by Selena Page
Her scent changed. He shouldn't have been surprised by that, but he was. Every time he kissed her, she smelled more and more like power. It was like eating the best chocolate in the world. It was like . . .
She pulled away. Overbalanced, he caught himself on the console and sat up. "But what about your rich, old, powerful lady?" He thought Amber sounded a little sharp. He supposed he probably deserved it.
"She's waited this long. She can wait a bit longer. Another kiss? Perhaps two for good measure?"
"I suppose it doesn't hurt to find out. Before we go track down your lady and all." She leaned forward and snaked her hand around his neck, pulling him toward her. She pressed her lips to his and opened her mouth for him.
This time, Jack dared to find the bottom of her blouse and slid his hand inside. Bare skin on bare skin felt better than it ever had before, like an electric charge running through him. He snuck his hand slowly up her back, fingers splayed, pressing her toward him. She put her hand on his neck and held him just as tightly.
The sound of tires crunching on the gravel was the only thing that made them come up for air. Jack barely resisted swearing. Amber didn't bother.
"Goddamnit, of all the freaking bad timing." She fell quiet. "You don't have any outstanding warrants, do you?"
"Warrants? From the mundane police? No, why?"
"Because they seem to be pulling up behind us. Which makes me wonder about other interesting things, like if your Palace Guard friends have contacts in human law enforcement which, you have to admit, might be awkward."
Jack swallowed. He'd been worried about this for months. Why had he forgotten it now? "What color are the cars?"
Amber frowned at the rearview mirror. "Navy and yellow. Troopers. Why?"
"It's not them. Probably, it's probably not police. I'd bet it's a glamour over, well, they're not the Palace Guard, that's the good news."
"And the bad news?" She was surprisingly calm.
"They're not as nice as the Palace Guard, and they have a lot less interest in bringing me back alive."
"Oh, good." She sighed and pressed her head against the seat. "Well, what are you going to do?"
Jack sighed. He could run. These things--skin-donners--that controlled the troopers weren't fast. They certainly weren't as fast as he was.
He looked to Amber, then back to the skin-donners. He glanced at her one more time and took a deep breath.
"Stay in the car if you can. If you can't, stay behind me. And if you can't do that, run for either high ground or water. They don't climb well, and they don't like water."
"The staties don't like water?"
"The skin-donners riding them don't." He opened the door and got out. "Try not to die, all right? I'd . . . I don't know how to drive your car."
Well, that was stupid. About as stupid as what Jack was going to do now.
He dropped power to his hands and let the magic shine from his left hand while the skin-donners walked toward him. A human wouldn't be able to see the power--a normal human, since the stars above only knew what Amber was capable of. One of the staties glanced at his hands and frowned. Bingo. Now, what about the other two?
"Jack? Jacanamo Tyberius? Come with us peacefully and nobody will get hurt." The man in front took a step forward, but he hadn't reached for his service weapon yet. Jack had two of them focused on him.
How was he going to get the last one's attention? He grinned. "Oh, sure, everyone says 'and no one gets hurt,' but come on, be honest, orchan devonne. Someone's gonna walk out of here hurt."
The insult was in fae Lowtongue. Jack noted how the man in front managed to control his twitching, but the last one curled both hands into fists. "We'll show you hurt," he growled.
Well, Jack had just called him something pretty nasty. He supposed he probably deserved some irritation.
"Come with us, and everything will be fine."
"Look, I know how you guys define fine, and it usually isn't fine. So I think I'll stay right here, all right?" At least until the Palace Guard caught up with him, but no need to mention that to these guys.
"No. You will come with us. Enough talking."
"You guys are a bunch of laughs, you know that. There is no such thing as enough talking. Especially when you're dealing with, well, with me. I mean, don't you know who you're dealing with?"
The man-thing in front growled. "A mouthy fae-child."
"Well, close enough, close enough." He made a little hop-skip that put him off to one side, so they were looking at him and not at the car. "So I suppose the question is if you want to take me, can you catch me?"
What was he doing? Jack wasn't sure he knew, but he was pretty sure it was insane. There were three of them. They weren't human anymore, if they ever had been. And any given skin-donner was twice as strong as your average runaway fae. Or above-average runaway fae.
But they were slow, and they were a little bit dumb. So he started running, going slow enough that they could keep up with him but not so slow that they'd catch him.
It took them a minute, a long, terrifying minute, where Jack wasn't sure they wouldn't go for the car instead. If they didn't take the bait, he was going to have to do some pretty drastic things to keep them away from Amber.
He ran a few more steps and aimed both middle fingers in the direction of the skin-donners.
The sliver of personality in them that masqueraded as officers of mortal law bristled at being flipped off. That got them going, and they lumbered in his direction. Jack picked up speed. He wanted to taunt them. He wanted them to think they had a chance of catching him.
He dodged into a hedgerow and ran down its length for a while, hopping over thorn bushes and ducking under tree branches. The skin-donners weren't quite as agile as he was--there wasn't much in the world more agile than him--and he could hear them grunting and swearing. If they weren't careful, someone would come up on them and blow their cover. Even in the middle of nowhere, there had to be someone around.
Of course, the skin-donners might not care. That was a worrying thought. If they weren't concerned about their cover, that meant they'd found what they were looking for and were heading back to their den soon. Which would mean that Jack wasn't a casual chance encounter.
He glanced behind him and realized only two of them were still following. "Shit." He hopped onto a rock wall and launched himself off, heading as quickly back to the car as he could.
When he ran his fastest, they couldn't keep up. They couldn't even hope to keep up. The problem was, how long ago had the third guy peeled off? If he'd already made it back to the car . . .
A scream cut across the field. Jack picked up more speed. An angry shout followed the scream. He couldn't run any faster, so he whispered a spell, giving his feet more speed, lifting him above the field and its pitfalls. His feet pounded on air, and his heart was pounding like it hadn't beaten in over a century. Another scream. If they hurt her, he would destroy them and everyone who had ever known them, every skin-donner and everyone who had sent them. Jack ran faster.
A long, unhappy shout was echoed by another, and then a shriek ripped across the countryside. The piercing sound stabbed into his concentration, and his spell flickered, faltered. Jack stumbled and didn't fall, although he dipped down into the grass. He tripped again. No, no this was not happening. He hauled himself upright and finished the sprint.
Amber was in the middle of a fight with one of the skin-donners, but the monster was having a harder time than either Jack or, it seemed, it had expected. She was swinging something around--Is that a machete? Where did she get a machete?--and was fending off the skin-donner, but that left her with no hands free to deal with the one lumbering up on her.
Jack could help with that. He pulled his inner power into a ball of glowing white magic that slowly grew in his hands. He didn't have long, and he wasn't thinking quite as well as he wanted to, but that was OK. Skin-donners were tough; that was all. They weren't smart, and they weren't that magically adept.
>
Just really, really tough. He shot a blast at the first one, aiming for the head and neck. "Hey!" That was enough to distract the skin-donner. But the second one was still trying to pick Amber up. Jack had just enough time to blast at the second one before the first was on top of him.
The trick to fighting skin-donners was not to let them touch you. If you let them touch you, the trick was not to let them get their hands around your neck. If they did that, well, you had to hope it was fast so at your funeral you could still be pretty.
Jack struck out, aiming for the eyes and throat, but it wasn't quick enough. The skin-donner got both hands on Jack's neck and pressed. Its claws snuck out from under its human pretense, pricking into Jack's skin.
Beside him, Amber yelped and swung that machete around, barely fending off another strike from a skin-donner. She was struggling with her breath now, slowly losing ground as she kept inching backward. He couldn't catch her eye, but he could tell she was worried.
The skin-donner had pinned his left hand, but his right was free. He called power to it, feeling the strangeness of using his off-hand prickle through his veins and arteries and set fire to his tendons. It was nothing fatal or, at least, far less immediately fatal than the skin-donner on top of him.
He forced out a choked sound as he pushed power through him. It might not kill him, but it was torture. There was a reason he used their left hand for power--the same reason the skin-donner had pinned his left hand. The right was for other things, and attacks were not it. Not magical attacks, at least.
The skin-donner knew that. It reared back at the unexpected slap of power in its face and growled, probably as much out of surprise as pain. There was a lot of debate over whether skin-donners understood pain, at least their own pain. They clearly enjoyed inflicting it.
Jack hit him with another blast of power, just in case. There were a lot of ways he'd thought about going out, and this hadn't made his top hundred.
Chapter 5
Don't fight cops was right up there in Amber's early life lessons, along with always say please and thank you and don't make deals with fae, magic-users, or anything that won't tell you its name.
But here she was, wielding her machete--another family lesson, never go anywhere without at least one tool-slash-weapon--and fending off something that was, at the very least, wearing a police uniform and had come out of a police car and waved a police badge.
The fact that he gave off a stink of power like rotting eggs and he'd grabbed Amber's wrist and tried to drain her power spoke to him being not a regular cop.
Well, OK, not a human cop. It wouldn't be the first cop who'd tried to sample her power. But the family had different rules about that. People who tried to eat you didn't count as friends anymore.
This thing, she wasn't entirely sure what it was, and that was saying something. "So is this a spirit riding a human, or is it a thing pretending to be human?" she shouted.
Jack didn't answer. She'd seen him come up and tackle the other cop-thing, but now he was unresponsive. She ducked under her attacker's reach and tried to steal a glance.
Jack was shooting off white power in the face of the cop, but at the same time, both of the cop's hands were wrapped around Jack's throat. Jack's face was turning a strange blue color that was probably no healthier for whatever he was than it was for humans.
Right, he couldn't answer questions at the moment. Amber flailed at the cop-thing a little bit more then remembered what Jack had said. They don't run fast.
But if she ran, would they all attack Jack?
The creature grabbed for her. She ducked out of its reach and ran. How smart were they? They'd known enough to double-back to her, but that didn't indicate all that much planning. It could have been laziness.
The thing followed her, lumbering and grunting, one hand reaching for her. Amber ran around the car in a wide loop. Jack was still turning blue, the power in his hand sputtering while the veins up and down his arm looked swollen and purple.
Amber ran another loop, this one larger, as fast as she could. The thing kept following her. On the third loop, she managed to get enough space that she could skid to a stop right next to Jack. He was still pushing power out, but it was flickering like a guttered candle.
She had played junior-league softball, back before she figured out that having her parents at events made everyone else uncomfortable and she'd quit. Her skid toward Jack wasn't her best base-slide ever, but it was in her top five.
His left hand was pinned under the cop-thing, but her skid managed to surprise his attacker enough that it shifted. That was all the room she needed to slide her hand into Jack's.
"Take," she hissed. "Take it."
His eyes widened. "Power freely given?" It came out as a choked gasp, but she understood him anyway.
"Freely given," she agreed. He had to hurry, why wasn't he hurrying. "Oh, man."
She felt it the moment he started to take power from her, like a caress running inside of her and a warm whisper in her ear.
The second cop-thing was almost on top of them. She should run. She should let go. Amber lay there, the heat of Jack's touch running through her. She could almost feel his lips on hers. She could almost hear him saying her name.
"Amber," he gasped. "Duck."
There was nowhere to duck, so she rolled over, pulling her knees up to her face.
The world lit up with light and heat. It was like being at the center of an explosion, but there was no sound, nothing but the surprised grunt of the two cop-things, and the brightest light she had ever seen. Even through squeezed-shut eyelids, the world was bright white, and even with her back to the explosion, her face felt like she was staring into a fire.
And then she heard a thump and a quieter grunt. "Come on." Jack's hand was on her shoulder. This time, it felt like a soft embrace. "We should get out of here."
Amber sniffed the air. It smelled like the residue after a bomb, and the faintest hint of char. She rolled over carefully, surprised to find that she wasn't burnt to a crisp.
The cop-things were not so lucky. Both of them were down and unmoving, a slight smoke coming off them. Amber thought they looked empty, not dead.
"Come on," Jack repeated. He offered her his hand--his right hand; she noticed his left was hanging limply by his side. Amber swallowed and put her fingers in his.
Quiet warmth crept over her, the sort of feeling you might get laying in a sunbeam on a lazy weekend. A smile came to her lips and she let it. They'd survived.
"The power beacon I sent up, the Palace Guard will be on us any minute. We need to get out of here."
They'd survived one threat. Amber sighed. "You know," she muttered, "I had this lovely, tame library job archiving ancient history." Dash-cam. She had to check the dash-cam. She struggled to her feet.
"Don't worry." He was panting. "Let's get out of here, and then I can let you get back to your normal life--if you want to. What are you doing?"
"Cop cars have dash-cams. We don't want to be on camera doing what we just did." She peered inside the car. "Or maybe it's not a problem." The inside of the car was no more a police cruiser than those things had been cops. "You're the strangest man that's ever showed up."
Her eyes landed on his arm again. Most magic workers didn't use their off hand, did they? And his looked swollen and miserable. "And you saved my life," she added reluctantly.
He glanced up at her, still looking tired and a little grumpy. "What?"
Amber cleared her throat. "That is, I mean, none of the other handsome creeps ever saved my life."
"Well," he dragged the word out, "I suppose that puts me at a slight advantage over the other creepy supernatural people that you run into, yeah?"
She smiled cautiously back at him. "I'd say it's a pretty big advantage." He smelled even sweeter now, like a favorite old shirt or her bed when she first woke up.
"And, well." He flexed his hands cautiously. "I have to admit you might have helped save my life, too. I me
an. Well, you helped me save your life."
She smirked at him. "You know, if I'd had any doubt that you were of the High Courts, that totally would have blown my questions away." She hadn't been sure, but the raised eyebrow he gave her confirmed her suspicions.
"My power?" he hazarded. He sat up slowly, arching his back and wincing.
"The way you do your best to not be indebted to anyone. You're the first High Court member I've met."
"High Court? I'm just Jack."
"Come on, Jacanamo Tyberius. We can argue in the car since the Palace Guard of the High Court of New York City is chasing you down." She was amused despite herself. "Maybe if we can get more than twenty miles without blowing off power like a giant smoke signal."
"That wasn't all my power." He struggled to his feet and offered her his right hand.
"No, but I don't shoot off magical energy like a beacon." She accepted his hand, the memory of the way he'd taken her power running through her. His fingers felt feverishly hot. She could feel old callouses on his hand, too, and his grip was firm without hurting.
"You're still argumentative and difficult, you know that?" He gave her a playful tug toward him.
"What, you thought that would change?" She released his hand and grinned at him. "Come on, let's run away from some more unsavory creatures. That's what will make me into a more cheerful and compliant person." She pulled her keys out of her pocket. "I mean, if your whammy didn't kill my car."
Now she was just being difficult, and she knew it. She turned away, fumbling with the car keys to give herself something to do with her hands.
"Well, to be fair, if it did, it was your power."
She unlocked the car--at least that still worked. She'd heard stories about magic and technology, especially things like High Court magic. And that had been a pretty impressive blast Jack had thrown off there.
The cop-things were still flat on the ground. "Will there be bodies?"
"They don't dissolve like the TV shows." He slid into the passenger's seat. "If that's what you mean."
"Some things do. Or, rather, they don't leave an obvious body."