Everyone was smiling and laughing, their stances relaxed—except Tech Dude, who hadn’t left his hunched pose on the sofa behind me. The dawn light turned the edges of the landscape golden, matching the triumphant vibe perfectly. I dragged in a deep breath of the cool early morning air, a smile of my own crossing my lips, but a twinge shot through my gut at the same time.
Snap was still missing. My instincts had been correct—he hadn’t been in any of those cells in Victor Bane’s mansion.
If the Company hadn’t captured him, where had he gone? All the way back to the shadow realm? Was I ever going to see him again?
I’d been prepared for us to part ways when Omen’s mission here was done, but the loss still gnawed at me. I hadn’t gotten to say good-bye. Maybe if we’d talked, if I’d been able to talk the devourer through his doubts, I wouldn’t have needed to say good-bye, at least not right away.
The Company of Light wasn’t the only force malevolent toward the shadowkind in this world, only the largest one I’d encountered. We might have decimated them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Omen and his crew found other ways to stay busy rather than heading straight home.
And maybe I was kind of hoping they’d count me as part of that crew for as long as they stuck around. What did I have left to go back to anyway? A burned-down apartment, a handful of sort-of friends and colleagues who’d turned their backs on me…
Well, one very dedicated best friend as well. I should call Vivi and let her know it was safe to leave her watery safehouse now.
As I fished out my phone and stepped out onto the untamed grass, Pickle scuttled after me. I bent to give him a scratch between his wings before he scampered off in Laz’s direction. My smile grew with the amused anticipation of the troll’s nervous reaction. I brought up my contacts on the screen—
—and the tech guy burst out of the RV behind me, his laptop held up like a signal flag, gasping for breath as if he’d just run miles rather than five feet.
“Everyone! It isn’t over. This isn’t— That place was just one—”
My hand dropped to my side. As I stared at him, the others drew in closer, Omen and Rex at the front of the crowd.
The hellhound shifter’s good humor had faded. “What are you saying? Spit it out—a little more coherently, if you can manage that?”
Computer Dude swiped a nervous hand across his mouth. The spines on the back of his neck jittered. “It’s just—It took me a while to really dig into the files. There were a lot of layers of protection. And at first I didn’t totally understand what I was seeing, with all the code names and the rest. But—there are definite references to other facilities in other cities—New York, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans…”
“All the best locales,” Ruse murmured. Any place that attracted a decent number of artsy or otherwise quirky humans tended to appeal to the shadowkind as well—easier for their quirks to blend in.
My stomach had balled into a massive knot. “You’re saying the Company of Light isn’t alone? There are other organizations like them?”
“No, that’s all the same organization.” The guy swept his hand through the air. “The Company of Light has… let’s call them branches in at least seven other cities in the US. It doesn’t look as if all of them are currently holding higher shadowkind captive—the operation here seems to have been one of the biggest—but they’re all experimenting on lesser beings and hunting around the local rifts.”
The buoyant mood that had filled the gathering deflated. I exchanged a grim look with Thorn and Ruse. This hadn’t been our final stand after all. The operations we’d burned down here had only been one piece in a massive puzzle of awfulness. Shit.
Omen cleared his throat, taking charge with a typical authoritarian vibe. “Have you at least determined what all this experimenting is for—specifically? How do they think they’re going to conquer the shadowkind?”
Computer Dude’s fingers tightened around the laptop. “They… they’ve been testing all sorts of things to see what drains our essence the most, in an attempt to create a sickness that could be passed between the shadowkind and deadly enough to kill any that encountered it in the mortal world.”
A deeper hush fell over the crowd. “It’ll never work,” one of the gang underlings said after a moment. “We don’t get sick.”
The guy shrugged. “They have made progress. Nothing we’d need to fend off immediately, and the virus I sent into their computer systems may have passed on to the rest of the organization over the internet and damaged their research overall, but—I won’t feel comfortable while they’re still working on it. They’ve already created bacteria potent enough to make lesser shadowkind weaken.”
There was a moment of total horrified silence. It’d obviously never occurred to the assembled crowd that even that much could be possible. A shiver ran down my spine.
“Fine,” Omen said. “The assholes are dangerous—we already knew that. If we didn’t topple the kingpin last night, we’ll just have to do that next. Did you find some indication of who is running the whole show?”
“It does appear that Victor Bane was in charge of operations here. The records stay pretty vague about who holds the ultimate authority, but… based on the scale of operations, my best guess is they’re located in San Francisco.”
“Road trip!” Ruse said, raising his fist in the air, but even he couldn’t summon much enthusiasm into his joking tone.
Murmurs spread through the crowd. As Rex took them in, he nodded. “We fought the battle we came here to fight—we kicked the bastards out of our city. The rest I’m going to have to leave to you. We’ve put enough on the line as it is.”
The werewolf’s gaze settled on me. So had that of a few of his companions, I realized. Their expressions had tensed in a way that only amplified my uneasiness.
“Especially when you’ve got a sorcerer working with you,” Rex added, and it clicked. Of course the shadowkind who’d seen me summon fire in the entrance hall would assume I’d used sorcery, bending a shadowkind to my will. They’d seen plenty of evidence that I was mortal, and that was the only way mortals were supposed to be able to use magic.
I pulled my posture up straighter. “I’m no sorcerer. I—I’m not totally sure what I am, but I wouldn’t manipulate shadowkind for power.”
Rex’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re trying to tell me that you’re a human who can conjure fire on her own steam?”
“Well, more like smoke, but…”
“It’s true,” Omen said brusquely. “Do you really think I’d work with a sorcerer, Rex? I’d rather eat them for dinner. If you’re not sticking around, I can’t see how it matters anyway.”
The murmurs had heightened, more gazes turning my way. Thorn took a step closer as if he thought I might need a bodyguard, but Rex waved his people silent.
“You’re right. It’s your business, not ours. Come on, folks—let’s leave these do-gooders to their crusade.”
He wavered into the shadows. Most of the gathering followed him. I guessed they’d find a vehicle of their own to steal to shorten the trip back into town.