by Lucy Lyons
Just as swiftly as the attack began, someone or something turned out the lights, and we were plunged into blessed darkness. I felt the soft kiss of silk across my face, and there was a scream directly in front of me. I opened my eyes to Portia, her talons deep inside Haley’s abdomen. The sight of the tiny girl hanging from the Cetan’s grip wrenched a scream from my throat, and I lunged for Portia, my claws extended.
She dropped the halfling to the floor and sidestepped me, evading my wild swings easily. Instead of closing in for the kill, she backed away from me, keeping space between us as though she were giving me a chance to cool down, which almost made the rage more than I could control.
It was Jesus who pulled me back while Dirk checked Haley’s vitals. Jodi stepped between us and faced off with Portia as though he had a chance of surviving an encounter with her. I tried to reverse our positions, but Portia once again backed away with a look of disgust on her face. Jesus took Jodi’s arm, and Steven stooped to whisper to Dirk, then together we formed a wall between the Red Daggers and Dirk, who was desperately trying to stop the blood flow from Haley’s gut wound.
“Did you poison her or just gut her, Portia?” I demanded, and she snarled at me. I knew Haley’s life hung in the answer to that question, and I leaned back to examine her for myself. Her wound didn’t have the faint smell of poison that my own wounds had been tainted with, and I exhaled and nodded. “She’s not going to die from that wound. She’s an immortal halfling. But we need to get her above ground and back to Maria.”
I glanced down at Dirk, who was already carefully lifting the girl into his arms. He nodded, and I grimaced and gave each of the men a quick look. We were all in agreement. I helped Dirk hold Haley as best I could, her blood making her slick and hard to carry.
“We can’t just let her bleed out or she will die. But Dirk, I can’t in good conscience stop the hunt for Rae.”
“Rae’s OK. I don’t know how I know that, but somehow I know that Ashlynn found her. I felt it when you boosted my magic, the wild magic, just for a moment,” he said, and I nodded. I hadn’t felt it, but I’d seen enough to know that if the magic had spoken to him, I shouldn’t argue.
“We’ll come back down and find her the moment we get help for Haley, I promise.” I added the last even though I knew I shouldn’t have to. I was the alpha. The moment I gave my word, it was as binding as a blood oath. But Dirk just smiled at me. More than many of the others, he knew what it meant to be human, the awkward necessity of words and the necessity of awkward silences.
The silence is what we carried with Haley back to the flickering lights of the sub-basement where we had entered. Maria was still waiting for us there, but when she saw Haley bleeding out in Dirk’s arms, my hands pressed tight to her belly to stop the bleeding, her normally impassive, unreadable face flushed and she called for help.
Portia appeared in the hole behind Steven and co, who had been on our tails all the way up from the tunnels. I snarled and backed her into the doorway, holding her there until Maria was free to deal with her.
“Clay. Get away from Master Cetan and continue to hold poor Haley’s guts in,” Maria demanded, and I stammered, trying to articulate an argument even as I found myself kneeling on the concrete pushing against Haley with my palms and the shielding I’d been trying to erect in the tunnels.
“Maria, you can’t just let . . .” I began, but she shushed me and turned to look up at Portia and scowled.
“How did you let her get so far? Your mission was to let her lead you to her companions, not let her try to assassinate the alpha werewolf and his generals,” she snapped. “Portia, you used to be my best. If I find out that you let her—”
“Wait, Haley is the bad guy?” I asked, lifting my hands from her already closing wound.
“Clay, don’t stop putting pressure on it. We don’t want Haley dead, do we?” Maria asked.
“We don’t?” I replied, and she shot me a dirty look.
“Well, we didn’t let her kill you, did we?” she answered, and I gave up, unable to think of another question to fire back at her.
“So, you weren’t trying to kill me, Cetan?” I asked, and she sniffed.
“I don’t like you, pup. However, I am growing fond of your heroic and romantic friend. Dirk was changed for love, doesn’t complain, and he smells like . . . like magnolia trees. You, on the other hand, treat anything that isn’t human like we’re not quite up to snuff, like you see a monster in all of us.” I blanched and started to argue, but enough of what she said struck home that I just glared at Dirk instead.
“You made friends with the one Fae in all of Fae-dom that I can truly, deeply, not stand?”
“I didn’t mean to. We haven’t even talked,” he blurted. “Do you really think we’re all monsters?”
“No. I don’t even think Portia’s a monster. In fact, when I’m at a safe distance, she’s quite beautiful and exotic,” I replied. “But sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see a monster, and I can’t be wrong,” I admitted. “Either I’m a monster for hunting those who I’ve killed in the past or I was right then and I’m a monster now. I can’t have it both ways.”
That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard from you, and you say some seriously stupid things, Clay, an irritable voice resounded in my head.
Ashlynn, I thought, relief coursing through my body, making me shaky and weak. I may say stupid things, but that’s a damn sight better than doing them, woman. I leaned back, sure that Haley was well on the road to full Fae recovery.
Well, I might have to give you that, this time. They were just too strong, Clay. They smelled human. I thought I was strong enough to take on a few humans.
I’m coming Ash, and when I get you home, I’m never letting you out of my sight again.
I wiped the blood off on my jeans and stood, holding out a hand to Dirk to help him up too. Maria merely stood away from the entrance to the tunnels and smiled as though everything was happening the way she had planned it.
“Master Cetan, our women are in danger. I can’t offer you payment worthy of your help, but as one shifter to another, would you please help us save them and the first shifter of our kind to be born and not made?”
Portia smacked her lips and rolled her eyes at me before bowing low to Master Shedu and gesturing through the doorway for us to follow her.
“Anything I can do to help you helps us all, right?” she smirked, and I nodded.
“I’m sure someday this is going to kick me in the ass, but yeah, Portia. What’s good for me might actually turn out to be good for you someday.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I pushed off the wall and headed for the stairs up and out of the dim lights and concrete. I needed the air on my face to be a fresh sea breeze and the light to touch my face to be warm sunlight. My men followed me topside, and as I leaned against the chain-link fence that surrounded the small parking lot behind the building, the familiar, silken rustle of feathers made me turn my head.
“Forgot your glamour, Master Cetan?” I asked as she laughed and shook out her glittering crown.
“One of the loveliest parts of living in the city is the blanket expectation that everyone has, that whatever you look like is just your costume. Sometimes it’s nice to just let it all out for a bit.”
I saluted her and kicked the fence. “I wish I could do that sometimes or even be good enough with glamour to just hide it with magic instead of keeping it all bottled up inside.”
Dirk had cleaned the blood off his hands properly in a rain barrel in the back and motioned to it with his head.
“I think we need to go in from the vampire side, Clay. We can’t afford to be fighting ahead and behind all the way to Rae.” I nodded in agreement and bowed to Portia at the neck.
“Think you can stomach a couple dozen more halflings, Portia?” she snorted and unfolded her arms.
“I think I can handle anything you throw at me and not lose my control, if that’s what you’re asking,
pup,” she retorted. Outside the shielding for the dojo, the air buzzed with activity. The scents and smells that the light breeze pushed into my face made me feel like slipping my skin and running as a wolf should, asphalt streets be damned.
I let my pack feel what I was feeling, and I felt the faintest whisper of understanding from Ashlynn. I saw her sitting in the darkness, holding another body in her lap like I had held Dirk when he was wounded, and I knew it had to be Rae.
I checked my phone, but no texts waited for me from Goldie. In fact, when I checked the thread, Goldie hadn’t texted me in days. Haley. Godforsaken day walker had sold us out to whatever humans had got their hands on magic, and I was going to wring her bloody neck when it was all over. Maria had a no-kill policy for the Fae, but I was willing to bet Haley could take a fair amount of damage in a fair fight.
Portia asked us to wait while she put together a force she trusted, and I made the call to Fin and Colette at Pulse and left them a message asking for permission to bring strange Fae into the hive. As soon as I was done, Simi was ringing in to offer her assistance from London, where she’d gone to study lore about the Fae and Caroline’s hypothesis that all magic creatures, including the Onyxis, the Night Mother herself, were Fae, not demonic.
“There aren’t any Venatores sanctioned for kills in your neck of the woods right now. If there are humans targeting your people, I’d say do what you must do to protect them. I would come if I could, but . . .”
“No problem, Sim. We’ve got more help than we know what to do with at this point. No sense in putting you in harm’s way or on the radar of powerful beings you might one day have to hunt.” I remembered how helpless I’d been to prevent Portia from disemboweling Haley and almost shuddered despite the warm day.
“You still there?” Simi asked, and I managed a dry chuckle.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about how glad I am that you’re a continental land mass and an ocean away from the fight that we’re looking to finish,” I admitted. “But when we’re done kicking ass, if you haven’t gotten me the information on this group of malevolent magic-users, maybe I’ll have something new for your library.”
We signed off, and I tried to reach Ashlynn again and worried when I couldn’t. Steven, Jesus, and Jodi joined Dirk and I outside, and we walked toward Pulse. I felt eyes on me as we strode down the street and realized that together we had enough power to break down the walls of the mundane and make even the least psychically sensitive human stare.
Or it’s that you’re four hot, muscular men wearing very little and walking down the street like you own the place, came a thought in my head that wasn’t my own. Grateful to hear her again, an image of her came to my mind, one of my favorites, of her laughing as she looked down at me on the floor where I’d landed when I fell out of bed at a loud sound from below us one morning. Lust bored through me, hot and insistent, and I picked up the pace without thinking.
It was Portia who grabbed my arm and forced me to slow down to almost a stop before I reached the door of the club.
“Hey there, Romeo. You might want to put a damper on those thoughts before you walk into a clan of vampires,” she chided me. “Nice guys or not, strong feelings like lust make the halflings hungry, and you’ve already wasted enough time fighting your own. You and I are not friends. I think you waste your time and should be much further in your training than you are, but I’m not your enemy.”
“I have no idea what to say to that except to tell you that I’ve systematically forced myself to become immune to your poison. In case you change your mind.”
She cleared her throat and nodded. “OK then, I’ll make sure to remember that.” The look on her face was cautious, as though she were seeing me for the first time. Honestly, if it kept her from trying to slash my face off in front of the lower classmen every time we sparred, the agonizing boosters were worth it.
Portia cleared her throat and tapped her temple reminding me to shield better. I took her advice and paid attention to my shielding. My first slip had been had enough, even if I hadn’t made the natives hungry like Portia feared. The last thing I needed was the vampires I was trying to build an alliance with seeing and feeling my most intimate thoughts.
We entered the club together, and behind me Steven whistled the theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly while I tried not to smile. The only bartenders hanging out upstairs were human, and the burlesque dancers weren’t hanging around waiting for show time like usual. No vampires in sight—no wererats, and no werewolves. We rode down the elevator in silence, the silliness of our entrance magnified by the situation we were riding down into.
The doors slid open to an unnerving stillness in the sublevel. Instead of the usual hive of activity, we were met with an empty hall and hushed voices in the distant conference room. We followed the conversation to just beyond the door. I stood staring at the heavy, ornately carved wood of the door and waited for the creatures on the other side to finish talking about us and invite us in.
I felt a presence behind us and spun around to see Caroline and a sleeping Rowena watching us. My hand automatically reached for the soft, sleeping form and Caroline giggled.
“She really does love you the best,” she sighed. “Even Nick doesn’t get that level of psychic energy expended for him, and he cuddles her for hours at a time.”
“Well, right now, it’s Daddy that I need, little one. You just let Uncle Clay go talk to Daddy so we can get your little werewolf cousin back before the bad people do . . . whatever it is they think they get to do to us,” I finished. Caroline patted my hand and juggled Rowena up onto her shoulder.
“Go get ‘em, tiger,” she grinned. “Nick knows what needs to be done. Just give him the chance to follow your lead. Your pack is lucky to have you.” I got one more half hug and stroked the baby’s cheek. Ashlynn would be a good mother, was the last thing I had time to think, and the big wooden door slowly opened. Rachel, Nicholas’s second-in-command smiled out at me.
“Welcome to command central, boys and girls. We’re ready for our marching orders.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The room had been so full of bodies they were pressed against the wall all the way around the long conference table. Every vampire, wererat, and werewolf in the room was locked and loaded, waiting for us to divide them up into teams, no questions asked.
“Our first pregnant wolf was taken earlier today, and my mate was captured when she bravely fought to free her. You know what it means to us to have you standing here with us,” I cleared my throat as emotion choked me up and continued. “What it means every time we come together, despite the hatred we receive from fanatical monster-hunters and preternatural enemies alike.” I stepped to one side and held out a hand to Portia, who accepted it with a sideways glance and gave her customary bow to the room, flashing her crown of feathers.
A gasp went up from most of the females in the room, stunned by her avian beauty, and she colored slightly and smiled. If only she’d known what the reception would be, the Cetan would’ve joined us years ago, I thought and felt Caroline’s appreciative laugh from the other side of the door.
“This is Master Cetan—Portia to those who know her well. She is High Fae, a former goddess of an ancient multi-theist culture and the finest fighter I’ve ever seen wear the Red Dagger uniform.” I didn’t bother to add that I’d only met the Red Daggers recently, and Portia didn’t correct me, as I’d known she wouldn’t.
“Welcome to our home, Master Cetan,” Nick replied in the smooth, dark tones I knew he reserved for gullible customers. Portia shook out her feathers and bowed again without speaking, but her hand tightened in mine. She was outnumbered by halflings, and as her palm grew damp in my hand, I squeezed back. We still weren’t friends, but I could sure as hell respect her for walking into that conference room as afraid of our impure blood as she was for the sole purpose of saving two more halflings and an unborn Fae.
More introductions followed as Portia identified the other
Red Daggers to our clans, and we all left what had happened with Haley for a later briefing. Within minutes, everyone had their assignments and the room was empty except for Dirk, Nick, Portia and myself. Portia was the one to tell Nick that she’d suspected Haley was up to something when she volunteered for the mission after working so hard to shed her halfling status as a Red Dagger.
“You will be expected to share such information with the alpha and myself in the future,” Nick reprimanded her. I flinched at the tone he took, but we were in his castle. Portia merely nodded at his chastisement, and I wondered if I would receive the same respect if she met me sitting on my throne. I discarded the idea immediately.
As we listened to Nick, Dirk reached over and he touched my arm. Instantly, I felt his thoughts flood my head, a jumble of worry about time and if Portia, who had attacked me so viciously in the past, was suddenly our protector among the Fae.
Dirk. We know they haven’t done anything to harm Rae or the baby, I thought to him. I didn’t add what really worried me. Ashlynn had gone in there, guns blazing, and got caught. There was no reason to keep her alive, and from the pain in her tone even when she was trying to be lighthearted, she’d been wounded badly enough in the fight that we needed to get her back and give her the chance to shift and let her wolf heal her.