Page 173 of Shadowblood Souls
Dominic rushes in, his trench coat shed, both tentacles whipping around us. Another attacker, this one clutching a knife, lies slumped on the ground in his wake.
I leap in and wrench the gun from the shooter’s hand. He barely seems to notice me.
His broad face has gone sallow as he stares at Dominic. At the inhuman appendages protruding from Dominic’s back.
“What the fuck!” he spits out. “What kind of freak?—”
A sharper fury than when it was only me they were attacking roars up inside my chest. I ram my fist into his mouth before he can finish his question.
His jaw jerks right off its hinges. With a moan, he sinks to the ground, clutching it.
Dominic stares down at him, panting. He looks almost as sickly as the man staring at him does.
He’s put so much effort into hiding his strangeness. This is exactly why.
He knew what reactions he’d get.
But he let these assholes see him, let them gape at him in horror like all of them are now, to save me.
Other, more welcome footsteps thud toward us. Jacob, Andreas, and Zian race across the lot, their faces taut with confusion and anger.
“Who the hell are these fuckheads?” Jacob growls, leaning mainly toward anger as usual.
I step farther away from the five men, all fallen to the ground with their various injuries and staring at all of us. Their aggression has given way to fear.
My mouth twists into a frown. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen any guardians around.”
Zian marches up to the guy with the broken wrist, bristling with fury. “Who sent you at us? What do you want?”
The man flinches at the bellowed questions. “None of your fucking business,” he grits out, but he still looks bewildered.
“I don’t think they had any idea who we are,” I murmur. Or what.
“You’re—you’remonsters,” mumbles the guy I kicked in the gut, scrambling to his feet. His gaze is fixed on Dominic, his face gone waxy.
Andreas snorts in derision. “I’d say the monsters are the ones going around randomly attacking people.”
He grips Dominic’s shoulder, and the other guy stirs out of the agonized daze he seemed to have slipped into.
“Grab your coat,” Andreas says, quiet and gentle. “I’ll wipe you from their memories. They’ll have no idea what they saw. It’ll be like it never happened.”
Dominic nods shakily and hurries to where he dropped his coat. My gaze follows him, my heart wrenching on his behalf.
It did happen.I’mnot going to forget it.
I already knew he was willing to let the monstrous parts of himself grow to heal me. But revealing himself like this… doing that might have been even harder.
As Andreas turns toward my injured attackers, Jacob looms over the nearest one and slams the guy’s back into the asphalt with a stomp of his shoe against his ribs.
“You’d better tell us what the hell you were trying to do here, or a whole lot more of you is going to end up broken. In ways you can’t even imagine.”
Whether because of Jacob’s fierce expression, the venom in his tone, or the inhuman features he’s already seen, the man lets out a whimper of surrender. “It was just a job. We got some cash and some pictures—we were supposed to get more if we offed the girl.”
“Who gave you the job?”
“I don’t know! It was just an envelope—left in our car a half hour ago telling us to come right away.”
Andreas is studying him. “I think he’s telling the truth.”
