Page 568 of Shadowblood Souls
Riva stirs impatiently in the seat behind me. “How do the shadowbloods feel?”
“Angry.” The word pops out before I can shape it into something fully accurate. It isn’t a fraction enough to convey what I’m picking up on.
As another prickling wave washes over me, I swallow and try again. “I didn’t realize how angry they were when I was sensing the fight with you and the guardians in the forest. Or maybe they weren’t that angry yet, when they’d only just seen Balthazar killed. It’s like… like there’s no room for anything else in them. It doesn’t stay the same—it shifts and takes on different flavors, but everything is tainted by it.”
In the rearview mirror, I see Jacob’s mouth twist. I catch the hitch of guilt that hits him.
“That sounds like how I felt,” my twin says. “When I thought you were dead and that Riva had set you up for the guardians and turned on us. I did horrible things when that rage was gripping me. If I… if I could be that harsh with people who were my friends, who knows how far they’ll go against strangers they never cared about at all?”
There’s a rustle of movement—Riva taking Jacob’s hand. Compassion and pain mingles with those memories, but a whisper of relief passes through my brother at her gesture.
Dominic leans forward from behind the driver’s seat. “Can you calm them down with your powers?”
My stomach tightens. “I tried in the forest, and you could see it didn’t work very well then. But it might be easier closer up.”
With each surge of fury that sears into me, I believe in that possibility less.
Sorsha rolls her shoulders where she’s sitting in the very back next to Zian. “Maybe we should have brought along the kids we already freed. They grew up with some of the others—they might know what to say.”
“No,” Riva says firmly before the phoenix’s last word has faded from the air. “Booker tried to talk Nadia down last time, and she didn’t listen at all. The others might even be angry that the three of them came with us. The powers they have can’t protect them from an attack. This isourfight.”
Sorsha nods, but I taste the tendril of doubt that winds through her other emotions. She’s letting us call the shots when it comes to our fellow shadowbloods, but after what’s already gone down, she isn’t totally convinced we’re right.
I don’t think Riva is completely sure either. She’s just desperately hoping to find a way through this mess that doesn’t involve slaughtering children.
I point the way at another crossroads. “We’re almost there. A few more minutes, I think. They haven’t attacked yet. They’re agitated but not the way it’d feel if they were in the middle of actually fighting.”
As soon as Riva determined what direction the wayward shadowbloods were heading in, it wasn’t hard for us to figure out their next target. The internet holds plenty of accounts of a group of anti-monster vigilantes who gathered together here in Memphis, Tennessee to patrol the city.
They got a lot of publicity after a couple of them riddled someone’s pet wolfhound full of silver bullets, taking it for a supernatural beast in the dark. But with the current atmosphere after the “monster” attacks on other cities, the backlash wasn’t enough to shut the vigilantes down completely.
They’ll be out sweeping the streets with the tools Balthazar arranged for them to get, and the shadowbloods are hunting them in turn. Just as we’re hunting the shadowbloods.
Thankfully, it looks like we got here before the bloodbath. The shadowbloods are moving slower as they search, giving us time to catch up.
We leave behind the bars and sounds of late-night revelry for quieter streets with wide-spaced houses behind sprawling lawns. The sense of anger thickens until I can almost see it clouding the air.
“Just—just a couple of blocks farther and I think one street to the right.” I clear my throat, the swelling emotion choking me. “Drive another five blocks and then double back so we can meet them head on. I’ll try to settle them down.”
As Andreas pushes the engine a little faster and my friends ready their stances to spring into motion, I extend my senses outward. Rather than simply absorbing the emotions around me, I focus on the most calming memories I have and push the feeling out toward the raging presences nearby.
Softly lilting music. Petting my now-lost cat, Lua, while she curled up on my lap. Waking slowly in the same bed as Riva, drifting out of sleep with her contentment twining with mine.
There hasn’t been a whole lot of peace in our lives, but my talent lets me amplify those impressions and intensify them. I pour all the serenity I can summon in a deluge toward the forty or so figures stalking the suburban roads.
The wave of calm sweeps toward them, propelled by my will—and smacks into their fury as if their anger is a solid wall of flame. The rage disintegrates my efforts before the emotions I’m projecting even start to penetrate it.
I close my eyes and push harder, maintaining the delicate balance between holding on to my own inner calm and bringing the necessary force to bear. My awareness tickles across the inferno in search of a gap, a momentary lapse.
Nothing. I try to expand the sense of calm even broader, to turn it into a tsunami large enough to overwhelm the flames, butthe feeling of peace starts to fragment. I’m stretching it farther than I can sustain.
I jolt back into the physical reality of my seat and find my breath coming with a rasp, my forehead damp with sweat.
Riva reaches around the back to touch my arm. “Are you okay, Griffin?”
I manage a shaky nod. “Yeah. But I can’t—I can’t get through the anger. It’s too much.”
Jacob shrugs, his voice terse. “We do things the other way, then. Take out as many of the criminals as we can. Then the kids will have to listen to us, however long it takes.”
