Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,59

legs, but an embarrassingly large part of me wanted to.

I couldn’t help imagining the choice remarks Sorsha would have made about that. Which annoyed me even though she wasn’t around to actually make them, doubly so because of the other emotions that stirred at the memory of the glint that lit in her bright eyes with her teasing.

Our mortal ally had tangled herself up far too much in my thoughts.

“You return, hellhound,” one of the other Highest rumbled. They towered so close together I’d never been entirely sure how many of them there were. “Have you tired of your quest?”

I drew myself up with as much confidence as I could exude without crossing the line into insubordination. “Not at all. Actually, that’s what I came to talk to you about.”

There was a general rumbling between more than one of the beings—a chorus of disgruntledness. I thought it was a different one who spoke up next.

“When we permitted you to take your leave on this endeavour you requested to pursue, it was with the understanding that we had no interest in it ourselves.”

The “permitted” remark rankled, even if it was technically accurate. “I know,” I said. “But I thought you might be interested now that I’ve discovered more. The harm I thought was being done to our kind—it’s much more serious and widespread than I ever suspected.”

Another of the Highest let out a sound that could only be described as a grunt, which even the echoing quality of their voices couldn’t make portentous. “Are there rabble-rousers like yourself fanning the flames of ire again? We can send a host to bring them in line—”

“No,” I cut in, instinctively bracing myself. For good reason, because an instant after my failure of manners, a jab of pain coursed across my throat like the jerk of a choke chain—if that choke chain had been buried within my flesh.

I barrelled onward. “I haven’t seen any of our kind inciting the conflict at all. The offense is all on the mortals’ side. There’s a large collective of humans spread out across the mortal realm, determined to destroy not just every being of our sort on their side but the entire shadow realm as well.”

“Hrmph. Not surprising after all the work you and your ilk did to stir up those hostilities in the past.”

My jaw clenched. I didn’t need them to remind me of my complicity in the problem. That was exactly why I couldn’t back down now and let the Company do their vicious work unimpeded. I’d helped set the stage for them, and I’d damn well yank it out from under them if I possibly could.

“What these mortals are attempting goes far beyond any damage the shadowkind ever caused them. They’re attempting an outright extermination. And from what we’ve uncovered, they’re close to achieving it. They’re even working on ways to extend their influence through the rifts. They want all of us dead.”

And that includes you, I thought but kept in. The Highest could read between the lines. The last thing they’d appreciate was a being beneath them suggesting they were in any way vulnerable.

One let out a bellowing sort of chuckle. “They could never penetrate our home. You may disdain the creatures, hellhound, but you give them too much respect at the same time. They are frail, waning beings who barely breathe before they’re gasping their last.”

It would seem like that to the Highest when they’d been around who knew how many millennia. As if a human lifetime wasn’t plenty long enough to wreak all kinds of havoc.

Some part of me abruptly wished that Sorsha were here, just to see what she’d say to these lumbering ancients. Better that she wasn’t, though, if it’d even been possible. I’d get to admire her brashness and the flare of that flaming hair for about two seconds before she was down one of these leviathans’ gullets.

I hadn’t really expected any other answer. But for the sake of being at least as intrepid as that one mortal, I gave it a final go. “I think they might come up with a way. But even if they don’t, they’re tormenting and killing all sorts of mortal-side shadowkind.”

The sublime presences of the Highest loomed even larger over me. “That is not our concern. We regulate the rest of you when we must, but we don’t trouble ourselves with mortals. If one of our kind has been intensifying the problem, then perhaps we would step in, as we did with you…