Undeniable (The Druids Book 1)

by S A Archer

  That quirked the dark Sidhe’s eyebrow. “Are we? You are fey now, are you?” Circling, the man watched Peyton with a dark amusement tugging at his lips.

  “It’s kind of like the mob; they don’t let you walk away.” Peyton worked himself up onto an elbow, forcing his body to obey no matter the pain. An agonized wince caught him as a broken rib moved. Reflexively, he hooked his arm against his side, as if that might stabilize it. Debris was all around him, mostly in the form of jagged rocks and nothing decent within easy reach to use for a weapon.

  “And you were there entirely against your will.” The Sidhe’s cold laughter mocked Peyton’s attempts to talk his way out of trouble.

  Edging back, he inched for whatever space he could claim to maneuver. “Once I understood what was truly going on, it was too late.”

  “And no amount of drugs could assuage your conscience?” The Sidhe paced, so slow and deadly in his elegance.

  Peyton nudged back with his legs even more. Clearly, Deacon had given this bloke the full scoop. Not even the wizards had known about his drug use, or if they had, they hadn’t called him out on it by the time the whole organization came crumbling down, in the most literal sense. “I couldn’t stomach what they’d turned me into.”

  Lazy steps forward stole the gap Peyton tried to wedge between them. “Kidnapper… assassin… thug…”

  “I’m not proud,” Peyton assured him. “I wouldn’t do that again.” He could feel the sharpness of some broken bit of stone at his back and he shifted to ease around it. His hand reached back and rested on it, but it was too bulky to even grip. Peyton edged around it.

  “Wouldn’t you?” The Sidhe closed the distance, and crouched down to face him. “But you were so very good at it.” The next time Peyton scooted back the Sidhe snagged the waist of his jeans and dragged him back. “I could use someone of your skills.”

  Peyton paused, still back on an elbow, brows furrowed. “You… want to hire me?”

  “You seemed between jobs at the moment.” A sarcastic twist to that handsome smirk.

  Peyton’s eyes narrowed, incredulous, and mind reached for something he’d missed. “Who are you?”

  “Credne.” He gave a name Peyton only barely recognized. A gloved hand extended in the offer of a handshake.

  If it hadn’t been gloved, Peyton wouldn’t have trusted it. He fit his hand into the other’s grasp, reaching for any slim hope of getting out of this with his life somewhat intact. It was only when their hands clasped, and he felt flesh instead of leather, that he realized his mistake.

  Glamour. The glove was nothing but an illusion.

  The jolt of magic caught him like electricity. It fried through the very fibers of his body, burning pathways with the sadistic bite of acid. Teeth clenching, breath stolen, Peyton fought to throw himself away from him, but there was no place to go when the ground already pushed at his back. Struggling to even gasp, his head slammed to the stone floor. His own screams flooded his ears as agony tore, clawed, gnashed… destroying him from the inside out like a thousand knives ricocheting through his essence. A flood of power gushed in behind it, drowning him in the metallic taste of a magic too dark and terrible to comprehend. Worse than a consuming terror. So much worse than death.

  When the grip finally released his hand, Peyton coiled into himself. With eyes clenched closed, he screamed with a horror that consumed him as relentlessly as the torment of enchantment. This was game over, in the most terrible way imaginable. Cursed to the very core, with no escape possible.

  Shivering, sick, doomed, Peyton fought to open his eyes, even if facing the truth was beyond his endurance.

  It wasn’t game over. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it.

  He’d find a way.

  Deacon, behind the Sidhe, sneered down at him. “Karma’s a vicious little twat, mate. Welcome to Hell.”

  Even seeing him haul back the fist didn’t give Peyton the chance to avoid the punch that snapped his head to the side and knocked him back out.

  Chapter Four

  Riley’s back pressed against Joe’s, as they faced opposite directions. He spun the knives before him with the twist of his wrists as a sign that he was more than capable of using them. He could feel Joe’s back muscles flexing as his straight arms shifted from the sides to before him. And Riley knew that the aim of his guns shifted from one of the beasts to the next.

  They were completely surrounded by the pack of werewolves. In their hybrid shifter forms, they stood a good two and a half meters tall, even when bent and snarling at them. Their snouts extended farther than the span of his hand from their heads. Their canine fangs must’ve been a good ten centimeters at least, and glistening with their saliva. The beasts moved around the pair of druids like the wolves they were, looking for a chance to breach their defenses, and slice them with claws as deadly and sharp as Riley’s knives.

  “I wouldn’t say this was a dead-end lead, would you?” Riley was trying for humor, or sarcasm, or anything other than sheer panic.

  “Run your mouth after we survive this,” Joe growled. “Not a dead-end, but a trap. Good job, leading us right into it.”

  “My bad,” Riley replied, then reacted to the clawed hand that reached for him. His blade sliced upward, across the inside of the werewolf’s forearm, painting the air with an arc of blood that seemed almost to move in slow motion.

  That first strike sparked the counterplay. All the wolves burst into attack. Riley dropped down as one attacker flung himself to tackle him and he twisted his arm back to catch Joe’s neck and jerk him down with him. It might have made Joe miss the target of his gunfire, but it saved his head from getting ripped off as the werewolf launched himself over top of them. Riley twisted away and dove into the brawl.

  As one werewolf swiped where he’d stood just a second before, Riley swung under his torso and jammed his knife into the creature’s thigh. Rotating around so that his back was wedged between its legs, he jerked back his head to impact it in the gut and knock the wind from it, even as the creature bent over him. His second knife impaled its throat between the jaw joints all the way to the hilt. The blade must have completely plunged into its brain at this angle. As Riley jerked back both of his knives, he threw himself under the beast as it fell, so he came up behind it.

  Joe had fallen to the ground on his back, after Riley had thrown him down, but that had not slowed his gunfire. The werewolves pouncing at him were driven back but the impact of the bullets that ripped away flesh, and bone, and scattered them in a spray of blood as the corpses dropped from the air.

  Tae Kwon Do had prepared Riley to defend against multiple attackers. He knew where the remaining werewolves were by just spatial memory and the physics of motion. All lovely terms to mean that he was about to get tackled.

  From his low, crouched position Riley sprung straight upward and twisted to pull his feet up into the air so his body spun horizontal to the ground. As he twisted, his foot impacted the face of one of the werewolves, snapping its head around. But that was not the focus of his assault. It was the werewolf now propelling across the space beneath him.

  Riley stabbed his blade into its back, right between its massive shoulder blades. The knife stuck between the ribs and hooked in so that the momentum of the werewolf’s lunge pulled at the grip of the knife, and jerked Riley along behind it. Hanging onto the knife handle, Riley rotated to straddle the werewolf’s back like a horse. His other arm hooked around the werewolf’s neck. With a jerk, he sliced across the neck until a heated spray of blood coated his arm. The beast beneath him crashed.

  Riley threw himself free and rolled. He lost the knife embedded in the animal’s back, but still had the one in his left hand. As he recovered into a crouch, the werewolf that he’d kicked lunged for him once more. Riley threw his blade and it drove itself to the center o
f his chest. But the creature did not stop.

  “Crap!” Riley jerked back his fists, having no weapon left to him now and this monster was not slowing down.

  The sound of gunfire exploded the werewolf’s head. The gore sprayed over Riley, as the monster crashed to his feet.

  He jolted to the side and twisted about quickly, seeing nothing but werewolf corpses and Joe, still in a crouch, with his gun aimed at the final animal. The werewolves slowly changed back into human form and the slaughter was even more disturbing that way.

  He counteracted the horror with humor. “Well, that went better than expected.” Riley pushed the corpse onto its back with his foot and dislodged his blade. Reclaiming the knife from the back of the other former-werewolf was more difficult and it took a hard yank, and the sound of breaking bones, to get it free.

  Joe was slow in returning his weapons to their holsters, as he walked the perimeter of the clearing, which barely resembled the garden it used to be. Joe’s black fatigues clashed with the artistry of the architecture, where it showed through the climbing ivy that was in the process of consuming it. “Well, I would say that this Temple of Manannan’s is no longer in use by the fey.”

  Riley looked at the statue, that had once gurgled a water fountain, when he’d first met Manannan. “I’d looked for the temple after the Collapse of the Mounds, and found no one here. I had hoped that with the creation of the new realm perhaps some had wandered back.” Riley shook his head. “You can still see the beauty, even with the overgrowth of plants.” And the bodies strewn about. And the blood splattering his t-shirt and jeans.

  “They probably went their separate ways after Manannan’s betrayal.” Joe glanced at the bodies once more. “I don’t think anybody will find the corpses here. Clearly the fey have moved on.”

  “But that website still panned out. It was still a lead to a threat to the fey.” He bent to wipe the blood off his knives, before returning them to the sheathes he wore at his hips. Later, he’d give them a good cleaning. “When we get back, I am going to try and decipher some of the other messages. If parahumans are posting about hunting other fey, we could head them off at the pass.”

  “That’s for sure. Next time, we’ll need to bring more backup. These guys might have been looking for fey, not druids, but our blood is fey magic enough for these beasts to want to feast on it.” Joe indicated with the tilt of his head for Riley to come with him. “We should head back, now. Nothing more to do here.”

  “But they’re all naked.” Riley glanced at the bodies. “They might have clothes stashed somewhere close by. They might have clues or something on them.”

  “What kind of clues do you think you’ll find? They were werewolves. They eat fey. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s just the nature of things.”

  “If you say so.” Riley backed away from the bodies and followed Joe towards the entrance of the temple. Truth be told, this had been more dangerous than he’d expected. The threat to themselves was bad enough, but if there had been fey here, they would have come across a slaughter, rather than a trap. How many other raids of fey villages had been chatted about in that forum for parahumans that no one stopped? How many were in the works, even now? And if he didn’t stop them, then who would?

  Chapter Five

  In the age of digital forensics, Granger found himself spending more time scrubbing through video feed from security cameras and cell phone uploads to Facebook than anything else. While his supervisors fed the media on a diet of misinformation and terrorist speculation, the Special Branch of Interpol checked for occult connections, evidence of magic, and demonic residue. So far they’d pretty much scratched the demonic off the list. None of the activator charms were picking up the least flicker of the residue demons shed, which sucked because demons were usually the prime suspect on any large scale, showy display of destruction.

  On the investigation board, palm-sized images of the employees of the Brightner Corporation were grouped into three categories; the confirmed dead, the ones whose whereabouts were unknown, and the ones they’d tracked down and found alive. So far, only London Eyer fit that last category, her picture conspicuously held apart from the others by the green push pin fixing it to the board.

  Of the bodies they’d discovered in the wreckage, most were killed when the building crushed down on top of them, but a few were taken out by gunfire.

  As devastating as the building’s collapse had been, and the death toll it caused, it was interesting that of the collection of non-human body parts they’d recovered, not one resulted from the events of that day. Rather, they’d all been surgically removed anywhere from days to weeks prior. And, interestingly enough, even though no preserving method appeared to have been used on the gruesome collection, not one appeared to show the first signs of decay.

  Granger stared at the board, with its unaccounted potential victims and suspects, as if it might start forming connections in his mind, if he just studied it long enough. Only his gaze drifted back to London Eyer, all alone to the side. The background check wasn’t in yet, but he was betting there would be something. Some clue as to why she was different.

  With his head propped on his palm, the arm of the office chair being the only thing keeping him from flopping wearily to the floor, Granger diverted just his gaze from the board to his left, back to the computer before him. With an economy of movement, he shifted the mouse pointer down one, to the next video file, and double clicked.

  The weather cam aimed monotonously up the road captured the Brightner Building, among several others, in its field of vision. The time frame for the camera went back as far as a week before the building fell. Using the trackball on the mouse, Granger scrolled quickly along the video, tagging the segments where someone came or left the building. Then he marked the period just before the building dropped. For that, he let it play at regular speed.

  The building gave a shiver, which suggested a massive explosion, only there wasn’t any residue in the rubble pointing to an explosive device. Then the whole thing lurched forward, doubling over at the middle. The upper floors pitched hard, well over forty-five degrees. Windows shattered as the contents were spilled out, just before the base imploded and the upper stories chased its lost possessions down onto the street below.

  It was just a miracle that no bystander had been in that section of road to get crushed by the falling debris.

  What had been under the building when it came down?

  Granger scrolled it back, and ran it at slow motion. A couple of empty cars were all that was on the road. They got dumped on with the chairs, and flood from the sprinklers, and whatnot before the building hit.

  Except…

  He rolled it back and played it again, before opening the IM window to Ray in Cyber Forensics. He typed, File Weather_cam_673.mp4, during the collapse, can you enhance the falling debris? I’m seeing a weird flicker.

  On it. The IM responded back.

  Rolling his fingers over the track ball, Granger backed to earlier in the day. Back to when London Eyer walked into the building. So he knew she went in that day, but no evidence revealed how London had managed to escape. No vehicles had left after her arrival, and she wasn’t seen leaving on foot by any of the cameras.

  You’re gonna love this. Ray’s IM popped that window to the front, with a file ready to download. Granger double-clicked on it and waited the second and a half it took to start playing.

  Now the video wasn’t fixed in position, but rather zoomed in on a particular set of windows. There was a flash from inside the room that the tinted windows didn’t completely obscure. That flash looked a heck of a lot like the kind you can get from a high powered weapon.

  The zoomed in video began a slow pan, tracking the path of that window as the building bowed in half. The window shattered out and debris slid out on a current of water. Then two
figures followed the rest, free falling away from the building. As they fell, clutching together and spiraling in slow motion towards the ground, their faces turned towards the camera. One was a young male that didn’t appear on their roster board at all. The other was London.

  Granger’s stunned gaze fixed upon the screen, witnessing what should have been a fatal trip to the ground ending with a building smashing down onto her. But then, they were gone. There one second. Gone the next.

  Teleportation.

  Granger banged his fist down on his desk. “Gotcha!”

  “No grown man should get that excited about something that isn’t rugby.” Patterson crossed the investigation room carrying a medical tray in his hands.

  “Teleportation! I got it on video!” He clicked to move the time indicator back to the beginning of the clip. “Let’s see that cocky bird try and play this one off. We got her!”

  “I got you one better.” Granger’s partner set the tray down in front of him. A severed ear, pointed at the apex, rested in the bottom of it. That alone wasn’t significant. Supernaturals were more likely to have pointed ears than not. Apparently not seeing the impressed expression he was looking for yet, Patterson reached into his suit jacket pocket. “This is the best part.”

  He unscrewed a small glass jar and tapped out a sprinkling of a glittering metallic powder. It coated the ear, which began to fade right before their eyes, becoming transparent and then finally vanishing, leaving the metal flakes to litter the bottom of the empty tray.

  Granger stared a moment longer, to see if some other trick was going to happen, then glanced back up at Patterson, who grinned with his discovery. “That was silver, which means that the ear belonged to—”