by Eva Chase
I sank down on the edge of the bed. As Pickle scrambled up onto my lap to curl up there, my thoughts veered toward my own friends. My best friend, who’d wanted so badly to fight for me too, even if those efforts had ended in disaster.
I grasped my phone. “I should call Vivi. Make sure she found someplace safe to hide out.” Get in a few last words with her just in case they turned out to really be my last. It was late, but Vivi tended to be a night owl even when she didn’t have a recently-witnessed murder to ruin her sleep.
“I’ll give you the room,” Thorn said, and wavered away into the shadows to his own room without bothering with the door.
I hesitated over my Frequent Contacts, where Vivi’s welcoming face grinned up at me from the top spot. My stomach knotted.
Ten years ago, when I’d been barely more than a kid and she hadn’t been much older, we’d been glued at the hip. I wasn’t sure how I’d have survived this long without her friendship keeping me sane and human. The thought of someone putting a bullet in her still made my innards clench up with an icy panic.
But maybe she’d felt the same way about me potentially walking into danger. She’d screwed up and crossed boundaries, and I was still kind of pissed off about that, but at least she’d done it out of love rather than the intent to do harm.
I tapped the screen and lifted the phone. A few seconds later, my bestie’s voice pealed into my ear.
“Sorsha! Are you still okay?”
I ignored the ache in my shoulder. “I’ve had better days, but yeah. Are you? Did you get out of town like I said?”
“Yeah, I grabbed Gran, and we took off for a cottage a couple of hours away that belongs to friends of the family. I—I keep looking out the windows just in case someone’s coming.” Her voice dipped lower. “I’ve been worried sick about you. I wanted to call, but I didn’t want to interrupt you at a bad time. Obviously I’m not the greatest judge of when or how to interfere.”
“You shouldn’t have been interfering at all,” I couldn’t help saying, even though I hadn’t meant to restart that argument.
Vivi sighed. “Okay, that might be true. And I’m really sorry I went all stalker on you. But you shouldn’t have been lying to me. I thought you knew you could count on me… I wish you’d trusted me more.”
The dejection in her voice made me wince. I swallowed hard. “It’s not that I don’t trust or count on you, Vivi. I do, for all kinds of things. But you saw how dangerous the situation is, what kind of people I’m up against… With the things Luna taught me”—and the trio of allies who’d turned up on my doorstep—“I’m better equipped to take them on. I was trying to keep you safe.”
My best friend was silent for a moment. “I get that. I can even appreciate the thought. But Sorsh, what if I don’t want to be safe if that means I can’t help you when you’re in trouble? How do you think I’d feel if you got hurt and I hadn’t done anything to stop it? If we’re working together, at least we can split the danger two ways instead of it all being on you.”
“I don’t think it works exactly like that,” I said, but her words sent a twinge through me anyway. Had it really been right for me to take away her choice in the matter? I’d told myself she wouldn’t fully understand the danger to know what she was getting into—but part of the reason she didn’t was because of all the things I’d avoided telling her.
I hadn’t liked Thorn trying to send me off to keep me safe, and he’d at least informed me of that decision rather than going behind my back.
“I’m sorry too,” I added. “At this point, I think we’re both safest if you lay low, but once the immediate crisis is over, we’ll talk more. Okay?”
“That sounds like a compromise I can get behind. Are you… Are you looking after yourself?”
“As well as I can. And as you noticed, I’ve got some friends of another sort who’ve made that their business too.” I smiled wryly. “You don’t have to worry about them either. We’ve reached an understanding.”
“If you say so.” She gave a short laugh. “Ack, Gran’s calling for me. I’d better see what’s up. Call me again to touch base tomorrow so I don’t go crazy wondering what’s happened to you?”
“I’ll do that.” I’d be worrying about her too.
“Talk soon then. Ditto.”
My smile turned painfully bittersweet. “Ditto,” I replied.
I lay back against the pillow, Pickle snuggling into the crook of my neck, and closed my eyes. Despite the intermittent twinges of pain, I must have dozed at least a little. One second my mind was drifting through a highlights reel of the past week, and the next all three of my shadowkind companions had burst into my room, talking at the same time.
I sat up, blinking and swiping at my eyes. A glance at the bedside clock told me it was now nearly two in the morning.
We were running out of time.
I held up my hands. “Hold on, hold on. What’s going on? What did you find out? Start from the beginning—just one of you.”
Ruse came to a stop beside the bed and caught one of my hands in his. His smirk radiated victory.
“The hacker you found cracked all the codes, and we hit pay dirt. We know exactly where Omen is down to the cell number—we’ve even seen the blueprints to know how to get to it once we’re there.”
Snap was practically bouncing on his feet with eager energy. “At least, we think it’s him. They’re all called ‘subjects’ in the files. But ‘Subject 26’ was the only one brought in around the time he was captured, and some of the other details sounded like him.”
“He’s alive,” Thorn said with undisguised relief.
“We found the building,” Snap went on. “It was one of the other impressions I got from Meriden. Two of them together, actually. There’s a big construction site”—he glanced at Ruse as if to confirm he’d gotten the term right—“and in the middle where you can’t see unless you go right through, there’s the building I saw with the concrete walls and shiny doors.”
A secret facility hidden within a construction site? With all the building projects that went up around the city and then took forever to complete, I had to give the conspirators kudos. That was pretty brilliant.
“You saw the place?” I said as everything he’d said sunk in. A quiver of nerves raced through me even though the two of them had clearly returned unharmed. “You went in?”
“Not all the way in,” Ruse said. “On the way back here, we swung by the address we got to scope things out so we could make more definite plans. We couldn’t easily get into the actual building, though. They’ve got flood lamps all around the place so we can’t get close enough to jump to any entry point through the shadows, and obviously we weren’t going to stroll over and knock.”
“Lots of guards too.” Snap made a face. “Some of them standing around, some of them patrolling, with silver and iron protections and those weapons they used before.”
“I can smash through their puny equipment,” Thorn rumbled.
“Not with this many, even with these guns.” Ruse punched him lightly in the arm. “We’re going to need a better strategy than ‘Charge straight in and hope for the best.’”
I thought of the construction of the toy shop office. “What about the building itself? Is there any silver or iron worked into it?”
Ruse hesitated. “We didn’t pick up on anything from outside. The blueprints indicate there were special materials used in the cells, which makes sense. The rest of the building looked clear.”
But of course we couldn’t know for sure if they’d added more since then.
If the shadowkind couldn’t simply slip inside unseen, then getting in would require my expertise. My first impulse was to tell them to lay out the route for me, and I’d get to Omen and release him myself. No need for any of them to risk the same assholes catching and caging them, especially when we didn’t know how going into the building might affect them.
But as I looked around at the three men—and perhaps monsters
—who’d crashed into my life uninvited days ago, the bizarre fondness that swelled in my chest was tainted with a pinch of shame.
I’d nearly gotten myself killed earlier tonight by insisting I go into the store alone. Shutting Vivi out had made more problems for us than it could solve. The idea of seeing anyone that I, yeah, cared about under threat still made every particle in my body balk. It made me think of my parents’ cries and of Luna shattering into mere particles of the woman who’d raised me.
My lungs constricted with the memories. People around me, people who were trying to look after me—they died.
But these three knew the risk they were taking. How could I tell them it wasn’t their choice to make—or try to take the choice away from them completely?
If we were going to outmaneuver the sword-star bunch and rescue their boss, it’d take all the wits and skills we had between us. Going in alone could be both a suicide mission and a guarantee of failure.
“We’ve gotten this far,” I said. “No way are they stopping us now. Tell me exactly how the building is laid out and where we need to go, and let’s work from there. We need to pull this jailbreak off before the sun comes up.”
32
Sorsha
The steel struts of the construction site loomed above the lower rooftops of the neighboring buildings, reflected moonlight making them visible even from two blocks away. They gleamed faintly against the darkness of the night sky like the bones of some massive creature that had settled there to die and had its carcass picked clean. That image fit my mood perfectly as Ruse put the car into park.
“The end is nigh, but I’m holding on,” I sang, but not even the inspiration of Blondie could stop my voice from sounding thin in the silence. At this hour, no other vehicles passed us on the road. Not the slightest breeze stirred the warm air. My shoulder still throbbed from the silver bullet Snap had pulled out of me.
The end of our mission was up ahead, sure, but for all we knew it could end us.
Out of all of us, I had to admit the one most likely to meet some dire fate was the owner of a mortal body—a.k.a., me. I was prepared for that, but a tightness wound through my ribs as my shadowkind trio moved to get out of the car.
I gave Pickle one last scratch between his wings where he’d perched on my lap and then shifted him to the middle seat so I could get up too, resisting the urge to cuddle him so close he’d squawk. We’d brought him and all my belongings with us because regardless of where this night led, returning to the motel after we faced off against the sword-star bunch directly seemed unwise. Leaving him there in the car, the constricting sensation crept up into my throat.
The three men had gathered around me on the sidewalk. I turned to them when I’d shut the car door.
“If something happens to me tonight,” I said, “promise me you’ll look after Pickle? He won’t get very far on his own.”
Snap’s expression turned pained. “You don’t need to worry about that,” he insisted.
Thorn raised his chin, adding to the immense sense of his height. “I don’t intend to return without you, but if it eases your mind, you have my word the little creature will be taken care of.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose with the implications of his initial statement. I knew he meant not just that he hoped to make sure I came out alive, but that if I didn’t, it’d only be because he fell too.
We had a plan, and I didn’t think we could have come up with a better one, at least not without days longer than the hour or so we’d actually had. But so much was still uncertain. Our enemies had caught us off-guard more than once. We intended to turn the tables on them tonight, but we hadn’t pulled off anything quite like this before.
An impulse gripped me that I let myself follow, because who knew whether we’d have another moment of relative peace. I grasped Thorn’s shirt and bobbed up to give him a light peck on the lips, swiftly enough that he didn’t have the chance to return it or pull away, whichever he’d have decided on. I had no idea how he’d feel about the others seeing any softness from him.
The warrior glowered at me after, but the heat in his gaze felt at least as hungry as it did annoyed. Ruse was smirking, wider when I turned to him. He reached for me and tugged me to him by the waist, his eyelids lowering seductively.
“I’ll take a little more than that, Miss Blaze,” he said in the chocolatey tone that still made my skin tingle. But he let me be the one to lean in the last few inches between us and capture his mouth.
I’d almost forgotten how much skill the incubus could bring to a simple kiss. The press of his lips, languid as if taking his time and yet passionate as if reveling in every second, set a whole lot more tingling than just my skin. Wouldn’t it have been nice to sink into that bittersweet cacao-and-caramel scent of him and leave death-defying capers for another night?
We didn’t have any other nights before our enemies discovered how close to them we’d already gotten, though. Reluctantly, I eased back.
Snap’s posture had tensed while I’d kissed the other guys. Glimmers of brighter green shimmered through his eyes with the intensity of the reaction he appeared to be reining in. “My peach,” he said, shooting a look at the other two that dared them to deny him that claim. The defiance turned his heavenly face even more dazzling.
I touched his soft cheek. I’d saved him for last for exactly this reason. “My devourer?” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure what that label meant yet, but the tension in his expression melted at the suggestion.
“Yes,” he said with a brilliant smile, and tipped his head to nuzzle my cheek before he brought our mouths together.
I’d expected all sweet tenderness, but Snap was clearly determined to both make a statement and stake a claim. He parted my lips with eager determination, his tongue flicking in to twine around mine as he deepened the kiss. The stroke of the delicately forked tip sent a rush of giddiness through me. As he traced my jaw to tilt it at an even better angle, he all but plundered my mouth.
It was sweet, hell yes, and dizzyingly intense too.
When he released me, every inch of him was lit with satisfaction, deliciously fucking gorgeous. A laugh both delighted and terrified bubbled at the base of my throat until I swallowed it down.
I’d gotten myself an angel, a sort-of sun god, and a guy most mortals would consider a demon. What sort of being was waiting for us inside that prison if we succeeded in freeing him?
It was time to find out. I stepped back and motioned toward the construction site. “Let’s do this thing.”
As I strode toward the site, my companions wisped away into the shadows to draw less attention if anyone happened to look our way. The site itself was bordered by a solid fence some six feet high, but I made short work of the chain securing one of the entrances with my scorch-knife. Trusting that the trio was following close by, I squeezed inside.
I crept along a meandering path between metal beams and stacks of wood until I skirted a raw cinder-block wall and the glow of the flood lights came into view up ahead. With a few more steps, I made out the concrete walls of the squat two-story building Snap had first seen in the impressions clinging to Meriden’s body.
It rose up out of a clear stretch of dirt in the middle of the larger half-finished building. The door on this side was indeed shiny—stainless steel, from the look of it—and the flat gray walls around it held only a couple of small windows, those on the first floor. The holding cells above must have offered no glimpse at all into the outside world.
Figures stalked along the edges of the harsh light that surrounded the place. I counted three patrolling in my view and two others stationed by the door. From what Ruse and Snap had reported, there’d be at least twice that many monitoring the entire area. They all wore helmets and vests that gleamed with plates of silver and iron.
I caught myself just shy of rubbing the bandage on my shoulder. Two guards had been trouble enough. But I wasn’t alone here—and if we didn’t get going, we’d lose all the
advantage of the darkness and surprise.
I lifted my hand with an OK signal. That was Thorn’s cue. Tucking myself as close to one of the nearby beams as I could, the metallic odor filling my nose, I braced myself for the chaos.
It started with a thumping like several boards toppling off a pile. All of the guards jerked their heads around to stare in that direction. As one man trotted over to investigate, a sharper clatter split the air. Drawing his gun, he motioned for two of his companions to follow.
They’d just loped out of view when something fell with a clang in the opposite direction. A shout carried from around the side of the building as more guards must have sprung into action. As long as they weren’t heading anywhere near me, I was happy.
At an even more distant spot, there came a crash like shattering glass. One of the guards by the door spoke into her radio and then hustled off to help her colleagues. We were down to one between us and the entrance—but just distracting him momentarily wouldn’t do the trick. If we wanted enough time to not just get into the building but get Omen and the other shadowkind prisoners out, we needed as many of our foes as possible caught up in a wild goose chase.
Thorn hadn’t forgotten that part of the plan. A few seconds later, he charged over to join me, a dazed but thankfully not smashed figure dangling from his hands by the ankles so he didn’t need to touch the helmet or vest that would have burned him.
Without a word, he dropped the man on the ground in front of me. Before the guy could regain his equilibrium, I yanked off the tight helmet and jerked at the snaps on his vest, gritting my teeth as the ache in my shoulder grew teeth. The protections hadn’t been able to neutralize the warrior’s physical strength, but none of my allies’ supernatural powers would have any effect until we’d gotten rid of them.
The vest’s clasps parted to reveal a faded Guns ‘N Roses T-shirt. “Et tu, Brute?” I muttered.
As I tossed the vest aside, Ruse materialized out of the shadows. The guard took a swing at me, shoving himself more upright with a wobble, and Thorn clapped his hand over the guy’s mouth the second it opened to yell. Before he needed to intervene any more than that, the incubus started speaking, staring deep into the man’s widening eyes.