by Eva Chase
I stumbled, clamping my teeth against a gasp as the impact radiated through the still-healing cut across my abdomen. Then I lunged right at him.
I wasn’t totally sure what I was hoping to accomplish. I just wanted to pummel something or someone, and Omen was there acting like such a dick it was hard not to see him as an ideal target. I lashed out with my own fist, skimming his jaw as he dodged to the side. He gave me a shove—not too hard, just enough to send me staggering backward.
“Come on then, little mortal,” he taunted. “Where’s your fire now? Am I going to have to thrash it out of you?”
I didn’t think so. As I circled him, my heart was thudding like the rhythmic pumping of bellows raising flames from a furnace’s embers. My inner fire burned through my gut and trickled through my veins, turning me molten.
“Such a fantastic teacher,” I shot back at him. “Five minutes in, and you’re beating up on your only student.”
“If it’s the only lesson that’ll work…” He feinted and snatched at me. His fingers bruised my arm as he yanked me toward him and spun me around. I barely wrenched myself out of the way of the kick he aimed at my ass. “Seems like you need a little more toughening up, anyway.”
I swung at him, and he caught my knuckles. With a chuckle and a heave, he sent me stumbling sideways. “Nice try. Is that the best you can do?”
“You haven’t seen anything yet. Let me remind you that I’ve done more for your people in the last few years than you’ve managed so far.”
That blow landed even if the physical ones hadn’t. An orange light flashed in his eyes, but his voice stayed tight. “If you think that, then why are you so afraid of giving this battle your all? Let that fire out, Disaster. Show me what you’ve got.”
He came at me then like a hound unleashed, no sign that he intended to stop until I forced him to. His first smack across my cheek whipped my head to the side. The next sent a lance of prickling pain through my collarbone.
I did my best to block him, to dodge him, but I’d never fought anyone like this. My self defense classes had focused on a few quick moves to disable your attacker so you could run for the hills, and I couldn’t land a single one of those against the onslaught of this shadowkind.
He must have been able to tell he was overwhelming me, but he didn’t let up. A fist to my jaw. A heel to my toes. Fresh jolts of pain marked my body with every huff of breath he released.
The flames inside me flared hotter on the combined fuel of frustration and panic. I slashed my hand at him, and his sleeve caught fire. He slapped it out and pushed me toward the school building. “Not enough. Let’s see more of that. I want to see everything.”
The welling sense of power was starting to sear right through me from the inside out. Why couldn’t he lay off me for one fucking second?
Why did Leland have to be such a vengeful asshole? Why hadn’t I steered clear of him to begin with?
How could I not have realized Snap needed more from me last night?
Such a fucking mess. Burn it down. Burn it all down.
The urge rolled over me in a wave so visceral it brought a jab of terror with it. The certainty gripped me that if I gave Omen what I was asking for, if I let loose everything that was raging inside me, I could burn even this man with all his powers to a crisp.
A flare of heat slipped out—a flame shot up from a tuft of his hair that had risen from the slicked-back strands. He shook it away and punched my other shoulder. “Still not seeing what makes you so great.”
“I don’t think you want to. I don’t think you’d survive it.”
“Oh, ho, big talk from the mortal.” He swiped at my temple, hitting me hard enough to send my thoughts reeling. “Try me, then.”
The heat scorched my throat. I couldn’t swallow it down. My rising terror flickered higher alongside those flames. “No, Omen, I really don’t think—”
“Come on, Disaster! Why can’t you do this one thing? Or were all those grand rescues before, letting out the collectors’ prizes, only about the glory of pulling the capers off? Don’t you care whether you can help any more shadowkind? Or whether we ever see Snap again?”
“Don’t you?” I burst out. “All I see is a fucking bully who doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing if he can’t badger everyone around him into falling into line. As far as I can tell, you’re the problem here, not the solution.”
A growl escaped him, and suddenly he was really on me, hurling me into the wall with a slam that spiked pain all through my back. He pinned me there, the thrust of his hands nearly shattering my wrists, his eyes burning and his teeth bared. His hot breath spilled over my face.
There—there was the beast I knew was in him. Somehow seeing his cold front fall away dampened the fury in me.
Not so much for Omen. He wrenched himself back a step a moment later, cursing under his breath. His hair had bristled; his chest was heaving. He blinked, but the orange haze wouldn’t quite clear from his eyes.
I let my arms drop to my sides. He leaned in again, his palm against the bricks just inches from my head, his conflicted gaze holding mine.
“What is it about you that you always have to bring out the worst in me?” he asked in a ragged voice.
“I don’t think this is the worst,” I said honestly. “Right now? You feel like you’re being real. I like you angry—way better than I like the ice-cold prick who orders people around from his high goddamned horse, anyway.”
He guffawed, the sound equally raw. “You like me better when I’m on the verge of literally biting your head off.”
I shrugged, my shoulders scraping the wall. I might have liked him better, but I still valued my life too much to try to push past him right now. My anger had dwindled, but fear was alive and well, thrumming through my pulse. “It’s become increasingly clear to me that I have unusual tastes. But yeah, I do. Although I’d also prefer that you didn’t actually bite my head off, if it’s all the same to you.”
Omen’s own head bowed, dipping closer so his forehead almost grazed mine. The heat of his body radiated over me. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, to tell you the truth.
Yep, the poster girl for unusual tastes, right here.
“If you had any idea how hard I’ve worked to get here…” he muttered.
“Get where?” I asked. “The state of being an asshole?”
“See, that— You—” He let out another growl, but it was a subdued one this time. Then he eased back just a little. A flicker of something I hadn’t seen in him before crossed his expression. Was that… concern?
He fingered the side of my shirt, his fingertips brushing my side for the briefest of seconds. “I opened your wound again.”
I glanced down, more surprised than I should have been by the streak of bright red spreading across the center of the bandage. The sight of it brought the sting of the wound into sharper awareness. My mouth twisted. “Well, hey, what’s it matter if another mortal is spouting blood, right?”
Omen’s tone was gruff but firm. “You know you’re more than that.”
I supposed I did. And that was clearly the only reason he cared—because of my superpowers and how they might help his cause. “I’m sure I’ll survive, because or in spite of that.”
“No doubt.” He hesitated, still looming over me by the wall, as if he couldn’t quite tear himself away but also didn’t know what he was doing there. “I was taking out frustrations I shouldn’t have directed at you, at least not entirely. I wish… that I’d been less of an ‘ice-cold prick’ toward Snap lately. Maybe he thought he’d crossed some line I wouldn’t abide by, and I’d made him feel he couldn’t even check with me to see where he stood.”
I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so shocked that Omen was lowering himself to admitting any regrets at all. “You think I haven’t been beating myself up as much as I tried to beat up you? If I’d been more careful what I said around my ex—if I’d paid more attention to the state Snap was in last night—”
>
Omen interrupted me with a hoarse chuckle. “Suffice to say there’s plenty of blame to go around. Maybe you didn’t send me up in flames, but you put up a pretty good fight.”
I guessed that was a high compliment coming from him. I wasn’t completely comfortable with the flames that had been surging through me just minutes ago, though. If I’d let myself hurl the full force of them at him, just how bad would it have been?
Then he raised his hand to my hair, and those thoughts fell away. My awareness condensed to the warmth of his knuckles grazing my cheek as he fingered a few stray strands—not so different from how Snap had the first morning we’d met.
Omen’s gaze slid from his hand against my face to my eyes. The fiery light had faded from his, but the pale blue didn’t look quite so icy now. I found my hand drifting forward to rest against his chest, taking in the slowing rhythm of his breaths beneath the taut muscles.
What the hell was I doing? I couldn’t tell you. Whatever it was, it seemed to draw Omen nearer. He leaned in, his fingers sliding down to stroke across my chin, and a new pulse of heat flared in my lips. I wet them, my pulse kicking up a notch, not entirely sure what I wanted but wanting it very much at the same time.
His breath tickled over my face. Then he shoved the hand he’d leaned against the wall to push completely away from me, his gaze jerking toward the RV.
“We should get you patched up again before you make any more of a mess of yourself, Disaster,” he said, back to business as usual.
I peeled myself off the wall with only a smidgeon of disappointment. Whatever line we’d come close to crossing just now, I couldn’t help suspecting it might be better if we stayed on this side of it.
“And then back to training?” I suggested.
Omen shook his head. “No. I think we’ve both had enough of pushing you around. I know you’ll fight as well as you can when the need is there.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted by him throwing in the towel. I was trudging after him toward the Everymobile, debating just how suicidal I’d be to put up an argument, when the door flew open and Bow stared out at us.
“Please—Gisele—I think she’s getting worse.”
27
Sorsha
Other than a glimpse as the other shadowkind had hustled her onto the RV, I hadn’t seen Gisele since the start of the battle. At the sight of her lying crumpled in the master bedroom, horror overwhelmed any sense I’d had of my own discomforts.
Her slim, graceful body had deflated, limbs limp and cheeks sunken. What skin I could make out had lost its pearly sheen to a creeping gray undertone, as if her entire being had clouded over. Most of her, though, was covered with rough fabric wrapped tight and dappled with yellow-green smears.
From what the shadowkind had said, those bindings had stabilized her before. Now, thin trails of smoke were seeping through the cloth. Omen took one look at her and made a noise of consternation.
As he grabbed a jar off the bedside table, Bow hovered uneasily nearby. “I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to put on even more…”
“We do this and give her a chance to recover, or she leaks away into nothingness,” Omen said. “It’s not much of a choice.”
I didn’t understand why there was any debate at all until he started slathering the pale green paste from the jar onto the bandages. Gisele’s face remained flaccid, but her arms twitched, her shallow breaths stuttering. Bow winced and turned away as if he couldn’t bear to watch.
“It’s hurting her?” I asked quietly.
“The herbs in the salve are toxic to shadowkind,” the hellhound shifter said without looking up from his task. “Normally we’d avoid them—they’d weaken us. But in a case where someone is already severely weakened and in danger of wasting away, in small amounts they can repel our essence back into the body. The hope is that before too long, that body can heal itself enough to stem the bleeding on its own.”
The treatment was poisoning her as much as it was curing her. My stomach turned. But Omen’s efforts had clearly accomplished their goal—the wisps of smoke faded away. A tremor ran through Gisele’s body, and then it sagged even more lifelessly into the mattress.
Bow was swiping at his eyes. He sat down onto the bed next to her, the haggard expression on his usually jovial face almost as painful to look at as his companion was. Omen set down the jar with a sharp rap. He stalked out of the room to wash his hands with a hiss of the faucet and returned a moment later, brushing his reddened fingertips against his pants. The stuff had burned his skin too.
“Next time, you start applying the salve the moment you notice any seepage. She can barely afford to lose the little essence she still has.”
The centaur’s head drooped more, but he nodded. “I’m sorry. I—I panicked. We’ve never gotten more than a scratch here before. I didn’t know what it would be like.”
“This is war,” Omen said. “Don’t imagine it can’t get worse.” His tone softened just slightly. “We’ll continue doing what we can for her. I’ve put a call in to a dryad with healing skills—if he’s willing to stick his neck out this far after we’ve become such a target. I’m not sure how much even he’d be able to help her at this point as it is. She seemed strong. She may manage to pull through.”
He spun around, and I followed him back to the living area.
“If she starts bleeding again, I could put the salve on,” I said. “It wouldn’t hurt me at all.”
Omen glanced at his fingers, where the flush of irritation was already fading. “It’s a minor discomfort. Better that I handle it, or Thorn—we can judge what’s a reasonable amount from how it affects us.”
“I guess you have experience with this sort of thing from the wars before.”
He gave me a sharp look. “Not something Thorn would want you discussing with anyone else.”
I grimaced at him. “I figured you’re safe enough, since he told me you were there. You already know what he is.”
“That’s hardly—”
An engine sounded outside, and he cut off whatever other criticism he might have added with a rough breath. “Enough of that. Charlotte’s back—and let’s hope our wingéd, our incubus, and our devourer are with her.”
Had the others found Snap? As I hustled to the door, my heart leapt with more hope than I knew was sensible.
When I stepped out onto the pavement, Ruse was just driving the motorcycle into the lot. He parked it, and Thorn emerged from the shadows around the undercarriage where he must have been riding—alone.
“No sign of Snap,” the warrior reported to Omen without preamble. “And no sign of activity at the Wharf Street factory either. I ventured inside, and it appeared to have been very recently gutted.”
Omen swore. “They guessed that was our target.”
“This Leland twerp could have told them everything the Fund was looking into on Sorsha’s behalf,” Ruse said. “Everything her friend discovered at the fundraising gala.”
“Then we can assume that anything important they were keeping at the other locations under that shell company has been cleared out or will be shortly too.” The shifter started to pace. “In some ways that could be good. We’ve got them on the run; they’ll be getting short on property where they can carry out their operations and stash their prisoners. They may be having to cut corners on certain security measures to avoid places we might know about.”
“Except they’ll be cutting it at places we don’t know about,” I couldn’t help saying.
“Yes, that is the primary problem.”
Was that my fault too? We wouldn’t have known to make that factory a target if I hadn’t gotten Vivi and the Fund involved in the first place, so… maybe it all evened out on the scale of horribleness and personal responsibility?
That thought didn’t exactly lift my spirits.
Thorn stepped forward, worry turning his expression even more somber. “Sorsha, you’re bleeding again.”
Oh, right
. Gisele’s much more urgent injuries had diverted Omen and me from the whole patching-Sorsha-up plan. I set my hand on the top of the bandage. “It just needs a change of dressing. I’ll be fine. It only stings a little.” And maybe there was a bit of throbbing in there too after all this bustling around, but he didn’t need to know that.
Despite my reassurances, the warrior ushered me back into the RV like some kind of hulking matron. As he unwrapped the wound, he tutted under his breath. He added a few careful stitches where a couple Omen had sewn in last night had broken and dabbed antiseptic cream over the whole slash. When he’d wrapped a layer of gauze around the new sterile pad, Ruse set a paper bag on the table by the sofa. I straightened up, a buttery, cheddar-y scent reaching my nose.
“I liberated some breakfast for you,” the incubus said, his tone jaunty but his hazel eyes darker than usual as they lingered on my face. “I know it’s no substitute for our beloved devourer, but you do need to look after the inside of your belly as well as the outside.”
I couldn’t deny that—and on a better day, my mouth would have been watering at the savory smell. “Thank you,” I said, unwrapping a breakfast sandwich of biscuit, egg, and melted cheese. It sure beat hay-and-clover salad.
As I took a bite, the two remaining members of my original trio stood on the other side of the table like stalwart guardians—or wardens, ensuring I didn’t leave until they were satisfied I’d taken care of myself. The crumbly pastry dissolved on my tongue, and the cheese added the perfect amount of bite to the creamy scrambled egg. For a guy who used human sexual satisfaction for sustenance, Ruse was an excellent judge of actual food.
But each gulp stuck in my throat before dropping into the hollow in my gut. I’d only made it halfway through the sandwich when the lump expanding inside me felt almost too heavy to bear.
I set the sandwich down, figuring I could at least take a breather, and Thorn’s brow knit. “You don’t look well. Your sleep can’t have been satisfactory lying on that bench all night. You should take some rest in your bed.”
