Chapter 11

Quinn

It seemed like every time I glanced at the news feeds, the situation on the coasts had gotten worse. I woke up in the guest bedroom in Rollick’s Texas badlands house and immediately grabbed my phone to find reports of more storm activity and a couple more tidal waves that’d crashed along the coastal regions. By the time I ventured out into the common areas, showered and theoretically refreshed for the day, my stomach was a mess of knots.

Lance was already in the kitchen, crisping bacon and frying eggs with his fiery breath. He motioned for me to sit at the gleaming central island and nudged the plate toward me before swiftly slicing an orange into crescents with his claws. I guessed he’d sensed as soon as I’d woken up and decided to be ready for me. I wasn’t going to complain.

“Thank you,” I said, and he beamed at me.

“You have to keep your strength up, baby girl. I’m always going to take care of you.”

I couldn’t bear to tell him that bacon wasn’t exactly the best option for heart health. I doubted a little grease really mattered at this point when so many other things were putting much more strain on my transplanted organ.

As I dug in, my other three men wavered into sight around the island. Crag grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and set it in front of me as if he was afraid I’d forget to hydrate. Torrent leaned against the counter with a pensive expression.

“We had a few more beings turn up overnight,” he told me. “Wanderers who noticed the increased activity here and wanted to find out what’s going on. They’ve opted to stay. You’ll need to test them.”

Rollick gave a tight grin. “For the moment, we have a few of our confirmed allies keeping watch over them to make sure they don’t get up to anything nefarious. And the most competent beings standing watch at a farther distance to make sure no one else meanders close enough to see what’s happening here without being vetted.”

My gut clenched even more with that new worry. “Do you think the leviathan’s minions will realize we’ve come out here—or what we’re doing?”

“I expect we’re reasonably safe,” the demon said. “He’s focusing his attention on the coasts, which are his natural habitat anyway, and he has no idea what our current plans might be or where we might have gone to. It’s unlikely he has enough minions to spare to closely investigate every corner of the country. But the patrols will guard against any of those minions happening to stumble on our little army on the off chance that they do head this way.”

“There aren’t many beings hanging around out here at all,” Lance put in. “Not much to do. Very boring. No people, no buildings, and everything is so flat.”

Rollick shot him a light-hearted glower. “The boring-ness is what makes it safe. You always seem to find plenty of ways to entertain yourself no matter where you are.”

“The storms are getting more volatile,” I said. “I read that there’s a major hurricane brewing in the Atlantic now, bigger than they usually see at this time of year. Will that be shadowkind-generated too?”

Torrent nodded. “There are definitely beings that can affect the weather that way, and I’m sure the leviathan has the reach to bring them under his sway.”

“The humans have been evacuating many of the coastal areas—all across the country, not just in L.A. now,” Crag said in an obvious attempt at reassurance. “They’ll get to where it’s safe for them too.”

“If they can.” I rubbed my mouth, forcing myself to finish chewing even though I couldn’t take much pleasure from the food. Rollick might have had a general idea of the logistics after how thoroughly he’d involved himself in urban life, but I doubted the other shadowkind had any concept of how difficult it was to move entire cities’ worth of people and keep them fed and sheltered.

Maybe it was the stress of that added concern or maybe it was just random, but a moment later, my chest contracted with a now-familiar vise. I braced my hands against the island, closing my eyes as I breathed through the painful sensation. My pulse skipped and raced, and a chill washed through me, deeper than the air-conditioned coolness.

A hand came to rest on my shoulder, rubbing it gently. I focused on that contact rather than the pressure in my chest. Lance let out a rough noise of frustration, but there really wasn’t anything else any of them could do—as they had to be recognizing by now as much as I had.

When the pressure released, a sheen of sweat had formed on my brow. I wiped it away and stared down at my plate, a faint queasiness in my stomach making it hard to imagine eating more.

“We can put your food in the fridge for later,” Torrent suggested, his even voice unusually soft.

“Yeah, that might be a good idea.” I dragged in a breath and glanced toward the windows that looked out onto the house’s yard and the desert terrain beyond it, where all of our new “army” was hiding in the shadows. “First I’m going to check in with my parents, and after that I’ll confirm that the newcomers are above board, and then I think we should get on with figuring out who in this ‘army’ can actually do anything to fend off the leviathan.”

I went back into the bedroom to make the call in private, my chest constricting in a different way at the sound of Mom’s voice. She still sounded shaken but resigned. I didn’t sense any sign of rebellion in her tone.

“It’s good to hear from you,” she said. “Are you all right? What we’re seeing on the news is pretty frightening.”

“I know,” I said. “But I’m far away from it right now, and I’m making sure we’re totally prepared before we try to fix things.” As much as we could be prepared anyway.

“I feel so selfish staying here out of the way when so many other people are suffering.”

A lump rose in my throat. I could have said the same thing. People were dying out there, losing their homes, struggling to survive, and I was living in relative comfort, even though I was one of the few people who had any chance of tackling the threat. I hated that we’d had to run away, as necessary as I knew that move had been.

“You’re helping by giving me one less thing to worry about,” I told her. “Knowing you two are okay makes it easier for me to concentrate on finding ways to stop this disaster that won’t put me in too much danger.”

I talked with her a little longer and then with Dad. After, I walked out of the room with my emotions in a muddle, pulling on my protective vest so I could go beyond the house’s yard without fear of detection. Out under the searing sun, I pushed my worries to the back of my mind and went through the motions of making sure the new arrivals to our shadowkind gang weren’t operating under enemy influence. Then I sat down on a bench in the shade of the pair of scrawny trees at the edge of the yard.

My men had followed me out to oversee the proceedings. “Let’s find out exactly what we’re working with,” I said to Rollick.

Torrent leaned his forearms against the back of the bench, one resting next to my shoulder companionably. “The most important factor in tackling the leviathan is going to be making sure no one we send into battle will get caught up in his sorcery.”

Lance clicked his tongue. “Quinn’s magic shielded us from the behemoth. He didn’t get into my head at all.”

“Yeah, but the behemoth was only half as powerful as the leviathan is now,” I pointed out. “And my sorcery has a stronger effect on you four because I know you so well. I don’t know the beings that’ve joined us since then at all.”

“And there are too many of them,” Crag put in firmly. “Quinn would wear herself out if she tried to cast a powerful command that’d last long enough on all of us.” He loomed over me with a concerned frown, not mentioning the possible consequences beyond simply making me tired.

I swallowed thickly, and Rollick let out a faint huff. “I doubt we’d want to send all the beasties right into the fray regardless. If we can pick out a few key allies, Quinn’s magic would at least give them some protection. We can’t decide how to proceed until we’re aware of the possibilities.”

He stepped forward into the sunlight, snapping his fingers. “All right, all of you who want to help stop the leviathan from carrying out whatever other horribleness he has planned, our sorcerer wants to speak with you. Let’s start with the higher beings. Show yourselves a few at a time, and let us know any supernatural abilities or other skills you can bring to the table.”

I raised my voice to carry across the desolate terrain. “If any of you have some kind of power that allows you to ward off other beings’ supernatural abilities, that would be particularly useful. Or anyone who can manipulate water and weather, since that’s what the leviathan is mostly using against us right now.”

A slim woman with bluish skin materialized out of the shadow by a patch of desert grass. She approached me with her head bowed low. “I don’t know about warding off, but I’m a sea nymph,” she said. “All of my powers have to do with water.”

My spirits rose a little. This was a decent start. “Do you think you’d be able to push back against the tidal waves that are being summoned—maybe even break them apart before they reach the shore?” We could send her to the east coast or farther north on the west where she’d only be contending with the leviathan’s allies, not him and his sorcery directly.

“I could try. The way they’re stirring up the oceans, throwing the water around—it isn’t right. It’ll be hurting the other shadowkind who like to live in the water too.”

Lance had perked up. “Maybe you have some friends who could help? That way you could push back more.”

She offered a shy smile. “I’ll reach out to whoever I can find. I don’t know how many others like me would want to get involved. I know what it’s like to be caught up by that awful magic… I don’t want it to happen again. But when they haven’t had their minds taken over, they don’t realize what’s at stake.”

“Whatever you can do would be great,” I assured her. “Let’s see who else is here to help, and then we’ll decide the best place for you to go.”

A gangly man with shaggy yellow hair had appeared while I’d been talking to the sea nymph. As she stepped aside, he gave me a jaunty bow and brandished a gleaming flute. “I don’t know about deflecting powers, but I have a sort of sorcery of my own that I can use on mortals. I managed to get away from the leviathan before his magic totally caught me, so maybe my own powers have given me a little resistance.”

“Maybe” and “a little” didn’t give me a whole lot of hope, but it was better than nothing.

I smiled back at him. “That’s good to know. Is that your only supernatural ability?”

“I can work minor glamours, but I’m not sure how much use they’d be.”

Neither was I, but I forced my smile to hold. “You never know. Thank you.” I glanced around the terrain. No other beings had emerged yet. My temporary good spirits started to fade. “Is there no one else here who has abilities related to persuasion or water?”

When no other shadowkind showed themselves, I sat up a little straighter, willing myself to hold steady. “That’s all right. I’d still like to know what the rest of you can do. Let’s hear from all of you.”

But if the ones I’d already spoken to were the best of the bunch… I wasn’t sure we had a hope in hell of defeating the fiend we were up against.

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