Escape the Void (The Eclipse Omegaverse #2)

1. Zephyr

Zephyr

The building’s residual energy thrums in tense silence, which has my hair standing on end.

My shadow — in its most natural shape, a maned wolf — tiptoes on stilt-like legs around the room, inspecting things and keeping watch.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Phoenix, my identical twin brother, looks around the warehouse. It was raided by the police a few days ago and has since been sitting empty.

Apparently, the police raid ended without uncovering any useful information. But they didn’t know what they were looking for, not like we do.

Sure, the cops saved a half-dead omega that the Hollow Coffins MC, our biggest rivals and the worst of the worst, left behind, but she was just a decoy. There’s still a strong possibility we’ll find some valuable information that the police missed, like where they’re harboring stolen omegas.

I shine the black light across the floor, illuminating the now-visible characters, arrows, and numbers made of luminescent paint.

I whisper to my twin, “Help me move the desk.”

“You found—” He stops himself, his brown eyes going wide with the realization that he’s talking too loudly. He helps me pick the desk up off the ground, shuffling it a few feet to the left, and whispers, “You found something?”

Wearing our motorcycle gear — thick composite pants, thick hooded sweatshirts, our cuts, and most importantly, our gloves — we don’t have to worry about leaving behind fingerprints as we rearrange toppled furniture to get the desk out of the way.

Once we move the desk, more encoded text is unveiled.

I pull my phone out, Phoenix doing the same, and we snap pictures of the markings on the floor.

I don’t bother trying to decipher all the markings, but some of the words I know for sure.

‘Safe,’ ‘book,’ and ‘omega.’ It’s not a lot to go on, but we need to move quickly.

“We need to find a bookcase,” I whisper, looking around the room.

But there isn’t one.

I glance around at the toppled furniture, the darkness not that difficult to see through, but nothing even remotely looks like a bookcase.

I scan the walls with the black light anyway, trying to avoid shining it out the window.

Then I check the perimeter of the room, where we’ve found code written in past locations that we’ve searched.

I shake my head, slinking out of the room and into the next one.

This warehouse, a manufacturing building, has way too many rooms for my liking.

It’s like the clubhouse but less logically laid out.

I keep worrying that we’ll get trapped in a dead end and the cops will come back.

But I push those thoughts down. We need more information to help find omegas and shut down these trafficking rings once and for all.

We don’t miss any rooms, searching as we go into each one. We find more of the paint here and there, which Phoenix and I take pictures of and keep moving.

Finally, in one of the last offices, we find a bookcase.

Whatever cop searched this room did a shit job.

The bookcase is tipped over on its side, but based on the discoloration of the wall, it wasn’t slid to the left or right, so the bottom half of the wall behind the bookcase was never exposed.

Leading me to believe there’s no way the cops looked behind it.

When we pull it away from the wall, it reveals a hidden cache. It’s low to the ground, unlike most caches, which are usually at chest height.

One of the last caches like this was booby-trapped to explode when accessed. I brace myself, and my shadow darkens as it reaches toward the safe, ready to shield me from a potential blast once it opens the door.

Phoenix doesn’t hesitate to reach for the knob. I try to pull him back by his sweatshirt sleeve, but it’s too late. He opens the safe before my shadow can. It’s not even locked. Luckily, not even a slight puff of smoke escapes as he gains access.

I breathe a sigh of relief and let go of his sleeve while he starts pulling items out of the safe.

Dozens of envelopes, papers, folders — a whole slew of information is held inside.

Phoenix loads it into his backpack, and we replace the bookcase to its original position, hiding the cache once again.

My internal clock, the countdown that says we’ve been here too long, has me twitchy.

“I feel it too.” Phoenix gestures to the door while pulling his backpack onto his shoulders. “Let’s fly.”

Along the farthest back wall of the warehouse, large scaffolding leads to massive windows.

Which would probably be really nice during the day and let in sunlight for workers, but at night, they just make great access points for thieves.

We’re halfway up the scaffolding, Phoenix climbing above me, when the service door on the other side of the warehouse creaks open.

“Bastet’s Crossing PD. Freeze.” Based on the lack of alpha command, and the hesitation, the officer is a beta. That and the use of a standard flashlight.

Preferring the darkness, alphas would sneak in rather than announce themselves with a flashlight.

Phoenix is quick to use his shadow to mimic natural shadows you might find in a warehouse. It shields us from the flashlight like a trick of the eye. But it won’t work forever.

“Zephyr, come on,” Phoenix hisses from the darkness.

“Go!” I whisper, pulling the spray paint can out of my hoodie pocket.

He moves silently above me, his shadow cloaking him so he can escape.

“I see you,” the cop says, but I know he’s talking only to me.

My shadow hides from the light behind me.

“Hands up, drop what you’ve got,” the cop orders.

It pains me to do so, but I pull my phone out of my pocket and drop it with the spray paint can, letting it tumble — without a case — to the concrete floor below. They clatter to the ground.

I know by the sound that my phone just shattered as planned. It’s for the best. If they can’t make it work, they can’t find the evidence on it, and it just looks like I was here tagging.

“Turn around,” the cop orders.

I do, and he immediately clicks the button on his flashlight and changes the light setting.

It fucking stings. The bright all-spectrum light, at nearly the brightness of the sun, has my shadow hiding behind me as tightly as it possibly can. My whole body threatens to burn up from the intensity. No matter how impossible it is.

“Come down. Slow and steady. Don’t do anything stupid.” The cop coaxes me.

“Would if I could see,” I mutter.

The cop lowers the flashlight so it’s out of my eyes but only barely.

Abraham will be so fuckin’ pissed. I practically roll my eyes and groan internally.

I climb down the scaffolding. Me going willingly, not resisting arrest, will make this easier for everybody.

My older brother’s mate, our motorcycle club’s attorney, won’t be pleased with the nightmare this is turning out to be.

But the cop only saw me. If he thinks I was here just being a vandal, it’s a slap on the wrist at best. And the information from tonight’s raid went with Phoenix back to the clubhouse.

Once on the ground floor, I notice that the beta cop is big for his designation.

Almost as big as me. He shoves me against the wall, the flashlight shining on my hand still irritating and binding my shadow.

I’m not resisting arrest to make this any worse, so he’s able to move quickly, cuffing me and turning out my pockets.

The cuffs are the standard all-spectrum emitting ones.

They shine a constant ring of light against my skin.

It anchors my shadow to my body and keeps me from shifting.

If I shifted to my falcon form, I could fly away, just like Phoenix did.

If I shifted to my maned wolf shape, I could intimidate the cop or run away too fast for his two legs to catch.

Much like the flashlight, it stings with irritating pain. It’s bad enough to be bound, my shadow forced to behave like a usual shadow and confined to me. It’s another for it to actually hurt while doing so.

It’s not like I haven’t been arrested before. I know the drill.

But I can feel the disappointment from Family Baron already.

“Young kids like you out here vandalizing shit. Let me guess, part of your initiation into the motorcycle club? You could be doing something with your life, but instead you’re out doin’ this shit.” He talks at me, not to me.

He hasn’t even read my ID or anything. All he’s seen is the Night Wraiths logo on my sweatshirt.

My cut, showing me as a patched member and not a prospect, is tucked underneath it, hidden away. I guess Phoenix and I do look young. But at twenty-six, we’re hardly kids.

Yeah. Abraham is going to be pissed.

“Fuckin’ hell.” Abraham looks at me from across the table.

We’re in a room meant for attorney-client meetings, no cameras, no people watching, it’s ‘safe,’ and they let me out of the painful light cuffs.

I draw a slow breath, relaxing now that there’s a friend in the room. I don’t have to keep myself on high alert. I can finally give my shadow a chance to focus on something other than where the next punch is coming from.

“You should see the other guy.” I shrug, but I’d forgotten half of my injuries in the second I could relax. I wince under the stabbing pain as it jolts up my spine.

Last night I got my ass handed to me in holding. I’m sporting a fresh black eye, and claw marks run down my neck, leading across my chest to where I have several bruised ribs from ‘chance’ attacks when shadows broke free under fading and burnt-out all-spectrum lightbulbs.

My clothes were shredded, and I got treated to the jailhouse special. A cheap white T-shirt, sweatpants, and the remainder of the early hours of the morning in cuffs chained to an interrogation table.

“I have. Luckily for you, he looks less bad.” Abraham pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ve played hardball with the county attorney. Your best bet is to take a plea deal.”

“Why does that sound like I’m not getting hit with just trespassing and attempted vandalism?” A lump forms in my throat.