Page 517 of Shadowblood Souls
Jacob thumps his fist on the table. “We destroy him and any of the criminals working with him. Sounds good to me.”
Fang turns his unnerving face toward Rollick. “How hard could it be to kill one mortal man? Heismortal, isn’t he?”
“Mr. Balthazar had no interest in becoming at all like the shadowkind himself,” Toni confirms.
Rollick grimaces. “He has proven to be particularly adept at evading our attacks, though. He doesn’t skimp on his silver and iron protections, and he leaves himself plenty of escape routes while preventing even his captives from getting within close enough range to unleash their talents on him. I don’t think we can count on the battle being easy, especially with an unknown number of shadowbloods in the mix.”
“We’ve got to find him first,” Andreas points out, and motions to Toni. “Where would he want to go next? You haven’t said what the next steps in his plans were going to be.”
She exhales raggedly. “I don’t know the specifics. I didn’t even know he and Matteo had finalized the procedure for transforming people into shadowbloods until that last night. But… the first stage he always talked about, when he had the manpower to move forward, was giving the world motivation to go on the attack against shadowkind.”
Zian frowns. “And how was he going to do that? No one believes monsters really exist.”
Toni meets his gaze, her dark eyes solemn. “He was going to prove it. By having his new shadowbloods rain down destruction with their powers, and then claimingthey’rethe monsters that need to be stamped out.”
A chill floods me from the inside out. “They’re going to go around attacking people.”
“Something like that. But I don’t know where he’ll start. Or when. I can’t imagine he’ll wait long, though. He’s been desperate to get started.”
My hands ball into fists, my claws tingling at my fingertips with the urge to strike out. But the man I want to tackle is nowhere within reach.
“We have to find him. Fast.” I look down at my arms and rub the skin of my wrist, the bruising there nearly faded already thanks to our swift shadowkind healing. “I wish we had a manacle onhimso we could track him down. He could be anywhere in the world!”
There’s a momentary silence. Then Dominic clears his throat and glances across the table. “Griffin tracked us all across the continent back when we were on the run—without needing any tracking devices.”
Every pair of eyes around the table jerks to the subdued guy who’s simply been sitting with us taking in the conversation—and the emotions we’re all giving off.
Only the briefest flicker of surprise passes through Griffin’s light blue eyes. Then he nods. “I did. But only because of the history between us. I’ve never evenseenBalthazar in person. I don’t have a strong enough sense of him that I could home in on his location.”
Zian lets out a growl of frustration. I slump in my seat, the momentary sense of hope deflating.
Jacob turns toward his twin. “You couldtry.”
Griffin pauses. “No. I can already tell it wouldn’t work. But…”
His gaze slides to me, intent and a little sad. Enough that I tense up before he even starts to speak.
“Riva, you share his DNA. You’ve seen him, using Zian’s power. If you borrowed that talent of mine, you might be able to find him.”
Three
Griffin
Rollick lays out the world map on the pale floorboards of one of his mansion’s common rooms. The paper surface is big, a good six feet across and four high, so he’s pushed the furniture to the sides of the room to make space. But even so, the imagery printed across the surface only offers a little detail, working on that scale.
The demon tsks his tongue. “You’re lucky I could dig up actual physical maps this quickly. Everyone’s all about the digital versions these days.”
Next to me, Riva rubs her arms and then forces her hands to her sides. Tense anticipation wavers off her into my awareness.
“So I start with the whole world and then narrow it down once we see what I come up with?” she says.
I nod. “After you get down to a smaller area like a city, we can switch to screens for that. But I always found it much easier to get a clear impression when I had a larger concrete map for the initial seeking.”
The other guys and a handful of shadowkind have been watching from a loose ring around us. Jacob steps forward to tap my arm. “Are yousureyou can’t do this? I mean, since you have the experience with how to work the power effectively. The procedures Balthazar had that asshole Matteo put us through expanded all of our talents.”
I shoot my brother a tight smile. “Not all of ours. At least, not in any way we figured out. Matteo pushed me to locate strangers using names and photographs—even inanimate objects—but none of that ever worked.”
Riva glances at me in surprise. “Wait—the procedures didn’t affect your powers even a little?”
