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Every trace of the facility where we were tormented the longest, where the guardians tore us apart and shattered our early bonds, turns into ashes.
I find I don’t mind the smoky flavor that coats my mouth. It’s confirmation that we’re never coming back.
Then, late that night, we slink into the high-rise office space Andreas pulled from Cutler’s memories—a property that Toni confirmed belonged to Balthazar. The rogue shadowbloods must have found out about it one way or another and commandeered it for their own ends.
They only left three of their companions behind. Easing the door open enough to peek inside, I catch the man and the two teenaged boys in urgent conversation.
“Cutler said to get started if they weren’t back by the morning,” one of the boys is saying. “What the hell are we going to do in the middle of the night anyway?”
The man glowers at him. “We haven’t heardanythingfrom him. Something’s gone wrong.”
The other boy cocks his head. “He might be glad if we brought in more people even if he’s okay.”
I’m not going to give them time to decide to take that route.
For what I hope is the last time I need to in my life, I open my mouth and shriek. I don’t make it loud, just give it enough audible force to make sure it’ll hit them as quickly as possible.
With the impact of the sound, the figures freeze. I punch the vicious energy through their hearts, one by one—quick, but giving the hunger inside me a few brief bursts of pain like a sort of thank you for its service.
I wouldn’t have made it this far without the banshee side of me. I might not have ever made it out of the cage-fighting ring.
I can’t say Ilovethat part of myself, but it doesn’t seem fair to hate it either.
When the last of the rogues crumples to the ground, I make a beckoning gesture. Jacob, Zian, and Dominic follow me into the office. Sorsha brings up the rear, supported between Thorn and Snap in her still-dizzy state.
We find the serum and the pills Cutler mentioned quickly enough. Several dozen vials of clear liquid sit on the shelves in the office fridge next to bottles full of gel capsules. Sorsha scorches it all into a glob of melted glass, and we toss it into a garbage bag for more thorough disposal.
Zian lets out a shout and holds up a couple of notebooks. “I think these are Balthazar’s. It looks like they’ve got instructions, maybe some formulas.”
My gaze has latched onto a device I never expected to see again. “Here’s Engel’s laptop. They held on to that too.”
Sorsha wiggles her fingers. “I can take care of all of those.”
“Wait,” Dominic says, quiet but emphatic. “Before we destroy them, we should take the time to look through them and figure out what he did to his shadowbloods. Maybe there’s some way to reverse the effects. The ones Andreas wiped are still going to have to deal with a difficult temper their whole lives if we can’t.”
I balk at the idea of leaving any shred of Balthazar’s plans intact even for an hour longer, but I force myself to nod. He’s right.
We’ve taken an awful lot from the rogues we saved. The least we can do is see if we can give something back.
Snap has left Sorsha’s side to move through the room. He pauses by the few computers on the scattered desks and flicks his forked tongue toward them.
“No one’s used these recently,” he announces.
I exhale in relief. “Toni’s already working on erasing all the data Balthazar stored online. That’ll be the end of it.”
* * *
The struggles aren’t over for our fellow shadowbloods either.
A few days later, I drift through the halls of Rollick’s Spanish mansion, where he sent us after we finished sorting out the mess in the US. The isolated setting makes the estate ideal in case any of our charges act out—and for the comings and goings of his shadowkind allies.
The former rogues seem to drift too, wandering around the rooms with slightly dazed expressions that still haven’t left them. They’re having to build whole new identities for themselves with nothing really to go by except the names we could tell them and the slow introduction we’re giving them to their powers.
Some of the teens have taken to hanging out together, taking comfort in their shared confusion. I find five of them in the sitting room with a laptop Rollick gave them. They’re watching music videos online.
One of them points at the screen. “That one next.”
“We just listened to it!” another protests.
