Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,18
He touched his gentle fingertips to the bruise Omen’s blow had left on my temple, careful not to provoke any further pain. His other arm tightened around me as if he thought the hellhound shifter might change his mind and attempt to charge off with me again.
Huh. Apparently it wasn’t just the warrior wingéd who was prepared to do battle to keep me safe. I’d never thought of Snap as much of a fighter, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go up against him at his fiercest.
I glanced over in time to see Omen practically gaping at the devourer, obviously startled by the chiding. His jaw worked, and his face returned to the same tense, unshakeable mask it’d been since he’d hauled me out of the cave. He took in the rest of our companions assembled around me, all of them now watching him in silence. Possibly wondering whether he was going to attempt to take off Snap’s head for insubordination.
I shifted my weight, preparing to do some defending of my own if the hellhound laid into the devourer, but I didn’t need to. Omen ducked his head, just slightly, and said, “I acted too hastily. It won’t happen again.”
He was admitting he’d made a mistake? My eyebrows shot up. “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” I couldn’t help saying.
Omen’s eyes narrowed as they returned to me, and I tensed all over again. I had the feeling my release wasn’t so much a free pass as a conditional reprieve. And Omen hadn’t bothered to tell me what the conditions of my remaining free were. Probably he’d be noting every slip I made for any excuse to proclaim me a real disaster after all.
“It had better not happen again,” Snap said to the hellhound shifter. “If you try, it might be the end of you.”
I wasn’t sure how easily he could make good on the threat, but given that he had Thorn for back-up, it wasn’t impossible.
Omen appeared to take it seriously enough. His voice turned curt, a few tufts of his hair rising with his temper. “If I say something, I mean it. She’s back, isn’t she?”
Snap made a discontented sound as if to say he wasn’t excusing the matter that easily, but he let it drop for now.
Omen scanned the lot again. “Did we lose the night elf?”
Ruse waved his hand dismissively. “Gloam felt ‘uncomfortable’ with the ‘hostile energies’ and took off.”
My heart sank a little. We were just getting started against an even more powerful enemy that we were anticipating, and we were already shedding allies like a cat shed hair.
The incubus folded his arms over his chest. There was something wary in his expression as he considered his boss. “So, where are we taking things from here?” he asked, a little too purposefully casual to be casual at all. “Off to tackle your good friend who’s mixed herself up with the Company?”
“Tempest is not my ‘friend’,” Omen muttered, and drew himself up a little straighter. He wasn’t the tallest of our bunch by a longshot, but the power and authority he exuded simply standing there gave him a stature that couldn’t be ignored. “But I do know her well, and I think we may be able to use her to our own ends—both to dismantle the Company and to convince the Highest they can lay off on Sorsha. But first we need to get over there.”
Thorn frowned. “Over where?”
“From what she’s said, I assume she’s set up shop in Versailles. She always used to talk about this dream of convincing some royal figure to build a palace so lavish it outdid all others. She finds mortal extravagance both incredibly amusing and appealing. I thought the Sun King’s tastes in that area aligned awfully close to hers—if I’d known she was still alive, I’d have recognized her influence in it immediately.”
Omen squinted past the warrior toward the Everymobile. “Do you think you and your wingéd brethren could handle heaving Darlene through the nearest rift—and bringing her out one of the Paris-area openings?”
“I might even be able to manage it on my own,” Thorn said without hesitation. “I’m not sure how well the mortal vehicle will adapt to the journey, though.”
I’d never heard of any shadowkind taking a mortal-side object that large through the shadow realm before. I’d never been taken into the shadow realm before myself. A chill rippled over my skin despite Snap’s embrace. “Are we sure that I’ll adapt to the journey?”