Water: The Elementals Book Three

by L. B. Gilbert

  Kerrick followed her line of sight, spotting the human seconds after she did. His mouth dropped open. “Is that what I think it is?” He grabbed her arm, hissing the question in her ear.

  Serin shook off his hand. “It would appear so.”

  She gestured for him to follow her to the edge of the room, out of the detective’s line of sight. “What happened? Have you given the task of warding the bar to a subordinate?”

  “No! I always do it myself—I have since I took over the bar three centuries ago. There’s no way in hell a human got past them.”

  She craned her neck to see the agent. He appeared to be enjoying his beer. “Well, apparently this one did.”

  When she turned back, Kerrick was watching her with suspicion. “Do you know him?”

  “I do. He’s a particularly persistent member of the human law enforcement. He’s been popping up lately.”

  “A human cop? That’s even worse.” Kerrick was beside himself. “We need to get him out of here before he sees past Cincy’s glamour. She’s not that good at holding it for more than an hour or two. In fact, most of the patrons can’t do any better. It’s why they come here, so they don’t have to.”

  Serin shook her head, still marveling that Romero had made it past the wards. “He really must have hunter blood in him.”

  “Really?” Kerrick slumped in relief. “Then that’s settled. We can just contact the Court. One of the trappers will pick him up. He’ll be conscripted into the Great Hunt, problem solved.”

  Serin scowled. “Don’t even think about it. This guy’s profile is too high. A top human cop can’t just disappear without a shitstorm of scrutiny.”

  Not to mention the fact humans conscripted into the Great Hunt were essentially slaves. Elementals didn’t interfere with the practice because most of the human predators started out by hunting their own kind. Agent Romero wasn’t in that class.

  The goblin scoffed. “Humans disappear all the time. The queen can have a changeling fashioned to replace him. No one will ever know the difference.”

  “The hell she will,” Serin said. “Forget about it. We’re not siccing fae bounty hunters on him. Loki’s alive because of Romero.”

  Kerrick didn’t care. “Lucky Loki, but the human has to go before anyone notices him. There are mountain trolls in here! You know how suspicious those bastards are. If they even get a whiff of him, they’ll tear him apart.”

  Ugh. As much as she enjoyed teasing him, Serin didn’t want to go to bat for this particular human. She was still annoyed at being dragged in for questioning.

  “I’ll take care of this,” she said from behind gritted teeth.

  Romero clapped a hand over his eyes, tears streaming.

  “Sorry. Can I have a napkin or something?” he asked the gorgeous Playboy bunny behind the bar. “I don’t know what’s wrong with my eyes. Must be the smoke in here.”

  The blonde gave him a stiff smile and handed him the folded square of paper, dropping it on the bar in front of him to avoid touching him. Wiping his eyes, he turned around, wondering what her problem was. He was in plainclothes, and no one had ever made him as law enforcement in a bar.

  Also, Daniel ordinarily did pretty well with female bartenders. He’d gone home with more than one in his day, but this girl was acting like he had the plague.

  He sipped the beer she’d handed him moments before. Blinking, he glanced down at it in surprise.

  At least the beer was good. It was nutty and had a hint of honey without being sweet. It must have been a new microbrew. He squinted at the vaguely Celtic design on the label, committing the name to memory so he could find it again before turning his attention back to the shifting crowd.

  A cleared space in the center of the room served as a dance floor. There were more men than women in the melee, all dancing—if it could be called that. The raucous crowd behind him threw themselves around like they were being electrocuted. The beat they were moving to wasn’t half bad. It was one of those heavy drum and bass tracks popular on the radio recently.

  A massive figure broke away from the crowd, crashing into a barstool a few away from his. The ugly son of a bitch picked himself up with a gap-toothed grin, then went stumbling right back into the mix.

  One thing was for damn sure. Daniel wasn’t going to be a regular here, no matter how good the beer was.

  “Is it always this…active?” he asked, swiveling toward the bartender. It was a Wednesday, for Pete’s sake.

  The woman shrugged, her head down.

  Strike two. He was definitely off his game.

  A particularly deep thrum in the soundtrack made his eardrum vibrate, and he winced.

  Damn, he was getting old. A couple of years ago, he would have felt right at home in a place like this. It was strangely familiar, though he couldn’t say why.

  The decor was a weird mix of post-apocalyptic industrial and old-world pub. He polished off his beer and decided to order another when he saw his chatty blonde barkeep straighten suddenly. Her eyes flicked past his shoulder, widening as her whole body tensed.

  Blinking fast to clear the continued stinging in his eyes, Romero spun around, his hand instinctively moving to the hidden holster under his jacket.

  Despite the violence of the dance moves displayed on the floor, there wasn’t a threat coming up behind him, nor was another behemoth about to barrel into him. It was the woman in the white bikini, only this time, she was dressed from head to toe in black leather.

  She looked amazing. As usual, his brain short-circuited, and he stared open-mouthed at her like an idiot. He searched for something to say. If you value your life…don’t make a Catwoman joke.

  11

  Daniel shook himself. He’d half expected to see his prime suspect here, but it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.

  She wasn’t supposed to move in slow motion as if they were starring in their own personal chick flick, the part where the hero sees his dream girl across the room.

  Eileen strode down the middle of the room toward him, cutting right through the fracas on the dance floor. But not even one of those raging dipsomaniacs so much as touched her. Instead, the crowd parted like she was Moses and it was the fucking Red Sea.

  His breath caught as the light sparked off the red highlights in her dark hair. Her ridiculous curves shifted fluidly in their black leather casings. Unbidden, the image of a black panther stalking its prey flashed through his mind.

  He forced himself to take his hand off his piece as she smirked, leaning with her elbows back on the bar.

  “I think you’re in the wrong place, Detective Romero.”

  Her throaty voice was low, but for some reason Daniel had no problem understanding her over the loud music. It was as if her voice could cut through the din—like it was wired directly to the nerve endings in his ear.

  Daniel sipped his beer, adjusting his grip so his now-sweaty palms wouldn’t drop the glass. “If you’re here, Ms. Knight, then I’m in the right place. Especially since it’s just steps away from where I got into a firefight earlier today,” he said pointedly.

  Her eyes widened. “A firefight, you say? What an exciting life you lead, Detective. But surely you don’t think anyone here had something to do with that?”

  She waved at the clientele as if they were all sitting down to a formal tea instead of moshing in a pit like maniacs.

  He raised his drink in a silent toast. “Well, until I saw you here, I was thinking this place was a dead end. Now I know better.”

  It was no less than the truth. His skin was starting to itch, his cop sixth sense going crazy. The music didn’t help. It was blending with the club’s noises, confusing him. Was someone banging on a drum? That wasn’t part of this song, was it?

  No, it wasn’t part of the recording. He couldn’t make out who was doing it in the general gloom, but combined with the smokiness in the room, it was starting to give him a headache.

  He spun around to surreptitiously rub his eyes. Oddl
y, looking at the hot bartender only made it worse.

  Eileen leaned in closer. “I really think you should leave now, Detective, before the proprietor has you thrown out.”

  Daniel scowled. “It’s agent, not detective. And this is a bar—a public space. I have every right to be here.”

  Her head drew back, her eyes flicking to the back of the room where a group of men was starting to push and shove each other. The beat changed, and the crowd swelled like a shifting sea.

  “Actually, you don’t,” she corrected in her best English schoolmarm voice. “It’s a private club. It is not open to the public. Under normal circumstances, you would have been stopped at the door, but the bouncer must have been taking a break.”

  Now he was irritated. “I’m conducting an investigation,” he said. “And this isn’t some country club or posh society cabaret. I mean check out the people on the dance floor. They’re just this side of—”

  She poked him hard in the side. “I know the music is loud, but don’t let that fool you. Some of these folks have excellent hearing. They don’t like strangers, and they really don’t like cops. Come back tomorrow with a warrant. Because that the only way anyone here will talk to you.”

  The woman had the gall to begin nudging him toward the door.

  Daniel’s head was spinning now, his eyes tearing, but he would be damned if he let his prime suspect give him the bum’s rush.

  “As much as I’m enjoying your hands on me, I’m not going anywhere so you can just stop that now.”

  “You’re enjoying this?” She gave him another hard nudge, enough to make his shoes slide across the floor several feet. “You may not realize this now, but I’m trying to help you, Agent Romero.”

  Daniel sidestepped her grasp, wondering how the hell she’d propelled him so far. She hadn’t even put her weight behind the move. Eileen Knight was half a head shorter than him, and weighed a buck twenty-five soaking wet. How was she this strong?

  A group of four enormous, foul-smelling men broke away from the dance floor. He had a confused impression of horns and teeth. One of the men roared a bestial racket that made Daniel’s ears vibrate. A wave of foul air rushed over him, stinking worse than that corpse flower he went to see at the botanical gardens last year.

  “I smell human.”

  “The hell you can,” he snapped, holding his sleeve to his face to block out some of the stench. “What you smell is the very real and pressing need to shower.”

  Eileen laughed, seemingly unfazed by the fetid stink. “Now, boys, you don’t really want to disturb my guest, do you?” she asked, standing in front of him as if she were going to somehow stop them.

  The man in front of her grunted something that vaguely sounded like words, releasing another wave of that rotting stench.

  Daniel couldn’t help himself. Bending over, he gagged.

  He held on to the legs of a barstool to keep from toppling over. “Ugh. This is worse than that time I pulled a three-month corpse out of a barrel. Seriously, what have you been eating?”

  An unintelligible growl was the only response. It must have been Slavic—it was all guttural rumbles and clicks. Despite Daniel’s supposed expertise in over half-a-dozen languages, he couldn’t make a damn thing out.

  Unbelievably, Eileen responded to him in kind. Daniel watched, fascinated, holding the cuff of his shirt over his nose as she slapped them down with an attitude a person had to be born with to get away with.

  The entire bar crowd was watching them now. Most of them seemed strangely affected by Eileen’s words. Some even backed away or hugged the wall, but the trio in front of them was unfazed.

  “Serin, get him out of here,” a man behind them hissed. “These are mountain trolls. They don’t have enough brain cells between them to know not to mess with you.”

  Daniel pivoted to see that a young bearded man had joined the blonde behind the bar. Like her, he was model perfect and dressed like he was about to shoot the cover of Hipster’s Weekly.

  His head was really starting to pound now. It was also starting to play tricks on him.

  “Do you hear hoofbeats?” he asked Eileen, spinning back around. It almost sounded like he was standing next to a mounted patrol in the park. But that made no sense at all. He was indoor for fuck’s sake.

  Behind him, the long rows of bottles behind the bar rattled. Daniel frowned. The female bartender was the only one anywhere near the bottles, but even if she’d bumped the bar, it shouldn’t have rattled like that.

  The blonde was staring at his scowling face like she’d forgotten to breathe. His lips parted to reassure her that everything was going to be fine, but the male bartender gave her a little shove. The girl dived behind him, effectively hiding from his view.

  But not my ears…

  Every time she moved, Daniel heard hoofbeats. “What kind of heels is that woman wearing?” he muttered under his breath.

  The male bartender made a choking sound. “Serin,” the man pleaded.

  Rapid movement made Daniel jerk back to the audience. A wave of unwashed flesh rushed forward, threatening to crash down on him and Eileen.

  Daniel tensed, a split second from running in front of her, but a blinding pain forced him to his knees. Stunned, he stared down at the glass and liquid raining from his shoulders. It smelled like fermented honey. Had he been hit with a bottle of mead?

  Darkness warred with his will to stay conscious. The scene receded as he slumped against the bar. The distant sounds of a fight roused him. He blinked, his hazy mind registering the full-blown battle raging around him.

  Eileen was in the thick of things, landing a roundhouse kick that took down a man three times her size.

  Daniel’s last feeling before passing out was vindication. I knew it was her in the alley.

  “Get off me, you rancid Yak turd,” Kerrick swore, shoving away the last mountain troll still standing.

  The troll stumbled closer, giving Serin the opportunity to deliver one last punch to the head, finally knocking it out.

  “Hell,” she huffed, breathing hard. “It’s been forever since I fought any of these. I forgot how much it took to put one down—and how much they smell! I’m going to have to have this outfit dry-cleaned before I wear it again.”

  She raised an arm to smell where one of the trolls had caught hold of her sleeve. “Or maybe I’ll just throw it out.”

  The bar was nearly empty now. Funny how a pitched battle between an Elemental and a trio of mountain trolls could do that.

  Serin stepped back, nearly tripping on the prone figure of Agent Romero. “Son of a—what happened to him?”

  She had been too busy with the trolls to check on him, but when he hadn’t leapt into the fray, she’d assumed he’d been smart enough to stay out of it. Kneeling, she checked his pulse.

  “Good,” she said, relaxing. He was still breathing.

  “What do you think happened to him?” Kerrick cried, retreating behind the bar. “I broke a bottle of my best mead over his head when Cincy’s glamour started to break down.”

  “You did what?”

  Serin grabbed the unconscious man’s head, turning him to the light to check his injuries.

  There was a bump on the back of his head. It was the size of an egg and growing. Shit. Agent Romero’s blue and red aura was flaring white at the edges like a strobe light. She tensed, but her touch soothed him, slowing the flashing.

  The blow to the head had been a shock to his system and he was going to have a hell of a headache when he woke, but, fortunately for him, Romero had a very hard head. He would recover.

  She glared at Kerrick. “You could have killed him.”

  Dropping his glamour, the goblin ran a hand through his bright pink hair. “Better that I had. He’s seen too much. Worse yet, he could understand some of it. He even heard Cincy’s hooves against the wooden floor. That’s too damn perceptive for a human. He’s dangerous to let live—unless you’ve changed your mind about having him taken up for
the Hunt.”

  Kerrick reached for Romero’s shirt collar, hauling him up to a seated position. The agent’s head lolled, smacking against the bar.

  “For the Mother’s sake, watch his head,” Serin nudged the bartender out of the way. “I told you, I won’t hand him over to the Seelie Court.”

  “But he can see through glamours!”

  “Almost. He can almost see through them,” she hedged. “And of all people, you know what being conscripted to the Great Hunt means—what it does to a man, human or not. You’re just freaking out cause it’s your bar. If he’d walked into another tonight, you wouldn’t be so trigger happy.”

  “Well, he didn’t walk into another, did he? He walked into my place, and now look at it.” He waved at the flotsam. “It’s wrecked.”

  “So bill the mountain trolls—or better yet, bill me. I can afford the repairs, but Romero is out of bounds.”

  She reached down, grabbing the unconscious man’s arms. After hauling him over her shoulder, she started heading out the front door.

  Reasserting his glamour, Kerrick followed her, leaving Cincy to start on the mess inside.

  “I’m obviously not going to bill you,” he muttered, trailing her sullenly.

  Inhaling deeply to find a smidgen of patience, she rearranged Romero so she could reach into her pocket. After fishing out a few gold galleons, she tossed them at the goblin. “I picked those up off the coast of Ecuador. Take them to a dealer for the historical value. You’ll get more from that than if you make a deal for the metal alone. It’s more than enough to cover the damages.”

  He fingered the coins, jiggling them before grimacing and slipping them into his pocket. “Bollocks. You make it hard to argue with you Serin.”

  She set her charge down in the alley by the dumpster, taking care not to jostle his head any more than she had too.

  “If he remembers—” Kerrick began.

  “He won’t.” She rifled through her bag, retrieving a small knotted string from her bag. Squinting at it, she glanced at Romero, weighing it in her hands.