Page 604 of Shadowblood Souls
“It doesn’t matter whether I get out. We left a few friends behind, along with our maker’s serums and pills and instructions. If we don’t come back, they’ll raise up a whole new army of monsters to rain hell down on you—and everyone else who deserves it.”
My heart lurches. Oh, fuck, no. Unhinged shadowbloods creating even more shadowbloods and roping them into their psychotic cause?
I don’t even want to think about how much worse things could get.
We can’t kill Cutler. Not right away—not before Andreas or Ajax can search his mind to find out where they’ve left their back-up stash so we can destroy that too.
As my mind scrambles for an answer, the former inmate heaves out another room-shaking holler and yet another. With the second bellow, the doorframe jolts a few inches, pushing back from the cement of the wall.
He’s trying to crack the whole frame right out. We can’t let him run away from us either.
An idea starts to formulate in my head. But I need my allies on board with it.
“Let me deal with him,” I shout to wherever Jacob and Sorsha are now. “Don’t burn him or?—”
“As if they even could,” Cutler interrupts, and throws his voice into another booming roar. At the same moment, Nadia floods the room with dagger-sharp light.
My vision whites out, and metal groans in concrete. With my pulse thundering through my veins, I hurl out a shriek just ahead of the last place I heard Cutler.
I assumed he’d run toward the door as it starts to fall—and I was right. My scream latches onto a figure in mid-stride.
His lips part. I’m not sure I can hold him firmly enough to stop him from heaving one of his bellows at me. He could shattermybody like he has the wall.
I focus all my attention on the cord running up his spine and twist it right at the base of his skull.
A flare of pain shoots into me and then cuts off. The second I drop my voice, Cutler crumples to the ground with a thump.
I’ve paralyzed him—he shouldn’t be able to move a muscle… or his vocal cords.
I just have to hope I didn’t cut off his functions so thoroughly that his vital organs will shut down too. I don’t know anatomy with a surgeon’s precision.
“Leave him!” I cry out, afraid Sorsha might have missed my earlier plea. “We need him alive.”
A sob peals out from somewhere in the mess of fallen columns, followed by a growl of anger. “You’re the monsters,” Nadia cries. “You attack us and torture us, just like?—”
“No!” I ease closer, trying to get a clear sense of exactly where she is. “We don’t want to do any of this. Ihatethat we’re doing this. But you were attacking so many other people.”
Maybe sensing my intentions, Nadia sends out another searing blast of light before the blotches have faded from my vision from the last time. I freeze with my hand against the wall, pained tears welling in my eyes as I struggle to see.
Her voice reaches me again, ragged and trembling. “You said we were blood. You said you’d save us.”
I swallow thickly, the guilt that hit me before expanding through my abdomen. There’s nothing I can say that will persuade her to back down.
So I might as well be as honest as I can be.
I pitch my voice to carry, though my throat is getting scratchy from the smoke. “I hate that I couldn’t save all of you. I tried so hard… But being blood doesn’t mean you always have to stand with someone if they’re doing things you can’t accept. Balthazar was myfather, but he was trying to ruin the whole world. I couldn’t live with myself if I let that happen.”
Nadia lets out a sound that’s both choked and derisive. “Like you’ve never hurt anyone? I’ve seen what you can do with your scream.”
I wet my lips. “I realize that I’ve hurt a lot of people. You know…”
The memory that wells up in my head brings a sharper pang of pain, but I push myself onward. “I almost killedmyself. I was afraid I was going to lash out and hurt people I didn’t want to, and in that moment, I thought maybe it’d be better if I was dead. If I couldn’t stop otherwise.”
“But you’re still here. Why did you change your mind about yourself, but you’re taking us out?”
My mouth twists with a bittersweet smile. “I realized there was more to me than the anger and the brutality. I cared about people, and people cared about me.”
Nadia scoffs raggedly. “You think I don’t?”
