Page 401 of Shadowblood Souls
The only one of us who could save her is lying unconscious on the hospital bed by the wall.
Lindsay’s knees give. Her head droops, her face waxy pale.
Suddenly, I’m shouting too. “Stop it! You made your point. Help her!”
On the TV screen, our captor remains silent. The woman who brought us to the room stands beside the table, motionless.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jacob snarls at her. “Do something!”
His arm jerks up as if he’s going to yank her right over with his talent—but before he’s given her so much as a tug, he staggers on his feet. His eyes roll up as a potent dose of Balthazar’s sedative washes out his mind, and he slumps over on the ground.
My throat stings, raw and aching. I want to scream, but what would that accomplish? I’d end up sprawled unconscious on the floor with Jacob and Nadia, leaving Balthazar totally untouched.
Lindsay has crumpled too, her body slackening as it sinks into the pool of blood that coats the floor around her. Her eyes stare blankly at me, her lips parted as if she’s on the verge of asking me a question she’ll now never speak.
I swallow a sob, unable to convince my fingers to release her arm, as if I might still be able to pull her back.
That prick who thinks we belong to him decided her abilities weren’t useful enough? She was just a kid—she couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
And he cut off her life without so much as a blink, as if nothing mattered more than his sick demonstration.
Griffin has knelt next to Jacob, checking his pulse. A hand grips my shoulder, and I glance up in a daze to find Andreas leaning over me, his face tight with horror.
Balthazar’s voice carries from the screen as calmly as if this was a standard job orientation meeting. “You see that I have the means to easily keep you in line if necessary. For the time being, you have free run of most of this property, but youwillobey any requests made by myself or my primary staff, Toni and Matteo.”
I glance over at the screen, fury searing through my chest.
Our captor is gazing at us with that fucking smile curving his cruel mouth. “What we’re doing here is far from a game, and I trust that you understand now that I’m not playing around.”
Three
Riva
Zian stares down at the drop beyond the stone wall for several beats before straightening up with a hopeless expression. “We’re not getting anywhere that way.”
My fingers curl around the edge of the wall, my claws scratching the limestone blocks. We’ve been exploring Balthazar’s expansive “villa” and grounds for the better part of the afternoon, and nothing we’ve seen has given me any basis to argue with Zee.
The stately mansion is built on a narrow hilltop amid the churning sea of rock I saw from my bedroom window. The plateau that holds it and its patios and gardens drops away into a nearly sheer cliff on all sides.
There is a gate at one end, beyond a row of nearly manicured hedges, with a narrow bridge that connects the plateau to a lower one with a gentler slope. But it was built with a drawbridge in the middle. A drawbridge that’s currently raised.
Even I couldn’t hope to jump the entire thirty-foot gap beneath it.
Sweet smells fill the air from the flowers and waxy-leaved trees still vibrant in the cool autumn air, but I can’t take any enjoyment from the atmosphere. My stomach is knotted too tight.
I dig my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and turn to face the others. The mountain breeze tugs at the strands of hair it’s worked free from my braid.
“He picked a location even more secure than the island,” I say with a humorless smile.
Nadia rubs one of her bracelets. “And trapped us with these awful things too. They’re notbracelets—they’re… they’re manacles, without even needing chains attached.”
Her brown face is still a little grayed after her dose of the sedative, but she makes the declaration in a typical dry tone. We’re all nervous about how our captor might be monitoring our conversations, but I have to think he knows we’ll discuss our predicament.
If he’s listening in, he’ll probably enjoy hearing us despair.
The only thing we have to be careful about is if wedostumble on an opportunity to get the fuck out of this nightmare.
She has a point about the bracelets—or manacles, as I can’t help thinking of them when I look at them now. I can practically see the metaphorical chains tying us to the villa behind us and the madman who brought us here.
