Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,99

my ears, a gleaming bolt of metal pierced the darkness and rammed into Omen’s back.

27

Sorsha

The metal projectile stabbed right through Omen’s heart, the pointed tip tearing through his shirt as it burst from the middle of his chest. A plume of smoke so thick it hid his face gushed up from the wound. His body sagged into me.

A cry wrenched from my throat. “Omen? Omen!”

My frantic appeal did nothing to stop his legs from crumpling. I clutched at him, but my attempts to steady him only sent the rest of him falling to sprawl on the dirty asphalt. The smack of his back hitting the ground drove the stake through farther.

A fucking stake, made of silver and iron, like some kind of three-in-one multipurpose monster-murdering device for mortals who couldn’t tell the difference between vamps, werewolves, and fae.

I dropped to my knees beside my lover, searching his slack features, but the concentration of those metals ripping through his most vital physical organ was enough to murder even a hellhound.

Omen’s head lolled to the side, his eyelids twitching. The faintest wheeze whistled from his lungs—and then every part of him went limp, oblivious to my shouts and my shaking of his shoulders.

More smoke billowed up in a congealing cloud. The color had already drained from his lifeless face. He looked more like a wax figure than a man—a man who’d once contained so much snark and power—a man I’d have put my own existence on the line for if there’d been the slightest chance—

Fury surged through me, scorching hot. It blotted out every thought except one question burning through my mind: Who did this?

My head jerked up. Fire blazed from my body in every direction, but most of it downward. The rush of searing flames propelling me up into the air—up over the swarm of shadowkind gathered around us, up into the night sky, glaring in the direction from which the stake had flown.

A woman was crouched on the rooftop of the low building that stood between the parking lot and the taller brick structure that had been Tempest’s hideout. She was decked out in the standard Company armor, shoving another gleaming bolt into a crossbow.

My hands clenched at my sides, my fingers branding my palms with their scorching heat. Die.

Before she could end another shadowkind life, a surge of flame shot up from beneath the woman’s feet. In seconds, it had swallowed her completely, even her shriek of pain. Her body crumpled much like Omen’s had, the fire still eating away at it, but watching her form shrivel and blacken didn’t tame the rage coursing through me one bit.

A thumping of footsteps reached my ears through the roar of the flames that held me. A mass of Company lackeys were running toward the crowd of shadowkind. One of them was fumbling with a plastic box, yanking it open and drawing out one of several laboratory vials—

Tempest’s disease. Of course her death wouldn’t stop the asshole mortals who had no idea that her creation would end them as quickly as the shadowkind it infected. Of course their first thought while their colleagues lay dying and their building in shambles was to unleash that horror on the world.

Not today, motherfuckers.

Burn. Burn them all to the fucking ground.

More fury flared through me, and flames erupted all through the swarm of would-be exterminators. I squeezed my fists tighter. The glass of the vials melted, fusing together and snuffing out the deadly microbes that floated within.

That wasn’t enough either. Who knew how much more of the Company’s vile invention was still stockpiled in that building—or in other facilities across the world? How many sites and people held the information to recreate it?

They all had to go. Every last one of the pricks who’d dreamed of ridding the world of shadowkind, who’d tortured and slaughtered for their own satisfaction, and the empire they’d built could damn well die with them.

My flames raced along the sidewalk to the smashed-open building. The roar beneath me propelled me higher still. More fire burst from my back with a stinging sensation that was offset by the rush of satisfaction as crackling flames swept through the air on either side of me to form wings.

They’d messed with a fucking phoenix, and every last one of them was going to burn.

I poured my rage toward the brick structure, and an inferno as sizzling as the bonfire inside me engulfed it. The taint of all those vicious intentions crawled over my skin. Without