“They’ll have consolidated all their security there too,” Thorn pointed out, ever the man of practicalities and glasses half empty. “Especially if—you said you think the man who owns the property may be the head of the entire Company of Light?”
After Ruse had returned from his venture with Sorsha, he and I had driven out to see what further information his hacker dupe could unearth. With her charmed dedication, she’d found enough records to clarify the situation.
I nodded. “He’s covered his tracks well, but we came across money trails that convince me that this Victor Bane is behind the biggest operations the Company has conducted in this city. Either that, or someone with immense influence over him was pulling his strings, which amounts to the same thing.”
Restlessness gripped me, and I had to tense my legs to stop myself from pacing. This was only the first glimpse of our real victory. We wouldn’t achieve the rest until we got down to action.
But Thorn was right. We couldn’t charge in, eyes and fists blazing, like the wild fool I’d once been. I dragged in a breath. “And he’ll have plenty of security, yes. But most of the guards won’t be used to working there. We can still make use of parts of our original plan, like the various diversions to divide and conquer. It may be difficult, with fewer of us…”
My gaze lifted to the bedroom doorway down the hall. The unicorn had proven herself a fierce fighter—I’d give her credit for that—but even if her body healed, she’d be in no condition to leap back into a battle for several days at a minimum. I wasn’t sure the centaur would join us in venturing that far from her bedside either, even to avenge her injuries.
And Snap… The day had crept into evening and then dusk with full night looming over us, and our devourer hadn’t reappeared.
When I’d asked him to enlist in my team, I’d known that he had lingering reservations about the most potent part of his nature, but I’d thought his eagerness to help save our kind would override that if he ended up needing to use his greater power. Evidently he’d been more fragile—or the Company’s hunters swifter—than I’d anticipated.
“We’ll make the best of what we have,” I went on, and then, as I drew in my next breath, a knock sounded on the RV’s door.
Both Thorn and Sorsha sprang up, but their demeanors couldn’t have been more different. Thorn’s muscles flexed, his body braced to meet an attack—as if our enemies would have knocked before attempting to blow us to smithereens.
As Sorsha obviously realized. Her face had lit up with hesitant but obvious hope. In that moment, I didn’t see any of the mouthy mortal who pushed me to the limits of my temper or the cocky thief who laughed at deadly threats, only a woman whose heart was leaping at the possibility that our missing companion had come back to us unharmed.
The sight wrenched at me more than I’d have liked. When had I ever seen a mortal that earnestly dedicated to any of the shadowkind? But I didn’t think it was Snap out there—I doubted it would have occurred to the devourer to knock with his return either. And perhaps there was also an incredibly small yet niggling sensation with the knowledge that she’d have looked nowhere near that enthusiastic if I’d been the one who’d vanished.
You didn’t win wars by courting affection. My job was to kick her ass into getting those powers up to speed—a job I might already have backed off on more than I should have today.
I strode to the door and yanked it open, my other hand balled at my side ready to launch my claws. With my first glance outside, my stance relaxed, but only slightly. “What are you doing here?”
Rex was standing just outside the RV’s door, his arms folded over his chest and a particularly wolfish gleam in his keen eyes. “You put out a plea for help, didn’t you, Omen? Are you going to let us answer it or not?”
As he said “us,” he stepped close enough for his companions to converge around him. By brimstone and hellfire, it looked as if he’d brought his entire outfit along for the ride. The inner circle stood at his flanks—Birch the dryad, Lazuli the troll, and Tassel the succubus—and at least half a dozen of the gang’s lower underlings encircled them.
“I remember reaching out to see if Birch would lend his healing abilities,” I said. “Are the rest of you along to provide him with moral support?”
The werewolf rolled his eyes. “Why don’t we discuss all this inside before some country-dwelling mortal drives by and wonders what’s going on with the party at the school bus?”
He had a point, but my hackles rose instinctively at the thought of letting so many powerful and self-interested shadowkind onto the vehicle I was starting to consider mine. Of course, technically it belonged to the tourists in the back, and power was relative. In the grand scheme of shadowkind existences, Rex with his century or so of experience was still a gangling teen, and he was the most established of the bunch. Thorn and I would have stood a decent chance at decimating this pack between the two of us.
That was an evaluation the werewolf could likely make for himself with the experience he did have and his knowledge of me. And I had asked for at least one of them to make an appearance. I restrained my inner hound and stepped back to let them in.
The inner circle kept their physical forms, coming to join the four of us by the sofa. At Rex’s gesture, the underlings flitted into the shadows as they followed. I could still sense their presence lurking around us, but at least we weren’t being squashed into the space like sardines in a tin.
Both Thorn and Sorsha stayed on their feet. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that even faced with several shadowkind she barely knew, our mortal was the one to push them into action.
“You should take a look at Gisele right away,” she said, motioning to Birch. “They hurt her really badly. Omen and Thorn patched her up as well as they could, but…”
Her voice faded as she led him to the master bedroom. Rex glanced at me with a slight arch of his eyebrows as if amused that I’d let the human call any of the shots, but he didn’t remark on it.
“That was quite a ruckus you stirred up downtown last night,” he said instead.
I grimaced. “Not by our choosing. We meant to ravage the pricks on their own turf, but they caught wind of our plans and ambushed us on our way there. We still managed to do plenty of ravaging, though, just not the rescue effort we’d hoped to include.”
“They’ve moved their prisoners again,” Thorn added with a grumble of frustration. “And they may have captured one of our own.”
Rex’s gaze skimmed over us. “Oh, yes, your ray of sunshine is missing, isn’t he? What a pity.”
A squeak sounded as if in agreement. Sorsha’s shadowkind pet had been huddled in a corner of the sofa at the arrival of the newcomers. Apparently having recognized them now, the little dragon scampered across the floor to twine around Laz’s ankle like a cat. The troll stared down at the creature with an expression of such anguish that I had to suppress a laugh. So much for the tough-guy front.
Sorsha slipped out of the bedroom alone, her face drawn, and moved to rejoin us. I tipped my head to Rex with all the authority I could emanate. “Why exactly are you all here, Rex? Does your dryad require this much protection or were you simply wanting to gawk at us? Because we have more plans to make and battles to carry out on behalf of all shadowkind that I’d like to get back to.”