“What the fuck is going on?” Hail says, staring alongside me.
The man we’ve been guiding sways on his feet and crumples over in a faint.
I don’t know if he blacked out because of the effects of the shadows or simply from shock. My pulse stutters. “We can’t leave him here.”
Raze is already springing forward to scoop the limp man into his muscular arms. He jerks his chin at us to motion us to keep running with him.
We skirt the building and dash out onto the street beyond just as the spreading spew of shadow churns straight through and across the road.
Cars honk and swerve. Gasps and shrieks reverberate from the other industrial buildings around us.
One SUV skids straight into the current and whirls around as if the tires have hit ice. I get a glimpse of the driver’s blanched face through the windshield.
As I whip around to help her, a familiar white van careens into view on the other side of the flood.
Rollick’s assistant made it to Jonah quickly. Our sorcerer brings the vehicle to a screeching halt. The doors have flown open before it’s even finished moving.
The two shadowbloods jump out and charge into the dark flood. I spot Zian wrenching open the SUV’s door so Riva can drag the woman out.
More shouts and tire screeches carry from beyond the next building. How far is the rift’s shadowy vomit going to spread?
“Let’s go pick up the pieces we can,” Mirage calls to us, and bounds toward the nearest side street.
Raze sets the unconscious man down a few buildings away from the current, and we all dash after the fox shifter. Mirage’s ears flash amid his red hair, but he manages to tuck them away as quickly as they emerged.
As we sprint around the hulking buildings, other sorts of unnerving noises reach my ears. There’s a metallic crashing sound, over and over as if someone is repeatedly driving their car into a wall. Then a hollow groan that sounds like something mechanical being torn in two.
Are the shadows from the rift throwing a temper tantrum now? How much worse is it going to get?
My feet and ankles sting with the pounding of my shoes against the ground. The pain must be echoing into my marked men, because Raze glances back at me with a concerned expression that seems to make Hail’s jaw clench.
“I’m fine!” I gasp out past the dryness in my mouth.
We hurtle out onto the next road over—and discover that the flood hasn’t made it this far after all.
It appears the wave of shadow brought at least a few shadowkind with it. A couple of creatures are weaving between the parked cars, lunging at any mortals who venture out of the nearby buildings. One that looks like a leopard with quills poking from its spots snarls and gnashes its teeth at the figures behind a first-floor window.
And in the middle of the street, jumping up and down on the roof of a truck that’s had its door ripped off, is a higher shadowkind who looks almost human.
Her corporeal form is a tall, gangly woman with a sharp jaw and sharper elbows. Her roughly chopped hair rustles with each hop.
She must have more strength than her normal human-like size would suggest, because her weight is denting the roof farther down with every jump, provoking that awful crashing sound. Or maybe that’s the effect of some supernatural power, I realize at a flash of cracking energy beneath her feet.
Out the back of her baggy jeans, a ridged crocodile-like tail lashes back and forth in time with her hopping, as if she’s using a very thick skipping rope.
She doesn’t seem to care that the mortals might see her monstrous feature or her powers. Maybe she’s the kind of troublemaker Rollick would have ordered to the academy if he found out about her. With no one around to ground her, she’s taking advantage of the sudden chaos.
Then, as I watch, the edges of her body quiver.
All at once, her hair shoots out twice as long, halfway down her back. Her pointed chin widens into a square-ish shape. Her eyes sink deeper, and her ribcage juts broader.
My heart stops.
She isn’t an ordinary shadowkind being, higher or not. She’s morphing like all the weird lesser creatures who’ve tumbled out of the strange rifts.
15
Periwinkle
