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I have to speak up, even though the reason I know this makes me even more ashamed. “An aircraft would. A plane… or a helicopter.”
I once tracked my friends as they approached one of the facilities by helicopter, hoping to sneak up on the guardians by coming from multiple directions. It only took a few minutes for me to see how the two flight paths were converging.
Riva mutters a curse. “He’s in the middle of going someplace else, then. We don’t even know for sure if he started that flight in Tunisia.”
“Which direction is he headed in now?” Rollick asks.
She refocuses on the map and moves her finger in a slow, halting line. “Northeast, it seems like.”
Toni approaches to consider the larger map, her expression still tight. “He does have holdings in Egypt and in South Africa. Egypt would have been closer, but…” She shrugs to indicate she has no definite information on where Balthazar would have gone when he fled.
“All right.” Rollick turns off the tablet and tucks it under his arm. “I can send a few of my companions to chat with the local shadowkind near the portals in Tunisia and see if any of them have noticed unusual activity. And we’ll check on your would-be world conqueror’s location again in a few hours.”
Zian rolls his shoulders with an impatient air. “What should we do until then?”
Riva’s head comes back up with a flash of hope across her face. “I knew a few of the younger shadowbloods pretty well. Maybe I can tracktheirlocations. We’ll want to know where they are so we can get them out—and that’ll give us some idea which of Balthazar’s properties he’s using to hold people like us.”
“That seems worth a shot.” Rollick goes to retrieve the large world map so they can start over from scratch. “You seem confident enough now—and I hope my colleagues have all indulged their curiosity in this process.”
The demon shoots a pointed look at the gathered shadowkind, a few of whom duck their heads and waver back into the shadows. Then he gestures to Toni. “You should stay, since you’re familiar with your former employer’s haunts. Maybe the rest of our shadowbloods can make themselves useful too. Sorsha, why don’t you take them to the atrium and start sorting out potential strategies once we’ve figured out where to hit this megalomaniac.”
The red-haired woman chuckles and motions for everyone else to follow her. I pause to give Riva’s arm a quick squeeze. “You’ve got this, Moonbeam.”
The smile she aims at me in return is almost enough to make up for the fact that there isn’t anything else I can offer her. I drift after the other guys reluctantly.
The atrium is a square of garden inside the mansion’s sprawling walls, open to the outside with no roof overhead. Sweet fragrances drift off the flowering bushes along one wall.
More shadowkind pop into being as Sorsha turns to face us with a decisive clap of her hands. “All right. First things first—what can each of you contribute in a fight?”
My smile turns tight again, but I only have one answer to give. “I can confuse their emotions. Send them into a panic or lull them complacent. Whatever works best for the plan.”
Steel turns his cool gaze on me. “You could do that to shadowkind too, huh, shadowblood boy?”
I give him the most reassuring look I’m capable of. “I wouldn’t, though. Not when we’re helping each other.”
I pretend I don’t notice the flicker of uneasiness that stirs in him at my words. And then Toni bursts into the atrium with a ragged breath.
“It’s started,” she says. “Mr. Balthazar’s shadowblood army—they’ve launched an attack.”
Four
Riva
As our helicopter thrums through the air, I flick at the screen of the tablet Rollick lent us, careening from scene to scene of destruction. With each, my stomach knots tighter.
Some of it is amateur footage, shaky cell phone camera recordings punctuated by the startled yelps and breathless exclamations of the locals who witnessed the initial onslaught. The official news crews arrived on the scene later, after Balthazar’s new shadowbloods had already fled the scene.
I only catch glimpses of the figures in the amateur footage. No one who survived to post their videos online got close enough to the carnage to capture identifying details.
But the impact is clear enough.
In one recording, a distant form slams his fist into the side of a four-story building—and it crumples to the ground in a hail of rubble. In another, screams ring out as streaks of sizzling blue energy whip through the air to cut down the panicked locals whoweretoo close.
It wasn’t just Moscow, the first place one of Rollick’s shadowkind allies saw a news report on and alerted us about. Balthazar has already built up enough of an army that he was able to send at least a few shadowbloods to five key cities around the world.
I’m seeing broken buildings and bodies from London, New York, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires as well. He’s spreading his message across the continents and both hemispheres, looking to get as many eyes on it as possible at once.
And it is a message, quite literally. His shadowblood thugs left words seared into the sides of buildings they left standing or painted them with the blood of their victims.
