Under the sink is my first and only destination. Really, I was hoping for detergent or bleach, but what I find is much, much better than that.
Rat poison.
Ah, the countryside.
The warrior’s ploy to take quiet roads and villages backfired.
I empty the box of powdered rat poison into the pumpkin soup. All of it, every last dusting of beige. Then I stir it in, fast, and shove the empty box to the back of the under-the-sink cupboard.
They return sooner than I expected. But I’m safe, just stirring the soup when Spike scurries into the kitchen.
Before the dark fae heads back to the lounge, I call out to him, “I need the loo again.”
He throws me a withering look.
In answer, I shrug. “I think I’m about to bleed.”
His eyes roll back for a fleeting moment. His exhaustion of me is palpable. Yet, he summons me over and leads me up to the bathroom for the second time that day—providing me with the alibi I need. Now, Spike is alone with the food, and I have plausible deniability.
I head straight for the cupboards and drawers. Inside, I find a half-empty pack of pads and one tampon. Not a woman’s house, then. Or the residents took most of it when evacuations spread through the countryside.
To the vexation of the warrior, I take my damn time. Eventually—when I’m reading the trivia on the pad-wrapper (I love this brand)—he slides down the wall to sit on the floor, and just watches me.
Some of this trivia I’ve read before. It’s my preferred brand for this very reason, I have reading material when I’m changing the bits. But today, I learn a new piece of utterly useless information.
“Did you know humans can’t lick their elbows?” I ask, tossing the wrapper away. I ache to try it, but that’s embarrassing, isn't it?
He says nothing.
I lean back against the basin and unravel the pad in my slender fingers. “Can your kind lick their elbows?”
His lashes lower. “I have never tried, nor heard of such nonsense before.”
I hum. “If you can’t do it, you could just say that.”
His mouth twitches, fighting off a snarl.
Reaching under my dress, I slap the pad onto my undies (keeping my bits from his gaze—a gaze that flicks downwards), then fix them back up.
“Are there humans in your world?” I ask, kicking away from the sink.
He pushes up from the floor, his weary stare on me. I don’t expect him to answer me but before I reach the door, he says, “Some.”
I arch a pale eyebrow. “Slaves?”
“Among other things.”
My lashes flutter with a startled blink. “Like ... what?” What could be worse than slaves?
He doesn't answer and instead, ushers me out of the bathroom.
On the way down, another thought pops into my mind and, really, what do I have to lose with our looming deaths?
“Is there any light in your world?”
Silence is my answer as we take the stairs. When we reach the bottom, he says, “The fruit shines, the grass gleams, and the roads glow.”
My heart twists at the thought, pictures of what this fantasy land could look like swarming my mind.
Before I can settle on any one image, I see the coffee table—and the plates and three bowls on it, waiting for us.
My stomach flips with dread.
Spike sits cross-legged at the corner of the table, watching us with suspicion narrowing his eyes.
As far as I know, all three of those bowls are poisoned. But a new threat chills me—what if Spike had the same idea, and poisoned my food too?
I intend to die after the warrior does. But not before I have a wash in the tub and enjoy a cigarette from my shoulder bag and browse through the house, then maybe sit outside in the fresh air for a while.
I’d hoped to enjoy my last moments.
Now, I don’t know if I’ll get the chance.
11
Eyes on the plates, my steps slow as I move around the couch. Just as I come to the coffee table and make to crouch down, a sudden hand snatches the nape of my neck—and I’m yanked off my feet.
The warrior has grabbed and pulled me onto the couch.
I go sprawling over his lap, face-down on the leather. His hand still grips tight onto the nape of my neck, holding me down.
For a heartbeat, I’m utterly still. He knows. He knows, he knows, he knows. Somehow, he’s learned what I did to the soup—and I’ll be crushed for it.
But then...
A strange, itchy sensation tickles the back of my head.
Stunned, I blink as I figure out what the odd feeling is: He’s peeling away strands of my hair from my head wound.
Total silence crushes the room, and that pressure keeps me down on his lap more than the grip on my neck. I’m motionless as he shifts away for a beat, then I hear rummaging as he fishes through a satchel.
Before my mind can click onto what he’s doing to me, he’s doing it—spreading a balm over my head wound. And that stings, I tell you.
Against the leather, my face twists with a grimace and I sink my fingers into the couch as far as they will go. A groan rumbles up me, but he keeps on dabbing his salved-fingertips over the gash.
Wonder what it looks like now. Still hurts like all hell, but how has the healing gone? Is it all congealed, crispy blood or a lumpy line of that glazed-like blood that reminds me of the inside of a jellybean?
For the dark fae warrior to decide to heal the wound, he must suspect it to be worse than I thought. Maybe he needs to get us moving on soon and he’s concerned that the injury will slow us down.
Who knows why he does the things that he does. I sure as shit don’t.
The pressure from my neck lifts and it’s like a breath fills me out of nowhere, flooding me with relief and oxygen. With a lift of his thigh, he nudges me off of him.
I push up from his lap, avoiding his gaze, and slip down to the floor.
Spike’s gaze burns hot into my red cheek.
There’s no secret about it. I’m not the mule, my wounds are healed—though this could all be to avoid me slowing him down—and I slept on the rug with a blanket and in direct line to the fireplace. If the warrior has a favourite ... well, it’s pretty damn obvious that it’s me. But again, that’s a big if, isn’t it? Really, he’s focusing his attention more on me so that I heal and recover better, and we can head on soon.
I slip a plate off of the coffee table.
Throwing a cautious glance at the dark fae, I check that it’s all right to start eating. But he just shifts on the couch, watching me with that familiar frown between his brows. He rests his forearms on his thighs, hunches over a little, and considers me with firelight eyes, mirroring the flames in the hearth.
I clear my throat and look down at my plate of lemon-juiced asparagus.
Lifting a strip up by the stalk, I nibble on the grainy end, and that triggers Spike into eating too.
He pulls his plate onto his lap. And we eat in silence.
The warrior watches me for a while longer before he reaches for his food. My heart leaps into my throat as his hand cups the soup bowl.
He tucks in, finally yanking his frowny gaze away from me.
I chance a glance at Spike. His brows are all furrowed and bushy, and on his juice-stained lips (he must have been guzzling some long-life orange juice in the kitchen while I was in the bathroom) he wears a grim look.
Suspicion has his eyes narrowed, and I know he is wondering why the hell the dark fae healed me.
In answer, I just shrug.
He shakes his head and scoops up a spoonful of beans.
I’m cautious about my meal. Asparagus seems the safest option, so I take my fine-ass time nibbling on them down to the final stalk. By then, the warrior has finished the last of his soup and he trades the bowl for the large plate of rice smothered in soy sauce.
He doesn’t get a single mouthful of the rice before it happens.
The pl
ate falls from his hand and thuds to the rug. Rice splatters.
I turn my widening eyes on him, my heart suddenly stopped in my chest. I swallow back a lump just as a wretched gurgling sound crawls up the warrior’s throat and then—
Holy shit.
He heaves forward just as black blood comes flying out of his mouth.
Scrambling back from the spray, I drop my plate; lemon juice spills all over the floor. I kick off of the rug, another spray of thick black, unnatural blood spilling out all over the coffee table.
Spike just sits there, his eyes wide and mouth parted, and watches as the warrior shoves up from the couch and, crouched over, lets blood spill out of his mouth like a constant stream of water from a tap.
I can’t stop it; a retch of my own throws my body forward. Didn’t expect to see much blood—not this much at least. And now I’ve gone and triggered myself.
I turn over onto all fours and spew up the asparagus. The lemon juice burns my throat coming up. It’s a vomity-bloody disaster in here.
The floor thuds beneath me as the warrior storms out of the lounge and into the kitchen. I glance up, tears in my eyes (why do I end up crying every time I vomit?), and see that he lets it all come out into the sink.
A shudder rinses my body. With a look back over my shoulder, I notice that Spike has stood up at some point and backed up to the wall, his wide eyes now on me.
He knows.
But he doesn’t get the chance to accuse me—yet.
Storming back into the lounge, the warrior wears fiery eyes that light up the room, and a furious twist to his face. His eyes shift between Spike, huddled by the wall, and me, crouched on the floor with my own vomit on my hands.
I loosen a shuddering breath.
It didn’t work. It was enough to hurt him, make him ill—but he’s standing there, tall and strong, inde-fucking-structible.
Well, shit.
Guess I should have eaten the soup at the same time. I would have died before he got the chance to punish me.
But—I can’t believe my luck when—he barges past me and heads straight for Spike.
Falling onto my bum, I turn and watch as Spike backs up into the bookshelf. It rattles as he lifts up his hands.
“It was her,” he whispers, his voice trembling. “It wasn’t me, I swear—I would never, I could ...”
His words fail him as the warrior stops in front of him. His back muscles are tense balls of lead with beige skin pulled tight over them.
Slowly, he looks over his shoulder at me. And the embers in his eyes burn through my soul.
I shake my head and point frantically at Spike. “It was him! I was with you in the bathroom!”
“So was I!” Spike shouts, so terrified that he jumps on the spot. “I told you she would do this,” he adds, looking pleadingly at the fae, “I told you she would deliver on her promise. This is what she does, who she is.”
The fae snatches Spike by the side of the neck, then hauls him over to me. He throws him down on the floor so hard that I hear his knees crack. Spike flips around, looking up at the fae—but his murderous eyes are for me, and only me.
“I’ll kill you the first chance I get,” the warrior echoes words I once swore to him.
I pale, feeling the drain of blood plummet to my worrying gut. Numbly, I shake my head—but it’s all I can muster, and it’s not enough.
He reaches for me.
I scramble back, but I’m not fast enough. His hand snatches my neck up and, in a swift and strong tug, I’m lifted onto my feet and slammed back against the wall.
My grunt is muffled by the grip pressing against my throat.
The warrior brings his face to me, the tickle of his nose on mine itching me. “Tell me your name.”
I blink, surprise slackening my face. His grip loosens just enough for me to croak out, “Coralie.”
“Cora-lee,” he parrots in his earthly accent, thick and barbed, “how I will make you suffer.”
I see the wink of a dagger in his hand.
And I shut my eyes, tight.
Please, make it quick.
Please, kill me softly.
end of book 2
mind the cliff.
QUINN BLACKBIRD
THIS SERIES A RAPID-RELEASE, ALL INSTALLMENTS WILL BE RELEASED EVERY TWO WEEKS.
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Dark Fae: Extinction is the second series in the “Dark Fae” Universe, by Quinn Blackbird.
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KEEP READING FOR A ‘DARK FAE, BOOK 1 SAMPLE’
I hear him before I see him; the purposeful steps he takes up the alley, the clink of armour, the song of a dagger he sheathes.
I turn my head to the mouth of the alley, where the main street blazes orange. And I see his silhouette first. Tall, broad—consuming.
Danger creeps up my spine. I have the sudden urge to break free and run at the other dark fae. I don’t want to face this one coming up the alley, the one all the others fall silent for.
My breath is deep and shaky as I see him completely engulfed in firelight.
The darkness fades from him, but lashes of it seem to lick at his heels, as though the darkness itself belongs to him, he is their master, their home. His soft-soled boots are thin, onyx-black leather, matching the trousers that grip him.
At his hips hangs a belt that’s home to all kinds of daggers and throwing knives. Some blades wear traces of fresh blood, and my spine shivers at the sight of the crimson smears gleaming in firelight.
Chain-link armour—so fine that it appears to have been made from silk threads—clings to a black-leather vest he wears. Paler than moonlight, his skin is scarred all over. His arms, muscular and strong, are ribbed by these strange scars. They aren’t bumped like the scars that scatter my arms, but pale and jagged not unlike stretch marks. They climb up his neck like claws, and stop just before the strong jawline.
His face steals me.
I’ve seen some dark fae from a distance before, and up close and personal today. They are all beautiful in the most dangerous of ways, like deadly cobras or lethal panthers. But this one… he’s something else.
His sleek dark hair falls to the side and brushes over his raised eyebrow. His eyes are pits of nothingness, just pure black. As I take in his face, I think fleetingly of our old world and the likes of Matt Bomer.
Only, this guy is no pampered actor. He’s a warrior, and his onyx-black eyes are fixed on me. There’s nothing friendly about the way he looks at me, either. I get the gut-churning feeling he’s about to skin me alive.
Dark Skies : A Dark Fae Romance, A Dark Paranormal Romance (Dark Fae: Extinction Book 2) Page 7