Page 43 of Shadow

I tilted my head just enough to glance back at the hellhounds.

One of them was watching me.

Its unblinking, inky-black eyes followed every movement, and for a fleeting moment, a chilling thought crossed my mind.

Itunderstood.

Somehow, it understood.

There was intelligence lurking in those dark, monstrous eyes. An intelligence that shouldn’t have been there.

Chapter Sixteen

King

She was human, I reminded myself. Not weak, just human.

“Stay with me,” I muttered under my breath as I carried her back to my room.

Her hair brushed against my face, and I couldn’t ignore her scent. It drew me in, and I knew this wasn’t a good thing.

“Please put me down,” she said softly when we were halfway to our destination.

I stopped and lowered her legs slowly, tilting her upright. She stumbled slightly, her hands reaching for the wall to steady herself. Hanging her head, she took a few shuddering breaths. Moments later, she bent over, her palms on her knees, drawing in deep, gulping breaths of air.

I stayed silent, giving her time to regain control.

“It was a panic attack,” she finally said, a little steadier now. “I get them occasionally.”

She straightened, closed her eyes briefly, and exhaled deeply. “You have given me a lot to think about. Please, take me to my room so I can sort it out.”

Sweat beaded on her temple, causing a few strands of hair to stick to her pale, damp skin. Skin that looked impossibly soft. I shoved the thought aside.

“This way,” I said, pointing to the right before walking ahead of her, deliberately putting some distance between us.

The sound of her sluggish footsteps trailed behind me. Beast remained oddly quiet, which was a surprise. When I picked her up, he didn’t stir. Not even a whisper.

I was the one who struggled. Seeing her in distress, having her so close. It got to me.

But she was human and worked for the Federation. I could never allow myself to forget that.

I owed her father, but I did not owe her government. That was where the problem lay. Right then, I couldn’t trust her to leave with the hellhound information. Not yet. We still didn’t know what the Federation knew, and that uncertainty was dangerous. We were waiting for confirmation of what we believed, and it could come at any time. Until we had the truth, she wasn’t going anywhere.

Greystone had kept a journal, and through it, we pieced together fragments of the conversations Secretary of Defense Church had with him. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. The Federation needed to come clean and share everything they knew about the hellhounds.

If we had worked together from the beginning, we might have developed a more effective way to destroy them. Something better than the gruesome task of severing individual heads.

From what we studied, we believed the first wave of hounds was made up of those who had died within the past fifty years. The next wave could possibly hold those who were older.

The question was: Would they be stronger? Weaker? Smarter? We didn’t know.

What we did know was that these creatures were intelligent on some level. They tested their restraints methodically, and once they determined escape wasn’t possible,they stopped trying. They waited. That kind of patience wasn’t lost on any of us.

What we didn’t know was whether they could communicate with each other. We had been running experiments to prove or disprove this theory, but so far, we had made no progress.

When they first attacked, they came in wave after wave. That was why we suspected they might have some form of communication. If they could communicate, we’d figure out how, and we’d use it to our advantage.

I wasn’t entirely honest with Marinah about what we had discovered. From documentation my Warriors had recovered in the U.S., it was clear that the old government had known what was happening long before the first electromagnetic waves hit.

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