Page 532 of Shadowblood Souls
I relax into the sensations, letting them flow through me in giddy ripples. When Zee dips his head to kiss my shoulder, I hum happily.
“No one else fills me quite like you do,” I murmur, glancing over at him.
The wolfish cast that came over his face is fading. A flush that’s more than just the exertion creeps up his neck at my remark.
Then he hugs me against his chest. “It means you’re literally stuck with me, at least for a little while.”
A giggle tumbles from my lips. “I have no problem with that at all.”
The surface beneath my hands wobbles. I raise my head, releasing the headboard with one hand to swipe at the sweaty strands of hair clinging to my forehead.
The top section of the wooden slab topples over onto the pillow in front of me. I freeze, my jaw dropping open.
“Um… I think I broke your bed.” It’s split with a crack that formed along the grain of the wood. A crack I’m pretty sure didn’t exist before I grabbed hold of the thing.
Zian peers at it alongside me. Then a deep chuckle resounds from his chest. “Don’t know your own strength, huh.” He nuzzles the back of my neck. “I’ll take part of the blame. But somehow I don’t think Rollick will be that upset about it.”
Knowing the demon, he’ll probably find it amusing. I nudge the broken piece up against the remaining headboard and saginto the covers. “When we have our own house, we’ll have to get stronger beds.”
If only all our problems came with such a simple solution.
Eight
Riva
Silence cloaks the craggy slopes of the mountains along with the thickening dusk. I draw up my legs on the rock ledge where I’m perched and hug my knees.
Sorsha has used her fiery powers to warm the area of our camp against the cold of the season and the altitude, but gusts of biting wind penetrate it here at the edge. I curl my fingers in my wool gloves and tune out the discomfort.
Inside, I’m focused on my sense of Balthazar’s presence using the talent I’ve once again borrowed from Griffin. A small laminated map of this stretch of the Carpathian range sits on the gritty rock beside me. I don’t even look at it as my finger taps a slow path toward our location.
The six of us shadowbloods, Sorsha, and a handful of shadowkind including Rollick arrived in the mountains yesterday. We made a slow, careful trek to the campsite Rollick’s people had picked out as they investigated the area, followinga route they also picked out to avoid any of Balthazar’s more distant security measures.
We’re right at the edge of his sphere of detection now. The mountainside base lies about a hundred feet below me, invisible at this distance other than a narrow stone lip Crag pointed out to me that he said is the top of the entrance.
While we’ve been staked out here waiting for our enemy’s arrival, the other shadowkind working alongside us have spread out in a wide ring around the base. They’ll report back to Rollick if they notice anything that could interfere with our plans—and interfere themselves if more manpower arrives from outside the base.
If we’re really lucky, one of those powerful beings will spot the maniac himself and end his life before the rest of us need to move one inch farther. But I’m becoming increasingly sure there’s no chance of that.
Andreas comes up beside me and sinks down onto the ledge. “Still getting closer?” he murmurs under his breath.
I nod. I first charted Balthazar’s movements toward the base around the middle of the afternoon, from someplace in northern Russia where Toni confirmed he has property. We became increasingly sure he was coming specifically here and not some other place to the south as the hours went on.
Now he’s only a few miles away. And he’s slowed down as if he’s making a final approach. But Rollick’s people haven’t reported any sign of him back to us.
“He’s almost here,” I say, matching Drey’s soft tone. “But he’s got to have some secret way of arriving through the mountains, or one of the shadowkind would have seen him.”
Andreas glances around over the steep mountain slopes. Up here, there’s barely any vegetation other than patches of coarse grass and an occasional withered shrub.
He motions to the landscape with a flick of his coppery-brown hand. “There are a lot of nooks and crannies across the mountains. Areas it’s hard to see unless you’re right on top of them. We’d need thousands of beings to keep an eye on every entry point.”
And Balthazar is still moving fast enough that my ability to pinpoint his location doesn’t do us much good. By the time I’m sure of one exact location, he’s already left it behind.
All I know for sure is that he’s on his way, and he’ll be arriving within minutes.
I lean forward a few inches to peer down the slope through the hazy twilight. “Obviously he wasn’t coming by helicopter. At least not using the helipad we know about.”
There’s a smooth stretch of rock about a hundred feet below and to the left of the base’s most obvious entrance, with scuff marks indicating it’s been landed on before. Back when Balthazar didn’t have to worry about his former shadowblood captives coming after him, I guess.
