Dark Moon Rising (Half Fae Hunter Book 1)

by J. C. Diem

  “Eventually,” I said vaguely. “First, she’ll have to cast the spell that will allow everyone to see and hear you.”

  “That can wait until after we have the girl,” Rudy added before Pru could ask more about that spell. “We don’t know if she’ll be able to see ghosts yet.”

  We didn’t know anything about the girl at all, but we were about to rectify that. “It’ll be late by the time we return,” I said to the newest members of our team.

  “I need coffee if I’m going to be staying up that late,” Pru said. “Harley can show me which hotel he’s staying at. I’ll book a room there and we’ll wait for you to return.”

  “My hotel isn’t exactly the best one in town,” he warned her.

  “Good. I might be able to afford it then.” She didn’t look like she was joking.

  “Don’t mind me,” Leroy said dourly. “The token will just wait here all alone in this big old house. Go ahead, I’ll be fine.” He flapped his hands at us dramatically.

  Rudy rolled his eyes at the phantom’s theatrics. “You lived here all alone for decades,” he reminded the specter. “We’ll be back in the morning.”

  Muttering beneath his breath, Leroy vanished. He’d used the veil that lay between dimensions to shift himself to somewhere else in the house. He tended to hang out in the basement when he was sulking. It was as if a part of him already knew that was the naughty corner we would be sending him to once he became a full member of our team.

  Now that our newest members knew where our base was, Harley led the way to his hotel with Pru following him in her car. Rudy and I headed east towards the institute where we would find our mystery girl.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Putting my foot down once we left Devil’s Peak behind, I only slowed down once when I sensed a radar trap. It should have taken us two hours to reach the asylum, but I cut the journey down by half an hour.

  Leaving the highway, I followed the GPS mounted to my dashboard to our destination. The device was the newest thing on my truck. All hunters used them these days. It made it a lot easier to not get lost when hunting our prey in the wilderness.

  The institute was set on a manicured estate a few miles from a large town. It looked expensive and the security was tight. Guards patrolled the tall stone fence that marked the boundary. Cameras were also no doubt set in place. It looked even more like a prison up close, thanks to the razor wire on the fence and bars on the windows.

  Rudy peered up at the edifice that towered four stories high. “It isn’t exactly inviting, lad,” he noted. “We’re going to set off all sorts of alarms once we enter that place.”

  “It’s a pity we don’t have an invisibility spell to hide us,” I agreed. That was just one of the tricks my foster daughter could conjure up. I’d been working on learning more about my abilities. If I concentrated hard enough, people tended to not see me for a short time. It was as if I could reverse my glamor that drew people to me. It wouldn’t work on the cameras, or anyone watching the monitors, though. Rudy could easily teleport himself inside and sneakily hide from view as only a leprechaun could.

  “What’s our plan?” Rudy asked.

  “I don’t really have one,” I confessed ruefully. “I was thinking of finding the room the girl is in, then playing it by ear.”

  My sidekick snorted out a laugh. “That sounds like the kind of half-assed plans I usually come up with.”

  We climbed out of my truck and I locked it securely. A small surge of power covered the vehicle in a ward, preventing anyone from being able to break into it. It wouldn’t pay for anyone to steal my weapons. I’d left them all behind, except for a knife which was hidden in a sheath in my right boot. Since we didn’t know what the girl was, I didn’t want to frighten her by going in visibly armed. “Can you take us to a room in the asylum that doesn’t have any security?” I asked.

  Rudy cocked his head to the side, delving the place from a distance. “I think so,” he replied. “Hold onto your hat,” he warned me, then zapped us into the institute.

  The room he’d taken us to contained cleaning products and linens. Now that we were inside the building, I could feel another supernatural presence. “Can you feel that?” I whispered.

  “Aye,” Rudy replied with a shiver. “This girl is strong. She feels similar to you.”

  “I was going to say the same thing,” I said, meaning she felt similar to him. She had to be from the fae realm. Only fairies, leprechauns and other species that originated from there tend to feel like us.

  “She’s not a fairy,” my sidekick said. “That much I can tell.”

  “Can you pinpoint where she is?”

  “Somewhere on the third floor,” he reported, looking up as if he could see through the layers of concrete and metal that lay above us.

  “You know what to do,” I said.

  With a small sigh, he teleported us up to the third level. We ended up in a private bathroom inside an office. I eased the door open to see a large desk with a black leather executive chair waiting for the occupant. Dim light from the hallway shone through an opaque window in the door. It was enough to illuminate two visitors’ chairs and a small palm tree in a pot in one corner.

  Rudy stuck his head through the gap beside my knee. He sneered at the gigantic desk, but didn’t comment on the size of the ego of the person who owned it. A plaque on the desk said it belonged to ‘Dr. Oscar Parry’. His head swung to the right and he pointed. “The power feels stronger over there.”

  I released my senses and they zeroed in on the supernatural creature that resided on the third floor. She made no effort to curb her power. It hung heavily in the air as if waiting for something to latch onto. It was similar to mine, but different on a fundamental level that I couldn’t really grasp. I wasn’t sure what she could do with it, but I sensed it could be dangerous if she desired it to be.

  We crossed to the door and I quietly opened it. A camera was mounted on the wall at the far end of the hallway to the left. With a bit of concentration and a burst of power, I shorted it out. The red light flickered and died, signaling that it was now safe for us to emerge. The way to the right was clear, so we stepped out and hurried down the hall.

  Stopping at the door where we could feel the strange energy coming from, Rudy held his hands up, silently demanding I pick him up so he could look through the window. I hid my smirk and bent to grab him by the waist. We peered through the barred window to see a girl sitting on her bed. Her head was bowed and her silky blonde hair hid her face. It was so long that it fell almost all the way to the floor. She was small and slender and the ugly green hospital gown was far too large for her. She was humming beneath her breath as she rocked backwards and forwards.

  Just like the hallway, her room was completely white. The walls were padded like in Pru’s vision. Even the metal bed had been painted white. The complete absence of color made the room depressing rather than soothing. Her gown was faded and dull and did nothing to enhance her living experience at all. Apart from the bed, she had a small dresser and no other furniture. A door to the right probably led to a bathroom. There was a slot at the bottom of her door where her food was delivered to her. She didn’t have a TV, books, or anything to keep her mind occupied.

  I put Rudy down, then grabbed the door handle to find it was locked. It was probably alarmed to alert the guards if it was opened. I lifted an eyebrow at Rudy. Knowing what I wanted him to do, he teleported us inside.

  The moment we appeared in the room, the girl went still and stopped humming. She didn’t lift her head, but it was obvious she knew she had company. “You shouldn’t be in here,” she said in a low voice. “No one is supposed to come into my room.”

  “We’re friends, girly,” Rudy said soothingly. “We’re here to rescue you from this nasty place.”

  “Rescue me?” she said without inflection. “I don’t need to be rescued. I need to be kept here so I can’t hurt anyone else.”

  “Have you hurt people, darlin’
?” I asked her gently.

  “Yes,” she said with a small sigh. “And I’ll hurt more if I ever leave this place.”

  “How did you hurt them?” Rudy asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she replied, sounding forlorn.

  “Try us, sweetheart,” I prodded. “We’re not like ordinary people. We’re like you.”

  “No one is like me,” she refuted and started rocking again. “No one can do the things I can do, but no one believes me. They all think I’m crazy. Especially Doctor Parry.” The doctor had to be her therapist. From what I’d seen so far, the man wasn’t qualified to treat someone like her. No human possibly could be, no matter what their credentials were.

  “What sort of things can you do?” Rudy asked.

  “I can get plants to kill for me,” she said, then lifted her head. Even in the dimness, I saw she was ethereally beautiful. Her eyes were large and amber with green and brown specks. Her chin was pointed and her nose was small and perky. I couldn’t determine her exact age, but I had a sense that she wasn’t anywhere near as young as she appeared to be.

  “We need your help, darlin’,” I said.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” she replied in despair. “I use plants to hurt people. Only a crazy person would think they could do that. What help could I possibly be to you?”

  “I’m half fae,” I told her and pointed at Rudy. “My friend here is a leprechaun. We’re not sure what you are yet, but we know you aren’t a full human.” She didn’t seem at all human to my senses.

  “Do you know who your parents are, lass?” Rudy asked.

  “I was abandoned as a baby,” she said, chin dropping to her chest again. “I don’t know who my mother or father are.”

  “At least one of them is a supernatural creature,” I told her. “You’re different because you inherited power from your mother or father. You aren’t crazy, honey. I’m betting you really can talk to plants.”

  “The trees whisper to me constantly,” she said in a haunted voice. “I can’t hear them in here. It’s peaceful in this cell.”

  “I’m Jake Everett and my friend is Rudy,” I said. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

  “I’m Asha,” she replied. “Asha Trinity. That’s the name I was given at the hospital I was taken to after being left at the fire station.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “About sixty years ago,” she replied. “But no one believes me when I tell them that. They say I look too young.”

  Rudy and I exchanged glances, silently trying to determine whether it would be a good idea to take her with us or not. It was obvious she wasn’t completely stable, but we couldn’t really blame her. She’d had no idea she was only half human. I had a feeling she wasn’t taking in our conversation fully. It was possible she thought we were just a figment of her imagination.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Before we could try to convince Asha to come with us, a door opened at the end of the hall. I stepped over to the window to see a guard looking up at the broken camera. He scratched his head, then shrugged and began his rounds. Dressed in white, he held a black nightstick in one hand, but was otherwise unarmed.

  Stopping at each door, he checked that the occupants were in bed before moving on. Tall and burly, the beginnings of a flabby gut strained against his shirt. He seemed like the type of guy who would enjoy using his size to bully others. “A guard is coming,” I said. “He’s checking every room.”

  “That’s just Malcom,” Asha said in an offhand tone. “He likes to watch me through the window. He stands there for a long time and does something to himself that makes him moan a lot.”

  Rudy’s mouth dropped open as he took in the implications. “Does he ever try to touch you, girly?” he asked in a tone that bordered on rage.

  “Not after the first time he came into my room,” she replied. “No one ever tries to touch me a second time. They know they’ll end up getting hurt.” She sounded serene, but her rocking had increased.

  Sharing Rudy’s fury that the guard had attempted to abuse her, my hands clenched into tight fists. I’d inherited my father’s Unseelie rage. It had a habit of manifesting in violence the few times I’d lost control of it.

  “We can’t kill him, lad,” Rudy said bleakly. “It wouldn’t be wise to leave any evidence of ourselves behind.”

  “I’m not going to stand here and do nothing while this freak stares at Asha and jacks off,” I said tightly. I itched to teach the guard a lesson that he would never forget.

  “Leave it to me,” the leprechaun said with an impish grin. “I can guarantee he’ll never want to pay a visit to any of the women in this place ever again.”

  I glanced through the window to see Malcom was only a few yards away. He became entranced when he was close enough to see inside. A mixture of lust and the desire to force himself upon Asha emanated from him. He was so bamboozled by her allure that he didn’t even see me watching him from the shadows.

  The guard drew a tissue out of his pocket and unzipped his pants. The camera was too distant to catch him in the act even if it had still been operational. Rudy rubbed his hands together in anticipation, then vanished. Malcom let out a low groan when he started stroking himself. Asha hunched her shoulders and tried to make herself smaller, which infuriated me even more. I turned away before I lost control and ripped the door off its hinges to get at him.

  The groans turned into noises of alarm, then the guard let out a small shriek. I couldn’t resist the temptation and peeked through the window to see him staring down at his rapidly shrinking appendage. His pants were open enough for me to see nasty red boils had appeared all over his manhood and groin. Gibbering in fear, he turned and fled, heading for the door at the far end of the hall.

  Rudy reappeared, doubling over and slapping his knee in mirth. “That’ll teach him,” he crowed quietly when he had himself under control. “Every time he even thinks of taking his willy out, the boils will come back,” he added, wiping away tears of hilarity with his sleeve.

  I smiled at his choice of punishment. “Nice one,” I complimented him, then turned to the girl. “We could really use your help, Asha,” I told her again. “Something is preying on the people where we live. If we don’t stop it, this thing could end up killing everyone.”

  She stopped rocking and her head slowly lifted again. “Where do you live?” she asked.

  “In a town called Devil’s Peak,” I replied.

  A mirthless smile flitted across her face before it went blank again. “Of course,” she said almost to herself. “It had to be there, didn’t it?”

  “You’ve been there before, lass?” Rudy asked.

  “That’s where I was abandoned when I was a baby,” she said, then went back to rocking.

  “I remember that,” I said, dredging up the memory from six decades ago. It had caused quite a stir when a baby had been left at the fire station. The infant had been sent to another town and had presumably been adopted. Now I wondered if that had been her fate at all. I’d been in my twenties back then and I barely looked any older now. If Asha really was in her sixties, it was more proof that she had a supernatural parent.

  “Time’s wasting,” Rudy reminded us. He didn’t wear a watch, but he didn’t really need one. He could gauge the passing of time accurately. “We need to leave before someone discovers us,” he added.

  “What’s your decision, Asha?” I asked. “Will you help us, or are you going to hide here for the rest of your life? That could be thousands of years, by the way.”

  Her head snapped up and her strange eyes sharpened. “I could live for thousands of years?” she asked, clearly aghast at the idea. “I’m not going to grow old and die like a human?”

  “Nope,” the leprechaun said with brutal honesty. “You’ll be young and beautiful forever, just like us.” He gave her a cheeky wink.

  “I’m a couple of decades older than you, darlin’,” I told her. “How old do I look to you?�
�

  She examined me almost as if seeing me for the first time. A faint blush rose in her cheeks as she took in my fae handsomeness. “Twenty-five,” she said at last. “I can’t tell how old he is,” she added, pointing at Rudy without shifting her gaze from me.

  “I’m ancient, girly,” Rudy said. “I was born before the pharos of Egypt began building their monuments.”

  Shaking her head in disbelief, Asha looked at my hand when I held it out to her. “Come with us,” I coaxed her. “We can help you figure out how to use your powers without hurting innocent people.”

  Clearly torn, she was terrified at the prospect of leaving her exile. She reached out to me and I clasped her slightly cold hand. “Can I trust you, Mr. Everett?” she asked, vulnerability coming through loud and clear.

  “With your life, darlin’,” I said truthfully. “I’ll keep you safe from harm and I’ll make sure you don’t hurt anyone else who doesn’t deserve it.”

  Her fingers tightened on mine, then she allowed me to draw her from her bed. As tiny as a full blood fairy, she barely came up to my breastbone. She stared up at me trustingly. “I’ll come with you,” she said, holding her gown shut behind her with her free hand. “I just hope I don’t end up killing you both.”

  “We’re very hard to kill, lass,” Rudy said dryly. “But we have a couple of fragile humans on our team, so you’ll have to be careful around them.”

  “Rudy is going to teleport us to my truck,” I warned her. “Are you ready? Do you want to take anything with you?”

  “I don’t have anything to take,” she replied.

  Her tiny feet were bare. She didn’t even own a pair of shoes. If I checked the dresser, I would probably find more hospital gowns. “Get us out of here, Rudy,” I requested.

  With a click of his fingers, he zapped us to my truck. Asha started and her grip became uncomfortably tight on mine. She was a lot stronger than she looked. Her eyes went to the line of trees that marched along the edge of the road. “I can hear them again,” she said in a disturbed tone. “They’re trying to tell me something, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.”