by S. Young
When they moved through security, she had to use mental manipulation again to stop security from questioning her about the pile of cash in her bag. She had over $30,000 in different currencies.
“Did you steal that cash?” Kiyo asked as they strolled out of security.
Guilt pricked at her. “What of it?”
“There is no honor in stealing.”
“I know,” she said so quietly, it was almost a whisper.
Kiyo frowned at whatever he heard in her voice. “Then why?”
“I’ve been on the run for over half my life.” She shrugged. “I did what I could to survive.”
“Luxury hotels, empty penthouse apartments, and piles of cash is merely surviving?”
Realizing he knew more about her than she’d thought—and hearing the judgment in his tone—Niamh clamped her lips tightly shut. He wouldn’t understand, so there was no point engaging in conversation about it.
“Unless, of course, it was your brother who convinced you living it large made up for being on the run.”
His words hit so close to the truth, Niamh felt them like claws in her chest. She turned to snap at him, to tell him to mind his own business, when a roll of familiar nausea turned over in her gut.
She felt the blood drain from her face.
No.
Not now.
Not so soon after the last.
“Kiyo,” she said, frantic.
He stopped, expression alert. “What?”
“Vision.” She got the word out just before the first image slammed into her head. Vaguely she was aware of her body moving and then a strong band of power wrapped around her. It steadied her as images of a young, pretty, dark-haired girl pounded painfully through her brain, one after the other. A man. Older. Connected to her. Owner. Husband. Sexual violence. Beatings. Abuse. Servitude. Exhaustion. Pain. Despair. Loathing. Rage. Despair. Rage.
Despair.
Rage
Despair.
RAGE.
Shuddering as the last image faded from her mind, Niamh realized the usual juddering convulsions were restrained. Cognizance returned, and Niamh lifted her head to lock gazes with Kiyo.
He’d guided her to a corner of the airport, his body covering hers, his arms bound tight around her.
“If anyone saw, they only witnessed two people embracing,” he whispered, his hot breath tickling her face.
The hairs on Niamh’s arms and nape rose as a shiver skated down her spine.
He smelled wonderful. Earthy. Smoky.
And his arms felt safe.
They felt good.
It had been months since anyone had been there to hold her through her visions.
As tears burned her throat and stung her eyes, Niamh dropped her gaze so he wouldn’t see. She pushed gently at his chest.
He slowly released her.
“Thanks,” she muttered, turning away from him.
Her bag had fallen to the floor. She quickly grabbed it and hurried in the direction of the ladies’ restroom.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what the vision was about?”
“Same one,” she lied. “Must be important.”
They reached the restroom and Niamh raised an eyebrow at him. “You know you can’t come in here, right? Why don’t you go buy us some breakfast?” She gestured to the food court. “I’ll meet you over there.”
Niamh wasn’t sure if anyone had ever bestowed such a suspicious look on her before. Everyone else saw a sweet girl with a sweet demeanor who couldn’t possibly lie … not Kiyo. It was like the bastard could see right through her.
With a roll of her eyes, Niamh pushed into the restroom and let the door slam behind her.
There were several other women inside.
She pretended to use the facilities as quickly as possible and then followed one of the other ladies out.
Thankfully, Kiyo was gone, which meant he was at the food court.
Good.
Niamh took off in the direction for terminal transport. By the time Kiyo realized she was gone, it would be too late. And she’d find him again. Something told her that whenever the wolf was in the vicinity, Niamh would be able to find him, even blindfolded.
Ignoring the ghost of his embrace that still clung to her, Niamh got on the elevator that took her down to the terminal’s bus stop. A bus was already there waiting. Perfect timing.
Her patience strained as the bus sat there for five minutes and then finally, the doors closed. It moved, skirting the runway and waiting planes as it drove toward the next terminal.
No one would notice if she raced from this point on because people were always in a hurry at the airport. Niamh dove off the bus in the direction of the girl from her vision. This vision had explained more than the last. Unlike the last, but much like the latest others, this vision was tinged with insistence and aggression. She’d never had visions like these up until a few months ago … like they were trying to make her feel something, not just relay information.
The girl and the man she’d seen were human. She’d been sold into marriage by her own family. And this man was abusive in every way he could be. The girl’s spirit was strong but she was breaking, and she was hours away from murdering her captive. Niamh didn’t exist to play God, but she’d seen what this man had done. He was evil to his core.
The violence he’d enacted … Niamh had seen a lot in her visions over the years, and he sat among the worst of the monsters she’d experienced.
Niamh couldn’t let this girl go through so much only to end up in prison for killing her torturer, her abuser, her enslaver. And if it was worthy of a vision, it was worthy of her dealing with the problem.
“And where is it you think you’re going?” Kiyo suddenly stepped in front of her.
Niamh skidded to a halt seconds before crashing into him.
She gaped in confusion. “How did you … what? How?”
He had a to-go cup of coffee in his hand. He took a casual sip as he stared at her. “You think I’m that stupid?”
“Well …”
“You have a vision and then you urgently need to use the restroom and get rid of me at the same time.”
That burn of irritation she hadn’t felt in hours swarmed her chest. “Look, I’m not running away from you. I just have something I need to do.”
Kiyo chugged back his coffee and then threw it, with perfect aim, at a recycle can twenty meters away. Without taking his eyes off her.
“Show off.”
His expression darkened. “I can’t let you go play savior. Not hours after The Garm tried to kill you. Are you insane?”
“I can’t ignore my visions.” She moved to brush past him.
“Niamh.” He grabbed her arm, and she whipped around to rail at him, the images from her vision causing that burn in her chest to flame. She felt it flooding out of her; her eyes widened as she watched Kiyo’s grow round with shock.
His body shuddered as his grip on her arm became bruising.
“Kiyo.” Concern eased the burn as his eyes fluttered and his body convulsed ever so slightly.
He gasped, releasing her arm.
His dark eyes, filled with disbelief, flew to hers. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head in truth. “What … I …”
“I saw things.” He grabbed both of her biceps and gave her a shake. “What did you do to me?”
“I didn’t do anything.” Niamh yanked at his unyielding hold. “I promise, I didn’t do anything.”
His grip eased, his eyes desperately searching hers. “I saw a girl and a man. But it was more than just images. It was … their life together.” Anger darkened his expression. “She was sold to him. He abuses her. They’re here. And she’s going to kill him.”
Niamh’s legs almost buckled. “Not possible.”
“What was that, Niamh?”
“My vision. You saw my vision.”
How …
She shook her h
ead. That had never happened. Not with anyone, not even with him.
“Not possible,” she repeated. “What are you?”
He released her like she’d burned him. “I didn’t do this. I’ve never experienced anything like that. That was you.”
“No!” She flinched at the loud denial and glanced around to see they were drawing attention to themselves. “We have to move.”
Kiyo studied her intensely for a few seconds. “You’ve never shared a vision with anyone before?”
“Never.”
He released a shaky exhale. He was completely thrown by this, and Niamh could tell he wasn’t used to anything disconcerting him.
“We have to go, Kiyo. Now.”
“Yeah, we do. Back to our terminal.”
Her eyes narrowed, the burn of irritation returning. “I can’t leave her to him.”
“You’re not. He’s about to get what he deserves.”
“But she isn’t. All that pain.” Her eyes brightened with tears of compassion. “I know you felt her pain. If she does this, she spends the rest of her life in prison. Or worse, they cart her back home and they execute her for it. You can’t tell me, after what you saw, that you think she deserves it.”
As hard as Niamh tried to hold them back, tears of sorrow, for what the girl had endured, escaped. Kiyo seemed fascinated, watching the tears roll down her cheeks.
“What do you plan to do?”
“Find him. End him. And help her start a new life somewhere else.”
“So you’re judge, jury, and executioner?”
Niamh shrugged wearily. “It’s my burden to bear. I have a long life ahead of me … maybe. I want to know I made a difference. And I don’t care if it makes me dishonorable or a different kind of monster. If I can rid the planet of his kind of evil, I’ll take Fate’s judgment when She comes for me with my head held high.”
Something happened then. Something Niamh didn’t understand glittered with a sharpness in Kiyo’s dark eyes. Fustratingly, Niamh didn’t understand what that look meant.
“Fine. We can wait until he goes into the restroom. There are no cameras there. I’ll follow him in and deal with him. But we’ll have the problem of the body. It can’t be found while we’re still here.”
Niamh was momentarily taken aback by his willingness to help. It took her a second to reply, “Don’t worry about that. I can turn a body to ash.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “And you didn’t think to do that back at the park?”
Oh shit, yeah.
Her lips twitched. “Must have slipped my mind.”
He huffed. “You can’t find any of this amusing.”
“It’s hysterical laughter,” she promised. “I’ve had quite a shock.”
“You’ve had a shock,” he muttered under his breath as they searched for the abuser.
It was weird watching as Kiyo spotted their perpetrator first. He’d seen him too. There had to be a reason she’d been able to transfer her vision to the werewolf. For twenty-one of her twenty-six years on this planet, Niamh had never once physically shared a vision with another person.
Her emotions seemed to have fueled the transfer, but she’d been plenty emotional after her visions over the years, and it hadn’t happened before. Why was Kiyo receptive to them?
None of it made sense.
They had to wait for over an hour, watching the evil fecker sitting next to his young wife. Niamh spotted him pinching her thigh a few times as he snapped something at her.
Although Kiyo’s expression never changed as they waited, she noticed he tensed ever so slightly every time the man pinched the girl, which meant he’d noticed it too.
And he didn’t like it.
Something warm flooded Niamh’s chest.
“You’re staring at me,” Kiyo said, attention still on their prey.
“You’re nice to look at it,” she answered honestly but evasively.
He gave her a wry look. “You’re trying to figure out how I saw your vision. If you think I might know, you’re wrong. I’m as baffled as you.” His gaze cut back to the couple. “He’s moving.”
Niamh’s attention returned to the man as they watched him head toward the restroom.
“What if he’s not alone?” she asked Kiyo before he moved to follow.
“I’m an alpha,” he replied. “I give off energy that I can turn up. Makes humans flee my vicinity.”
“Sounds very helpful for a being who so clearly prefers his own company.”
“Funny,” he muttered before casually strolling toward the restroom.
As soon as he disappeared inside, Niamh followed.
Just as she reached the door, two men hurried out, looking confused and disturbed.
Alpha energy indeed.
She waited a minute, made sure no one was watching, and then darted inside.
In the farthest corner, she found Kiyo standing over the corpse of the girl’s abuser. Kiyo glanced over his shoulder at her, his expression grim. He seemed to take no pleasure in death. That was reassuring. “Your turn.”
As she approached the man, all the terror and hurt and torment the girl had felt wrapped itself around Niamh until she could barely breathe … and she could technically survive without oxygen, which said much of the size of the girl’s pain and fury.
Kneeling, she placed a reluctant hand on the man’s knee and felt her magic pulse from her palm. Slowly it crawled through his whole being and they watched as his face cracked.
Then he just crumbled.
To ash.
“I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Niamh stood. “We fae have many tricks up our sleeves.”
His gaze sharpened on hers. “We will never do this again.”
She narrowed her eyes at his bossy tone. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I understand now that you feel everything these victims feel, and I appreciate that you want to help them. But this”—he gestured to the ash—“it’s bad enough interfering in supernatural lives when it’s not your job, because we have rules for a reason, Niamh, and it’s all about our survival and avoiding war with the humans. To interfere in their world is so far beyond dangerous … It’s not your right.”
His words penetrated, making her feel guilty and indignant at the same time. “But my visions …”
“I don’t know why they’re coming to you, but every time you do something like this, you leave a signature. And that signature is how the Blackwoods or others like them are going to find you. Is this girl’s life—the lives of the other people you’ve interfered with—worth the lives of every single person on this planet?”
Deep down she’d always known she was playing a dangerous game with the world, but Kiyo had hauled her harshly into the light of reality.
He was right. She knew he was right.
She couldn’t keep doing this.
She couldn’t be responsible for opening that gate because once upon a time, she’d seen what could happen if the wall between worlds fell.
Yet, it was so hard not to answer the call of the visions.
“I just wanted … I want to be useful.”
He exhaled slowly. “The vision, the Tokyo one, is that truly helpful or is it another one of these?” He gestured to the ash.
“It’s important. I promise. It’s about the fae-borne.”
“And you won’t tell me more than that?”
More guilt pricked at her but even after the last hour, she still wasn’t ready to trust him. She shook her head.
His expression closed down. “Fine. Let’s get back to our terminal.”
“But the girl. I want to help her. Change her passport. Give her money.”
“And how do you propose doing that without using magic that makes her aware of our world?”
Niamh scowled because he was infuriatingly right.
“You’ve helped her enough. She’s on her own. Now get your ass back to the terminal.”
&nb
sp; His demanding tone licked down her spine like fire, causing her to snap to attention. “Or what? You’ll make me?”
“Niamh, I just killed a human in a public restroom and watched you turn him to ash. This, after receiving visions I had no business receiving from a pain-in-the-ass Irish woman I’m bound to protect by a spell that pretty much screws with my freedom until Fionn’s happy you’re safe. My patience is wearing very thin.”
She sniffed haughtily as she moved past him. “It can’t be wearing thin if it doesn’t exist in the first place.”
His growl rumbled at her back and while it should have frightened her, it didn’t.
It had a much more disturbing effect on her body.
One that made her flush hot from head to toe.
5
“You can relax now, you know,” Niamh said quietly.
The plane had just leveled out and Kiyo wanted to believe he could relax, but his body refused to. Waiting at the airport had been tense. He’d been constantly on alert for any sign of The Garm or another enemy. Moreover, he still couldn’t figure out how the hell Niamh’s vision had transferred to him. He wondered if it could happen again. The stubborn fae wouldn’t tell him about her Tokyo vision, and since she’d admitted it was partly about him, Kiyo felt he had a right to know.
Especially if it was taking him back to a city where he had enemies.
“Can I?” he muttered, glancing around at the busy plane. The passengers were reading, watching the TVs on the back of the seat headrests, or sleeping. When was the last time he slept?
Having his neck broken and being unconscious for a few minutes didn’t count.
“I have a spider sense,” Niamh leaned in to whisper. Her spicy-sweet scent tickled his senses, and his gut tightened.
Kiyo glowered at her, noting the delicate golden freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. “I don’t care about your spider sense?”
She quirked an eyebrow. “You’re in an awful mood.”
“Niamh …” There was a growl of warning in her name.
“Okay, fine.” She considered him, questions in her big, golden-aquamarine eyes. “Do you not like flying?”
“Breaking the contract might be worth it,” he muttered.