The flames shot up from my elbows toward my shoulders. Thorn caught them for me with a clap of his broad hands against my arms before they could set my hair alight.
My mouth went scorchingly dry. Tempest was staring at me now with far more interest than she’d shown anything else in this conversation so far. The sweep of her gaze over me left an uncomfortable prickling in its wake.
She sat up straighter as if to look at me even more closely. I resisted the urge to back away, holding my ground and raising my chin, daring her to comment. But when she did, it wasn’t in the mocking tone I’d expected.
“Not so mortal after all.” She laughed again, but this time it was more breathless with awe than disdainful. “And here I thought the devourer was your greatest find, Omen. Where on earth did you acquire a phoenix?”
I should have been gratified that she was impressed, but everything about this woman told me she wasn’t the sort of being I should want to awe. A phoenix? Just because I caught myself on fire along with whatever else I was aiming at?
Watching me, Tempest’s lips curled into a smirk. “You didn’t know, did you? Oh, I am glad I’ll be around to witness this. When you burn, the whole world will burn with you.”
A wave of cold flooded me at that declaration, washing away any lingering fire. My voice came out tart. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not planning on burning.”
“You keep telling yourself that, darling.” The sphinx rose to her feet, her innumerable baubles swaying around her, and peered down at Omen from the bed. “Well? Have you come all this way just to grimace your disapproval at me, or will you remember yourself and join the revelry?”
“It’s been a long time,” Omen replied in a low voice. “I no longer revel in the same things you do.”
“Then we have nothing left to discuss. Stay out of my business, and I’ll leave you to the rest of yours. You know what you can expect if you deny that request.”
“Tempest,” Omen started, but she was already leaping into the shadows. At a jerk of the hellhound’s hand, Thorn and Flint threw themselves after her.
My legs had taken on an uncanny resemblance to spaghetti. When they wobbled despite my best efforts, Snap was at my side in an instant, his hand on my back.
“It doesn’t matter what she called you,” he said. “We know who you are.”
Did they? Did I?
Omen’s hands had clenched at his sides. At the return of our wingéd warriors with no sphinx in sight, he didn’t look surprised.
“We failed to detain her,” Thorn said with a pained expression. “She traveled so swiftly—”
“Don’t apologize. None of us quite anticipated what we’d find here.” The hellhound shifter exhaled roughly.
“She’s not going to help with the plan to appease the Highest about Sorsha,” Snap ventured.
Omen gave a bark of a laugh. “No, I’d say not.”
My own fingers curled into fists. I crossed my arms over my chest, burying the sphinx’s needling comments—the whole world will burn with you—under the immensity of everything else she’d admitted to.
“There’s one very obvious answer to that problem,” I said. “We always meant to destroy the Company. Now I’ll just have to add defeating her to that to-do list—for real.”
8
Sorsha
No one had turned on the Everymobile’s radio, but it’d decided to start blaring about ten minutes ago, switching back and forth between strident classical music and a talk show where everyone seemed to be yelling in Russian—which was particularly odd considering we were currently in Paris.
Ruse and Antic jabbed at the buttons to no avail. Finally, Thorn strode over to the dash.
“My apologies,” he said solemnly to the RV, and slammed his fist into the radio controls. The noise sputtered, but it did die, as just about everything did after a punch from the warrior.
Omen grimaced at the smashed spot we’d have to find some way to explain to the equines when they reclaimed their ride, but he didn’t criticize Thorn’s tactics. He turned back to the rest of us from his usual post leaning against the kitchen counter. No doubt it really would signal the end of the world if he ever lowered himself—both figuratively and literally—to sitting on the leather sofa-bench with us.
“Our observations across the past few days have made it quite clear that we can’t rely on our previous tactics,” he said. “Whether based on Tempest’s urging or their own initiative, the local Company facilities are under total lockdown. We can’t charm or threaten anyone into getting us past the outer defenses if no one ever comes out in the first place.”
“Do you really think all the Company workers are living inside those buildings?” Snap asked. He nestled me even closer against him as he spoke, which was quite a feat when he’d already had me practically on his lap. He seemed to have become extra possessive after our confrontation with Tempest a few days ago.
I gave him a peck on his cheek to return the affection, and he beamed at me before continuing. “The facilities we found didn’t appear to be made as homes. Won’t the Company people get bored spending all their time at work? Won’t some of them have families they’ll be separated from?”
“I’m sure the answer to both of those questions is yes,” Omen said. “They’re just willing to sacrifice a few freedoms to make sure they can continue screwing us over.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. Days of surveillance and no real action had left me restless, especially with my resolve to defeat Tempest hanging over me. “To be fair, being bored and lonely probably beats getting beheaded or disemboweled. If they think they’re in mortal danger, I could see them putting up with a lockdown for quite a while.”
Thorn glanced at Omen. “The sphinx knows we’ll be investigating in this city. Our prior sources have indicated that the mortal leader of the Company of Light travels across Europe. The map we saw displayed several bases of operations here. Might they be less stringent elsewhere?”
“I don’t think Tempest will be cutting any corners. Even the leader himself might be cloistered somewhere until she feels we no longer present much of a threat.” The hellhound shifter rubbed his jaw. “She was only able to interrupt our last plan, which came very close to working, because she intervened quickly enough. If we could find another point of access and distract her well enough at the same time—or even attempt to take her down completely before we tackle the mortals… But without that point of access, we have no way of getting at their current operations or potential weaknesses.”
“I could put out feelers for another mortal with hacking skills,” Ruse suggested. “Someone who’s not already working for the Company but who might be able to dig up some data that’ll give us a lead. These jackasses can’t run their operations without any interaction with the world around them.”
Omen nodded. “Good idea. Your computer person back in the US contributed quite a lot. Run with that. And while you’re tracking an appropriate human down, the rest of us will head underground. Paris has a mass of tunnels and catacombs that sprawl under a significant portion of the city. We’ll split up and check the areas near the Company facilities for any alternate means of entrance. It’s a long shot, but we might as well try whatever we can.”