Page 67

THREE

Sorsha

The Company of Light’s main Chicago facility resembled nothing so much as a shoe box—albeit one the size of a city block. That resemblance might have been intentional, because their front wasn’t just any museum. It was a Museum of Footwear.

As we cruised by, I squinted at the pale gray walls from the window over the RV’s sofa. “Why would anyone think you need a building that big just to show off a bunch of shoes?”

Ruse chuckled from the driver’s seat. “You fail to recognize the multitude of items mortals have worn on their feet over the centuries, Miss Blaze.”

I rolled my eyes in his general direction. “I’m sure there are plenty of interesting slippers and sandals and galoshes or whatever, but who wants to spend a day looking at them all?”

“Enough people to keep the Company’s front in business,” Omen said from where he was standing near the door, watching the street through the windshield. “The dwarf said quite a few ordinary-looking humans go in and out on an average day.”

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste, I guess. I don’t see much in the way of security on the outside, at least not right now.” There wasn’t much room for guards to take up posts along the narrow strip of lawn between the building and the sidewalk. I’d spotted a figure just inside the glass front doors, though. “If they mostly stick to lesser shadowkind here, maybe they haven’t felt the need to really lock the place down.”

Thorn appeared across from me so suddenly that Pickle startled where he was curled up on my lap. The warrior must have leapt straight from the shadows along the road into the RV and then into physical form so fast even his fellow shadowkind hadn’t been prepared.

“The building appears to have an inner sanctum,” he reported without preamble. “The galleries form a square around an area that only a single locked door leads into. The door and the walls around that area contained enough noxious metals that I couldn’t slip past while the entrance was shut. No telling how many mortals might be stationed within, but I counted six guards patrolling the outer rooms.”

A thin smile curled Omen’s lips. “They’re definitely not expecting us, then. The Company must not have realized how far we got into their computer system before we burned that last place down. It’ll be simple enough to blaze through this spot to wherever they’re holding Snap.”

His words were enough to set off a flash of heat in my chest. My hands tightened around Pickle.

A couple of days ago, I’d have welcomed the searing power that stirred with my anger. After scalding my fingers and hearing the basilisk’s warning, my body recoiled at the sensation.

I’d only just discovered this power—or acknowledged it, anyway—a week ago. I’d barely scraped the surface of learning how to work it. Which was to say, I didn’t have much of a clue what all I might be capable of, for good or ill.

Besides, did I really want to go charging at every enemy we faced from now until the end of this quest, burning them alive as my opening move? The shrieks of the people I’d sent up in flames in the last facility echoed through my memory, leaving me faintly queasy. Omen and Thorn wouldn’t have batted an eye at that tactic—Ruse and Snap might not have either—but murder was a tad more taboo among humans than it was among the shadowkind.

Just how much of a monster was I going to become while we saw this mission through?

An unnerving prickling crept over my skin with that question, as if some of my inner fire was already rising to the surface. I wet my lips. “Before we do any blazing, could we find someplace for me to get in a little fire-throwing practice? I’d like to make sure I still have a good grip on my powers after the downtime.”

No need to mention that I already suspected I was losing my grip.

Omen frowned as if he resented the delay, but then he sighed. “It isn’t as if we’d go barging in there five minutes from now anyway. You can toss your flames around while we discuss our plan of action. The dwarf did mention a place where we should be able to park Darlene without being observed or disturbed.”

He pulled up the map on his phone and barked a few directions at Ruse, who gamely drove us through a sprawling residential neighborhood and out to a strip mall where all the store windows were boarded up. They formed a perfect C around the parking lot Ruse drove into. Plenty of room and no witnesses—just the way we liked it.

I stepped out into the cool night air and rolled my shoulders, willing my nerves to settle. That little accident the other day was no big deal. So my powers were a little capricious still. What else would you expect when I was some weird type of mortal who occasionally bled smoke as well as blood?

There was no guidebook on being… whatever the hell I was. I just had to get used to my unexpected abilities. And as for Talon and his sunglasses, he’d probably been pulling crap out of his ass, hoping he’d freak me out as payback for mocking his interior design sense.

There’d been a time only days ago when I hadn’t been able to summon a flame except under terror of death. Now, I fixed my gaze on a paper bag drifting along the asphalt, and the surge of power swelled inside me so swiftly my heart started thudding because of that magic instead of the other way around.

“Burn,” I murmured with a flick of my fingers.

Heat shot through my arm, and the paper bag exploded into flame. In seconds, it was nothing but a little heap of charred black flakes.

Ruse clapped his hands for me where he was conferring with Omen and Thorn beside the Everymobile. “Bravo!”

I grinned at him in return, but my face felt stiff. The prickling sensation that had welled up inside me before was spreading all through my chest and down to my gut.

As long as it stayed there, I was just fine. No self-roasting today; no problem.

I swiveled around in search of more targets. A tattered flyer for a small-time theater production—with one sharp look, it was ashes. A paper plate with grease stains in the shape of a slice of pizza—cinders. An empty pop can that rattled as it rolled in a gust of wind—why the hell not?

I stared at it, my gaze narrowing to a glare. Heat blazed from my chest through my throat to the back of my eyes, and?—

A rush of fire burst up not just on the can itself but several inches around it too. The heat of those flames flared so intensely that it lashed across my body from five feet away.

Or was that the heat inside my body flaring at the same time? The sensation whipped up in a whirl that sizzled up my spine and across my shoulder blades, and pain stabbed through my back.

A cry caught in my throat. I winced, drawing my arms toward my chest, and both the pain and the fire around the pop can shimmered down.

Or rather, around the smear of melted metal that marked the ground where the pop can used to be. Holy liquified lizards, I’d reduced the aluminum to a puddle in just moments. A little more practice and I wouldn’t even need to miss my titanium scorch-knife with its magically heated blade anymore.

A slightly hysterical giggle tickled up from my chest. Watch out, Company of Light.

As I adjusted my stance, the fabric of my shirt shifted against my back, and a fresh sting jabbed across my right shoulder blade. I tensed instinctively. With careful fingers, I prodded the flesh just below the collar of my shirt.

Even that tentative touch provoked more stinging. Small ripples met my fingers, as if the skin there was blistered.

I wasn’t just melting down metals—I was barbequing myself.

That had never happened when I’d used my powers in the first several days. Why was the fire lashing back at me now? A scorching churn remained inside my gut even though I wasn’t trying to summon it now, fierce enough that my stomach lurched with the thought that it might not be just my skin getting scalded.

Maybe this was just how this impossible power of mine worked—the more I wielded it, the more it leached from me in turn. Why not, when mortals were never supposed to work magic in the first place? At least the burns on my fingers had healed with shadowkind-esque swiftness. I hadn’t done any permanent damage to myself.

Of course, that didn’t mean I couldn’t .

When I looked up at the strip mall, the heat inside me bubbled up eagerly. The sense came over me that I could have burned that whole stretch of buildings down with just a little push of my will…

I closed my eyes. Fuck this. I was all for kicking butt and pummeling the assholes who treated shadowkind as lab rats and worse, but a gal needed to have some kind of limits. I didn’t understand what was going on inside me, and the more my powers grew, the more dangerous that ignorance became. Playing with fire was only fun if you were truly in charge of the matches.

We had other options beyond bringing a full maelstrom down on the shoe museum, right? There had to be room for a little subtlety in between “stand back and do nothing” and “burn everything and everyone to ashes.”

As I walked over to the shadowkind men, I braced myself. I could predict how at least one of the three would react to the suggestion I was going to make.

Thorn had been saying something, but he fell silent as I reached them, looking to me as if he realized I had something to say.

Omen considered me with his icy blue eyes. “Finished your flambé practice?”

“For now.” The jolt that rushed through me at those words, both giddy and rattled by the impression of all the things it could be in my capacity to incinerate at this moment, only bolstered my resolve. “I think it might be best if we come up with a plan that doesn’t count on me using my powers.”

The hellhound shifter grimaced before I could get any further. “Don’t tell me you’re doubting your abilities all over again. You burned down a whole mansion a few days ago. I saw you lighting up trash over there just now. The fire’s in you—you know how to use it. What’s the problem?”

The heat inside me flared with a prickle of frustration. I resisted the urge to hug myself as if the press of my arms would force the inner flames to simmer down. “The problem is it feels… different from before. Bigger. Fiercer. I know how to bring it out, yeah, but I’m not sure how well I can keep it in check once it’s out there.”

Omen shrugged. “So you might char a few other establishments around the museum. The mortals never seem to care how many shadowkind they mow down in their crusades.”

“You might care if I charred you ,” I retorted.

“I think I’m safe from your incredible talents. I know you think very highly of yourself, but you really don’t need to protect me from you.”

Would he be so sure about that if he could feel the building inferno of my power the way I could?

“I think I do,” I said stubbornly. “Especially since you can’t be bothered to listen to me. I don’t think it’s safe for any of us—including me —if I keep throwing my powers around when none of us has any clue how I even have supernatural skills in the first place.”

Omen squared his shoulders. “Look, Disaster,” he said, his voice flat but cutting. “I know the fact that there’s something not entirely human in you unnerves you. The fact that the rest of you is human unnerves me . I’ve gotten over it, so you’re going to find a way to come to terms with it too. Preferably soon. Stay focused and committed, as little practice as I’m sure you’ve had with that kind of discipline, and you’ll control yourself just fine.”

“Maybe if you were focused on something other than giving me a hard time, you’d be able to think of a plan that’s better than ‘fry all the villains to a crisp.’ Brute force isn’t the only skill we’ve got. Look at… Look at how far Ruse has gotten us with his incubus charm. Why don’t we have him beguile all the guards into being on our side, and then we’ll be able to waltz right through the place and get the cells open without running for our lives at the same time?”

Ruse blinked at me, apparently startled that I’d singled him out. He ran a hand through his rumpled chocolate-brown waves, past one of the small, curved horns that poked through them. “As much as I appreciate your faith in me, Miss Blaze, I can’t easily charm more than a couple of mortals at the same time—not to the lengths we’d need to override their devotion to their cause.”

“You wouldn’t have to win them all over at once,” I said. “They’re not expecting us to be here. We have time. We watch the museum, follow the guards when they go off duty so we know where they live, and you can bring them around to our side one at a time. If we can get a few of the syndicate’s followers to help us track them down, we could probably have them all dancing to your tune by tomorrow evening.”

The incubus tapped his lips, but a soft smile was starting to tug at them. “You know, that might work. And I would love to see a whole company of Company goons following my every command.”

Omen still looked skeptical. “We have no idea of their shift structure or how many staff might be working in the inner chambers of that place. Miss one, and we’ll still have a mess the second we get in there.”

We might have been able to sort that out if we’d had weeks to survey the museum’s comings and goings, but I wasn’t going to leave Snap at the Company’s lack-of-mercy for that long. I spread my hands. “So what? You and Thorn can take care of one or two stragglers if they get in our way, can’t you? Or we let the guards deal with their own.” I liked that way better than being responsible for several deaths-by-charbroiling—and who knew what other havoc on top of that.

Thorn cleared his throat and rested his hand on the small of my back, a solid, comforting pressure that offset the faint stinging still radiating through my shoulder blade. “You know I’m most at ease with physical combat, Omen, but I believe Sorsha’s plan has its merits. The incubus has proven just how much influence he can wield. We’ll have more time to uncover information on our enemies’ weaknesses and policies if we enter through non-violent means. Any records we can obtain could make the difference between succeeding against the larger organization.”

For the warrior to support a strategy that involved him standing back while someone else took the lead role was as huge as, well, the warrior himself. I would have kissed him if I hadn’t suspected that would only undermine his larger point with his boss. I settled for giving his brawny forearm an affectionate squeeze instead.

Omen’s mouth went as flat as his voice had been. I hated it when he ramped up the cold-and-hard-as-ice facade he turned to more often than not. Hated it so much that I’d never been able to resist poking at him until I found the right angle to provoke some of his own inner heat to the surface.

To be clear, dealing with a hellhound shifter in a rage was no laughing matter. But I’d take being terrified over condescended to any day.

We could get along; we’d proven that while making our final plans to take out the facilities back home. But Omen had been particularly stick-up-ass-ish when it came to my unexpected voodoo skills from the start.

“Are you sure this isn’t all about giving you more excuses to hide away your powers?” he demanded. “Because it sounds an awful lot like that.”

I gazed right back at him. “I’ve gotten so far from hiding them that a whole bunch of shadowkind and at least a couple of human beings who are still alive witnessed my flame-throwing last time. And I’ve spent my whole life toeing the line between risky and outright suicidal, so you’ll just have to trust that I know when I’m on the verge of crossing it.”

“Maybe you simply need a little more practice at exercising that discipline you struggle with.” He loomed on me abruptly, a flash of orange light darting through his eyes, and somehow my body reacted with both a panicked hiccup of my pulse… and a tingle of a different sort of heat low in my belly.

We should probably get this out of the way up front—I have a unique taste in men. Deal with it.

I hadn’t given in to any of those flares of attraction the hellhound shifter occasionally set off, though, and I wasn’t about to start simpering now.

“Let’s go,” he said, jerking his hand toward the open lot behind us. “We’ll see what you’ve got.”

I jabbed him in the—very well-built, I had to admit—chest with my forefinger. “No. I’ve had enough for today. I need some simmering down time, not more stoking of the flames.”

“So you say. There’s one very simple way to get over the fear that you’ll somehow reduce me to cinders. Give it a shot—your best one.”

My power shifted inside me with an uncomfortable crackling. I swallowed hard and played one card I knew for sure would rankle him. “Leave it, Luce. Haven’t you ever heard that no means no?”

A while back, Ruse had mentioned that long ago, Omen had pretended to be Lucifer—the devil himself, who apparently didn’t actually exist—to frighten old-timey mortals. Usually pulling out that nickname was a sure-fire way to break him out of his own taut self-discipline. Tonight, a few tufts of his hair rose from its slicked-back surface, but his gaze kept its cool blue. A slightly dry note crept into his voice.

“I say when you’re done. Come on and get this over with, Disaster. There’s nothing you can?—”

“I said no ,” I interrupted, with a burst of heat I hadn’t meant to unleash. Flames sprang to the surface, but not on Omen. My clenched hands lit up like glowing embers—and with agonizing throbbing as if embers were burning against my palms.

“Shit.” I pressed them to my body as if I could extinguish a fire that hadn’t even leapt all the way to the surface of my skin and choked on a gasp of pain at the contact. The agony faded with the glow, leaving my hands faintly pink and my heart pounding all over again.

Omen considered my hands with an unreadable expression. His gaze rose to meet mine. For just an instant, he hesitated.

“All right,” he said brusquely. “You’re frayed enough for one night, then. We’ll deal with your fears and whatever else tomorrow. It can’t hurt to have Ruse pave our way into the facility whether you bring your blaze or not. Go get some rest.”

Both Thorn and Ruse were eyeing me with obvious concern. “M’lady?” Thorn started, but I waved him off.

“I’m fine. But I could use that sleep. Go track down some guards while I get my mortal beauty-rest, all right?”

I kept my tone breezy, but as I climbed into the RV, my lungs had clenched. I’d thought the new direction my powers were taking was freaky, sure, but this was all new to me. Omen had hundreds of years of supernatural exploits under his belt… and what he’d seen in me had freaked him out enough that he’d backed off without one more word of argument.

Just how fucked was I?