back into the sofa cushions, my phone spinning from my fingers. I threw my arms over my head just in time to shield it as the entire RV careened over.
I tumbled toward the roof, and the window next to me shattered. Metal screeched as the vehicle skidded on its side across the asphalt.
“It’s them!” I gasped out over the throbbing where my recently healed shoulder had slammed into a ridge in the wall. “The Company. They knew we were coming.”
My shadowkind companions whirled around me, flashing in and out of the patches of darkness. Footsteps were thumping outside. “Can you get up, Sorsha?” Thorn hollered, and I shoved myself onto my feet, snatching up a trembling Pickle as I did. Given the way the Company had blasted our last two vehicles, I had no reason to believe I was safer in here than out there on the street.
Omen had already bashed the door open in what was now the ceiling of the toppled RV. I ran to it, and Thorn heaved me up onto the steel side that still, miraculously, looked like a city bus.
The others had darted outside through the shadows. Maybe it’d be better if they stayed there. Figures in typical Company of Light armor were rushing all around the RV, spilling from the armored truck that must have rammed us. “Get back, get back!” more distant voices were yelling at pedestrians who’d been nearby.
Taking in the chaos in those initial few seconds, my first chilling thought was that the shadowkind should leave me. Get the hell out of here as fast as they could, and let the Company take out their frustrations on the one being who couldn’t slip away through the shadows. There were too many of the mercenaries—they’d caught us too off-guard—
But Thorn leapt out of the RV in his solid form without any hint of considering abandoning me. The swing of his fist gouged out the face of one soldier who’d been springing at me. As another clambered onto the overturned vehicle, he slammed his heel into the back of the man’s head.
On the ground, someone… rode by on horseback? Holy mother of a mongoose, no, that was Bow, charging at our attackers with a battle cry and an actual bow notched with an arrow that seemed to have appeared alongside his full shadowkind form. His human-like torso emerged from the shoulders of a chestnut stallion’s body.
With a scream that was somehow silvery sweet, another horse charged into the soldiers’ midst—a graceful ivory animal with tassels of hair sprouting above her slender hooves and a brilliant horn sparkling where it jutted from her forehead. At least, it sparkled for the instant I saw it before Gisele stabbed her horn into a man’s gut. The equines apparently had no intention of giving up their Everymobile without a fight.
The unicorn jerked back with a squeal of pain as the man’s armor banged her. The twined metals left a black mark just below the slick of blood dripping from the rest of her horn.
“Come.” Thorn hefted me onto his back, presumably to make our escape, but he’d only just jumped to the ground when a barrage of attackers came at him. As he whipped around to fend them off, the jolt of the abrupt motion loosened my grip. I tumbled onto the cobblestones of the courtyard.
I scrambled up, spinning this way and that in search of shelter or, better yet, a clear direction to flee in. As long as I was vulnerable, my companions would make themselves vulnerable protecting me. My gaze caught Snap blinking out of the darkness for just long enough to slap the gun from one soldier’s hands—a gun that had been pointed my way.
Another attacker came at me swinging one of those horrible laser-like whips. I managed to duck under it and hurled myself at the guy’s legs. We toppled together, his helmet falling off with a clang as it hit the ground. Omen hurtled past us in hellhound form with a slash of his claws to open the guy’s throat.
But there were still more—still way too many fucking more of the pricks. I grabbed the dagger my latest attacker had strapped to his hip and pushed away from him just in time to see a clot of the Company soldiers tossing one of those glinting nets around Bow.
The centaur staggered to a halt with a clomping of his massive hooves. His captors closed in around him, and a jolt of horror rang