hand on my arm and nuzzled the back of my head in a way that sent a flutter through my abdomen that was totally inappropriate to the situation.
The others were standing around our two captives. Omen rubbed his hands together. “Get their gear off, and we’ll see how much we can drag out of these miscreants tonight.”
6
Sorsha
Interrogation was much less painful when you had an incubus in play, both for those of us on the interrogator’s side and, I had to assume, for the victims. No need for water torture or trolleys laid with knives and pliers when a little charmed conversation would get them spilling their secrets much more effectively.
Ruse had chatted up our two captives while they’d still been pinned against the ground. As soon as they’d been thoroughly under his thrall, we’d let them up and marched them into the back of their own truck. Now, we were parked in an isolated part of town, standing in a semi-circle facing the two star-sword dudes, who sat against the wall of the compartment.
The incubus might have softened up these two, but naturally Omen was determined to handle most of the actual questioning. His eyes gleamed, even narrower than usual under the stark glow of the one lamp we’d turned on—one that’d been meant to hold other shadowkind as prisoners under much harsher circumstances.
The specifics of those circumstances was clearly the largest question on his mind. He crossed his arms over his chest, appearing to just barely hold himself back from shooting the two guys a death glare. Ruse’s illusion that we were all fantastic friends would only hold if Bossypants didn’t push them too far in the opposite direction.
“What were you planning on doing with the shadowkind being you were buying from that collector?” he asked.
One of the men stirred, a hopeful expression coming over his face as if he wanted nothing more than to please his kidnappers with his answer. “We’d meet with the other truck and hand it off.”
This was at least a two-stage manoeuvre, then. Not surprising, considering the lengths we’d seen these people go to for caution’s sake before.
Omen frowned. “And where would the other truck have taken it?”
“We don’t know,” the other guy said. “The people who give us our instructions, they like to keep all the pieces separate. They say it’s more secure that way. It’s a good thing—what if someone who wasn’t looking out for us had grabbed us instead of you?”
My lips twitched, but I managed to swallow a laugh. Had Ruse wiped the memory of what Thorn and Omen had done to their colleagues from their minds, or had he simply convinced them that those guys had been asking to have their skulls bashed in?
It would have been nice if we could have tracked down the second set of Company lackeys, but they’d have realized the hand-off had gone wrong by now. Wherever they’d been meant to meet these dudes, they and anything they could have told us would be long gone. So much for finding the new base of operations.
Omen didn’t look remotely satisfied with the answer he’d gotten either. “Do your ‘people’ tell you anything about what they do with the shadowkind they’re gathering once they have them?”
The first guy brightened. “Yes. A little. They’re looking for ways to end the beasts’ evil influence on our world. The Company of Light will eradicate all the monsters that prey on us. But they’re slippery demons—just killing some here and there isn’t good enough. They’re looking for a better way.”
I wasn’t even one of those slippery demons myself, and I automatically bristled on behalf of my companions. Snap tucked his arm around my waist in a gesture of comfort, but his divinely sweet face was drawn. I squeezed his hand in return. He’d spent little time mortal-side before now—he might never have heard a human talk about how much they detested beings like him before. This supposed “monster” was more compassionate than most human beings I knew.
A hint of otherworldly smolder flickered in Thorn’s eyes. The huge warrior took a deliberate step closer, looming almost to the roof of the compartment with an aura of menace, but Omen held up his hand. His mouth had formed a rigid smile.
He didn’t like what the guy had said, but it was exactly the attitude he’d expected.
“The Company of Light,” he repeated. “Is that what your organization calls itself?”
The man nodded. “We have to keep our cause secret, because backlash from the