Scarlet and I both watched, our sides pressed into each other as Mack jogged to where Lance and Jane stood arguing with the fae at the door. He was a big guy, over six feet tall and muscular. Even from here, I could see he had one of those runway-ready faces that were so common in fae—sculpted features, high cheekbones, swollen lips. His skin was pale, his hair midnight black with blue undertones. He wore full armor like he was heading off to a Renaissance Faire or some shit.
“I am Prince Macklin of the Spring Court,” Mack declared, his tone commanding as he approached the house. “Where do you get off impeding my investigation into these murders? Bring out the fae in charge of this.”
“Your mother put me in charge.” Barney audibly gulped. “No one can pass. Not even you, Your Majesty.” Three other fae at the door fell to their knees and kissed the doormat.
Beside me, Scarlet gave a snort that sounded like chuckling, even in wolf form. She nudged my side, but I was already moving, slipping out of the van and behind the nearest hedge. We hunched down and slipped along. The area around the house had the cloying, almost overwhelming odor of freshly mown grass and wet paint. But another scent layered on that one, the scent of rotten meat and spoiled eggs. It was faint, drowned out by the grass and... I inhaled deeply and smelled bleach and baking soda.
We padded slowly over the moist grass, dashing toward the side yard when we were out of sight of the front door. A tall oak stood at the edge of the yard. Its branches had been cut precisely as if the tree had been sliced off with magic exactly where it would have ventured into the neighbor’s yard. But the half-cut tree managed to block the side yard from the street, and Scarlet and I took the time to change and hop over the padlocked, wooden gate. For just a moment, we were visible to the neighboring house, and then we were over the barrier, shifting back into our wolf forms and hugging the fence. We slipped along it and hopped up onto the planks of a wide back porch.
The reek of death, blood, and old meat burnt my nose. The strength of the smell was so pungent it clogged my nasal passages until I couldn’t smell anything at all. Beside me, Scarlet made a low hacking sound at the back of her throat. My eyes watered, blocking my vision, and I knew that I would be no good to her like this. Huddling into the shade at the side of the house, I changed back to human. A moment later, Scarlet changed as well.
“I’ve never smelled anything like that,” she whispered, her eyes tearing over at the stench. “I thought they were only supposed to have been dead for—what—twelve hours?” Her watering green eyes met mine, and she wiped her mouth. “It reeks like a mass grave left in the sun for days. I’m surprised I didn’t scent it from the car.”
“I smelled it a little,” I admitted as I wiped the moisture from her cheeks with my thumbs before wiping off my own face. “Someone went to the effort of painting the house, mowing the lawn, and scrubbing with a mixed bleach cleaner, most likely on the path and road.” I lifted my nose to the deck. “And here. In the amount of time since the murders, it would take a full crew.”
We both turned to the house and listened. Over muffled voices, one of them clearly Mack’s indignant call, was the soft tread of footsteps and a shushing and rubbing that could be cleaning. There was a quiet, high-pitched squeak, followed by a fresh plume of bleach odor that, for one moment, mingled with the scent of rotting meat before the fragrance again dissipated.
“She’s scrubbing the crime scene—cleaning and painting it.” Scarlet’s brow furrowed. “Is she just trying to dismantle the investigation, or is she actually trying to hide something?”
“My guess is both,” I said as I raised up and peered over the deck. The wooden boards appeared to be freshly scrubbed. A hot tub sat in one corner, its lid missing. The glass door that Zane Reed allegedly smashed through last night had been removed. If we went in there, it was doubtful we’d find anything, and we’d more than likely be caught.
“We should head back to the car. These fae might have orders to kill anyone who comes in there, and technically, they’d be in their rights to kill us, at least as far as our treaties saw it.”
“Fuck, Aaron,” Scarlet breathed as she ran her fingers through her hair and grabbed her head. “I have to go in. If she’s cleaning this up, it means that Titania thinks Zane might be innocent. The reason she thinks that is going to be in that house.”
“If those fae haven’t disposed of it already.” Judging by how much they’d managed to clean, they probably already had.
“As his alpha, I have to check,” Scarlet said. “You should head up to the front.”
I studied her determined expression. Going in there was the wrong call. But damn it… For her, I would do it, anyway. Looking at Scarlet now, I realized just how crazy I was about this woman.
Chapter Eleven
Scarlet
As we stepped onto the freshly scrubbed flooring, the smell hit me so hard I had to bury my nose in my elbow so I wouldn’t get sick. Adding my own vomit to the mixture of scents wasn’t going to improve matters, and it would only leave glaring evidence of our break in if we managed to make it through the mansion unseen. The floor inside had a rough, scratchy feel under my palms as we crawled into what looked like a living room area. There was no furniture, no wall hangings, nothing that made the area look like a house. There was also nothing to justify the overwhelming stench.
“Police report said that the EMTs took the bodies last night. Where is that smell coming from?”
Human and fae blood was the strongest scent, but there were dozens more unsavory scents underneath. Scents of semen, perfume and cologne, urine, excrement, and bile all blended together. Mingled with all of that was the stinging scent of bleach, wet paint, and a rotten meat smell so vile, I continuously had to choke down vomit.
We crept along the side of the living room, careful to step gently.
Aaron leaned into my ear, whispering, “This floor has been newly sanded.”
As we inched forward, the sound of scrubbing grew louder all around. Feet skittered over floorboards. The room beside ours was similarly barren, with its floor sanded. In a few places, the surface dipped.
“Psst,” Aaron whispered from behind me. When I turned, he pointed to the floor where a small mound of powder from the sanding had piled between the baseboard and an open door.
I bent to see what he was gesturing to and saw a tiny horseshoe charm. It was dull grey metal, the kind that would hang from a cheap child’s earring.
He leaned in and sniffed. “Iron,” he whispered quickly. “That’s pure iron. And it has a familiar scent...” He lowered his nose to the stud of the earring, the part that would have pierced through an ear. My heart sank as his gaze met mine. There was clear shock in his expression, but I already knew who he was scenting even before he said it. “Your sister.”
Iron was to fae what silver was to werewolves—deadly if ingested or pierced with it, agony if touched with it. Zeezee had headed to a fae orgy wearing deadly weapons in her ears. My stomach plummeted as I realized that I’d come in here in an attempt to find something that would prove Zeezee and Zane’s innocence, and I might just have found the opposite.
Aaron leaned in. “We should go.”
He was right. There was nothing here but a fresh coat of paint and a pungent and lingering smell of death. But there had to be some evidence here, something more than this. Why else would they strip this place the way they did?
“Is there any way I can convince you to—”
His fingers covered my lips, and he shook his head. His golden eyes clearly conveyed the message, no fucking way, Scarlet. He wasn’t leaving me here alone, no matter what I said.
My heart picked up speed as I surveyed my options. The distinctive sound of spraying, shushing, and scrubbing waited in the room to our left. The soft tread of feet pattered on the floor above. An open doorway twenty feet ahead led to the argument at the front entrance. Clearly, the room to our right was the only direction we could go without the guarantee of capture.
/> Meeting Aaron’s eyes, I nodded my head in that direction and crept forward. One look through the doorway showed me an empty kitchen with gleaming, marble countertops that had recently been scrubbed. The smell of rotting meat and cleaner was nearly unbearable, as if it was the epicenter of the reek, but I couldn’t see anything in there that could have caused it.
“Coast is clear,” I whispered as I crouched and slipped through the doorway. The moment I passed through, I realized my grave mistake. The room was filled with fae—forty or more. Stepping through the doorway was like stepping into a bubble of sound and color.
Three-foot-tall, willowy humanoids hovered around a long line of open coolers. Their giant colorful wings held them aloft as they tipped canisters of salt and bottles of bleach into the open top of the coolers. Men and women with their upper bodies human and lower half goat held cleaner bottles under spigots at the bottom of the coolers, refilling with bleach and salt.
All around the room, thin creatures flapped their multicolored wings while scrubbing discolored blood stains on the walls and ceiling. At one side of the room, a man with the lower body of a horse pushed a sander over the wood flooring with white earbuds in his ears. Furniture, splattered with blood and bits of flesh, had been piled against the far wall. At the room’s center, I saw the origin of the reek.
Where a table should have been stood a perfect circle of mushrooms, and all around the mushrooms labored six short men I immediately recognized as Redcaps from their hats that dripped with blood.
Everyone gawped at us except the centaur, their jaws unhinged. A severed arm dropped from one Redcap’s limp fingers, but instead of hitting what looked like solid wood floor, the hand vanished into the mushroom circle. One second it was there, the next only smooth hardwood.
A hand wrapped around my waist and tugged me back. “Scarlet,” Aaron whispered, “Run!”
Too late. The shock fell from the fae’s faces, and they charged. I didn’t make it ten feet before strong little hands grabbed my hair, arms, and legs.
Aaron grabbed a fairy creature off my head and chucked it across the room. “Change.”
“We can’t hurt them,” I yelled back, knowing that if I let my wolf out, there would be another room full of dead fae, and this time it would be entirely my fault.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He kicked away a Redcap who’d grabbed onto his leg.
There was a loud pounding sound behind us, and then someone grabbed my arm and hoisted me off the floor.
Both Aaron and I looked over at the exact same moment to see the centaur hoisting both of us to dangle from his massive arms. “You shouldn’t have intruded here, Alpha,” he said in a booming voice. “Our orders were that if you forced your way in, we have to bring you to the queen.”
“We’ll leave,” I said quickly. “I just want to find the truth. I just want to stop a war between the werewolves and the fae. That’s all I want.”
“If that’s true…” He sniffed, his bright blue gaze landing on my hand where I still pinched the horseshoe earing. “Why did you bring a weapon in here?”
“I found it on the ground,” I said. I tossed it to the far corner of the room and away from all of the thin fairy creatures. “See? Take it. It’s not mine.”
The fae all shied away just slightly.
“Please,” I called up to the centaur. “I just want to figure out what really happened here and get justice for the dead.”
The centaur stomped his hooves, interrupting me, and then he pulled me up until we were eye to eye. “I don’t believe you are innocent, and I don’t believe that your wolf is, either.”
And then I was flying toward the mushroom circle. A body smacked into mine, and I just managed to wrap my arms around Aaron before we fell straight through the floor.
Chapter Twelve
Scarlet
The world blurred into a mess of gray and white as we fell through the air.
“Scarlet!” Aaron reached for me, grabbing my wrist. Something hit my foot, and I looked down to see a blood-soaked couch cushion falling along with us.
“Aaron! We should—” Before I could finish telling Aaron that we should get ready to roll, a stone room came into focus below, and we smacked onto a giant pile of wood and fabric.
The air whooshed out of my stomach, and I slid down the side of the pile, sending salt canisters avalanching with me.
Aaron’s hand squeezed mine, and he groaned. “What the fuck?”
The stench overwhelmed my senses, like a cesspool under the midday heat mixed with sulfur. Acid surged up in my throat, and I gasped. Lifting my head to peer around at the pile, I saw where all the contents of the crime scene had ended up. We lay naked at the top of a mountain of couches, mattresses, bloodstained curtains, and flat-screen televisions.
It looked like a child had picked up their dollhouse and poured everything onto their playroom floor. Where my body touched the pile of living room furniture and curtains, a grainy paste rubbed off on my skin. The same film was on my cheek where I’d smacked down against a couch cushion. “This stuff is coated in salt.”
The canisters rolling down the heap confirmed it. Those fae in the house above had coated everything with salt before throwing it through a fairy circle.
“Scarlet, we have to get the hell out of here!” A full bathroom sink and vanity slid down the mound, and Aaron had to kick it away so it wouldn’t crush us.
“Wait...” I examined the mound, which had to be fifteen feet tall. “This is the jackpot, Aaron. Whatever the fae want to conceal is somewhere in this giant pile, and for some reason, coated in a salty paste.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he whispered. “But much good it’ll do us when we’re dead.” He tugged on my hand. “Scarlet, any other time I’ll let you be on top, but right now, right here, you’re going to listen to me.”
He crouched over me, dirt and blood coating his naked body. His expression was fiercer than I’d ever seen it. Usually, Aaron was my laid-back wolf, when everyone else was freaking out, Aaron was cracking dirty jokes. But right now, he looked like his wolf was two seconds from taking over. His citrine eyes glowed gold as he tugged me up toward his body.
My wolf rose up, urging me to go with him. At this moment, he was our alpha, and she wanted to heed his call. My human side hated the idea of letting anyone overrule my decision. We’d just literally landed on a pile of clues, damn it!
But I’d gotten my mate into this mess. Aaron had come along to help, and he’d wanted to turn back in the yard. He’d pushed forward only because he cared about me. I knew that. Keeping him here when his instincts were urging him to flee would be taking advantage of his feelings for me, and I couldn’t do that.
When I climbed up beside him, Aaron held a finger to his lips and crouched down. “If this is Queen Titania’s compound, it’s deep in the woods, about halfway between the coast and the Sierras. There will almost certainly be fae hunters surrounding the compound. They’re just as fast as we are in wolf form, and the spring fae can use air to knock you over. If there are any summer fae, they can make plants grab you. So, we’re going to have to move silently and quickly before they know we’re here.”
Going to all fours. I followed him across the room. At the door, Aaron raised a hand.
Voices approached from outside. “What was he thinking, sending them down the chute? You should call him back and make him deal with it.”
“Damn it,” Aaron whispered, “They know we’re here. Don’t fight, Scarlet, I—”
The door jerked open. Four fae stood outside on what looked like a front stoop made of a massive root. They dressed in green velvet shirts with black armor breast-plates and trousers with daggers strapped to their thighs. They held up swords that looked distinctly like the fantasy swords in that always-empty fantasy weapon shop in Eureka Mall.
As we stood, I had a very inappropriate urge to tell these guys that Robin Hood ran that’a way, but the fierce glowers they aimed down at us made me think that w
asn’t such a good idea. I didn’t recognize these fae, but they had fair hair and piercing blue eyes. The forwardmost fae had the darkest shade of blond hair, cascading around his face.
He lifted his sword, raising it to just under Aaron’s chin. “You’re coming with us to the queen.”
The scent of burning flesh permeated the air, and Aaron inhaled sharply.
A smile spread across the fae’s lips. “Yes, it’s silver.”
Panic surged through me, and my wolf roared to the forefront.
“Scarlet, no,” Aaron called, lifting a hand to stop me. Too late.
One thought filled my mind: silver was touching our mate. Claws extended from my hands and fangs sharpened from my teeth. I leapt between Aaron and the fae, clamping my jaws down on the fae’s arm. Blood filled my mouth as the silver sword clattered to the ground. The fae screamed and pulled away, but I dug my teeth in and reached my claws toward the fae’s face.
The other two fae leapt, and Aaron surged forward.
A sudden, searing pain sizzled up the length of my arm, and I screamed, releasing the fae from my teeth.
The world faded as agony boiled through my skin. I thrashed, trying to get away, but a second point of pain seared into my neck.
“Release him, or I slit her throat.” The fae’s voice came from far away.
There was a loud growl, and then the pain slowly subsided from both directions. My breath heaved as the world again came into focus.
The fae I had attacked clutched a bloody arm to his chest, but he held up his silver sword in his other hand, and the point was just inches from my throat.
“First, you two are cutting into our lunch break. Second, the queen doesn’t even know you’re here yet,” the bloody fae snarled through ragged breaths. “So, if you don’t do everything I say, I will kill both of you and claim that it was an accident and go finish my caviar and chevre salad.”
“Fucking Fenton,” said the guard who stood behind us. “That centaur could give a fuck about how quickly a salad can lose its optimal taste.”
Filthy Fae: A Dirty Alphas Novel (Heartland Forest Book 2) Page 9