by Eva Chase
Nothing about her appearance had changed that I could pinpoint. I’d always found her enjoyable to take in with that ruddy hair against her creamy skin and the vibrant glint that so often lit in her eyes. Much more interesting than a peach, as delicious as the fruit might be. But now, ever since that unexpected development during our hasty getaway…
My gaze veered across her body, over the curves of her chest and hips that drew my attention much more intensely than they ever had before. She shifted up on one elbow, and I couldn’t help following the sway of her breasts. Then the way her thighs slid against each other as she stirred again.
A strange, heated sensation unfurled through my being with the urge to find out if those parts beneath her clothes would be as soft to the touch as her hair was. To discover how her expression might change if I gave in to that urge.
I turned my awareness away, back to my own room. It was easier to master the emotions flowing through me when I couldn’t see her. Beneath the heat of the impulse, a chill shivered through my nerves.
Somewhere in the longing I could taste the start of a headlong fall. Would I be able to pull back from it if I let myself tumble?
If I couldn’t… The one time I’d careened past the point of control before…
My mind shuttered against the memories.
The new feelings hadn’t emerged out of nowhere. They’d risen from the physical body that let me interact with this realm. If I understood why, how it all connected, what it meant, maybe it wouldn’t be so unnerving.
Our bathroom door was already closed. I pulled myself out from the shadows there, the air settling more solidly around my form. Only a little city glow carried through the small window beside the sink, but I didn’t want to turn on the light and make Ruse wonder what I was doing in here.
The appendage between my legs lay flaccid in my pants now. I let one hand drop to it, but it didn’t stir at the contact. I hadn’t thought much about that particular part since we’d first passed over to this realm with Omen, other than the occasions when I’d spent enough time outside the shadows that I needed to relieve myself using it—and during Thorn’s initial, stern reminder that if we got into a physical fight, I should be careful not to take a blow there, or the pain would be temporarily disabling.
It had never become so taut before, or lifted the way it had in the car, even though Sorsha’s bottom had been pressing down against it—
The memory of that firm yet pliant roundness, of my arm around her back and her hair grazing my cheek, rushed through my mind like the scent of her had filled my nose. And what a scent it was: sweet like the honey I’d sampled at the market but with a sharpness as biting as the flames she’d lit in the wake of our first escape. I wondered if I flicked my tongue against her cheek, not with any power but just to taste in the physical sense, would her flavor be as intoxicating?
And then that appendage, what I’d heard Ruse refer to as his “cock,” had twitched and stiffened with a flood of pleasure totally different from any I’d felt before, hot and hungry and unsettlingly forceful.
Like it was stiffening against my hand right now in response to those memories. I swallowed hard and ran my fingers over it experimentally. Thinking back to Sorsha lying on the bed as I’d seen her just now…
It rose even higher, straining against the fly of my pants. With each brush of my fingertips, ripples of pleasure and the hunger that came with it radiated through the rest of my body. I closed my eyes, caught again between the longing for more and the terror that quivered up from deeper within me.
There had been a sort of pleasure in my first—and only—devouring. A cold, bottomless hunger that sucked in and shredded, and a tight, icy bliss as that hunger was satisfied bit by bit. The two together had driven me on and on…
Nausea coiled through my stomach at the memory.
That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The devouring had been horrible and horrifying… and the part of me that had sunk in its ethereal jaws clamored to sate itself all over again.
My fingers had stilled over my erect member. With the thought of other acts, it was starting to wilt. I gave it another stroke, willing the distant past away.
This sensation wasn’t the same kind of pleasure. It wasn’t the same hunger. What I wanted when the heated tingles spread through my groin was not to satisfy myself so much as to create a pleasure that would satisfy her too.
She hadn’t been disturbed by the idea. Recalling her offer that I should come to her if I decided to pursue my desire brought an eager flush into my chest and cheeks.
I wasn’t sure I could control this sensation. I wasn’t sure where tumbling into it would lead me. But it felt like a kindling rather than an obliterating. It was possible, wasn’t it, that this unraveling could be different in that way too? That it might take us someplace good?
I could wait and see how things seemed by the light of day. Proceed with caution—until I couldn’t be cautious anymore, if I took that route.
My thoughts slipped back to Sorsha: to the warmth she’d shown me, to her laugh, to her enduring strength through all the danger we’d faced. If I did dive in, it would be with her. I knew already there was no one else who’d make it worth the risk.
25
Sorsha
“I should have brought a pair of binoculars,” I grumbled, slouching against the leather seat with new-car smell prickling in my nose.
Ruse tsked teasingly at me from the driver’s seat. “Patience, Miss Blaze. Our job is to be ready to drive when the Incredible Hulk gives the word.”
He meant Thorn, who was stationed in the shadows somewhere down the road where he could make out what was going on at Meriden’s house. Those of us keeping our physical bodies were staked out in a driveway a couple of blocks away. Ruse had even made a show of getting out of the car and walking around to the back of the house in case anyone was watching all the way over here and would have thought our arrival odd otherwise.
He’d slipped back through the shadows after, and the sedan’s tinted windows ensured no one was going to be IDing me or my shadowkind friends through the glass. I appeared to have stumbled straight from a slasher flick into a spy caper.
It was a pretty posh car all around. I peered at Ruse from where I was still hunkered down in my seat. “Are you sure the salesman isn’t going to snap out of your little charm spell and realize he’s lost a major chunk of change, plus commission?”
“First off, I assure you there’s nothing ‘little’ about any part of my prowess,” Ruse said. “And yes, you can rest easy. He thinks he got the better end of the deal.”
“But he didn’t. Someone at the dealership is going to notice eventually.”
“Your mortal conscience is so adorable.” Ruse’s smirk softened around the edges with a hint of affection. “If all goes well, we won’t need to keep this lovely piece of machinery for more than a few days, and then I’ll drop it off in the lot. No harm done!”
Other than the potential harm of whatever wear and tear we put it through, which considering how the past few days had gone might be a lot, but since the alternative had been sitting around in the horror-movie motel with my thumb up my ass, I shut up.
I suspected the only reason Thorn had agreed to my coming along at all, yesterday’s apologies about misjudging my commitment aside, was because he’d be more worried leaving me on my own than having me where he could keep an eye on me. As annoying as his own commitment could be, he did take the whole protection racket very seriously.
Across from me, Snap turned his head, following the path of a gray minivan that was cruising by.
“Wrong direction for that to be Meriden,” I said. “And much more the kind of car the white-picket-fence families around here would be driving than a conspiracy of shadowkind hunters.”
He nodded as if taking my observations in stride. If last night’s awkwardness was still affecting him, he hadn’t let it show in any way I’d noticed so far. Maybe he’d decided pretending his moment
ary arousal had never happened and praying it never did again was the better course of action.
I was allowed to feel a tad disappointed about that, don’t you think?
“Perhaps I don’t understand because I haven’t spent enough time in this realm,” he said, “but I can’t see what those people would want with us. With higher shadowkind in general. What are they doing with Omen and whoever else they’ve taken, and why?”
“The collector who had us felt awfully proud of the power he had over us, keeping us locked up,” Ruse said. “Remember how often he’d come around to gloat? Mortals can be just as addicted to a sense of power as shadowkind can—maybe more so.”
Snap hummed. “It didn’t seem as if that building we searched before was for just holding and displaying the shadowkind they’d captured. They were going much farther than that.”
“Everybody wants to rule the world,” I said carelessly.
The godly shadowkind blinked at me. “Do they? I don’t.”
“No, it’s just— It’s words from a song. Never mind.” I gave a vague wave of my hand. “Whoever these people are, they’re probably power-hungry too, just for a different kind of power. The hunter M.O. has evolved before, right? From what I’ve heard, way back in the day, all they were interested in was tracking down and slaughtering any of you they could find. It took a while before they found out that they could actually make money from the hunt—mostly if they kept the beings they captured alive.”
“There were always collectors,” Ruse said. “Just like there were always sorcerers.” He glanced at Snap. “Those are the mortals who’ve developed a system for manipulating shadowkind into using their powers for the sorcerer’s benefit. But I remember hearing of collectors in my early days… There were only a few of them, and it was harder for them to arrange the purchases without the internet and all, I’d guess. And mortals in general were much more bloodthirsty about anything remotely supernatural back then.”
“At least when the creatures are in cages, I can let them out again.” I kicked the back of Thorn’s vacant seat and scowled at the street outside. “These sword-star people are definitely something else, though. So many of them and so organized, plus they’re trying to get shadowkind from the collectors instead of for them. And from what you said about the impressions you picked up in that lab, Snap—I don’t like it; that’s for sure.”
The incubus opened his mouth as if he were going to add something else—and the gray minivan that had passed us just a few minutes ago drove back into view, turning toward Meriden’s house at the intersection between him and us. I sat up straighter, studying it. Why would they have come back around?
The minivan slowed to a stop toward the end of the next block, and a figure hustled over to it from one of the driveways I could barely distinguish at this distance. I tensed even more. “Start the engine,” I told Ruse on instinct, a second before Thorn flickered in and out of view in his signal to us to pick him up.
“Thorn’s calling us!” Snap said.
Ruse peeled out of the driveway but rumbled on down the street at just a smidge over the speed limit, despite the urgency he must be feeling as much as I was. If we looked like we were chasing the minivan, we’d blow all the care we’d put into this cover.
I gripped the door, my heart thumping. A baby blue compact had pulled away from the curb behind us. Great, now we had two sets of spectators to worry about, not counting anyone who glanced out their house’s windows.
The incubus didn’t even slow down as we passed Thorn’s post. The warrior must have sprung into the sedan from one shadow to another. With a blink, he was sitting in the passenger seat as if he’d never left.
He jabbed his hand toward the windshield. “Meriden got into that van. Don’t lose it. But make sure they don’t know we’re tracking them.”
“I remember the plan,” Ruse said mildly. At a stop sign, he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, the only outward sign of his own impatience. The minivan turned out of view up ahead, and I stifled a growl.
Now that the people in the van couldn’t see us either, Ruse gunned the engine a little faster. When he took the same turn, the vehicle was still in view, the gunmetal-gray paint shining in the mid-morning sunlight a little more than a block ahead of us.
I let out my breath, and it snagged in my throat on my next inhale at a flash of color in the side mirror. Craning my neck, I spotted that baby blue compact taking the turn after us. Uneasiness itched at me. “I think someone might be tracking us.”
Thorn glanced back, his lips slanting into a deeper frown. “It appears to be just a driver, no passengers. I could deal with them if need be.”
I squinted at the figure, but between the light reflecting off the windshield and the pale hood pulled low over the driver’s forehead, I couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman. “It only took one person to bring a whole squad down on us last night,” I reminded him.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions yet,” Ruse suggested. The minivan veered right, and several seconds later he copied the maneuver. I exhaled slowly—and here came that blue car, following us again.
The incubus’s mouth twisted. “Okay, maybe we should start jumping now.”
“We can’t keep following the van with someone else following us,” I said. “No one’s seen who we are yet, but the more obvious it becomes what we’re doing, the more likely they’ll sound the alarm.”
Ruse gave the wheel another beat of his fingers and made a pleased sound at the sight of the van’s turn signal going on. We were coming up on a major throughway, four lanes with plenty of traffic as commuters headed to work. The incubus ignored the left turn lane the minivan had pulled into and drove straight ahead.
Thorn grunted in dismay. “What are you doing?”
“Just watch. Ah, here he comes.”
The blue car stayed on our tail. Ruse sailed through the intersection and halfway down the next block, and then swerved with a jerk of the wheel into a gas station.
“Ooof.” My chest jarred against the seatbelt I thankfully had on this time. Not that my ribs were thanking it.
I clutched the edge of the seat as Ruse tore through the gas station between the rows of pumps and out onto a different street. The engine roaring now, he careened into the next right, cut across the parking lot outside a print shop, and flung us around through a couple more hasty turns. Then, with one final squeak of the tires, we flew out onto the large street the minivan had turned onto.
And wouldn’t you know it, there was the damned thing still only a block ahead.
Ruse chuckled. “Thank the dark for rush-hour traffic. Any sign of our hanger-on?”
I studied the view beyond the back window for several seconds as we cruised after the minivan. The baby blue sheen should have stood out in the sea of black and silver, but I didn’t spot it. A weird choice for a stealth mission, really. Knitting my brow, I swiveled toward the front again.
“You lost them—but maybe they just happened to be taking the same route and weren’t after us anyway. They didn’t seem all that on the ball.”
“Doesn’t really matter as long as they’re not behind us now. Let’s see where Meriden is off to.”
We skirted the edge of downtown, coming within ten blocks of the apartment building we’d crashed in—and then crashed through—not long ago. The minivan took a few more turns before ending up in the docklands, where aging factories loomed on either side of the streets and the smell of algae seeped into the air conditioning. The river that wove through the east end of town used to be a major shipping route before the manufacturing industries had started moving overseas.
With much less traffic on these streets, Ruse had dropped back to a couple of blocks behind the minivan. I stirred restlessly in my seat. How long a road trip were we on, exactly? And why hadn’t I brought more snacks to—
The minivan jerked to a halt by the curb. A skinny figure topped with gleaming black hair scrambled out and darted o
ut of sight between two of the buildings.
Thorn cursed. “Go! We have to see where he went.”
The second the minivan had pulled away, Ruse hit the gas. We jolted back in our seats as he sped over. When he passed the last side-street before the drop-off spot, Thorn vanished, presumably rushing off through the shadows to track the man where the car couldn’t follow.
“He might need me to test the area,” Snap said, and wavered away an instant later.
As Ruse drove by the alley I thought Meriden had taken, I peered down it, but he’d disappeared as effectively as the shadowkind had. The incubus eased to a stop at the end of the block and idled there.
The minivan was long gone. As far as I could tell, there was no one around to make note of us. But I’d thought that before and been wrong.
I twisted to scan the street. “Do we just wait for Thorn and Snap? Should we be searching for Meriden too?”
Ruse appeared to make a quick deliberation. “Let’s keep driving—it’ll look less suspicious if anyone is monitoring the area, and maybe we’ll spot our target somewhere around the block.”
He circled around, and I leaned closer to the window, studying every doorway, window, and alley. The gloomy structures showed no sign of life at all, like giant, rotting carcasses of beasts slain long ago. An engine thrummed in the distance, but whatever vehicle the sound came from, we never saw it.
Ruse continued on a block farther, to where a rusty crane creaked in the wind over the river. He looped back around with a rough sigh. “Hopefully the Hulk had better luck.”
We were just coming up on the street where we’d left Thorn and Snap when both of them slipped out of the shadows into their seats with a shudder through the air. Ruse eased over to the curb and cut the engine.
