Agent of Darkness (Dark Fae FBI Book 3)

by C. N. Crawford

  As soon as I touched the strings, a wave of exhaustion slammed into me, and I felt an overwhelming desire to lie down on the floor. What was the point of any of this? Why had I come here? Gabriel was already dead, and revenge wouldn’t change that.

  Nerius was right. I was nothing more than a useless fortal, a lilive, a mongrel.

  The wave of fatigue hit me so hard, I nearly fell into the white strands. I forced myself back, a gasp of despair escaping from my throat, and quickly crossed to the wall. I rubbed my fingers on the rough stone, scraping off the strands of gleaming white, and some skin along with it. Slowly, the despair subsided, and I took a deep breath.

  What the hell was that stuff? It felt like tangible hopelessness. I shone the beam of the light over the room again, suddenly seeing what I should have realized all along. Nausea climbed up my throat. Under the silky strands of fabric were humanoid shapes, completely encased in a thin, shimmering material. My stomach dropped. Christ. There were people trapped in here. No wonder the room reeked of death.

  As I looked closer, I began noticing the shapes protruding from the silk. A hand jutting out, lifeless and rotting. A half-submerged skull. A long, slender leg, sticking out from a slumped form.

  My mouth had gone dry. Nerius had been right. If Lord Balor had been kept in here, he was long gone now. I fumbled in my handbag, searching for a mirror to escape this hell.

  A long groan stopped me in my tracks, and I pointed my beam of light toward the source, my heart hammering. A cold sweat beaded over my forehead. Someone in here was still alive.

  As I drew closer, my flashlight shone over a man, or what remained of him. His face looked gaunt, his skin gray, and two-thirds of his body lay cocooned in the ghastly material. When I’d touched it with two fingers, I’d wished for death. How did it feel to be wrapped in it? How could he even find the will to groan?

  He moved his lips faintly. “Please,” he muttered. “Death.”

  I crouched lower, meeting his gaze. “Who are you?”

  He let out a dry sob, his eyes agonized. “No one. Kill me.”

  “You don’t want to die. It’s this stuff that’s covering you. Hang on, I’ll get you out.” Easier said than done. I pulled Branwen’s stiletto from my bag, and ran it along the man’s form, trying to slice through the silk. I managed to slice the material, but it clung to the blade, dulling it. I needed to clean it to try again, but touching the stuff would probably kill me.

  “A knife,” he croaked. “Here.” He tilted back head to expose his neck. “Do it. Please.”

  Shit shit shit. Even if I somehow managed to pull him out of there, he’d still be covered in the stuff, and if I got any on myself, it was all over. And even then, I had no way to break him out of the complex. He couldn’t come through the reflection with me.

  “Who are you?” I whispered again.

  “My name is Gormal. Please, I beg of you—”

  “Gormal? Lord Balor?”

  He gave a faint nod.

  “What is this place?”

  “The end. Please. Do it before she comes back.”

  “Who?”

  “The interrogator.”

  “What does she want?”

  He let out a sob, his head drooping. He began wailing in desperation, ignoring me.

  “I’ll give you what you want if you talk to me.”

  He raised his eyes, glimmering with—no, not hope. The opposite of hope. The expectation of death. “You’ll kill me?”

  I hesitated. “First tell me what I want to know.”

  His mouth twisted. “Just like the interrogator. She promised to kill me when I told her what she wants to know. And I told her. Everything. But still she thinks I’m holding out. I told her everything I know—the fae courts, their bloodlines, the family connections between Seelie and Unseelie, the bloodline of dread—”

  “The bloodline of dread?” I pounced on that phrase. “What do you know about that?”

  He shut his eyes, lips moving silently as though praying.

  “Hey. Hey!” I pressed my stiletto to his throat, and said, “I need to know about the Masters of Dread, the whole bloodline. If you tell me everything you know, I will drive this blade right into your jugular.”

  His eyes opened at the sound of my twisted threat. “A promise.”

  I bit my lip. “Yes.” There was no hope for him. All I could do for him was put him out of his misery.

  “I was a scholar,” he said, his words fast and urgent, knowing that death was in his grasp. “Studying fae bloodlines, and I found a peculiar hereditary strand. One that was considered a myth. A family line that held a power over fae emotions.”

  I tensed. “Some say that magic can’t use fae emotions. That fae emotions are magic.”

  “That’s almost entirely true. Most fae emotions are just that. Magic in pure form. But there is one emotion that’s different. That is more primal, more ancient than any other human emotion.”

  I swallowed. “Fear.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Not love, or happiness, or rage. Fear came before all of that. When Lilith opened her eyes in the Garden of Eden, that was the first thing she felt. A jolt of fear.”

  “And that family line? What could they do?”

  “They could use the fear of fae. Use it for their own powers of magic.”

  “In what way?”

  “Various ways.” His voice cracked. “Each one could use it differently. Of course, the ancient fae weren’t too happy with this power. They killed any fae that showed a sign of possessing it. But several survived. And they had children. As far as I know, there are still two alive today.”

  “Who are they?”

  “One of them—” A sudden creak made him pause, his eyes widening. “She’s coming,” he said, his lips trembling. “Kill me, you promised!”

  We weren’t done yet. There was still that other matter. “Lord Balor—do you have any idea who betrayed you? A spy among the rebels?”

  “No,” he stammered. “Please. She’s here.”

  My pulse racing, I turned around. An old woman stood in the doorway, peering at me with milky white eyes. Her long, gray hair hung in front of her face, her skin a midnight blue.

  “I thought I felt a pixie in my lair,” she croaked.

  I shuddered.

  “Kill me!” the man screamed.

  With a lightning-fast move, I jammed the blade into his jugular, and blood sprayed through the air. But as I did, something silky hit the back of my neck, and dizziness clouded my mind, an agonizing emptiness eating at my chest like a cancer. Blinking, I stared down at the man, his lips moving soundlessly. Fatigue was sapping my body. I needed to lie down.

  I dropped to the floor, letting the mirror slip from my fingers, emptiness gnawing at my ribs. The jagged void. Why did we put up with all the pain of life? Why didn’t mothers break the necks of their babies as soon as they were born? Certainly better than to let them live in this hell.

  Something scuttled in the corner of my eyes, and I turned to see the old woman, crawling now, on eight spindly legs, four of them ending in long-fingered hands.

  “Well, what do we have here?” she scuttled around me, and as she did so, white strands of string spooled from her mouth. She grabbed them deftly with her hands, circling me, wrapping the strands around my arms. She flattened my arms to my body, then began to cocoon my feet. A powerful maw of despair gripped me, a sense that I was rotting from the inside out—rotting, and completely alone.

  She crouched, gazing at me with her milky eyes. When she opened her mouth, I noticed another set of mandibles.

  “The Mistress of Dread herself,” she whispered, in a voice like a thousand ants crawling on my skin. “The king wants you dead or alive. I wonder which he prefers? Dead? Or alive?”

  Dead. Please.

  “I can feel your despair, pixie. And it’s a glorious banquet.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek, and I desperately wanted to get to my knife. I could have ended it m
yself if I had been just slightly quicker.

  “But others have underestimated you before, haven’t they, little pixie? I’m not the Rix. I’m much older, and much wiser. When I see a threat, I kill it.”

  I glimpsed a movement in the corner of my eye. A tail, curved and ugly, ending with what appeared to be a large stinger. It twisted closer, and then suddenly whipped and jabbed me in the throat. I gasped in pain.

  “You’ll die, Dread Mistress,” the interrogator rasped above me. “Just like you wanted. It won’t be painless. My venom rarely is.”

  A numbness was spreading through my neck and down my shoulder, a tingling sensation. It wasn’t too bad. Just a bit of an itch. And it would bring me the oblivion I craved for. The interrogator scuttled right and left, dropping her threads of despair around me carelessly. Her feet scraped the stone floor unpleasantly. Soon it would be over. The numbness spread to my left arm. Then, my neck began to burn, as if someone had placed a live coal against it. I moaned. Above me, the interrogator cackled.

  The pain spread. Shoulder. Arm. Hand. Fingers. Everything began to thrum with agony. I writhed on the floor, groaning, my breath too shallow to scream. The pain pulsed in my skull now. It overcame everything, any coherent though I had. All I wanted was for it to stop. My eyes fell on an object lying on the floor. The hand mirror I had dropped. And I could glimpse the corner of a reflection. In a desperate twist, I rolled toward it, as I searched for the only person I thought could somehow help me stop the pain.

  The world blurred, and I looked up at the cloudy faces of five fae. “Where the fuck did she come from?” barked Nerius.

  Roan crouched, scooping me into his arms, his mossy scent enveloping me. “Cassandra? What’s happened?”

  Even in his embrace, an agonizing sense of isolation consumed my mind, an endless void. “Kill me,” I whispered.

  An eerie keening pierced the air, cutting me to the marrow. Shrill cries, intermingling in the air.

  Then, Elrine’s voice. “What’s that sound?”

  “It’s the banshees screaming down in the catacombs,” said Abellio. “Foretelling death. They’re never wrong.”

  My death. It was the sting, I knew. My executioner had filled me with venom, and I was about to die. In this gaping void of despair, I welcomed that knowledge.

  Chapter 16

  I gazed into Roan’s eyes, hoping he’d end my torment quickly. I was about to die, no matter what, and he could end it fast. My heart fluttered.

  Elrine crouched by Roan, reaching for my body. “What’s that stuff she’s wrapped in?”

  Branwen stayed Elrine’s hand. “Don’t touch it! It feels… wrong.”

  “I’m removing it,” Roan said matter-of-factly.

  If he touched the webs, he’d become just like me—rotting from the inside out. Before I could open my mouth to stop him, he grabbed a bunch of the stuff, green eyes widening as the despair hit him.

  Then he clenched his jaw, his eyes clearing, and tore the rest off me, pulling it off my arms, my legs. He ripped through the strands, smearing them on the brick to clear them from his hands. He kept going, even though I knew cloying despair must be poisoning his brain, whispering at him that there was no hope.

  My heartbeat began to lose its rhythm as the venom streamed into it, poisoning me. As my vision dimmed, my heart skipped a beat, then slowed. My throat clenched, the supply of oxygen dwindling every second. A sharp pain spread down my arm to my fingers, and I felt as if someone was boiling my blood from within. I whimpered. Death lingered around me like a miasma.

  As he scraped the last of the despair strands off me, my mind sharpened. Pain splintered my body, but I was desperate to live, to see Roan’s eyes again, to run through the forest, to feel my fingers in the dirt, to run my hands over the oaks.

  With the last breath left in my body, I whispered, “Sting. Venom. My neck.”

  Roan cradled my head, leaning in closer to inspect my neck. I heard Elrine gasp. “Roan. She’s dying. It’s too late.”

  He ignored her, and lowered his mouth to my throat, warm lips on my skin, his tongue moving against the bite as he tried to suck out the venom.

  “Roan!” Elrine shouted, nearly hysterical. “You’ll only poison yourself! What the fuck are you doing?”

  He raised his head, spat aside the poison and lowered his mouth to my neck again, the feel of his lips sending a pulse of heat through my body. My heart raced out of control, and couldn’t tell if it was the poison’s effect, or if it was Roan’s proximity. My muscles spasmed suddenly, and a burst of fluid ran up my throat, blocking my air. Some of it leaked down my cheek, the rest choking me, making me cough. That flame that had been burning in my chest since I’d bitten Roan sputtered, nearly dying out.

  “Look at her skin,” shrieked Elrine. “The poison is spreading. Let her go, Roan. There’s no point!”

  Roan raised his head again and looked down at me. He grabbed the front of my dress and pulled at it roughly. I heard the tear of fabric, felt his fingers brushing against my skin. The world blurred around me.

  Abellio had said that the banshee keen never lies. When they wailed, death was sure to follow.

  Strange. I always imagined death as a darkness closing down on me. But when my vision finally failed, it was replaced by endless, milky white.

  A gentle, incessant tugging pulled at my chest, over and over. I felt at peace here, sinking deeper into a cool, heavy neverness.

  And yet that warm tug pulled at my chest, piercing the calm, a niggling, irritating thing, like an un-snoozable alarm clock, telling me that it’s time to get up get up get up. I wanted to swat it away, but that would mean moving, and I just wanted to let my body fall into the never.

  The warm tug intensified, and I whimpered. With that one exhaled breath came air, and body, thoughts, and pain. Warm, powerful hands on my chest.

  Something warm and delicious pressed against my lips, bringing with it a vision of amber light streaming between oak leaves, sparking the earth with gold.

  I coughed and bucked, my body pulling from the cool never. My eyes snapped open as I gasped for breath, the light sharp—too sharp. That persistent, warm tug pulled at my heart, forcing it to keep on beating. I wanted to scream, wanted to flail, wanted to fold into a ball and fade back into the white.

  Instead I took another, painful breath. And another.

  “She’s back,” Branwen said. There was something in her voice. Disbelief, perhaps.

  “Cassandra, can you hear me?” Roan said, his voice laced with a panic I’d never heard from him. “Blink twice if you can.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I tried to remember what he’d said. How many times did I need to blink? And had I already done it, or did I still need to?

  “I can hear you,” I croaked, my voice like sandpaper. It hurt my throat to talk, and I let out a cough.

  Roan let out a long breath, pulling me closer. “Thank the gods.”

  Slowly, the world swam into focus. I was laying on the brick courtyard, not far from the church. Something moved to my right, and my eyes followed the motion. A mourner, leaving the church. Ignoring us completely.

  I swallowed hard. “What happened?”

  “The spider poisoned you.”

  Elrine was giving me a death stare, apparently furious. “And you died.”

  I looked at her in confusion. It seemed my death had really pissed her off.

  Another tug at my chest. I flinched at the tug and noticed Roan’s eyes shift at the exact same moment.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “What is what?” he asked.

  “That sensation… like a tugging. Like something is pulling me—There! It happened again!”

  “That would be your bond,” Elrine said, her eyes dark with rage.

  “Bond?”

  “The bond that Roan—”

  “We were bound to each other yesterday,” Roan said, his voice tense. “I never… severed the connection. That’s what p
ulled you back.”

  “Pulled me back?”

  “From death. My heart beat for both of us.”

  I shut my eyes. I’d died?

  “Can you get up?” Roan slid his arm behind my back. “I can lift you if you can’t.”

  “Give me a moment.”

  Groaning, I pushed up onto my elbows, and as I did, a breeze whispered over my breasts. Roan tugged the ripped front of my dress together, and I held it in place. I looked around to see who might have been enjoying the view.

  Apart from the fae, nobody, it seemed. The mourners from the funeral strode past, completely ignoring us. Roan’s glamour was powerful as hell.

  “Watch where you put your hand,” cautioned Roan.

  I looked down, and realized that a mound of the white strands lay inches from my fingers. I quickly drew it back.

  “You touched it,” I said numbly, remembering him scraping it off. “Do you have some sort of… magical protection?”

  “No,” Roan said. “I’m just used to the feeling.”

  Christ. A long silence fell over us.

  “We should get it out of here,” I said at last. “Or it’ll poison half the neighborhood.”

  “No problem,” said Branwen, pulling out a lighter. She flicked it, then crouched down, touching the flame to the piles of silk. Instantly, they blazed with a roaring fire, and Branwen jumped back with a shriek. The spider’s silk was highly flammable.

  I leaned into Roan, feeling that warmth return to my chest. Somehow, he’d brought me back from the other side.

  Chapter 17

  We got back to the mansion, crammed into a sleek Rolls Royce Phantom that Nerius had parked nearby. I sat in the back, and the wind from the open windows rushed over my skin. Roan sat by my side, his body warming mine. Apparently, our bond was still partly keeping me alive, and we had to stay close while he helped to keep my heart beating. That glowing warmth in my chest had returned, pooling around my heart.