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The lamia. I guess that’s a little better than constantly drugging them up.
I cross my arms over my chest, just shy of hugging myself. “What have they been doing when they wake up?”
Zian rubs his shoulder. “One of the kids tried to tear my arm right off when I went to talk to him. I could barely hold him down—whatever his powers are, they include a lot of strength. He wouldn’t stop yelling long enough for anyone to get a word in.”
Rollick eases open the door and motions us into the room. Three cots are set up with the dozing figures, who are pinned to their beds with heavy chains.
The one girl has a gag tied across her mouth. The man is blindfolded.
Before I need to ask, Andreas points to a large black splotch on the wallpaper. “The older guy has some kind of rotting power he projects with his eyes. He nearly disintegrated a hole in the wall.”
The plump woman with a silvery sheen to her skin wavers out of the shadows near the teenage boy—the one who attacked Zian, I guess. She looks at Rollick in question. “He’s starting to wake up. Should I send him back under?”
Even as she speaks, the boy’s limbs twitch. I square my shoulders. “I’d like to see how he is. At least as much as you can let him wake up before he’s a real threat.”
Rollick inclines his head to give his agreement. Lull stations herself near the boy’s head in anticipation of using her powers.
A tremor runs through the boy’s body. He jerks against the chains before his eyes have even opened.
Then he thrashes his head from one side to the other, but the movement is still a bit sluggish with sleep. “Let me out of here! I’m going to rip you all to pieces, you freaks. If I—”
The lamia brushes her fingertips over his hair, and his voice falters. His eyelids droop again, but they don’t fully close.
I dart to the end of his cot. “We want to help you. But we can’t do that if you’re trying to fight us. If you could just listen for a minute or two—my friends and I are shadowbloods just like you—”
“Nothing like us,” the boy mumbles out in a thickened voice. “Deserve everything you get. I hope Cutler finds you and chops you all to—”
His arms have started to slam against the chains again. With an apologetic pursing of her lips, Lull presses her whole hand to his head, and he trails off into slumber.
I take a step back, my posture deflating. How the hell can we get through to him when he’s still so caught up in his rage, even separated from the rest of the group?
There’s obviously nothing more to see. Rollick ushers us back into the living room.
I walk to the sofa and then back again, my nerves jangling. “And the other rogues—the ones that got away? Do we know what they’re doing?”
“It seems like you shook them up some,” Rollick replies. “They bashed up a few things—and people—on their way out of the city, but they didn’t stop to revel in the destruction. They were in a hurry. I don’t think they liked how close you got to overpowering them.”
“Not close enough,” Jacob mutters.
I swallow a choked laugh. Not close enough by a long shot.
One of his colleagues appears on the other side of the room and points to the bedroom where I woke up. “The wild shadowbloods are on the TV again.”
My stomach sinking, I hurry over with the others. The TV mounted on the wall across from the bed emits a reporter’s clipped but slightly frantic-sounding tones.
“No one’s quite sure who the culprits are or what the motivation for this massacre was. Police are pursuing every possible lead. We can’t help speculating that it may be connected to the recent string of attacks attributed by some to ‘monsters.’”
The imagery on the screen shows a city park. Shrouded bodies too much like Booker’s scatter the blood-stained grass. Paramedics are loading some figures onto stretchers as quickly as they can.
My throat clogs with a lump of nausea. I want to shut my eyes against the images, but I can’t let myself.
The reporter is still giving her commentary. “The only message officials assume was left by the murderers was a few words carved into one of the paths:We won’t be tamed.What that has to do with the slaughter of more than fifty seemingly random pedestrians, it’s impossible to say at this point.”
“Fifty.” I repeat the number raggedly. “Oh, God.”
Andreas looks as sick as I feel. “‘We won’t be tamed.’ Do you figure that message is directed at us?”
Zian’s eyes widen. “They killed all those people just to get back at us for trying to stop them?”
