by KB Anne
“Will attend to immediately Lord Silverlain.”
“Keep me abreast.”
“Yes, sir.”
It filled me with satisfaction that Treadwell was acquiescent to my grandfather. I might not agree with my grandfather’s methods, but I hated Treadwell with all my being. I longed for Treadwell to suffer. I wanted his nights to be as haunted as mine were.
I didn’t agree with the modus operandi of my grandparent’s enemy. Setting off a bomb in a crowded stadium with thousands of innocent people was a terrible act of violence, but as the ancient proverb goes, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
And with backstabbers surrounding me, I needed all the friends I could get. I could form an alliance with this “new” player and take down the Organization.
“Grandfather?”
His hawk eyes found mine. “Yes?”
I steeled myself for the high dose of BS I was about to deliver.
“Treadwell mentioned your enemy was behind the explosion. Who would possibly want to challenge your position?”
He pursed his lips squinting at me. “Know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”
“I’m familiar with the quote, but who is your enemy?”
He studied me for a long time. I couldn’t decide if the conversation was over or if he didn’t want to tell me in the present company or for another reason I hadn’t deciphered.
“Who isn’t? That is why I will never lose.”
“Who was behind the bombing?”
“You heard Treadwell, as well as, I did.”
“So, you know who is responsible?”
“The question you should be asking is, who isn’t responsible?”
“So you trust no one?”
“No, and neither should you.”
My eyes fell on Jude, then Jovie, then Sami. “I don’t.”
“Then one day you will make a great leader of the Silver Fae.”
I bit my tongue before I replied with a smart retort. I didn’t want anything to do with the Silver Fae or the Shadow Fae or any Fae for that matter. What I wanted was to escape and disappear never to be heard from or seen again.
Chapter Seventeen
Di
* * *
I spun out of Frank’s arms. I had to get to them. I had to get them out. I took off sprinting toward the now towering inferno.
Guilt raked me. It was my idea for Ben, Coda, and Rebeca to go to church. My friends would pay with their lives for my mistake. I was a fucking selfish idiot.
People screamed as they ran away from the explosion. I was the literal salmon swimming upstream, but I had to find my friends.
A hand hooked around me. I jerked away. No one was going to stop me from saving my friends.
“Di, it’s me,” Frank yelled. In my panic, I left him behind, but he didn’t leave me. He’d never abandon me. “Have you seen anyone?”
“No,” I screamed. We dodged hundreds of polyester suits. We kept as far away from that fabric as we could. That shit would go right up in the flames.
A silver limo blared its horn as it barrelled through the crowds. People dove out of the way. Those who didn’t got up close and personal with the front bumper. I could guess the rest.
Poor Starr arrived in that limo that ran over congregation members in its singular pursuit to retrieve her along with the rest of the Silverlains. Today was not the day for her rescue. We had the rest of our team, our family to save.
“There. Look,” Frank said.
I glanced to my right. Rebecca’s frightened eyes found mine. Tears streaked her cheeks. She sprinted toward us. I scanned the surrounding faces for Coda and Ben. They had to be here. They wouldn’t leave Rebecca, and she wouldn’t abandon her friends.
She tugged my hand. “We have to go.”
Or so I thought. I resisted. “Rebecca, where are Coda and Ben?”
“They were taken.”
I stood rooted to the spot unable to comprehend what she told me. Frank swoped me onto his back, clutched Rebecca’s hand and sprinted back to the van.
Amongst the screams and the roaring blaze, the lonely howl of a wolf broke through.
Rebecca slowed. “Ben…” Her head spun wildly searching for him.
Frank pulled on her. “We need to get out of here now.”
She nodded and followed us.
The three of us sighed in relief at the sight of the van. Frank threw me in the back and plunged in after me. Rebecca jumped in behind him and slammed the side door. Frank leapt into the driver’s seat, threw it into drive and hit the gas.
The reality of the situation crashed down on me. “Wait, we can’t leave them. We can’t …”
Rebecca wrapped her hand around my arm. Her touch instantly calmed me. “I am the Keeper of the Stories. We need to leave.”
Frank gunned it out of the parking lot. A steady stream of police cars, firetrucks, and ambulances flew past us and toward the fire. No one paid us any mind as we raced away from the chaos. Frank swerved around dozens of cars on the highway in our pursuit to get as far away from the danger as possible.
Before we could think, before we could even breathe a giant black wolf landed on all fours in the middle of the highway. Cars swerved out of the way. Tires squealed. The stench of burnt rubber filled the air. The world had once again erupted into chaos, and we were at the epicenter of it.
“It’s Ben. It’s Ben!” Rebecca shrieked.
The black wolf spotted the van and sprinted toward us. Frank slammed on the brakes. The van fishtailed, but he righted it. Rebecca threw open the side door.
“Move,” she shouted to me. Together we dove into the back row as the wolf leapt into the van. The weight of the beast rocked the vehicle.
“Hit it,” Rebecca screamed.
The van roared back to life. The tires spun out desperate for asphalt. Once found, the van launched forward, and we flew backward as physics caught up to us. Panic seized my chest. I was too young to die from a heart attack, but holy shit, my heart didn’t get the memo. I gripped my chest begging any god who would listen to save my life. I breathed through my nose like Starr taught me until my heart beat slowed from cardiac arrest levels to minor chest pain. I heaved myself up from the pleather seat and peeked over the seat in front of me. Two light amber eyes stared into my soul. My heart stopped as I came face to snout of the largest wolf I’d ever seen.
The tires squealed as Frank swerved around a stopped vehicle. The abrupt movement knocked Rebecca and I into the aisle. I always hated physics.
The van veered onto the rumble strips for a long stretch. It swerved back on the road, veered around stopped cars, threatened others with a raised fist out the window or with an intimate greeting with the van’s front bumper. Honks and more squealing tires filled the air. But nothing impacted Frank’s driving. Made all the more intense and loud with the open passenger door.
Rebecca and I struggled to climb back into our seats, but every time we tried, we got knocked back on our asses. During yet another attempt to get out of the aisle and put our seatbelts on, the passenger door slammed shut. Rebecca’s brown eyes met mine. We both leapt up from the aisle like Superwoman but without the cape or kryptonian skinsuit.
“Ben,” Rebecca murmured.
A groan came from the other side of the seat. A human groan. We both roughly swallowed before peeking over together. Ben was curled up in a ball, panting hard. He clutched his ribs like if he was trying to hold himself together. Coda told me it didn’t hurt to shift, but Ben’s reaction suggested it hurt like hell.
“What happened?” Rebecca whispered.
“They… they…,” he tried to catch his breath, “they took Coda.”
My eyes met Frank’s in the rear-view mirror. “Who did?”
“The Silver Fae.”
I frowned. I must have heard him incorrectly. “Who?”
“Starr’s family.”
* * *
Frank buried the needle of the speedometer. If
the van had wings, we’d be flying. But the van and none of the remaining team members were Fae. The only one who had been but never exhibited even a hint of wings was kidnapped by her grandparents…
Who were Silver Fae Royalty. Who had Coda.
“What should we do? Where should I drive to?”
None of us paid attention to which direction we were headed when we left the church parking lot. We were intent on getting away. Well, Frank was intent on getting us away. Rebecca and I tried to remain in an upright position. After a quick location search on my phone, we pinned just south of the Silverlain estate.
I scratched my head in the hopes that some fascinating helpful idea came to me. It didn’t, so I stated the obvious. “We were planning to visit Christian after church, anyway.”
No one agreed with me, but they didn’t disagree either. I sighed. After Starr was taken, I had filled that quasi-leader role. When confronted with a dilemma, I often found myself thinking, WWSD. But with Coda missing, I didn’t know what Starr would do. Our team was adrift. This leadership position sucked.
Frank looked at us through the rearview mirror. “Do we tell Christian what happened or do we skip him and start searching for Coda?”
Ben tugged on a shirt. “Christian will lose his mind. He’ll do something irrational.”
“Like he’s been acting rationally since Starr was taken,” Frank grumbled.
“If they took Coda to the ranch, I could say I had a delivery to make and sneak in,” Rebecca said.
I smiled at her. She was as tough and determined to save her friends as me. I liked the way her mind worked, but we couldn’t risk something happening to her.
“It’s too dangerous. You said yourself that as the Keeper of Stories you couldn’t be taken.”
She cracked her fingers. “If I reinforce my magical protections, I will be safe.”
“No,” Ben said. “There’s got to be a better way.”
Frank took a left to turn down the road that would take us to the back of the Silverlain estate. “What happened anyway? How did they get Coda?”
“Starr and her grandparents sat in a silver balcony overlooking the congregation. When White mentioned her, the cameras panned over to the balcony. Well, you saw that right? You two were livestreaming, weren’t you?”
Frank’s green eyes met mine in the rear view mirror. My cheeks warmed. We definitely missed that part when we were otherwise engaged, but I wasn’t going to admit that we had taken our eyes off “The Prize” because we were too busy sucking each other’s tonsils out.
“Totally.”
“Well, after the service, they escorted her to the Jessalyn Silverlain wing and there was a dedication ceremony.”
“We saw that.” Frank’s eyes found mine again. We feared that Starr’s attention had shifted away from her former team and fighting the Organization to enjoying her new life as a Silverlain Princess.
“We did, but where were you?”
Ben growled. “They made the congregation except for some of the front rows remain in their seats to watch on the big screen.”
Panic swelled in my belly. “Did the explosion happen when you were still in the stadium?”
“We were exiting with the rest of the congregation. It got really hot. I mean burning hot. Sweat ran down our faces blinding us, but no one else seemed to notice.”
Rebecca slumped over. “I sensed something was amiss. I realized they put wolfsbane in the ventilation system, but it was too late.”
Ben reached over to her. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known what they had planned.”
Wolfsbane didn’t sound good, even to a non-wolf non-shapeshifter. “What does it do?”
“Think of it as a Shapeshifter Indicator,” Ben said.
“In small doses, it’s an irritant,” Rebecca added.
Frank took another left. “And in large doses?”
“It’s toxic. In a large enough dose, it could put us down for good.”
I rubbed my hands back and forth trying to fight the cold filling them. “Why would they do that? No one knew we were coming today.”
Ben shrugged. “They might always have it. Coda and I never went to OneTruth, and neither did Christian. It might be part of their security measures.”
“But why?”
Rebecca clasped her hands around Ben’s. “A wolf’s bite is fatal to a Fae.”
Ben’s amber eyes found mine. “Fae and shapeshifters are mortal enemies.”
“But that would mean…”
“Technically, Starr and Christian are forbidden to each other.”
Chapter Eighteen
Starr
* * *
The remainder of the drive back to my grandparents’ estate was filled with silence which I appreciated because I had a lot to think about. I kept mulling over what groups would go to the extreme risk of bombing an enemy faction. I didn’t know enough about my own Silver Fae heritage to make any guesses. Grandmother promised my lessons would begin Monday morning. I could grill my instructor on all things Silver Fae, Shadow Fae, and regular Fae. There might be vast populations of Fae living among the civilians waiting for their chance to rise up and take control of not only the United States but Fae leadership as well. There were so many questions I needed answers to.
I wanted to escape as soon as possible and begin my life as a free woman, but another part of me wanted to discover all there was to know about the Fae. The more I learned the more likely I could disappear and never get caught. Like Grandfather said, “Know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”
“My dear Miss Jessalyn,” Willingsbee said offering his arm at the limo. I willingly took it. He lead me up the stairs and through the front door. “I have excellent news.”
My mood brightened at the prospect.
“Your bags are in your room. You should find everything you requested on your list, along with additional items I deemed necessary.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you. I’ll be right down.”
He held up his hand. “No need to rush. The workers are finalizing a few details.”
“It’s not done?”
I sounded like a spoiled brat. What a freaking asshole. I quickly recovered. “Thank you Willingsbee, I’ll see you later.”
My grandparents were already halfway up the stairs climbing at a snail’s past. I wanted to sprint past them, but I was sure that would be frowned upon. Until I learned how to defend myself against the Great White and Shadow Fae, my grandparents were the only ones who could save me. I needed to stay on their good side. Once they reached our floor, they split off to their wing, and I sprinted down the hall with Team Asshole in fast pursuit.
Adrenaline already raced through my veins when I reached my room. I threw open the door with gusto. Bags covered my bed and half the floor. I tore through the closest one. Then the second. Then I lost my mind and ripped through the rest of them like an all-you-can-eat-chocolate-fondue-bar. Sneakers, socks, shorts, leggings, shirts, jog bras, sweatshirts, rain gear—everything I needed to run during any season regardless of the weather. Best of all? Two pairs of flip-flops. I held them to my chest.
Hello sexy, how YOU doing?
I grabbed a pile of clothes and ran into my changing room. In seconds I ripped off my dress and tugged on a pair of running shorts along with a sweat-wicking shirt. As I spun around in the mirror, I caught a glimpse of Jovie watching me. “Betcha thought you’d seen the last of me in athletic wear, huh?”
She laughed. “I must admit I did have a fleeting moment of relief, but I knew you too well. I knew sooner or later you’d get your hands on “comfortable” clothing.”
“Well, at least you get to dress me in that crap.” I pointed at the giant room filled with hanging clothes.
She grinned. “This. Is. True.”
We bantered back and forth like old times. She made it all too easy to forgot her betrayals, but… and that was a gigantasaurus, capital But, even if
Sami pressured Jovie into taking part in everything, Jovie betrayed my trust. No matter how friendly I might act toward her, I could never forget what she did to me.
What she did to us.
* * *
But even the disappointment in my ex best friends couldn’t curb my excitement to see the gym Willingsbee created for me. I skipped down the stairs two at a time feeling lighter than I had in days. If I thought about it hard enough, I could probably fly. Not even iron crosses could clip my wings when the time came. I felt it in my bones. In my soul.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Grandfather yelled from the top of the stairs. I skidded to a stop at the first landing and looked up to see him frowning at me in disapproval.
“I was going to check out the gym. Willingsbee said it was ready. Then I’ll probably go for a run outside.”
“That’s fine.”
Not that I asked him permission but, whatever. A little ass kissing wouldn’t hurt too much.
“Thank you, sir.” I waited for him to either leave the stairwell or dismiss me. My body was literally crawling with excitement, but I stood still and watched him watch me. Another test of wills, but in order for me to win, I needed to lose. Finally after several human lifetimes, he nodded and disappeared down the hall to his study.
Sometime soon, perhaps tonight, I’d get my hands on his bookshelves. My gut told me many of the answers to my Fae questions were there. I needed information, and if I found a trick door to freedom, I would take it.
Once Grandfather was out of sight, I turned and leapt down the final three stairs without looking and almost plowed into Willingsbee.
I stumbled away. “Oops, my bad.”
His eyes sparkled in delight. “Somebody is excited.”
“I’ll say. Let’s go!”
He chuckled to himself as he shook his head. “There are still some finishing touches I’m waiting for. Why don’t you go for a run outside first? It’s such a beautiful day. You would benefit from fresh air and sunshine.”
Rather than groan in annoyance, I decided to listen to Willingsbee’s suggestion. He knew I was being kept against my wishes. He also knew what I was. He could also know that fresh air and sunshine were the keys to strengthening my power because I still wasn’t back to my normal strength since last night’s escapades. This morning’s excursion to OneTruth and my interactions with The Great White and his minions didn’t help.