Page 188 of Shadowblood Souls
The few shadowkind who’ve kept their physical forms around him are watching his reactions. Cinder tips her head toward him and says something I can’t hear.
They’re all braced for a sudden movement, twice as on edge as he appears to be.
They haven’t decided what to do. The guardians raised us hoping we’d be able to destroy shadowkind—they probably have other methods of striking out at our tentative allies too.
Even if those methods aren’t particularly effective, why should the “monsters” we’ve turned to take the risk on our behalf? They could just vanish into the shadows and pretend this confrontation never happened.
My lips part… but I’m not totally sure Iwantto appeal of Rollick to help us get out of this standoff.
The guardians know a lot more about the shadowkind than we do. They’ve clashed with them who knows how many times.
They’ve seen enough horrors from the creatures they call monsters that they believed raising partly monstrous warriors to defend the human race was a reasonable measure.
And we’ve already seen horrors, haven’t we? One of those shadowkind paid off a bunch of goons to try to murder me, just to test how we’d use our powers.
Rollick responded to that overstep by gouging his colleague’s throat.
And just now, the demon was cajoling me into exercising my twisted powers. Insisting that I need to inflict more pain, refusing to try any tactic to simply keep that talent under wraps, no matter how much I hate it.
Was his insistence really for my benefit or for his, because some part ofhimenjoys seeing pain dealt out?
The guardian’s voice rings out again. “Stop fighting and return to us, and we’ll make sure you’re safe. They can’t touch you at the facilities. And anything they’ve already done that you might not even know, we’ll fix it.”
A creeping sensation tickles up my bare arms. I hug myself, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
Is it possible? Could the shadowkind have inflicted powers on us that we haven’t even noticed?
Of course they could have. They can slip in and out of shadows, move through the world totally invisibly. There could be thousands of them around us right now that we have no idea about.
Who knows how much else they’re capable of doing without giving any sign at all?
Jacob’s face has hardened even more than before. “I’m not going back to that fucking prison,” he says under his breath. “Thosemonsters killed Griffin.”
I swallow thickly. I don’t want to go back to the facility—to one of the facilities, since it sounds like there are even more than we know about?—either.
“Can we get past them on our own?” I ask. “Without the RV? Zee, do you know how many we’re dealing with?”
Zian squints through the dim light. “I think I’ve counted twelve inside. But we’re too far away for me to look through the walls. There could be more ready to rush in if they have to.”
To my surprise, it’s Dominic who speaks up in favor of the shadowkind. “If we’re going to ask Rollick and his crew to help us, we’d better do it soon, or they might just leave.”
I glance at him, taking in his taut but always handsome face in the wavering light from the flames still licking up from the front of the RV. “You think we should trust them?”
Andreas’s mouth tightens. “We don’t know what kind of deal we might be making if we ask for that kind of help. What it might turn out we owe them after.”
“I don’t see any way we’re fighting our way out through who knows how many guardians and other shadowbloods too,” Dom says. “Not on our own, not when they’re ready for us, right between us and the only escape route. Maybe some of us would make it… but that’s not good enough for me.”
My stomach knots. I shake my head. “No. We stick together.”
We are blood. The words we used to say to each other as kids and teens resonate through me.
I’m not ready to say them yet, not ready to call the guys who hurt me anything like family again, but I’m also not going to sacrifice them for my own escape.
My gaze slides back to the cluster of shadowkind, just as Cinder blinks out of view, along with one of the shadowkind men whose name I didn’t get. My pulse hitches.
They’re already starting to leave, deciding they have no dog in this fight. Why would they want to listen to the guardians talk to them like that?
They’re our blood too. We’re half shadow, half human like the guardians.
