by S A Archer
“Yeah,” Kieran breathed. Shifting, he slid down a bit more so he could lay his head back and still see the screen. His hand rested on Riley’s bare upper arm. A light Touch dribbled from his flesh, and with each ripple it echoed back to him. “This OK?”
Riley grinned softly. “Yeah.”
It could have been weird, given that they were strangers to each other, but somehow it wasn’t. Not a lot needed to be said. Something this symbiotic didn’t need explaining.
Dr. Who would be proud.
Relaxing, Kieran closed his eyes.
Now, he could sleep.
4 days after the creation of the new fey realm
Chapter Seventeen
“Become the night.” His voice caressed her ear, summoning the dark stir of her magic. The light touch of his hands curled around her hips as he drew up against her back. “Become the darkness.”
Trip glanced back at Cormac. The dark elf leaned so close to her that she couldn’t catch but a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. Before them, the night sky arched over the Isle of Fey. From the mouth of the sluagh cave, near the peak of the mountain, she watched the dark forests below swaying in the night breeze. A few pinpricks of light flickered down in the fey town near the beach, the last hints of illumination in the cool, consuming night. “I could lose myself.”
His mouth moved closer to her throat. So close, the heat of his breath tickled against her skin, making it hypersensitive. “Trust yourself. Trust what you were meant to be.”
Trip leaned against the dark elf’s strong body. Reaching back over her shoulder, she gripped his hair and drew him down to kiss her throat. “You tempt me.”
His fingers clawed up her sides to grip her ribs. “Embrace who you are and the Wild Hunt will follow you anywhere.”
The Wild Hunt. There were only the two of them right now. Just her and Cormac and a flight of sluagh. Other dark elves lingered in the caverns further down the mountain, but none other than Cormac drew close to her. But even he, for all his suggestive whispers and caresses, wouldn’t concede himself. For all the effort he made to lure her to him, he refused her bed as long as she resisted the dark power within her.
Which only heightened the sense of longing and desire. And not just for him.
When Cormac wasn’t trying to seduce her deeper into her dark magic, he taught her the language of the sluagh so she could at least make out the slithering phrases the creatures spoke. Like bats, they rustled their leathery wings in the cave behind her. They came when she called to them, but even they weren’t under her command. The tallest of the sluagh matched a four-year-old elf in height. Their slender maroon and black skin, large heads and glistening, over-sized eyes no doubt inspired many of the medieval paintings of devils. Their wicked claws could shred wood as easily as flesh. Although needle sharp teeth filled their often agape mouths, they tended not to bite as often as scream. And their screams could tear like daggers through a person’s sanity. Trip didn’t fear them though, since they seemed to worship her, but harnessing them to her will with her magic was another feat altogether.
When she didn’t respond to Cormac, he slipped away from her. The lingering slide of his hand down her back was the final alluring stroke before he came around beside her. In the dark his coppery skin glistened. The slim fitting brown suede and black leather of his clothing hugged the narrow line of his hips and the length of his legs. The jacket only reached the base of his ribs, like a matador’s, and accentuated his muscular chest and shoulders to reveal the deep purple of the silk stroking over the flat of his stomach. When he glanced back at her his semi-transparent third eyelid had slipped closed. Somehow, the third eyelid magnified the existing light, so he could see in the dark. It gave his eyes the appearance of glowing soft blue. But when he blinked it back, his irises glittered with a jeweled amber color instead. The fall of his black hair parted around his sexy, elven ears.
Self consciously, Trip dragged her fingers down her hair. When she’d turned sixteen, she’d convinced a human plastic surgeon to ‘fix’ her ears. Now, she regretted that rash choice. Just as she’d not used Glamour to hide her elven ears from the humans, she didn’t use it to alter the appearance of her rounded, human-like ears from the fey. Normally, she just pretended her ears didn’t disfigure her. But around Cormac, she caught herself unconsciously covering them. No reason to give him more to find her lacking.
The deep murmur of his voice brought her out of her thoughts. “Changeling.”
At first, she thought he called her that. Her frown of confusion turned to one of concern and he nodded out towards the forest between them and the village. “Are you certain?”
“Utterly.” Cormac started down the steep mountain side, as comfortable leaping from ledge to ledge as the wood elves were with swinging through the trees. Longer distances he teleported, but his acrobatic skills usually made it unnecessary.
Trip hopscotched behind him, teleporting from outcropping to boulder to keep pace with the dark elf. Some day, when she mastered her shadows, they would become solid enough to carry her through the air. It was a concept Donovan had told her, but one Trip hadn’t been able to wrap her head around. Shadows were insubstantial. The absence of light. Not something with mass.
The broken rock of the uplifted mountain peek gave way to the roll of hills as they traveled downward. Already great forests of trees created a canopy high above the ground where the wood elves created a grove for themselves and the other woodland fey.
Just at the edge of the tree line Cormac slid to a halt. His hand skimmed over the rough bark of an ash tree. His eyes glowed blue as he touched markings she couldn’t see.
But she could feel the unsettled arousal of her power in the pit of her stomach. She’d been near Changelings only a couple times in her life and they always affected her this way. Like the dark elves, whom she felt as the quickening of temptation, and the Unseelie Sidhe, with their alluring Touch, the Changelings were dark fey. If she’d more experience, Trip could have found the Changeling on feel alone.
She felt the Changeling’s nearness like breath.
“The Changeling marked these trees on purpose. Like a cat, scratching to declare its territory.” Cormac blinked into the woods. “There’s more that way.”
Trip followed him. “It left a trail.” And she knew it had been intentional. “Luring us into a trap?”
Cormac’s feline movements rolled with unconscious grace as he slipped silently through the shadows. They’d not gone more than a few minutes before he raised a hand in warning.
Trip slipped up beside him to peer between the trees at the clearing beyond.
The torn and bloody body of a wood elf sprawled in a shaft of moonlight. Her sightless eyes stared upward. An expression of shock froze upon her fine-features.
Beside her, just in the shadows, the figure of a man bent over her.
Trip started forward, but Cormac gripped her wrist. “Wait,” he whispered.
“That’s no Changeling,” she replied, not shielding the sound of her voice from the man beyond. She might not sense magic like Malcolm, but she sensed darkness. The flavor of the Unseelie varied from Sidhe to Sidhe, but she recognized this one.
As she approached, the moonlight caught a glint of red from the Unseelie’s hair. Bryce was the only Sidhe she’d met with red hair and she knew it stemmed from the fiery aspect of his magic. As she drew near, Bryce glanced up at her. “We got a report of a missing girl.”
Cormac crouched next to the body. With the tip of his knife he examined the wounds. “Changeling claws.”
“Changelings?” Bryce twisted to search the night around them. “Here? Are you sure?”
Cormac rose to his full height. “They leave a residue. Their flesh sloughs off easy. It sparkles gold to dark elf eyes.” Blinking, his third eyelids f
licked back into place like a canine’s.
“We should tell Donovan,” Bryce said, then caught himself. “I mean, I’ll text Tiernan.”
No one had seen Donovan since the Creation. Rumors were already circulating. Very possibly, he was never coming back. And there wasn’t an earthborn Unseelie from Donovan’s crew that didn’t miss him acutely.
Chapter Eighteen
Malcolm’s body buzzed. He knew that before he was even fully awake. Flat on his stomach, his face turned towards the wall and mashed into a pillow like he’d crashed hard, his body had the stiffness of not having moved for hours. His brains felt like cotton. Magic throbbed through him with the endless rhythm of waves washing over the shore. Over and over, it spread inward and then rushed back out through the Touch. It made the room spin in a weird jerky way.
His eyes slid open but he didn’t really see anything. It was all about feeling. Feeling the fingers tracing lines and patterns over his bare back. Tracing his scars. Each stripe a reminder of the silver laced whips that the goblins had beaten him with. Over and over they had struck him, ruining the flesh on his back.
A soft kiss pressed to one of the scars below his neck. Kaitlin’s music carried a loving and sympathetic melody that twined with her Touch. She looked upon his scars, caressing them, and not thinking less of him for them.
Malcolm closed his eyes again, drunk on the Touch magic surging in and out of him. He wasn’t thinking. Not really. His mind floated out, following fluttering butterflies of memory.
Such a pretty boy.
They aren’t paying for his looks.
The voices of Fiona and Rand. The human and the Changeling that had abducted him and buried him deep in a goblin’s nest.
Such a shame.
That had been London. He remembered her, gazing into his eyes even though the room had spun then too. He’d been so drunk on that cinnamon brew. So drunk, so many times. Every day, he suspected, though he couldn’t have kept track.
His body had been sore then, from so much sex. His lips had been chapped from the endless kissing, and other stuff. But when he’d been drunk, he hadn’t cared.
Spinning and spinning, like now. Remembering it just now didn’t hurt. All floating and hazy. Far away from the feelings, but close with his mind.
Curse her! Rand had growled, pinning Fiona against him.
And Malcolm had done it. The one and only time he’d Touched a human on purpose. His Touch burned through her, dissolving her resistance and filling her with magic. Cursing her with the need for it. It had been disgusting. Like Touching a corpse and filling it with the life of his magic.
She was dead for real now. Malcolm had done that, digging Kaitlin’s stolen magic out of her.
No more silver! Malcolm had pleaded, Can’t you see what it’s doing to me?
The silver shackles had eaten into his wrists, until the bones showed through in places. It was why he’d lost so much strength in his hands and made using the drumsticks about the limit of his grip.
He’d known nothing of his magic back then. He’d no way to defend himself from the brutality and abuse. But he’d never stopped fighting.
We need to give him to the vampires more often. Take the fight out of him.
Rand had been merciless. Cruel, all the way to his black heart.
And Malcolm wasn’t the first Sidhe he’d enslaved.
He’d Touched Rand once, hoping to hurt him, like he’d hurt Fiona. But it hadn’t hurt him at all. He’d felt the Changeling’s magic absorb the Touch.
He’d felt the Changeling’s magic.
He’d felt it…
And he remembered.
Remembered…
Remembered the feel…
Remembered the magic…
And… he felt it still…
Donovan said he thought Rand was dead.
He wasn’t.
Malcolm’s mind floated on the threads of magic, along a single familiar thread.
Rand was alive.
And if he lived, he was a danger to any fey, any Sidhe, he found.
Malcolm might not be able to live on the Isle, or in the Realm, but he could do something to protect the fey.
He could kill Rand.
If Rand didn’t kill him first.
Rolling away from Kaitlin’s stroking fingers, Malcolm broke the intoxication of her Touch. He blinked at her, waiting for the room to stop its spin.
She had the look on her face that said she knew his secret now. The reason he refused to take off his shirt in front of others. And yet he’d not hidden it from her. It made her soften in her expression. He’d seen the look in Trip’s face before too. Like they pitied him, and thought him broken. He figured it was why they tried to mother him sometimes.
But he wasn’t a whipped puppy.
He was a bloodhound.
And the fey feared to speak that name.
Rand would fear it, too.
If it was the last thing Malcolm did.
Chapter Nineteen
The lights barely illuminated the narrow observation room, but it was enough for Kieran’s fey eyes to see by. As Tiernan led him inside, he introduced Kieran to the man leaning against the back wall with his arms crossed and his attention fixed on the tinted wall of glass. “Joe, this is Kieran. I’m starting him with a crew and he’ll need a solid second backing him up. That’s you.” As the human offered him a non-committal nod of acknowledgment, Tiernan turned to Kieran. “This is Joe Lansing, enchanted human and ex-special forces.”
Even in the unassuming cotton button-down shirt and faded jeans, Joe still carried himself with an attitude of bad-ass. Probably the military trained their special forces guys to look that way, Kieran figured. His expression was pleasant but serious, and gave nothing away about what he thought about being assigned to Kieran’s crew.
As the two men shook hands, Tiernan swaggered over to Monique and slung a casual arm around the vampire’s waist. Through the one way mirror, they all watched the sparring session in the padded room. Over the speakers they could overhear the conversation. Or rather, the grunts and shouts. Kieran moved closer to the glass, as another body hit the mat, noticing for the first time that one of the guys in the fight was Riley.
“So what do you think about our latest recruit?” Tiernan asked the vampire with that rakish grin of his.
“Oh, you know well what I think.” Monique rested her hand on her silk clad hip.
Tiernan only smirked and turned back to the mirror.
Inside the practice room, two men armed with knives circled Riley. He kept turning with them, eyes flicking from one to the next. The first one lunged for him, but Riley skated back out of reach. The other didn’t charge, so they repositioned around him, altering directions and speed to throw him off.
Riley never lost focus. When the next one charged from the front, the other lunged from behind. Instead of attacking the weapons, he went for their bodies, a sign of skill. Riley dropped to the side out of the incoming strikes and made a swift kick to the back of one of his attacker’s knees, knocking the legs from beneath him. Then he rose up to the outside of the other one’s stabbing thrust. He moved fast to go for pressure points. Snagging the knifeman’s shoulder with one hand when hooking his wrist under his arm and up into his throat. He flipped the attacker around and over, forcing him to the ground while controlling his knife arm all the way. With a flinch against the elbow, the knife sprung free. Then Riley flung him aside and came up, bouncing on the balls of his feet, in case either man came up for another attack.
Both declined, moaning and grunting from the fifth time Riley had slung them around.
“Got to admit,” Tiernan said, without glancing away, “the Tae Kwon Do is a nice touch.”
“Hm
mm,” Monique purred doubtfully. “Unless he uses it against us.”
Tiernan did glance back at her then. “The enchantment is a powerful motivator. That’s not something the wizards can reproduce. Even if they could stave off the effects for a time.”
Kieran’s head snapped up and he checked the faces of all those around him. No one else seemed startled by the revelation. Riley had worked for wizards?
The argument didn’t seem to faze Monique. “It is never a good idea to hire your enemy’s henchmen. You can never be certain of their loyalties.”
“Which is why I need him in the field. To see what he’ll do.”
“If he survives,” she murmured.
“Ooo..” Tiernan made a teasing kissy face. “Someone is feeling catty today.” Then he laughed and straightened up. “Come on, then, Kieran. Shall we meet your druid?”
“Druid?” Kie murmured, following Tiernan from the observation room. He had a book in his bag upstairs about the care and feeding of druids. A gift, of sorts, from London. If she was a poster child for druid-kind, Kieran was in for trouble.
Once inside the practice room, Tiernan dismissed the others, instructing only Riley to stay. The human scrubbed at the sweat on his face with a towel, then snatched up a water bottle as he waited for the room to empty.
“Kieran, this is Riley Flynn. I want you three to check on a run for me,” Tiernan started out. “Roll out in an hour.” He gave a smirk. “Time to earn those paychecks.”
Last night in the lounge hadn’t been weird, like it could have been. A human and a Sidhe trading magic and hanging out. Maybe not common back in the Glamour Club, but common enough in this place.