Page 512 of Shadowblood Souls
He hadn’t counted on them having a hybrid they could call on for help—or on Toni turning against him. But…
I knit my brow. “What would he need an openingfor? What did Rollick have that?—”
The answer hits me with an icy smack. Oh, shit.
My voice weakens. “Engel’s laptop. I told him that I left it with Rollick. I figured that put it out of his reach anyway, that it couldn’t hurt to say it…”
Jacob glances between us, his shoulders flexing with restrained tension. “What the fuck does it matter? What could he get out of Engel’s laptop? It didn’t do much for us.”
“It had all of her notes on it,” Dominic puts in. “There were lots we couldn’t understand because they were in code.”
Andreas makes a face. “He worked closely with her. He might have known how to break it.”
Toni nods. “He did. He has her documentation of the original processes she used to create the six of you. Which means he can replicate them.”
Zian cocks his head. “But that’s not a big problem right away, is it? I mean, any shadowbloods he creates are going to start asbabies. We can stop him before he could make them hurt anyone.”
It’s a moment before Toni can seem to find the words. She inhales with a rasp.
“He already had Matteo working on other sorts of procedures. You experienced some variations on those. But he was missing the key…”
The chill that hit me before digs its claws right through my ribs. “What are you saying?”
Toni drags her gaze to meet mine again. “Balthazar has a method for turning fully-grown adults into shadowbloods. I met his first attempt last night—the first soldier in his new army.”
Fearsome Dream
One
Riva
Aborrowed power ripples through my veins. It’s as familiar as the men standing around me but exhilaratingly new at the same time.
I test my sense of the energy inside me like a flexing of muscles, looking around the clearing where we’re holding this demonstration.
The warm breeze ruffles the fronds on a nearby palm tree and licks under my braid. December in southern Spain feels like spring has in most places I’ve been to before.
I shift my feet against the thick grass and study the other, bushier trees that surround the clearing. All I need is a single, small branch jutting away from the others.
I’d rather not chop down an entire tree—or even half of one—by accident.
There. One of the shorter trees, barely more than a sapling, has a long twig with just a sprinkling of leaves poking from its trunk below the thicker boughs.
I gather the roiling power behind my eyes and focus it into heat. Then I slice that heat down through the base of the twig.
It only takes a moment. A whiff of smoke laces the air with a crisp woody scent, and the twig drops to the ground, its severed end charred black.
As I glance at Zian and nudge the tingle of energy from me back into his brawny form, Rollick brings his hands together in a brief round of applause. “Fascinating. Both in how far your skills have developed and how seamlessly you can exchange them.”
Our host smiles at us, his dark blue eyes twinkling. In his human guise, the millennia-old demon has the stunning good looks of a movie star—and I find him as difficult to read as if he really was only a mask made of special effects and studio lighting.
The beings like Rollick—who call themselves shadowkind but most humans who know of them call monsters—haven’t often been friendly to my guys and me. Many of them don’t trust beings likeus: hybrids with both human and shadowkind characteristics, capable of major supernatural power but lacking the few weaknesses that can hinder other “monsters.” Shadowbloods, as our makers named us.
Which is probably fair, because the humans who created us did it specifically so that we could go out and kill shadowkind on their behalf. They weren’t counting on us developing strong enough minds of our own to decidetheywere a hell of a lot more monstrous than our supposed enemies.
And Rollick has proven more than once that he doesn’t consider us the enemy either. It’s thanks to him that we made it away from the worst of our captors just yesterday.
I’m not sure how many other shadowkind might be watching the demonstration he asked for after we told him about our new abilities. One thing they can do and we can’t is merge into patches of darkness in their truest shadowy forms.
