Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,80
through my own jaws?
This was what my beloved and my friends saw in me: not a monster giving in to viciousness, but a shadowkind with an ability that could reverse an immense catastrophe. I could do this. I was meant to do this. And I found I could think that without cringing for the first time since that night long ago when I’d sunk my teeth into my first meal’s skull unknowingly.
Why had I joined Omen’s cause at all if I wasn’t going to give this mission everything I had?
While I’d grappled with myself, Ruse and Thorn had conveyed the situation to our captive as well as they could with motions and scribbled words. He shook his head against the floor with a defiant scowl. Inhaling slowly, I crouched beside him.
“You are helping to hurt many people who’ve done nothing wrong,” I told him, in case some of my meaning might travel into him even if he couldn’t hear my voice. “I must hurt you to make sure those horrors end. It’s what I was made for—I won’t deny it. Sometimes it takes a monster to fight monsters.”
I knew in that moment through my entire body that as long as I cared about this realm and mine and all the beings in them, I wouldn’t ever let my monstrousness overwhelm me.
Greenish light glittered across my vision. I gave myself over to the change into my full devourer form. The stretch of my limbs and sprouting of sharper teeth came over me as though I were breaking free of a blanket that had been wrapped around me suffocatingly tight. A burn that was almost pleasant spread through my muscles.
Part of me would enjoy this act, as horrifying as it was. That was all right too. The enjoyment could belong to the good I knew I was doing even as I mourned the agony that came with it.
My jaw gaped open. Pulled by a mix of determination, justness, and the swelling hunger, I clamped my teeth shut around the man’s head.
I’d forgotten how intense the rush of images could be. Sights and sounds and, oh, the tastes surged through me, so vivid they might have swept away my sense of purpose if I hadn’t held on tight.
Yes, the rush of a young boy racing across a field to an ice cream truck—and the creamy sweetness flooding his mouth afterward—was meant to be savored. Yes, I could allow a moment’s satisfaction from his internal scream as I scoured through the memory of his teenage self smashing someone else’s prized violin into the smallest pieces his heels could produce. But farther, deeper, there would be the answers we needed.
There would be a sphinx and awful promises and mysteries unraveled. And I could devour until I found them.
The moments I’d been searching for hit me unexpectedly: a flash of amber eyes, graceful movements of bejeweled hands that I couldn’t follow, a caustic sense of agreement racing through the man in response. Tall towers, deep caverns, dry heat and damp darkness, chambers lit by an artificial glow. Glints of the metals he could pass but his master couldn’t tolerate. Writing, carved or painted, that he snapped photos of or copied with painstaking precision.
Spurts of triumph. Maybe this time would be enough. Maybe this time.
I lingered over every morsel as long as I could, inhaling every detail and marking in my own memory. The man’s silent wail of agony wound through the images brittler and harsher, until—snap!
My hunger severed the last thread. Nothing remained inside his husk of a body.
I heaved myself backward, falling into my regular mortal body as I did. Emotions still churned through me, some of them mine and some of them my victim’s, but the strongest sensation that expanded in my chest was relief.
The words spilled out of me. “He found writings—stories about shadowkind weaknesses. Rumors of poisons and other toxins. It wasn’t enough. She wanted more. There were claims of mortals sickening shadowkind and sickening themselves in turn. Ways to protect against that too. He saw just a day or two ago— To shield against the weaknesses one or the other possesses, you must contain both their strengths. I don’t know what that means, but Tempest was pleased when he told her. And… something about a place with many large rocks. He found a painting of it. Energies could resonate from it. I think she decided to unleash her disease from there.”