Page 55

TWENTY-TWO

Sorsha

“Well, this is… something, all right,” Vivi said, taking in the walls in the low-ceilinged living space, which looked—and smelled—like they were pasted with dried algae. From her face, I suspected she was resisting the urge to wrinkle her nose.

Gisele pranced around the room, which otherwise held an odd collection of rattan furniture with cotton cushions that at least appeared to be cozy. The unicorn shifter’s perky voice gave no sign that she’d noticed Vivi’s hesitance. “Kaiso said we could drop in and use the place any time. He’s got houseboats all over the world, so he’s not here that much.”

“A big fan of water living, huh?” I adjusted my balance as the floor rocked under us with the shifting currents of the river.

“It makes sense. He’s a kappa, after all.”

Vivi’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, are you totally sure he won’t be back while I’m staying here?” Temperaments really varied even across shadowkind of the same sort, but kappa did have a reputation as tricksters at best and murderers-by-drowning-mortals at worst.

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be a problem even if he does,” Gisele said. “Just tell him you’re a friend of ours.”

Vivi didn’t look any more certain about that strategy than I felt—who was to say the water spirit would ask for introductions before getting down to drowning—but Omen stepped into the boat’s interior then. He didn’t hesitate to wrinkle his nose as he glanced around.

“You should be safe from any shadowkind who come wandering this way,” he said. “I’ve marked the place with my power as a warning. There aren’t many who’d purposefully risk the wrath of a hellhound.”

Marked the place? What, had he peed on the deck in hound form to leave his scent? The image made the corners of my mouth twitch, but I decided it was better not to risk his wrath right now by sharing it. Too much gratitude was tickling up through my chest.

I hadn’t expected Omen to even participate in finding Vivi a safe place to hide out, let alone use his influence to protect her.

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

He shrugged and stalked back out without another word. “I guess the other guy got all the friendliness on offer when they came into being, huh?” Vivi said with a quirk of her lips. Ruse had been by a few minutes earlier to drop off food and a couple of changes of clothing he’d gathered for her, which he’d presented in his usual charming fashion.

“Something like that.” I glanced at Gisele. “This is great. Thank you so much too. Can you give us a little while to talk?”

“Of course!” The unicorn shifter bobbed her head with its rainbow of hair to my best friend. “A pleasure to meet you.” She trotted out after Omen.

Vivi flopped down into one of the rattan chairs. “My God, what a night. Out of the frying pan and into a five-alarm blaze.”

The comment pinched at my gut. I knew she only meant it as an expression, but I also wasn’t sure if she’d noticed the spurts of heat and flame I’d been able to produce while I was taking down her attacker in the butcher shop. She hadn’t brought it up, and I’d figured it was better not to heap any more craziness on her than she was already dealing with… and also I wasn’t super keen on seeing how our friendship might change if I revealed I might not be completely human after all.

“Ruse will bring more supplies around if you need them,” I said. “And I’ll always have my phone on me. But hopefully what we’re going to do tonight will get us a huge step closer to taking down the Company of Light completely, and then we won’t need to worry about them coming after you again.”

“You think so? They’re a hell of a lot more organized and vicious than any hunters we’ve tangled with before.”

“Well, if we can free a bunch of higher shadowkind they’ve been torturing, that’s tons of new allies right there. And we’re going to get all the info we can out of the people working there, whatever files they have on site, and then hopefully erase everything on their end so all their experimental data is kaput… We’re a lot better prepared than we were before.”

“You had things figured out well enough to get to me before the jerks strung me up or whatever the heck they were planning, so I have all possible faith in your plans.” Vivi reached to pat my arm as I sat down beside her, but her usual energy was still dampened.

A sharper jab lanced through my stomach. If I hadn’t pursued the Company and kept helping Omen and the others work out how to take them down—if I hadn’t gone to the Fund asking for help—right now, Ellen would be at the theater getting everything ready for the day. Vivi would be able to go back to the apartment she’d decorated with so much flair. Neither of them, or any of the other Fund members, would be living with the fear of murderous psychopaths in silver-and-iron armor rampaging into their lives.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize—I thought taking this to the Fund would be safe with all the precautions we took. The last thing I wanted?—”

Vivi held up her hand. “I’m going to stop you right there. I begged you to let me be a part of this, Sorsha. Ellen and Huyen made their own choices too. The whole point of the Shadowkind Defense Fund is supposed to be to stop assholes who treat the shadowkind as worse than vermin, and these Company people are clearly the worst of the lot. Do you really think it’d be better if we stepped back and let them run their experiments and murder anyone else who stumbled onto their scheming? Because I don’t. I’m still 100% on team Crush Those Assholes To Smithereens.”

I had to smile at that, but my fingers tightened against my pocket where my phone formed a flat, silent lump. “You’re the only one out of the Fund who feels that way, as far as I can tell. The only people who answered when I tried to reach out this morning didn’t have much to say other than to fuck off.”

“Aw, they’ll get their heads on straight when you expose everything the Company has been up to. And those who don’t are just chickens.”

Her vehemence eased my guilt a little. I sank back into my chair with the rocking of the boat. Thankfully it was docked far down the river from the place we’d be crashing into tonight.

“So…” Vivi prodded me with her index finger. “How many shadowkind groupies do you have now?”

I rolled my eyes at her, ignoring the faint flush that crept into my cheeks. “Still just the three. You don’t think that’s enough?”

“Why stop there? That Omen guy is pretty hot in an I’ll-rip-your-face-off sort of way.”

I was pretty sure Omen had literally ripped plenty of people’s faces off, but maybe Vivi realized that. “We can barely have a conversation without wanting to punch one another. I think I’ll stick to three.” I rubbed my face. “It’s weird enough that I’m having any kind of relationship with a bunch of monsters in the first place, isn’t it?”

Vivi shrugged. “Nothing wrong with having unusual taste in men. Leaves more of the typical hotties for the rest of us. Now that I’ve met them, I can definitely see the appeal.” She shot me a wide smile.

“Believe me, they’re more trouble than they look,” I muttered, but the complaint was half-hearted. I couldn’t say I regretted that the trio had barged into my apartment and my life those weeks ago—not even a little bit, the loss of that apartment and just about everything else I’d counted on notwithstanding.

And we had much bigger trouble to tackle tonight. I’d have loved to linger there on the plump cushions, ignoring the algae smell and chatting with Vivi as if this were some unexpected aquatic holiday and not an attempt to save her life, but I really should get back to our final preparations.

I pushed myself off the chair. Vivi got up too so I could squeeze her in a hug. She hugged me back just as hard.

“You lay low completely this time, all right,” I ordered, wagging a finger at her. “Don’t set one foot off this boat—unless the bad guys set foot on it, of course.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” she said with a cheeky salute. Then a cloud crossed her expression, a hint of the fears she was suppressing. “Ditto.”

“Ditto.”

As I crossed the houseboat’s deck, my own fears swelled inside my chest. I’d only just barely protected Vivi this time. If the Company tracked her down here…

We’d just have to make sure they didn’t get the chance to so much as try.

As I headed for solid ground, I spun a lyric around and sang the newly mangled version under my breath to bolster my spirits. “Stand up and burn ‘em down, never let them see us frown. Ne-eh-ver. Ne?—”

I stopped in my tracks when I saw Omen waiting for me on the road. The Everymobile had vanished, leaving just him—and the motorcycle he’d apparently retrieved when I wasn’t looking. He straddled the old but well-polished Harley, one foot on the ground and one propped on the footrest. All he’d need was a beat-up leather jacket, and he could have driven straight out of a ‘70s biker flick.

Not my decade, but I could appreciate the vibe all the same.

I ambled over, crossing my arms. “Decided it was time to lean into the bad-boy persona, did you? This does look more your style than good ol’ Betsy.”

He grimaced at me. “You will not besmirch Betsy’s good name. She gave us her all. This is Charlotte.”

I swallowed a guffaw. “Do you name all your vehicles?”

“All two of them that I used to have, yes. Do you think you can manage not to get this vehicle blown up, Disaster?”

“The other ones weren’t even my fault,” I felt the need to point out. “Why are you letting me near dear Charlotte if you’re concerned about that?”

His gaze sharpened. “Thorn mentioned that you used your powers again to fend off your friend’s attackers. You seem to be getting better at bringing them out—it’s just the control bit that needs work. It occurred to me that the bike might be a good way to get some concentrated practice.”

“How so?”

“You can’t drive, so I’m going to guess you’re not quite as confident on a speeding vehicle as standing in front of one. And I’ve got plenty of tricks to get your heart thumping. Get on.” He tapped the seat behind him and then a strip of paper he’d taped to the end of the right handlebar. “When you’re agitated enough that you can feel your power, see if you can light this on fire—not me. I’ve got more where it came from once that one’s good and crispy.”

It actually sounded like a reasonable plan… except I wasn’t only hesitant about the whole riding on a speeding motorcycle thing but also having to cling to the man in front of me while I was doing it. I couldn’t exactly hope to perch daintily on the back—no, this was going to require full body contact.

I wasn’t going to let Bossypants see that hesitation, though. “Fine,” I said, and hopped on.

As I settled my knees against his hips and wrapped my arms around his waist, Omen turned to face ahead. His entire abdomen was packed with solid muscle. This wasn’t a man I’d ever expected—or wanted—to be embracing, but I couldn’t say it was an entirely unpleasant experience. Here was hoping I didn’t, like, drench him in sweat in the summer heat or something.

“No helmets?” I asked.

He chuckled. “And here I thought you had a hard-on for danger. We’re going to do a little death-defying today.”

Without another word or any warning, he sent the bike roaring forward.

My arms jerked even tighter around Omen’s frame in an instinctive bid to, y’know, not die . My legs pressed in too, my body shifting forward to meld against him for security’s sake. Well, now I could say I’d had the fourth member of my shadowkind quartet between my thighs, even if it wasn’t in the way Vivi had been teasing me about.

As we tore down the street and around a corner, the shifter’s hellish scent filled my nose, plenty dangerous in itself. His muscles flexed beneath my fingers. My heart was thumping all right, but it might have partly been because my jerk of a brain couldn’t help wondering how Omen would react if I dipped my hands a little lower and found out what he would get a hard-on for.

Then the hellhound took another turn with a rev of the engine and a lurch of the bike to one side, and all thoughts of anything other than surviving fled my mind. Seconds later, he whipped around a curve dipping so low I’d swear my hair grazed the pavement.

My pulse stuttered. With his shadowkind strength, he’d probably recover from a high-speed tumble. Did he comprehend how easily my head would crack open?

Yes, yes, he did. That was the whole point of veering so close to this guardrail that I could see the traffic passing below the bridge as vividly as my life flashing before my eyes. For one specific purpose.

Focus, Sorsha. I wanted to master this force in me.

With my next jolt of panic at a risky maneuver, I trained my attention on the strip of paper now flapping wildly in the wind. Heat flared in my chest alongside the clanging of adrenaline. I narrowed my eyes—and the paper went up in a burst of flame.

Omen slowed at a traffic light and fished another slip out of his pocket. “Good. Let’s do it again. After a few times, we’ll see if you can manage it when you’re slightly less terrified.”

“I’m not terrified ,” I objected, and lost the rest of my protest and probably all of my credibility when the bike took off again with a squeal of burnt rubber that shocked a yelp from my throat.

As much as I was tempted to whack Omen across the head for the wild ride, it did work. By the time I’d fried my fourth slip of paper, the surge of power from my gut to my chest was becoming familiar. True to his word, the hellhound shifter eased up on the stunts, and even with the—okay—terror dwindling to a tamer uneasiness, I managed to summon enough sparks to burn up a few more strips by dredging up that sensation.

I hadn’t realized he’d swung around to arrive at the bus lot until he parked just outside it. I pulled myself away from him and clambered off the bike, figuring a little space was in order now, but the smile he shot me—the brightest and most genuine one I’d seen from him so far—brought back that pulse-thump of attraction.

That was okay, wasn’t it? I didn’t have any plans to actually jump his bones or anything. Why couldn’t a gal simply have unusual taste in men, as Vivi had put it?

“You’re getting a handle on it,” he said.

“Maybe not such a disaster after all?”

“We’ll see how it goes tonight.” He said that part dryly, but his gaze didn’t feel quite as icy as usual as it lingered on my face. “You have kept up all right so far.”

Coming from him, that was the highest of praise. Had I brought the hound to heel?

I found myself grinning back at him. “And you only took a little convincing.”

He snorted, but then his good humor seemed to fade. He motioned me toward the lot. “I’ve got to stash Charlotte. See if the others have made any progress with the final details. We’ve wasted enough time getting your issues sorted out already.”

Then he drove off without another word, leaving me caught in a different sort of whiplash.