City of Shadows

by Pippa Dacosta

  “They’re liars. All of them.” Being now almost pressed face-to-face, the tips of his canine teeth seemed sharper. I pushed the blade harder. He flinched but wouldn’t back down. “They will use the ugly and the wrong in you.” He leaned in close, too close. His lips brushed mine, and instantly a flood of tingling stole a gasp from my lips. Need slammed reason out of the way. I slanted my mouth across his and kissed him deep. His hand fell away, curled around my back and yanked me hard against him. No, no, no, this can’t happen. But it was, and he tasted divine. It wasn’t a kiss, but an assault, and I was in control. Draíocht simmered beneath my skin, itching to escape, and the power in him swelled. I could feel the pressure, pushing down and in. More. I need more. He tried to pull back—a moment of indecision, a weakening—but I chased his retreat, caught his attempt at denial, and crushed it behind the savage need.

  He broke free and slammed his palms into my chest, shoving me back. His eyes bled red, and the fear on his face summoned a smile on mine. I had him. I could feel the beast lurking inside, pacing its cage. And I could free it.

  “Don’t,” Reign whispered.

  Summon it, control it, take it. I had to know.

  “Don’t, Alina. Please.” He staggered backward. “Let go. You can let me go. Please.”

  Free the hound.

  Reign made it outside the building and down the steps before falling to his knees. In the dark of the building site, hidden behind the construction site panels, swirling green vapor licked around his prone figure. His body heaved as he fought to breathe through his waning control. But I had his reins now, and with just a twitch, the beast would come.

  “Alina! Don’t do this to me,” he said, panting, and then let out a cry, tremors rolling through him.

  Something came out of the shadows and hit me in the side like a battering ram. In the next second, I was facedown in the dirt with a knee in my back, pain throbbing in my chest.

  “Stay down,” Samuel growled. “You feel the blade?” I could. Cool. Hard against my neck. “Focus on that. Just that. And know I will cut you should the hound manifest. Understand?”

  Samuel’s weight shifted but kept me pinned. It seemed like forever I lay there, the blade an ever-present threat. I’d released Reign the second I’d been knocked off my feet. I couldn’t see or hear him, just my own breathing and Samuel’s.

  “I’m going to let you up. Sovereign isn’t here. Do not go looking for him. Attack me and I will respond in kind.”

  Guilt twisted inside; so heavy, and heartfelt, that all I could do was sob. “I didn’t mean to attack him. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to, but it felt right, so right. To be strong. It felt good. So good, Samuel. I wanted it. I still want it.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud, or that Samuel had pulled me close. I just knew that Reign was right. Inside, I was ugly and wrong, and if I couldn’t control it, I’d hurt him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I lined up the dagger with the target and threw it again, for about the hundredth time in the past however long Samuel had been barking orders at me. It punched home but missed the center—where I’d been aiming—by a good couple of inches.

  “Again!” he snapped, standing proud in his FA colors, arms crossed and face impassive, but he didn’t hide the anger simmering in his eyes, as it had since he’d stopped me from summoning the hound several nights ago. I wasn’t sure how much of my conversation with Reign he’d seen or heard, but enough if that angry glare was anything to go by. So much for earning Samuel’s trust. We’d barely spoken since. I was fairly certain he was pissed at me in every way possible. We had that in common, since I was pissed at me too. If the hound had gotten loose in public, the blame would fall on the FA for not having already caught the beast. The fragile peace between the fae and the people of London could have easily been shattered. And all because I couldn’t control myself around Reign.

  I threw the second dagger. It hit handle first and bounced back, skidding toward me. “It’s the weight, they’re too heavy for throwing.” I swept my hair back, swiping at the stubborn strands clinging to my face, and pulled my tank top away from my clammy skin.

  Samuel scooped the dagger up, yanked my other failure free of the dummy, and threw the two blades at the target to my right. Naturally, both hit home, virtually dead center.

  “Again,” he said.

  I missed, and spat a curse.

  “Again.”

  “I’m sick of this.” Marching toward the target I shot him a snarl. “I’m sick of this place, I’m sick of Kael avoiding me, and I’m sick of you barking orders.”

  “Again,” he growled, low and deadly enough to trickle shivers down my back.

  “Screw. You.” I retrieved my daggers and headed for the door. This wasn’t working. Nothing was working. I needed another way to get to Kael, another lead to follow. Something, anything, instead of throwing daggers at a target and getting nowhere. Maybe I could ask Andrews if I could see Becky’s journal. But even as I considered it, I knew I shouldn’t go back there.

  “You’re sick? I’m sick of your constant self-indulgent whining. If you quit, what do you think will happen the next time you start to get hungry? The next time someone pisses you off?”

  “I don’t care,” I snarled.

  “You lack discipline and control. You’re afraid, and weak, and confused. You also lack focus and integrity.”

  I laughed, “My integrity is just fine, thank you.”

  “Why are you here, Alina? What is it you really want from us?”

  I stopped. I don’t know anymore. I didn’t turn, didn’t want to see the disappointment on his face. The door was close, my way out. I’d leave, get away from the FA. Stay with Andrews—

  “You can’t run from this,” Samuel said, so close behind me that I jumped.

  “You have no idea what I’m going through, what’s happening to me,” I said quietly.

  “I know temptation. The fae live with it every day. We war with ourselves, inside and out. You need to accept your nature in order to master it.”

  I sighed. How could he possibly understand the madness clawing at my mind? “I just want to be Alina again.” The reporter who needed the scoop to get her job back. Everything had been so much easier then.

  Samuel stepped between me and the door, blocking my exit and forcing me to look up to meet his gaze. “Your old life? It wasn’t real.” His fae eyes glared hard and cold. “Get over it.”

  “I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know what I was thinking.” I made a move for the doorway, but Samuel sidestepped into my path.

  “You’re just going to leave?” he asked, lip curling.

  “When you get out of my way.”

  There was that incredulous disappointment again. “You know I can’t let you leave unsupervised. You’re too dangerous.”

  “So I’m a prisoner?”

  He didn’t answer. And didn’t smile. Just stood there like a damned statue. Rigid and stubborn.

  “Wow.” I laughed. “You’re going to stop me? Try it.” I snatched for my dagger. Samuel’s fast, but I’m faster. I plucked the weapon free and danced back, light on my feet. He snarled a purely fae ripple of a warning at the back of his throat and tensed to throw a right. I feinted one way, and when he made a move to grab me, I spun and hit him in the lower back with a dagger handle; enough for him to know it could have been a lot worse. My moment of triumph lasted long enough for me to recognize it, before Samuel kicked my legs out. I sprawled, flat on my back, teeth slamming together so hard the noise rang in my skull.

  He pinned my wrist under his boot. I twisted, brought my knee up, and knocked his weight-bearing leg forward. He crumpled hard, falling back with an immensely satisfying oomph. And laughed.

  He laughed. I’d never heard him laugh before. This was a deeply rich chuckle, somehow equal parts wicked and joyful. The laughter cut off the moment I straddled his legs, pinned him still, and lifted the dagger.

  “Something funny, Sam?”
r />   He pinched his lips closed but the chuckles still jerked through him. His lips twisted as he fought with a grin and failed.

  “You’re not supposed to laugh.” I braced my arms on either side of his head and leaned over him. My hair fell on one shoulder and trailed against his cheek. The chuckles faded, his smile melted away, and he stilled. “I like it,” I said.

  We weren’t touching, not skin to skin, and yet I could feel the tug of something like draíocht. A simpler desire. A human one. The warmth of him, the fresh smell of pine and cedar, of woodlands, and grasses, and freedom. Home. Faerie.

  “Alina.” He rested a hand on my shoulder, perhaps intending to keep me at arm’s length.

  I just wanted a taste. To experience something that wasn’t screwed up or tainted by draíocht or hunger or the hound. Just a little bit of something normal. “Tell me to stop, and I will,” I whispered. His fingers dug into my shoulder, but he didn’t push. He waited—an unreadable expression on his face.

  I closed my eyes, breathed him in, tasted him on my lips—my tongue, and kissed him slowly, brushing my lips over his. He could stop me, if he wanted to. I kissed again, a long, lingering taste. He opened a little, allowing more. There was no surge of power, no messed-up need, just a light tingling where our lips met, enough to know I liked it. He tasted sweet and surprisingly soft. I licked the tip of my tongue across his lip, and then nipped. His intake of breath sprinkled darts of pleasure way down low.

  He released my shoulder and slipped his hand down my back, pulling me down as his mouth chased mine. I pulled back a little and smiled as he came with me. His eyes had darkened, pupils dilating. He wanted me; the girl made of nothing but wicked thoughts and bad dreams. His fingers slipped into my hair and pulled me down into a heated kiss, heavy with desire. I eased my hand under his shirt, and soaked in the warmth of him. Hard and yet soft, in all the right ways. I wanted to taste where my hand roamed. And more. All of him. The kiss broke apart. I nipped at the line of his jaw, his neck, and felt his body twitch beneath me. This was real. Not some twisted fae battle of wills. But two people, each needing the other, for no other reason than because it felt good.

  I flicked open a few of the uniform buckles and trailed delicate kisses down the line of his collar. His sharp breaths, the feel of his thighs trapped between mine, his hand clenching against my back—these things licked pleasure all the way through me, shortening my own breath, and fluttering my heart.

  “Alina.” there was a ragged plea in the way he said my name.

  “Tell me to stop.” I whispered the words against his chest and eased my hand inside his jacket, relishing the feel of him. I spread my fingers wide, the rise and fall of his chest quickened. I hadn’t known I could do this, have this control over pleasure—his and mine. I flicked my gaze again to his. He watched, lips parted, a new hunger in his eyes.

  Rising up, I unbuckled the rest of his jacket and flicked it open. Ever since the pool I’d wanted to touch him. That was curiosity. This was something else entirely. He was perfection in every inch. Tanned and smooth, but hard and unyielding where I trailed my fingertips low. I skimmed where his waistline dipped into a tantalizing v and dove below his waistband. He sucked in a sharp hiss through his teeth. I’d found where he liked to be touched, but he caught my hand and yanked me forward before I could explore any further. His eyes pinned me still as he raised the inside of my wrist to his lips and brushed maddening kisses along the tender inside of my forearm.

  Need throbbed low, overriding whatever reasoning I had left not to do this. I pulled my arm free and pinned his shoulders down, drilling my stare into his. The laughter was back in his eyes and on his lips. I kissed him hard and hungrily. He sank his hand into my hair and returned the madness, tasting like faerie, touching like he needed me just as much as I did him.

  I broke the kiss, shifted down so I could flick my tongue along the plains of his chest, and nudged a knee between his legs. A groan or a gasp escaped him, I wasn’t sure which. I eased my hand between us, riding my palm over exactly where he needed it, a deep, guttural growl rumbled through him.

  “I need this,” I whispered, and tilted my head up so that my chin grazed his chest. He pulled me back into a kiss, hooked his leg around mine, and rolled me onto my back. No madness. No urge to control. No hound. Just the feel of Samuel moving over me.

  Someone coughed nearby. Samuel and I both froze, the only sound that of our panting and my pounding heart.

  “Samuel, I can see that you’re incredibly busy with your training session,” Nyx said. “Kael has urgently requested your presence. Shall I inform him the construct has you in a compromising position?”

  Samuel’s eyes met mine. Promises glittered in those tricolors. “Later,” he whispered before somehow climbing off me with all the grace and poise of an FA warrior. Flushed, hot, and wet in all the right and wrong places, I wasn’t sure I could stand, and didn’t dare look at Nyx.

  Samuel strode from the hall, working on his buckles to masterfully avoid Nyx’s pointedly raised eyebrow.

  “You too, Alina,” she added.

  I reluctantly got to my feet, straightened my clothes, and tried to keep the mischievous smile off my lips.

  Nyx raised her eyebrows at me and mimicked a one-handed claw at the air. Rawr. “That’s some training session,” she said, following me out of the hall.

  I choked on a laugh.

  Later couldn’t come soon enough.

  It was clear as soon as we reached the entrance hall that something big was going down. It seemed as though the entire FA were spilling out of HQ and packing themselves into a convoy of waiting vehicles.

  Samuel veered off toward the lead car, probably to check in with Kael. Nyx and I climbed into Scaw’s Range Rover. “Buckle up,” he said. “It’s a hot one.”

  “What have we got?” Nyx asked, settling into the front seat and fastening her belt.

  “Ogre.”

  “What?” We both asked in unison.

  “There’s an ogre in Saint James’s Park,” Scaw replied, his grim face a testament to the gravity of his words.

  “How?” Nyx snapped. I was glad to see her surprise was as real as mine.

  “Sam will know more.” Scaw nodded at the returning warrior.

  Samuel climbed in the back beside me. “Go,” he ordered, barely inside before Scaw planted his foot to the floor.

  “Ogre,” Samuel confirmed while tucking a communications earpiece into his ear. “News crews are all over the scene. This has to be professional, clean, and quick. No mistakes.” That last order masquerading as advice was aimed at me.

  “How?” Nyx asked again, twisting in the front seat to fix her glare on Samuel.

  “Its origin is unknown.”

  “There aren’t any ogres in Under?” I asked.

  “No,” all three fae replied at once.

  So where had this one come from? I really wanted to ask if this ogre was just a big-muscled fae or the fairytale giant kind of ogre, the kind that ate people. But considering the stony faces, I figured it might be easier to think the worst and hope for the best.

  Scaw squeezed every bit of horsepower out of the Rover’s engines and every inch of grip from the tires as he raced through London’s late-afternoon streets.

  A police barricade had cordoned off the Mall—the stretch of wide tree-lined road that hugged one side of St. James’s Park. The route through to Trafalgar Square was blocked at one end and Buckingham Palace barricaded at the other. The FA’s Rovers were waved through the cordon, hardly slowing.

  A scattering of cars lay strewn about the road. One had hit a tree and flames engulfed the tangle of metal and wood. I was trying to get the measure of the carnage through the windshield, when a gray hulking mass of muscle about the same size as a London bus came thundering across the grass and punched the lead Range Rover, sending it careening into the park, toward the water.

  Oh, the eating-people kind of ogre.

  “Group two, abandon the
vehicles and move in,” Samuel said, speaking into his earpiece. “Group one, use the cars to block it if it runs. It must not leave the park.”

  Samuel’s tone made it quite clear there was more at stake here than bad PR.

  Scaw pulled our car to a skidding halt and we were out in time to see the ogre tear a tree from the sidewalk and slam it down into the road, shattering the asphalt. It opened its cavernous mouth and roared loud enough to set off nearby car alarms.

  The FA moved in, their distinctive black and red attire drawing the ogre’s attention. It lifted the tree and swung it like a bat at the converging FA.

  “Alina.”

  My attention snapped to Samuel.

  “You’re fast,” he said, freeing his own daggers and narrowing his sight on the ogre. “I need you and Nyx to get behind it. There’s a weak spot at the back of the neck. Stab it there, sever its spine, and it’ll go down.”

  “Right,” Nyx said, immediately turning on her heel to circle around behind the creature.

  “Go!” Samuel barked at me and then jogged toward his company.

  Okay, sure, I could climb the ogre’s back.

  A police helicopter swooped in low over the surrounding buildings and trees. The ogre saw it, straightened its back, and let loose another air-shattering bellow. Damn, it was tall.

  Yeah, okay. I can do this. I’d fought a possessed spider-queen, this thing was all muscle and didn’t look nearly as calculating as her. I jogged after Nyx, telling myself over and over how this would all be over soon.

  A few of the FA saw Nyx and I, and they moved in to distract the ogre while we lined up behind the mass of gray.

  “This is nuts,” I said, loud enough for Nyx to hear me over the car alarms and ground-shaking stomps.

  Nyx grinned. “This fella’s just a baby.” She punched me in the arm, like that was supposed to help. “You took on a lytch, Alina. This is a walk in the park. Literally.”

  This thing wasn’t like the lytch. While I could feel the by-now-familiar tug of a fae connection, I couldn’t taunt the ogre and drink it down like I had the lytch in the Underground. It would likely pummel me into the earth the second I opened my arms to it. If I had any other tricks up my sleeves, now would be a good time for them to manifest. I rolled my shoulders and tried to summon the deeper fae part of me. Considering everything I’d accomplished in the past, I should be able to do this.