Agent of Chaos (Dark Fae FBI Book 2)

by Alex Rivers

  “Scarlett.” My mind was screaming, trying to keep up. I needed to be cautious with my next question. “How is it that you’re able to run as fast as you are?”

  Her brow furrowed. “Same as you.”

  I swallowed hard. She’s a pixie?

  “The CIA has acquired from the fae some capabilities to enhance its operatives,” she continued. “Just like the FBI did with you. I saw how fast you could move, too. This is why you’re not going to convince me that your unit doesn’t exist.”

  I nodded. Okay. I’d be keeping this particular secret a while longer. “And what do you mean about the Seelie and Unseelie?”

  She shook her head. “I honestly don’t get why you feds had to bungle into something you know so little about. Okay, let me give you a crash course on this stuff, because we really need to know what you guys do.” She took a deep breath. “The fae have two courts, Seelie and Unseelie. Our own folklore actually has a lot of documentation about that. The standard interpretation is that the Seelie court are the faeries of light and sunshine, sparkly-twinkle-shit. And the Unseelie court is like a giant torture dungeon of darkness and murder. But that’s just an overly simplistic binary classification, obviously, probably a result of some Seelie propaganda.”

  Well, I was certainly achieving my goal of learning more about the fae. “And the truth about the Seelie and the Unseelie?”

  Scarlett’s green eyes sparked fiercely. “The truth is, they’re all threats. The only difference is that the Seelie don’t have tails and horns, and they’re slightly smaller. They look more like very pretty humans. But they’re not cute, Cass. They’re deadly.”

  I nodded, trying to take it all in. Roan had horns, so he was definitely Unseelie. What was I? “Surely not all fae are threats. That’s just… prejudiced. What if I know—”

  “Listen, Cass,” she said in a low voice, leaning closer to me. “I don’t think this room is bugged, but frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised. There might be a bug in the pitcher, in the carpet, in my cleavage… who knows? When in doubt, bug it. That’s our motto. Not really—that would suck as a motto. The point is, people here like to listen. So before you tell me anything that might get you locked up in isolation, let’s just clear up the fact that the only fae you ever met is the Rix, and you killed him, right?” She arched a cautionary eyebrow, widening her eyes meaningfully.

  I knew my friend enough to follow her lead. Sticking up for the fae would not make me popular around here. “Of course. Just the Rix, who is dead.”

  She let out a long breath. “Good.”

  And yet—what about me? I was half-fae, and I wasn’t a monster. Surely no one was born monstrous—not even the fae. Monsters were created, not born. “But I was simply under the impression that not all fae are… evil.”

  She shrugged. “Let’s not worry about evil. Let me put it in CIA terms. We deal with threats. And the fae are, and always will be, a threat to humans. They are stronger than us, have powers we can’t predict, and they treat us like slaves. Did you know they feed on our feelings?”

  I bristled. I didn’t like where she was going with this since, you know, I fed on feelings too. “I’m familiar with the idea.”

  “And you know what happens when a fae unveils, right?”

  Okay, she had me there. “Unveils? No. I have no idea.”

  She groaned. “Part of our collaboration will be to make a nice dictionary of terms so we’re all on the same page. What the CIA call unveiling is when a fae loses control. Their glamour is broken, temperature fluctuates around them, and they unveil their true faces. Their bestial side comes out, and they become very violent or crazed with lust or whatever. That fae with the hooves had unveiled.”

  Roan’s image burned in the back of my mind. Whenever he was angry, everything around him became colder, and his eyes turned a deep gold. His horns shimmered into view. And then he usually tore people’s hearts out and flung them around like ragdolls. “Okay, I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Good. So forget evil. The fae are dangerous, and we’re in charge of ensuring they don’t kill us all, okay?”

  I swallowed. What would Scarlett say if she knew I was a pixie? Obviously, I couldn’t say anything about that here, but could I reveal it to her at all? She’d been my best friend since freshman year at college, and we shared almost everything—apart from the details of her work, until now. I wanted to think that if I came out of the pixie closet, it would give her a different impression of the fae, but there was no way I could do it here. Plus, she seemed so damn certain of herself, that all fae were some kind of threat to humanity.

  “Okay. Scarlett, I’ll tell you guys what I know, but I’m not part of an FBI fae unit, okay? I just stumbled into that stuff by accident.”

  “Of course you’re not.” She leaned closer, touching my knee, and whispering. “Why would the FBI hide anything, right? You people are all about transparency, we know that.” She leaned back again, frowning. “But if you were in such a unit, I would have wanted you to talk to your supervisors and get clearance to talk about it, because all this cloak and dagger stuff is getting us nowhere, and people are going to die.”

  Irritation flared. “There’s no unit, Scarlett!”

  “Right.” She looked just as pissed off as I felt. “We need to help each other, Cassandra. Because I’m not sure if you noticed, but a lot of people got hurt in those attacks. So do whatever fucking paperwork you need to do to help me stop the next attack.”

  I heaved a sigh. She was right. We needed to work together, even if I couldn’t tell her the complete truth. “Here’s what happened. You remember the Resurrected Ripper case? I came here to profile him and help the London police, and it turned out that he wasn’t an ordinary psychopath. He was a fae psychopath. Things got kind of intense, and another detective and I managed to take him down. He tried to foment discord in the city by allowing Londoners to think immigrants had committed the crimes, and I’m guessing the hysteria helped fuel his power. Yesterday’s attacks probably serve the same purpose. I’ve seen two tabloids blaming immigrants for the explosions, and one blaming Muslims specifically. The explosions aren’t the only threat. London is going to be a tinderbox of panic and scapegoating. More discord, more terror, more power for the fae.” It wasn’t the whole story, of course. At some point, I’d need to tell her about Trinovantum, but I wasn’t ready to say that in front of the CIA bugs.

  Scarlett leaned back in her chair, folding her arms, and I suddenly felt like I was being interrogated. “And you just happened to have an iron knife with you? These things are hard to come by.”

  “My detective friend got it for me. And a Glock with iron bullets. We had to learn fast. I didn’t have all the CIA intel about fae.”

  “Okay. And what about the reports that you disappeared into thin air while the police were interrogating you? What’s that about?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. How did I explain that? “They would say that, wouldn’t they? Better than admitting how incompetent they were.”

  Her piercing green eyes locked on me. “Like I said. We need to know the whole story, Cass. Before this blows up to hell.”

  Maybe the FBI secret unit was a convenient ruse. Unless I told her the truth, there was clearly no other explanation for the things I’d been able to do.

  I took a sip of water. “What is this major stuff you were talking about? Is that related to today’s attack?”

  She downed the last of her coffee. “Our source informed us that we could expect a major Unseelie terrorist attack this week. Our analyst thought it would be in a few days, but he was wrong. We had nothing to go on but that it had to do with the number of the beast.”

  I blinked. “Six-six-six?”

  “Right. Our analysts figured that it was most likely related to the Great Fire of London, which happened in 1666. We just had no idea what they had planned, or that it would happen so soon. It never occurred to us they might actually reenact the London fire. We didn
’t think they’d do something so… big.”

  “Why not?”

  “The fae are usually not that organized. They don’t draw attention to themselves. They normally lurk in shadows, terrorizing a few people on street corners here and there. We really can’t explain this new pattern, except that it probably has to do with the Rix, and it definitely has to do with an impending war.”

  “A war? With humans?”

  “No. A war between the Seelie and the Unseelie.” Scarlett turned to stare at me. “You ever wonder why I know so much about plague pits? Whenever a fae war breaks out, millions of humans die. That’s what’s coming for us, Cass.”

  * * *

  Scarlett led me down another hall, to a thick iron door. She put her eye to a retinal scanner, and after a second, the door clicked open. We entered a large, white room. Computers lined one wall, and a rack of assault rifles lined another. Three rows of rectangular black tables stood in the center of the room, their surfaces covered with gadgets—digital watches, tablets, phones, and some esoteric contraptions like Scarlett’s magic scanner. Behind one of the tables stood a gray-haired, bespectacled man, about to sneeze. After a few seconds, when the sneeze didn’t come, I realized that was just the way his face looked.

  “Cass,” Scarlett said. “This is the guy in charge of our research and development here. His name,” she said, gesturing at him dramatically, “is Q.”

  He sniffed. “My name is Howard.” He offered his hand, and I shook it.

  I smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Q,” said Scarlett. “Cass here is temporarily joining the good fight, but she isn’t really armed for it. She’s the agent I told you about with the FBI. You know how they are. Never quite prepared.”

  “I have a knife,” I said defensively.

  They both stared at me.

  “An iron knife,” I clarified.

  Scarlett arched an eyebrow. “She needs a gun.”

  “I have a Glock,” I said. “Except I don’t have any bullets for it—”

  Howard pulled off his glasses, chewing on one end. “If it’s a regular Glock, it’s also not intended for iron bullets. I assume it’s… unpredictable.”

  “Yeah, it was for close range only.”

  “Our guns are designed for iron bullets Agent, uh…?”

  “Liddell. Just call me Cassandra. Only Scarlett calls me Cass.”

  “And only Scarlett calls me Q,” he murmured, walking over to the gun rack. “It would be nice if she could use people’s actual names.”

  Scarlett leaned on one of the tables. “Q, Cass and I go way back.”

  Howard returned holding a small handgun and two clips that he carefully slid across the table. “There you go. Already loaded, and each clip has an additional twelve bullets.”

  “Thanks.” I snatched them up and tucked them into my handbag.

  Scarlett took a deep breath. “She also needs a magic scanner and a fae detector.”

  Howard stared at her with an air of hurt pride. “Do you mean an aether sensor and a personal ambience indicator?”

  “That depends.” Scarlett cocked her hip. “Does the aether sensor scan for magic? Because that’s actually what we need.”

  “It—it…” he stammered. “It identifies imprints of aether within remnants of what you call ‘magic.’”

  “Right. And the personal ambience indicator… is that the one that detects fae?”

  “It reacts when a person gives away a certain wavelength that corresponds with these beings.”

  “Awesome, Q.” She gave him a thumbs-up. “So like I said, Cass needs a magic scanner and a fae detector.”

  He tutted and inspected the table, pushing his glasses up on his nose as he searched the gadgets. After a moment, he plucked a wand-like scanner just like the one Scarlett had used earlier, and he handed it to me. “It’s quite easy to use. You press the red button, and just slide it along the aether remnant… the magic residue. The indicator lights green if it’s there.”

  “Okay.” I took the scanner from him, finding it quite light in my palm.

  “Once you scan the imprint, you can return here and cross-reference it with our database. Each aether imprint is unique, like a DNA sample or a fingerprint. And we have the names of hundreds of Seelie and Unseelie in the database, so we might have a match. It’ll also give us some basic attributes of the scanned imprint, like strength, deterioration, angle from source, temperature…” He probably noticed my eyes glaze, because he stopped listing the attributes.

  “Cool, thanks.” I traced my fingertips over the scanner.

  “As for the personal ambience indicator…” he continued.

  Scarlett mouthed fae detector.

  “I have one left.” He rummaged in a drawer below the table. “Ah! There we go.”

  He handed me something that looked like a silver wristwatch, identical to Scarlett’s.

  Howard held it up, pointing to a white light on the watch’s face. “This indicator will start pulsing in the presence of a fae entity. It will also glow in faint green. Hold out your hand.”

  Shit. My pulse raced. “There’s no need. I’ll be with Scarlett most of the time, and I don’t like watches.”

  Howard frowned. “It’s really quite comfortable.”

  I swallowed hard. “I get a skin reaction from metal. A rash. It’s very unpleasant.”

  Scarlett’s fae detector didn’t warn her against me, probably because my pixie wavelength confused it. But I really didn’t want to find out what happened if one touched my skin.

  “Just try it.” Howard grabbed my hand, then pressed the watch against my skin.

  The watch immediately began to judder and glow with a red light.

  Howard’s forehead creased. “Oh.”

  Scarlett wrinkled her nose. “What the fuck is wrong with it? It’s not supposed to go red.”

  “No, of course not.” Howard pulled it away from me. “Red indicates an error.”

  Scarlett rubbed her forehead. “The new guy did it, right? Igor?”

  “His name is Jeremy. Yes, but I assure you he’s quite capable…”

  “Capable, my ass! Speaking of asses, did you know I once overheard his theory on women? Apparently, he divides all females into two categories: those who take it up the bum, and those who don’t. He’s permanently looking out for indicators of how to best classify individual women. Wearing a thong means they’re probably good to go, but yoga pants and ponytails are bad signs. So you know, I don’t really trust Igor with complex concepts. Or like, making coffee. Or really anything.”

  Howard frowned. “I suppose, but I assure you, Igor—Jeremy is—”

  “If Igor can concentrate on his work for a few hours instead of searching for thongs, he might redeem himself with me. Tell him that by tomorrow, I want Cass to have a functioning fae detector.”

  Howard nodded, and Scarlett smiled, slapping him on the back. “Thanks, Q. You’re the best. If there’s anything I can do for you—”

  “You can call me Howard.”

  “If there’s anything except that, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Chapter 4

  When we left the US embassy two hours later, clouds hid the sun. As we walked, I glanced at the numerous “closed” signs that hung from the cafés and restaurants. After the scale of yesterday’s attack, businesses remained shut. We could have eaten at the embassy, but I didn’t want to risk running into any FBI agents there.

  Specks of ash from yesterday’s attacks still floated through the air, mingling with the dull light. Even a day after the attacks, tension still rippled through the city. It was no longer the thrilling panic that sent power blazing through my body, but a vibrant worry that set my teeth on edge and made me jump at every small noise.

  “Relax, Cass,” said Scarlett. “We’ll find them.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I have some reliable informants. I just need to establish contact when I can.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “When did our lives get
so complicated? It doesn’t feel like that long ago we were downing Jell-O shots at costume parties.”

  “I think we decided we needed more out of life the night that New Jersey guy with the permanent sweatpants boner tried to make out with both of us, then threw up on my shoes.”

  “That was definitely some kind of low point.”

  “Hello. My name is Darryl,” she said, imitating his New Jersey accent. “Are you girls together? I see you together and I think, maybe they’re together. I don’t know. Maybe you’d like to get together in my basement without your shirts on and I could photograph you. For art. You know?”

  I cracked a smile. Whenever I felt down, it was like Scarlett had a compulsion to make me smile, and her imitations were spot on.

  Even so, underneath it all, I knew her mood was somber. When she was stressed, her speech sped up, and she toyed with the ends of her hair, like she was doing now. A line appeared between her eyebrows as the cogs turned in the back of her mind. She hated to let on that she was under pressure, but when the stress got to her, I knew she’d be staying up late and waking through the night with night terrors. Her dietary choices would regress by decades: an ungodly combination of cocktails, comfort foods, and candy. “The holy fucking trinity,” she called it.

  She was just one of those people who had a hard time turning off her thoughts. She felt permanently compelled to prove herself, as if she could never quite work hard enough or achieve enough.

  “How long will you be stationed in London?” I asked, hopeful.

  “I might be here for a while, Cass. We’re trying to locate portals into… well, you know. But we’re preparing for something big.”

  “Right.” It was a measure of how much she trusted me that she was willing to tell me any of this, no matter how vague. “I’m thinking of staying for a while, too.”