by Lexi Blake
He sighed. “Zoey, that’s not…”
The minute I heard the negative, I shot him. I had a distinct advantage on him and I used it. He didn’t want to harm me. It made him slow to act. Like his brother, he went down, though his eyes stayed open longer. I leaned over him. He was in a really uncomfortable position. If I left him like that, he would be sore and while I had no problem with Zack having back spasms for days, I would feel bad about Lee. He was just trying to look out for his brother. I kicked the gun out of his hand and helped him down to a more suitable position to lie unconscious in for several hours.
“Zoey.” Lee managed to speak even as his eyes were getting heavy. He should have been out, but he fought it. “Don’t get yourself killed.”
“I promise. I’ll bring you back a head or something, Lee. You’ll wish you had gone with me.”
“I probably will, you crazy bitch,” he said with a smile as the drug finally took effect.
“Night, night, Lee.”
I stood up and looked around my own little candy store. I would love to have been able to take one of those cool looking P90s, but they were really hard to conceal under a skirt. I would have to rely on handguns and knives. I could probably fit a couple of grenades and flashbangs in my really big bag. Kelly had sworn it was the handbag of the season. At the time it seemed like a bit much for a girl who only carried a wallet, a cell, and some lip gloss, but now I saw the advantages.
“You took out the wolves.” Declan stepped gingerly over my now defunct bodyguards.
“I told you I would.” I steadied my foot on a shelf and hiked my skirt up to mid-thigh. I efficiently strapped on the leather piece designed to hold knives. I selected two, turning them slowly in my hands to test their weight before securing them against my leg.
“I admit I was skeptical.” Declan carefully watched every move I made. He frowned when I smoothed the skirt down. Looking around the room, his eyes widened as he took in the weaponry. “Why does my brother need such an armory? You said this was a club. If I know my brother, he declared it a place of peace. He never did like to take sides, or rather he never liked to appear to take sides.”
I shrugged as I placed the Ruger in my bag. I would have preferred to have it in a handy holster, but it was summer in Texas. I was wearing a skirt and one of those recently outlawed tank tops. I could conceal the knives but not the bulky gun. “He sometimes has security problems. Even a place of peace has to have a security team.”
My logic was sound even as I lied through my teeth. Since Dev had thrown his lot in with me and Daniel, the armory had grown exponentially.
“This is not for simple security. Someone is planning a war. What has my brother gotten himself into this time?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, unwilling to get into that argument. “I’m just a soft, sweet girl. He wouldn’t tell his little mistress about his plans. Now drop the glamour.”
“What?”
I gestured up and down at his perfect facsimile of Dev. “I’m talking about the glamour you’re using to look exactly like your brother. You’ve been apart for a long time. I seriously doubt you tracked down his hair stylist and asked for ‘the Dev.’ You were watching us the other night and you copied him. I want to see the real you.”
The prince nodded and dropped his perfect glamour. I gasped at the quick change. His hold on the magic was damn near perfect. I saw the real Declan for the first time and couldn’t help but stare. Declan still looked exactly like Dev with a major exception. His hair was really long. It created a midnight black waterfall around his handsome face. It reached halfway down his back. It strangely didn’t make him look feminine. It made him look slightly savage, as did the gold circlet that sat on his head. In the center of his forehead was the same sun symbol that adorned my necklace.
“When did Dev cut his hair?” I made no effort to hide my fascination. Even in the awful florescent light, Declan’s hair shone. I found myself thinking about what Dev would look like with all that hair. It would cover me like a blanket when he laid on top of me. I would get tangled in it when we cuddled together. It was so black it almost looked blue.
“He used a knife to butcher it before he left the sithein.” Declan lowered his head silently, giving his assent for me to touch him. I let my fingers run through the thick, silky fall of his hair. It was truly his crowning glory. “It was then I knew he meant to leave.”
“You’re beautiful, Declan,” I said because he was and it was polite in Fae society to compliment someone on their looks. “Your hair is the sexiest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
He gave me an arrogant grin, bowing slightly. “Thank you, Zoey. And I think your breasts are completely succulent. If I had found myself with more time the other night when I shot the undead creature, I had planned on getting them in my mouth.”
“Nice,” I replied with a shake of my head because faeries were also big on the over sharing. “How many guns do you want? I always try to carry at least two.”
He shook his head. “I do not carry such weapons. They are not honorable.”
He turned and showed me that he wore a long, ornate bow on his back along with a quiver containing arrows—a traditional Fae weapon. It was also pretty much crap in the urban field. A longbow worked well when you had the high ground against an army, but I preferred bullets. They were quick, did their job, and I didn’t have to notch one every time I needed to fire. There were other reasons I didn’t like the bow as a weapon.
“You know what’s not honorable? Shooting a hostage in the belly with an arrow. It hurts like hell going in and that is nothing compared to the way the sucker feels when you have to shove it out through the back. I’ll take a bullet wound any day of the week. That weapon there isn’t honorable. It’s barbaric.”
“You have had this happen to you?”
“Oh, yeah,” I assured him. “Just ask your brother about it. He was tied up at the time, but I’m sure he remembers the experience. He was quite impressed that I managed to shove the whole arrow out the back and I only passed out once.” To be honest, I was pretty hopped up on vamp blood at the time or I would have been dead, but I didn’t need to tell Declan that. I suddenly remembered we were alone, and I had some unfinished business to take care of. “Declan, this is for Dev.”
I hauled my fist back and put every bit of strength I had into breaking his nose.
The Gaelic started flying, and I suspected it was not a flurry of polite words. There was an odd rush of energy against my skin, and I suddenly found myself shoved against a row of shelves with a knife at my throat. I was held firmly in place by a large male with long white hair who had not been in the room thirty seconds before. Declan had been serious about the fact that I couldn’t see his guard. The new guy’s pale eyes told me he would slit my throat in an instant and probably enjoy the experience. So this was what passed for a bodyguard in the Fae world. I was suddenly glad for Zack.
“Padric, release her,” Declan ordered, holding his nose.
I’d drawn blood. That made me happy.
“She attacked you, Your Highness.” Padric proved he had an excellent talent for stating the obvious. I stayed really still because that knife was starting to cut into my throat just the tiniest bit. “I cannot allow the insult to pass.”
“You can and will obey me,” Declan ordered, his temper on a short leash. “Do you think I cannot handle one small female on my own? I am a warrior of the sidhe. Now let her go. This is my brother’s mistress, for the goddess’s sake. If you harm her, he will never come back with us. You know how he is about his females.”
Padric looked me up and down, and I could tell he found me wanting. “I do not understand your perverse interest in human females. They seem so breakable and short.”
I was, compared to Padric. He had to lean down to hold the knife to my throat. I hoped it caused a crick in his neck. Of course at barely five foot four, I was short, period. If Dev didn’t like me to wear four-and-a-half-inch heels, I wou
ld reach the middle of his chest. I only barely made it to Daniel’s shoulders. That day I was wearing flats, and Padric loomed over me.
“I do not require your understanding,” Declan declared, and Padric finally let me loose. “You are ordered to remain hidden until such time as I call you. Is that understood?”
Padric nodded and was suddenly gone. I looked around but there was no sign of the big scary Fae and his knife that I could still feel at my throat. I would love to have known how he pulled the invisible trick though. Something like that would come in handy when running a job.
“You will explain.” Declan had managed to wipe himself clean of the blood, and I could see now his nose wasn’t actually broken.
I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. I remembered the episode Dev and I had experienced on the Hell plane like it was yesterday. Dev and his brother had been barely seventeen when they were sent to the Unseelie sithein for a bit of torture their mother had decided should be part of their education. Dev was the mortal of the two but he had handled it so much better than his immortal brother. “You left him. You left him to the mercy of those Unseelie monsters to save your own hide, and I promised him I would beat the crap out of you if I ever met you.”
Declan laughed. “Now I see why my brother finds you so amusing. He would enjoy the idea of a woman defending his honor.” His eyes turned serious. “I remember that day well. I was ashamed of my fears, and I lashed out at the brother who had sacrificed to save me pain. I have not forgiven myself for that day, so if you choose to hit me again, I assure you it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what I owe him.”
It meant something to me that he was willing to own up to what he’d done. Ingrid had said there was always two sides to the story. I was willing to listen to Declan.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “I have one more thing I need. It’s in the kitchens and then we hunt down this bitch.”
Chapter Seven
Declan turned out to be a complete baby when it came to mass transit.
He whined about the people, the smell, the metal. I wasn’t sure what he thought a train should be made of, but he really didn’t like the metal. In the end, I had to get off the train and hail a cab because I was sick of his whining. It made me wish Dev had bought me that Porsche. I’d left my own crappy car on the farm for Justin and Angelina to use. I could have used the limo, but I thought that might be conspicuous in the neighborhoods where I was going.
I settled into the cab, and Declan quickly opened the window, pressing his face out of the vehicle. He sat as close to the fresh air as he possibly could. I gave the driver the first address on my list and was happy to learn he didn’t speak a whole heck of a lot of English. That would make it easier to talk to Declan freely without the cabbie calling the loony bin on me. I’d done all my research the night before and found ten possible locations for the aswang’s workplace. There were a couple of Filipino markets, six restaurants, and two butchers. I was going to try the butchers first as all the legends claimed this was the aswang’s chosen profession during the daylight hours.
“Why would the undead creature wish you harm?” Declan asked as though he was trying to get his mind off the fact that he was encased in two tons of steel.
“I tend to piss people off.” I rifled through my printouts. “I think someone hired the aswang. I’m not its normal prey. It tends to feed off of corpses or newborn babies. It leaves an effigy behind to take the place of its victim.”
“What have you done to anger people? Did you refuse their suits?” Declan asked because he probably couldn’t think of any other reason someone could be angry with a female.
“Well, I’ve narrowed it down to a couple of people. It could be the local werewolf alpha. I shot his balls off a few months back. They’ve probably grown back by now, and he could be looking for some revenge. There’s always Lucas Halfer. He’s a demon. I managed to get his dumb ass kicked off the Hell plane. I’ve killed any number of people whose relatives could be out for revenge. I even considered Cecilia, that vampire Dev slept with. She was hot to get him back, and I don’t doubt for one instant she might try to take me out to clear the way.”
Declan smiled with the memory. “Yes, I remember her. She was quite terrifying. I still cannot believe he got into bed with that. He had nightmares about it for weeks. I was surprised to discover him in another vampire’s bed.”
“Well, Daniel’s bite is quite the experience.” I looked out the window, wondering briefly if I would ever get to watch that sight again. I really loved to watch the two of them together. They were so freaking hot. Maybe it made me perverse, but I wanted to watch them, craved it kind of. I had some very specific fantasies. “It’s totally different from Cecilia. It was Danny’s bite that brought Dev’s magic back.”
Declan’s whole face flushed. “You told me he did not fornicate with the vampire.”
“He feeds Daniel on occasion,” I clarified. Despite my best efforts, I hadn’t managed to get them to do more than have Daniel suck on Dev’s neck. I had pointed out that there were other veins he could draw from. “Other than that, they share me. Why would you care even if he did?” I had to ask because the Fae weren’t known for their homophobia.
“If the vampire has forced himself on my brother, then I will be honor bound to kill him.”
I laughed a long time at that one. I was going to have to tell Danny, and he’d have a laugh, too. “Well, let me spare you an ugly death, Declan. I assure you that apart from high-fiving at basketball games, the boys don’t exactly get physical.”
“I can handle one small vampire,” Declan assured me with a snooty arrogance.
Daniel Donovan had once killed twelve vampires in the course of an hour in the arena, and he hadn’t been full of companion blood at the time. He was the first vampire in more than a millennium to earn the title of Death Machine. I once watched him decapitate a vampire with one hand as he flew through the air, and he’d managed to catch the head before it hit the ground. If Declan thought he could take Daniel out with his little bow and arrow, I was willing to buy a ticket to that show.
“I bet you can,” I offered as the cab stopped at our first destination.
I asked the driver to wait as we hustled out of the cab. Declan was back in his Dev glamour as I’d decided that running about town with a character from Lord of the Rings was bound to attract attention.
“I can kill the vampire for you if that is your wish, Zoey,” Declan said confidently as he strode beside me. “If he is cruel, then I will slay him and you, my brother, and I will return to the sithein together.”
I rolled my eyes and kept walking. “He isn’t cruel. I’m not using Dev to try to escape Daniel. I love my husband. I love your brother, too. We’re happy together.”
Well, we had been until I’d shot my bodyguards and defied both their orders.
I opened the door to the small meat market. There were signs in both English and Filipino in the window. The store was neat and clean, but a butchery still smells like meat.
“Ah, it is a ménage?” Declan asked. “I always thought Devinshea would be happy in this sort of arrangement. I rather thought he would be at the center, however.”
I glanced around the shop. There were only three customers, and I disregarded them. I was more interested in the woman behind the counter. She was a small woman with tired eyes. Weariness was stamped on the lines of her face, but if I had to guess her age, I would put her in her early thirties. It was the tired look that made me suspicious. The aswang was always weary during the day from all the prowling it did at night.
This was the part where one of my werewolf bodyguards would have really come in handy. If Lee had just come with me, I wouldn’t have had to look like a complete idiot. He would have been able to smell the decay that hung about the corporeal undead and I wouldn’t have to identify the fucker myself. There are many creatures in the supernatural world that can perfectly mimic the human form. It’s one of those Darwinian trai
ts that makes a species successful. Werewolves are successful because they can pass for human most of the time. Vampires can pass. Dragons got their asses slain because they were scary. They were no longer on this plane because they couldn’t hide what they were. Humans tend to hunt down and kill what frightens them.
My point is, when dealing with supernaturals passing for humans, there are always tricks to identify your prey. Hunters wrote entire books about it, passing these tomes from generation to generation. In the human world, they’re called superstitions, but in my world, it’s called a good defense.
There were a couple of tricks I’d discovered for identifying the aswang. I could find an elder to mix a special concoction of coconut oil and herbs and leave it on the suspect’s porch. When the aswang walked by it, the oil would boil, thereby unmasking the creature. As I didn’t know any Filipino elders who wouldn’t laugh me out of their homes, nor did I have any suspects, I had to go with option two, which I did, much to everyone’s surprise.
Right there in the middle of the butcher’s shop, I turned my back to the suspect, hiked my skirt up as modestly as I could, and bent over to view the possible ghoul through my legs.
Like I said before, I was going to spend the day looking like an idiot.
“We are doing this for what reason?” Declan asked from beside me. He had taken up the same position, and I was glad I wasn’t the only one looking foolish. “Are we trying to anger the creature by…what is the human term…mooning it?”
I sighed because the chick behind the counter was still human. Just to be sure, I checked out the customers because as long as I was down there, I might as well.
“It would only be mooning if our asses were bare,” I corrected Declan as I stood back up and smoothed down my skirt. That had been a waste of time.
Declan gave me a sly smile. “If your ass had been bare, I would not have mimicked you. I would have stood back and enjoyed the sight.”