by Gaja J. Kos
Shit. That was a terrifying enough thought all on its own. I didn’t even want to consider the consequences if he failed to return to court.
I certainly couldn’t keep my mother in check, and my father, well, he wasn’t around much, nor was he the type. Power hungry, yes. Stand-up, no. After all, he did go along with her idea of breeding Nightwraith daughters to strengthen her rule, now, didn’t he? Not that I was ungrateful for my existence, far from it, but my parents didn’t exactly fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings, either.
If my mother went off the rails, I could just as easily become carrion as the next unfortunate asshole that would cross her path.
Wanting to wash the bitter taste off my tongue, I waltzed into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of nice, cold vodka. The alcohol burned as it slipped down my throat, and I returned to the living room, glass in hand, to enjoy the moment of solitude it promised.
But before I as much as parked my butt on the armchair, a crash reverberated through the dimly lit room, followed by a breeze of fresh, night air.
“What the—”
I jerked around, noting the shattered window, then followed the trajectory straight to a curved, little black thing, waiting viciously in the far corner of the living room floor.
Motherfucker.
This night really couldn’t get worse.
Because that intrusive darling was nothing less than a bloody grenade.
Chapter 7
My mind slowed and broke apart until it resembled a chilling landscape, filled with sharp edges and even sharper thoughts. But one stood above all else.
There was no chance of getting that grenade out in time.
My power alone wasn’t sufficient to contain the force of the explosion, and the amplifier I hated to use, but would in a blink of an eye right now if it meant shielding me from the blast, was stored away in my lair. The single uplifting fact remained that maybe, just maybe, the blast would take out only my end of the floor, not level the entire building.
With a surge of blazing anger and regret, I called to the presence of the metaphysical umbilical cord the instant I felt something shift in the air. My body broke down into atoms without hesitation, and the ethereal line connecting me with my lair sucked me in the very next moment. The force plucked me from existence and cast me down the tunnel, but not before I felt a brush of heat wash through those few particles that lingered just a tenth of a second longer.
Shit. I didn’t want to think about the magnitude of the blast that faint, brief connection indicated, refused to let all those ghastly images creeping at the edges of my mind to surface… But when I reformed on the cold ground in the very heart of my lair, my knees buckled nonetheless.
I braced myself on my hands, breathing heavily as nausea stirred in my stomach and filled my throat with the acid presence of bile. I swallowed, then slowly forced myself to stand.
Another wave of sickness hit me, but I controlled the impulse to throw up and focused on calming my energy instead. Once those turbulent waves died down, my body’s corporeal responses became manageable.
As did my thoughts.
I faced the bitter truth that there was nothing I could do to change what happened. For all the magic in the world, no one had yet figured out how to tamper with time. But I did have every intention of finding the responsible party and stopping them before they pulled shit like that again. Throwing grenades into someone’s apartment wasn’t the MO of one-time offenders.
Ignoring my unsteady feet, I marched into the adjacent room. The familiarity of my lair wrapped around me, the deep red walls and abundance of dark leather and velvet a soothing presence that helped put me even more in control. I strode over to the wardrobe where I stored my weapons and an array of mag-tech, then crammed as much arsenal as I could into a bag I fished from beneath my bed. When it was nearly filled to the brim, I tossed in some spare clothes, as well as one of the disposable cells I had for keeping in touch with my clients when on a job.
Once I was certain I had everything I needed—everything save for my car keys which had most likely been incinerated in the blast—I walked back into the sacred chamber and let the umbilical cord whisk me away.
With a destination already firmly planted in my mind, my particles whooshed though the peculiar tunnel as if the magic itself understood my haste. But as the power around me shifted, became thinner as it always did when I neared the end of the journey, I remembered that I made one very grave mistake.
A mistake that slammed into me with such force I fell on my ass even as my atoms were still in the process of realigning themselves into my corporeal form.
Invisible fire burned my insides, suppressing my power and movements alike. I felt my body vibrate as it struggled to break free, but I knew it was useless.
If anything, the exertion would only knock me out. And that wasn’t an outcome I wanted right now.
“Drop. The. Fucking. Ward,” I squeezed the words through gritted teeth at the lovely blonde who emerged from the door set on the other end of the room, then swallowed heavily as vicious little daggers of ethereal bloody pain jabbed into my flesh.
“Ah, fuck,” she hissed.
The force receded at once, then flaked away until the only things pressing on my senses were the familiar fragrances of Liva’s apartment.
“Sorry Lena”—she winced—“didn’t expect you here tonight.”
I glanced at my sister, noting her blunt state of partial undress.
“Clearly,” I rasped, then groaned as I forced myself off the floor.
I rubbed my temples to dissipate the hammering pain, silently cursing Liva for being such a fucking master at spells—but even more so, cursing myself for not thinking sooner that materializing without warning was not something I ever wanted to do around her.
After nearly losing her mate to power-hungry Fae, then acting as High Lady of the Earth Court and soothing the unrest that seemed to pulse through Faery… Her utter devotion to keeping her surroundings as secure as possible was no particular surprise.
Obviously the explosion had stunned me more than I wanted to admit if I’d managed to forget something so vital.
I stopped mushing my temples and blinked to scatter those final whispers of darkness that flickered at the edges of my vision. “I guess Cian’s here, too?”
“Yes, he is.” An amused, lilted voice came from behind, and I glimpsed just a little too much naked flesh before I whirled my focus back to Liva.
She, at least, hadn’t gone past the no-underwear stage.
“Gods,” I grumbled, “I hope I didn’t kill the mood.”
Cian laughed, his rich tone ricocheting off the walls, but Liva observed me with a critical eye of someone who wasn’t about to take any bullshit. “What are you hiding behind the humor, Lena?”
I grimaced, then padded over to the sofa and plopped my butt on the plush cushion. I hadn’t heard Cian move, but he must have slipped into the bedroom at some point, because he came out wearing pants and a simple black tee. He tossed another to Liva and she pulled it on immediately, covering her hourglass form and everything else her lacy bra had failed to hide. She sat down by my side as Cian perched on the armrest beside her, his hand on her back.
A part of me desperately wanted to just blab everything out, but dropping all this shit on their doorstep would only make me feel lousy in the long run. Their honeymoon phase had been filled with battles and fights, and judging by how flushed they looked, I figured it was fair to assume that things had just started to calm down. Fuck me if I was going to be the one to stomp all over that bliss.
“Liv…” I began.
“Save it,” she snapped. “One excuse and I’ll lock you in the ward again.”
Cian gave a small chuckle, although the look in his eyes told me he was moderately sympathetic to my ungrateful position. There really was no fighting my sister when she was like this.
She lifted a shapely eyebrow and pinned me with a hard stare. “Tell us everything.
Now.”
I sighed. “Do you have anything to drink?”
I got the drink—a delicious vodka martini that almost made me purr—and with the alcohol soothing the anger in my blood, I finally spilled everything. Well, almost everything. I left Caz mostly out, mentioning only the less tangled aspect of his presence in my life, although him being a cop did get some raised eyebrows. Well, to be fair, that might have been my own stupidity at getting caught lurking around a corpse that merited that reaction. I threw in the details of Tevan’s disappearance, then recounted all that happened after Yelena left.
By the time I was done, I wasn’t entirely sure whether Liva wanted to hug me or tell me off for what an ass I was.
The grenade had been a slipup. A massive one at that.
Maybe I really would have sensed something sooner if I were paying attention, but truth be told, my mother’s visit threw me off guard. Not that it was a difficult thing to achieve, with all the thoughts of that damned Perelesnyk dominating my mind.
Besides, it was my fault I had no wards set around my apartment. I was rarely there, so I never considered upping the security. Partially, that was because I really didn’t feel like dragging Liva away from her mate—or Faery—to set up something I figured I’d never have need for, anyway. A fuck load of good being considerate did me.
“Do you think the attack came on the gilded wings of dear old Mum’s arrival?” Liva asked.
She leaned back into Cian’s embrace, and I was infinitely grateful to the Fae High Lord for knowing just what to do to unwind her. I’d half expected she’d put me back in her ward by now.
“Haven’t got the slightest idea,” I admitted. “But the timing is too good to be a coincidence. Maybe they thought she was still there. Or maybe they just wanted to deliver her darling daughter to her in pieces.”
Liva winced, but that was anger pooling in her gray-blue eyes, darkening them like the eclipse of light just moments before a storm.
“I was wondering…” I started but an elegant wave of Liva’s hand cut me off.
“No need to ask.” She glanced up at Cian, and I saw a heated flash of hunger cut through his purple eyes. It was primal yet intimate, and it involuntarily made my thoughts drift to Caz. “You can stay here for as long as you need, Lena. We’ll head back to Faery. I’m certain Tierney missed having to scowl at us for preferring the bedroom to the banquets.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I’d met Tierney once, and knowing my sister and how un-lord-like Cian tended to be around her… Yeah, scowling was certainly on the menu.
“Don’t forget our inappropriate dancing at festivities,” Cian chimed in, and it was Liva’s turn to look up at him with hungry eyes. “The Bonfire Night is coming up…”
“Honestly”—she chuckled—“it’s like he’s missing the whole point of celebrating the rebirth of nature.”
I felt a pang of…longing as I watched them spar, and it was enough to kill the smile that flirted with the corners of my lips only moments earlier. I’d never wanted what they had, so why start pining for it now?
Fervently, I blamed it on the explosion and lack of sleep, then said, “I know Faery is safe—safer,” I corrected once Liva gave me a flat look. “But be careful. If this really has something to do with Yelena, we could all be in the line of fire.”
Cian got off the love seat to gather their things, and my sister took my hands in hers. “We will. And promise me that you will, too.”
I started to protest, but she gave me a squeeze.
“I mean it, Lena. You may be the baddest bounty hunter around, but no one is infallible.”
Her voice weakened at that last word, and I knew that she was thinking about Cian—the strongest High Lord in all the Fae lands, nearly depleted of his magic by a High Lord and his rotten brothers from an enemy court. She was right. No one was infallible.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I promise.”
“Good.” With one last squeeze, she got up and joined Cian in the middle of the room, their fingers entwining. “And Lena…”
“Hm?”
“Make sure you let that detective sweetheart of yours know you’re all right. If he heard about the explosion, he must be going out of his mind.”
With that, the pair of them evanesced, and I was left cradling the empty glass in one hand, hating how my sister ferreted everything out.
But even more so, hating the fact that she was absolutely right.
Chapter 8
“I’m fine,” I said for what must have been the sixth time, but Caz wasn’t buying it.
Some rational part of me knew I should have phoned him the instant I was in the clear. He was a cop, after all, and given he knew where I lived and what I did, I wouldn’t be surprised if he kept a spying eye on my apartment. Or at least monitored for any incidents taking place in the area.
But the stubborn side of my being didn’t like the idea of having to answer to anyone. Even for something as simple as to dispel their fears.
“Caz, I told you—”
“Someone died, Lena,” he shouted back. “Someone fucking died in the blast, and I was going out of my mind, not knowing if it would be your corpse I’d see on the examiner’s table.”
My knees did a nasty little wobble, and I fell down on the couch. For a long moment, all I could do was focus on my breaths until the room around me stopped swaying.
“Someone—someone died?” I whispered.
“One body. Several other residents were injured, three unaccounted for. Your name among the latter.”
“Shit.” I clutched the phone so tightly the plastic gave a little creak. “Do you know the names?”
“Sara Vengus and Lila Masen,” he said with a growl to his voice, clearly more pissed at me than worrying about breaking protocol or the actual victim.
“Sara travels a lot. She could just be away. But Lila…” I pinched the bridge of my nose, hating the sting that started to accumulate behind my eyes. “Lila lives next door.”
A long breath whizzed down the line, the anger turning into something softer, but no less profound. “I’ll tell the boys the remains are most likely hers.”
Fucking shit, I didn’t want to imagine how bad the explosion must have been if they hadn’t been able to identify the body. Bile burned at the back of my throat, fueled by the gods-ugly sensation that all of this was my fault. There was a reason my sisters and their mates didn’t stay in populated areas for long. With Cian’s high rank in the Fae society, and Alin’s former crime lord—and ongoing demon lord—status, it was simply too big a risk for that small amount of normalcy living among humans could grant us. Even before, Lena had received quite a lot of heat for her necromancy, while Liva faced dangers of a more subdued, although no less dangerous, kind with all the artifacts she handled. It was too easy to drag innocents into our darker blend of life.
Gods… But I was so rarely at home. It was a careless, rookie thing to do, but I always hated the idea of giving up the place, even if it would be only for those few days a month I used it.
And now Lila paid for my pettiness with her life.
Fuck.
“Lena, are you still there?”
“Yeah, yeah… Just…” I sighed and wiped away a tear. “This isn’t easy.”
“It never is.” Caz’s voice was warm, imbued with the kind of gentle sympathy that made me want nothing more than to wrap myself in it and just bawl my eyes out until all this hurt bled away.
But breaking down now wouldn’t make me feel better in the long term. And it certainly wouldn’t catch the bastard or bastards responsible for Lila’s death. I rubbed my eyes and exhaled.
“Tell me where you are, and I’ll pick you up,” Caz said just as I regained my composure.
“What? No—” He started to protest, but I cut him off. “I’m safe in Celje for the moment. We won’t get anything done tonight, anyway, and I have a suspicion about what the attack might have been about.”
“I don’
t suppose you’ll be generous enough to share,” he commented dryly.
A phantom smile briefly touched my lips. “Tomorrow. I need to pay a visit to someone before I see you, but if I can come by your house around noon, I’ll tell you everything.”
“No.”
“What?” I snapped. “What do you mean no?
“I’ll come and pick you up. Non-negotiable.”
Although some primal part of me perked up with interest at the demand in Caz’s tone, the rest was just annoyed. “Fine. Whatever.”
I gave him the address of the parking lot at the edge of the city center where we could meet, then said my goodbye.
But before the call disconnected, Caz’s voice filtered through to my ears. “Take care, Lena. There’s still plenty more of you I’d like to see.”
I was on my third vodka martini when it became clear that as much as I wanted to, there was no fucking chance in all the realms I would be able to fall asleep. Thoughts crashed and rolled in my mind—Sever’s body, the missing girls, my mother’s visit, and Lila’s kind, wrinkled face, snatched away before her time. But most of all, it was the longing to feel Caz’s strength and warmth brush against my skin that knocked sleep away from my grasp whenever it crept a fraction closer.
Frustrated, I kicked off the floral covers, placed my half-empty glass on the nightstand, and pulled on some clothes. A glance at the clock revealed the hour was, indeed, ghastly, smack in the middle of the night with the dying light of evening long gone and the brink of day still nothing but a faraway dream.
I padded into the kitchen and opened the topmost drawer, sighing in relief when I found some used chalk among the scattered contents. I rolled it between my fingers, almost hoping to talk myself out of what I was about to do.
I’d already barged in and disrupted one of my sister’s plans. I could at least give the other the courtesy of uninterrupted rest.
