Page 225 of Shadowblood Souls
“We’ve got to get farther away,” Jacob rasps out. “Whoever they are, we don’t want them following?—”
He doesn’t even have time to finish his warning. Hollers ring out, bouncing off the bright pastel storefronts.
Dominic lunges forward and smacks his free hand against the tree. I let Andreas slump against the pot and spin around.
A squad of figures in military-style uniforms are barging into the street from the same direction we came from, a few of them right out of our side-street. Whatever they’re shouting to the pedestrians clogging the wider throughway, the crowd is parting.
People are hurrying off in either direction. Cars grind to a halt, some of them backing up to navigate nearby cross-streets.
The soldiers raise their guns and point them straight at us.
“Shit,” Jacob hisses through his teeth. He catches my arm and pushes Andreas forward, herding us toward another street just a few buildings down.
Then his hand lashes out behind him. Two of the figures running toward us topple like action figures kicked by a toddler.
The other soldiers are barking orders at each other. They dodge their fallen companions and start shooting again.
More of the bullets ping against Jacob’s hurled power, but one whizzes right past my ear. I swallow a yelp and throw myself faster toward the corner, yanking Andreas with me.
The wound on his arm has to be killing him, but that’s better than him beingliterallykilled.
As we dart around the bend, I fling a quick glance over my shoulder at the uniformed combatants pursuing us.
They all look like locals. I don’t see a single metal helmet either.
They aren’t guardians. So who the hell are they, and why the fuck are they trying to kill us?
“What’s going on?” I manage to say as we barrel past the bystanders on the less crowded street we’ve turned onto. “We haven’t even done anything!”
Dominic drags in a breath, his forehead already shining with sweat—probably because he’s managed to seal Andreas’s injuries enough to slow though not stop the bleeding.
“They’re saying something to each other about monsters. About the ones they were warned about.”
The clammy sensation from before turns into blades of ice lancing through my gut. “They were tipped off.”
Like the gangsters who came at me back in Miami—except a dozen times deadlier.
At least one of the shadowkind in Rollick’s crew took a page out of his disgraced colleague’s book.
Ursula Engel did tell us there were other organizations dedicated to ridding the world of shadowkind. One of our supposed allies must have found a local group and pointed them straight at us.
They found a way to arrange our deaths without having to risk their own hides even slightly.
Jacob lets out a string of curses through his gritted teeth. My own fury, sharpened by a sting of betrayal, surges up through my chest.
We never did a thing to the shadowkind. All we asked for was whatever help they’d freely give.
We turned to them instead of turningonthem like our creator wanted, and they repaid us by trying to destroy us just like she did.
My power reverberates through me with the prickling of a scream at the base of my throat. But everywhere I look, I can’t help seeing the startled civilians darting away from us as more yells echo from down the street.
Whether this group of monster hunters are actually part of the military or they’ve stolen uniforms to make it look like they are, they’ve found a winning strategy for clearing their way. My talent isn’t as easy to aim as a gun, though.
Even as it claws at my lungs, begging me to pay our attackers back for the pain they’ve already caused the man beside me, I gird myself. I’m not going to tear through all these unknowing people on a rampage.
I don’t even know if doing it would save us. Who can tell where more of these assholes might be coming from?
All at once, I’m wishing I had tormented a few crabs and the other creatures Rollick would have set in front of me. Maybe then I could have chosen who I ripped into.
