Page 108

FOURTEEN

Sorsha

As he smoothed another dab of aloe gel over the burns on my back, Snap’s hands couldn’t have been gentler, but my skin was so raw that I winced anyway. He made a fierce hissing sound through his teeth.

“I’d devour the sphinx without any regrets whatsoever,” he declared.

Of the many things I could have pointed the finger at Tempest for, flambéing my body wasn’t one of them. This had definitely been a self-barbequing. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to correct my lover, any more than I wanted to ask if anyone had heard anything about a sudden blaze in downtown Pisa last night. Denial might be a river in Egypt, but I could transport it to Italy if I wanted to, thank you very much.

None of my companions had mentioned the flashfire, but then, we’d driven right back to Rome, and they weren’t exactly avid watchers of the news. And maybe they wouldn’t have thought much of it anyway. A block of shops and all their contents incinerated? Just the dangers of mortal living.

I wished I could dismiss it that easily—and at the same time the thought of ever overcoming the guilt twisting through my gut horrified me.

“If that would be enough to end her, we’d toss her right to you,” Omen said from the doorway, although he’d know even better than I did that Tempest wasn’t likely to let anyone toss her anywhere in the first place.

I shifted where I was lying chest-down on my bed so I could pull my hair out of the way. Snap smeared more of the aloe—my second coating since I’d returned last night—across the back of my neck. “How are we going to come at her next, now that she won’t be accepting any friendship bracelets from you?”

“I’ve been thinking about that while you’ve been sleeping,” the hellhound shifter said, as if my repose had been pure laziness and not a physical necessity. “With our best option for stealth out the window, we may need to return to your old strategy of strength in numbers. Perhaps we can round up a shadowkind or two with some ability that proves to be a game-changer.”

“I think our hacker friend can come up with a few more people with Company connections for me to sweet-talk in the meantime,” Ruse said, sauntering past Omen into the bedroom and propping himself against the small dresser. “Might as well wring everything we can out of them.”

Thorn formed out of the shadows at the base of the bed so he could get in on the conversation too. “I could attempt to speak to my wingéd brethren once more. They were hesitant to become involved, but if I could quickly see to their concerns… It might be a simple matter.” He sounded doubtful, though.

“I will aid you in whatever their demands require,” Flint put in, peering over Omen’s shoulder.

A second later, Antic bounded in, her kindergartener-sized body jittering with excitement. “I know! You all haven’t been thinking big enough. You’ve only been looking mortal-side. Why don’t I go through a rift and see if I can round up some real help from the shadow realm?”

Omen folded his arms over his chest. “We don’t need a horde of gnomes and pixies.”

“Hey, a horde can get plenty done! And I can convince beings bigger than me! One of my best friends was a sea dragon, I’ll have you know.”

Between the lot of them, there was barely space to move in here anymore. I made a grumbling sound and reached toward the stack of clothes beside my bed. “Whose idea was it to have a strategy meeting in my bedroom—and while I’m shirtless? Let her go through the rift. There are a hell of a lot more of you on that side than here. I’m sure she’ll find someone.”

“Off with you, then,” Omen told the imp. “We’ll see how long it takes for you to find that someone.”

“Aye, aye, captain!” She saluted him and scampered back out, which didn’t exactly open up a whole lot more space. I tugged on my shirt, careful of the sensitive patches of healing skin on my neck, back, and arms.

Snap rested a protective hand on my hip. “You and I could go looking for shadowkind together, Peach,” he said. “I can spot the ones in the shadows—but you’re better at explaining how much we need their help.”

Omen gave a definitive clap. “Perfect. I’ll search around the city as well, Ruse will do his charming, and Thorn and Flint can barter with their not-so-angelic acquaintances. Let’s attempt to meet back here by midnight. Tempest will be rushing her plans along even faster than before now that she’s seen how far we’re willing to go to stop her.”

Thorn’s mouth twisted at his orders, even though he’d suggested the plan of action. As everyone moved to leave, I caught his hand. “Give me a sec,” I told Snap.

When we were alone, the massive warrior peered down at me. “Is there more I can do for you before I go, Sorsha?” His brawn had already tensed as if ready to spring to my aid.

“I was just wondering if there’s anything I can do for you ,” I said, squeezing one of those impressive biceps. “From what you said before, your ‘brethren’ out at the Vatican gave you kind of a hard time.”

The tightening of Thorn’s jaw suggested he hadn’t even told us the half of it. “I’m accountable for whatever tensions remain between us, and I will resolve them,” he said. “It is the least I owe them.”

“I don’t think you owe them anything at all. It’s been centuries. You didn’t even do anything wrong to begin with.”

“There are varying opinions on that matter. And the past is more present in its impact on them than it is for me.” He sighed and lowered his head to brush his lips to mine, his voice dropping too. “Believe me, if I could simply stay by your side at all times, I’d much rather be here.”

“Well, hurry back then,” I said, giving him a peck in return, and headed out after him to where Snap was waiting near the door.

Normally, I couldn’t have asked for a better companion for exploring a city than the devourer. He devoured new sights and experiences as avidly as he did his favorite fruits—and human souls.

For the first hour or so, that expectation held true. Snap peered with wide eyes at the looming ruins of antiquity in the Forum, listened in with eager little hums as a tour guide described the ancient activities that had taken place there, and sampled the energies around the structures with his forked tongue when no other tourists were near enough to see.

But we didn’t find any shadowkind to beg to lend a hand—the couple that Snap sensed in the shadows darted off as soon as he paid any attention to them. As we passed a gaggle of college-age sightseers who jostled against me without so much as a glance back, let alone an apology, the devourer’s usual bright demeanor started to dim.

“The shadowkind are nervous of all the mortals around,” he said. “Humans haven’t been all that kind to this place, even though it’s their own history. I can’t taste anything from the times when all this was whole and celebrated… Too many impressions of people chipping away at it, bumping against it without watching, carving words that make them laugh into it to show how little they think of it… Why would they do that?”

The fraught confusion in his voice brought a lump into my throat. “We don’t always appreciate our history,” I said. “It’s harder when we don’t live anywhere near as long as shadowkind do, you know. For the people seeing this now, the society who used this place was gone before any of our great-great-great-however many times grandparents were born. It doesn’t feel totally real.”

“I didn’t exist that long ago, and I still find it fascinating.”

I bumped my arm against his playfully. “Well, that’s part of what makes you so special.”

The compliment lit him up again, but only for a little while. We failed to gain any supporters from the creatures lurking near the Pantheon and the grand museums. Clouds clotted in the sky as we approached Trevi Fountain, and Snap shivered with the fading of the sunlight.

“Someone carved that whole sculpture without any magic at all,” I said over the burbling of the water. “Pretty amazing.”

“It is,” Snap agreed, but the brightness of his voice diminished too. “They built so many things… and so many of them wish no being like me ever got to see them. They would be upset that I enjoy all the fruits and the honey and…” His brow knit. “ Most humans would want us dead if they knew of us, wouldn’t they? That’s why we keep our existence secret.”

“Well, maybe not dead ,” I started, but I didn’t really know how to follow that up. Because, yeah, it was possible the majority of humans would wish to see beings like my monstrous lovers slaughtered if they found out shadowkind existed. I didn’t want to lie to him. But the hurt in his eyes and the gloom creeping into his words made my heart ache.

The Company hadn’t killed Snap while they’d held him captive, but how much was he really Snap if they destroyed his sense of wonder?

A spurt of flame lanced through my insides. I coughed and barely managed to swallow it down so it seared nothing but my stomach. For my devourer’s sake and my own, I groped for a lyric to spin this conversation in a lighter direction.

“Come on. We’ve still got to find some shadowkind to make our appeal to.” I tugged on Snap’s elbow and sang, “And if I only could, I’d make an eel maraud, and I’d bet him with all our aces.”

“I don’t think an eel would be very helpful against Tempest,” Snap said, but it was with a smile to show he hadn’t really taken me seriously. Good. Between two wingéd with maybe a couple more on their way, Omen dealing with a very solid specter from his awful past, and me burning innocents left and right, we had enough sombreness hanging over our group already.

Perking Snap up didn’t help us find any new allies, though. We returned to the Everymobile just shy of midnight. Omen emerged from the shadows before we’d quite reached the doorway and motioned Snap inside. “I need to speak with our mortal,” he said, without even bothering to ask how our quest had gone. I guessed our failure was obvious enough.

Snap bristled with a brief flare of neon green in his eyes, but his loyalty to the shadowkind who’d called him to this cause was clearly at war with his devotion to me. He paused and then said, in a careful but firm voice, “What do you want with her now?”

Omen sighed. “I’m just going to talk to her, honestly. If anyone’s going to haul her off to some dire end, it won’t be me. Aren’t you convinced of that yet?”

The devourer looked chagrined, but only slightly. “I didn’t think you’d do it in the first place,” he informed the hellhound shifter, but after one more caress of my arm, he vanished into the RV.

The early autumn night was warm enough, but Omen’s solemn expression sent an icy quiver through my gut. “What’s the big secret?”

He guided me off to the side of the RV. Not all of Rome was so scenic—the rundown suburb where we were hiding out smelled like tar rather than gelato, and a loose door somewhere in the distance was creaking on its hinges in the breeze. The Everymobile added to the atmosphere with the rotating hubcaps it’d recently produced, which rattled like hamster wheels as they spun endlessly on.

“It’s not a secret,” Omen said. “I just thought I should tell you first so there’s no time for misunderstandings. I’ve decided I’m going to approach the Highest again.”

Even after what he’d just said to Snap and everything he’d said to me in the past few days, my pulse stuttered. Before I could say anything, he held up his hands. “I won’t even mention you. I’m going to tell them what I’ve found out about Tempest and see if they’ll change my final order to taking her down rather than finding ‘Ruby’. And whether they will or not, they might lend some brawn to our cause. They did want to destroy her enough to sic a whole bunch of their lackeys on her before.”

It made sense—enough sense that Omen obviously hadn’t been able to talk himself out of doing it, as much as I could tell he disliked the idea of chatting with the beings that had put him in their leash.

“That would certainly be helpful,” I said. “It’s about time they pitched in rather than pitching fits.”

The corner of Omen’s mouth quirked upward. “We’ll see. In any case, nothing ventured, nothing gained. They should have no way of discerning that I’ve had contact with the mortal-shadowkind hybrid they’ve been searching for. I didn’t want you spending any time worrying about that, even if it was only the time it took to answer half a dozen questions from our companions.”

I set my hands on my hips. “Me, worry?” I teased. “Do you know me at all?” But the truth was, he did know me. Enough that I had to add, “Thank you. For worrying about whether I’d worry.”

He made a dismissive sound, but then he ran his fingers along my jaw to draw me to him. He kissed me hard, the intensity of it sparking all kinds of flames beneath my skin, but only the pleasant kind.

Why couldn’t my inner fire always feel this delicious?

When he let me go, another ache formed in my chest to join the one Snap’s disillusionment had provoked. I couldn’t help curling my fingers around Omen’s before he could drop his hand. “Make sure you come back.”

He gave me a full smile then. “No one’s managed to crush me yet, as many as have wanted to. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Disaster.”

I laughed and followed him into the Everymobile so he could tell the others where he was going, but underneath my good humored response, the ache remained.

How had I gotten to the point with this man where the thought of anyone getting rid of him made me want to rain fire from the sky?