Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,46
his fists clenched where he’d raised them level with his chest. Determination shone in his dark eyes, but when he glanced toward us, taking in my near-stumble as Ruse helped me along, his expression shifted from severe to startled and back again in an instant.
“What have they done to her?” he demanded, and swung toward the door again as if he could pummel the attackers on the other side with the force of his glare alone.
“Some type of drug—meant to knock her out, I think. Either they figured it works on shadowkind too, or they didn’t know we’d be here.” Ruse hustled me to the bedroom. “Come on.”
“If they don’t know we’re here, they might not have—”
“Come,” Ruse insisted. “We can’t know either way. Is it worth risking us all ending up in cages again—or dead? Remember who was right the last time we got overwhelmed?”
Thorn let out an extended curse under his breath and swiveled toward us. At the same second, one final blow to the door burst the hinges if not the deadbolt. As it bowed into the hall, Ruse yanked me through the bedroom doorway.
“Open the window,” he ordered Snap.
Snap shoved at the pane, which slid upward with a grating sound. My gaze caught on the curve of my backpack peeking from beneath the bed, and a cold shot of panic surged through me.
“There’s evidence here—if they see it, they’ll know for sure—I have to—”
My sentences broke with my colliding thoughts so many times I decided I was better off just acting rather than trying to explain myself. I grabbed the backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and then cast a frantic look around the room.
What else might I have lying around that would tell the invaders I was not just interested in Omen but had freed and destroyed the possessions of at least a dozen major collectors across the past few years? Shit, shit, shit.
If word got out that I was the sticky-fingered, monster-emancipating fire-starter, every hunter and collector in the state, possibly the country, would be looking to come at me the way they’d murdered my parents. I wouldn’t be able to turn to the Fund either—they’d probably disown me.
The door clattered all the way to the floor, and shouts rang out from the hall. Thorn let out a wordless rumble, and there was an impact that sounded like his knuckles meeting flesh, but his own grunt of pain followed it. They had something that could hurt him.
There wasn’t time to come up with a five-point plan of carefully considered action. My mind latched onto the strategy that had been my saving grace every other time I’d needed to cover my tracks.
As Ruse dragged me to the open window, a rush of warm summer air washing away the air-conditioned cool, I dug my bottle of kerosene and my lighter out of the backpack. My arm jerked, splattering the fluid in an arc across vanity, bookcase, and bed. “Thorn!” I yelled, and flicked on the lighter.
With a lurch of my heart, the flame seemed to leap from the tool I was clutching to my target before my hand had even reached the vanity. It licked across the polished surface with a waft of sharper heat and coursed along the trail of kerosene—over the floor, up my mussed sheets.
Ruse let out a hoarse chuckle. I snatched Pickle up, stuffed him into my purse as far as he’d go, and scrambled out the window after the incubus. Snap had already disappeared somewhere below.
More hollers, thuds, and grunts carried from behind us. The flames hissed, flaring higher—and then Thorn was charging through them, his fists bloody, a black mark slashed across his jaw where I guessed he was going to add another scar to his collection.
He spun just as he reached the window and exhaled a massive breath with the force of bellows at a forge. The flames whipped up all across the floor, crawling the walls toward the ceiling. A few figures I could only hazily make out through the flashes of light and the clotting smoke yanked themselves to a halt on the threshold. I tore my gaze away and dashed for the ladder.
The fire would only hold them off for so long. If they decided they couldn’t charge through it, they’d race down to try to cut us off on the street.
A shout from below told me our attackers had been one step ahead. Someone had staked out the fire escape too. I wavered where I’d