I took photos of the invoices, recording company names and numbers to find something to track down later. I tried not to touch anything—even as I wondered just who staffed the dozen cubicles and six side offices. With what the shifters had seen of movement in and out of the building, it was almost certainly not a human staff.
The mercenaries probably made for poor data entry clerks, but the skill wasn’t beyond most fae. Just, well, beneath them.
A lot of the paperwork was clearly issued to American numbered companies. Some of it was issued to an Irish police force, others to several US sheriffs’ departments. One set of paperwork was a stack of legitimate-seeming equipment transfer orders from the US and Canadian Armies.
Guns and munitions and reloading gear had been sold to what appeared to be legitimate purchasers, but both the gear and the paperwork had ended up here. A fictitious NATO formation, front companies and real cops had been used to place the orders, and an entire arsenal had been assembled.
Hopefully, the names and numbers would be useful for Shelly and others to track it down. The side offices weren’t key card–locked, and I wasn’t up to picking a lock with telekinesis. I made an abortive attempt to unlock one of the offices through the window and discovered that the doors had old-fashioned locks that required the key from both sides.
That wasn’t an accident. Someone had done that as security against infiltrators with the Gift of Force. I had enough data now to confirm that something very strange was going on there…but not enough data, I had to admit, to even prove that this wasn’t a perfectly legitimate facility operating under Andrell’s authority.
Large chunks of what was going on there were Covenant violations…but they were “apologize and promise to never do it again” violations, not “sanction a Court and Lord” violations. The scale was unusual, but unannounced “visitors” and secret facilities were hardly a new problem.
I needed something more. I needed, if nothing else, to be one hundred percent certain that Maria Chernenkov was there.
Stepping over to the door leading out onto the catwalk over to the apartments, I carefully looked out the tiny smudged-up window. The redcap guarding the other end of the catwalk might have looked bored and inattentive, but there was no way I was going to be able to cross that narrow pathway without being spotted and intercepted.
I could take one redcap. With Inga’s training, I could probably take two or three. But if there were a dozen of them around here, plus friends…even if I had grounds to start this fight, which was iffy, I couldn’t finish it.
Fortunately for me, however, I was a Hunter, which meant I had options another infiltrator wouldn’t. I took a deep breath and studied the distance between where I stood and the roof of the apartments, looking for a spot where I could emerge unseen.
And once I was ready, I stepped Between.
I emerged on the roof of the apartment structure, crouched down behind what little cover there was up there. No one seemed to notice me, but I remained still and quiet for a minute or more as I waited to see if that stayed the case.
The office had been abandoned for the night and was easy to stay hidden in. People were living in these apartments, and they were under active guard by the redcap freelancers. Staying hidden was going to be hard, but I needed to make sure I knew if Chernenkov was there.
Just as I was about to move, however, there was a commotion beneath me. More of the redcaps emerged from the lower-level apartments, looking like they’d been roused unpleasantly by alarms or something.
Brushing sleep from their eyes, the four mercenaries formed up in the center of the courtyard like an honor guard and waited. A few moments later, an attractive-looking young woman appeared out of one of the storage sections, carrying a long narrow box.
It took me a moment to realize why she looked familiar, and then a cold sinking sensation took over my chest. The woman carrying the case was a hag. More, I was pretty sure she was related to Laurie, the hag whose involvement in the plot against MacDonald had earned her a death sentence.
The hag reached the guard of redcaps, who fell in around her with practiced ease, and then a sixth person emerged from the staircases, forcing a sharp inhalation from me.
There was no way to tell if the fae was male or female. A shimmering glamor covered them head to toe, obscuring height, build, skin…everything except the iron mask they wore over their face.
I had suspected that the reason there was an arsenal there was that the Masked Lords were using it as a base. It was still a shock to the system to actually see one and understand just what Inga had meant when she said the Masks concealed them completely.
The hag presented the case to the Masked Lord, who took it and gestured for the guards to follow them. Whatever was going on, it didn’t seem to be about me, thankfully. They were heading for the office, the training area I’d seen on the ground floor.
If nothing else, I supposed, that was a Greater Fae and a Masked Lord who definitely weren’t up on the second floor with me. Knowing there was a Masked Lord there changed the equation, but not entirely.
I needed to know if Chernenkov was there—assuming that the Pouka Noble wasn’t the Masked Lord in question, anyway. I slowly crept up to the edge of the roof, peering over at the other set of apartments to see if anyone was visible through the windows.
I wasn’t surprised that didn’t work, however. Fae weren’t exactly known for their exhibitionism, quite the opposite, and every window was covered with curtains. I could see some motion behind them, but it looked like I was going to have to get closer to see who was home.
Each step closer was another risk of being found. I could leave right now. The presence of a Masked Lord was probably enough to bring in the Wild Hunt and end this whole affair…but I wasn’t here for the Fae High Court’s political enemies.
I was here for the monster who’d eaten five young women simply because it was convenient for her.
Feeling like an idiot and wishing I had some kind of magical cloak of invisibility, I clambered up and over the edge of the roof, dropping myself down onto the balcony beneath while checking to make sure none of the guards could see me.
Only the one guarding the catwalk to the office was on this level, and that was now around the corner of the apartments from me. The balcony I crouched on was empty, which gave me a moment’s breather.
I now found myself trying to work out how to peek in through the windows without being obvious. The Gift of Force, thankfully, provided a solution. I twitched the curtains of the apartment I was crouching outside of, hopefully keeping the movement natural-looking, as I peeked through.
The room on the other side was a pretty typical bachelor apartment. Tiny kitchenette, bed, couch and some chairs. Nothing out of the ordinary except that it was in a motel-style structure inside a warehouse.
It was also empty. As was the next one. The third left me feeling more than a little dirty, as the occupants were in the middle of having sex—and I had to look closely enough to be sure neither was Chernenkov, once I knew they were distracted.
The fourth apartment left me feeling dirty in a different way, as the occupant was a nightmare, currently doing kata in a sports bra…and nothing else.
That was probably part of my distraction as I checked the next apartment. Either that, or I underestimated the senses of a Pouka Noble. I flicked the curtains aside and found myself meeting Maria Chernenkov’s gaze.
For an eternal few seconds, we just looked at each other—and then she was moving, charging toward the door.
Stealth was now officially history and I grabbed the MP5 under my coat and opened fire, hoping to take Chernenkov down. Cold iron bullets smashed the glass and hammered the apartment around Chernenkov, A handful of hits flung her backward, but she was already transforming into the terrifying black horse I’d seen at the Stampede.
Suppressed or not, I’d just emptied an SMG clip inside the warehouse, and the entire area was starting to explode. I was backpedaling
, trying to buy time to think and potentially reload the MP5, and then the Pouka unleashed her fear aura.
Unthinkingly, I stepped Between to escape…and then discovered what had been in the case the hag had handed the Masked Lord as I was painfully yanked back into reality.
23
I landed on the hardwood floor of the safehouse training room like a sack of bricks. Stuck in the middle of them, I could now feel the three golden poles they’d taken from the case—a trap that would drag anyone walking Between to this exact spot.
“Really,” a distorted but probably female voice said cheerfully. “Did you think we had no defenses against the Hunt, Mr. Kilkenny? Did you think we would not be ready when we knew Her Vassal here had the Gift of Between?”
The glamor-wrapped figure of the Masked Lord yanked me to my feet, sending me stumbling away from her to the laughter of the redcaps and hag in the room.
“We were not so foolish as you believed, it seems,” she told me. “And you, it appears, are more foolish than we believed possible. Have you learned what you sought, child? Has what you saw been worth your life?”
The chorus of laughing redcaps had an eerie resemblance to a hyena pack, I reflected as I pulled away from her. The MP5 had landed well away from me, but I was still armed.
Even as the thought crossed my mind, the Lord gestured, and a sword ripped itself from the storage racks along the wall and flipped to her hand. I’d missed it among the practice weapons, but the edge to the blade was clear.
This was no practice weapon, and the way she wielded it with Force and hand alike told me that I was utterly outmatched if I were to try and fight her with a blade.
“Maria may complain, I suppose,” the Lord said thoughtfully, “but this is my sanctum you’ve invaded. The Masks decree your death, Sir Kilkenny. Your mistress and precious High Court will join you soon enough.”
She might have been mocking me for my foolishness, but she’d clearly assumed that the submachine gun one of the redcaps was currently kicking to the wall was the only gun I had on me. As she charged me, I drew the revolver and fired.
I’d never before considered just how terrifying a Jedi deflecting blaster bolts had to be to the poor stormtroopers until that moment as I opened fire on a Fae Lord in all her fury. Six times the revolver’s report echoed in the training room.
Six times it was followed by a crashing noise as the Masked Lord parried the bullets with inhuman speed. I was fast, faster than any but the absolute peak of humanity…but I couldn’t do that.
I tossed the gun aside and dodged away, Inga’s training channeling my telekinesis to move me faster than my apparently weak limbs could. Steel flashed through where I’d been standing, and the Lord laughed.
“Is that the best you’ve got, little Vassal?” she asked mockingly. “A gun and a dodge? This is going to be even less challenging than I expected.”
Inga’s training had left me feeling like I could take on anything. Now I was getting a rude awakening in just how limited I actually was.
I conjured a whip of flame laced with Force, twisting it through the air to catch the sword as the Masked Lord struck again. I didn’t have the speed to actually parry or deflect her blow…so I destroyed the sword, scattering molten metal across the hard floor of the training room.
“Damn,” she said mildly. “I liked that sword.” She shrugged. “Oh, well.”
A new blade, this one forged of glamor and Force instead of steel, flashed into existence in her hand. To drive the point home, so did five clones of the Masked woman, all also carrying glamor blades.
“Honor requires I fight you,” she noted. “A Vassal of the Queen herself? You deserve our best. But you don’t deserve my time and I will not toy with you.”
The only good news I could think of was that I’d emailed the pictures I’d taken in the office to Shelly. Even if I didn’t make it through this, some good had come of it.
I also wasn’t going to give up, outnumbered six to one by a single opponent or not. Green fire and invisible Force flared around me as my whip extended, turning into a spinning sequence of Power as I forged both attack and defense from the same spell.
She laughed and attacked—and I met her with everything I had. After the first few seconds, I’d lost track of which of the glamor-wrapped Masks facing me was actually a person, but all of their attacks would be deadly.
Her glamors were strong, but not strong enough to survive being hammered with the Fire and Force of my whip. Glamor-blades shattered and re-forged all around me as I danced around them, somehow managing to evade the strikes I couldn’t destroy.
My whip flashed through one of the mirror images, shattering the illusion as I cut it in half in what would have been a lethal blow if I’d hit the Lord herself.
I took advantage of the moment of weakness, launching myself into a telekinetically-augmented dive through the gap in the circle of death she’d woven around me.
I didn’t make it.
A glamor-blade hammered into my leg, catching me in midair and slamming me to the ground. She left the blade there, pinning me to the ground as she hammered a second blade into my other leg. I tried to conjure Fire again, only for her to break both of my arms with a single blow.
“I thought you weren’t toying with me,” I spat back at her. This whole fight had already lasted longer than I’d expected, and I could hear the Lord breathing heavily as she dropped the illusions to leave only the glamor-blades pinning me to the ground.
“I wasn’t,” she said in a soft, intrigued, tone. “How interesting. Shame, then, that this is the end of it. Good night, Mr. Kilkenny.”
I sensed the cold iron knife before I saw it…and then she slammed into my chest, finishing the job of pinning me to the hardwood ground. Agony flared away from my people’s ancient bane…and then darkness took me.
24
I woke up to the sound of voices, which was something of a surprise. I also woke up to searing agony throughout my head and neck…and a disturbing nothing from below my neck. Focusing through the pain, I came to a very distinctly uncomfortable conclusion:
At some point after I’d been stabbed, someone had broken my neck. Probably not intentionally, I realized as I opened my eyes.
I’d been tossed roughly against the wall, out of the way, and a sheet haphazardly thrown over me. I could see shapes through the sheet, but that was it.
And I was alive. The Masked Lord had assumed a cold iron knife would instantly kill me and yanked it out relatively quickly. Except…I was still one-quarter human. I had the healing abilities of a fae and only part of their vulnerability to cold iron.
“I want to eat his heart,” a familiar voice snarled. Chernenkov was apparently in the room with me.
“I hate to deprive you, sister, but eventually his body will be found,” a different female voice replied. Wait. That was Gráinne. Calling Chernenkov “sister”…though that was probably metaphorical, not literal.
“You already stuck a cold iron blade through it anyway,” the Pouka grumped. “Ruins the flavor, even if the fear would have been delicious.”
That descriptor made Gráinne our Masked Lord. Useful information, if I somehow managed to live through this disaster.
“And him?” Gráinne asked quietly.
“He’s on his way. He wants to check in on me,” Chernenkov replied. “I told him he needed to keep away until things were resolved, but having the Vassal show up here was just too much for him.”
Gráinne chuckled.
“You two are sickening,” she told them. “We can’t let it interfere with the plan; you know that.”
“I know,” Chernenkov agreed. “So does he. Soon, I won’t have to hide here anymore.”
That didn’t sound like a good thing to me, but I guessed the Pouka had a different opinion on that.
“I’ll have the redcaps deal with the body. They’ll dump it in the river.”
“He wants to see it, to be certain,” Chernenkov replied. “Le
ave it here, sister. The smell of blood is relaxing.”
The Unseelie Noble chuckled again, then paused.
“He’s here,” she said calmly. “I’ll give you two some privacy, though I’ll note the floor in here isn’t all that comfortable.”
“What, tried it yourself, have you?” Chernenkov asked.
“I’ve landed on it, training,” Gráinne told her. “Haven’t had sex on it. Let me know how it goes?”
“I’m not that desperate, sister,” the Pouka said. “Yet, anyway.”
Even through the sheet, I saw them embrace and one of the two shadowy figures—presumably Gráinne—left the room. Staying still to remain hidden was easy. Nothing below my neck was responding, anyway.
I couldn’t see the door the unnamed man entered through, but I saw his shadow cross the sheet and wrap Chernenkov in his arms, a fierce embrace and kiss that radiated affection even through the shadow-puppet show I was watching.
“My love, you shouldn’t have come here,” she told him. “Until Oberis and his Court are destroyed, we remain vulnerable.”
“I know,” he replied, and I was glad that my crippled body kept me from reacting. The man was Andrell.
“The Masks’ plan continues,” he noted. “I know my part in it, and I will play it. So will you. But I will be damned if I let a Hunter’s changeling sniffing around keep me from you.”
They kissed again, and the full depth of how fucked we were began to descend on me.
It was at that moment, of course, that Andrell crossed over to me and yanked the sheet off. I was still broken, unable to move. There wasn’t a lot of work to be done in faking being dead.
“Shame, really,” the Fae Lord said as he studied my “corpse.” “I kind of liked him. Oh, well.”
He twitched the sheet back over me and turned back to Chernenkov.
“Make sure the body isn’t found,” he ordered. “A missing Vassal is bad enough. A dead Vassal will bring down the Hunt, and that will be one hell of a delay.”
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