by Riley Storm
Rachel was well aware that living out the night was no longer an option. With Khove gone, and several hundred creatures straight out of a book surrounding her truck, it would be over in minutes, if not seconds. There was nothing she could do to stop that.
Except take as many of them with me as I can.
Bearing her teeth in a silent challenge, Rachel waved them forward. Better to die quickly than to be torn apart slowly. It was a cold thought, but that was her trained police mind at work.
The ground shook, rocking the truck slightly. The oncoming wave of demon beasts slowed, their hoots, hollers and war cries wavering and fading into silence.
“It wasn’t me, you pansies!” she shouted, beckoning the nearest, a half-man, half-goat-like thing, with horns that curled down from where its ears should be. “Let’s get this started.”
An earth-shattering roar broke the growing silence, driving even Rachel to her knees as it assaulted her eardrums.
“What is this?” she shouted. “Some sort of video game? Do I fight the boss now to pass the end of the level?”
Then the demons did something she didn’t expect. They shuffled toward her. It wasn’t the aggressive advance she’d expected. It was almost as if…
Something moved in the dark behind the truck, and the ground trembled again. The purple mass kept moving, but they didn’t stop at her. In fact, their heads were all pointed in the same direction as hers now.
The shadow moved, and so did the demons. Away from it. Rachel had a fraction of a second to be confused before a true demon burst forth from the shadowy, unnatural darkness that surrounded the truck. It was huge, bigger than anything in the crowd around her, and as it landed on all fours, the truck jumped from the impact.
Rachel was spilled to the ground, preventing her from seeing what exactly happened next, but she did see a mangled purple corpse go sailing over the truck, its body split open from neck to navel by four huge lines.
Nervously, she peeked over the lip of the truck bed, watching as the giant grizzly bear ripped into her attackers with a fury. Mashed and mangled bodies fell aside as the terrifying thing went on a rampage of death and destruction.
All around her, shapes faded into the darkness, backing away with howls, yips and shrieks that sounded like so much gibberish to her, but seemed to give the attackers a semblance of coordination to their retreat.
In seconds, she was alone with the bear. It spun to face the truck, eyes reddened with fury.
“Easy,” she said, holding up both hands. “I’m a friend.”
The bear shied backward.
Frowning, she looked at her hands, only to realize she was still holding the knife Khove had dropped in her right. Hurriedly, she dropped it into the truck.
“See!” she called, waving her open palms. “Friend. Khove, it’s me. Rachel. Come on back.”
Slowly, the bear seemed to calm, and reason returned to its eyes. Moments later, her stomach heaved as she watched the creepy, jarring transition. A few seconds later, a thoroughly naked and bleeding Khove stumbled toward the vehicle. Hopping down, she ran to his side, getting an arm underneath him.
“Come on,” she said, easing him to the truck. “It’ll be okay. Come on.”
“I’m alright,” Khove said, gasping for air. “Just. Need. Rest. Air.”
She settled him down into the driver’s seat and stayed with him as he tried to get his breathing back under control.
“Trust me, I’m fine,” he repeated, sounding less strained this time. “Nothing serious.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“Yeah, that tends to happen,” he agreed. “But you can check me out if you like. It’s not like I can hide anything from you right now.”
She eyed his nakedness for a split second. “This is true.” Sobering, she looked behind them to where the creatures had faded away. The darkness still closed in, preventing them from seeing overly far.
They were alone in the middle of nowhere, without a working car, and precisely one knife and one exhausted bear shifter to defend them. The odds, to put it bluntly, were shit.
“Khove,” she asked nervously, finding his fingers and gripping tight. “What do we do now?”
24
His brain was taking its time to focus.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, still breathing hard. “But we need to prepare. Before they come back.”
“So, they are coming back, you think?”
He nodded. “Yes. They’ve been driven off, but they’ll be back, and in greater numbers too.”
“Lovely,” Rachel grumbled, kicking dirt. “And we have no plan.”
Khove thought. “Well, what do you have in your bag of tricks?”
Rachel frowned. “Me? Why do you think I would have any plans? I don’t even know what the hell those things were!”
“Fae,” he informed her. “Faeries. Summoned from another plane of existence.”
“Oh. Lovely. Tinkerbell is trying to murder me.”
Khove shuddered. “You’d best hope she isn’t here, or we’re well and truly screwed.”
He ignored Rachel’s amazement at the confirmation she was a real faerie—and one of the lords, to be precise. “In your bag though. Behind the seat.”
“What bag?” she snapped. “We went from the hospital, to your castle, to here. My car is still parked behind that building we were at to stake out the restaurant.”
Khove shook his head. “While you were in the hospital, I had your stuff brought over. It’s in the back seat. I told you that as we were leaving.” He paused. “You were just in a bit of a mood after I’d told you that you weren’t driving. Maybe it didn’t register?”
Rachel groaned. “You’re telling me it’s been back there this entire time?”
He nodded. “Of course. You acted like it was very valuable when we left the Sheriff’s office to go to the stakeout. I didn’t want to leave it behind. Do I get to find out what’s in it now?”
Shaking her head, Rachel went around to the passenger side, flipped the seat forward and gingerly hauled out a duffel bag with police markings on it.
“It only has a few things we could have used,” she said, opening it up.
Khove’s eyebrows went up as she removed her service pistol, several backup rounds of ammunition and a Kevlar vest.
“Is that a—?”
Rachel hefted up the assault rifle that was the piece-de-resistance. “Yeah. Could have used this earlier. Too bad somebody didn’t think to mention it when those pixies were threatening us.”
Khove just watched in silence as Rachel checked her weapons and donned the protective gear. “You’re kind of a badass,” he said at last.
Rachel hefted the assault rifle to one shoulder. “I try,” she said fiercely. “I’m not about to let you die on me too.”
He blinked. “Too?”
Something flared deep in her eyes, but she turned away, fiddling with the assault rifle. Khove leaned back against the side of the truck and just watched, trying to figure this strange woman out. Just when he thought they were opening up to one another, he found there were more walls in the way.
Pushing wouldn’t get her to open up. Not right now at least. Rachel was already on edge, and trying to pry would slam those doors shut in his face. If she wanted to talk, she would talk. So he waited patiently, saying nothing, keeping one eye on her, the other on the circle of darkness.
The only light they had was from the inside of the truck and its headlights. The engine was dead, but the battery still worked. For now.
“It’s why I left the city.”
Rachel’s voice split the silence that had descended over their little clearing. Khove looked up, focusing his attention. Whatever she was saying, it was important.
“Your partner,” he guessed, having made some deductions of his own.
“Yes,” she said heavily, still not looking at him. Instead, she stared ahead, into the depths of the darkness. “We were tight, the two of us. Fi
ve years we’d been partners, working the same cases, busting bad guys. One of the top-performing teams in homicide.”
Khove was impressed. He’d known she was good, but homicide was a tough department. His respect for Rachel went up another notch or two.
“We were going after this guy,” she said mournfully. “Some tweaked-out rich kid living on Daddy’s money.” Her voice faltered.
Reaching out, Khove squeezed her upper leg gently in support and reassurance. Talking about something like this, it had to be difficult. Whatever had happened, her partner’s death had pushed her out of the city entirely. That sort of thing, it left a mark upon one’s soul.
“We didn’t know it at the time as we cleared the house, but he was holed up in the security room. Bastard had cameras everywhere. He knew when we were coming. Where we were.” Rachel shook her head. “Vince didn’t make it.”
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, meaning it. “Rachel, I…”
“I couldn’t take it after that,” she said, her voice haunted. “His wife, two kids. Seeing their faces at the funeral. It broke me.”
There was nothing more Khove wanted in that moment than to reach out and pull her into his arms. To hold her tight, tell her that it was okay, that she wasn’t to blame. Something stopped him though.
She needs to talk about this. To open up about her trauma to someone else.
“You haven’t told many people about this, have you?” he asked softly.
“Therapist. Lieutenant back in homicide. The Sheriff. And now you,” she said heavily, finally looking up at him.
Khove bit back a pained gasp as he saw the emptiness in her eyes, the despair. This was it all over again, he realized. She’d finally opened up to a partner of sorts, let someone in close—close for her, at least—and now that person was also going to die. It didn’t seem to matter that she was, that was an afterthought.
“I still wanted to help people,” she continued. “But I couldn’t work with anyone else there. Not in the same city. I needed to work alone, somewhere killings didn’t really happen. A nice peaceful sheriff’s office in the middle of nowhere.” She snorted. “At least, I thought this was a sleepy little town.”
“We’re not going to die today,” he assured her. “Do you hear me? Neither of us is going down.”
Rachel looked at him and nodded, but it was clear she didn’t believe him. Her head was moving up and down, but her body language, the set of her face, it all betrayed her. The blues of her eyes were dull, the vibrancy that was always there vanished as she accepted her fate.
Without thinking, Khove stepped forward, cupped her face and kissed her. She beat at his chest with her free hand, but every second that passed, her strikes got softer and softer, until she cried softly in defeat and accepted it.
“I said we’re not dying tonight,” he snarled quietly. “Help is on the way. All we have to do is hold them off if they return before it gets here. Do you understand me?”
Rachel stiffened, and he prepared himself to deal with more denial.
“Too late,” she whispered. “They’re already here.”
Khove disengaged from Rachel, following her gaze past his left shoulder. Out in the darkness, things were moving. They were too faint, too blurred, for either of them to make out distinct figures, but with every passing second, the blobs became more defined, growing hard edges.
“There’s a lot more of them,” she muttered. “Like a lot.”
“They’re essentially cowards at heart. They don’t like to do anything solo.” He grabbed his knife, wishing desperately for a blade, preferably one tipped with radiation-spewing uranium.
“Right. Any tips on how to kill these assholes?” Rachel asked, slipping the safety free and pulling the rifle into her shoulder.
“Ever played any zombie shooters?” he asked, rolling his neck to loosen it.
Rachel’s face split in a grin and she lined up the weapon as the first face appeared out of the murk. “Aim for the head,” she muttered softly, and a second later, the minotaur’s head exploded in a welter of gore.
“Exac—” Khove’s voice trailed off. “Uhhh, are you seeing this too?”
“They’re retreating,” Rachel said in disbelief as the Fae paused in their advance, then began to back away. “Did I kill the leader or something?”
“No,” he said absentmindedly. “If any of the Fae Lords were on earth, we’d be long dead. Those guys don’t mess around. I don’t know what happened. But I’m not about to act ungrateful for it.”
“You’d better not,” another voice said from behind him.
Khove wheeled to see someone emerge from a gash in the very fabric of reality. The edges of it glowed with a sullen red ochre, flashing slightly brighter each time someone came through.
“Kasperi!” he barked, happy to see the Magi of House Ursa, their most powerful magic user.
“Shall we go?” the magic-using shifter asked impatiently as half a dozen of the House Ursa guards fanned out. “Before they realize this is a rescue party, not an assault.”
“Right. Of course,” he agreed, taking a step forward. “See, I told you neither of us was going to die tonight.”
Rachel didn’t reply. He frowned, then saw Kasperi waggling a finger, pointing behind Khove. Turning, he saw Rachel standing where he’d left her, rooted to the ground, mouth hanging open.
“Hey, Rach?” he called softly. “Hello. Earth to Rach.”
Grabbing the barrel of the rifle, he reached up and gently patted her face. She tensed and tried to bring the weapon up as he snapped her out of her spell, but fighting against his grip was useless. The weapon didn’t move.
“They came out of the air,” she said, eyes darting between him and the rent. “Khove, they just walked out of mid-air.”
“Remember,” he said. “Magic? I told you it exists.”
“I didn’t believe you,” she said.
“Well, now you’ve seen a first-hand example of it. Well, a second first-hand example. The Fae are magic too.”
“Uh huh. Okay.” She wasn’t functioning right yet.
Khove put an arm around her and started walking forward, forcing her to do the same, lest he drag her along behind him. “And now you’re going to get to experience some magic,” he said, trying to hold back the laughter at her stunned expression.
“What do you mean?” she asked nervously.
“I mean, we’re about to go through it,” he said cheerfully, before dragging Rachel kicking and shouting through the rift.
25
“Don’t you ever do that to me again!” she snarled as they emerged into what she could only assume was the Manor.
“Rachel, you’re being ridiculous,” Khove said calmly. “And even worse, you know it. Just let yourself accept that magic is real, and be comfortable with how cool that is.”
“I just walked through a portal.” She crossed her arms under her breasts, forcing the men who followed to go around her.
“You did,” he agreed, stepping back in, grabbing her by the shoulders and casually lifting her out of the way of the others. “Now be grateful for it and say thank you to Kasperi here, who risked a lot more than you can understand to come and get us.”
She started to say something but bit the words off. Some things you couldn’t take back.
“Thank you, Kasperi,” she said, meaning every word of it. The method of rescue had left her shaken more than she cared to admit, hence the defensive attitude, but she was still very much grateful for being rescued.
“No problem. I know that traveling like that can be unnerving, especially if you had no idea it was a thing. But you’re in good hands with Khove,” the strange man said. “He’s kind of dumb, but he has a good spirit to him.”
Despite everything that had just happened, Rachel couldn’t hold back the explosive laugh that came from deep within her belly.
“I could get to like him,” she told Khove as their rescue party dispersed into the Manor, leaving them alone
. “He’s funny.”
Khove rolled his eyes. “Don’t feed his ego any more, please. He doesn’t need it.”
“I heard that,” a voice echoed back down the hallway.
“Are you hurt at all?” Khove asked quietly. “I want to get you checked out if so. Sometimes, the Fae use poison on their blades.”
“No, not even a knick,” she admitted. “Most of them focused on you.”
Khove looked down, then shrugged. “Yeah, those will heal quickly. I am a bit of a mess though.”
“And naked,” she said. “Which doesn’t seem to bother you.”
The big man chuckled, which did…interesting…things to his anatomy. Anatomy she most definitely was not trying to study. At all.
“Nudity is not a taboo among shifters,” he said gently, reaching out and snagging her by the arm, guiding her down the hallway. “If you shift without changing, it destroys your clothes. You end up naked. It happens. A lot. So you just learn to accept it. The only real downside is shrinkage.”
Rachel covered her laugh with a cough. “I don’t think that’s something you need to worry about,” she said, feeling her face heat.
Oh God. Did I just admit to looking at his junk? I did, didn’t I?
“You noticed, did you?” he teased, giving the arm he had around her shoulder a squeeze.
“Oh, shut up,” she moaned. How was it that she decided flirting was the best thing to do after they’d come so close to death? He was still covered in purple blood for Pete’s sake!
They walked in silence, Khove guiding her through the bizarre maze of halls, until he stopped at what she assumed were his quarters. The doors all looked the same to her, and she’d only been there once before, so it was tough to be sure.
“Now,” he said as the door closed behind them, interrupting her as she tried to speak. “Before you bombard me with questions, I’m going to rinse off really quickly. You’re going to have a drink, I assume?”
“Yes please,” she groaned. “Anything to take the edge off. I feel like I’m riding a high right now. The adrenaline isn’t fading.”