Page 559 of Shadowblood Souls
In the midst of the bolts of energy and the cacophony of the battle, maybe my concentration isn’t perfect. Just as I feel the vicious energy hit its target, Balthazar flinches—and wrenches his hand toward his pocket.
It’s possible he does have the device he used to interrupt my previous attack on him. It’s even possible he’d have managed to activate it before I lanced my scream into him with even more force, if I were alone.
But I’m not.
Before Balthazar’s fingers quite brush the surface of his jacket, his wrist snaps sideways as if twisted by an invisible force. His forearm cracks in a different direction, the bone raking through the fabric.
And with the extra second Jacob earned me, I throw everything I have into my shriek.
There’s no time for lingering in the torment, as much as I might like to pay this man back for what he did to us like I got to with Matteo. I channel all of my brutal power into the wrinkled organ within his skull.
The neurons cleave apart; the tissue shreds. The bony dome fractures into a thousand pieces.
Life sputters out.
Balthazar’s knees buckle, a single searing jolt of pain resonating from him into me. As he topples over, his body jerks.
It slams into the ground, and his face crumples in. Bloody dents burst across his flesh, smashing his features.
I can picture Zian’s fist pounding into our former captor. Zee is still invisible, but his supernatural strength shows in every break of Balthazar’s skull—until all that remains is a bloody pulp framed by crimson-streaked hair.
Relief sweeps through me, knocking the breath out of my lungs. It’s done. We did it. Balthazar is actually… gone.
I hurl myself from my tree and race to the concrete yard, needing to see the proof up close to confirm it. Needing to taste the tang of our tormenter’s blood in the air.
Skidding to a stop just a foot away, I stare down at Balthazar’s mutilated and undeniably dead form. The man whocalled himself my father only as another way to control me. The man who forced himself into all our lives even more viciously than the guardians he once helped lead.
He can’t hurt anyone else ever again.
As my heart thumps hard in my chest, a sense of triumph that has a shocked edge to it fills my chest.
Wereallydid it. I almost didn’t believe we could?—
The impression of being stared at yanks my attention away. I glance up and find the nearest of the scattered shadowbloods gaping at Balthazar, looking totally bewildered.
Right. They can’t see me or Zian to know what even happened to him.
That thought has just passed through my head when Nadia lets out a cry and hurls a blast of her blazing light our way. It smacks into me with an unnerving prickling sensation, as if I’m sloughing off my skin like a snake.
No, not my skin—Andreas’s invisibility. As I blink the burn from my eyes, Zian wavers into sight beside me.
He’s fully wolf-manned out, muzzle jutting and fur sprouting down his neck to the collar of his coat. Gore smears his clenched fists.
“You…” Nadia says in a shaky voice.
I touch Zian’s arm in solidarity and raise my voice to peal out through the clearing. “Shadowbloods! Balthazar is dead. He doesn’t control you anymore. It’s over.”
More of the figures who were still fighting the remaining guardians swing toward us. Only a few continue the battle—nearly all of their enemies have fallen anyway.
Bodies litter the concrete surface, but nearly all of the dead wear guardian uniforms. Balthazar’s bodyguards have smashed right through the four board members who stood nearest, their corpses lying crumpled and distorted on the ground several feet away from where I stand.
One of those thugs, the one with the scar across his brow, stares at Balthazar’s battered form. He lifts his gaze to me, and his lips curl with a snarl. “Youdid that?”
I blink, my throat momentarily closing up. “I?—”
All around us, pairs of shadowblood eyes have narrowed. Hostility crackles on the crisp breeze.
The man who spoke cracks his knuckles and steps toward us. “You’re going to pay.”
