The Lethe Stone (The Fae War Chronicles Book 4)

by Jocelyn Fox

“The Lethe Stone offers a chance to save the Crown Princess,” replied Mab.

  “Not save her,” said Finnead from behind Vell, a slight tremor in his voice. “It will not restore her. It will destroy her.” He fell silent as Vell held up a commanding hand.

  Mab glared at Finnead, white with fury. “I need not justify myself to you.”

  “Peace,” commanded Vell as Finnead stiffened. Mab looked away. “Queen Titania, is there a compromise to which you would be amenable?”

  Titania stared across the table at Mab. “I cannot condone the use of a Lethe Stone. It breaks fundamental laws laid down between our Courts centuries ago.”

  “Centuries are not so long a time,” Mab echoed with cold venom.

  Tess took a deep breath, feeling as though she were about to step off a cliff. “As the Bearer, I am not bound by the laws of your Courts.” She looked at Mab. “As an exchange for the construction of a warded Gate to the mortal world, I will retrieve this Lethe Stone from the Bone Sorcerer.” She shifted her gaze to Vell. “And for the safety of both our worlds, I will destroy this dark mage.”

  “And so it is made as a pact before the High Queen,” said Mab, triumph in her words.

  Vell nodded slowly. “So it is made as a pact.”

  Tess swallowed against the mingled excitement and confusion rushing through her. In the end, it had worked. In the end, they’d gotten Mab to agree to the Gate…but somehow she felt as though she had been the one trapped. She sat back in her chair and listened as the Queens began to discuss the details of the Gate-building, Titania with anger behind her golden beauty, Mab with a hint of satisfaction lurking in her words. Vell glanced at Tess and gave her a slight nod. The important thing was that they would be rescuing Luca and Merrick – she’d face whatever dangers she needed to bring them back into their world alive and whole. The Caedbranr trembled in its sheath as if in anticipation of this new adventure. Tess rested her hand on its hilt and smoothed her face, thinking that at least in the mortal world she wouldn’t have to endure any more councils.

  Chapter 14

  Ross woke to the rumble of May’s low growl and a strange scratching noise, like branches from one of the rose bushes brushing against the window. She struggled out of sleep, fumbling for her phone on the bedside table, groaning when she saw that it was just past two in the morning. Her entire body ached in the way it did when she didn’t get enough sleep between shifts. Darkness pressed around her in the bedroom, and her eyes tried to slide shut again.

  “May,” she said drowsily, thinking that the dog had to be growling at the three strange men in the house, “knock it off. They’re friends.”

  At Ross’s voice, the dog’s growl subsided for a moment, but then resumed, the sound more insistent. The strange scratching sound came again at the window. Ross blinked and realized that May wasn’t standing at the door to the bedroom, to the right of the bed. The dog was standing to the left of the bed, growling at the window.

  A surge of adrenaline swept away the haziness of sleep as Ross kicked away the quilt, reaching for the holster bolted into her headboard. Her hand curled around the familiar grip of the Beretta, forefinger pressing the button on the holster that released the weapon with a practiced motion. She slid out of bed, the gun held in in her right hand and pointed it at the floor as she made her way in a low crouch toward the footboard of the bed. The window was between the foot of her bed and the door of the closet. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ross peered around the edge of her bed and saw Mayhem, all four paws planted in a wide stance, facing the window squarely. The black-and-tan Malinois who had once worked to sniff out bombs and flush out enemies from abandoned buildings looked every inch a working dog, her hackles raised, lips drawn back from her white teeth, frozen in a crouch and ready to spring.

  Ross looked up at the window. Her breath caught in her throat and she brought up the Beretta, gripping it with both hands, her thumb sweeping off the safety even as a scream bubbled in her throat. She clamped down on the scream and reduced it to a guttural exhalation of shock, sounding as though she’d been punched in the stomach. Mayhem’s growls escalated.

  Dark liquid smeared the exterior of the window. Blood. Ross couldn’t catch her breath. She kept her finger straight and off the trigger. The scratching sound came again. It was a hand. A human hand scratching at the glass of her window, nails broken and bleeding.

  “Noah!” Ross shouted, keeping her voice just calm enough that it wasn’t a scream. She heard a thump from the living room, a pause, and quick footsteps down the hallway. The doorknob rattled once and she thought numbly that it was locked and that she should unlock it, but she didn’t move, staring up at the window, her Beretta pointed steadily at the creature scratching at the glass. The darkness and the blood smeared across the glass made the figure ghostly and strange. She made out the pale oval of a face, the thing’s motions jerky, like a life sized puppet violently controlled by its master. Bile rose in her throat as the thumping and scratching continued, scenes from zombie movies flashing in her mind’s eye.

  “Coming in,” came Duke’s muffled warning. That spurred her into action; she slid forward and took a knee by Mayhem, telling the dog with a quiet command to keep her position facing the window. May didn’t waver, not even when the door burst inward with the force of Duke’s kick. He slid into the room with practiced quickness, hugging the wall and striding toward the closet even as he cleared the other sectors of the room.

  “Window,” said Ross, resting one elbow on her knee so she could keep steady aim.

  “Roger,” responded Duke automatically.

  Whatever was outside the window had backed away momentarily, leaving only the rusty streaks across the pane of glass. But Mayhem didn’t relax, so neither did Ross.

  “Something trying to get in at the window,” said Ross, squeezing out the words. Her chest ached and her head began to pound.

  “What was it?” asked Duke tightly.

  “Not sure,” she replied. “I was asleep and May woke me up…it was scratching the window. All I saw was its hand.”

  “Did it look human?” Duke didn’t take his gaze from the window, but he lowered his pistol slightly, pointing the gun at the ground in the ready alert position. She followed suit.

  “I…I don’t know.” She pressed back the panic welling up within her. Work through it. Sort it out. Take a deep breath. “All I saw was its hand.”

  “It’s important, Ross. What exactly did you see?”

  “You think I don’t know it’s important, Noah?” she snapped, and then she gulped down a huge breath, let it out slowly. “I’m sorry. It…it scared me.” She gathered her thoughts. “From what I could see,” she said slowly, “it looked human. But not normal.”

  “How not normal?” asked Duke.

  “What normal person claws at a window until their fingers are bloody?” she asked. Mayhem’s stance relaxed marginally, but her amber eyes still watched the window.

  “I’m going on a perimeter check,” said Duke. “Stay here with the dog and stay sharp.”

  Ross opened her mouth to protest but then swallowed instead.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” Merrick said from the doorway, gray eyes luminous in the shadows. He held an unsheathed sword. A huge shadow that had to be Luca leaned against the wall behind him.

  Duke nodded curtly. “Stay tight on my six.”

  Merrick didn’t ask what it meant. He followed Duke down the hallway. Ross gave Mayhem a low command and the dog peeled away from the window, standing alertly by Ross’s knee. Ross kept the Beretta in her right hand and rested her left hand lightly at Mayhem’s neck, purely for her own comfort. She’d learned a few of the commands that May had utilized during her time as a working dog. It had seemed a good way to bond with the dog and keep her from missing her old job too much. Now Ross was grateful she’d stuck to the discipline as she walked toward the bedroom door. May tensed when Luca stepped in front of Ross. And then, to Ross’s bewilderment, Luca crouched
in front of the well-muscled dog. He said a word that sounded vaguely Scandinavian to Ross’s ears and held out a hand.

  Ross watched in amazement as Mayhem stepped forward and smelled Luca’s palm. May didn’t like strangers. She wasn’t aggressive – she was too well trained for that – but she didn’t voluntarily approach people. She always waited for Ross to give the okay. Luca let the dog sniff his hand thoroughly, and then he reached out and clasped May’s face with his huge hands. Ross sucked in a breath, expecting the Malinois to wrench herself from his grasp, growl or even snap at the big man. Instead, Mayhem sank into a crouch and whined low in her throat as Luca pressed his forehead to hers. The dog licked Luca’s face as he drew back, and he chuckled. Then he said another strange word to Mayhem – definitely not one of the words that she knew from training – and nodded at Ross. Mayhem wagged her tail a few times and backed up until she sat at Ross’s knee again.

  “What did you just do?” Ross asked in a low voice, distracted for the moment from the shock of that hand scratching at her window.

  “I said hello,” replied Luca with a wolfish grin, his teeth very white in the darkness.

  “Okay,” Ross said slowly.

  “She loves you,” Luca said. “Do not worry, I am not trying to steal her away.”

  “Good,” said Ross in that same slow, suspicious voice.

  Luca put out a hand to steady himself on the wall. May whined deep in her throat and Ross stepped forward to help. “Come on, you shouldn’t be up. How are you feeling?” She swallowed down her fear for Duke and guided Luca to the living room couch, glancing uneasily at the window, but no disembodied hand reached out of the darkness. No sooner had she settled Luca onto the couch than the crack of a gunshot split the night. Luca surged to his feet, an axe in his hand, and May moved between Ross and the front door. Her heart leapt into her throat and then sank back down into her chest, leaving her a bit light-headed, but she planted her feet and held the Beretta with both hands, watching the door. After what seemed like an eternity, someone walked up the front steps.

  “It’s Duke,” came the familiar voice. “Coming in!”

  “Come in,” responded Ross automatically, relaxing her grip on her gun.

  The doorknob turned and the runes on Merrick’s protective spell flared silver. Duke made a face as he slid through the doorway. The smell of cordite lingered around him.

  “You fired your weapon,” said Luca, his axe still held in one hand.

  “Yeah,” said Duke. He looked at Ross. “It was the guy from the gas station. The clerk.”

  “Oh my God,” Ross said, remembering the grizzled clerk who had peered out with such interest from behind the register, his curious gaze drawing her notice even through the glass.

  “He’s not dead,” continued Duke. “I need you to call an ambulance.”

  Ross drew in a shaky breath, and then her mind clicked back into gear. Her thoughts roared ahead at breakneck speed. “Okay. Get him up onto the porch.” Duke turned, and she caught his sleeve. “You can’t be here. And Merrick and Luca…” She shook her head. “Take them out back. There’s a shed down by the river.”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” said Duke tightly, his eyes fixed on her face. “And like hell I’m gonna go out back without a weapon.” He raised his eyebrows slightly at his last words, almost daring her to contradict him.

  “Well, you don’t have a choice about leaving me because that’s what needs to be done,” she said in a businesslike voice. “Look, Noah, I know you want to protect me but what if the police recognize you? Your photo was in all the papers, all over the local news. Most of the town came to your funeral, and that included the local cops.” She thought quickly. “Take the Beretta. I need the Glock.”

  They exchanged pistols in efficient silence. Duke pressed his lips together and nodded, disappearing again out the front door.

  Mayhem padded alongside Ross as she quickly walked a circuit through the house, checking the details of her story in her mind. After quickly adding a sports bra under her loose t-shirt, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table and dialed 9-1-1, her hands beginning to shake as she held the phone up to her ear. “Operator?” She made her voice breathless and summoned the thickness of held back tears. “I need the police. I need someone right away…there was a man who tried to break into my house, he tried to break my bedroom window and then he somehow got in the front door and…please send someone. I… I shot him.”

  Hot tears gathered in the corners of her eyes as the operator asked the standard questions. Ross quickly gave her name and address, walking back toward the living room with Mayhem on her hip. When she neared Luca, static suddenly laced the call. She stopped and took a step back, the operator’s voice wavering in her ear. “I… I’m sorry, you’re breaking up, the guy’s still alive… I need to help him, I don’t want him to die.” It was almost too easy to sound semi-hysterical. She stepped closer to Luca again and static swamped the call like a tidal wave. Experimentally, she held her phone out toward him and watched the screen flicker and fade into blackness.

  “Well, I hope I didn’t just fry my phone,” she muttered, and then she felt terrible. Duke just shot a stranger who had bloodied his fingers in some bout of insanity clawing at her window, Luca looked like he was about to pass out; the cops would be arriving in short order, and she was making flippant remarks about her phone. She slid the phone into the pocket of her gym shorts and considered the door. Should she leave the runes or try to clean them off before the police arrived? She decided against it, grabbing her medical kit instead. “Be ready to move,” she told Luca, who braced his elbows on his knees and nodded. Frustration and exhaustion etched lines onto his face.

  Ross opened the door just as Merrick and Duke carried a limp figure onto the porch.

  “His shoulder, didn’t hit anything major,” grunted Duke. “Not bleeding much, but I think he’s passed out just from the shock. Something…something was in him.”

  They set down the lanky clerk by the front door. Duke held something out to Ross. “The brass.”

  Ross stared down at the spent bullet casing gleaming in her hand. Then she shook herself and wiped it with the edge of her shirt, holding it between two fingers to put her prints back on it – she was the one who loaded her own magazines, after all – and dropped it onto the porch with a metallic clink. Then she looked at Duke. The heavy night air pressed around them. “What do you mean, something was in him?”

  Duke crouched by the unconscious man and pulled the man’s unbuttoned shirt aside enough for Ross to see the ugly blackened skin on the man’s chest. “The worst burn is over his heart. There are others at his wrists and one on his ankle.” He shook his head. “I have no idea what it means.”

  “A bone sorcerer,” said Luca from the doorway of the house.

  Ross blinked. “A…what?” Mayhem sniffed at the prone man and growled low in her throat. Ross gave her a quiet command and the dog subsided. The distant wail of sirens echoed through the humid darkness, spurring them all into action. Merrick reached for Luca, offering his shoulder to the ulfdrengr as they made their way down the steps of the porch. Duke stopped, looked down at the blood on his hand from holding pressure on the man’s wound, and smeared it onto the wrought-iron handle of the screen door and the doorknob of the front door. Then he strode into the shadows without saying a word. The sirens grew louder, and she gripped the Glock, suddenly realizing that if the police took prints from the gun, they’d find Duke’s prints, too. She had only purchased the weapon last month. Her mouth went dry but she held the gun in her left hand and grabbed a gauze pad from her medical kit with her right, tearing the package open with her teeth. The man didn’t even stir when she pressed the gauze to his shoulder.

  Two police cars careened down the small road, their flashing lights painting the oaks with garish hues of white, blue and red. An ambulance followed close behind, its siren splitting the night. Ross swallowed hard and winced when the first officer’s flashlig
ht nearly blinded her. Her heart pounded in her chest as she calmly told them that she held her Glock in her left hand and set it on the floorboards of the porch. Two other officers fanned out and searched the darkness with their bright lights, their weapons unholstered.

  “Are you hurt, ma’am?” said one officer.

  She blinked. “No.” She couldn’t find the energy to say anything else. May pressed against her side, watching the men moving about the house, a soundless growl vibrating in her chest.

  After the policemen ascertained that the scene was safe, the paramedics wheeled a stretcher out from the ambulance. One of them, an older man with a moustache, did a double take when he saw Ross. “Cooper? This guy tried to break into your house?”

  The other paramedic knelt by Ross and took over the pressure on the gauze, giving her a small nod.

  “Um,” said Ross, feeling sick. She must’ve run into the older paramedic during training or one of the temporary fills she’d taken at one of the smaller firehouses. “Yeah. I think…I think he’s on drugs or something, he broke his nails trying to claw through the glass on my bedroom window.”

  Two of the policemen glanced at each other when she mentioned drugs.

  “Are you hurt?” asked one of the policemen again, a younger guy that she vaguely recognized.

  “No.” She drew in a shaky breath. “No, I’m fine.” Sudden inspiration struck her. “Um, if it’s okay, I’d like to put my dog in the house. It’s already been a rough night for her.”

  “Sure,” said the younger policeman, shadowing her as she opened the door with shaking hands and motioned May into the living room. She gave the command to stay, and Mayhem whined low in her throat but settled down onto her belly to watch the door. When she shut the door, she looked down at the crimson smear on her hand. The officer saw her staring at her hand, frowned and then directed the beam of his flashlight at the door, picking up the smears of blood.

  “Would you mind telling us what happened, Miss Cooper?” he said slowly, glancing between the unconscious man’s bloody fingers and the gore smeared on the front door of Ross’s house. Ross took a deep breath and silently promised that she’d go to confession and light candles in the cathedral at Jackson Square in penance as she started to tell one of the biggest lies of her life.