Page 240 of Shadowblood Souls
Twenty-Nine
Dominic
Riva slumps onto the deck, her face drained of all color. The features that had gone rigid as she let out her scream slacken; the white sheen fades from her eyes beneath her plummeting eyelids.
There’s chaos all around us—yells of horror and anger, shadowkind looming on the deck in front of me, plumes of dark smoke gushing through the air—but my entire world narrows down to the woman I love. A splinter of her anguish spears through me from the mark on my sternum.
Before I’ve even processed that I’m moving, I’ve dashed to her side.
A shudder ripples through her body, and then she keeps shivering despite the warm air, like she’s freezing. When I touch her arm, her skin feels clammy.
I yank off my trench coat without a second thought and crouch down next to her to wrap it around her tremblingshoulders. The ocean breeze licks over my exposed tentacles, but right now I don’t give a shit.
The rest of the world barges into my awareness, as much as I’d like to keep tuning it out.
“You see?” Kudzu is hollering, stomping toward us with his sinewy muscles flexing across his tall frame. “She’sthe fucking monster. We have to destroy her before she?—”
My tentacles have already lashed out to defend Riva as well as I can. Andreas steps in too, his face taut but determined, and from the splashing and sputtering that carries from below the boat, I’d imagine Zian and Jacob are doing their best to fight their way back to us.
The second shadowkind being that leapt onto the boat has stepped back to the railing, his eyes bulging with fear. But the other springs forward, joined by the one of their group that’d stayed on the dock before, scrambling after Kudzu with seething hisses and murder in their eyes.
Oh, fuck.
Then Riva raises her head. She doesn’t seem to see the monsters bearing down on us—she focuses on the railing as if she can see through the hull to the dock beyond.
“Billy—is he—” Her gaze yanks to me. “Can you heal him, Dom? I tried to stop before it went too far…”
Three raging supernatural fiends are storming toward us intent on ending her life, and she cares more about the life she almost took. She’d send me to protect him rather than have me stay here defending her.
I don’t feel like I have a lot of choice, though. I snatch up the knife she dropped and shove between her and Kudzu a second before the massive guy barrels down on her.
“Don’t touch her!” I snap, tentacles whipping around me, knife hilt clenched in my hand.
He could probably pummel me into the deck without breaking a sweat, but he’ll have to if he wants to get to Riva. He’s not setting one fucking finger on her while I can still stand in the way.
The shadowkind man snarls with a hint of a smirk, as if he’sgladhe gets to bash through me first?—
And then a voice so deep and dark it sounds like it’s echoing up from the depths of hell reverberates through the air.
“Get away from the girl.”
The rush of supernatural power that comes with that order washes over me in a prickling wave that sets all the hairs on my body on end.
Kudzu jerks around, his body clenching up like he’s been punched.
A monster stands on the dock, glaring at the shadowkind on the ship with eyes like smoldering coals and razor-pointed teeth glinting in his grimace. The inhuman figure has to be well over seven feet tall, muscle-bound beneath his ruddy skin, two long black horns curving upward from the sides of his head.
My mind jars against the image, my thoughts scattering.
Then Kudzu says, in a cringing tone, “But, Rollick?—”
“Get. The fuck. Away from her,” the monster says in a firm but almost sardonic tone that does remind me of the demon’s voice, even if this version is way more booming.
Is that… is that what our benefactorreallylooks like?
I guess he’s called a demon for a reason.
There’s no missing the brutal energy that radiates off him, even more potent than in his human form. The shadowkind on the deck fall back, one of the smaller beings wincing as if Rollick’s demonic presence outright hurts her.
