Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,50
blazed hotter. My fingernails dug into my palms within my fists. I passed rows of stucco buildings, restaurant patios abandoned for the night, shadowed doorways and winding alleys. All the windows were dark, any inhabitants sleeping behind them.
Sleeping and blissfully unaware of the terrors being committed around them. Would they care even if they knew? The Company tortured and murdered shadowkind, but the whole rest of the human race happily told their ghost stories and made their monster movies and fueled that hatred, and maybe they’d have all joined in if they’d realized how real those creatures actually were.
Pricks and bastards, all of them. And I was too, wasn’t I, wanting even for that brief moment to blame Tempest for their crimes? The real monsters were right here, all around us, laughing and living their mindless lives—
A wave of heat so huge it qualified as a tsunami rolled through me—and out of me. Flames crashed and caught all across the face of the buildings along the street ahead of me. More lashed down the backs of my arms and legs.
I dropped to the ground, smacking my limbs against the pavement to put out the fire. That did nothing for the inferno already swallowing up the entire block of shops I’d been approaching.
The fire roared, smoke billowing up. Glass shattered as the flames whipped higher. Cries rose to join it as people in the apartment building across the street woke to the blaze. They were lucky my flames hadn’t headed in that direction, burning up them instead of store merchandise.
My gut twisted into one huge knot. I was lucky.
The heat that washed over me on the night wind woke up a renewed throbbing across all the spots I’d been burned myself. I froze, staring—at a fruit and vegetable market where all the delicacies my devourer would have swooned over had already blackened. At a musical instrument vendor where piano strings were twanging as they snapped. At a watch store where the melting glass faces in the shattered window showed I’d literally made time fry.
I’d done that. Dozens of people’s livelihoods were being incinerated before my eyes because of the fury I’d let loose. And there wasn’t a single thing I could do to calm those flames. Every part of me ached with the suspicion that if I reached with my power to try to control the fire, I’d only end up hurling out more.
So I followed the strategy that had served me so well in my career as a thief—I ran as fast as my feet would take me.
The crackling roar of the fire and then the swell of sirens dogged me long after I’d left the scene behind. As I dragged in each breath, a smoky smell congealed in my lungs. I pushed myself onward toward the spot where the RV was waiting, a heavier sensation welling up inside me, drowning the last of my inner fire.
I was a menace. How much more was I going to destroy before this battle was over? What if the Highest were right? What if I was a greater threat to both mortals and shadowkind than Tempest had ever been?
I should march right into the Everymobile and tell Omen to take me to the Highest to meet the fate I’d escaped so long.
I paused and shut my eyes. The hopelessness squeezed around my ribs, suffocating. But through it, the image of Tempest’s gleaming slit-pupil eyes, of her broken-glass laugh, returned to me.
She’d provoked me. She’d figured out the best buttons to push and jammed on them like a six-year-old pulling an elevator prank. She’d wanted me to explode, probably way more than I actually had, so she could snicker about it afterward.
I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. And if I gave up, I’d only be stepping out of Tempest’s way. She’d like that, wouldn’t she?
I’d been our best chance of stopping her, and maybe I’d get another chance.
I knew better what to expect from her now. The others were counting on me. I had to stick with this at least long enough to save the rest of the world from the brutal chaos she intended to inflict on it.
And after that… then maybe I’d feel I needed to be put down. But not yet. Too much was riding on me. Too many lives hung in the balance.
I raised my chin and started walking again. The air that filled my lungs tasted cleaner now. The sirens had faded away.