by Raquel Lyon
“That’s ridiculous,” Charlotte said, snatching the photo and slamming it back onto the top of the pile before standing up and walking over to the map—in my opinion, a pointless exercise. The answer wasn’t hiding amongst the scribbled notes and bits of string, but that fact didn’t stop Charlotte from looking for it as she continued, “As you can see, I’m still alive, and I’ve been here for months.”
“Wrapped in the safety of a protection charm.”
“I’ve been outside of it before today, you know. How else do you think I managed to pinpoint all these locations?”
“Maybe they’re saving you for later. Maybe they were waiting for me to arrive.”
She flung her head around. “Why? So they could make you watch?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you honestly that stupid to see the flaw in your theory? Think about it. There’s no way I could be a target. I only met you yesterday.”
I opened my mouth to refute her statement, and then closed it again. “Then let me ask you something else. Why you?”
“What do you mean?”
“How did you get caught up in all this? Why did you stay? Why dedicate all your time to it?”
“It’s what I do. I kill demons.”
“And how many have you killed?”
“In my life? Dozens. What has that got to do with anything?”
“I meant here. How many deaths of those deadbeats up there are down to you?”
“Well… none yet, but only because I was beaten to it.”
“Which is why I’m not getting it.” I almost divulged that I knew her, but checked myself just in time. “You strike me as the kind of girl who lives for the kill, not one who works in someone’s shadow. You must be missing the high. Is it not eating away inside of you?”
“Mind games, now? Is that where we’re at? Are you trying to psych me? Pin the deaths on me? What?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you’re here. And what’s kept you here all this time, despite the lack of action. What’s driving you to stay when you could be back in the Third, doing what you do best?”
“How about the knowledge that I’m doing good? That when this is all over, I’ll have stopped a psychopath and saved many lives?”
“Good answer, textbook even, and admirable… but a lie.”
“Okay, you got me. There’s a huge bounty on this one that I just couldn’t pass up.”
“Also a lie. I’ve never heard of the Assembly paying bounties, and you don’t work for money. It’s not your style.” No way would the Charlotte I’d known waste time and energy for any kind of reward. Her single motivation was revenge. None of this made any sense.
“Less than twenty-four hours together and you think you know me?” she said. “You don’t know the first thing about me. Not about the kind of woman I am, what I’ve experienced, what I want… nothing! What gives you the right to judge?”
“I’m not judging; I’m stating a fact. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong… apart from one thing.”
“Which is?”
“That you’re the common denominator.” She twisted a ring on her finger that I hadn’t noticed her wearing before. “I believe that part, and I have an idea.”
“So do I. I need a drink.” I pushed to standing and headed for the kitchen area. There weren’t many cupboards, but Charlotte wasn’t the teetotal type, and there had to be something stronger than coffee stashed inside one of them.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Where’s your booze?”
She pumped a sigh down her nose. “There’s a crate out the back, if a beer will help you to listen to my idea.”
“Fine. Shoot me up.”
“Well, on one of my scouting trips near the border, I came across a group of demons from the light side, and I think they knew more than they were saying. Meeting you might loosen a few tongues,” she said as I opened the door and peered into the darkness.
“No. No way. Until I can get a handle on what’s going on here, I’d rather be the passenger you thought was afraid to ride with a woman than the one who caught the crazy train. Consorting with unknown demons has to be one of the most stupid ideas you’ve ever had.” Where was that fucking crate?
“How would you know? They might be able to help us get to the bottom of this. What’s wrong with giving it a try?”
“I said no.” I spotted the crate hiding behind a pile of logs and reached to pull a bottle from it.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You could never imagine how important this is.”
Her voice was close. Maybe she’d come for a beer as well.
“The answer’s still no. Want me to grab you one, too?” I asked.
“No.”
Suit yourself. I straightened up to take my beer inside, and turned to see the black outline of an iron skillet speeding towards my face before a sharp pain sped through my skull and I hit the deck.
Chapter Fifteen
The brown envelope lay discarded on the bed as I read my latest instructions out loud to Charlotte listening in the bathroom. Keeping our connection when she needed a few minutes of personal time was a royal pain in the ass, but somehow we managed to make it work.
She emerged with a half-smile playing on her face. “Did you say London?”
“Yes, and this one never stays long in one place. We’re gonna have to hustle if we don’t want the lead to go cold.” Which was a shame, because that sexy lace number she was wearing was screaming for a delay to be on the cards. It was almost as though she wandered around half-naked all the time to ensure she kept my attention, and, man, did it work, but there wasn’t time for fooling around today.
Adjusting the edge of the bandage encircling her wrist, she came to sit beside me on the bed.
“I was born in London. It’s a great place to raise a child,” she said, laying her hand on my thigh. A twinkle in her eye accompanied her widening smile. “I’d always hoped to settle down there again one day.”
I slid from temptation and stood to tuck the folded paper into my back pocket.
“Can we talk for a minute?” she asked.
I looked down at her as she leaned back on her elbows and eyed me in a way that hinted at anything but talk, and drank in her curves. “Am I looking at a long conversation? You know these instructions are only good until the mark moves on.”
Her mood deflated as she stared at me a second longer before sitting up. “Yeah, you’re right. It can wait. I just wanted to tell you I’m really happy.”
She was a strange woman at times.
“Good to know. Then get a wriggle on and suit up. Train leaves in fifteen.”
The whir of an engine seeped into my consciousness as lucidity returned. It took a second for my brain to come back to the present and realise that I wasn’t on my way to London, nor ensconced in the cabin, but chained up on the back seat of a motorcycle in a part of the woods the snow hadn’t penetrated, with my head pounding hard enough to have been hit by a sledgehammer rather than a skillet.
What the fuck?
I wriggled to try to dislodge the chains, but they were thick and going nowhere soon.
And neither was I.
The iron cuffs at my wrists were clearly enchanted and had bound my powers and rendered them useless.
Son of a bitch.
Why did Charlotte have to use chains? Chains had been the cause of my death and the start of this whole fucked-up mess—not that she knew that, but when I got out of them, she was going to be sorry.
I searched around for her. She’d left the engine running and probably hadn’t gone far, but with my night vision taking a hiatus, it wasn’t the simplest of tasks to see much at all, never mind a woman who always wore black.
Behind me, I heard a movement. Twisting and squinting, I spotted a blip in the darkness: Charlotte’s hair moving as she felt her way around a large, gnarled tree. I yelled out to her.
“Damn it, Char, what are y
ou playing at?”
“Oh good, you’re awake, are you?” she shouted back. “Nice sleep?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call a whack on the head sending me off to sleep with a soothing lullaby.” My wolf roared inside, angry at being contained, and I pulled at my wrists and grimaced. “Get these chains off me.”
“Now, now. Play nice, little man. If you’d have gone along with my plan from the start, there wouldn’t be a need for any of this.”
“Your plan sucks. Don’t be stupid, Char. Take them off.”
“And see you run off with your tail between your legs? Not likely.”
“I don’t have a tail, and you’ll be the one doing the running when I get these off.” I tucked my thumb in as far as I could and turned the cuffs in an effort to slide them over my fingers, but the harder I pulled, the less they seemed to want to move. “And where’s Rust? What have you done with him? He’d better be okay.”
“What do you take me for?”
“Considering my current position, I’m not entirely sure anymore.”
“Look. You’re the innocent animal killer, not me. I love dogs.”
I glanced over my shoulder to check whether she could see my attempted breakout, but she remained intent on her task. “Not all dogs… clearly,” I mumbled, although evidently not quietly enough.
“You’re different. Rust is curled up nice and cosy, warming his paws in front of the stove.”
“Then I hope you don’t love your hearth rug, because he’s not used to being cooped up, and he might just leave you a little present on it.”
“What do I care? It’s not my rug. I have more important things to worry about, and you’re staying right where you are until I find the entrance.”
Not if I can help it. I gave up on that hand and took a stab at the other. “What entrance?”
“To the other side.”
“You’ve been to the light?”
“No, but, like I said, the demons I met were from there. I saw them cross through somewhere around here. Ah… found it.”
A heavy, grating noise rang out as a portion of the tree trunk parted from the main section and pivoted over the flattened earth, casting shafts of bright yellow light into the clearing. It was the first time I’d experienced sun in almost two days, and I didn’t need to feel its warmth to know that I’d missed it. The sooner I got out of this hellhole and back to the real thing, the better.
“Just because they live in the light doesn’t mean you can trust them,” I said.
“Says the man whose name is literally written all over this nightmare.”
“And there isn’t a single part of that I’m happy about.”
It was no use. The cuffs were too tight to slip out of. With a flash of inspiration, I remembered the knife I kept stashed inside my jacket. Perhaps I could pick the lock with its tip. I twisted and squirmed to reach for it. It wasn’t there. Fuck! I turned my attention to the chains and tried my hand at sweet-talking instead.
“Come on, Char, close that door, unshackle me, and let’s go and investigate the area where those bodies were dumped.”
Before she could answer, a loud chattering followed a steady beat of wings as dark shapes loomed low in the sky. I threw my hands up and swatted one away as it swooped over my head.
Bats. Huge ones, with a wingspan of over ten feet. That was a first.
Fears over Charlotte being next on the list suddenly became all too real, and in my current predicament I was powerless to prevent it. Unless I could get off this damn cycle, she was on her own, and a bat was heading straight for her.
“Char, watch out!”
She whipped her head around, and her gaze shot skyward. Spotting the bat closing in fast, she jumped up to grab a tree branch and swung her feet with perfect timing to kick the advancing attacker to the side before landing in a squatting position and pulling a knife—my knife—from her belt as she kept her focus overhead. I should have known. Sneaky bitch.
The bat came back for another go, and Charlotte stood up, knife at the ready. At the same time, a screech alerted me to another advancing creature. I turned around in time to see a set of fangs bared inside an open mouth, heading straight for my neck.
With a rush of adrenaline, I heaved my body out of the line of fire, and the motorbike tumbled onto its side, pinning my leg underneath it.
“Charlotte! Char!” I called. “Release me, and I can help you to fight them off.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” she grouched, “I’m a little busy right now.”
“And happy to let me die, clearly.”
“Rather you than me,” she said, swiping the knife and lopping off a bat’s head. “Ha! Take that, you bastard!”
My attacker returned, and I caught it with an up-punch to the chin. It reeled back and fell to the ground stunned, but one punch wouldn’t stop it for long. I had to get free. “If one of these suckers kills me, you’ll lose your bargaining chip. But if you unchain me, I promise I’ll go wherever you want.”
She paused long enough to be mulling it over, but I sensed no reaction.
“Toss me the key, Char.”
I had a matter of seconds before we’d both be under fire again.
“Char, the key… now!”
A small cloud of dust rose from the dirt as a key plopped at my side. I snatched it quickly, and then fumbling with it like a virgin faced with his first bra strap, I eventually managed to stick it into the padlock securing the chains and twist out of them before shoving away the heavy machine, just in time to roll from another attack.
“And the cuffs, Char. I need the key for the cuffs, too,” I shouted as I scrambled to standing.
“I don’t have it,” she replied. “It must have fallen out of my pocket. I don’t know where it went.”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
“I’m not,” she yelled as a huge, leathery wing swiped my feet from under me.
The force sent me flying against a tree trunk as if I’d been blasted there by a cannon ball. I slid to the ground, my breath deserting me as my assailant passed by.
Goddammit!
I needed to transform, and I needed to do it now. Without my powers I couldn’t heal, and if the beatings continued, I’d be back in Hell facing the fiery depths of the scourge pit before the day was out. I could almost hear the Devil laughing now. Except it wasn’t laughter I was hearing; it was screams. Charlotte’s screams.
I looked over to see her caught in a set of claws and thrashing the knife in any direction that might prevent her capture. I prayed that the creature wouldn’t have enough power to lift her, but my prayer went ignored as she was hoisted into the air. Crap! The motherfuckers were stronger than they looked, and however uncomfortable it was to be around Charlotte again, I still cared. I couldn’t let them take her.
I had one chance.
Gathering every ounce of remaining energy I could muster, I ran for a tree on the other side of the clearing and quickly grabbed hold of a protruding knoll. Hampered by the shackles, it wasn’t an easy task to scale up to a branch that extended far enough into the bat’s flight path, but somehow I managed to heave myself up and then launch from the end of it.
Tough hide bowed under my body as I landed on a wing and my fingers reached for a bone to grab onto. The creature lurched and tilted, dipping low under the extra weight and loosening its grip on Charlotte. She tumbled to the ground and landed heavily, unmoving. I let go, and within seconds I dropped to her side.
“Charlotte. Char!” I shook her shoulders and tapped her face as leaves rustled in the distance. “Char, get up before they come back. We have to get out of here.”
She didn’t move.
Frantically, I checked her pockets and then inside her top. I reminded myself it was all in the name of freedom, but that didn’t stop parts of me from enjoying the brief search far more than they should. She hadn’t been lying. The key wasn’t there.
Above us, screeches rang through the air and two silhouett
es grew larger against the background of the moon as they advanced, deftly avoiding the streaks of sunlight beaming through the tree doorway and into the night sky.
The doorway.
With Charlotte out of it and me unable to put up a decent fight, there was only one way to avoid being creamed by these suckers.
“Looks like you’re gonna get your way, woman,” I said to her unconscious form as I lifted her head and hooked my arms around her body. Then, as the bats burst into the clearing, I hauled her dead weight backwards into the shaft of daylight, not stopping until I’d dragged her all the way through the door to the other side.
Her eyes opened in time to see the beasts slam into the doorway as if it were made of glass, and bounce away with smoke rising from their bodies.
Chapter Sixteen
Charlotte pulled to a sitting position and blinked in the brightness of the light. “What happened?”
“I just saved your butt, that’s what happened,” I said. “Which, by the way, would have been a whole lot easier if you hadn’t imprisoned me in my human skin. So, how about a thank you?”
“Thanks. I guess.”
“You guess? Jeez, don’t go overboard with the gratitude, will you? Maybe I should have let the fanged fiends fill their boots on your warm and gooey. At least then, I’d be free to get on with this thing without having to watch your back as well as my own.”
“I never needed my back watched until you showed up with a big X on yours.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault we got ambushed by a bunch of rabid neck-biters, is it? I’m not the one who sent the blazing come-get-us beacon into the night sky.”
Charlotte stayed silent and drew up her knees as she threw me a sideways look that told me in no uncertain terms that, whatever the reason for our attack, she held me fully responsible.
Unbelievable.
Time was, she would have laughed off our near miss, and have been fired up with strategies to get our retaliation. But looking at her now, I saw only contempt and, despite my scepticism that it could exist in a woman like Charlotte, a touch of fear. When had she allowed that to creep in there?
