Chapter 16
Mirage
Rollick sprawls in his seat in his private jet, but he’s only giving an illusion of relaxation. His fingers flex against the leather arm. There’s a tightness to his shoulders like he’s on the verge of jumping out of his skin.
I know that feeling. It comes over me often enough.
Right now, after everything we’ve seen, part of me wants to burrow way down in the dirt away from all of it.
Of course, that’s impossible while I’m tied to Peri by the glowing spot on my chest. And also when we’re thousands of feet in the air.
The man who’s awfully kind for a demon rubs one hand across his brow. “So there haven’t been any further incidents since the initial flood? No more shadowy material spilling out of the rift and no more destruction from any of the beings who might have spewed out with it?”
Jonah shakes his head. “We think the higher being who was causing the most obvious destruction is lying low after we got close to capturing her. Or maybe she’s left the city for someplace that feels less overwhelming.”
“Or maybe she went back into the rift and will stay there,” Raze mutters without much hope in his tone.
Peri pipes up, her voice as bright as ever even though her expression looks serious. “Now that it’s sucked everything back in, the rift feels the same as it did before—unnerving but not more than usual.”
I nod, remembering the chaotic vibrations the portal gave off right before we left it. “All wibbly-wobbly but not spewy-stewy.”
What was the mess that flooded the streets around the rift for a short time? Nothing about it felt like the shadow realm I’ve dipped back into now and then, where it theoretically came from.
I like surprises and curiosities, but not the kind that try to drown people and crumble buildings.
Rollick sighs. “The shadowbloods will keep monitoring the situation, and Sorsha should be on the scene soon. She’s just wrapping up another matter she was called away to.”
Peri hesitates. “Are you taking us off duty? We did our best.”
The worried note in her voice tugs at my heart. My teeth itch to sprout into a full set of foxy fangs, as if there’s anything here I can defend her from.
Rollick is already waving off her concern.
“No, no. You handled the situation as well as could be expected. The way you read that being’s emotions to figure out her weakness was a particularly impressive move.
Your talent should also come in handy for quelling continuing fears among the humans who witnessed the strange events and can’t quite ignore them. ”
I cock my head. “Should they ignore them? If that being comes back, she might bash them up as much as their cars and windows.”
Rollick’s mouth twists. “I know it’s in your nature to want to ‘play’ with humans, but they’re the biggest threat to our existence in this world.
Every type of shadowkind they’ve encountered, they’ve turned into a new monster to build a mythology around.
If more of them realized those ‘monsters’ and dozens more kinds are real… ”
“How can you be sure it’d be so bad when we haven’t had a chance to find out?” Peri asks.
The demon arches his eyebrows. “Just in the past few decades, we’ve had to contend with an organization that experimented on shadowkind with the intent of wiping us out, another that created the shadowbloods and then tried to use them to expose and destroy us, cabals of sorcerers slaughtering beings to enhance their powers and enslaving masses of others…
Even if some are accepting, it doesn’t take many mortals to create a potential disaster. ”
His words have set off a prickling chill that claws into my chest. Experiments on shadowkind—does he mean the same ones who caged me?
I don’t ask. I don’t want to stir up the memories even more.
No one knows except Peri, whose gaze I refuse to meet.
Rollick pauses and then shakes his head with an air of bemusement.
“When humans and shadowkind collide, it almost always ends in catastrophe, going back as far as the devastation of the wingéd wars. But there’s been even more disruption between our realms than usual recently.
So much they’ll be ready to blame us for, so many people on the verge of realizing.
I’d hate to see what happens if we tip the balance too far to swing it back. ”
Peri’s bright blue eyes have widened. “Shouldn’t we all be in the city doing damage control, then?”
The demon offers her a wry smile. “Some of your companions’ temperaments aren’t ideally suited for comforting rather than clashing. And I have something else I thought we should apply your talent to that might prove even more urgent.”
All of Rollick’s words have been ominous as rumbling thunder, but that last remark hooks me with a tug of curiosity. “What’s that? Did the other new rift do something extra strange?”
From the sounds of things, this surprise wasn’t a good one either.
Rollick chuckles, but without the humor the sound deserves.
“That rift looks the same as all the others to me. I’m not taking you that far.
I got a report from my assistants who are studying the warped beings at my estate.
There’s been an… unusual development there.
I suppose it could bode well for our current problems, but I find it unsettling all the same. ”
Jonah frowns. “What kind of development?”
“It’ll be easier for you to see for yourselves.” Rollick’s gaze returns to Peri. “But I’ll be especially interested in hearing what feelings you pick up from the creatures now.”
And the rest of us are crammed into this narrow hunk of flying metal because getting too far apart from her would tear all five of us apart—worse than if we were tossed through the turbines.
I suppress the urge to squirm.
There’s no one around but my fellow shadowkind. I should be able to switch into fox form—why should any of them care?
Except that Rollick is the head of the school that’s taught us to hold human form whenever possible.
I don’t want him changing his mind about my ability to control my impulses and send me back to even the dreary, not-horribly-surprising part of the shadow realm.
Is that what would happen anyway if the humans took up a mass hunt? A deeper shudder runs through me. Let’s get back to the city quick and prove how very okay everything is—even if it isn’t.
Thankfully, it’s a short flight to Rollick’s estate. We land before I’ve literally crawled out of my skin, and the airfield is close enough that we can simply flit through the shadows to reach the house, with Jonah following on his mortal legs.
As we weave through the expansive home to the stairs that lead to the basement, my skin starts creeping with a different sort of restlessness.
Despite my best efforts, flickers of images pass through my head—metal walls, searing lights, harsh voices alongside the prick and jab of blades and needles.
The room down below isn’t like the lab where the humans who captured me poked and prodded me and all those other shadowkind, I remind myself. Rollick is one of us. He’s trying to stop these beings from getting into trouble, not looking to torment them.
But his mention of the humans who did revel in torment is still pinging around my head. My nerves stay on edge all the way down into the white-walled research room.
One of Rollick’s assistants is waiting there, tapping on a computer keyboard. At our entrance, she stiffens. “Sir, the subject that was farthest advanced… is gone.”
Rollick grimaces. “I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s see the one that’s next worst off.”
Gone? Does she mean dead?
What could be killing shadowkind down here? Rollick wouldn’t let anyone hurt the creatures.
The woman goes to the stack of cages and opens one near the top. She coaxes out a creature that currently looks like a huge dragonfly with feathered wings.
In the first moment as it glides down the floor, I have no idea what Rollick could have meant about it being “worst off.” Then, as it lands, the impact sets its wings fluttering—and tendrils of smoky essence drift off them. A couple of feathers outright disintegrate into the air.
Peri gasps. “What’s wrong with it? It doesn’t look injured. It doesn’t feel injured.”
“That’s what I’m trying to determine,” Rollick says.
“The creatures that came out of those odd rifts the longest ago… Their bodies appear to be breaking down. Maybe it’s the overall instability from all the morphing they’re doing, and they simply can’t hold their essence together after too many transformations.
We’ve attempted various approaches that work on actual wounds, and nothing—”
The words burst from my throat before I know I’m going to say them. “You have to let them go!”
Everyone’s head swivels toward me. Hail’s lip curls disdainfully. “What are you going on about now, fur-brain?”
As if he wasn’t grumbling about the cages when he first heard about them. He just likes to sneer at whatever he can.
I can’t stop a tremor from rippling through my limbs. My fox ears flick in and out of being through my hair. “Let the creatures go back to the rift. Back to the shadow realm. They can’t die there. They shouldn’t be here.”
They shouldn’t be trapped in cages while they fall apart. They shouldn’t dissolve into nothing surrounded by an alien world of iron and light.
Rollick steps toward me with his hands held up in appeal. “We’ve tried sending them back. They don’t want to go. Any way we send them, they come right back. Not even supernatural compulsion will stick.”
No. It isn’t right.
I shake my head, and my whole body moves with it. “Maybe now that they’re breaking—maybe they’ll go now. You have to try!”
“It isn’t that easy to transport these beings to the nearest rift. By the time we get them there, it could already be too late for some. I’m trying to save them right here.”