by Karen Lynch
I jumped to the floor below and walked over to stand a few feet from Lukas. Up close, there seemed to be a lot more blood, and I tried not to wince at the sight of it.
“I guess that was long overdue,” he said dryly as he wiped away some of the blood with his sleeve.
“I thought you were an ogre,” I admitted.
A burst of laughter came from above. I looked up at Conlan descending the stairs with Violet in his arms. She had Romeo and the chihuahua cradled against her chest, and the ferret carrier dangled from one of Conlan’s hands.
“Violet!” I ran to them.
“She’s okay,” Conlan assured me as I anxiously waited for them to reach the bottom of the stairs. “A minor sprain.”
Violet lifted her head and gave me a pained smile. “I tried to keep them out of the bathroom, but they’re strong bastards.” She held up the stun gun I’d given her. “I used up the battery, but I made him think twice about grabbing me again.”
I was so relieved she was safe I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “How did you know we were in trouble?” I asked Conlan, still reeling from their sudden appearance.
He smiled. “Violet called us.”
I looked at her in confusion.
She pulled my phone from her pocket and waved it at me. “As soon as you left me in the bathroom, I knew it was time to call in the cavalry. I found Faris’s number in your contacts and called him. He took care of the rest.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t block him, too,” Conlan quipped.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that Faris hadn’t given me a reason to block him, but bringing that up would be ungrateful after they had come to help us.
Lukas joined us and handed me my glasses I’d lost in the fight. Miraculously, they’d come out of it unscathed, but I really needed to think about getting contacts.
“Are you hurt?” he asked me tersely as I put on the glasses.
“No.” I forced myself to look at him, and my stomach fluttered at the concern in his eyes.
Conlan snickered. “I’d say she fared better than you, my friend.”
Lukas’s jaw flexed. “What were you thinking, entering a building full of ogres on your own? Do you need the money so bad that you would risk your life for a job?”
“It wasn’t for a job. We came to get our friend’s dog. And we were told there were only two ogres here.”
“Told by whom?”
“By someone who is going to be getting another visit from me,” Violet said with a gleam in her eyes that didn’t bode well for Mandy’s ex. “As soon as I can walk again, your stun gun and I are going to have a little heart-to-heart with Mr. Gordon.”
I imagined how smug Drew must have been after he’d gotten one over on us. I should have left the bastard shackled to a chair to teach him a lesson.
Conlan grinned down at Violet. “You’re a bloodthirsty little thing.”
“All this for a dog?” Lukas’s voice was incredulous.
I put my hands on my hips. “What would you do if someone took Kaia?”
“That’s different. I can handle a dozen ogres.”
“There were only supposed to be two,” I said defensively. “When was the last time you saw this many ogres living together?”
“A better question is when was the last time someone mistook Lukas for an ogre?” Iian asked laughing.
Conlan and Kerr joined in, and my ears grew warm. “Well, you guys shouldn’t sneak up on people in the middle of a fight. Announce yourselves next time.”
“You call that a fight?” Faolin came to stand with us, leaving Iian and Kerr to guard the ogres.
I scowled at him. “What would you call it?”
“I call it an untrained girl barely fending off ogres, who would have overpowered her had we not intervened. Your technique is sloppy, and you have no strength in your blows.”
“Except when she nailed Lukas,” Conlan piped in.
“Except then.” Faolin studied me as if he was trying to dissect me with his eyes. “When you attacked Lukas, you moved with agility I did not expect from you. You have some potential.”
“Strong in you the force is,” Violet said in a terrible Yoda impersonation, earning strange looks from the faeries and an eye roll from me.
Faolin continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You need to fight properly if you hope to survive as a hunter. Self-defense is not enough. You must build up your strength and speed, and learn to fight offensively.”
I huffed. “I’m working on it, but it takes time. Even you guys had years of training.”
“We did,” he agreed.
Violet flapped her hand excitedly. “You guys should train Jesse.”
“No.” I stared at her in horror. Had she hit her head fighting off that ogre?
“Why not?” She waved a hand at all of them. “There are like six of them, right? Who better to teach you to fight?”
I shot her a warning look. There was no way I was training with Lukas or his men. I could barely be in the same room with them as it was.
“You’re right,” Lukas told her. “We will train Jesse.”
I whipped my head around to stare at him. “No, you won’t.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t an offer. You will start tomorrow.”
“No,” I said with more force. “I’m quite happy with my current trainer, and I don’t need your help.”
“As you wish,” he replied pleasantly. “We will follow you to keep you safe until you’re able to do it yourself.”
“No, you will not.” I glared at him, but I might as well have been speaking to the floor.
He looked past me at Faolin. “Do you want the first shift?”
I crossed my arms. “I don’t know how you do things in Faerie, but following someone here against their wishes is called stalking. There are laws against that.”
“I’ll notify the Agency that my guard is providing temporary protection for you,” Lukas said with an infuriating tilt to his mouth. “You can hardly feel threatened by that.”
“Tell that to my sanity,” I said under my breath.
Conlan laughed outright, and even Faolin’s lip twitched.
“It’s settled then,” Lukas said as if that was the end of it.
I wanted to stomp my foot in frustration. “Is this because Faris thinks he owes me a debt? Because you more than repaid it today.”
“My brother’s debt is his own, and none of us can repay it for him,” Faolin said. “But it would put his mind at ease knowing you are protected.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Now you’re resorting to emotional blackmail.”
“Not every fight is won with physical force,” he replied smugly.
“Oh, that’s low.” I gritted my teeth. He knew I had a soft spot for Faris, and he was using it against me.
Lukas reached over and plucked my phone from Violet’s hand. I grabbed for it, but he held it out of my reach and proceeded to enter their numbers into my contacts.
“You know I can just block those again.”
“You won’t,” he said without looking at me.
I tapped my foot. “What makes you so sure of that?”
He finished what he was doing and handed the phone to me. “Because if I call you and you don’t answer, I will put a twenty-four-hour watch on you.”
I glared at him as I stuck the phone in my pocket. “I should have punched you harder.”
“If it makes you feel better, you can do it again,” he replied in a voice that made warmth unfurl in my belly.
Kerr interrupted us. “What do you wish to do with them?” he asked Lukas.
I followed their gazes to the cluster of ogres kneeling on the floor, submissive in the presence of Lukas and his men. Ogres were bad news, and if Lukas released them, they would be up to no good again tomorrow. Eventually, they’d end up with a bounty on their heads, if they didn’t have one already.
Lukas turned to me. “Do you want to bring them in for a bounty?”<
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The ogres shifted and murmured nervously, and a few of them darted their eyes around for an escape route. Good luck with that.
I did a quick headcount. There were eleven ogres, and at two thousand dollars each that was a whopping twenty-two thousand dollars. I could finally hire a plumber to replace the bad pipes.
I pulled out my phone and called Levi. Sure enough, there was a bounty on a gang of ogres working this area. Since ogres were territorial, the odds of there being another gang here were slim.
“There is a bounty on them,” I said to Lukas after I hung up. “But you caught them, not me.”
His eyes lit with amusement. “You got here first, and I believe one requires a license to collect a bounty. It’s all yours.”
I looked at Violet, and she waved a hand. “I will settle for you not telling my mom how I sprained my foot.”
Conlan laughed. “What happened to the little firebrand who was going to take a stun gun to the man who sent you here?”
She snorted. “You obviously haven’t met my mother.”
I walked over to them and took Romeo from Violet. “I’m going to take this little guy to his mom, and then I need to figure out how to get eleven ogres to the Plaza.”
“Wait,” Violet said before I could leave. “If there’s a bounty on them, doesn’t that mean the job was already assigned to another hunter?”
“Yep and he’s not going to be happy.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
I smirked. “Poor Trey, he can’t catch a break.”
* * *
I walked through a meadow of tall white flowers that swayed in the warm breeze, their delicate perfume surrounding me. Raising my face to the bluest sky I’d ever seen, I closed my eyes, letting the sun’s warmth wash over me. I inhaled deeply and let it out on a blissful sigh. This place was pure heaven.
A whisper of sound had me turning my head to my right, and I was surprised to see I was not alone. Standing beside me was a tall, beautiful woman in a white dress with silvery blonde hair that fell almost to her knees. Her face was unlined by age, but her gray eyes held the wisdom of a thousand lifetimes.
The woman spoke, but though her lips formed words, no sound came out. She seemed unaware that I couldn’t hear her until I pointed at my ear and shook my head. A frown marred her perfect brow, and she glanced up at the sky as if pondering what to do next.
She lowered her head, and her eyes met mine again before she pointed at something behind me.
I turned and gasped. On a hill rising above the trees beyond the meadow was a breathtaking white castle. It looked like it had come straight out of a fairy tale, with its gleaming white turrets and stained glass windows that sparkled like jewels in the sun.
I started walking toward it until a light touch on my arm stopped me. The woman shook her head and pointed to the sky above the castle. I looked up and watched the blue deepen to twilight in a matter of seconds. Before I could question it, undulating ribbons of multi-colored lights appeared in the sky. It resembled the aurora borealis, except for the jagged bolts of lightning at its center.
A sharp pinch on my hand made me tear my eyes from the sky. I looked at the woman, who was standing with her hands at her sides. The pain came again, and this time, it brought tears to my eyes.
“Ow. What the –?”
The world around me disappeared, and suddenly I was lying in my bed. It was dark in the room, but I could make out Gus as he paced back and forth on the bed.
“Gus, what the heck?” I cradled my hand to my chest. He’d been sneaking in to sleep on my bed every night, but he never disturbed me. This was the first time he’d bitten me since the day I’d tried to get him down from the kitchen cabinets.
He made a sound between a growl and a squawk and jumped off the bed to fly to the chair by the window. Maybe he needed to go out and couldn’t get the bathroom window open.
Pushing the covers off me, I got out of bed. “All right, I’m coming.”
I reached up to unlock the window and froze when I saw the ribbons of colored light stretching across the sky. I rubbed my eyes, but the lights were still there when I looked again. It wasn’t impossible for the aurora borealis to appear above New York, but not in the middle of the city.
Déjà vu hit me hard, and I remembered my dream. How was it possible I dreamed of this phenomenon exactly when it was happening? Unlike in my dream, there was no lightning, but still, this was weird even for me.
Gus squawked and flapped his wings impatiently. I slid the window up for him, shivering when the cold air hit my arms. “Here you go, buddy.”
Instead of going out the window, the drakkan jumped off the chair and ran under my bed. I stared after him until the cold forced me to close the window. In the sky, the lights were starting to fade. I stood there watching them until they were gone.
A glance at the alarm clock told me it was just after four in the morning. I yawned and crawled back into bed, hoping for a few more hours of sleep. I had a feeling I was going to need it today.
* * *
“You’re late,” said a scowling Faolin when he opened the door of their building hours later.
I met his glower with one of my own as I stomped snow off my boots. “By ten minutes. You try getting around this city in the winter without a portal.” I hadn’t exactly been in a hurry to get here for my first training session with them, but I kept that to myself.
He stepped aside and waved me in. I entered the main living space, expecting to see Faris or Lukas, but it was only Faolin and me.
“Leave your things here.” He pointed to one of the barstools at the island. “The training room is upstairs, and we will begin there.”
“We?” A tiny knot formed in my stomach as I deposited my coat and backpack on a stool and kicked off my boots. Surely, he didn’t mean he was training me. Then I took in his outfit – some kind of loose, black leggings that stopped below his knees and a gray, short-sleeved top.
“This way.” He turned toward the stairs, but not before I caught his smirk.
For about half a second, I thought about grabbing my stuff and running. I straightened my shoulders, picked up the gym shoes I’d brought with me, and followed him.
We climbed the two flights of stairs to the third floor, which was laid out much like the second floor with closed doors on either side. Faolin led me to the door at the end of the hallway and opened it to reveal a large room with a glossy hardwood floor bare of any furniture. Along the walls hung swords, staffs, knives, and other weapons I had no name for. There were no mats on the floor to break one’s fall, and I cringed inwardly, thinking of the bruises I was going to collect in this room.
“You won’t need those,” Faolin said when I bent to pull on my shoes.
“You want me to train in my socks?”
He glanced at my feet. “No. Remove those as well.”
I gaped at him. “I can’t train barefoot.”
“Are you one of those human females who is self-conscious about her feet?” he asked with a note of impatience.
“Of course, not. I just don’t like walking around barefoot unless I’m at home.” I picked up one of my shoes. “These protect my feet and help with balance.”
Faolin scoffed. “Exactly. You should not rely on footwear for balance or performance. Training without them will strengthen the muscles in your feet and teach you to rely only on your body.”
“Fine.” I pulled off my socks and tossed them into a corner with my shoes. What he said made sense, but if I found out this was some kind of Fae hazing prank, there would be payback.
I faced him, feeling strangely vulnerable without any socks or shoes, until I realized he had removed his as well. I wore my usual workout clothes – leggings and a sports bra, with the addition of a T-shirt.
Faolin walked over to one of the racks on the walls and took down a long wooden staff tipped with silver on each end. He grasped the staff in both hands and performed a series of slashes, thrusts, and st
rikes in a deadly dance that made me take a step back. He moved faster with each movement until I could no longer follow them.
His routine finished as abruptly as it had begun, and he turned to face me again. “We will train you in several weapons, but after observing you last night, I think you might be better suited to the staff.”
“Where do we start?” I rubbed my suddenly sweaty hands on my hips.
He returned the staff to the rack on the wall. “We start with your conditioning.”
“Okay.” I relaxed a little. Maren was always putting me through drills at the gym.
“My early training required me to run up and down a mountain until I fell from exhaustion,” he said.
I stared at him, sure he had to be joking. “It’s probably a good thing we have no mountains here then.”
“You will use the stairs.”
Two flights of stairs weren’t that bad. “How many times should I run them?”
The gleam that entered his eyes would have sent a smarter person running for the exit. “Until you fall or I tell you to stop.”
An hour later, the bottoms of my feet were numb from hitting the hard steps, and my calves and thighs burned from the effort to move them. I’d lost count of how many times I’d climbed the stairs to hear Faolin say, “Again.”
At the ninety-minute mark, I could barely drag my feet up the stairs, and I had to hold the handrail for support. Every time the sadistic beast at the top of the stairs barked for me to go again, I was convinced I couldn’t do one more. I pulled on a reserve of strength I hadn’t known existed in me and pushed on.
Nearly two hours had passed when I paused on the top step to catch my breath and wipe away the sweat that ran into my eyes. My chest heaved from the effort, and I wondered if running up a mountain could be much worse than this. At least, there’d be fresh air and nature to enjoy. And there would be cool mountain streams to drink from. My parched throat worked at the thought of water.
“Are you quitting?” my tormentor asked in a taunting voice. I would have given him the finger if I could have spared the energy.
“Just taking a breather,” I said between pants. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me quit.