“Something change?” Jack asked.
“Yeah.” Kenyon shuffled uneasily. “They stopped here. The vehicle drove off but I’d say some of the passengers got out.”
“Why?” Lark wondered. “There’s nothing here but trees.”
Kenyon shrugged. “I’ll need to check around to see if their scent leads away. There’s nothing to say they didn’t get out just to stretch their legs for a minute.”
“Check it out,” Jack said.
With a nod, Kenyon left his backpack and set off, tensed in a way that said every nerve was trained to the task at hand. Lark dropped her pack and sat on a boulder beside the road. Though the doctor hadn’t taken much of her blood, she could feel the added edge to her fatigue. Being in nature healed any fey, and the clear air and starlit sky was like a tonic to Lark, but she had barely left her sickbed. She could have done with a little less nature and a little more couch in front of the television.
As she caught her breath, Lark mulled over something that had passed between her and Winspear before he’d left them there on the road. She and the doctor were old friends—not romantic ones, but comrades from her early days with the Company. As such, she knew how to read his expressions.
She’d seen the label on the vial of Lexie’s blood. She’d shot him a look, and he’d raised an eyebrow, confirming her guess. Then he’d put a finger to his lips, signaling silence. It was then she’d known the blood draw hadn’t been done after Kenyon phoned him. Winspear already had the samples with him, and the label belonged to a private clinic that specialized in mixed-species pregnancies. There was only one conclusion Lark could come to: Faran and Lexie were expecting, and the mother-to-be wanted to be the one to deliver the news. That should have made her happy, but instead it made her want to swathe Kenyon in bubble wrap and send him home to his wife-to-be.
Jack sat beside her, jolting her out of her thoughts. There wasn’t a lot of room on the boulder, and Jack’s legs pressed against hers. “It’s a nice night for a walk,” he said.
Lark huffed. “If you don’t mind the homicidal fairies and crashing helicopters.”
Jack squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. We’re quick on our feet. Always have been.”
“I’m admiring the Dark Fey’s handiwork. You have to appreciate the planning.”
“Queen Selena’s got nothing else to do. Plotting really good revenge tends to be a time suck.”
Lark studied his profile, wishing they were alone somewhere safe. She ached to touch him—it was an ache that ran deeper than any physical hunger. “Is the Dark Queen communicating with her people outside the gates? Is that even possible?”
“Given what we’ve seen, I believe the Dark Fey have wedged the gates open a crack. The seal on the gates, though incredibly strong, was never completely impervious. We didn’t have the power.” He seemed to be looking far away, gazing into that distant past. Sometimes it was hard to remember how very long he’d been walking the earth. “We concentrated our energies on making absolutely sure Selena herself couldn’t leave.”
“Was it hard to get all the races to agree to the banishment?”
“No. It sounds almost cartoonish to say, but Selena really was after world domination. She enjoys fear, both for its own sake and as a means of self-protection. If she gets out, we’re going to need all the help we can get to stop her, including the Light.”
“The Light doesn’t have a lot to work with right now.”
Jack gave her a curious look that said she’d let too much slip. Lark cleared her throat. “What I mean is, if I could have stopped Drusella Blackthorn, if I was better...”
“Do the Blackthorns know what you can do?”
“Not really,” said Lark. “I’m not the same kind of magician. Ask me to cast a glamour and I’m top of the charts, but taking down a helicopter isn’t my best game. You saw that.”
“Let them underestimate you, and then play to your strengths. That’s when you’ll get them.”
“I hope so.”
“For fear of sounding as ancient as I am, I knew your grandfather,” Jack said. He brushed his knuckles along the back of her arm. “His power was more like yours, more about illusion than strength, and yet he won the battle of the Star Tower.”
The story was famous—one her uncles held up as the example of all a fey should be. Her grandfather had stood at the gates of the Star Tower, raised his sword and lit it like a torch with his magic. Then he’d held the entrance for three days and three nights, spending his life energy until he burned away to nothing. Light Fey were light made manifest and breathing, and he had ignited himself to save seven hundred innocents from Selena’s army—for the Dark could not abide the touch of his brilliant spirit.
“I’m no hero of legend,” Lark said.
Jack shook his head. “Your grandfather had courage, but he couldn’t throw a fireball to save his life. That didn’t mean he wasn’t as stubborn as they come. Sometimes refusing to give the Dark what it wants is all that counts.”
The moment stalled. Lark sat very still. Jack’s hand lingered on her arm; their sides touched. She wanted to lean into him but feared disturbing the truce they’d found. The slightest push might remind Jack how little he trusted her.
Before she could decide whether to risk more contact, Kenyon returned. “There’s a path a little ways up the road. It heads straight into the trees and then turns directly up the mountain. I smell fey, but I also smell humans. I think they’re taking the prince and princess overland.”
“So the kidnappers leave the Suburban and the driver carries on thinking we’ll follow the vehicle,” Lark said. “Meanwhile, the kidnappers march the prisoners through the mountains?”
Jack turned to look where Kenyon was pointing. “That’s the back door to the Derrondine Pass. The kidnappers might have found another route through the mountains, because I can’t see them doing that climb with prisoners. It’s straight up the rock face.”
“We won’t know until we find them.” Lark rose stiffly, slinging her knapsack over her shoulder. “It’s into the woods we go.”
Kenyon made a face. “I think there are a lot of stories where that ends in tears.”
“Yeah,” said Jack drily, “and I think most of those involve the big bad wolf.”
* * *
The path wasn’t a trail made by axes or even by the steady traffic of wildlife—it was made by fey. Someone had commanded that nothing grow there, and by the shiver up Lark’s spine when she set foot on the bare dirt, the earth heartily resented the intrusion. Dark magic, then.
Even with the clear path, the route was a long, hard slog that meandered through the trees, angling ever upward along the toes of the mountain. Hours later, Lark’s feet were sore after a night of walking, and now the rising ground demanded she use saplings and tufts of grass to help her climb. Jack walked behind her, guarding the rear. Her pack grew steadily heavier.
Just as the sky was turning a pearly gray, the path ended. It wasn’t as if it had arrived at a destination; it just stopped where the trees thinned, a patch of trampled weeds showing where a group of people had stood.
“Security,” said Jack. “No point drawing a straight line to their door, but this gets them through the worst of the undergrowth. Wherever they went from here was easier to find.”
“Not by scent,” said Kenyon. “Bears live around here. I can’t smell a thing past that stink.”
“Then, shift and put your wolf nose into it,” said Jack. “We’ll rest.”
Rest? Lark didn’t need to be asked twice. She shrugged off her pack and sat on the grass, trying to summon the energy to reach for her water bottle. Kenyon headed off into the trees to get furry.
Jack paced restlessly, his iron vampire strength barely tapped by a dusk-to-dawn hike up a mountainside. “If they were on foot, they can’t b
e all that far ahead of us,” he mused. “And they had prisoners. That must have slowed them down.”
Lark tilted her head up to watch him patrol the tiny clearing. Within seconds, he had made her dizzy. “If you sit down and relax, I’ll see if I can sense them,” she offered.
“Can you do that without being noticed?”
“I’m a spy,” she said a trifle impatiently. “It’s my job to be sneaky.”
Jack gave her a look. “All right.” He didn’t sit, but he stopped and leaned against a tree. At least he was still, and that would have to do.
Lark closed her eyes and extended her perception. She was aware of the mountain, the birds, trees and insects, the animals and the nameless energies that dwelled as part of the earth and yet separate from it. The Dark Feys’ path slashed like a scar over the earth’s surface, throbbing with a painful spell. Lark silently promised to break it once her mission was done. It had ever been thus, the Dark taking while the Light healed.
Lark felt a gentle tug, pulling her attention north. At first she wasn’t sure why, but then she sensed Kenyon running in wolf form, a sleek gray bullet scrambling up a rise so that his eyes could confirm what his nose was telling him. An image flashed, the wolf paused, its elegant beauty outlined against the dawn sky—and then the visual faded as quickly as it had come.
Lightly, she explored beyond that point, letting her consciousness dip and float seemingly at random. Even a sentinel on the lookout for magical interference would have a hard time sensing her as she drifted past the wolf, past the scrub and toward the point where the forest met the steep wall of the mountainside. Indeed, there were caves, and surely that was where the Blackthorns and their prisoners had gone.
And yet something was wrong. Lark reeled her consciousness back slowly, trying to detect what was bothering her. She moved with extreme caution, fearful of a trap that would catch her there, vulnerable without the protection of a physical form. She had a sudden sense that her adversaries were not where she expected them to be. In fact, they’d reversed their course. A prickling chill ran through her and she risked a faster retreat, a mounting panic telling her she might need to move fast.
Kenyon howled, a deep-throated, mournful cry that resonated through the jagged mountains. The sudden sound snapped Lark back to herself. She was on her feet before she was fully oriented, and grabbed Jack’s arm for support.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“They’ve doubled back on their trail.”
The werewolf howled again, this time with an edge of rage. With unspoken consent, they raced toward the sound. Lark surged ahead of Jack, following a trajectory through the trees until they reached the base of the rise where she’d seen Kenyon in her vision.
“This way!” she pointed, but they didn’t get much farther. Egon Blackthorn stood at the top of the rise, a silver chain in his hands. On the other end of the chain was Kenyon in wolf form, snarling, ears back and with long ivory fangs bared. He was lunging against the chain, smoke rising from where a silver collar touched his ruff. The sound he made was terrible—a long, outraged growl broken by bewildered whimpering. His claws scrabbled at the ground as if digging for escape. Teeth snapped at Blackthorn, toward Jack, at the grass. The beast was obviously maddened with pain.
Egon looked utterly in command. He was a tall, bald mountain of a man with black eyes as cold and impassive as flint. “In time, he will obey me just to make the agony stop.” His voice was just as hard as his expression. “Go home before you end the same way.”
Jack’s gun whipped up, an iron bullet leaving the chamber before Lark could even form a thought—but it didn’t matter. A wisp of smoke was all that remained where Blackthorn and Kenyon had been.
Jack roared, scrambling up the rise to where the fey had stood, but it was pointless. Kenyon was gone, another prisoner.
Jack and Lark were the only ones left to fight.
Chapter 17
Disbelief jolted Lark, leaving her frozen where she stood. She lifted a hand to sketch the air where the wolf had been, unable to find words. The helpless gesture was as far as her strength would go, and all she managed was a soft, outraged cry.
Exhaustion welled up in a sudden black wave and Lark’s legs buckled. Jack reached for her, but she hit the ground anyway, knees thumping to the soft earth. She curled forward, putting her head in her hands. It would have felt good to weep, but grief and panic blocked even that slight relief.
“They’ve got us all,” she said, barely giving the words voice.
“Not all of us,” said Jack. “We’re still in play.”
“I’m not sure that matters.” Lark could usually find some scrap of hope. Not this time. Jack was a great agent, and she was very, very good—but the Dark Fey had so far been unstoppable—and they had Amelie, where all her people’s hope rested.
She heard Jack’s clothes rustle as he crouched beside her. When he slipped his arm around her, she forced herself to look up and meet his eyes. In the pale dawn, she could see the strain in his face.
“What now?” she asked, barely able to rise to her knees so that they faced one another. Jack took her arms, his strength alone holding her up. Lark bowed her head. “Are we running straight into a trap?”
He swallowed. “We go forward or we go back to the city. There aren’t a lot of choices.”
The idea of turning around and heading back to safety was as pointless as it was tempting. If the Dark Queen won, none of them would be safe. Not the prince and princess, not Kenyon, not any of them. In very little time, the whole world would be at the mercy of the Dark.
She closed her eyes, her strength failing her. “I don’t know.”
“Listen,” said Jack, shaking her a little. “It’s up to you and me.”
You and me. She’d wanted to hear those words on Jack’s lips. She’d longed to be his partner again, working with instead of against him. She’d yearned to be in his arms. But this mission seemed insurmountable.
And yet, if she had to put her faith in anyone to see her through this test, it was Jack. Besides, the Light Fey were counting on her. She was the only trained agent they had. “I promised Amelie I’d keep her safe.”
“And?”
Lark dug deep and crawled to her feet. “I vote we make Egon and Drusella eat their trap.”
Jack grinned. It was a quick flash, bright and sharp as light glancing from a blade. Lark’s stomach leaped at the sight.
“Onward, then,” he said with deceptive softness. His fingers touched her cheek, leaving an electric tingle in their wake.
They retrieved their packs and trudged down into a broad shallow of land that lay between them and the vertical face of the mountain. They swished through long grass dotted with pale flowers that seemed to glow in the false dawn. Jack pushed hard, but the meadow was wider than it seemed. The grass spread to a rippling sea that felt endless until they found the fey path again—which seemed to start as abruptly as it had ended in the woods.
The trail steered them to the base of the cliff, where a thin strip of trees clung like a foot rug to the mountain. Even though the route was direct, it took them the better part of an hour. By then the sun was rising, and Lark was buckling under her fatigue. They’d been hiking almost around the clock.
The moment she saw a large rock, she sat. “Just give me one minute.”
“We need rest,” Jack said, sounding as tired as she felt. Dawn hit vampires like a brick wall.
Lark shook her head. “I already feel guilty for sitting here.”
The corners of his mouth quirked down. “In another half hour, we’ll be hunting for a path through the mountain. Once we find it, we’ll be crawling in dark places and meeting up with who knows what.”
Lark surrendered. Jack was old and strong enough to power through the daylight fatigue, but it would drain him of stren
gth he’d need later. “Then, let’s get off this track,” she agreed.
Jack held out his hand. Wearily, she took it and let herself be hauled upright. Her hand felt good in his, as if his touch loaned her a bit of his resilience.
After another ten minutes, they found a cluster of trees that offered shade and concealment. Lark sank gratefully to the thick bed of ash leaves. “I’ll set a perimeter spell,” she said. “I don’t think either of us is up to keeping watch.”
Jack started to protest, but then nodded agreement. “I’ll keep watch, but a backup is a good idea.”
He sat, his back against the trunk of a tree. The shadows were thick there, making him almost invisible against the roots and bark. After wearily setting a few trigger charms, Lark scooted back against a boulder, then tried to use her backpack as a cushion.
He held out an arm. “I’m softer than a rock.”
A smart remark hovered on her lips, but she was just too tired. Instead, she curled against his shoulder, finding he was just as good a cushion as she remembered. “This break is only for a few minutes.”
“Right,” he said. “Because we have supernatural stamina.”
They were both asleep in under a minute.
Lark drifted into Jack’s dreams. She’d never done so before, but they were touching and too exhausted to keep barriers in place between them. She found herself wandering through an ancient market, the sun so hot and bright it felt like a weight against her skin.
Lark spun around in an effort to take in the scene all at once. Delight bubbled through her. She’d caught glimpses of other people’s dreams before, but nothing this detailed or vivid, and never Jack’s.
There were a few low buildings framing the square, but mostly she saw endless tents of colorful silk. Between and in front of those, brilliant carpets were spread on the dirt with wares arranged for sale—metalwork and pottery, spices and strange musical instruments that Lark could not name. The square was crowded with all manner of people, from nimble dark-skinned children to huge men with forked yellow beards. And the hot air reeked of animals, every one of which was cackling or bleating or grunting. Someone had brought camels.
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