Page 302 of Shadowblood Souls
“I just want to understand what’s going on. I’m part of this too.”
“You work for your boss. I work for mine. We all get what we want. That’s all you need to know.”
No, it’s not, not when everything he adds to the puzzle makes the pieces look more ominous. He has a boss—helping with this mission isworkfor him?
I wish Andreas was here to peer right inside this guy’s head and find out what’s going on. But he’s not.
It’s just me.
“Please,” I say. “I came all the way out here. It’s my mission too—why shouldn’t I know all of it?”
My guide keeps his mouth clamped shut. He appears to have decided he’s not going to talk at all.
The old me might have given up. This me has faced off with literal monsters and murderous gunmen.
This me has watched the woman he loves torn apart and then melded her back to life.
If there’s something going on here beyond what we know, I have to find out what that is. All of our lives could depend on it.
I’m not going to be the weak one. I can’t let this slide.
I push to my feet, ducking my head under the low ceiling of the van. “How were you and your ‘boss’ involved in setting up this mission? I need you to tell me.”
“You can ask your own boss if you want to know more.”
I step toward the guy and take in his flinch with a wince of my own. But underneath my revulsion at his reaction, I know I can use it.
He’s scared of me. And fear can be an incredible motivator.
“I don’t need you,” I say. “I can drive this van myself. I could tell my boss that you freaked out about my abilities and tried to hurt me. It was self-defense.”
The man’s head jerks toward me. “What are you talking about?”
I hate using my physical differences this way, like a threat, but it’s the only thing I’m sure will work. I shrug off my jacket and let my tentacles rise on either side of my shoulders.
I aim a firm gaze straight into the man’s twitching eyes. “I can use anything living to draw energy from. I can drain a whole human being in a couple of minutes. I know, because I’ve needed to before.”
The man cringes in his seat against the door of the van. He snatches at the handle, but I whip out one tentacle and snag it around his nearer wrist.
“You’re not going anywhere. Just tell me the terms of the deal, and we can go back to just sitting here like we never talked at all.”
“Get that thingoffme!” The man jerks at his arm, but my suckers and the sinewy muscles within the tentacle clamp tight.
“I can start siphoning off your life right now,” I warn him, but he keeps struggling.
I need to prove it. I need to make him feel what he could be losing.
My mouth goes dry. I managed to take just part of a fish’s life once, back when Rollick and his people were helping us get control of our abilities on his yacht. That last set of exercises I attempted with him, I was just starting to get the hang of refusing the deeper hunger.
But that was only once, in a perfectly controlled situation.
On the other hand, a fish has a lot less life than a human being.
I can do this. Ihaveto do this, or what did I even start threatening this man for?
I clench my teeth and give a tug through my tentacle. My will catches hold of the streams of life energy that thrum through the man’s body alongside his pulse.
The first spurt of it rushes through me with a giddying warmth, like drinking the richest hot chocolate in the world. I want more—I want to drown myself in it?—
