by S. Young
“What happened?”
“I met the vampire and surmised he’d been lying about fighting an all-powerful being to cover up that he’d gotten his arse kicked by a fucking werewolf. Unbeknownst to me, Alice had caught his eye.”
Rose considered this. This woman secured Fionn, attracted another guy, and then caught the eye of an indolent vampire. “She must be an intriguing lady.”
“Alice is very attractive.”
“Is that it?” Rose scowled. “A woman just has to be beautiful to warrant attention?”
He gave her an impatient look. “First, I said attractive, not beautiful. Many women are attractive. Beauty, being in the eye of the beholder, is harder to define. Second, Rose, I have no interest in relationships, which means a woman only has to be two things: physically appealing to me and sexually free. If that offends the feminist within, I could give a fuck.”
“Charming.” Did she really describe him as noble earlier?
“Anyway, this vampire was more than intrigued by Alice. He turned her. She came to me, said it was against her will, and I tried to help her come to terms with her new reality. But in truth, she was there as his spy. He’d heard I was a powerful warlock but beyond that, I was a mystery. He was a collector of information and he sent Alice to find out more.”
Oh shit.
“I left her in an apartment I’d rented in London. I told her I was away on business, but really, I just needed some time away from her. I went home to Ireland. I’ve never left any personal item behind around a mistress—but she’d stolen a silk handkerchief from me. They used it to trace me and she followed me there. By the time I found her, she’d already relayed information about my vault.”
“What happened to her?”
Seeing her fear, Fionn shook his head in disappointment. “My home is my sanctuary. It’s spelled. It’s almost impossible to find, but if a person stumbles upon it, they forget about it as soon as they leave. The only people the spell does not work on are Bran and the staff who worked there for generations. Bran has no spell on him but the staff were spelled to be unable to speak of me or my home.
“When I found Alice, I broke her neck. While she was unconscious, I had her removed. When she woke up, she had no memory of the place, but it was too late. She’d already sent the information on.”
“Shit. So Alice came back and broke into the vault?”
“Alice is dead. Along with others who returned to my home.”
Horrified at the casual way Fionn relayed this information, Rose couldn’t hide her reaction. There was a ruthlessness to him that she couldn’t pretend didn’t exist. It was confusing. Worrying.
“It would never be a safe place again. Someone could find out what I was. What good would that do? And why should I explain myself against a woman who betrayed me for a chance at immortality? That was their deal. He didn’t turn Alice against her will like she’d said.” He curled his lip in anger. “He offered her immortality to get to me.”
Betrayed again.
How could a person who had been continually betrayed through the centuries trust anyone? Let alone a woman he’d just met?
Rose didn’t think the punishment fit the crime, but then again, this world had different rules from the human one. Conflicted, she looked away. “What happened next?”
“While I was chasing signs that pointed to Niamh Farren being in Budapest, Alice’s vampire enlisted twenty lone vampires, killed my guards, my housekeeper, and my steward. They then used an industrial-sized steel laser to cut through the doors of my vault. Along with An Breitheamh, he stole valuable artifacts I’d collected over the years.”
She thought of all the people who had died during that attack and didn’t feel so much sympathy for Alice. “I’m sorry, Fionn.”
His expression remained annoyingly blank. “Bran hacked the vamp’s phone. Deleted Alice’s original texts and searched his entire system to delete any information on my home. As soon as he and his vampires left my home, they had no idea where they’d gotten all the artifacts. That didn’t stop me. I delivered retribution for the people they’d murdered, people I’d sworn to protect and failed to do so. I killed every bloodsucker that entered my home, and I’d do it again.”
Fionn tensed, as if he’d said more than he’d meant to. Cursing under his breath, he looked away, seemed to gather himself, and turned back to Rose with a calmer expression.
“The vamp had sold most of the items by the time I tracked him down, including An Breitheamh. Bran has found pieces here and there that I’ve stolen back. An Breitheamh seemed lost to me until I received word of it being in Barcelona.
“Then Bran found out about the auction. It’s being held by Oliver Schneider, a German businessman who also happens to be a powerful warlock. Schneider must know of An Breitheamh’s historical importance and that some ‘fanatics’ believe enough in its power to pay a lot of money for it. Three times as much as he paid for it.
“But Schneider also knows it was stolen from me. The man he believes it was stolen from was the man Alice believed me to be—Edward Kent, an English warlock. Schneider may not know my real name, but he knows I’m a man.
“You, Rose, are not a man. So, you need to break into that vault.”
Steal an ancient iron dagger from a highly secured vault in a five-star hotel in Barcelona? An ancient dagger that was the key to opening Faerie if plunged into her heart?
God, she missed bartending.
Heaving a sigh, Rose leaned across the table. “Explain that whole ‘man’ thing to me. Tell me what I need to do.”
Fionn’s room is neat as a pin, Rose thought as they strolled into it after breakfast. She’d left her bed unmade, her dirty clothes sprawled over a chair, and the bathroom was a mess of toiletries.
Fionn’s didn’t even look like it had been touched, let alone slept it.
Must be the soldier in him, she mused, glancing around as she followed him to the desk in the corner.
“What are we doing?”
“Bran hacked into the hotel’s system. He sent over schematics of the hotel and vault.” Fionn laid his iPad on the desk, the screen showing a partial of what looked like plans. Then, Rose watched in awe as he drew his hand over the iPad and across the desk. As his hand glided, it appeared as if the iPad was a printer, miraculously churning out paper with the schematics on them.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Rose couldn’t help but smile.
Fionn glanced up in time to catch it. He frowned. “What is it?”
She shrugged, still grinning. “Dude, that is very cool. Don’t you think that’s cool?”
He blinked as if shocked. “Did you just ‘dude’ me?”
“Did you just make an iPad print out schematics of a vault with a wave of your hand?”
Fionn rolled his eyes and turned to the drawings. “Focus, please.”
It occurred to her, for not the first time, that Fionn didn’t seem to appreciate his talents. Now, she wasn’t stupid. She realized as a human he’d hated the fae and being turned into one was probably a fate worse than death. However, he had not chosen to stick iron in his own heart and end his fae existence. He was still here. Which meant Mr. Mór had turned his bad fate into a purpose. If he could do that, couldn’t he eventually grow to love being his own version of fae? Rose bumped his shoulder with hers. “You need to learn to find the joy in your abilities, Fionn.”
He grunted. “Concentrate or die.”
Assuming that wasn’t a direct threat (she hoped), Rose leaned in to look at the plans, brushing her breasts against his arm. Although he did a good job of pretending not to notice, Rose caught the little tick of a muscle in his jaw. God, he was fun. Trying to suppress her smirk, she asked, “What am I looking at?”
He tapped a finger at the edge of the plans. “The vault is underground. Far underground. We must be inside the hotel to travel to that level. Once there, you’ll travel into the vault.”
“Why am I traveling in?”
“Because according to the information Bran has sent over, the vault is alarmed with a spell that will trigger if a man, other than Schneider, steps foot inside it.”
“Again, why am—”
“Man, Rose. Not woman. Man.”
Indignation flooded. “That sexist asshat. What? He thinks a woman can’t steal from him?”
“The only person he’s expecting to steal An Breitheamh is me. A male.”
“Yeah, who could, and is, enlisting a female to help him. What is this guy’s problem? He thinks a woman can’t best him?”
“Yes.” Fionn turned his head to meet her eyes. “From everything I’ve heard of the man, he thinks exactly that.”
She was affronted. “Misogynistic dipshit. Chauvinist pig. Bigoted dickwad. Sounds like someone needs a good kick to the jewels, if you ask me.”
Fionn studied her a second. They stood so close her breath caught. Then a definite glimmer of amusement crept over his face. “Let’s leave the jewel-kicking out of it. At least physically. Metaphorically,” he said, looking down at the drawings, “we’re about to show the bastard that you never underestimate a woman.”
18
The plan itself was simple.
What wasn’t so simple were the people waiting to kill them at Hotel Saber.
Well, not exactly at the hotel.
Schneider had banned any supernatural from entering the hotel until after eleven thirty that evening. As a powerful warlock, he’d spelled the entire perimeter of the building with an alarm like the one inside the vault.
This meant that neither the Blackwood Coven nor the Garm would be inside the hotel, waiting to kill Rose. According to Bran, her parents’ coven was unaware of the auction for the dagger and was still fumbling around in Europe trying to pick up her and Fionn’s trail.
So that was something at least.
However, the Blackwoods and the Garm would be in the vicinity. They would see Rose and Fionn coming if they approached the hotel by foot. That’s why they weren’t going to. Fionn would create a gap in the perimeter spell so that he and Rose could travel inside via the delivery entrance at the back.
Once inside, they’d pretend to be a couple staying at the hotel to avoid suspicion, until they could get to the restrooms. With the memory of the plans in mind, Rose would travel into the vault, while Fionn traveled outside of it. She would then poof out next to him so he could double-check she’d collected the correct dagger, they’d travel back to the restrooms, then back to the hotel, and then poof several blocks away to the outer grounds of Camp Nou.
If they could do that and avoid everyone who wanted to kill them, great.
Butterflies, different from the kind induced by Fionn, swarmed in Rose’s gut.
“You ready?” he asked.
They were outside Camp Nou, the soccer stadium, preparing to travel inside the delivery entrance at Hotel Saber. To be honest, Rose would have preferred if they could’ve departed somewhere a little closer to the hotel, but this was as close as Fionn was willing to get.
He insisted the Blackwoods and the Garm probably had the hotel surrounded for at least a block.
“I’m nervous,” she admitted.
Nerves had always plagued her in competition when she was an athlete, but she’d never admitted it out loud. In her mind, that was admitting weakness.
Fionn was the most complicated man she’d ever met. She felt conflicted about the choices he’d made in the past yet ultimately decided she couldn’t judge. Hadn’t she killed a warlock in self-defense? Rose felt she understood her companion, and more than that, despite his often-grumpy demeanor, she felt safe to be herself with him.
He gave her a clipped nod. “It would be foolish of you not to be nervous. But you can do this. I’m right here with you.”
“Okay.”
“Ready? Visualize where that delivery entrance is.”
Fionn had assured her that although she had no idea what the entrance looked like in real life, it was enough to know where it was situated in the building to travel to it.
“Ready.”
The world blurred for a mere few seconds, darkening, then lightening as the surrounding space settled into place.
She glanced up at Fionn who gave her an encouraging nod.
He’d cast an illusion spell on himself so he’d blend, nondescript, as they moved through the hotel. Rose stayed glued to his side as he walked with confidence down the delivery corridor and out through double doors that led into the public areas of the hotel. As he stepped out into a corridor, signs on the opposite wall directed guests right toward the main reception and left toward the ballroom. Rose reached for his hand.
Fionn jerked away from her and glared.
Ignoring the little pinch of hurt, she glowered back at him. “We’re supposed to be a couple. Couples hold hands.”
He grunted in obvious annoyance and held his hand out to her like it was the last thing he wanted to do.
“What are you? Five?” She slipped her hand into his and ignored the tingles that shot up her arm. He had calluses on his palms, just below his fingers. She briefly wondered what caused them before the feel of him overwhelmed all other thoughts.
His grip on her tightened. “Concentrate,” he reminded her under his breath.
Right.
Concentrate.
They stopped at the concierge and made a fake booking for tour tickets that included a guided tour of La Sagrada Familia—Rose had to stifle a snort. Then they casually walked, hand in hand, toward the signs for the restrooms. Milking the moment, she snuggled into Fionn, curling her free hand over the top of the hand that held hers.
He peered down at her, unamused.
Rose grinned.
His countenance hardened with more than just annoyance; she felt that look all over.
“Didn’t you say you need to use the restroom?” he bit out.
She knew she should act with more solemnity considering the danger they were in, but teasing Fionn distracted her, calmed her, even. Raising their clasped hands to her mouth, she pressed a soft kiss to the top of his hand and then released it. “I’ll be right back.”
With a little swing in her hips, she left Fionn fighting back a scowl of outrage.
Fuddy-duddy, she laughed to herself as she entered the restroom.
Even though she’d checked to make sure there was no one there to see her travel, Fionn had told her to do it from inside a stall. Apparently, Schneider might not be above breaking the law by sticking cameras in the ladies’ room.
Rose locked the stall and leaned her palms against the door, closing her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she visualized the plans for the vault. It wasn’t a huge room, an entirely steel cube with very thick walls. Fionn seemed to have this unshakable belief that she could travel into it.
Called her a natural.
Exhaling long and slow, she chanted inwardly, You can do this, you can do this.
The vault enveloped her entire mind.
Go there. Be there.
Although her eyes were closed and she didn’t move, she felt the door disappear beneath her palms and a chill blast across her skin.
Opening her eyes, Rose grinned.
She was inside the vault. There were four shelves that wrapped around the entire room except for the wall with the door. On the shelves were boxes and artifacts, some with gemstones that sparkled under the LED lights that she knew from the detailed plans didn’t emit heat or UV.
The vault was also kept at a chilly temperature.
She shivered in her T-shirt, glad for her jeans and sneakers at least. Scanning the shelves, she searched for the silver box Fionn had described but stopped when she felt a tingle on the back of her neck.
Slowly turning, she faced the opposite wall and her attention zeroed in on a silver box on the second shelf.
Rose knew it was the one.
The solid silver case had engravings along the bottom half that wrapped around the entire box, depicting Fionn’s story. Careful
ly taking it off the shelf, she ran her fingers over the etchings. A warrior on a rearing horse with a dagger in one hand, a sword in the other. The same warrior plunging the dagger into an elegant male. The warrior shackled before a beautiful woman. The warrior surrounded by cloaked figures. And finally, the warrior asleep in a tomb, his sword clasped between his hands.
Shivering for a different reason, Rose fought back overwhelming emotion. She felt Fionn’s betrayal like that dagger through her heart. Anger and hurt burned inside her for him.
It made no sense.
How deeply she felt his pain made no sense to her.
Blinking back tears, she reached for the clasp on the box.
Fionn had said not to open it but Rose needed to see. She needed to see what the weapon, destined to kill her, looked like.
As soon as she lifted the lid, tremors affected her nerves, weakening her. Her knees gave way as if a huge weight was crushing down on her.
Rose slammed the box shut, closing the clasp, her strength returning.
“Fuck,” she whispered, trembling.
She’d barely gotten a glimpse of the silvery-gray weapon.
When Fionn said pure iron hurt them, she assumed the metal would have to touch her skin to do it. Apparently not. Apparently, she just needed to be in its vicinity for it to affect her.
Then why hadn’t she felt it when Ethan threw that blade at her?
Rose held the box firmly in her hand and focused on traveling outside the vault door. She was immediately faced with an irate Fionn.
“What took so long?” He took hold of the box before she could answer and unsnapped the clasp to lift the lid. She felt the strange weakening occur again just as Fionn flinched and shut the box.
Rose frowned. “Why does it do that? The blade Ethan threw didn’t affect me, but this …” She gestured to the box.
“Its effects are akin to being trapped in a room made entirely of iron. I told you. It’s not just an ordinary iron blade. It’s more powerful than that. Now, travel back to the restroom. From there to the stadium.”
He vanished before she could answer.