Page 97

THREE

Sorsha

If Omen had wanted to keep the location of his hidden bunker a secret from me, he hadn’t done a very good job of it. In with the pre-wrapped chicken sandwich and bottle of orange juice in the bag he’d tossed me, I found a rumpled napkin with the logo for the Grand Canyon Visitor Center.

I’d always wanted to take a gander at the Grand Canyon. Of course, I’d have preferred to be looking at it from the rim rather than this incredibly inside view of the rock it was made of. Omen really didn’t have the tour-guide instinct.

I had to assume he’d picked this cave as a stash spot because it was nowhere near anyplace mortals generally went in the canyon. I wouldn’t be surprised if the door at the other end of the room led out to a nearly sheer several-hundred-foot drop, and the bastard hadn’t brought along my grappling hook. No doubt I was about as far from human civilization as you could get in the entire country.

Maybe he’d wanted me to see that napkin to dissuade me from attempting to slip my bonds.

After I’d wolfed down the sandwich and chugged the juice—because my chances of survival were hardly going to get better if I starved myself—I examined the cuff around my wrist and the chain that attached me to the cot’s frame. I’d melted metal with my fiery powers before. The first time just a pop can, sure, but I’d also wrenched through the bars of cages in one of the Company’s facilities.

Even those bars had been significantly thinner than the links on this chain, though. I’d have given it a go anyway, but a twist of uncertainty in my gut held me back.

Fraught emotions always seemed to set my flames veering in unpredictable and sometimes undesirable ways, and I wasn’t feeling all that fine and fancy-free at the moment. I’d say there was a not insignificant chance that if I tried to exude enough fire to reduce those rings of steel into a puddle, I’d become a pile of ashes in the process. I didn’t have anyone around to toss a bucket of water at me if I turned the mattress or, y’know, myself into an inferno.

No, as long as I suspected I wouldn’t be able to escape the prison even if I got loose from the chains, I wasn’t going to risk it. I might laugh in the face of danger, but only when I was reasonably certain I could dance around it at the same time.

It didn’t take long before I started wishing I’d been a little less hasty with my meal. At least eating had been something to do. Being essentially a prison cell, there wasn’t a whole lot to occupy myself with other than counting the ripples in the beige rock walls or mulling over exactly how painfully the Highest would have me killed as revenge for evading their grasp for so long.

After a while, I flopped down on the bed and grimaced at the ceiling. At this rate, my actual cause of death would either be boredom or stomach ulcer.

To try to pass the time somewhat constructively, I considered what new arguments I might make to persuade Omen that I wasn’t anywhere near a big enough threat for him to worry his houndish head about. I mean, I didn’t want to blow up both the realms—or even any substantial portion of either of them. I might have fried a few things I hadn’t meant to here and there, but I’d always been able to rein those over-zealous flames in before I did serious damage. If I got really concerned about my self-control, I could just not use my powers in the first place, right?

But even as I thought all that, the heat in my chest continued churning so furiously that I wasn’t totally convinced. Fuck a flipping flounder. Had my parents gone into this hybrid baby-making scheme with any idea just how much hassle they were inflicting on me as a theoretically impossible being?

They’d loved me enough to pull out all the stops to bring me into this world, but I wasn’t sure they’d thought the whole plan through all that well. No offense to Mom and Dad, may they rest in peace.

It might have been one very long hour or a dozen short ones when the shadows around the door wavered. Omen formed in pretty much the same spot I’d last seen him, standing next to the lantern. He had another plastic bag that appeared to contain food. Apparently it’d been long enough for me to get hungry again without realizing it, because my stomach gurgled at the sight.

Well, I had to assume he wouldn’t be feeding me just to lead me to the slaughter. I held out my free hand, and he threw the bag to me.

He’d ventured farther abroad this time to bring me something more dinner-like: a fast-food hamburger and a carton of fries, as well as a bottle of water. The fries had gotten a little droopy during his journey through the shadows, but I wasn’t going to pick a fight about that or the fact that he hadn’t brought any ketchup to go with them, as grave an offense as that was.

I popped a fry into my mouth, the salty greasy flavor buoying my spirits a little, and waggled another in his direction. “How did all that brainstorming go? Have you figured out the meaning of life while you’re at it? Inside tip: I hear the number forty-two is involved somehow.”

The hellhound shifter glowered at me. “You still don’t seem to be taking this situation anywhere near as seriously as it warrants.”

“Would you rather I was slumped on the bed groaning like I need my appendix out?”

“No. Just—” He cut himself off with a huff, maybe not sure what exactly he would have liked to see.

My life was still in his hands. And until today’s events, I had actually been starting to like and even trust this guy. How could I remind him of the woman he’d been starting to care about before this whole Ruby problem had exploded in our faces? He needed to see me as a real person and not just a walking disaster.

I lowered the fry and tamped down on my urge to shoot my mouth off, speaking more honestly instead. “I understand I’m in an incredibly serious situation. If I let myself dwell on it too much, I’ll end up rocking in the corner like I belong in a mental institution, and I don’t think that’s going to help either of us. But I definitely don’t think it’s a laughing matter either.” I spread my arms with a clink of the chain. “You’ve got me at your disposal. What can I tell you to help you make up your mind? Ask away.”

Omen gave me a narrow look, as if he suspected me of setting him up for some kind of prank, but he leaned himself against the wall opposite me as if he was settling in for a longer conversation. “Well, since you’re offering… Why don’t you tell me some more about what it was like growing up with that fae woman who helped your parents? Now that you know the whole story, is there anything that stands out? She must have known the Highest and their minions were after you.”

I sucked my lower lip under my teeth, thinking back. “I don’t know what other bits of memory Luna might have glamoured over—but maybe you’ll notice if there’s a gap I don’t realize while I’m talking.” He’d been able to break one glamour in my memories already.

“Start talking then.”

Lord knew when I’d ever get another invitation like that from him. I drew my legs up on the cot. “Honestly, it was pretty predictable considering I was an essentially mortal kid being raised by a shadowkind. Luna would find us an apartment in one city or another—I’m not totally sure how she even paid for them, but maybe her glamours did the job there too—I’d go to school and all the usual human things, and then every year or so she’d get nervous that the people who’d killed my parents might find us and we’d move to a pretty similar apartment in a different city.”

“She never said anything to indicate she was watching to see if you’d show any powers, or that she was worried you might hurt someone?” Omen asked.

I shook my head. “No. I would definitely remember that. Maybe she didn’t realize that’s what the Highest expected to happen. She was pretty carefree about most things other than avoiding getting murdered.”

Even though it’d been twelve years since the Company’s hunters had killed her, a pang shot through me at the loss. I could picture so clearly how she used to sashay around the apartment to whatever ‘80s band she was currently particularly obsessed with, her sparkly hair swishing in its scrunchie-d ponytail, her wings showing in glittery glimpses here and there when she completely let loose. The way she’d always find the perfect joke to make in her melodic voice to reassure me if some asshole kid at school had picked on me. The joy she took in dressing me up in frills and sequins, and her playful grousing when I’d developed enough of my own taste to start chucking those clothes in the back of the closet in favor of darker hues and simpler designs.

I couldn’t think of any moment when she’d seriously criticized me, let alone made me feel there might be something terribly wrong with me. Maybe she hadn’t been built to fill a parental role, and maybe a fae couldn’t produce the same sort of maternal love a human could, but she’d cherished me beyond all reason. She was the only person in my life that I could really remember who’d never been anything but fully devoted to me.

“The time when I guess my powers had the most reason to come out—but didn’t—was when I was a kid and this shadowkind jerk thought it’d be fun to work his mind control voodoo on me to use me like a puppet.” I’d told Ruse about that incident before, but talking about it out loud made my skin itch. I resisted the urge to hug myself. “Luna told him off and brought me home. She didn’t ask anything about how I was feeling. I mean, it must have been pretty obvious how shaken up I was with the way I was crying, but she didn’t seem concerned that I might lash out. She just grabbed my favorite ice cream for us to eat right out of the carton and put on my favorite movie, even though it bugged her that I liked something modern rather than her ‘classics,’ and sat there with her arm around me petting my hair.”

In spite of the awfulness of my present, a smile crossed my lips at the memory. Auntie Luna might have learned her cues about human behavior from all that ‘80s media she’d consumed, but she’d been able to put them to practice pretty damn well.

Omen was watching me intently. “She was important to you.”

“Of course she was,” I said. “She was my whole world. I didn’t exactly have much time to make friends when we were constantly moving… After a while, it seemed like there was so little point in getting to know people better that I stopped putting in an effort. If I wasn’t doing the essential stuff, I was hanging out with her. She knew how to make even mundane things like buying groceries or dealing with a scraped knee fun. It was a little lonely sometimes, but she did her best by me. I’ve managed to pass for reasonably normal, as humans go.”

A dry chuckle fell from Omen’s mouth. “Only to someone who doesn’t know shadowkind enough to pick up on the influence.” He paused. “I didn’t get any sense of glamoured bits from what you’d said, but I’m not sure I’d pick up on them from general thoughts. And I don’t think we have time for you to recite your entire history if there aren’t any particular incidents that seem connected to your powers.”

“She probably figured it wasn’t any big deal, and if I started showing some, she’d deal with it then. She wasn’t much of a planner either.” I rubbed my mouth, the pang of mourning combining with all the tensions I’d already been feeling in an indigestion stew. Was any of this making Omen more kindly disposed toward me? Maybe I’d be better off reminding him of his past—and the responsibilities that came with it—instead.

“It sounds like this Tempest gal is the total opposite of that,” I went on, picking at my fries. “How long ago was it you thought the Highest had killed her—several centuries, or something like that? All that time, she’s been playing some kind of long game, keeping it all under wraps… Did she ever turn against other shadowkind back when you two hung out together?”

The downward twitch of Omen’s lips told me he didn’t like the change of subject. “Tempest’s main goal was sowing chaos. She mainly did it among the mortals, but she wasn’t above ensnaring weaker shadowkind to add to her amusement. I wouldn’t have expected a scheme on this scale, but…”

“But?”

He was silent for a moment. “I once watched her spend the better part of a week plucking the claws off little beasts like your dragon so that she could then jab them one by one into a mortal who’d offended her until he resembled a pin cushion. A bloody one. If she’s found some way to turn the Company’s operations around on mortals in an epic fashion, it’s not difficult to imagine her going to even more epic lengths at the rest of our expense to get there.”

Ah. So we were dealing with a total psychopath. Not that I’d had much doubt about that after hearing her taunt Omen over the phone, but that little story solidified the impression.

“And you don’t think stopping that kind of epic crazy is a little more important than the slim chance that I’m somehow going to explode like a hundred nuclear bombs in the next few days?” I couldn’t help saying.

“I think I don’t know how slim that chance actually is.”

I couldn’t argue that point very easily. Time to shift the focus back to him. “Why did you go around with a shadowkind like that anyway? Were you that bad back then?” He’d told me that he’d played pranks on mortals—convincing them he was the devil himself had been a favorite—but I hadn’t imagined him that sadistic, especially to other creatures of the shadows.

Something in Omen’s expression shuttered. “I can’t say I was at all considerate of the mortals in my vicinity, but I never harmed any of my own kind purposefully.”

“You just stood by while someone else did it.”

“If you think I never had arguments with Tempest, or that there was any chance she’d change simply because I said—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I looked the other way too often when it was convenient to my purposes, and I’ve learned to do better than that. I won’t make those same mistakes again. Which is exactly why I’m being much more careful in my associations now.”

The pointed look he gave me made me bristle despite my best intentions. “I’m nothing like her .”

“No, I don’t think you are. The problem is, if the Highest are right, you might be even worse.”

He straightened up, and then he was vanishing into the shadows without another word. I stared at the spot where he’d stood, but he didn’t return.

Had all that talk gotten me anywhere with him, or had I only screwed myself over even more?