Blood trickled from the neat cut, pooling in my palm until Mac fished a wad of cotton gauze out of his pack and pressed down hard. A flash of panic spiked my pulse. No matter how long he held it, the bleeding wouldn’t stop, which was kind of the point. And yet...gulp.
“Now what?” I took over for him, applying steady pressure like it mattered. “The control box?”
“Whether you jump a tether to the mortal realm or ride it to another location in Faerie, all tethers are anchored by a physical object to keep them stationary. Otherwise, they would drift. This location is pinned by the bridge. The control box is an amenity I added so that others could adjust their coordinates and travel more easily, but that is the limit of their power. To sever a tether, you must locate its anchor, and then you must counteract the spell I laid on the object. To do that, you use your magical sight to locate the threshold of the entrance. Once that is done, smear your blood across it and use the Word unique to its location.” Mac gestured before folding his arms across his chest. “Go on. You’re bleeding too much.”
Huffing, I did as instructed. I stared at the bridge, letting my sight go unfocused. As the shimmering net superimposed itself over the bridge, I focused on the thin weave forming a tunnel and followed the rim of the circular entrance down to the ground, where the magic hit earth and rippled.
I crept forward, wary of the energies lapping against its mooring. Once on my knees, I pocketed the gauze and let my blood drip in a line from one side to the other, then I smeared my hand over it to even out the drops and create an unbroken threshold. Nothing flickered. Nothing surged. Disappointment had me balling my fist, but when I twisted to glance at Mac over my shoulder, he gave me a pleased nod.
“Say the Word,” Mac said patiently.
I scowled at him. “You didn’t give it to me.”
He jerked his chin toward the tether. “I shouldn’t have to.”
Great. He was testing me. Again.
Figuring the answer must be right in front of my face, I studied the net and then the control box, but nothing jumped out at me. All I saw were the coordinates. Mac wouldn’t use those... Would he?
“Numbers aren’t technically words,” I muttered.
The snatch of laughter I caught told me I had guessed right. With my hand planted on the blood smear, I spoke the coordinates under my breath. Waiting until my leg muscles quivered, I shoved to my feet, faced Mac and threw out my arms. “I guess this means the Morrigan will have to eat crow.”
All her scheming, all the people she had hurt, all for nothing.
My blood wasn’t counteracting his. My counter spell hadn’t kindled.
Shoulders slumping, I had to find a new bargaining chip if I wanted to get Shaw back.
His gaze strayed past me. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Wood groaned behind me, and I spun around in time to watch as the supports buckled. Mac and I leapt backward as the bridge collapsed on itself. Old as it was, magic was all that had been holding it together. When I cut the tether, the magic spilled into the ground and the ancient structure toppled.
“I did it.”
I severed a tether.
“You did indeed.” He sounded pleased. “Now, let’s tend your hand so we can get moving.”
Still reeling from what I had done, I drifted to Mac in a daze of possibility, and he clasped hands with me, pressing his runes against the hairline cut on my right palm. A whiff of burnt skin rose, and I growled viciously through the pain. He inspected the temporarily cauterized wound before humming low in his throat, seeming satisfied.
“There.” He sounded apologetic. “That ought to hold.”
I curled my numb hand into a fist. “How many are left?”
“There is one tether in Winter and one in Summer. Autumn and Spring each have two.”
“So we have five to go.”
And then it was time to find the Morrigan.
Chapter Nine
Mac drifted as silent as a wraith through the tittering forest, his boots picking familiar paths with confident strides that left me panting in his wake, trying to keep up with him. Leaves crinkled under my heels despite my attempts to muffle the noise. Prickling on my nape confirmed we were being watched, but I scented no one. Mac walked on, unconcerned, so I mimicked his body language, using false confidence as my shield.
Five tethers remained. One more here in Autumn. But first we had to secure Mac’s den. Success meant we could make a quick trip to sever the tether and be done with this portion of Faerie. Failure meant we needed the tether active as a means of escape. In fact, I liked the idea of saving it for last for that very reason.
Figuring we were safe until reaching the den, I took in the sights. I hadn’t had time before to admire the impossible collection of trees. Bald cypress, sugar maple and black tupelo trees brushed limbs in greeting while aspen, sourwood and sassafras stood alone. Sweetgum trees dropped tiny balls on the ground for us to roll our ankles on while towering longleaf pines provided spots of green amid all the reds, oranges and golds. As an added bonus, the trees produced pinecones the length of my forearm.
A burst of mischief hit me, and I punted one such pinecone at Mac. He glided to his right, and my kick went wide. The cone bounced twice before smashing into an aspen instead of his backside.
The impact startled a caw from overhead, and my blood ran cold. The urge to search the sky was a twitch in my neck. But I took Mac’s lead and kept my eyes glued straight ahead and my head level.
Keep calm and carry on.
Ahead of us, a familiar giant redwood rose from the ground. It stood well over three hundred feet tall. Its reddish-brown bark had peeled in a few places. Handfuls of its spiked green needles had shed. Hard to tell if the damage had occurred when I led the hunt on a chase through Mac’s living room or if the damage was recent. I hadn’t seen the den after accidentally riding a tether via one of his doors.
Unfazed, Mac led on while gooseflesh peaked my skin, though his pace slowed until I caught up easily. He planted his feet as the wind changed, and the scent of wet feathers and musk hit my nose.
An eager gleam lit his eyes, and black-green power sparked in his palm. Together we tilted back our heads. Black bodies perched on the limbs above us, humanoid but covered in silky feathers.
“Aves,” Mac growled.
Curious what the heck an Aves was, I glanced at him in question. Eyes tightening at the corners, he shoved me behind him. Or he tried to. I tripped on an exposed root and fell onto my hands and knees, spitting mad, ready to break him off a piece of my mind.
Then I saw them.
Aves.
Swarming.
“Oh crap.”
Pain radiated through my shoulder. My face smacked into the dirt, and I spat moldy leaves. Talons pierced my back, wings brushed my cheek and hot breath blasted my nape. The dull scrape of a beak followed. A flash of bird-boy snapping my neck flickered in my head.
Not today.
Torquing my upper body, I threw all my strength behind my elbow, slamming it into his ribs. It squawked and flapped its wings, achieving liftoff and lightening the load on my back. Bracing palms on the earth, I shoved up and yanked my feet under me. Bird-boy toppled with a grunt when I stood.
Static crackled over my skin, and I yelped when green light flashed by my foot, blasting clods of dirt into the air. I half-expected smoke to curl up from my boots. None did, thank God. My assailant, however, wasn’t as lucky. He had been reduced to a heap of charred bones and vaporized feathers.
The almost magnetic pull of Mac’s emerald gaze drew mine to him, and I gulped. “Mac?”
Intricate runes mapped every visible inch of his face and neck, including his scalp under his closely cropped hair. Symbols covered his lips. His eyelids, when he blinked, were also marked. This was the real Macsen Sullivan, the one fae whispered about behind their hands and feared crossing in the dead of night. This was the face of Faerie justice. Even in this, he maintained balance, the patterns symmetrical, carrying equal w
eight in proportion to the area of his body they emblazoned.
All this time I had been seeing him through a layer of glamour.
I stared into my possible future, terrified of so much magic owning real estate on my body.
“Thierry.”
His voice snapped me to attention, and I cut him a sharp nod.
After turning a slow circle, I spotted three more scorched-earth marks left from where Mac had ended lives with a flick of his rune-stained wrist. Standing there stunned, I whooshed out a surprised breath when another bird-thing leapt onto my back. I spun toward the nearest tree and rammed my spine against the trunk until the creature’s grip slacked, and I scraped it off me using the rough bark.
Staggering forward, I scanned the forest and then the limbs over my head. Both were clear.
“Are you all right?” Mac’s voice rose behind me.
“Fine.” I rubbed my shoulder. “What were those?”
“Aves—half man and half bird.” He came to my side. “The Morrigan bred them herself.”
Eww. I wasn’t going to ask how that was possible.
“I counted seven bodies,” he said. “Females mate with two males. That means two escaped.”
“What about him?” I pointed to the one I had knocked unconscious. “Do we leave him?”
“We might as well.” Mac dusted his hands. “The others flew straight to the Morrigan, I’m sure.”
“Great.” The giant redwood caught my eye. “She knows where we are and what we’ve done.”
What I had done.
Confirmation from her spies ought to buy Shaw more time. Silver lining, right?
Mac walked to my side and stared out at his home. “We should get inside.”
I grabbed his arm when he rocked forward. “How do we know it’s not booby-trapped?”
“The den is more heavily warded than the grounds.” A twinkle lit his eyes. “Why do you think she sent Aves?”
“They kept to the trees.” I considered it. “That’s why they attacked us physically.”
“Aves possess no magic, but even if they had been armed with spells, they are useless here.”
I fell into line behind him, watching our backs. I lifted my chin and drew a long breath in to fill my lungs. Burnt feathers and cooked meat stuffed my nose. A troll could be right behind us, and I wouldn’t smell him. Given their diet, that was saying something. Generally, when a person had corpse stuck between their teeth, you smelled them long before they got close enough for a chat.
Rubbing my hands down my arms, I asked, “Do you think she’ll try to stop us?”
“Not yet.” He sounded resigned. “She’ll want to see what you’re capable of herself.”
Great. Lucky me I wasn’t one to suffer performance anxiety.
The Morrigan’s ability to shapeshift into a crow meant she had a bird’s-eye view for everything Mac taught me. Well, I hoped she enjoyed the show. My one-woman act would be coming to a tether near her soon. As an Unseelie, she must have set up camp in the Halls of Winter. Mac said there was a tether there, and she would be guarding it I was sure. The denizens of Summer were no less lethal, but after Balamohan, I was nursing a healthy...not fear...but respect for the Morrigan’s ruthlessness.
The short walk from the Aves slaughter to Mac’s den took no time. I kept an eye out for Aves or other fae loyal to the Morrigan, but it seemed we were alone. As Diode, the lock on the massive door had given Mac trouble. Thanks to the power of opposable thumbs, Mac worked his lock in seconds. I scooted aside as a three-foot section of the trunk swung open, and smoothed my fingers over the shaggy bark, tracing claw and teeth marks left from the hounds who had hunted me. With a shiver, I dusted my hands and sidestepped Mac. Entering his circular living room, I gave him space to heft a bar into place behind us.
While he fidgeted with the lock, I stood on a ratty woven mat and breathed. Tobacco smoke and parchment tickled my nose with a pleasing familiarity. His floor-to-ceiling shelves held tomes with gnawed spines, and broken knickknacks littered the floor. Chewed shoes and shredded paper huddled in corners, and the stink of urine near Mac’s bedroom door made my lip curl.
I thought the hounds had followed me straight from here after I killed Prince Raven. Apparently, they hung around long enough to destroy everything they could get their teeth and paws on. Mac was lucky he left his other doors shut, or he might have lost everything. As it was, the place was wrecked.
“Forgive the mess.” He nudged a broken ceramic owl with his toe. “I had no time to clean.”
“You’re forgiven.” I chuckled. “Considering you were busy saving my life at the time, I’m glad you didn’t stop to straighten up. It’s not like you’ve been here since that day to do anything about it.”
“Still—” he bent to straighten a fallen chair, “—there are rules of hospitality.”
I snorted. “Have you ever seen my bedroom?”
He raised his head. “You have a point.”
Debating whether I ought to be insulted by his swift capitulation, I rolled my shoulders. “Hey, I wash clothes. It’s the hanging-up-and-folding part I don’t get around to. That’s half the battle, right?”
He hummed low in his throat. Not a disagreement, but an acknowledgment.
A bumping sound froze us mid-conversation. Mac’s head swung left, toward his bedroom. Light sparked in his palm, green-black and menacing. Power leapt into my runes, and we stalked forward together. A quick hand signal indicated I should open the door, and he would rush in the room to clear it.
Rolling my eyes at his mile-wide protective streak, I got in place. Then again, if something had broken his wards and gained entry, it must be nasty. Or really stupid. The hounds had battered down the door, sure, but they were relatives of ours. Magic was fluid, and—like me with the tethers—often a familial tie was enough to break a ward or a spell if you had finesse, were willing to spill your own blood and had enough juice to power a counter spell. Maybe Mac’s bum-rush idea was smart after all.
Hand on the knob, I caught Mac’s eye, flung open the door and jumped back. The glow of his magic lit up the room, and I glimpsed a shadow dart across the foot of the bed. With a curse, Mac extinguished his energy and shook out the residual sparks. He turned to me and sighed.
His hand flung out to gesture at a dark smudge on the floor. “I believe this belongs to you.”
Creeping forward, I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and realized the smudge was a body. Not just any body, either. Crap on toast. I crossed to him and knelt, gripping his chin and lifting his face.
“Hey, Rook.” Runes lit, I held them close to his face. “I heard you were dead.”
“I’m harder to kill...” he sucked in a shuddering breath, “...than I look.”
Most cockroaches are.
Sucking on my teeth, I caved. “What are you doing here?”
His answer was to roll his eyes up in his head and slump forward, all but falling into my lap.
Great. Just great. This was all I needed. My soon-to-be ex-husband passed out, drool sliding from the corner of his mouth, bleeding from dozens of nasty scratches crossing his pale face and neck.
Really, was it too much to ask to be a widow?
Mac and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the foot of his bed, watching Rook flip and flop on the mattress. Sleep hit him hard once I cleaned him up and Mac scrounged together a meal for him. The hounds had eaten most of Mac’s stores since his compact kitchen sat off to one side of the living room.
My foot jiggled. “How did he make it past the wards?”
“I invited him to cross my threshold, remember?” Mac sighed. “What’s done is done.”
With the hounds at our heels, Mac—Diode—whoever—had to act fast. He had allowed Rook in so that I wouldn’t argue and waste precious time. Now it seemed I had compromised his den. Go me.
Hopeful as I was that was the only reason the wards reacted favorably to Rook’s presence, I had to put it out there. “I was afraid it was th
e blood thing. You know—him being my husband and all.”
“It was my first thought too.” Strain registered on Mac’s face. “But he used no magic to enter.”
A chill whispered over my skin. “You don’t think the Morrigan can use that bond too?”
He turned his head so our eyes met. “It’s a possibility.”
Fear crackled like ice over my heart. “Through that bond, her blood could null my magic?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Our magics have similar roots. We are all death-bringers.”
A low groan drew my gaze to Rook. “Do you think he’ll die?”
Mac laughed. “No such luck.”
Pressing my lips together, I wasn’t sure if the answer pleased me or not. I could make Branwen happy by returning her brother to her, but should I set Rook loose in the mortal realm? I wasn’t sure.
A firm hand dropped onto my shoulder, and I glanced at Mac.
“You must get this marriage annulled before we face the Morrigan.”
Eager to be free of Rook, I gripped Mac’s hand. “How does that work?”
Rook had tricked me into performing a barely legal marriage ceremony by dining with him on food he served me, wearing clothing he bought for me bearing his crest, and by changing in his bedroom. Part of me wondered if it could be that easy to break the bond. Say I cook for him, give him back his armor and...I don’t know how to reverse the last bit. You can’t un-flash a room where you’ve changed.
“You must go before the High Court and plead your case.”
I groaned. “Are you serious?”
“They acknowledged the union, and they must be willing to dissolve it.”
“No way is Daibhidh going to vote for freeing me from a union with an Unseelie. That was half their claim to the throne.” My fingers curled into my palms. “Liosliath might agree to it just to piss him off, though.”
Mac was nodding. “You need a majority, not a unanimous vote.”
Hope sparked in my chest. “You’re the tie-breaker.”
“I am.”
I grinned at him. “Can I assume you’re going to vote for the annulment?”
“I would have annulled the marriage with a swipe of my claws had you let me.”
Old Dog, New Tricks Page 9