“I told you already that I will not betray my source, so stop fishing,” I said. “Is there a way for the labs to test the disease, to figure out what it is and maybe make an antidote?”
“There is always that possibility, but if I share this up the chain of command they will want to know my source. And if I tell them mine, then you won’t be able to protect yours.”
“Couldn’t you just leave that bit out of it?” I asked.
Magda shook her head before turning the computer screen around to face me. What I saw on the screen sickened my stomach. I’d thought the wolves caught between the shift looked bad, but the shifters—or at least what was left of them—looked far worse. The bodies were half rotted and fully human, and some looked as if they had been ripped asunder. It was possible that the shifter community was trying to take responsibility for its own by killing off the infected ones. Tearing them up until they were basically unrecognizable.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said in a low voice as I studied the images.
“Doubtful.”
“You’re thinking that maybe the shifters are policing their own kind. Allow me to disabuse you of that idea. What you are looking at is what happens to a shifter’s body after this disease runs its course… Read the reports.” She minimized the images and pulled up a series of neatly typed reports.
I scanned the pages, my blood freezing in my veins when I came to the part describing the wounds they had sustained. The injuries had occurred before death, the virus burning through the shifters before forcing them to revert to their human state as their bodies ripped themselves apart. The ligaments, tendons, muscles, and bones were literally falling apart at the seams.
“Goddess,” I said.
“She cannot help. If I flag these reports and put them together, then the Elite will start rounding up the shifters and weres. They might start doing it anyway,” she added quietly, and I even caught an element of sorrow in her voice that surprised me.
“How do we stop it?” I asked.
Magda shrugged and turned the computer screen back around to face her. “I have no idea. Until you brought this to my attention, I had not heard of it. The Elite have become much more suspicious. There is talk from the higher-ups that many of the branches have been compromised. There is talk of the sorcerers of old taking control once more.”
I dug my nails into my palms and kept my features neutral. I knew the sorcerers of old that she spoke of. Really, there was only one kind—the shadow sorcerers. And I had met one of them in King City. The girl hadn’t known the full extent of her power or even what lay ahead of her. Her thread had not yet been decided upon, but as I spent time with her I could feel the hand of death hanging over her. Whether that meant death for her or those closest to her, I didn’t know and wasn’t going to interfere. But the Elite might, and if what Magda had said was true, then everyone was in way over their heads.
Magda leaned toward me. “I find that cases such as these will either run their course, or you will find the root cause of the issue and nip the disease in the bud. Remove the source, and you can cut the head from the hydra.”
I nodded and pushed to my feet. “Thanks.”
She grinned at me, and her eyes lit up again. “If we were anywhere but here, I might try to take your heart.”
“And I might try to take your head,” I replied. “What was in the lunchbox?”
“Things that do not concern you.”
“If the Faerie Court gets wind of you eating other fae, they will send me to take your head,” I said.
She smiled, and her second row of razor-sharp teeth clicked down into place, making her mouth look overcrowded and her smile unnaturally wide.
“If they find out, I will know who to blame.”
Raising my hands again in mock surrender, I backed up toward the door. I despised her kind, mostly because of their cannibalistic tendencies—well, that and their ability to kill without conscience. The humans thought I was a monster belonging in the same category as the strzyga, but that wasn’t true. I wasn’t a monster… but the creature sitting on the other side of the desk most definitely was.
“If I find out more information, how can I contact you?” she asked, hissing through the rows of her teeth.
“I’ll come to you,” I said. There was no way in hell I was ever going to give something like her my address. I wasn’t quite that mad yet.
Her smile widened to almost impossible proportions, and she nodded knowingly. If I could say one positive thing about her kind, it was that they weren’t stupid.
“Run along, little harbinger, before my lunch no longer satisfies me,” she said.
Taking her at her word, I found the handle of the door and tugged it open, then stepped into the hall, where the lights were still flickering overhead.
The strzyga’s laughter followed me down the hall as I made my escape toward the stairs, picking up my pace until I was practically running.
Chapter Fourteen
I didn’t stop running until I reached the sidewalk. The group of young Elite officers had moved on, leaving me torn. Part of me was grateful that I didn’t have to carry the guilt of watching the young man’s life come to an end when someone like me could probably stop it. The other part of me felt sorrow for missing the opportunity to satiate the darker side of my nature that craved death and mourning.
I made my way toward the side alley where I had left my bike. I contemplated walking back to the office, but something drew me to the alley. The moment I saw her standing next to my motorcycle, my blood turned to ice and my heart came to a stuttering halt.
Auriella’s fingers trailed violet power across the locks as she cooed at the bike, her back to me.
“I will never understand how one like you came to have something so valuable,” she said, hearing me approach.
“It is of me,” I said, choosing to keep my answer short and snappy. The last person I wanted to spend time with was the Mother of the Hunt. I still hadn’t shaken the image of what she had done to MacNa or the look in his eyes as she brought his life to an end. I would carry it with me always.
“Hmm,” she said, sounding bored. She continued trailing her fingers over the bike, across the leather saddle, and up the polished bone handlebars. I fought the urge to squirm. It almost felt as though her fingers were caressing me; the bike, like the Bone Blade, was a part of me, and her sudden interest in it left me feeling uneasy.
“Is there something you wanted, Auriella?” I asked.
“You would dare question me?” She whirled around, her eyes flashing with anger as she stalked toward me. “Don’t you remember who I am?”
“I know who you are, but I do not answer to you,” I said. It was the truth. She was powerful and dangerous, but I served the Faerie Court and answered to Lunn on their behalf. Just because he was tied up with them didn’t change that.
“Are you sure?” she asked, leaning toward me, her breath sliding down my neck.
“I’m more than sure,” I said, holding my ground. “Why are you here? I didn’t try to summon Lunn, so you have no business with me.”
She pulled back and observed me slowly, staring me up and down the way a scientist might analyse a particularly interesting bug.
“You do not fear me?” she asked, leaning in further. “There was a time when I could make you quake in terror.” Though she whispered the words, she may as well have been shouting them.
I shook my head and continued to stand my ground. I would not take a step back; I would not back down from someone like her. “I do not know you well enough to fear you, Auriella. Not in the way you wish to be feared,” I finished diplomatically.
Her laughter was short and barked, bouncing off the walls surrounding us and spreading like the ripples of a stone in water. Power sparked along her arms as she met my gaze head-on, and I saw something utterly familiar in her eyes. I didn’t know her. I’d only seen her for the first time in the alley with Lunn when we’d been hunting M
acNa. Hadn’t I? Staring into her eyes, I was no longer sure.
“You don’t remember the time we spent together in Faerie, do you?” she asked, her voice low and sultry and making my skin crawl.
“It obviously wasn’t as memorable for me as it was for you,” I said, gritting my teeth as she scented along the side of my neck.
“Perhaps,” she said, drawing away from me.
“I will ask once more. What do you want, Auriella?”
She moved lightning quick, her balled-up fist slamming into my face as she sent me spinning backwards into the wall. I tried to roll with the fall, but she was on top of me before I could even recover my stance. Her hand wrapped around my throat and she lifted me from the ground, pinning me to the wall, her eyes filled with rage as she stared up at me.
“Don’t ever speak to me like that again! You will give me the respect that I deserve, that I have earned.”
My fingers scrabbled at her clawed grip, and darkness ate at the edges of my vision. It wasn’t possible for me to die from lack of oxygen; fae went into a kind of hibernation when we were deprived of it. And I was able to heal most wounds she could inflict upon me, but she was fast—would I be fit to heal fast enough to keep pace with her?
As though to emphasise her point, she shook me the way a dog might jerk around a doll. I opened my mouth to answer, but the lack of air in my lungs made talking impossible.
When she released me, I dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. My body crumpled down upon itself as I sucked in several deep breaths.
After a few moments, I finally found my voice and stared up at Auriella, hating the submissive position I found myself in. But what choice did I have? I might still answer to Lunn, and while I could hold my own against most fae, she was the Mother of the Hunt. Her title gave her power, perhaps even more power than the members of the Faerie Court. Who was I to stand against someone like her?
“Where is Lunn?” I asked, the gruffness of my voice testament to how close she had come to crushing my larynx.
She glared down at me. “I told you the last time, he disobeyed a direct order of the Court and is now facing the consequences.”
“What does that mean? When will he be back?”
A moment of silence followed as I held my breath, waiting for her answer and wondering if she would even give one to me.
Auriella crouched down next to me, her leather boots crunching on broken glass as she came eye level with me.
“You won’t ever see Lunn again. You’re the reason he was punished, and the Court thought it was best to move him to new pastures.”
The fae couldn’t lie, but they could bend the truth…although I couldn’t see a way for Auriella to bend the truth quite so far. Lunn’s fate rested with the Faerie Court, and it seemed completely plausible for them to move him. But if that was true, was I now stuck with Auriella breathing down my neck at every turn?
“If it were up to me, he would never see the outside of a cell,” she said, her words practically dripping with malice.
“So if that’s true, then why are you here?” I asked. It was a dangerous question, especially since she hadn’t taken too kindly to it the last time I’d asked.
“I’m here to tell you of your next job for Faerie,” she said, a wide smile curving her lips.
I sighed and dropped my gaze to the ground as my heart sank into my boots. “What do they want?”
I could practically feel Auriella’s glee, but I kept my gaze trained on the ground to keep from seeing her happiness. I didn’t need to have salt rubbed in the wound.
“They want you to sort out a turf war between the water nymphs and a young vampire group in this city,” she said.
My head snapped up, and I shook it. “Are they mad? We both know the fae stay away from the vampires for a reason. We’ve been at war with them for centuries. If I approach them about anything, my head will end up on a platter.”
“These aren’t mature vampires, Darcey, so you don’t need to fear them. The Court wouldn’t send you into something you weren’t capable of handling.”
This wasn’t a job for a lone banshee. If the fae were having issues with vampires, the Court should approach the vampires’ High Council—anything else would be a suicide mission. But who was I to question the Court’s intentions? If I did that, I would have to worry about much more than just the vampires. And I imagined that Auriella would be only too happy to carry out the Faerie Court’s commands and drag me back there in iron to face my death.
“The Court’s command is my duty,” I said, pushing up onto my feet and turning away from Auriella. I could practically feel her heavy gaze boring holes into my back as I unlocked the bike and climbed onto it.
“Don’t dawdle, little harbinger,” she said. “The Court’s patience grows weary of your continued rebelliousness.”
“Is Lunn all right?” I asked, risking her wrath. He could have come back to tell me he was moving on, but he’d chosen not to. The Court had quite possibly decreed it to be this way, but if that were true, I had a feeling they would have also hauled my ass in to finish the job they had started so many years ago.
“You just keep pushing, don’t you?” Auriella snarled.
I stared at her uncomprehendingly. Why she didn’t want to answer such a simple question was more than a little suspicious. Telling me how he was doing certainly wasn’t going to hurt her.
“I suppose that’s why the Court has me out hunting,” I said.
She nodded and waved me away, but I kept one foot on the ground, digging my nails into the palms of my hands. “And Lunn?”
“He’d be better off if you forgot about him,” she said. “Now leave, before I really lose my temper.”
Biting down on my tongue, I kept my thoughts to myself and kick-started the bike. I opened the throttle and picked up speed as I steered it toward the road, escaping from Auriella and her gleeful grin as fast as the rubber on my tyres would allow.
Her presence certainly complicated things. The situation with the vamps would have to be dealt with as swiftly as possible, particularly if I ever planned on getting to the bottom of the sickness killing off the wolves.
Chapter Fifteen
I made it back to the apartment without further incident and found Samira sitting on the couch talking to Byron. They fell silent as soon as I entered, and I couldn’t help but feel paranoid. Neither of them spoke as I crossed the floor and pushed open my bedroom door. The room had become even more of a forest since I’d left, but its power was intoxicating, and I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes as it washed over me.
“Darcey.” Byron’s voice pulled me out of my reverie, and I turned to see him in the doorway. His eyes widened as the ivy slithered across the floor toward him.
“I’m not sure if coming in is such a good idea,” I said. “Havoc was in here earlier, and it didn’t take too kindly to her.”
“What is it?” he asked, staring down at the ivy that had come to a halt at the threshold.
I’d never realized that it wouldn’t be able to cross the boundary between rooms, but in a way that made sense. The rules of magic were complicated and twisted. Boundary magic was particularly complex, and the magic that had created this place had already crossed one boundary, travelling from Faerie into the human realm. And despite the fact that the magic in the air had a taste of Faerie about it, it had still done something incredible and probably needed to regroup.
I shrugged and fought against the ivy binding my box of weapons shut. It finally gave way, and I popped open the lid and stared down at its contents, contemplating what I would need to meet with the water nymphs. They were slimy critters at the best of times, and if they were feeling threatened by the vampires I had no doubt that their behaviour would be particularly vicious.
“Well when did it come about?” Byron asked, still looking at the ivy. I glanced back at him as he stepped away from a particularly curious piece of ivy that was slowly winding its way
up the doorframe, stopping at eye level.
“Last night,” I said. “I think it had something to do with me healing.”
“You did this?” he asked incredulously.
“No. I’m a banshee, not a nature fae. I deal in death, not growing stuff.”
He nodded as though he understood, and I had to wonder just how much of a connection to the fae he truly had.
“What are you doing?” he asked, nodding in the direction of my weapons.
“Got to go and have a chat with a few undesirables,” I said, selecting some iron blades and a wickedly sharp machete.
“I thought you were working with me,” he said, sounding irritated.
Straightening up, I pointed the machete at him. “I am, but I’m bound by the Faerie Court. When they say jump, I jump.”
“Why are you bound to them?”
“Let’s just say my past has been a little checkered,” I said, skipping around the truth without actually telling a lie.
“I take it whoever you’re going to see is dangerous?”
“Vampires and water fae usually are, yes,” I said.
“Vampires?”
I nodded and settled the machete into my belt. “Yup. A nest of babies is taking over some water fae territory, and Auriella wants me to go in and sort it out…” I trailed off and watched Byron as he tried to hide the concerned expression that suddenly lit up his dark eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“No. When I said Auriella’s name, you got this weird look on your face… almost like you knew it.”
Byron shook his head and smiled. “No, it just reminded me of someone else.”
I eyed him carefully. He definitely wasn’t telling me something, but when he closed down like this I couldn’t get a read on him. If I were even half as good at closing myself off, I would save a lot of heartache.
“Well, at least tell me if it’s a good someone or a bad someone,” I said, and instantly regretted it. What if it was a significant someone? There was no way in hell I wanted to know that, and yet my big mouth had walked straight into the hole again.
Huntress Moon (Bones and Bounties Book 2) Page 10