Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection
Page 7
My lips tightened. I knew where she was now. And I wasn’t about to leave her behind.
Not for long, anyway.
“Come on,” I said to Wolf. “Now I have a plan. We need to go steal a truck full of iron.”
13
Cassidy
I swam out of consciousness as fingers flitted across my face. I could barely sense the world around me through my pain, the iron too much for me.
“Cass. Cass, wake up.”
I recognized the voice, even though the ringing in my ears warped all sounds around me.
“Avery?”
“And Orin,” another voice added. Concern laced the Summer Prince’s voice. “Are you all right?”
I smiled painfully as my eyesight blurred. “What do you think, Captain Obvious?”
“So you feel as bad as you look.”
I snorted in answer.
I felt his lips brush against my forehead. Orin had always been the most romantic out of all my boyfriends. I sighed into his touch. Avery stroked my cheek and I looked at him, my vision finally clearing enough to see my fairy boyfriends.
“What are you two doing here?” I whispered. “I thought you were in the fairy realm.”
Orin grinned, although he looked pained to do so. “Aelfdane came back to the realm and raised hell about you and Drake.”
I chuckled dryly, remembering that I had told the Autumn King that his son was fucking me over the phone. “So you two got jealous?”
The two princes stared down at the ground, and I couldn’t believe how adorable the two of them were in front of me. It doesn’t matter if a man is human, fae, or otherwise, they get jealous over the most stupid things.
“It was Avery’s idea,” Orin said. “To come back early.”
“And when we did,” Avery added, “we got your messages. And came out here to save you.”
“I guess it was a good thing I texted you where we were headed.”
“You have no idea,” Avery said.
You could never be too careful when you’re going into enemy territory. I made the mental note to never go anywhere without texting my boyfriends.
And that was only confirmed as I saw the pile of bodies around us. They had fought their way through a throng of fairies to get to me. How romantic.
“Where’s Blaize?” I asked, glancing around frantically, which caused the porridge inside my skull to rock painfully. I cried out in pain and clutched at my head.
My heart leapt into my throat as I couldn’t see my cousin anywhere.
“Hey, calm down,” Orin whispered. “She has a plan. So she says.”
“So she says,” Avery agreed with a sardonic grin.
Blaize’s plans usually involved big explosions, big weapons, and even bigger messes. I hoped she would rock it. “And Wolf?” I asked, remembering that I had shot him.
“I healed him,” Avery said. “You really did a number on him.”
I hung my head, glad that I had done that part right, at least. “I didn’t want to kill him.”
He smiled gently at me. “You didn’t. You save his life.”
I closed my eyes and something that sounded like a sob escaped my throat. I was never so happy to hear that I didn’t kill something in my life.
“Think you can stand?” Avery asked as he threaded his fingers with mine.
I looked down at the ropes that had been cut and noticed for the first time that I’d been untied. “I think so. Where did the iron go?” There had been so much of it. So much that kept me immobilized.
Orin held up his hands, where angry blisters marred his smooth skin.
“Orin…” I whispered, crestfallen. Because it was from iron, Avery wouldn’t be able to heal the wounds, and they’d probably scar.
He shook his head, though. “It’s no big deal,” he said quickly. “We just had to get it done.”
“Orin chucked them somewhere,” Avery explained, suppressing a shudder.
“I could kiss you for that,” I told Orin, and the Summer Prince rewarded me with a kiss.
“How’s that?”
“Perfect,” I said through half-lidded eyes.
“And me?” Avery said with a half-whine. I kissed him too, tasting both him and Orin at once. My princes. My lovers.
And that thought cleared my mind enough to really take in my surroundings. We were still in the Purisima Creek Reserve. Still cut off from the rest of society. Still in enemy territory. Still missing the Autumn Prince.
“Have you seen Drake?”
They both shook their heads.
“We wanted to save you first,” Orin said almost sheepishly.
Oh, God, could they be any cuter? I took a second to admire them. “If we get out of this alive,” I said approvingly, giving their hands a squeeze, “you guys are getting a reward.”
Avery raised an eyebrow suggestively.
“If we get out of this alive,” I reminded him. “And that means we need to find Drake.”
“Kellan probably has him close,” Orin surmised. “He wouldn’t have the heir of the Autumn Court anywhere else while he’s trying to make a play for the throne.”
I clenched my hands into fists. “You fairies truly have the stupidest laws.”
“Yeah,” Avery agreed. “Well, the ones who made the laws benefitted from them the most. There used to be more courts.”
“More seasons?” I asked, wondering what they could be.
Aver cursed under his breath. “Yes, yet another reason to get Drake back.”
I nodded, and looked around. “We should find my weapons.”
The three of us may not have been able to wield any iron weapons against fairies, but my silver daggers, stakes, and guns could take care of the werewolves. They might have been under Kellan’s influence, so if I could just subdue them long enough to take care of Kellan and stop him from using the wolves as familiars.
Then again, I had no idea how to “take care” of Kellan. I couldn’t exactly kill him, not without creating bigger problems in the fairy realm than one king trying to take over another’s court. I’d be on the most wanted list for killing one of the royals, even though Kellan was the bad guy here.
Surely there must be something that we could do to make sure that he didn’t try to use any of us to make a play again?
First things first: Get Drake back. We’d figure out the rest.
A snarl behind me had me reacting before I processed what it even was. I gave a roundhouse kick, my foot connecting with the jaw of a werewolf, slamming him into the ground. The movement surprised everyone, including the fairy princes, but I stood over the creature.
“Where. Is. Drake?” I growled.
The wolf replied something in yips and growls, but I honestly didn’t care that I couldn’t understand. I could tell he wasn’t going to help based on the glint in his eyes as he snapped toward me.
Don’t kill him, I told myself. I took a moment to steady myself and quell my anger before I slammed my fist into his face, knocking him out.
One less werewolf to worry about.
“Come on,” I whispered, looking up through my curtain of tangled blond hair. Somehow, I’d lost my ponytail holder, and I felt just as wild as I straightened up. Both Orin and Avery watched me warily, and I was sure they were afraid of me.
I was a descendant of the Irons, after all. I was born to hunt fae, and I was on the prowl.
We moved through the woods, going from tree to tree, slipping among the shadows. Orin and Avery were quieter in their prowling, as their supernatural abilities lent to their almost impossibly silent movements.
But I was out to find and save one of my mates. And heaven help any being that got in my way.
14
Blaize
When we got back to the van, I pulled my cell phone out of the glove compartment where I’d left it and took the time to pinpoint the wolves’ location on the map. Then I dropped a pin in it. That function was going to come in really handy.
“Y
ou feeling okay?” I asked Wolf. He ducked his head in a nod and grinned his wolfish grin at me. A wave of something like relief, maybe gratitude, flowed through me, and I closed my eyes for just a second, thankful to have him beside me again.
I didn’t examine the feeling too closely—though I was going to have to consider what it meant sometime soon. I was beginning to think that something more than mere chance was tying the two of us together. Eventually I would need to figure out what that was.
Right now, however, we were going to go save Cass and her fairy boyfriends.
I retraced our route back toward 92—where I had seen the construction site earlier, about two miles from the reserve.
Once I found it, I circled the site a couple of times, looking for the best place to park the van.
“You know,” I said conversationally as I dropped down onto the road and shut the doors behind us, and we made our way over to a temporary chain-link fence surrounding the site, “it would be a lot easier to do this kind of stuff if you would shift into your human form.”
Wolf whined, and I said, “I know you have one. I’ve seen it before. Is there something keeping you from shifting?”
Wolf dropped his head and whined again, but he didn’t indicate yes or no. With the bolt-cutters I had brought from the van, I cut the links in the fence until I could peel them back far enough to allow us to make our way through.
“Is there a reason you won’t give me any hints?” I asked.
Wolf stopped dead in his tracks, made eye contact with me, and stood up on his hind legs to put his front paws on my chest. Deliberately, he gave one long lick up the side of my face.
“Okay, okay. Stop that. Gross.” I pushed him off me, but gently. He dropped down and started walking toward the construction site again. “Fine,” I muttered. “But we’re not done talking about this. Not yet.”
The truck was right where I had seen it, behind the fence but still visible from the highway. The site didn’t have any security that I could see—I guess they thought there wasn’t really anything there worth stealing yet.
Maybe not to the average crook. But I was hunting fairies. Those bars might as well be pure gold.
It looked like maybe the truck itself belonged to the construction company—it wasn’t a specialized delivery truck, but something more like a dump truck, the kind of vehicle they would use when they picked up their own supplies.
Wolf kept watch while I cut the lock on the gate. Then I moved around to the truck to check out its load of rebar. The back end was piled high with long, steel bars, rough-cut on the ends so that some of them looked more like spikes than anything else.
“Oh, yeah,” I whispered. I knew exactly how I was going to use them. “Time to get going,” I said. It took me only a few seconds to open the door, a few minutes longer to hotwire the truck. Daddy taught us all the best skills—Cass could’ve done this, too, if she remembered how.
The truck roared to life with a giant rumble, and I laughed aloud in sheer delight. As long as I got back there in time, this was going to be fun.
“Let’s go kill some fucking fairies,” I said, and Wolf barked twice in agreement.
15
Cassidy
Blood was not a fashion accessory I liked wearing all that much, but I had blood in my hair, blood dripping in my eyes, and I could taste it in my mouth. I spat, wiping my lips as I stood over the fallen werewolf.
Luckily, I hadn’t killed any of them yet. Guilt pulled at me that I had killed some in the Mission when they took Drake—after all, it wasn’t their fault that they were under Kellan’s control. I couldn’t let the guilt get to me and bog me down.
I’d have to deal with it later.
The fairies, however, got no such quarter from us. They were here of their own volition and Orin and Avery reminded everyone why they were powerful princes from their respective courts.
Luckily, we didn’t have anyone sound the alarm just yet. And hopefully not anytime soon.
Drake and I may have been ambushed earlier, but this time, I was ready with the other two princes at my side. Orin and Avery were silent, deadly killers. It was kind of sexy. I didn’t know what that meant—that I was turned on by my boyfriends killing some fairies—but it was necessary to keep me going through this long night.
“Found your weapons, Cass,” Avery said, tossing my duffle bag to me. I caught it and slung it over my shoulder, feeling more like myself.
“Where was it?” I asked, pulling out my knives and my guns.
“This asshole had it hidden,” Orin said, kicking the still form of a fairy. “Like he was going to use it against the werewolves himself.”
“Glad you found it, then,” I said. “We’re doing the werewolves a favor, aren’t we?”
I pulled out my silver katana from the duffle bag with a satisfied sigh, unsheathing it partially. The edge glinted with deadly promise. The werewolves were as good as out of the picture now, at least.
“Where to next?” I asked, feeling the adrenaline fuel me. We’d canvassed to the west of where Orin and Avery found me, with no sign of Drake. “You’d know if Drake was in the fairy realm, right?” I asked.
Avery and Orin exchanged glances, a silent conversation passing between them.
“Yeah,” the Spring Prince said. “But we wouldn’t know if he were nearby.”
I didn’t want to face the possibility that maybe Drake wasn’t here. Kellan could have taken him anywhere in the world, and if he were gone…
I refused to believe it. Kellan was cocky, but he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his takeover.
I swallowed nervously and licked my lips. “Let’s keep looking.”
We’d do everything we could here to exhaust all possibilities. And if he was somewhere else, well, we’d cross the bridge if we came to it.
There’d better not be a fucking bridge, though.
I gritted my teeth and trudged on through the night. We worked as a single unit, leaving no stone unturned. My boyfriends were here with me, making the rising panic in my chest more bearable. We kept to our targets, me dealing with the werewolves while Orin and Avery handled the fairies.
I’d just pinned a werewolf through the shoulder to a tree when I heard a weak groan. Not that I’ve ever heard Drake make a groan like that before, but I did know exactly who it was. I whipped my head around at the sound, my heart thudding to a stop in my chest.
“Drake,” I whispered. Hearing his voice spurred me forward, and I tore through the underbrush. “Drake! Where are you? Tell me where you are!”
“Cass,” Avery hissed behind me, “Cass, don’t be too loud!”
I dimly heard him through the pounding in my ears. All I could focus on was getting Drake back. I never considered the fact that it could possibly be a trap.
“Drake! Drake!”
Then I heard an answering whisper. “Cass…”
The world stilled around me at the sound of my name, and my mates behind me stopped as well. They heard him, too. A strangled cry escaped my throat, and I reached out blindly into the darkness and…
My hands found purchase on something slick and metal. I cried out as the metal burned my fingers, but I gritted my way through it and pulled. Avery and Orin came up and reached into the same space as me and tugged as well.
Finally, it seemed, whatever what holding him in that space gave way, and we all tumbled to the ground, pulling Drake with us. He was wrapped in iron chains, barely conscious. I cried as the iron burned me. Now that he was out of whatever pocket of space that was hiding him, the iron burned my eyes and throat, and I vomited into the grass.
I just had to be allergic to iron. The one thing that could harm the men I loved, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
Orin and Avery acted quickly, unwrapping the chains from around Drake. I could smell burning flesh as their skin made contact with the metal and hear them cursing under their breath. Avery disappeared for a moment to throw them off into the woods somewhere.
I did feel better now that the iron was further away, although I could still feel it somewhere out there. Like it could come back and get me.
“Thanks,” I whispered, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “How did we not sense it until we found Drake?”
“A glamour,” Orin explained, pain etched into his own features. “Kellan hid Drake in his own little bubble, and it also masked the iron. If we could feel the iron in the air, we would have been able to find him easier.”
“Why are you fairy royals so damn conniving?” I muttered, bringing myself to my hands and knees.
Avery snickered. “We live a long time. We always come up with ways of making life difficult.”
“You bastards,” I said, trying to be playful, although I didn’t feel that playful as I crawled my way over to Drake. He wasn’t doing very well. The chains had burned through his clothing all the way to his skin, and the smooth perfection of his body was charred and oozing blood.
Orin brought him to a sitting position, and his head lolled to the side. He groaned and whimpered, but he wasn’t awake.
“What did he do to you, my love?” I whispered, stroking Drake’s cheek. He was hot and feverish to the touch. This would scar him for life, and that wasn’t talking about the mental scars. He’d been tied up like this for over twenty-four hours. What kind of lasting impression would that leave on him?
His eyes fluttered open—barely—and they focused fuzzily on me. His brow furrowed slightly. “Cassidy?”
A lump formed in my throat. “Hey there, handsome.” I rolled my eyes as Avery let out a mock-jealous sigh.
Oh, I was so glad to have my mates back with me. A tear sprang into one of my eyes as I kissed Drake’s forehead. He grimaced at the movement. “Sorry,” I whispered.
His gaze drifted to Orin and Avery behind me. “What are you assholes doing here?” he asked, the barest amount of humor in his voice.