The Mad Queen (The Fae War Chronicles Book 5)

by Jocelyn Fox

  Chapter 19

  “This is far enough away, I think,” said Molly.

  Ross drew Vivian’s car to a slow halt on the side of the road, tires crunching in the gravel. “I don’t like the fact that you’re going alone.” But she put the car into park and turned off the headlights, leaving it running so they would at least have the air conditioning to combat the heat of the Louisiana summer. Even at night, they’d be sweating within minutes.

  Molly turned catlike eyes on Ross from the passenger seat. “You could come with me, if you want, and see how Corsica reacts.”

  “I think that is an ill-advised suggestion,” said Niall from the back seat. The tall Seelie Knight looked ridiculously incongruous in the cramped space, his graceful frame contorted to fit in the sedan’s seat. He’d even obediently put on his seatbelt. Ross had noticed that he didn’t have the same reaction to being in a car as Merrick had when she’d first rescued them. Niall had explained that as one of Titania’s Three, he had more protection against the effects of iron and the other influences in the mortal world. And he’d pulled up his sleeve to show her the runes inked on the inside of his forearms.

  “I know,” said Molly, raising her dark eyebrows. “I need to go alone.” She tapped the blade at her hip. “I’m more than capable of using this. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worrying,” protested Ross. She consciously relaxed her grip on the steering wheel. “I just think this is a really sketchy setup.”

  “Sketchy or not, it’s all we have to go on right now,” said Duke from the back seat.

  Ross stared out the windshield into the darkness. There weren’t any streetlights on this road, and the lights of the nearest house glowed like fireflies on the horizon. Trees studded the landscape, their branches printing lacy silhouettes on the night sky. The air pressed humidly against the windows of the car, fingers of thick swamp scent curling through the air conditioning vents.

  “Will you accept Corsica’s offer?” Niall asked Molly, his pale eyes gleaming in the shadows.

  “It depends on what exactly the offer is,” Molly said.

  “What I can’t figure out,” said Ross slowly, “is why Corsica broke the bone sorcerer out to begin with.”

  “I think you can figure that out,” replied Duke. She turned to look at him sharply and his teeth flashed white as he grinned. “C’mon. If you want someone to do something for you, like, say, showin’ you how to flip the switch on a spirit-stone to make it go boom, then you gotta show ‘em that you’re on their side. You gotta make ‘em trust you.”

  “And nearly kill Tyr in the process?” Ross shook her head. “If that’s how Corsica treats the people who trust her…”

  “We do not know the truth of what happened,” said Niall.

  Ross found herself gripping the steering wheel tightly again, the worn faux leather slick under her palms. “So we let Molly walk into what could be a trap, no way to signal us, no back-up.”

  “We are her back-up,” said Duke. “That’s why we came.”

  “And don’t worry, you’ll know it if I need you,” said Molly with a predatory grin. With that, she opened the car door, a wash of humid night air spilling into the cool interior. Molly slid out and shut the door behind her with a sound that seemed to Ross like the snap of a giant mousetrap.

  “Niall, you could probably move up front,” Duke offered good-naturedly. “Me, I’m fine back here. Travel-size, man. But you’re all folded up like an accordion.”

  “Accordion?” Niall repeated, a note of question in his voice. It wasn’t often that the Seelie Knight asked for clarification on mortal words. Ross wondered if that was just because he didn’t feel comfortable enough to let them see his lack of understanding.

  Duke chuckled and tried to explain the musical instrument, which prompted several further questions from Niall. Ross let their voices fade into the background and turned her attention back to the inky night enveloping the vehicle. Her first day of work at the new firehouse was tomorrow – or maybe today, she amended, glancing at the neon numbers of the dashboard clock. But just like the call from Duke had upended her life as she walked into the interview, these new developments with Corsica and the bone sorcerer consumed her thoughts on the night before her first day. Maybe it was better this way, she concluded. She didn’t have time to worry.

  “You think V is okay?” she said into the thick silence. Niall apparently had decided not to take Duke up on the offer to move to the front seat.

  “She’s got Jess with a Glock and Mayhem,” said Duke firmly. “She’s fine.”

  All the same, Ross slid her phone out of her pocket. Jess had picked her up a cheap flip-phone when he’d made the grocery run the other day, so she at least had a way to communicate. In a way, the simple phone was less aggravating than the constant beeping and buzzing of her smart phone, striving to notify her of every post and tweet and God knows what else. And if the flip phone survived the weird energy surrounding the Fae, or at least lasted longer than her other phone, she’d be willing to stick with simple. Sure, texting was a pain in the ass, but she hadn’t been fast on the touchscreen either. She didn’t have any new messages or voicemails.

  She glanced at the clock. It had already been fifteen minutes since Molly had melted into the shadows. They’d agreed that she had an hour. Ross shifted in the driver’s seat.

  “We still have forty five minutes before we can get restless,” drawled Duke from the back seat.

  Ross glanced behind her. Her fiancé sat with his head tipped back against the headrest, ubiquitous ball cap pulled low over his eyes.

  “What, you going to take a nap?” she asked with a hint of acid in her voice.

  He pushed up the cap with one knuckle and opened an eye, surveying her. “You lose the ability to relax while you’re waitin’ on a green light?”

  “Not everything relates to our time in the service,” Ross replied, her words toeing the border of an irritated snap. She took a deep breath.

  Duke slid back into his languid position. “There’s where you’re wrong, darlin’. Most everything does.”

  Ross swallowed the annoyed retort that her brain readily supplied. As much as she hated to admit it, she was on edge, and he was right. She wasn’t good at relaxing anymore. Maybe she’d never been good at it, just good enough to scrape by on deployment without driving herself nuts. She sighed and flexed her fingers, gazing out into the darkness and thinking about her first day at the firehouse. She walked through the day in her mind: introduction at morning quarters in the briefing room, getting issued her turnout gear and a locker, setting up her bunk and observing all the dynamics of her new team.

  She’d almost succeeded in reaching a state of semi-relaxation when something hurtled out of the darkness and struck the driver’s side of the car. The little sedan rocked on its axles. Ross felt the wheels beneath her almost leave the ground. Blood roared in her ears as her heartbeat kicked up a notch. She heard Duke’s cussing and the startled exclamation that left her own lips as if from a distance. As she leaned over the center console and popped the glove box, reaching in to curl her fingers around the familiar grip of her Beretta, the creature struck the car again, this time lifting the driver’s side enough that the wheels left the ground. For a sickening moment, Ross thought the car was going to tip, but Niall threw himself against the rear door and Vivian’s poor sedan crashed down again.

  “What is it?” she yelled, her voice booming in the interior of the car as she swung the pistol around to point out the driver’s side window. But she couldn’t see anything in the inky darkness. Her breath fogged the window, her heart hammering in her chest.

  “Garrelnost,” said Niall. His pale eyes flashed and before she or Duke could move he’d thrust open the back door and slid into the night, the silver hiss of a drawn blade echoing behind him.

  Duke swore and grabbed for the door handle.

  “You don’t have a weapon!” Ross protested. She scrabbled at her own door handle. The crea
ture’s blows had dented the door out of place in its frame. It was stuck.

  “Then give me the Beretta,” he snapped, holding out a hand.

  She added her own swear words, cursing expressively about stupid cars and stupider men, and magical creatures that just appeared out of nowhere on top of everything else. She kept her grip on the Beretta until Niall leapt in front of the car, fending off a huge, hulking shadow with his sword. She couldn’t see the creature clearly, the blade flashing silver in the moonlight.

  “Gun!” yelled Duke.

  Spitting a few more curses, she shoved the Beretta at him. He dove out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Ross kicked at the driver’s side door. It didn’t budge. She twisted and clambered through the space between the two front seats, sliding into the back seat. She knew both those doors worked. And then she realized that she was the one without a weapon now…but Vivian kept an old-fashioned tire iron in the trunk. She opened the rear door and stumbled into the thick night air, her ears instantly assaulted by the snarling of a very large, very angry beast. It sounded different than anything she’d ever heard, and the wrongness of it made her stomach curdle with nausea. Two gunshots cracked the calm of the night but the snarling continued unabated. What trap had Corsica set for them?

  Moving by feel rather than sight, hoping that the creature didn’t catch her before she got to her makeshift weapon, she popped the trunk and shoved her hand inside, questing fingers encountering several useless items – rain jacket, gym bag, two hardcover books – before they closed around the cool length of the tire iron. With a hiss of triumph, she grabbed the pleasingly heavy tool and slammed the trunk shut, hefting its weight in her hand.

  “Ross!”

  She heard Duke’s yell at the same time that a stench of foul hot air washed over her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she turned, staring into the malevolent red eyes of a huge wolf-creature. Time stopped as she noticed every gory detail about the creature: the black lips curled up from dark teeth, the mottled fur encrusted in patches with stains that could have been blood, the hulking body with its strangely hunched back and barrel chest, the short, powerful legs that ended in paws the size of her head, tipped with wicked black claws. Her heart thudded in her ears.

  The creature lunged and she leapt aside, swinging the tire iron like a baseball bat at the thing’s head. It connected with a satisfying crack and for some reason the smell of singed hair enveloped her….as though the tire iron had been red hot. She kept her grip on her makeshift weapon as the beast crashed into the back of Vivian’s car, an enraged and injured snarl escaping it. Keeping her eye on the wolf-creature, she only saw Duke in her peripheral vision, running around the side of the car with the Beretta held at the low ready. The creature shook its head as it recovered from Ross’s blow, its eyes glowing surreally in the shadows.

  “Get behind me,” Duke said, placing his body between her and the creature.

  For once, she didn’t protest, the breath squeezed from her chest by the sheer impossibility of the creature readying itself for another leap at them. Duke brought up the pistol fluidly, his aim steady, despite the fact that he was looking down the sights at a monster straight out of a nightmare. He squeezed off a pair of controlled shots. Ross saw both his shots hit the beast, one in the shoulder and one in the chest, and it shuddered but it didn’t stop prowling toward them. Duke took two measured steps backward, trying to keep a good stand-off distance as he sent another two bullets into the creature.

  “Can they even be killed?” Ross asked.

  “We’ve killed ‘em before, but in their world,” said Duke grimly.

  As the creature turned, snarling and crouching for another leap, Ross glimpsed an ugly weal on the side of its head, a bubbling burn that didn’t make any sense to her – had the thing already been wounded? That was exactly where she’d hit it with the tire iron…

  She looked down at the simple tool in her hand, her mind lighting up with the sudden flash of understanding just as the creature leapt at Duke. He brought up the Beretta and emptied the rest of the magazine into it but its claw caught him by the shoulder and slammed him into the ground. He stabbed it with his omnipresent knife as Ross shook off her shock. With a yell – half anger, half kamikaze – she threw herself onto the beast as it lowered its head toward Duke, wielding the tire iron like a sword, bringing it down square on the thing’s skull and feeling it jerk beneath her. The stench of burning flesh assaulted her nostrils. She brought the iron up and hit it again, and again, her vision and focus narrowing to just that motion, all the muscles in her chest and back and arms aching with the tension and impact. Something gave beneath the tire iron, but she didn’t stop. The creature fell onto its side, throwing her into the damp grass, its snarl dying into a gurgle and then silence.

  Ross coughed, sat up and realized that gore spattered her shirt. She swallowed down bile. She’d seen enough to know how not to throw up, but that didn’t mean it didn’t make her sick.

  “It’s dead all right,” said Duke after he stabbed his knife into the creature’s eye for good measure. He walked over to her and offered her his hand. She took it, their palms both slippery with blood.

  “Did it get you?” she asked, her chest aching sharply as she saw the wet stain on his shoulder.

  “Mostly caught shirt,” he said. “Scratches, I bet. There were two of ‘em.”

  “Niall?” Her legs felt rubbery but she forced herself to stand.

  “He finished that first one off just as I saw the second one coming.”

  “Well done,” said Niall, holding a gore-stained blade as he walked around the car. The moonlight made his pale hair white. His smile looked feral to Ross. “The Bearer killed a garrelnost with a horseshoe, but it injured her very badly in return.” He tilted his head, eyes glittering. “It is not a tale that many know, but I think now you hold the title of mortal who has killed a garrelnost most handily.”

  “I would have been fine not earning that title,” said Ross, her voice gravelly. She realized she still held the tire iron in a death grip, her knuckles aching from the force of it. “Where did they come from?”

  “Most likely the bone sorcerer,” replied Niall.

  “Where’s your spare magazine?” asked Duke.

  “In the glove box,” she told him.

  He ejected the empty magazine from the pistol as he walked toward the car.

  “It is good to keep your weapon close, but you should at least clean it,” said Niall, his voice not unkind.

  “Oh. You mean…this.” She held up the tire iron and inspected the hair and flesh encrusting its surface. After a few minutes of dedicated scrubbing in the long grass, most of the detritus came off. Somehow, she felt a little better hefting the clean tool. Niall gave her a nod.

  “You think Molly’s all right?” Duke said as he returned to their little group, snapping the new magazine into the butt of the Beretta.

  “Maybe he sent the hounds or whatever they are after us because she didn’t come alone,” Ross said. She felt vaguely proud of the fact that she was still capable of such logical thought, but a chill ran down her spine as her mind continued to churn out possibilities. “What other creatures does he have? Were these the only two?”

  “I highly doubt it,” said Niall, glancing at the hulking carcass, a hint of distaste flashing across his noble face. “And he can always construct more.”

  “Construct more?” Ross repeated.

  “Guessin’ he was one of the ones in the lab thinkin’ up all the fuglies we fought in your world,” drawled Duke to Niall.

  “I believe he worked for Malravenar as a matter of convenience,” said Niall.

  Ross felt exposed and vulnerable under the star-spangled dome of the night sky, even with the tire iron still held in one hand. “Glad you guys can discuss everything so casually, considering we were almost just ripped apart by mutant wolves.”

  “I thought we handled them quite well,” said Niall calmly.

&
nbsp; “You put that one out pretty neatly,” agreed Duke, his grin flashing white in the darkness.

  Ross felt the peculiar nervy exhaustion nagging at her, the type of strange tiredness that always came after the adrenaline of an intense situation drained away. “Nothing neat about it,” she retorted, the remembered feel of the creature’s skull giving way beneath her blows vibrating through her body. She wiped her free hand on her thigh as though she could scrub away the memory. Another chilling thought struck her. “If these aren’t his only creatures, you think that he’ll send ones to the house?”

  “Perhaps,” said Niall, still unruffled.

  “And you aren’t worried about that?” Ross heard the frayed edges of her own voice. “Vivian’s there, alone with two wounded men and a dog.”

  “And Jess,” pointed out Duke. “He won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Ross couldn’t suppress the fizzing bubbles of worry that swirled around her spine and filled her stomach, drifting up into the back of her head. “This was a bad idea. I don’t know why we split up like this.”

  “We discussed it,” said Duke. “Everyone agreed.”

  “I’m going back to the house,” Ross said, yanking open the back door and slithering into the front seat, tossing the tire iron onto the passenger seat.

  “Hey, just wait a minute,” protested Duke. “Don’t go harin’ off all half-cocked, think it through. What’re we supposed to do, walk back?”

  “You can get in or you can walk,” said Ross, pulling her seatbelt across her chest. “I’ll double back to pick everyone up once I’ve checked on V.”

  “She is not a helpless damsel,” pointed out Niall.

  “She’s my friend,” growled Ross, “and she doesn’t have any experience fighting for her life.”

  She heard Duke and Niall conferencing in low voices. Fine. Let them talk. She turned the key in the ignition. The engine whined but didn’t turn over. She didn’t know whether she should curse or pray so she did both beneath her breath as she waited a minute and then tried again. Still that grinding, hair-raising sound and no engine ignition.