by Lexi Blake
I caught sight of a man dressed in all white, and a chill went up my spine. He was the one who’d sent the plants. I knew him immediately, but when I’d met him long before, he hadn’t spoken with that accent. He was powerful and he had a familiar face, but the soul was different.
It was exactly what I would do if I wanted to capture someone like me. I would send in someone I know, someone I might trust. I would save the person I wanted to capture, befriending her and letting her know she could trust me.
The man in white had been there on my first day. He’d helped me save my mother. He’d understood what I was and he’d been a patient voice whispering in my head, telling me how the world worked and what I could do. He hadn’t liked my father, but he’d been interested in Mom.
Why was he here?
Come to me. Let me protect you. Kelsey will handle the bad guys. There’s no need for you to be in the middle of battle. You could get hurt, bella.
My stomach turned because the words hadn’t been spoken aloud. They’d been placed directly in my mind. They’d whispered across my brain in an accent that was foreign to me. It was a rich voice calling to me, telling me everything would be all right. All I had to do was let him take care of me. He was willing to do it. He would protect me while Kelsey finished the task of dealing with the men who’d attacked. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me.
Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had someone promise to protect me? I’ve been on the run for years. I’ve been offered any manner of protection, and it almost always ends in someone trying to take my power. In some cases, they tried to end my existence out of fear.
It’s what happens when you’re the Fae equivalent of the boogey man.
I clutched the sword and wondered what he was. It was obvious the woman was a shifter of some kind, and the man in white had Green Man powers and the ability to take on another’s face. He wasn’t the man I’d trusted. That man, the one my mom had called Dev, he hadn’t had an accent like that, and he’d had no real power beyond a Fae’s usual touch of magic. I’d seen his soul and this wasn’t it.
I was being set up. I’d thought Kor was the threat but now I was surrounded by three of them.
I looked at the Green Man. His eyes were pure emerald orbs and I knew that whatever he’d done to the men wrapped in vines was the least of what he was capable of. This went beyond a mere Green Man. I’d lived on various Faery planes and met several beings with agricultural powers. He was something different. Something powerful and frightening.
He was a god.
Don’t be afraid. Come to me, bella. I will take care of you.
I turned and looked at the man who whispered across my mind. He stared at me, his eyes burning even in the light of day, and I caught a hint of fangs.
Vampire.
I let the sword drop because it would do nothing against these creatures, as Kelsey was proving. I couldn’t access my magic even if I’d wanted to, and I knew exactly what a vampire who wasn’t on his plane was looking for.
I turned and I ran.
* * * *
Kelsey
I’d had a hell of a day already and it wasn’t even noon.
Well it might be where I was now, but back at home it definitely wasn’t noon, and as I punched an asshole in the face, I wondered if Gray and Trent were already worried about me. Maybe they didn’t know I’d fallen through a painting and found myself in Faeryville.
There’s a reason I wasn’t big into art. First of all, it can be pretentious, and I don’t understand how a bunch of squiggly lines represent man’s struggle in the industrial world. It mostly gives me a headache. Second, now I know it can suck me off my happy plane of existence where I should be getting ready to head to the beach with my superhot husbands and spend a few weeks soaking up the sun and having a mega shit ton of great, freaky sex.
But no. I had to fall into a painting and find a chick who looks exactly like the Queen of all Vampire, but she can’t be because I’d left the queen back in Dallas.
How was there another Zoey Donovan-Quinn in the universe? It was far too weird to be coincidence.
But I couldn’t think about that right now because the butt-faced asshole who’d shot me with an arrow was swinging a sword my way.
“Don’t use all those bullets, bella. If we’re going to defend the queen, we’re probably going to need them since neither Devinshea nor myself can figure out how to open that door again.” Marcus had come running up a few seconds before. I’d seen him out of the corner of my eye and though I no longer could feel him pushing his calm toward me, soothing and easing my way, the fact that he was here gave me great strength.
I blocked that sword coming at me with my demon arm. I’m a Hunter and I’m supposed to have gotten a supercool werewolf arm, but when I’d come into that power, I happened to have Gray’s blood in me. My honey’s demonic DNA had overridden the werewolf inside me. For a while everyone had thought it would change. But I still had a demon arm, and I’m one hundred percent certain a wolf arm wouldn’t have stopped that sucker the way my demonic one did. I brought my arm up because I hadn’t realized I would be fighting for my life and had left Gladys behind. Gladys is the traditional sword of the Nex Apparatus. That’s my title. It’s why I was here instead of hopping a flight to Hawaii. Because it’s my job to handle the evil shit that affects the supernatural world.
I considered the dude across from me pretty evil, and I didn’t even know him yet. All I knew was one of his assholes lodged an arrow in my shoulder and ruined a perfectly nice jacket.
His eyes flared when he realized he hadn’t managed to chop off my arm. He said something in a language I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure whatever the words were the meaning was something like—shit, bitch be crazy and she’s going to kill me.
Or something like that. It’s what the bad guys usually say right before I murder them.
But he’d said something before that had scared the crap out of me. He’d called Summer an abomination.
The same word Lupus Solum had used to describe my son.
Abomination. I hated that word.
It was probably why I drew back my leg and kicked up as hard as I could. I figured this dude was probably Fae. He had that look about him. Fae males hate getting kicked in the junk as much as any other male does. On some species, you have to figure out where those suckers are located, but my current opponent was Fae, and sidhe to top it all off. That basically meant he was perfectly humanoid, and his precious ball sack is located between his legs. It’s a good design because it makes it easy for me to kick the fuckers back up into his body cavity.
At least Marcus was here. I’d been smart enough to pick up my gun before I’d gone into Donovan’s office and gotten sucked into the trick and trap Gray had been warning me about forever. He could have been more specific.
“It’s not the queen, Marcus.” I’d only really used the gun because I knew Marcus and Dev were somewhere close. I hadn’t had time to locate them before I’d been forced to run, so I’d hoped the sound of gunfire would be like a beacon to my former trainer. I knew it would be to Dev Quinn. The prince of Faery loved himself some hardware. I tossed the Ruger Marcus’s way because I didn’t need to draw anyone else to us. “The queen is back at Council headquarters. And hold that for me unless you want to do that thing where you make everyone gut themselves.”
“And spoil your fun?” Marcus was still dressed in the suit he’d worn to my wedding the night before. It was slightly wrinkled, and I wondered how much time had passed here. “I would never. Besides, I can feel your anxiety from here and I haven’t felt anything from you in months. You need to blow off steam.”
He was right about the fact that I was anxious. I wasn’t with my husbands. I wasn’t sure I could get back to them. I could feel the distance between us, but it helped to have Marcus close. It helped to know he believed in me.
“What do you mean she’s not the queen?” Ah, there was Dev. A quick glance to my right and
I saw he was already busy. He had called upon the forest to aid him, and two of the soldiers who’d been trying to get hold of Summer were wrapped up in vines. I’d seen him do it before. “I think I know the queen when I see her.”
But he hadn’t really looked at her yet. On the surface she certainly seemed to be the clone of the queen. When I got rid of the rest of them, we would all sit down and have a long talk.
I managed to wrest a sword from the soldier who rushed at me from the right. It was easy to skewer him with it. Now that I knew Marcus was here, I could breathe a bit easier, and the rhythms of the fight took over my body. Marcus would look after Summer. I had no doubt even as I squared off against the last man standing that he was making sure the young woman was all right.
“She killed her whole tribe.” Kor held that sword at his side, keeping a careful distance between us. “Why would you aid her?”
“I didn’t get the feeling you were planning on killing her.” It hadn’t escaped me that he’d ordered his soldiers to do the opposite. I rather thought they intended to take her to their leader or something.
Yeah, I had a whole bunch of questions. But luckily I happened to know Dev could keep those soldiers he’d wrapped up alive, and they would be right there waiting to answer so I could kill this dude.
“Devinshea!” Marcus called out. “Stop her.”
I had a bad feeling about the her Dev was going to stop, but I had to deal with Kor.
“You know what she hasn’t done?” I asked as we began to circle one another. “She hasn’t shot me with an arrow. It’s barbaric, you know.”
“She will do worse to you,” Kor replied, his jaw tightening. “Only one person can contain her evil and that is my king. Give her over to me and I will let you and your companions go free.”
He had an altered sense of reality. “We’ve killed or taken hostage all of your men, buddy. Not sure why we would concede anything to you. And I don’t need you. I’ll question your friends.”
“They aren’t my friends. But they are true believers and I assure you they will not answer questions. They know what to do if it appears the Destroyer will win.” Kor stopped because the ground started to shake.
I took a stab at him, but my stabbing was way off the mark because the shaking got worse. I seemed to have found myself in the middle of an earthquake, except it was more than the ground shaking. The whole forest seemed to shimmer and shine as though it was changing right before my eyes.
Reality was bending and it made me sick to my stomach. My vision seemed to go hazy. One minute I was surrounded by forest and then next I saw white marble all around me. The columns rose up toward a sky I knew wasn’t the physical one above me, and it was so disconcerting. The world was shifting and it wasn’t natural.
“This is her doing,” Kor said, taking a step back. “And the longer she is allowed to deny her true fate, the worse it will get. You have a hand in this now.”
I didn’t know what “this” was. There were people here. Not here here. Other here. They were dressed in flowing gowns and looked like they’d been going about their everyday lives until the world had shifted. One stared at me, her face a mask of horror. I wasn’t sure if that was about the plane quake or my demon arm. Could have been both.
“Kelsey!” Marcus shouted.
The ground settled and the world around me became forest again. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach lessened and I could breathe again.
Until I turned to Kor and saw that not all of the world had returned to its normally scheduled reality. A tear was right there, ripped through the plane we were on, showing off the one behind it. I stared for a second, unable to process what I was seeing. Darkness came from the tear. It wasn’t even the place I’d seen before. This was someplace else. Some place without an ounce of light.
If I went there I would be nothing. If that darkness took me, I would cease to be. I would become a part of it.
Kor began to scream as he was pulled toward that darkness.
I could feel it. A vacuum had begun and it was going to suck us all in. My feet started to move toward that darkness.
It looked like I was heading on another trip, and I prayed this one wasn’t the last.
Chapter Five
Zoey
“He’s up to something.” Sarah paced back and forth on the balcony of her tenth-floor apartment. She had one of the upper-floor units. They were more like houses than actual apartments and reserved for those closest to the royal family. So basically my friends were all here.
And Myrddin. His unit was one of four on this floor. It had been empty for years, waiting for Daniel’s mentor to move in. Dev had arranged for all of Myrddin’s possessions to be moved from the pocket world Nim had imprisoned him in to those apartments and then kept them up. A housekeeper had cleaned once a week, though no one had resided there for years. When I’d wanted to let someone move in, I was voted down. One of the many ways the wizard managed to trump me.
“Of course he’s up to something. Daniel’s lost three of his closest advisors and protectors in the course of a single day. I know Myrddin’s behind it.” I poured the tea I’d made ten minutes before and sat back. The sun was starting to go down and Ether would be open in a couple of hours. We used to spend our every free moment in the nightclub where we’d first met Dev, but now we tended to spend our nights working or having quiet meals and time together. We still found ourselves down there a few times a month, but it was hard. No matter how much we wanted to be a part of things, we were still the royals and there was a wall between us and everyone else. “The question is how. How did he manage to do it and where does he have them stashed?”
I couldn’t consider the fact that Myrddin might have killed them all. I simply couldn’t.
“I might not be Myrddin Emrys, but I cast powerful locator spells,” Sarah said. “If they were dead, I would have found the bodies. My guess is they’re not on this plane. You’re right. He’s hidden them somewhere and we need to find them.”
That was precisely the point of this evening’s meeting. We needed to figure out how to find them before Myrddin did whatever the hell he was going to do. “Are the academics on their way up? I had Albert send us some scones. Hugo prefers a proper British tea service.”
“They should be here any minute.” Sarah sighed and turned back to face me. Her hair was slightly longer than the pixie cut she used to wear but it was still a vibrant color. Seafoam green was the flavor of the month, and it suited her well. “I’m concerned that Myrddin caused this problem so he’s going to be the one to fix it. I heard he’s down in his new temple preparing to work a couple of spells with Nimue. We might find out he’s done all of this so he can be the hero.”
I hadn’t considered that, but it sounded like something Myrddin would do. “You can’t tell if he’s worked any magic?”
Frustration clouded her expression. “Of course he’s worked some magic. It’s what he does. But something is wrong. Not with him. With the whole building. The problem is I know something’s off. I can feel it. But I don’t know what it is. It’s like there’s a ward up, but I’m not sure what it’s doing.”
“When did you start to feel this way?”
“Yesterday,” Sarah said. “But I didn’t want to disrupt the wedding. You were kind of a bridezilla.”
It was fair and I knew it. “Describe the feeling. I don’t feel anything at all different.”
“It’s subtle.” Sarah pulled out one of the four chairs and sank down. “It’s almost like I’ve got a cold. You know that sensation you get when it’s first starting to settle into your chest? You’re not coughing yet, but you feel the slightest bit of weight pressing down.”
Or she could simply be getting a cold. Her daughter, Mia, had been sniffling this morning. I’d already mentally braced myself for Lee and Evan to get sick. The rest of the kiddos had either Fae or wolf constitutions, and nothing would get through those immune systems. “Have you seen a doctor?”
&nbs
p; Sarah’s eyes narrowed and I was reminded how good with hexes she was. “I’m serious, Z.”
I held up my hands in apology. “Okay, not a cold. Then what is it? Is it some weird kind of ward? One you’ve never seen?”
“I kind of thought I’d seen them all, but if I had to guess, that’s what I would say it is.” She pulled her teacup closer but didn’t take a drink. “It doesn’t stop magic. I worked a couple of spells and they went great.”
“White magic?”
“And dark,” she replied, meeting my eyes with a bit of challenge. “I wanted to make sure both kinds work. I’ve kept up my skills. I know Felix wouldn’t approve, but I still practice.”
Her husband was a fallen angel, though not for the stereotypical reasons. He hadn’t gone bad. He’d fallen in love with his charge and joined her for an earthly life. He could be prudish when it came to the darker magics, but I didn’t have his faith in the universe. “Good. We might need it. Don’t think for a second I won’t call on you to use all that mojo if Voldemort decides to play rough.”
Her eyes rolled. “No one’s here. You can call him by his name.”
I had to be careful. “I have to think that he’s everywhere. We don’t know that this ward you feel isn’t more of a spell that allows him to hear everything we’re saying. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
She shook her head. “I know he’s better than I am.” She held up a hand when I started to argue. “No, he’s forgotten more magic than I’ll ever understand, but I promise you I would know if he got through my wards. He might be able to do it, but he couldn’t hide the fact. I ward with my own blood. Never tell Felix this, but every inch of this building is protected with my heart’s blood. I would know.”
I felt my eyes widen. Heart’s blood wasn’t like nicking your palm and bleeding a little. “How did you do that?”
“I used a spell, of course. I couldn’t work it on myself so I had Olivia help me. She’s almost as strong as I am. I think when she’s older she might pass me. Well, she might have before.”
