Chapter 5
Torrent
Iwatched Rollick slide into the back seat of the chauffeured sedan, aiming a wave at the patrons lined up outside the hotel night club as he did. The car drove off into the L.A. night. I waited in the shadows in front of the hotel for several minutes longer to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t double back for one reason or another.
Not that he typically did. But I no longer trusted my instincts when it came to my former-and-possibly-still-current boss. I wasn’t even sure whether I’d misjudged him only a little or horribly to begin with.
There was definitely plenty he wasn’t telling me, my men, or Quinn, and as long as I didn’t have the full story, everything about him was suspect.
I was reasonably sure that he wouldn’t be back for at least a few hours. His evening business meetings tended to involve a lot of drinking and schmoozing, something he’d playfully complained to me about more than once. He wouldn’t want to show any sign to the outside world that something had changed about his habits, even around mortals. You could never be totally certain who else might be watching.
Anyway, he hadn’t forbidden us from having any contact with Quinn at all. If he caught me schmoozing with her, he might be pissed off, but he couldn’t claim I’d gone against explicit orders.
I slipped through the shadows up through the hotel. On the high level where silver and iron slats lay interlaced within the floor, there was no way for the average shadowkind to continue upward other than via Rollick’s secure elevator… or through a secret entrance he’d keyed to just a few select employees’ energies with his demonic magic. Thankfully his shaken trust in me had been outweighed by his desire to have as many invested parties as possible keeping his “prize” safe, or no doubt I’d have been locked out of that.
I had to be careful in his own rooms, of course. I wouldn’t put it past Rollick to have surveillance in his private space, video or audio or both. If I could avoid him finding out about this visit, I’d prefer to.
The terrace outside his suite looked clear enough. I scanned the eaves and the walls and saw nowhere a camera could be hiding. It was just a matter of getting Quinn out here.
She was in the lounge room, tucked into one of the armchairs with a book open on her lap. There mustn’t be much for her to do stuck in that suite. It’d be killing her being so cut off from her family and school.
My mouth twisted at the thought. I wasn’t sure my visit would make things much better, but at least I could offer a little company and information about what was going on outside these rooms.
I emerged into physical form on the darkened terrace, just close enough to the sliding door that I could touch the handle with the tip of one tentacle. I gave it a slight jostle, small enough that it could pass for a gust of wind but loud enough to make Quinn glance up.
As her gaze caught on my face, I held my finger to my lips. She’d startled a bit at the noise, and thankfully that covered any additional shock from her first sight of me. Being the astute woman I’d discovered her to be, she composed her features into an expression of calm and turned back to her book as if she hadn’t seen anything at all.
Satisfied, I drifted through the shadows to the side of the terrace to wait. Impatience gnawed at me, but I wouldn’t want her to come too quickly and give the game away.
Moonlight rippled over the ocean. I watched it and listened to the distant chatter and music from the rooftop lounge overhead until the door from the bedroom whispered open. As I dragged myself back out of the gloom, Quinn eased outside to meet me. She walked over to the railing next to me and then raised her eyebrows in question, not even sure whether she should speak.
She’d learned a lot of caution in the past several days—or maybe she’d developed that instinct years ago thanks to the restrictions of her health.
“I think it’s fine for us to talk here,” I said quietly. “But I checked earlier—the hotel room around the corner of the building is empty. If you trust me to help you over, we could talk even more freely there.”
Quinn nodded without hesitation, sending a pang through my chest. She’d only known me for a matter of days, and in that span she’d uncovered at least one major betrayal, but she believed in me enough to put her life in my hands. I guessed I had saved it far more times than I’d put it in danger, but her trust felt like a gift all the same.
“Stay here,” I murmured, and leapt into the shadows along the building. It was a long span of wall to reach the corner, and then a few feet around the side to the railing of the other room’s balcony. There, I re-emerged and unleashed two more of my tentacles than usual, leaving me with eight limbs: four from my shadowkind state and four humanesque.
My natural appendages were far stronger than my human-like ones. I hooked one tentacle firmly around the railing and then drew myself back around the building by gripping the wall with my suckers. Quinn didn’t show any sign of alarm at my increased monstrousness. She waited while I got a solid grip on her railing. Fully extended, I could hold on to both, but I wouldn’t want to risk stretching myself across a much farther distance.
I held out a third tentacle to her. “I’ll hold on to you and carry you across,” I said.
“Okay.” She clambered onto the upper part of the railing with the skills I’d seen watching her tramp around abandoned buildings and high-rise rooftops back in her regular life, and I looped my tentacle around her waist. It was a little strain drawing her to my torso, but she wasn’t all that heavy.
She smiled at me when we were face to face. As I passed her to my fourth tentacle, her gaze slid down the building, taking in the lights and other terraces below. Then I was hefting her around the corner to where she could scramble onto the other balcony.
I followed quickly, heaving myself over the railing after her and ducking into the shadows to unlock the balcony door from the inside. The moment I opened it, Quinn darted inside—and flung her arms around me.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she murmured against the fabric of my button-up, her warmth spreading all across my body. “I’m so glad you’re still okay. Lance and Crag?—”
“Are just fine too, last time I saw them, which was this morning,” I reassured her, and allowed myself the simple but nearly overwhelming pleasure of hugging her tighter to me with my arms while my tentacles braced my damaged legs.
The gargoyle liked to call her “soft,” but what I felt more than anything was the strength in her. The resilience that had kept her going through so much chaos and so many setbacks.
As much as I wanted to gather her up completely for myself, I forced myself to add, “They’d be here too if they were able to. Rollick sent them on missions farther afield, and they haven’t gotten back yet. He’s gone out too—we should have at least a couple of hours before there’s any chance he’ll notice I’ve kidnapped you.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” she asked, tucking her head against my neck. “Kidnapping me? I thought we agreed that it was better to wait out the deal and see what we could find out with Rollick’s input.”
“That is still the plan,” I admitted. “This is only a temporary kidnapping. I figured you’d want to be filled in on what we know so far—and to have the chance to talk to someone other than him, as enthralling a conversationalist as I know he is.”
Quinn snorted, which told me Rollick had at least tried working his charms on her. The thought made my arms tighten around her, even though she obviously wasn’t particularly impressed by him.
What Rollick wanted, he tended to get, one way or another. Which was all the more reason we had to figure out how to free her from him for good before that happened in a more permanent fashion.
An ache was starting to creep up my calves from standing like this. I adjusted my weight minutely, not wanting to disturb Quinn, but she reacted immediately. She’d always been particularly alert to my difficulties, which both irritated me and tugged at my heart.
“You should sit down,” she said, glancing around the room. The only places to sit were a narrow armchair that I could already tell would squish my tentacles—it wasn’t as if Quinn could carve that into a more monster-friendly version in the short time we had—and the bed. A pang that was both uncertainty and anticipation wavered through my chest, but Quinn drew me toward the bed without a second’s hesitation.
I sat down on the edge near the foot and swept my gaze around the room in another precautionary glance. It seemed unlikely that Rollick would risk putting cameras in the guestrooms where there’d be a scandal if one were discovered, and I saw no sign of one. I relaxed just slightly, setting my hands on the covers.
Quinn switched on one of the small bedside lamps so we could see each other better and hopped up next to me, turning toward me and sitting cross-legged. She obviously wanted to have a real part in this conversation, not just to lean on me for comfort. That was part of why I’d fallen for her too.
“What have you found out so far?” she asked. “Do you have any idea who these shadowkind are that keep sending their horde of allies after me?”
Right down to business. My lips twitched with a fond smile. “We know more than we did before. From combining what Rollick’s been able to tell us about what happened after the sorcerer family was attacked in Miami with our own observations over the past several days, we’re completely sure that whoever’s searching for you—and putting pressure on Goldie and whatever else—was also behind that attack. We also know that this is part of a longer pattern. Rollick’s dug up information on a dozen or so prominent sorcerers across the continents who’ve been slaughtered in similar ways.”
Quinn winced. “With their vital organs removed?”
“Yes,” I said, because it wouldn’t do her any good to shy away from the full truth. “It’s starting to seem increasingly likely that the one or few higher shadowkind responsible have gained some sorcerer power of their own and are using it to compel some of the lesser beings to their bidding, along with more typical methods of coercion. Although I’m sure some of them are simply along for the ride to win favor or for the thrill of it.”
Her shudder reflected how unnerved I felt by that revelation. A shadowkind compelling other shadowkind… It was bad enough when humans enslaved us and manipulated us to their will. To turn that perverse power against your own… There were some lines that shouldn’t be crossed, no matter how much of a monster you were.
“Who are they?” Quinn asked. “Do you know anything about the powers they had before they started murdering sorcerers? Or about what they want to do with all the new powers they’re getting?” She paused, her head drooping slightly. “Or why they seem to want to capture me now rather than tear me apart on the spot? Although maybe that’s just so the underlings can bring me to their boss, and that’s when I’ll get torn up.”
“That is possible,” I admitted, as much as I hated to. “We’ve talked about it, and even Rollick agrees that at this point it seems unlikely. They’ve put a lot of energy into tracking you down, and with the number of sorcerers they’ve already devoured, one heart doesn’t seem like it should be so important to them.”
“But what else could they possibly want from me?”
I dragged in a breath. “We’ve determined that they have at least one higher being with persuasive abilities working with them—she can’t compel shadowkind, but her powers work on mortals, and she’s used that to help during their search for you. It could be that they want to have you in their grasp so they can compel you into compelling other shadowkind.”
Quinn knit her brow. “And that would be better than eating my heart?”
I smiled thinly. “Power direct from its natural source is a lot more potent than power diluted by mixing it with other factors. Quite possibly once you get a handle on your abilities, you’d be able to command more shadowkind alone than our enemies could with a dozen sets of organs in their guts.”
A shiver ran through her slim frame, and she hugged herself. Wisps of her pale hair fell across her cheeks as she glanced down at her lap. Then she squared her shoulders and met my eyes again with those stunning sky-blue eyes. “Well, we’re obviously not letting that happen. What about my other questions?”
I thought back to what else she’d asked. “The mastermind—or minds—behind this whole situation have kept themselves very much in the background, letting their lackeys do all the grunt work. We’re not sure what kind of beings they are or their natural powers. We do seem to have benefitted from their not being all that familiar with this country. Most of the other killings were in Europe and Asia, and they’ve only been ‘recruiting’ assistance here on the ground pretty actively in the past several months—they don’t seem to have had much of a presence on this side of the ocean until recently.”
Possibly that was the only reason we’d been able to stay a few steps ahead of them.
“We’re still working on that,” I went on. “It’s only been a couple of days. Rollick sent Crag off to talk to a being who tangled with the group and might have clashed with the leader directly to see what we can find out there. Lance is following another trail. I’ll try to update you again soon—maybe all of us will be able to come together. Rollick has meetings and other events pretty frequently.”
Quinn gazed past me toward the balcony, her expression pensive. Then she met my eyes again. “He wants me to tap into my sorcerer powers. Rollick. He told me that yesterday.”
I frowned. Was that all the demon wanted—a pet sorcerer he could use to compel shadowkind to his bidding? The idea made even less sense to me than the thought that he’d wanted to devour her heart and take on that power for himself. I could maybe see him enjoying adding to his own capabilities, but he exerted plenty of authority over any shadowkind he encountered already. Getting a human to order them around in his place didn’t sound like him at all.
Quinn was studying my reaction. “That’s not what you’d have expected.”
“No. I have no idea why he’d want to bring out your magic—but I doubt he’d tell me if I asked.”
“He wouldn’t tell me. And you’re not even supposed to know, since we aren’t supposed to have talked about it.” She sighed. “Before this whole thing, you respected him, didn’t you? You didn’t think he was some horrible villain.”
“I didn’t think that,” I agreed. “He… I mean, we’re all shadowkind, not human. There’s a reason we get called monsters, and it’s not just because of how we look. I won’t claim he follows the same moral compass someone you’d consider a “good person” would, but neither do I. I can say that in the decades I’ve worked for him, he’s only seemed harsh when prompted, not out of pure sadistic enjoyment. And while he plays with the mortals who come to this place, it’s never been in a way that leaves them scarred. He doesn’t let the shadowkind patrons outright harm them either.”
“So he’s got some sense of morality,” Quinn muttered. “Or at least of maintaining a balance for whatever selfish reasons.”
“I don’t think it’s all selfish.” I flexed my tentacles on either side of me. “He didn’t need to take me on as a lackey and then a lieutenant. When I presented myself to him and asked for whatever work he could give me, I expected him to laugh in my face. I haven’t gotten much more than sneers and ridicule from other shadowkind over my infirmities… and I can’t deny that they make me less capable. But he saw something in me and decided it was worth taking the gamble. He’s the only one who gave me a chance like that.”
Quinn was quiet for a moment. She scooted closer to me, and I shifted my nearer tentacle so it slipped around her, letting her get close enough that she could rest her hand on my thigh.
“What did happen to you—to injure your legs and…?” Her hand rose to my bashed-in cheek. “If you don’t mind telling me.”
I didn’t like talking about the past with anyone. Shame burned through my body at just the briefest memory of those times. The words rose in my throat to put her off—but she’d told me about the most traumatic parts of her own life. She’d bartered her freedom to save me from Rollick’s anger.
She deserved to know exactly what kind of man—and monster—I was, didn’t she?
I forced myself to speak. “For most of my existence, I wasn’t anyone you’d have admired or probably even liked. I got a thrill out of all the indulgences of the mortal realm, and that was what I focused all my time and energy on. I grifted to make money and connections; I roamed from party to party; I delved into every recreational drug there is; I went through multiple sexual partners in a night.”
Quinn hadn’t tensed or shown any sign of distress yet, just waiting patiently for me to go on. I swallowed hard and continued.
“I don’t even remember exactly what happened, I was so high at the time. All I know for sure is that I got it in my head to hassle some other beings in some way, a prank or something like that, and it turned out they were more powerful than I must have realized in my messed-up state or I wouldn’t have targeted them. They were pissed off, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to really defend myself. They battered me good… I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d have killed me if we hadn’t been on a beach and I managed to propel myself into the water where I was more at my element and could flee.”
I paused, and then reached to untie the laces on my boots. Let her see the full extent of my deformity. This was who I was now. This was who she could decide to stand by or push away from.
As I slid the boots off, a little pained sound worked from Quinn’s throat. On one side, the foot was merely broken, the ball and toes missing just as the very tip was on the matching tentacle when I was in full shadowkind form. My ankle canted inward at an odd angle too.
The other side was worse. My attackers had crushed everything from below the anklebone so completely that my left foot had simply fallen away. There was nothing but a stump. The boots I conjured out of shadow held the necessary fixtures to keep me upright when I needed them to.
Quinn’s fingers curled around my arm. I found myself unable to look at her.
“That’s the story,” I said, my voice roughening. “That’s who I was. The beating worked as a wake-up call. I couldn’t indulge the same way I had before, since I couldn’t move among mortals on just my two feet, and I didn’t want to lose even more by keeping up the same carelessness anyway. But I still love a lot about this realm. The job for Rollick gave me access to a few minor pleasures. And the rest I can at least enjoy vicariously here and there.”
Now she’d seen it all. She knew just how much of a ruin I was. My muscles clenched, bracing for—I didn’t even know what, but some act to extricate herself from me.
Instead, she bobbed up to press a kiss to my fractured cheek like she had in the yacht a few days ago. My heart wrenched.
Quinn stayed there with her head tipped close to mine, her breath tickling over my skin. After a moment, she spoke softly by my ear. “Thank you for telling me. It doesn’t change who I know you are now. Or how I feel about you.”
I finally dared to turn my gaze toward her. “And how’s that?” I murmured.
She touched my jaw and brought her lips to mine.
As our mouths melded together, something hummed through my chest, as if she were pouring pure light straight into me. I wanted to soak it all in, to revel in the passion she still meant to offer me.
Here we were on this bed with no one to disturb us. I had her all to myself. And if she wanted me, then I was going to make sure she got every possible pleasure I could offer her.