“And your fae friend, what does he want?”
Good question. “Not Earth. Not Sol. He just wants to end an injustice that started a long time ago.” Shudders racked through me, my body trying some new attack. “He has his own cross the bear,” I hissed.
She sighed. “Tell me why you’re here. Without that truth, I cannot believe anything you say.”
She left, and the pain swallowed me whole all over again.
Chapter 17
Marshal Kellee
Eledan studied the restraints holding me in place. “Hmm…” he mused. “Torture?”
This was a dream. All around, the lab swirled and drifted. The world was just him, me, the chair, and a murky fog. Too weak to fight him off, I let my snarl do the talking.
Around and around he paced, circling the chair like a predator zeroing in on the kill. “You’re a long way from Faerie,” he said, “but somewhere with her touch… somewhere life thrives.” He folded an arm across his chest, planted his elbow on his fist, and tapped his chin in thought. “I taste their tek in you.”
“There is no Faerie magic where I am,” I croaked. Eledan didn’t need to know I was on Earth. His mind was too sharp. If he knew where I was, he’d know why, and knowledge was dangerous in his hands.
He leaned close and scrutinized my face, reading every line. If he moved an inch closer, I could lunge and head-butt that pretty nose of his.
“Afraid to come closer, fae?”
His blue eyes narrowed, and then his smile appeared. He knew where I was.
He backed off. “Of course there is magic where you are. How do you think life began on Earth? Do you think it crawled out of the dirt and remade itself over millennia? Don’t be a fool. Earth is ripe with magic. Fae magic. Oberon made it that way.”
His steel-trap mind would be running through every possibility. I could only hope he was still stuck in a hole somewhere.
“I’d rather be awake and getting tortured than stay here and listen to you.”
“I can oblige you.” He lifted his hand, fingers poised to click.
My cheek twitched. The thought of going back to that pain, of feeling the tek crawling through my veins…
“No?” He dropped his hand. “Thought not. Dreams give you time to breathe and heal. Take this moment as a gift from me to you.”
And why would he give me that? “Why are you here?”
The dream swirled behind him, lending him a chair in which he sat. He crossed one leg over the other and tapped out an annoying rhythm on the arm, mulling his next words. “Events are in motion. The Wild Ones rally. I will soon be free and home again.” His eyes glittered with madness. “But Faerie has changed in my absence. It will take a great deal of strength and cunning to grapple Faerie and her sisters, Halow and the like, under my control. I wonder, sometimes, if I need another to aid me… Someone I understand and who understands me.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
He leaned forward. “Why not?”
All right. I’d play along. “When I escape, I’m coming for you. Everything you tell me I’ll use against you. I’m not about to let you stake some ancient claim on Halow or Sol. They do not belong to the fae or you. Their people are free.”
“You’re wrong. The protofae own it all.”
I laughed. “You created it, but you don’t own the lives. Those people grew without you. They deserve their freedom. They’ve earned it.”
“Wrong again.”
I yanked on the restraints, jolting the chair. “I will be the one to kill you, prince.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Says the last vakaru tied to a chair. Let’s agree to disagree so we can move on, shall we? Besides, you’ll forget much of this when you wake.”
I slumped back. Had we had similar conversations before that I’d forgotten? I’d know, wouldn’t I? My top lip twitched, a snarl threatening to bubble through. Eledan’s fucking mind games. Better to ride out the dream as he wanted it and be done with it.
Eledan’s smile crept all the way along his lips. The sluagh-bait bastard was too smug. I couldn’t fight him here, and he knew it.
“There’s a good vakaru. You understand how this works. Do you think you can escape Captain Pierce?” he asked.
“How do you know her name?” Dammit, he was already in my head, plucking out the information he needed. I shook my head, trying to rattle him free, for all the good it would do me.
“I can help you,” he said, pointing with too much glee.
“Why would you?”
“Have you heard the human expression, the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
“And whose enemy am I?”
“Oberon’s.”
He had me there. I raised a questioning eyebrow.
“My brother is not all he seems.” Eledan rose from the chair and unbuttoned his shirt cuffs. As he approached, he folded those cuffs over and pushed his sleeves up, revealing warfae marks like Kesh’s. “A long, long time ago, he and I were inseparable, and like most brothers, we dabbled in… dangerous things. I helped him break the rules when he took possession of a terrible weapon.” The marks on his arms came to life and twisted on his skin. “That weapon marked us both so it could always find us and reclaim the debt paid. Later, racked with paranoia, Oberon began to mark others to hide himself among them.” Eledan stopped in front of my chair and ran his left hand down his right forearm. The marks shimmered. “It helped that the design had interesting qualities, such as its ability to off the dark. Nobody questioned him. Nobody but me. The only sure way to keep a secret on Faerie is to kill all those who know it. He couldn’t kill me on Faerie. The sidhe and the Wild Ones adored me. So, he arranged it so I would not return from the human war. I was to be Faerie’s fallen hero, and his secret would be safe with him.”
I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t sure which was better, being tortured in the real world or being tortured by Eledan’s pity party here.
“Our mother suspected. Oberon’s behavior had become erratic. He wouldn’t venture outside the palace. And then he adopted a reedy little saru girl, one already in love with him, and squirreled her away to do his bidding.” Eledan grinned. “Stolen by a Faerie Prince.” He swept his hand through the air. “It has a ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Sounds like a cliché. Can you get to your point before these tek-bots kill me?”
“Humor me.”
I tugged on the clamps around my arms, and like in the real world, they didn’t budge.
“He somehow learned that I was alive,” he drawled on, “but could not reach me through Halow’s defense net. My unfortunate survival gave him an opportunity to test his saru experiment, his tek-whisperer. By then she was a fiercely loyal thing. Loyal enough to have killed the queen to stop her from ever discovering the truth.”
“He sends her to kill you. She rips out your heart. The end.”
“Ugh, vakaru have no sense of poetry.”
I grinned, displaying curved fangs. “This isn’t poetry. It’s the story of a spoiled prince stuck in a thousand-year tantrum because he couldn’t get home to Mommy.”
He sighed and pressed two fingers to his forehead. “I have no idea what she sees in you.”
“It’s my sparkling personality. Are we done here?”
“The point I am trying to make—”
“Finally!”
“— is that all of this—you in that chair, Halow’s demise, the Game of Lies, Oberon’s crusade—is superficial. Nothing matters.”
“In that we agree.”
“The only part you need to pay attention to is this.” He lifted his arms, adorned with matching marks. When he brought his forearms together, the marks moved on his skin, slithering to line up, creating a distinct circular pattern. Did Kesh’s marks do the same?
“What is that?” I asked, reluctantly curious.
“A key.”
“A key to what?”
“Faerie gave up two weapons.” He lowered his arms, and the
marks slithered back into their original design. “One of light, the polestar, and one of dark. It has a name, but to speak it is to invite it. Oberon still possesses the dark weapon, but he is losing his grip, and the dark will soon collect his debts. Once that happens…” Eledan swallowed. “We’re all fucked.” He peered down at me. “These marks, given to me and my brother, are the key to the weapon’s demise and the demise of both the darkness and the light. This key returns the dark to Faerie and the polestar to Faerie’s sky, returning balance. These marks are the reset button. They answer the question of how it all ends.”
How convenient that the one fae asshole I wanted to kill was the only one I needed alive. “If you think those tattoos will keep my teeth from sinking into your throat, you’re mistaken—”
“None of this matters.” He gripped the armrests of my chair, filling my vision. “Lives don’t matter. Your precious little individuals don’t matter. Worlds don’t matter. Humans and their tek-toys don’t matter. Because if left unchecked, the dark will get free and consume everything.”
He attempted to draw a line across my throat. I snapped my teeth, jolting him back. The prick laughed his slick, haunting laughter.
“I killed you once. Shockingly easy for a vakaru. I’d love to do it again, but instead, I’m telling you this so that when the time comes, you’ll remember and do the right thing.”
He truly was insane. “I’m killing you the first chance I get.”
He threw his gaze toward a non-existent ceiling. “I’m asking for your help. Can you think beyond the beast inside you and consider it?”
He was sincere, but he was also a live wire thrashing wildly in whatever prison he was stuck in.
“All right,” I replied carefully, unsure what I was agreeing to but figuring I could take a leaf out of Kesh’s book and lie. This was a dream. Like he’d said, nothing here mattered anyway.
He looked down at me, unconvinced I was on his side.
“You said you can help me get out of this?” I asked. “How about a deal? I’ll help you with this key when the time comes if you help me now? Else I won’t be around to do the right thing when you need me to.”
His image shimmered, clothing changing into light warfae armor. Silver thread glittered through the seams, stitching the act together, turning him into something from an Earthen fairy tale, only this fairy tale would chew humans up and spit them out.
“The Earthens have extensive files on Drochfhoula,” he said, his voice cold now that we were past all his key nonsense. “They know your history as well as you do. Captain Pierce has gone over your files at length. Her dreams are full of your butchery.”
“You’ve seen her dreams?”
He held up a finger.
A warning growl rumbled inside me. “I’ll bite that fucking finger off if you silence me again.”
“She’s only looking at half the story,” he continued, arching his eyebrow at my threat. “The half written by Earthen winners.” Eledan’s outline blurred, turning him into a ghost. The dream thinned too, falling away. “Tell her to search the classified files for the truth. Tell her to search for the man,” he whispered, “not the monster.”
Chapter 18
Marshal Kellee
Bright lights and searing pain. I couldn’t think beyond those things. My jaw throbbed, teeth stretched long and thin, and my hands each bore razor-edged claws. These humans wanted the monster, and I couldn’t stop it.
Teknicians came and went, mumbling about their studies and adjusting the drugs. I might have missed Pierce’s visit in my haze. Eledan’s voice drifted back to me like flotsam washing up on a beach, only for the ocean to take it away again before I could grab hold. He had told me to tell the captain something, but I couldn’t remember what.
Had it been two days yet?
Had Talen and Hulia left? They should have. This was the opportunity the Nightshade had been waiting for: leave the marshal behind and take control of his destiny, whatever that destiny was for something like him. And Hulia? I hoped she’d gone with him. I couldn’t be responsible for any more innocent deaths. Perhaps this was how it should be for me… killed by human hands. Justice.
“I dreamed about you last night.”
Pierce was here, standing at the foot of my chair tilted at a fifteen-degree angle. I wasn’t sure if she was real. My senses told me we were alone, but I doubted it.
“Vivid dreams.” She frowned like her dreams were my fault. “The dreams must be mine yet…” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, wincing. “It wasn’t you, exactly, but Marshal Kellee, Halow’s lawman. I looked him up…”
Make her see the man…
Eledan had been busy.
I flexed my hands, willing the claws back out of sight. They throbbed hotter, arching my back off the chair, and didn’t retract. Talking wasn’t an option. If I tried, she’d hear only growls.
“Marshal Kellee was awarded the Star of Valor during Sandequine’s riots.” She held my gaze, hoping to guilt the past out of me. “Saved five families from a fire that decimated the slums.”
Should have saved more…
The ventilation system had whipped the fire into a storm. Flames had torn through flimsy fabric dwellings, consuming women… children. Three hundred people died that day.
“Did you keep the medal?” she asked.
A soldier like her, I was surprised she’d even bothered to ask. I’d tossed the worthless piece of tin in the trash as soon as I’d gotten back to my Juno apartment.
When I didn’t answer, she glared, reading the answer beneath the vakaru staring back at her.
“That was just the most notable award out of a string of similar distinctions. The domes’ failure on Hen-Rit, the Donna collision, the highest arrest count …the list goes on. Marshal Kellee was the most decorated lawman in Halow’s ranks. He was nominated for promotions. Twice. Declined each time. I’ve seen a lot of conflict. We Earthens invented war. I know people. I know soldiers. And do you know what I see in this marshal? I see a man desperate to balance the scales. Do vakaru fear Hell? Is that what you’re trying to avoid?”
Hell was a human concept. Vakaru feared the nothingness that came from death outside of warring. A never-ending dream in which they were forgotten. A never-ending nothingness like the wraiths on Valand were trapped in.
Red spots danced across my vision, beating loud and bright. The pulse point at her neck drew my eye, pulling my attention away from her voice and to the rhythmic song of her heart pumping blood through her human veins.
“You know what I think?” She came around to the right side of my chair. “I think you threw the medals away and declined all that praise because you know none of that can make up for what you did as the vakaru warlord.”
Give the captain a fucking medal for figuring me out. It didn’t change a damn thing.
“You are two things. You are what you were, and you are what you want to be.” Her fingers touched the brackets holding my right arm down. “Let’s see which side will prevail.” She flicked the latch.
My fingers were around her neck. I didn’t recall putting them there. All it would take was a twitch, and I’d have my teeth in her throat, and then nothing would stop me. I’d tear through this place, killing every living thing that stepped in my path.
Her eyes bugged, and her nostrils flared. She’d underestimated my speed and probably assumed her bots had tempered me, when all they’d done was flick all my vakaru switches to ON. I ached to plunge my teeth home, drink her down, tear her open, and paint my face with what remained. By cyn, this woman was a fool. These people were fools. They had learned nothing and deserved what was coming for them.
I plucked my fingers free and let her fight free of my grip.
“Guard!” she screeched.
The other latch fell away at my touch. I tore the intravenous drip free and was at the door, blocking her exit. Every instinct demanded I kill her. The bots in my veins buzzed and itched, driving me straight toward the edge of
insanity.
“Marshal Kellee?” she asked. “Is that who you are now?”
Marshal Kellee was a long, long way from this room.
Show her the man…
“Kill me and it’s over for you,” she said.
The door behind me opened. I drove my elbow back, striking the guard in the gut and instantly dropping him. A punch, with my claws on display, would have spilled his shiny guts all over the polished floor. This way, he’d live, unless he came at me again.
“Kellee…” Pierce extended a hand in peace. “You’re him now, aren’t you? You’re not this monster, not anymore. You told me that, remember?”
Fear. She reeked of it. This whole damn place made me want to feed, to kill. The air, the light, the tek—it all tried to crawl inside and change me. My sight blurred, and the room tilted, causing my gut to lurch and body to convulse. I reached for something, anything, and dropped to my knees when my hands found only air. My insides tried to force their way up my throat. I fell forward and retched up silvery, shiny worms. The splatters of vomit writhed and slithered.
Those things were inside me.
By fucking Faerie, and these assholes thought I was the monster?
“No, leave him!”
If anyone touched me now, I’d rip their arms off. “Stay… back.” Words. Words were good. They sounded rough, more of a growl than human speech, but they were definitely words.
Heaving, I spewed more tek worms and wished they had killed me instead of pouring those fuckers into my veins. I spat aside and wiped my mouth dry. Hopefully, those were all the bots. The madness was passing, though the hunger wouldn’t until I’d dealt with it, but I could manage it without those tek parasites in me.
Pierce stared, panting like a frightened rabbit.
I grinned back at her. “Monster enough for you?!”
Someone lurked in the corner of my eye, smelling of tek and syringes. “If you so much as look at me with a syringe in your hand, I’ll take that needle and pump that shit into your veins. Seeing as nobody here is vakaru and can’t expel poisons the way I can, you’ll die in seconds.”
Prince of Dreams (Messenger Chronicles Book 4) Page 23