by M. J. Scott
I shrugged at him, quite happy to stay where I was. The marble beneath my feet was the nicest thing I’d felt all day.
Guy swung down from the horse, hitting the ground with a series of metallic clunks. I’d never actually seen a Templar in armor and mail before. It looked hot and uncomfortable. I couldn’t imagine trying to fight weighed down by so much metal.
Guy nodded at the archer and suddenly both the fires went out. Not Simon, I thought. The archer was the one controlling the fire. Was he a sunmage too? Or a metalmage perhaps? They used fire in forming their compounds. Could they control it?
I didn’t know enough about human magic. It was frustrating. And potentially dangerous, as I learned the night I’d tried to kill Simon.
“This is a Haven.” Guy’s voice carried across the silent forecourt and road, booming like a small thunderclap. “Why are you breaking the peace of the treaty?”
Rene straightened. “We have broken no law. We are clear of Haven grounds.” His voice was steady with a rumbling undertone that told me his control was stretched thin.
Guy gave a small nod, his mouth set in a flat line that boded nothing good for the Beasts. “Technically, that is correct.” Behind the Beasts, three of the knights dismounted, drawing their swords with a ringing slide of metal. “But my companions here have never been big on technicalities. I suggest you go back where you came from. There is nothing for you here.”
His head didn’t turn toward me, but I still felt a small glow at his words. Until I realized he might mean that I was the Templars’ to deal with. But hopefully that was me being paranoid. Guy had said he would believe me and I had done nothing to play him false. Yet.
“We came for the girl. She belongs to Lucius.”
Guy rested one gloved hand on his sword. “Belongs? She doesn’t look blood-locked to me. And if she’s a Trusted, then Lucius could call her to him. Anything else would have to be termed slavery.” His fingers tapped the hilt, mailed glove clinking a soft staccato. “Slavery is, as far as I’m aware, outlawed under the treaties. If you’re claiming her as a slave, then we would have to act to enforce the terms of those treaties. As we are sworn to do.”
There were more clanks and the slicker hiss of metal sliding free of leather as the remaining Templars suddenly drew their swords.
The Beasts didn’t move. If not for their coloration, you would have thought they were carved from the same marble as St. Giles himself. They might have liked the odds when it was two against seven, but apparently they weren’t so keen on five against fourteen.
“Well?” Guy asked after a minute’s strained silence during which I became aware that several people had gathered behind me. I kept my eyes on the action.
“Are you claiming her as a slave?” Guy continued.
Rene’s face twisted, baring those inhuman teeth again. He was controlling himself with an effort. A Beast who has been fighting and is wounded will always have a strong urge to change. And the younger they are, the harder it is to resist. Rene, if I had the tangled lines of Pierre’s sons by his various wives correct, was only twenty-two or so. Still very young in Beast terms.
Obviously he took after his papa and had an alpha’s strength of will. I hoped for his sake, he had an alpha’s courage and cunning to deal with Lucius when he returned empty-handed. Though Lucius’ anger would have to be spread over all those he had sent to find me, so maybe Rene would escape too much punishment. Then again, maybe not. I felt the renewed pain in my abdomen where he had hit me and couldn’t bring myself to feel too sorry for him or any of his companions. Even the one still groaning as he lay in the road, smoking slightly.
“Well?” Guy repeated when Rene stayed silent. He held his sword loosely in front of him, double handed, blade lowered. I had no doubt he could bring it to a fighting stance and wreak some serious havoc in a matter of seconds.
Likely none of his brother knights were much slower.
Rene seemed to come to the same conclusion. “No. We will go.” His voice was almost a snarl. Not a happy Beast pup at all. I smiled in satisfaction.
Guy gestured and the knights behind the Beasts fell back, opening a gap in their semicircle for Rene and his friends to retreat, which they did, after collecting their wounded comrade. We all watched as they left, the tensionfilled silence broken only by the sounds of the knights’ horses shifting on the cobbles and the wind moving through the oak trees that bordered the grass. As the Beasts disappeared around the corner at the end of the road, someone let out a soft sigh behind me.
This time I turned to look. Two women and a man stood on the marble just a few feet away, watching the scene curiously. The shorter woman and the man were both human from their scent. The other woman, however, was not. Dark haired, tall, and slender, she was Fae to the bone. Even if I couldn’t smell the faint scent of wild places coming from her or sense the depth of her magic, the color of her eyes—a blue just a shade too rich and deep and bordering on purple like a night sky—would have given her away. No human had eyes that color.
Her green dress was simple as Fae clothing went, long and unadorned without any over robes, but she wore an intricately wrought chain about her neck that gleamed like a silvered rainbow. It could be nothing but Fae work. Likewise the elaborate Family ring on her left hand.
I waited for her to look through me or for her face to register disgust and turn away as the Fae normally did when they found themselves in the same place as me.
But she didn’t, even though her face wasn’t exactly welcoming. Instead, she met my gaze coolly. “Welcome to St. Giles,” she said in a tone I couldn’t read. Her gaze swept over me from head to foot. “It seems your day has not been entirely peaceful.”
I wondered what the hell I might look like. My shirt was half shredded, and fighting with Rene couldn’t have helped the state of the rest of my clothing any.
“I’ve had worse,” I said, trying for the same air of cool control she projected. I couldn’t quite contain a wince as I straightened my shoulders, but on the whole I thought I did rather well. One thing living in the Night World taught well was how to remain impassive in the face of pain or surprise.
“Indeed,” she replied. “Well, let us hope that we can prevent the day from slipping any further down the scale of unpleasantness.”
She looked over my shoulder. “Perhaps, Simon, we should continue this inside? Bring your . . . companions.”
I swung around to find Simon, Guy, and the archer, a young man with hair and skin like ebony and eyes that were a startling green contrast, standing behind me.
“I think it would be wise to leave most of the men out here. Make sure those pups causing all this excitement have truly left the area,” Guy said. “I want to take Simon and his . . . friend—” He looked at me with something close to approval, then continued. “To the Brother House.”
I opened my mouth to protest this piece of news, then shut it again with an effort of will as the Fae woman shrugged. I had a sinking realization that I had no say in anything they wanted to do to me until darkness fell.
“Leave your men, certainly. But we will be going inside before you go anywhere, Guy DuCaine. She took a step toward Guy. Away from me. “Simon and this one have injuries that need tending. And the three of you, I believe, have a tale to tell.”
This one. Perhaps she wasn’t different from the rest of the Fae after all. Perhaps she just had more control. I lifted my chin and stared at her deliberately.
“I’m fine,” Simon said. “Lily is the one who needs healing.”
“You’re not fine—”
The Fae woman cut me off. “We will go inside.”
To my annoyance, neither Simon nor Guy made any further argument. They simply nodded as if they knew protesting wouldn’t be worth the effort. Guy turned and shouted some orders at the other knights, who swung into their saddles, splitting into three groups, two of which headed in opposite directions down the road. The third stationed themselves along the grass lining the for
ecourt, silver statues in the sunlight reflecting off the marble.
They would be half boiled inside all that metal. I was starting to feel overly warm in the direct glare of the sun myself.
Once Guy had his men organized how he wished, he turned to us. “After you, Lady Bryony,” he said with another deeper nod that bordered on a half bow.
Hells. He’d called her Bryony. Not just any Fae, then. The Fae in charge of St. Giles. Who didn’t like me. This was going to be every bit as unpleasant as I had imagined.
Chapter Eight
As we approached the front doors of the hospital, Lady Bryony paused. “Simon, take her in the back way.”
Her tone was sharper now, angry even. She avoided actually looking at me. Somebody wasn’t happy to have me in her hospital. Guy and the archer didn’t move. Simon’s jaw clenched, but he took my arm without protest, leading me away from the others.
I was relieved to be granted even a temporary escape from Bryony’s presence and didn’t protest other than to remove my arm from Simon’s grasp. He shot me a look but didn’t try to take it again. We walked, following the building’s wall, until we reached a small gap between one building and the next.
“This is better for security,” Simon said to me as he turned into the tiny laneway formed by the gap.
“This is better for your Lady Bryony avoiding anyone seeing a wraith in her hospital.”
He paused. “What do you mean by that?”
“The Fae don’t like my kind.”
“This is a Haven. We help everyone.”
“Helping doesn’t mean liking.” Indeed. If Bryony’s purplish eyes could’ve struck me from the earth where I stood, they would have. “Why else are we sneaking around to the back entrance? For all she knows, I’m hurt.”
He frowned, then looked almost chagrined. “Are you hurt? Did you reopen the wound? Let me see.”
I avoided his reaching hand. “You’ll just hurt your ribs if you do that. I’m fine. You’re the one who needs healing.”
His fingers curled for a moment, not quite into fists but close enough before he relaxed them with an effort of will. “Let’s just walk. Trust me, you’ll be treated just like anybody else.”
If he truly believed that, then he was in for a rude shock. But I didn’t want to stand here and argue. The sooner we got inside, the better. They could take care of his ribs and my side. Hopefully they could find me a new shirt too.
We walked on. One lane led to another and another. The hospital, it seemed, was a veritable maze of marble-clad buildings, set narrowly apart like some giant’s building blocks. Unlike in Brightown, the laneways were all very clean. Eventually Simon stopped by an innocuous-looking wooden door.
To my surprise, it opened onto a stairwell. One leading down rather than up.
I peered down the stairs. “Secret tunnels?”
“Not particularly secret,” he replied, lifting an old-fashioned oil lamp from a rack lined with ten or so more. “Useful, though.”
He lit the lamp with a match. The short spurt of flame reminded me about the fire that had stopped the Beasts.
“The fireballs—was that you or the archer?” I asked curiously as I followed him down the stairs and into, well, not really a tunnel. It had a floor tiled in marble and walls lined with wood paneling. Much more civilized than the tunnels I knew. But tunnel was close enough.
“That was Liam.”
Liam. I filed the name away. He’d looked younger than Simon and Guy, but he was obviously another mage; someone else to be wary of. “Can you raise fire?” Better to know the enemy’s weapons. Not that Simon was exactly an enemy.
He made a noncommittal noise. “I could set a vampire on fire by calling sunlight.”
Not exactly an answer to my question. But for a moment I didn’t really care, distracted by a sudden, pleasing vision of Lucius’ face wreathed in flames. But then I dismissed the image with a shake of my head.
Foolish to wish for what one can’t have. Even if I could steal one of Simon’s sunlamps, I could hardly activate it. No, better to put myself far out of Lucius’ reach than to attempt to solve my problem any other way. Run and figure out how to deal with the need afterward.
The need . . . as if I’d conjured it by thinking of it—or maybe because the adrenaline from the fight had finally worn off enough to let it resurface—I felt a sudden rush of warmth to my face. I shivered and my side throbbed a protest, making me breathe deep to ease the pain.
The air in the tunnel smelled strangely dead somehow. Dry and faintly dusty but without much odor of humans or disease or blood or soap or any of the things I would expect to smell in a place of healing. In fact, the only strong scent was Simon’s warm spice.
The need flared again, drawn to the fragrance, wanting me to move closer, breathe it deeper.
Easy, the ache low in my belly whispered. Nobody around to see. Nobody to know. Just a few moments to ease the yearning.
I found myself drifting ever so slightly in Simon’s direction and pulled up short, wishing desperately for a gallon of cheap cologne to drench myself in. Maybe burning out my ability to smell would grant me some peace from this ridiculous attraction.
Simon turned, looking concerned, but I waved him on with a little gesture, then followed, careful to keep a few feet between us. Thank the lords of hell that Simon was human. I felt as though the need was a tangible thing marking my skin or warming the air around me, rushing to overwhelm me. Something anyone could sense.
Hopefully my impression was wrong. Simon was human with a human’s senses, but we were headed toward Bryony. A Fae. With senses beyond even those of the Blood or the Beasts.
Damn Lucius and his insatiable desire for control. This was his doing. The fact that I was here in these corridors, the fact that I was fighting the urges that rose within with every step. All his fault.
Sometimes I longed for his death.
Distraction. That was what was needed if I was to get myself under control before we got to our destination. What had we been discussing again?
Flaming arrows. Right. Better to think of those than other things that burned right now.
“Not as useful as a flaming arrow in most situations, being able to set a vampire on fire, then, I mean.” I carefully didn’t look at Simon. “Is Liam a metalmage, then?”
“That’s something you’ll have to ask him.”
A casual chat with a Templar knight about his powers. I couldn’t see that happening anytime soon. If Simon didn’t want to talk about the Templars, I needed another topic of conversation.
“Are there tunnels under all of the hospital?”
“Here and there.”
He was playing his cards close to his chest. I couldn’t fault him for that. In his position I wouldn’t be telling me too much either.
“They seem deserted.” We were yet to meet anyone else on our path.
“They’re used more at night.”
We reached an intersection in the tunnels. Ours ended with two branches, leading off right and left.
Simon jerked his head to the left. “This way. Not too much farther.” He took the lead, holding the lantern up. I couldn’t help glancing behind me, down the other branch. A faint draft wafted to me, scented with something heavy and metallic. Iron, I realized. A lot of iron. Something glimmered at the far end of the corridor, faint purple and gold, like the afterglow of a ward.
Wards and iron in a tunnel below a Haven? Lots of iron in a place where the Fae came regularly. There could only be one purpose to such a thing and that would be to keep the Fae out. My neck prickled as my instincts kicked in. The humans were keeping a secret.
“What’s down there?” I asked, trying to sound innocent.
Simon glanced back at me. The light from the lantern reflected in his eyes, making him hard to read. “Nothing much, it leads to another building. Come on, Bryony will be sending a search party if we don’t appear soon.”
He was lying. I was sure of it. And, as I
followed the light of his lamp away from the smell of iron and the glow of magic, I found myself wondering why.
Bryony hadn’t sent a search party, but both she and Guy looked somewhat impatient by the time I opened the door to her office. My ribs had creaked in protest with every step up the flights of stairs leading out of the tunnels and up to the stone wing favored by the Fae. But I couldn’t afford to slow down. Not yet. Getting Lily here, to a Haven, was only the beginning of things.
“Lose your way?” Guy asked with a frown. He stood in by Bryony’s desk, Liam on his right, both of them militarily upright and ignoring the plethora of padded chairs Bryony kept for visitors.
I frowned back. “We took the long way round.” I didn’t mention the fact that I’d come as fast as my ribs would allow. That wouldn’t improve the mood of the room any. It was already serious enough with the two Templars present. Armor-clad and grim, they looked out of place. Bryony’s office was light and plant-filled, full of flowers and greenery. Not the place for soldiers.
Though if Lucius had his way, soldiers would be needed everywhere.
Guy and Liam were apparently too disciplined to sit down when the opportunity presented itself. I had no such qualms. My ribs were on fire after the climb. I ushered Lily toward one of the chairs, hiding a slight frown as she twitched away from the touch of my hand on her back. I lowered myself carefully into another and turned my attention to the other occupant of the office.
Bryony sat behind the desk, one hand resting on the handle of one of her many silver teapots. Steam rose from the spout, spilling the scent of something sharp and herbal into the room. Damn. One of Bryony’s tonics. They worked but I could never quite shake the feeling I was drinking something revolting glamoured to taste nice.
“Ribs, m’hala?” she said to me as she poured the tea.
Guy raised his eyebrows at Bryony’s familiarity but stayed silent.
I nodded. There was no point trying to hide my injuries from her. “I’ll live. Lily’s hurt worse than me.”