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TWENTY-THREE

Thorn

With every passing minute after we’d left our last stop behind us, Omen’s disappearance gnawed at me more perniciously. I stalked the length of the RV—physically and through the shadows and then back into my solid body again—but I couldn’t wear out the uneasiness winding through my nerves.

It’d been my suggestion to move on without our commander. I stood by that suggestion without a single doubt. It was what he would have wanted, regardless of what had happened to him. Whether he was with us or not, the Company of Light still needed to be demolished.

But it was so unlike him to abandon us without a word. I couldn’t imagine how our enemies could have attacked and seized him without my coming across any trace of that incident in my patrols. The mystery of it loomed over me in a way that was, well, ominous.

As the incubus drove us onward to the city that was the Company’s base of operations on this side of the ocean, my faint awareness of the other wingéd presence thickened too. It didn’t tug or gnaw but simply spread through my chest like a pang of recognition on seeing an old friend you barely recognized.

The one who dwelled out here couldn’t be any actual friend of mine, though. The brethren I’d been close enough to that I’d have considered them friends as well as comrades had all fallen in the war. This one might not even have fought on the same side as I had… not that I was certain I could have distinguished who’d belonged to one party or the other after all these centuries.

We were going to pass the spot where that one must be dwelling, though. The pang came with a vague sense of direction—northwest of our current position, shifting closer to pure north the farther we traveled along the highway. I paused to gaze out the window as if I might see a sweep of vast wings in the distance.

“You made the right call,” Sorsha said to me, observing my pensiveness but not being aware of the full source. “Omen knows where we’re heading. We won’t be hard to find once we’re in the city. Maybe this is another one of his beloved tests.”

Her smile looked tight around the edges, and she didn’t sound as though she were as relaxed about the situation as her words were meant to imply. She’d said very little at all since we’d pulled away from the fuel station.

What if Omen wasn’t in the city when we arrived? What if he never returned to us at all? I had trouble conceiving of that possibility, but we needed to be prepared. I’d committed myself to this cause, and I wouldn’t let it fall apart while I was still standing.

My gaze skimmed over my other companions: Ruse humming with disconcerting merriness behind the steering wheel, Snap stroking Sorsha’s hair comfortingly, the imp dancing invisibly through the air with ridiculous attempts to provoke our mortal into a smile, and the downcast presence that was the night elf lurking in the shadows beneath the table.

Could we take on the highest level of the Company with just our current allies? Tackling even a less powerful leader had required one of our equine companions and more than a dozen shadowkind helpers from a local criminal syndicate—and we’d had Omen with us too.

I looked toward the window again. My kin was almost directly north of us now. Another road veered away from our highway up ahead, dust billowing behind a speeding car’s tires as it raced that way.

My muscles tensed all through my body. But my own discomforts mattered far less than our mission. I meant to see us emerge victorious from this war no matter the cost to myself.

“We should make a brief diversion,” I said abruptly.

The incubus glanced back at me. “Not satisfied with patrolling the vehicle, my overeager warrior? I promise you we’ll be safer driving in a straight line at the highest possible speed.”

“It’s not to patrol. There’s someone I think I might be able to persuade to join our cause. And it seems now more than ever we should attempt to gain every possible ally. Take that next right turn.”

Sorsha was studying me with a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. I’d mentioned my awareness of the nearby wingéd to her. She was respectful enough of my preference for keeping my nature secret not to speak up, though. A flutter of gratitude passed through me even as I prepared to end that secrecy myself.

Ruse pulled onto the narrower, dustier road, but he wasn’t as mindful of his own tongue. “And what makes you think this random potential ally will have any interest in joining our wild and crazy mission?”

“It’s not random. This is one of my own kind. One of the few remaining. If anyone can make an appeal that will succeed, it’ll be me.”

Snap’s expression turned more alert at that statement, his head cocking with curiosity. The imp ceased her endless bounding about to solidify in the middle of the table.

“Oooh,” she said, placing hands on her hips. “We’re going to find out what the big scary shadowkind is.”

Ruse swiveled right around to look at me, leaving me thankful that the road ahead of him was so barren. “Are you actually going to put an end to the guessing game? I should have started a betting pool.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Sorsha said softly. “If you think it’s worth it, I’m all for it—but we’ll manage with the help we’ve got.”

My tenacious lover could be so tender when she wanted to be. Her acceptance of my hesitations made me all the more sure that it was time to end them. If I was going to reveal myself for any reason, it should be to ensure I’d done everything I could to make sure she survived the upcoming battle.

“We’ll manage better with more,” I said. “I’m not certain how this member of my brethren will react to being approached, though… Perhaps I should prepare you. You’ll want to pull over to the shoulder, incubus, so you don’t risk crashing our means of transportation.”

“You think very highly of the shock value of your secret identity,” Ruse teased, but he did as I’d asked.

When the vehicle was parked, he got right out of his seat and propped himself against the wall just beyond it, watching me expectantly. Antic bobbed on her toes with excitement.

Suddenly the act felt too momentous. I hadn’t intended to build it into some earth-shattering announcement. What would the others make of me when they saw what I was? Sorsha had taken my full physical form in stride—but she didn’t have the same awareness of the history most of the shadowkind would, and besides, she was hardly a typical example of her kind.

But then, none of the beings around me were quite typical, were they? They wouldn’t have joined this crusade to begin with if they’d been your standard shadowkind. I had to assume any goodwill I’d garnered with my contributions over the recent months would hold out against their feelings about my kind.

I inhaled deeply and allowed the energies I usually kept tamped down within this mortal body to rise to the surface.

My limbs and torso expanded. My eyes prickled as the heated darkness came over them, not hazing my vision but sharpening it to every movement around me. My feathered wings flared up from below my shoulders, arcing as high as the Everymobile’s ceiling and as wide as its windows even only partly open. This space was too confining to show my true shadowkind form in its full glory, but that might be for the best.

No snarky remarks came from the incubus. His lips had parted with the slackening of his jaw. He collected himself with a rough chuckle, but he kept staring. “Holy hell. I should have guessed. Of all the damned beings out there—” He shook his head in disbelief.

The imp had cowered back to the corner of the sofa-bench. Not the reaction I’d wanted to provoke, but an unsurprising one. She peeked at me through her fingers.

“I have no interest in hurting you,” I told her, my wingéd voice resonating from my lungs.

A scrabbling sound drew my attention behind me. Sorsha’s tiny dragon had emerged from the bathroom where he’d built his nest. At the sight of me, he stiffened, letting out a squeak with a flare of his nostrils. Then he flexed his wings as if to say, I’ve got those things too .

He didn’t scramble away, but he didn’t come any closer either. This might be the end of my amity with the little creature.

One of our number wasn’t taken aback, though. The devourer smiled at me, his wide eyes offering nothing but awe. “Of course you wouldn’t hurt any of us. You’ve been hurt yourself so many times to protect us. Your form is marvelous. Why didn’t you show us it before?”

Ruse let out another short laugh. “You never heard about the wingéd, huh, devourer? They have an… interesting reputation.”

His gaze had definitely become warier. I could accept that. It wasn’t as if we’d been the closest of comrades before. He hadn’t fled for the hills or hurled cutting remarks my way, which I could count as a victory.

“I’d prefer not to be judged based on events long past,” I said. “We all have questionable moments in our histories, don’t we?”

“Most don’t have moments that involve an entire war that nearly exterminated your own race—but by all means, let us focus on the present.” The incubus offered a grin that looked more like his usual playful self, and just this once, I was glad to see it. “You’ve stuck to smiting the right people as long as I’ve known you. I’ll trust that you’ll continue to do so.”

The imp had lowered her hands. Snap glanced over his shoulder toward the window. “The shadowkind we’re going to see—they’re another ‘wingéd’ like you?”

I nodded. “The only one I’ve come close enough to recognize in well over a century. Let us hope time has mellowed him as it has me.”

Ruse muffled what might have been a snort of disagreement with his hand, but he returned to the wheel. “Direct away, oh angelic one.”

There. It was done, and the world hadn’t crumbled apart around me. Relief washed through me so abruptly I had to pause to catch my breath. With a tug of my will, I pulled my features back in to leave only my mortal-appearing form on display.

“Drive onward,” I said. “I’ll inform you when we need to deviate from that course.”

The pang in my chest grew stronger with each mile that passed beneath the wheels. When a dirt road even more desolate than the one we were on veered off to the left, I directed Ruse down it. Finally, a shack that looked as if it had been put together out of discarded, beaten-up planks of wood came into view in the midst of a plain that was otherwise all hard-baked earth and tufts of yellow grass.

No road or even pathway led from the one we were on to that building. Ruse parked, and we studied the shack through the windows.

“I think you’d all best stay here—as much as you might enjoy spectating,” I said, adding the last piece when Ruse started to open his mouth with what I suspected would be a protest. “No one lives so far away from civilization because they enjoy company.”

“Fair enough,” the incubus said with an air of resignation. “But I’m certainly going to watch as much of the show as I can from in here.” He plopped himself down at Sorsha’s other side and promptly twined his fingers with hers.

I caught our mortal’s gaze for a brief moment, hoping I could convey with mine my thanks for her faith in me—in this and so many other things. Then I moved through the shadows onto the barren plain and strode toward the shack.

My fellow wingéd would have been able to sense my approach as well as I’d sensed what I was approaching. A small part of me worried that I might find the place abandoned and feel the presence dashing away from this intrusion, but our kind didn’t tend toward fleeing. The sense of his presence remained steady until I was only a few feet from the shack’s crooked door. Then a figure formed out of the patch of shadows there.

As was to be expected, the wingéd who emerged before me matched me in stature: tall and broad with much muscle filling out his powerful frame. His knuckles were similarly hardened, but with ridges of a ruddy hue that looked more like copper than crystal. His eyes gleamed the same metallic shade beneath straggling gray hair that fell past his shoulders and shadowed his brow.

“What business do you have here?” he demanded. “I have no interest in reuniting with the remnants of our kind.”

“Only one remnant at the moment,” I said. “My companions are… various other sorts. And this isn’t about reunification.” I studied him and the shack. “You’ve lived a long time in this part of the mortal realm.”

“So that I could remain undisturbed. In the emptiness, I can meditate on the failings that led me to continue to be in existence at all.”

My companions might rib me about my severity at times, but I didn’t believe I’d ever put forth attitudes quite that grim. If I had, it was a wonder none of them had shoved me back through a rift. Although I supposed my stature might have had something to do with that as well.

As somber as the disgraced warrior was being, however, I did at least understand the sentiment he was expressing. It was only a darker shade of the guilt and regret I’d recently begun to shed.

“What if I could offer you something better than that?” I asked.

He scowled at me. “That you would even think any of us deserve better?—”

I held up my hand to stop him. “Not in that way. In the way that you might be able to make amends for the errors of the past by contributing to a new struggle with even greater stakes. We’re in dire need of assistance.”

My kin didn’t stop frowning, but I thought his eyes brightened just a little. He shifted his weight and folded his bulging arms over his chest. “How can you be sure we won’t simply bring about an even more horrible fate than before?”

That question had haunted me ever since Omen had first come calling. I hadn’t always been confident in my answer. But here, thinking of his leadership even if he wasn’t with us in the flesh, of the deeper understanding of my capabilities and flaws that Sorsha had brought out in me, and of the cause we’d all come together for, the words came to my lips without a hint of hesitation.

“One can never be sure,” I said. “But I’ve seen enough to believe that in this conflict, I can make a difference for the good of all shadowkind. I can save far more lives than were ever lost in the wars of the past. And you could too, if you’ll lend your instincts and your fists.”

The other wingéd was silent for a long spell, considering me. Then he said, in a tone that ignited a flicker of hope within me, “Tell me more about this new war.”