by Marie Hall
“HPA are mainly watchers. Rarely do they involve themselves in our world. And only to investigate potential homicides directly related to the killing of mortals. I doubt very much they will come seeking her out to kill her as she implied. They seem to take a very hands-off approach. They’re scholars, not killers.”
“Then she is insane?” He looked back at her. She was no longer playing with her food, just gazing at it intently with a pent-up, glassy-eyed stare.
“No, I suspect she merely mentioned them to throw you off the true scent. I believe she plans to escape you at some point.” The monk shook his head violently. “Her true threat comes from this shadow, and if I’m right, she’s in serious danger.”
Brows lowering, he frowned. “Why have I never learned of a shadow?”
Looking pointed, George growled. “Because you’ve kept yourself locked away in faerie land for so long you know little of the dangers living in this world now.”
Second time tonight someone had told him that. First Lise, now George. Shoving his face to within inches of the monk’s, he said in a low-pitched voice, “Then tell me.”
“Irish folklore speaks of a beast born of the wild hunt.”
Frenzy knew of the wild hunt; it was the faeries’ equivalent of a wild, raucous party. A time when all fae, no matter how strong or weak, came together to revel in the wonder and splendor of faerie—when magic was powerful and potent. He’d run in the hunt for decades alongside his queen, reveling in the godlike power bestowed upon all during it.
“And what beast is this?”
“Its origins are hard to trace exactly, but the times I’ve seen it referred to in text, it’s only ever called by two names. The shadow, or drochturach.”
The wild hunt was a time of madness and chaos, birth, death, and magic. But Frenzy had never heard of this one.
“What does it do?”
“It finds and destroys seers. That is why they are so rare. The creature has been very thorough.”
“So it kills them? Slices off their heads?” He ran his hand across his neck.
“Much worse.” George swallowed convulsively. “It consumes them. Their physical bodies may die, but their souls stay forever trapped within it in a perpetual hell.”
Grimacing, Frenzy wondered how he’d never learned or heard of this creature—this killing shadow.
“Not only that, but from what I’ve gathered, each death makes it stronger.”
The possibilities were staggering. The potential for what it could be boggled his mind. “How many has it killed?”
George shrugged. “Stories vary. Some say ten, others three. I couldn’t say for certain. All I can say is this creature is dangerous and unpredictable.”
The pieces of the puzzle were slowly starting to come together: why Lise had been so insistent he keep Mila safe. Not because she had plans for Frenzy and Mila to become the next Romeo and Juliet, not even because she wanted to save her life. Mila was valuable. A rare treasure and a possession that even Lise would crave to own.
“Then I will just take her to faerie, keep her there for a—”
“No.” George shook his head hard, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose again. “The wards of faerie will not protect against this creature. It was born in your lands; there is no place it cannot go. Your only hope of keeping her safe is running, keeping low, and never letting her tap into her powers.” He tapped his forehead. “Every time she uses them, it’s like a dinner bell to the monster. It can track her off them.”
Muscle in his jaw ticking, trying to make sense of all this information, Frenzy opened his mouth, ready to ask how the vampires were involved in all of this, when he heard a loud clatter and then a dull thud.
Turning on his heel, he spotted Mila slumped on the ground with the hilt of the knife poking up from her chest.
Chapter 6
Powerful hands gripped her shoulders, digging into muscle as they shook her violently.
“Stupid woman. Wake up!”
Frenzy’s voice was rough and full of gravel. Moaning, she shook her head from side to side, groaning from the fiery ache spreading like acid through her chest.
The knife was ripped from her and she screamed, bending over double as the wound throbbed unmercifully.
“What the hell were you thinking?” He slapped her face, not as hard as he could have—more like he was trying to help her come to.
Swatting his hand off, she sat up and then glared at him, grabbing hold of her still-aching chest. “Why didn’t I die? I stabbed myself through the heart. I should have died.”
“You weren’t a watcher, were you?” Silver eyes full of brimstone cut through her.
Rolling her lips inside her mouth, she refused to speak.
“Because if you were, you’d know stabbing a vampire through the heart only immobilizes them. It doesn’t kill. To kill you need to rip the heart out and destroy it. Or give it death’s kiss,” he hissed.
Looking down at the red, angry wound in her chest, she watched, amazed, as right before her eyes the flesh and muscle began to knit itself back together. “I…I…” Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head. “I was a watcher. I just wasn’t in the field.”
“Damn you, woman,” he growled, and the low timbre of it shivered down her spine, made her hot and achy in strange places. What was wrong with her? Why was she even thinking about how nice his voice sounded? The reaper looked like he wanted to strangle her himself. And why, because she’d tried killing herself?
Slapping his hand away, she scooted back on her heels. “Let me die. Kill me yourself. I don’t care. But kill me. Please.”
She cursed the fact that her voice broke just then.
“Why?” His face contorted into a frightful mask, giving his regal beauty a hard devilish bend, making her pulse race and her mouth dry. “Because you lied. Because it’s not the humans coming out to find you. It’s the drochturach. Isn’t it? That’s why you’re so desperate to off yourself.”
“No.” She shook her head, tasting the adrenaline on the back of her tongue. “No.”
“Yes,” he spit out.
She shook her head harder.
His smile was cruel, showing off the canines of his teeth, the sharp pointed edges that made him look so much like the vampire he was not.
“I won’t let you die. Want to know why, little baby vamppie?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve suddenly realized just how precious you really are.” Standing to his feet, he glowered down at her. “And you want to know something else? You’re not a vampire, not really. You’re a vampire/shifter hybrid. You’re just about impossible to kill.”
Something hot and wet shaded the corners of her eyes, making her vision blurry. “No. You’re lying!”
He laughed. “Am I?”
What did that even mean? The possibilities rolled through her mind in fast forward. She’d never heard of a mixed breed, let alone what he claimed she was. “I…I…”
“Get up and get yourself together. You and I are taking a little trip.”
“Where?”
Spinning on his heels, he walked back to the monk still standing in the corner, and that’s when her tears fell. She knew she was in trouble and there was no way out of this.
Their heads were bent and they were whispering furiously back and forth to each other. Her hearing was ten times what it’d been when she’d been alive, so she could hear the gentle scraping of claws on stone as rats and other vermin scampered through cave tunnels. The constant drip of water echoed like thunder all around her. It should have been easy to make out what they were saying so she could decipher the meaning behind the curious looks they kept passing her way. But they were supernatural beings themselves and likely knew how to keep their thoughts hidden.
A sick sort of feeling began to gnaw its way through her belly, twisting her up in knots. The monk was a shifter. It hadn’t escaped her notice that while he looked nothing like the typical werewolves
she’d seen in movies, he definitely didn’t look human either. The film over his eyes reminded her of the dull sheen a fish got after sitting on ice for three days. His skin was so bluish gray that if it weren’t for the fact that he was actually talking, he’d pass for a corpse. Not to mention the fact that the tip of his nose looked as if it’d been bitten off. He was missing a large portion of one ear and he was exceedingly careful with how he handled things. He moved slowly, methodically, as if making certain he didn’t trip or tumble over something.
Lone wolves didn’t heal well. She knew that much, and yet she had. Maybe they were lying; maybe she wasn’t really a shifter. Because the thought of being a vampire was bad enough, but being a shifter on top of it—it made her want to vomit.
But the thought that she hadn’t died, she hadn’t even gone immobile from the knife wound bothered her. Because a blow to the heart for a vampire meant they were as good as dead. It completely paralyzed them, gave their killers enough time to regroup and shove the stake all the way through. Aside from the fact that the stabbing had hurt like hell, she hadn’t gone catatonic.
“Let’s go.” Frenzy was back in her face, mercurial eyes glaring hard at her.
Setting her jaw, she wrapped her arms around her legs. Yanking her by the hand, he forced her to her feet. “Where are you taking me?” she asked, trying in vain to tug out of his grasp.
“You’re still not telling me everything, and if I’m going to guard you, I have to know it all. There is only one place to learn it.”
Fear clamped ahold of her soul. Mila had pretty much fibbed and blustered her way through his interrogation. Truth was, she’d been a part of HPA only peripherally. They’d contacted her when her services were needed, but up until the point of the Candyman, she hadn’t been around the task force much. All the knowledge she’d gained of the creatures hadn’t come from studying up on them through fieldwork. It’d been passed down from one generation of O’Fallens to another, down the family tree.
Frenzy’s barrage of questions had distracted and rattled her enough that she’d finally blurted out the truth of the shadow. The mere fact that he’d just called it drochturach meant either he or George had figured out what it really was. And if he knew that, then he also knew there was only one place in the world he’d find the rest of the answers he needed.
Faerie.
“If you’re thinking about taking me to your home, no!” She held up her hands, taking slow steps back. “I canna go there.”
Looking at her like she was a curiosity he couldn’t make sense of, Frenzy’s lips thinned. “And why not?”
“I’m an O’Fallen.”
His brows formed a question mark. “I already know that.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” She sighed. “My bloodline is ambrosia to a fae. One whiff of me and they’ll try to enslave me, make me their own. The power inside me, it’s potent, especially on fae soil, and they’ll know that.”
He didn’t move. She looked at George, hoping that maybe he could back her up on this. “Tell him, monk. It’s true. You know it is.”
“George?” Frenzy didn’t take his eyes off her, the look so pointedly heated that it was all she could do to remember to take a breath.
“It’s true,” the priest said, English accent much more pronounced. “The girl cannot go. She steps a foot on fae soil and she’ll never leave.”
“And I should let them keep her,” Frenzy growled.
“No.” Her nostrils flared. Staying in faerie was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to her. Faerie wasn’t what the tales made it out to seem.
As beautiful as the light court was, the night court was equally as terrifying. She could not know who would find her first, and honestly neither option appealed. Because they would both want what she had. That was why the shadow was after her. The shadow had been after her line for centuries. The creature was obsessed, mad with lust for a taste of her power.
Ironic as it was, her best chance of survival (at least for the time being, until she could convince Frenzy to figure out some way to take her life) was to stay with him. Because though he was fae, he was also death. In his own way he had the gift of sight and did not covet hers. Which meant he was safe. Terrible option though it was, it was the only one available.
“George, you watch her.” Frenzy patted the wolf on the back, then, staring down his nose at Mila, said, “Don’t let her do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
He swiped his bony hand through the air, opening up a fabric in time before them. Mila’s jaw dropped. She’d always heard of their ability to bend time and space to their will, but the tear in time was almost too beautiful for words: a spiraling helix of shimmering blue and dusted silver that grew from a pinprick to a large gaping veil. Standing there before the rift, his flame-red hair billowing behind him, he appeared frightening and powerful, and again she wondered why her dreams had revealed him to her.
Visions were never a certain thing; there were so many variables, so many different choices to be made to decide an exact and true path. But he’d been in her dreams for so long, what was Frenzy to her? Could he actually save her? Was it possible that death could bring hope?
From one blink to the next, he was gone. Leaving her alone with George.
“Monk?” she said softly.
Turning toward her, he nodded. “Hmm?”
“You have to help me die.”
* * *
Choppy waves and salty air smacked Frenzy in the face the moment he stepped onto Alcatraz Island. Covering himself in glamour to remain hidden from the milling tourists, he ran toward the ancient tree, the nearest entrance to his sithen, imbued with enough faerie magic to act as a portal between earth and his home.
Chanting the blessing beneath his breath, he stood and waited for the tree to open her doorway. The ancient oak shuddered, groaning loudly as a knot on the trunk transformed from mere wood to a man-sized hole. Mortals could not see what happened; the tree was enchanted to only appear as a tree to those not of faerie blood. The gaping darkness beckoned. The instant he stepped inside, the entrance sealed shut. A heartbeat later he was back in faerie and breathing deeply, letting the natural beauty and serenity of his lands ease the tension from his shoulders.
Frothy sea foam splashed his face. A cool hint of frost licked at his nose. Even in faerie it was close to winter. Jack’s kiss lay heavy on the land. Hawthorns and berries spun their scent through the rolling winds that rang with the clear, angelic choir of sylphs flying through the spun-cotton clouds.
Above him a crimson-eyed crow perched on a dead branch watched his every move. The queen knew he was back. Badb and Nemain were her eyes and ears throughout all of faerie.
“Badb, tell The Morrigan that I have arrived and wish an audience.”
With a loud caw, the enormous crow flew toward the spiraling black steeple of the castle off in the distance. After a millennium of living at the queen’s palace, he knew how much she hated surprises. And after what Cian had done, following protocol seemed like the wise thing to do.
The skies, which had been white when he’d first stepped through, now began to gather, turning gray and black around the edges. Lightning struck patches of earth around him.
This was new. Clearly The Morrigan wasn’t the only one aware of his coming, but so was the earth god, Dagda—The Morrigan’s consort. Normally her male counterpart was known for being calm, or at least calmer than the queen herself, but clearly his mood indicated that was not the case today.
The castle was bustling when he entered. No one seemed uptight; in fact the mood was electric and rowdy. There was laughter and revelry, and maidens and warriors mingled, doing what lovers do.
Ignoring them all, Frenzy headed deeper into the labyrinth of the keep. Into the heart of it, where the consort and queen lived. The door to their chamber opened the moment he came to within a foot of it.
The queen was dressed in shadow, swathed in it. It veiled her body in a smoky, ephemeral d
raping from her neck to her toes. Her skin was polished ivory, gleaming with shades of mother-of-pearl. The black strands of her hair curled enticingly around her heart-shaped face, giving her a more youthful appearance than typical. She was the most beautiful woman in all the world. Deep red eyes stared at him intensely. Whenever the queen used her crows to “watch,” her eyes would match theirs, and right now they had the same cold, dead stare of her prized birds. Her fury was palpable; it was a stench in his nostrils.
She did not move, or even breathe. She sat still as a pillar of marble, just staring at him from her throne of crystal clear glass. Dagda sat beside her. His burnished skin was a stark difference from the queen’s, and brown hair came to rest just above the collar of his golden robe. Rich sable eyes sparkled with light, but it was a ruse Frenzy knew well—because the king controlled the elements, and outside the castle, it raged.
“Welcome, Frenzy.” The queen’s voice was cultured, full, and throaty, which made him shiver with an uncomfortable desire to either possess, or be possessed by her. But it was always thus with the queen, she commanded desire, reverence, and respect, even while you cursed her to a bloody and vile death.
Inclining his head, he waited for one or the other to speak first.
He didn’t have long to wait.
“So tell me, where is the girl?” The Morrigan lifted a fine black brow as her ruby lips turned into a slight sneer.
“She is on Earth.”
“We see that,” Dagda said so softly Frenzy had to strain to hear. “Why?”
Schooling his features to remain impassive, Frenzy spread his hands. “She is of the O’Fallen line and therefore cannot safely cross into our lands.”
The moment he said it, he understood why the queen and her consort were giving him the look that said they wanted his blood.
Mila hadn’t lied, and how he’d not figured it out sooner was beyond him. Her powers must be strong indeed for the queen and king to notice. It wasn’t mere curiosity making them ask this question; their lust at the thought of collecting a seer was a tangible presence. It snaked through the air like the sparks of hot metal beating metal.