Page 58 of Bizarre Bonds
Riva holds up her hand to stop me before I can spiral into panic. The vibe I’m getting off her isn’t irritation or fearbut mostly caramel-corn amusement. Well, layered across some frustration she’s suppressing beneath the tastier emotions.
“Nothing like that,” she says. “Sorry, bad joke. It’s just—we’re still trying to hunt Viscera down. So far we haven’t managed to do more than shout at her from a distance a few times, she’s so slippery. But the times wedidshout at her, she asked us where you are. It seems like she found you… interesting.”
Based on the way the crocodile-tailed woman spoke to me, I wouldn’t have thought she considered me interesting so much as pathetic or naïve.
Based on how she bashes up whatever she’s paying attention to, I’m not sure Iwanther finding me interesting.
“She ran away from me,” I point out. “She laughed at me. It didn’t seem like she wanted to talk to me at all.”
Drey shrugs where he’s standing next to Riva, his mouth slanting into a crooked grin. “Maybe she likes you now that she’s gotten to compare you to the other supernatural people who’re trying to talk to her. She definitely doesn’t want us anywhere nearby.”
“She can tell you’d have a much better chance of catching her.”
“And that might be true,” Riva says. “But the fact that she’s asking about you might give us a different sort of edge. Now that you’re back, maybe she’ll stick around a little longer in one spot if it means you two can have a chat. That gives us opportunities.”
The men I marked have materialized around me, other than Jonah who had to step out of the car the human way. Raze lets out a soft growl. “You’re talking about using Peri as bait.”
Riva raises her hands. “Only if she’s up for it! And we’d be very careful. It just seems like a strategy that might work… and we’re in pretty short supply at this point.”
Jonah’s expression darkens. “You haven’t madeanyprogress toward containing Viscera since we left?”
At Riva’s other side, Zian shakes his head. “She’s fast, and she never hits the same area twice. We haven’t seen any pattern to where she pops up and starts smashing things. No matter how thoroughly we patrol, there are always some places none of us can get to fast.”
Drey grimaces. “She jumps out of the shadows, does as much damage as possible in ten minutes or less, and vanishes before any of us can reach her. Rollick’s shadowkind employees have been patrolling too, trying to keep tabs on her, but she moves faster than any of them can.”
Nausea pools in the base of my stomach. “How much has she destroyed since we’ve been gone?”
Riva sighs. “A bunch of storefronts, one whole row of houses, several dozen cars, and more telephone poles than I can count. We’ve been able to keep the humans talking about marauding gangs and electric blitzes for now, but I don’t know how much longer we can avoid them drawing the conclusion that there’s a monster rampaging through their city.”
“Just the tail, not the whole Godzilla,” Mirage pipes up. He offers a tight smile. “It could be worse?”
Hail looks abruptly concerned. “Those monster movies—Godzilla and King Kong and all—aren’t based on real shadowkind, are they?”
Jonah manages a rough laugh. “Not as far as any of us know. I suppose the fact that this Viscera being isn’t as bad as a skyscraper-tall lizard is a small comfort.”
“She’s still wrecking too much stuff,” I say. “The people must be so scared.” Little eddies of uneasiness drift from the city like trickles of pickle juice. How much stronger must the flavor be up close?
It took a lot of digging in the academy library to find out much about the incidents Rollick mentioned between shadowkind and humans. What Fen and I did scrounge upshowed a whole lot of bad behavior on both sides—sorcerers using shadowkind and shadowkind eating sorcerers to compel each other, researchers experimenting on us while one of our own toyed with them for malicious ends.
But even in the most horrifying accounts, there were sprinkles of hope I couldn’t miss. Mentions of humans who pitched in and risked their lives alongside the shadowkind.
Maybe a super-powerful demon wouldn’t think much of them, but I know better than to dismiss how much impact even a trace of sweetness can make. No matter what Hail thinks, humans aren’t all bad. Whatever happens here, we have to give them a chance.
And they won’t get much of one if Viscera buries them in rubble.
I square my shoulders. “If she’ll come out for me, we have to use that. Maybe she’s getting bored, and she’s thinking about what I said. She might start to settle down if she realizes we really will help her!”
Hail snorts. “Always so optimistic, Cream Puff.”
There isn’t much rancor in his voice, though. I catch a strange twinge of uncomfortable affection, like chocolate laced with the bitterest of ground coffee.
Raze shoots me a sharp look. “You shouldn’t do anything that’d give Viscera a chance to hurtyou.”
“The shadowbloods and Rollick’s assistants are putting themselves in danger every time they go out to track her down. I’ve got to dosomething. If she attacks me, I’ll bounce back easier than any mortal being would. I’ll be fine.”
A pang of distress hits me through my connection with Mirage. “We can’t let her break our Rainbow.”
I can’t remember the last time the fox shifter has called metheirs. The fondness woven into the nickname only solidifies my resolve. “She won’t. Maybe I’ll break through all her messed-upthinking instead! And we can use our bond. You can find me through it if you try, and I’ll intensify what I’m feeling so you know when I’ve run into her.”
