From the ground, I heard the iron gate slam down again. I scrambled out of the way as the wooden door banged shut. Someone in a cloak was bolting it.
On the other side of the door, the dogs howled into the night. They wouldn’t be able to get to us. Magic protected these walls. At least, I was pretty sure it did.
I shivered.
As my savior secured the door, I slowly rose, trying to calm my breathing. When she whirled to face me, I took in the woman’s elegant face, hints of chestnut hair tucked under her hood. She held up a lantern that cast a warm light over her brown skin.
Her brown eyes glinted as she stared at me. “You’re a fae,” she said evenly. “You glamoured yourself.”
“You really waited till the last minute there.” I let my sentinel glamour fade, my face returning to its normal hue, bright red hair shining through the gloom. “Last time I was here, the warden was a bit faster.”
“Even if you knew our signal, I couldn’t be sure that you weren’t a real sentinel until I saw the panic written all over your body. Sentinels don’t panic.” She shoved the lantern closer into my face. “What do you mean, the last time you were here?”
“I tried to get information from you. I was told I needed to bring some in return. So I have information for you.” I glanced around the Tower’s stony interior. Why didn’t the Order extend some of this security to the other Londoners while the hounds devoured them every night? “It must be nice to have all these walls here to protect you.”
“How did you learn our signal, fae?”
“My parents were members of the Order of the Watchers. They tried to recruit me and train me before they died.”
The Watcher held my gaze for a long time, then nodded curtly. “Where were they stationed?”
“New York City. They were killed in one of the random dragon attacks, long before the Great Nightmare even began. Look, I’m not here to give you my life history. Like I said, I’m here for an exchange of information.”
“The Order once depended on fae like you. Now we have none left in our ranks here in London.” She cocked her head. “What’s your name? Your full name?”
“Ruby Hudole.”
She frowned, still gripping the lantern aloft. “An unusual name.”
“Not for a fae.” Silence fell as a chilly wind rippled over us, and her gaze continued to bore into me. I started to lose patience. “Look, I have some information about Kratos and another angel. I’m hoping in return, you can tell me what you know about the dragons.”
“Why dragons?”
“I’m looking for my sister. A dragon shifter abducted her.”
She tapped a fingertip on her lower lip as she studied me, and I felt like I’d shown up for an oral exam I hadn’t prepared for.
“Wait here.” She pivoted, heading for one of the gatehouse doors.
As the door slammed behind her, I hugged myself, surveying the Tower. I stood between two sets of walls, medieval structures looming over me on either side. Droplets of rain fell on my skin, and I glanced up at the gatehouse tower. Her lantern light burned warmly in there.
What is she doing?
After several minutes in the icy rain, I huddled by one of the Tower walls, though it didn’t offer much protection.
At last, the human woman returned, her lantern burning warmly in the gloom. She peered at me inquisitively. “Ruby Hudole.”
“Yes?”
“Your parents were Orla and Rayne Hudole?”
So that’s what she’d been doing in the gatehouse. Checking up on me. “That’s them.”
“Sister named Hazel.”
My throat tightened at the sound of her name. “She’s the one who is missing. And… do I get to know your name?”
“Yasmin,” she said abruptly, then glanced at the gatehouse. “The new shift will be arriving soon. We can leave. I need to show you something. Chop chop.” With that, she turned on her heels, marching over the rain-slicked cobblestones. Wordlessly, she led me past the Traitor’s Gate as I hurried to keep up, teeth chattering. I looked up at the narrow windows, finding candlelight flickering in a few of them.
“It’s practically empty here,” I pointed out. “Maybe you could have let in a few more humans instead of leaving them to the killer dogs?”
She shot me a sharp look. “We moved in here after the Great Nightmare began, and some of our sorcerers helped to shield the Tower with magic. We tried allowing in more people. The experiment didn’t last long.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been out there. You’ve seen how untrained people behave when they’re scared and desperate. You’ve seen the gangs, I’m sure—the violence, the desperation. We couldn’t control them. The strong stole food from the weak, the men tried to overpower the women. We are trying to achieve something here, and they were frustrating our objectives.”
I thought of Dickhead and his gang. I mean… she had a point. “But what about families with kids?”
“We let some families and young children remain in the White Tower, but we couldn’t accommodate them all. We had to secure our borders. If we’re going to figure out who’s attacking us, we need to survive first. There are families out there, and innocent people. But we have to help them in other ways—long-term ways.”
Okay, so maybe this was their version of the hidden garden, or the traps around my rookery. Just—a much more elaborate hidden garden, with thousand-year-old fortress walls and dungeons.
“What are your objectives, exactly?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she led me up to another tower. She yanked open an enormous door with a creak, and I followed her into a narrow spiral stairwell. Here, candlelight wavered over the rough-hewn walls. Our footfalls echoed off the stone ceiling.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“If you’re going to pass on this intelligence you claim to have, we’re going to a secure place. As long as we remain outside, the sentinels can watch us. They can listen.”
She led me through a narrow, arched hallway until at last we reached a door. Yasmin pulled a skeleton key from her pocket, clicking open the lock and opening the door to reveal a cozy, white-walled bedroom. A portrait of a knight hung above a fireplace, and papers lay strewn over an old wooden desk. Just in front of the fireplace, two wooden chairs flanked a table, set with wine and a few glasses.
Yasmin gestured to one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”
I did as instructed, and she pulled up a chair directly across from me, lowering the hood of her cloak. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the flames warmed my body. Gods-damn, it felt nice in here. The angels and shifters had left the whole Tower intact, and I knew that magic protected its walls. A girl could get used to this place.
I studied the rest of the room, trying to learn what I could. A bare dresser stood against one wall, with a door to its left. To the right of the dresser hung a tapestry—a depiction of a forest scene.
An examination of the bed gave me an idea of where the second door led: a raggedy stuffed monkey lay on the covers beside a slightly tattered copy of Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes. Yasmin had a child nearby—a young one.
“I’m surprised you let me into this secure enclave,” I said.
“Some of the Watchers feel differently, but I value the fae above all other operatives. You were rare before the Great Nightmare began, and now we don’t have a single fae among us. Not here. Not in the Tower.” She reached for the bottle of wine, popping out the cork. Without asking, she poured me a full glass.
No one in the hellscape of the Great Nightmare would share their wine unless they really wanted something.
“But there’s something I need to tell you,” she began. “If the information you want is about the location of the dragons, I can’t help you. Dragon shifters are notoriously secretive. We have Watchers and spies all over Europe searching for angels, but none of them know where to find the dragon shifters. Their lairs are dripping with gold. You can imagine why they’d
be secretive. I can only tell you we haven’t seen any dragons in the south of England since the Nightmare began. You should tell us what you know anyway. We’re on the same side.”
My chest welled with disappointment, but I’d been expecting this possibility. “I know the dragons must have a lair or a fortress or someplace they take their women. That’s what I remember my parents saying. Dragon shifters hoard gold and beautiful women in their lairs. You don’t have any way to find where these lairs are?”
Sympathy shone in her eyes. “There may be a way I can help you find your sister. But before we get into that, I need to know exactly what you’ve come here to tell me.”
Some of the tension in my chest unclenched a little. I knew the Order would have something up their sleeves.
I took a sip of the wine, letting it roll over my tongue. The wine had been open just a little too long—she’d been saving this, even when it started to taste too acidic. And yet—gods—I didn’t really want to leave here.
“The last time I was here, I tried to tell another Watcher about Kratos. The Order already knew about him.”
She nodded. “This is our objective—learn about our enemy. What makes them tick, why they’re here, what they want to protect. And when we’ve learned their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, only then can we fight them.”
“That’s where I can help.”
She leaned forward. “Oh?”
I wasn’t giving up my leverage so easily. “Before I get to that, tell me more about how you can help me.”
“We might have a way to get a message to your sister through magical means, if it was important. We just won’t be able to get any information back from her.” She tapped her fingertip on the wineglass.
It wasn’t much, but hope bloomed in my chest anyway.
“What is it that you’ve learned?” she asked.
I leaned forward. “I’ve learned one of their vulnerabilities. Kratos was talking to his hounds like they were people, like he loved them. Perhaps we could use them to set a trap for him.” I took another sip of the wine. “Have you ever heard of an angel named Adonis?”
Her brow furrowed. “Adonis?”
“I don’t know who he is, but I have a theory. An angel with midnight wings and gray-blue eyes. He hates the fae. I watched him kill two redcaps in front of me. He seemed…” seductive “… like the name would suit him.”
“Ah. We’ve seen him, but didn’t know his name.”
I frowned. “How many angels do you know of?”
“Here’s the strange thing. We only knew of one by name—Kratos. We’ve seen him around London, and one other from afar. Our Watchers have reported few angel castles in Europe.”
“There were none in New York either after Kratos left. Just the demons that took over the city.” I bit my lip. “So there aren’t many of these apocalyptic angels as far as you know?”
“London seems to be a headquarters of sorts, from which just a few angels wreak their chaos all over the world. No one is safe. The dragon shifters did some of the work, yes, but the angels did more to create this hell. Shockingly, it seemed to only take a few of them. Only a few to spread disease, famine, to destroy crops across the Earth. We have reason to believe they cause plagues, widespread death and destruction in every corner of the globe. We need to stop them before there’s nothing left.” Passion glinted in her eyes. “You understand, don’t you?”
My fists tightened, and the gears were already ticking in my mind. “I understand.”
“You’re already providing us with information we didn’t have before. But what did you mean about trapping Kratos?”
“I’d considered the possibility that you wouldn’t know where to find the dragon shifters. So I have another plan. I want to spy on the angels. I think I know how I can get into their world, and when I do, I want to learn everything I can: the angels’ powers, what they want, what they know about the dragon shifters… I can feed information to you, and you can tell me what you know about their weaknesses to keep me alive.”
Her eyes glinted. “No one has been able to get close to them. What makes you think you’d be able to do any better?”
“I’ve met Kratos three times now. The first time I met him, it was before the Great Nightmare began. I was dancing at a burlesque club in New York, glamoured like a succubus. It was one of my acts.” Gods, it seemed a lifetime away. Another Ruby, one who didn’t exist anymore. I swirled the wine in my glass, watching the light spark off its surface. “Kratos seemed fascinated by me. He liked the idea of a succubus dressed as an angel. Must be a weird angel kink.”
I could practically see the gears working in her mind. “I see. And the next time?”
“It was the day the Great Nightmare began, the day the dragons took my sister. They killed…” I let the sentence die on my tongue as grief slammed into me. I managed to master my emotions again. “That’s not important. The important part is, Kratos was there. He saw me again, glamoured as a succubus. In the middle of all this blood and death, the scorching bodies…” I practically choked on the words. “He invited me to come to London with him. My world had just been ripped to pieces.” The raw memory still clawed at my chest. “I didn’t know I’d need him. I didn’t know he’d be my only link to Hazel.”
I let out a long breath. “I saw him one more time, but he didn’t recognize me. I was in my fae form. His hounds came after me, and Kratos just let me go.”
“And when you met Adonis, did you appear as a fae or a succubus?”
“Succubus again. They’ve both met me as a succubus. If I play my cards right—if I gain just enough of their trust—I could buy myself an invitation into the world of the angels. Then I could learn what I need about the dragon shifters. And the angels in general, of course.” Maybe I could even find a way to destroy these angels of death before they slaughtered the rest of the world, but I didn’t want to sound like a lunatic by suggesting something so bold.
“And you’d be willing to give us information? Right now, knowledge is our only weapon against these angels. There are those who want to fight the Hunter with armies. In fact, the gods are raising up armies of humans and demons together. But we won’t defeat them fighting blindly. We have to understand the magic that binds them, what can truly destroy them. This isn’t just about you, or me, or Hazel. We’re fighting for the very survival of humanity right now.” She blinked. “And for the fae, as well.”
“If I’m going to help you, I need everything you know about the angels. I’ll need to know what weapons I can use, and what to do if one of them corners me. I’ve seen the angels slaughter creatures with a flick of their wrists. I don’t want to be one of their victims.”
She paled for a moment, then leaned back in her chair, her gaze never leaving my face. “Of course. We’ve never targeted angels before, but already the information you’ve given us is invaluable. Until you told me about Kratos’s hounds, we didn’t know if angels were capable of affection at all. We can use that now.”
Truthfully, the thought of spending more time around those angels turned my stomach in knots. These weren’t the glorious, ethereal angels I’d imagined as a child. These were gods of death, who apparently held a particular animosity toward the fae. And worse—since Eimmal was coming up, I risked exposure if the real me came out.
Still, it was like Yasmin had said. This was bigger than her, or me, or Hazel.
This was a fight for the very survival of our species.
Chapter 10
Yasmin rose abruptly, heading for one of the wooden doors in the wall. “Follow me. One, two, three. Let’s go.”
I was beginning to get the impression that Yasmin didn’t spend a lot of time talking to adults and had forgotten the basics of normal human communication. Still, I stood and followed her into another shadowy hall—this one narrow and unlit. I ran my fingers along the damp walls to steady myself in the darkness, my heart hammering.
Here, the Tower’s shadows crept over me.
&n
bsp; At last, a door creaked open and a chink of moonlight streamed through. Yasmin’s silhouette moved into a silvery room. Old, warped window panes lined the ceiling and walls. It seemed to be a small greenhouse of sorts—I’d never imagined something like this existing here in the Tower.
I breathed in the glorious aroma of soil and plants, the air heavy with the scent of foxglove, sage, lavender, and marjoram.
I traced my fingertips over a flowering plant with pink blossoms, the damp petals transfixing me. “This place is beautiful,” I breathed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything with flowers.”
“That plant is turmeric. It treats asthma.”
I glanced at another plant. In the faint light, I could just read the hand-scrawled label. Feverfew. “So you’ve got your own elaborate medicine cabinet in here.”
She nodded. “The gods give us what we need.”
I crossed my arms. This idea that the gods provided didn’t really gel with my recent life experiences—experiences that included starving and watching people die of infected wounds. “I was always under the impression the gods were just batshit.”
Yasmin was gently, lovingly pruning a plant. “And what do you know about the gods?”
I tried to remember what my parents had taught me. “The seven earthly gods were once archangels. When some of them passed on the Angelic language to humans, the lesser angels decided to punish them. The seven were cast to the Earth, and with them, their angels fell, turning into demons—valkyries and hellhounds and whatever else. They hate it here, hate being trapped and tormented on Earth. My people—the fae—were different. Angels who actually wanted to be here. I like the feel of having an earthly body, dancing, eating the food… Earth isn’t hell to the fae. Or at least, it wasn’t.”
A sudden sense of loss gripped me. I hadn’t danced at all since the last time I’d seen Hazel.
Yasmin eyed me from behind a flowering plant. “Good. You know your history. And you’re right, the seven gods will not help us. But you don’t know the whole history. I speak of different gods.”
Covert Fae: A Demons of Fire and Night Novel (A Spy Among the Fallen) Page 6