by Brook Rogers
He pulled some blankets out and threw them on the floor, then arranged them with his boot before laying me down. Despite how gently he did it, it still hurt. Everything hurt. The throbbing in my chest matched the set of drums pounding inside my head. More wetness trailed down my lips, and I struggled to raise a shaky hand to wipe it away.
Towering over me, he stripped off his shirt—a sight I would have appreciated more if I thought there was a chance I’d live through this. Ice-blue eyes stared down at my face, those white flames springing to life, and he lowered one giant hand to thumb away the blood I hadn’t been able to reach. Then he was lying down behind me, tucking me into his warmth, covering us both with another blanket.
Exhausted, I didn’t notice when the chattering of my teeth slowed, or that as soon as his skin touched mine, the throbbing pain lessened. Cocooned within his massive frame, I slept.
And it was like coming home.
Chapter 12
Climbing up from the depths of sleep, I snuggled into the covers. Something smelled divine—rich and chocolaty—and my stomach gave a loud growl. How long had it been since I’d eaten?
My nose was pressed into something soft, my legs weighted down. Disoriented, I tried to pull them free but failed. Realization slammed into me, and I froze.
Oh dear gods.
A deep chuckle rumbled over me, the vibration absurdly pleasant. This was even more awkward than disentangling after a one-night stand. I never let myself fall asleep with anyone I had sex with. The act of actually sleeping with someone was incredibly intimate, and there had never been a man I trusted that much.
Dubhlain lifted his leg off mine, allowing me to roll out from underneath him. Embarrassment heated my cheeks. Why did he have to smell so good?
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.” His eyes crinkled with barely suppressed humor. Again, he was enjoying himself at my expense.
I sat up, and he tucked his arms behind his head and gave me a lazy grin, his muscled torso flexing with the movement. I turned my head away quickly, which earned me another rumbling laugh.
I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but how are you even here?”
The amusement finally shifted to discomfort. “It’s the bond, lass, though I shouldn’t be feeling it so far away.” He unfolded his arms and pushed into a sitting position, his leg brushing mine in the process. The contact sent tingles fluttering through my core.
Last night’s struggle began to seep back into my memories. “Did you see her?”
“Who should I be seeing?” he asked, confused.
“The insanely beautiful woman in the pale skirt. She was here last night, right before you showed up.”
He stared at me as if I was the one with a few screws loose. “No one was here when I arrived—just you, on the brink of collapse. Maybe you should tell me what happened?”
I bristled at the command in his tone. No matter how many interactions I had with him, that cavemanlike demeanor set my teeth on edge. My body wanted to fuck him, but my mind said fight.
“Raywen,” he prompted.
Oh, we were on a first-name basis now? He’d never even bothered to formally introduce himself. I scowled. “You know an awful lot about me, and I know nothing about you. Time to level the playing field, don’t you think?”
He spread his arms wide, as though he had all the confidence in the world. “What would you be wanting to know?”
I squinted suspiciously. That was too easy. Lately, everyone talked in riddles when all I wanted were straight answers. Why would he be any different?
I decided to push the big red button first thing, to gauge how open he would be. “Who or what is Infinity?”
When he tensed and his eyes grew wary, I knew the question had hit its mark. To my surprise though, he answered, “A private security company.”
That much I’d already found on the internet, so it wasn’t really news. I wanted more. I waved my hand for him to continue, and he exhaled loudly.
“It’s a group of very powerful people who do the things Enforcement can’t or won’t.”
Yes! Now we were getting somewhere. “Like what?”
It was his turn to roll his eyes. “I can’t tell you that. What I can tell you is that there’s a lot of corruption and political pandering in Enforcement ranks. Infinity takes care of the problems that are untouchable for them. We also specialize in problems outside the realm.”
That bit caught me off guard, and I mulled it over. My job in retrievals was pretty far removed from the inner machinations of Enforcement, but I couldn’t help but notice how certain individuals were treated differently when they broke the rules. Having to give that werewolf special handling was a prime example. I wasn’t going to tell Dubhlain that though, not until I could confirm it on my own.
“So you work for them?” I prodded.
He tilted his head slightly. “Sometimes. Officially, nobody works for them, because they don’t exist.”
Right. So they were the boogeymen for Supes. That explained why my supervisor was so skittish when I brought it up. “What about Conall and Bran?”
At the different line of questioning, he visibly relaxed. “They’re my brothers. Not biological, mind you, but in every other way that matters. We’ve been together a long time.”
“By ‘a long time,’ you mean . . . ?”
He grinned, and his gaze took on a faraway quality. “Been fight’n together since Tyrone’s Rebellion.”
I blinked, momentarily stunned. Then I did the math in my head. No way. “You mean the Nine Years War?”
He nodded.
Holy hobgoblin nuts. That would make him, what, five hundred years old? Gods, he was as old as Grand-mère. Dragging a hand over my face, I decided right then and there—no more sleeping with old geezers who looked thirty. Miss Kitty wasn’t put off by the age discrepancy at all, but my brain was having trouble with it.
The druid clearly enjoyed my reaction, but he soon sobered and changed the subject. “You ready to tell me how you came to be in such a bad way last night?” I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “Start with why you’re in the Hell Plane.”
He just couldn’t help himself when it came to barking orders at people. Finding out he had grown up in the sixteenth century explained a lot. But I was a twenty-first-century girl. It would be a fun pet project to bring him up to speed on how one should treat the fairer sex, but for now I let it slide.
“I came for some demon fire,” I said.
He arched an eyebrow.
“I owe a witch, okay?” He really didn’t deserve an explanation, but the words just tumbled out. “I was also trying to find out if the rumor about the outcasts is true.” Gods, it was like diarrhea of the mouth.
“And?”
He was so irritating. I threw my hands up in frustration. “And nothing. The hot chick shot me out of a tree and tried to yank out my soul before I could learn anything,”
“Our souls,” he said softly.
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. I sputtered to a halt, panic and disbelief rising in my gut. “But you did something to it, right? I mean, the mark hasn’t changed at all since you healed it. Are you saying you felt what she did?”
He nodded as if I should know this. “I told you all I could do was slow it down. The bond is still very much there, Raywen, our spirits already fusing. That’s how I found you. It’s how you came to me a few weeks ago. She must have sensed the mark wasn’t fully formed and tried to remove it. Normally, it takes years to reach this point.” Almost to himself, he added, “Or that’s what we thought.”
Frustration and anger battled inside me. Spinning around to give him my back, I swept my ponytail to the side and pointed at the tattoo. “You need to explain this.”
He reached out and trailed a finger over one of the feathers. I couldn’t suppress the shiver. He wasn’t just touching my back; it felt as if he were stroking something deep within me. The bond hummed lightly
at the contact.
“That’s new. Who’s your artist? They do fantastic work,” he said appreciatively.
I snorted. “Are you cracked? You gave me this when you ‘slowed’ the bond.” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Way to pick at someone’s insecurities.” I paused for effect. “Dick move.”
Genuine confusion twisted his face as I turned back around. His hand still hovered in the air, as if he wanted to touch the wings again, but when he saw how angry I was, he dropped it to his side. “Raywen, I didn’t do that.”
I wanted to call bullshit, but his statement rang of truth. If the wings weren’t a byproduct of his magic, then where did they come from? The timing was suspicious, to say the least.
He stood abruptly, grabbed his discarded shirt, and pulled it back on. I remained sitting, still sorting through everything we’d discussed.
His voice was clipped and formal when he spoke again. “You need to tell me everything you remember—from the time you woke up in this shack till I got here. Describe, in detail, what the woman looked like again.”
The sudden shift in his demeanor had me running to catch up, at least mentally. Men were aces at compartmentalizing. Taking a page from that playbook, I built a box in my mind labeled “fuckery” and stuffed this whole situation inside. That kind of thing actually does work; I felt lighter instantly.
While I explained the events from yesterday, Dubhlain moved around the shack, stopping at the table to run his hands over the assortment of rocks still lying there. I finished with the last thing I remembered before it all got fuzzy: Aaron telling the woman they had found whatever they’d been searching for.
He stared at me for a beat. “We need to go to the mine.”
Chapter 13
I hadn’t expected anyone to still be at the mine, but the silence was eerie anyway. We trudged up to the dark, empty cave mouth, all traces of the green light from before gone. Thick timber supports lined the yawning black tunnel, and picks and shovels lay strewn haphazardly on the ground, as though discarded in a hurry. The cart the Fae had been using sat on its side, dirt and rocks spilling out onto the tracks.
Dubhlain slapped a rune on his bicep, and it lit up with golden light, solving the problem of how we would navigate inside. Druid magic definitely had its perks.
As we made our way down the tunnel, a strange heaviness to the air made the hairs on my arms stand up. I couldn’t decide what it meant. Something big was watching—holding its breath. Waiting.
Eventually the tunnel twisted and forked, and we followed the passage to the right—the one that obviously had more recent traffic. As we continued on, the oppressive vibe grew worse.
“Aversion spell,” Dubhlain said, his voice in the silence startling me.
Something kept niggling at me. “If they got what they came for, why would they leave the spell active?”
He shrugged but didn’t answer.
The deeper we went into the mountain, the more rocks and dirt covered the tracks. We had to be getting closer to the source. After rounding a bend, we halted before a large pile of rubble that almost blocked the entire shaft. A hole had been made opposite it, in the tunnel’s left wall. The opening was much smaller than what we were currently standing in, and the passage had no support bracing of any kind. It had been made with speed in mind, not safety. The only way we could get in there was to crawl. Would Dubhlain even fit?
He motioned for me to go first, but I simply stared back at him incredulously for a few seconds. If he thought I was going in there without a light, he was crazy. Finally, he huffed and pushed me out of the way, then jammed himself into the tiny space. I waited until he was on his way before following after, snickering at the obscene amount of grunting and scuffing ahead of me.
At the sound of a yell followed by a thud, I straightened, whacking my head on the packed earth above me. Dubhlain’s light now illuminated the end of the tunnel. I crawled on out and dropped about five feet to the floor of a large chamber.
Dubhlain stood and dusted off his hair, uttering something too quiet for me to hear. The light from his rune brightened, and the entire underground room came into view.
Several white crystalline columns stretched from floor to ceiling. A low wall of gray stone ringed a glassy pool of bright blue water, with another white crystal spire rising from its center. While Dubhlain crouched to trace more unfamiliar runes on the surrounding stone, I went to inspect several niches in the walls that had caught my eye. Metal coverings were bolted over the niches so they resembled cages. Bizarre.
I touched the crisscrossed metal lightly, and something stirred inside the small space. Leaning closer, I could just make out a tiny humanoid arm and leg sticking out of a dark lump.
It didn’t take long for me to locate and move a sliding bolt on the cover, and the metal swung open on squeaky hinges. I darted a quick look at Dubhlain. The sound seemed as loud as a gunshot in this huge, silent space. He glanced at me with exasperation but turned back to whatever he was studying at the pool’s edge. There wasn’t any reason for not making noise, but the whole place had a reverent feel to it. Sacred. It deserved respect and silence.
Hesitantly—I couldn’t see inside the dark recess very well—I pinched a little corner of what turned out to be dark fabric and slowly inched it out. I barely reacted in time to catch the fairy that rolled bonelessly out into my other palm.
I gasped. A miniature, naked man lay in my hand. What would normally be lustrous and bright wings were crumpled beneath him. His skin was ashen, his breathing barely noticeable.
An incredible boom shook the whole mountain, sending dirt and pebbles raining down from the high ceiling.
Dubhlain’s wide eyes stared at me accusingly from across the room. “What did you do?”
Another boom sounded, closer now, and the earth under my feet shifted. I gazed at the fairy in my hand and then back to the remaining cage fronts. Someone had trapped the diminutive Fae in here, and they were on the verge of dying.
I had to get them out.
Darting to the next enclosure, I opened the cage and scooped another fairy out. The bottom of my tank top turned into a hammock to place them in as I continued around the room, retrieving them from what would have been their tiny graves.
My progress halted when a large chunk of the ceiling gave way, crashing down only feet away from me. The billowing dust made me cough.
Dubhlain was suddenly at my side. “We have to go NOW!”
A great sucking sound drowned out his voice. The placid blue water from before was now a frothing, violent white whirlpool. Vibrations from the floor jarred my legs as dirt clods pelted me from above.
“We can’t leave them,” I yelled, pulling my shirt out to reveal the unmoving fairies.
Dubhlain went quickly to the next cage, mimicking my method and putting them in his shirt. As soon as the last niche was empty, we ran to the tunnel. I did go first this time, barely stopping myself from face-planting when Dubhlain put his free hand under my ass to boost me into the opening.
Crawling with only one arm to support myself took forever. It felt like an eternity before the tight walls gave way and the warmer air of the mineshaft brushed over my face. Scooting out of the way, I made room for Dubhlain to take the lead in the darkness. I only hoped he hadn’t crushed any of the little Fae while trying to get through.
As soon as he hit the bigger passage, he was up and running. I lost a few seconds getting to my feet but caught him as we flew past where the tunnel forked.
“Don’t stop running till you hit the clearing,” he barked over the ever-growing din.
We shot out of the mouth of the cave, our speed helping to keep us upright as we slid down the steep slope. Lungs straining, I glanced back just in time to see the top of the mountain fold in on itself, as if an enraged god had punched a fist into it. Rocks and other debris exploded outward with massive force. Even as far away as we were, the angry hail kept dropping.
We continued moving away fr
om the mountain but at a slower pace.
“It’s one of the Fae Queens,” Dubhlain breathed.
My breath caught in my chest as I pictured the ethereal woman who’d tried to remove my soul. A Fae Queen? What was one of them doing in the Hell Plane?
I glanced down at my unexpected cargo and wondered what had become of the other Fae—the ones working in the mine. Part of the mystery suddenly made sense. “She cast them out to do her dirty work, didn’t she?”
Dubhlain tried to wipe the dust and sweat from his forehead but only succeeded in smearing it into mud. “I believe so, yes.”
He stopped walking and turned to me. Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen behind him a couple steps, and I barely kept myself from colliding with his chest.
Fear was stamped all over his face. “Here, take them.” He hurriedly transferred all the fairies from his shirt to mine.
“What . . . ?” I stammered, trying to juggle the new influx of bodies. The added weight pulled my shirt down to the point where my boobs popped completely out. It was a good day to be wearing a bra.
“I know what they found and why they left the aversion spell,” he said quickly.
Fantastic, but why was I carrying all the fairies? A thunderous roar from behind me shook the clearing. The trees’ leaves danced crazily, a few breaking away to flutter to the ground.
A sinking dread curdled my stomach.
Whatever was back there sounded huge and mighty pissed. All my weapons were still stashed beyond the trees, and the load I carried made it impossible to fight.
“Get as far away as you can. I’ll hold it as long as possible.” Dubhlain gave me a strange look before grabbing my face and crushing his lips to mine. When he pulled away, there was goodbye written there. My heart squeezed unexpectedly, and then he was striding away.
What was he thinking? The idiot didn’t even have any weapons.
Chapter 14
It didn’t take me long to jog through the patch of woods, my own internal battle drum thumping to life at the noises coming from where I’d left Dubhlain.
