by Alyssa Day
“Are you threatening me?” Christophe’s voice was calm. A little bored, even. She could actually feel that he didn’t consider Paul to be the slightest small threat.
Christophe answered her unspoken question out loud. “Fae vary as dramatically in power as humans do in physical or mental ability. This one isn’t much of a power. Barely even much of a Fae.”
Paul’s hand tightened on the knife until his knuckles turned white, but he didn’t challenge Christophe. Instead, he sighed.
“Just leave. I can’t force you to do it, but if you don’t, I’m going to suffer for it. If you ever liked me at all, Fiona, please just leave.”
She stared at him, looking for any hint that this was yet another deception, like the bit with the knife, but all she saw was weariness and a hint of fear.
“Who is frightening you like this, Paul? Tell us and we can help you.”
He laughed, and it held genuine amusement and utter despair. “You can’t help me, Fiona. You can’t even help yourself. Get out of London while you can. Run. Run all the way to Atlantis. Swim, if you have to. He’s after you next. He’s going after the Siren and then he wants you, and I don’t even know why.”
Christophe reached over the bar and grabbed Paul by the collar and lifted him up and halfway over the polished wooden surface. “Who wants her? Tell me or die now, Fae.”
Paul looked down at the fruit staining the front of his shirt and then raised his head, and a corpse’s smile spread across his face. “Maeve’s brother, of course. Fairsby is Gideon na Feransel, Prince of the Unseelie Court, and he has decided to take a human bride. He’s after you, Fiona. You need to run.”
Christophe released him, and Paul slid back down his side of the bar until he was standing there, grinning at them, his eyes twin holes blazing in his pale face. “He has old business with you, too, Atlantean, or so he claims. You should both run.”
He started laughing, clutching his middle, insanity rising in the shrieking tones of his voice. “Run, run, run. Run, little human, but there’s no place to hide. The Siren is back, the wolves will fall, Atlantis will be destroyed. Run, run, run.”
Fiona grabbed Christophe’s hand and pulled him toward the door. She managed, only just barely, to keep from covering her ears with her hands to block out the horrible laughter. The mad refrain of “run, run, run” followed them out the door and at least fifty feet down the street.
That’s when the pub exploded behind them.
Chapter 34
The wave of heat and power almost preceded the noise, or at least smashed into them simultaneously, so that Fiona was flying through the air as if knocked aside by a giant’s hand before she realized what had happened. Through some miracle of balance or Atlantean magic, Christophe performed an amazing twisting somersault in midair and caught her before she crashed down on the concrete, headfirst.
Together, they sat up and stared at what was left of the Prancing Pony. Fire, smoke, and death.
“They’re going to think it was terrorism,” she said. “We need to leave. Slowly and inconspicuously.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” Christophe said, pointing.
A crowd was boiling up the street toward them. No, too big to be a crowd. More like a mob. But no ordinary mob. This one was utterly, completely, silent.
“They’re all shifters,” Christophe said, pulling Fiona back into the doorway of a shop. “Every single one. They’re shifters, and they’ve been enthralled.”
“So many? At once? That’s not possible,” she protested. Then realization dawned in spite of her brain still feeling dazed from the blast. “He’s got the Siren. This is a demonstration or a taunt, or something. Fairsby has the Siren and he’s already using it.”
Christophe’s face was grim. “Either that or Telios does. One of them must be behind the explosion in the pub, too. Whichever it is, he’s making some kind of point, and he’s making it here. We’re caught in the middle of it.”
Behind them, the shop owner locked the door. The old woman’s worried face appeared in the glass for an instant, and then she ran away, into the back of her shop, or possibly out a rear exit.
“We have to get out of here,” Fiona said. “You can’t fight that many shifters.”
“I won’t have to,” he said as the first ranks marched right past them. Every single shifter stared straight ahead, eyes blank and glazed over. “They’re not here for us.”
Fiona scanned the street. “Everybody is running and hiding, but they’re ignoring the people for now. What is this about?”
A flash of bright blue caught her eye and she cried out. “Christophe, that’s a child. He’s caught right in their path. If they don’t stop, they’ll trample him.”
She tried to run out there, but he yanked her back. “Let me.”
Before she could argue, he transformed into a cloud of sparkling mist and swirled rapidly through the crowd of shifters, then circled the sobbing child and, still in mist form, lifted him off the ground and above the heads of the oncoming shifters, who kept marching as if they’d seen none of it.
They probably hadn’t.
Christophe carried the child to his mother, who’d fallen down while chasing him but appeared unhurt. She took her child and hugged him close to her body, surreptitiously making the sign against the evil eye at the sparkling savior who’d delivered her baby safely to her arms.
Fiona wanted to smack her. Superstitious fool. Christophe had saved her child. She hoped he hadn’t seen the hurtful gesture.
He returned to her and transformed back into his physical self. She launched herself into his arms, kissing him all over his face. He pressed her against the wall and returned her kisses so thoroughly she was trembling by the time he released her.
“You are my hero,” she said, hoping every ounce of her love for him showed in her face.
His eyes widened, and his expression rapidly cycled through smugness, terror, and an almost tentative happiness. Her own eyes widened when she realized she wasn’t reading all that from his face. She was actually feeling his emotions.
“The soul-meld. Can it, does it make me feel your emotions? Like, what did you call the princess? Aknasha?”
“Only for me, and I for you. But let’s discuss the finer points of the soul-meld later. Now we need to see what they’re up to, but it’s too dangerous for you. I need to get you out of here.”
“We both need to get out of here,” she said firmly.
“Yes, but only your human body would be harmed by another explosion. If I’m mist, it would pass right through me.”
“If you saw it coming. Last time, we didn’t.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “You’re right. Another reason to depart. But first I need to know if I can learn anything from one of these shifters.”
Quicker than thought, he leapt into the street and grabbed one of the enthralled marching men by the shoulders and hauled him up onto the sidewalk. The rest of the mob never even broke stride. In fact, none of them seemed to even see him do it, as if they were blind to anything but their purpose, whatever that might be.
“What are you doing?”
“Marching. Marching. Marching,” the shifter said in a singsongy voice.
“Yes, I can see that. But why?” Christophe’s eyes glowed hot with power and Fiona realized he was trying to break the enthrallment.
The shifter started shaking, as if caught in the throes of a fierce internal conflict, and then he slumped and fell to his knees. “Experiment,” he said hoarsely, staring up at Christophe. “Telios said we were an experiment. What did he do to us? Why—where am I?”
“You’re going to be all right now,” Christophe said, helping the shifter lean back against the wall. “Just rest for a few minutes and try to remember what else Telios told you. Was he holding anything when he talked to you?”
The shifter clutched his head in his hands, his face screwed up with pain or effort. “A sword. He was holding a sword, and the blue stone on its hilt was glowing
like it was lit up from within. But why? Why—what?” He cried out. “It hurts to try to remember. The rest is blank.”
“Do you know where you were? This is important. I need to know where Telios was when he talked to you,” Christophe said.
“Please,” Fiona added. “We must stop him from doing this to any more of your people.”
The shifter shook his head back and forth. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. It’s like there’s a big block between me and the memory.” He clutched his head again. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just want to go home.”
“We need to get out of here,” Christophe said. “He isn’t going to remember any more.”
“I’ll call Sean.” But she’d no sooner pulled her phone out of her purse than she saw Sean angling the car into a space at the next cross street.
“I swear that boy is psychic.”
“Or he could have heard the sirens,” Christophe pointed out, as the sound approached, shrieking its urgency.
They ran for the car.
“This is bad,” Sean said, as he accelerated away. “Really bad. The radio news says Telios is claiming responsibility and that the shifters who aren’t enthralled are screaming for war. The prime minister is calling in the army, and it looks like London might become a battleground. Again.”
“So it’s Telios,” Fiona said. “The shifter was telling the truth. That answers one question.”
“Does it?” Christophe shook his head. “If I’m Unseelie Court and I want to stir things up, I do something pretty awful to one side and make it look like the other side’s at fault. Boom. Instant war. Then the humans call in the mobs with torches and pitchforks—”
“The army with missiles and tanks,” Sean said.
“Yes, or that. The Fae retreat to the Summer Lands until the dust settles and there you go. No more vampire or shifter problem.”
“Holy hell.” Sean whistled. “Pardon me, Lady F, but holy hell. That’s devious. That’s bloody brilliant.”
“Fae aren’t known for their stupidity,” Christophe said dryly. “Avarice, lust, and greed, yes. Stupidity, no.”
“But we’ll all be caught in the cross fire,” Fiona said. “Humans, and all of the shifters who don’t want war. Even the vampires, and we know there are some who just want to live out their existences in peace. It’s not fair to any of them.”
“This war is on the ground, too. No time to put the children on trains,” Christophe said, his gaze far away.
She shivered. “Were you here then? World War Two?”
He turned to look at her almost as if he’d forgotten she was there. “For part of it. We were in France a lot, helping with the Resistance. Germany used shape-shifters against farmers. It was a slaughter.” His face hardened. “Never again. I will never let that happen again. We have to find that sword and stop this.”
Sean switched the radio back on, and the announcer’s voice rang out in the oppressive silence in the car.
“The prime minister has announced that she and other heads of state will be meeting within the next few hours by teleconference to discuss the increasingly dangerous threat from the supernatural community, with the possibility of military action on the table. The prime minister’s political opponents are claiming—”
Sean shut it back off. “This is going to be really bad, isn’t it?”
“Not if we can help it, Sean,” Christophe said, clasping his shoulder for a moment.
Fiona appreciated that he’d used the word “we,” but she held his hand tightly all the way home.
* * *
St. Mary’s tube station
Gideon stared down at the stupid vampire who had caused him so much trouble. It was really always the same with vampires. All one needed to do was wait for daylight. This one, although old enough to be awake most of the day, certainly in the dark this far below ground, was dead to the world. Wielding the power of the Siren must have drained the vampire’s energy. Even now, Telios clutched the sword in his skeletal hands.
Gideon paused to smile at his own joke. Dead to the world. And soon truly dead to the world. It was the matter of seconds to drive the wooden stake through Telios’s heart, wrench Vanquish out of the vampire’s clutching hands, and watch as the pathetic creature once known as Jack the Ripper dissolved into acidic slime. The curse didn’t activate, of course. One could not steal an item from a dead vampire.
“Thank you,” Gideon said, mocking the corpse. “Now I have much to do. I think I’ll take advantage of your little ploy and build from there. The next headlines will be ‘Fae prince saves the day.’ ”
Caressing the sword and its lovely, lovely gemstone, Gideon took a last look around the miserable place. “A fitting tomb, don’t you think? And now on to the next phase of my plan. Where do you think Lady Fiona might be?”
He stepped back out of the path of the spreading slime. “Oh, my apologies. You don’t have a brain left to think with.” He chuckled at his own wit and then opened a doorway to his home. “I wonder if she has received my message yet?”
Chapter 35
Campbell Manor
Hopkins met them at the door before they made it out of the garage. “A note just came for you, Lady Fiona.” His body practically hummed with suppressed fury. “I think we may have a problem.”
He turned to Sean. “If you would please open the vault and bring out the special items I showed you once?”
“Are you sure?” Sean’s face turned pale.
“Yes.”
Sean wasted no more time with questions, but just took off back toward the garage.
Christophe and Fiona followed Hopkins inside and to her office. “What kind of problem? We don’t need another problem. Did you read the note?” Fiona asked.
“I would not read your mail.”
“I think we’re a little past that. Have you listened to the news?”
Hopkins nodded grimly. “I was going to wait five more minutes for you and then read it. I think Declan’s in trouble.”
He handed over a thick envelope, cream parchment with her name elegantly written on it in slanted black letters and bold black ink. She ripped it open and held the note out so they could all see it.
Lady Fiona,
As you may know, I am not precisely the man you assumed me to be. I should like to meet with both of you to discuss our future plans. Your brother has graciously accepted my hospitality, as well, and is currently enjoying a bit of light refreshment. Tell the man from the water that Declan tells me the wine is a very good vintage.
Yours,
Fairsby, Lord Summerlands
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Her lungs absolutely refused to draw in air. She collapsed to the floor before Hopkins or Christophe could catch her.
“He has Declan. Feransel has Declan.”
“We’ll get him back,” Christophe said, scooping her up off the floor and into his arms. “I swear to you by my oath as a Warrior of Poseidon that we will get him back.”
“What does it mean?” She pushed away from Christophe and smoothed out the crumpled letter. “I get that ‘man from the water’ is you and ‘Lord Summerlands’ is a not very subtle way to say lord from the Summer Lands especially since that’s not his title, but what does that mean about the wine?”
“It means that Declan accepted drink, maybe food, too, so they more than likely have enchanted him.”
She thought about it. Thought about all the reasons why she should remain sane, and calm, and rational.
And then she threw back her head and screamed.
* * *
Christophe understood what she was feeling. He even understood her need to howl out her rage. But it wasn’t helping their current problem, and he needed for her to think. He figured he’d give her another minute before he tried shaking her or pouring cold water on her head, or whatever he should do to calm hysteria. One minute, and then she had to stop.
She stopped screaming thirty seconds later.
“Right,�
� she said briskly, as if she hadn’t just had a minimeltdown. “Let’s figure out what to do next.”
Her cell phone rang. She pulled it out like it was a lifeline, then held it up in a shaking hand. “It’s him. It’s Declan.”
She flipped it open and adjusted something so they could all hear.
“Declan, honey, are you okay?”
“How touching.” Fairsby’s voice—no, Feransel’s voice—rang out.
A wave of fury hotter than molten steel forged in the fires of the nine hells swept through Christophe, searing and burning everything in its path, until all that was left was rage and determination. The Fae was going to die for hurting Fiona. He was already a dead man. He just didn’t know it yet.
“You put my brother on the phone, Fairsby, at once,” Fiona demanded.
The Fae laughed, and even through the phone, the sound was so chillingly evil that all three of them recoiled as if a serpent perched on the tiny electronic device instead of at its other end.
“He’s a little busy at the time, with a few water nymphs. Did you know your baby brother is a virgin?” He laughed again. “Oh, too bad. I do believe was is the correct verb tense.”
All the blood drained out of Fiona’s face. Christophe took the phone out of her shaking hand.
“What a brave elf to play with little boys, na Feransel,” Christophe said, mocking him. “Does your mommy still wipe your ass for you, too?”
“Call me elf at your own peril, Atlantean. I would think, in any case, that you had enough to concern you,” the Fae said; still calm, still taunting.
Christophe had shaken that smug serenity a little bit, though, and he planned to shake it up even more. “I heard Telios stole your thunder with the Siren. Sad, that. Outwitted by a vampire. What’s next? Shifters in the Summer Lands?”
“Ah, yes. Telios. I learned of his little demonstration just a bit too late. So sad that he was defenseless in his sleep this morning. One would have expected more of a fight from the celebrated Jack the Ripper. I so wanted to keep his head to decorate my wall. So tragic that they dissolve so fast.”