Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase

1

Sorsha

I wouldn’t have thought my journey toward ending the world would involve a glamoured RV plastered with copious amounts of glitter, but hey, we couldn’t always choose our fates.

At least the glitter was all on the inside—as far as I knew, anyway. At this point, I’d only seen the outside in its various glamoured states. With a push of the button on the dashboard, the luxurious ride could appear to be anything from a school bus to a military submarine.

We hadn’t tried out the latter of those just yet, more’s the pity.

Right now, the RV was in its tour bus guise—an excellent multipurpose façade that could fit in just about anywhere. Like, for example, the parking lot outside a state park’s nature center. The building with all its displays about local flora and fauna was closed for the night, but we weren’t here to brush up on our environmental acumen anyway. About half a mile off one of the forest trails lay a rift that connected this mortal world to the shadow realm.

The seven beings who stood around me—or in the case of my little dragon, Pickle, on me, in his favorite perch on my shoulder—all belonged to that other realm. Only three of them were returning to it this evening, though.

Gisele adjusted her stance next to her partner, Bow, who had his arm around her torso to help her keep her balance. A few days ago, the unicorn shifter had been nearly mortally wounded in a battle with the Company of Light, a secret organization we’d discovered that was dedicated to ridding all worlds of the shadowkind by whatever means necessary. Gisele, Bow, and their friend Cori were heading back to their natural home so she could hurry along her recovery.

She gave the RV one last mournful glance. “You take good care of the Everymobile, all right?” The three of them were kindly lending us their vehicle, glitter and all, to continue our quest to take down the Company. As a thank you slash apology, we’d fixed up the broken windows and other bits that’d been battered in that recent skirmish.

Ruse shot the unicorn shifter one of his typical smirks, making his gorgeous face even more roguish, and patted the RV’s side. “We’ll treat her like a member of the family—the best of everything.”

I jumped in before Omen, the leader of our little group, could bring up the fact that I’d supposedly gotten two of our previous vehicles destroyed—as if it were somehow my fault the Company’s mercenaries had decided to target our means of transportation.

“You’ve been healing so fast,” I said. “I bet you’ll be back to collect her in no time.”

“Back to rejoin you in crushing those assholes,” Gisele muttered, her voice managing to keep its sparkle even when she was grumbling. “There are consequences to messing with a unicorn.”

Omen tipped his head with its tawny, slicked-back hair to her—just slightly, but a major show of respect from the hellhound shifter, who was the most powerful shadowkind I’d ever met. An air of menacing authority radiated off him, as consistent as his breath. “We’ll continue paying out those consequences until you return. We’ve got plenty of bones to pick with the Company.”

“I’m looking forward to clobbering many more of them,” Bow announced. He’d done a good deal of clobbering already with the massive haunches and hooves of his full shadowkind form. After seeing him as a centaur, I couldn’t quite accept the standard human appearance he took on to blend in with mortals. Like all the shadowkind who traveled here, he did keep one of his monstrous features no matter how human he tried to pass as: in his case, a glorious mohawk mane of chestnut hair.

Thorn, the third of my current companions, straightened his considerable height even taller with a flex of his bulging biceps. The moonlight glinted off the one shadowkind feature he couldn’t hide: his crystalline knuckles, also highly useful for bashing our enemies. His deep, gravelly voice came out as somber as always. “The villains have much to answer for.”

They did. Just remembering Gisele’s crumpled form after the ambush, smoke billowing off her like blood would have poured from a mortal, sent a prickle of angry heat through my chest. The sensation flared hotter at the thought of what the murderous Company pricks might be doing to the fourth member of my monstrous quartet now.

Snap had been the sweetest, gentlest being I’d ever met, humans included—even if, yes, he was also capable of inflicting