Page 34

ONE

Sorsha

I hadn’t always wanted to end the world, even after it’d started to seem that a significant portion of the world wanted to end me.

The specific people who’d been after me most recently might still be lurking on the other side of the plywood wall I was now eyeballing from the sidewalk across the street. I couldn’t see much other than the skeleton of steel girders rising up above it.

Construction workers perched in their neon vests at various points across that skeleton. That was new. Before, it’d looked like the construction site that hid my enemies’ secret facility was just a front. Surprise, surprise: apparently all those beams and boards were actually going to construct a building.

“Okay,” I murmured. “I’m going in.”

If you were watching, it’d have looked as if I crossed the road alone. I was counting on my monstrous companions—four of them now, up from a trio to a quartet—slinking after me through the shadows. More properly called “shadowkind,” beings like them had gotten the name both because of the darkness of their natural realm and their ability to sink into and travel through the darkness in ours. Which also conveniently meant they could leap out of that darkness and tackle anyone who tried to tackle me.

We were pretty sure the crew of monster hunters and torture-happy scientists we’d faced off against wouldn’t attack me in broad daylight with multiple witnesses, but I wasn’t tossing all caution to the wind. Three cheers for supernatural bodyguards!

The buzz of a saw carried from deeper within the construction site. As I walked over to the half-open gate where the workers had driven a couple of trucks in, the tang of fresh-cut pine wood in the warm summer air tickled my nose.

I’d kind of hoped that simply strolling in would get me where I wanted to go. A lot of the time, looking like you knew you were allowed to be someplace would convince everyone around you of it too. No such luck today.

A guy with a gray helmet, an orange vest, and a moustache so bushy a squirrel could have borrowed it as a substitute tail stepped into my path and held up his hand. “Where do you think you’re going, Miss?”

For those of you taking notes: you can get good mileage out of a well-placed giggle too. “Oh,” I said with a little laugh. “I’m sorry. Something of mine blew over the fence—I just wanted to grab it.”

A couple of the other workers sauntered over. Mr. Moustache glanced around. “Do you see it here? I didn’t notice anything.”

I tapped my lips, pretending to scan our surroundings. “No, maybe it drifted farther in. Couldn’t I just take a quick look around? It doesn’t look like you’re doing anything at the moment that’d make me fear for my life.” I raised my eyes to the girders above.

One of the younger guys chuckled, but the moustache dude shook his head. “Sorry, Miss, but we could get in a lot of trouble if we let pedestrians wander around. What is it you lost? You can give us your contact information, and we’ll keep an eye out for it.”

It needed to be something that could have easily slipped from my hand and been caught in the wind. The words tumbled out before I’d given them much thought. “It was a napkin. A paper napkin with a phone number on it.”

Did they look skeptical? I folded my arms over my chest and put on my most convincing tone. “It was from a really hot guy, okay? I don’t want him to think I couldn’t be bothered to shoot him a text.”

The guy who’d chuckled now waggled his eyebrows. “We could give you a few phone numbers to make up for the loss.”

Very funny. In reality, I was getting more than enough action these days. Sure, it was from men these dudes wouldn’t believe existed, but that was part of what I liked about my new lovers.

Before I could answer, Mr. Moustache handled the come-on for me. “We haven’t got time for this messing around. After all the delays on continuing construction, they’ll hand us our asses if we don’t get on with it.” He bobbed his head to me. “If you give me your phone number, I promise I’ll only call if one of us turns up your napkin.”

I sighed dramatically. “Oh, well, if it’s drifted off that far maybe it’s just not meant to be. Can’t fight destiny! Thanks for your help, though.” I sauntered out without waiting for their response.

Since it wouldn’t exactly do for the regular mortals to witness my monstrous companions emerging from the shadows as if appearing out of thin air, I couldn’t confer with them until I reached the dim alley a few blocks down the street. A trash bin farther down the narrow space was baking in the summer heat, giving off a lovely bouquet of broiled kitchen scraps. I wrinkled my nose and glanced around to make sure no one human had followed me between the looming concrete walls.

A moment later, four figures solidified around me like smoke condensing into physical form.

“A hot guy’s phone number on a napkin—really?” Ruse teased, his hazel eyes twinkling beneath the fall of his rumpled chocolate-brown hair. “Or have you already gotten bored with the pickings here?” The incubus gave me his typical smirk, which cracked a dimple in his roguishly gorgeous face. I’d “picked” him a couple of times already, and I was happy to report that getting it on with a sex demon was everything you’d expect from the package and more.

Next to Ruse, Snap’s forehead had furrowed, barely putting a dent in the divine beauty that made him look like a youthful sun god. “The napkin was made up,” he protested in his bright voice, and turned his moss-green gaze on me. “It was made up, wasn’t it?”

I patted his slim arm. “A total fabrication. I have no phone numbers whatsoever, nor do I want any.”

The devourer made a pleased humming sound and stepped closer—not to touch me, but as if he simply wanted to soak up my presence. I’d also gotten it on with Snap not that long ago, in a tamer if no less satisfying fashion while he eased into the whole concept of physical desire. What could I say? I’d been busy lately… although with a whole lot more than getting busy , I promise.

Waking up Snap’s carnal awareness had also stirred up a possessive instinct I hadn’t counted on but couldn’t help finding kind of sweet. He might stand a full head taller than me, but he was about as frightening as a gamboling fawn. Of course, at this point I knew more about the feel of his body than why the others called him a devourer, which was still a mystery to me. Whatever his greatest power was, just the idea of it made him shudder in terror, so he hadn’t exactly been eager to chat about it.

As usual, the third member of my original trio was all business. “It didn’t appear as though you got close enough to make out anything of the inner facility, m’lady,” Thorn said somberly. The ruggedly handsome hulk of a man, a smidge taller even than Snap and filled out with muscles galore, had never met a subject he couldn’t approach with grave severity.

He could be plenty intimidating without even trying, although right now his imposing air was impaired by the little dragon squirming from one broad shoulder to the other, displacing Thorn’s long white-blond hair with little snuffles of discontentment. Pickle hadn’t spent much time around anyone other than me since I’d rescued him from a collector ages ago. It’d taken a lot of coaxing—and quite a bit of bacon—to warm the lesser shadowkind creature up to Thorn enough for him to let the warrior carry him into the shadows, out of mortal sight.

“I couldn’t see anything,” I agreed. “But it seems like a bad sign that construction has started up again. I can’t imagine the sword-star group would let the workers wander around the site if there was anything incriminating left to see.” The covert group of hunters, scientists, and who the hell knew what else we’d spent the past week battling marked some of their equipment with a symbol like a star with sword blades for two of its points, which was the only way we’d found to identify them so far.

The fourth shadowkind in our group—the one I’d only met last night after we’d broken him out of the facility that’d been hidden in the construction site—shifted on his feet. His voice held a ring of authority as cool as his icy blue stare. “I think you should hold off on making sweeping assumptions until we’ve had an actual look inside the place.”

I wasn’t totally sure what to make of Omen, the guy my trio referred to as their “boss.” He shouldn’t have stood out in the bunch—not as tall or as muscle-bound as Thorn, not as languidly sensual as Ruse or as breathtakingly dazzling as Snap. Other than those piercing eyes, he was attractive enough with his tawny, short-cropped hair and sharp features, but hardly otherworldly. I hadn’t determined what monstrous feature he’d been unable to shed in his mostly human form, either. No shadowkind could pass for fully human on close inspection, as Thorn’s crystalline knuckles, Snap’s forked tongue, and the curved horns that poked from Ruse’s hair could attest to.

All the same, Omen radiated power and menace with every movement of his body, every word that fell from those Cupid’s bow lips. When we’d opened his cell last night, he’d lunged out more beast than man—he’d slaughtered two of the guards in a blink. That capacity for violence lurked somewhere beneath the controlled facade he was presenting now. At least with Thorn, who could be monstrously brutal too, the warrior frame and the scars lining his face served as plenty of warning.

Thorn adjusted that frame now, giving Pickle a careful nudge to keep the tiny dragon from tumbling right off him. “We could slip through the shadows right now to survey it. Two of us go and two stay to watch over Sorsha.” He’d already smashed through an apartment building and torn heads from men’s bodies to keep me safe—he took his self-assigned job as my protector even more seriously than he took most other things.

Omen had held up his hand before the warrior had even finished speaking. “No. Whatever we find, we’ll want our devourer testing it to see what he can glean, and he can’t do that while there are human witnesses around.” He glanced at the sky. “It’ll be a little longer before their work day is finished. Since we’ll want a vehicle of our own to rely on as we proceed, we may as well take the opportunity to pick up my car and then return.”

He definitely lived up to the title of boss—as in, bossy. Since we had just met, and I wasn’t confident he didn’t have some supernatural power that would eviscerate me if I pissed him off too much, I meant to keep my mouth shut and go along with his plan. The trouble was, the next words out of his mouth were to me, with a slight sneering edge: “Since you can’t travel through the shadows, I’ll give you the address. You can meet us there.”

I blinked at him. “You’re telling me to head across town on my own?” The other three had refused to let me out of their sight for more than a few minutes since they’d shown up at my apartment, even when I’d wanted them to let me handle one thing or another alone.

Omen gave me a narrow look. “I would have thought a woman of your many supposed talents could manage a simple cab ride.”

“Well, yeah.” But the sword-star crew had a bad habit of showing up unannounced, weapons blazing. I was only alive thanks to the efforts of my trio—my shoulder throbbed dully where I’d taken a bullet yesterday before Thorn had yanked me out of the way of one that would have blasted straight through my heart. It was still daytime, though, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Bossypants make me look like a weakling.

“Here’s a thought,” Ruse said, smooth as ever. “A cab can whisk any of us across town much faster than we can flit through the shadows. Why don’t I charm a driver into zipping us to our destination as one happy family?” He slung a playful arm over my shoulders and grinned at Omen.

Omen frowned, but even he didn’t have the authority to change the fact that motorized vehicles offered superior speed. “Get on with it then,” he said with a flick of his hand toward the street as if it’d been his idea in the first place, and rattled off the address.

He must have made some other gesture of command, because as Ruse strolled past us, Snap and Thorn faded into the patches of darkness that lined the alley. Omen lingered a moment longer, eyeing me with an intentness that set my nerves twitching, and then vanished as well.

The boss had put Ruse on his team for good reason. It took all of a minute before the incubus had a taxi driver eagerly beckoning us into the back seat of his cab as if we were great friends and letting him give us a ride was a huge favor to him . Ruse swept his arm toward the open door. “Ladies first.”

The other three stayed out of sight, but I assumed they hopped from the shadows along the street into the darker corners of the cab. We couldn’t see them, but from what I understood, they’d be able to see us just fine. I doubted Omen would eviscerate me in full view of at least one unknowing mortal, so this seemed like the perfect time to pay him back for his obvious disdain for my presence.

“Nicely done,” I said to Ruse as the cabbie hit the gas, and scooted over to grasp the silky fabric of his shirt. The incubus flashed a brilliant smile before meeting me halfway for the kiss I’d planned to claim.

The moment his mouth caught mine, it was definitely him doing the claiming. Holy mother of mistletoe, the guy could kiss. Sure, bodily pleasures were his stock and trade, but still, mark this one A with a thousand pluses.

For a few seconds, I forgot where we were. I forgot the onlooker I’d meant to piss off. I was lucky I remembered my name. My lips parted for Ruse’s sly tongue, and my body melted into his, my skin sparking where he trailed his fingers down my side.

Why had we put a hold on our very enjoyable nighttime escapades again? Oh yeah, because he’d broken his promise and used his paranormal voodoo to take a peek inside my head. But he’d told me why with an explanation I could believe, and he’d been on excellent behavior since. I should definitely look into rewarding that behavior soon, shouldn’t I, especially since the reward would be gratifying for both of us?

The driver gave a little cough, and that broke me out of the bliss enough to ease back. Heat crept over my cheeks. Ruse shot me another smile, but I’d swear even he looked a tad flushed. I gave myself a mental high five. If Omen was fuming right now, especially since he couldn’t actually tell us to knock it off, so much the better.

The cab took us to a derelict storage facility on the outskirts of the city. Most of the garage-style doors were dented and rusted, many of them half-open with only dust and litter scattering the cement floors beyond. But the place must have been at least somewhat operational, because the unit Omen strode straight to had its lock in place and no sign of deterioration. He jerked up the door to reveal…

“You drive a station wagon?” I said, unable to keep the incredulous note out of my voice.

Omen shot me a frigid glance and patted the boxy brown hood. “Betsy here is as reliable as they come, and when evading one’s enemies, that matters much more than glitz. She’s also got a glamour on her windows that gives a false impression of who’s inside, courtesy of a former fae associate of mine. I do also have a motorcycle, but that’s kept elsewhere.”

And it wouldn’t really lend itself to carting all five of us around town, at least not when the others were in physical form. But seriously—he’d named his car Betsy ? I held in a snicker, but the sharpening of his glare suggested he’d noticed the twitch of my lips. I did have to admit that the glamour spell would be awfully useful for keeping the pricks we were up against off our backs.

Thorn peered into the darkness of the storage unit, where wooden crates and metal chests were stacked along the walls around the car. “This space could also serve as a place for Sorsha to sleep—out of the way, and?—”

Omen spun to face him, cutting him off with a curt voice. “Don’t be ridiculous. Would you have her lead this group right to my stash? We shouldn’t linger here any longer than we already have.”

Thorn looked so stricken my throat constricted at the sight. It wasn’t an expression that belonged on a man of so much strength. “My apologies,” he said quickly. “I should have thought the matter through more carefully.”

“It seems you haven’t been very careful with your thinking in general these past few months, or I wouldn’t have spent most of those months acting as a lab rat for a coterie of vicious mortals. Why don’t you keep your mouth shut from now on and let me do the thinking?”

I hadn’t realized it was possible for the warrior’s face to fall even more. Bristling on his behalf, I lost control of my tongue.

“ You’re the one who got yourself trapped by those mortals,” I said. “You have no idea how much Thorn has been busting his ass trying to get you back. He’s the most dedicated person—being—whatever—I’ve ever met, often to the point of being incredibly irritating about it. So maybe you should shut up about things you apparently know nothing about.”

I could tell Thorn had turned to look at me, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off of Omen to check the warrior’s reaction. I’d given Thorn a hard time about his single-mindedness in the past, but he’d proven he was holding in plenty of real emotion under that strict exterior—and plenty of passion I’d only gotten a taste of so far. He’d beaten himself up enough for failing to prevent Omen’s capture without the very person he’d been obsessively trying to rescue adding to that agony. I wasn’t going to stand around while this jackass laid into him for the one thing he couldn’t possibly be criticized for.

If I’d thought Omen’s gaze was frigid before, now it was cold enough to flay me down to the bones. His carefully slicked-down hair had risen in little tufts as if propelled by a swelling rage. My hands clenched at my sides as I braced myself for an onslaught of anger, but he kept his voice as tartly cool as before.

“If you hadn’t insisted on crashing this party, none of us would need to worry about where you spend the night in the first place. Don’t make yourself too much of a hassle.”

The implied threat sent a shiver down my spine. Why had Omen agreed to keep me around anyway?

It could have been because of the emphatic references I’d gotten from his companions. Snap stepped closer to me, curling his long, slender fingers around my fist in solidarity. “It’s because of Sorsha we managed to find and free you at all. She’s just as important as any of us.”

Pickle let out a chirping sound of what might have been agreement, fluttering his wings anxiously. He lost his hold on Thorn’s tunic and ended up clinging to the warrior’s hair in his panic to hurl himself back onto his perch. Thorn unfastened him with a long-suffering sigh, but a hint of a smile crossed his lips. I hustled over to take my sort-of pet off his hands.

Omen watched all of this with the same detached disdain and then shook his head. “We’ll see,” he said darkly. “For now—all of you, in the car. Let’s discover what’s left of my former prison.”

To my relief, he drove with more care than Ruse did, making it back to the neighborhood of the construction site without prompting a single blared horn. By that time, I’d determined that the middle cushion in the back seat popped out to allow access to the trunk and had let Pickle scuttle through. The little dragon was now soothing himself by constructing a nest out of an old plaid blanket that’d been folded there. I decided I wouldn’t mention to Omen that his beloved Betsy might end up with her felted trunk lining shredded.

The sun had sunk below the roofs of the nearby high-rises, but the summer evening was still warm and relatively bright. Thorn stole through the shadows around the site before giving us the go-ahead: no sign of the sword-star bunch. Around the back of the site, he hefted a section of the barrier wall aside to let me walk in while the others took the shadow route.

The half-finished framework of steel and cinderblocks wasn’t exactly welcoming in the late afternoon light, but it provoked a lot fewer goosebumps than it had in the eerie glow of security lamps through the darkness last night. I suppressed a wince at the creak of the metal beams above in a gust of wind. Then my feet stalled in their tracks as I came into view of the facility we’d stormed last night.

Or rather, didn’t come into view of it—because where the concrete building with its flood lamps had stood less than twenty-four hours ago, there was nothing but bare, packed earth and a shallow pit of rubble.

As I gaped, my shadowkind companions emerged around me. Ruse let out a low whistle.

A disbelieving laugh sputtered out of me. “These people don’t do things by halves, do they?” Just yesterday morning, they’d battered one of their own men beyond identification to cover their tracks. I shouldn’t be surprised.

We ventured closer, Thorn striding ahead to patrol the wreckage, but it didn’t take long to determine that our enemies had left nothing incriminating or useful behind, only smashed concrete. Snap bent over various spots around the pit, flicking his forked tongue into the air just above the chunks to test for impressions that might still be clinging to them, but more hope seeped out of his face with each attempt.

Omen had lingered near me by the edge of the clearing, letting his companions do the work. No trace of emotion showed on his face—not discomfort at returning to the site of his torment, nor satisfaction at seeing the place in pieces, nor frustration at how utterly our enemies had obliterated the evidence of their activities.

There’d been several other shadowkind experimental subjects being held in the facility—beings we hadn’t gotten the chance to free. We hadn’t managed to figure out what exactly their painful experiments were meant to accomplish either.

“We have to find out where they’ve taken the other shadowkind,” I said. “And then shut down the sword-star crew’s operations completely. They can’t keep getting away with this.”

Omen didn’t move. “Obviously.”

That was all he had to say about it? I frowned at the barren stretch of ground. “It was hard enough getting just you out with the four of us working together. There are plenty of shadowkind who come mortal-side regularly or even live in this realm these days. Maybe we could ask around and see if any of them would join?—"

Bossypants interrupted me with a dismissive snort. “Have you met many of our kind that linger in this realm? They’re no less self-involved here than they are back in the shadows. All they care about is themselves and perhaps their immediate circle. The greater good of our people means nothing to them if it requires them to lift a finger. Why do you think I was tackling this menace with such a small group to begin with?”

I had seen those selfish attitudes in other shadowkind. The group of humans I worked with to protect the creatures that traveled into our realm had reached out to local shadowkind gangs and the like before, but they rarely opted to get involved unless it affected them directly. Still…

“This is a much bigger deal than solo hunters or small collectives snaring lesser shadowkind for profit. All the higher shadowkind are at risk. Don’t you think that would matter to the others?”

Omen grimaced. “If it did, this ‘sword-star crew’ would never have managed to establish themselves as firmly as they have.”

He vanished into the shadows, putting a definitive end to that discussion. Such a lively conversationalist.

With a grimace of my own, I picked my way along the fringes of the clearing. Maybe a bit of useful debris had blown this way in the midst of the destruction and been missed during the clean-up. I scanned the piles of boards and the interlocking beams to see if anything caught my eye, squinting into the lengthening shadows of the approaching evening.

I’d made it about halfway around the destroyed facility when a warbling sound from above caught my ears.

My head jerked up. I flinched and stumbled backward just in time to dodge a streak of fire that plummeted down at me.

The blazing thing whooshed past me close enough to singe a few flyaway strands of my hair before it hit the ground. My pulse lurched. The flames flared higher, and I scrambled farther back, my arms flying up defensively. A bolt of pain shot through my bandaged shoulder. The fire flickered in the opposite direction and then slowly dwindled as its fuel ran out.

As I lowered my arms and edged closer to the now only smoldering object, Thorn charged over with Snap and Ruse close at his heels. I clenched my jaw against the ache still burning in my shoulder, and we all stared at the thing that had nearly landed on me like a flaming toupee.

It was a charred… pair of work jeans? Yep, with a sharp chemical scent that indicated how the fire had caught on them so enthusiastically. The fabric must have been dosed in some kind of lighter fluid and then been tossed down from above.

Thorn sprang back into the shadows, presumably to search for my attacker. Snap checked me over carefully. His eyes stark with concern, he fingered the singed strands of my hair, which he’d admiringly compared to the color of a peach when we’d first met.

I took his hand in mine with a reassuring squeeze. “I’m all right. The jeans, not so much.”

Ruse cocked his head, still considering them. “Well, that is something, all right.”

I peered up at the gridwork and knit my brow. Who would have done that— why would anyone have done that? There were a hell of a lot more deadly things here than discarded construction pants.

A nervous quiver ran through my chest, but I wasn’t going to be shaken by something this ridiculous, not if I could help it. Mangling the lyrics from my favorite ‘80s songs always bolstered my spirits. I waved my hand in front of my nose and sang a little tune: “This is what it smells like when gloves fry.”

While Ruse snickered, Snap knelt down. His tongue flitted through the smoke. “A man was wearing them this morning—he spilled something sticky and black on them, had to change, left them in a waste bin. I can’t sense anything after that.” He frowned.

Omen had returned to join us sometime during the chaos. He contemplated the burnt jeans, the structure around us, and then me, his gaze so penetrating I could almost feel it digging through my skull. “Fire seems to like you.”

“A lot of the time, I like it too, but only when I’m the one setting things up in flames.” I resisted the urge to hug myself. “Someone’s messing with us. Trying to keep us on our toes.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get the slightest bit burned.”

What was he implying—that I’d been prepared for fiery legwear to fall on my head? “Three cheers for good reflexes,” I said.

Thorn burst out of the shadows so abruptly the air rippled against my skin. “There’s no one else on the site right now. Either it was another shadowkind who slipped away quickly or a trick set to go off automatically.”

Ruse raised his hand. “Seeing as we weren’t getting anything useful out of this ruin anyway, I’d like to vote that we take off before any other ‘tricks’ come at us.”

I expected Omen to argue like he seemed to whenever anyone other than him suggested a course of action. Instead, he nodded. “We aren’t getting any farther here.”

He stared at me for a moment longer before shifting his attention to the incubus. “Why don’t we make use of that computer adept you mentioned? Our enemies will have left a trail somewhere—we just need to pick it up, and quickly.”