Page 279 of Shadowblood Souls
I let him take lead in the escape—I let him be the one to race out first, where the bullets started flying?—
How much of the strangeness I see in him now is my fault too?
I suck in a breath through my teeth. “We can’t trust them. We can’t trust any of them. Even Engel, the one whomadeus, turned out to hate us.”
“Clancy isn’t like that.” Griffin steps back toward the door. “Show that you’re ready to talk and listen, and then we’ll get somewhere.”
He slips out before I can get another word in, leaving me behind in the cold, empty room.
Four
Riva
The swaying, reed-like strands of plastic sparkle with pink glitter. I eye the narrow opening, tracking their movements in the breeze.
There’s a dip in the ground under them. If I roll into it—a little to the side to avoid that root—at just the right moment…
I brace my limbs and then launch myself. As I hit the ground, I tighten my muscles to squish my compact body as small as it’ll go.
The pink-and-green strands flash by over my face. Then I’m shoving forward and leaping onto a jutting tree branch to avoid a pool of more glitter—this stuff neon yellow—on the far side.
I crouch there for a moment, breathing hard but with a sense of satisfaction I wasn’t totally prepared for. The branch starts to wobble, warning me that it’s part of the course’s training too.
With a rasp of my feet against the bark, I spring off and slip along a narrow path between the trees. I spot the trip wires seconds before I reach them and hop nimbly over each, justdodging a spinning disc that’s careening back and forth along one of them.
It’s done. I dart out into the field beyond the jungle with a sigh of relief.
The sun beams down over me, comfortingly warm. My nerves jangle from the high alertness I kept all through the stealth course that’s part of this island facility’s grounds.
Flopping down on the soft grass, I breathe the warmth and the new stillness in deeply.
Icando this. I can lie back and rest, knowing I made it through the course successfully.
Knowing I got to choose to run that course to begin with. Clancy escorted me from my room in the mountain facility this morning after a brief talk, but once we reached the grounds, he told me I could explore and try out anything that interested me.
Hewantedme to get comfortable here. To see what he’s offering and what the life he’s talking about could be like.
I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of a guardian offering me a choice.
I told him I’d give his training style and his missions a try, because it was either that or stay locked up and be prodded like a lab rat. The decision was pretty simple.
But is it possible this option could actually be… good?
I’ll feel surer about that when he lets me see my guys again. How much can I really trust him when he doesn’t totally trust us?
Of course, he’s right not to trust us. If I knew how to reach the guys and had a clear way of getting us and the other shadowbloods out of here, I’d take it in an instant.
But the mountains that surround this crater-turned-valley look ominously steep. I don’t know how far we’d have to go beyond their ridges to find the island’s shores—or what avenues for further escape we’d find there.
How is Clancy bringing in people and supplies? Helicopter? Boat?
I have no idea which direction we’d even want to go in.
So for now I’ll play along, make whatever observations I can, and stay ready.
And if he really can help me get a proper handle on my sadistic talent while I’m here, I might actually leave better than I arrived.
Footsteps rustle across the grass toward me. I sit up in a snap and find two of the younger shadowbloods wandering over.
