Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,85
it seems most likely she’ll be in southern England.” Omen grimaced. “Which hardly narrows our search down.”
Ruse’s fingers were flying over his phone, which he’d pulled out the moment we’d emerged. “Better than scouring all of Europe. I’ve already gotten my hacker on the job, pulling more details on the suspicious activity he’s already dug up in that region. He should be able to help us get a more specific location.”
Snap shifted on his feet, the neon green of his shadowkind form whirling in his eyes. “We can’t just stay here waiting. We’ve got to start our own search as quickly as we can.”
Bow got up too. “We’ll be right there with you.” The centaur glanced at Gisele. “Do you think it’ll be safe to leave the Everymobile here for however long we’re gone?”
Mortals did have a habit of getting finicky about any vehicle sitting in the same spot for what they deemed was an inappropriate length of time, which from what I’d gathered often wasn’t very long at all.
Gisele frowned and then tossed back her hair. “Let’s not risk it. We might need a good getaway vehicle once we’re there anyway. And it’ll be nice to give Sorsha a familiar place to recover in as soon as we’ve rescued her. The Everymobile survived one trip through the shadow realm—I’m sure she can handle one more, when it’s this important.”
Omen’s lips twitched with a hint of strained amusement. “We’ll do our best to keep the trip short for minimal side effects. Perhaps all her new features will revert back to normal on the second time through.” He motioned to the driver’s seat. “Would one of you prefer to do the honors? The nearest rift isn’t far.”
Gisele hopped up behind the wheel. With a look of utter determination, she hit the gas and turned the RV in the direction he indicated.
The portal between the mortal realm and our natural home was invisible to human senses, but I assumed all of us could sense the faint vibration rippling through our bodies that heightened the nearer we came. This one lay over open waters just beyond the shore, around a peninsula from the harbor. The quiet of the night allowed us to veer down a darkened side-road and heave the vehicle out of the physical world into the shadows, all of us gripping its walls to speed the transition.
We propelled it toward the rift, the thrum of the opening pulling us in like a vacuum. We’d just shot through into the amorphous world on the other side, a thick chill condensing around my being, when a familiar voice carried through the churning darkness.
“Thorn! I was just coming in search of you.”
It was Flint’s deeply melancholy tone. We all stopped, and I turned to face my fellow warrior. His presence loomed large and weighty in the murky atmosphere.
“What is it?” I asked with a flicker of hope. Had he decided to rejoin us? Was it possible the other wingéd from Rome might aid us in this battle after all?
But as he drew nearer, my hopes were extinguished with the impression I got that he was bracing himself. He wasn’t pleased with what he was about to say.
“Our brethren wish for you to attend to them. They have great need of your attendance.”
Irritation prickled through me before I could catch it. I shouldn’t resent those who had given so much of themselves while I’d escaped our past essentially unscathed. And yet—if I accepted this delay, how scathed might my lady be by the time I reached her?
Omen made the decision for me before I had to grapple with my conflicting responsibilities. “Go. See if you can stir them into getting off their asses and pitching in before Tempest sends the whole world to hell. It’ll take us some time to find out where Sorsha’s being held anyway. You can smash your way through to her when you get back.”
Yes. I could meet both responsibilities—and perhaps turn one into part of the solution to the other. I nodded to Omen and set off in a different direction from my companions.
It would have been difficult for me to explain to a mortal how exactly we ascertained which rift led where and how we reached those rifts in our own realm. The portals floated here and there with hints of the sensations that waited on the other side. One could spring through any at random for a trip of unexpectedness or focus on the place one most wanted