by H. D. Gordon
Surah laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Mr. Redmine, I know I may not look it, but I am probably more ‘practiced in killing’ than both of those men combined.” When he looked like he didn’t quite believe her, she added, “I fought a Sun Warrior not too long ago.”
Now his eyes grew as wide as jeweled disks, his mouth falling open slightly before he snapped it shut. Surah had to suppress a smug smile. It was nice to catch him off guard, to let him know he wasn’t the only one with secrets.
“What’s ‘not too long ago’?” he asked.
Surah tapped a finger against her chin. “Just over a month ago.”
“I thought all the Sun Warriors were dead.”
A strange little ache worked its way through her chest at his words, a feeling she always got when she thought about the Sun Warrior, Alexa, and her sister, Nelliana. It never failed to surprise her, because she hardly knew the two girls, but they brought with them the memories of that cold night in the Silver City. So much blood. So many dead…
When Charlie spoke again she nearly jumped out of her skin. That memory would always be a powerful one. “I guess you won?” Charlie asked.
Surah gave her head a small shake to clear her thoughts. “Won? Oh, the fight with the Sun Warrior? No, I didn’t win.” She smiled now. “But she didn’t, either. It was a draw.”
Charlie looked suitably impressed by this. “And you didn’t use Magic while fightin’ her?”
Surah scoffed at the question, even though it was reasonable. Sun Warriors were the greatest of Warriors. Quicker than Elves and stronger than Ogres. They were a race born and bred for one thing; killing, and to claim having fought one in earnest and lived to tell the tale was quite a boast, to say the least. Still.
“Of course I didn’t use Magic to fight her,” she said, raising her chin a fraction. “The challenge was fair. We were stopped by her sister just before either of us could deliver our death strikes.” She didn’t think it was worth mentioning that the Sun Warrior was only eighteen years old at the time, and had she had even a few more months training Surah would have been easily outmatched by Alexa. If he’d heard stories, odds were he knew the girl was young, anyway. And it was still an impressive thing.
“Well, thank the Gods for her sister then,” Charlie said, and Surah decided to ignore the way this made her chest swell. “I’d heard rumors and stories in the bar about the things going on in the Five Cities, but it’s hard to tell what’s true. So there really is a Sun Warrior in existence, and she has a sister who can control minds?”
This was not something Surah wanted to get into right now. She had enough to think about without dredging up bad memories concerning Vampires and Wolves. She stepped away from him and took a seat beside the small fire pit dug out in front of the cabin, snapping her fingers and causing a spark and then a bright flame to appear on the wood Charlie must have stacked there earlier in the day.
She stared into the flames, as if they could burn the past away. “That’s a story for another time,” she said.
After a moment, Charlie came over and sat down beside her, just the way he had at the lake nearly a thousand years ago. “Alright, so you’re pretty badass with all those weapons you got tucked in your cloak. Guess that’s good to know… What are you worried about then, if it ain’t Theo and my brother?”
Surah continued to stare into the flames, causing licks of orange to flash in her violet eyes. “I’m scared for my father, mostly, and well, the kingdom as well. The throne is vulnerable while my father is still healing and I’m not there to rule in his stead. Who knows what Black—Sorry, I mean who knows what your brother is planning? Who knows what Theo is planning? He could smother my father in his chambers, and I’m not sure enough people would ever suspect him of it. As Head Hunter, right now he’s kind of holding the reins.”
She looked over at him now, and his face was so beautifully lit by the flames of the fire that she had to stop herself from reaching out and running her fingers over it. He waited patiently for her to continue.
“I can’t really be sure of anything anymore, Charlie, but I do know this, a throne left untended is a like a dinner bell to the wolves. You want to know what I’m afraid of? That’s a big part of it. However this ends, wherever this is going, it’s going to affect a lot of people. Innocent people. I can feel that in my blood.” She paused. “I just hope whatever role I play isn’t one that causes heartache and pain. There’s enough of that in the world.”
Charlie was silent for a long time, and she knew without looking that his eyes had gone inward again, looking at whatever memories lived there. After a while, he surprised her by scooting closer and wrapping his arm around her shoulders. The weight of it was comfortably heavy, warm, like a thick blanket in the heart of the cold season. She felt safe under his arm, something that held her, but also gave her freedom, a place where the mask she always wore was not a necessity. Charlie seemed content as well, and they fell silent for a good length of time, the only sounds the cracking of the fire and the chirps of the night bugs.
After an indeterminable time, Charlie rubbed his hand down his jaw and looked down at her where she was still tucked under his arm, her cloak draped around her, a small night breeze stirring back her hair. “You know what I think?” he asked.
She pulled her eyes from the flames and looked up at him. She shook her head. “Tell me.”
Charlie’s eyes went skyward, and he let out a long breath. “I think whatever’s comin’ is gonna come, and we’ll just do our best to deal with it when it does.”
Her brow furrowed. She got the feeling that this answer was not the one that had been on the tip of his tongue originally. “You think we should just wait? Like it’s all just going to come straight to us?”
He stared down at her and brushed a stray lock of lavender behind her ear, his fingers leading tiny trails of heat over her skin. “I think trouble has a knack for findin’ us, love,” he said, and his deep voice was hardly above a whisper, but his words carried over her skin like a caress, raising the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and goose bumps along her arms.
“Only Samson calls me ‘love’,” she said, and was surprised when her voice came out in a husky whisper.
His lips were so close to hers it was hard to think straight. She could feel her heart beating in her throat. The smell of burning wood and Charlie surrounded her, tall trees on all sides shielding them from the world while reaching up to a deep, black night sky. The stars looked down on them, as if the whole universe was audience to their moment. Surah and Charlie. The stars of the show…
She hoped like hell it would not be a tragedy. Then his hand slipped around her neck, and the universe slipped away as if sucked into a black hole that left nothing but her and Charlie.
And then something awful happened.
CHAPTER 9
SURAH
Surah gasped and jerked forward, her hand flying up and clenching into a fist around the piece of White Stone that had gone white hot against her skin. She yanked the chain that held it off of her neck and let it dangle from her hand as she leaned forward, her stomach tucked against her thighs, panting for breath. Her heart was pounding out of her chest, not in the good way that Charlie seemed to cause, but in a nearly painful might-break-her-ribcage kind of way. She groaned as involuntary tears sprang from her eyes. It felt as though something very essential was being ripped out of her.
Beside her, Charlie gave a deep groan of pain as well, and Surah blinked over at him through blurry eyes to see that he was doubled over, his jaw clenched and the muscles on the sides of his neck bulging, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “What in the name of the Gods is happenin’?” he asked, gritting out each word between clenched teeth.
Surah squeezed her eyes shut, deciding it was best not to speak until this thing passed. She’d never felt anything quite like it, but she thought that it was fading a bit, the worst of it having passed when it first slammed into her. She looked over to see Charlie rec
overing as well. After a few more moments, the ripping sensation and pain subsided completely, and both of them were left gasping for air.
“What was that?” Charlie asked again, after he’d caught his breath.
Surah shook her head. “I don’t know, but I feel… different. Like, I’m tired all of a sudden, and my stomach is queasy, but that’s not all. I just… I feel different.” She looked over at him, her violet eyes wide. “You?”
Charlie nodded his agreement. “Same. I feel it, too. What does it mean?”
Surah held up her sister’s piece of White Stone by its chain, wary of touching it after the way it had burned so hot a moment ago. She licked the tip of her pointer finger and gave the stone a poke, wincing when it sizzled a little at the touch. She studied it closely and poked it again a moment later. It swung to and fro on its chain. It had gone from white hot to dead cold.
Colder than she had ever known a Magical stone to be.
A thought occurred to her then, and she was so horrified for a moment that she couldn’t bear to test her theory. Charlie sat silently beside her. She took a deep breath and snapped her fingers, reciting a simple spell to put out the dwindling flames of the fire in front of them.
Nothing happened.
She tried again. Still nothing. Her heart did a dead standstill in her chest. Panic boiled inside her like spoiled stew. She tried a different spell, a harder one, just a small teleportation over to the cabin door. It didn’t work. She shot to her feet, spells rolling off her tongue one after the other, her hands flying gracefully through the air as she cast and cast and cast.
Not a one of them was successful.
She slid the necklace holding the Stone back over her neck and wrapped both hands around it, her knuckles white with her grip. She tried more spells, running through a good portion of the ones she knew before slumping back down to the ground beside Charlie. He was still silent, and she was grateful for this. The magnitude of what had happened was too much for her, and her brain had nearly frozen with the realization. She wasn’t aware of it, but her arms were wrapped around her legs, her body rocking slowly back and forth, her eyes distance and dull, like a person in a padded room.
When his hand touched her shoulder a tear fell from each of her eyes, but Charlie’s thumbs were there to brush them away before they could lead hot trails down her cheeks.
“It’s gone, isn’t it?” he asked, and she winced at the words.
It took a few breathless minutes, but slowly Surah regained her composure. The fear in her eyes was so great she could see it reflected in the jade of Charlie’s as they stared at each other in wonder and confusion. At last, she said, “Yes. I don’t know how… but it’s gone. Our Magic is gone.” She looked at him now, her pretty face as grave as the dead. “And I don’t think it’s just us, Charlie. I think all the Magic might be gone.”
But Charlie wasn’t looking at her, his eyes were focused somewhere over her shoulder, and she could tell at first glance that danger was near. Her eyes slowly scanned the trees around them, straining to pierce the shadows of the forest to see what monsters lurked there. Suddenly, she was sure that something lurked there.
Then they began to slink forward out of the trees, some of them perched on branches, others appearing from behind bushes. Dozens of strange, slanted eyes staring at them in the darkness, surrounding them on all sides.
Surah took Charlie’s hands and pulled him slowly up to his feet as she rose to hers. She unclasped her cloak, still moving very slowly, and whispered to Charlie. Her voice came out calm and focused. “What’s your weapon, Charlie?”
“Whatever you got to spare, love,” he whispered back, his voice as calm and cool as hers.
Surah’s hands disappeared under her cloak and she grabbed her sais with one and a folded up crossbow with the other. She snapped her wrist and the bow’s wings flipped out, a spinning barrel holding several arrows perched at the ready. She slipped it through the front of her cloak and pulled her eyes away from the threat long enough to see one side of Charlie’s mouth pull up as she passed him the weapon.
“That’ll do,” he whispered. “Are those… Fae?”
Surah nodded. “But not just any Fae,” she said, her voice held low, her lips barely moving. “That’s the royal guard.”
Under her cloak Surah switched one of her sais to her free hand, the worn leather wrapped around them comforting under her fingers. Then she shrugged her shoulders and let the cloak slide off and fall to the ground. She looked into the eyes of those staring back at her, and anticipation for what would surely follow next welled up in her. She hoped like hell Charlie was a good shot, because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to protect him without her Magic.
Surah spun the sais around in her hands, making the moonlight reflect flashes of silver off their surfaces. “Come on then,” she said, her sweet voice soft and delicate, but clear and strong. She stopped spinning her weapons and raised the sharp tips of them just slightly at the intruders directly in front of her. “What are you waiting for? Come take what you came to get.”
Charlie chuckled shortly beside her, and she took a moment to give him a sidelong look. Most people she knew would be having a hard time controlling their bladder at a time like this. There had to be at least twenty Fae moving in on them, long swords in each of their hands. She gave him a small nudge with her shoulder, tucking these thoughts away for later examination, body tensing for the coming attack.
“Charlie,” she said, just before the first of the Fae reached them.
“Yes, love?”
She nodded toward the crossbow in his hands. “Shoot to kill,” she said, and then there was no more time for words.
CHAPTER 10
CHARLIE
It became apparent to him very quickly that his fear for her in this situation was misplaced. He was stunned to stillness for a moment as he watched her move forward and thrust the sharp tip of the sai in her right hand through the midsection of the nearest Fae. Blood the color of sapphires sprang from the wound and seemed to hang in the air as the scene took on a slow-motion state in front of him. She had not been joking about being trained in killing. She was great at it, somehow managing to make even death dealing beautiful.
The Fae were all male, and all enormous, even compared to Charlie, who was not a small man himself. They dwarfed Surah, but he could see she was using this to her advantage, darting around them with her quick, precise movements, her lavender hair flying out behind her and her weapons (which were now dripping sticky blue blood) glistening in the moonlight.
He snapped out of his stupor just before one of them reached him, the sword in its clawed fingers held outstretched, aiming straight for his heart. The Fae came from above him, the black, insect-like wings on its back fluttering too fast to be anything but a blur. Its slanted silver eyes were filled with murder, lips pulled back revealing a line of sharp, dripping teeth.
Charlie lined up his shot and pulled the trigger on the crossbow. It hit its mark and the Fae’s whole body jerked once before crashing to the ground, a small arrow sticking out of the place one of those silver eyes had been. The barrel on the crossbow spun another arrow into place automatically, and Charlie fired three more of them in rapid succession, taking out one Fae on either side of him and another that had been standing too close behind Surah’s back.
Surah flashed him a grin, her face and hands splattered with blue. Then she spun around killed two more Fae in the same moment, the tips of her weapons sliding through them as easily as if they were warm butter. Charlie hadn’t known it was possible, but he thought this made her somehow even more stunningly beautiful.
Before long, the Fae still standing realized their best shot at taking Surah and Charlie down was from the air, because Charlie watched as they took to their wings and circled above them, blotting out the stars. Both of their heads tilted back as they looked up, waiting for what was inevitably coming next.
“How good are you at hitting moving targets?” she as
ked him, her eyes never leaving the sky.
Charlie was already lining up his next shot. “Good enough,” he said, and pulled the trigger. A Fae fell from the air and tumbled to the ground, head over heels, an arrow lodged deep in its chest.
Down they came in one big mass, like a swarm of people-sized wasps, the fluttering of their wings drowning out the sounds of the night. Surah went one way and Charlie went the other, gaining deep gashes on his back as the clawed feet of one of the Fae slipped over his skin in a barely missed attempt to sever his arms at the shoulders. He knew he should be paying more attention to the enemy, but it was hard not to watch Surah as she ran a few steps up the trunk of a tree and used the leverage to slide her weapons through the hearts of two more Fae in mid-turn. How, when covered in the blood of Fae warriors, did she manage to be so lovely?
He pulled his eyes away too late, just in time to see the flash of a blade heading right for him. He had just enough time to think a single curse, and then he squeezed the trigger on the crossbow, sending an arrow flying wild. His brows furrowed when the Fae who’d almost killed him fell face forward to the earth, the tip of its sword popping one of the buttons off his flannel shirt before crashing to the ground as well. Charlie pried the sword from the fallen Fae’s hand quickly, noticing a shiny throwing star sticking out of the back of its neck, having landed in just the right spot to kill instantly. He looked up to see Surah flash him another grin, and then lined up another shot and took out a Fae approaching her in the time it took her to kill three others.
Before he had a chance to breathe or blink, bodies leaking thick blue were scattered all around him. It had all happened so fast, and yet had seemed to last forever. Now that the battle had stopped he could smell their strange Fae blood on the air, a stomach-turning mixture of iron and sugar. Several sets of silver eyes stared heavenward, but they were blind to the stars and the moon forever more. It made a rush of horrible images fill his head, memories he’d suppressed and done his best to forget. Though he had never shot arrows into the heads and chests of blood-crazy royal Fae warriors—or whatever Surah had called them—killing was killing, no matter how you cut it. You owned the lives you stole, and you had to carry the weight of them. Charlie hadn’t liked the weight of his load before this little incident. He had to clench his teeth and force his heartbeat to slow.
