The hellhound shifter made a point of looking around the room, his stance casual but poised. “You’ve hardly brought all your allies to this parley. Of course, it appears you’ve gotten yourself a whole host of them, more than perhaps could fit in this palace. All of them mortals, oddly enough. What grand scheme have you concocted this time, Tempest?”
“Oh, you know me. To some extent I simply play it by ear.” The sphinx gave a smile that didn’t quite manage to be demure and trailed her fingers across the bed covers. “It’s provided immense amusement having a horde of mortals at my beck and call, hating shadowkind with all their being while in service of one.”
“They’re hurting shadowkind,” Snap spoke up with some of the new boldness he’d shown since I’d returned. He should know more about that hurt than anyone here other than Omen—they’d both spent time in the Company of Light’s cages, tormented by their experiments.
Tempest lifted one shoulder in the most languid of shrugs. “Fewer incompetent beings to irritate me. The Company of Light would hardly be effective if I never let them indulge their basest desires, would they?”
“Effective at what?” Omen demanded, commanding but not angry. Not one tuft of his tawny hair had risen yet, as provocative as his former conspirator was obviously trying to be. I couldn’t suppress a twinge of affection that didn’t have much place in this moment.
He’d used to run wild with this woman, yes, and it wasn’t hard to see how tempting she could have made the prospect. He’d been savage and cruel and selfish. And somehow while she’d stayed exactly the same or perhaps gotten even worse, he’d shaped himself into something so much better than that. A leader who could be compassionate as well as harsh, who saw what people were capable of and gave them a chance even when he was skeptical.
Call him a monster all you wanted, but he was a hell of a lot more than that too. And he’d reached that point through lifetimes of effort and determination.
No wonder he’d gotten pissed off at my many attempts to poke holes in his carefully constructed cool.
I suspected Tempest would have liked to do the same, but she clearly didn’t know him all that well as he was now. She chuckled slyly and gazed at him through her eyelashes. “I expect by now you’ve managed to uncover their ultimate plan?”
“They’re attempting to create some sort of sickness that will spread through the shadowkind and kill us all,” Omen replied. “I expect you aren’t actually out to commit suicide by mass genocide?”
“Oh, I’ll ensure I remain above the fray. The hardiest amongst us will be just fine. The mortals and the weaklings, not so much.”
If I caught the slight stiffening of Omen’s posture, she must have too. “Then what they’re working to create,” he said, “you really do expect it to infect and kill shadowkind.”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Omen. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. Eliminate most of the feckless beings who venture out here and might cramp my style, wipe out a good chunk of humanity as well and leave the survivors wrenched with guilt over their miscalculation…” She batted her eyelashes. “It should be a smashing time all around.”
My stomach had plummeted to my feet. Omen had assumed the Company’s stated mission was also a front for some other scheme of Tempest’s. Not so much, apparently. This went so far beyond trampling a few lesser creatures on the way to screwing over some mortals that we might as well be in a different solar system.
Chances that she’d be willing to set aside those plans to participate in a ploy where I pretended to defeat her, just to foil the Highest for a brief moment? I’d place them at about a trillion to one.
Thorn shifted on his feet, and I could feel the horror he must be reining in while he let Omen take the lead. Snap couldn’t restrain a shiver. He was the youngest of my shadowkind crew—was his accumulated power enough to protect him from this menace and her constructed disease?
Did it even matter whether they survived when either way, scores of shadowkind—and humans—were going to die because of the path Tempest was leading the Company down?
“They’re almost finished,” she boasted as if she had an audience avid with enthusiasm rather than alarm. “Just another leap of inspiration or two, and we’ll have it ready. You’ve been a thorn in my side for the past little while unintentionally… Are you ready to get in on the most epic strike of both our careers?”
My stomach twisted. I glanced at Omen, wondering if he’d play along to humor her for the time being. But his jaw had clenched even tighter, an orange sheen of hellfire glowing over the pale blue of his eyes.
“When did you move from games to outright warfare?” he asked. “This plot is so far below the Tempest I associated with that I can’t believe you don’t see that.”
She sniffed. “I haven’t sunk at all. Perhaps the problem is that you all have forgotten what you’re meant to be. They call us monsters for a reason, don’t they?” She narrowed her eyes at each of my shadowkind companions. “You must have leashed your hound so long you’ve forgotten what it is to run free, Omen. Where’s the vicious fury at the pathetic arrogance of mortals that used to fuel you? And you wingéd, aren’t you done sulking over your losses yet? What do you use that spectacular physique for now—squashing cockroaches? Or do you offer leniency even to them?”
“I have bashed open plenty of skulls and rib cages in defense of my fellow shadowkind,” Thorn rumbled, unable to hold himself back any longer.
“As if they were worth the effort.” Tempest gave a tinkling laugh like shattering glass that made me want to punch her skull in and turned her attention to Snap. “And a devourer—one of the rarest of all our kind, and yet what are you putting your talents toward other than looking pretty? You ought to be out there rending soul by mortal soul apart to become as great as you’re meant to be. You could contain a multitude if these insipid sympathies didn’t hold you back.”
“Those souls belong to the mortals who contain them,” Snap replied, but he’d shivered again at her words. The color had drained from his face, leaving him wan beneath his golden curls.
That was the moment my tongue got away from me. “You’re one to talk, acting like you’re some pinnacle of shadowkind when you’ve spent how many decades now encouraging a bunch of mortals to annihilate your own people. As far as I can tell, you’re the one who’s forgotten what you are.”
The sphinx’s eyebrows arched. “Brave—and ridiculous—words from the mortal who’s currently standing alongside these shadowkind. Have you convinced yourself you’ll ever be more than a groupie to their evidently deviant tastes?”
The jab rankled me more than it should have. “You have no idea—” I started, and managed to yank my temper back under control before I said something I’d regret. “You know nothing at all. And here I thought a sphinx could at least pretend a little wisdom.”
Unfortunately, while I could harness my words, I wasn’t quite so good with my powers. I’d barely finished speaking when the revulsion and rage churning inside me lurched with a flare of my inner fire.