Agent of Darkness (Dark Fae FBI Book 3)

by C. N. Crawford

  Chapter 5

  “Cassandra? Cassandra, talk to me!” A deep voice penetrated my dreamless sleep, and I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

  I lay on my back—on the floor, maybe. As soon as I opened my eyes a crack, letting in a thin haze of pearly light, my brain began to pound. I think it was struggling to flee my skull. I tried to say something, but I only managed a soft moan.

  “Thank God.” The voice was tinged with relief, and it took me a moment to recognize it as Gabriel’s.

  My eyes fluttered open, and I immediately regretted it. The glaring morning light pierced my skull like a hot poker. “The light,” I whimpered.

  He muttered soft curses as he rose, then he pulled the curtains closed.

  I looked around myself, finding myself lying next to an empty bottle of whiskey and my discarded clothes. If I hadn’t felt near death, I might have mustered up some embarrassment at the crumpled black underwear on the floor. With the curtains closed, shadows darkened the room. Gabriel walked past my inert body, and I heard him leave the room, closing the door behind him. After a minute, he was back, crouching by my side and holding a glass of water.

  His brow furrowed, and concern shone in his hazel eyes. “Can you sit up?”

  “I’m fine.” Slowly, fighting the nausea climbing up my gut, I managed to sit up and reached for the glass. When I grabbed it, I nearly dropped it on the floor, my fingers trembling. Clutching it harder, I took a small sip. The water in it felt sublime on my parched throat, but a moment later, the nausea intensified. I handed him the glass and lay back on the floor, hoping that he would now leave and let me die. To my horror, I realized I’d been sleeping in a pile of discarded Cheesy Wotsits, some of which had become embedded in my hair. An orange film covered my fingers, and a new cell phone lay among the garbage. When the hell had I bought a cell phone? I didn’t remember that, but trashing and buying cell phones had become something of a habit in London.

  He stared at me. “You’re fine, you say.”

  I swallowed hard, my mouth tasting of death. “I often sleep in processed cheese products. They ward away nightmares. An old fae superstition.”

  Apparently, my death would wait, because Gabriel seemed determined to revive me. He crossed to my suitcase, and I listened to him rummaging around for a minute, cringing slightly at the thought of him riffling through my tampons and lip-plumping gloss.

  He turned to me a few moments later with two white pills in the palm of his hand. “Lucky for you, I found some paracetamol.” He dropped them in my palm. “The trick is to take them before you go to bed. Staves off the hangover.”

  I swallowed the pills. “Thanks. At least I didn’t puke.” God forbid I lose my dignity. I brushed a mashed cheese puff from my hair.

  “You’d probably be feeling better if you did throw up.”

  I nodded weakly. “True. Can you help me up?”

  Crouching next to me, he slipped his arm around my back, his other one cradling my back. Slowly and carefully, he helped me get up to my feet. I wobbled, the world still tipping gently. Nausea rose in my throat, and I swallowed it down again. It was bad enough that Gabriel had found me passed out on the floor next to my discarded panties and neon orange snacks; I didn’t want to bathe him in vomit.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, looking around the room. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. I’ve had my share of benders, but you took this one to the next level. You’ve made drunken binges into some kind of art form.”

  Jagged shards of mirror littered the carpet, along with a few plastic bags, and piles of dirty clothes. I could spot only one or two mirrors left whole. I vaguely remembered buying them, but not breaking them. What had I seen in them?

  I swallowed hard, trying to think through the fog in my brain. I definitely remembered breaking a mirror after seeing…

  My mind shied away from the memory. Not yet.

  I breathed in deeply, for the first time realizing how bad I smelled. Just another entry in my ledger of complete humiliation. “I should probably shower.”

  “Do that,” he agreed. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

  I groaned, as if he had just threatened me with horrendous torture, but said nothing. I was in no position to argue. Instead, I stumbled out the door to the communal bathroom, crunching over the broken glass on my way out.

  After a shower, I brushed my teeth in the steamy bathroom, for the first time realizing what was missing. The screams. I couldn’t hear them anymore, and I nearly broke down and wept in relief at the realization. Their memory still whispered in the hollows of my mind, and I was pretty sure I’d never forget it. But they no longer seemed to reverberate in my skull. Maybe the whiskey had purified my brain.

  Freshly cleaned, I wrapped a white terrycloth bathrobe around myself, and opened the door to my disastrous hostel room. Gabriel sat in a chair in the corner of the room, a plastic bag of groceries by his feet. On the rickety table next to him, he’d laid out a plate with two croissants and a Starbucks cup.

  “You look better,” he said.

  “Yeah. I think some of the alcohol escaped my pores through the steam.” Already, the painkillers were getting to work on the throbbing in my skull.

  He frowned. “I found three empty bottles of whiskey. How long, exactly, did this bender last?”

  “Not even sure I can answer that,” I muttered, preferring not to mention the three other bottles that he hadn’t found.

  “What happened, Cassandra? I understand going out on the lash for a night, maybe two, but this is a bit much.”

  I squinted, struggling to find a way and explain it all. “Let me have some coffee first.” I sat on the corner of the bed and he handed me a cup of black coffee. I took a sip, wincing slightly at the strong taste. “This is helping.”

  He held out the paper plate with croissants, and I nibbled at the edge of one of them. As soon as the buttery, flaky taste hit my tongue, my stomach roared with hunger. I chomped into the croissant, flakes dropping all over my bathrobe. It only took another thirty seconds for me to get the second one.

  A sudden wave of nausea nearly made me spew the entire thing back out, but I took a few shallow breaths, clutching the side of the bed, until the sickness subsided. I slowly drank the rest of the coffee, feeling my mind slowly sharpening, the mists clearing from my skull. As they did, a memory rose in my mind—something I’d seen in the reflections. A woman burning to death at the base of the London Stone.

  I swallowed hard. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I didn’t. Scarlett called me two days ago, worried sick. She said something was wrong with you. That you sounded drunk, and that she wasn’t a psychologist but you also… sounded confused.”

  “She said I’d lost my fucking mind.”

  “Basically, yeah. She asked if I could find you, and for the past two days, that’s what I’ve been doing.” He arched an eyebrow. “Would have been helpful if you used your credit card.”

  “Force of habit after living as a fugitive.”

  “I found you eventually by following up on police reports. Some reports of a drunk and disorderly pink-haired woman on Cannon Street and near Walbrook. A break-in at a sports shop on Cannon Street, blood all over the glass. Seems someone wanted to get at the London Stone. Can you believe that? And a series of weird calls to dispatch about mirrors flickering strangely. Almost all those reports were less than a mile from here. So I checked all the nearby hotels, flashing my handy detective badge, searching for a woman with pink hair. For someone used to being a fugitive, you’re not exactly blending in with that look you’ve got going.”

  I nodded, and instantly regretted the gesture. “You raise a good point.”

  He sipped his own coffee. “Last time I saw you, you had a rude raven on your shoulder, and you said you were heading back to America. What happened?”

  “Odin is in an animal shelter, I believe.”

  He raised one eyebrow. Clearly, he wasn’t interested in the raven
.

  “I thought Roan needed my help.” I ignored Gabriel’s frown. “I gave him my word. But I was too late, and he wasn’t interested. So I came back.”

  “Okay.” He leaned back in his chair, then nodded at the shattered mirrors and chaotic state of the room. “And all this? Why did you spend a week getting trollied and punching windows?”

  I loosed a long sigh. “I was looking for my mom. My birth mother, I mean. I had a magic trinket that led me to the London Stone, and then I just felt it pulling me closer. It’s magical, Gabriel. And it’s full of horror. When I touched it, I could hear these screams, and they…” And they thrilled me. “As long as I touched it, it blocked out my own thoughts. But when I left, they just echoed in my mind. Gabriel, I don’t think I can explain. It’s like being in a room with a thousand people, all crying in pain. Except that room is your brain, and the screaming is drowning your thoughts. And you can’t leave, can’t shut your ears. I couldn’t sleep. I think the Stone is some kind of terror leech, like me. It soaks up fear, but it also doles it out again.”

  “And when you drank?”

  “I needed something to dull the screams, and that’s where the whiskey came in. And I kept returning to that Stone.” I clenched my hands together. “But there’s more. I heard a voice there, keening above the rest. I can’t explain why, but I think it was my mother. I mean, the woman who gave birth to me. I just felt it. I need to understand her connection to the Stone.”

  “I don’t understand. Is she alive?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s a memory of her. Or some of her essence, her terror, stored in the Stone.”

  “Maybe it’s one you’re better off leaving buried.”

  “No. I need to know who my mother was.” My voice cracked.

  He said nothing.

  “Do you think I’m nuts?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve told me some crazy things since I met you, and they all turned out to be true. You can walk into other dimensions through mirrors, so I don’t see why a spirit-filled rock can’t be real. But I have a better question for you. Why does it matter? You’ve told me that you don’t think it matters who gave birth to you. Lineage doesn’t matter, just whether you were raised with love. Nature and nurture and all that.”

  “I know.”

  “The London Stone is possibly a powerful relic. Just touching this Stone sent you on a week-long drinking binge that could have ended with you choking on your own vomit. I’ve never seen you look worse, and I’ve seen you in some pretty awful states.”

  “You know how to make a girl feel nice.”

  “You came here to find a killer. You did that. Now it’s time to move on. Your birth mother is gone, and there’s nothing you can do.”

  A lump rose in my throat. “I have no family left. The people who raised me are dead. I murdered my biological father. I know what I said, that lineage doesn’t matter…” I took a deep breath. “I’m not so sure it’s easy to believe that anymore. Not when I can feel myself feeding off other people’s terror. And it’s more than that. I felt like the Stone was… alive, or conscious. What if my mom’s consciousness is still trapped in there?” I rubbed my throbbing temple. “I don’t know. I have no idea how it works.”

  “And let me guess. This involves going deeper into the fae realm, even though it seems like it’s killing you, and to be honest, it’s ruining your life. How can you really be so sure it was your mom’s voice? You’ve never heard her voice before. Like you said—you have no family left. And I know that hurts but… is there a chance this could be wishful thinking? You’re a psychologist. How would you interpret it if someone told you they heard their mother’s voice in a rock?”

  “You don’t understand!” I gritted my teeth in frustration. “I could feel that we were connected somehow. I can’t explain it. I just felt it.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I hated myself for saying them. I’d never operated on gut instincts before. I always thought everything through, and here I was clinging to something just because of a feeling.

  “Let me just pose another explanation. The most obvious one is that you haven’t slept for days, and you were drunk, and you’re yearning for a family. And I don’t blame you, Cassandra, I really don’t. Being lost and alone isn’t a great feeling. And you’ve been struggling with it for how long now?”

  “My parents died when I was fourteen. I’ve been alone since then. But this time it just feels… different.” Hollowness ate at my chest, and I stared at the floor. “I know I felt a connection. I know it was her.”

  “Look, Cassandra.” He softened his tone. “You found out some shocking things about yourself, about your origins. Maybe I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but I think you’re desperate for a purpose right now, for an easy answer to make yourself feel better. That’s why you went to help Roan, right? What better way to avoid your own problems than trotting off to dive into the problems of the fae? You’re quite literally trying to escape to another world.”

  A wave of exhaustion hit me. “Okay. You’ve stated your opinion at this point. It’s noted. You want me to let it go. I think you’re wrong. I don’t need your help.” My head throbbed. “I need to find out what happened to my mom. I don’t have anyone else.”

  “You have Scarlett. You have me. And you look like you need my help right now.” As if to punctuate his point, he shot a sharp look at the wine bottle I’d left on the floor—the one with the word FANCY scrawled across the label in my handwriting.

  “Don’t patronize me.” The ice in my voice surprised me. “If you’re not going to help me learn about the Stone, you’re just getting in the way. And let’s be honest: You don’t know a lot about the fae to begin with.”

  Slowly, he rose to his feet. “Yeah, you’re doing a bang-up job on your own, Cassandra.”

  I said nothing. He crossed the room and left, closing the door silently behind him.

  Chapter 6

  Five minutes later and I was hurrying down the stairs after Gabriel, hastily dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. I moved as fast as my throbbing muscles would allow. I flung the hostel’s front door open, desperately searching the narrow street for him in the glaring sunlight. Since when had London gotten so damn sunny?

  Not catching any sign of him, I hurried down Carter Lane, taking a guess that he’d headed for St. Paul’s.

  As soon as Gabriel had left, I’d regretted turning him away. Maybe Gabriel was right—I wasn’t completely alone. What did it matter if they were blood relatives? Your family were the people who looked after you, who you cared about. Family was whoever was willing to show up in your shitty hostel room and get you through a brutal hangover. Who knows what my biological mom was like? I knew what Gabriel was like. Since I’d met him, he’d been there for me.

  When I got near St. Paul’s, the Restoration-era cathedral that towered over the churchyard, I surveyed the streets, searching for him. I scanned past the exhausted woman pushing a child in a stroller, and two men holding hands. No Gabriel.

  I hurried to the closest office building, across from St. Paul’s, and stared into one of the windows, feeling for its reflection, searching for Gabriel. The glass shimmered, and Gabriel appeared, his jaw clenched tight. I almost jumped into the reflection, but I felt too weak, and I couldn’t risk getting stuck. Instead I looked carefully, identifying his whereabouts by his surroundings. He was already striding down Cheapside, heading for the tube.

  I broke into a jog, each step firing sharp pain through my throbbing skull. A punishment well deserved. I didn’t slow down, ignoring the nausea and the dizziness.

  Every once in a while I’d stop, glancing in a shop’s window or a car’s side mirror, making sure I could still track Gabriel. This city, which had seemed so alien weeks ago, now felt like a familiar friend. I was starting to learn its curves and twists.

  Glimpsing him in the window of a coffee shop, I saw him turn onto Old Jewry, a narrow lane in the cente
r of the city. So he wasn’t heading for the tube, and he was only a minute away. I picked up my pace, fighting past my body’s objections. As nausea welled in my stomach, I turned into the alley and ran, its stony walls seeming to close in on me.

  I reviewed the past week in my mind. As an agent who had gone AWOL after an investigation, I probably no longer had a job with the Bureau. I’d pissed off Roan, Gabriel, and Scarlett. I’d broken my promise to Roan, told Gabriel he knew nothing and that I didn’t need him, and… I couldn’t entirely remember what I’d said to Scarlett, but I was pretty sure it hadn’t been nice. I wasn’t isolated because my family was dead. It had something to do with the fact that I’d been pushing everyone away, hiding out in a shithole with my whiskey bottles and dirty laundry.

  Catching my breath, I slowed down to a walk, then stopped altogether, resting my hands on my knees, my gut twisting. I wasn’t sure if it was the hangover, but a tear was sliding down my cheek. I should go back to my hostel, and I could find a way to call Gabriel later. I needed some hair of the dog to get through the damn day.

  As I was catching my breath, a horrible screech pierced the air, and I raised my eyes to the skies. Three large, silvery cranes circled the skies. Slowly, they glided lower. As I stared at them, a chill shuddered up my spine. They were too large to be simple birds, and something about their presence had cleared most of the people off the street, as if the passersby had begun to sense an otherworldly threat.

  Then, one after the other, they dove onto the street, landing on the pavement around me. Two in front of me, one behind. Death glinted in their eyes, dark as coal, and an icy chill fell over the air, raising goosebumps on my skin.

  The largest one quirked its head, then burst into a large form, cloaked in mist. When some of the fog cleared, a bony woman stood before me, draped in a crimson cloak. Tangled silver hair tumbled over her shoulders, and she glowed with a greenish-gray light. Her enormous black eyes transfixed me, and I hardly noticed the other cranes transforming. Waves of frigid air rolled off their bodies, and my teeth chattered.