Chapter 9
Periwinkle
Colonel Hueber gazes around the table in the trailer, radiating so much disdain I think even a human could taste the burnt-broccoli flavor. “These are the… the things you have helping you run the show? No wonder it’s all going to hell.”
I clasp my hands in front of me, trying to look ever so responsible and ready to solve all our problems. Next to me, Raze shifts his weight, his head drooping low.
Where he’s standing between us and the several other beings who’ve gathered for this conference, Rollick’s eyes narrow just a smidge. If the military figures on the other side of the table could pick up on his demonic energy right now, they’d be ducking. It crackles through my senses.
He manages to speak in a deceptively even voice. “We’ve kept the situation much more under control than it would have been without our intervention. I don’t think you’d want to see what would happen if we leave.”
Hueber huffs. “Is that a threat?”
Rollick looks as if he’s exerting immense effort not to roll his eyes. Interestingly, I get a similar impression from the slim, black-haired man standing next to the colonel. Major Yin’s lips give a slight twitch like he’s bitten his tongue, possibly literally.
All right, I think I like that one.
“It’s simply a statement of fact,” Rollick goes on in the same steady tone.
“We’re living in unprecedented times at the moment.
You can’t know what it would look like without us pitching in, because nothing like this has ever happened before.
In any case, I don’t believe any of your people were harmed in the incident. ”
Hueber’s eyes narrow. “All the people around here are my people. The human ones, not whatever exactly you are. We came to protect them, and apparently you’re here to tear them to shreds if the mood strikes you.”
His gaze flicks to Raze, whose shoulders slump even more as if he’s trying to fold his tall, sinewy frame in on itself into monstrous origami.
The salty-sour shame flowing out of my lover sparks my temper.
I match Rollick’s calm, but I’m not going to keep quiet.
“He was protecting us. None of us want to hurt humans, but those humans ran at us with weapons. They were out to kill us! Don’t you have laws about self-defense and standing ground and all that?
” I feel like at least one of those terms was thrown around by a police officer in some movie I watched.
Hueber purses his lips. “We only have your word on that.”
Major Yin clears his throat and motions for the colonel to lower his head so he can convey something quietly. At whatever he whispers, Hueber’s face tenses.
The colonel jerks straight again with a prickle of irritation as if it’s his colleague’s fault he needed to be corrected.
“Fine. A few human witnesses confirm your story, so it seems you had some provocation. All the same, I can’t imagine a human ripping any of you apart the way this monster did.
” He waves his hand toward Raze. “I don’t want him anywhere near my troops. ”
Rollick ticks one eyebrow upward. “Not even if it’s either Raze charges in to protect them or some new warped monster from the city joins the tearing-apart game? He’s saved a lot more of you humans than he’s harmed, you know.”
Hueber glowers at the demon, seething even more bitterly on the inside. I’m a little worried he’s going to hurl his tank-like body right at the table in an attempt to take us all down with it.
“I don’t want to set eyes on him,” he growls. “You have all those shadowy powers. If I can’t see him, then I don’t have to think about him. But if there are any more deaths on my watch—”
Rollick holds up his hands. “Message received, loud and clear. I don’t suppose your investigations around the city have turned up anything useful?”
Yin speaks up at a hurried clip. “We’ve been busy making arrangements for as many of the refugees as possible to be moved to proper shelter in the nearby towns. I’m sure once we’ve had more of a chance to examine the situation—”
“It’s fucking mad, that’s what it is,” Hueber breaks in. “I thought you all were the experts. Have you come up with any answers to why the sky is literally falling on our heads?”
I’d point out that the rift is not part of the sky, and it’d be pretty depressing if a piece of sky was always that dark, but I don’t think either of those observations would be helpful.
Rollick offers a tense smile. “We’ve had time to conduct our own experiments. I believe we’ve made progress in making the city more livable, but it’ll be a long process.”
To my relief, he doesn’t glance at me, even though it’s my powers he’s talking about. I need the colonel breathing down my neck about scrubbing the city clean of darkness like I need gravel in my pie.
If I had a pie.
Note to self: see if we can get some pies around here. Pie makes almost everyone happier.
Hueber could definitely use some blueberry or maybe a comforting apple right now.
His thick eyebrows draw together. “I don’t want it just better.
We need the city back to the way it was.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced out of their homes.
Maybe you’re happy lounging around in that murky crap, but we’ve got higher standards here on Earth. ”
Has he forgotten that we’re not actually aliens from another planet? I take a breath to correct the misinformation I was a major force in spreading, but Jonah touches my arm at my other side.
“We’re doing our best to get everyone back in their homes the way they were before,” he says. “But this is an environmental disaster on the level of a tidal wave or a tornado. It wouldn’t make sense for everything to be able to snap back to normal without any repairs.”
Hueber snorts. “Show me how to repair a bunch of darkness and we’re talking. And beef up your patrols! If you don’t want us shooting at the crazy creatures that keep launching themselves out of that mess, you need to be there to catch them before they bring out the claws.”
He spins on his heel with a forceful air as if he thinks he’s made some impressive point. I’d like to tell him to put his own claws away.
Hueber, Yin, and the several soldiers they brought with them so they could feel like they weren’t outnumbered—even though they totally were by all the shadowkind who’ve stuck to the shadows—stalk out of the trailer.
As they pass through the doorway, a small form darts past Hueber’s ankles.
He lets out a grunt of disgust and kicks his foot toward the furry serpent, but thankfully Falkor is pretty quick even with only two paws.
My strange pet wriggles across the floor and winds up my leg.
As the door thumps shut behind the soldiers, I detach the puppyish snake just long enough to tuck him around my waist rather than my knee.
He coils the end of his tail behind his head to hold himself in place like a living belt, resting on my ample hips.
Rollick eyes the shadowkind creature. “You do attract some strange company, my glowing friend.”
“At least he isn’t one of those weird warping shadowkind,” I point out. A pet like that would be about as good an addition to someone’s happy home as an oven with a leaky gas line.
Raze swipes his hand across his face. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter what the humans were doing—I know I shouldn’t have lost control like that.”
Hail shrugs. “You slaughter totally innocent animals all the time. Why not switch to humans who deserve it?”
His gaze darts toward Rollick with a flicker of wariness. “Er. But preferably somewhere Colonel Stuffed Shirt won’t find out about it.”
Rollick aims a chiding look at the winter fae. “Preferably we don’t go around slaughtering humans, period. It’s bad enough that some of this bunch has ended up with a whole new set of ideas about ‘monsters’ in their head. That’s going to be at least as much of a clean-up job as the damn rift.”
His words send a jolt of shock through me. I stare at him, knitting my brow. “After all this, you’re still going to try to convince humans that we don’t exist after all?”
Sorsha lets out a soft laugh from where she’s leaning against the wall at Rollick’s other side. “Yeah, Rollick, I think that ship has not just sailed but sunk to the bottom of the ocean.”
Rollick waves off the phoenix shifter’s wry remark, focusing on me.
“We are going to convince the humans that we don’t exist. It’s still only a very small portion of them who’ve seen us.
Once the city is cleared of the rift and the other odd rifts are contained, people will no longer have a permanent reminder.
They’ll want to go back to thinking things that go bump in the night are only imaginary, if we can point their minds in the right direction. ”
Even Mirage is frowning, an expression that doesn’t sit right on his golden-brown face. “What if we can’t make the rifts go away completely? Peri can brighten them up, but blasting them doesn’t make them let go. They’re stickier than cement.”
The demon sighs. “It isn’t as if we have any other options. We’d better sort this mess out, or we’ll be in an even bigger one soon enough.”
I raise my hand tentatively.
Rollick motions for me to speak, and I give a little cough, abruptly nervous.
“I mean… we do have another option. We could just accept that some people know about us, and focus on telling and showing them what we’re really like instead of burying them in a bunch of lies.
If they understood us better, maybe they could make more progress in helping with—”
The demon is already shaking his head, his expression gone hard.
“No. I realize you mean well, Peri, but so many humans don’t.
Even if they’d accept the shadowkind who can pass for human like most of us here, they’re still going to look at your furry companion there and scream.
And even the first part is an incredibly big if. ”
Riva speaks up in a cautious tone. “Yeah. I wish it could be that easy, but I’ve seen firsthand how hostile regular humans can get about even people like me and my guys who are half like them. And I don’t think we want to encourage more of their scientists to start meddling with shadow stuff.”
“They got away with what they were doing to you because of all the secrets,” I have to point out. “If everyone knew, if we could keep an eye on things openly instead of always sneaking around, we’d have a lot more of a say.”
Hail lifts his chin. “We should have a say, shouldn’t we? We’re part of this world too.”
That’s not exactly what I was trying to get at, but I’m glad to have someone’s support.
Hesitation wavers through my connection with Raze—he’s probably thinking about whether he’d be more likely to hurt humans if he was around them more. Jonah is balking inside too. I don’t think he likes disagreeing with Rollick, even if the demon isn’t his boss anymore.
Mirage—well, Mirage is full of flares of gumdrop delight. I think he’s imagining all the tricks he could play with people if they wouldn’t be as afraid of his illusions. I guess that’s a note for the plus column too.
Rollick promptly stomps all over the gumdrops.
“That kind of thinking is only going to lead us into a bunch of battles you won’t want to fight.
The more we put ourselves out there, the harder it’s going to be to pull back.
It’s already going to be just shy of impossible.
So forget about that, and let’s focus on sorting out this rift so we can get on with the rest.”
Get on with erasing our presence from the records and reports. Get on with deluding the humans who’ve encountered us into believing we were only figments of their imagination.
I can see the reasoning in every word he says, but something about his decision doesn’t feel quite right.
Maybe because under all his firm words, the vibe seeping off Rollick isn’t calm certainty but a fishy tang of fear.