“Darcey, what is it?” Samira asked.
“Do not do as she asks. I’ve witnessed what Noree does to those she considers weak.” The memory threatened to resurface, and I did my best to crush it down inside. Some fragments of it slipped through anyway, and the smell was something I would never forget. That, and Noree’s laughter as she rubbed the blood over her arms and smeared it down her face.
“I see you remember,” Noree said softly.
“You don’t see at all.” I was unable to keep my petty words to myself.
Noree’s body stiffened, and I inwardly cursed my own stupidity. Noree was a temperamental cow at the best of times, and insulting her really wasn’t going to win her over to my way of thinking.
I waited for her anger to lash out at me, but when nothing happened I released the breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding.
“You weren’t this stupid back when I was free to do as I pleased,” she said, a wistful expression falling over her face.
“We’ve all changed,” I said. “That was a long time ago.”
“That it was,” Noree answered. “I will offer the young witch my protection, but there is a condition.”
“I will give what I can,” I said, not promising anything until I at least heard what she wanted.
“I have an errand I need of you. Will you do it?”
“What sort of errand?” I asked.
“I need you to retrieve something for me. And if you agree to it, then I will look after your fragile little friend here.”
“Darcey, the apartment is fine,” Samira said. Her obvious unease was making it almost impossible for me to figure out Noree’s true intentions. I couldn’t exactly trust Noree, but even she wouldn’t back out of a deal. Samira would be safe.
“I can’t take the risk with the apartment,” I said to Samira. “If the hunters turn up again when I’m not there, you’ll be vulnerable. They’ll just find another way to hurt you, to draw you out. And she—” I pointed across the room to Noree—“can’t hurt you if the deal is struck.”
“If you are sure,” Samira answered. I waited until she nodded and rolled back her shoulders. She looked like someone who was about to face a firing squad rather than spend a few hours with Noree. I was pretty sure some would argue that the firing squad would be easier to cope with.
“Deal,” I said, turning back to face Noree with an outstretched hand.
Noree crossed the room, moving through the pieces of furniture like she could see exactly where everything was—and perhaps she could. Pausing in front of me, she wrapped her hand around mine. The sudden sharpness of her nails caught me unawares, and I gasped and fought to jerk back my hand. But Noree held on.
Blood trickled from between my fingers and dripped to the floor as Noree forced our joined hands up toward her face. I cringed as her tongue flickered out to lick the blood from my fingers.
“Your turn,” she said, pushing our joined hands toward my face.
I didn’t want to do it, but I had a vague recollection of Noree making similar blood oaths in the past. The oath would bind me to her, but it also meant she couldn’t go back on her word about keeping Samira safe.
I licked the blood as fast as I could, and the metallic taste coated my tongue like old pennies that tingled and popped with magic.
Noree broke free, releasing me as quickly as she’d grabbed me. She wrapped her arm around Samira’s shoulders and drew her over to the light filtering in through the uncovered window. “Come, child, let me take a good look at you.”
Noree studied her for what felt like an eternity; the blood in my veins slowed to a crawl as I waited to see what she was planning to do. The moment she lifted one wizened hand toward Samira, my body tensed and I prepared to throw myself between them. But Noree merely shot me a withering look before carefully lifting the collar away from Samira’s skin.
“There is powerful magic at work here,” she said, her voice sounding breathy and excited.
“It doesn’t come off,” I said.
“Oh, it comes off all right,” Noree answered. “Just not in any way that is useful to me at the moment.”
“I do not wish to die,” Samira said quietly. She didn’t sound as afraid as I had expected her to be. Noree could be overwhelming, and yet Samira stood before her as though she wasn’t a crazy person capable of killing with the flick of her wrist.
“Killing you would be a pointless waste,” Noree said. “The power of the collar relies on you remaining alive. To cut off your head would ensure that whatever magic flows through it would be destroyed forever.” She sounded almost disappointed, and I curled my lip in distaste.
“Relax, Darcey. I gave my word that I will not harm her, but I will not lie to make you feel better. You have known me for a very long time. You know my desire for power, and to one day right the wrong done to me.”
I nodded; there was no point in denying it. Noree had been as bloodthirsty as anyone I’d met, but her constant striving for more power had eventually led her to the Beast… and her downfall.
If I was being honest, my own search for power had led me to the same fate. But, then again, we were both still free, capable of feeling summer’s warmth touch upon our skin and winter’s cruel embrace. The Beast would never have that again. Not if I could help it.
“We have a deal, Noree,” I said. “You know the price for breaking a blood bond.” The expression Noree gave me was anything but friendly. There was a time when I might have shrunk away from it, but not anymore.
“Go, Darcey, I’ll be fine.” Samira met my gaze with her steady one, and I felt myself stagger almost imperceptibly with what I saw lurking in her eyes.
She trusted me. I was a stranger—someone she barely knew—and yet her faith in me was plain for all to see. The last person to trust me like that had been betrayed.
I spun away from her and stumbled toward the door, Noree’s laughter echoing in my ears.
Samira might not understand what exactly had transpired all those years ago, but Noree did. She had been a witness, which, in a weird way, was a type of ironic justice. MacNa had led me to Samira, and now I would hunt him down. He, too, had witnessed first-hand the extent of my betrayal—it was one of the reasons neither he nor the Noree would ever trust me again. To betray a friend was bad enough, but to betray your soul mate… Well, that was something only the darkest of Fae would ever contemplate. And yet it was exactly what I had done.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’d made it as far as the street in front of Noree’s restaurant before I regretted my decision. She really wasn’t someone to be trusted, and yet here I was getting ready to walk away and leave Samira behind. But she had agreed to a blood pact, and even Noree wasn’t stupid enough to try and break something like that.
I’d never been so uncertain of something in my entire life.
I jumped as my phone vibrated in my pocket, and I slipped it free of my jacket.
“Yeah,” I answered it, chewing my lip nervously and casting a quick glance over my shoulder at Noree’s darkened apartment.
“Darcey, you remember that bar I told you to check out?” Clary was whispering, which instantly captured my attention. I turned my focus to the conversation.
“The Dearg Hand, yeah. I haven’t had a chance to swing by there yet.”
“Well, get your butt over here. You’re not going to believe what’s here!” Her excitement was almost contagious.
“MacNa,” I said, knowing he was the only reason she would get so worked up. She’d always hated him, and I could imagine Clary being only too happy to see him locked away in Faerie.
“Nope, better.”
Her words prickled along my spine, causing my skin to erupt in goosebumps.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Clary. Out with it!”
“Another banshee,” she said. “I don’t recognise what clan she comes from, but she’s having a lovely chat with Daster.”
I knew the name instantly. He’d been
one of MacNa’s closest friends, and I couldn’t imagine that changing despite the years that had passed since I’d last seen him.
“You’re sure it’s a banshee?” I asked. I was practically certain that Clary wouldn’t be wrong, but it seemed too coincidental for a third banshee to be running around the city without my knowledge. I needed to hear her say it.
“Darcey Thorne, I didn’t sprout last season. I know a banshee when I see it.” I smiled at her irritation over being questioned.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, hanging up the phone and sliding it back into my pocket. Throwing my leg across the motorcycle, I gunned the engine and gave one last glance to the apartment above me.
I could feel Noree’s eyes on me, and her eagerness to see me gone, and that alone was enough to send my unease into overdrive. But what other choice did I have? I couldn’t risk Samira’s life by keeping her out in the open; if the Saga got their hands on her again, she wouldn’t live long enough to see the sunrise.
Of course, there was always the chance that I wouldn’t live to see the sunrise, especially if the strange woman Clary saw in the bar was a full-blooded banshee who decided to come after me. On the other hand, if I didn’t figure out the connection between her and MacNa, the Faerie Court would come for me.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But I was Unseelie—those were odds I could get behind.
Parking the motorcycle outside The Dearg Hand was the easy part. Arguing with the security guard at the door to let me inside was the hard bit.
“Your kind ain’t wanted here,” he said for what felt like the millionth time in his gruff Irish accent. Trolls were notoriously difficult to reason with at the best of times. At least the nursery rhymes about them had accurately depicted their obsessive need to guard things. Everything else, though, was way off base.
True, they were tall and butt-ugly, and this one was no exception to the rule. However, they appeared human, and if you could get past the stench of rotted meat on their breath, they weren’t the worst.
“I realise that, but I still need to get inside. I’m on official Faerie Court business, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to fall on the wrong side of the Court.”
“Yer not going inside,” he said again, blasting me with fetid breath as he planted his hand on the centre of my chest and pushed with his full weight. I stumbled back several steps, barely managing to stay on my feet as I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to rub my chest in the spot where he’d pushed hard enough to break human ribs.
Did I mention that trolls tend to be as dumb as rocks? Apparently, this fine specimen was no exception. Anyone with an ounce of grey matter between their ears didn’t want to fall on the wrong side of the Court, and his answer proved that the only thing floating between his ears was cotton wool.
Pulling one of my iron blades free of the protective shield at my hip, I adjusted the grip. The metal immediately began burning my hands, but the welts I’d received from training helped me to ignore most of the pain. The troll eyed me warily and shifted his weight from one foot to the other as I started forward at an easy jog.
“Do you ever do anything inconspicuously?” Clary’s voice cut through my concentration. I halted, glancing over my shoulder to where she stood half-concealed in the shadows next to the door. I’d been so busy arguing with the troll I hadn’t even noticed her sneaking up on me.
“I’m a banshee, Clary. The Fae don’t like my kind—we give them the willies.” I shot a pointed glance in the troll’s direction.
She sighed and stepped from the shadows. Without a word, she thrust her hand into the air and the ground beneath our feet began rumbling and roaring as tree roots as thick as my arms burst forth toward the sky, throwing dirt in every direction.
Her face was a mask of concentration as she pushed her hand toward the troll. The roots instantly followed her movements, winding their way around his legs and arms, lifting him from the ground, and pinning him to the wall.
“Get me down, ye silly bitch.” His accent grew stronger as panic filled his face.
“What did you call me?” Clary asked, and from the corner of my eye I caught sight of one root sliding across the ground toward the trussed troll.
“Enough, Clary, he’s not going anywhere,” I said, gently touching her arm.
The look she gave me caused me to swallow back my fear. She was my friend, and I knew she wouldn’t hurt me, but the expression in her eyes said otherwise.
I’d heard of tree Fae going mad before the end, but I’d never seen it. Practically a millennia had passed since the last tree Fae had died, and while the history books were a little sketchy on what to expect, there was no denying the tumultuous power that spiralled in Clary’s gaze.
“Did I ask your opinion, Darcey? Perhaps you deserve to be pinned up there like him.” Her voice was hollow and distinctly unlike my friend.
“Clary, please, I know you can hear me.” I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around her. At the same time, a root found my ankle and slowly climbed the calf of my leg.
She blinked rapidly, but the power still spiralled in her eyes. The root’s grip on my leg tightened. The iron in my hand burned, and without thinking I pressed it to Clary’s back.
She screamed and writhed in my grip, the iron searing through the flimsy fabric of her dress to reach her iron-sensitive skin. The root wrapped around my leg tugged on me violently, but I held on to Clary, keeping the metal firm against her body.
The moment the root fell away from my leg, I lifted the iron from her and pulled back enough to stare into her eyes, which had returned to normal. She glared at me and jerked free of my hold.
“What the hell was that for?” she said, a low hiss escaping her as she rolled her shoulders back.
“Can’t have you going all supernova on me, now can I?” I smiled in an attempt to soften my words, but Clary’s expression shifted. She took in the scene around us, and my gut twisted as I watched comprehension dawn in her eyes. She swallowed hard and gave me a jerky nod.
“What do we do with him?” she asked, her voice surprisingly steady despite the haunted look in her eyes.
“Leave him. It might teach him not to get involved in Faerie Court business from now on.” I glared up at the troll, who was fighting and writhing against the grip of the roots still pinning him to the wall of The Dearg Hand.
I headed for the pub, stepping past the mess the roots had made of the road and footpath. As I pushed open the front door, warmth and noise spilled over me. The smell of magic and hops filled the air, giving it an intoxicating atmosphere that had been created to keep the Fae docile and encourage them to spend money. Clary joined me, her nose wrinkling in disgust as she sucked in a deep breath of the same spicy scent.
“I hate places like this,” she said. “It’s always so bloody stifling.”
“Which part?”
“Mostly the magic. Every time I take a breath, I’m forced to filter it out through the root network, pushing clean air back out into the atmosphere. The polluted air of Falcon is hard enough to deal with, but this takes the biscuit altogether.” She drew in another deep breath, and I could see the magic in the air settling around her nose and mouth, thousands of tiny, sparkling lights that dotted her skin like glitter.
“Jesus,” I said, unable to help myself. In all the years I’d been friends with Clary, I’d never seen magic behave in that way around her. I knew she could filter it from the air, but I didn’t know she could make it manifest.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It looks like glitter.” I gestured to her face.
She hastily scrubbed the back of her hand against her face, and the magic drifted toward the floor in tiny, brightly-coloured swirls.
“Shit.” She stared down at the streaks across her hand.
“Clary, what’s happening?” I asked. I had my suspicions, and I had heard the stories, but the true answer could only come from Clary.
“It doesn
’t matter. We don’t have time to—”
“Like hell it doesn’t matter! Clary, I know the stories. Is it true?”
She lifted her face, and one fat, glittering tear rolled down her cheek.
“They’re true, but”—She scrubbed away the tear—“I know you won’t let me go supernova like the others did.” She gave me a watery smile.
“Clary, I—” She cut me off with a wave of her hand, the expression in her eyes hardening.
“We don’t have time to discuss it. Nobody lives forever, Darcey. You, above all else, know this.”
Her words struck a chord with me. I did know it, but being forced to watch someone you care about wither away and die was more than most were fit to handle. I’d witnessed my fair share of human grief. Death had a way of ripping lives apart, and its finality was beyond cruel. But a human life was fleeting. Humans expected death, and yet still had the capacity to be surprised when their time came.
The Fae were supposed to be immortal…
We could be killed, but only if we were foolish enough to wander into the way of a stray iron blade.
Just another of the great lies, really. It had helped many of us forget that death would eventually catch up to us. Even I, surrounded by death, had forgotten. And now, as I stared into Clary’s eyes, I felt my heart ache for the friend I would lose to the great abyss.
“There she is.” Clary jabbed me in the ribs hard enough to snap my attention back to the situation at hand.
Casting my gaze over the busy pub, I searched for the one Clary believed to be a banshee. It didn’t take much effort to find her. It was almost as though I was drawn to her—and perhaps I was.
She stood near the bar with her back to the crowd surrounding her. Her hair was shorter than mine and cut around her shoulders in a style that vaguely looked as though she had taken the scissors to it herself. That would almost certainly have been the case for me, but everything else about her screamed money, and so the precision of the choppy layers had probably cost her a small fortune.
She’d also obviously discovered the same issue as I had with the colour of her hair. No human had hair like a banshee’s—all white and silver streaks, with strands of blue and pink pearl giving it highlights that no hairdresser could ever hope to achieve. It looked natural, which the humans always noticed. Perhaps it was in their genes; we were, after all, predators. I added bright blue streaks to mine, giving it the illusion of an expensive dye job, and so the humans skimmed straight over it. The woman at the bar had opted for hot pink ombre, and the bright colour clashed with her natural ghostly pallor, making her complexion look almost pasty.
Banshee Blues (Bones and Bounties Book 1) Page 14
