Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,4
all the other beings in both realms?
The little dragon our mortal had looked after appeared to be equally bewildered. Pickle darted here and there through the broken shards of plates and wine glasses that littered the floor, letting out harsh little squeaks at no one in particular. I tried holding out my hand and clucking my tongue at him the way I’d seen Sorsha do, but he just snorted louder and snapped at the table leg as if it were responsible for her disappearance.
Thorn opened and closed his massive fists at his sides, still pacing. His low voice boomed through the room. “If he’s already harmed her—he’ll face a reckoning, I can say that much.”
The other wingéd among us, an equally massive shadowkind man named Flint who’d joined our party only a few days ago, glanced up where he was sitting across from me at the table. “If he saw something in her that made him feel she was that much of a threat—”
The warrior rounded on him. “You don’t know anything about her! He would still be in the Company’s clutches, enduring their torture, if she hadn’t helped us free him. She is the kindest and most compassionate being I’ve ever had the honor of standing beside. I’ve never seen her hurt any who didn’t deserve as much ten times over.”
Flint set his jaw as if it were made of the same stone as his name, apparently deciding it was better not to speak at all. Omen had wanted to keep the full secret of Sorsha’s identity secret from the newer shadowkind in our group, so we hadn’t shared the entire story with them, but it’d been impossible for them not to notice him tearing off with her. I supposed we’d have to tell them some version of the truth, just not all of it.
Ruse swiped his hands over his face, which had turned pallid in the time since Omen’s betrayal, and looked up at us from where he was leaning against the wall near the driver’s seat. “All that is true, and Omen could still be doing whatever the hell he wants with her. How can we stop him? It could already be done.”
“He might not have completed that betrayal yet. He knows how valuable she is to his cause, and he wouldn’t want to jeopardize that. I know he’s dedicated to ending the Company’s plans.” Thorn swung around again, a dark crimson gleam flashing in his near-black eyes. “I might not have anticipated this, but I have known him a long time. If he’s still in the mortal realm, I may be able to locate him.”
My heart leapt, and I sprang to my feet with that sensation. “What are we waiting for, then? Let’s find Sorsha.”
The incubus straightened up too, but Thorn shook his head at both of us. “I’ll move much faster on my own with no need for explanations, and I’m the only one of us who has any chance of matching him if it comes to a fight. I’ll return as soon as I’m able.”
“Thorn!” Ruse protested, but the warrior didn’t respond. He vanished into the shadows and had raced off beyond the range of my awareness before I’d so much as blinked.
“Big bad angel taking off without the rest of us,” Antic muttered in a sing-song voice, crunching broken shards under her feet in time with the rhythm. The imp took a couple of jabs at the kitchen counter, which was about the same height as her head. “I’d give that hellhound what-for.”
“Yes, and a few seconds after that, you’d be cinders,” Ruse said dryly, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in the attempt at humor. He grimaced at the floor. “I should have realized as soon as he started talking about—all of it. I should have… I don’t know. Fuck.”
He cast about as if looking for something to hold onto, and a glimmer of an idea quivered through my head.
“Did he touch anything?” I asked, glancing around.
Ruse paused and stared at me. “What? Who?”
“Omen. When he was in here.”
“I don’t see what that matters after—”
I didn’t normally interrupt my companions. Normally I listened carefully to whatever they were saying, since all of them had much more experience than I did in either realm and especially this mortal one. But the sting of Omen’s violent departure and my wrenching worries for Sorsha sent a surge of determination rushing through me.
I had a purpose here. There was a reason Omen had brought me