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“Go,” she ordered, putting more command into her voice.
The shade flickered this time and turned, lingering by the boy until he turned to follow. When Amy didn’t immediately follow, the shade just closed an ephemeral hand around Amy’s arm and dragged her along.
Amy continued to live only because Gia had told her shadow not to kill the woman.
A shade never saw in anything but black and white, and Amy had caused the deaths of too many Fae, too many shifters, too many who weren’t human. Although it had been done to protect a child, something even a shadow could understand, the blood on Amy’s hands was all Gia’s shade would ever see.
Turning to focus on the path, and the sharp curve where it disappeared into the fathomless night, Gia pulled a hair tie from her pocket, pulled her pale blond hair into a tail, secured it. Breathing in through her nose, she picked apart the scents, caught the one that stank of human sweat, excitement and fear.
The cloying, sticky-sweet tang of excitement had her curling her lip.
Monster.
Even before he showed his face, even if she’d been left to fight him in the dark, blindfolded, Gia would have known who was approaching.
This fight had been a long time coming.
He came around the sharp turn in the path, moving with bold strides as if he hadn’t been climbing a narrow path up a rough trail in the darkness while the wind howled.
Sweat and dirt and grime streaked his normally clean face, his olive green shirt far from the pristine sweaters and khakis he wore when presenting his normal public, pious face.
“I knew I’d have to face a whore of Babylon one day,” he said, his tone somber while mania turned his eyes vicious.
She cocked a brow, not moving as he drew closer.
The human standing in front of her burned with blood-lust and the desire to see her on her knees and begging for her life was stamped on his features.
But Rand wasn’t the real enemy tonight. He was just a puppet and in the back of his eyes, Gia saw the echo of the monster. Her monster—the Redcap who’d killed her father, and so many others.
“Hello, Robin.”
Robin’s flesh puppet jerked in response.
Arching a brow, she asked, “What’s the matter, thief? Haven’t let him in on the fact that you’re hitching a ride? Awful close to lying there.”
Rand’s watery blue eyes flashed black for a fraction of a second, a hint of Robin pushing ever closer to the surface.
“Come out and play.” Gia smiled, taunting him.
“I don’t play with the devil’s whores,” Rand said, lip curling. But when he took a step toward her, his movements were stiff and awkward, the first sign that the thing inside him was about to wrest control from the human.
“Let’s get this over with.” Gia pulled a blade from the sheath at the waist. “You’ve got to be tired of me running you to ground. I’m sure as hell tired of getting this close, only for you to jump ship and catch a new ride. Here, you don’t have many options. Either I win, or you win. Whichever way it goes, one of us dies.”
Rand’s eyes went glassy only a split second before Robin pushed through to the surface, his blacker-than-onyx eyes capturing all the light, swallowing it.
“Who says I can’t take you, Gia? You’re alone. Your shadow is busy. It’s just you and me.” A slow smile curled his lips, Rand’s features taking on a saturnine confidence unique to the Redcap possessing his body. “You’ve never been very good when it’s just you and me.”
“The last time it was just you and me was over a century ago,” Gia said. His lids flickered. This time, she was the one to smile. “I was hardly more than a child and I still managed to put a few holes in your meat suit—enough holes that you had to jump ship and you ended up trapped in the body of an aging, devout nun for the next eleven years. That must have been so boring. She’d have her nightmares where you had to lay in wait like the pathetic creature you really are, trying to lure her into making a mistake so you could guilt her into breaking and all she would do was wake up, pray and talk to a friend—a fellow sister, or the priest she’d known since she’d first become a nun. She was on her deathbed and you still didn’t get a foothold.”
“I had fun with Sister Alice.”
To Gia’s ears, the words came out in a petulant sulk and Rand’s mouth twisted to match, his body completely under the control of the Redcap who had slid into that human body nearly two years earlier.
Gia didn’t let herself enjoy it for long, though. It had taken her this long to run the monster down and if she wasn’t careful, he could still slip free, still jump into another nearby body.
Her shade would protect the boy—and maybe even Amy, giving Rob even fewer chances.
But that didn’t mean Gia was going to underestimate the bastard.
