Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,96

I got my opening, she was going to regret every bit of the pain she’d inflicted and urged others to inflict, no matter how eagerly those mortals had leapt to the task.

Heat seared across my tongue. I swallowed hard, gritting my teeth, and aimed it along my gum. I’d better be ready.

All at once, Tempest heaved upward. A large circle of metal swung up and over to bang against asphalt. Still clutching me tightly, the sphinx clambered out into the cool night air that drifted through a vacant parking lot. A ratty shopping bag coasted by us.

It wasn’t the most glamorous escape route. I guessed I was cramping poor Tempest’s style.

Not for long, it seemed. With a sweep of her wings, we lifted off the ground. Yells and a metallic crunching sound careened from somewhere down the street. I’d better figure out exactly what mess we were leaving behind before I took my shot at destroying the woman who’d set it all in motion.

Twisting my head, I made out a big brick building with lights flashing in some of the windows. Immense, monstrous silhouettes charged in and out of view. One wall was crumpled in across most of the left side. A few human figures scrambled through the rubble. As I watched, a shadowkind of some sort sprang at one and slashed through his neck. Several more creatures tore from the darkness in pursuit of the others.

I hadn’t seen any being I recognized yet. Maybe this really didn’t have anything to do with my crew. Where in Pete’s name would Omen and the others have found themselves this many new allies so fast—if the hellhound shifter would even have considered sticking out his neck to ask without me badgering him about it?

Tempest wrapped her other foreleg around me again now that her wings were doing most of the work. As she soared higher into the air, the pressure squeezed my ribs against my lungs. My voice came out more strained than I liked. “Pissed off a whole lot of beings this time, did you?”

“They don’t even know what they’re intruding on,” Tempest muttered. “Nitwits, the whole horde of them. Bashing their way in, yammering about some ruby they were looking for. If I’d had the time, I’d have directed them to a fucking jewelry store and introduced a diamond cutter to their vital organs.”

I just barely bit back a startled laugh. Ruby—that horde of shadowkind was looking for me.

And who knew of me as Ruby other than my closest companions… and the minions of the Highest, who wanted me dead to the point that they’d spent twenty-five years scouring the mortal realm for me?

Omen had stuck his neck out, all right. I never would have expected him to go this far. Technically, he’d stuck my neck out too, but it wasn’t as if my life hadn’t been under plenty of threat as it was. He’d used the Highest’s forces as his own tool to crash Tempest’s party.

I had kept telling him that getting his fellow shadowkind in on the cause was our best bet of coming out on top. Nice that he’d finally embraced my approach whole-heartedly.

Of course, all his efforts would amount to jack shit if I let this psychotic sphinx carry me off to conduct her nefarious schemes elsewhere.

Tempest must have sensed the readying of my muscles. She glared down at me. “Throw one whiff of flame at me and we’ll find out whether you can survive a trip into the shadows, phoenix.”

What would happen if I didn’t? Would I die as she wrenched me into the darkness, or would she find herself losing her grip on me?

We were swaying with the beating of her wings at least thirty feet above the ground now. The odds of surviving a fall weren’t in my favor. But at this point, all that mattered to me was that my captor didn’t survive.

Even with all the rage scorching my insides, I might not be able to completely destroy her on my own. If Omen could use the Highest’s minions, there was nothing stopping me from borrowing his strategy in turn.

“You think you know everything, but you have no idea,” I told Tempest, and sang another mangled lyric at her. “Not very smart, and you’re insane, you can shove your mad game.”

“Big talk from a little birdie in the clutches of a cat.”

“We’ll see how long that lasts.” I tipped back my head and bellowed at the top of my lungs, propelling a