by Lexi Blake
“The door is to the left,” Nim called out behind us.
Daniel took a hard left and then he was kicking the door open, allowing the night in. He strode out with Neil following hard behind him. Nim and Roarke ran to keep up as we made it to the yard. We needed to make it to the forest where our small party would have the advantage over the heavily armed troops. They wouldn’t be able to travel as quickly as we could. Daniel began running to the left, but Neil stopped him with a decisive pull on his shoulder.
“Stop,” Neil yelled, frustrated that Daniel wasn’t letting him go first. It was a reversal of everything we’d done before. In the past, Danny and I did nothing during a job without Neil’s senses telling us it was all right to continue. The change was obviously pissing Neil off. “Will you give me a second? I smell something. It’s coming from that direction.” Neil pointed to the direction we were about to head.
“Watch out for the advance guard!” Nim yelled as she and Roarke made it out the door. “They always send a couple ahead of the full troops.”
The red caps came into view. They carried iron pikes in their hands and the minute they saw us, an unholy gleam lit their dark eyes. They took in the scene in front of them, quick to recognize their quarry.
“By the order of King Angus, you will give us aid, My Lord. We seek Her Grace, the wife of the Seelie High Priest,” one said, his voice harsher than sandpaper. “Surrender her and we shall be satisfied.”
“No you won’t,” Nim said, huffing her disbelief.
The three smiled, their grins creepy and bloodthirsty. “No,” the one said. “We won’t.”
Their eyes told the tale. They had full orders to execute Nim and Roarke and probably to parade the traitors’ heads through the sithein as they brought me to the king’s palace.
They began to move forward, their movements a testament to long training and discipline.
“Catch her,” Daniel demanded as I found myself tossed into the air.
Neil moved gracefully under me, and I was grateful for his physical prowess as he made sure I didn’t hit the ground.
Daniel struck quickly. His legs kicked out, attempting to dislodge the goblins from their traditional weapons. He hit one hard, his foot meeting with the goblin’s chins. The red cap’s head flew back and his body followed, but the other two paid no attention to their weakened comrade. They were far too busy shoving their cold iron weapons into my vampire’s body. One of the pikes entered Daniel’s chest and the other met his belly. I was shocked not at the blood but the lack of it. Daniel’s body bled weakly, and I remembered he hadn’t fed the day before. Even a single day could weaken him.
“Neil, you have to help him,” I said even as he was putting me down, having already determined the same thing.
Neil tossed his shirt over his head and before it had time to hit the ground, he changed and howled, calling the Cŵn Annwn to his aid. The enormous dogs growled and leapt into the fray. Daniel pulled the pikes out of his body, tossing one behind him and keeping the other in his hand. He wielded it against the red cap closest to him. The small, fierce goblins were more wary now as three canines approached with deadly hunger in their eyes.
Daniel surged forward, catching a red cap on his pike and shoving the cold iron home through the goblin’s chest. He hauled his prey high into the air, letting gravity work its magic as the red cap fell forward, impaled on the iron. Blood dripped from his mouth and Daniel tossed the fallen foe aside.
Neil and the hell hounds moved in on the last two. They chose their targets and pounced carefully. The hell hounds gleefully tore apart the goblin, reveling in the blood and gore. The final red cap saw the writing on the wall and began to back up. He left his weapon behind and started to flee. Neil began to give chase, but Daniel called him back. The werewolf changed and looked at his former master curiously.
“It won’t do any good,” Daniel said, pain evident in his voice. He stumbled a bit as he walked back toward me, and I could see the blood on his clothes. He’d lost blood he couldn’t afford to lose. Daniel had gotten used to a free blood supply. Most nights Daniel fed from both Devinshea and me. He’d been meeting only half his need with me the past few nights and had nothing at all the night before. “The rest will come anyway. We need to get away.”
Arawn stepped forward. “The vampire is right, but there is something I can do to aid our escape.” The death lord looked down at the two fallen goblins. He pointed to the one Daniel had impaled. “This one is still viable. His heart is beating. Nim, do you have a knife?”
“Of course,” the brunette said as if the answer should have been obvious. She pulled a long knife out of her pack and handed it to her lover.
Arawn did not hesitate. He brought the knife down on the goblin’s neck with brutal force, neatly separating the body from the head. He smiled down, satisfied with his work. “That’s better.” He looked to the hounds and whistled sharply. They turned their heads and ran back to their master, muzzles covered in blood. “Good job, boys.”
Nim frowned as she came to stand beside me. “This part is creepy.”
Daniel staggered his way back to me as Arawn held his hands out, and I felt a chill permeate the courtyard, a wave of cold that made me shiver. The leftover body parts of the ex-goblins began to quiver and shake in a way that dead body parts just shouldn’t. The body stood up, not seeming to care that it had a pike through it or that its head was staring up at it from two feet away. The parts the dogs had left whole were also doing their best to get themselves upright.
I helped Danny remain standing and looked at Neil as he changed and got back into his clothes. We watched as the Lord of the Dead proved his mastery. The former goblins were joined by a couple of skeletons that looked to have clawed their way from the ground.
Nim rolled her eyes as she stared at a corpse with a little meat still hanging on the bones. “Yuck. They’ll be coming here for days. I’m not cleaning this up, Arawn. You can do it yourself.”
Arawn smiled, satisfied with his work. “You will block our retreat,” he commanded his small army of the dead. He closed his eyes and even I could feel he was sending that cold magic out from him. “You will fight the red caps. Delay them any way you can.”
I felt Daniel shake and my arms tightened around him. “You can feel that?”
Danny nodded shortly, trying to concentrate. “It’s taking everything I have to not join them, Z. He can take me over. He can make me do whatever he wants.”
I shot a quick glance at Neil, who knew exactly what that felt like having experienced it at Daniel’s hands before. I expected at least a little hint of satisfaction that the man who had caused him to feel this way was getting well acquainted with the experience. He simply looked at me and came to Daniel’s other side. He pulled Daniel’s arm around his shoulder and gave his support.
Daniel leaned against Neil. He took a deep breath, his eyes tight with strain. “Neil, I am sorry. I didn’t understand what I was doing. Not really. Could you forgive me?” The question was asked in a calm voice but I knew Daniel well. He was worried about the answer.
Neil simply nodded. “I promise I won’t leave like that again. I’ll stay and fight it out with you, but I won’t leave.”
I hugged Daniel’s side as Nim and Arawn turned back to us. Nim frowned at Daniel. “He looks sick.”
“He’s fighting,” the death lord replied. “He’s strong but he hasn’t fed. It would be easier for him to resist the effects if he’d properly fed.”
“When she’s safe,” Daniel insisted.
Arawn’s eyes narrowed. “I could force you.”
“Then you’ll fight all of us.” There was a dark growl behind Neil’s words.
“As you wish.” He shrugged as though he didn’t care either way. “But you should know that my concern is Nim. If your weakness threatens her in any way, I’ll do what is necessary.”
Nim shook her head. “He’ll be fine. We just need to get to Chima’s. We can make it there and the
red caps wouldn’t dare enter her territory.”
We made for the forest even as I heard the rumble of the red caps’ approach. Daniel walked on his own and picked up speed as he forced himself to move. I hurried to keep up with him and hoped this Chima person’s house wasn’t too far away.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There’s a reason most people who choose to hike through the forest wear pants. Pants are helpful when tromping through the brush. When one wears pants, even lightweight pants, one’s legs tend to not get cut up and scraped by the aforementioned brush. Shoes are helpful as well. Shoes mean your feet don’t get cut up when your hungry vampire gets driven to distraction by the blood welling up on your legs from not wearing pants. When your now surly vampire has to get downwind of you so he no longer smells those little tiny cuts and scrapes, you’re left to walk along the forest floor without shoes.
I’m pretty sure Eve ate the apple so she could get a pair of boots.
“Are you okay, Z?” My surly vampire tossed back over his shoulder as he forced us through the forest at a brutal pace.
“I’m fine,” I assured him from the back of the pack.
Neil was just a little ahead of me, walking along with the red-eyed hell hounds. Arawn and Nim kept pace with Daniel so they could guide him to the house we were attempting to get to. Arawn kept praising Daniel for his strength and his ability to function on little blood. No one mentioned the fact that my tummy was growling, too. I’d gone just as long without food as the vamp, but no one complimented my stamina. It might have had something to do with the unholy amount of whining I’d been doing, but it was true.
“We are almost there, Your Grace,” Arawn announced and my hopes for a ham sandwich went up.
“That’s great,” I said with a happy smile.
“Just another hour or so.” Arawn proved he had no idea what the word “almost” meant.
I growled, causing Neil to giggle a little.
“Do you need a lift, Z?” he asked, offering me a piggyback ride.
“No.” Though I had new scrapes opening regularly, I would heal quickly. Daniel’s blood would see to it. I wanted Neil ready to jump into action if he had to. I didn’t want him to worry about me.
As we passed through a particularly thick part of the forest, I found another problem with my wardrobe. When a pissed-off ascended god plucks you from the forest floor and hauls your body up to his weird tree house, you don’t want to be going commando.
I was happy the sleeves to Arawn’s shirt were well made because one minute I was trudging along, grousing in my head about how much I hated nature, and the next I was hauled up by the neck of the shirt. Before I could scream, a hand covered my mouth and I felt cold iron at my neck.
“Keep quiet, Your Grace,” the Hunter’s voice demanded in my ear as he pulled me close to his body. He shifted, finding a better balance on the massive tree limb we were standing on. “I don’t have any problem using this on you.” He shoved his free hand into his pocket and dropped something that looked like sand to the ground where I had been. Then his arm wrapped underneath my breasts and he stood on the tree’s wide limb with far more surety than I would have had. “If you scream, I will gut you, do you understand? We can go to my place and settle our differences or I can kill you here. I’ve already been convicted of the crime, so I have no issues making that a reality. If you agree, nod.”
I wasn’t completely sure if I was agreeing to not scream or if I was giving the Hunter permission to horribly murder me. Either way, he was going to do what he wanted. I nodded and his hand left my mouth.
“I didn’t…” I began in a quiet voice.
The knife immediately went back at my throat. “Not a word.”
I nodded again even as I heard Neil call my name. The Hunter held me roughly against his body and began to climb up the tree with a strength that might have matched Daniel’s. He was graceful and agile as he moved through the tree, never once showing that my added weight slowed him down for an instant.
“Where the hell did she go?” Daniel asked, panic tingeing his voice.
“I don’t know.” Neil’s voice was starting to fade the higher we went. “She was right there.”
The Hunter moved silently, his weight making almost no movement as he sprang from branch to branch. I heard my husband and best friend frantically trying to find me but the sound was farther away now. The forest here was lush, with ancient trees that seemed to go on for miles. I was surrounded, my world doused in the blanket of leaves the trees made. I worried that the Hunter might be planning to take me high up in the canopy and then drop me on my head, but after a harrowing couple of minutes, we reached an odd structure.
It was a box in the air. As the Hunter hauled me into his little room in the trees, I saw that it was sparse but comfortable. There was a chair and a pallet and a single oil lamp providing a small amount of light. The only other things in the space were weapons and a canteen. I finally realized this wasn’t a tree house. This was a high hide. The Hunter used it to hunt.
I was tossed on the floor of the structure and the Hunter stood over me. I had to scramble so my hoo-ha wasn’t on full display. The man hadn’t liked to see my limbs. I didn’t want to find out what he thought of girls who didn’t wear panties.
“Whatever you are thinking I did, Hunter, think again.” I got to my knees because I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me.
He pushed me down again and I got my first real glimpse at the knife he had held to my throat. It was enormous and wicked sharp. I quickly rethought my stance on being intimidated. “I’ve been kicked from my home for treason, Your Grace. I’ve been told that I will be executed and the Seelie wish to use a spell to not only kill my host but to trap me.”
So they were serious about punishing him. I could bet Dev was behind that one. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“Oh, I disagree,” he returned flatly. “I was convicted of crimes against you.”
“I told Declan and my husband that I didn’t believe you had anything to do with it.”
“I’m sure you protested my innocence mightily.” He bit out his words with a sarcasm I hadn’t thought him capable of. “I’m sure that you cried out my innocence to all who could hear.”
“No,” I said, remembering those terrible days. “I told Dev what I believed and then I went back to bed because I didn’t care. I didn’t care about you, I didn’t care about him. I didn’t give a damn that the world was falling apart around me. I only cared that my child was gone. If that’s my crime then you should punish me for it because I admit to it willingly.”
My admission seemed to deflate a bit of the Hunter’s rage. “I was sorry to hear about your loss.” He was quiet for a moment and then finally went to sit in the chair. “Did you truly tell Devinshea I had nothing to do with this atrocity?”
“I did,” I replied, relaxing a little bit. “I told Declan as well, but he had a confession and that was all he needed. The man who gave me the tea confessed to being your accomplice.”
“It only proves that the Seelie know nothing about us.” Herne made his first appearance of the night and the minute the Hunter gave him the body, I knew the real threat had passed. “We wouldn’t stoop so low as to spike a pregnant woman’s tea with a curse. We would carve the babe from your belly.”
“Yes, that’s much better.”
“You take my meaning,” Herne said impatiently. “The Unseelie are a direct people. We would strike hard and with great violence. We would proclaim our crime. This has Seelie betrayal written all over it. They have put Angus in a terrible position. Now I hear that Arawn is wanted for questioning in your kidnapping.”
“Oh, that was Nim,” I corrected. “She bought me. She wanted a little girl-on-girl action.”
“Really?” Herne asked, his eyes lighting up. “Did she get some?” His eyes rolled and the Hunter looked at me, shaking his head. “Forgive my host. He thinks of only one thing. So the traitor has managed to force Angus�
�s greatest allies into hiding right before the war. It’s clever. How can I be sure that overindulged idiot Miria calls her heir isn’t behind this?”
It was a reasonable assumption. Declan, as far as the Unseelie knew, hated them and was capable of anything. “I have proof that the Duke of Ain is behind everything and is working with someone named Con.”
“Bastard,” the Hunter growled. “I should have known. Con has been plotting for years to move up in the court. He always speaks ill of Arawn and me to the king. He tried to convince the king that ascended gods couldn’t be trusted, that we would seek to overthrow him someday in order to rule as we did when we were corporeal.”
I nodded. “It’s a good play. I take it Angus hasn’t bitten until now.”
“He has no choice at this point,” the Hunter admitted. “If he wars with Miria, we most likely lose any chance we had at Devinshea performing his duties as our priest. The nobles over here will revolt. If he concedes, we come under Seelie domination and then the nobles revolt. We cannot win.”
“Why didn’t you call a hunt down on me?” If he had truly believed I’d called him a traitor, he could call for the hunt to execute me. It was his right. I was a royal and owed him honesty.
“It’s a good thing I did not. Do you think the Wild Hunt is to be used in this manner? It’s a serious thing. Had I called a hunt down on your head, I would have found it coming after me.”
“Because I didn’t commit the crime you accused me of,” I reasoned.
He nodded. “It’s a great responsibility. It’s not to be taken lightly.”
“Why not just call a hunt down on the duke?” I sat up straight. “I’ll call it. I have the right. I have no fears that the hunt will turn on me.”
He reached out and put a finger to my lips. “Hush, Your Grace. You have the right but this isn’t the time. You must stand in a space with both me and the Duke of Ain and look at him when you make your accusations. You must then request a hunt of me. It would be best, however, if you allow your husband to call the hunt or the queen herself. It is not right or fair, but the Seelie will be forced to accept the sentence of the hunt if it comes from them.”