When Pandora opened her eyes, Jax was standing two feet away, stock-still. The only thing moving was his ebony hair, blowing wild in the breeze, while the rest of his body was on high alert. His green eyes were laser focused on the horizon, brows drawn together as he scanned the desert scene splayed out before him, searching between the handful of inmates growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
He’s tracking someone, she thought, having seen him use his power before—enhanced smell, enhanced sight, enhanced speed, and gut instincts that always pointed his feet in the right direction. But he’s not tracking me.
If he were, he’d have flinched, turned, recognized some little part of her standing by his side. She was sure of it. In actuality, the fact that every one of his innately heightened senses was searching for someone else was probably the only reason he hadn’t felt her sudden appearance by his side.
“He’s that one over there,” Jax muttered, jutting out his chin.
“Got it,” a female voice said from behind. Pandora swiveled and was surprised to find she recognized the brunette hunter who was working with Jax. It was Rachel—a girl she’d gone to school with, just another titan she’d known since birth who was plotting to kill her. Same old, same old. And there was a third man next to her, someone Pandora didn’t know—a titan for sure, but she couldn’t discern which kind.
That was until he knelt on the ground, dug his fists into the dirt, and pressed against the tightly packed sand, hands shaking as the muscles in his arms bulged.
“Hold on,” Pandora whispered to Naya, who was still clutching her in a tight embrace.
A moment later, the earth trembled, the lid of a pot about to boil over as it shook, vibrations mounting, growing stronger. The quaker punched his fists against the ground in one hard, swift move, gaze concentrated on the small figure running away in the distance. A shock wave pulsed beneath the sand, rippling across the desert, shooting like a torpedo toward its target. Moments later, the barely visible man in the distance went down, tripping as the ground gave way beneath him.
But Jax wasn’t watching him.
Jax had turned his head, peering over his shoulder, brows pulled together. His gaze, eyes narrow, roved over the empty space where Pandora and Naya stood invisible.
“Let’s go,” a gruff voice ordered. The quaker.
He and the girl took off at a run.
Jax held his gaze for one moment longer.
A nervous tingle shot down Pandora’s spine.
Turn around, Jax. Please, just turn around.
He did.
Because he had a job to do? Because he didn’t actually sense her but was picking up on something else? Because he knew she was there and didn’t have the heart to stop her?
Pandora would never know.
Jax launched into a sprint, enhanced tracker speed allowing him to close the gap quickly as he rejoined his group, chasing a different target.
And thank god for that. Pandora sighed, relieved to watch his supernatural speed carry him away, far enough that he wouldn’t sense her.
“That was close,” Pandora muttered.
Naya finally released her nearly suffocating hold on Pandora’s body and stepped back, but not too far.
“I never doubted you for a second,” the medium said. Pandora’s brows practically flew off her face. “Okay, maybe for a second.” And then Naya’s face brightened with surprise. “Wait, I can see you. I mean, I can actually see you. Huh, you’re blonde. I didn’t expect that.” And then her gaze turned inquisitive, taking in the ebony smoke swirling all around them. “What is this?”
“Welcome to my world.” Pandora shrugged. “I call them my shadows, but really it’s just my power. It’s how I slip out of the light to become invisible. And it’s how we got away. But I’m not sure how much longer I can keep you here. I’ve never tried to run with someone by my side, never tried to carry another moving body through the shadows with me.”
“What about that thing you just did? Can we keep doing that?”
Pandora snorted. “Frankly, I’m pretty impressed with myself for pulling it off the one time. Desperation is a miracle worker. But if we can find a place to hide until dark, I think I can keep us out of sight until then,” Pandora murmured. She twisted her head, searching the grounds. Her gaze landed on the looming prison building behind her, and she smirked. “How high can you jump?”
“Why?” Naya asked, suspicious.
Pandora lifted her gaze back to the building. The thing was massive, stretching from one end of her vision to the other, but not that tall. Thirty, maybe forty feet to the roof. Tops.
The medium followed her eyes. “No. Are you insane? We just escaped.”
“Yeah, so?” Pandora countered. “What better place to hide? They’ll never expect it.”
“Because it’s lunacy.”
“It’s genius.”
“It’s foolhardy.”
“That’s my middle name,” Pandora replied smoothly, grinning. “Besides, my escape plan got us out of that place. Don’t you trust me?”
Naya tossed her a pointed stare, ever challenging. “I’m pretty sure my army of vampires is what got us out.”
“Potayto, potahto.” Pandora shrugged. “Either way, I’m the one with the power of invisibility, and I’m taking my disappearing act to the roof. If you’d like to stay out of sight, I suggest you stay close, and don’t let go of my hand. Unless, of course, you’re afraid of heights or something.”
“I’m not afraid of heights,” she growled, eyes flashing.
“Prove it.”
Pandora ran toward the building, tugging on Naya’s hand to drag her along. All her effort was on keeping the shadows close, keeping the darkness wrapped around both of their moving bodies, keeping two targets hidden.
For that short distance, it seemed to work.
One hundred yards later, they were pressed with their backs against the wall, searching for any titans who might have seen them, but no one came running.
“You go first,” Pandora said quickly, alert now that they were on the move. “If somebody sees you, I’ll take them out before they have a chance to notify anyone else.”
Naya nodded, glancing up warily.
“Do you need a boost?” Pandora taunted, smirking.
Naya wrinkled her nose. “You are playing with fire, my friend.”
“Good thing I’ve already been burned.”
Their eyes held for a moment, a shared understanding passing between them. Because for all their possible differences, they had one thing in common. They both knew what it felt like to be used, abused, lied to—burned. How else could they have ended up here?
Naya nodded once and dropped Pandora’s hand, stepping out of the shadows. A moment later, she was soaring toward the top of the building in one giant leap. After grabbing hold of the upper ledge, she flipped herself over the side, somersaulting out of sight. Somehow, Pandora knew she landed smoothly on two feet, the definition of grace.
Jerk, Pandora thought, taking one last look around to make sure no one had seen her. The coast was clear. Here goes nothing.
Pandora took a deep breath.
She’d made jumps like this before…as a vampire.
As a titan? Not so much.
Theoretically, she could do it.
Enhanced titan strength, enhanced titan speed, enhanced titan agility.
But in reality, this body she had now wasn’t the one she’d grown accustomed to over the past four years. These last few hours had proved that. It was slower, more awkward, not nearly as fluid, not nearly as strong. The humanness hung off her bones, a heavy weight.
Pandora knelt, gathering her strength, preparing for the jump. A thought stopped her.
I could cheat.
She glanced up, calculating the height of the building again.
Two stories.
Two aggressively large stories.
No one will ever know.
The idea was tempting. And now that she’d goaded Naya into making what could potentially be called the most elegant forty-foot leap ever, she wasn’t sure she wanted to follow.
My little secret, Pandora thought, gathering the darkness. She was becoming a pro at this whole teleportation thing. As the onyx fog thickened, she let those annoyingly fierce amber eyes act as her guide. A moment later, she was at the top of the building—dignity still intact.
“You did that thing, didn’t you?” Naya asked in a goading tone, edges of her lips turned up just enough to imply humor.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pandora replied, settling down next to her partner. She grabbed Nay’s hand and wrapped the shadows back around them both.
“You didn’t jump,” Naya accused, superiority dripping from her tone.
“Of course I did. You just couldn’t see, because of my whole invisibility thing.”
Naya snorted, studying Pandora’s face. “You didn’t jump.”
“I—”
She was cut off by the sound of two doors crashing open and the thunder of pounding feet.
Instantly, the two girls stopped joking around.
“Stay down and don’t lose contact with me,” Pandora murmured as she flipped onto her knees. She peered over the edge of the building, watching as titan after titan raced outside. “They must have figured out that we got through the door somehow when we escaped that death wave the trident threw at us.”
Not good.
Not good.
The sound of another crashing door jolted Pandora from her thoughts. She flipped back to her butt, alarmed to see titans pouring through the roof access, at least twenty before the door finally slipped closed.
Okay, really not good.
“I knew this was a bad idea.” Naya cursed under her breath.
Pandora threw her arms over the medium, hugging her close as she reached for the darkness. “Roll up into as small a ball as you can and be quiet. I can hide us. I can save us.”
The shadows grew, billowing around the two girls, filling every bit of space around their bodies with black smoke. The veil over Pandora’s eyes thickened until she forgot the sun was beaming overhead. Her world had become night.
They sat like that for an hour.
Not speaking.
Barely breathing.
Pandora gritted her teeth as her muscles cramped, fighting to remain still. Her back ached from hunching over. Her fingers throbbed from gripping Naya so tightly. Her eyes burned from the strain of trying to see through the curtain of her power. The midday heat pierced the fog of her shadows, burning her skin. Every so often, a titan would step close, too close. Shifting her stiff limbs was an act of torture, but she did it to get out of the way as they walked by. Before long, her body was sweating, fingers trembling from the strain, but she kept fighting.
Twenty trackers.
Nearly the size of the entire North American force.
But not a single one of them was Jax, thank god. He was long gone chasing some other poor soul.
I can do this, Pandora thought the entire time, repeating the words like a prayer, because never in her life had she held on to the shadows so tightly for so long for someone else. I can do this. I’m strong. I’m powerful. I’ve got this. I can do this. I can. I will. I am.
She did.
And when the last tracker finally disappeared inside, Pandora collapsed, still holding on to the darkness, still hiding her presence, but the majority of the shadows dispersed.
She let out a groan. “I thought they’d never leave.”
Naya reached her arms overhead, stretching, keeping her foot pressed against Pandora’s leg to remain within the bubble. “How much longer can you keep us invisible?”
Pandora sighed. Faux confidence or sincerity? Which would it be?
“I don’t know,” she confessed softly, tired of the brave face she’d been wearing all day. The weary, lonely girl was seeping out—the high of the escape had long since worn off. “But I’ll keep going until I physically can’t, until I pass out from trying.”
“That may not be necessary,” Naya whispered.
Pandora’s gaze grew sharp. “Why?”
“Because I haven’t been totally honest with you.”
Pandora shot up to a seated position, elbows on her knees. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m a medium and a necromancer, but I’m something else too, something very few people know.”
I knew it! I knew it!
Naya paused, taking a deep breath, dragging out the dramatic silence. And then she confessed, “I’m the jaguar god, the night sun, reborn.”
Her tone implied significance, authority, and, well, in classic Naya-form, superiority of some kind. But Pandora remained silent, completely confused.
Uh, what now? Come again?
If that was supposed to be a big, shocking reveal, she didn’t get it. All she could think was womp, womp as she waited, eyes blank.
Naya’s brows drew into a frown as she elaborated. “I told you my people worship a sun god, and the night sun is his other half—ruler of the underworld, responsible for carrying souls to rebirth until the sun god gifts them with a spot in his eternal kingdom. There are a lot of people who have been born demigod, gifted with various levels of his power, but my people believe I’m his true image, a goddess reborn for the first time in centuries.”
Pandora nodded slowly. “Okay…” She trailed off, pursing her lips. “I feel like that was supposed to mean something to me, but I don’t get it.”
Naya rolled her eyes, glaring at Pandora. “I’m an incredibly powerful necromancer and werejaguar rolled up into one.”
That’s the big secret? Pandora thought, realizing in an instant that it made perfect sense. The growls. The feline eyes. The claws. The catlike reflexes. She’s a werejaguar. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty cool. I’ve never met one before. But I was sort of expecting more. Then again, not everyone can have a secret like mine, you know, that they might mean the end of the world as we know it. Actually, I like her secret better. Way better.
“Sweet.” Pandora smiled appreciatively.
“Not sweet,” Naya grumbled. “Fierce. Ferocious. And it’s how we’re going to escape the trackers flooding the desert around us.”
“Go on…”
“I’ve never transformed into my spirit animal in front of the titans. They’ve never seen me in her body, never caught a whiff of her scent.”
“And they can’t track what they don’t know exists.” Pandora’s eyes widened, lips pulling into an appropriately evil grin. “Genius.”
“Thank you,” Naya quipped. “As soon as the sun sets, we can make our move. I was born to blend into the darkness.”
“Me too,” Pandora whispered, voice hollow as she brushed her fingers against the shadows.
Naya studied her for a minute, gaze passing over the black mist circling them both. “I’ve found in my line of work that darkness isn’t evil. Quite the contrary—it can be an escape, a relief, a paradise to many,” Naya began, words strangely echoing what Sam had told her the day before. “It’s only when it leaks into your heart, when it stains your soul, that it becomes a problem, a trap, a curse.”
Pandora nodded.
“I only have one question.” Naya paused, gulping as her focus shifted from the charcoal smoke swirling around them back to Pandora. She pulled her brows in and took a deep, heavy breath. Pandora braced herself for what was to come, staring into amber eyes that seemed to know far more about life and death than any normal person should. But the medium released her gaze and turned her attention to the desert, sweeping her focus over the vast landscape surrounding them that seemed to stretch on for miles and miles without end. She sighed, shoulders slumping as every muscle in her body gave out all at once. “Do you have any idea where the hell we are?”
Pandora broke, body shaking as the laughter worked its way up her throat, bubbling over as the tension of the past couple days fell away, a weight suddenly gone, leaving her light.
Naya joined in with her own deep, throaty mirth.
They collapsed against the scratchy concrete roof, shoulder to shoulder, hidden between swirling folds of darkness.
Hot and exhausted.
But miraculously free.