“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.”
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.