I said. “I might be able to dodge them.”
“You didn’t see the security footage,” Omen muttered. “We’re not leaving you behind, Disaster.”
We burst out into the hall between the galleries. Shouts echoed off the walls as the onslaught of enemies shooed the visitors out of the museum. Footsteps pounded on the floors. Two squads of guards hurtled toward us from either side.
My pulse stuttered with a flare of adrenaline. I wasn’t dying here, not after all this—not when I hadn’t even gotten to welcome Snap back. Fuck these assholes and the shit-show they rode in on.
Without my even consciously willing it, flames whooshed up over three of the figures racing our way. I tuned out their shrieks with a wince. Thorn threw himself toward the other attackers at our right, and my gaze stopped on a broad window that looked out onto the street just behind them.
“Thorn!” I said. “We can crash right through.”
There’d been a time not that long ago when Thorn would have been too caught up in his own combat focus to pay attention to any suggestions I made. We’d established more of a mutual having-of-each-other’s-backs since then. He followed my motion, made a quick nod of agreement, and swung both fists to gash open two of the guards’ throats. Then he snatched up a couple of steel-toed shoes and hurled them at more distant opponents with a kick hard enough to break their noses.
Omen was slashing through the wave of guards coming from the other direction, but there were a lot of them. They all wore their protective armor, and a few carried the laser-like whips that raked through the shadowkind’s bodies in ways most other weapons couldn’t.
I gritted my teeth, and another two of our attackers vanished into an explosion of flame, along with a couple of displays that let off a whiff of charred leather. My skin tingled, but I didn’t seem to have caught fire myself this time. Having clearer, more deserving targets seemed to help keep that scalding energy focused away from my own body, thank tasseled toe shoes.
The smell of burning flesh wafted through the smoke. Bile rose in my throat, but I ignored my queasiness. I just had to get to the window, and we could be done with this.
Let them all burn. Why the hell shouldn’t they, when that was what they wanted to do to every shadowkind in existence?
Thorn battered a couple more guards and hurled himself past them to the window I’d pointed out. The slam of his fist brought down a hail of broken glass. I sprinted toward it.
A movement by one of the display cabinets next to the window brought my fury back to the surface. I whipped my hand out, and a pair of ancient miner’s boots turned into a fireball that careened toward—
A little boy. It was one of the tourists’ kids: a scrap of a thing all round eyes and flyaway hair, who couldn’t have been more than seven years old. My boot-iful fireball flashed toward him where he’d crouched trembling beside the case. A look of pure terror took him over, and a cry broke from my lips. No, no. I hadn’t meant to—
Something in me heaved with that shock of panic, and the flaming boots veered just enough that they skimmed the boy’s legs rather than roaring right into his face. He squealed, slapping at his jeans.
I’d still hurt him. What if he—
I didn’t get to find out whether I had enough conscience left to make sure I hadn’t flambéed a child. Thorn caught me around the waist and hauled me through the broken window. The fresh outside air slapped me in the face, waking me out of my conflicted anguish.
Get to the RV. Get to Snap. Then it would all be over.
I dashed alongside the warrior around the corner. Omen flickered in and out of view, loping along in his hellhound form, just long enough to show he was with us. As we came into view of the Everymobile, Ruse flung the door open for me and then dove back into the driver’s seat. Thorn vaulted into the shadows around the steps, I threw myself up them and jerked the door shut behind me, and the RV lurched forward with a screech of its tires.
My heart was still thudding. I swayed over to the sofa and collapsed onto it. “Where’s—where’s Snap?” I managed to ask.
The devourer blinked into sight at the other end of the sofa in response to