Shadow Kissed 03 - Shadowman

to argue, “He can’t even pick—”
    â€œYet he managed to build the gate,” Custo shot back. “Get out.”
    Khan poured his attention into the hammer while the cavern was vacated. The tool was not meant for fae hands and defied his attempts. The power to wield it had come from something else, deep, deep inside him. He searched for that space of quiet, for the time he’d spent with Kathleen. He thought of the red-gold fall of her hair, the shift of her features when she smiled, the natural pink to her lips.
    He grasped for the hammer again. His Shadow hand passed through the tool, and he wasn’t surprised. It was the wrong tack; he’d try another.
    Layla.
    He’d held her in his arms, her skin smooth and silky under his hands. Her body, warm like the earth, arching for him. Shuddering in pleasure. He recalled the salt of her sweat, the flash of her eyes. He drew from her dream, the child Layla, his glimpse into her life, her young gaze full of loneliness. Layla who’d needed a protector, yet had overcome her fears to brave wraith nests and Shadow. Layla, Layla . . .
    â€œLayla,” he said in an invocation and reached.
    The wooden shaft was smooth in his grip.

    Rose hid her bad hand in her lap when she came to a stop at the security entrance to The Segue Institute. The deformation had extended to her thickening wrist. Corded sinew ran down from her elbow across her forearm. She’d attempted to paint her striated and . . . rather pointy fingernails a pretty pink, which made her bad hand look a little less disturbing, but a glove would be better still. Definitely before she reunited with Mickey.
    She rolled down the window of her stolen delivery truck as two soldiers approached, one on either side. She had half a mind to floor the gas and bust through— Find her! the gate said in Rose’s head—but the enclosure surrounding the place was made up of thick concrete and metal barriers. At full speed, the truck would crumple like a soda can.
    Well, fudge.
    â€œMa’am? May I see your driver’s license?” But the soldier thought, Trouble . He looked at the other soldier, who touched something around his throat and mumbled a series of numbers Rose couldn’t quite make out. It must have been some kind of code for trouble , because his next thought was that it would take ninety seconds for backup to arrive. Survive , he thought. She had no idea what he meant by wraith.
    What was a wraith? It did not sound polite, particularly directed at her.
    â€œIf you’ll just open the gate.” Rose tilted her head, smiled, did a double bat of her eyes. She mentally nudged him with the command. If she pushed too hard, his mind might break like that of the poor fool who’d refused to give up the truck, and then he’d be a drooling baby and no good to her at all.
    kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat
    Yes, yes. She was trying. Some things took a little time, a little subtlety. Movement rustled the trees along the road. The backup?
    If this soldier would just cooperate . . .
    â€œI have a truck full of groceries to deliver.” She insinuated truth into her sentence and pushed harder. “Open the gate, please.”
    The soldier blinked at her with bleary eyes. “Can’t. The lockdown command was already sent. No one goes in or out until Adam Thorne clears it.”
    kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat
    She’d think a whole lot better without the gate in her head. She pushed hard on the soldier. “Well, is there another way to get in?”
    He swayed on his feet. “Lockdown.”
    The second soldier approached. “Sullivan, you’re relieved of duty.”
    Rose guessed her time was up. The gate would just have to wait, and so would the girl it wanted her to deal with. Rose would think her entry through and then come back. Maybe sneak through the woods and climb over the wall. For now, though, it was better to go back than wait and find out what a wraith was and what the backup was going to do about it. She wasn’t too excited about being shot at from all sides.
    â€œMike!” the soldier shouted, as the one outside her truck window fell to the ground. Minds were such delicate things.
    â€™Course the road was too narrow to make a three-point turn easily. And she couldn’t very well back down the mountain with the hulking cab behind her. She’d go right off the edge and that would be the end of Rose Petty. Nobody wanted