them take some. Is that why you’ve unleashed such widespread destruction? To keep the Torva’ox from trickling even into human souls?”
“By the time the next Breaking Moon rises, we’ll have thinned their herd either by turning them into wretches or killing them outright.”
“And,” she mused, “we’ll be in control of the wretches?”
Hearing the breath coming from Liam was enough to paint the picture of his toothy smile in Paige’s mind. “Now we’re on the same page,” he said.
“But this is not the only spot where the Torva’ox flows,” Minh pointed out.
He looked down at the pit as if there was no looking away. “This is where the first Full Blood has been born in the last thirteen decades. There is no stronger source and there is no better time for us to claim it. The Skinners will collect themselves before too long, but for now they are too weak to be a threat. The Nymar are entrenched, which will only make them overconfident. The humans have always been curious, but now they have the means to scour every wooded patch of land, every cave, and every corner of the desert from space.”
“If that were true, they’d be able to find their own criminals.”
“Human criminals are like the leeches, themselves,” he sneered. “They hide for years at a time, skulking in basements like Mongrel rats or spending every dollar they steal to purchase new names and identities. Do you want to start living like that?”
In a softer voice Minh said, “Some of us already have.”
Liam pivoted around so quickly that Paige was certain she’d been spotted. Instead, he hung his head low while speaking in a voice that rumbled like a tremor through the charged soil beneath the house. “The only reason we would ever fall from the top of the pecking order on this earth would be if we allowed it, and there isn’t one damned reason why we would allow such a thing.”
“We used to go where we pleased,” Minh said in a soft, almost comforting tone. “We avoided humans simply because they were noisy, arrogant, and stank of smoke and metal. When we were curious as to how they were living, we walked among them. The ones that stepped out of line, we wiped off the face of the planet. Then the Nymar spread like a plague and lied well enough to convince us that staying in the cities for too long was more trouble than it was worth. I think Kawosa had something to do with that. He is Ktseena. Some say he can look into the soul of any shapeshifter.”
“He may have spawned us in one way or another,” Liam sneered, “but he can’t look into my soul any more than a father can know what’s truly going on inside his son. If he knew what was goin’ on inside of me, he would never have left me alone for so long.”
Minh approached him in the form of a lean, finely toned human. Her long black hair hung down over smooth shoulders and pert, firm breasts. Even in the little bit of light coming through the window, her skin had the color of lightly creamed coffee. “As more power flows through us, the temptation will arise for us to thin our own herd. Esteban already met Randolph, which means the first blood has already been spilt. The last time we fought among ourselves this way, entire cities were laid to waste. Human history records them as natural disasters only because there weren’t enough of them left on those battlefields to record the truth.”
“I don’t know about you, darlin’,” Liam growled, “but I am a natural disaster.”
A cold knot formed in Paige’s stomach. For anyone else on earth, that statement would have been hot air. Hearing it spoken by a Full Blood was like finding out that a tornado was not only conscious but eager to turn the next midwestern town into a swirling cloud of splinters and screaming motorists.
“There are already precious few of us on earth,” Minh continued. “and there will be even fewer after a fight like that.”
“And those of us that remain will have the power we should have had all along! Do you even know what can be done by someone who wields a lion’s share of the Torva’ox?”
“I know the legends, but those aren’t enough to start killing our own kind and laying waste to so many humans. They may be a weaker species, but they are persistent, they are vengeful,