Page 599 of Shadowblood Souls
The instant it bangs shut, a hissing sound fills the air. I touch my gas mask instinctively, confirming its fit.
With that bulky thing over my face, I’ll look even more like a monster than I normally do, but no one can see me anyway.
Clouds of chemical smoke gush from the two vents we otherwise sealed, triggered by Griffin. I brace myself to jump in for my role in this plan.
A couple of the shadowbloods shout in alarm, but they’re already swaying with the drug’s effects. Rollick helped us pick out one that’s both potent and fast-acting.
We couldn’t have succeeded using this tactic on the full crowd of rogues. In a space big enough that they’d all have willingly come in, we’d never have been able to affect them all in time to prevent a counterattack.
Even now, while the four smallest teens slump on the floor unconscious, the other five figures keep stumbling through the hazy air. Sparks shoot from someone’s fingertips.
We can’t have them fighting while Andreas is working his memory wipes on the others—or worse, bashing their way out of the room into the fresh air. Zian is stationed outside, but he’s got to stay on guard against escapees from both sides.
If we want to save anyone from a worse fate, it’ll be a lot easier if we can keep them contained.
I shove myself forward from the corner I was tucked into with the invisibility Andreas granted me. One of my tentacles wraps around the neck of the kid who was shooting sparks; the other catches Omar by the wrist.
As soon as my suckers connect with bare skin, I’m hauling their energy into my veins. At the same moment, I reach out my hands toward the farther shadowbloods and yank at the thrum of life I can sense emanating from them.
Shadowblood energy comes so quickly, so easily. The thrilling rush sweeps over me from every side. Giddy shivers ripple through my limbs.
An ache forms in my chest to drink in even more. To find out just how good the full force of so many lives at once could feel.
No. I’m not even entertaining that thought. I’m draining them toprotectthem, not to gratify some selfish urge inside me.
Maybe because I’ve already taken in so much all at once, it’s easier than I expected to detach. As the sparking kid’s knees buckle in a faint, I flick my tentacle free.
Omar sags next, stumbling into the wall and then sliding down it. He jerks his arm against my hold a few times, conjured spurts of ice nipping at my skin, but he’s already so weakened between the drug and the energy I’ve stolen that he doesn’t come close to dislodging me.
I can taste his pulse growing sluggish. I whip the tentacle that gripped him away and whirl toward the spot where a few more of the rogues are still on their feet.
With one last tug at the pulsing thrum inside them, two of them crumple. The last, the remaining man, lunges at me and nearly trips over his feet in his dizziness.
“You,” he snarls out at whatever he can make out of me in the haze. I curl the tip of one tentacle toward his face to drain just a tiny bit more, and then he’s tumbling over on his ass.
I can make out Drey and Griffin vaguely, human-shaped gaps of what looks like empty air in the midst of the clouds. Drey bends over Devon, a hand against the boy’s forehead, performing either his first or his second memory wipe depending on how quickly he’s been able to work.
Griffin has remained in his corner near the cardboard boxes. His voice comes out muffled by his gas mask. “Do the adults next. Once the drug started taking effect, I could calm down the kids a little, but those two stayed pretty angry.”
Andreas nods, sending the haze rippling around the space where his head moved. “Are they all down?”
“I got the ones who resisted the gas,” I say. “I don’t know how long they’ll stay unconscious, but I can drain them a little more if I need to.”
My skin is humming, my pulse twitching with the immense stores of energy I’ve taken into myself. I have the bizarre impression that if I pushed off the floor, I could glide right to the ceiling and float there.
But that’s okay. I only took the energy I had to, nothing more.
I made it possible for us to offer some of the shadowbloods driven out of control by Balthazar’s treatment a fresh start.
Which is a lot better than the murders Riva and Sorsha are having to carry out in the room next to ours.
That thought brings me back to earth with a flip of my stomach. Even if the rogues have gone off the rails, even if it’s clear there’s nothing else we can do for some of them—nothing that would save the peopletheywere intent on murdering… we shouldn’t forget them.
They didn’t deserve to end up this way. It wasn’t really their choice.
All we can do is set things as right as we can. Maybe there was never going to be any perfect solution, even if we’d destroyedBalthazar before he could start building his private shadowblood army.
A faint sense of soothing wraps around me, and my gaze darts toward Griffin’s form in the haze. He must be picking up on my conflicted feelings. But the offered calm doesn’t come across as an imposition, only an offer of sympathy and reassurance, as if he’s squeezed my shoulder or offered me a quick hug.
