Like a developing photograph, pale pink rose in Senka’s cheeks. Startled, I sat up and stared at her.
The apple in her palm was no longer healthy and red. Cradled in a palm much more flushed than it had been moments before, the apple had become a withered, blackened husk, void of life.
18
Lila returned from the meeting with her face harder than I’d ever seen it.
My boss could be a bad ass, and that sweet face could turn on a girl like a rabid dog. I couldn’t tell, though, if she was just mad or if fear had mingled with irritation. In either state, Lila was a force of nature.
She sat in the only unoccupied chair and primly crossed her legs. I stayed silent as she gazed out the massive picture window overlooking the destroyed tomb. Her foot bounced irritably.
I stayed slouched in my chair across from Senka, my palms resting on my dirty thighs. “I take it you know about Weston.”
“Yes.” Bounce, bounce, bounce.
I glanced at Senka. The princess held a computer mouse, turning it over in her hands as if trying to decipher its mysteries. She still hadn’t spoken, but my steady offering of things to touch and discover seemed to have drawn something out of her.
“How is our princess?” Lila asked, finally turning to look at Senka.
“Responding more, I think.” I gently extracted the mouse from Senka's hands and placed it back on the counter. “I need to show you something.”
Lila observed as I plucked a potted cactus off the windowsill and dumped it from the ceramic.
“Hold out your hands, Princess,” I said softly, and waited for Senka to acknowledge me.
She lifted her gaze to meet mine and cupped her palms obediently. I dumped a handful of soil on her hands and placed the cactus on top.
“Be careful of the barbs,” I reminded her.
Senka tore her enigmatic gaze from my face and looked at her new toy. She touched the smooth skin of the cactus with one thumb, deftly avoiding the thick needles, just as I’d warned her. We’d already done this with the other potted cactus. Senka could understand me; I just had to reach further inside her to draw her out.
Lila and I watched as Senka studied the little plant. That same pink tinge rose in her cheeks, and the cactus slowly withered.
Lila gasped, a hand fluttering to her mouth.
I held the trash can out to Senka. She opened her hands, letting the soil and cactus rain down into the black plastic bag. I deposited the can under the desk and wiped the dirt from Senka’s hands with the edge of my tank top.
“It happened with an apple and the other cactus,” I told Lila, gently scraping dirt from between Senka’s dainty fingers. “Anything alive, I think.”
“You’ve touched her?”
“Multiple times. She hasn’t hurt me.” I cupped Senka’s hands and smiled at her. “You wouldn’t, would you, Princess?”
Senka’s lips twisted, as if the memory of smiling existed just beyond her reach. But instead of a smile, she looked more like a grimacing skeleton. She tried for a moment longer, and I touched her lips. “Stop, now. We’ll get there. You’re going to be okay.”
“What does it mean?” Lila wondered aloud.
“She’s filled to the brim with Acura. Look at her eyes — even the shadow touched still have some whites.”
Lila leaned in to look into Senka’s completely black eyes. The princess didn’t acknowledge her.
I put the computer mouse back in her hands. She happily resumed her thorough exploration of the plastic.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Lila dropped her face in her hands wearily. She still wore the heather gray yoga pants and enormous t-shirt she’d worn to bed that night before the earthquake unleashed more problems than we had before. I got an enormous amount of amusement imagining her presiding over the council meeting in a Daffy Duck t-shirt.
“I don’t know. The council has no clue. We weren’t prepared for any of this. For the growing shadow touched epidemic, for Weston, for Senka to...” She trailed off and sat back heavily in her chair. “We don’t have a plan for any of this, Relle. We’re flying blind.”
“Bats do that all the time,” I offered.
“Bats have echolocation.”
Senka handed me the mouse and pointed to the tumbler sitting on the counter next to the lunchbox. I obliged.
“She’s like a small child,” Lila said.
“She’s been away from civilization for a hundred years. It’s amazing she’s got any humanity left at all.” I grabbed the tumbler before she could dump it on her lap and showed her how to open it. She raised the cup to her nose and sniffed. “Coffee. It’s a beverage.”
She gave me the cup but kept the lid, twirling it between her fingers.
I sat the tumbler on the counter. “What do we do with her?”
Lila bit her lip. “Can you stay with her?”
I sighed. “Lila, they dispatched me on a run two hours after I fell asleep. I found myself tasked with protective custody of the guy who witnessed Weston’s assassination, took him home, dug a bullet out of his fucking leg, and barely got out of my apartment building before a skyscraper fell on it. I want to go check on my ward and get some sleep.”
Senka must have heard the irritation in my voice. She gave me the lid and reached over to touch my face. Her black eyes roamed over me.
“She likes you,” Lila remarked.
“Maybe because I was the only asshole in this place not afraid of her.”
Senka cupped my face as if to agree. Her lips arched as she struggled to smile in that weird, grimacing way.
I laughed. “Thank you, Princess. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I’ll find someone else willing to sit with her tonight.” Lila sighed. “I’m sorry to hear about your apartment.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you add Senka to your list of protective custody wards? Come back and get her tomorrow morning? I'll get a team on finding you a safe house.”
I glared at the Reina.
She smiled demurely back at me.
Senka smoothed the wrinkles between my brow with her cool fingers. The touch was sweet, loving, like a mother easing my worries.
I heaved a sigh. “Okay. Fine.”
I could babysit a half-breed shadow touched and the princess of darkness. Sure.
True to his word, the officer who had taken custody of Warren earlier that night when we arrived at Headquarters had texted me Suite 3C not long after I sat down with Senka in the guard office. So after a tired SEB agent with a blonde ponytail and a strong cup of coffee arrived, I headed upstairs.
I made a detour to the weapons closet and checked out a new Taurus and holster. Mine had been left behind in the collapse. Who knew if I’d ever recover it or my knife from the remains of my life?
While sitting with Senka as she inspected a clipboard, I had searched through Com records and located the transcripts for the collapse. Officers were still on scene with rescue workers, sifting through the wreckage. They’d found three people still alive. No names listed. But three made it. And more might still be found.
The knowledge some of my neighbors had survived helped me come to terms with the night. Three days ago, I'd had a brother, an apartment, and a relatively low-key lifestyle. I’d been content.
Now, I was brotherless, homeless, and my entire universe revolved around a shadow touched and the princess of Senka Hollow.
Life is fucking weird.
Before finishing my journey to check on Warren, I stopped by the receptionist’s desk on the third floor. “Can I get a room for the night? Agent Nez, SEB 277.”
The perky brunette behind the counter shook her head, short curls bobbing. “Sorry. The council and their families are all staying here tonight for safety. All the rooms are taken.”
“Because of course they are.” I sighed. “I need a key to 3C. The occupant is under my protective custody.”
“Oh yes, the officer who escorted him told me to expect yo
u. Your Com is already registered to 3C.” She smiled broadly, a seemingly endless well of energy. “Let me know if you have any issues!”
Issues. Ha. If you counted having to share a room with a hot, hybrid fae with a molasses voice and smokin' body an issue.
Then I was already in trouble.
The suite was dark when I entered. I kicked my boots off in the foyer and dropped my keys on the hall table. I slid my messenger bag—that still held my cash and Rice's Com—into the shadows under the table.
Even in the silent darkness, the apartment seemed vastly different from my own. Cool AC drifted on the air. Not a sound passed through the bulletproof walls. There was no smell of stale beer and day-old pizza.
But it also felt uninhabited. Pristine surfaces, antiseptic scents. No familiar scars on the hardwood; no note thumbtacked to the wall to remind me to get milk and coffee.
The kitchen windows looked out over Main, where a spotlight illuminated the remaining members of the crowd. Most had returned home after the brief press conference that gave them exactly zero direct answers beyond declaring a state of emergency. Those who had stuck around were sprawled along the opposite sidewalk, chatting, sleeping, eating, and waiting for shift change so they could accost agents for answers.
I opened the fridge and found more food than had ever passed through my doors at once. Illuminated by the tiny light from inside, I assembled a sandwich and scarfed it. Mama’s dinner was a distant memory.
The thought stunned me into stillness. Mama, Mai, and I around the table; the Nez girls without our men. They were all I had left. I didn’t know yet what Senka’s rising meant, but I had an unsettling feeling the Res was in danger from the darkness. All those years I had spent honing my skills because the darkness crept so close to my home… Now, the darkness was here, made physical in Senka. She was no longer beneath us, soaking up Acura's foul leftovers.
What did that mean for the Hollow? For the rim?
Once I awoke and returned to Senka, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave her. I definitely couldn’t drag her to the Res with me—I didn’t want her anywhere near Mai. I’d have to send an officer to talk to my mother and convince her to move the clan into the city for now.
I pitied whatever officer I sent to the steely chieftess who had raised me.
Exhaustion dragged my bones to the floor, but I found the bathroom and turned on the water as hot as I could stand it. My battered leg burned beneath the stream. I washed the dried blood away and dug out some small pieces of rock and detritus. My jeans had suffered the worst of the blow, so my leg didn’t look as bad as Warren’s had, but it still hurt like hell.
I left my clothes in the bathroom trash and tugged an SEB robe over my still damp body. Steam escaped as I opened the door, allowing cold air to rush in. I shivered and tied the robe tight.
Most of the suites were full-service apartments: kitchen, dining, living area, plus a bedroom. But I found no living room in this one—only the small kitchen and bathroom and the quiet bedroom where Warren slept beneath a pile of blankets, his hair flattened from sleep.
I didn’t have much of a choice, and quite frankly, nothing sounded more incredible than cuddling against his warmth right now. His hands had been up my shirt only hours before; surely, we were beyond modesty.
I slipped beneath the covers in my robe. Warren shifted in his sleep, as if we were magnets and my pull was too strong to keep him away. He didn't open his eyes but wrapped his arms around me. We slept.
I walked the desert of the Res, barefoot and unarmed. On the horizon—and too close for comfort—a pulsating mass of void pushed towards us.
All the houses I passed were silent, empty. I hoped that meant my tribe had evacuated. How could they not with Acura's darkness made visible?
But when I got to my mother's, I realized not everyone had evacuated. Mama and Mai set on the front step, old fingers and young fingers knitting stars into an indigo tapestry. And before them, Daddy built a brick wall.
“Daddy, what are you doing here?”
He dug a spade into a bucket of mortar and spread the mixture on the top of the wall before he carefully placed another res brick. “What does it look like I’m doing, buttercup?”
“But you’re dead.”
He turned his handsome, weathered face toward me, squinting into the sunlight. “Death is relative.”
He turned his concentration back to the wall, so I joined Mama on the porch.
The yellow stars decorating their blanket had doubled while I talked to Daddy. They twinkled like little diamonds on a background of deep, endless blue.
Neither my mother nor my sister acknowledged my presence.
“Mai shouldn’t be here, it isn’t safe,” I chastised my mother. “She can’t protect against Acura like we can.”
Mama didn’t bother lifting her eyes from her work. “That’s why your father is building the wall, Maurelle,” she replied, her tone indicating I was an idiot.
I glanced at Daddy. The wall barely reached his navel, and the bricks were dwindling too fast. Acura's seething mass had drawn closer.
“Mama, you know that dinky wall won’t hold back the darkness.”
She didn’t reply.
I turned to my sister. “Mai, do you want to come into the city with me? Rice will play video games with you.”
Wait… That wasn’t right. Rice was dead. So was my father.
I looked over my shoulder where he'd been working on the wall. But he was gone. Acura's evil seeped around the edges of his unfinished wall.
I ripped the blanket away from Mama and Mai. I threw it away, irritated they had continued working on it, ignoring my warnings as the darkness came closer.
The blanket sailed toward the darkness. As it fluttered through the air, it grew. Yellow stars and indigo sky grew larger and larger until I could no longer see the darkness.
Strong fingers clasped my wrist. I whipped around to find both my mother and my sister staring at me.
Their eyes were completely black.
19
Sunlight filled the room when I emerged from dreams.
I still lay in the warm circle of Warren’s arms. My chest ached, as if my dreams had reached inside me and ripped out my heart. I massaged away the feeling with two fingers and focused on breathing.
“You okay?”
I startled at the soft murmur of his voice against my hair. I hadn't even realized he was awake. I shifted so I could see his face.
Warren gazed at me sleepily through hooded eyes. For the very first time, I could see the beauty in his odd, darkened eyes. The nearly all-encompassing black of a shadow touched’s eyes had always seemed ugly. Unnatural.
But… I knew Warren. He wasn’t cursed, or evil, or deadly. He was just different.
Beautiful.
“I’m okay,” I answered. He didn’t need a rundown on my weird ass dreams. “How are you feeling?”
I rolled over so I could see him fully. Our bare legs slid together, and my robe—already loosened from sleep—gaped open.
His gaze drifted to the line of exposed skin between my breasts “Good. Dr. Webster knows his medications.”
I froze beneath his regard, feeling suddenly exposed. He licked his lips, and heat flooded me from top to toe.
“Are you wearing anything beneath that robe?” he asked in a husky voice. He splayed a hand over my hip, his fingers digging into me possessively.
My heart thudded between us. “Do you want me to be?”
He met my gaze. His hand slid from my hip to the collar of the robe. He kept his eyes on mine as he slowly pushed the robe aside, exposing my breast to the sunlight. He trailed the very tips of his fingers over my skin, cresting carefully over the peak of my breast. My nipple tightened beneath his touch, echoed by an ache between my legs.
I moved my hands over his hard, bare chest, breathless. “I have to get up.”
“I’m up enough for the both of us,” Warren said.
I groaned at hi
s bad joke. “Don’t ever say that again.”
He caught my eye. “You don’t have to get up yet.”
Before I could respond, his hand moved down beneath the barely-tied robe sash. My breath hitched as his fingers scaled the sensitive skin of my abdomen and dipped into the hot, aching core of my body.
I gasped and arched into his touch. My body was such a livewire of unfulfilled needs and nervous energy, I’d needed nothing more than his eyes hungry on my bare skin for my body to betray me. A single finger dipped into me, so slow I wanted to scream.
“Clearly, you don’t want to get up,” Warren added, and then his mouth closed over mine.
Kissing him sent a rush of dizziness through me, as if all the oxygen had been taken from me. He yanked me against him, and I angled my leg over his. His tongue slid against mine, and he squeezed my ass with bruising force, hips rocking into mine. I felt him, hard and thick beneath his thin shorts. That heavy feeling of him, so close but so far, made me mindless with need.
I realized then that I didn’t have time for niceties. I had a shadow touched princess to guard and a Hollow to save from her darkness, so who the fuck knew when I would have this chance again? I wanted this man. I didn't give a fuck about anything else but this insane, desperate need to feel Warren inside me and forget about the rest.
I broke the kiss and pushed him onto his back. I straddled him and let the robe fall, then reveled in the way his expression morphed as his gaze roamed my naked body. I shoved his boxers down and met his gaze as I maneuvered him into me.
I sank down the length of him slowly, my body rushing hot with the heavy weight of him inside me, with the feeling of being in absolute control.
Then he proved me wrong. He sat up, an arm snaking around my back and his lips crashed into mine, suddenly I was beneath him, as if I’d weighed nothing at all.
He pulled out, a smile on his face as I wiggled beneath him, one part dying for him to fuck me and the other fighting my prone, submissive position.
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 11
