Page 466 of Shadowblood Souls
There’s no one in sight of our alcove in the hedges to see Andreas’s powers at work. He brings us back into visibility, appearing before my eyes with a triumphant grin.
We won this minor battle. Balthazar didn’t have us knocked out or harmed for delaying an extra minute.
For all he knew, we really couldn’t have returned right away regardless. He couldn’t have seen exactly what the circumstances were.
A little loophole in the tangled mess he’s wrapped us up in.
I don’t know if he’ll agree to any more recreational excursions after we’ve stretched the limits of his patience, but that possibility seems unlikely anyway. All that matters is the lightness that winds through me as Andreas and I find our way back to the waiting car.
The sense of momentary freedom lingers through the drive to the villa as I nestle against Drey in the back seat. It lasts untilthe car passes over the drawbridge into the grounds, and Toni eyes us as we clamber out.
“You got your fun,” she says. “Now Mr. Balthazar has another job for you.”
Twenty-Two
Riva
Somehow it feels odd to look around and see all the signs up and down the city street printed with English words. Many of them I can’t fully make out in the hazy light of streetlamps through the night, but it still gives the neighborhood a sense of home that I hadn’t realized I was missing.
This isn’t the first time any of our recent keepers have sent us on a mission to an English-speaking place. The gala we attended, where I carried out my political assassination, must have been in the US.
But that one time, our escort dropped us off right at the site of the job. We had no chance to look around, let alone roam.
Every other place Balthazar or even Clancy sent us was someplace beyond the continent where we grew up, often unidentified and made even more indecipherable by that lack of information.
Here, the recognizable language showing in shop windows, over their doors, and on the ads in a bus shelter grounds me.Balthazar and his people didn’t tell us what city we were going to, but it’s warm for the late autumn. I guess it’s possible we’re in Australia, but the look of the place, the sounds and smells and the overall atmosphere, strike me with a sense of familiarity.
We’re probably somewhere in the southern US. Maybe I’ll see a reference to a state or the city itself on one of the buildings we pass.
Not that the information will necessarily tell us much of anything about why we’re here or how it matters to Balthazar, but I’ll take every scrap we can get.
His driver has chosen our stopping point well for keeping Zian, Andreas, and me in the metaphorical dark as well as the literal, though. Most of the structures we slink by on the short walk to our target are bland office buildings with vague company names that give away nothing about what services or products they offer. If the few street signs we pass include the city name like I’ve seen some places, it’s in a print too small for me to make out in the night.
I spot our destination up ahead: another office building, slabs of concrete around horizontal rectangles of glass. Our instructions said it’d be on the corner, with a large logo like a red daisy cut in half etched on the wall beside the front door.
Pausing on the opposite side of the street, I reach back to touch the small bag slung across my back. Confirming I’ve got my cargo.
Today we’re not stealing anything but dropping something off. Which somehow seems more ominous, since I can’t imagine Balthazar’s offering is actually any kind of gift.
For a second, I could imagine I’m alone on the street corner. Only three of us headed out from the villa for this latest job, and Andreas’s only role was to use his expanding powers to turn Zian, me, and my cargo invisible. Zee and I left him back in the van.
The faint huff of a breath confirms that Zee is still there beside me. I have the urge to reach toward him, to solidify his presence in my mind with a touch, but that seems particularly risky when he won’t even be able to see my hand coming.
“Ready?” I ask under my breath. I don’t see anyone around, but the caution comes automatically.
Zian replies with a repetition of the next part of our instructions. “Middle of the south side, twelfth floor.” He inhales audibly. “Let’s get it done.”
Balthazar picked the two of us for the main part of this job mostly for our supernatural strength. None of the other shadowbloods could have fit their fingers and toes into the small ridges in the concrete and hauled themselves up twelve floors without fear of falling.
Okay, notmuchfear. Given the choice, I’d rather have a climbing rope.
But Zian and I clamber upward with no further conversation, only the soft rasp of exertion in our breaths. I sense him just a foot away from me in the shifts of the air with his movements.
When I’m looking straight up, not paying any attention to the area beside me, my mind fills in his image there as if I could see him after all.
My limbs move even more effortlessly than I’m used to. All of Matteo’s “procedures” have continued enhancing my strength and speed as well as my banshee scream.
With my conversation with Andreas in the back of my mind, the things he said about how our powers could work for us as well as other people, exhilaration trickles through me. I don’t like that I’m performing this feat for Balthazar’s benefit… but there is something thrilling about the fact that I can accomplish the climb at all.
