Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden

by Sarra Cannon

  “Trows,” I said thoughtfully. “They’re troll cousins, right?”

  Her answer involved peeling her eel-skin lips from her ichor-stained teeth and hissing at me.

  “We can finish this later.” I scanned the street until spotting a flicker of ginger bobbing over the sea of inky-haired sameness. I bolted in that direction as pain razored across my forearm. Dark blood welled and glistened in the furrows the trow had raked in my flesh, but I healed before a single drop fell.

  “Finish this now,” she growled. “Pretty lady.”

  “Fine.” I was closer to the troll than I had been all week, and I wasn’t leaving the bazaar without him.

  I raised my left hand, let the trow see the shimmering wards stamped into the black leather glove I wore, let her wonder what all those bindings meant. And then I showed her. Murmuring my Word, I sensed the protective magic locking the glove at my wrist relax. I removed it and flexed my fingers.

  Runes covered my skin from wrist to fingertips, casting a soft peridot glow around my hand.

  Her rheumy eyes flared. “Cú Sídhe whore.”

  Every person on the packed street craned their necks. Mouths fell open. Bodies shuffled the hell out of my way. No one spoke. They barely breathed while I strolled the narrow gauntlet they formed, taking time I didn’t have so all saw the markings, my birthright, and understood what they meant.

  Sometimes it paid having Macsen Sullivan for a father.

  Ahead of me, the troll glanced back. His bone-white face contrasted with his scalding hair. Stark blue eyes pierced mine. Freckles crawled like ants over his bulbous nose. His teeth, when he smiled, were so much worse. Square pegs, each thicker than my thumb and made for grinding, edges too dull to slice through flesh.

  Trolls were fond of chewing their victims to a squishy pulp without breaking the skin. They cut off the head and rolled up the corpse starting from the toes, the same way humans used a tube of toothpaste, squirting out the goo then discarding the empty wrapper in the nearest trash bin.

  Grinning, the troll licked his lips. He flipped a table then darted behind a row of booths. When he bolted between two buildings, I broke into a sprint. If I lost him now, I might not get another chance, and I wanted that bonus.

  Magic sucker-punched me when I reached the mouth of the alley. No subtle push here. This was a seasoned uppercut while your head was turned. Usually charms like the one I sensed made the location emit nothing to see here vibes that spun most folks on their heels. This one blared fuck off.

  With my head reeling, I braced my bare left hand against the nearest brick wall and shook off the oily threat permeating my senses. Entering the alley alone was a Very Bad Idea, but I didn’t get paid to let fae eat humans. Our race was a nibble away from discovery as it was. Both Seelie and Unseelie houses agreed if the fae had to come out, they wanted the big reveal to be on their own terms. Having an ass-ugly troll with people stuck in his teeth for their poster boy? Probably not the smoothest move in the campaign to convince humanity our races could coexist in harmony.

  That first step into shadow made my bones creak. Pressure built in my ears until I swallowed to pop them. Runes on my hand provided the only light, a faint green glow. Given tonight’s full moon, I chalked the pervasive darkness up to black magic. Someone had gone shopping tonight.

  “Smells of dog, it does,” the troll’s thick voice boomed. “What business does it have with I?”

  Paper crinkling on my left made me squint that much harder. “Are you Quinn O’Shea?”

  “Aye.” He crushed something underfoot, closer to my right.

  He was circling me.

  I raised my palm, hoping to distract him with the immediate threat while I tugged a daylighter flare out of my satchel. “In that case, O’Shea, I bet you can guess what I’m doing here.”

  Hot air blasted my nape as his damp nose snuffled me. “You’re Black Dog’s get.”

  I suppressed a shudder. “That’s what they tell me.” I had never met the guy myself.

  “Black Dog knows I.” He exhaled near my ear. “Thinkin’ he won’t want it to hurt I.”

  “The conclave sent me.” I twisted the cap off the flare. “My father has nothing to do with this.”

  “It has Dog’s black hair.” His chuckle slithered over me. “Does it have Dog’s black heart?”

  I was nothing like Mac. Our magically radioactive left hands were the only things we had in common, not that I had ever seen his to compare.

  “The conclave bids you come with me of your own free will to stand trial.”

  He chuffed. “Don’t much like I’s odds if I goes to court.”

  “If you’re convicted of the murders—” and we both knew he would be given his starring role in the convenience store surveillance video, “—you can appeal the verdict. But if you don’t report, and if you really do know my father, then we both know what happens next.”

  “It don’t have the power.” The troll grunted. “It wouldn’t be set loose here if’n it did.”

  “Last chance.” I gripped the flare with one hand and its cap in the other. Each flash of my runes telegraphed my movements. No hope of concealing them. The glow didn’t come with an off switch.

  “Don’t fear death.” Claws scraped asphalt when he shifted his weight. “Don’t fear you neither.”

  I rubbed the coarse striking surface of the cap against the button on the flare. Nothing happened. Damn it. Trolls turn to stone in sunlight. I had planned to identify Quinn, whip out my daylighter flare and then babysit the hunk of troll-shaped rock until the conclave dispatched a unit with a flatbed for pick-up. But Quinn’s nasty little charm must protect him by dousing all forms of artificial light, like my flare.

  With a sigh, I tossed the worthless daylighter aside. “You aren’t coming peacefully, are you?”

  His answer was to hook his meaty forearm around my throat and yank me against his chest. My lungs burned while his bulging muscles flexed, crushing my larynx. I dug the nails of one hand into his wrist. Runes eased beneath my skin, shining like beacons, banishing the gloom.

  Damp and fleshy, his tongue slid down my nape. The glide of his blunt teeth followed.

  A shudder cemented my resolve. Kill or be killed. I had a choice to make. An easy one.

  I clamped my bare left palm over his thick wrist. “This is going to hurt.”

  Chapter 2

  Quinn’s startled bellow when my magic threaded through his veins to his heart was deafening.

  My ears rang as much from his screams as the collapse of his charm. Moonlight filtered through the fading tendrils of darkness, casting faint light between the squat buildings sandwiching the alley.

  Glittering bones, each one picked clean and most gnawed to splinters, littered the street. Tossed aside like trash to rot among the wet newspapers and crumpled soda cans. Hard to know who or what left those behind. They weren’t troll kills. That much was for certain. They weren’t fresh kills, either.

  Trolls were opportunistic. The odds Quinn had squatted in another fae’s territory were high. Yet another use for that blackout charm. Tack it up, say a Word to activate it, and the charm did the rest.

  Power that rich could make any spot with a kernel of darkness blossom into an abyss.

  One corpse, the girl whose disappearance tipped off the conclave about our rogue troll problem, sprawled in a heap of broken limbs. The toothpaste trick didn’t work as well on humans as it did on fae. Poor kid. I hated breaking bad news to parents who actually cared whether their children lived or died.

  The troll’s wheezing forced my attention back to him. Enough stalling. Time to finish this.

  “By the power vested in me as a marshal of the Southwestern Conclave, I condemn you to death for your crimes against humanity.” I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached and braced against the coming pain. “Your soul will now be extinguished and your remains claimed by the Morrigan, as is your right as a subject of House Unseelie. If you have sworn fealty to another de
ity, and if you wish your remains to be an offering to them, speak their name now or forever hold your peace.”

  I took his silence as consent and willed a pulse of magic through the runes contacting his skin. A heartbeat later, searing heat cut across my jaw, a scalpel-sharp ache zigzagging past my temple and over my scalp. Razors slashed under my skin with every wicked slice my magic dealt O’Shea.

  I hated this part, the severing of a soul from its host, the trimming away of the fat of life and the cauterizing of immortality. Fae were built to weather eternity. Few grasped true death in any context.

  But we were all tangles of muscle and bone, flesh and blood, heads and hearts, weren’t we?

  We could all die if the time was right. Sometimes we did even if it wasn’t.

  I held O’Shea’s terrified gaze while the top layers of his skin peeled away from muscle like ripping off an old bandage. I owed him that. I was ending a man’s life and could damn well look him in the eye while I did it. The vicious teeth of my magic savaged his soul, rent the tatters of his self and devoured it whole.

  Pleasant warmth suffused my limbs, sating the darker part of me who stared at carnage a little too long, watched each death a too closely and enjoyed a soul-induced high just enough to shove me spinning down a shame spiral only one person could stop.

  I wish Shaw was here.

  No. No, I didn’t. Sure he might pull me out of my guilt tailspin, but that meant talking to him, and if he got me on the phone, I knew what he would want to talk about. Us. Except there was no us. Not anymore.

  The troll’s pupils had faded to milky white. He was an empty shell suspended by an intricate web of misery. Magic knifed under his flesh, jolting his corpse, seeping out his pores until his skin released with a wet kiss of sound and puddled at his ankles where the pinky-white folds withered into a dried husk.

  What remained was a meat and bone sculpture of troll musculature ready for disposal. Time to ring the dinner bell.

  Before gloving my hand, I tugged a quarter-size silver medallion from my shirt by its chain and palmed the cool metal. Rubbing a rune-covered thumb across the triskele stamped into its center, I summoned the Morrigan.

  A breeze smelling of wood smoke and embers ruffled my hair. A pulse of black magic beat in the air before me. The ball of swirling mist drifted on the breeze. That…wasn’t right.

  A carrion crow swarm that blotted out the sky then swooped to encircle an offering in a cawing black feather tornado complete with glowing ruby eyes? That was more her style.

  This was something else—someone else. But who had the balls to claim her feast in their name?

  I lowered my hand to my side where its luminescent threat remained visible.

  “You summoned the Morrigan.” A thickly accented voice throbbed across my skin.

  “I did, and you aren’t her.” The cadence of those words shivered through me. “Who are you?”

  “Whoever you want, a stór.” His chuckle was worse, all buttery rich and inviting. Dangerous.

  “I’m not your darling.” I raised my left hand. “By whose authority have you answered my call?”

  A moment of silence passed. “I am the Morrigan’s son.”

  “The Raven,” I breathed.

  Her son and heir, Raven, an Unseelie prince. A prickle of unease quivered along my nape. A prince in the mortal realm. What on earth had lured him here? And did the conclave know? They had to, right? The prince must have used a tether to get here, and for visiting dignitaries, that required permission from the Faerie High Court on his side and the Earthen Conclave on this one.

  Straightening my shoulders, I gestured toward the body. “Then you are welcome to your feast.”

  “Who do I owe for this offering?” Amusement throbbed in that nebulous swirl of magic.

  “Thierry Thackeray.” Not my Name, but a name nonetheless.

  “Tee-air-ree.” He dragged out each syllable as if savoring the sound on his…well, he had no lips in this form.

  “Let me grab this…” I knelt and rolled up the troll’s skin, “…and I’ll leave you to it.” Tucking the proof of death under my arm, I saluted the magic blob. “Enjoy your feast.”

  Eager to put Raven behind me, I turned on my heel and strode toward the mouth of the alley, tugging my glove back in place. His mother tended to rip off limbs and gnaw on them like chicken wings instead of, oh, I don’t know, someone’s arm. I shuddered and kept on walking. However her son chose to dine, he was doing it alone.

  “I will savor every bite.” His voice dogged my heels. “Go bhfeicfidh mé arís thú.”

  Until we meet again.

  A shiver danced down my spine as I raised a hand in a half wave and kept walking. The conclave awaited my resolution, and thanks to O’Shea’s refusal to stand trial, I had a good three or four hours’ worth of paperwork ahead of me.

  Chapter 3

  On the dusty outskirts of Wink, a ramshackle farmhouse slouched on three hundred acres of dried weeds. Or so its glamour led you to believe. Those who knew the Word and braved the gap-toothed front porch were rewarded with entrance into the modern brick office building run by Mable, who was receptionist, secretary and den mother to us all.

  Murmuring a Word, I keyed the ward locking the front door of the marshal’s office. I stepped inside Mable’s domain in time to catch her licking a dollop of honey from a teaspoon before dipping it into her glass of sweet iced tea.

  The sight of Mable’s lopsided bun sliding down the back of her head always made me smile.

  She was a bean-tighe, a housebound spirit. They were one of several nocturnal races of Seelie. Their personal glamours were usually of the cookie-baking, apron-wearing, booboo-kissing grandma variety, but Mable had taken her illusion one step further. She emulated the ultimate grandmother figure. She was a dead ringer for Mother Christmas, if Mrs. Claus had never met a shade of pink she didn’t love. And possibly if the North Pole was, in fact, a dude ranch staffed by ten-gallon-hat-wearing elves.

  “Knock, knock.” I waited while she adjusted her alarmingly fuchsia glasses. “Did I interrupt your dinner?”

  “Thierry.” Her round face split into a grin. “Always good to see you, sweetie. Come on in.”

  “I brought you something.” I pulled the troll skin from under my arm. “Quinn O’Shea.”

  “Oh dear.” She covered her mouth with a plump hand. “An execution.”

  “I…” Old guilt tightened my throat until it trapped my excuse. “It was self-defense.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” She bent down, opened the mini fridge under her desk and produced a pitcher of iced tea and a glass that matched hers. “Yours is a dangerous job.” She poured the syrupy liquid to the brim then passed the drink to me. “Out in the field, anything can happen. You do the best you can to see that justice is served, and then you do whatever it takes to get home in one piece.”

  The miserable tightness making it hard to breathe eased enough that when she passed me a tray of my favorite iced lemon cookies, the smile bending my lips was as genuine as the affection behind it.

  She jabbed her finger at the chair across from her desk. “Go on, sit. I’ll get the papers together.”

  “First, I have a gift for you.” I reached into my messenger bag, a graduation gift from her, and pulled out a small jar. “Basswood honey.”

  “Basswood, you say?” She clasped her hands together. “I haven’t tasted that variety in years.”

  “I’m glad you approve.” I passed it to her. “I’ll bring avocado next time.”

  Despite being employed by the conclave, tradition dictated a price be paid for the services of the bean-tighe. Mable loved her honey, the more exotic the better. Sucking up to the lady who handed out case assignments was always a stellar idea, but Mable was like family. Spoiling her with rare honey made me happy.

  “You are too good to me.” She unscrewed the lid, her eyes closing as she sampled it by dipping her pinky into the jar and licking honey from her finger. “Divine
.”

  I dropped into the spare chair and leaned forward, propping my elbows on her desk. Two more cookies vanished while she filled out my bonus voucher and printed the necessary paperwork. Chasing O’Shea must have worked up an appetite. “What do you know about the Morrigan’s son, Raven?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. I don’t involve myself with Faerie’s politics when I can help it.” Mable capped her honey and placed it in a desk drawer. “Why do you ask?”

  I licked my fingers before remembering where my hands had been. Ick. I gulped Mable’s lemony sweet brew, swishing it around in my mouth. Brushing my teeth with a palm full of sugar would have had the same scouring effect. “Someone claiming to be Raven showed up when I summoned the Morrigan earlier.”

  I had been working cases solo for over a year now. Factor in five years of education in the fae private school system, plus sixteen weeks of marshal academy, and my summoning skills should have been topnotch. When I summoned the Morrigan, I expected the Morrigan. Not her next of kin.

  “Give me a moment.” Mable cleaned her hands with a wet wipe then clacked a few keys on her computer. “I don’t see any cross-realm travel paperwork filed under his name—or hers.” She glanced up at me. “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “No.” The cookie turned sour in my mouth. “He appeared as a floating glob of energy.”

  “Hmm. That sounds like a scavenger to me.” She clicked a few more keys. “I’ll file a report and let the magistrates know there was a poaching incident. That’s the fourth one this week.”

  “There have been more?” Poaching from the Morrigan was suicidal, so understandably rare.

  “Oh, yes.” She bobbed her head. “Territorial disputes happen to us all from time to time, and she holds the monopoly on conclave business. I can’t imagine the other death dealers are too pleased about that.”

  I sat back and drummed my fingers on her desk. “So there’s no way it was Raven?”

  “No.” She printed out an incident form and slid it over for me to initial. “It’s not possible.”