Court the Fire (Son of Rain #3)

by Michelle Irwin

  My heart started to pound.

  Are they taking me for retraining?

  Memories I’d tried desperately to repress came bubbling to the surface, unbidden and unwanted. Blood. Pain. Death. My heart hammered. I broke out in a cold sweat and the throbbing in my head intensified. Shivers of dread ran through my body until I was shaking so hard my teeth gnashed together.

  “Are you okay?” Ben asked. “You don’t look so hot.”

  I can’t go back! I wanted to shout, but instead I just mopped my brow and nodded.

  “I’m fine.” My voice was squeaky and high pitched, belying my words, but I couldn’t control it any better. Once, I might have been able to bluff my way out of the fear, but not anymore. I needed Evie by my side so I could draw on the strength she offered me. With her, I could face the world without any fear—without her, I was a crumbling mess.

  Man the fuck up! I screamed in my mind, but I couldn’t overcome my quivering limbs or pounding head, no matter how much I yelled at myself. Flashes of everything that had happened when I was dragged to that cell and forced into the treatment rooms last time raced through my mind on a loop.

  The elevator doors slid open and an intense nausea added to the mix of torture my body was putting me though. I didn’t understand how I’d gone from being a perfect soldier to a mewling lamb in such a short time.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, afraid to know the answer, because if it was the treatment rooms, I knew I couldn’t cope.

  “How long do you think this will take?” Eth asked. “I don’t wanna keep my date waiting when she’s already heartbroken, primed, ready, and has an itch that needs scratching.”

  With my next step, a high-pitched noise burst through me. It was as if a dam had been ripped apart in my mind and a storm surge had rushed through. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from outside or if it was just echoing inside my own mind.

  I staggered a few steps as my whole body shook with a ripple of electricity so violent that I was certain someone must have tasered me. My legs gave way beneath me and I tumbled to the ground. A cry tore from me as the agony surging through my body demanded a voice. My body quaked and quivered against the carpet. I tried to wrestle my body into submission, but ended up arching my back off the ground only for it to slam back down as the next wave of pain rolled through me.

  Bile rose in my throat, thick and hot, making me gag. The pressure behind my eyes was so strong that it felt as though my head might explode at any second. Wave after wave of the same blinding shocks rushed through me, and I begged for it to stop as best as I could without control of my lips or tongue.

  If it was the first step in a fresh round of retraining, I wouldn’t last long. It was a torture worse than any I’d ever experienced before. I could think of seeing one other example of agony so extreme—the boo hag in Oxford, with her flailing limbs and heartrending cries of pain.

  I thrashed on the floor, struggling for breath and wondering how much longer I had to suffer through the torment.

  Then, like a switch being turned off, I was released from it all.

  The relief was so sudden that I couldn’t stop the final whimper that rushed from me. I took a sharp intake of breath and released it in a series of small, shaky exhalations. I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes while I waited for the shakiness caused by the attack—or whatever the hell it was—to abate.

  When the pain went, reality flooded in and the mingled voices of the crowd that surrounded me filled the air. Ideas of what might have happened filled my mind. My training told me it was something to do with the fae magic that still twisted my vision and the anti-fae enchantments that lined the corridors. Was that the same reason I’d had the buzzing headache from the moment I entered the building? If that was the case though, why had I been able to make it some of the way into the hallway before the enchantments had hit so hard? The way Eth had spoken about it during our planning it had sounded like the symbols covered the area, especially on the key floors.

  Had Evie made it this far? My stomach twisted. Was she safe if she did? The crowd around me was too big for her to slip by unnoticed. The offices and rooms around us seemed to have regurgitated every Assessor and operative in the area.

  The part of me that sought out Evie was awake and confirmed she was nearby. I didn’t know how far away, but I could feel her stress. Despite the pinched eyes and open animosity on the faces of those closest to me, my fear was no longer for myself, but for Evie. That’s when Lou lifted her head away from me, seemingly singling out some movement at the end of the room.

  “Isn’t that the girl from the restaurant?” I swallowed hard. We were always able to stumble across the others in the area. Now I knew the reason, and the lies we’d been told, the deaths of all the creatures I’d killed rested heavier on my conscience.

  Get out Evie!

  “What are you talking about? Why would that hottie even be on this floor? Besides, I’m meeting her in her room later, remember?” Eth’s words denied it, but I could tell it was a cover. He’d seen Evie just as Lou had—I was sure of it as certainly as if he’d told me outright.

  I pushed up onto my elbow just enough to see the fiery aura that surrounded Evie’s body moving away down the hall. Beside me, Lou started to move and I worried it would be to follow Evie’s trail. Needing to draw Lou back to my side and give Evie a chance to escape, I dropped down onto my back again and issued what I hoped was a convincing enough cry of pain to keep Lou near me, but not so convincing that it would cause Evie to come rushing back.

  “What the hell?” Ben growled before reaching down and grabbing my shoulder and roughly planting me back on my feet. Before I could even blink, I had a gun pressed firmly against my temple. “You have two seconds to tell me who you really are and where the real Clay Jacobs is or your brains will decorate the wall behind you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, raising my hand in surrender.

  “That is Clay,” Eth said at the same time.

  “Bullshit. That sort of reaction is typical of fae scum that we’ve escorted through these halls.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lou shrank away from us. Her hand came to rest on her arm, as if trying to hide her scars.

  “There are anti-fae protections all up and down these halls to ensure that they can’t hide on the ethereal plane or assist in breaking their filthy friends out of our treatment rooms. And what just happened is exactly the sort of bullshit reaction we’ve seen countless times. Usually it doesn’t end on its own though, so I can only assume you have help.” Ben rested his finger on the trigger. “Now, talk or I shoot.”

  “There’s no need to be hasty,” Dad said. “Maybe there’s something more going on here.”

  Lou narrowed her eyes and moved closer again until she was standing right in front of me. “How did you do it?”

  I wondered what she was talking about, but before I could ask, the back of her hand smashed across my cheek.

  “How did you replicate that feeling I get when Clay’s nearby?” she screamed at me with a hand pressed against her stomach. She was talking about the pull we both felt when we were close to each other.

  “I am Clay!” I shouted back.

  “Bullshit. You have it almost right, but you got some stuff wrong too.” She was staring right at me, right into my eyes. “Like that,” she said, pointing. “Clay’s eyes are brown.”

  “Let’s get him into one of the treatment rooms and we can work it out there,” Abe said.

  “No!” The word tore from me too soon to stop it, but I couldn’t face that again. With what they’d done to me in those rooms when I was their ally, I could only imagine what they might do if they thought I was a fae enemy.

  “Let me finish him,” Lou said, holding her hand out for Ben’s gun. “It’ll be one less fae bastard in the world.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Dad said. Lou twisted to him with a look of shock on her face. He rarely said no to her and had never st
opped her from destroying a creature before.

  Of course he doesn’t want her to do it! I saw it with blinding clarity. He knows I’m me.

  My hatred for him burned through me hotter than ever before.

  “But Dad,” Lou whined as if she were a child denied her favorite toy.

  “Leave him with me and I’ll get some more information from him,” Dad said. “He doesn’t need to die. At least, not yet.”

  Eth stepped in front of Ben and forcibly lowered the gun that had been against my head. “Stop. That’s Clay. You can trust me on that.”

  “What’s going on Ethan?” Dad asked, no doubt wondering why he was leaping to my defense rather than siding with Lou like he usually would have.

  Eth glanced sideways at me and then set his mouth into a hard line. “Clay isn’t himself at the moment. It’s the real reason I came to New York.”

  “What?” It wasn’t only my voice asking the incredulous question, but Dad’s, Lou’s, and Ben’s all issued in chorus with mine.

  “I got a phone call two nights ago, with Clay yammering about how there was some important information he needed to find here. How it was linked to the woman he’d killed in France and to everything that happened in Oxford. I had to meet him to find out exactly what kind of crazy he was spurting, and I saw pretty quick that he’s still under the fae spell that caused him to break into the Oxford vaults. I wanted to bring him in, but I was worried he might give me the slip again if I tried anything funny. So I pretended to go along with it all to figure out his plans.”

  “And? What did you find out?” I could almost hear the desperation in Dad’s voice. He obviously knew—or at least suspected—that I’d encountered the fae and had learned the truth.

  “It’s all to do with the phoenix and some fae friends she’s found.”

  “No!” I cried. I didn’t care if he threw me in front of a bus, but not her. Not Evie. If they knew she was in the building . . .

  My heart pounded against my ribcage as concern for her well-being overtook me.

  Eth looked like he was going to say something more, but Abe held his hands up. “Let’s get out of the hall before we discuss this further, shall we?”

  “If we get him into the treatment rooms, we’ll be able to get some information out of him real fast,” Ben said.

  “No, I have a better idea,” Eth said. He held up his hand, showing off Evie’s room number. “We can go to her hotel room. I learned from Clay that they planned to get her one so she could clear a path for her friends to attack this place. When I saw her upstairs, I saw through her costume. I think she was trying to get lover boy’s attention, but I told her I knew the secret and pretended I’d pass the message along.”

  “She survived the fall?” Lou narrowed her eyes as things clicked into place in her mind. “I knew there was something odd about that skank in the restaurant. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on her for a few hours in a treatment room.”

  “You’ll get your chance before long,” Dad whispered.

  “No,” I pushed forward to get her, but I had three pairs of hands stop me and then Ben shoved the gun back in my face.

  “I’m sure she was here, on this floor.”

  Eth snorted. “I think you’re seeing things, sis. How would she have even gotten through the security?”

  Abe shifted to the wall, running his finger over a mark on the wall that was now ruined before dropping to the floor and picking up a couple of beads that Evie must have left to cancel the anti-fae enchantments. “Who blocked the protections then?”

  Eth’s gaze cut to me before lifting back up. “Maybe she was on this floor then, but she’d be long gone by now. Besides, Clay is the bigger piece of the puzzle right now and I don’t think she’ll go anywhere without her pet.” He smirked at me in a way that made my fists twitch with the need to punch his mouth. “She’ll return to the room to find him and meet her friends.” “You seem to know a lot about this plan,” Dad said.

  “You’d be surprised how chatty this asshole can be with a little bit of booze and the pretense you’re on his side. It certainly got me information faster than any of the interrogation techniques you would have tried.”

  I had no idea why he lied about the method of finding out the plan. Whatever way you cut it, he was giving them my secrets. Did he believe the information I’d given him about Fiona was a lie?

  “What if it’s a trap?” Ben asked.

  “Even if it is, we outnumber them,” Eth said. “By running to Clay, I was able to get some vital information from him. Not everything, but enough. There are two guests coming to meet them soon. If we’re waiting in the room, we can get the upper hand before they have a chance to readjust the plan.”

  I tried to interject to deny everything that Eth had said, but it was meaningless; out of the two of us, only one was trustworthy in their eyes. Within minutes, Ben had secured my hands behind my back, tugging ruthlessly on the rope until it was practically cutting off the circulation in my fingers. As he did, the realization dawned on me—as well as the lie about finding out the plan about under the spell of alcohol, Eth had said two visitors even though the plan was for more fae guards to help.

  He wasn’t selling me out like he appeared to be.

  Ben grabbed my biceps and led me in front of him toward the elevator, and I realized that Eth might very well have saved Evie’s life by getting us off the floor, even if that meant informing Dad and Lou of Evie’s survival. The biggest threat to any of us was itchy trigger fingers. If we could keep them thinking that there was a bigger plot, they would try to get it out of us before they killed anyone. Played right, we could use their desire to stamp out a threat to our advantage.

  I struggled in Ben’s arms as much as I dared. “How could you do this, Eth? You’re supposed to be my brother.”

  “It’s because you’re my brother that I have to do this.” His tone sounded almost wounded. He was either a better actor than I’d thought or he hadn’t understood that I’d caught on to his plan.

  The elevator ride down to the fourth floor was silent and awkward. The weight of disapproval came from so many sides, all except Dad. He barely seemed able to look at me, and I wanted to scream at him that I knew—that I knew everything. His lies were unraveling faster than he could imagine, and soon, he’d lose it all. When he did, I’d dance over the resulting destruction.

  The time would come for that later though.

  First, I had to play along with Eth’s plan and hope like hell that Evie would understand when she was met with his apparent betrayal. It would be questionable since she’d only learned to put faith in him recently. It would be so easy for that faith to be shaken.

  Lou came to stand at the other side of me, and together, she and Ben hid the fact that my hands were secured behind my back. They pushed me ahead of them when we were at the fourth floor, guiding me toward the room Evie had booked into earlier. When Abe opened the door with the master key, I was forcibly shoved inside by Ben, who then dragged me across to the bed. Open on the bedding was the suitcase Evie and I had purchased earlier, confirming that Eth had indeed led them straight to her. I began once again to hope that he knew what he was doing.

  “What guests are coming?” Ben asked as he shoved me into a sitting position.

  “Fuck off,” I spat back at him, earning a backhand across the face.

  Ben started to ask me another question—or maybe the same one a second time—but Abe stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Abe knelt down in front of me, placing one hand on my knee and offering his most compassionate expression. “I understand that you’ve been hurt and are confused about who to trust, but I promise, if you tell us everything and let us take care of it for you, everything will work out fine.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t believe that bullshit when Dad was spouting it years ago, and I definitely don’t believe it now.”

  Abe nodded slowly, stood, and placed his hand out expectantly. In an instant, Ben’s gun was
resting on his palm. A second more and it was against my forehead, primed and ready to go.

  “Don’t!” Dad said. “Ethan will tell us what he knows, won’t you, son? Then we can work out if we need to get more information from Clay.”

  Abe raised the muzzle of the gun, before twisting it in his hold and passing it back to Ben. “If he makes one noise, shoot him,” he said to Ben before turning to Eth. “Okay, let’s hear what Ethan has to say.”

  Eth was busy in one corner of the room, texting on his phone with a smile on his face.

  “Huh?” he said, looking up at the room as though he’d just noticed someone was talking to him.

  “Who are you texting?” Dad asked.

  “My date tonight—I wasn’t lying when I said I had a hot one.”

  “Let me see,” Dad held out his hand to show it was a command and not a request.

  Without pause, Eth placed the phone in Dad’s hand. Despite the situation, I almost laughed at the speed with which Dad returned it.

  “I told you she was hot, and so filthy.” Eth winked at me. I wondered what texts he had on the phone just waiting for the request to see them—he probably would have been more upset if he hadn’t been able to show his handiwork off to someone. He turned his attention back to Dad. “All I know is he’s teamed himself up with a couple of fae.”

  “Fae?” Dad definitely seemed a little too interested in that revelation.

  “Yeah, he told me something about them needing his help to get some information or package or something.”

  “Package?” Abe asked cautiously.

  “What were their names?” Dad said at the same time.

  “Brayden, no that wasn’t it, it was something like that though. Aiden maybe. I can’t remember, and the other one was Fiona. I couldn’t forget that name because it’s Mom’s name too, isn’t it, Dad?”

  Dad’s head swung around to me faster than I thought humanly possible. I could tell he had a hundred questions ready to go but couldn’t ask them without risking me spilling the beans to Lou and Eth. I met his glare with a knowing smile and watched as he paled in response. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, no doubt forcing down the questions he wanted the answers to.