Twilight Crook Page 6

  Before they got that far, four shadowy forms hurtled into the lot. I couldn’t make out much of their faces through the blur of darkness still clinging to them, but the massive shape bashing two of the sword-star crew off their feet was obviously Thorn.

  The other three shadowkind didn’t dare get quite as close to our enemies and their noxious armor. Ruse lashed some sort of rope at the collector’s legs and yanked it so he tumbled onto the ground, his knees locked together. As the not-at-all-super villain started sniveling like a kindergartener, Omen and Snap tossed thick sheets over the two attackers Thorn had felled. Whatever those were made of, the material was heavy enough to hold the men in place.

  Thorn was still dealing with the rest of the sword-star crew. He snatched the man with the whip by the wrists and hurled him over the fence to crash into the mini-golf castle. The dude slumped, one of the turrets wobbling and then plummeting to smack him in the head for good measure. Another asshole got a punch in the throat with the warrior’s crystalline knuckles. A gurgle escaped the gaping wound as he collapsed in a bloody mess.

  The last of our enemies had taken advantage of Thorn’s distraction. The guy thrust a metal rod at the warrior’s back, and sparks spurted against Thorn’s tunic. The huge shadowkind shuddered, a spasm gripping his limbs for a second as he wrenched himself around. Meanwhile, the prick who’d broken the poor castle was managing to pick himself up, whip in hand.

  Oh no, he didn’t. “Thorn!” I called out in warning, springing to my feet. My hand had already shot to one of my pouches. My fingers curled around a golf ball, and I flung it at the guy with the rod.

  It nailed him in the back of the helmet with a dull clang—I’d call that a hole in one. With a victory whoop, I pitched another few his way, pelting him for long enough that he wasn’t prepared for Thorn’s punch. The warrior’s rigid knuckles smashed right into his face. I averted my gaze from the spurt of blood.

  Good thing, because the castle dude was dashing back toward the chain-link fence, whip ready. I leapt from the hut’s roof onto a plaster drawbridge and from there to the ground. As the guy moved to heave himself over the fence, I thwacked him across the ear with the golf club, just below the base of his helmet. His head swayed, and I aimed the putter at the top of the helmet this time. With one solid swing, I smacked the protection right off him.

  Omen was there as if he’d been waiting for just that chance. The second the helmet careened off, our leader slammed the sword-star guy’s forehead into the bar along the top of the fence hard enough to shatter his skull.

  Okay, then. He might not have Thorn’s bulk, but he wasn’t lacking in bodily power. Note to self: don’t get too far on this dude’s bad side.

  The two surviving members of the sword-star crew squirmed under the heavy sheets ineffectually. Omen stalked up to the collector, who was huddled by his van sobbing with shaky gulps for air.

  “Tell all your collector friends that we see them, and we’ll come for them, one by one,” Omen said, his voice taut with threat. “Maybe if you scurry away and hide, we won’t find you, but anyone who decides to do business with these people”—he pointed to the delivery truck—"from now on has sealed their doom.”

  I clambered over the fence and jogged across the lot to the van’s open back door. The shadowy form of a large creature too distressed by its surroundings to show itself wavered amid the wash of light behind the silver-and-iron twined bars of its cage, which was nearly as tall as I was. It was either a smaller higher shadowkind being than my current companions or simply a very potent lesser shadowkind. Neither deserved the treatment it had gotten.

  With a few hacks of my scorch-knife, the supernaturally enhanced titanium blade sizzling with heat, I carved out the lock. The second I threw open the cage’s door, the shadowkind creature flung itself past me. It bolted off into the night without so much as a thank you. I guessed I couldn’t blame it.

  “Good,” Snap murmured, coming up behind me. He set a gentle 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 monsters could end us all, but with the work we’re doing, our light will burn away all the shadows.”

  “But you don’t know what exactly your Company’s experiments are supposed to achieve.”

  “Experiments?” The man’s brow furrowed. “That’s not my area. I just know whatever they’re doing, they’re working toward destroying every fiend that dares set foot here—and maybe all the ones back where they come from too.”

  Lovely. A chill collected in my gut. He was discussing literal genocide as if it were the most glorious purpose he could imagine. Had any of these sword-star—excuse me, Company of Light—assholes ever even talked with a higher shadowkind?

  I’d be the first to admit that beings like the four around me didn’t subscribe to the exact same sense of morality humans did. And sure, some of their kind did prey on mortal beings. But plenty of mortals preyed on each other too. The answer was to fight back against the ones committing the actual crimes, not to mass murder everybody. I didn’t think this Company would like it if the shadowkind turned their logic back on humankind.

  “That does sound like an honorable goal,” Omen said, his voice so edged with sarcasm I half expected it to slice right into our captives’ flesh. He paced from one end of the compartment to the other as he considered his next line of inquiry. “Are these hand-offs with the collectors the only way you contribute?”

  “They call on me once every few weeks for a job like this,” the first man said. “Otherwise, I keep quiet and keep out of the rest of their business.”

  The shadowkind’s gaze slid to the other guy. “And you?”

  “I don’t do anything else with the beasts, but I’ve done a little other driving—bringing equipment for the events and that sort of thing.”

  “Ah. What sort of events would those be?”

  The guy shrugged. “I’m not sure. They have some parties with a bunch of rich folks now and then. With all the equipment they must need and the cash for buying off the collectors—I guess they’ve got to raise funds somehow or other.”

  Another laugh tickled my chest, this one sharper with irony. Of course the Company of Light would need to hold fundraisers just like Ellen and Huyen’s group of defenders did. While we gathered money to protect the shadowkind, they gathered money to hunt and torture them. From the scale of our enemies’ operations, they had to be a lot better at it than we were. Maybe we could pick up some pointers along the way.

  Omen grilled the two more—about how they got their equipment, where they were trained in handling shadowkind, and anything else he could come up with relating to the structure of the Company of Light. Unfortunately, our enemies had been awfully sly all around. The training sessions happened at random locations that changed every time, the equipment showed up on the guys’ doorsteps along with the orders for their next assignment, and they didn’t know much else.

  We stepped out of the truck to confer where they couldn’t overhear us.

  “It’s not a total loss,” I said. “We freed the shadowkind they were going to buy—we put the fear in that collector and hopefully a bunch more in his network. We know what their hand-offs look like now, and maybe we can get at them through these fundraising events somehow.”

  “It’s still less than I’d like.” Omen eyed the truck broodingly. “Maybe I can come up with another angle that’ll be more productive.”

  A new chill tickled down my back. “What are you going to do with them when you’ve run out of questions?” I’d avoided prying into that subject until now, but that hesitance was starting to feel cowardly. The guys in there were prejudiced dicks, but they’d talked with us peacefully. I didn’t like the idea of watching my companions slaughter them in their defenseless state.

  Omen looked as though he’d like it just fine, but then his mouth twisted as if he’d bitten something sour. “It would be better if their ‘Company’ doesn’t realize we held this interrogation. Ruse, you can charm them into keeping quiet about our chat, can’t you? Convince them that they have to claim they drove from the scene of the attack unhindered?”

  The incubus saluted him. “Give me a little more time, and I can manage it.”

  I glanced around at the darkened street. The shadowkind quartet didn’t really need me here anymore—and there was something else I’d wanted to accomplish while Omen was distracted with this business. My stomach grumbled, giving me the perfect excuse. I hadn’t eaten since that slice of pie with Vivi.

  “Unlike the rest of you,” I said, “I need dinner or I’ll keel over. Meet you back where we left Betsy in a couple of hours?”

  The thought of me fulfilling my mortal needs brought out Omen’s disdain. He waved me off and yanked open the truck’s back door again.

  I trotted several blocks from the interrogation scene, weaving right and left at the intersections, and then called an Uber. I was planning on getting something to eat—but not anywhere Omen would have approved of.

  As I settled into the car’s back seat, something jabbed my leg in the bottom of my backpack. I felt inside, and my fingers closed around the cool, smooth surface of a little box. My throat tightened.

  I drew out the box, the city lights outside the window catching on its pearly sides. My fingers moved automatically to pop open the lid.

  This keepsake was the only thing I had of my parents’. There hadn’t exactly been time to stop and pack when hunters had stormed into my parents’ house while Auntie Luna and I had been playing in the backyard. At my mother’s scream to her, Luna had grabbed three-year-old me and fled—but she’d had this box with the folded notepaper inside to offer me when I was old enough to read it.

  The note didn’t say much other than that my parents had loved me and wished things hadn’t turned out this way but that Luna would protect me. They’d obviously realized there was a chance the assholes they’d stood up to would lash out at them.

  I didn’t know whether those assholes had been connected to the Company of Light just as Luna’s attackers had been or whether they’d been just a random bunch of vengeful hunters, but either way, it only proved what psychotic monsters humans could be. And how much some of those humans needed to have their evil plans upended.

  So I’d damn well use every tool I had, whether Omen approved or not.

  I clicked the box shut again and tucked it into my purse this time, wanting to keep it even closer to me. The car slowed, just reaching the bar I’d given the driver the address to.

  As I stepped through the doorway to Jade’s Fountain, I scanned the room for anyone who didn’t fit, but it looked like the usual crowd of quirky mortals and the occasional shadowkind partier who could blend in here. There was a mortal girl wearing a cat-ear headband, and two tables away a dude whose lizard-like eyes I suspected weren’t contacts. Exactly as it should be. The burble of the water that cascaded down the far wall and the mineral scent in the air settled my nerves for the first time in days.

  As usual, Jade was working solo behind the polished quartz bar counter, the dark green hair that would have marked her as a shadowkind to anyone who realized it wasn’t dyed tumbling down her slim back. I headed to the seat at the far corner reserved for those of us already in the know.

  The shadowkind woman ambled over a moment later. I thought her eyes were more wary than usual. Either she’d picked up word on the street about the hijinks I’d been caught up in, or those hijinks had made me more paranoid than usual.

  “What’ll it be tonight, Sorsha?” she asked.

  “A Jack and Coke and one of those turkey paninis.” I motioned to the little fridge where she kept prewrapped meals ready to pop into the toaster oven.

&nbs
p; “Late dinner tonight?”

  “It’s been a busy one.”

  She hummed in response as she prepared the sandwich and poured my drink. When she set both in front of me with a clink of the glass, she lingered there, leaning one elbow onto the counter. “What’s up?”

  I paused to take a large bite of my panini and licked melted cheese grease off my fingers. Yum. “I know you don’t like to get too involved in the Fund business and that sort of thing, so I’m not going to ask you to. I’m just going to say: if something major were going down—something that put all the shadowkind who’ve come mortal-side and maybe even the shadow-side ones in danger—do you know any higher kind who would want to stand up against the mortals involved?”

  Her expression turned even more guarded than before. “Are you suggesting that something like that is happening now?”

  I held her gaze steadily. “How much do you really want to know?”

  She hesitated, and then her lips pressed flat. “Point taken. Maybe it’s not worth the risk of even asking around, then.”

  “I guess you’ve got to weigh the odds. Would it be worse to do nothing at all and one day soon this bar gets stormed, or to just put out some very careful feelers that you can divert toward me?” I took another bite and chewed while she thought that over. Then I added, “I’ve never seen anything like this before, Jade. You know I wouldn’t be making an ask like this if it wasn’t important.”

  A couple of college-age kids with facial studs that might have been disguising an actual horn or two had come over to the counter farther down. Jade sighed. “I’ll think about it—even if I check, I’m not sure I’ve got anyone for you. But if I do… I’ll reach out to your private number?”

  “You’ve got it. Thanks, Jade. I appreciate whatever you can do.”

  It was late enough that a few of the patrons were starting to sway with the music beside the tiled pond people used as both wishing well and, when drunk enough, wading pool. I hadn’t planned to dance, hadn’t planned to stick around longer than it took me to gulp down the rest of my meal, but as I tossed back the last sweet-and-sharp swallow of Jack and Coke, warm hands gripped me by the waist. The now-familiar bittersweet scent of cacao laced with caramel wrapped around me.