Chapter 17
Quinn
An uneasy quiver ran through my nerves at Torrent’s announcement. “What do you mean? How are you going to analyze me?”
Torrent sat down on the lounge chair Lance had recently vacated. He held up one of his tentacles, the tip curled inward like a question mark. “The energy that’s affecting all the shadowkind is being generated by your body somehow. If we can narrow down exactly where and how, that should help us in figuring out what and why. My suction cups can pick up more sensory input than most eyes, ears, or noses.”
My arms rose to cross over my chest instinctively. I held my voice steady, arching an eyebrow at him. “So you’re going to give me an exam, Dr. Squid?”
A short laugh tumbled out of Torrent that appeared to surprise even him. His lips quirked into the closest thing to a real smile I’d ever seen from him, though it still wasn’t entirely relaxed. I wasn’t sure the guy ever really let loose, at least not in physical form.
“Essentially,” he said, his voice still brisk but lighter. “I won’t even need to touch you, just bring my tentacle close. We can do this out here or in the cabin if you’d feel more comfortable there. Unless you’re not interested in what I might find out, Ms. Fix-It?”
Was there a dare hidden in his even tone?
I forced my arms to lower to my sides, bracing against the padding of the deck chair with the gentle bobbing of the boat, and exhaled slowly to release the tension that’d wound through me. “I want to know. Go ahead. I think I’d rather stay out here.” I liked having the sun’s warmth beaming over me. The soft warble of the ocean wind mixing with the thrum of the yacht’s engine would make it easier to tune out the weirdness of the situation.
Torrent raised one of his tentacles to the level of my head. I closed my eyes, figuring it’d also be easier if I couldn’t see him not-quite groping me with the thing.
But I could feel him even if I couldn’t see what he was doing. He didn’t touch me, just like he’d promised, but the air shifted slightly against my skin as his tentacle swiveled around my hair. It displaced a few flyaway strands, which I couldn’t really blame him for. The sunlight against my closed eyelids dimmed as the suckered appendage glided past my face.
He moved down to my shoulders, curling loosely around each of my arms and skimming down my back. Here and there, he grazed the fabric of my shirt just slightly. Just enough to set all my nerves tingling.
Maybe it was actually worse not seeing. It gave my imagination too much free rein.
I opened my eyes just as Torrent lowered his tentacle down along my chest, arcing over my breasts, and the tingling only deepened. Suddenly I was wondering what it would feel like to have those soft suckers actually stroking me, skin to skin. If Lance’s claws and fangs could spark such a thrill…
I squeezed my eyes shut again as if I would dismiss the lustful thoughts that way. It wasn’t weird for my mind to be wandering in those directions, right? Hooking up with Lance had been one of the most intense thrills of my life. Why wouldn’t I be curious about the other possibilities monsters could offer?
But they weren’t sex toys for me to experiment with—they were… people, or close enough, with their own thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings that sometimes seemed pretty alien to me, but valid as anyone else’s.
And it wasn’t as if Torrent had any interest in exploring me the way Lance had.
When he spoke, his voice confirmed as much. For all the heat that had started to flow through my veins, his tone remained calm as ever. “I’ll need you to stand up.”
“Right.” I pushed myself to my feet, hoping he hadn’t noticed the blush coloring my cheeks, and looked down at him as he continued his inspection.
His expression remained impassive too, his gaze trained on whatever part of me his tentacle was moving over with penetrating focus. I found myself studying the broken angles of his face below his rumpled red hair.
Even with the caved-in cheek, he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Those intense eyes, the contrast between his dark hair and pale skin, the elegant lines of his features that remained intact. He might have been nearly as striking as Lance was before the injury.
When he hadn’t needed his tentacles out to help him move around, he must have been able to pass for human, unlike his two companions. How different had he been then from the coolly curt man he was now? Goldie had obviously known him as something of a ladies’ man.
Had Crag and Lance known him back then? They’d never made any remarks about his past habits.
I lifted my eyes. Crag was staked out by the side of the bow, his watchful gaze scanning the sea in all directions. Lance was watching Torrent’s progress, his head cocked with obvious curiosity. When he noticed my gaze, he shot one of his smirks at me as if my heated reaction hadn’t escaped him and strolled across the deck again.
Hooking his legs around the railing, he draped himself over the side of the boat without a hint of fear of falling. The rasp of his claws against the hull told me he was scratching his random designs like the ones he’d left all over the cabin.
Torrent’s tentacle had reached my feet. I sat back down and lifted them up so he could flick it under my sneakers, since he seemed to be aiming for total thoroughness. He withdrew the extra limb and leaned back on his lounger, his expression pensive.
“Could you tell anything from that?” I asked when he didn’t give an immediate report.
He exhaled slowly. “I can pick up the impressions of a threat you give off all through your body. It’s most concentrated around your chest, but then, all of your energies are most concentrated there, like they are for any mortal.” He frowned. “The only thing that tells me for sure is that it’s something quite woven into your being, not an external force that’s been attached to you somehow.”
“Great,” I said. “So, I just naturally incite shadowy beasts to want to slaughter me.”
Torrent glowered at me. “It was worth checking. And we do know more than we did before. If it had been an external force acting on you, we’d have needed to figure that out to deal with it.”
It’d probably have been easier if it’d been something like a magic spell that’d been cast on me and not an inherent part of who I was. I swallowed thickly. My thoughts jumbled for a moment, and I couldn’t really have said why this question popped out now out of all the things I’d been wondering and worrying about.
“You don’t have to keep your tentacles out. You didn’t with Goldie. What’s your shadowkind feature that you can’t transform?”
Torrent blinked at me, looking surprised but thankfully not offended. Then, without a word, he tugged one of the elbow-length sleeves of his linen button-up higher on his arm. He turned so I could see the two rows of nickel-sized suction cups that ran down the back of his arm from close to the pit to a few inches above his elbow. I assumed he had a matching set on the other arm.
“I’m lucky they don’t go all the way down to my wrists,” he said briskly. “They’d be a lot harder to hide. Not that it makes much difference these days.” His mouth flattened after that remark as if he wasn’t totally happy he’d made it, and he jerked his sleeve back down before nodding to the cabin. “You should get some sleep while you can. Once we reach Daytona Beach, we’ll be on the move for the rest of the night.”
His dismissal was clear. The sun was still out, if close to the horizon now, but he did have a point.
“I’ll try,” I said.
I didn’t think I had much hope of dozing off, but when I sprawled out on the bed inside, the exhaustion of the day’s chaotic events rolled over me. I closed my eyes, tucking my arms close to my head, and that was the last thing I was aware of until I was jolting awake with the hitch of the boat.
In that first moment, it was totally dark in the cabin, only a faint gleam of distant lights penetrating the night beyond the far windows. My arm brushed my pill case lying on the bed next to me—I must have taken last night’s doses on autopilot when my alarm went off and then gone right back to sleep without fully waking up. It’d happened before. Having the same routine for nine years will do that to a person.
Then the cabin lights flared on, and a body hurtled onto the bed next to me.
“Rise and shine!” Lance crowed, bouncing up and down on the mattress and then springing over in one of his acrobatic flips. He spun around and grinned down at me. “Although there’s not much shining going on out there right now.”
“Lots of gloom for the shadowkind creatures to lurk in,” I said, my stomach knotting as I scrambled off the bed. I didn’t know exactly what this trip had in store for us. I snatched up the pill case, grimacing at the faint rattle. There was only one dose left, for tomorrow morning.
But Torrent had said we could get my full supply from home tonight.
“Let the beasties come at us.” Lance swiped his claws through the air so fast the air hissed around them. “I’ll carve them up real nicely.”
Torrent’s voice carried from the captain’s seat. “We’ll be fully docked in a few minutes. Take care of whatever you need to now, because we’ll want to move out the second we can.”
Right. So those “beasties” didn’t have time to home in on my new location.
I ducked into the tiny bathroom to do my business. An ache that wasn’t just anxiety had gripped my chest by the time I emerged, punctuated by a fresh fluttering of the weird energy inside me. I grabbed my messenger bag, gripping the strap tightly as if it could keep me grounded.
Crag was just landing on the deck. When I stepped out into the open, salty air, which even near land was mildly warm rather than sweltering in the wee hours of the night, he’d already shifted back into man-like form.
He handed me a couple of chocolate bars. “I flew to land when we got close. I didn’t know what at the store you’d like most. But you won’t be hungry.”
A different sort of hunting. I smiled up at him, accepting the snack. The night around me didn’t feel quite so intimidating when I had a being as intimidating as him on my side.
“Thank you,” I said. “These are great.”
He gave one of his gruff grunts, but I thought he looked a little pleased.
Lance leapt onto the dock we’d moored at, his agile feet barely thumping on the boards, and lashed the yacht in place. Crag moved to help him.
Torrent came up behind me. “The car should be waiting in the lot here. A black sedan with tinted windows.”
I frowned. “How are we going to get the keys?”
“They’ll be in the glove compartment. Thankfully some of us can slip inside without needing the doors unlocked. But we’re going to stay out of sight while you walk over.”
“I haven’t seen any shadowkind prowling nearby yet,” Crag reported.
The three of them vanished in the darkness, and I hurried along the dock, my nerves jumping at every faint creak of the boards. There weren’t many lights on in the marina, just a few security lamps that cast the surroundings in an orange haze.
No one else was here for a late-night boating expedition. The parking lot stood vacant other than the one car, so it was easy to find the right vehicle. I walked over to the black sedan, and suddenly Torrent was sitting in the driver’s seat. The locks whirred on the doors, and he reached over to open the glove compartment.
I got into the back, setting my bag on my lap, and to my surprise Crag appeared next to me. It must have been more cramped for his bulk than the front seat would have been. He glanced around the parking lot with a wary air that suggested he felt the need to be as close as possible to protect me from lurking dangers.
Lance sprawled out in the front passenger seat. Neither he nor Crag bothered with their seatbelt, but I guessed if we got into a crash, they could just blink into the shadows before any damage was done.
Such a handy talent.
“Are you sure you’re comfortable to drive?” I asked Torrent, eyeing the way he’d propped a tentacle over the side of the seat against the gear shift. We were heading back to Jacksonville, which would take at least an hour even with the speed limits he was breaking while the roads were this empty. I’d never seen him hold physical form continuously for that long.
“I’m the only one who can,” he said.
“I can.”
“I think it’s better if I stay in control of the several tons of steel careening at high speeds when we don’t know for sure what might cross our paths.” He started the engine. “I’ll be fine. I’m not an invalid.”
His tone had gotten a bit sharp. I winced inwardly. “I know, I just—” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
“Maybe I’ll learn to drive sometime,” Lance said conversationally as the car rumbled toward the highway. “Zoom all over. It’s too bad you’re supposed to stay on the roads, though. So many other places to go.”
“Remind me never to get in a vehicle when you’re behind the wheel,” I teased, kicking the back of his seat lightly.
Despite the dragon shifter’s chatter, the atmosphere in the car was somber. I glanced out the window at the darkness beyond the streetlamps, apprehension creeping over me again.
So many horrible things could be lying in wait just beyond my view. Torrent thought this strategy of keeping on the move would stop too many creatures from catching up with us at once, but he’d also thought the cabin would be safe. The horde had almost gotten the better of us there.
Maybe it was silly, but my hand crept across the seat of its own accord and grasped Crag’s. My fingers curled around his much larger ones tentatively, half expecting him to pull away. The gargoyle sat still for a moment in stony silence and then eased a little closer to me on the seat, clasping my hand more firmly. Even with my seatbelt on, I could now lean against his massive bicep. The fear that’d risen up inside me eased back just a little at the warmth of his arm against the side of my face.
The car swayed as Torrent pulled onto an on-ramp, and Crag’s knuckles brushed my thigh. All of a sudden, I was thinking more about what thrills those immense hands might be able to provoke in me than how well they could defend me.
I was glad that the night hid my blush. When had I become such a horn dog? These men had woken something up in me that I didn’t know how to send back to sleep… or if I even should.
Those kinds of thoughts definitely weren’t helpful at this particular moment. I focused on the protective posture of the man looming over me rather than any other wonderful assets he might have and talked to fill the silence. “What exactly are we going to do once we get to Jacksonville?”
“I want you to give us a tour,” Torrent said. “All the places where you’ve spent significant amounts of time over the course of your life. I’d like to see if we can pick up on anything about or around them that might have affected you.”
“Okay.” I knit my brow, starting to compose a mental list. “But why would any of those places have affected only me and not everyone else there?”
“I don’t know, but it’s somewhere to start. We have to make use of whatever leads we’ve got.”
“Of course,” I said, chagrinned. I was as much a mystery to him and the other men around me as I was to myself.
By the time we reached the Jacksonville city limits, I’d come up with several locations we should check and even sorted them into a vague loop starting in the south. First, the hospital where I’d gotten most of my treatments, including the transplant operation. Then my high school, my elementary school, the daycare center I’d attended for several years, and the mall where I’d done most of my larger shopping trips, either with Mom or on my own.
At each of them, Torrent had me stay in the car while he and the others prowled around and through the sites. Each time, he returned without much to say and prompted me for the next location. After the mall, my heart had started to sink.
“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d have been to that regularly except for my house. Maybe the little park that’s near it? I played there a lot as a kid. Oh, and just in the past few years, the university in Gainesville. I guess we could drive all the way out there and check it out too.”
Torrent shook his head. “Whatever’s in you, I think it’s been developing longer than that. Where’s this park?”
I directed them to it and watched from the windshield as they stalked through the small grassy field and around the playground equipment. Lance poked at one of the swings and chuckled when it swayed.
The times I’d spent running around that place felt like multiple lifetimes ago. Before I’d found out that monsters existed and wanted to have me for breakfast. Before doctors had carved my old heart out of my chest and stitched in a new one. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that I’d ever been a carefree little girl clambering over the monkey bars.
I’d survived, but in a way the girl I’d been before the virus had rampaged through my body had died. The Quinn who’d taken her place wasn’t really the same person. But it was hard to mourn her loss. I had no concept of who I would have been if I’d never gotten sick, of what I’d have had that I didn’t now.
I just wished she hadn’t taken so much from everyone else around her as she’d slipped away.
“Nothing?” I said when the men returned to the car.
Torrent didn’t even bother answering the question. “Let’s go to your house. We needed to collect your extra pills anyway. Where are they?”
I dragged in a breath, my chest clenching up at the thought of being that close to home but not even being able to go in and soak up the familiar surroundings, to say hi to Mom and Dad and show them I was still okay. Turning up in the middle of the night would only make them more worried, not less. And the last thing I wanted was even one vicious creature noticing me inside the building and taking an interest in the other inhabitants.
“In my bedroom,” I said. “It’s the one next to the second-floor bathroom that looks over the backyard. Get all the pill bottles out of the drawer in the bedside table. Thank you.”
A pang ran through me at the thought of all the other things I’d have liked to take, but we had to stay mobile. Focus on the essentials. It wasn’t as if I could really concentrate on my studies or anything else until we got my monster-stalker problem sorted out.
Torrent bobbed his head in acknowledgment and vanished along with Lance. Crag remained in the back seat with me instead of joining them like usual.
“We’ve lingered in this neighborhood for a while,” he said. “One of us should stay.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be more grateful for his attentiveness or nervous about the possibility of an imminent attack.
No hordes of murderous creatures descended on us this night, though. Maybe ten minutes had passed when Torrent and Lance materialized in the front of the car. Torrent immediately turned and held out not a handful of pill bottles but my entire school backpack, bulging full.
“I put the bottles in the outer pocket,” he said brusquely. “And I grabbed a few more changes of clothes and your computer as well. I thought you might want those.”
My spirits leapt. My laptop—I could catch up on my classes after all. Well, as long as I wasn’t too busy fleeing shadowkind beasts.
As I took the backpack and hugged it to my chest, a lump rose in my throat. It hadn’t occurred to me that Torrent would consider any of my wants or needs beyond the most obvious. At least now I could avoid falling totally behind.
Before I could say anything, Lance piped up. “Quite the collection of medicine. You could start a pharmacy.”
Torrent’s voice got even terser. “She needs it. It isn’t that much considering she had her entire heart replaced.”
The heart in question skipped a beat at the way he’d leapt to my defense, not that I’d really needed protection from the dragon shifter’s joke. I hugged the backpack to me.
“I really appreciate it,” I told him. “It might not seem like much, but it means a lot to me.”
Torrent glanced back at me, his pale eyes unreadable in the dimness. “I listen,” he said. “And you should make as much as you can of the time you still have.”
A chill shivered through me at the unspoken words I didn’t think he’d meant for me to pick up on. However little that is.