Beneath the Dust (Force of Nature Book 4)

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  “I didn’t know—”

  “You didn’t care!” Merc roared. The floor shook from the force of it. “I watched her writhe in pain, begging for death as Doc tried to heal her. But no medication could sedate her, and none of us knew that the elements were what she needed. So we kept her deep below ground in the infirmary, sealed off from the source of her power. She suffered needlessly because of you, and we were forced to stand by helplessly and witness it.” Merc was nearly nose-to-nose with my father, and I feared for what would happen when his control snapped. I wanted Reinhardt gone—but not dead. “There is no punishment severe enough—no death painful enough—to make up for what your abandonment cost her.” He looked back at the crowd. At his brothers and Knox’s wolves. At Kat and Grizz. Then his eyes found mine. “What would you have me do, Piper?” he asked softly.

  Tears ran down my cheeks in response.

  He took a step away from Reinhardt.

  “You will answer to anyone here—take whatever punishment they deem fitting—until all have had a chance to avenge Piper in their own way.”

  Jase, Dean, and Kat pushed their way to Reinhardt. Nobody dared to interfere, not even Knox. He knew that they, too, had witnessed what Reinhardt’s absence had led to. They had earned their spots in the front of the vengeance line.

  As they surrounded my father, I looked away, unable to stomach what I knew was to come. I pushed my way through the crowd, needing air. Needing space.

  I’d made my way down the stairs and through the hall to the kitchen before I spotted Kingston, amulet crooked in his elbow, frantically searching for an escape.

  “Going somewhere?” I asked.

  He turned to me and frowned. “Don’t you want to find the lock? Has your bloodlust clouded your mind?”

  “That’s rich coming from you—”

  “I don’t wish to be the fey queen’s prisoner any more than you do. So shall we get on with this?” He pinned me with his cold blue stare as he awaited my answer.

  I let out a sigh.

  “Fuck…follow me.”

  Together, we crept down the hall to the front entrance. I quietly pressed the code into the keypad and opened the door. Just as we stepped through, a massive paw landed on my shoulder.

  The three of us stood in the security breezeway, locked in together.

  “Grizz, I need to take Kingston to find the lock.” He stamped his foot and shook his head. “You can’t go, buddy. Not after what happened today. We can’t risk it happening again.” He winced at the truth in my words but didn’t argue. Instead, he parted his lips to reveal something held delicately between his teeth—Sherry’s talisman. He hadn’t come to stop me; he’d come to make sure Kingston wasn’t tracked. “Oh Grizz…” He nudged my hand with his muzzle and dropped the magical trinket in it. Then he rubbed his furry face against mine and turned back toward the house. I opened the door for him and watched as it shut him inside.

  “It’s now or never, Piper,” Kingston said, reaching his hand-less arm for me.

  Reluctantly, I took it. The second my hand grasped his wrist, I felt the magic surge through us both, pulling us toward the thing we sought.

  “Show us the lock,” I said as I opened the exterior door. The wind sucked us through the opening and thrust us toward an SUV. We were in and driving before we fully understood what was happening. I tucked the talisman into his pants pocket and took the amulet from him. I palmed it and pressed it to his arm. He eyed me sideways as I did, but he didn’t argue.

  We wove through the city, following the call of the lock that pulsed from him to me.

  “We need to call the others,” I said, taking a corner far too fast. The SUV straightened out in a jerky fashion, and I wondered if we’d make it there alive with the way I was driving.

  “How about you focus on not crashing for now,” he said, trying to fasten his seat belt to no avail.

  I swore under my breath. “Fine, but we call the second we get there.”

  “They’re your goon squad. If you want them, then you call.”

  I swore again. “Do you have any idea where we are? Where we’re going?”

  He leaned forward to get a better view of the darkened neighborhood. “Maybe. I can’t tell just yet.”

  Another fifteen minutes passed, and I still had no clue where we were headed.

  “I know this street,” he said right before the magic drew us down it.

  “Why? What’s here?”

  Silence.

  “My childhood home.”

  “Ummm…what the fuck does that mean?”

  He never answered my question. Instead, he pointed to an alley cutting between a row of houses. I followed his direction until the wind stopped and Kingston told me to park. We got out and walked until we were standing behind an innocuous-looking Brooklyn home. Nothing scary. Nothing ominous. Just a house with one light on inside.

  Kingston made his way up the concrete path to the pale green house and managed to pull the back door open with both wrists. My heart flipped with anticipation. Before he could step inside, a flash of blonde flew into the window and pushed the wooden door open. Beatrice stood there, eyes wild and full of panic.

  Holy shit.

  Beatrice was the lock.

  “Look out!” she screamed, knocking us both aside as she raced for the backyard, where multiple golems were advancing on us.

  “Push them back!” I yelled, throwing up my arms to force them away. I grabbed the amulet, hoping it might fuel my power, but there were so many of them coming from every angle—including inside the house. “It’s not working!” I channeled all my energy into the wind that couldn’t budge the golems. Kingston yanked Beatrice away from one that had grown bold and soon found himself half inside the attacker. He chanted frantically as his handless arms glowed blue. But the further in he went, the more that blue glow dimmed. His power was being slowly snuffed out by the creature, like mine had been.

  “We can’t let them have him!” Beatrice yelled, eyes burning with rage.

  “I know!” I pushed my magic so hard I felt my lungs burning with fire—or lack of air—I just couldn’t tell. The glowing blue vortex swallowed the golems, but seconds later, they walked right through it, headed for us. “Fuck!” I scrambled for my phone. “Merc!” I screamed, not sure who’d I’d called, but hoping that he or one of his brothers could hear my cries. We needed their ghosting abilities and brute strength to rip Kingston out and flash him to safety.

  But my winds drowned out the voice on the other end.

  “Keep trying,” Beatrice snarled in my ear before rushing toward the golem.

  “We’re at Kingston’s childhood home in Brooklyn!” I shouted. “We need you! Now!”

  Kingston had all but disappeared into the golem by this time, and my chance to destroy the spell that bound me from killing my mother was slipping away before my very eyes.

  “No!” I screamed as I lunged for him, consequences be damned.

  “The king cannot have him!” Beatrice yelled as she shoved me aside. I fell to the ground amid the golems. Beatrice stood face-to-face with the fey king’s pet abducting Kingston. “There will be no stopping the queen if the key is lost.”

  “There won’t be if the lock is lost, either!” I yelled, scrambling to my feet. I ran up behind her, pouring out every bit of power I had until the burning in my limbs could no longer be ignored and I cried out in pain.

  Kingston began to emerge from the golem inch by inch, the sickening sound of sucking mud eclipsed by his war cry as he struggled.

  “Give him to me!” I shouted. The golem cocked its earthen head at me. “Release him!” I swear to God, a slash of a smile spread across its face.

  With a force I’d not expected, it shot Kingston toward me, blasting us back against the house. He landed on top of me and knocked my breath away. The handless warlock fared better, having used me as a landing pad. He was back on his feet, running toward the golem that had nearly absorbed him whole.

&n
bsp; The golem and the witch it had begun to absorb.

  “Bea!” Kingston screamed as he rushed over to try to save her.

  “I owe you a life debt,” she said to me, her face nearly enveloped in dirt and clay. “Consider it paid.”

  Before Kingston could reach them, Beatrice disappeared into the golem. A portal opened behind it and the others, and they collectively took a step through the veil, taking the young witch with them to an unenviable fate. Kingston dove as the portal closed, but he was too late. He crashed to the ground and lay there for a moment. Now able to breathe, I rushed over to him, wondering if the golem had done something to him—had somehow wounded him through the veil. But he wasn’t wounded—at least not as I expected him to be.

  When I knelt down beside him, he wiped his face, then glared at me.

  “We have to go after her,” he said, his voice more menacing than ever.

  “We can’t—”

  “We have to get her, now!”

  “I want to get her back, too, but she’s gone, Kingston. And our chance to kill the fey queen is gone, too…”

  He snatched me up with his amputated wrists and shook me. It was only then that I saw the utter despair in his eyes—the crazed look of loss that I knew all too well. The kind that drove you to do foolish things.

  “Beatrice isn’t the lock, Piper,” he said, trying hard to control himself. “She’s my sister, and I will not let her die—especially not for you.”

  “Wait—I don’t understand—”

  “Bea is my sister—heir to the coven.” He gave me a moment to let those words register. “And she is not the lock.”

  It was only then that realization slammed into me. Beatrice hadn’t been at the house to warn us of impending danger. She’d been there because it was her home. The coven queen’s home.

  “You’re the coven queen’s son…”

  “We need to go get Bea, Piper.”

  “We can’t, Kingston. I’ve been there. My power doesn’t work well, and I doubt yours will, either. Even with the amulet, it was a struggle to escape alive. I had to turn to the fey queen for aid.”

  He leaned in closer, his body coiled to strike.

  “My mother is the lock,” he said. His sudden change of subject addled me for a second. “Get Liam to open a portal to the fey king now, and I’ll help you kill the fey queen.”

  “You don’t know that for sure—”

  “Bea told me in the prison cell—whispered a clue in my ear—and now she’s about to sacrifice herself to make sure you stop the fey royals, so get me to the other side to save her, now! My mother and I are the ones who can make it possible for you to kill that fairy bitch, but I’ll only do it if you help me save my sister—and promise to let me kill the fey king.”

  I stared at him, knowing we were on borrowed time. If the fey king needed power so badly, he couldn’t have been far away upon the golems’ return. Going after her was a suicide mission. She was likely dead already.

  “Kingston, listen to me. We cannot bring her back,” I said, grabbing his face. “I would do anything to save her, but we can’t, do you understand? She’s gone…”

  “You. Don’t. Know. That,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

  I opened my mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Maybe there was a way to know for sure. Maybe there was a way I could prove one way or the other whether Beatrice was already lost. If not, I shuddered at what I’d have to do to get her back.

  I clamped my hands down harder on his face, pressing a cut on my palm to one on his cheek, and called my magic.

  “Is she alive?” I whispered to the stirring air. It faltered for a moment, the leaves it carried dropping for a second before whirling around us again. “Show me if she’s alive!”

  I felt a tear in the veil open up in front of us and turned to see the golem that had stolen Beatrice pulling her from within its thick, suffocating body. She was limp, and the bits of her skin not covered in mud and clay were oh-so-pale.

  “Don’t look,” I whispered to Kingston as I held his face in place and watched the golem hand his sister over to the fey king. He smiled with delight before turning to me, staring through the portal I’d carved into his realm.

  “You really should have joined me, Piper,” he said, cradling Kingston’s sister to his chest. “It would have been so much easier for everyone.”

  Hearing the fey king, Kingston bucked wildly in my grip until he finally broke free and turned to see the fey king levitate his sister just above the ground in Faerie. Then, just like the earth in Alaska had done to him, it swallowed her whole.

  I heard her scream just before the crevice sealed shut.

  “I’ll fucking kill you!” Kingston roared as he launched himself at the thin barrier between our worlds. I grabbed his coat and hauled him back before he succeeded in reaching the king—and likely his own death.

  He fought against my hold as the portal began to waver, then disappeared altogether.

  “We could have stopped him!” he raged at me, shoving me away.

  “No, we couldn’t—”

  “We could have saved her—”

  “No—”

  “You could have called her back like you did me—”

  “It’s not like that there—”

  “Why did you leave her?”

  He shoved me again, the hard jab of his wrist punching into my chest. With each one, I realized that the terrible warlock who’d tormented me—the one who’d nearly killed me and everyone I loved—loved something, too. And he’d lost her to Faerie, just as Kat had lost Jensen. Just as I’d nearly lost Merc, Knox, and Jagger.

  “I need you to hear me when I say this, Kingston: we couldn’t have stopped him. This isn’t my fault, or yours. It’s the fey king’s, and he’s going to pay for it. Understand?”

  His blows grew weaker as his emotions won out, and he flopped down onto the ground, burying his head in his arms.

  “She was all I had,” he said softly, his voice not his own. Unsure of what else to do, I sat down next to him and wrapped my arm around his shoulders.

  “You have your mother—”

  “That cunt should have been the one he took,” Kingston spat, shaking my arm off. “Instead, she hides while her daughter serves herself up to pay a life debt. Now you have to keep the coven queen safe if you want to undo the spell.”

  “Will you still do it?” I asked softly. “Will you help me kill the fey queen?”

  Eyes as cold and dark as night turned to me. My breath caught in my throat.

  “I will help you bring down the fey queen if you help me kill the fey king. They both deserve death—just like my mother does.”

  “You can settle your mommy issues once she breaks the spell,” I said. It earned me a laugh. “I’m settling mine first.”

  “I guess we have that in common.”

  “I guess we do.”

  After a long moment, Jase, Dean, and Merc appeared with Knox, Grizz, and Kat in tow. One look at Kingston and me together, covered in dirt and looking a mess, and they were on the offensive, rushing toward us.

  “You’re not supposed to let the animals out of their cages, Piper,” Kat said as she approached, claws unleashed.

  “Says the beast,” Kingston replied, sounding every bit as haughty as usual. Grizz growled at him, and his smile widened. “Both of them, as the case seems to be.”

  “Kat, we don’t have time for this. The golems just took Beatrice—”

  “Fuck—”

  “—and we need to get the coven queen ASAP because she’s the lock.”

  Her blue eyes went wide and she stared at us, unable to come up with a witty retort.

  “And you know this how?”

  “Long story—one we don’t have time for.”

  Kingston’s expression fell as he stuffed the emotions I’d just witnessed down and turned on his hostility instead.

  “The fey king took my sister from me, and I want him to pay. I’ll need Piper’s
help for that. Undoing the spell is my payment toward that end.”

  “Sister?” Merc asked.

  “Beatrice,” I said, interrupting. “Like I said, it’s a long story that we don’t have time for. We need to round up the coven queen and everyone else we’re going to need to kill the fey queen once and for all. We can sort everything else out later.”

  “That’s why he’s so eager to help all of a sudden?” Knox asked.

  “Bea was my half-sister and the only being in this world who really gave a shit about me,” Kingston growled. “I can’t save her now, but I sure as fuck can avenge her once you kill the fey queen. Now move!”

  Neither Merc nor Knox budged.

  “Merc, for once we have the element of surprise,” I said, imploring him to act now. “The fey queen doesn’t know who the lock is, and the only other person who did was just sacrificed to the fey king. We’ve got her where we want her. Let’s end this!”

  Knox and Merc shared a look, which was beginning to be a thing between them, before nodding once. Kat, however, looked at me like I’d lost my fucking mind, and in fairness, I wondered if maybe I had. Kingston, my nemesis—the one I’d entombed in the Earth—was willingly going to help me bring down Faerie, royal by royal. That was a big pill to swallow, even for me. Had I not seen the way he’d reacted to his sister’s death, I’d never have believed it, either. But I had, so I did.

  Like it or not, the warlock traitor and I were in this together.

  Chapter Thirty

  Merc knew where the coven queen had holed up with her witches, even if the queen believed otherwise. Within minutes, he and his brothers had ghosted an entire mansion full of enforcers and werewolves to the outskirts of her hideout. I could feel the brush of her wards against my skin, and it made me think of my uncle.

  My father.

  We needed Drake’s—Reinhardt’s—knowledge of our enemy. And he, above the others, would have it, given his rather intimate relationship with my mother. But I didn’t even know if he was still alive, and if he was, if he’d help at all. That bridge, like the one that hung precariously over the gorge, likely could not be fixed.