Page 268 of Shadowblood Souls
His slicked-back hair curls a little longer around his ears than seems quite right.
His clothes, though all black, don’t totally match mine. The collar only reaches the base of his throat instead of covering his neck.
And his eyes. The pale blue eyes that’ve seared into me with anger and lit up with joy look utterly empty in a way I’ve never seen before, not even at his worst.
The bottom of my stomach drops out.
That’s not Jake.
The man who isn’t Jacob pushes his mouth into what looks more like an imitation of a smile than the real thing.
“It’s been a long time, Moonbeam.”
Captured Fate
One
Riva
Apainful tightness fills the middle of my throat. Before I’ve even opened my eyes, the urge to clear it grips me.
But I can’t seem to swallow. I can’t make a sound.
It’s not a lumpinmy throat but something squeezed against my neck from the outside.
My eyes want to spring open. My muscles are braced to jerk into attack mode. But instead my body reacts as if I’m moving through mud.
My eyelids lift sluggishly. My arms and legs squirm against a firmly padded surface.
And jar to a stop when they hit restraints clamped around my wrists and ankles.
I blink with the same blurry sluggishness, fighting to clear my hazy vision. A room comes into focus around me: shadows along the walls but bright light streaming over the center of the space where I’m trapped in this seat.
It’s like a dentist’s chair. Except I don’t think those normally lock you in place.
Of course, I’ve never been to a proper dentist before, only seen them in TV shows and movies. It could be the reality is much more frightening.
But why the hell would I have been kidnapped by adentist? Some psycho tooth doctor was so desperate to clean my teeth?
My head’s been filled with mud too. My thoughts seep along dampened circuits.
There was something, right before?—
We were in the facility—we’d gotten a bunch of shadowblood kids out?—
Running down the stairs after Jacob, urgency thrumming through my nerves. Dashing down a hall and into a room?—
Unbreakable walls thudding into place around me. And Jacob?—
Not Jacob.
He called meMoonbeam.
My heart lurches, and my limbs yank against the restraints even though I can already tell they’re built to withstand my supernatural strength. But as the resurgence of shock and anguish crashes over me, I’m remembering what happened next. The gas that poured down from the ceiling in a thick lavender gush, blotting out the man I was staring at and clouding my mind into nothingness.
That’s where the memories stop. I have no idea what happened between that moment and waking up here, now.
Panic trickles through the sludge in my head, sharpening my senses.
