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TWELVE

Sorsha

The second the Company mercenaries burst into the hotel room, my fighting instincts took over. Heart thudding, I snatched up two of the brass platters our breakfast had been delivered on, briefly lamented the waste of delicious food, and slammed them into the faces of the men who’d lunged my way.

Metal clanged and eggs squelched. An invisible force I assumed was Antic followed my example and started hurling more dishes off the table at our attackers. Delicate china cups smashed left and right. Tea and butter splattered the ornate rug.

Well, what do you expect when you open up a penthouse to a bunch of monsters?

An instant later, the tea and butter was joined by a gush of blood. Thorn gouged one crystalline fist through one soldier’s neck and bashed the other into a second man’s face. Omen tore through the room in a maelstrom of hellhound brutality, raking his claws across thighs and calves, sinking his jaws into one woman’s belly. The magma-like streaks that seared through his dark gray fur blazed with fury.

Our efforts might not be enough, though. As I ducked down and knocked the feet out from a gunman with a sweep of my leg, the sight of more figures charging through the doorway made my gut lurch. One of them was already hefting a silver-and-iron net to toss over the fighting shadowkind.

A crackle of fire rushed through me in response. I hadn’t meant to risk burning the place—and all the other, perfectly innocent guests—down, but flames spurted across the guy’s shirt before I had any chance to rein them in. His colleagues shoved him to the floor to drop and roll, one snatching the net from him as they did.

Shit. If I let out more than that, a lot more than just the Company assholes might end up incinerated on this fine morning.

As I swung the brass plates again, willing down the vicious heat inside as well as I could, my gaze darted across the room. At the other end, the gauzy curtains drifted in the cool breeze where we’d left the balcony door ajar. Inspiration shot through me like a bolt of lightning.

Just this once, I didn’t need my supernatural allies to ensure my mortal self made it out of this alive.

“Get out of here!” I shouted. “You don’t need to wait for me. I’ve got my own escape route; I’ll meet you at Darlene.”

Not that I approved of the Everymobile’s new name, just to be clear—it was only a way to avoid tipping our enemies off to where we were heading.

“M’lady,” Thorn called out in protest, apparently unwilling to take my word for it. Time to get a move on anyway.

“Just go !” I said, snatching up my purse with a sputtering Pickle in it, and dashed toward the balcony.

It helped that our attackers had entered from the main door and were opting for a “mow them down” approach rather than “surround them.” I only had to dodge a couple of fists and one gleaming whip before I was springing past the curtains into the crisp dawn air. My devoted shadowkind defenders had better take the hint and escape into the shadows now that I’d exited the room.

Leaving the balcony looked to be slightly more difficult than reaching it. Our lovely penthouse stood twelve stories above the sidewalk I’d like to end up on, and I hadn’t brought my grappling hook and rope. Note to self: All occasions are good occasions to have the cat burglar gear on hand.

The thunder of impending footsteps told me I’d better get going one way or another. I glanced down, ignored the flip of my stomach—I was no chicken when it came to heights, but I generally wasn’t prancing around on buildings quite this tall—and vaulted over the balcony’s railing.

With a grasp of the bars and a swing of my legs, I launched myself onto the smaller balcony below. One floor down, eleven more to go. Too bad the rest of the windows below me only featured Juliets—who in their right mind called that little stub a balcony anyway?

The inhabitants of the sub-penthouse had left their balcony door locked, but even in a hotel this fancy, those things weren’t really built for keeping people out. Who expected robbers to descend from the sky? I gave the handle a well-practice kick, grinned at the snap of the lock, and shoved the door wide just as shouts hailed down from above.

I sprinted through the room of some hotel goer who was lucky enough to still be sleeping at this hour—at least, until my pursuers crashed in—and down the hall to the stairs, not wanting to risk the elevator. My feet had never flown faster. On the ground floor, I peeked out through the window, spotted the metal-helmed figures by the front doors getting stares from the desk clerks, and eased the door open just far enough to make a run for the kitchen.

The staff who’d provided our delightful breakfast were clattering around fulfilling other room service requests. “Thanks for the lovely meal!” I hollered to them as I sprinted past. As I’d hoped, a door at the far end of the room offered an exit into an alley that held a dumpster and exactly zero Company assholes. For now.

Thankfully, we’d taken the precaution of parking the Everymobile—in cargo van guise—a few blocks away from the hotel. I loped over there before our attackers could get their act together and figure out where I’d snuck off to.

As our vehicle came into view, tension prickled through my muscles. The shadowkind had all hoofed it out of the penthouse when I’d left, hadn’t they? I couldn’t remember even seeing Snap in the fray. If we’d lost him again, or any of the others…

The door flung open to admit me, Thorn standing on the other side with an urgent beckoning. I spotted Ruse in the driver’s seat behind him, foot poised over the gas.

Neither of them looked at all concerned about getting anyone on board other than me. Thank holy hamburgers. I accepted Thorn’s hand, he yanked me on board, and the RV peeled away from the curb the second the door had thumped shut behind me.

“We all made it?” I asked, just in case.

“All present and accounted for,” Omen said tersely from where he was standing by the kitchen. Snap was sitting on the sofa-bench with a vaguely bewildered expression, and Antic… was bouncing on her heels right on the table.

She shot me an eager smirk when she saw me look her way. “I gave them a good lesson with those teacups, didn’t I?”

“You were great,” I said. No need to pick apart exactly how much each of us had contributed to the skirmish. I dropped onto the sofa across from Snap and released Pickle from my purse.

Omen was frowning. “Hey,” I said, aiming a teasing kick at his calf. “We just escaped a vicious ambush with all lives and even body parts intact. What more could you ask for?”

He swiped his hand across his narrow jaw. “I’m more concerned about how those pricks found us in the first place. There’s no way they should have been able to determine that we’d head to Austin from Chicago, and even if they had, we weren’t on the right course.” He aimed a particularly icy glance at the imp.

I hadn’t had enough time to recover from the whole fleeing for my life bit to consider the implications of the attack. “That’s true. I didn’t mention where we were headed to Ellen or Vivi, so it couldn’t have come from them.”

Ruse glanced back toward us. “The hotel was the first place we’ve been in one spot for any significant length of time since we stormed the museum and then hit the road. Could the Company have tracked your phone, Sorsha?”

I shook my head. “I’ve had it off except when I was using it while we were on the road, just in case.”

“It’s possible they were tracking something else.” Omen’s gaze settled on Snap. “Didn’t any of you find it odd that our devourer’s cage opened on its own to release him when we came for him? The Company’s scientists had already called in back-up. Why would they want us to leave with him rather than be caught?”

“I figured they got scared that we’d find them before back-up arrived,” I said. “But yeah… They didn’t have any reason to worry at that point. It was because his cage opened that we got suspicious.”

Snap had stiffened against the leather seat. “I wouldn’t have helped the people who locked up me and Antic and the others in those metal boxes.”

“Of course you wouldn’t have, not on purpose,” Omen said in the same unexpectedly gentle tone he’d used with Snap before. He stepped closer to the devourer, studying Snap’s lean frame from head to toe. “But you might have without even realizing it. There’s a trick I’ve seen hunters use when they want to collect a lot of little shadowkind at once. Some of the lesser creatures tend to congregate together. They catch one and fix a tracking mark of some sort on it, then release it and let it lead them to the others.”

I’d heard of that too. They marked the creatures’ bodies with a little silver ink that wouldn’t vanish even if the creatures slipped in and out of the shadows and that created a resonance they could detect with a specialized device. A shiver tickled through me. “You think the Company scientists put a tracker mark on Snap? Wouldn’t he have noticed?” The lesser shadowkind might ignore a little discomfort in their relief at being freed, but Snap was more aware than that.

“Possibly not, if it was small enough. He hasn’t used a physical body long enough to be all that aware of what’s normal in the first place.” The hellhound shifter motioned for Snap to stand up. “Let me check you over. We don’t want them tracking us any farther than they already have.”

Snap got to his feet, his eyes wide. “They attacked us because of me? I never thought—if I’d realized?—”

“We know.” I scooted close enough to take his hand, although I didn’t know how much real comfort that would give him. Still, I ran my thumb over his knuckles in as soothing a gesture as I could offer while Omen leaned in, practically sniffing the devourer with his houndish senses.

“Here,” he said abruptly, grasping Snap’s other arm and turning it to tap a spot just below his elbow. “There’s just the faintest hint of it…” He grimaced. “Not on the flesh, but there’s a bit of a regular scar here. They must have cut you open and etched it right on the bone.”

A shudder ran through Snap’s body. “There is something there—a bit of an itch. I thought that must be normal.” His head jerked up. “I can’t stay. You’ll have to go on without me. I could return to the shadow realm—they won’t be able to follow me there. Then you’ll all be safe.”

Like when he’d run from us when he’d been afraid of how we—how I —would see him after he’d devoured that man in front of us? Panic jabbed through my chest, and my grip on his hand tightened. “No. There has to be a way to get it off.” I just didn’t like thinking about how bloody those ways might be.

Omen glanced at Thorn. “You know your way around a blade.”

The warrior bowed his head. As he opened the drawers beneath the kitchen counter, I tugged Snap down beside me. He turned to me. “I had a feeling, in the hotel room—I knew it was dangerous for me to be with you. You all could have been captured or killed, and it would have been my fault.”

“Not your fault,” I said firmly. When his gaze started to slip away from me, I touched the side of his face to bring his attention back. “Hey. It’d be the fault of the assholes who put that mark on you. I know you don’t remember it, but you’ve helped us so much. We need you. Don’t you want the chance to see them totally shut down?”

“I don’t know how much more I can do.”

“I do.” I kept all my focus on his moss-green eyes. “And even if you weren’t going to stay with us, would you really want them to be able to track you down any time you came mortal-side again? You’d never be safe here again.” I couldn’t imagine Snap having to give up everything he’d taken wonder from in this world. He’d make that sacrifice if he thought it would protect us, because that was how he was, but he’d never stop missing the color and flavor his home realm lacked.

Just like I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop missing the passionate devotion he’d brought into my life.

That thought brought a lump into my throat, but I kept holding his gaze. “If we can get the mark off you, do you think you can handle the pain?”

He hesitated, his forked tongue flicking across his lips. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes—to be able to stay here. To keep up with the mission. To have all the fantastic things I haven’t gotten to experience yet.”

“Good. Then think about all the fantastic things you have had already, and I’ll keep holding your hand, and we’ll pretend Thorn isn’t even there.”

Snap drew in a breath and squeezed my hand in return. His eyes became distant as he must have thought back to some favorite of the new memories he’d accumulated in the past day—the grandeur of the hotel? The rush of the RV’s speed? Or maybe the simple pleasure of his fruit salad, knowing him.

As I watched his face, I could see Thorn applying a carving knife to the devourer’s forearm at the edge of my vision. I restrained a wince at the smoke that unfurled from the cut. Snap blinked, and his jaw tensed—the only sign that he’d felt it. He could be as stoic as the warrior when he needed to be.

“Tell me your favorite things here,” he said abruptly.

Recently? Lying on a cramped bunk bed with your arms around me. Seeing your face light up at a taste of honey. I swallowed hard. There were plenty of other things too.

“Listening to music,” I said. “Letting the beat move through me. Singing along, finding ways to play with the words. You haven’t gotten to do any of that yet. Opening those cages and watching the beasties big and small leap free. Burning the places that belong to the assholes who built those cages down to the ground.”

Thorn had opened up a gash wide enough that the smoke was billowing now. His expression was as pained as I felt seeing it.

“There’s the mark,” he said. “Barely larger than the head of a pin. I think I can scrape the silver off with the edge of the blade.”

He braced himself, and a flinch ran all through Snap’s body. The devourer closed his eyes with a hiss. His fingers clutched mine so hard my hand ached, but not half as much as my heart did.

Then the warrior was tossing the knife into the sink. Omen stood ready with the roll of gauze they’d procured for my injuries days ago. He’d smeared a little of the green paste that helped contain shadowkind essence on the pale fabric.

As he bandaged Snap’s arm, the devourer’s shoulders sank down. His head dipped toward me. “Thank you,” he murmured.

I wished I could kiss him. I wished that was still something he’d take joy from. “Any time,” I said with forced cheer.

“You should rest,” Thorn said gruffly. “After losing some of your essence…”

“Yes.” Snap stood, took a step, and wavered. I followed him, ushering him down the hall to the RV’s main bedroom.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and then didn’t seem to know quite what to do with himself. An impulse gripped me, so insistent I couldn’t ignore it.

I sat down next to him and wrapped my arms around him, tucking my legs over his lap. Almost like that time in the back of our long-ago borrowed SUV when the friction of me jostling against him during a getaway had woken up his sense of carnal desire. His fresh yet mossy scent filled my nose.

Fruit and flattery hadn’t unearthed his memories. Would something about this embrace do the trick?

Snap gazed down at me, stroking my hair, but the gesture felt more absent than affectionate. “Are you all right?” he asked me.

So much for that idea. I’d stop throwing myself at him now.

I pulled back and gave his hand one last squeeze. “Just making sure you are. Lie down—it’s easier to rest that way. And don’t you dare go anywhere.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said, with a determined assurance that killed me. “Whatever I can do here, it’s so much more than I could ever offer where I came from.”

I didn’t really want to go back to the others just yet. Thorn would probably look at me pityingly, and the devil only knew what Omen was thinking about my soppiness. I retreated into the second bedroom that had almost become my own and flopped down on top of the purple cloud-print comforter. It didn’t feel all that cloud-like. After the heavenly linens in the hotel, this fabric was scratchy against my skin.

Damn. Penthouse life had ruined me for the plebeian existence in a matter of hours.

Someone rapped on the door. “Still alive in there, Disaster?”

I rolled my eyes at the ceiling. “Yes, Luce , as much as you might hope otherwise.”

Omen didn’t bother with opening the door—he slipped in through the shadows, his well-built form solidifying at the edge of the bed. I supposed I should be glad he’d bothered to knock at all. I looked at him without raising my head from the pillows, which to be honest strained my eyeballs, but I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction of sitting up at attention.

“I thought we’d established that I don’t particularly want to see you dead,” he remarked with a coolly casual air.

“More like that you think I’m too useful to get rid of, regardless of what you’d personally prefer.”

He let out a soft huff at that but, I noticed, didn’t put up an argument. Then he just stood there, as if waiting for me to figure out why the hell he’d come in.

“Was there something you wanted?” I asked.

He folded his arms over his chest. I braced myself for whatever criticism he had for me now, but what he actually said was, “You handled yourself well in the ambush. And—with Snap. You know how to… settle him down. Keep his head on straight.”

At that admission, I couldn’t help propping myself up on my elbows so I could look at the hellhound shifter without giving myself a headache. “It’s easier when your first priority isn’t being the most ice-cold bastard in the room.”

Was that a wince he’d suppressed with the tightening of his lips? “That may be true,” he said evenly.

It might not have been totally fair, though. I’d seen him making an effort to be kinder with the devourer in his uncertain mental state. “You haven’t been quite as much of a bastard to Snap as you generally are to everyone else,” I conceded. “And I appreciate the recognition of my many talents.”

That time I could tell it was a smile he’d caught. “Ice-cold bastards get things done, you know. Better to have one than none.” He turned to leave.

“Omen,” I said before I was sure what I was going to ask. He paused, and I pushed myself all the way up, tucking my feet under me to sit cross-legged.

He’d come in here for a reason. Just to pay me a compliment? I didn’t completely understand, but the moment felt vital yet tenuous, like a chance I shouldn’t let slip through my fingers.

What did I most want to ask? I turned the possibilities over in my head before settling on a topic.

“Why did you decide you needed to become all ice-cold anyway? You obviously don’t take to the chill naturally—the other day, you talked about how hard you worked at it. And I know from some of the things the others have said that you were a lot more laissez faire with your abilities however many eons ago.”

“The incubus and his loose tongue.”

I couldn’t hold back a smirk that would have made Ruse proud. “Oh, don’t complain about his tongue. He puts it to all sorts of wonderful uses.”

Omen glowered at me, but he stepped away from the door to prop himself against the bed’s footboard. “I didn’t come to the decision lightly,” he said. “I did use to be much more careless with my powers, playing with mortals for entertainment.” He paused, looking toward the wall with a distant gaze. “I had a lot of power to work with and an associate who enjoyed the revelry of horrors even more than I did, always encouraging fresh intrigues.”

“Not Thorn.” The warrior was the only shadowkind I knew Omen had associated with ages ago, but I couldn’t imagine the stalwart wingéd instigating mayhem.

Omen snorted. “No. And you don’t have to worry about meeting her. In the end, Tempest was too caught up in her cleverness for her own good. She was a sphinx, but taunting mortals with riddles wasn’t thrilling enough—she shifted her form I don’t know how many times, riding humans to their deaths as a night mare, riding doom through their towns when she led what they called the Wild Hunt, and the Highest only know what else. Which was the problem. The Highest caught on to how much hell she was raising and sent a pack of wingéd to take her down, back when there still were enough wingéd around for them to form packs.”

“And you decided you’d rather not end up bashed open by a hail of crystal knuckles, so you committed to changing your ways?”

“Not exactly. I wasn’t quite as flamboyant as her. I thought I could stay beneath their notice. But there was a night?—”

He halted as if grappling with the memory. I gave him a good long stretch before impatience got the better of me and I prompted, “A night?”

“I’d messed with a lot of the mortals in one settlement, and they came to get retribution. Instead of finding me, they stumbled on a cluster of lesser shadowkind who’d been drawn by my energies. The humans slaughtered every creature there without a moment’s hesitation. And I realized the Highest were right in the little bit of enforcement they do enact across the divide.”

His gaze was still fixed on the wall, his tone as even as ever, but his hand had come to rest on the bed frame, the knuckles paling where he’d clenched his fingers. I waited another moment before asking, “How so?”

“It was my doing,” Omen said. “The mortals were brazen fools like so many of them are, and they deserved all the havoc I brought into their lives, but in wreaking that havoc I stirred up their distrust and hatred of all shadowkind. How many hunters took up hunting because I hurt them or theirs? How many humans simply blundered into causing massacres like the one I witnessed that night in fits of rage? So many lesser creatures and no doubt some higher ones as well paid for my crimes more than I ever have.”

Ah. I tried to imagine what it would have been like, arriving at a personal revelation on that scale, and couldn’t. His voice had only gotten flatter as he spoke, but I’d been around Omen well enough to know that meant he was clamping down even more control over emotions threatening to leak out.

“So this is your penance?” I said. “Making yourself a model of self-restraint and ordering everyone around while you save the shadowkind you can?”

“Something like that.” Omen’s gaze finally slid to me. “I was selfish and undisciplined and foolhardy—all the worst qualities mortals have in abundance. By provoking them, I was sinking to their level. Yes, I have plenty to make up for, but mainly I want to be as little like those pricks as I possibly can be.”

I guessed that could explain why so many parts of my mortal self—impossible supernatural powers aside—irritated the hell out of him. Or the hell into him?

Whatever. I glanced down at my hands and then back at him. He hadn’t needed to tell me any of his history. Maybe he was already regretting that he had. I could avoid driving that regret home.

“I see your point,” I said. “For what it’s worth, the being I’ve seen when you let the ice crack isn’t anything like the worst human beings I’ve met. Do you ever think you could ease up on yourself a little after all this time?”

A gleam lit in his eyes. “And ease up on the rest of you as a natural consequence?”

I spread my hands. “You said it, not me.”

He did smile then, a gesture that only curled one side of his mouth but that I’d take as a victory anyway. In that moment, the vibe between us felt almost companionable. Then he straightened up.

“Get some rest. I got the impression you didn’t spend all that much time in that big hotel bed sleeping last night.”

The thought that he’d been paying any attention at all to my interlude with Ruse and Thorn sent a flicker of heat through me that wasn’t exactly comfortable but not totally unpleasant either. “Spying on us, were you?”

He scoffed. “It isn’t exactly difficult to put the pieces together with certain scenarios.”

I leaned back on my elbows again with a tingling awareness of my body laid out on the bed. “Next time, maybe you should join in.”

I was mostly joking—but a little part of me wasn’t. And there was no joke in the flash of orange that lit in Omen’s eyes before he jerked his gaze away.

“Less snarking and more napping,” he said in a definitive tone. “We’ll want you sharp when we get to Austin.”