Iron (The Warding Book 1)

by Robin L. Cole

  I clicked on the light and shone it around in quick jerks, trying to cover as much of the room as possible. More trash, droppings galore, and some hulking machines I couldn’t even begin to identify filled the large, high ceilinged room—but nothing moved, as far as the eye could see. I had to admit, when nothing leaped up at me from the dark, I let out a small sigh of relief. “Looks clear.”

  I heard him curse. It wasn’t exactly the answer either of us wanted. Hours and hours spent on a futile hunt pleased neither of us.

  “Hold on. Let me take a good look before you go yanking me back up.” I slowed my search and tried to make my sweeps methodical and even, leaving no inch untouched. I held my breath, carefully cataloging every little sound I heard: the creak of the rope keeping me aloft, the faint drip of water hitting cement, that eerie ambient buzzing you get in your ears when things are just too damn quiet. Nothing out of the ordinary. Unless this thing was hunkered down behind something, holding its breath, I was pretty sure we were the only living things in the building.

  An indignant squeak and the scratching of tiny nails on concrete echoed from somewhere to my left reminded me that was untrue. Fine then; it was just us and the rats.

  “I’m not seeing anything. Want to lower me down? I can do a pass on foot.” It was the furthest thing from what I wanted to do, but I didn’t have any better ideas.

  I could tell he was considering it for a moment by his pause, but he said, “No. Too risky. I wouldn’t be able to get you back up and that harness is too tricky to manage in the dark, alone. I think we’ve seen enough. It’s not here anymore.”

  Fuck. Who knew when—if—we’d pick up its trail again? The thought of those poor kids burned in my gut like a straight shot of Tabasco. I knew it was likely too late to save them—so likely that it was a pipe dream to expect anything else—but bringing them justice would have been something. Ever one to beat a dead horse, I continued to sweep the room as I was hoisted back up. I was dizzy as hell but determined. Unfortunately, that gumption got me nowhere.

  Once the light began to return, I was able to gage my surroundings once more. The smell of marginally fresher air was a treat after spending so long in the damp cavern below. I tucked my flashlight away and reached up to grasp the rope with both hands. I managed to pull myself upright, wincing as the harness straps cut into my thighs in a whole new way. I was not a fan of the spelunking shit. I made myself a promise to start pumping iron. Next time, Gannon was going to be the one taking the plunge if I had anything to say about it.

  The lip of the hole loomed above me and I reached out to get a good grip on it, helping guide myself up and over before the rope went slack. I flopped back on the concrete and laid there for a moment, waiting for my bodily fluids to redistribute themselves properly while trying not to think about all the dust and grime currently caking itself into my hair. Gannon crouched beside me, undoing the locks of the harness. It was the closest he had been to me in a long time, save for when we were kicking one another’s asses in the training ring.

  I shoved that thought away quick.

  The whole situation really bugged me. We had come so close. The remains we had found on the lower floors proved some sort of bestial fae had certainly been living here. Who else could it have been, if not our serial killer? Given just how many stashes of picked clean bones we had found, the damn thing had called this shithole home for quite a while. There had even been a few suspicious looking piles in the basement, making me wonder where the damn thing had slept. Didn’t that old adage of “don’t shit where you sleep” apply in the fae kingdom? Actually…

  I wondered aloud, “How would it have gotten down there in the first place, if the stairs are missing?”

  Gannon paused for half a second. Over the last few months I had learned to read my teacher well. With him, that small tick was damn near an admission of guilt. He seemed to shake it off as undid the last strap and stood. “Kludde can fly.”

  “Fly?” I sat up. He had taken two steps away, back turned. I shimmied out of the remaining straps about my thighs. Those he had left alone. What a gentleman. Chivalry wasn’t about to make me forget the bomb he had just dropped. The mental image of some feathered freak soaring up out of the darkness, beak agape, was emblazoned in my mind and would probably haunt me for days. “Gee, that’s good to know. Nice of you to warn me before I went down there.”

  He shot me a look that was disbelief balanced by an equal amount of thinly veiled contempt. “Does it matter? One way or the other, one of us was going down there. You said it yourself; you weren’t going to the one hoisting me up in this thing.” He shook the rope for emphasis.

  “Yeah, well maybe it would have changed my opinion just a little! I wouldn’t have been so eager to be dangled in the dark like a worm on a hook, thanks.” I shot him a peeved look, which earned me an eye roll. That was Gannon-speak for “stop being a drama queen,” which only irritated me even more. I snapped, “Don’t you think that’s some information I could have used before we turned this place over from top to bottom?”

  “Perhaps, but I didn’t think it relevant.”

  “Oh yeah? And why not?”

  “You’ve never showed interest in preparing yourself for a hunt before.”

  I might have recoiled visibly, if I had been on my feet. As it was, I froze with my mouth hanging open. He casually turned his back to me, as if he hadn’t just given me a verbal five across the eyes. I glared daggers into his broad back. My face burned.

  To say that our relationship was a rocky one would be something of an understatement. Gannon was my teacher and I was his unexpectedly capable student, but there the warm and fuzzies ended. From day one, we had run hot and cold with one another. We were usually civil and had found that we worked surprisingly well together when out on the prowl but beyond that, the lines of communication between us were a bit... strained.

  They had become even more so ever since the night we had hunted down a black dog (which was pretty much exactly what it sounded like: a gigantic, slavering fae hound). I had acted like an ass and nearly gotten myself killed by blithely ignoring the dossier he had so painstakingly prepared for me the night of that particular hunt. The danger my laziness had put us in had led to one of the most severe dressing downs he had leveled upon me to date. The blow-out of that night made this insult seem almost flippant.

  So, as much as I wanted to bite back after that not-so-subtle dig, I deserved it. Knowing firing back would just spark another war between us, I tried to be the bigger woman and swallowed my pride. Believe you me; that was hard for me. Really, really hard.

  I climbed to my feet and picked up the discarded tangle of harness. It weighed next to nothing. He was on his own with the rope. I stalked off across the room, muttering uncharitable things under my breath once I was out of earshot. I needed to put some distance between us before I said something honest. No one had the power to infuriate me quite like Gannon. Even Kaine—whose princely ass remained at the tippy top of my shit-list—didn’t make my skin itch like a wool jumpsuit.

  I shouldn’t have been too surprised, of course. Ever since the Warding had manifested in my life, letting me see through fae glamours in addition to being immune to their freaky magical abilities, my life had been one giant problem after the next. You would think that I would have adjusted to being around them damn near 24/7, but; no. Navigating the ins and outs of fae etiquette was nowhere close to being my strong suit.

  My being the last known Warder left in the world—both mine and theirs—proved that some sort of fae blood was intermingled in my gene pool but I was still just a little human fish in a big, strange fairy pond. All I wanted was to protect myself and those I loved from the more savage fae who were slowly invading my world, but to do that I had to throw my lot in with the exiled prince and his buddies, like it or no. From day one, Kaine had made the hoighty-toighty royal decree that I not hunt the bestial fae without Gannon—his loyal Guardian, resident badass, and huge pain in my rear. T
hat was just one more complication in my quest to save humanity from the monsters.

  It wasn’t like Gannon and I had exactly been chums before our little black dog spat, but I’d be lying if I said his prissy attitude didn’t chap my ass. I had done him and his little coterie a huge solid by finding them their Secret Keeper, but when the Lynx’s solution to ending their banishment hadn’t proved a quick and easy fix, it had put further strain on our relationship. Which totally wasn’t my fault but; whatever. I hadn’t given their bat-crap crazy High King nearly omnipotent powers, had I? I didn’t have anything to do with his having tossed their asses out of Tír na nÓg on trumped up (i.e. fake) treason charges, leaving them to rot in my world. And I certainly hadn’t broken the news to them that petitioning a vengeful goddess using some near-mythical fae artifact was their only hope of breaking that exile. That was all on them, their crazy relatives, and the Lynx, thank you very much.

  I snarled silently and kicked at a piece of discarded plaster, likely fallen from the crumbling ceiling above. Just thinking about it made me want to scream. I had thought I would be free of them as soon as I lived up to my end of the original ill-gotten pact with Kaine to find the Lynx. Instead, I had realized that I couldn’t walk away from them any easier than they could from me. Until I saw Kaine returned home to usurp the throne from his crazy brother, there would be no stopping the bestial fae from crossing into my world to feed on humans. Forging another blood-bond with that smarmy, identity hiding royal bastard had been the only way to ensure my safety and that of the human race in general—but that meant that I was tied to them until they found that stupid sword and made it back home, come hell or high water. Finding the damn thing was proving to be another wild goose chase of a nightmare.

  Good god damn, my life was a hot mess.

  I heard the rustle of the rope being wound up on the other side of the room. I wanted to keep as much distance between myself and Gannon as I could until my temper cooled, so I chose to get some fresh air, relatively speaking. The door to the street was listing at half mast, a rusty length of chain still slung across it from the outside. If it was meant to keep out intruders if had failed miserably. Neither of us had had a hard time bypassing it. Not much of a surprise for my five-foot-four frame, but Gannon was a head and a half taller; lean but wiry with muscles I could never dream of having. Personally, I thought we should have taken bolt cutters to the thing, but Gannon had insisted we leave as little evidence of our search as possible. Whatever. Just another small way he annoyed the shit out of me.

  I shimmied through the crack and emerged outside on the dilapidated front stoop. A few crumbling stairs lead down to the deserted lot below; the ground cracked, weeds sprouting up where employees had once parked their cars. The sun was shining bright in the sky and it made me squint. I was used to late night hunts; covert shit under the cover of darkness. We had risked the complications of seeking the kludde out during the day thanks to its nocturnal habits. Catching it asleep in its lair would have been much easier than tracking it at night. Had it still been calling this place home, of course.

  Nocturnal and flying. How was that for a one-two punch?

  I paced in small circles, too jazzed up to stand still. Just thinking about that thing still out there at large made my blood boil. It was an all-out predator, not just some crazy nutjob with a taste for human flesh. Having found no trace of it stuck in my craw even worse than Mr. High and Mighty’s passive-aggressive bitchiness. Who knew where it was now? I could hope that it had moved on—but if those missing kids were any indication, it was still calling Riverview home. I didn’t like the thought of something that vicious—that evil—residing in my city. Who knew where it would strike next? Who knew when it would swoop down, grab some unsuspecting innocent, and fly off to devour them in its new nest?

  Fly.

  I looked skyward. A bird was lazily winging along above, riding a nice breeze.

  Son of a bitch.

  We had been looking in the wrong place all along.

  I spun around and craned my head back, shading my eyes with one hand as I scanned the side of the building. Sure enough, there was a rusty, rickety-as-hell-looking ladder jutting up from somewhere on the third story, leading to the roof above. Adrenaline surged through me. I sprang forward and shoved myself back through the cracked door, nearly colliding with Gannon on the other side.

  “What the hell—”

  I grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt and damn near spun him in the direction of the stairs leading to the upper stories. “The roof! We didn’t check the roof!”

  He gaped at me for a moment before the light bulb went on. A manic grin broke out on my face. I saw that excitement mirrored, crackling to life in his pale blue eyes. He dropped the rope by the door and sprinted toward the stairs with me in hot pursuit. We took them two at a time, sling-shoting ourselves across each landing to bound up the next flight. There were no words to describe the vicious excitement that flooded my veins. This hunt wasn’t ready to be called a bust just yet. We slowed our pace as one when we hit the third floor, not wanting to alert anything that might be waiting above. I had to admit, our glaring differences aside, we worked in concert. We were one hell of a team.

  The door to the outside was bolted shut; the lock long rusted. Gannon tried to shoulder-slam it into submission but it wasn’t giving. I sacrificed the sleeve of my shirt to clear through the thick layer of grime on one of the window panes. Outside I could see a small ledge spanning the length of the building, hardly wide enough for two people to walk side by side. It had likely been a service walkway in its former life, long forgotten. An ankle deep layer of decaying leaves and God only knew what other matter awaited us. Ick. Hunting was far from being a glamorous job.

  I looked around and found a hefty looking piece of wood among the debris surrounding us. I picked it up and tested its weight. It was on the light side—likely hollowed out by decay—but I had the hunch it would be enough. Gannon had stepped back, arms folded. He didn’t have to ask. He already knew where this was heading. I really wanted to use my newfound weapon to knock the sly look of his face; devilishly high cheekbones and all. Instead, I took a deep breath and swung at the glass. The pane shattered with a satisfying clatter.

  So much for keeping things quiet.

  It took us a few minutes to clean out the frame and work our way through but we got there. The foul reek of rotting vegetation greeted us. He climbed through first. I heard the muffled snap of what I could only hope were rodent bones being crushed underfoot, lost among the rubbish. He reached in and helped me through, hoisting me over the edge so that the rough edges of the glass wouldn’t snag on my clothes. Such a gentleman.

  The ladder leading up to the roof looked no more stable up close than it had on the ground. The metal had long ago turned the red-brown of something rusted beyond repair, though it still seemed to be securely bolted to the wall. I slipped on a pair of thin leather gloves. I didn’t know how much they’d protect me, but it was better than nothing. Getting a tetanus shot wasn’t high on my list of things to do. I hoisted myself up and let the bottom rung take my full weight. It groaned and shook, but held. I said a quick prayer to whatever was watching over me and clambered up, as quick and quiet as possible.

  I hopped over the lip at the top and moved off to the right, giving Gannon room to follow. I crouched and scanned the area. It wasn’t very impressive. The surface was paved in gravel, though much of it had worn away in the years of disuse. Squat little chimney stacks popped up at regular intervals, each capped with a rusted metal hood. A cluster of metal towers and pipes dominated the far left corner, likely the remnants of the building’s air conditioning system. I couldn’t see what hid in that labyrinth, but my gut told me we were close. As soon as Gannon was up and over the edge, we crept forward. A few feet in, he stopped me with a hand to the chest. I followed his gaze to the ground. There was dried blood spattered among the gravel.

  A lot of dried blood.

  I drew m
y blades.

  The world was scary silent up so high, with the building below us long dead. Even the traffic from the busy streets was muffled. We were only a few feet from first of the shed-like structures when I heard the rustle of something moving on the other side. We both froze; weapons drawn, and—personally—heart hammering. Belatedly, I realized I probably should have asked what exactly a kludde was earlier, instead of getting snarky over past mistakes. But that would have been the reasonable thing to do—a.k.a. not something ever entered Caitlin Marie Moore’s mind until it was too late. (Why be logical when you can be bitchy, right?)

  One day I was really going to get a handle on that smart-ass gene.

  Gannon’s hand grazed my forearm. When he had my attention, he jerked his head to the right and pointed straight ahead of us with his sword. I nodded, veering off on a path opposite of his. It was the luck of the draw to see who got the head end this time. I knew my luck. Something told me I was about to play bait once again. I pressed my back up against the shed when I rounded the corner, stilettos at the ready. Each step was carefully placed, my eyes never leaving that bend; that space where that monster might appear.

  Until I stepped down on something that snapped with a loud crunch.

  Until I remembered the kludde could fly.

  About the Author

  Robin L. Cole likes to write, cook, and feed her voracious fiction reading habit through late-night splurges at Amazon. She is an indie urban fantasy writer who lives in New Jersey with her husband.

  Iron is her first publication and she is hard at work on its sequel, Faster.