by Lexi Blake
“Marcus, it’s a yucky thing. You need to kill it. It’s like a horse or something,” I yelled. I didn’t have much time to give him the rundown on what he was up against.
Marcus dove under and in seconds the surface was smooth again.
Quinn knelt down and touched a section of reeds. “Find her. Lead him to her. Help my daughter.”
They peeled off and snaked away, doing the bidding of their master.
“You don’t do that at home.” I was feeling pretty useless, but I got my gun out anyway in case the yucky horse thing attacked on land, too. I was never swimming in lakes again. Oceans were iffy too because sharks are legit.
“The plants at home aren’t native to Faery. They’ve evolved differently. I can manipulate them, but I don’t have the connection I have here or on my home plane.” Quinn stared out at the water, his hands on his hips. “I’m going after her myself.”
“You’ll only make things harder for him. Marcus knows what he’s doing. He didn’t ask you to follow him. He cares about her. Let him handle this.” I knew what it was like when civilians shoved themselves into my battles. It could be chaotic, and every moment would count. Marcus wasn’t fighting in a place he was used to, and Quinn wouldn’t be either. Their senses would be dulled underwater.
Quinn looked like he was going to ignore me when Marcus’s head came up again and he dragged in a breath. He had wrapped one arm around Summer’s body and started to swim to the shore.
“She’s not breathing,” he said.
Now nothing I could say would stop Quinn. He didn’t dive in. He brought the platform to Marcus, who found himself lifted out of the water and brought to shore. I rushed to meet him. I might not have listened to long lectures about faery creatures, but I did know a lot about CPR.
“You need to lay her flat on the ground,” I instructed, getting to my knees.
“I need to give her my blood,” Marcus said, pulling at his sleeve.
I shook my head. It was his go-to move. Vampire blood was our universal curative, but it wouldn’t work here. “It might make her lungs function, but it won’t clear the water. She’ll just drown again. You two get back. Now.”
I could take charge of this. Summer was covered in blood and I wasn’t sure how much of it was hers, but if I could get her breathing again, Marcus could fix anything else that was wrong with her. I leaned over and placed my mouth on hers. Two quick breaths and then I found her xiphoid process and moved up an inch on her sternum.
“Be careful with her,” Quinn said, kneeling next to me.
Marcus was opposite me, Summer’s hand in his.
I started compressions, being careful because I had a whole lot of strength and I wasn’t sure how fragile she was. I found a rhythm in my head and let it take over.
“It’s not working.”
I didn’t need to see Marcus to feel his fear.
I kept on, unwilling to give up on her.
“Kelsey, let Marcus try giving her blood.” Dev was every bit as freaked out as Marcus was.
Again, I didn’t take the time to explain that it wouldn’t work the way they hoped it would. I kept up my steady beat, giving her breaths when the time came.
Her eyes flew open as I leaned over to put my mouth on hers. She knocked me back as she twisted to one side and vomited up all the lake water she’d swallowed.
I breathed a sigh of relief as she dragged air into her lungs, and Dev and Marcus crowded her in a way that would have made me growl.
“Bella, you are all right?” Marcus asked.
“Of course she’s not all right,” Dev complained. “She was attacked. Give her blood, Marcus. Look at what it did to her arm. Did you kill it?”
“He’s talking about the yucky horse thing.” I noted no one was complimenting my CPR skills.
They ignored me entirely.
Summer’s body shook as she cleared her lungs and her gut. Marcus held her hair back, lending her strength. Dev pretty much got in the way, but he thought he was her dad and I would likely be all kinds of upset if Fen drowned. I’d been twelve kinds of freaked when he’d nearly been sacrificed by witches and I hadn’t even been his mom then.
I put a hand to my belly. I was bringing a kid into a world where witches might try to sacrifice him. He would be part demon, and though we’d managed to break Gray’s contract, what would happen if one of his relatives tried to enforce that legacy on his son?
Why hadn’t I thought of any of this before I’d gone and gotten pregnant? I was mom to a wolf king. At some point every alpha in the world would likely force my Fenrir to prove himself far before he was ready.
The son I was carrying would be less than a halfling. He would be a freak in the demon world, part demon, part demon hunter. How would they treat him? Hell, I wasn’t even sure we weren’t about to get involved in a war with that plane. Would I be bringing my son into a world where no one would accept him?
Was this how the queen felt when she’d become a mom? Had she been this paralyzed with fear? Had she wondered what the hell she was doing? If she was even doing the right thing?
If she was ready? If she was capable of being a good mom?
“I’m fine.” The words croaked out of Summer’s mouth.
“You are not, bella. Your arm is still bleeding, and I think I can see bone.” He reached down to gently touch her right forearm.
Summer hissed and tried to sit. She brought her left hand up, touching the collar at her neck. I’d noticed it before, but only in a vague way. It was a thin circlet of what looked to be silver, and there was a charm attached to it. Honestly, I don’t know much about jewelry, but it wasn’t something I would have picked. It didn’t seem to go with Summer’s skin tone. I would have put her in gold. The queen wore a lot of gold, and it seemed to bring out the warmer tones of her skin. But Summer must have some sentimental attachment because she seemed deeply relieved it was still there.
“I’ll be fine. I need to get home. Erna can heal me.” She sounded out of it, but then she’d recently drowned so I wasn’t judging.
“Marcus can heal you,” Dev insisted. “Vampire blood heals quickly and there will be no scars.”
She shook her head. “I know what that means. Vampires don’t heal you for nothing.”
“It means only that I do not want you in pain,” Marcus explained.
“He won’t expect anything from you.” I felt the need to plead Marcus’s case. I don’t know what vampires she’d known before, but Marcus wasn’t the kind of male who would ever hold off on offering healing to anyone. Except the bad guys, and then he would be the one getting inside their heads, telling them to gut themselves. “You can heal, Summer. He won’t jump you or anything. Not like the horse thing. It’s dead, right?”
Marcus nodded. “The each-uisge is dead. I drained it and he tasted quite good. He will not bother another traveler.”
Summer shook her head. “I don’t think he was trying to eat me. It was weird. He wanted…”
Summer’s head fell back and Marcus caught her. I heard Dev curse.
“Give her blood.” The good news was with her all passed out and stuff, we could drip that sucker into her mouth.
“Or you can step away from her, vampire,” a new voice said.
A young man who couldn’t be more than twenty stood to the side, and he was holding a crossbow aimed right at Marcus.
Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed.
* * * *
Zoey
It’s not easy to walk in an invisibility cloak. Maybe it is if you’re the only one inside it, but I wasn’t, and my human son wasn’t the most coordinated kid in the world.
We were walking down the hallway that led to Myrddin’s apartment when he nearly tripped and sent us both tumbling.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Did you forget to tie your shoe?” I’d asked him twice if they were tied properly.
He knelt down. “This wouldn’t happen if you got me the Velcro kind.”
I stood there, keeping the cloak around us and trying so hard not to lecture the kid. I could hear my father down the hall at Sarah’s knocking on the door. It was all a part of the plan. He’d led us to the residential wing of the building. There were cameras everywhere, and I didn’t want Myrddin wondering why an elevator opened and closed on its own, nor did I want to risk riding up and down until someone wanted to go to the right floor. The cloak hid us visually. It couldn’t hide our mass if someone brushed up against us. According to Lee, there was something about the cloak that hid it from cameras and allowed eyes to see what they thought they would see. If we stood in front of the door, there wouldn’t be a shadow there. They would see right through the cloak. There was nothing I could do about the door coming open, but my father was there to make sure no one was hanging out. Sarah had a spell for the camera in the hallway and the one on the door that would let Myrddin know who was standing there. We were lucky with that. Sarah was our official witch. She was the only one the security systems weren’t warded against in case we needed her.
I needed her today.
“Are you done?” I didn’t mean to sound so irritated, but we needed to get a move on. I wanted Lee to be safely in bed by the time Myrddin figured out his book was gone. I would be sitting on a couch somewhere doing my nails and trying to look pretty. After all, according to Myrddin, that was my job.
Lee popped back up, nearly knocking me over. He winced. “Sorry. Yeah. I’m ready. I stretched and everything.”
It was good to know my father still taught the same things. I hadn’t stretched. Probably should have.
“Did you go to the bathroom?”
“Mom,” Lee groaned.
“Fine. Let’s go.” I couldn’t help it. I was his mom, and I went on several jobs with my dad when I was his age. Thievery didn’t care that I couldn’t stay home alone. If Dad couldn’t find a sitter, I’d often gone as his assistant. And I usually told him I didn’t need to use the bathroom and then I almost always did, and sometimes there wasn’t a bathroom around. It had been rough on my preteen self to have to find a place to pee in the middle of a swamp when we were stealing from a hobgoblin.
We shuffled forward. Like I said, it’s not easy moving in tandem with someone, and I had zero idea how he’d managed to fit Rhys and Sean under here with him.
“You know this is going away when we’re done here,” I said.
Lee sighed. “I knew this would get me in trouble. I should have talked to Hugo first and gotten immunity.”
Hugo Wells was the Council’s lawyer. It didn’t surprise me my son had thought about that. “I would still hide the cloak. You don’t need to sneak around, baby.”
“I do. Like Grandpa said, information is the best thing I can steal,” he replied resolutely. “I’m going to work for Kelsey, and she needs me to know things.”
I’d heard this plan and I was kind of all for it. Kelsey had come to me and explained that she thought she should start training Lee. It would give him a place where he fit in, a job he could do when he was older, but he was going to start small. We shuffled toward the turn and then there would be a straight line to the front door. “I’ve only agreed that you can intern for her this summer. You’ll be filing reports and helping out Justin most of the time.”
“Sure. That sounds like fun,” he said cheerily.
My guard went up. I didn’t say anything but I would have Justin spying like the blood-oathed vampire he was. Whenever my kid agrees with me, I know he’s planning something. “You have to keep your grades up.”
“I will.” His hands were holding the cloak together.
Though we were fully inside the cloak, we could see. The world was a bit hazy, like it had a film over it.
“Hello, Sarah.” I heard my father behind me. “I was hoping to talk to you about a problem I’ve been having.”
“Of course, Harry. Come on in,” Sarah said. “You know my daughter, Mia.”
“Hello, Mr. Wharton. How is Lee doing?” Mia asked. “Is he being careful? You know about school and stuff?”
I groaned. The child wasn’t subtle. “You told Mia?”
“I have to tell Mia. Mia knows everything anyway,” he shot back. “You tell Neil everything.”
“I do not, and there’s a good reason for that. He’s a horrible liar.” The good news was Myrddin tended to completely ignore Neil. He wasn’t an alpha wolf so he was beneath Myrddin’s time. Neil had gotten better at simply not talking.
“Mia’s an awesome liar,” Lee replied with enthusiasm. “She’s way better than me. And you can’t tell her mom I said that because we’re on a job and we have a code. Snitches get witches.”
I bit back a laugh because it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. “Thieves code. Got it, and you know your grandad was serious about that. I remember one time a halfling demon ratted him out to the mark and your granddad paid a witch to do terrible things… Well, he didn’t date for a couple of months.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Lee,” I started because I was still his mom and he wasn’t supposed to cuss, but then I realized we weren’t alone. There was a man standing at the end of the hall, right across from the door we needed to get inside. “Oh, shit.”
We stopped. He was standing facing away from us. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, sneakers on his feet.
“Mom, what do we do?” Lee asked.
We yell at Sarah because she should have been watching the hallway so we wouldn’t have gotten surprised like this. “Be still. He can’t hear us.”
“Of course I can, Your Highness.” The man turned and I sighed. Jacob, the heavenly prophet. He put up a hand. “You know I like to watch the important moments of history play out. Don’t take the cloak off. The cameras won’t see me because I don’t want them to, but they will see you.”
“Who is that man, Mama?” Lee asked. I noted that Dannan had moved from his shoulder to the top of Lee’s head, as though he wanted to get a better look at the new guy, too.
“My name is Jacob, little prince,” Jacob said, looking down at the cloak he could obviously see right through. “I’m a prophet. I bear witness to the great events of the world and sometimes guide the hands of those who need it. I have a message for your mother.”
A chill went across my skin because he wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t serious. The fact that I had Lee with me made my stomach turn. This was serious and my son could get hurt. “I can try this again later. I’m going to take my son home.”
“Then you will fail,” Jacob said solemnly. “The princeling is why you have a chance at succeeding. The world is at a crossroads, Your Highness, and once again, it will be the choices you make that shape fate.”
I had to take a deep breath because the last time this had happened, the last time I’d been the one making the choices, I’d lost my beloved guard. I had to force myself not to hold Lee tight because I wasn’t losing him again. “Say what you need to say, prophet. We both know I won’t understand half of it.”
“Gray has said most of what needs to be said.” Jacob’s eyes were perfectly human, so I knew this wasn’t the prophet part of him talking. Sometimes Jacob played a long game. Unlike Gray, he’d had control of his powers for as long as humans had walked the Earth plane, and he often made what he liked to call “moves.” I got the feeling I was about to get put into position.
“I gave your people a gift once. You should retrieve it along with the item you seek to steal. Remember that you have both items when you need them years from now. And Your Highness, do not blame yourself for what will happen. It is truly the only way to win. To win this battle you must begin with a loss.”
“I thought our battles were done.”
“You thought wrong. I believe you were told that Daniel’s challenge wasn’t in taking his crown. It would be in keeping it. And you will be the reason he rises or falls. You and the princeling.”
“I’m just human,” my son said.
Jacob kn
elt down and smiled. “I think your father was right in how he is choosing to raise you. Be brave, Prince Lee.”
“We don’t give our children royal titles in this kingdom.” I never called my children princes or princess. We had fought to earn our crowns, but they would not be passed on to our kids. It didn’t work that way.
His smile turned distinctly sly. “Also an interesting choice. I shall call him what I wish, what suits him. For now, he is a princeling to me. And you must be a queen, but first a wife. Remember that you are always given the tools you need to succeed, but sometimes you pay for them in the harshest of ways. Go now and do your good work. The wizard is busy. You’re the one thing he didn’t count on. You and Grayson Sloane. Who could have guessed that by creating a dark prophet, the Hell plane would lose its advantage? Oh. That was me.”
He’d been the one to train Gray, the one to keep him close for months after his turn. He’d been planning for a while, it seemed. “Tell me it’s going to be all right, Jacob.”
He stood and his eyes seemed to find mine. “Eventually. Hold strong, Queen Zoey, and know none of this was your fault. As for you, little prince, forgive her one day. She never meant to leave you. When you see me next, know you are close. Do not leave the path.”
He stepped around us and began to walk away. I turned to try to see him, but he was gone.
“What does he mean, Mom? Some of the things that man said scared me. I’m not a prince,” Lee said. “He told me to forgive her. Who is her?”
I was deeply afraid Jacob had been talking about me. Something was coming for us. “I don’t know. That’s kind of the way prophecy goes, baby. I have to do this and do it now. Why don’t we go back and you can wait with Aunt Sarah and Grandpa.”
“No. He said you would fail without me. We’re going together. I can do this.” Lee started forward and I nearly tripped trying to keep up.
Jacob had said it pretty plainly. Why had he called my son a prince? Why had he looked so amused when Lee had told him he was only human? I had to put it all out of my head for now and concentrate on the task at hand, and that was doing the job and keeping my son alive. We made it to the door and Lee gently pressed the sides of the cloak around the knob and lock, giving me plenty of space to work. Dannan clung to the top of my son’s head, his wings carefully folded together, and I had to wonder at the pixie’s loyalty to Lee. Pixies don’t like enclosed spaces. At all. And yet Dannan was suffering through it for his sake.