Page 241 of Shadowblood Souls
And just like that, it becomes very clear why he’s the boss. Even if his associates sometimes turn a little mutinous.
“Billy,” Riva says again, louder—a wrenching plea.
“He’s alive,” Pearl’s voice calls up from the dock, unusually squeaky with strain. “He’s— It’s not good.”
The demon that is Rollick meets my eyes and jerks his head toward the dock as if to say,Well, get on with it.
I don’t want to leave Riva, but knowing that someone is helping Billy in ways she can’t obviously means more to her than keeping me here. Rollick’s influence seems to be holding his comrades at bay.
My stomach knotting, I dash to the side of the boat.
As I straighten up with my approach, the crumpled bodies on the dock come into view. They’re even more unsettling than I expected from my glimpses while Riva’s scream cut through our attackers.
I can barely make out the heap of matter that was once Cinder through the streams of smoke gushing off her corpse. It looks as if her flesh is disintegrating into the smoke essence.
There’s a knob of something there that might be a knee. A long, lean chunk that’s probably her torso, though contorted beyond recognition.
I drag my gaze away to the other, smaller form huddled closer to the shore.
Billy is at least still identifiable as the slender, horned faun. His head appears to be intact, though it’s tucked toward his chest with a twisted grimace.
But the rest of him…
The gleam of a rib juts from one side, right through his torn shirt. Both of his legs sprawl bent at unnatural angles.
Wafts of essence trail off his wounds. Pearl is crouched over him, tears shimmering on her rosy cheeks, her pale hands flitting over him as if wanting to piece him back together but not knowing how.
No, that’s not good at all.
I shove open the gate and push down the ladder so I can rush down to the dock. The rickety surface bobs under my sudden weight.
Jacob and Zian are just pulling themselves onto the boards farther down, adding to the unsteadiness. Jake swipes his hand back over his drenched hair and stares at the boat as if he’s about to launch himself back onto it, his eyes blazing like ice-blue flames.
“If those fuckers touch Riva?—”
“They know better,” Rollick says in that echoing demonic voice that sends another shiver under my skin.
I dash over to Billy and sink down across from Pearl. My tentacles swing forward, one of them tucking around his waist, and the other trailing through the air.
“I need—I need an energy source,” I rasp out.
Rollick snaps his fingers. “Kelp, get the kid some fish.Now.”
An eerie warbling sound carries up from below, with a tremor of the dock. Then a gleaming fish as long as my forearm flips out of the water onto the boards next to me.
I don’t question it, just smack my other tentacle around its scaled body. The suckers clench on, and life races into me in a tingling torrent.
I compel the energy through my body and out the other tentacle, pouring every shred of the life I’m absorbing into the broken man in front of me.
Billy’s shadowkind body doesn’t feel the same as the people I’ve healed. Instead of catching hold of solid bones and organs, the healing power I’m sending into him seems to pool through his entire form. Like it’s condensing inside him, making every particle of him stronger and more solid.
Whatever it’s doing, my efforts appear to be working at least a little.
The rib vanishes into Billy’s body. His legs morph back into a more normal configuration.
The plumes of essence taper off, but thinner ribbons of smoke keep winding upward.
Another fish flops onto the dock, and my tentacle flicks to that one, nudging the desiccated corpse of the first into the water. I yank more life energy through me, but I can’t tell if my renewed efforts are actually fixing anything in the muddy sense I have of Billy’s internal state.
