The Divine Roses (Jake & Dean Investigations Book 3)

by Richard Amos

  The others were inside now, the door closed. Our newly intensified wards let them pass. They’d let Orla pass, but these weren’t the same wards. Mila had increased their potency to a level that only just allowed the postman to come to the door.

  “That’s some magic you got around this gaff,” Pranay, the werewolf declared. “Don’t blame you with that wanker running around.”

  “Can’t be too careful,” Jake answered.

  “Damn right.” Pranay slapped him on the back.

  “Would anyone like a drink?” I asked, getting over my starry coma.

  “Something hot, please,” Dylan replied.

  The others agreed.

  “Follow me into the kitchen.”

  Amazingly, Louise hadn’t noticed the door had gone. When I popped my head into the living room, she was fully engrossed in her film, the annoying unicorn performing one of its many musical numbers.

  We gathered in the kitchen, eyes immediately on the laptop screen.

  “This is what we were coming here for,” Dylan said. “To talk about his arrest. You have a video link?”

  Jake filled the kettle. “Perks of the job, I guess. Not that he’s saying anything. I mean, why would he?”

  “Indeed. He paid us a visit tonight.”

  “Elijah?” I questioned.

  “The other one.”

  “At the hotel?”

  “Yes. Appeared in our suite, trying to threaten us to leave the city. I don’t respond kindly to threats. None of us do.”

  A jangle of chains from Seph the kelpie.

  Elijah was silent, still in the same position, no longer looking at Ana. He was staring into space without a care in the world.

  Would the Conclave attack the police station to free their leader? They had force and strength to overwhelm the police, but with the council army there too, I couldn’t see anything other than a blood bath happening.

  Something told me those bastards were smarter than that.

  Jake made teas and coffees on request as we listened to the constant questioning. It was going nowhere, Ana and Lars trying to break Elijah but failing miserably. Still, there was the glaring evidence against him. That was something.

  I explained the full story of the Rós twins and the fae prison to our guests.

  “Maybe I should’ve called you straight away,” Jake said guiltily to Dylan. “I said I would.”

  “Oh, don’t worry your handsome head about that.”

  Jake’s cheeks flushed a little.

  “I’d like to see this door,” Andy added.

  “I can take you tomorrow if you like?” I suggested.

  “Brilliant. What time?”

  “Say eight? Is that too early?”

  “No. That’s perfect.”

  “I’m gonna check on Lou,” Jake said.

  Dylan smiled. “I saw a little head in there. Cute. How old is she?”

  “Four. Turning five on Friday.”

  “Ooo! Soon-to-be birthday girl.”

  “Dean!” Jake’s cry made my blood run cold.

  “Oh, fuck!” Pranay barked. “Elijah’s gone!”

  Two things hit me at once, but the first trumped the second. I burst into the living room to find Jake on his knees beside the sofa.

  “She’s… Oh my God. Dean. She’s…”

  Dead?

  Nineteen

  Jake

  Not her.

  Not my baby.

  “Lou? Come on now. Wake up. Wake up!”

  She was stone still, her lips blue, eyes wide and pupils dilated. I’d found her on her belly on the sofa. Bloody laughed at first with her hair all over the place. Looked like she’d worn herself out and conked out. When I’d touched her, she was ice.

  Now she was in a hospital bed in the ICU, death in her eyes.

  But she was breathing. Labored breaths. A pulse. The heart monitor beeped steadily.

  Alive.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked helplessly, knowing there would be no answer yet. The doctors were still trying to figure it out. Her temperature was normal according to every test, and so was everything else. She was alive and healthy but basically stone.

  Magical tests were ongoing.

  It wasn’t the nulling stuff we’d given her that Mila had made. In fact, the doctor had said there was only a trace of it in her system, completely rejected by her body. And it wouldn’t do this to her anyway. It only nulled power.

  Oh, God.

  My heart wasn’t beating, the world slowing down. This wasn’t panic. This was my soul going through a shredder. The only thing keeping me from ripping the world apart was Dean’s hand in mine, my head on his shoulder.

  “Our baby,” I whispered, helplessly watching her from her bedside in the private room. “Please wake up, Lou.”

  Dean held me tighter, his eyes red raw from crying. I held him back, the two of us more helpless than we’d ever been in our lives.

  Not our daughter.

  Not our baby girl.

  Through it all, I’d registered that Elijah had vanished from the police station. Now the hunt was back on, Dylan and his crew joining it.

  I didn’t care, didn’t give two flying fucks about any of that now. To Hell with all of it. Let it burn, let the fucking world crash and crack and spin. This was worse than anything else. The greatest horror story.

  Our daughter was…

  Lost.

  I started crying again. Then Dean followed. We did what we’d be doing the past hours we’d been here. Cried together. Waited for her to come back to us.

  I thought I’d known heartbreak.

  Man, had I been wrong.

  Midnight.

  The hours had blurred together. Sleep was nowhere near me. I sipped my tea, not wanting it, but Dean insisted I at least have some.

  Tea didn’t mean anything. Nothing meant anything. We were zombies, going through the motions of existence, brains switched off, staggering towards hope a million miles away.

  Her power? Was this her power?

  Still no answers, still no way forward.

  Until the door opened.

  Rather than a doctor or nurse, a man stood there dripping wet. The rainstorm hadn’t let up anywhere on this planet. He was pale, wore a baseball cap, didn’t look out of the ordinary. Just a guy soaked to the skin.

  It was never just a guy, was it?

  “You,” Dean said, shooting to his feet. “You work for her.”

  My turn to leap up. “What?”

  “He’s one of Orla’s guards.”

  I crushed the plastic cup, warm tea surging up and over my hand. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “I come for him.” He pointed at Dean. “With a message from the queen-in-waiting.”

  My fists were clenched so hard my bones begged for mercy.

  “What message?” Dean demanded.

  “If you want your daughter returned, you will come to Autumn City and make amends with her.”

  Dean had to hold me back. I struggled, raging at the guard so loudly security and nurses burst into the room. I raged and screamed and cried and cursed and was dragged away, kicking, desperate to rip the fae’s head off.

  “What’s that fucking bitch done to my daughter?”

  Dean came to me about half an hour later. I was in a room guarded by security, slumped in a chair, sobbing. Calmed down? No. They’d given me something to stabilize me because I’d lost it big time.

  “How can you be so calm?” I asked Dean as he crouched in front of me.

  “I’m not, baby.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “For saying that. You’ve always had the level head. I’m such a prick.”

  He wiped at my tears with some tissue. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit.” An unsteady sigh. “It was her. Orla. She did something to our girl. She’s the one.”

  “I think she is.” His eyes swirled with shadow.

  “I want her dead,”
I said weakly.

  He took my hands in his. “I have to go to Faerie. For Louise. It’s the only way this will end.”

  “Dean…”

  “We’ve got no choice now.”

  “How…how will you make things right?”

  “I don’t know. But I will.”

  “What if she hurts you? Puts you under a spell?”

  “Let her try.”

  Hot tears ran wild again. “Dean… I can’t… She’ll… Oh, God. I can’t let you go. I can’t.”

  “You can, baby. You have to. This is the only way to save our girl.”

  Pain in my heart so deadly I was at the doors of death. “What if I never see you again?”

  “Shhh…” He caught more tears, his own leaking from his beautiful eyes. “Don’t talk like that. You will see me again. We’re forever, you and I.”

  “But she’s… Oh, God.”

  “She won’t have our daughter, and she won’t have me. Believe me, Jake. No one fucks with my family.”

  I pulled him to me, and we cried together again.

  “I never want to let you go,” I whispered.

  “No chance of that.”

  He stood up. “There’s a convoy outside waiting to take me through the closest Faerie gate. They’ve improved their transport system, apparently, so the journey won’t be long to Autumn City. Should take three hours to get there, three hours back. Kind of.” Time passed differently here to over there.

  If she lets you go. How was I supposed to let him walk away? “You armed?” I knew he would be, but it was my job to check.

  He nodded, showing me his potion belt and dagger. “Not that I’ll get them into the palace.”

  “Dean…”

  “I’ll sort this, Jake. I promise.”

  “I should go with you, but… I can’t leave her.”

  “It’s okay. You’re forbidden to anyway. That’s the condition. Me. Only me.”

  I sat forward and stood up. “If she lays one finger on you, then that’s the end of Faerie. I swear I’ll rip it apart.”

  “I don’t doubt that, baby.”

  I’d watched him leave from the hospital entrance, police and council guards surrounding me for my own protection. Before leaving, he’d arranged for some extra protection. There were more cops and council people with Lou and spread all over the hospital.

  The fae guards had taken my baby away.

  My other baby.

  The other piece of my heart.

  The whole city was on high alert after Elijah vanished. How many dead women would there be come morning?

  I did care about the victims, but with Lou was still in this state, where no one could figure out what was wrong, and Dean gone, my priorities were with my family.

  I knew what was wrong with Lou. Orla was wrong with her.

  I did my best not to lose it. Raging like that again wouldn’t do me any good, and it’d tear me away from Lou’s bedside. There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be now. My body and mind were exhausted. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t closing my eyes until she said my name, made a sound, gave me all the signs of life.

  Until then, this was me in this hospital room.

  Waiting.

  A knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  Lars. “Sorry to bother you, Jake.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s some visitors here for you. They’re waiting outside the ICU. Cherry and Brem.”

  “Brem?”

  The officer scratched his red beard. “I know. He’s got everyone on edge.”

  Brem was a vampire. A gang lord that no one could pin evidence to. Complete knob head. I’m talking fully rounded prick. He was the last person I wanted to see. But Cherry? With him?

  I didn’t know what to do.

  “Nurses won’t let them past the doors,” Lars added. “Neither will we.”

  Just outside. Literally a few steps away. It was Cherry. Okay, and Brem. But Cherry. Alive. Not another victim. Plus, there would be wands pointed at Brem. Guaranteed. He wouldn’t wanna be vamp scrambled eggs.

  “I’ll come out.”

  “Okay.” He nodded, and I followed him into the corridor, walked the few feet towards the locked ICU doors. My feet were lead in my shoes, my legs pretty much disconnected. I moved, though. More from muscle memory than anything else.

  I spotted Cherry first, a white bobble hat on her head, a burgundy coat. On her arm—a vampire. I should be calling Brem every name under the sun, but what was the point? Anyway, he’d helped us out, sort of, on the necromancer case, so things weren’t as bad as they’d been at Christmas.

  Brem was pale with sharp cheekbones, his luxurious brown hair cut immaculately. He always looked expensive. He brushed the front of his violet suit, an air of menace about him, but also sadness.

  The hell? Normally he was just a creepy prick.

  Sadness?

  There were wands pointed at him.

  “Cherry?”

  “Oh, Jake.” She let go of Brem and hugged me.

  I hugged her back.

  “How is she?”

  I told her.

  “This is awful. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.” End of hug. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “That hug was nice.” I tried to smile, but the mouth wouldn’t work

  “My people have been watching the streets,” Brem said in his smooth tones. “Looking for these fae brothers.”

  I faced him, nodded.

  “We may have our differences, Mr. Winter, but one common ground we share is Cherry. I want her safe from harm, and these men have their deadly attentions turned her way.”

  He always called me Mr. Winter. “Good to know.”

  Cherry returned to him, their arms linking up.

  “Are you Victor?” I asked.

  They looked at each other, then Cherry back to me. Brem didn’t take his eyes away from her. Never thought I’d say it, but there was love in that vamp.

  “Yes,” she answered meekly. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “Victor.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry for the secrets.”

  Her and a vampire. A dangerous vampire.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Brem cut in. “Why is your friend with me? And why was I using the windows for sex in the first place when I can have whoever I want.”

  “Erm…” Yeah, I kinda was thinking that.

  “You don’t need to fear for your friend.”

  Kept the gob shut.

  “I promise.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” My mind wasn’t in the right place to feel anything but numbness. I wanted to get back in there and be with my daughter. “As long as you’re both happy. As long as you look after her.”

  “I will. No matter what. I cannot deny my love for her now. I have fallen hard. I would run into the sun for her.”

  I looked behind me, to the corridor where Lars was still standing outside the room with my baby girl.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Brem said. “You need to be in there with her, not out here with us.”

  My brain was too broken to process the kindness coming from the vamp. “Yeah.”

  “I just wanted to come by,” Cherry added. “Do you need anything?”

  “No. We’re fine.”

  “Give my love to Dean.”

  As far as they were concerned, Dean was here. “I will. Thanks for coming by. You take care. Stay safe.”

  She nodded, and Brem put his arm around her. “Bye, Jake. If you need anything, call. Okay? I mean it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We are at peace,” Brem said to me as they left.

  I hurried back to Lou’s side, still numb, rejecting the new information.

  “I’m here,” I whispered to my daughter.

  Twenty

  Dean

  The autumn lands.

  Traveling here used to be by horse outside the main cities (vehicles wouldn’t leave the limits of a city),
or by sea. Air travel wasn’t really much of a thing in Faerie.

  Until now.

  I’d been expecting a three-hour ride judging by the new and improved horses that the residents of this realm now used to travel the roads, not this air chariot of gold pulled by a flying white horse. No wings, treading the air, sparks flying every time its hooves slammed down on nothing.

  So many of them, carrying the other fae guards around me.

  At least the journey would be quicker than expected.

  It was daylight. Morning here.

  Flanked by two guards inside the chariot, I held onto the edge, watching the land pass below me. I’d never seen it from this point of view. It was spectacular. Reds, golds, greens, a sea of autumnal trees, rivers, the palace always in the distance to remind me where I was going.

  Autumn City. Amber buildings in different sizes, stone towers poking out of the cylinder building of the palace. It looked so different. There’d once been amber spires instead of those ugly towers—in the days before the city had sustained a brutal attack from a once brutal enemy. The whole place was muted compared to its grander days. The gulls still circled the top of the towers, though. A permanent feature.

  To the west of the city was the Rose Sea (ironic much?), and behind the city were the iron pits.

  The sooner I got home, the better.

  It wasn’t long before we swooped down low, straight over the city walls, over the bustling streets, straight to the palace at the heart of it all.

  A gate opened in the eastern side of the amber structure, the horse galloping inside to a stable. The cart landed with the tiniest bump on a gray stone floor, hay strewn across it. It came to a stop.

  Quick. Easy.

  Now for the hard part.

  It was a wide stable with eight horses in their stalls with the runway part that was this stone floor cutting through the middle. The walls were gray, black wooden beams above my head. There was no amber glow behind the white ceiling, nothing hinting at the rest of the palace around the stable.

  “This way,” the male guard on my left commanded.

  There was a woman too, and she covered the back of me. They’d already confiscated my weapons long before we’d left Earth.

  The other guards hadn’t come this way. How many of these airport horse stables were there?