by S. Young
She’d moved fast.
Too fast.
No one moved that fast.
Energy tingled along Rose’s head, like bugs crawling across her scalp. She clutched at the woman’s wrists, trying to pry her off, shocked when she couldn’t.
Rose was strong. Naturally so. She always had been. It had held her in good stead during her time as a competitive gymnast through high school.
But this waif of a woman was stronger.
Inexplicable fear flooded Rose.
The woman let her go, her eyes round with shock.
What does she have to be shocked about? She isn’t the one who’s just been attacked!
“What the hell!” Rose shoved her away, and the man took a menacing step forward.
The woman held up her hand, stopping him, her attention never leaving Rose. “You have a block on you. A spell. Someone has blocked your access to your powers.”
Okay, then. Ignoring the woman’s freakish, unexplainable speed, Rose backed away from a person high on something or who took pranking people to another level. Or she was just plain old nuts. “Look, I will let it slide that you put your hands on me without permission and just ask you to leave.” She spoke slowly, calmly, so as not to cause agitation. “Now, please.”
“Don’t talk to my sister like she’s a lunatic.” The man glowered. “You need to listen to her, and fast. We don’t have much time.”
“You don’t know who you are.” The woman gawked at Rose. “Oh God, you need to know who you are.”
“I know who I am, gorgeous, and who I am is a slightly freaked-out bartender two seconds from calling security on your ass.”
“Niamh, we don’t have time to deal with an ignorant human. We have to go.”
“She’s not an ignorant human. Okay, she’s ignorant but she’s important, Ronan Farren,” Niamh snapped at him. She turned back to Rose, irritation changing to earnestness. “More important than anyone else in the world.”
Taking a step back, Rose’s earlier fear returned tenfold. Niamh was either a great actress or desperately believed Rose was the Second Coming. And how the hell did she know her name? Had she asked one of the other bartenders? Probably. Fear wasn’t a usual emotion for Rose, and the fact that this extra from the Lord of the Rings movies was freaking her out pissed her off. “Yeah, you two need to leave. Like, now.”
“There are two paths, Rose. I see them clearly. At the beginning of one, you die, and if you die, the world as we know it will be over. I don’t know why or how, but I know it’s true. The other path, the one where you don’t die, we all live.”
She was so sincere, so believable, a chill cut to Rose’s core. Anger immediately followed the unsettling feeling. “You need to get your tiny ass out of this club right now.” Rose charged toward her. “You think this is funny? Is this some shtick the two of you do to complete strangers? Well, not to me. Not tonight. Go fuck yourself and while you’re at it, get the hell out of this club.”
Ronan moved toward his sister, but she shook her head. “She’s strong, but she has no power. Not with that spell on her.” She bit her lip, studying Rose like she was a high school science experiment. “We have to remove the block.”
“Nee, we need to go. Does she die tonight or not? Because if not, we can come back.”
“Is that a threat?” Rose swallowed, trying to look unafraid as she searched the staff room for a potential weapon.
“No. I’m not here to hurt you and you’d know that if there wasn’t a bloody spell on your mind.” Niamh froze, eyes wide, her mouth open as if in a silent scream. Her head began to shake from side to side in small, frantic increments.
“What the hell …”
“Niamh.” Ronan grabbed his sister, pressing her close and turning his body toward Rose as if to shield Niamh from her.
Uneasiness held Rose in place. “What is happening? Is she seizing?”
He cut her a dark look. “She’s having a vision.”
An impatient Rose threw her hands up in the air. “Of course, she is. Why wouldn’t she be?”
As abruptly as his sister had started seizing—for lack of a better word—she stopped. Her small, elegant fingers curled into her brother’s biceps. She looked up at him, seemingly shocked. “He’s close. We need to go.”
“And her?” Ronan gestured to Rose as Niamh released Ronan and started backing toward the door.
“I understand now,” she whispered, staring at Rose in awe. “Only she can deliver us from him.”
Ronan glanced from his sister to Rose. “Are you sure, Niamh?”
Niamh nodded, a small, strange smile on her lips. “You have to trust him, Rose. Even when he makes it impossible. Don’t let us down now.”
At that, Ronan grabbed his sister’s hand and the two of them raced out of the room.
“Okay, then!” Rose called after them, even though they were gone. “Thanks for the mind fuck, assholes—ah!” She jumped in fright at the sudden appearance of Ivan.
He braced his hands on the door frame, filling the entire space. “Who are you shouting at? Is everything all right?”
“Did you see them?” Rose asked. She pushed past Ivan to glance both ways down the dark corridor. The awful aluminum lighting blinked in the darkness, like it was on the fritz. There was no one in sight.
“See who?” Ivan peered over Rose’s shoulder, deliberately pressing his chest into her back.
She half turned to face him. “The two lunatics who accosted me in the staff room. How did they get past you?”
He frowned, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “No one got past me, Rosie. You sure you are all right? You look … blijeda.”
“Huh?”
He brushed a thumb over her cheek. “No color, yes.”
Deducing he meant she looked pale, Rose huffed inwardly. Yeah. No surprise there.
She glanced down the corridor again, wondering if she’d imagined the whole night, from her reaction at the bar to Mr. Armani Viking, to the strange siblings who’d pretty much told her she was going to die. But not tonight, so yay me!
“I feel like I’m in a very strange dream.”
“What?”
She sighed heavily and strode by him to put her phone in her locker. “Nothing. I better get back to work.”
She wouldn’t say it, but she was glad Ivan walked her out into the club. Her disquiet was strong. Rose searched the vaulted room as she made her way back to the bar, looking for the siblings, for the man.
Was it all just an elaborate joke?
“Of course, it was,” Rose griped to herself.
But joke or not, Niamh had gotten to her. She’d freaked her out, and Rose didn’t want to be alone.
When the club closed in the early hours, Rose broke her own rule and let Ivan walk her home.
2
Frustration seethed through Fionn as he let himself into his suite. The sitting room off the bedroom felt too small for his current mood. He needed somewhere to pace, to vent his irritation.
Shrugging out of his coat, Fionn had flashes of his previous visits to this hotel in Zagreb. He’d stayed several times in the past, always under a different name. His first visit was in 1926. The hotel was only a year old and the first stop for travelers on the Orient Express. He’d been there as an investor in a new radio station. The wealth he’d amassed over the last two centuries was convoluted. To stay out of the pages of history, he’d used false names, and traveled all over the world to make his investments in industries that were booming at the time.
His last visit to Zagreb had been twenty years ago, and he’d stayed in the presidential suite, a sprawling apartment that included a kitchen and staff quarters. Room to pace. To vent.
However, that visit hadn’t required secrecy, and the presidential suite was too visible. Hotel staff more than paid attention to the occupant and Fionn didn’t need that kind of scrutiny.
Speaking of which …
Pulling his mobile out of his pocket, he swiped across the edge an
d hit the single icon with the letter b on it.
Brannigan picked up after two rings. “Fionn.”
“Update?”
Bran chuckled. “And a good evening to you too,” he teased in a thick Dublin accent time had never diluted.
“Update,” Fionn repeated, in no mood for the boy’s perpetually high fucking spirits.
“Right, right. There’s no sign of the Blackwoods. If they’ve followed you to Zagreb, they’re doing a good bloody job of covering their arses.” Bran paused. “So … was it the girl?”
For nearly three centuries, Fionn had waited for a prophecy to come true. Technically, he’d waited for over two thousand years, but he’d been asleep for most of that. Thank fuck.
As it was, it was hell to wait for the children of Aine’s prophecy to be born.
Seven children born as fae in the human world, with the ability to reopen the gate to Faerie.
Seven children who had been hunted by several factions of the supernatural community, including Fionn himself. Fionn knew only of the existence of two of them. A young woman he called the psychic, and another called Thea Quinn, who was no longer fae, and as such, no longer of use to him.
But the girl, the psychic, she was the key to the ones who were left.
Using fae magic sent up a flare to anyone who knew what to look for and brought Fionn down on her every time. However, as soon as he got within the same city limits as her, she disappeared off his radar. Her signature had become familiar to him now, and he and Bran had studied the events surrounding her appearances.
The girl had been recorded in the same city as three of the seven fae children. Two of those three had been killed by his old acquaintance, Eirik, along with a third that the girl had no connections with as far as Fionn was aware. A woman the girl had met with was Thea Quinn. Fionn had no idea how they had connected, but he knew that days after their meeting in Prague, Thea Quinn had killed Eirik, the oldest vampire in the world.
Thea had then been turned into a werewolf by her mate, Conall MacLennan, Alpha of Pack MacLennan, the last werewolf pack in Scotland.
Fionn could be pissed off that he’d missed the opportunity to capture a woman as powerful as Thea to open the gates to Faerie, but she’d killed Eirik for him. Not that Fionn was incapable of killing Eirik. It was just that he owed the vampire for helping him escape Faerie in the first fucking place.
As the vampire gradually depleted the fae children, however, Fionn knew he’d have to take out his old ally.
Thea saved him from that.
Still, now there were only three fae left. Three keys to the gate of Faerie.
And the psychic woman was one of them. Moreover, he and Bran had concluded that she was searching for the others. To warn them? To connect with them? He had no idea. He didn’t care.
All he cared about was that she’d lead him straight to the fae.
Except tonight.
Upon arriving in Zagreb, he’d felt the girl immediately and had followed her essence to a club fifteen minutes north of his hotel. He’d expected to feel another fae there. Yet, not only did the girl slip through his fingers, he hadn’t found another fae energy.
But he’d felt something from that bartender.
Stretching his neck from side to side to work out the tension, Fionn took a beat before admitting, “I lost her. She sensed me coming and is masking her energy.”
Bran sighed. “Ah, bollocks. What now?”
Fionn thought on the bartender. As he’d moved through the nightclub, he’d felt … something. A magnetic pull toward the circular bar in the center of the old building.
That’s when he saw her.
Staring at him in awe.
That was nothing new. Humans often reacted to Fionn that way. At once terrified but drawn to him. The woman had strained against the bar, as if fighting the compulsion to come to him.
Fionn had sensed … something. Not fae, but something. A whisper of energy around her. At first he’d dismissed it, but after searching that club, he’d found no other that could possibly be the reason for his psychic to be there.
His psychic could have been at the nightclub to dance, but Fionn didn’t think so. Two days ago, Fionn had been on his way to Barcelona to retrieve an important artifact that was stolen from him. However, Bran had called to tell him a bank in Zagreb had reported someone had broken into their vault. No one had been hurt and the cameras showed what looked like a blur moving through the secure chamber.
Fionn would have suspected a vampire or even a wolf, except the safe in question was melted open. Bran had hacked the Croatian police’s computer system and sent Fionn the photographs. There was a handprint melted into the safe.
A witch or warlock might be able to use a heat spell to do such a thing, but they were ultimately human and unable to move with the kind of speed recorded on camera.
Evidence pointed to fae.
Despite the urgency of taking back what had been stolen, Fionn couldn’t turn down the opportunity to find one of the fae. Upon landing in Zagreb, he knew right away it was his elusive little psychic. And if she was willing to stick around the city after robbing a bank, then she was sticking around for something important.
Like another of her kind.
The bartender prodded at Fionn. Facts told him the answer was no, but his instincts said otherwise. “There was a woman … there was something about her energy that suggests she’s more than human. I discounted her at first, but after searching the club and the surrounding streets, I found nothing else that would warrant the psychic’s interest.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“I’ll return to the club tomorrow evening for the bartender.”
“The psychic can’t mask her energy forever. It takes up too much magic. She’ll exhaust herself.”
“Then we can only hope she reveals herself while I’m still here.”
“And An Breitheamh?”
Fionn cursed under his breath. “It will just have to wait.”
“Or you could set someone else on the task of retrieving it.”
He shook his head. “It’s too important.”
“Your control freakery might be the end of you, Fionn.”
“Immortal,” he reminded his only confidant.
“Ah, right, keep forgetting about that. Don’t know how. Must be your modesty.”
Ignoring Bran’s sarcasm, Fionn exhaled heavily. “Anything else to report?”
“There was a murder in Zagreb two nights ago. It sounds like the work of a vampire.”
Bloody brilliant. Just what he needed. Vampires, in general, fed for survival. But like any species, there were always those few who got off on killing for the sake of killing. “I hopefully won’t be here that long to have to deal with it.”
“I mention it because the murder took place outside the club near your hotel. I hacked into police records, and they think it’s the work of a serial killer that’s been killing women across Europe. Always near a nightclub the female victim was reported to have been seen at. Usually found in an alley near the club with neck wounds and drained of blood. They’re working with Interpol on this one.”
“Bloody hell,” Fionn muttered. That probably meant undercover police at the clubs. “Right. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“No movement on An Breitheamh, FYI.”
And that was one of the reasons Fionn put up with Bran. The vampire was young in the grand scheme of things. Only ninety-five years old. He was also brilliant. He managed Fionn’s intelligence system and directed the many contacts Fionn had amassed all over the world.
Moreover, he was the only being that Fionn trusted.
“I want to know if the Blackwoods step a foot in Zagreb.”
“On it. Speaking of the Blackwoods, you asked me to keep an eye on Thea and Conall MacLennan …”
Alert, Fionn stiffened. The Blackwoods wouldn’t dare meddle with the MacLennans after they promised not to.
If they had, their ruin would be the
ir own damn fault. Arrogant swine. If it were a perfect world, he’d have nothing to do with that magical family.
Unfortunately, he owed the Blackwood Coven even more than he had ever owed Eirik.
It was that debt that stayed his hand against the witches and warlocks who desperately sought to open the gate to Faerie. Not to take down the bitch who had ruined Fionn’s existence but to forge an alliance with her. To live among the faeries, to imbue their magic with pure power at the source.
The Blackwoods were an old, very large North American coven. They were also naive, sycophantic arseholes, and there was no telling them that the fae would destroy the humans. He had to keep one step ahead of them at all times.
Fionn had slipped up with Thea Quinn. The Blackwoods knew of her existence before he did, and they’d arrived in Scotland before he could. Layton Blackwood had met with him in Inverness, a city an hour and a half east of the werewolves’ home in Torridon.
The obnoxious warlock, son of the coven leader, had lounged across from him in the hotel bar. “Thea Quinn is a werewolf and mated to Conall MacLennan.”
It had taken a moment for Fionn to process this. After all, the information he’d gathered suggested the woman in question had survived numerous attacks over the years, many of them in just the past few weeks.
One of them by Eirik Mortensen, the oldest living vampire in the world. Fionn knew that for a fact, for he had known Eirik for over two thousand years.
Of course, that was until Thea had wiped out Eirik and fourteen of his vampire brethren for attacking Conall MacLennan.
Who was obviously Thea’s mate, Fionn had mused.
Only a mate could turn fae into a werewolf without the bite killing her. A little-known secret he’d learned while enslaved to the Fae Queen.
Matings were not supposed to happen between the fae and the supernaturals born from their magic and interference with the humans. Yet, somehow, vampires and werewolves found themselves mated to fae. It had been rare. It had been forbidden.
But it happened.
And when the Fae Queen, Aine, learned that a werewolf bite could turn fae from immortal into a powerful but very mortal werewolf so long as the pair were mated, she decided that connection between the once-human supernaturals and the fae-borne was too dangerous to allow to continue. She’d banished the supernaturals from Faerie, sending them back to the human world.