challenge or accusation. It’s happened often enough in the past few days that I know I’m not imagining that he’s looking to me forapproval.
My certainty doesn’t make the act any less confusing. But really, what else are we going to do?
I suck in a breath and nod.
We cross the street and amble toward the building. I usually avoid paying much attention to Jacob at all, shying away from the uncomfortable memories his presence stirs up, but now I study him surreptitiously.
