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.
My phone chimed. Vivi? I tugged it out as quickly as I could.
It wasn’t my bestie’s number but one I didn’t recognize. I hit the answer button, a new thread of uneasiness already winding through my gut. “Hello?”
“Sorsha? Oh, good, I got you.”
It took me a second to place the voice with its odd wavering distance. She must still be woozy from the medications the hospital would have doped her up on. “Ellen! How are you? You have to know I’m so—”
“Don’t worry about that. That isn’t—” She coughed. “You’re right. These people—we can’t let it continue. But I overheard—Leland was talking near the doorway—he said something about making sure you don’t get anyone else hurt. It sounded as if… he meant to do something… something he probably shouldn’t.”
Something that had troubled the Fund’s leader enough that she’d reached out to me despite her injuries. My throat constricted. “Thank you. I—I’ll keep that in mind. You get some more rest, okay? We need you better.”
As I lowered the phone, the Finger slid by outside the RV’s windows. I’d just opened my mouth to say we needed to stop and take stock with this new warning when the roar of another engine penetrated the wall across from me.
The RV jolted and lurched to the side with a crunch of steel ramming steel.
24
Sorsha
The crash threw me back into the sofa cushions, my phone spinning from my fingers. I threw my arms over my head just in time to shield it as the entire RV careened over.
I tumbled toward the roof, and the window next to me shattered. Metal screeched as the vehicle skidded on its side across the asphalt.
“It’s them!” I gasped out over the throbbing where my recently healed shoulder had slammed into a ridge in the wall. “The Company. They knew we were coming.”
My shadowkind companions whirled around me, flashing in and out of the patches of darkness. Footsteps were thumping outside. “Can you get up, Sorsha?” Thorn hollered, and I shoved myself onto my feet, snatching up a trembling Pickle as I did. Given the way the Company had blasted our last two vehicles, I had no reason to believe I was safer in here than out there on the street.
Omen had already bashed the door open in what was now the ceiling of the toppled RV. I ran to it, and Thorn heaved me up onto the steel side that still, miraculously, looked like a city bus.
The others had darted outside through the shadows. Maybe it’d be better if they stayed there. Figures in typical Company of Light armor were rushing all around the RV, spilling from the armored truck that must have rammed us. “Get back, get back!” more distant voices were yelling at pedestrians who’d been nearby.
Taking in the chaos in those initial few seconds, my first chilling thought was that the shadowkind should leave me. Get the hell out of here as fast as they could, and let the Company take out their frustrations on the one being who couldn’t slip away through the shadows. There were too many of the mercenaries—they’d caught us too off-guard—
But Thorn leapt out of the RV in his solid form without any hint of considering abandoning me. The swing of his fist gouged out the face of one soldier who’d been springing at me. As another clambered onto the overturned vehicle, he slammed his heel into the back of the man’s head.
On the ground, someone… rode by on horseback? Holy mother of a mongoose, no, that was Bow, charging at our attackers with a battle cry and an actual bow notched with an arrow that seemed to have appeared alongside his full shadowkind form. His human-like torso emerged from the shoulders of a chestnut stallion’s body.
With a scream that was somehow silvery sweet, another horse charged into the soldiers’ midst—a graceful ivory animal with tassels of hair sprouting above her slender hooves and a brilliant horn sparkling where it jutted from her forehead. At least, it sparkled for the instant I saw it before Gisele stabbed her horn into a man’s gut. The equines apparently had no intention of giving up their Everymobile without a fight.
The unicorn jerked back with a squeal of pain as the man’s armor banged her. The twined metals left a black mark just below the slick of blood dripping from the rest of her horn.