Arrows of ice shot up and down her spine. "Vincent."
"I am so please you recognize my voice. It means I made quite an impact on you."
"I thought—"
"I was dead?" He laughed. "I'm not so easy to get rid of, little human."
"What do you want?"
"Why, to see you, of course."
"You must be out of your mind if you think I'm coming anywhere near you."
"You see, I knew you would say that. That's why I brought someone who I think might be able to persuade you." She heard him talk to someone in the background. "Say hello to Iris." A second later, a trembling voice called her name.
"Iris?"
Iris gasped. "Marion!"
21
The Enemy of My Enemy
Iris drove like she never thought she could and she was glad that it was Sunday and the streets were empty at eight in the morning. The warehouse where Vincent had asked her to go was in an industrial area on the east side of town. She'd never been there before but, according to her phone GPS, it was only a twenty-minute drive from her neighborhood. She stopped at every sign. The last thing she needed was getting pulled over for running a red light. Vincent had been clear—if she didn't get to him alone, in half an hour, Marion would be dead and another one of Iris' loved ones would take her place.
Her mind was still struggling to find a reasonable explanation as to how he was still alive after Dorian had snapped his neck the night before. Then again, she knew nothing of the inner workings of a supernatural body.
With her heart pounding in her chest, she parked the car in front of the warehouse and headed towards the main entrance. The inside of the warehouse was dark with only one light on in the middle. It was weak but Iris could still see Marion tied up to a chair, seemingly unconscious. When the metal door slammed shut, both girls jerked. Marion raised her head and narrowed her eyes to pierce the darkness.
"Iris?"
Iris ran to her friend, falling on her knees in front of her. "Marion."
"What's happening? Why am I here?" Marion's face was wet. Tears mixed with mascara gathered on her chin and then dropped on her white silk top, staining it dark grey. Her wrists were tied to the chair arms, her ankles to the legs. The area around her mouth was red, probably as a result of a piece of tape pulled off too fast.
"It's going to be okay, Marion."
"I like your optimism," a voice resounded from the darkness and, a second later, Vincent appeared.
Iris got up and stared at him.
"You're probably wondering how I'm still alive. It's one of the perks of selling your soul to the devil. Satune's Seal makes you immortal before it takes away your sanity. The Elwoods were too busy tending to their wounds to notice me rise from the dead and slip away."
Iris straightened her arms to her sides and clenched her fists hoping it would stop her body from shaking frantically. "I'm here. Now let her go."
"Not so fast, little human. You see, I need you to do something for me and your life and those of your friends depend on whether or not you cooperate."
"What do you want?" she said through her teeth. She'd been scared out of her mind. Now she was frustrated and angry. And still scared out of her mind.
"First I want you to strip."
"Excuse me?"
"Don't worry. I'm not a pervert. I just want to check you for marks."
He wants to see if I have a tattoo of Satune's Seal. "I assure you, I don't have any marks or tattoos."
"Strip!"
Iris jerked. His voice went from honeyed to booming in a split second. Marion kept screaming and when she wouldn't stop Vincent covered her mouth with a new piece of tape.
With trembling hands, Iris undressed all the way down to her underwear. She blinked repeatedly to fight back her tears. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Vincent walked around her, studying her like she was a statue at a museum. After what seemed like an eternity he told her she could put her clothes back on. He came close to her and smelled her. Iris swallowed back nausea. When he spoke his voice was calm again.
"You're human and you have no marks on you, so tell me, how do you do it? How do you control the hounds?"
"I swear to you, I don't know. I just do."
He let out a terrifying howl that shook the warehouse and reverberated long after he stopped to gasp for air. He really was going mad, if he hadn't already. He walked around the empty space around them for a while, muttering to himself. For a second, Iris couldn't see him anymore and she looked around, contemplating a way out of there but then he came back holding a chair. Goodbye, sweet escape.
"Sit." His voice was flat. Iris obeyed and watched him tie her up the same way he had Marion.
"Look, you got what you wanted. I'm here. You don't need Marion anymore. Let her go. She has nothing to do with this."
He laughed a crazy man's laugh. "You think I want you? Oh no. You're just a means to an end. I want someone who wants you to remain in one piece."
"The Elwoods don't care about me anymore. Not after last night."
"It's not them I want."
"Then who?"
"Dorian. I want Dorian."
So the Elwoods had been right all along. Dorian was tied to the beasts from hell. That was the reason he'd shown up at their door—not to help them, but to get them to kill the hounds before the hounds killed him.
"What makes you think he'll come for me?"
"Well, he did risk his life to save you. Twice. Three times if you count our encounter in the woods last night when he, so unceremoniously I might add, snapped my neck. You see, I may be hiding but that doesn't mean I don't hear things. Like for example, do you know that there's a bounty on your head? Yes, the supernatural world heard about the human with the ability to control hellhounds and they want you. Whether it's to keep you or sell you to someone who would pay a fortune for your talent, the point is that you're quite valuable nowadays. I assume that's why Dorian keeps saving you. He'll use you to escape the hounds and then he'll sell you away." He took out her phone from her jacket and put it in her tied up hand. "Now, call."
"No."
He went to Marion and put his hands on the sides of her head. "Call or your friend here will join her mother in human heaven."
Iris stared at him, paralyzed, as the meaning of his words took form in her mind. She looked at Marion. The girl's eyes were filled with tears. Behind them Iris saw horror and pain.
"Mrs. Young is dead?"
"Yes. An unfortunate tragedy, which could have been avoided if she hadn't gotten in my way when I snatched your little friend."
Iris blinked to release the tears that were blurring her vision and scrolled through her contact list to find the number that Dorian had put in before he returned her phone at the Elwood mansion.
Connor paced around the living room listening to Iris's voice message for the fourth time. When his grandmother walked in, he put his phone in his pocket and sat on one of the white leather couches. "How are you feeling?"
"Tired. I'm old. Even with the spheres, it will still take a while before I'm fully recovered."
"Oh, good. You're up. Just in time for tea," Lorelai chirped. She was carrying a big trey with smoking teacups and a plate full of biscuits. She laid it on the table and sat across from Connor. Aeryn sat next to Lorelai and looked Connor in the eyes. "What's wrong?"
He took out his phone and played Iris' message. After it ended, Lorelai was the first to speak. "So Dorian got shot. Good riddance. One last evil thing we need to worry about."
"With a cold iron bullet," Connor pointed out. "By our town sheriff."
"I must admit I never liked him. He always gave me the feeling he was hiding something."
"Do you think he knows about us?"
"Clearly he knows something. I say we kill him."
"We can't kill the town sheriff, Lorelai."
"Why not? The Council would. Plus, with the whole forest beast terrorizing the town, we have the pe
rfect cover."
Connor looked at his grandmother. The woman took a sip of her tea then put the cup back on the table. "I think there's a third option," she said. She got up and picked up the phone from the small table next to the couch. She left the room dialing a number.
"Are we even sure it was a cold iron bullet? Iris is not one of the most trusted sources when it comes to supernatural things."
"Why would she lie?"
"Maybe she wouldn't. But she does seem to keep some shady company lately. Or perhaps you've forgotten who brought her to the party last night."
"She would never side with Dorian."
"And yet every time we argue she always seems to take his side."
"He's just using her to get to us."
"Well, I'd say it's working."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You hesitated last night. If you'd kept going with the spell we would now have control of the hounds. But as soon as she showed up, you forgot about the mission. And now we all have to pay for it when the Council gets here. So I'd say Dorian's plan worked out just fine."
Aeryn walked in before Connor could reply. "I invited the sheriff to come to the house under the pretext that there's something in the forest around the mansion but he said he'll send someone else. He's busy with a crime scene."
Lorelai got up and went to the window. "This whole town is about to become a crime scene when the Council gets here."
Connor noticed something in his grandmother's eyes that worried him. "What happened?"
"There was a robbery at the Youngs' early this morning."
"Marion's house?"
"Sarah Young was killed."
Connor's first thought was Iris. Sarah had been like a mother to her and Iris would be devastated when she heard the news. He had to call her. His phone rang just as he was reaching into his pocket. He closed his eyes and sighed when he saw the caller id. For a moment he thought about rejecting the call.
"What do you want, Dorian?"
Lorelai and Aeryn turned their eyes on him as soon as they heard the name. A few seconds later Connor hung up and dropped his phone on the floor.
"What is it?" Aeryn asked, impatient.
"Vincent's alive and he has Iris."
Iris watched Vincent pace up and down. Every now and then he stopped to listen into the distance. She couldn't hear anything other than the wind blowing through the forest and whistling through the cracks in the metal walls of the warehouse, but she knew that she couldn't rely on her human hearing. Not in those circumstances.
Next to her, Marion was sobbing. She hadn't stopped crying ever since she'd heard the news about her mother's death. At first she writhed and yelled, but her screams were muffled by the tape over her mouth and she was soon out of breath. Now she just sat there and cried.
"Why do you hate Dorian so much?" Iris asked.
Vincent stopped pacing and looked at her. "I don't hate him. I just want to kill him."
"Why?"
He closed his eyes and frowned before he answered. "Because it's the only way to save my family." Iris didn't know what to say and after a while Vincent spoke again. "I assume the Guardians already told you all about our kind and how we get here. I was a street soldier back in Aldera. We kept order in the markets around the palace, hunted down thieves and ensured that taxes were paid in time. One day, a thief tried to steal some silk from one of the street vendors. I stopped him and the owner gave me a little medallion as a sign of gratitude. At first I refused, since we're not allowed to take gifts from vendors, but it was a trinket made of amber so I didn't think much of it. That night, the court soldiers broke into my home and arrested me and my family for being in possession of an object stolen from the Council Treasury.
"My wife was a witch. She did small spells, mostly for good fortune and fast healing, but it was enough for them to think she was plotting something against the Council. They took her and my five-year-old son and locked them up. They would be stripped of their powers after I was exiled here. The day I was supposed to cross over, someone came to me and offered me a chance to save them. I would have done anything. So they gave me this tattoo, and sent me here to find a certain Dorian Reed and kill him. I wasn't supposed to resurrect the hounds until I was sure of his location. If I succeeded, my family would be free. If I didn't, they would be executed. It took me six years but I've finally caught up with him."
"Who are these people?"
"I don't know. And I don't care. All I care about is saving my family." He turned his head towards the front entrance. "And it looks like I'm about to."
A loud bang exploded in the warehouse and the massive metal door collapsed to the ground. Two dark figures emerged as clouds of dust rose up from the floor and dissipated into the empty space around them. From the darkness inside the warehouse the figures looked like shadows against the daylight in the background. As they advanced, Iris recognized Dorian and Raven.
"Well, here I am, Vincent. Ready to kill you again. And this time I'm going to make sure you stay dead."
"Oh, I don't think so."
"Why? You're going to sic your fire puppies on me?"
Vincent pointed at Iris. "Do you think I'd be so stupid to bring the hounds with her here?"
Dorian looked at her and smiled. "Hello, love. We always seem to meet in the most peculiar of circumstances, don't we? Must be fate." He turned to Vincent. "So, if not the dogs then who?"
"Oh, just some old friends of yours."
Vincent spread his arms. The dark corners of the warehouse began to rattle and all of a sudden they were surrounded by a sea of men. Probably Fae, Iris thought. She looked at them better and shuddered at their appearance. Their eyes were dark, with purples veins all around them, and they had sharp… were those fangs peaking from under their lips? Vampires? Marion had stopped sobbing. She was staring at the crowd, her eyes wide, filled with horror.
Dorian and Raven watched them gather around. Dorian was still smiling, although for a second Iris noticed a glimpse of shock in his eyes.
"Max, what an unpleasant surprise," he said. One of the vampires took a step forward. The others hissed. They were barely holding back. "Tell me you're not still mad about that whole moonstone business. Or are you here for a second round of ass whopping?"
Each member of the crowd took out a weapon. Swords, knives, axes, chains, all of different shapes and sizes, all meant to cause the maximum amount of damage in the hands of their angry owners. Suddenly, Iris and Marion were surrounded by a ring of metal, glinting under the weak sunlight coming through the empty doorframe of the warehouse. Dorian and Raven each took out a sword. One of the vampires threw Vincent the biggest knife Iris had ever seen.
"Well, go on," Dorian said. "Let's get it over with. I have a dinner date and I really don't want to be late."
Vincent gave the attack signal and then there was only noise. Screams of anger and pain, metal clashing, blades cutting into flesh, bodies falling to the ground. Everyone was moving so fast that Iris couldn't really distinguish the figures individually—they were all just a maelstrom of colored shadows.
She and Marion had to get out of there. She struggled with the ropes but it was pointless. They were too tightly wrapped against her wrists and the more she pulled the deeper they cut into her skin. A vampire came at her out of nowhere, probably attracted by the smell of the blood coming out of her wrists, and she screamed as she felt his cold hands grab her shoulders. She closed her eyes to block the horrid image of his fangs and prepared for the pain she expected to feel when they sank into her skin. But then she felt a breeze on her face and a whooshing sound and when she opened her eyes the vampire was lying on the ground in front of her, his head two feet away from his body. She struggled not to vomit and looked up. Raven winked and smiled, and then instantly turned around to block the blade of another vampire.
She looked down at the body in front of her. The bloody blade of a knife sparkled next to it. She began to throw her upper body sideways
to unbalance the chair. At first, nothing happened, but then the legs began to lift off the ground, two at a time, each time more and more, until finally the chair didn't return to its original position.
The contact with the floor electrocuted her shoulder and, even with all the mayhem around her, she could swear she'd heard a cracking noise. She laid there for a moment, struggling not to faint and waiting for the pain to allow her to breathe and move again. When that happened, she pushed herself forward, extending her fingers to reach the knife. Her wrists were still tied up to the chair arms and the little mobility she had was fading away as her arm was getting numb.
She grabbed the knife and began to slide its blade up and down the rope. When she finally managed to free her hands, her wrists were burning. She cut the rope around her ankles. When she got up, a flash of pain shot through her arm and shoulder. It was broken alright.
She stumbled towards Marion. The girl had fainted and her chin was resting on her chest. Iris cut off the ropes around her friend's wrists and ankles and ripped off the tape on her mouth. She tried to be as gentle as possible but it must have still hurt because Marion opened her eyes and screamed, then fainted again. Iris was grateful for the horrifying noises around her. They covered her friend's scream and kept the attention away from them.
She laid Marion on the ground, then slipped her hands under the girl's arms and tried to drag her away from the battlefield. Her shoulder protested and she fell next to Marion. She crawled backwards, pulling Marion with one hand but that too only lasted for a moment. She was out of breath, so she stopped to rest and fight the lightheadedness. That's when she saw Dorian, laying on the ground. He was covered in blood. Vincent was on top of him, holding a sword to his chest. Iris gasped. Again, his life was in danger because of her. Vincent laughed and raised his sword with both hands. Just as he was about to lower it into Dorian's chest, a loud, familiar voice bounced off the metal walls of the warehouse.
"Hope we're not late for the party."
Everyone stopped and turned their eyes towards the front entrance. Two lean figures were standing in the doorframe. Iris had never been so glad to see the Elwood siblings.
The Fountain of Truth (Tales of the Dark Fae Book 1) Page 20