With the entire crowd flooding the square and Magnolia Lane, the further she walked up the street, the more deserted it seemed, and yet Iris had a sudden feeling that she wasn't alone. She stopped and instinctively looked back to check whether someone was indeed following her but she couldn't see anyone. She started walking again, this time a bit faster than before, trying to tell herself that she was shaking because she was cold, but the truth was that she was afraid. She should have let Aeryn walk her to her car, but she didn't want to seem weaker than she already appeared in their eyes. Plus, she couldn't always rely on Connor and his family to save her.
The feeling that she was being followed became so strong that she thought she could hear footsteps behind her. She tried to concentrate and see whether the sound was real or just the result of her overactive imagination, but she was too afraid to stop so instead she started running. She wanted to turn around and see who was following her but the voice in her head, screaming at her to run as fast as she could, terrified her. She couldn't have had more than five hundred feet to her car but suddenly five hundred feet seemed like five hundred miles.
For a moment she thought it could all be a nightmare, the nightmare, and the one following her was the Ice Queen, a terrifying creature that hunted her every night in her dreams ever since she was five years old. In that case, she wasn't running fast enough. At that rate, the Queen would get her in a few seconds, because in her dream she was running so fast that everything in her peripheral vision appeared as if looking out the window of a speeding train. She wasn't going to make it, she thought, and if that was the case, then she might as well give up then and there and get it over with, because the fear was worse than the idea of dying.
All of a sudden she felt like a tornado had swept her off the ground, rolling her around in midair, and she instinctively closed her eyes. Thinking that the Queen had finally caught up with her, she kept her eyes closed and waited for her sentence. She wasn't eager to see the Ice Queen's face—she knew it all too well after being tormented by it every night for the past eleven years.
After a few seconds of waiting to die, she realized that everything was silent and she wasn't being thrown around anymore. Instead, she was held from behind, a cold hand covering her mouth, a strong arm wrapped around her ribcage, threatening to crush it. She had trouble breathing. Her heart was pounding inside her chest and, just when she thought it couldn't beat any faster without giving her a heart attack, it decided to prove her wrong when she felt a warm breath behind her ear.
"Don't make a sound," a smooth voice whispered, so softly that she intuited the words rather than actually heard them over the sound of her own blood pounding in her temples. The voice had a hint of British in it, and, although velvety and deep, there was something about it made her think its owner was rather young. It didn't seem menacing, yet every beat that her heart took hurt.
She obeyed. After all, even if she wanted to protest she couldn't have, because he was holding her so tight to his chest that she could almost feel his heart beating against her back. She realized that she had her left hand clenched around his wrist, his blood pulsing underneath her fingers as his hand pressed against her mouth. Her right arm was on top of his around her chest. Her hand covered his and she could feel the smoothness of a set of long, slim fingers spread over the side of her ribcage.
She opened her eyes and realized that they were in a small side alley that she hadn't noticed earlier when she parked the car and then walked back to meet Aeryn in the square.
Slowly, he released his hold on her mouth. Still, even if her lungs were desperately asking for air, she was too scared to indulge them. They remained like that for a few moments, so close that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. Then he spoke again. "They're gone now."
After what seemed like an eternity, he finally freed her from his hold. She stood there for a second, and when she turned he was gone. She looked around but he was nowhere to be seen, so she finally headed towards her car. Now that the danger was gone and she had recuperated her sense of reality, she realized that she was already less than fifty feet away from the parking spot—a short distance under normal circumstances, an endless road when you're being chased and you're running for your life. As soon as she was in the car, she took a few minutes to try and make sense of what had just happened.
When she got home Connor was already there, sitting on the front steps, next to a plastic bag. He got up when he saw her enter the driveway and started walking towards her. He smiled but she could see a faint vertical line between his eyebrows. He stood there, looking at her, and she knew that he was struggling to find the right thing to say. She smiled and shook her head, signing him to follow her inside.
"What's in the bag?"
"Dinner courtesy of the Forest Hills Bar & Grill," he said, smiling. "I'm pretty sure your grandmother left you plenty of food but you haven't even touched it."
He wasn't wrong.
The house was a dark blue under the light of the moon coming through the windows and the lights almost startled her when she turned them on. She dropped her bag and her hoodie on the couch and let herself fall, feeling her legs give in under her. Connor put the plastic bag on the table and sat next to her.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "I was expecting you to get here sooner. I called you a few times…"
Iris patted her pockets but they were empty. She reached into her bag and when she couldn't find her phone, she emptied the contents on the couch. It wasn't there.
"I must have lost it," she said, thinking that it probably fell out of her pocket when she was running in the alley. The memory made her shiver. Connor got up, picked up a blanket from the armchair next to the couch, and wrapped it around her shoulders.
All she wanted was to close her eyes and sleep. Sleep and wake up when all of that was over, but she realized that it wasn't possible. None of what had happened to her that day would ever go away. Not even if she asked Connor to wipe her memories away like he'd done with Marion.
He opened the bag and took out two paper boxes, one with fried chicken and one with French fries. She wasn't hungry but he insisted and eventually she surrendered. As she ate, she started telling him about the message, but he already knew that from Aeryn, so she moved on to the boy in the alley. She could see that he was hurting. Remembering Aeryn's words about his heart being weak but his feelings about her genuine, in that moment, looking into his eyes, Iris was sure that what they had, their friendship, or maybe more, couldn't all be a lie.
"I'm sorry." He got up and picked up her jacket. "Come on. You're spending the night at the mansion. The house is warded against all supernatural being besides Grandma, Lorelai and me. No one will be able to hurt you there."
"No. I'm okay here."
"Iris, you just got a warning that everyone and their grandmother is out to get you and one of them even tried that tonight."
Iris paused for a moment, remembering the stranger whirling her in the air and holding her still against him. Don't make a sound. "That's just it. I don't think he wanted to harm me. I think he wanted to save me," she said, she herself confused.
"Who would want to do that?" He must have realized how that had sounded because he immediately added, "I mean—"
Iris got up and smiled. "Relax, I know what you mean. I don't know. Are you sure it wasn't you? You seem the only one who wants to save me these days. The rest of the world…" She knew it wasn't him. The voice belonged to someone else.
Connor looked at her with pained eyes. "I'm sorry." His voice was broken. "I still think you shouldn't be alone anymore."
"It's okay," she said smiling. "You can't be with me every second of the day." She reached out and rubbed his shoulder. "Have you found out anything else about the hound?"
"Lorelai asked around and it turns out someone noticed a Fae with a strange tattoo on his arm. From their descriptions it seems to be the mark of Satune's Seal."
"But how is that possible? You said it's locked tight
inside the Council Treasury."
"Grandma fears it might be an inside job. Someone inside the Council circle is working with the Dark Fae."
"Is that even possible?"
"What worries me more is not the how but the why. Why would any of the seven supreme members of the Council commit an act of treason punishable by death?"
"Isn't there a registry of who went in or out of the Treasury?"
"Yeah, but who do we trust to check it? We should go there ourselves. But that's impossible right now, just days before the Harvest Supermoon. We have to deal with this problem ourselves. And to do that we need to find whoever it is that's controlling the hound."
"You will. He's slipping. He's losing control. I think that's why the hound got derailed and came after us."
"That's what we're afraid of. According to the Book of the Past, the Fae that was controlling the last known hound to be alive started seeing dead bodies everywhere. He eventually took out his own eyes. The hound ended up killing nearly an entire city before it was put to death. The reason the Council brought them to extinction and declared their resurrection a capital crime was precisely because no one could control them and no one else could kill them."
"What do you mean?"
"To kill them you would have to light them on fire and keep them burning for a whole night until they turn to ashes. But the hounds can sense anyone from miles away. It's virtually impossible to get close enough to even shoot an arrow."
"How did the Council do it then?"
Connor sighed. His lashes threw dark shadows on the thin space under his eyes and he seemed more tired than ever.
"They built a circle of fire around the city it trapping the hound inside."
"What about the other Fae living there?"
Connor didn't have to answer. The look in his eyes did it for him.
Panic took over Iris as a thought formed in her mind. When she spoke, her voice was a broken whisper. "Connor, what happened to the Fae living in the city?"
"They all burned to death."
12
Trouble Ahead
The house was empty and cold. Iris got out of bed and shivered when the soles of her feet touched the icy floor. The door to her room was half open, a beam of blue light creeping in from the hallway. She had a feeling she shouldn't go out but there was something drawing her like a magnet. She grabbed the knob. Her sweaty palm slipped on the metal and she had to steady her trembling hand to hold on to it. The door slid open with a screech and Iris stepped into the hallway, invaded by the same blue light. It was coming through the window at the end of the corridor and she could see the dust particles dancing all around her. Cautiously, weighing her every step, she headed towards the stairs. The floor squeaked under her wait and instinctively she moved to walk closer to the wall. There was an oppressive silence throughout the house and the sound of her heartbeats in her ears was deafening. She grabbed the banister to steady herself down the stairs because her knees were shaking. She couldn't understand why she was so afraid—she'd never been afraid in that house.
On the landing halfway down the stairs she stopped and listened into the silence. Nothing. She closed her eyes and focused, waiting for a sound but none came. Not at first. But then it did, like thunder, shaking the walls with such force that it made the paint fall off. It hit her like a wave and sent her against the wall. Don't make a sound. Her blood froze in her veins. She stumbled to her feet and darted down the stairs to the only place where she'd felt safest in the house—her father's study. She banged her shoulder against the door and slammed it behind her. She closed her eyes, leaned against the door and slid to the floor, listening. The silence was back.
She sat there for a few moments and then opened her eyes and looked around the room. It was completely dark and Iris found it odd because, even with the blinds on, moonlight should still seep through the edges. She waited a while for her eyes to adjust and then looked around the room again, from left to right. Now she could see the shapes of the all too familiar objects—the bookcases, the desk stacked full of papers, the cabinet on the floor with her father's antiques. Her eyes slid over them and then returned to an object that seemed somehow bigger than the rest. She focused on it and it started to become brighter and brighter until she could see it clearly—the statue of a warrior woman with a sword in her right hand and an eagle resting on her left forearm. Then another sound shook the house and Iris opened her eyes.
The doorbell rang like someone had forgotten to take their finger off it. She got out of bed, fighting the dizziness, and ran downstairs.
"I'm coming," she announced from the landing, hoping the ringing would stop. It didn't. She checked the time. There was only one person who would pay her a visit at five thirty in the morning. When she opened the door, Marion nearly hurtled her to the ground on her way in. "Why won't you answer your phone? Also, you look like hell."
Iris ran her palm over her sweaty forehead. "I lost it last night."
Marion seemed too agitated to ask for details. "Have you seen this?" she said, waving a newspaper. Iris read the title on the front page of the Forest Hills Daily, the town's main printed source of news—Hikers Stumble on Pile of Human Remains Five Hundred Feet From Chestnut Trail. "Human remains, Iris. Human remains!"
Iris thought of the hellhound and the memory of its bloody jaws rimmed with shark teeth made her shiver. "Do they know who did it?"
"Not who. What."
"What?" Iris jerked. Was Marion remembering the day before?
"That beast that attacked us. The mountain lion."
"Oh." Iris breathed a sigh of relief.
"Did you just sigh?"
"No. Are they sure it's a mountain lion?"
"They weren't but when my mom told them about our incident in the woods… Anyways, the sheriff and the forest rangers are putting together a search party. They say there might be other bodies. Plus, if it's not dead yet—you know, from the accident—they want to find it and put it down."
Iris' heart skipped a beat as she imagined the entire search party face to face with the hellhound. They wouldn't stand a chance. It would shred them to pieces before they had the chance to point their guns at it. "Is that wise? I mean, there could be more of them."
"The rangers are not children, Iris. They handle wild animals all the time."
Not this kind of wild animals.
"Listen," Marion went on, "the sheriff wants to take our statements. Do you think we could go together? I'm still pretty shaken up and it would help if you were with me."
Iris shuddered at the thought of having to lie to the sheriff. She was such a bad liar that she rarely even tried to do it, no matter how dire the consequences of telling the truth were, because she knew that sooner or later she would give herself away. But this time the lie was different and the consequences of telling the truth were considerably more dangerous. "Sure. When?"
"At his office. In two hours. My mom's driving us."
As soon as she closed the door behind Marion, Iris darted upstairs. She needed to talk to the Elwoods. By the bed she found a note. Sorry, I had to leave early. I'll stop by later. Please don't leave the house. Connor. She had to leave the house. It was an emergency. She couldn't wait around for him to come by.
She went into the bathroom to take a shower when she realized that she was still wearing the clothes from the day before. She couldn't remember when she'd fallen asleep, but Connor must have carried her to her room and laid her in bed. She smiled at the thought.
This time she didn't stop to check her hair and cover her dark circles. She rubbed her hair with a towel, put on the first clothes that she could get her hands on and ran down the stairs. Almost without stopping, she grabbed her bag and hoodie from the living room and darted out the door.
At the Elwood mansion she pushed the doorbell in the same manner Marion had a little while before. The second it took Lorelai to open up seemed like an hour.
"Have you guys seen the paper today?" she asked as soon
as she was inside.
"Hello, Lorelai. Boy, you look stunning today. Thank you for saving my life yesterday," Lorelai said in falsetto.
Iris answered on the same tone. "Hi, Lorelai. You look like you could use some sleep. Thank you for turning my life upside down yesterday."
Lorelai rolled her eyes and headed towards the kitchen. "We were just talking about that. The paper, I mean. Not you and your drama."
In the kitchen, Aeryn and Connor were sitting at the breakfast table.
"I thought I told you not to leave the house," he said instead of hello.
"This is an emergency," Iris pointed at the newspaper on the table, open at the fold with the article about the attack. No one said anything, so she went on. "Did you know the sheriff's organizing a search party in the woods?"
"We do," he said.
"Well, you have to stop them. They're going to be eaten alive."
Aeryn looked her in the eyes. "Iris, we can't do much on our own. We need the help of the Council."
Iris went pale. "But they're going to wipe the whole town off the map." She looked at Connor. Just the day before, they were talking about not informing the Council about the hound. What had changed?
The Fountain of Truth (Tales of the Dark Fae Book 1) Page 11
