Page 7

SEVEN

Sorsha

Even at midday with the summer sun beaming, we only passed a couple of dog walkers on the narrow path the trio led me down through the city’s largest park. By the time Thorn came to a stop, we were completely alone in a denser stretch of trees. No sound reached us except the chirping of birds.

He motioned to where the path veered down a sharp slope ahead of us and passed beneath a broad concrete bridge. A vine clung to the rough cement surface. The drape of its leaves darkened the passage’s opening even more.

“Welcome to the jungle,” I muttered to myself. Despite the brightness of the day, this spot felt almost gloomy. “Is there a troll we should be paying a toll to?”

Ruse chuckled, but Thorn only frowned at me. “No trolls. Only enemy mortals, at least on certain occasions.”

The guy had no sense of monster humor. I glanced around. “This is where the hunters—or whoever they were—grabbed your guy?”

He nodded, pressing one hand against the other palm. To cover his unusual knuckles while we were out where mortals not in the know could see him, he’d pulled on a pair of fingerless leather gloves, the same fawn-brown as his skin and thin enough not to draw too much attention on their own. Having his hands even slightly confined appeared to irritate him.

“Omen had noticed something unusual in this area. There’s a rift between the realms not far from here, so shadowkind often pass through this area. We were… patrolling, searching for evidence. He told us to always remain in the shadows unless we needed to physically interact with an item. He slipped out for a moment just under the bridge—and they came at him from all sides in an instant.”

“You hadn’t noticed they were there?”

Ruse gestured to the trees on either side of the path. He was sporting a baseball cap to hide his horns, but somehow the sporty headwear didn’t diminish his roguish good looks in the slightest. “We were farther back, spread out away from the path,” he said. “I didn’t even see what was happening until they were already on him. I’d guess they were waiting on top of the bridge, ducked down behind the wall.”

Snap paused, his stance tensing as he eyed the structure. He’d seemed to take joy in just about everything he’d encountered in the mortal realm, but the attack here must have really shaken him.

“I could test the bridge,” he said, his voice more subdued than usual too. “Over and under. Even with the time passed, if I’m thorough I might be able to taste something about them.”

He walked on down the slope without waiting for our agreement. I glanced at Ruse. “Taste something?”

The incubus shot me a grin that set off a flicker of heat in my loins despite the situation. He’d disguised any weakness he’d been suffering from before well, but I’d definitely noticed more spring in his step since our encounter last night.

“You’ll see,” he said. “Come on. We did rush in after we heard the attack—let’s see how much of the scene we can reconstruct.”

“If we’d intervened in that first moment instead of holding back…” Thorn rumbled as the three of us followed Snap.

“We’ve been over this,” Ruse said. “Even you held back because Omen specifically ordered us not to fight any battles we weren’t sure we could win, and you could see that our chances were slim. Those jackasses were clearly prepared to fight—and capture—shadowkind, and there were at least twice as many of them as of us. They’d have taken us all, maybe to a worse fate than those ridiculous cages.”

Thorn grimaced. “More than twice. There were ten. But in days past, I could have taken that many on my own. Perhaps I could have still. That’s why Omen brought me on.”

“You saw how quickly their methods subdued Omen—and he can put up a good fight when he needs to. I remind you again, you were following his orders.” Ruse flashed another grin, this one at his beefier companion. “So really, if it’s anyone’s fault Omen got captured, it’s his own.”

Thorn made an inarticulate sound of derision, but he stopped arguing. Before he could grouse about anything else, I waved my hand toward the arch of the bridge. “What exactly did you see when you made it over here?”

Thorn tilted his head to the side as he considered the scene. His eyes, so dark I could barely make out the pupils within the irises, went distant as he drew up the memories. The breeze stirred his moonlight-pale hair.

When he wasn’t talking or outright scowling, he really was something to look at. The scars that mottled his tan skin—one slicing across the bridge of his nose, another bisecting one of those hard cheekbones, various nicks dappling his brow and the edges of his jaw—only added to the valiant warrior vibe.

“There were the ten of them,” he said. “All wearing a sort of plating of silver and iron over their entire torsos and like helmets on their heads. When Omen lashed out at them, it burned him. He still managed to take one down—slashed through his throat just under his chin—there.” He pointed to a spot just beside the base of the bridge. No trace remained of the skirmish that I could see, but it’d been weeks, maybe months, and these people were obviously skilled at removing evidence.

“They didn’t have just armor,” Ruse put in. “Weapons too. Nets—not the dinky ones they use on the lesser creatures but like they were meant to haul in a boatload of fish, with silver and iron barbs all over. And these sort of whips that swung streams of light. I hadn’t seen those before. They caught Omen up in the bindings before he had a chance to escape into the shadows.”

Even powerful shadowkind had trouble using their powers if they were bound with iron and silver. As for the rest… As Thorn grunted in agreement with Ruse’s account, a chill washed over my skin. I’d seen glowing whips in the past. A memory from much longer ago swam up: muttered commands, Auntie Luna’s cry, and the arc of searing streams of light swinging at her to bind her in place.

That didn’t necessarily mean anything. If there were new weapons that could disable higher shadowkind, anyone who set out to capture or kill them would be using them, with no connection to any other group implied. But I was about to press the men for more detail anyway when Snap leaned over the railing on the bridge above us.

“I think I’ve got something from that evening here,” he said, and then, I swear on a unicorn’s ass, he dipped his head lower and flicked his tongue across the concrete. It darted from between his lips farther than any human tongue could have, and he sucked in a breath with a snake-like hiss.

“Um,” I said, momentarily lost for words.

Ruse was smirking now. “I told you that you’d see. Omen brought him on board for a reason too. One of his kind’s primary talents is picking up impressions of the past from any object they encounter.”

By “tasting”—right. I’d never heard of that talent among the shadowkind before. There mustn’t be many like him.

The thought of licking that grubby cement made me wince, but it didn’t appear to bother Snap any. “Yes,” he said dreamily. “At least one of them was crouched here—she bumped her foot against this spot as they all vaulted over. A leather shoe, a little too tightly laced. Pushing fast.”

“And probably no one else has touched that exact spot since then,” Ruse said. “That’s why Snap can still pick up something from that long ago. The most recent impressions end up overwhelming things from farther back.”

Snap’s gaze refocused on us. An apologetic note came into his voice. “That’s all I’ve been able to find up here from the ambush. It doesn’t seem as if it’d help us find Omen.”

“The actual battle happened on the ground,” Thorn said. “See if you can discover more beneath.”

Snap leapt down to join us, landing on his feet more lightly than you’d expect from a guy that tall. He peered into the thicker gloom beneath the bridge. I found myself staring as his tongue flitted from between his lips to test one patch of wall and then another.

“He can’t get sick from doing that, can he?” I asked Ruse. Lord only knew what microbes had taken up residence under there.

Ruse chuckled. “As offensive as it might look, he’s not actually making contact, just tasting the energies clinging against the surface. As far as I know, they can’t do anyone any harm.”

That didn’t sound so bad, but I couldn’t have said I was entirely offended anyway. A certain amount of fascination was involved too. Especially when the dreamy tone came into Snap’s voice again.

“One knocked his shoulder here in the struggle—a spot where the armor didn’t cover his clothes. His shirt was torn. A piece falling. It might still be…”

He dragged his foot through the scattered leaves, twigs, and other natural debris that had collected along the edge of the passage. With a victorious exclamation, he fished out a small scrap of fabric. As he held it level with his face, his tongue flicked out again, not quite close enough to make the scrap stir with the motion. He inhaled deeply.

“Cotton. Blood from a cut underneath—Omen’s claws. The one wearing it bought it—I can see the store—All Military Surplus.”

I’d been in that place once or twice—a big warehouse type store on the industrial side of town. “That doesn’t narrow things down much. There’ve got to be thousands of people in the city who’ve shopped there.”

Snap’s face fell. He looked so disheartened that I had to add, “It’s amazing that you can tell all that in the first place, though.”

“I can taste more when there’s a stronger emotional association,” he said. “He didn’t care about this shirt very much.”

“You’re giving it your best shot,” Ruse reassured him. “Anyway, that tidbit could end up being useful in some way we can’t anticipate yet.”

“I’ll see if I can find more.” Snap turned and ventured farther along the passage.

I turned to the others. “Can you remember anything else about the people who staged the ambush—any identifying details at all?”

The incubus spread his hands. “Unfortunately, my skills are fairly short range. I didn’t get a detailed read on any of them—nothing beyond the expected aggression and fear.”

Thorn studied our surroundings again as if searching for something to jog his memory. “Their faces were mostly covered. From their movements, they were thoroughly trained in combat. A few of them carried silver daggers as well, and one had—I’m not sure what to call it. Like a metal stick that shot electric sparks from one end.”

“Some kind of taser.”

“I don’t know that word.” His forehead furrowed. “It had some sort of symbol on it, didn’t it? I only saw it for a second—it was mostly covered by the fighter’s hand. But the swords in the design caught my attention.”

Another, sharper chill prickled through me. “A symbol with swords?”

“Yes. Like a five-pointed star, but the two most horizontal points were drawn as the blades of a sword with a simple joint hilt in the center.”

He picked up a stick from beside the path and dug its end into a clear patch of dirt. With several strokes, he sketched out an image so familiar it made my stomach flip over.

The star with the sword points. The hunters who’d come for Luna—I’d caught a glimpse of that symbol on one of the metallic bands they’d worn around their heads. And never found any reference to it since, even with all the searching I’d done in the first few years after her death.

I’d given up on getting justice for her, other than in the roundabout way of striking back against hunters and collectors in general. But the people who’d come for her hadn’t just been a particularly vicious group of hunters after all. The symbol connected them to the trained fighters who’d come for the trio’s boss as well, eleven years later.

They’d only captured Omen, not slaughtered him, as far as his companions knew. Maybe they hadn’t been attempting to kill Luna either. What were they doing with the higher shadowkind—and what else had they been up to in the decade in between?

My three lost puppy dogs might be the key to getting answers, and to more questions than I’d even known to ask until now.

My heart had started thumping faster. “After they captured him, didn’t you follow to see where they were taking him?”

Thorn let out a huff. “As far as we could. We can move quickly through the shadows, but not swiftly enough to keep pace with your mechanized vehicles.”

“They drove off in a big truck,” Ruse clarified. “No logos or anything useful there.”

Snap emerged on the other side of the passage under the bridge. His tongue darted toward a spot at the corner, and he hummed to himself.

“One leaned back here briefly. Breathing hard. But he was pleased. Very pleased and a little relieved. They must have bound Omen by then.” He paused with another flit of his tongue, and a faint smile crossed his face. “He said something—quietly, to a man next to him. ‘Let’s get it back to Merry Den.’”

Both of his companions stepped closer. “You could hear that?” Ruse said.

“Yes. The sound’s blurry, but—he was so eager, the words stuck. Is that good?”

Thorn clapped Snap on the shoulder, so forceful in his enthusiasm that the slimmer guy both beamed and winced. “A name is excellent! The name of where they were taking him.” He looked at me. “Do you know a ‘Merry Den’?”

The bastards who’d come hunting didn’t stand a chance now. I rubbed my hands together as a waft of elation filled my chest. “I don’t, but you’d better believe I can find it.”