Banshee Blues (Bones and Bounties Book 1)

by Bilinda Sheehan

  She whipped up her hand, and the edge of the Bone Blade caught the inside of my arm as I tried to hop back out of her reach. The half-breed moved with lightning-quick reflexes, jerking her arm up so the iron blade dropped to the floor next to her. Before I could move, she was on top of me and lifting the Bone Blade in a high arc.

  And then she was gone. Clary’s green hair blurred in the corner of my eye as she tackled the half-breed to the ground.

  Sirens split the air, and the whole world came to a shuddering halt as the half-breed pushed Clary’s limp body onto the floor, the Bone Blade buried to the hilt in her stomach. Scrabbling across the floor, I reached Clary’s side as the half-banshee drew the Bone Blade from Clary’s gut and ran for the room containing the photographs.

  “No, no, no.” The words spilled from my lips as I pressed my hands against the wound. It wasn’t bleeding, but the Bone Blade didn’t behave like any ordinary knife.

  Clary stared up at me, the light already beginning to fade from her bright eyes.

  “I couldn’t let her win,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper that was barely audible over the sound of the sirens screeching to a halt outside the house.

  “You’re going to be fine. We just need to get you out of here and stop it from spreading.” I knew I was lying through my teeth as I watched the Bone Blade’s power spread. It started at the tips of her fingers, at the greying of her beautiful skin as the Bone Blade’s power stole her essence.

  Clary laughed and then grimaced as the greying spread to her forearms.

  “We both know there’s no way to stop what has started,” she said. Her expression darkened and pain bowed her spine as the greying continued spreading. “My necklace,” she said suddenly, trying and failing to lift her dead arms.

  I lifted the tiny glass vial away from her chest, and Clary ducked out from beneath the twisted bark chain that had kept the vial close to her heart.

  “I did my best, but it was all I could give.” Her words made no sense to me as I stared down at the vial of green fluid.

  “What is it?”

  “New life, I think…” she said. “I thought I had more time. It has been so many years since the last of my kind died that I don’t fully remember if I did it right. But bury it in the Between…” She coughed as the greying spread up to her chest, making her breathing laboured.

  “Clary, I’ll find a way. We don’t need—”

  She cut me off with a dark look. “Leave. By the time I die, they will be here. The Elite will not look kindly on my dying wish for you to escape and plant the essence in the Between.”

  Tears blurred my vision as I shook my head. “No, you deserve someone with you until the end.” I was glad that my voice didn’t let me down by wobbling with the emotion coursing in my veins.

  “Not at the expense of everything else, Darcey…” She paused and swallowed as the greying crept over her body.

  I heard the front door shattering, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps pounding across the floor.

  “Go!” Clary urged. “I’ll give you as much time as I can.” She closed her eyes.

  The ground trembled, and for a moment my brain refused to catch up to what was actually happening. The tremble became a rumble, and the rumble grew to a roar, and soon the house cracked down the middle as thick, snake-like roots burst through the carpeted floors.

  Leaning down, I pressed a small kiss to Clary’s forehead before pushing up onto my feet. Her smile remained fixed in place as the greying spread up her neck toward her face. Still the roots whipped around, building a solid wall between us and the few Elite officers who had made it up the stairs. I’d never seen any Fae capable of using their magic after being cut by a Bone Blade, but Clary was somehow managing it.

  I darted down the hall toward the room with the photographs. The window was wide open, and I climbed onto the ledge without a backward glance.

  From somewhere downstairs, I heard a scream. It sounded like a man, but the pitch was high enough to belong to a female. Terror had a tendency to do that to humans. The window where I was perched overlooked the neighbouring yard, and I jumped as the house groaned again, tucking my body so that I rolled forward as soon as I hit the ground.

  Taking cover beneath the trees grouped at the end of the garden, I stared back at the house and watched as it sagged in the middle before collapsing in on itself.

  The tree nearest to me suddenly cracked down the centre, its leaves turning brown and drifting toward the earth as sap poured from its split core. Crouching down, I scooped up one of the crisp, brown leaves, the distinctive pattern and shape of the oak leaf as familiar to me as Clary’s face.

  She was gone. Really, honest-to-Goddess gone, and I knew without a doubt that her sudden death had ripped the core out of the oaks. Hers would not be the only death.

  Uncurling my hand, I peered down at the vial of green liquid. I would do as Clary had asked. I could only hope it would be enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Making it out onto the street without being seen was no easy feat. The road that had just been quiet was now jammed with emergency vehicles and unmarked Elite cars. The Elite were easy to pick out from the gathering of mundane cops; their general arrogance and complete ease in any situation instantly set them apart. It only made me hate them all the more.

  Clary had died in that house, and from the quiet conversations I could pick out they were treating her death like it was nothing more than a rogue Fae attack. They were wrong, but I couldn’t very well tell them that. Poking my nose out of the shadows would only lead to my arrest, and I didn’t have time to be bothered with them. I could only hope that their investigation would lead them to the truth sooner rather than later.

  Tugging the hood of my jacket up over my head, I kept my gaze averted as I made my way through the groups of people gathered outside the barricade set up by the Elite. Hearing the neighbours’ shocked whispers as I passed made my skin crawl. Clary would have said I was being too sensitive, but what did it matter since she wasn’t here to say it to my face?

  Reaching the edge of the gathered crowd, I glanced up and met Lunn’s angry gaze across the police barricade. His arms were folded across his broad chest, and a petite, dark-haired woman stood next to him. The flash of her violet eyes told me she was every inch the Fae, but it was beyond me why she and Lunn were inside the barricade.

  One of the Elite officers turned and said something to Lunn. I couldn’t make out his words, but I could tell from the stiffening of Lunn’s shoulders that he didn’t take it too kindly. The female Fae put her hand on Lunn’s arm in gesture of calm, but there was also something terribly proprietary about the action. My breath caught down the back of my throat.

  Fixing the hood of my jacket more firmly around my head, I turned my back on Lunn and the other Fae and jogged back toward the alley where Clary and I hid no more than an hour ago.

  Once within the safe confines of the alley’s brick walls, my chest constricted and I doubled over. Bile crept up the back of my throat as salty tears stung my eyes and stole my vision.

  “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Darcey?” Lunn’s angry voice cut through my pity party, and I jerked upright hard enough to make the world momentarily spin. The half-banshee had rung my bell good and proper, and being forced to stand by Clary as she died had only made everything worse.

  “I could say the same thing to you. I didn’t peg you for an Elite sympathiser.”

  “This isn’t a game, Darcey. First, you keep the human witness a secret, and now one of our own has died. If you don’t come clean and tell me exactly what’s going on, I won’t be able to protect you from the Court.” The edge in Lunn’s voice surprised me, and before I could stop myself a high-pitched, hysterical laugh burst from my lips.

  He grabbed my shoulders and shook me until my teeth chattered in my head and the laughter turned to sobs. I didn’t fight him as he drew me in against his chest, cradling my body to his. The steady beat
of his heart beneath my ear calmed the terrible turmoil raging just beneath the surface of my skin.

  “Talk to me, Darcey. I’m not the enemy. I want to help.” He spoke so quietly it was difficult to hear him above the pounding of his heart. “The Court wants you brought in for failure to turn over MacNa. They know about your history with him, and they believe you’ve turned on them.”

  “As if I would ever go back to someone like MacNa. He hates me as much as I hate him. That tends to happen when you mutually destroy each other’s lives…”

  Lunn sighed and pushed me away so he could stare down into my face. “Tell me what happened.”

  I could have kept quiet, but I’d grown to trust Lunn. That hadn’t been easy, but something about him made me want to spill all of my dark secrets. He had just as many secrets as I did, and part of me believed we could absolve one another of our wrongdoings. Sometimes, two wrongs could make a right.

  “Clary told me about the pub called The Dearg Hand. I was going to head over there to speak to Daster about MacNa, but Clary beat me to it. But when she called me up, it wasn’t to tell me that MacNa was there. It was to tell me that the half-breed banshee was speaking to Daster instead. We tracked her back here and Clary…” I cut off, remembering the glimmer of excitement I’d seen in her eyes. Had I misread it? Clary’s behaviour suggested that she knew exactly what was coming, or at the very least she recognized the possibility of it. But how?

  “She’s a half-breed?” Lunn asked. “You’re sure?”

  “I saw her eyes right before Clary saved me. She’s half-banshee, all right. She even has a Bone Blade—it’s what she used on Clary—but she’s definitely not a full-blooded banshee.”

  Lunn nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of another woman clearing her throat cut him off.

  “Do you have her, Lunn?” The strange Fae’s keen violet gaze raked over me in barely-disguised disgust.

  I jerked in his grip. He instantly released me, but his kindness and the pained expression on his face were at odds with the other Fae’s words.

  “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” I said, taking a small step back from Lunn. It wasn’t far enough to remove me from his reach, but it was enough to make it difficult. And difficult was all I needed in order to escape.

  “Generally, I don’t bother introducing myself to my prisoners. But I suppose if you insist, my name is Auriella. I am the head enforcer of the Court.”

  Her name was familiar; I’d heard it spoken in whispers when I’d been held in the catacombs beneath the Unseelie Court, but I’d never met her face to face. She didn’t look like much, but then a Fae’s looks could be deceiving. The simple fact that her glamour was strong enough to hide her wings and all the other hallmarks of a true Fae told me plenty about her power.

  “I see you have heard of me,” she said, the slight curl of her lips giving her Cupid’s bow pout a cruel twist.

  “Everyone has heard of you.”

  “No.” She smiled, and her perfectly straight teeth became jagged and needle-like. “Only those who have crossed the Court have heard of me. You do not see the end coming, Darcey. You, above all others, should know that.”

  “Auriella, the Court wants you to bring her in, not kill her,” Lunn said, his words travelling like shards of ice in my veins.

  “She resisted. What else was I to do?”

  Lunn shook his head, and I took another step backwards as a black whip uncurled from Auriella’s wrist. The tip dropped to the ground as though it had a mind of its own. It probably did; the Fae weren’t exactly the poster children of subtlety.

  “She’s not resisting, she won’t resist…” Lunn trailed off as Auriella took a step toward him.

  “And you, Lunn? Will you resist?”

  “I serve the Court. You know this, but I won’t let you break your oath.”

  “The Mother of the Hunt cannot break her oath, because it is not given the way you believe it. I am duty and honour personified, and I say a stain like her is to be wiped from this plain of existence. It is something that should have been done a long time ago.”

  “You’re the Mother of the Wild Hunt?” My heart stuttered to a halt. I’d seen what the Wild Hunt could do. I’d seen the pain it could inflict, the devastation, but I’d never for a second imagined it had a Mother.

  “Yes,” she said. Her jaw seemed to be elongating, and her skin stretched across her face as her eyes grew larger and more animal-like with every passing second.

  “Some mother you are,” I said. “Where were you when your children needed you? When they were being used for the gains of another? You stand there and say you are duty and honour personified, but where were those virtues when the honour and duty of your Hunt was being used for personal vengeance?”

  “I am not the keeper of my children,” she said, advancing toward me. “They do what they must, and go where they are bidden. I never said they couldn’t be corrupted. If they have allowed that to happen, then it was of their choosing.”

  My hand slowly closed around the second iron blade in the sheath on my waist. I’d lost the first one when the half-banshee had broken free.

  “Auriella, no.” Lunn stepped between me and the other Fae. The look of glee that crossed her face the moment he moved clenched in my gut, and I touched his arm in warning. She’d planned it, hoping to catch him unawares, and he walked straight into her trap.

  “Go, Darcey, run!” he said, the look in his eyes telling me he understood. He’d known it was a trap, and had knowingly stepped into it. “I can take her,” he said, his wicked smile warming me to my very core. It was true: I’d seen Lunn fight, and he was unbeatable. If anyone could stop her, he could.

  The Mother of the Hunt snarled, her mouth opening to reveal the rows of jagged teeth. When she snapped her jaw shut, the sound echoed in the alley and caused the hairs to stand on the back of my neck.

  “Run,” Lunn whispered again, the weight of that one simple word echoing Clary. For the second time that night, I turned tail and ran like the coward I knew myself to be.

  My motorcycle came as soon as I called for it, and I sped back to my apartment. I didn’t have time to waste. Clary was gone, and I couldn’t let that stand. The Court’s bounty on me meant I would have to make capturing MacNa my priority. But before I could beard MacNa on his own turf, I would need supplies. If I was lucky, Daster would fold quickly and give me MacNa’s location. If I was really lucky, the troll guarding the door would be gone—the thought of fighting him for a second time in one night wasn’t exactly high on my agenda.

  I headed into the apartment, pausing as the stench of sulfur tickled the back of my nose. I only knew of one demon capable of getting past the shiny new ward on my door.

  He wasn’t in his usual spot on the couch, and I saw no sign of him in the kitchen. The subtle creak of shifting bedsprings drew me toward the bedroom, and I pushed open the door with the toe of my boot.

  Mazik lay on his back, his eyes shut, his nose and mouth obscured by the marmalade ball of fluff curled across his face.

  “What the hell are you doing on my bed?” I demanded, striding into the room and scooping the marmalade terrorist from its place.

  It mewled in frustration and struggled in my grip. Mazik opened one turquoise eye and peered up at me before stretching lazily and propping his hands behind his head. This clearly wasn’t the first time he’d slept in my bed, and that thought made my skin crawl.

  “I was waiting for you, and so was she,” he said, indicating the kitten who’d managed to turn in my grip and wriggle free. She crawled up the sleeve of my shirt, pausing only when she got to a particularly bloodied section of fabric. Then she meowed again, pitifully.

  “I’ll feed you in a minute,” I said impatiently, reaching down to grab Mazik’s booted feet. He moved right before I could touch him, drawing his knees up toward his chest and propelling his body off the bed. He stood face to face with me, and the smell of sulfur mixed with the mu
sky scent of his aftershave gave him an unusual, rather than unpleasant, scent.

  “So where’s your little shadow?” he asked, peeking past my shoulder toward the living room. It took me a moment to figure out who he meant, but when it dawned on me my shoulders stiffened with tension.

  “Stay away from Samira. The last thing she needs is you screwing with her head.” I turned toward the wardrobe in search of clothes that weren’t covered in kitten hair. Reaching into the inside of my shirt, I tugged the necklace containing the vial of Clary’s essence free from its hiding place. I popped open the back of the wardrobe and set it on the shelf alongside the Bone Blade. It was safe for now, and could remain there until I could return to the Between and do as she’d asked. Crouching down, I unlaced my boots.

  “It’s not her head I’d be screwing,” he muttered.

  I heaved my left boot in his direction, my aim accurate enough that he had to duck. It thumped harmlessly off the wall behind him.

  “Get out, Mazik,” I told him wearily as I grabbed a clean navy tank top and grey jeans from the bottom of the pile in my wardrobe. I saw only the slightest spattering of ginger hair across the tank top, and the jeans appeared to have survived the ginger bomb entirely.

  “Not until we have a little chat about the bodies you had me get rid of the other night,” he said. His sudden seriousness dragged me back from my own dark thoughts.

  “What about them?”

  “They’re gone.”

  Two utterly innocuous words, and yet coming from Mazik’s mouth they were downright dangerous.

  “What do you mean by gone? I asked you to get rid of them. What you did with them… well, I don’t want or need to know…”

  He shook his head. “Not my kind of gone… The ‘got up and walked out’ gone that’s usually reserved for crappy human horror movies. Seriously, the things they find terrifying? I just find them funny.” He had a wide, smug grin that my palm itched to slap.