Page 3 of Thief of Night
Red,she thought at him, not sure if he could even hear her.Help! I’m not forcing you, but please.
The Blight stalked toward her, barely slowed by the dagger sticking out of its side.
Charlie didn’t have another onyx weapon. Instead, she dropped her flashlight, the beam spinning wildly on the ground, and grabbed for a splintery plank of wood.
The long shadow was almost to her again as her thumb flicked over the wheel of her lighter. Old, half-rotted, and soaked in something oily, the wood caught fast.
At the sight of the fire, the Blight paused in its approach.
The flames licked downward over the plank, toward her hand. Whateverhad caused the wood to catch so easily also made it burn too fast. She felt heat lick at her fingers, then scorch.
With a desperate shout, she hurled the plank at the Blight.
The shadow monster caught fire, an enormous torch in the night. It gave an inhuman howl that sounded half like an owl screech, half like an infant cry, and Charlie staggered back. Flames licked the ceiling before burning up like flash paper. Bright enough to blister the eyes, then gone.
Charlie’s fingers hurt. She put them in her mouth as she stamped out the embers. She noted the oily substance, darker than char. The remains of the shadow.
Then another shadow dropped down from the empty windowsill, landing softly, catlike. Charlie screamed.
When he came into focus, though, it was only Red.
Red.
She wanted to think of him as Vince, but she couldn’t.
Tall and broad-shouldered, with bronze hair and eyes like smoking craters.
Nicely done.The words echoed in her mind.
“No thanks to you,” she said out loud, not wanting to let him see how rattled she was. Still, she couldn’t help bracing her hands on her thighs and leaning over to take several steadying breaths, then several more.
“I came when you called. If you needed me, you should have called sooner.” She could feel the whisper of his emotions, prickly and intense enough to bleed through their tether. “You can make me do whatever you want, Charlie.”
Ash smoldered at her feet and her fingers still stung from the fire. Charlie reached down and took her knife from the remains. With it, she scraped up some of the dark substance she’d need to present to the Cabal to claim the bounty. “You were slow.”
He only watched her with those terrifying eyes.
Charlie stuck her hands in her pockets and started to pick her way out of the building, toward the white van that she’d been driving. She tried to ignore her sore shoulder and burnt fingers and throbbing head. Ignored that Red hadn’t followed her. Tried to convince herself this had been a success.
She was the Hierophant. She’d gotten rid of a dangerous Blight and come one step closer to working off her debt to the Cabals.
She was three darkened blocks away before Red caught up. His eyes looked more human—no hollows and no smoke. She thought about the body of the man on the third floor, the one whose blood had still been wet, whose skin had still perhaps even been warm.
She wondered if there was any blood left in him now.
2Gritted Teeth
Charlie leaned back in the driver’s seat of the van and felt the sticky wetness on her shirt beneath her coat. Blood, from where the shadow’s claws sank into her back. With the realization she was bleeding, the pain that adrenaline had held back flooded in to replace the cold strangeness from a moment before.
She gritted her teeth and gripped the steering wheel, wishing she was by herself. Wishing that Red wasn’t there to witness her every moment of weakness.
Wishing that she could at least be alone in her own head, without worrying he could sense the edge of her feelings, if not more.
All Charlie’s life, she’d been able to hide. It was a lot easier to seem tough when there was no one watching you lying in bed all day, too depressed to take a shower. To let people believe you were on a bender when you didn’t show up for work instead of having to admit you couldn’t make yourself get up off the couch.
A lot easier to allow yourself to descend into hysterical sobbing when there was no one to witness it, no less a terrifying former Blight. She supposed her own shadow had always been there, though she hadn’t given it much thought. Now her shadow was with Posey and all she could think about was Red.
“Let me see your shoulder,” he said, voice like smoke.
