Page 16

SIXTEEN

Sorsha

The smack of my fall radiated through my hands and legs. My stomach heaved, and I almost lost whatever remained of my Jack and Coke onto the living-room floorboards. My head drooped toward the ground.

Hands caught me before I could completely collapse. The music switched off. Ruse’s voice reached me through the fog that had enveloped my mind. “Sorsha? What’s going on?”

Then came Snap’s softer but clear tone. “There’s something in the air. I can’t pick up any larger impressions from it, but I don’t like the way it tastes. It’s thicker over by—I think it’s coming from the hall.”

I couldn’t find my tongue to offer any insight. Heavy steps I knew must be Thorn’s thumped away.

Ruse stroked his hand over my hair soothingly. “Sorsha, something’s affecting you—some kind of drug? I should be able to partly clear your mind so it doesn’t knock you out completely, but I have to get in there first. Your little brooch blocks too much of my power for me to help all that effectively. Can you manage to take it off?”

A breath hitched out of me. My little brooch—my badge. He couldn’t touch it himself—none of them could—at least not without it doing who knew what damage to them. The only way he could remove the badge would be by stripping my dress and bra right off.

I could do this, couldn’t I? Just focus on that one thing. Move my hand off the floor to my chest. Under the fabric of my dress. Yank the badge off. Simple.

It should have been, but I wobbled when I lifted my hand. Even after Ruse steadied me, it took a few fumbles before my fingers caught on my neckline, and by then I’d half-forgotten why I was groping myself in the first place.

A metallic crash sounded from far away. Thorn’s footsteps thumped back toward us. “There was a device at the door propelling some sort of gas underneath. I bashed it down the stairs. No sign of the person who placed it there—” He cut himself off. “Someone’s coming.”

“Watch for their shadowkind weapons,” Ruse warned him. His grip tightened on my shoulder, maybe readying to get on with the stripping if I couldn’t manage the task myself. “The brooch, Sorsha. You can do it.”

Right. Right. I shoved my hand toward my bra. My fingers fumbled over the metal badge and snagged around its edges. There was a clip right… there .

It popped off the fabric cup with a click. I tossed it across the floor with a clumsy flick of my hand, and an instant later a warm tingling spread across my scalp. The sensation seeped through my skull and into my clouded mind.

Within seconds, the floor under me felt more solid, the sounds around me clearer. I raised my head, blinking. Ruse was crouched beside me, his gaze intent. Snap stood braced by the doorway, his eyes flicking between us and the hall, where I assumed Thorn was staked out by the front door.

The door slammed shut. “They’re coming up,” our warrior called back to us. “There are a lot of them—I can’t tell what kind of weapons they have. I can take them on?—”

“No,” Ruse snapped, his voice gone ragged. I had enough awareness now to wonder how much the voodoo he’d worked on me had worn him out. That couldn’t be a typical use of his cubi powers. “It’s got to be the same people who came for Omen. You know they were prepared enough to take any of us down. And Sorsha’s still out of it.” His tone softened when he returned his attention to me. “Let’s get you up.”

He hadn’t been able to drive all of the drug out of my system. My limbs still swayed as he helped me to my feet; my vision doubled for a moment before steadying again. My thoughts were clearer, but they jumbled every time I turned my head.

Something banged against the door so hard the hinges creaked. My pulse stuttered at the sound. Ruse gripped my arm tightly. “I don’t think you’re in any condition to stand and fight, Miss Blaze. Do we have any good routes out of here other than that door?”

I could think well enough to answer that question. “Fire escape. Outside my bedroom window.”

“Got it. We’re going to make a run for it.”

He nodded to Snap, who slipped out ahead of us. I snatched the strap of my purse where I’d left it on the sofa. Pickle scuttled alongside me, his head weaving through the air anxiously.

In the hall, Thorn was braced in front of the door. It shuddered again, and his fists clenched where he’d raised them level with his chest. Determination shone in his dark eyes, but when he glanced toward us, taking in my near-stumble as Ruse helped me along, his expression shifted from severe to startled and back again in an instant.

“What have they done to her?” he demanded, and swung toward the door again as if he could pummel the attackers on the other side with the force of his glare alone.

“Some type of drug—meant to knock her out, I think. Either they figured it works on shadowkind too, or they didn’t know we’d be here.” Ruse hustled me to the bedroom. “Come on.”

“If they don’t know we’re here, they might not have?—”

“ Come ,” Ruse insisted. “We can’t know either way. Is it worth risking us all ending up in cages again—or dead? Remember who was right the last time we got overwhelmed?”

Thorn let out an extended curse under his breath and swiveled toward us. At the same second, one final blow to the door burst the hinges if not the deadbolt. As it bowed into the hall, Ruse yanked me through the bedroom doorway.

“Open the window,” he ordered Snap.

Snap shoved at the pane, which slid upward with a grating sound. My gaze caught on the curve of my backpack peeking from beneath the bed, and a cold shot of panic surged through me.

“There’s evidence here—if they see it, they’ll know for sure—I have to?—”

My sentences broke with my colliding thoughts so many times I decided I was better off just acting rather than trying to explain myself. I grabbed the backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and then cast a frantic look around the room.

What else might I have lying around that would tell the invaders I was not just interested in Omen but had freed and destroyed the possessions of at least a dozen major collectors across the past few years? Shit, shit, shit.

If word got out that I was the sticky-fingered, monster-emancipating fire-starter, every hunter and collector in the state, possibly the country, would be looking to come at me the way they’d murdered my parents. I wouldn’t be able to turn to the Fund either—they’d probably disown me.

The door clattered all the way to the floor, and shouts rang out from the hall. Thorn let out a wordless rumble, and there was an impact that sounded like his knuckles meeting flesh, but his own grunt of pain followed it. They had something that could hurt him.

There wasn’t time to come up with a five-point plan of carefully considered action. My mind latched onto the strategy that had been my saving grace every other time I’d needed to cover my tracks.

As Ruse dragged me to the open window, a rush of warm summer air washing away the air-conditioned cool, I dug my bottle of kerosene and my lighter out of the backpack. My arm jerked, splattering the fluid in an arc across vanity, bookcase, and bed. “Thorn!” I yelled, and flicked on the lighter.

With a lurch of my heart, the flame seemed to leap from the tool I was clutching to my target before my hand had even reached the vanity. It licked across the polished surface with a waft of sharper heat and coursed along the trail of kerosene—over the floor, up my mussed sheets.

Ruse let out a hoarse chuckle. I snatched Pickle up, stuffed him into my purse as far as he’d go, and scrambled out the window after the incubus. Snap had already disappeared somewhere below.

More hollers, thuds, and grunts carried from behind us. The flames hissed, flaring higher—and then Thorn was charging through them, his fists bloody, a black mark slashed across his jaw where I guessed he was going to add another scar to his collection.

He spun just as he reached the window and exhaled a massive breath with the force of bellows at a forge. The flames whipped up all across the floor, crawling the walls toward the ceiling. A few figures I could only hazily make out through the flashes of light and the clotting smoke yanked themselves to a halt on the threshold. I tore my gaze away and dashed for the ladder.

The fire would only hold them off for so long. If they decided they couldn’t charge through it, they’d race down to try to cut us off on the street.

A shout from below told me our attackers had been one step ahead. Someone had staked out the fire escape too. I wavered where I’d started down the rickety metal ladder, and Thorn burst through the window.

He sprang over me. Before I could so much as blink, he’d dropped from the second-floor platform to the ground with only a huff and a smack of his feet against the pavement.

Flesh mashed. Bone crunched. I fled down the ladder as fast as my limbs would allow, Ruse following just as speedily. Thorn let out a strangled noise, and there was a thwack that I would bet was a smaller body slamming into the wall below.

The second my feet touched down, the warrior grabbed my wrist and hauled me toward the street. He was limping—a jagged tear gaped open in his trousers just below his knee.

Shadowkind didn’t bleed the way we did, as Thorn was demonstrating very vividly right now. Rather than liquid spurting, wisps of black smoke unfurled from the wound hidden by the fabric. The thicker darkness of the night swallowed them up.

I caught a glimpse of two bodies, one slumped by the wall spilling a lumpy mess of brains from its head, another sprawled nearby with its back wrenched to an angle that made my stomach churn. The smoke alarms were wailing above, gray billows streaming out the open window.

It wouldn’t be only our attackers descending on this place soon. I ran with the shadowkind toward the street, thanking the heavens that I’d worn flats with this dress.

Get out of here—now, now, now. The urgent cry in my own head propelled me onward. Could I really outpace these hunters—or whatever they were—in my current state?

We sprinted down the street, my stomach roiling as much from the drug still in my system as the gruesome scene Thorn had left behind. My backpack battered my side. Then up ahead I spotted a veritable gift from the gods: a bike leaning against the fence outside a house on the other side of the street, not even chained.

I might not be licensed to drive, but I could sure as hell pedal with the best of them. I veered across the road, yanked it from the fence, and hopped on.

A startled yelp reached my ears—the bike’s owner must have had it in view—but I was already flying along the sidewalk, the wheels whirring. My mind had narrowed down to one thing amid the lingering haze: get as far away from the attackers at my apartment as was humanly possible.

The buildings and streets whipped past me in a blur. My thighs burned, but I kept pumping my legs as fast as they could go, even as my balance wobbled. This late, hardly anyone was out and about. When a stream of traffic lights showed up ahead, I swerved down one side street and another until a perfectly timed green light gave me a chance to bolt across the busy road.

I’d lost all track of my supernatural companions, but at this hour, the city was more shadow than not. They might not be able to match a truck’s speed, but I hoped they were keeping up with my bike by the means only they could use. Better they traveled in ways no mortals could see them anyway.

Every now and then, I shot down an alley or cut across a parking lot—taking routes no larger vehicle could use in case I’d picked up less welcome followers. After several of those and an ache that had expanded all through my legs, my panic eased off. I pedaled on for at least another ten minutes before I finally coasted to a stop at the corner of a block of low-rise apartment buildings.

The back of my dress clung to my skin, damp with sweat. The night air stung as I sucked it down my raw throat. My breaths and my pulse gradually evened out. In my purse, Pickle squirmed and let out a mournful-sounding squeak.

I still had him. I had my wallet and my phone and other purse essentials—I had my cat-burglar-esque equipment in my backpack. Everything else…

Three forms emerged from the shadows around me. As the last of the adrenaline drained away, the full impact of what I’d left behind—left behind in flames —hit me too hard for me to acknowledge the trio.

Luna’s CD collection. Her fairy dust shoes and her scrunchie. I didn’t give a shit about my own clothes—those I could replace—but the few fragments of her life I’d been able to hold onto…

The pearly box with my parents’ letter. That realization came like a punch to the gut. I nearly doubled over as I clung to the handlebars.

I’d stuck the box back on the shelf in the closet. I hadn’t even thought of it, I’d been in such a rush. The fire would have consumed everything in that room, if not the entire apartment. The one gift my parents had left for me was utterly gone, and I had no way of ever replacing it.

My guts felt as if they’d knotted into a solid mass of mourning. I hadn’t been ready, not for any of this. More than a decade in the same city, three years in the same apartment—I’d gotten complacent. So fucking stupid. Luna had taught me better than that.

“Sorsha?” Snap said tentatively. He brushed a gentle hand over my shoulder.

I inhaled sharply and forced myself to straighten up. The ache in my weary legs was nothing compared to the stab of loss in my chest, but these three wouldn’t understand why I cared so much about those things. I’d just have to swallow the grief down like I had Luna’s death and the other losses since…

As I dismounted the bike, Thorn stepped closer. The tear remained in his trousers, but his calf had stopped leaking the smoke of his essence. That seemed like a good sign. Shadowkind did usually heal quickly.

“You should probably hold onto this,” he said, holding out one of his brawny hands. “It seems rather… delicate. It didn’t entirely survive the fighting I’ve already had to do—I apologize.”

He was offering me the box I’d just been mourning. A crack ran through the pearly lid, and one of the corners was chipped, but it was here . Whole and unburned.

I snatched it from him much more hastily than was really polite and popped it open. The letter was still nestled inside, my mother’s spiky handwriting scrawled across the notepaper. I snapped the box shut again with the irrational terror that a sudden wind might steal that treasure from me after all.

A lump filled my throat. I stared up at Thorn’s face. “When did you take this?” And the bigger question: Why?

His rugged features revealed no more than his usual grimness. “I noticed it in your closet as I was coming into the bedroom. It appeared, before, that it was important to you. I thought you would want it saved from the flames.”

I hadn’t realized he’d been paying any attention when I’d talked to Snap about it, let alone that he’d recognized the depth of my connection to what must have looked to him like a fairly mundane object. He’d risked a few seconds in the battle to rescue it for me. That was worth a heck of a lot more than any heads he’d bashed in on my behalf.

“Thank you,” I said, swallowing hard. “I would have hated to lose it. Honestly, I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

As I searched his face for the compassion he must have acted on, his expression tensed under my scrutiny.

“It was nothing,” he said brusquely. “Certainly not compared to the debt I’m still repaying. We shouldn’t linger out here in the open for much longer, should we?”

I winced inwardly at the curt dismissal. Maybe that was all he’d been thinking of—how he owed me for getting him and the others out of those cages. However he felt about me, he obviously didn’t want to waste any time accepting my gratitude.

I slipped the box into a safe compartment of my backpack. “You’re right. We’ve got to hole up somewhere for the night. I’m totally wiped—we can take stock and make bigger plans in the morning.”

Ruse cocked his head toward the apartment buildings beside us. “It looks like we have an extensive spread of possible hideouts. Let’s see which ones we can use.”