Page 21 of Throwing Shade
I bounced on my toes. “Did you just neg me? I bet you’re a hit with the incels. Who brings the Bud Light to your basement circle jerks?”
Alex fired at me, but I’d caught the telltale motion of his fingers and flung myself sideways.
Before he could attack again, Delilah grabbed him in a chokehold.
Alex turned beet red.
“Did you go after Jude last night?” I demanded.
“Who?” He tugged ineffectually on Delilah’s arm, his words raspy.
“Red-haired woman, the same age as me. She went missing last night and I’m not a big fan of coincidences.” When he didn’t answer, Delilah choked him harder.
Alex made a gurgled sound, struggling to pry her arm off him.
I fixated on his diseased shadow. Its very existence was repellent to mine, and yet, I was drawn to it like a moth to a putrid evil flame. Before I’d reconnected to Delilah, I hadn’t paid attention to people’s shadows, but now that I was attuned to her, I sensed the wrongness of Alex’s shade even more.
Thrusting my hand over top of his shadow, I caught hold of it like it had substance.
A soundless scream tore from Alex’s throat, his tendons straining, but he was unable to move.
Whoa, that was new. Feeling my way instinctively to the next step, I crumpled his shadow in my fist. Darkness oozed through my fingers, hot to the touch and viciously seething.
HATENEEDFEEL
The world swung sideways in a vertiginous blur along with the strongest sensation that I’d jumped feet-first into a pool of rot. I stumbled drunkenly and lost my grip.
He cracked his neck, regrouping with a mean little smirk that faltered when a giant body soared off the restaurant’s rooftop.
Alex and I froze.
The massive white wolf was easily over six feet long and two hundred pounds, made bigger by bristling hackles and erect ears. It had to be male, because boys and their size issues. His head, large and heavy with a wide forehead, boasted a long, blunt muzzle, and jaws that could make short work of anything.
Green eyes stared unblinkingly at Alex and me, the kind that glowed cold and hungry out of the darkness while puny mortals built fires they prayed would keep them safe.
I clenched my bladder, goosebumps breaking out all over my body, telling myself this wasn’t a real wolf, merely an Ohrist shapeshifter, and thus, human, somewhere in there.
That didn’t lessen my terror. Especially since we were less than fifty feet from tourists in Terence Poole plaza, and yet not one of them seemed to notice a wolf. In downtown Vancouver.
“This isn’t your fight.” Alex sounded kind of pitchy, and yet not surprised.
The muscled killing machine prowled slowly toward us.
Sweating so hard I had boob soup, I let out a strangled yelp.
The wolf blinked.
Alex brought his thumbs and index fingers together in a “W” formation, but a split second before his magic blazed, the wolf bit off the man’s finger and threw it aside.
I screamed almost as loudly as Alex did, blood burbling out of his stump.
Two crows swooped down on the finger, breaking into a squabble over their prize.
The beast seized Alex by the scruff of his neck and flung him into the glass tower like he weighed nothing.
“Stop!” I cried.
Cracks spiderwebbed in the glass, but Alex staggered to his feet and bolted, zigzagging towards the seawall and leaving bloody drips in his wake.
