“A human, huh?” I clicked my tongue skeptically. “Whatever drugs you’re on, I want some.”
He fingered a few spilled seeds across the table toward him and nodded. “Supposedly he’s in hiding somewhere in Reykjavik, and you need to find him.” He glanced at my wine bottle. “Soon.”
“Why does this Kason Fields need to be found?”
“Because.” He brushed his hands over the neat pile of seeds and sat back in his seat. “He has the key to freeing us from the fae.”
I opened my mouth to deliver a snappy retort, but the dead serious look on Ty’s face slanted it into a frown instead. “How do you know all this?”
“I have it on good authority. You’ll have to trust me.” He fished through a pocket in his pants for his wallet and flipped it open to a printed picture wrapped in plastic, not digitized and on screen like I was used to.
The last time I saw one of these, a real photo… I cleared my throat and lasered in on the picture. Dark, deep-set eyes stared from in front of an orange fire and a red brick fireplace. A stubbled chin shadowed strong cheekbones and highlighted a perfect pair of lips. The guy looked to be in his early to mid-twenties, just a few years older than me, and he radiated so much intensity and danger that a simple photo unfurled a shock between my thighs. Maybe it was the mad dash of wine through my bloodstream, but Kason Fields needed a bow—a manly one, obviously—that had Fuck Me stamped all over it.
“Okay?” Ty said.
Even for just a human, I could tell he was still powerful, which I guessed you would have to be if you were the only human living in a world of fae and witches and eternal winter.
“Hadley?” With an exasperated sigh, Ty ripped the picture from the plastic and dropped it in the green flames by the wall. The photo curled up at the corners, warping Kason into a hellish demon before crisping him into nothingness.
“I’s memorizing it, dick,” I slurred.
He winked. “You were humping the table.”
“How much for the job?”
“Sixty clicks now and sixty after you figure out how he can help us.”
I looked down my nose at him. “I’ve hacked Reykjavik government employee records for more than that.” That was a lie—nobody had enough spare magic clicks to pay me. So I took money. Ty likely already knew that, but this was me negotiating.
He shrugged. “That’s all my contact would allow. Go to the nearest atern charging station, and your sixty will be there.”
And this was me failing at negotiating. I glanced over to make sure our sleeping stranger was still out cold, then maneuvered my now half-empty bottle onto the table with my boobs and my forearm like a badass. Like a slightly inebriated badass. When I looked up again, Ty was studying me with his arms crossed, concern steeling his normally animated features.
“You sure you can handle this?” he asked.
The fact that he would even ask that question stormed a bitter betrayal through my gut that I tried to match with the force of my glare. He knew what the fae had done to me. Enough of it anyway since I hadn’t invited him into my house in the last two years. Now he saw the physical and emotional aftereffects in wasted 3-D sitting right the fuck in front of him.
I slid across the seat and knocked myself into the sleeping stranger hard enough to drop him on the floor. “See you in spring,” I told Ty, then strolled out of Hell Here with that promise tasting even sweeter than wine.
2
Onen, I said inside the safety of my own head.
The front door of my house flew open, burying the single click of my atern. I’d walked out of here an hour ago with one click of magic on the silver bracelet; now after stopping at an atern charging station, I had exactly sixty. No telling how I would’ve opened the door without my last click if Ty hadn’t paid me since my hands were useless. I could’ve either died out in the cold or died after the last click of my atern with poisoned spikes gouging my wrist. It would be like a Witch Way book Mom used to read me, except both choices would end horrifically. I didn’t exactly think through my return here very well.
As I stepped into the entryway, the door slammed into my hip before it clicked shut. I winced at the spark of green flames that burst from the wall sconces around the living room. A blaze shot up in the fireplace, and from that amount of light, it didn’t appear that I’d dragged in any rabid fae dogs with me. They could watch me all they wanted after I found the human. Kason. Even his name sounded delicious.
I panted my relief, exhaling a wintery breath and inhaling sugary-laced air with a dash of sour and stale. My lungs felt like they were still outside, and my loud breaths rattled like I’d been couch potato-ing two years too long.
My wool coat, torn, raggedy, and about three sizes too small, snapped open when I stuck out my chest She-Woman style. My boobs were good for something, at least. I shrugged out of the coat, letting it fall to the blackened floor, then made a beeline through the living room, past a barbed-wire gate that barricaded the hallway, to the kitchen and my laptop.
With an obscenely spacious hard drive, more memory than I knew what to do with, and a custom-made, voice-activated keyboard, this laptop was state of the art, my pride and joy. Dad had given it to me when I was fourteen, and I’d slowly upgraded a few things with my earnings as a hacker, or “information borrower” as I liked to call myself. On the outside of its case, I’d written the word “Nasty,” so named by Ty because of all the scandalous things I’d found out for my clients.
Nasty powered on quickly, the screen’s glow casting a small orb onto the blackened kitchen table. While it did its thing, I moved past the back door window toward the countertops to deal with my sudden drunk munchies. On the right of the sink were plastic bowls and rows of boxes of flaky or puffed breakfast cereals. On the left were several opened boxes of unwrapped straws, and on the other side of the refrigerator that had stopped working about six months ago, was a Necromancer’s Piss wine tap, complete with spigot that stuck out of an actual cardboard box. Fucking brilliant.
Empty bottles sat underneath the spigot, so I elbowed one underneath it, grabbed a straw in my teeth, and took the wine and Nasty to the living room couch in front of the fire.
Hackers left certain signatures behind that could lead a digital trail right to them if they were messy. Good thing I wasn’t messy. The back pocket of my pants snagged against the black couch cushion, and I slopped wine all over my sweater. Good thing I wasn’t a messy hacker.
An open bottle of fennel seeds sat propped in the corner cushion, but when I attempted to pour them into the wine, most of the seeds ended up on the floor. With my new cheap perfume of wine soaking through my bra, I assumed the position on the couch with my head propped up on a pillow and a straw dangling from my lips.
As long as I cleaned up after myself online, the Diamond Dogs would never know it was me hacking into the fae network to dig up info on Kason Fields. Or they wouldn’t be able to prove it, anyway. But they sure did suspect me. Which meant I needed to find him fast.
I got to work on searching for the name Kason Fields, but it didn’t exist in cyberspace. That made sense, because if the fae knew about Kason, his profoundly hot face would likely be caged up in a laboratory somewhere while the fae used him as a human battery to feed their own power. And when he wasn’t useful to them anymore? He could be buried under six feet of snow, sans other, probably just as beautiful, body parts. That would fucking suck in more ways than one, because then his knowledge about ending the faes’ power over witches would die with him. No way would I let that happen.
My voice-activated keyboard shuffled past pictures of several vacant houses in Faction 11, and I supposed any of them could have hidden a human. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but I kept clicking at the same speed at which the snow pelted the window behind me.
And something else tapped behind the barbed wire gate that led down the darkened hallway.
I shoved myself into a sitting position, my heart making a permanen
t home in my throat. The whole house was protected by a multitude of charms, spells, and herbs that had only been breached once. And once was all it took.
With breath held, I stood and let Nasty drop to the couch. I held my wine bottle close, but I wouldn’t be able to use it as a weapon. Not with these shaking, useless hands. The only weapon I had was magic, but even as I faced the gate and the barricaded hallway beyond, even though I didn’t know what kept tapping, a large part of me didn’t want to use up my magic for this, whatever this was. If I was going to find Kason and make him end fae power over witches, I was fairly certain that would require more than a couple well-timed sarcastic jokes and a roll of duct tape like most of my problems.
One of my feet aimed toward the gate. The other pointed toward Nasty, my coat, and the front door. I could just say fuck that sound and attempt to search for Kason outside on a wintery night. Or I could put my big girl panties on—the ones with all the holes—and unlock the gate to check out the sound.
I’d fortified the charms, spells, and herbs after the breach had happened two years ago with most of what remained on my atern. There was nothing down that hallway except more barbed wire nailed across closed, black doors. Behind those closed doors… Well, behind them was nothing I wanted to remember.
But if something was down there, inside one of those sealed off rooms touching the things I never could throw away, then that tugged a nerve that could potentially stir up too many memories. The things inside those rooms shouldn’t be touched by anyone. Or by anything.
I took steps toward the gate and eased it open on silent hinges. The fire sconce on the wall nearest my head didn’t reach that far, and none of the others were lit since I’d sealed this area of the house off. I had no purpose for anything down there since it had ended life as I knew it two years ago. Even my bedroom, full of girlish things like silly witch hats and nail polish and who I used to be, had been left untouched.
After inhaling a shallow breath, I puffed the fire sconce, and green flames lit the four other sconces along the hallway walls. I followed, trying to separate the clicking from the crackling fire and the thundering blood between my ears, past my bedroom door to another.
My littlest brother’s room. Jake. He would’ve been seven this year.
If I wanted to know what was tapping, I would have to open this door, and I really, really didn’t want to do that. The barbed wire nailed in strips along the walls covered most of the button that would open the door, but if I slid my elbow through it just right, I could do it. And I had to, because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that something lurked in my brother’s room. It still didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to.
I gathered the sleeve of my sweater out of the way, elbow pointed out. Leaning in, I promised to pinpoint the sound and assure myself it wasn’t another psycho fae killer before Jake’s maple tree smell and the sight of all his toys gutted me from the inside out. One second, two tops, then I would seal the room again like it needed to be.
The skin at my elbow pinched the seam between the black-painted wall and the button because of my weird angle through the barbed wire. Then the doorbell rang.
My yelp morphed into a pained cry as I jerked back, yanking my wrist along the barbed wire. I fell back against the opposite wall, hugging both arms to myself to quell the stinging and the bleeding. The photos hanging next to me jumped and clattered. The smiling family who once lived inside those wooden picture frames had been wiped away with black, the type of magic and the literal color, just like everything in the rest of this goddamned house.
It was too late for deliveries, and Ty knew better than to just drop by. Now my hackles were seriously fucking raised.
Inside Jake’s room, the tapping grew louder.
I backed away from his closed door and down the hallway toward the living room. Something didn’t feel right about this. Not at all. I eyed Nasty on the couch, then ticked my gaze to the kitchen and the back door. One fae had broken in despite my parents’ careful charms, spells, and herbs of protection, and that fae happened to be a malevolent psycho killer. Who was to say it wouldn’t happen again?
It was time to go. To Ty’s or Hell Here. I would dig my own snow fort if I had to, though it might turn into my own grave. Anywhere was better than this house. I scrambled for Nasty and then my coat, still on the floor by the front door. As soon as I drew closer to it, a sonic boom shook my entire house and rattled everything from my feet to my teeth. The force knocked me down and sparked an explosion of stars when my head hit the blackened tiles.
I lay there, gasping, while everything inside me screamed to get up and run. Because I’d heard that sound once before. Magic that powerful cost serious credits, more than I had ever seen on an atern, and was meant for serious destruction of a home’s protective magic. Someone really wanted inside. Probably not to talk about my interior decorating skills.
Shrugging on my coat, I pushed to my feet, my head spinning with a mess of wine and terror, and raced back to the living room. A shadow passed behind the sheer, blackened curtains toward the front door. Tall, thin, walking with a razor sharp stick up her ass. Of course it was one of the Diamond Dogs. Of course it was.
But why were they here? What did they want with me? Sure, I hacked the Isa fae computer network, but why were they so interested now after four years of steady clients looking for an information borrower? Did they really have no one better to give their swift and bloody brand of justice to?
I grabbed Nasty then dashed past the hallway, trying and failing to snap the buttons on my coat with a sliced open forearm and shit hands, while straining my ears for the tapping sound in Jake’s room. Still there. Even louder.
One Diamond at the front door. The second maybe down the hallway breaking into his room. And the third?
Glass smashed as soon as I turned toward the kitchen. The window above the table, gone. Between the spiked points of remaining glass stood Claudia, with snow twinkling on her blonde hair as brightly as the diamond collar around her throat. Her smoky wings darkened the night with their rippling beats and pushed in her weird fish smell.
She crouched on the windowsill and blew the fennel seeds that were meant to repel intruders away as if they were nothing but dust. Her dark red lips puckered, and a shrill whistle sounded. A door hissed open from the direction of the hallway followed by a sharp, dog-like yelp as it hit the barbed wire.
I summoned a smile, one I hoped radiated the confidence I didn’t feel. “I got this place wired for bitches like you.”
She looked distastefully down at the empty bottles scattered everywhere in the kitchen. “You only wish you were half as clever as you think you are, Hadley. Now, why don’t you tell me why you suddenly met with Ty Brunoch after two years of self-imposed solitary confinement in”—she looked around, her whole face screwing up with disgust—“this shithole. Seriously, what is wrong with you?”
The front door creaked open. I had a feeling I would soon be joined by another Diamond Dog, and I needed some kind of plan. Maybe I could outrun them. Maybe I could go to Ty’s to warn him that he was likely in danger, too. Shit. Why hadn’t I just stayed indoors like I always did, safe, secure, and with no pants?
When I glanced up again, Claudia had one leg swung over the windowsill. I didn’t think about speed or how much this would hurt or if it would even work. I just moved.
With Nasty still clutched to one side, I forearmed an empty bottle off the table and bolted toward the back door.
Onen, I commanded, and it flew open. With the bottleneck pointed away from my body, I smashed into the doorframe at full throttle on my way out. Glass shattered. I swung around the outside of the house into a squat and adjusted the part of the bottle I still held, pointy broken side out. With working hands, this would be a lot less awkward. But as soon as movement flashed out the door, I leaped up, my momentum helping to keep the bottle wedged underneath my forearm, and rammed it into something soft and squishy.
&
nbsp; I didn’t wait around to see what it was. I ran as fast as my legs and lungs could go through three feet of snow. Which wasn’t fast at all. Past other houses. Past other witches who might have been able to help me, but I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger. Besides, if they were smart, they wouldn’t open their doors to anyone this late. I just needed to lay some serious distance between myself and the Diamond Dogs before I figured out exactly what to do and where to go. Not Ty’s house. They likely knew he’d met me at Hell Here.
As I ran, a strange fog chased between the falling snowflakes, building what seemed like a solid wall around me and the night. I stumbled my way through it, my legs burning at the effort of running through snowdrifts.
Somewhere behind me, a dog howled. The sound dragged a shiver down my spine. The Diamond Dogs were hunting me.
It came again, closer. They must have been within chasing distance to penetrate the thick fog curtaining the starless sky. If my tracks in the snow didn’t lead them right to me, the smell of my blood probably would.
A low growl brushed past my ear, close enough to blast rotten breath up my nose. I whirled around, my heart kicking against my rib cage. Wind streaked my hair across my eyes, and I raked it back to see. Nothing but more fog and snow and a closed sign on the door of Hell Here.
Shit. I had no place left to go.
I dropped to my knees in a snowdrift while several crunchy footsteps padded up behind me, pressing me into Hell Here’s brick wall. “Shilde,” I whispered. The word clung to the air in a billow of steam before the fog and a thick orangeish shield enveloped me.
The Diamond Dogs pounced on it. Claws scraped and teeth gnashed, but I tried to ignore the chaos while I powered up Nasty inside my very temporary cocoon. I maybe had five minutes, max, to find Kason before my shield bubble burst.
First, I fired off an email to Ty: Run. DD’s sonic boomed my house. Then I returned to the list of possible abandoned houses. No, it would take too damn long to scroll through them like some kind of real estate agent. I needed to use magic to find him, which I probably should have done in the first fucking place. Because I’d spent most of the last two years with one magic click on my atern, I’d grown used to not using it.
Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection Page 2