“You will play your part, or they will tie you down and take turns until one of them breeds that cursed womb of yours, Erie. My money is on Arthur planting his seed first, as he hates you the most.” I smiled coldly, unwilling to let him see the shiver that rushed through me with his words. Mostly because I knew they would do it if it came down to that.
“Sorry, but you’re going to lose that bet. Callaghan is ahead of them already,” I muttered beneath my breath as I started towards the doors. My eyes scanned the document that he had handed to me when I’d first entered. Reading it, I stopped short of the door and frowned. “Are you fucking crazy, or just stupid?” I swung around, staring him down. “The Guild is forbidden to breach, even for me.”
“You’re not to enter it,” he grumbled. “You’re to be sure the Fae are otherwise occupied elsewhere. You have that ability, don’t you? It’s probably just a guise to get you out into the open anyway, so what does it matter to you?”
“Is that because today is the day your doomsday countdown started? Tick tock, Frasier. I do hope you have a great year because I assure you, it will be your last one,” I chuckled as I wiggled my fingers in a wave and pushed my back against the door as he watched me.
Outside, I let the cold air wash over my face as fresh snow began to drift down to blanket the world around me. I held my tongue out, catching a snowflake before I closed my mouth and looked around as I felt eyes watching me. Snow was the last thing this city needed right now; as if the humans weren’t struggling enough already?
Really, if I could add Mother Nature’s ass to my hit list, I would. Hands shoved in my pockets, a target on my back, I headed to the one place the Fae loved to gather: Night Shade. It was a sanctioned bar that allowed creatures of the other realms to seek asylum as long as they followed the owner’s rules. I myself wasn’t allowed in there anymore, but it had been worth it. Who knew pixies could be used as darts?
It didn’t take long for me to reach the nightclub or find the Fae who gathered around in the large, opulent club. I watched them, wondering what it would be like to be a part of it. To have enough friends that you could barely fit them all into one room. Oh well, I had Fred, and he could never hurt me.
I palmed my weapons and turned away from the club as I felt another presence close to me. I pulled down the hood of the jacket I wore, eying Arthur as he watched me with a heated look that sent a shiver racing down my spine. He wasn’t hard on the eyes, but the way he looked at me sent every warning bell in my body off.
“They’re preoccupied,” I informed the Knight as I watched his slow approach, stopping only when he was mere inches away from me.
“For how long?” he questioned.
“If you like, I could go inside and ask them?” I snorted as he sneered at my answer from where he stood in his pristine armor that glinted in the moon’s gaze.
“I am your superior, Erie,” he snapped coldly, his narrowed gaze sliding over my attire with disdain as if he could still smell the last job I’d finished on them. He probably could, but finding running water nowadays was a bitch, let alone a washing machine attached to it.
“So you are. That still doesn’t change that I cannot foresee when they will finish for the night, Arthur,” I grumbled, hating that I couldn’t just tell him where to shove his attitude. There were several painful places that I could suggest, and I knew I’d enjoy pushing into most of them.
“And the Guild; is it empty?”
“Again, I am not a seer,” I chided softly. “I cannot tell you it is if I am not inside it, now can I? If you’re afraid, I can go with you and hold your hand.”
“Drop the tone, female,” he ordered as he stared down his nose at me.
I knew what he was after, but I also knew it was no longer hidden within the Guild. When the Guild fell, we’d taken it. They wanted what was ours, and even worse, they wanted to use us to obtain it. As if druids were no more than the creatures who bowed at the feet of the ancient Knights.
I crossed my arms over my chest to ward off the chill of the air; little puffs of steam expelled from my lips as I stood in the garbage-strewn street waiting for him to decide if I had to go play fetch with him, or if his buddies he had hidden within the shadows would begin their chase tonight. I prayed the latter didn’t happen, as it would force me to up my own schedule.
“I will retrieve it myself; you’re dismissed,” he said as he slid his faceguard into place and slowly slithered back to the shadows from which he’d come.
I exhaled the breath I’d held as his power reached out to touch against mine in a show of force and strength. A warning of who was stronger. He’d never felt my power, none of them had. I kept it hidden from everyone, even myself.
Dropping my arms after I’d watched him fully disappear into the shadows, I turned and found Callaghan watching me from where he leaned against an old abandoned building. This one, this one was my bane. He made me warm and fuzzy in places that both bothered me and made me want to know more about things I shouldn’t. Out of all of the Knights I’d met so far, this one was the star of every fantasy I’d ever had. Which shouldn’t happen, not with what he wanted from me.
Blue eyes locked with mine as a cocky grin lifted those full, sinful lips up in the corners. Eyes of the clearest turquoise waters watched me as he moved ever closer to where I stood frozen to the spot. His dark blond hair was pushed back, untethered as he often wore it. He was dressed in the same ancient armor that Arthur wore, but where it looked out of place on Arthur, Callaghan wore it perfectly. His heady scent filled my senses as he closed the distance with sure-footed strides that bespoke of power and grace. The sword on his hip drew my eyes, watching the blood-red ruby on the hilt of his blade as it caught the moon’s light, glowing eerily in silent warning.
I should have pretended not to have noticed him and rushed off, but I was sure he wouldn’t have allowed it. This Knight was the highest ranking one I’d dealt with thus far, and his sheer dominance and power always left me shaken when he walked away from our meetings. I was Erie, unafraid of anything, anything except the male who was currently giving me a wolfish smile as he strode towards me.
Chapter 2
Callaghan
I watched her exiting the Druid’s Den, her eyes burning with ire as she peered down at her fingers and then lifted her wild blue gaze to the skies as the first snow fell. Her pink tongue darted out, capturing a snowflake as my cock jerked in response. Erie had two sides to her, the cold killer who watched you with every intent of ending you, and the childlike woman she let slip out every once in a while. I’d watched her enough to see both, to watch her eyes as she took something in for the first time and her eyes grew large with wonder. There’s a side to that woman that I wanted to know while avoiding the other like the fucking plague.
Erie was and would always be the epitome of beauty and grace, but she’s also a fucking wrecking ball that would destroy anything that threatened her. She enjoyed her freedom, a freedom I was about to destroy. I hated the idea of watching those eyes grow cold with understanding as she tried to figure out what I’m about to do to her. I’d scoured the world over, and a few others to be certain there wasn’t another way out of this, and now, with the clock ticking down, time was up. I wanted her to come into her power first, to remember the past, our fucking past that was so buried within her that she might never find it again. I still wanted that for her, no matter what had happened.
I watched her walking away from the den, her tiny hands pushed into her pockets as the wind sent her hair into her face. She worried for the humans, something not many cared or bothered with nowadays, and yet she protected them to the best of her ability. I wasn’t even sure she knew what she did, or why she felt the need to do it. The girl didn’t belong to this world, to this era, and yet here she was, diving into a war that wasn’t her own.
The idea of what I was being tasked with sat like a rock on my ches
t. Knowing that if I didn’t do it, someone else would, well, it bothered me to even think of her tied down, raped until she’d become pregnant, and I had no plan of allowing anyone to do that to her. Not when she was mine and had been since as long as I could remember. No, this woman had been mine since I breathed into her premature lungs and brought her to life. In reality, it had started way before that, but that was neither here nor there, and this Erie was so much softer than the other versions.
Still, no matter what had unfolded in the past, or the ages that we’d survived, I wanted her to come to me on her own. I wanted this shit over with, to save the people I’d vowed to protect from certain death if the curse wasn’t stopped. If this didn’t play out, thousands of innocent lives would be caught in the crossfire. They deserved to live, to grow up without being cursed by the ancient crones that had fucked themselves way back before this world even fully comprehended what they were. We’d warned them to stay out of the affairs of the mortals, and instead, they tortured them. Then those assholes got their noses bent when we refused to step in and save them. Not because we hadn’t wanted to, but to bond them to the church would have doomed us all. Not that it stopped it, not with who was pushing it from the shadows to play out exactly how it had. No, one person had wanted us cursed, and she was the epitome of war. And so she had waged it against us and won.
I pulled out of the memories as I watched the lone female who carried the weight of our unknown future with her. She walked away, moving further from me by the moment as she trudged through the litter-covered streets heading to meet up with whatever mission they’d given her today. She looked afraid, and I wanted to pull her close, stare into her beautiful blue eyes, and tell her it would all be okay, but the fucked up truth was, it wouldn’t. Not for Erie, not for the child she would carry either. Life wasn’t black and white, but hers, it was created in the grey that lay between them. I know it was, because I was the one who created her, or more to the point, brought her back.
I pushed through the doors of the Druid’s Den with no warning, enjoying the shocked faces that turned to stare at me. It was white and bland, sterile walls in the antechamber that greeted you as you walk into it, made to disorient whoever entered it. I searched the room for the lecherous asshole who I’d given that girl to mere hours after she’d been born. To be loved, and yet they’d hated her with every fiber of their very being. Nothing I did made them change how they treated her, not even telling this cold bastard that I intended to take her as my female, eventually. Maybe it was what she was, or that they sensed the evil that slumbered within her, but even so, it didn’t give them the right to hurt the child she’d been.
“And to what do we owe this unexpected visit, Templar?” Frasier’s tone grated on my nerves, and I wanted to rip his fucking tongue out and slap him with it. I refrained, barely. I allowed my power to fill the room as he swallowed hard, and yeah, I fucking enjoyed the fear I smelled rolling off of him, old and new. Good, she made this pansy-ass, paper-pushing pencil dick cower in her presence.
“Cut the shit, you know why I’m here,” I growled, watching as the color drained from his face. It continued, right up until I produced the payment for Erie’s living expenses for the last one hundred years. The monthly checks she received for work I’d sent her to do, needing to see her in action, to know her weaknesses and faults. There was nothing I didn’t know about her unless you considered her love life, but then I hadn’t needed to be privy to that. Who she took between her legs had been her business, just as long as her monthly physical turned up negative for pregnancy. The only thing of hers that belonged to us was her womb, and as long as it wasn’t filled, she was free to continue doing whatever she wanted. I’d fought for her freedom without her knowing it. I’d fought for her since the moment I’d brought her into this world.
“How generous, but you’re short a couple thousand or more,” he wheezed as he tried to hand it back to me. I stared at it before I snorted in reply, watching him step back as my chest rattled, my eyes glowing from within. I wanted to wrap my hands around his throat and watch as the life dimmed to nothing in his dull brown eyes.
As if he could fucking escape me.
“Short? I’ve monitored every cent you spent on her, which was rather low, considering you spend ten times that amount on those you deem untrainable. Not to mention, she’s never received a check from you for over one hundred dollars, even though you sent her to do your dirty work often, for free. You should be happy I’m not charging you for that, too, considering she is mine and has been mine since the moment she drew air into those premature lungs. Did you forget the agreement? Or the abuse she endured under your watch?”
“I assure you that I was not in residence when the blue woad was applied to her face, or when she was taught…I mean, abused. As I’ve told you many times before today, apparently some of the men feared their children lusting after Erie with her unnatural taint or getting ideas that she was…theirs. It was meant to keep her pure until the time in which you came for her. It doesn’t really matter either way; she only has one use. Erie was created to spread her legs and take what is given to her. She’s nothing more than a womb to be used and then thrown away. What does it matter if she was mistreated or scarred?” he snorted and then groaned as my fist slammed against his face without warning. Bones snapped, the crunch soothing to the monster within me as I watched him slide down the wall in shock as the pain registered inside the useless organ between his ears.
The moment he climbed his worthless ass back up from the floor, I was in his face, nose to nose with him. “Convenient, you were also absent when she was beaten repeatedly because she drew the eye of a head druid’s son, too. And when she was strung up and beaten again, and again,” I hissed icily as he flinched with every word I said. My hands tightened around the crumpled collar of the suit he wore; nose to nose I hissed every word, knowing he could hear the beast within me rattling his cage, itching to take him out. “Erie isn’t ugly. That girl is as beautiful and wild as the land she is named after. You think those marks you placed on her deter or detract from her beauty? They don’t. You abused her and allowed others to do the same. You acted and treated her as if she was no one or nothing of consequence. Then you trained her how to wield magic. You painted the woad of the long-forgotten Celtic warriors onto her face and taught her how to fight, Frasier. Now you’re butthurt because she’s willing to go to war to be free of you, of us? You think she’s going to be easily caught? Nah, you better start praying to your Gods that she can forgive us because she’s more than ready to fight for her freedom. You don’t build the perfect weapon and expect it not to work. You painted that girl for war, and make no mistake: she will go to war against us. It’s in her fucking blood, in every fiber of her being to wage it. She won’t just bow down because some man tells her to. No, Erie will wage war against us, and she’s got a huge advantage over us in that department.”
“You think she will live that long? No, she will be dead the moment she is no longer needed,” he hissed, and I smirked, showing him my teeth.
I let the beast within flex his muscles. My eyes glowed as I stared him down, begging him to make a fucking move, any move, so that I could allow what lay beneath the cold façade of my skin to come forth to collect a pound of his flesh. We’ve craved his death longer than Erie’s been born.
“She is an abomination of the laws and of this world. She was created in an evil so terrible that it was banned from this world by the Gods themselves. She cannot be allowed to live, and the fact that the monster within you wishes her to be his should tell you everything you need to know about her! She is evil incarnate, and if she ever learns to wield it against us, God save us all!” he shouted, and I smiled coldly, because yes, that was my girl. She was evil, so fucking evil that he couldn’t even begin to understand what lay within her beautifully twisted soul.
“You touch my girl, and I’ll make an example out of you that will never be for
gotten as long as this world continues to spin. She is a fucking unicorn, and she’s mine. I named her, and when her mother refused to look at her? I was the one who comforted her and promised her that everything would be alright. Erie is mine by right, one hundred fucking percent. When no one else cared about her, I did. I have protected her for her entire life, and if you think it will end because she’s accomplished what she was created to do, you’re wrong. Let’s hope you’re not dead wrong, Frasier.” My hands released him and fixed his shirt as I remained close enough to stare into his eyes. “Now tell me, were you a good boy? Did you hand her my letter?”
“She took it, and it burned her hands; your spell is well-embedded into her flesh. You can track her at will, elsewhere.”
“Good, now give me the rest of the spells I asked for,” I ordered as I watched him wiping the blood from his mouth and nose. The bent appendage would never heal correctly, which satisfied the inner beast that watched from within. Once I had the spells and her location, I growled. “What the fuck is Arthur doing summoning her?” I demanded as he handed me her mission log.
“I didn’t ask why he needed her,” he shrugged. “He called and asked for her to meet him at that location. If you ask me, he intends to get that necklace and place it on her before you have a chance, Templar. You may want her, but he hates her enough to treat her as what she is. Nothing more than a womb,” he mocked as he nodded towards the door. “You’ve overstayed your welcome. Best you get going before he claims that which you crave, Mason Callaghan. While you’re throwing out threats, remember this: I raised her; she’s very aware of her value and what she is. She will never touch me because that was the first thing she learned under my teachings. Ask her about it, ask her what happens when she doesn’t listen or questions me.”
If She's Wicked Page 2
