There was a loud banging coming from the doors, and when Fae looked over at them she could see the edges of the doors glowing a soft gold. From the other side was Butler’s voice yelling to break the doors down.
Run.
The word echoed inside her, and she stifled the sobs in her chest, locking the guilt away so she could think. Fae gave Juliet one more glance before she stood up. The fire was spreading up the wall, roaring against the ceiling and Fae backed away from it. There was no way to get to Irena or any of the girls, not from this room. The only way out for her now was through the windows. Running over to them she hopped up onto the windowsill and slipped out the window.
She gasped as her bare legs went through a foot of snow that had built up against the house. Pushing through the bushes that scratched at her arms she tumbled out onto the front lawn. Although the cold was painful she had to hurry, they’d be through the doors soon, or someone would see her out front. Moving across the snow covered turf she started to run as best she could, pulling her legs high out of the snow. Her breaths were puffing out in clouds around her, and she couldn’t really feel her feet anymore, or her hands. The realization was far away though, she just had to run, to get as far from those girls as she could so no one would get hurt because of her again.
That was the greatest gift she could give them.
Juliet was dead, but Nikola was dead too. If she were there they’d only use the other girls to punish her, and she couldn’t handle that on her conscience. She couldn’t have another of their deaths to remember.
Chapter Eight
Rannoch Moor, Scotland
The roar of laughter slowed down and Cole picked up his story again, “So there’s Kiernan, waist deep in the river getting his grooming routine on, and this beauty comes walking along the other side of the river.” Cole planted his foot on the ribcage of the massive tiger that spanned the length of one of the tables, and one of the guys shook Kiernan’s shoulders while laughing loudly in his ear. “So we hear Kiernan whispering at us, ‘Hey! Guys! There’s a tiger!’ and I open my eyes to see his ass, naked, running around our camp trying to find his bow.” Cole scrubbed his face in a dramatic way, “I’ll never forget that image in all of my days!”
“Like you looked so hot with your face in the mud? I woke this idiot up half drowning in a puddle! And I put on my fucking pants, Cole.” Kiernan shouted over the others, which only renewed the laughter from the group of Laochra who had gathered to see their trophies.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so he grabs his bow and runs back to the bank of the river - and there she is just drinking. She stretches herself out like she wants to get shot, just waiting for him. Kiernan pulls back the bow and POW down she goes.” More hands reached forward to clap Kiernan on the back and he took a big drink of his beer, which sloshed over as he got bumped again by the crowd. Eryn was sitting on the other side of the table and he stood, the group growing quieter to listen to him.
“She wasn’t down for the count though! No way. Kiernan fords across the river, half-swimming and gets to her and she starts hissing and roaring at him, swipes at him with one of those huge claws.” Eryn raised his glass in a toast. “And he leans over her and slits her throat with his knife!” A roar of cheers rose up and Eryn’s grin split his face, showing his teeth.
His own smile was false, hollow.
It had been a fantastic trip, but Eryn was just as vicious as ever and Kiernan couldn’t be a part of the vision Eryn had for the world. He tipped his beer back and finished it, showing the empty mug to the group. Standing up he headed back to refill his drink from a barrel that had been brought out in celebration of their kill. As he stepped away a few of the guys gripped his shoulder, or slapped him on the back and he made himself smile at them. His stomach was turning though, a feeling of dread pooling in his chest as he opened the tap. His arm suddenly burned and he pulled up his sleeve to see the vines progress towards his shoulder. The pitstop at the bar in Virginia on their way back had been enough to move the vines back to his elbow, but not enough to push them back completely.
What the hell was happening?
He headed towards the sleeping areas and hissed as the burn in his skin faded. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the vines were a warning, that it was something important, and not just his normal lack of action. Kiernan rubbed the ends of the vines on his arm and tugged his sleeve down as Fae’s face popped into his mind. He froze for a moment as her sad smile filled his head and pushed away all thought of the hunt, of the other Laochra waiting to celebrate with him. He just needed to check in on the observation glass and then he could come back. He could come right back, and no one would even notice.
Hopefully.
Focusing on his apartment he felt himself reappear and waited a second until everything came into perspective.
“Alright, what’s going on...” he muttered to himself, shaking his head at his sudden paranoia as he moved his desk and flipped open the box holding the glass. He touched the edge of it, thinking of Fae. Light flickered in the glass and then the image came into focus. He saw her walking in the snow, bright sunlight making it sparkle around her like diamonds. He frowned as he tried to squint and saw the thin, sleeveless dress she had on.
Why would she be outside? Half naked? In the middle of winter?
What the fuck had happened?
Sliding his finger counterclockwise around the glass time moved backwards, images flickering until he saw fire fill the glass. He paused a second before moving it back even further to get back to the dinner party he knew had happened over the days he was gone; when he saw the whip he stopped and let it move forward. His heart rate increased as he watched, and he found himself digging his free hand into the desk as anger took him over. He wanted to find the man who had held the whip, the one called Butler, and kill him slowly. Very slowly. Then there was the one who’d picked her up off the floor, bleeding, and taken her to his room to-
Kiernan cursed loudly and forced himself to speed up the time, not having the stomach to watch what he did. Moving forward he finally saw the other young girl die, and then he had no idea what he saw inside the glass. The windows blew inward, her master was pointing the gun at her, and then the fire came to life and took Nikola into it. Then Fae was running, out into the snow.
In Canada. In only a dress.
Shit.
When he removed his hand from the edge of the glass it snapped back to real time, only now there were three black clad figures coming towards her in the snow. He slammed the box shut and stepped back focusing on the image of her face.
He felt the frigid air hit him before he recognized he had moved, and when his eyes came into focus he was only a few feet in front of her next to the road, standing shin deep in snow. Fae had one of the men clad in black in some kind of arm hold, and she drove her knee into his stomach hard. Then when he bent over she snapped his arm over her knee. Kiernan could hear the bone break from several feet away and the scream from the guy only confirmed it. Brutally efficient.
“What the hell?!” one of the other guys shouted in a thick accent, and when Kiernan looked over both of the other men were staring wide-eyed at him. Shifting away from the man on the ground Fae kicked the guy with the accent in the chest before turning to look over her shoulder. Her lips parted in surprise and her brow furrowed as she finally saw him – and Kiernan was struck still.
Her eyes were an even paler blue than he thought and her hair was filled with fiery red strands that caught the sunlight. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, the exertion of the fight, and trudging through the snow. He watched her turn back just in time to see the last man reaching for her and she side-stepped him, knocking his arm away from her. She was more beautiful than he could have ever thought watching her from afar, and watching her move fluidly as she fought, with her breath coming out in clouds in the air around her, was mesmerizing.
“You fucking bitch! You broke my arm! Travis grab her!” The guy with the injured arm had pulled a stun gun out
of a pocket in his pants with his good arm, and that finally snapped Kiernan out of his daze. The one called Travis turned to respond but Kiernan caught him in the jaw with a right hook that sent him down into the snow.
What was he doing?
Travis tried to get up and Kiernan leaned down to deliver another two punches, which dazed the man sufficiently to stay down.
“Who the hell is he?” The last guy circling Fae pointed at Kiernan, and Fae glanced at him, her brows pulling together again. The injured one with the stun gun lunged for her, but she jumped out of the way. Kiernan took a few steps towards her, ready to step in if the guy went for her with the weapon, but she obviously didn’t need his help.
Her arms and legs were bare, and from what he had seen when she had kicked the guy she was barefoot. She was cold, she had to be cold because it was very, very cold here.
He needed to fix that.
The guy with the broken arm lunged for her, but Fae had been waiting and smoothly moved to the side, grabbing his vest and shoving him towards the last man. When the stun gun made contact there was a crackle of electricity, the other man yelled and hit the snow and the injured man screamed and grabbed his arm as he landed badly. Before the men could react again, Kiernan rushed forward and placed his hand on her shoulder. He focused back on his apartment, and with one last blast of frigid air he shifted and they were in his living room dripping snow onto the tile.
“What the -” Fae’s eyes grew wide as she stumbled back from him, trying to catch her balance against the edge of his couch. She looked around wildly. “How- Who? What the hell just happened? Who - what are you?” Fae held a hand out in front of her in an effort to get some space from him, and all the color fled her cheeks. He knew the nausea she felt, it had taken him years to adjust to the instant movement from one place to another.
“Sit down, the effects will fade soon. I just need a minute to think.” Kiernan sighed and pushed a hand through his hair, gripping it at the root.
“No. You need to tell me what the hell you are and how you got me here.” She was still bracing a hand against the couch, but every line of her body was ready to fight. He tried to tear his eyes from her curves, from the very short hem of that dress, and focused on the impossibility of what he’d seen in the glass.
“I can’t believe you did that.” Kiernan was muttering to himself and suddenly turned around to face her again, raising his voice at her, “How did you even kill Nikola? That shouldn’t even be possible!”
“How do you even know he’s dead?” Fae’s voice was serious, and she stood up straighter.
“I watched it happen!” His head spun as he remembered the eerie way the fire had moved, the way she had glowed with the power of the gods. He felt angry all of a sudden, like she’d somehow lied to him all these years. “You’ve never been able to do that before. Moved fire? Blew out those windows? What the fuck, Fae!” Kiernan put his hands in his hair again so he wouldn’t grab for her. He started to pace around the edge of his living room. Fae started moving around the front of the couch taking slow steps back from him, and he was somewhat grateful for the additional space between them.
“What do you mean you watched me? How do you even know me?” Fae’s voice had grown quiet, and he turned to face her, those blue eyes evaluating him in a way that made his cock twitch in his pants.
“Of course I watched you, it’s my freaking job, Fae.” He laughed as the bitterness of that statement hit home. He growled as he pointed at her. “The other Laochra will kill you if they find out you killed your master. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Fae stilled and Kiernan pushed out a breath of air, his hands clenching in his hair as he tried to think. But he couldn’t think, because she was here. In front of him. In his freaking apartment. This was so stupid, so very stupid. Suddenly, Fae jumped up on the couch and grabbed one of Kiernan’s swords that hung on the wall above it.
“Oh gods.” He groaned. For a second Kiernan regretted keeping his weapons sharpened, because this wasn’t going to go well. Drawing the sword from the scabbard she stepped off the couch and stomped towards him, he raised his hands, about to try and reason with her when she swung it hard at him. Kiernan barely ducked it before hitting the wall behind him as he threw himself backwards.
“Are you insane?!” Kiernan shouted at her as Fae brought the sword back around. He picked up a small table to block the blow, and the little statue that had been on it shattered on the tile. Fae pressed Kiernan backwards, striking at his legs and his head, each blow he caught with the table. His anger flickered inside him and he yelled again, “Stop it, Fae, stop!”
“You’re Laochra?! How dare you touch me, how dare you even speak to me, you bastard son of Gormahn!” Fae screamed back and surprised him with a hard kick in the stomach before bringing the sword around again. This time Kiernan was slower to block it and it almost cut into his side. Rage flared inside him.
Son of Gormahn? He was no son of Gormahn.
Kiernan stepped back quickly to get some breathing room from her range with the sword. There was a battle axe hung like art inside a black picture frame next to him, and every piece of him demanded he grab it and show her how he could fight. He gripped the hilt, then he imagined himself swinging the wide blade into her ribs and he released it instantly. A wave of nausea hit him, and he barely got the table up in time to block another blow.
“Listen! If I didn’t take you from there, those guards would have taken you back to Butler, and you know he would have claimed you. You know what he would have done to you.” He tried to reason with her as he blocked yet another attack. She was moving the blade incredibly fast and it was wearing him to keep up without a weapon of his own to counter and press her back.
“A Laochra wouldn’t care about that!” She kicked for his knee and he barely avoided it.
“Fae, stop! Would you just talk to me?” he pleaded, and Fae responded by bringing the sword down hard in a two-handed swing meant to separate his shoulder, but Kiernan caught it in the butchered legs of the table and it stuck. When Fae tried to pull it back he saw that it wasn’t moving and he twisted the table to wrench the sword out of her hands. Once it was free he threw the table and the sword behind him down the hall to his bedroom. “Okay, now st-” Fae spun and caught him in the side with a kick, but he grabbed her foot while it was still up and yanked her forward off balance. Catching her he threw her to the ground and avoided a head-butt as he pinned her.
Fae screamed even louder in frustration, “Get off me, you filthy fucking son of Gormahn!” He grabbed her wrists and slammed them to the tile above her head, bracing his knees on either side of her as she squirmed under him.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” He roared in her face, and she spit at him, screaming again.
“You are a filthy, disgusting, son of Gormahn! His vile power is inside y –” Kiernan cut her off by grabbing her throat, and she coughed as he tightened his grip. The darkness swelled inside him, a cold power roaring like the rush of the ocean in his ears. Her eyes closed as she tried to twist away from him, but that wasn’t possible. She wasn’t a match for him. Her body was strong, he could feel that, and he wanted to feel a lot more of it. It wouldn’t be difficult, to shift himself and push her thighs apart, and –
What the fuck was he doing?
Kiernan released her throat and she coughed and sputtered, tears sliding down her temples as she jerked hard against his grip on her wrists. He wanted to let her go, he wanted to get off her and get some space, because the ideas that had crossed his thoughts were –
‘Vile?’ his mind offered, and he was almost sick. Yes, vile, because Gormahn’s power was inside him, and he was Laochra, and he was tainted - and she… she wasn’t.
“Get off me, Laochra!” Even as her voice cracked from the strain of her shouting she glared at him. He could hear her feet slipping on the tile as she tried to get the leverage to knock him off her, but he was too far back on her thighs for her to manage it. He wa
s a little impressed, now that his head was his own again, how she was managing to still be so brave. She stilled suddenly and hissed at him, leaning her head up to meet his eyes, “You, and all your bastard brethren, should have died screaming.”
The viciousness of her words almost felt like a slap, but he just shrugged a shoulder as he took in her blue eyes up close. “I can’t really argue that.”
Her brows pulled together for a second as confusion passed over her, and then she arched her back as much as she could and let out an ear splitting scream. He slapped his hand over her mouth, trying to be gentle this time, but if he didn’t get her to stop soon the neighbors were going to call the police, and this was not something easy to explain.
No, officer, I’m not attacking a woman in my apartment. She’s actually not human, and no, I can’t really let you in to check or I’ll have to kill you, or she might kill you, it’s complicated.
Yeah, this was going so well.
“Listen to me!” Kiernan pressed his hand over her mouth and shook her a little, but her eyes were still blazing and her cheeks were flushed red in anger. He groaned, “Okay, listen, I’m sorry I choked you, but I’m not going to hurt you again. I promise, and I’d prefer if you wouldn’t hurt me either. Just nod if you understand and you’ll be quiet.”
For a long minute she just stared at him, dragging in harsh breaths through her nose, and then she gave one curt nod. As he lifted his hand she licked her lips and he tried to ignore the weight of his cock in his pants, knowing she could probably feel it and that wasn’t helping him much at all. He was about to apologize for his idiotic body, when she spoke again, much calmer this time.
“Why? Why would you not hurt me?”
Kiernan sighed. It was a reasonable question, but he never would have even raised a hand to her if she hadn’t come after him first.
“I don’t want to hurt you, that’s why.” Fae rolled her eyes and tried to twist her arms away from him, but he just pressed her wrists down more firmly. “Stop it! If I’d really wanted to hurt you I could have just let those guards take you to Butler. Right?”
Fae Page 11