Cruel Fate

by Kelley Armstrong

  I glanced at Todd, who hadn’t noticed the man or the giant black hound. His gaze was on the manor house and sweeping lawns, like something out of an English novel. The lord’s country abode.

  “Nice,” he said.

  Yes, the Cwˆn Annwn might be warriors of justice, but they hadn’t taken a vow of poverty. I was about to comment when Todd noticed Ioan, still fifty feet away, walking from the top of the long drive.

  “That’s him, I take it?” Todd said. “He definitely looks like Ricky’s grandfather.”

  “He does.”

  I climbed from the car, and Todd did the same. The man walking toward us was trim, fit and well built, in his early sixties, attractive, with an easy smile and easy stride. Confident, no hint of arrogance. He could be Ricky in forty years, age adding only self-possession and sophistication.

  For the Cainsville elders, taking on the form of senior citizens was their way of hiding in plain sight. They take advantage of humans’ ageism. We see a gray-haired and wrinkled person, and we don’t pay them much attention, don’t notice when, twenty years later, they still look the same.

  Ioan wasn’t that sort of senior citizen. He was the modern sort, still able to work ten hours a day running his own corporation, host a dinner party and then slip in a few holes of golf before bed. Or, in his case, go for a nice horseback ride and reap the souls of the damned. Same thing, really.

  The local Cwˆn Annwn had come up with their own way of hiding their longevity. In Ioan’s office, there was a photo of his son, also named Ioan, who grew up with his mom in Florida and was now in grad school. In a few years, Ioan Senior would suffer a sudden and fatal heart attack, and his son would come to Chicago to take over the family business, under the direction of the board of directors. That board of directors? The other Huntsmen. And Ioan Junior? It would be Ioan, in a much younger glamour, which he’d age at a natural human rate and then repeat the whole process.

  Ioan reached us and put his hand out, taking Todd’s and then, as they were shaking hands, pulling him into a half embrace, his arm around my father’s shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” Ioan said, his voice low. “I’m so sorry.”

  Todd shook his head as they separated. “You didn’t put me in there. Pam did it for both of us.”

  The expression that flickered over Ioan’s face said he agreed with me—the situation wasn’t that simple, my mother not that blameless—but the look vanished in the easy Cwˆn Annwn smile my father shared.

  Todd looked up as another man approached.

  “Keating,” he said to the Huntsman who’d infiltrated the prison guards to watch him. “Have you been celebrating your release, too? That wasn’t how you wanted to spend twenty years, I’m sure.”

  “I got to go home at night.” Keating shook Todd’s hand. “I’m glad to be out, though, if it means you’re out, too.”

  “And his real name is Trahaearn,” I said.

  Todd tried to pronounce that, and Trahaearn laughed and said, “You can stick with Keating.”

  “No, I’ll get it. I just might mangle it a few times.”

  “Come inside,” Ioan said. “I do believe it’s cocktail hour. I’m not much of a bartender, but Trahaearn mixes an excellent martini. And Liv has seen my wine cellar. Anything in there is yours. It’s a day for celebration.”

  “We didn’t really come for a social visit,” I said.

  “I know, but unless it’s urgent, I believe we can speak just as well over wine and a cheese tray.”

  I let Ioan make a fuss of our visit. He wasn’t downplaying our emergency. He was easing the tension and welcoming Todd properly. I went along with it because it also conveyed the message to my father that I wasn’t worried about the current situation. Nope, not at all. It was just an excuse to bring him to Ioan and settle this matter over cocktails.

  Trahaearn went into the kitchen to prepare a snack. As he got that, I took Todd to the wine cellar, where we picked out a bottle.

  As I came out of the cellar, Lloergan poked her shaggy head around the corner and fixed me with a reproachful stare. Then she withdrew, and her big paws padded away, as if she wasn’t terribly interested in my arrival, since I hadn’t even bothered to come see her.

  “Lloe!” I called and hurried after her. “I totally forgot you were here.” I set the bottle on a sideboard and dropped to my knees to hug her. “Sorry, baby.”

  She relaxed and nuzzled me as I petted her. Lloergan is Ricky’s cwˆn. She’s smaller than Brenin but still as big as a Great Dane and as shaggy as a Newfoundland. Cwˆn means “hound” in Welsh, Cwˆn Annwn literally translating into “the hounds of the Otherworld.” We use the term to refer to the Huntsmen, but technically, the hounds are the Cwˆn Annwn. They are the black dog of folklore. The black shuck. The devil dog. The barghest. Whatever you wish to call them. In folklore, they are fetches—see one, and your soul is about to be fetched away to the afterlife. In truth, they do the fetching themselves. They bring down the Huntsmen’s prey and send their souls to the Otherworld.

  Ricky found Lloergan two years ago, as an abused and neglected hound who’d been forced into service for a rogue Huntsman. Lloergan’s one milky eye had improved to the point where the damage was barely noticeable. She was missing an ear, but we’d treated the scar tissue and restored most of her hearing. While her health had improved significantly, the mental and emotional damage took longer, which was why I was so quick to shower her in affection when she thought I’d snubbed her. Having Ricky away on business already left her feeling abandoned.

  I turned to Todd as I kept petting the cwˆn. “This is Lloergan. Or Lloe. She’s Ricky’s hound. His cwˆn. The one I’ve mentioned.”

  He took a stab at her name. “Thloy-are-gan? Dare I ask how to spell that?”

  I told him, and his brows shot up. “Are you sure?”

  I laughed and got to my feet. “It’s Welsh. It means moonlight.”

  “Yes,” Ioan said as he appeared with an antipasto tray. “We’re quite certain Liv picked it to be difficult. The double L is what’s known as a voiceless lateral fricative sound. It’s nearly impossible for non-native Welsh speakers to manage correctly. Liv does a fine job of it, though.”

  “Showing off, is she?” Todd said with a smile.

  I stuck out my tongue and gave Lloergan one last pet before taking the wine into the main room. Ioan had the fire going low, taking the spring dampness from the air, and Lloergan lumbered over to lie in front of it.

  I motioned Todd to one of the sofas as I opened the wine, and Trahaearn brought in the promised cheese tray.

  “So,” Ioan said as he settled into an armchair, Brenin beside him. “You have a problem.”

  I nodded. “We need to know where you bury the bodies.”

  He gave a short laugh. Then he saw I was serious.

  “All right,” he said. “That wasn’t merely an idiom. You mean the actual corpses of our prey. If there’s been a cache of corpses uncovered, I can assure you it’s not us. We don’t use mass graves, and we don’t take enough souls to fill one.”

  “I’m asking about one body in particular.” I glanced at Todd. “Greg Kirkman.”

  Ioan’s surprise lasted only a blink. Then he nodded, relaxing into the chair and turning to Todd. “You were just released from prison, and that is the one thing that could send you back. You’re understandably concerned. Let me assure you that his body is well hidden. Even if it was found, the tissue—and any damage to it—would long be gone. Mr. Kirkman has returned to the soil, where he’s done far more good in death than he ever did in life.”

  Ioan leaned forward. “If you have any concern about the righteousness of what you did, Todd, any at all, I would gladly set your mind at rest with more details of his crimes. Not the intimate details, of course, but the number of victims, their absolute innocence and his absolute guilt.”

  “I know he was guilty,” Todd said. “He confessed to me, quite happily.”

  That was what ultimately set Tod
d off. Kirkman’s confession—not the guilt-stricken breakdown of a remorseful man, but the gloating boast of one who lost not a minute of sleep over his crimes.

  Ioan continued. “I realize, too, that in the human world, people dislike the death penalty. The permanence of it. The possibility of error. Your own case is a perfect argument against it. Yet we know our targets are guilty. You can ask Liv about that. She’s had experience—a case where it seemed we were mistaken. We were not. Even if a man confesses, he still may not have done the crime. But Greg Kirkman did, and there was little chance he’d have served a day in prison. What you did was justice.”

  “No,” Todd said carefully. “What I did was vengeance. A rage-fueled vengeance that was not mine to take. I didn’t kill him because it was right or just. In that moment, I wanted him to suffer, as his victims had.”

  Ioan’s expression said he didn’t see what difference that made. Todd still killed Kirkman for his crimes. I understood, though. I’d been Todd in his memories. I’d felt that rage, and then felt the shame and horror of what he’d done.

  “We aren’t asking about Kirkman as a hypothetical,” I said. “A body was just found near where Dad…did it.”

  Ioan relaxed back in his seat again and picked up his wineglass. “Then I understand your concern, but I can assure you, there’s no need for it. Greg Kirkman is not there. We wouldn’t dispose of his body near where he’d been killed. In the event he was found, we wouldn’t want the scene nearby. He’s over a mile away.”

  “Not off Willow Creek Road?”

  “No. He’s across the highway in a separate area of forest. We rarely transport the body far. We don’t want to be pulled over with a body in the trunk. But we put distance between Kirkman and the scene of his death. If a body was found off Willow Creek Road, it’s not him.”

  Ioan’s lips pursed. “Could it be his last victim? I know she was there, where you found Kirkman, Todd. We had, unfortunately, no way of leading the authorities to her body without putting you at risk. We’d prefer to give some resolution to the family. In this case, with the…state of her body, and the violence of her death, they’d have had no comfort even if we could have done it. If they’ve found her body now, though, that damage will be gone, and her family may welcome the closure.”

  “The police claim it’s a man,” I said. “Dead about twenty years, apparently just enough remaining tissue to suggest he was the victim of a violent attack.”

  “Still could be her,” Trahaearn said. “I’ve studied forensics. That’s my role in the Pack. I keep current on crime scene analysis, so we don’t make any mistakes in our disposal. An unembalmed corpse, buried in soil, will decompose completely within about ten years. Climate conditions can speed up or inhibit that process. However, we didn’t bury the girl. As I recall, she’d been left under a fallen tree, sheltered, so Kirkman could…return to her. That may have protected her from complete decay, but I can’t imagine there would be enough flesh to make a positive sex identification. Clothing would help, but it’d be in a state of serious decay, too. The police may have jumped to an incorrect default conclusion. A twenty-year-old corpse, showing signs of violence, found off Willow Creek Road? I’d lay bets it’s her. That’s a mild concern because of her link to Kirkman. It’s not as bad as finding him, though.”

  No, it wasn’t nearly as bad as finding him.

  Eight

  Gabriel

  Gabriel had told Olivia he would investigate this by calling his contacts at the state police. He had not lied. At the time he said the words, that had been his intention. Then he hung up, considered the matter, and decided to take a different tack: visiting the scene.

  He did, naturally, have a plan for managing the risk. Yet he had to admit he was taking a bigger chance than he should, spurred on not by logic but by emotion. Uncomfortable to admit. Incredibly uncomfortable. But it was a necessary step on a path he needed to travel.

  Gabriel had always considered himself a self-aware man. He knew what he was and what he was not. He’d come to realize, though, that what he considered recognizing his shortcomings was actually the act of strengthening them, of accepting them, of using them for excuses. Like when he’d realized he had no aptitude for geometry and promptly dropped the course rather than risk doing poorly in it. Whether he liked geometry had no bearing on his decision. He hated to even remember how many times he’d almost applied that logic to his relationship with Olivia back when they first grew close. He was not good at friendships—and certainly not good at more than friendship—and so he should just quit her. Accept his shortcomings and walk away.

  Walk away before he got hurt. Before he was disappointed. That’s what it really came down to.

  Thankfully he’d overcome that before they began dating, and he’d never once since considered walking away. Which led to an entirely new and even less comfortable worry. What if she walked away? He’d let his guard down, allowed her into his life, admitted he loved her and wanted to be with her for the rest of that life. The promise ring had been her way of calming his fears, telling him she felt the same.

  Yet it was one aspect of that old worry that drove him out of his office today, set him on the road to visit the scene of the body recovery.

  The problem was that Gabriel’s bòcan blood meant he understood the concept of reciprocity very well. In the past couple of years, it’d begun to manifest in a new and distressing way. Gabriel had not lived an ethical life by any stretch of the imagination. Even as a lawyer, he used blackmail and extortion. He broke into offices and private residences. He pickpocketed phones from police officers and prosecution lawyers and aides. He stole case files. He bribed clerks for access to information he should not have. He had standards, though. He would never plant evidence or bribe a judge or tamper with a jury or blackmail a witness into lying on the stand. That was cheating.

  Gabriel did not feel that what he did—in the pursuit of his clients’ interests—was wrong. Yet he certainly understood he was committing criminal acts that could cost him his livelihood, could even cost him his freedom. It was a calculated risk.

  Now, though, as his life deepened, with Olivia and all that she brought into his world, he had begun to suffer a dread of consequences from the universe itself. It was a concept people like his aunt knew well. Karma. Superstition. Fate. The sense that some universal force measured good deeds against bad. So far, Gabriel had been lucky—inordinately lucky. He’d achieved not only financial and professional success, but now also personal fulfillment. He was happy. Not satisfied. Not content. Happy. The question was: did he deserve it?

  No. He was quite certain he did not.

  On a rational level, he didn’t care. He repaid his good fortune by treating Olivia as she deserved to be treated. He’d also learned to extend that care and respect and consideration more fully to others who deserved it, like Rose, Ricky and Lydia. And together with Olivia, he did good in the fae world, expecting little in return.

  Yet beneath his rational side lurked a fretful sort of worry, surfacing only when something sparked it. That call from Olivia had sparked it.

  Gabriel had freed Todd from prison. He’d given Olivia the thing she wanted most. Her father free. Her father back in her life.

  What if that was too much? What if the universe had said, “Enough”?

  Gabriel had freed many guilty clients. It was the job of the legal system to convict them and his job to give them the best possible defense. Would it not be ironic if the one person he knew to be innocent went back to prison? Karmic revenge. He’d helped countless criminals avoid charges, and he didn’t give a damn about one of them. So when he actually did care, when his client was actually innocent of the charges, was this when he’d lose?

  That’s what Gabriel had been afraid of, all through the trial. When he’d won his case, he was more relieved than he would ever admit. But now, his bòcan blood whispered, what if the universe wished to correct the imbalance? Was it not greater punishment to send Todd back to pri
son after Gabriel got him out?

  It would certainly be worse for Olivia. To see the realization of a dream, only to have it whisked away.

  Gabriel had watched clients dissolve into oozing puddles of anxiety. He’d seen them twist into knots of worry. He defended clients guilty of murder and facing life in prison. Men who’d callously and cruelly taken a life, perhaps even boasted about it, only to break down in tears at the prospect of what Gabriel would, privately, call quid pro quo. Take a life, and you risk giving up yours in return. Yet even when Gabriel himself had faced that same sentence for a crime he did not commit, he’d never collapsed. Not outwardly. Not even inwardly. However worried he’d been, he’d tackled the problem with calm resolution.

  And so, the fact that this irrational fear of universal karma sent him flying down the highway toward Cainsville did not mean that he was in any danger of curling up in the fetal position, whimpering. Only a vague anxiety floated in his gut, no more noticeable than a cup of strong coffee, drunk too late at night.

  He told himself that the universe was not going to punish him. Such things did not happen. There was no karmic scale floating in the ether, no deity weighing his heart against a feather. There was simply a corpse in a forest, uncomfortably close to where Todd had executed Gregory Kirkman. It was an unfortunate coincidence, nothing more. This dead man could not be Kirkman.

  Olivia was asking Ioan where they’d disposed of Kirkman. Gabriel already knew the answer to that—not precisely where Kirkman lay, but in general terms, which was “not where he’d been killed.” The Cwˆn Annwn weren’t fools. They wouldn’t leave a corpse near a crime scene, especially in the forest where once you moved the body, you lost the scene itself and all forensic evidence that went with it.

  Fae could be careless. Flighty, capricious and careless. The Cwˆn Annwn were none of that. Olivia often said that she suspected Gabriel of having Cwˆn Annwn blood. Like them, he was meticulous in his work, careful and considered. That did not mean Olivia was right. Such traits could come from anywhere. The upshot of this situation was that Gabriel knew this body did not belong to Greg Kirkman. He simply needed to see it for himself, get that answer as quickly as possible and relay it to Olivia and Todd, so they could all stop worrying.