Agent of Enchantment (Dark Fae FBI Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  I sucked in a breath, inspecting the damage. I found two visible holes in his shirt—one in his shoulder, the other just below his ribs. I felt around his shoulder, slipping my arm around it, and I discovered an exit wound. But when I slid my hand lower under his muscled body, his weight nearly crushing my fingers, I found no exit wound for the bullet hole below his ribs. If he didn’t die from blood loss, the iron in his body would kill him.

  I needed to get the bullet out, but there was no way to do it, and no time. Gabriel would be in here any second, and I needed another diversion for Wood.

  I rose just as the Rix limped from the transept. Blood soaked his body, and his right eye had swelled shut, oozing blood.

  At the sight of me, the Rix growled. He ran, clearly injured, and yet still faster than a human. I turned to run, my gaze over my shoulder to see if I was drawing him after me.

  But he didn’t move. He’d frozen, fury blazing in his eyes. For a moment I thought something had hurt him—until he whirled. He grabbed Gabriel by the shoulders, slamming him into a pillar.

  “I’ve got your pet, three-born,” he purred. “And I killed your other boyfriend. So maybe we can move on to the main event—what do you think? I have some executions to stage tonight.” He slammed Gabriel again, knocking plaster from the ceiling, and my pulse raced. “Burning, I’m thinking. The Ripper killings were a bit trite, but forty-five minutes at the stake should stoke some real fear in the Big Smoke, don’t you think?”

  Oh God. How long before the invisibility potion took hold? Last time it was, what, four minutes? Maybe five?

  Slowly, I walked toward the two of them, slowing my breath, my heart rate.

  “Let him go,” I said, steadying my voice. “You have me. That’s all you need.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say. You don’t know what I need.”

  “But I know what you want.” I raised an eyebrow. “Me. Frightened. At your disposal. Think about it. If you kill us both, you’ll never feel it again. But if you take me, and keep me alive and terrified… Can you imagine how that would feel?”

  Come on, I thought, willing the potion to work. Come on.

  Wood’s mouth went slack, his eyes rolling. A junkie, that’s what he was. I’d turned Steve Wood into a terror junkie.

  “Want to feel it again?” I whispered, and glanced at Gabriel, imagining what would soon happen to us both. Gabriel’s neck broken, me in a cage somewhere in Wood’s house, tortured for the rest of my life, branded and burned beyond recognition, so he could live off my fear. The terror nearly made me stumble.

  His pale eyes gleamed in the darkness.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” I said, my voice soft.

  His eyes rolled back in his head, his grip on Gabriel weakening.

  He hardly even noticed as Gabriel’s body shimmered out of view as the potion took hold.

  In the next moment, Wood screamed, gripping his gut. He whirled, frantically searching with his good eye for the invisible man who’d just stabbed him.

  I watched as he dodged a few more blows—Gabriel couldn’t see Wood either, of course, and Wood seemed to be able to sense the knife, dodging away. It was almost as if he could feel the iron.

  Within a few moments, he was gripping Gabriel’s invisible body by the throat. “I can’t see you, Stewart. But I can feel your fear, nourishing my blood.”

  He slammed Gabriel’s body hard: once, twice, three times. I heard the knife clang on the tile.

  The Rix turned, thundering toward me, body blazing with cold wrath. “How did you turn him—”

  “You think reflections are all I’m good for?” I hoped he wouldn’t call my bluff, because frankly, reflections were all I was good for. “I have more power than you could ever—”

  He lunged for me, slamming his fist into my gut, knocking the air from my lungs. I crashed to the floor, and the Rix leapt on top of me, snarling.

  “Enough talk, fortal,” he roared, fingers tightening around my throat. “I will enslave you like the mongrel you are, to feed off your exquisite terror—right after I force you to watch your lovers burn to death.”

  How long did I have until my air cut out completely? He was crushing the air from me with one hand, pinning my wrist with the other.

  I had less than a minute before I’d lose consciousness.

  “Two lovers,” he snarled. “You vile little pixie whore. Do you know what the king would say of your filthy ways, you vile fornicatress? He would say you deserve to be punished. That you’re the reason we rid the kingdom of pixies, who twist our minds and desires and tempt men from their wives. He would say that you should be punished most severely, and that I’m just the man to do it.”

  Twenty seconds. With my free hand, I searched for something, anything, to use as a weapon, but I felt nothing but the smashed tile and stone around me. Unfortunately for me, Gabriel wouldn’t be able to see us now, and I thought he might be unconscious anyway.

  I rummaged in my bag as the world dimmed. I didn’t know what I was looking for, since I’d left the knife at Gabriel’s. And all I could find was a purse, lipstick, a crumpled paper.

  Paper.

  I pulled it out, shoving it before his eyes.

  “Wait,” I choked out the word.

  “What is this?” His grip eased as he glanced at it.

  “One pound and ninety pence,” I croaked, gasping for air. “For coffee. I’d like it now, please.”

  He snorted. “Your mind has gone, fortal. Goodbye.”

  But as soon as he’d denied my request, I felt power thrumming over me, and Wood’s strength suddenly diminished. I twisted one of his arms away, hearing it crack as I slammed him to the stone. He yelled in pain and surprise.

  “You promised.” I gasped for air, but power blazed through my body. I punched the Rix hard in the jaw with a powerful right hook, and he crashed against the pew. “You told me you’d pay me back for anything I bought to eat or drink here, remember?”

  Blazing with wrath, I crossed to him, towering over him.

  “You really shouldn’t break your promise,” I hissed. “It gives people power over you.”

  I punched him in the skull, pleased at the crack of bone. A broken promise gives you power over the oathbreaker, Alvin had said. I could feel it now. I had power over him.

  The Rix lay prone on the ancient flagstones, candlelight dancing over his handsome features.

  I had power over him, and it intoxicated me.

  As I drew closer, he seemed to rally, his lips curling into a grimace. With a roar, he leapt onto his feet, charging me in a blur of movement. He moved impossibly fast, and yet to my eyes, time seemed to slow down. His powerful arms swung like heavy pendulums, as if he were moving through a sea of honey.

  Reflexes took over as I slid aside and let his fist pass me. Then, with both hands, I grabbed his wrist. Dipping my hips, I used his momentum to send him flying into a stone pillar. The crunch of his bones echoed off the vaulted ceiling, and dusty stone rained down on us.

  The asshole had wanted to keep me in a cage, to torture me for fun. He wasn’t going to see my merciful side.

  With a dark smile curling my lips, I stalked toward him. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead, and he glared at me through his good eye. He snarled, a bestial sound. A predator, unused to being prey. As I came within touching distance, he tried to punch me in the stomach.

  I slapped his hand away, then backhanded him across the face. His head snapped right, and he fell to the floor. I picked him up by the collar, and hurled him at a row of pews. When he crashed into them, his body splintered the wood.

  And yet he kept going, dragging himself up again, breath rasping.

  This time I charged fast, intent on beating seven shades of shit out of him, but he was reaching for his boot. A knife? No. I recognized the gray aluminum, the familiar shape of a Glock 17, rising to point at my chest. My heart thundered. Shit shit shit. I dove, but not in time.

  A gunshot echoed off the ston
e. Pain ripped through my side. Gasping, I fell back, clutching at my waist, my hands covered in blood.

  He slowly stood, training the gun on me as I stumbled back, pain splintering my gut. The iron bullet seared me from within.

  Already the poison was spreading through my body, dizzying me. Quenching my magic. I gritted my teeth, mentally whispering my mantra. Be prepared to kill everyone you meet… Right about now, that wasn’t working out so well for me.

  His pale eyes flashing with fury, he pressed the trigger again, but it only clicked dully. The gun was empty. A small mercy.

  “Well.” He smiled wryly, walking toward me. “I guess I could always kill you the old-fashioned way.”

  I crawled away from him, gripping my gut, trying to block out the searing agony. “I should have known it was you. A fascination with power. Obsession with fear. You worship chaos…” Shivers wracked my body as the blood seeped through my fingers. “I profiled you all along.”

  “Mmm. Yet look where you are now, mongrel,” he growled, eyes gleaming.

  “Yeah, well…” I looked down at my blood-stained fingers. “I like to know that I got things right.”

  He kicked me in the stomach, right where he’d shot me. I gasped with pain, falling to my back, staring at the arched stone ceiling. Moaning, I gritted my teeth.

  The Rix smiled, apparently enjoying my grimace of pain.

  At the sight of his smarmy grin, rage flared in me. Fight, Cassandra. Always fight. I grasped around me for metal, glass, anything.

  “No one to save you anymore.” He knelt over me, running a fingertip down my chest. “No more tricks. No more magic. Just me and you. Do you know what I think I’d like to do? Break your ribs, one by one. I want to see the fear in your eyes. What do you think, profiler? Will I enjoy it?”

  A line of blood trickled from my mouth. “I think you need a more pro-social hobby.”

  He leaned over me, his pupils black as coal, completely devoid of feeling. “Ready to die, mongrel?” he said, pressing his knee on the gunshot wound.

  I screamed.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” His fingers wrapped around my throat.

  As if in a dream, I stared into his eyes. So soulless, so empty, that I could see nothing in them but my own reflection.

  My magic made reflections part of my body. But as I formed a bond with the Rix’s eye, I felt somehow corrupted. The eye really is a doorway to the soul. As I stared into his pupils, the reflection felt like a cancerous growth in me, its malignancy poisoning my mind even as it pulled me toward it.

  I ignored the discomfort, staring at his pupil and imagining the mirror in Gabriel’s bathroom. Mentally, I opened the portal and reached for his eye with my finger, letting it suck my arm through. As it did, a toxic magic coated my skin. It took a fraction of a second, but in that time, the reflection in the Rix’s eye scarred me, ripping a hole in my soul. I grabbed for the knife I had left by the mirror. As fast as I could, I pulled the knife back through his eye, severing the connection. In its journey through the Rix’s soul, the knife had become warped and blackened, corrupted with the Rix’s strange, dark energy. The blade, though still sharp, had twisted into a curved, ugly shape.

  His eyes widened at the sight of it. But before he had a chance to rally, I thrust it into his throat. His mouth opened in shock as I ripped the knife out, tearing a huge wound. His blood gushed onto me, soaking my face and hands.

  Slowly, the Rix—the right-hand man of the Fae High King—fell to one side, his body convulsing.

  The knife twitched in my hand, and I had the sense that it craved more blood, more death. I dropped it, horrified, and the malformed weapon fell to the floor.

  I stood up, clutching my gut, staring at the Rix’s lifeless eyes.

  He’d been an evil fae, one who fed off terror.

  I closed my eyes, desperate to block out the voice ringing ominously in the back of my head, the one that reminded me the Rix wasn’t the only one with that perverse pleasure—that I’d fed off Gabriel’s fear, too. A terror leech.

  I turned, falling to my knees, and dry-heaved.

  Chapter 32

  Clutching my stomach, I stumbled over to Roan. The blood loss dizzied me, numbing my mind.

  I crouched by his side, touching his neck, but I could hardly feel his pulse. I needed to get that bullet out of his body. His muscled chest rose and fell slowly, but his breath was faltering now. We were right next to St. Bart’s hospital, but Roan was no longer glamoured and I wasn’t sure how to explain the horns growing from his head, or the iron’s effect on his body. If I needed to save his life, I’d call an ambulance, but something told me to keep this under wraps if I could.

  A cough echoed off the high ceiling, and I turned to see Gabriel rising from the ground, fully visible, his head bleeding. “Cassandra!”

  “Gabriel! I need something sharp. A needle, if you can get one.” I gritted my teeth against the pain in my side. “The bullet is still inside him. It’s poisoning him.”

  Gabriel blinked, trying to clear his mind. He was half-dead himself. “Let’s get a doctor.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not human. I’m gonna try to save him myself first. Then we’ll get you a doctor, okay?”

  “Right.” He reached for the iron knife.

  I shook my head. “No iron. And don’t touch the knife by the Rix’s body.”

  His forehead crinkled. “Who?”

  “DCI Wood.”

  He shook his head, as if trying to clear the confusion. “I’m gonna grab a scalpel for you. Then I’m heading back to the hospital.”

  “Perfect.” I searched my mind for what I might need. “Tweezers, gauze, a needle, gloves, suturing supplies—everything sterile.”

  Wheezing, he hurried out of the church.

  I tore Roan’s shirt open. Blood smeared his chest, and around his gut wound, the blood had turned black. On the plus side, the bullet hadn’t gone very deep, and I could see it.

  I swallowed hard. When the iron had injured him before, I’d helped strengthen him by kissing him. Now that I knew he’d been stalking me for years, I didn’t exactly want to make out with him anymore. Sure, he wasn’t the serial killer, but he’d still been following me, collecting newspaper articles. And he’d paid those men to attack me…

  Then again, if I let him die, I’d never find out why. I’d never learn why a mere pixie mongrel like me was supposed to be important in this strange world of the fae. I gritted my teeth, trying to block out the pain ripping my stomach apart.

  Shifting closer to Roan, I closed my eyes, forcing myself to think of the dream I’d had that night in his cottage—the feel of the mossy earth beneath my feet, the scent of the heavy forest air, thick with oak and rowan trees. The feeling that he was coming for me, hunting me, that I needed to ready myself for him. As the image of the dream bloomed in my mind, my body began to warm, my pulse racing. I thought of his hand gripping my hair, the other running slowly down my back…

  At the sound of footsteps, I opened my eyes, turning to see Gabriel walking into the church. Instantly, I blushed, even though he couldn’t have had any idea what I’d just been thinking about.

  My gaze flicked to Roan, whose body now glowed with an amber light, his powerful chest rising and falling a little faster. It looked like it had worked.

  “I got what you needed, though the nurse in the emergency room wasn’t happy about it.” He held out a tiny steel tray of medical implements. “Do you have any idea what to do with it?”

  I bit my lip. Right now, my plan was to cut the bullet out, then think about that dream again to help him gather his strength. But I didn’t need to tell Gabriel all the sordid details.

  I held out my hand. “I’ve been trained. Sort of. And if all else fails, I’ll take him to St. Bart’s.” I nodded at him. “You get yourself fixed up before you lose your other lung.” I set the tray down next to Roan’s body, and pulled on the gloves. “Thanks for this.”

  “Are you safe with hi
m?”

  I frowned. I still didn’t know if I’d be safe with Roan under normal circumstances, but he wouldn’t be in fighting form anytime soon. “I’ll be fine. I’m tougher than I look.”

  “I’m beginning to understand that.”

  “Go,” I said. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”

  Reluctantly, he turned, heading back for the hospital.

  I looked at Roan again, then hooked my leg over him, straddling him. I’d never a cut a bullet out of a human before, but I had practiced on a dead pig. This was a little different. For one thing, he was still pumping blood. And for another, I had a bullet in my own body. The pain nearly stole my breath. Focus, Cassandra.

  With a gloved hand, I spread the wound, then slid the needle down along the side of the bullet and under the tip. With my heart pounding, I tilted the needle, forcing the bullet out as black blood poured from the wound. When the top of the bullet emerged from his flesh, I grabbed the tweezers. I gripped the iron bullet in the pincers, pulling it the rest of the way out, then dropped it on the floor. He groaned faintly. Blood poured from the wound, and I pressed the gauze over it.

  I grabbed the suture supplies—a needle and tiny forceps. Carefully, I sewed up his wound, listening to his breathing.

  Sweat beaded on my forehead. Frankly, I was no surgeon, but I was counting on his magic to fix the rest of this mess.

  I tied off the stitches, then sat back, pulling off the gloves. Feeling for his heartbeat, I found it just slightly stronger. I just needed to get him to glow again.

  Unfortunately, digging around in open gut wounds wasn’t exactly my idea of foreplay. And worse, the pain from my wound was excruciating, but I’d have to find a way to make it work.

  I pressed my hands on his chest, and closed my eyes, locking all thoughts of pain into that mental cage of mine. I thought of the feel of Roan’s lips on mine when I’d kissed him in the cabin. The firelight glowing off his muscled shoulders, the carnal look in his green eyes. My naked body under the blanket, his hands stroking my bare skin… As I thought about him, the pain seemed to leave my body. My pulse began to race, and heat swooped though my belly. Slowly, I let my fingertips trail down his chest, feeling his breath coming faster.