“Guys, that’s not an option.” I told them what Rook had explained to me. “The king is here, and he’s the only one with the Macon tether coordinates and the magic to make it work.”
They both stared at me, dumbfounded.
“Are you saying the only way home is through the rift?” Enzo grasped the situation first.
Or maybe Isaac’s thoughts had already whirled in another direction. “We go through the rift, and we end up in Butler. The pack could hide you until we figure out our next move.”
“As much as I want to see everyone, I can’t endanger the pack. If they bring a message from me to Thierry, she’ll know how we got home. She’ll know I’m in the area, and it won’t take long to track me down once she sets her mind to it.”
With the Black Dog as her father, a man formed from an actual hound, I had no doubt she had inherited his tracking skills. Not to mention her marshal training and resources. All that assumed she hadn’t been charged for her part in aiding in my escape. For all I knew, she was warming the cell next to mine, waiting on me to return so she had company. Partners in crime and all that.
“Let’s get moving.” As much as we needed to nail down a plan, it was too dangerous hashing out the details so close to the fortress. “We’ll figure it out along the way.”
Locating the precipice was easier the second time around. Magical interference muddled my nose, but I had a decent memory for landmarks, another perk of having a wolf’s drive to familiarize itself with each tree and stone in its territory. We took a moment to admire the precipice and the checkerboard layout where each season met to form a single point where you could stand on—or maybe in?—each season Faerie had to offer. It was a touristy moment, one I felt guilty for enjoying. Now that we had arrived, we had to chart our course. We might as well do it here where we had easy access to all the seasons.
I was lucky I had supernatural senses to alert me to the fact we had guests. Neither Isaac nor Enzo heard the rustle of leaves as our visitors closed in around us.
“Show yourselves,” I shouted, startling both men and causing a hush to fall.
A tall, slender woman who resembled Rilla enough to be her sister strode toward us with a serene expression masking the spike of aggression in her scent. I recognized Alyona as the third and final of the prince’s kidnappers.
“You seem to have lost your way,” she spoke in a quiet soprano. “Red Maple Hall lies in that direction. I believe that is where you came from and where you were meant to stay.”
Red Maple Hall? Boy, these fae sure did love naming their fortresses. Hands clasped at her navel, Alyona acted as though we were naughty children who had escaped our nanny and needed gentle correction for our bad behavior.
“I was hoping to see more of Faerie than four walls spiked with silver bars.” I kept my tone just as breezy. “Do you have any suggestions for sights we might want to take in before leaving?”
“Leaving?” She tittered. “Dear, you aren’t going anywhere. You have witnessed the treaty between my cousin and the pretender king. You can’t be allowed to carry that information to the mortals. Rilla does enjoy her scheming, and she is family. I’m afraid I can’t let you pass.”
A flash of lightning brightened the darkening sky. Alyona ignored the outburst, but it made me curious.
“Speaking of your family, how is Tiberius?” I made a point of studying the cloudless night. “I didn’t see him during my stay at Red Maple.”
“The prince is none of your concern,” she answered primly. A snap of her fingers summoned more golden-complexioned fae from the woods. “Return them to my cousin with my best.”
I counted four females and three males, all armed with glaives similar to Tanet’s. They also carried heavy shields. The odds were not stacked in our favor. So soon after my last shift, I couldn’t summon the wolf to save my life. Isaac might be in slightly better shape, but our best bet would be any gadgets he had secured on his person after being reunited with his pack. Enzo had admitted to being magically diminished, so I didn’t know what sort of help to expect on that front either.
Before the first guard reached him, Isaac offered his hands for binding. The look he shot over his shoulder told me he had adopted my earlier gambit and had chosen to play the role of the submissive. I put the same trust in him that he had shown me when I chose to leave with Rook and offered my wrists too. Enzo didn’t bat an eyelash. He let himself be trussed up as well and then joined us.
Half of Alyona’s guard remained with her, which convinced me the unit was the only one in the area. I wasn’t clear on who her family was status-wise, except that Tiberius was a prince, but I’d bet five bucks she kept a small, personal detail with her at all times when cut off from the rest of her brood. Why position someone of her rank out here in what was essentially neutral territory unless they had something—or someone—to hide?
Two females and one male parted from the rest. The male shoved Enzo stumbling forward, and Isaac and I fell into line behind him. Isaac waited until we were out of sight of Alyona and her guards to jostle me. I turned as he faked a twisted ankle and hit the ground on his side. The man stomped over to him, hooked a hand under his armpit, and hauled him upright. He screamed bloody murder on contact with Isaac’s bare skin. He tried letting go, but he was stuck. The closest comparison I could think of was this must be what it looked like when someone grabbed a live wire. But how was Isaac…?
Careful not to touch them, I eased two steps to the left and noticed the emerald runes dancing faintly over his left forearm, almost hidden by the angle of his body. I had a second to process he was pulling on the dregs of Thierry’s magic before the man screeched a panicked note that made my ears pop. He was a siren, after all. Their primary defense was in their magic-imbued voices. That they carried weapons here but had gone to Earth empty-handed told me they weren’t as high on the food chain in Faerie as they might like to think.
The women, who had hesitated to interfere, either out of confusion over what they were seeing or from caution about how to safely intervene, paled at the shrill note and raised their voices to match his. My knees hit the ground with no conscious choice on my part. The wolf tipped back her head and howled in misery at the agonizing pitch battering her tender ears. Enzo staggered to me and crumpled, his weaker human hearing sparing him from the worst of the assault.
He bent his head to mine. “…get ugly…”
I shook my head that I didn’t understand, and then my shoulder smashed into the loamy soil. I had lost all equilibrium and toppled sideways. Enzo used a handful of white, granulated powder I suspected to be salt and drew a circle around us. He sat down, winded, and pushed power into the grains until a protective bubble domed over our heads. The silence within the construct was deafening, and even his whisper made my back teeth ache.
“You might not want to see this part,” he was saying, gaze riveted on Isaac.
Unable to resist such temptation, I craned my neck to see what he meant. The siren locked in battle with Isaac shivered from head to toe, and then his skin tore in half like two people had been holding each of his hands and yanked the flesh right off him. The charred husk fluttered on the breeze. What remained was muscle and bone, and still its death cries echoed. The quiet after was almost worse. The women, unsure what had happened, took a cautious step back and angled their glaives at Isaac.
“That’s what Thierry’s magic does?” I squeaked. “She skins people alive?”
“And devours their souls,” Enzo confirmed. “I heard when she peels people, she wears their skins after.”
Bile rose up the back of my throat, but it all fit. Lord have mercy, it all fit. No wonder she gave my wolf the heebie-jeebies. There were apex predators, and then there was Thierry Thackeray. And we had released her rival from her father’s house. Maybe if Thierry got tossed into lockup for aiding and abetting it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all…
Sound came through the bubble muffled, but I heard the women ordering I
saac to roll onto his stomach and thrust his hands in front of him so they could keep an eye on his deadly digits.
“What do we do now?” I sat upright and almost wobbled right out of the circle. “They’ll kill him.”
“They won’t get the chance.” Enzo’s voice came out strained, and the bubble thinned as he reached through the filmy surface and flung something at the sirens’ feet. “Here we go.”
“What was that?” The small devices had the look of metallic grapes, so they were definitely of Isaac’s manufacture. “Enzo—”
He wasn’t listening. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and the dome turned opaque as he labored to thicken the walls. A high whine prompted me to stick my fingers in my ears, and as soon as I had them stopped, the sirens developed nosebleeds and fainted on the spot. I held my position until Enzo urged my hands down, and then we waited for Isaac to roll to his feet. For a long time, he stood there looking at the remains of the siren he had skinned.
“You two planned this,” I realized. “I’m impressed.”
“What did you think we were doing while you were off gallivanting with the king?” Enzo shuddered as the circle burst around us and sound came rushing in. “I had to keep Isaac sane somehow. He was too wound up for conversation, so we ran through worst-case scenarios. He created those spheres based on his experience with his siren aspect. They emit a sound so high most creatures can’t hear it, but the noise disables them.”
Isaac must have reserved them earlier because incapacitating Rilla still left us with the king, a much larger threat. This, however, had proven an ideal circumstance to test his weapon. Considering what I had planned for us, I hoped he had more of them, or that the ones he had already deployed could be reused.
“I’m going to check on him.” I stood and wobbled over to Isaac. “Hey.”
“I couldn’t stop.” He stared at his smudged left hand. “I thought I could zap him as a distraction while Enzo got you inside the circle, but Thierry’s magic latched on to him and wouldn’t let go.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”
There was no polite way to ask if this was his first kill, or if this was the first in a long time. Death doesn’t get easier, but you get used to the feeling. The months I had spent with the pack protecting the rift had hammered out all but a twinge of sympathy for the charred remains. Thankfully, I wasn’t so jaded that I couldn’t respect he might experience the full range of emotions, the doubt and regret and pity, I had ceased allowing myself to feel in the name of self-preservation.
I sidled up to him and leaned my head against his shoulder. “You saved us.” I wrapped my arms around his waist. “I’m sorry it cost you so much, but I’m not sorry you did it. The guard would have marched us back to the Red Maple, and Tanet would have locked us in the dungeon under heavy guard. We wouldn’t have escaped again. There’s no telling what they had planned for all of us. You spared us from ever having to find out.”
His stiff posture relaxed a fraction, and he linked his arms around me. “This won’t be the last time,” he murmured. “Not if Rilla and the king have their way. Soon we’ll all have blood on our hands.”
Given the choice between killing or dying, I knew which I would pick. I had made that decision when my alphas stationed us on the edge of the rift as the first line of defense against Faerie. Still, I hated watching Isaac torment himself over the siren’s grisly end. And I hated that he was right. Even peaceful fae had power, and some were capable of horrific things. Mix that with humanity’s involvement, and soon the number of innocents in our world would plummet.
“What do you want to do with these two?” Enzo wedged himself between us. This time he needn’t have worried about Isaac and me acting frisky. He was too deep in his own head to try getting in my pants. “Do we want to bind and gag them or use them as hostages?”
“The stakes are too high. Alyona won’t bargain with us for their lives, and neither will Rilla.” Since they knew the contents of the packs better than I did, I asked, “Do we have rope?”
“I have electrical wire,” Isaac offered. “That ought to hold them.”
“I’ll sacrifice a T-shirt for gags,” Enzo added.
Being somewhat of an expert on hogtying fae, I took the supplies and trussed up the remaining sirens. Neither woke until I pried open their jaws to get the gag situated. With voices like theirs, we couldn’t risk their cries for help carrying.
“We need to find a town.” Enzo rubbed the back of his head. “Summer or Spring would be friendlier to us. A local tavern would be a good place to listen for gossip. We might be able to pay someone there to guide us to the rift. Thanks to the rumor mills, I’m sure everyone knows the general area if not the exact location.”
Isaac made no comment though he must have burned with curiosity about the villages, towns, cities and their myriad inhabitants.
“That makes for a good plan B.” I smiled when their head snapped toward me. “Plan A involves finishing what we started.”
“You think Tiberius is being kept here?” Isaac glanced around and nodded. “It’s the perfect cover, and the precipice is as close to neutral ground as exists in Faerie.”
“An outpost hidden near the precipice would explain how Rilla knew when and where to meet us once we reentered Autumn.” She had been waiting on the other side, ready to intercept. “Alyona had all night to tip her off after Leon led us to the Black Dog’s den for shelter.”
“Makes sense,” Enzo allowed. “We don’t have much time for you to hunt. The others will notice we’re missing soon if the king can’t keep them occupied, and there’s no way to tell how long the cords will hold these two.”
“Then we better get started.” I removed my pack and held it up in Isaac’s general direction. “I’m going in alone to canvas the area. I can get in faster and quieter on my own.”
“Load me up,” he said as he turned so I could reach the series of small hooks.
“You’re not going to argue?” Enzo appeared impressed with Isaac’s rationality.
“If I start now, I would never stop. She’s always going to make the tough calls, and I have to be willing to support her.” A hint of smile bent his lips. “This is who she is, man. Loving her means accepting she’s bound to give me gray hairs before I hit my thirties.”
Enzo slid a hand through his artfully mussed hair as if checking for grays. “Maybe it’s best we didn’t click, Dell.”
Isaac snarled under his breath, a hint of wolf still in his bearing, but I laughed, glad the witch could joke about what might have been had our lives taken different paths. He had done a great deal of good for the pack, and I wanted him as a friend. Taking romance out of the equation just might make that a possibility.
“Lord save me from fashion plates.” I shook my head. Theo, Isaac’s twin, was just as bad. Both of them spent too much on hair gel and clothes, in my opinion. By necessity, wargs tended to embrace messy hair and holey clothes. If we looked presentable, it was usually in spite of ourselves, not because any real effort had been made on our parts. “You guys get somewhere safe and hide until I come back for you.”
Enzo set out toward the east, keeping in mind I had to head north and that we had come from the south. Isaac stole a hard kiss that bruised my lips before turning me loose.
“Don’t die,” he ordered me.
“Don’t get caught,” I bossed him right back. “Stay safe.”
With a grunt, he set out after Enzo. I let them get a head start before veering north and urging the wolf to the forefront of my mind. Shifting might be out of the question, but she could ride along with me in this form as easily as I shadowed hers. The sharpening of my vision heralded her arrival. My hearing increased, though my ears remained tender. Her guidance placed my feet in the quiet spots. I didn’t crinkle a single leaf as I picked my way back to where Alyona had caught us. This time I kept low and hid in the deep shade, invisible. Nose tilted to the wind, I caught scent of the sirens and tracked them to a
thick oak with meaty limbs and golden foliage forever frozen in Autumn’s colors. Familiar fragrance notes hit my nose—sea foam and petrichor with the faintest hint of lilacs.
The four remaining guards stood over a rack hung with raw meat. The sight made my stomach growl—protein-rich snacks weren’t cutting it at this point—but I couldn’t risk indulging. With a put-upon sigh, the wolf refocused our attention, urging me to look up into the canopy. High overhead a massive circular platform made from woven grass and sticks tightened my stomach with dread. Sirens were part bird. I shouldn’t be surprised they nested, but this was not ideal. Climbing left me exposed and unable to defend myself. I would have to go back for the guys and hope we could pool our resources and come up with a plan.
Slinking through the forest, I retraced my steps then started tracking the direction Enzo had led Isaac. I found them hidden underneath a thick hedge that had overgrown a small, rocky outcropping. They climbed out once they spotted me, and I filled them in on the situation.
“Will the grape things work on them?” Isaac had gathered them, so they must still have some value.
“The bulk of the sonic transmitters,” he correctly me gently, “have been discharged. We have two left, and it took twice that many to take down half their number.”
“One of us could create a distraction,” Enzo suggested. “We could lure off one or two that way and disable them. That would leave us with two guards and Alyona.”
“The transmitters won’t hurt you.” Isaac passed over two spherical objects. “They’ll wreck our hearing, so try and get a good distance away first.”
“The noise didn’t bother you before—” His meaning hit me. “Oh. You took blood from one of the sirens, didn’t you?”
He showed me his hand where the nail hadn’t grown back yet. “I have to use the tools at my disposal.”
“The last time you were a siren ended in a splat.” Only Zed softening his landing and me forcing blood down his throat so he could borrow warg super-healing abilities had saved him. “Are you sure you want to try again?”
Wolf at the Door (Lorimar Pack) (Gemini Book 5) Page 13