by Lucy Auburn
I made a sound of surprise, squelching it before I could get us caught. The other man—who was an identical yet somehow different version of Leon—glanced over at me and smirked a sexy little grin. “Hey there,” he murmured, “I’m Leo.”
“Shut up,” Leon muttered, grabbing his elbow. “C’mon, we’ve gotta take this guy out. Selena, hang back and don’t join in unless we ask you to.”
“Oh-okay.”
I clutched my knife tight, fingers slick as the scene in front of me unfolded frighteningly fast. The van’s engines rumbled. Leon’s double smashed the driver’s side window and grabbed the collar of the man inside, trying to pull him out. He hissed and spit some kind of sticky substance onto Leo’s face. The double stumbled back, clawing at his head.
Meanwhile, Naomi had opened up the passenger side door and grabbed the crazy venom-spitting guy’s helper. Her knife against his throat kept him still.
She yelled, “Selena!” and I hesitated only for a moment before I went running over to her, knife out. “Put that thing away. I need you to subdue this guy, not stab him.”
He was kicking and yelling, but apparently his boss didn’t want him back. The van sped off without him, the open passenger door swinging back and forth with the momentum.
Dropping my knife, I knelt in front of Naomi and her captive. “What do you want me to do?”
“Drain him!”
She sounded exasperated. Cringing, I put my hands on the man’s face and fought to get that connection started. It was hard with so much going on around me; Leon was kneeling in front of his double Leo, cursing as he tried to get the sticky stuff off his face.
But there was nothing I could do for them. What I could do was this. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on that part of me that was becoming more and more familiar now. And I pulled at the energy I felt inside the man.
He tasted strange, like cigarette ash and ground-up butterfly wings. I cringed at the taste, fighting through my disgust to get a true connection going.
“Take as much as you can,” Naomi said. “We need him unconscious. And try to figure out what the hell that poison is.”
I nodded sharply. “What did that other guy do?”
“Killed your friend.” The young man, previously so mundane-looking, grinned a wide and frightening smile of delight. “He won’t make it.”
Naomi pressed her knife against his neck until a line of blood trickled down. “Leon is stronger than you think.”
“Just tell us how to cure him.” Remembering all that I’d learned, I fed energy back to him until I could see the sway of seduction in his eyes, ignoring how grimy it made me feel to do this. “What do we do?”
Voice soft, the man said, “Alcohol will fix it.”
“The wine.” Urgently, Naomi yelled, “Leon, go get that bottle of wine we left behind!”
“Now is not the time, Naomi.”
“It’s for the poison!”
Realizing what she meant, Leon left his double, who was now curled on the ground clawing his face, and ran across the street heedless of cars to grab the bottle of wine. The whole time the man just stared at me, face slack, not fighting Naomi at all.
“I think you can let go of him now,” I said, almost miserable at how well my powers worked, even as I felt the strength inside me grow from stealing his. “Do you want me to put him to sleep?”
“Wait until we see proof that the cure works.”
It didn’t take long. As soon as Leon was back he poured the alcohol on Leo’s face. The poison dissolved, leaving behind red and blistering skin. Leon grabbed his almost-twin and pulled him towards him, and in a bizarre trick of the eyes suddenly they were one again instead of two. The only sign that anything had ever been wrong was the subtle rash across one of Leon’s cheeks.
He joined us, holstering his gun. “I should be alright now. Leo is healing. This guy?”
“We’ll question him back at the office. Your place or mine?”
“Obviously the Collective. There’s no way I’m letting you ‘question’ a suspect at your place with your knives.”
Naomi smirked. “Can’t hate a girl for trying. Selena, go ahead and knock him out.”
“Got it.”
Trying to stay steady, I drained energy from him. His eyes drooped closed as I took more and more, taking on some of the same weakness as Tae Min—only this time, I didn’t have to feel bad about it. Naomi sheathed her knife as he sagged in her arms, and I broke the connection between us.
“Let’s go.” Leon took the guy’s weight from Naomi. “With any luck, this will blow a hole wide open in this case.”
Chapter Thirty
“You won’t get anything from me.” The man we’d brought back to the interrogation room laughed as we tried, once again, to question him. I’d put everything I had into seducing him, but while he was compliant he didn’t answer any of our questions. “I don’t know anything. As soon as I realized you had a succubus I made myself forget everything I knew.”
I glanced over at Leon. “Is that true? Could he do that?”
“A memory fae of some sort could. If he came out of the trance you put him in while we were transporting him, it would’ve only taken a moment for him to realize what was going on and bury his memories deep.”
Naomi rolled her shoulders and pulled out one of her knives, using its sharp edge to peel off the tips of her fingernails. “If I were a dark fae demon summoner I’d probably pick accomplices who couldn’t be questioned by the police. It makes a certain amount of sense.”
Frustrated, I let go of the man’s hands and leaned back. “So there’s nothing you can tell us at all?” He met my eyes, his pupils still blown from being taken over by my powers. “I would really appreciate any help you can give me.”
He licked his lips, struggling between the desire to tell me everything he knew and whatever voodoo he’d done to himself to make him impossible to turn. “There is one thing I still know,” he said, in the voice of someone who’d been thoroughly drugged. “If you go to the Shadow Realm, you’ll find someone who has all the answers.”
I leaned forward at this, sensing there was more he wasn’t telling us. “Who?” Once again I placed my hands over his, folding my powers into him until his eyes were almost completely pupil. “Give us a name. Please. I would appreciate it so much.”
Naomi cocked an eyebrow at me from her spot behind the suspect, smirking at my tactics. I ignored her pointed look, watching his face go slack as the powerful thing that lived inside me took away the last vestiges of his free will. His voice was slurred like a drunk person as he finally said, “Vincent Vikander.”
I jerked back, and Naomi frowned at me. “That name ring a bell?”
Overwhelming darkness. A face looming in the shadows. “Kind of.”
“Well then.” Leon reached over and uncuffed our suspect from the interrogation table, pulling him into a standing position. “Let’s get this guy to holding and head to the Shadow Realm.”
“I don’t like the idea of this,” I said for what was probably the fiftieth time. “Couldn’t we find some other way to interrogate this guy?”
Leon and I were standing outside Petyr’s office, waiting for him to get done with his typical ambassador meetings so he could take us to the Shadow Realm to meet with this “Vincent” guy. After the way he’d reacted when I accidentally went into the Shadow Realm, I didn’t really look forward to asking Petyr to take us on purpose.
But apparently we had to go. “Dark fae like Vikander can’t leave the Shadow Realm,” Leon said. “He helped lead the rebellion. He’s been banished from other realms because of it.”
“I wish I was with Naomi hunting down that other guy in the van,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest. “Do we really have to go back there?”
Leon gave me one of his signature glowering faces. “If you’re going to be my apprentice, you need to be prepared to go anywhere to hunt down criminals. The Shadow Realm is just another realm. Besides, your
family built it.”
Not my family. Not really. Just whatever people had abandoned me, their flesh and blood daughter, as a baby. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”
Leon shrugged. “Define dangerous.”
Great. I could already tell that this was going to be an adventure. “It just had to be a dark fae, didn’t it?”
“Could be worse. I met Vikander once, years ago on one of my first cases for the precinct. He’s not bad.” Leaning back in his chair outside Petyr’s office, Leon seemed to go on a trip down memory lane. “Kind of a dick sometimes, but hardly the sociopath killer you’re thinking of. And he doesn’t spit venom.”
“Just great.”
The fae Petyr was meeting with must have gone out the back door or via one of those transportation rings, because the office was empty when the ambassador opened his door for our appointment. Petyr looked tired, dark circles forming under his eyes, his clothes slightly wrinkly and not at all like his usual self.
“Come on in,” he said to us. “This is about a case?”
“Yep.”
“You’ll have to make it quick, then. I only have fifteen minutes before my next appointment.”
“It won’t take long,” Leon said as the door closed behind us. “We just need you to take us to the Shadow Realm.”
Petyr’s head whipped towards me at that, his eyes incredulous as he glanced back and forth between me and Leon. “You can’t be serious.”
“We need to question a suspect. It’s our best lead in this demon summoning case,” Leon explained. “And I’ve been before.”
The ambassador frowned, crossing his arms over his chest belligerently. “What about Selena? You’re seriously going to take her with you?”
For some reason Petyr’s words erased all the fear and nervousness inside me and replaced them with irritation. “I’ve been questioning suspects this whole time. And it’s not my first time in the Shadow Realm.” Leon seemed surprised at that, so I told him, “It was an accident. Apparently something to do with my Lightblood powers.”
“Realm walking.” Leon grimaced. “Petyr, you should’ve told me earlier that she’d already shown those abilities.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the ambassador said. “I’m not bringing her back to the Shadow Realm. It’s too risky.”
I started to argue with him, but to my surprise Leon cut in on my behalf. “It’s too risky not to bring her, Petyr. The realms are her heritage. The sooner she learns how to navigate the pathways between them, the safer she’ll be. You know that.” He took a step towards Petyr, somehow emphasizing every one of the two inches he had on the ambassador. “And you also know that if you turn us down, I can just hire a freelancer to take us, which is what I’ll do to solve this case. My directive to work on this case for the Elders supersedes your authority, and Selena is my apprentice to train as I wish.”
Though he grimaced at Leon’s forceful use of his authority, Petyr gave a sharp nod. “Fine. Take my hand. I’ll have to drop you off—I’m not authorized to stay in the Shadow Realm for very long. How much time to you need?”
“Ten minutes should be more than good enough.”
“Deal.”
And just like that I was heading back to the place that almost gave me nightmares the first time around. This was one of those moments where my vow to myself to be strong was easier said than done; even the name “Shadow Realm” gave me hibbie jibbies. I was committed to it now, though, so when Petyr put his ring on and reached out, I took his hand, and Leon grabbed hold of my shoulder.
“It’ll be fine,” the detective murmured to me, his grip surprisingly reassuring. “I’ll be with you the whole time. We’ll just pop in, ask a few questions, and pop back out again.”
“In and out of a world of complete darkness and evil fae. What could go wrong?”
Petyr gave me a look. “You can back out of this at any moment, you know.”
“I know. But I won’t.” I lifted my chin stubbornly. “Take us to the Shadow Realm.”
“Very well. Look straight ahead, and don’t head off the path, whatever you do,” Petyr warned me. “You’ll see a lot of strange things if you do. Alarming things. So just stare straight ahead.”
I swallowed. “Got it.”
And then the world around us blurred into a stream of images and light. It was a good thing Leon had a tight grip on my shoulder, because if I hadn’t been grounded I might’ve forgotten Petyr’s advice and looked into the swirling chaos. This was nothing like when we went to the Realm of Light, and I saw laughing people all around me. Instead the images that lurched in the corners of my vision were all horrifying: twisted bodies, dripping blood, fire. I heard distant screams and had to fight against nausea.
Thankfully it was all over with quickly enough. We lurched into that same overwhelming darkness I’d been in before, but now I could see a faint path ahead of me, and a small glowing lantern that gave off a warm orange-and-yellow light. Ahead, like pinpricks in the darkness, I saw dozens of other lights. They must have been a distance away, because they looked as small as fireflies from here.
“I can’t stay long,” Petyr said, dropping my hand. “Follow the path. As soon as I’m home I’ll set a ten minute timer.”
He disappeared, leaving me and Leon in the dark. Dropping his hand from my shoulder, Leon did that thing again where he split into two different versions of himself.
“Always good to have backup in times like these,” Leon said. “Ready to go?”
“Sure. Just...” I glanced between the two of them. “It’s hard to get used to there being two of you.”
Leo flipped his collar up. “Don’t get us confused,” he said, cutting his eyes over at me. “I may look like him, but I’m my own man.”
Leon made an exasperated face at his double.
“Uh, okay. I won’t... get you confused.” Despite their superficial similarities, it wasn’t hard to keep them straight.
They had completely different attitudes and body language, different hairstyles—Leo somehow seemed to have gel in his hair—and most importantly they looked at me different. Leo had this distinctive smirk, and an almost smarmy look on his face at all times. Leon was more likely to look annoyed or frustrated—or so intense that I felt it down to my bones.
We walked down the path together, Leon taking first position and Leo in the rear. The path beneath us seemed to grow both in size and strength the more steps we took down it. Soon a landscape formed in the darkness, murky and half-lit by floating lanterns near my eye level.
There were trees with twisted trunks, winding around each other and opening their thin canopies towards a dark sky. Tinkling bells were strung between the trees, catching a lazy wind that wound between them and rang them softly. Streams crossed the path, and bridges made of thin bamboo brought our feet over them and to the other side.
“See?” Leon glanced over his shoulder and gave me a look. “It’s not all murder and blood in here.”
“It’s still creepy,” I pointed out. “There aren’t even stars in the sky.”
“There are up ahead. Take a look.”
We’d reached the end of the path. It stopped in a flat marble courtyard, where a fountain depicted a crescendo of a battle between two opposing sides. A figure sat at the edge of the fountain, his back to us, but I felt something familiar about him anyway. An arch served as the entrance to the courtyard, curving far above our heads, reliefs carved into its surface. I glanced up as we neared it and saw that there were stars in the sky here—strange constellations that seemed to hang just above my head instead of millions of miles away from me.
Leon started to go under the arch only to be stopped by an invisible force field that sprung up in front of him. He growled, the sound low and beastly in his throat, a reminder that the man in front of me wasn’t quite human.
“What, too weak to go through?” Leo taunted. The detective’s double stepped around me, shooting me a sly grin as he headed towards the arch. When the force
field stopped him from going through, too, he grunted in disappointment. “Maybe the beast can make it.”
They looked like they were about to regroup and turn into the wolf, which was something I wanted to see. But the voice that floated out of the courtyard stopped them.
“You won’t be able to come in,” Vincent said, standing smoothly and turning towards us. “This particular area was created to come to life only when a certain presence returns to the Shadow Realm. And it will welcome only her in.”
The detective, newly rejoined with his double, gave me a piercing look. “What do you know about this?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Vincent walked to the edge of the courtyard and looked at me through the archway. “I’ve been waiting for you to return, Selena.”
Now that he was up close, there were things about his face that I hadn’t noticed before. Like the golden tint to his brown skin, or the fact that his eyes were a blueish grey.
“How could you have possibly known that I’d be here?” I asked him. “What’s going on?”
In response, he held out a hand for me to take. “Come with me and I’ll answer all your questions.”
Leon growled. “I don’t like this.”
“We only have a couple of minutes before the ambassador returns,” I pointed out. “And I’m not defenseless, as you keep reminding me.”
Grudgingly, the detective gave a short nod. “Do what you have to do,” he said, arms crossed. “I’ll be right here in case it goes south.”
Vincent gave Leon a smarmy look. “Don’t pull a muscle trying to get through my magic, Detective Hardwick. I built this place to be completely private.”
Leon snarled. “And to think, I defended you.”
“Let’s get this over with.” I ignored Vincent’s hand, stepping towards the archway by myself. “This thing won’t zap me, will it?”
