Taken

by Jennifer Blackstream

  Flint’s irises glinted with a hint of gold. “If I were going to strip something from Shade, it wouldn’t be her ri—”

  I elbowed him in the stomach, aiming high for his solar plexus. Flint’s breath left him in a sharp whoosh, and he choked on his next inhale.

  Morgan glanced over her shoulder. “What is—”

  The door opened, cutting off any further conversation. I stared. The man that answered the door was not too far removed from his equine form. He had so little body fat that each strand of muscle strained against his skin as though it would snap if he flexed. His skin held a blue undertone, a promise of water, and his eyes were black and glossy, his pupils too large. He wore a linen shirt and breeches that reminded me of a different world, a different time.

  “Hello.” He studied each of us in turn, a question in the tilt of his head.

  Morgan lifted her chin. “Hello, my name is Morgan. I’ve brought some guests to see you. This is Mother Renard, and FBI agent Andy Bradford. I trust you know Mr. Valencia?”

  The kelpie gave Flint a less-than-friendly look. “Yes.”

  Andy. She’d called him Andy, not Andrew. I straightened my spine and stepped forward. “Good evening…?”

  “Rowyn,” the man said warily.

  “Rowyn, a pleasure to meet you.” I cleared my throat. “I’d like to speak with Grayson. Is he here?”

  “Why do you need to talk with him?” Rowyn demanded. “Bradan paid for him three hours ago. The transaction is over.”

  Andy tensed, but said nothing.

  “There’s been some concerns raised about his mental capacity to understand and agree to the contract he signed one year ago,” I said. “The one that allowed him to participate in the auction to begin with. We have to speak with him to determine if these concerns are valid.”

  Rowyn’s jaw tightened. “He’s bought and paid for.”

  I met his eyes and held them. “And if it was all above board, then you have nothing to worry about. If it wasn’t, then you will be reimbursed.”

  The man frowned. I could feel the argument coming.

  “I do apologize for the inconvenience,” I continued. “But my mentor was very firm about follow-through. If she heard I’d slacked on this, then I’d never hear the end of it. And you don’t want to know Mother Hazel’s version of never hearing the end of it.”

  Normally it annoyed me to have to drop my mentor’s name. I wasn’t her apprentice anymore, and I needed to make it on my own. But I’d already lost Lindsay. I wasn’t going to lose Grayson, not if I had the means to save him. Not for something as foolish as pride.

  My mentor’s name did not go unnoticed. Rowyn eyed me for a long minute, then glanced around at Flint, Andy, and Morgan. Finally, he stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind him and then moving farther out onto the sheltered lower patio. “Go to the shore. I will fetch them.”

  I took a step closer to Andy as soon as I realized what Rowyn was about to do. Thus far, Andy’s experience with Otherworld had been all humanoid. This was going to be different.

  A shiver ran over Rowyn’s body, a twitch of muscle beneath skin. Then something cracked, and he bowed, arms hanging toward the floor of the houseboat. Another crack, then another. He grunted, a muffled sound that was more a release of pressure than pain. Then his face elongated, the change rapid enough that Andy stepped back, features twitching as he fought to keep his FBI mask in place.

  The change didn’t take long. Soon it was no longer a man standing before us, but a horse. It stomped on the deck, giving us a glimpse of its backward hooves. With a final snort and a toss of its head, it took a running leap and sailed off the boat into the water, landing with a loud splash.

  Andy took a step closer to the edge.

  “Don’t get too close to the water,” I warned him again.

  He nodded, but didn’t take his attention off the water. The entire way to the shore, he stared at the spot where Rowyn had disappeared.

  We waited for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few minutes. The sound of splashing drew our attention first. As a group, we all gazed across the lake. A shadow danced over the water, the spray it kicked up catching the moonlight in arcs of bluish white. It was a kelpie, running over the lake’s surface. When it got closer, the floodlights from the house struck its back, revealing its burden.

  Grayson.

  The teenager clung to the kelpie’s neck, his eyes bulging and showing so much white they looked like enlarged pearls. He choked and gasped, sputtering every time an arc of lake water hit him in the face. His hair was long enough that it hung into his eyes, plastered to his face when he whipped his head around. The horse carrying him reared up as it reached the surf, and Grayson screamed, a sound of pure terror.

  He fell off the horse’s back, landing hard on the beach. Andy darted forward, but I grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t do anything that could be interpreted as an act of hostility,” I said under my breath. “Do not give them an excuse to fight. Not when Grayson is still in the water.”

  “Please,” Grayson choked. “Let me go.”

  The horse beside him shivered and shook its head. A ripple ran beneath its velvety hide, and a sudden cacophony of popping tendons and cracking bones preceded the collapse of his large form. He dropped to the sand, long legs growing short and thicker, hooves splitting into fingers. Andy face lost a shade of color, and even my own stomach rolled as the horse’s face melted away, retracting into an increasingly human face. When it was over, the man standing where there’d once been a horse rolled his head and shoulders, releasing a few final pops of tension. He faced us with the same serious bearing he might have had he been fully dressed, and not naked as the day he was born.

  “Stop complaining,” he told Grayson, giving him a cuff to his head. “You’re fine.” He looked at me, and the light from the house illuminated black eyes framed by a fall of green hair. “I’m Bradan. Rowyn said you wanted to talk to me?”

  “Actually, it’s Grayson I’d like to speak to,” I said.

  “What about?” Bradan asked.

  “That’s between us and Grayson,” Andy said evenly.

  The kelpie blinked at Andy as if seeing him for the first time. “And who are you? A human?”

  “FBI agent Andrew Bradford,” Andy said, flashing his badge. “I have reason to believe this boy is in danger.”

  Bradan opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked from Flint, to Morgan, to me. “Is he having me on?”

  “Help me,” Grayson gasped. His eyes had landed on Andy as soon as the letters FBI left his lips, and now he leaned toward the agent, desperation turning every word into a plea. “Please, you have to get me away from here.”

  My throat constricted, and it took everything I had not to grab the boy and haul him behind me. He was so frightened. So young.

  “Grayson, I’m not leaving without you,” Andy promised, his voice calm and authoritative.

  “Oh, thank God.” Tears streamed down Grayson’s face and he struggled to get to his feet. His legs shook too badly, though, and he collapsed onto the sand. His mouth opened, but a sob swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Bradan snapped.

  Andy tightened his fists at his sides. “Two of the three children who came into your care are dead.”

  Bradan snorted. “I’ve had none but this boy. And I don’t know anything about dead children.” He shrugged. “Bloody sidhe. You can’t hold us responsible for their carelessness. This one’s got nothing to worry about.”

  Grayson tried to stand again, but he couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t make his body obey his commands. “Please! Please, take me with you! I’ll do anything!”

  “You’ll do anything regardless,” the kelpie pointed out. “You belong to us now.”

  Grayson sobbed.

  “Grayson, three more children went missing today. Do you know where they are?” Andy asked.

  “Yes! Yes! I’l
l tell you, but you have to promise to take me with you! I’ll show you, I’ll show you where they are!”

  “Agreed.” Andy fixed the kelpie with his version of a witchy look—the FBI stare-down. “This boy was underage when he signed that contract. It’s void. He’s coming with me, now.”

  Ice flowed into my blood. “Andy,” I said quietly, “be careful.”

  “I’m told you are a law-abiding people,” Andy continued, doing a fair job of feigning respect. “I’m sure you understand how important it is that we protect minors from being held to consequences of contracts they don’t have the capacity to truly understand.”

  “He was seventeen when he signed that contract,” the kelpie said evenly. “And he’s eighteen now. He’s no child.”

  “Seventeen isn’t an adult.”

  “It is to us.”

  “It’s not to us. I suppose we could call the Vanguard and see what they say.”

  I grabbed Andy’s arm. “I told you, they will uphold both laws, not just human law.”

  The kelpie sneered. “We’re done here. Call the Vanguard if you want. He’s staying with me.”

  Several things happened at once. A kelpie in horse form, probably Rowyn, emerged from the water to stand beside Bradan. Bradan lifted Grayson to put him on Rowyn’s back. Grayson screamed.

  And Andy drew his gun.

  “Andy, no,” I said, my voice higher with a note of panic.

  “Fuck,” Flint spat. “Bloody humans.”

  The kelpie in horse form beside Grayson grabbed hold of the kid’s shirt with his teeth. Grayson screamed and flailed. Bradan stepped in front of him, blocking our view of the boy.

  “You would threaten us?” the kelpie growled. “Threaten to take what is rightfully ours?”

  Andy’s face betrayed none of the panic he should be feeling. “Grayson is not a what. He is a who. And he is obviously terrified. As a servant of the law, it is my responsibility to assure his safety.”

  “Oh, this is going so very, very badly.” I unzipped my pouch and began digging through it.

  “Woman, we don’t have time for you to find anything in that bottomless pit,” Flint said. His hand hovered at his side, near where he held his own weapon. “We will not win this fight.”

  “I know that,” I snapped. “Shut up and let me think.”

  Morgan stepped forward. “Let us all calm down. No blood needs to be spilled here today.”

  “I don’t mind a little blood,” Bradan said, his eyes locked on Andy.

  “Who let the human in with a gun?”

  Andy didn’t take his eyes off Bradan and Rowyn, but I turned to see who’d spoken. Two more kelpies had come out of nowhere. Like Rowyn, they had no body fat to speak of, all solid, straining muscle and square jaws. Unlike their bare-chested companions, they were dressed in black tie. I cursed under my breath. They must have come from the house. They barely spared me a glance as they shrugged out of their expensive jackets and let them fall to the wet sand.

  Blood and bone, they’re getting ready for a fight.

  Morgan lifted her chin. “I let him in. He is an agent of the law. It is not my place to disarm him.”

  “It was not your place to allow him access to what we were promised was a secure property,” one of the new arrivals snarled. He unfastened the top button of his shirt. “Marilyn will hear of this.”

  “I will tell her myself,” Morgan said coolly. She took a step closer to Andy, her expression earnest, only a shade away from desperation. “You are an agent of the law. You have rights. You came here on a legitimate mission; they must respect that.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. “Wait, that might be true, but—”

  “Our law is different from your law, and in such cases, you have a right to be heard,” Morgan continued over me. “Don’t let them fool you.”

  Andy said to me, never taking his eyes off the kelpie holding Grayson, “Is that true?”

  “Not in the way you want it to be.” I stared at Morgan. Couldn’t she see what she was doing? She was going to get us all killed. “There is a difference between sidhe law and human law, and some of that might bear on this situation. But different doesn’t mean human law supersedes sidhe law. Even if you called in the Vanguard, the sidhe can make a legitimate case for the legality of their actions.”

  “A minor cannot enter a legally binding contract,” Andy insisted.

  “And as I said, the human definition of minor is malleable,” I explained patiently, still digging in my pouch. I looked at Peasblossom and gestured to the pouch. “For instance, humans can declare minors adults for the purposes of charging them for a crime. As far as the Vanguard are concerned, if they can be considered an adult in any situation, then that gives the sidhe a reasonable right to consider them adults for the purpose of signing a contract.”

  “That’s not right.”

  “Neither is charging a minor as an adult,” I said. “But the truth remains.”

  Morgan stepped closer. “There comes a time when you have to decide not just what is right or what is easy, but what you can live with.”

  “Stop,” I snapped. “You are not helping.”

  Morgan bowed, shuffling away like a scolded child. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I told you, I don’t agree with what’s happening here. This man is right. They’re children. If there’s any chance to save them…”

  Them. “Andy, the other kids are still inside. We have to think of them too. If you die here, then they’ll be sold.”

  “Don’t leave me,” Grayson said, still sobbing.

  “Andy,” I warned.

  “He’s a child,” Morgan insisted, grabbing my arm.

  “Get him out on the water!” Bradan snapped.

  The horse flung Grayson into the air to land on his back, the motion perfected over decades of savage practice. Grayson landed and gripped its mane by instinct, trying not to fall into the water. The horse reared up, prepared to dive. Grayson screamed.

  Andy’s gun went off.

  Chapter 17

  Everything moved in slow motion, in a way that only happened when all hell had well and truly broken loose. I had all the time in the world to watch Rowyn, still in equine form, rear up out of the water, screaming in pain and fury as blood oozed from the bullet wound in his flank. The dancing lights I’d sent to hover around Grayson illuminated his bulging eyes, cast a spotlight on his terror as he was thrown from the kelpie’s back into the lake, swallowed by black water.

  Then the moment passed, and the world sped up.

  “You!” Bradan whirled to face Andy. A milky sheen melted over his eyes, outlining his horizontal pupils before they vanished in a pool of pearlescent white.

  Andy jerked back a step, sweeping his gun toward Bradan and swearing as the kelpie’s human face bulged outward in an equine snout.

  “Don’t shoot!” I yelled.

  My heart pounded. Andy shot Rowyn. He’d violated the laws of hospitality. He no longer had what meager protection they’d offered him. Morgan…

  I stomped that thought deep into my subconscious. Later—a problem for later.

  “One kelpie in the water, three on land,” Peasblossom said into my ear, clinging to my earlobe.

  “Rowyn’s a wildcard. He’s either injured and fleeing, or out of sight waiting to attack. But the other three will need a minute to finish the change. We need to move now!” I stared at the two kelpies shifting behind Morgan and Flint. They still stood on two legs, but were bent over as their fingers melted and hardened into hooves. Two birds…

  Magic welled up inside me, and I pointed at the ground directly beneath them. “Excavare!”

  The earth beneath the two kelpies exploded upward before they could finish shifting to their new forms. Chunks of dirt and stone pummeled them as they struggled in midair, trying to throw themselves to the side, regain their footing to avoid the pit yawning beneath them. It did them no good. Their legs were neither human nor equine, but an amalgamation of both, and
they were nowhere near as graceful as they would be when the transition was complete. They fell into the pit with howls of rage somewhere between a shout and a whinny.

  Grayson screamed, cutting off whatever victory I may have felt. My heart seized as I spun to see him flailing in the water. It was shallow enough that his head and one arm remained above the surface, but he wasn’t standing. As I watched, he tried to stand, only to fall back to the sandy lake bottom.

  “I’m going for Grayson,” Andy barked.

  Before I could tell him to stop, remind him of the danger that might be waiting in the lake, he skirted the pit and the furious kelpies still completing their shift.

  “Peasblossom, take this!” Magic pulsed inside me, and I let it flow down my arms to my fingertips. I tapped Peasblossom on the forehead, letting the energy fill her through our bond.

  “Right!” Peasblossom sailed after Andy like a tiny pink rocket, illuminated by the glowing spheres of light that swirled around the thrashing teenager. “Andy!”

  Andy didn’t take his focus off Grayson, so he started when Peasblossom landed hard on top of his head. She put her palms against his cheek, and a blue light winked at me, telling me the spell had been passed.

  “I think you’ve done quite enough, Lady Morgan.”

  I whirled to find Flint standing behind me, keeping himself between Morgan and the lake. The dark-haired woman curled her fingers into fists, frustration tightening her features.

  “I’m trying to help,” she insisted. “Let me help.”

  “Your obligation to the FBI agent is over. He violated hospitality when he shot Rowyn.”

  “Maybe I’m not in this for myself like some people,” Morgan snapped.

  Bradan grunted, close to finishing his shift. His movements were sluggish, the penalty for changing form so many times so quickly. I called my magic again, cursing at the trembling in my arm. Too much magic, too fast. I pressed my lips together, trying to concentrate. Come on, Shade. One more spell. Then we run.

  Grayson screamed, followed quickly from a shout from Andy. Panic slashed my concentration, and horror stole my breath as I saw Andy fall into the water, his suit jacket snagged in the blunt teeth, pulling him underwater. Rowyn.