I summon the vibrant blue-green light that’s shone from me before. It tickles up inside me, wavering with the splashes of anxiety that hit my senses from all around.
Yes, this situation is a little scary, but I do want to find a common ground. I want us to be able to coexist without anyone getting hurt.
Is that really so much to ask for?
The light streams out of me to the four men standing around me. I nudge it farther, toward Fen and Brine and Sorrel, toward all the other beings gathered around us, ready to embrace it and the cooperation I’m talking about.
Except most of them still aren’t in an embracing mood after all. The glow flickers as it spreads rather than beaming brighter.
My pulse hiccups. I try to push more energy out of me, but my own doubts wriggle through my focus like worms brought out by the rain. While a few streaks of the light veer toward the shadows, most of it snuffs out.
Sorrel glances down at her hands and then at the murk, her brow knitting. “That wasn’t much, was it? Maybe we should get, like, one of those big spotlights that can swing all over the place.”
I swallow thickly. “I don’t think that’ll do anything to this kind of darkness. I’m sorry. I lost my concentration. If we can all focus on the things that make us happy here in the mortal realm, that should?—”
A small, slender body springs out of the shadows to crash into my legs. Falkor gazes up at me, wriggles his furry snake form, and lets out an arf that sounds unmistakably urgent.
I frown down at him. “What’s the matter, buddy?”
He gives a whine that ends in a serpentine hiss and squirms away from me—past Sorrel, who lets out a little yelp and looks around as if for a chair to jump onto. Maybe she sees him as a very large mouse.
My impression of his urgency only increases. I glance around at my men. “I think something’s wrong. We should find out what’s going on.”
It’s no good trying to clean up one disaster if an even bigger one is about to crash on our heads.
Jonah nods. “Anyone who wants to join us, jump in the van!”
While he hustles to the driver’s seat, my other mates and I dive into the back through the shadows. Fen leaps after me, along with maybe a dozen of the other beings—including Sorrel, despite her shudder when my snake-puppy gives another arf from outside. Thankfully we all fit fine when we stick to the shadows.
Falkor seems to have picked up on what we’re doing. He barks toward the driver’s seat from where he’s standing on theroad, and Jonah gives him a wave. When our sorcerer starts the engine, the snake-puppy takes off as fast as he can slither-bound, keeping his physical form so Jonah can track him.
My self-declared pet leads us on a straight-forward route around the edge of the city, back toward the camp. My sense of the emotions wafting from the humans there had faded away with the distance. As we get closer, little jabs of panic and rage pierce my tongue, vinegar-sour and ghost-pepper-searing.
I materialize on the passenger seat next to Jonah. He’s used enough to shadowkind habits that he only gives a slight twitch of surprise, his hands staying steady on the wheel.
“Something’s happening at the camp,” I say, a shiver rippling through my nerves as the impressions expand. “People are really upset. I don’t know?—”
We turn a corner that brings us into view of the army cabins, and my voice dies. Because now I do know, and what I know isn’t good.
Dozens of soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder at the edge of their territory, their guns booming loud enough that I can hear the shots even though we’re still half a mile distant. A few tanks are rolling over behind them.
In the first second, I can’t tell who they’re firing at. It quickly becomes clear with the blinking of bodies in and out of view.
Supernatural energy flashes in lightning bolts and blazes of fire. An eerie shriek pierces the air.
It’s another army, one of shadowkind—more beings than I can count popping into view to hurl their powers at the humans and then vanishing before the bullets can tear into them.
The bottom of my stomach drops out. “Why are we attacking them? Well, notus, but… Did Rollick decide to drive the army away?”
Jonah shakes his head, his knuckles paling where he’s gripping the steering wheel. “He wouldn’t have done somethinglike that—at all, I don’t think, and definitely not without talking to us.”
My voice shrinks. “Maybe he was worried I’d disagree and mess up his plans.”
Jonah’s gaze flicks away from the road just long enough to hold mine for a beat. “No, Peri. He might have been frustrated that you and he weren’t seeing eye to eye, but—this is going to screw things up for all the shadowkind here. Make you all targets. He wouldn’t put your life in danger like that.”
That’s true. Rollick might distrust humans to a massive degree, but only because of how they treat shadowkind. He wouldn’t screw any of us over to screw them over too.
Only one-sided screwing is acceptable.
