Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,49
had given Tempest just enough warning for her to dodge. The chain smacked into the side of her robe but didn’t quite whip all the way around her.
Omen lunged at her, shifting into hellhound form in midair, but the sphinx was already diving into the shadows. I’d swear I heard a snarl of harsh laughter echo from the darkness around the tower.
Omen vanished too. I was left with a blob of melted metal, Tempest’s other trapped mortal, and the singed grass that marked my failure.
Fuck a donkey’s dingus.
A burnt smell lingered in the air, and my scalded skin stung with the movement of the breeze. Fresh heat was already roaring up inside me. I strode back and forth across the grass, gulping air and tamping the fire down as well as I could. The stinging sensation spread all the way down to the small of my back.
When Omen reappeared, the two wingéd had joined him. All of them looked both weary and pained.
I stated the obvious. “She escaped again.”
Of course she had. Omen had known we didn’t stand a real chance without tricks up our sleeves—and I’d bungled the damn trick. My fury with myself seared even hotter than the rest of my anger, blistering the bottom of my tongue.
We wouldn’t get another chance like this. She’d never trust Omen again. And in a week or less, she’d have the Company unleashing their hell on this entire realm.
Somehow, the fact that Omen didn’t point out my failure made the guilt slice deeper. “We’ll find another way,” he said. “There’ll be other options.”
But this had been our best one. I’d just gotten so fucking pissed off…
“If all those shithead mortals who joined up with the Company weren’t so excited to murder every being they don’t understand,” I started, and the blistering heat spread through my gums.
“She’s collected the worst of them,” Omen said. “They feed off each other’s hate. They hardly represent all of your kind.”
He couldn’t quite make that reassurance sound convincing. I knew how he felt about mortals. In his mind, I was the exception, and mainly because of the shadowkind side of me. He only cared about shadowkind hurting humans because it brought more rage back down on his own people.
I couldn’t stop moving, my feet carrying me to the base of the tower and back again. If I stopped, if I so much as slowed down, the flames surging through me might spring farther ahead—right out of me.
Thorn took a step toward me, his expression fraught. “Sorsha.”
I shook my head before he could go on. “One fight lost. There’ll be plenty more. There always are, right? I just need to cool off. You all go ahead, fly back to the Everymobile or whatever. I’ll walk it. That should be enough.”
My companions hesitated. “Something makes me think you could use a chaperone,” Omen said, managing to keep his tone mild.
I glared at him, reining in the fire so well for just a moment that the searing dwindled away. “I know what I need better than you do. And what I need is a good long walk without anyone judging my every move. We all know I fucked up here. Please don’t rub it in. I promise Darlene will be perfectly safe from me by the time I get there.”
He paused, his face tensing, but he didn’t snap back. When he replied, it was in the same mild voice. “I know you gave it everything you had, and I can’t judge you badly for that. You need space to work out your judgments of yourself? It’s yours. If you lose your way, call us and we’ll come get you.”
Not a chance I’d humiliate myself like that. I nodded curtly.
Thorn frowned. “Are you sure? I could give you space but still stay within sight, in case you should have need of me.”
My loyal warrior with his determination to protect me. The worst part was, his insistence only made the fire inside me prickle more fiercely.
“Did you see any other shadowkind around, or people who might be working with Tempest?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted.
“Then I shouldn’t ‘have need.’ Give me a chance to breathe, all right?”
Thorn still looked reluctant, but he followed Omen and Flint into the shadows at his boss’s gesture.
Tempest’s dupe kept standing there, but I felt more like burning him to a crisp than doing anything to help him. I spun on my heel and stalked away from the tower.