Unsidhe Assassin (Darkly Mine Season 1)

by Leona Windwalker

  “It seems you know this rule rather well. Unfortunately, I need you to be healthy, and that means you have to eat.”

  “Like I said, go get me a Big Mac or a Whopper. Hell, I’ll even take a Popeye’s chicken sandwich. Just bring it with a side of fries and a Coke, in the original bags and shit, so I know it’s real, and I’ll eat.”

  “I could just glamour up something to appear like it was,” he informed me.

  “If you tell me it’s the real deal, I’ll believe you. It’s against the rules to lie explicitly, isn’t it? You have to do so by omission.”

  He smiled then. “You’re catching on fast. I tell you what, we’ll play a little game. Let’s see if you can hold out from eating any food or drinking any wine for two more days. If you do, the third day, I’ll risk re-opening the rift and jump back to your world to get your food. Though I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me how to get those food items.”

  “Just look for fast food places called Popeyes or Burger King or McDonald’s,” I told him. “McD’s has a big lit-up sign with an enormous letter m that looks like a double yellow arch.”

  “Fine, fine. You just hold out, if you must. Either way, once you’ve eaten, we can move on with the rest of our arrangements.”

  With that, he turned and left me, but not before I heard him tell someone, “Offer him food and wine. Nothing else, and only once a day. And for pity’s sake, offer him something appetizing. I wouldn’t eat the slop you offered him before, either. Order him whatever the guards are eating and charge the extra to me.”

  Golly gee whiz, you’d have thought he actually cared or something.

  8

  Willow

  I was beginning to adore this stubborn streak of his. It meant that to break him, I have to peel off one layer at a time. To do that effectively, I needed to know his triggers. Food and water are basic necessities. Some people also had a thing about being unclothed, though this doesn’t seem to bother him. Either that or he’s so hyperfocused on ignoring his stomach pangs and sore muscles that all else was shoved into the recesses of his mind. Nevermind, I’ve already got a few more things up my sleeve.

  When they cut his clothes off of him, they brought me the scraps as well as what was in his pocket. One iPhone with numbers in the contact list that were most likely fake. A driver’s license and a credit card made out to a Liam Jones, which is most definitely fake. No way would anyone worth their salt go out on a job with their real ID. The card worked, though, as I’d seen him use it at the club to pay for his drinks. It went to show how thorough he is. He’d needed money, but he also had needed to blend in. These were all parts of his disguise but also very useful. He would have no idea that they’d also be helpful to someone like me. All I had to do was get a Hound and go tracking.

  It’s how I spent the previous day while Ghost was acclimatizing himself to his temporary digs. First, I visited a Valkyrie who was mated to a fae warrior I’d befriended in my youth. In exchange for agreeing to sponsor her offspring for elite warrior training, she consented to loan me one of the family’s hunting dogs, Asta. I use the term loosely, as they are most definitely wolves, descended from Odin’s own Geri and Freki. Asta was a massive beast, which I glamored to look more like a dog breed I’d come across during my human sojourns, a Husky. Asta took a good sniff of the clothes and wallet then jumped the rift with me.

  The first stop was a nondescript hotel room. It had a “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging outside the door, so no one had come to clean yet. It was empty, save for a lone used toothbrush by the sink. A sniff and a good mouthing by Asta later, and she traveled us to an apartment. This looked like it was his personal space, the place he called home. Framed photos of some kid in fancy dresses and rhinestone crowns, from her infancy on up, adorned the walls. I didn’t get the feeling she was his, as no school photos or candid shots were to be found anywhere. Whoever she was, though, she was important to him. I took several of the pictures out of their frames for Asta’s closer inspection, placing them in a bag I brought with me. I could offer them as rewards for being co-operative, once we reached the stage that made such a thing feasible.

  Asta next brought us to a modest house with a small yard. Tall pines grew in a thick cluster behind the row of houses on its side of the street, with the occasional one in the front yards. The house the child was most associated with, though, had a large oak out front. Also out front was a car, which had a woman and said child unloading what appeared to be groceries. Perfect. I’d found the child’s home. I drew a frame around the scene with my fingers, mentally uttering the words that would freeze this image in time for me to call up later, much like the human concept of a photograph. Speaking of which, that also wasn’t a terrible idea. I had his phone with me and it still held a charge. I’d watched humans take pictures with them at the birthday party, so I knew how to do it. I turned around, opening the camera app, and took a selfie once I had a clear view of both females’ faces, the house and car clear in the background. That done, Asta went to get a good sniff of the child, so that she could be tracked no matter where she went, across all the realms.

  “I’m sorry!” I called out. “She’s friendly.” Asta proved this by trying to lick the child as if she were her favorite treat. “She got away from me when I opened my front door.”

  The child was giggling now.

  “Oh, it’s alright,” the woman said, relaxing. “Molly keeps asking for a dog, but we are not home enough to keep even a cat. She enters all the important regional pageants for her age and all.”

  Hearing they frequently traveled over a large area, I was glad I’d had the foresight to have Asta mark Molly. If I needed to use her personal presence as leverage, it would make locating her much more straightforward. The woman, too, as I could tell from their individual scents that they were both closely related to Ghost. His mother and a sibling, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  “Well, I best get Asta back home,” I said, nudging Asta so that she nosed the woman’s leg. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “You, too, Mr.?” the woman angled for my name.

  “Jones,” I supplied smoothly.

  “Jones. I’m Carol Ann, and you’ve met Molly,” she giggled, batting her lashes coquettishly.

  I gave her a short nod, not wishing to engage her any further. I could smell her attraction rolling off in waves and it curdled my stomach. I’d tupped my fair share of females, including a few humans, in my two hundred and twenty-three years of existence. She was attractive enough, but there was only one human I wanted to sink into at the moment, and he was her offspring. That’s a hard no from me. I’ll dip my wick sideways among the branches of a family tree, but up and down the tree trunk is a pass.

  I turned away, tugging gently on Asta’s ruff to let her know it was time to leave. She followed me obediently and once we were out of sight, I told her to take us home. As we reappeared in Astrid’s kitchen, she stood up from the table where she was sat eating a meal with her mate and their children.

  “Talk about timing!” she greeted me. “I was just telling Ash here about you sponsoring our Eik for elite warrior training.”

  Given the level of success and the relative brevity of our mission, I was feeling generous. “Aye. And if he graduates in the top tier, he’ll have a spot in my personal guard.” It was time I stopped borrowing from my family’s guards, anyway, and get some loyal to just myself.

  Ash looked at me. “You forming your own, then?” he asked.

  “About time, I think. I’ll be two hundred and twenty-five in two years.” I didn’t need to remind him that I’d reach my majority then, and the gloves would really come off then. The Court would no longer have to play by the same rules as they did for a minor.

  Ash’s mouth set in a grim line. “We’ve been friends since you were a wee lad that came to watch us spar,” he said.

  “We have,” I replied evenly.

  “If you’re taking applications, I’d like it if you’d consider me. And I know Glade w
ould make the move if he were asked.”

  Glade had been our nursery guard. At nearly five hundred years old, he was an experienced warrior. He’d make a great captain of the guard with Ash as his second. Glade had always protected me from the wrath of my father whenever a childhood prank had gone awry. It wasn’t until late childhood that my sense of smell discerned the reason why our father was so hard on me and only me. Why he placed such a seasoned warrior in such a position and the reason why he and my mother had parted ways shortly after my birth. I was Glade’s son, a cuckoo in the nest. He knew that by claiming me and placing Glade as guard, he’d let no harm befall any of us in the nursery as I was there. I was Glade’s only child, too, as punishment for cuckolding my father had included rendering him magically infertile. It was a standard spell, one given to guards who watched over females to avoid having precisely what had with my mother. Not that Glade had been guarding my mother or her ladies. He’d been in the general house guard and caught my mother’s eye. He was now mated to a fellow former guard, one who was wounded in some skirmish or other my father sent the guard on to grab more territory. I’d take him, no question, and Ash as well.

  “I’d have to ask?” I replied, eyebrow raised.

  Ash laughed. “I’ll let him know when I go tender my resignation tomorrow.”

  “Good.” I’d be checking on my prisoner. After that, though, I needed to go see an outfitter about shields and banners and whatnot bearing my crest rather than my recognized father’s. It was going to be a good day, I just knew it.

  9

  Jase

  The day after Lord Willow the Jackass left me, Lurch came back to my cell. Not with food this time, though. This time, he had two guys with him that I’d never seen before. They carried in two pieces of metal, which they began riveting over the window, plunging me into darkness.

  “That’s spelled iron, same as the bars,” Lurch told me, sounding gleeful. “So, if you had any thoughts of someone coming to help you with magic, you can forget it. Nothing’s getting past that, not even a whisper.”

  Well, shit. That sounded like they’d discovered someone had been by to talk to me. I didn’t ask how they knew about it. I hadn’t solicited that guy’s help, and I was already in enough of a bother without getting drawn into any more drama than I already was.

  The thing with the dark, though, was it made it that much chillier in the room, which in turn made it even danker. After Lurch and his buddies left me, extinguishing the light in the corridor along their way out, I was in complete darkness, alone, and getting more miserable every second. My stomach was also gnawing on my spine now and my throat felt dry and swollen. My nose had stopped running from being exposed to the damp and cold, but I suspected that was due to the fact that I was becoming severely dehydrated. I’d last had a drink that night at the club, nearly three full days ago, and those had been alcoholic.

  My head was pounding, my ankle chafed, and my shoulders and back still ached. I could put up with the discomfort, but my body was going to shut down if I didn’t get some liquid in me. I knew this was their plan. Drive me to the brink, until I caved. It wasn’t going to happen. I hunkered down and closed my eyes. I would doze until I passed out if I had to. Time stretched on and on, my world becoming nothing but the sensation of cold, damp, and the other physical discomforts. I felt them as if disembodied. They were there, but I drifted as if not quite present to experience them.

  A cold tidal wave broke over me, and I came to with a splutter, my traitorous face turning to the water and catching droplets on my lips and tongue, swallowing. Oh, fuck.

  “Three days as promised. Not bad, but I didn’t want to wait any longer.” Lord Shithead the High Fae was back, and he’d tricked me again. I felt it as soon as I’d swallowed the first droplet, though I’d been too desperate to care. Until he opened his mouth and the full weight of what had just happened slammed into me. Or had it? No, surely, not. I didn’t feel any different. I would, wouldn’t I?

  “You’ll feel the tug the next time you leave the realm,” he said.

  Shit. I’d said all that aloud, hadn’t I?

  “And that,” he replied, looking amused.

  I wanted to punch that smirk right off his beautiful face. The pain in my skull went from a low, persistent throb that had been a steady seven or eight to the blinding whiteout of times a million. My back arched, my head thrown back as the sudden onslaught caught me off guard. Fuck me, what did that bit of water do to me.

  “Oh, sorry if I forgot to mention it, but when you tied yourself to the Realm, it solidified my claim on you. You can’t even think about hurting me or being disloyal in any way without that happening. That’s the warning shot. It only gets worse from there if you continue on.”

  I heard his words and they pissed me off even worse. A stabbing pain knifed through my chest as I imagined throttling him. Shit, I need to calm down. Think happy thoughts, dude, I told myself. I forced my self to imagine the pleased look on his face as I made the shot he initially hired me for. The pain dialed down. I panted, trying to keep that tenuous hold on my emotions.

  “If you’re quite done, I’ll have them fetch you a proper meal. They were going to bring you one in a bit, anyway.” He sniffed. “I had a reward for you, but I’ll keep that for when you better deserve it.”

  I wanted to refuse but there was no longer any point. I’d tasted fairy sustenance, no matter how microscopic it had been. I was stuck here, doomed to return to this crazy-ass place after only very short visits to Earth, and any other realm my new boss sent me on jobs to. Boss, hell. I saw the writing on the damned wall. He owned my ass, and given what he was capable of with all that magic he possessed, I was better off going along for the ride.

  He was going to pay anyway. I’d just have to find out how long I could stay on Earth each time and get him to pay me in human money I could actually spend. I wasn’t about to abandon my kid sister, leave her to think her big brother no longer cared. She’d not only be hurt thinking that, but once the sharks hanging about the kiddie pageants realized she only had my dork assed stepfather and our living in the past mama looking out for her, she’d be chum.

  Nope, not happening.

  “Water,” I rasped. I didn’t want wine. I needed to be clear-headed while I talked to my new employer.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, waving a hand. A glass of water appeared in his hand.” Not the tastiest, I’m sure. It’s collected from what was already here. It’s clean and drinkable, of course.”

  It’d do. I reached a hand out for it, and he surprised me by moving to kneel next to me. He cupped my chin with one hand while he held the glass and tipped it for me to drink from with the other. “Slowly, now. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”

  Damn it, I hated it when he was right.

  10

  Willow

  My human still needed an attitude adjustment, so I left him in the excellent hands of his current keepers for a few more days. I knew he was in good hands, they’d feed and water him and empty his shit bucket once a day, just as I’d ordered. They’d even toss some water over him in the mornings so he’d not stink. I did ask them to warm the water up a bit first. I didn’t want to have to deal with a sick human on top of a stubborn one. And while Ghost was hanging out at the dungeon figuring out which of us two was the one in charge, I would be busy doing other things.

  Things like what I was doing right now, for example.

  “While a compulsory purchase can indeed be completed, it needs to be made with your own funds,” the Buildings Regulator said.

  “Oh, I have the funds in my account,” I replied.

  “But is it all yours, earned or by inheritance? Not gifted or loaned.”

  “Yes, yes,” I answered, my tone impatient. “I know the rules. I have sufficient that I earned myself; nevermind what I’ve inherited. As for being gifted funds, you do know who you’re talking to, don’t you?”

  The regulator blanched. “Oh, my, yes. Your family diffi
culty saw a dwindling of your personal fortune, I heard.”

  He and the entirety of both Courts, yep. You don’t get into the level of trouble I did and not see consequences. Given that it became family trouble, that included having financial support withdrawn as well. Luckily, I was well paid for the fairy dust I brokered to the shifters a few realms over. They used it as a party drug, but who was I to judge? They wanted it and I was happy to help fae living on the edge of poverty. They donated dust for a few silver coins, and I brokered it all for a profit. They got high, I got rich, the poor got money to live on. Everyone won.

  “Both owners insist the payment be in gems we verify. No gold.”

  I’d expected that. There was always some idiot who sought to try and trick his fellow fae with fairy gold. It was. A pointless scam, but there was always that one guy or gal who thought they’d manage to get away with it. I mentally rolled my eyes. I mean, come on, that is literally the oldest trick in the book.

  “But of course,” I replied. “I expected nothing less.”

  The man sighed. “Okay, sign here and place your seal here. Arrange for payment to be brought here before the close of today’s business, or the contracts are void.”

  It was twelve minutes until closing, which was plenty of time, seeing as I’d booked a Wells-Faego to deliver it here already. The security coach was floating outside at the curb. All I had to do was go outside and tell them to bring it in, which is precisely what I did, once everything was signed and sealed.

  I thought about how I wanted to rearrange the rooms on those two floors. The one immediately below me needed to accommodate my new armory. The one below that would become barracks for the ten unmarried men and women who would become my personal guard. Married members of the guard would have rooms on the armory level for the days and nights they were in charge of the watch. And speaking of the armory, I needed to see how the order for weapons was going. Glade and Ash had no doubt been busy enough turning in their resignations and getting started on the recruiting, but I knew that wouldn’t have stopped them from amassing a wishlist.