“I think the bartender fainted or something.” Penny stood and scooted halfway between the neighboring table and their own, increasing her considerable height by raising on tiptoe to get a better visual.
Abby searched for Hop through the gawking diners crowding the area. A scream lodged in her throat when she spotted him a second later.
The powerful shifter was on his knees, a red dart sticking in his neck. His normally warm complexion was pallid as he clumsily groped at the slim projectile.
A clawed hand grabbed Abby’s bare shoulder from behind, locking her in place. She struggled in the firm grip, uncaring when sharp nails dug in and drew blood. The woodsy scent of fern trees pervaded her nose as Scott covered her mouth and muffled her scream. He jerked her chin high, forcing her onto her toes and putting an abrupt end to any thoughts of escape.
Helpless in the shifter’s uncomfortable embrace, she watched Hop collapse. He fell onto his face like a felled tree, parting the tightly clustered customers with his large body. He convulsed, eliciting several screams. Penny cursed, the expletive cut mid-oath by a second male clamping his palm on her forehead. The tattoos on his hand glimmered a dull steel hue, instead of the usual witch white, and her friend’s knees went liquid under the light touch. Eyes rolling back into her head, her lanky figure slumped. The Anwyll guided Penny to the upholstered bench, mumbling under his breath.
Disposing of her friend with a surprising amount of care, the black-haired witch turned to Abby. The unusually colored magic winked out, leaving behind unmarked skin. He met her gaze evenly; his straight brows lowered over eyes dark as coal. He raked his thick mane from his forehead with long fingers, revealing a widow’s peak and high cheekbones.
Memories of the Dádhe kneeling to remove her shoes assailed her. His eyes had burned red when he towed her into the river. She was sure of it. So, how could he be the same person? A witch couldn’t become a vampire. A vampire couldn’t become a witch. Could they?
Strong but oddly gentle fingers wrapped her arm. A set of complex cursive designs lining his jugular pulsed while she gaped at him, his throat tattoo-free only seconds ago.
Her shocked gaze slid to the window. Empty. Where was Mikhail? Had they killed him to get to her? Was Hop dying while she remained frozen in place? Abby would never forgive herself if either shifter were harmed. Unadulterated panic made it hard to breathe, but she inhaled as deeply as her constricted lungs would allow and reached for the Rip.
Nothing happened.
She reached again.
“Make sure the witch doesn’t interfere,” the Anwyll—or vampire—told Scott, referring to Evelyn.
A fog of confusion muddled Abby’s brain. Her heart slammed inside her chest, battering her ribcage with every consecutive failed attempt to touch her magic.
Why wasn’t it working!
The shifter waiter removed his nails slowly, drawing out the discomfort. Abby didn’t acknowledge him or the warm liquid trickling down her back, too frustrated and scared by her continued inability to help her friends.
The Ferwyn’s other hand dropped from her mouth, his thumb brushing her lip before trailing her throat in flagrant mockery of Samuel’s claim.
The hybrid’s upper lip curled, and Abby saw pointed fangs. The smell of wet dirt and peat filled her nostrils, overpowering the acrid scent of pine and the lingering odor of anise. The shifter abruptly let go and dashed for the bar, never once meeting her eyes.
Coward.
Abby’s determined kidnapper dragged her to the exit. No one noticed them leaving; all eyes trained on Hop or the downed bartender. A few observers were on their phones, presumably calling for help. Others callously snapped pictures or video for social media.
There was no sign of Evelyn.
Abby couldn’t prevent the sound of distress at the sight of the proud, virile shifter lying on the floor, unmoving and helpless.
“He’s not dead, and neither is the human. Leave with me now, and no one gets hurt.” He spoke softly, drawing her up the steps, holding her close. He opened the door for her as though they’d spent the evening on a pleasant date. “And as long as I’m touching you, the spell I’ve activated on my neck will block access to your magic.”
They walked outside into the heat of summer. He didn’t flinch.
She licked dry lips, tried to swallow, looked at the sun that hadn’t yet set, and back to the kidnapper escorting her into the street. “How is this possible?”
“I’m a witch,” he answered, jaw hardening.
She caught sight of an unmoving Mikhail lying on the stone thoroughfare mere feet from the steel tracks of the trolley line. A dart identical to Hop’s sticking in his chest.
A car idled nearby. The windows of the sedan were blackened, the rear door hanging open. He urged her inside, his hand solicitously covering the top of her head.
“And unfortunately for you, and my mother, I’m also a vampire.” The tattoos on the back of his hand gleamed a cloudy sapphire again. He placed his palm on her forehead, his lips moving silently.
The cloying scent of licorice engulfed her senses and everything went black.
Chapter 24
“Where is she?” Samuel shouted, hurling the flimsy chair across the room. Drywall exploded, the wooden frame buckling on impact and landing like broken matchsticks on its demolished twin.
The prisoner didn’t flinch.
Grinding the flat of his hand over his sternum, Samuel rubbed at the internal ache worse than any physical blow he could ever receive.
He felt Abby’s suffering keenly; the tie to a mate’s emotions would be the last link to break. Whoever was responsible for her pain—for taking her away from him—would die. And Samuel didn’t give two shits if it was one of the Nine or the President of the United States.
He approached the captured shifter, nostrils flaring and chest heaving, battling for control of his beast.
The male was chained to the lone intact chair in the room. He was shirtless and bloody from Tucker’s inventive interrogation methods. Despite the iron manacles suppressing his ability to heal or convert fully, there was a smattering of brown fur on his skin, and semi-elongated nails sprouting from his fingertips.
Two endless weeks passed without Abby before Myles’ unnamed spy finally came through with information they could use. A meeting was scheduled between a senior member of the Knights of Humanity and an outcast Ferwyn who belonged to the order they now knew as the Athair. The prince’s insider had enlightened them on the dangerous dynamics of the interspecies organization. They weren’t a faction of the knights as they’d first assumed, but a separate entity that worked in conjunction with the human hate group when it benefitted their agenda.
It’d taken all of Samuel’s considerable restraint to maintain his distance during the clandestine meeting between a Memphis city councilman and the traitorous outcast. He hadn’t wanted the latter to sense an Alpha nearby and run, unwilling to risk even the slimmest chance of escape.
Grabbing the subdued prisoner by his matted hair, Samuel yanked him close. “Where. Is. She?”
After hours of merciless questioning, it seemed that the shifter was about to give up the last of his secrets. He licked his split lips and murmured, “Texas. She’s in Texas.”
His beta stiffened; his previously relaxed stance instantly alert.
Tucker’s birth Clan was from Texas. His old pack Alpha was his littermate. And his previous king was Nathan Sinclair, the Dádhe ruler of the WSC region.
It wasn’t unusual for a Ferwyn to change packs within a territory, leaving to advance their dominance status within a smaller social circle or to seek out a truemate. Opportunities for better jobs or higher education was encouraged and coordinated between Alphas within a region, the clanmate free to return to their original pack whenever they wished. But to break the bond with the Clan you were born into altogether was virtually unheard of for a male. If banished for any reason, his kind was more apt to choose death over exile.
<
br /> Tucker had left Texas willingly.
Six months after Samuel became the region’s príoh, he found his future beta almost feral and starving, wandering on four paws near the Mississippi River. Only the pack bond Samuel offered enabled Tucker to regain control of his animal nature and reclaim his human form.
Although Samuel was aware of the reasons his friend made the improbable move, the Clan was not. They thought the quiet shifter an oddity among their race—an aberration.
And now Tucker’s former vampire king was in all probability involved in Abby’s disappearance.
His beta pounced on the semiconscious Ferwyn, shoving his converted claws deep into the muscle beneath his shoulder joint. The prisoner screamed and tried to break free. He didn’t get far, his arms chained behind the chair, his ankles tethered to its legs.
“Sinclair?” Tucker growled.
“I don’t know.” The shifter’s head hung low, exposing an inverted Y branded on his nape. The mark was about an inch long and a quarter inch wide, done in flowing lines with flourished serifs and a pair of solid triangles staggered, one above the other, in the arc of the reversed stem. “Our master did not tell us.”
Master. Father. Athair.
The only piece of information they didn’t have to pry from their captive once they discovered the brand was that the outcast believed—though he hadn’t met him in person—that his leader was an ancient Sídhe, a full-blooded Fae.
Samuel glanced at his lieutenant. Tucker removed his claws, leaving the shifter’s flesh to heal on its own, or not.
“Do you know why your master wants the girl?”
“We need her,” he said, panting. “To go back.”
“Go back to where?” Samuel was afraid he already knew the answer, but not how his mate fit in with this alleged Sídhe Lord’s plans.
“Home.” The Ferwyn’s swollen lids opened. “Brother wolf, think what it would feel like to run through the Wilds of Faery again.”
“I’m not your brother,” Samuel’s canines lengthened nearly to his chin. “Why her?”
“Only the Fae child can open the way.” He coughed blood.
“Fae child?” It was the first time he referred to Abby as nonhuman.
“Meascach,” he rasped, a derogatory Irish word for half breed, the term nonexistent in the Fae language.
“Don’t ever call her that,” Samuel barked. He kicked the male in his freshly wounded shoulder, knocking the chair off its legs. His skull cracked on the tile floor, knocking him out cold. “Ever.”
“Done?” Tucker asked, arms crossed loosely over his massive chest.
“For now.” Samuel left the unconscious Ferwyn were he landed, a puddle of blood forming beneath him.
“Should I send a healer?”
“No.” He practically mowed over the warriors stationed at the door on his way out. “Return him to his cell and remove the iron cuffs on his ankles. Leave the ones on his wrists. No water. No food.”
Samuel peeled off his blood-splattered t-shirt and banged into his crowded office, heading straight for his private bathroom.
The queen sat behind Samuel’s desk, Jenkins and the prince hovering on either side of her like bookends. Noah and Buck stood by the sole couch.
Buck was in charge of the firing range. He was also the ESC’s leading munitions specialist. After Abby was taken, Samuel brought him up to speed on the return of the Na’fhuil, the mysterious facility, and the harsh reality of a group of Fae Touched working against their species. His expertise would be needed on the rescue mission.
“Does he know where Abby is?” his nephew asked.
“Somewhere in Texas,” Samuel said, seething, washing away the blood under his fingernails in the sink.
“Holy shit.” Noah’s concern for Abby resounded down the Alpha bond. “That’s a lot of territory to cover.”
Samuel slipped on a clean black tee and grabbed an identical one from a small closet for Tucker before rejoining the others.
“Sinclair,” Myles said with a sneer, pupils enlarged and fiery red. “And without the final Mark on Miss McCarthy, we’ll need to get you to within what? Fifty miles or so to pinpoint her exact location?”
Samuel nodded, the weight of worry sitting on his chest, making it hard to breathe, much less speak.
“What else did you learn from the outcast?” Rose sounded tired.
They were all exhausted, getting little-to-no sleep while searching for Abby and ferreting what the notoriously tight-lipped other monarchs knew or didn’t know about the activities of the Athair in their respective regions.
“He has a brand on his nape, and it’s done in Fae script.”
Her eyes went wide. “It cannot be,” she said softly.
“What am I missing here?” Jenkins’ gaze followed Buck as he abruptly left the office.
“What do you know about the history of Ferwyns before coming to Earth’s realm?” Samuel asked, handing the other clean shirt to Tucker.
“Not much beyond the Sídhe using your kind in battle,” Jenkins said.
“All pureblood Fae live a very long time, but they have trouble conceiving.” Samuel couldn’t seem to stand still, taking up his beta’s habit of pacing when upset. “But their children are exceedingly rare and initially fragile.
“Too many Fae were dying due to the Sídhe courts’ endless squabbles and petty wars. The population steadily declined with all the needless deaths, but the ruling lords continued to hunger for power and land. Needing loyal foot soldiers to take the brunt of the casualties, pad their armies, and insulate their young, they captured ordinary forest wolves and enhanced them with Fae magic. They became faster, stronger, bigger, and more intelligent than any beast in the Wilds of Faery. They mated and had pups, who then died at the whims of their Sídhe masters.
“For over a millennium, my ancestors absorbed the magic of Faery. It seeped into their bones and further changed their genetics.” Samuel’s fists clenched and unclenched by his sides. He needed air—he needed Abby.
“The first conversion was brutal, the new Ferwyn species having no real knowledge of how to manipulate the enhanced magic. The shift was long, bloody, and agonizingly incomplete. The male who tried died within hours. But they didn’t give up.”
“So, you came by your stubbornness honestly,” Jenkins quipped, attempting to break the suffocating tension in the room. “Good to know.”
Buck returned, and Samuel stopped pacing. He was sweating again. The short-lived fevers were a warning the second binding was failing. Muscle soreness, headaches, and lack of appetite would follow the increasingly incessant spikes of heat. The cooling sheen of sweat covered every inch of his body like a second skin, the accelerated healing of his species compensating for the sudden rise in temperature. Given enough time without skin-on-skin contact with his mate, the link would eventually sever.
“A she-wolf completed the first truly successful shift,” he said, ignoring the uncomfortable symptoms. “She gained human likeness and lived, but along with the other females who successfully converted, couldn’t fully return to her natural form. Nor could their future daughters. We presumed the inherent magic evolved so that she-wolves could carry pups as even the controlled shifts of today would kill a fetus.”
“Did every wolf choose to convert?” Jenkins asked.
It was Buck who answered the queen’s liaison. “Many considered the human form an abomination, but the vast majority of our race were tired of being trained dogs. Although it took a hell of a long time to become more than Fae fodder and have a choice in whom they served.”
“And how did the Fae Lords take the change in their pet soldiers?” Myles asked.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Noah’s lips tipped into a cocky grin.
“They kicked the Ferwyn out of Faery?” Jenkins looked astonished.
“After the third insurrection.”
“The fourth,” Tucker corrected.
“How does the brand come into play, commander
?”
“Wolves have always lived and fought in packs. The Sídhe Lords and Ladies needed a way of distinguishing an enemy’s wolves from their own. So, they stamped them with their family’s crest.”
“Sort of like cattle?”
“No, exactly like cattle.” Samuel’s bitterness regarding the treatment of his race in the past was hard to hide.
“Hold on a minute.” Jenkins shook his head in stunned disbelief, the small gold hoop in his ear winking as it caught the light. “You think a pureblooded Fae branded this outcast?”
“The door between realms has been locked for a thousand years,” Myles said, coming around to stand in front of the desk. “Are you suggesting the Fae have returned to Earth?”
“Or never left,” Tucker said.
Rose’s face lost all color. “Because Abigail would know if the portal was no longer closed.”
“Yes,” Samuel said with certainty. “The Athair believes Abby’s unique Walker magic is the key to reopening the pathway connecting our two worlds.”
“Can she break the magical seal, Samuel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe the Fae Lord and his brand are fakes.” Noah sat hard on the sofa, collapsing against its leather back with a thump, dazed.
“It’s a possibility.” Although Samuel didn’t think so. He tore his fingers through his hair in frustration. “But the script is authentic old Fae. I’ve seen these types of brands before.”
“Where have you seen them?” Jenkins asked.
“It does not matter, Carter.” Rose grabbed the liaison’s hand and squeezed, asking him silently to let the subject drop.
“I checked the prisoner’s brand, and I think it’s legitimate.” Buck stepped into the center of the office; sad eyes soft on the queen. “It’s alright, milady. I’ll show him.”
The old shifter turned and lifted his shoulder-length hair. The raised scar on the skin beneath his hairline formed a half-moon within a circle of stars. “My sire was killed when I was young. My grandsire raised me, and his sire never let go of the old ways, never gave up hope his Sídhe master would return and take them back to the Wilds,” he said, expression vacant as though revisiting something painful, his body separating from his mind for the telling. “When I was five, he used a cattle iron and marked me with the same lord’s symbol he received from my great-grandsire, wearing it with pride until the day he died.”
Fae Touched (Fae Touched Book 1): Paranormal Romance Page 26