by Eva Chase
I was pretty sure Omen had literally ripped plenty of people’s faces off, but maybe Vivi realized that. “We can barely have a conversation without wanting to punch one another. I think I’ll stick to three.” I rubbed my face. “It’s weird enough that I’m having any kind of relationship with a bunch of monsters in the first place, isn’t it?”
Vivi shrugged. “Nothing wrong with having unusual taste in men. Leaves more of the typical hotties for the rest of us. Now that I’ve met them, I can definitely see the appeal.” She shot me a wide smile.
“Believe me, they’re more trouble than they look,” I muttered, but the complaint was half-hearted. I couldn’t say I regretted that the trio had barged into my apartment and my life those weeks ago—not even a little bit, the loss of that apartment and just about everything else I’d counted on notwithstanding.
And we had much bigger trouble to tackle tonight. I’d have loved to linger there on the plump cushions, ignoring the algae smell and chatting with Vivi as if this were some unexpected aquatic holiday and not an attempt to save her life, but I really should get back to our final preparations.
I pushed myself off the chair. Vivi got up too so I could squeeze her in a hug. She hugged me back just as hard.
“You lay low completely this time, all right,” I ordered, wagging a finger at her. “Don’t set one foot off this boat—unless the bad guys set foot on it, of course.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” she said with a cheeky salute. Then a cloud crossed her expression, a hint of the fears she was suppressing. “Ditto.”
“Ditto.”
As I crossed the houseboat’s deck, my own fears swelled inside my chest. I’d only just barely protected Vivi this time. If the Company tracked her down here…
We’d just have to make sure they didn’t get the chance to so much as try.
As I headed for solid ground, I spun a lyric around and sang the newly mangled version under my breath to bolster my spirits. “Stand up and burn ‘em down, never let them see us frown. Ne-eh-ver. Ne—”
I stopped in my tracks when I saw Omen waiting for me on the road. The Everymobile had vanished, leaving just him—and the motorcycle he’d apparently retrieved when I wasn’t looking. He straddled the old but well-polished Harley, one foot on the ground and one propped on the footrest. All he’d need was a beat-up leather jacket, and he could have driven straight out of a ‘70s biker flick.
Not my decade, but I could appreciate the vibe all the same.
I ambled over, crossing my arms. “Decided it was time to lean into the bad-boy persona, did you? This does look more your style than good ol’ Betsy.”
He grimaced at me. “You will not besmirch Betsy’s good name. She gave us her all. This is Charlotte.”
I swallowed a guffaw. “Do you name all your vehicles?”
“All two of them that I used to have, yes. Do you think you can manage not to get this vehicle blown up, Disaster?”
“The other ones weren’t even my fault,” I felt the need to point out. “Why are you letting me near dear Charlotte if you’re concerned about that?”
His gaze sharpened. “Thorn mentioned that you used your powers again to fend off your friend’s attackers. You seem to be getting better at bringing them out—it’s just the control bit that needs work. It occurred to me that the bike might be a good way to get some concentrated practice.”
“How so?”
“You can’t drive, so I’m going to guess you’re not quite as confident on a speeding vehicle as standing in front of one. And I’ve got plenty of tricks to get your heart thumping. Get on.” He tapped the seat behind him and then a strip of paper he’d taped to the end of the right handlebar. “When you’re agitated enough that you can feel your power, see if you can light this on fire—not me. I’ve got more where it came from once that one’s good and crispy.”
It actually sounded like a reasonable plan… except I wasn’t only hesitant about the whole riding on a speeding motorcycle thing but also having to cling to the man in front of me while I was doing it. I couldn’t exactly hope to perch daintily on the back—no, this was going to require full body contact.
I wasn’t going to let Bossypants see that hesitation, though. “Fine,” I said, and hopped on.
As I settled my knees against his hips and wrapped my arms around his waist, Omen turned to face ahead. His entire abdomen was packed with solid muscle. This wasn’t a man I’d ever expected—or wanted—to be embracing, but I couldn’t say it was an entirely unpleasant experience. Here was hoping I didn’t, like, drench him in sweat in the summer heat or something.
“No helmets?” I asked.
He chuckled. “And here I thought you had a hard-on for danger. We’re going to do a little death-defying today.”
Without another word or any warning, he sent the bike roaring forward.
My arms jerked even tighter around Omen’s frame in an instinctive bid to, y’know, not die. My legs pressed in too, my body shifting forward to meld against him for security’s sake. Well, now I could say I’d had the fourth member of my shadowkind quartet between my thighs, even if it wasn’t in the way Vivi had been teasing me about.
As we tore down the street and around a corner, the shifter’s hellish scent filled my nose, plenty dangerous in itself. His muscles flexed beneath my fingers. My heart was thumping all right, but it might have partly been because my jerk of a brain couldn’t help wondering how Omen would react if I dipped my hands a little lower and found out what he would get a hard-on for.
Then the hellhound took another turn with a rev of the engine and a lurch of the bike to one side, and all thoughts of anything other than surviving fled my mind. Seconds later, he whipped around a curve dipping so low I’d swear my hair grazed the pavement.
My pulse stuttered. With his shadowkind strength, he’d probably recover from a high-speed tumble. Did he comprehend how easily my head would crack open?
Yes, yes, he did. That was the whole point of veering so close to this guardrail that I could see the traffic passing below the bridge as vividly as my life flashing before my eyes. For one specific purpose.
Focus, Sorsha. I wanted to master this force in me.
With my next jolt of panic at a risky maneuver, I trained my attention on the strip of paper now flapping wildly in the wind. Heat flared in my chest alongside the clanging of adrenaline. I narrowed my eyes—and the paper went up in a burst of flame.
Omen slowed at a traffic light and fished another slip out of his pocket. “Good. Let’s do it again. After a few times, we’ll see if you can manage it when you’re slightly less terrified.”
“I’m not terrified,” I objected, and lost the rest of my protest and probably all of my credibility when the bike took off again with a squeal of burnt rubber that shocked a yelp from my throat.
As much as I was tempted to whack Omen across the head for the wild ride, it did work. By the time I’d fried my fourth slip of paper, the surge of power from my gut to my chest was becoming familiar. True to his word, the hellhound shifter eased up on the stunts, and even with the—okay—terror dwindling to a tamer uneasiness, I managed to summon enough sparks to burn up a few more strips by dredging up that sensation.
I hadn’t realized he’d swung around to arrive at the bus lot until he parked just outside it. I pulled myself away from him and clambered off the bike, figuring a little space was in order now, but the smile he shot me—the brightest and most genuine one I’d seen from him so far—brought back that pulse-thump of attraction.
That was okay, wasn’t it? I didn’t have any plans to actually jump his bones or anything. Why couldn’t a gal simply have unusual taste in men, as Vivi had put it?
“You’re getting a handle on it,” he said.
“Maybe not such a disaster after all?”
“We’ll see how it goes tonight.” He said that part dryly, but his gaze didn’t feel quite as icy as usual as it lingered on my face. “You have kept up all right so far.”
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Coming from him, that was the highest of praise. Had I brought the hound to heel?
I found myself grinning back at him. “And you only took a little convincing.”
He snorted, but then his good humor seemed to fade. He motioned me toward the lot. “I’ve got to stash Charlotte. See if the others have made any progress with the final details. We’ve wasted enough time getting your issues sorted out already.”
Then he drove off without another word, leaving me caught in a different sort of whiplash.
23
Sorsha
Our hosts only looked a little put out when Ruse opted to make a run for Thai take-out instead of the rest of us digging into their stash of actual grass and other fine greens. “They make a great salad too,” Bow said, holding up his plate of foliage. He studied the containers of rice noodles and creamy curries with a puzzled expression as if he couldn’t work out why anyone would choose to put those things into their bellies.
“I need protein for brain food,” I said. “It’s… a mortal thing.” It seemed politest not to mention that eating grass and clover wasn’t a human thing in any scenario I was aware of.
Omen was flipping through the photos and blueprints we’d gotten for the Wharf Street building on a tablet Ruse had charmed out of our hacker-on-call. “Don’t feel bad for her,” the incubus had told me. “She has a stack of them twice as tall as your dragon.” Snap tucked his arm around me on the RV’s sofa.
I gave in to the urge to feed the devourer a tidbit of green curry chicken off my fork. His tongue flicked over his lips to absorb the lingering traces of spice, and his pupils dilated.
“It has a sweetness, and also so much heat.” His smile took on a sly slant. “I can see why you like it, Peach.”
“Shut up,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek so he’d know my light tone meant I was joking.
Ruse had tucked himself in at the table by my other side, not quite as cuddly as Snap but with more of his usual laidback air. Whatever he’d been tense about before, our recent interlude of three must have cured it. His eyes twinkling, he swiped his thumb over a speck of sauce at the corner of my lips and sucked it into his own mouth.
Oh, yeah, I was made of heat. A wash of it had pooled between my thighs before he even rested a teasing hand on my leg under the table.
“The best place to get some fiery action going would be here,” Omen said, zooming in on an image. “How close do you think you’d need to get, Sorsha?”
If I could get the building burning in the first place? I sucked my lower lip under my teeth as I considered. “I don’t know. I moved the flames on the camper van from something like fifty feet away, but that was just propelling what was already there—plus I was trying to stop those guys from murdering Thorn. I don’t think I’d like to go at this with the same inspiration. But maybe, if we come down this alley, I could get a lot closer than that without getting caught anyway.”
“While the rest of us stay in the shadows. That could work. And where would you dodge to—oh, let me guess, that window wouldn’t be too much of a scramble for you?” The corner of his mouth curved upward.
“You’ve gotten to know me so well,” I said with amusement, but something had transformed in the dynamic between us since this morning, his brusqueness after the bike ride aside. We’d been bouncing ideas back and forth all afternoon with a familiarity that was starting to feel almost comfortable. Not an adjective I’d ever thought I’d associate with Bossypants here.
Snap, as always, was looking out for my well-being more than I tended to do. “We don’t know what guards might be stationed on the second floor there. Sorsha could end up jumping right into their midst.”
“I’ll take the same route she does,” Thorn said, shifting his shoulders as Pickle galivanted from one to the other. He shot the little creature a glower, but that didn’t stop him from reaching up to scratch Pickle’s chin. “They won’t be expecting us, and it’d be poorer tactics than the Company has ever shown to have many guards grouped at the same point without reason to anticipate entry. Between the two of us, we’ll tear right through any there.”
“As soon as we’ve got our brethren free, we’ll have even more strength in numbers,” Omen said.
I drummed my fingers on the table. “But remember, we don’t want to stick around long enough for the Company to bring in reinforcements, and we need all the data we can get about their operations. As soon as Ruse has the virus uploaded onto the first computer we find, we’ll want to grab any other computer equipment we see before he activates it. We can figure out what we’ll get out of their records when we’ve hauled the equipment back to the Everymobile.”
Omen nodded. “Snap, you determine which equipment is the most vital if we have to prioritize. Bow and Gisele, we’ll want you two wrangling the escapees and making sure they stay on track. But I think this should pull together well.” He paused and then lifted his gaze to catch my eyes. “You do understand that we won’t be leaving any humans alive in that place if we can help it, don’t you?”
A chill ran down my spine at the coolness with which he made that statement, but I’d been prepared for it. Slaughtering the building’s mortal occupants was the easiest way to ensure our own safety both during the attack and afterward. The more we reduced the number of people working for the Company of Light, the harder it’d be for the Company to keep running and the easier for us to disrupt any other parts of the organization we needed to destroy.
A quiver of queasiness passed through my stomach—and faded with the memory of the asshole who’d rammed his gun at Vivi, of the descriptions I’d gotten of Ellen’s injuries.
Anyone working in that facility knew they were torturing conscious beings that had all the self-awareness humans did, and had been party to who knew how many horrors inflicted on actual humans as well. I didn’t enjoy the idea of spilling their blood, but I wasn’t going to shed tears over their deaths either.
“If that’s what we’ve got to do, then we do it,” I said firmly. “I’ll fry a few of them if I have to.” If I could.
The hellhound shifter tipped his head approvingly and started going over a few more points with Thorn, who leaned over to peer at the screen. I forced down another mouthful of pad thai, but it dropped heavy into my stomach.
The last time we’d stormed one of the Company’s buildings, we’d had fewer people and less idea what to expect—but I’d also had less time for the enormity of what we were taking on to sink in.
I squeezed between Snap and the table to squirm off of the sofa, snatching a kiss from him as I passed. “Bathroom break. Don’t leave without me.”
As Gisele tittered at that unnecessary request, I ducked into the little RV bathroom and yanked the door shut behind me. The compact space was the only part of the vehicle its shadowkind owners hadn’t expanded or spruced up, probably because they had little use for it. I sat down on the closed toilet seat, one knee bumping the sliding door to the shower stall, and dragged in a deep breath.
I could do this. I could generate fire out of nothing—I’d done it plenty of times before, and tonight I’d do it again, as many times as I needed to. That was all there was to it.
I tugged a square of toilet paper off the roll and held it up in front of me. All I needed was to remember the sensations from that motorcycle ride. Stir up the emotions that brought the flare of heat into my chest. Think of Vivi being grabbed by those assholes—of that hall of cages in the experimental facility—of Snap’s expression when he’d gleaned impressions of the pain the Company’s experiments had caused. Of the hail of machine gun fire aimed at Thorn.
My lungs constricted with a hitch of my pulse. All those fuckers deserved to be burned to a crisp.
I glared at the square of floppy paper, and a flame spurted up along its edge.
Beautiful. I’d need a lot more fire than that to raze the Wharf Street building to the ground when we were through, but I’d have a lot more motivation when I was in the middle
of the fray. And if my newfound powers faltered once I was in the building, I had a new lighter and bottle of kerosene to speed things along.
I doused the flaming toilet paper with a spray of water in the sink and stepped out to find Snap waiting for me in the hall just outside. His eyes took me in with unusual intentness.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
My most devoted lover was nothing if not attentive. I rested my hand on his chest, smiling up at him. “Absolutely. We’ve got this.”
He brushed his fingers over my hair, gazing at me with such affection that my heart skipped a beat for much more pleasant reasons. “I’ll look after you out there too. Not just Thorn. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
“Hey, if I take any more bullets or break any more bones, that dryad can always patch me up again, right?”
When his intensity didn’t soften at my teasing, I leaned even closer, trailing my hand up to his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
He hummed to himself. “You can’t always be fine. But when you’re not, I’ll be there for you.”
That simple but determined statement sent an echoing rush of affection through me. I tugged him to me for a proper kiss, but it didn’t feel like enough.
I had to make sure I had my devourer’s back too, like the sort-of agreement I’d made with Thorn. Hell, any one of my quartet and our new companions might need protection at some point, supernatural powers or not. I’d be ready if that happened.
With all final loose ends tied as tightly as we could manage ahead of time, we drove the RV out of the lot. I did my best not to fidget in my seat on the sofa. Pickle curled up on my lap, bumping his head against my stomach as if sensing the tension and attempting to reassure me. Omen paced from one end of the living space to the other with only a slight sway when the RV turned.
I’d sat myself down so I could see part of the view from the front windshield. The Finger came into view up ahead, a looming F-you against the dwindling dusk. The ring of lights around the outside of the courtyard barely touched the enormous statue. Halfway there.
