Bad Fae: A Snarky Paranormal Detective Story (A Cat McKenzie Novel Book 3)

by Lauren Dawes

  I shuddered. “No, thank you.” Tucking Reaver under my arm, I set my watch then traversed the interior railings and tracks of the haunted house until the sensation of marching spiders and a change in pressure indicated we’d stepped between our realm and the realm of the fae.

  Sawyer came to a stop in front of a wall—no, not a wall. The bottom section of it was undulating in a breeze that shouldn’t have been there. Snow drifted out from underneath, and I realized it was merely a curtain that must’ve originally hidden a maintenance door.

  Sawyer fixed his eyes on me, silently asking whether I was ready. The answer? No, not really, but I had a hard-on to punish Kailon and nothing was going to stop me. I let out a breath and nodded. Lifting up his Glock, he pulled the fabric back, revealing a snowy landscape that seemed to go on for miles. My breath shivered in front of my mouth as I looked around. There was nothing but snow and a wind that teased and twisted the loose tendrils of hair around my face.

  He stepped free of the doorway, and I did the same, then turned around to see the silhouette of The Screamer—checking that it was still there and we had a way out.

  “Where are we?” I asked Sawyer.

  “Close to the Unseelie Queen’s palace. That’s where I asked it to come out. If Kailon is anywhere, he’ll be there.”

  I didn’t want to see the currently ruling fae queen any more than I wanted to see the horrors of that ballroom ever again, but revenge was a dirty business, and I was going to get mine.

  Sawyer and I slogged through the ice and snow for what felt like hours—but was probably only five minutes—until a castle made of black granite emerged from the white landscape. Jagged spires reached high into the bleak, white sky, their edges sharp like a freshly honed blade.

  As we got closer, I saw two unnaturally ugly fae guarding the entrance to a bridge—males dressed in crude black leather pants with swords hanging from their sides. Their barrel chests were bare and covered in thick, jagged scars. On their heads were red caps that seemed to be dripping with blood—blood that trickled down their necks and onto their shoulders.

  Well, I’d give Avi points for theme and consistency.

  But her uniform requirements for her minions sucked.

  “What the hell are they?” I asked Sawyer in a stage whisper, using Reaver as a handy-dandy pointer. In unison, the guards bared their blood-stained teeth at me and pulled out their own swords.

  “Put Reaver away, pussy cat,” he said under his breath in a harsh whisper. “These fae don’t take too well to being threatened with a weapon.”

  “Neither do I,” I sniped out of the corner of my mouth. “And you didn’t answer my question!”

  “Redcaps,” he said in that same low voice, holstering his Glock. “Blood-thirsty goblins who are loyal to their queen. Deadly to anyone else.”

  “Super,” I deadpanned. “I love blood-thirsty supes. Definitely my favorite type.” I waggled my finger in the bloody goblins’ direction. “How do we, ah, diffuse this situation?”

  “Lower Reaver and make it disappear.”

  I glared at him, then whispered to Reaver, “All right, big boy, time to go bye-bye.” And just like that, Reaver disappeared with a small pop. I hadn’t had to touch the glyph to will the blade away for a while now. I didn’t know whether I should be impressed or scared that we were more in tune.

  The redcaps lowered their own swords too, sliding them back into the sheathes at their waists, then returned their attention to the middle distance.

  “Sooo, what now? Do we just walk up to them, and they’ll let us enter?”

  “No, we need to make a blood payment.”

  “Why does everything have to come with a blood payment?” I whined. “First it was Sharyn Wyatt when we were trying to get information about Draco, now this?” I jerked my thumb in the goblins’ direction. “Just once, I wish things were easy.”

  “When have they ever been easy with you?” he asked, a mocking grin on his face.

  “For me.”

  “No. I meant with you.”

  Jerk.

  I huffed and folded my arms. “I suppose I’ll be the one giving the fluid donation?” Like always, I added bitterly.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. It depends on what they feel like today.”

  I followed behind him as he walked toward the two guards.

  “We wish to speak to Avi,” Sawyer said, his voice authoritative.

  “Our queen is unavailable,” one of the redcaps said in a grunting, snuffling voice.

  “She’ll want to be available for us,” I said, stepping in front of Sawyer. “We have something she wants.” I gestured to the necklace that I’d pulled out from the top of my jacket.

  The pair growled in unison when they saw the opal, then one of them said, “Come.”

  Redcap One turned and walked over the great stone bridge, stopping at the raised drawbridge. It looked as if it were made of bones—human bones if I wasn’t mistaken. Okay, so I was officially grossed out now. The redcap emitted some unintelligible grunts, and a moment later, the drawbridge lowered.

  As we walked across, I peered over the edge. The moat consisted of a black, viscous liquid that shimmered like an oil slick in the wintery light. I took a quick step closer to Sawyer when I saw motion under the surface. Something huge lurked in there, and I had no intention of finding out what it looked like.

  I let out the breath I was holding when we passed through the gatehouse and into the bailey. There were hundreds upon hundreds of fae there, all going about their business selling food and the weirdest looking animal pelts I’d ever seen. I looked a little harder, recoiling when I realized they were human skins, rather than animal.

  Swallowing hard, I tried to focus on why I was here.

  Revenge.

  My spine straightened, and I let my eyes drift around, fixing my gaze on the hundreds of pikes buried in the snowy ground, their sharp tips decorated with some sort of bloody body part. A hand here. A leg there. A… trachea?

  I shuddered.

  Sawyer moved behind me, placing his hand on the small of my back and urging me forward. “Come on, pussy cat.”

  As I walked through, I realized there were too few body parts to be from a lot of people, which meant it was just one person. I felt sorry for the unlucky bastard who’d been killed and put on display.

  The fae in the courtyard stopped and stared at us as we passed. I could feel the tension radiating out of Sawyer with each step we took until he was glued to my back, an impenetrable source of heat and safety ghosting behind me.

  Two more redcaps guarded the keep’s gate. They moved out of the way immediately, letting us pass through the portal without interruption. Our guard remained behind, and I glanced at him over my shoulder. He bared his teeth in a feral grin, blood dripping from his red cap onto his face and bare shoulders.

  I pointed. “You have a little something on your face,” I said before taking a deep breath and going inside the keep.

  With my opal quiet against my chest, I had no idea what kind of danger I was in. As close as I could figure, I was somewhere between Run Now Street and Holy Shit, We’re Really Doing This Avenue.

  I stepped into what appeared to be a great hall with a ceiling made entirely out of tree branches. The arched canopy was filled with black boughs, the skeletal branches stretching for as far as the eye could see. I could’ve sworn I saw stars winking in between the slightly creaking mass of limbs. Was there no roof on this structure, or was it some kind of fae magic at play?

  The walls were made of smooth black granite as was the floor. I glanced down. The surface was so smooth and unmarred that I could see my reflection, Sawyer’s reflection, and the ceiling above us in it. It was almost as if there was no delineation between the floor and the walls, the optical illusion messing with my head…

  … because I could’ve sworn I saw my truck in the reflection.

  My head jerked up, my eyes narrowing. Over in the corner, covered in river weed and lookin
g like it had rusted and aged for a decade out in the elements, there was no mistaking it as anyone’s truck but mine. I’d had vanity plates made reading UNICORN with a heart icon in place of the O.

  “It’s made a nice addition to my throne room,” a woman said in a throaty voice. “Don’t you think?” Avi was seated on an elaborate throne made of more black wood boughs. She looked just as she did when she visited me on the river—black hair, black clothes, black skin, and a black look of malice in her eyes. Those dark orbs darted down to the necklace around my neck, and a smile slowly appeared on her face. The only thing that was different was I could feel her power vibrating through my bones.

  “I see you’ve finally come to give me what I want.” She stood, her dress falling like water from her hips. She moved like water too—fluid and graceful. “That was very wise of you, Catherine Ellen McKenzie.”

  My heart seized a little at the use of my full name as I watched the Unseelie Queen move down the dais and walk to a niche in the wall. She kept her back to me, and although she had no guards in the room with her, I knew she wasn’t helpless. She was just cocky.

  “I’m not here to give you my necklace,” I replied. Because the bitch was never getting her hands on it.

  “Why have you really come then, Catherine?” Avi asked in an icy tone. “I can sense your desire to hurt someone.”

  “Two words. Kailon. Perry.”

  She half-turned toward me, that smile still in place. Whatever she’d been looking at was blocked from our view. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I have a few things I want to say to him.” With my sword. Through his temple.

  “Why?” She turned back to the niche, studying whatever was there.

  “Because he tried to kill me four times in the space of five days, and I’m getting kind of pissed off. He’s ruining Christmas for me.”

  Avi turned around and crooked a finger at me. Although I was reluctant to get any closer to the queen, I moved forward. She stepped aside when I was a dozen feet away, and I stopped dead. She waved her hands in the direction of the niche, all Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune.

  “Here’s Kailon,” she said, indicating to the dismembered head sitting on a red velvet cushion, the flesh was rotting away from the bone beneath, and the smell…

  … Jesus, the smell.

  “Err, where’s the rest of him?” I asked, unable to tear my gaze off the fae’s decapitated head, off his milky vertical pupils, at his scaled skin and fangs.

  She waved her hand airily through the air. “I’m sure you passed all of him on your way in here.”

  I covered my nose with the back of my hand. “That was him on the pikes?” At her nod, I asked, “How long have you had him on display like this?”

  She shrugged gracefully. “About two of your human weeks, give or take.”

  Two weeks? If he’d been dead for two weeks, who had been trying to kill me?

  Avi continued, “He defied me. He went after that witch after I strictly forbade it.” Her onyx eyes hooked into me. “I think I have you to thank for returning him to me. You refused to give him the witch. You refused to let him get his revenge.” She turned back to Kailon and brought one sharp nail up to his eye socket. With one flick, the unblinking eyeball popped like an overripe watermelon, sending ocular fluid leaking down his rotting cheek.

  “And his punishment was waiting for him when he returned. My sister and I might not agree on all things, but we do agree that bringing the attention of your human government our way is not what we want. Kailon, on the other hand, was impulsive and brash. He wanted to show humanity the might of the fae, but we have learned from our mistakes in the past, and I will not subject my people to that again.”

  I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Kailon was dead. “If he’s been here, minus his body, who’s been trying to kill me?”

  Avi looked at me, then over my shoulder. I turned, expecting to see Sawyer. But Sawyer was collapsed on the ground, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

  And standing over him was Willis Cameron.

  Nineteen

  I blinked at the Rogue Faction member, wondering how in the hell he was standing in Wonderland right now. “Willis? What are you doing here? How did you—”

  Putting a finger against his smiling lips, he began to shed the glamor from his body. Underneath his human shell, he revealed black-as-night skin veined with gold. His hair was longer and plaited into intricate braids finished with gold coils. His face became more drawn out—a little longer overall—but his dark eyes stayed the same.

  “You’re one of the Unseelie,” I murmured, wanting to kick my own butt for not figuring it out earlier. Although, if my opal had been working like it was supposed to, it would’ve alerted me.

  “Hello, Cat,” he said, his tone still a smoky voice. Seriously, he still gave James Earl Jones a run for his money in the vocal department? This would be far less scary if he spoke in a high-pitched squeak.

  I clutched at my opal. “Why didn’t I sense that you were one of the fae?”

  “The opal doesn’t react to Unseelie fae. No fae under Avi’s rule would dare try to harm her or her lover.”

  I cast my mind back, trying to remember if it had ever reacted in Kailon’s presence. I couldn’t remember a time when it did. Then I tried to remember every time it had glowed or burned. With witches and magic, it reacted. With almost every other kind of supernatural creature, it glowed if I was in danger or under the influence of their powers. It allowed me to see past the glamor of fairies, and…

  “I saw past Kailon’s glamor when I was wearing my necklace.”

  Willis shook his head. “A Seelie or Unseelie fae chooses whether to reveal their glamor. Nothing can force them.” He gestured to the opal. “I see you’ve come to return what rightfully belongs to my queen.”

  He stepped away from Sawyer, and I tensed.

  “It took me a long time to find you, you know. A long time. I didn’t know your father had given you the stone. If I had, I’d have come to collect it a lot sooner.”

  I licked my suddenly dry lips. “What are you talking about? You… You…” But I had nothing to say. Clearly, he wasn’t who I thought he was.

  “I’d lost the stone on a mission while wrestling with a bear-shifter. Your father clearly found it. Then, he gave it to you, and his heart’s desire was that you wouldn’t be found by Rogue Faction. The opal listened to him, although why, I still don’t know. Since I’m a member of Rogue Faction, that meant I was unable to find you, too. I only realized you were the one to have it when that Russian witch waltzed into Wonderland with it around her neck, crowing of her theft from you.”

  “Kseniya…” I shook my head. “How could you be a member of Rogue Faction if you’re one of the fae?”

  At my question, Avi chuckled—a cold, brittle sound. I turned to look at her. “I knew what the humans were doing. So, I sent my lover to spy on them, win them over, join their little organization of dogs sniffing around the supernatural world in a zealous drive to kill them. He infiltrated their ranks, dropping in and out of existence over the years to avoid arousing suspicion.”

  I paced a few steps to the left and turned back to Willis. “So that story of how you met my father was bullshit, then? You were already a member. He didn’t recruit you.”

  Perverse pleasure sparked in his dark eyes. “I had to gain your trust somehow. If you knew your father trusted me, I knew you would trust me, too.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was definitely kicking my own ass later. I’d been so caught up in the fact that somebody knew something about my parents that I hadn’t bothered to even think it all through.

  “And the kappas? That was you, too?”

  He nodded. “I forced Gwen to report them. I killed her son after she’d played her part.”

  I clenched my jaw. “The car bomb at the diner.”

  A smug smile. “Rogue Faction was able to teach me something useful it seemed before I destroyed them,
too.”

  I closed my eyes, pictured Hayliel’s dismembered body, and Ben’s injuries from the blast. The hundreds of off-duty police officers who had been enjoying a party with their wives and husbands until a blast ripped through the building and left them injured or in shock. “The Police Christmas Party. That’s why I saw you there.”

  “I expected you to die with that blast.”

  “What about the girl in the diner? She said that her actions were for Kailon. Bubblegum girl?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. Maybe one of Kailon’s lovers took offense to his demise and sought to blame you.”

  “I’m getting really sick of the being the catch-all-of-the-blame, you know.” I hitched my hands onto my hips. Then a thought struck me. “Mrs. Brown?”

  “Bravo. You’ve finally figured it out. I must say I didn’t think you would.”

  I swallowed hard. “Where is she?”

  Please don’t say dead. Please don’t say dead. Pleasedon’tsaydead…

  “Dead.”

  I stumbled back a step, trying to breathe through my shock, but it was hard considering the tightness in my chest. Tears welled instantly, and I forced them back, choking them down past the lump in my throat. “You killed Mrs. Brown to locate me.”

  He nodded. “Go on. I do so love hearing my plans dissected.”

  “She would’ve told you I was here, but the opal was hiding me, right?”

  “That day I ran into you in the coffee shop was a complete coincidence. I’d been in Buxton looking for you. All I knew was that you were a cop, so I had to get creative with engineering our meeting. Mrs. Brown, unfortunately, chose to die instead of telling me where you lived. All I managed to torture out of her was the city you lived in and your occupation. The rest was great detective work on my behalf.”

  Dead.

  Mrs. Brown was dead.

  I felt my world shiver a little with that declaration, like the very fabric that made it up had been torn down the center.