by Richard Amos
I was led through a wooden door, down a dark stone corridor, only faintly lit but glowing pebbles in the ceiling. Down some stairs, another corridor, up some stairs, and then through a door.
It opened into a grand room of amber walls and silver walls, bare of any decoration. In fact, it looked like everything was in the middle of redecorating, but without the tools lying around. The floor was amber, too, the pillars, the ceiling.
On a golden dais in front of me was a red throne. Standing to the left was Orla. Behind her was my dad.
My jaw clenched at the sight of them.
More guards filled the room.
It really was a strange place. Big but not grand. Stuck somewhere between, like it didn’t know what type of room it wanted to be. Even the red throne was a drab object.
This wasn’t the original throne room of the former monarch.
Orla couldn’t sit on it, which was so satisfying. Not the queen yet, so no throne for her.
“Dean,” she said sickly sweetly.
Pink gown, hair tied up in an elegant knot, a diamond-laced net over it, a glass vial of glowing liquid at the end of a silver chain around her neck. She looked the part of royal, but all I saw was dog shit in fae form.
My golden-clad dad (what else was new?) only received the briefest of glances from me. Fuck him. If I looked too long, I’d try and break his neck.
“What the fuck have you done?” I demanded.
At my snarl, one of the guards shoved me forward. “Don’t speak to her like that.”
“It’s okay. It means nothing.” She stepped forward, beaming with triumph. “Unless he wants it to.”
“My daughter—”
“Is at my mercy, Dean.”
“It was you. You came and took her that day.”
“Yes. And you were too stupid to not pin it all on me. I left you a huge clue with the perfume. I thought you were supposed to solve mysteries. How did you not see this sooner?”
“It was all a game.”
“Well, obviously. I wanted you to know, as you figured out straight away. Only, not that it was me.” She shook her head. “So slow, aren’t you? The dead perfume still held my scent, hidden, teasing you. Even when we were face to face with me, you failed at my little game.”
And I hated myself for it. “Why?”
She crossed her arms. “Why? Why, he says. There are so many whys.”
“My daughter…”
“Is nothing more than a tool. For me, for the world, for those men.”
“Elijah… Parker…” What was going on?
“Dean…” Dad.
Orla snapped her fingers before he could say anything else. “Let me be clear about something before we begin. I know no amount of perfume will intoxicate you. Tragic that his cock has you in a spin.”
“His name is—”
“Hold your tongue. I don’t want his name said here.”
I played it carefully, keeping quiet. Louise was at stake here.
“As I was saying,” she continued, “this is how things will work. You will not be leaving this palace. Unless you want your daughter dead, of course. You see, I came and took a piece of her essence. Mine to do with as I will.”
The vial at her neck. That was Louise glowing in there. “How could you?”
“Quite easily, actually. I saw how distracted you were by that necromancy case, so I seized the opportunity.”
No reaction from me. Only on the inside. She’d get one when the time was right.
“I needed her essence as a back-up. I was right to take it, seeing as your mind has been clouded by him.” She shook her head. “I can’t let you go, Dean. Why should I? I wanted you then. I want you now. We can be so good together. I showed you how. All you need to do is open your heart?”
She’d lost her mind.
“So, I took what you loved as a bargaining tool. That was one part of her usefulness.”
“What was the other?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder to my silent father. “Your daughter is the key to the pod problem.”
Twenty-One
Jake
How was it Friday night? How had time passed so bloody fast? How was it Lou’s fifth birthday, and we were in the hospital? How was this not a day for celebrating?
Why was she not awake?
Soph and Luuk were with me. I didn’t want them out in the streets, but there was no stopping them coming here. They’d shown up not long after Cherry and Brem’s visit and hadn’t left.
They were amazing friends.
I was drifting on a dead sea. Nothing inside and out. Alone, even if there were people around me. My family was broken apart, out of my reach. There was sod all I could do but stand over my daughter and pray my fiancé wasn’t killed or put under some twisted spell and bound to that evil bitch forever.
I’d run out of tears. The rain was making up for it. Flood warnings globally, canals not quite spilling over into the streets yet. Holland’s flood defenses were top notch. For how long, I didn’t know. It wasn’t just pounding out there, it was a watery apocalypse.
“Well, hi.”
I yelped and leaped out of my seat, tripped over it, and almost smacked into Parker Smith.
“Oh, my God!” Luuk cried.
Jumping back, I tripped again, landing on my backside. “Fuck!”
The door flew open, Lars bounding in with his gun. “Freeze! Hands up!” he barked in Dutch, then English.
Parker put his hands up. “You got me.”
I was back on my feet, protecting my little girl. “What’re you doing in here?”
Council soldiers filled the room, wands ready to blast.
“Scary.” Parker was the least scared person in the room.
“Don’t move,” a council guy ordered.
Wands. Guns. Lou.
“Not in here,” I said.
“I’m happy to talk outside,” Parker replied. “Makes no difference to me.”
“Yeah, I bet. Well? Outside.” Lou was not being put in any kind of crossfire, but I resisted moving.
Couldn’t leave my girl.
Sensing that, Soph took my hand. “We’ll stay with her.”
I sighed heavily. “I can’t…” Parker’s smug face gave me a shot of adrenaline. “But I will. Thanks, Soph. Luuk.”
“Be safe, Jake,” Luuk said.
The soldiers and Lars marched Parker into the corridor, out of the ICU, and all the way outside.
They blocked off the entrance, made him stand out in the rain while they formed a tight circle around me, others guarding Lou.
The fucker could teleport. Him and Elijah. Major risk, but so was him meeting the explosive end of a wand in Lou’s room. He wouldn’t be quick enough to kidnap her, and I didn’t think he would. His interest was in me.
At least I had him outside.
“Well?” I asked.
He pushed his wet hair back. “I love the rain.”
“Good job, you do.”
“Funny. So, how you doing? I hear your daughter’s not well, and I saw your man heading off to Faerie. Did you have a fight?”
Prick. “Just say what you need to say.”
“Or do what I need to do?”
“Move and we shoot,” Lars warned.
“Okay, officer. Whatever you say.” A shit-eating grin followed. “As I said, Jake, I’ve been extremely interested in you ever since I heard about your time in Coldharbour. Fascinating story. Where has that left you, though? Power-wise? Muted, I’d say. It would’ve been amazing to have seen you in your full glory.”
You won’t say that when I shove my spear up your arse. It was strapped to my back. Dean had made sure we left the house armed even if we were screaming for our daughter.
“What’s the point of this shit?”
“As I said in my letter, I want to see what happens. You have the blood of a goddess. Who else can say that? There’s no creature like you in existence that I know of. But that’s also what makes thi
s whole thing sad.”
“Sad?”
“Yes. Very sad. You don’t do anything. Twirl a smoking spear, investigate things, cook. How boring.”
“So fucking sorry.”
“You should be. Not to me, to yourself. It’s a straight-up tragedy.”
“No, that’d be the murders of those poor women, and the pod infestation. Also, you and your brother wandering around free. You’re never gonna be locked up, are you? How is anyone ever supposed to catch your arses?”
“I’ll let you figure that one out.”
Eyeroll commence. “You’re so boring. You know that, right? Change the friggin’ record. If you’re gonna do something, do it.” This was stupid talk. Really dangerous. But I was so over him, so over everything. I wanted my daughter back, for her to cry even, anything that meant she was safe and still here.
“What wasn’t boring, Jake, was the display from your daughter.”
My blood ran cold. “What?”
“Still bored?”
“You come anywhere near her and—”
“And you call me boring? Save the threats for another day. I’m still more interested in you for the time being.”
I turned and started to walk away, needing to be back by her side, my pulse racing a mile a minute.
Never should have left the room.
“I’m not done, Jake.”
“I a—”
He appeared before me.
The coppers and soldiers yelled and spun in surprise.
“Don’t fire!” Lars roared.
I was caught in the headlights.
“You—”
He cut me off. “I thought you wanted to talk.”
“Talking to you is the last thing I want.”
“You’re right. There’s nothing much to say now. Action is what’s needed.”
Oh, crap. Bad words from a knob like him.
“Part one,” he announced joyfully. That was the thing about him that made my skin crawl—his nice guy bullshit. “It’s time to release the roses.”
Twenty-Two
Dean
The wind had been knocked out of me.
“Good. I was hoping for that reaction,” Orla said. “Surprised?”
“But…how?”
“Care to explain, Evander?” she threw behind her.
“No!” I yelled. “I don’t want to hear your fucking voice.”
His shoulders slumped, and he looked away. Shame. At least, I hoped it was. Burning, debilitating shame.
Orla shrugged. “Don’t be too hard on him. He’s nothing but a pawn. Much like your daughter.”
“Tell me what the fuck you mean. Right now!”
She raised a hand to stop a guard from punching me for the disrespect. “Now, now. If you start being rude, I’ll give her a seizure. You don’t want that, do you? Writhing on the bed as he watches helplessly, your precious girl foaming at the mouth.”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand her face.
“Look at me, Dean.”
All I could do was obey. “Please.”
“Please? You’re begging?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Well, no. It isn’t. What it will take is for you to stay here, which you will, and be with me. You will come around sooner or later, and we will fuck and have children of our own. Like I showed you.” She sighed. “You may hate me now, which hurts me like you wouldn’t believe, but it will fade. I know you feel things for me. You must do, still. What we had was special. And maybe Louise could come over here to live with us.”
Yes. She was insane. Desperate for something that didn’t exist. The way she remembered us wasn’t the same as I did.
“You will need time to think on this, though,” she added. “Time locked away. With a beautiful view, of course.”
“Tell me…”
“When I’m ready. There’s no rush. You’re here now. That’s what I wanted.”
“Then give back what you took, at least. Let her wake up.”
She started inching closer to me. “I said, there’s no rush.” She hurried the last few steps and slapped me hard across the face.
Pain bloomed behind my eyes, and I tasted blood.
“Do you see what you make me do, Dean?” She huffed. “The heart is an untamable beast. I wish I didn’t love you like this. I loathe this passion.” She stroked my face, and I flinched. “So afraid of me. I am not the monster here.” Her face contorted as if she were a monster. She raked her nails across my cheek. I felt the blood, hot, trickle down my face. “The monster is him.”
“Please, Orla.”
She pursed her lips, cast her eyes up and down me. “This weakness isn’t particularly attractive.” A click of her manicured fingers and guards surrounded us. “Take him to his suite.”
They grabbed me. I struggled. “Orla! No! You have me, now let my daughter wake up! Please! Orla!”
“I’ll be seeing you later,” she called as I was dragged away.
“Orla!”
Twenty-Three
Dylan Rivers
“I can smell him,” Pranay said, sniffing the air. “He was just here.”
“Then, he could be anywhere.” Following a creature with teleportation abilities like Parker Smith was extremely irritating. Particularly when the rain wouldn’t relent one iota.
A team of hunters in black, driving a black car, we stalked the streets, attracting no attention. Andy saw to that with his fae ability of making the eyes unsee what he wanted to hide, and the fact we blended in with the night.
The rain also helped keep people off the streets and out of the way.
We stayed together as one unit, not daring to separate for a single moment. We didn’t go about handing out opportunities to our enemies. That was for fools, and I didn’t make a habit of getting myself burned after a lifetime of it.
Flevopark. A tram stop where six small green pods glowed with their own light, lining one of the platforms. Rain battered my hood as I headed for a space beneath the flyover that became a bridge known as Amsterdamsebrug, the bridge crossing the Amsterdam-Rijn canal, following Pranay.
It was quiet here, the road above practically free of traffic.
“He isn’t lurking?” I asked the werewolf.
“Nothing. He’s pissed off somewhere else.”
“Then, we strike this fae prison now.”
“Do you think he suspects us doing this?” Andy said to my left.
“Let him suspect all he wants,” Seph added. “The prick. He’s going down. They’re both going down.”
Words I loved to hear.
Slowly, cautiously, we made our way, keeping under the shelter of the flyover and following it to the sections with mud and water and reeds which Dean had told us about. It was the fourth section along where we would find the entrance to the tunnels with the fae door.
There we would figure out a way to destroy the Rós bastards.
This was personal, and time was running out for my stay here. I had to see an end to them. Parker especially after the chocolates he’d sent. My heart ached at the possibility of the pain he could have inflicted on those I loved. They were my life.
All in the name of an experiment? To see what a pod would do to a siren? What an incredibly disturbed creature he was. Slaughtered goblins, manipulated Jake and Dean, made a nuisance of himself. So did his brother but from a religious (I use the term lightly) angle.
I was hoping to have destroyed them by now, but things had become so complicated with this fae aspect and those poor murdered women.
Their deaths would come. When I sought revenge, I got what I wanted.
The water was high here. The mud paths drowned. Apparently, these sections were linked by mud paths cutting through the water. Each pillar had an elevated section at the bottom you could walk around, then hop down into the muddy path cutting through the middle to get to the next pillar. Not now. Water lapped at the edge of the stone platform, close to surging over and claiming
that too.
“Just like we thought,” Andy said. “Flooded.”
We reached the section with the tunnel entrance, Seph having used his chains to throw us across the water. It wasn’t as if we were afraid of mud and getting wet, but only a fool would risk getting a foot stuck in those pools of murk when absolutely unnecessary. Only battle the elements when you need to—as would be the case when I’d have to dive into the water to get to the tunnels.
Such fun!
“Flooding isn’t a problem,” I said, eyeing the dirty water, the surface dancing under the downpour.
“Swim?” Andy questioned.
I took his arm. “Andy, honey pie, you have a siren and a kelpie here.”
He didn’t like it but didn’t protest. They all knew there was no other way but to go down and face the risk. A muddy tunnel may cave in under such an onslaught of water. But the worst-case scenario was leaving the Rós twins alive. An impossible option.
This ended tonight. The magic of their prison kept them alive. It needed to be obliterated.
“Okay, this is the plan,” Pranay said. “Me and Andy will keep watch up here, but you ain’t going down there without some leverage. Seph, my man. That’s where you come in.”
Completely inappropriate, but I wanted to fuck him right in that moment. His baritone always drove me wild.
He winked at me.
I laughed lightly. Horny minds thought alike.
Seph tossed a chain to Pranay—a metallic safety line. The two of them were the physically strongest of us—muscle, muscle, and more muscle. “Hold tight.”
“I—”
Red lightning tore through the sky, dragging a gasp from my lungs. “What was that?”
A second burst came, then a devastating crack of thunder.
“There’s something in the air,” Andy said, scrutinizing the heavens. “Moving. Flying? Red…”
More lightning, five consecutive flashes, and something red made itself known up there. Five things. Ten… Did I just count seventeen? They spread across the sky in different directions with what looked like red sparks falling from them.