Page 593 of Shadowblood Souls
Just like before when she still had her memories.
“You’re all assholes!” the girl keeps shouting, the viciousness of her voice even more horrifying coming from a skinny fourteen-year-old kid. “I’ll hurtyouif you don’t stop this shit. I’ll?—”
A quaver enters her voice, and her expression shifts. She must sense a hint of her power.
The next sound that bursts from her lips is an emphatic, wordless crooning.
Fear rattles through my nerves, propelling a yelp up my throat and my feet toward the door. In just the second or two before Lull passes her hand over Bethany’s face, my heart nearly bursts from my chest.
Then the girl slumps back into a doze, and the adrenaline rush fades, leaving my body wobbly but a hell of a lot steadier.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Griffin swipes his hand over his face, his mouth slanted at a pained angle. “I’m sorry. I tried every angle I could think of—she got worked up so quickly.”
I clear my throat, but a rasp still colors my voice. “It’s not your fault. It’s that prick Balthazar.”
Why was Bethany still so aggressive when Keith came to in a much more cautious state? I stare at her prone form as if it’ll give me any answers and then extend my thoughts toward the one person who might have a clue.
Ajax? You knew both Keith and Bethany from training on the island. Can you think of any reason they’d react differently to this ‘treatment’?
There’s a momentary silence, and then Ajax’s inner voice trickles into my head.Keith was pretty quiet, kind of hesitant to try anything unless the guardians pushed him. Bethany always seemed a little angry even back then, like she figured she was going to get good at things to spite them or something. So that eventually she could turn the skills against them.
That makes a kind of sense. Their original personalities came into play, interacting with the crap Balthazar inflicted on them.
From what I’ve seen, the kids who were both easygoing and didn’t have particularly destructive talents even when amplified were the only ones who didn’t go batshit with his enhanced procedures. Maybe people who tended toward anger had their mental wiring screwed up the most.
So much that even a total wipe of the system couldn’t correct it?
I don’t want to believe it, but if this girl came out of the gate swinging that hard, it’s difficult to imagine how we’ll ever talk her down.
I restrain a shudder. “We’ll… We’ll figure out what to do about her next.” Then I turn to Griffin. “I should go fill Riva in. Why don’t you check on Keith and see if he needs any additional chilling out?”
“Good idea.” Griffin gives me a sympathetic smile and a quick squeeze of my arm as we head out of the room. Of course—he can sense my inner turmoil as well as he could the emotions of our wayward shadowbloods.
I watch him disappear past the other door before taking stock of myself. My nerves are still on the fritz, my heart beating a little faster than usual. I’ve definitely stretched my abilities.
My friends don’t need me only for my skills with memory. I’ll have to make them invisible for the ambush in the facility too.
It’d be good to test whether I have the capacity to tap into that talent even right after I’ve erased a couple of minds.
And the fact that I’d really rather not talk to anyone else about my theoretical success—and failure—before I reach Riva might be a small incentive as well.
I glance up and down the elegant hotel hallway with its amber light, confirming that I’m alone. With a slow inhalation, I will my body to vanish from view.
When I look down at my hands again, all I see is the mauve-and-gold carpet. Satisfied, I set off toward the elevators. It’s only one floor up to the penthouse suite, but the fewer doors I have to open manually, the less chance anyone will notice my presence.
The elevator opens to the vestibule outside the penthouse door just as Jacob and Zian come ambling out. “I’d rather get Greek,” Zian is saying.
Jake raises his hands in a gesture of mock defeat. “Let’s just see what’s near the hotel. We don’t want to roam around half the city.”
They’re off to pick up some dinner, apparently. I sidestep my friends and manage to slip into the penthouse just before the door closes behind them.
The living room on the other side appears empty, but I have no idea how many shadowkind might be hanging around in their noncorporeal forms. The door to the bedroom Riva has been using is closed, but I’ll just have to hope that any being who notices my passing by doesn’t freak out about it randomly opening.
I turn the knob carefully and ease inside. Riva is lying on top of the covers with her back to me, her head cradled by her arm. I’d have thought she was sleeping if it wasn’t for the air of tension around her pose.
She wanted to come with me, to witness for herself how our experiment turned out, but she was worried about the effect seeing her might have on the shadowbloods. “I know technically they won’t be able to remember me,” she said. “But it seemed like they associated me with everything they were angry about more than the rest of you. I’d rather not take the chance that there’s any lingering unconscious resentment.”
