Table of Contents
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Legacy
FACTION 11: ISA FAE PARANORMAL ROMANCE COLLECTION
Lindsey R. Loucks
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
About the Author
Legacy (Isa Fae Collection Faction Eleven) © June 2017 Lindsey R. Loucks
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
1
Only one thing could make me leave my house for the first time in two years—the promise of revenge. The vague message I’d received via email from my best friend had been just a hint, but the opportunity had sounded too sweet to resist.
Bundled against the driving snow in a wool coat and gloves, I marched down the sidewalk in front of my house. The brutal Iceland wind whipped my collar into my chin and spiked frozen needles through the leather on my hands. My loud, crunchy footsteps through the knee-high snowdrifts beat a rhythm at the back of my skull. I was used to dead silence contained within four walls, not this eternal winter bullshit.
Hell Here’s neon lights strobed behind the falling snow; I quickened my pace. Despite the harsh weather, the arctic air fanned the vengeful fire that burned in my gut into a raging storm.
I grinned, possibly a little too maniacally, because a couple coming up the sidewalk skirted wide. I eased up the shoveled path toward the thick wooden door of Hell Here and mistakenly made a grab at the handle. Pain stabbed into my hand and flared red across my vision. A cry ripped from my mouth and lost itself in the wind. I backed away, gripping my palm to my middle, while tears iced my cheeks. Thankfully, no one stood around to see that nonsense.
A burly man knocked his way out the door, and I slid by him into the crowded bar. Heat from a large, blazing green fire in the center of the room stung my wind-burned cheeks, and I melted into it while I cleared the long brown hair from my face with a forearm.
Booths lined the walls, and round tables butted up to the steel beams surrounding the large fire. Smaller green flames danced in the middle of every table like little pockets of warmth. People sat everywhere while tipping back drinks, the silver aterns at their wrists winking in the firelight.
A smiley woman with shiny red curls popped up in front of me with a menu. “How many tonight, miss?”
“One,” I said, brushing past Smiley toward a deserted corner booth.
I slid into it, facing the front of the bar, and Smiley followed me to place the menu on the table.
“Would you like to hear about our specials?” she asked.
“A bottle of Necromancer’s Piss,” I said. “And a bowl of fennel seeds.”
“A bowl of—”
I pinned her with a look that snapped her mouth shut. “Fennel seeds. Go.”
Patience—it was a skill I wasn’t working on at the moment.
She scurried off, her smile dropping at the same rate as the degrees outside. The same rate at which my insides plummeted to my feet. Because Hell Here’s front door opened once again, and this time the three new patrons hushed the bar into cold silence.
Three Isa fae women stood at the entrance, diamond collars strapped to their necks, their golden stick-straight hair shimmering in the green firelight. Black, smoky wings curled behind their shoulders. The Diamond Dogs, part of the fae government’s elite law enforcement and the shit-sniffers around the outskirts of Faction 11. Here, in a witch’s bar, an almost literal hole in the wall.
Their silvery blue eyes scanned the crowd. Someone coughed. A brave soul hid his nose inside his coat collar from the faes’ bad fish smell. A chair screeched across the wooden floor, which didn’t quite smother the sound of a whimper. And then the Diamond Dogs’ gazes zeroed in on me. They started across the bar toward my booth like an invading army.
My stomach turned to stone. The approaching wall of stink bowled into me. I folded my hands into my lap, gently so I wouldn’t betray the indifference I hoped I had fixed on my face. Did they somehow know why I was here?
“Hadley Hawthorn,” the middle one said. “Fancy seeing you…at all.”
The three of them looked so alike, but this one had painted her lips blood red. Claudia, I thought her name was. I didn’t know the other two. Knowing the Diamond Dogs’ reputation, she’d probably kissed a bloodied corpse and then sucked out its eyeballs with a straw for a midnight snack. Hopefully the other two had already eaten. Otherwise, tonight might not end with me passed out under the glow of my laptop like it usually did.
Claudia quirked an eyebrow. “Mind if we sit?”
Actually, yes I did, but I didn’t really have a choice. A cold sweat gathered on my upper lip, but I sat back and tipped my chin to the opposite side of the booth. They slid into the seat, Claudia first, the diamond aterns wrapped around their delicate wrists clinking against the table.
The rest of the bar looked on as if our table was center stage. Smiley tiptoed up to us, her face drawn into a grimace, and set the wine and bowl of seeds in front of me with shaky hands.
“Anything for you three?” she asked, avoiding their gazes.
The air around the three of them wobbled, and Claudia, who sat closest to the wall, traded faces with the Diamond Dog in the middle. It happened so quickly, so fluidly, that I might have missed it if not for the subtle tick on their aterns. Must be nice to use magic for such important matters as switching seats.
Claudia propped her elbows on the table and glared at Smiley. “Go away, witch.”
She scuttled off, and I wished I could too.
“So, Hadley,” Claudia said. “It’s been two years since you last left your house. Of all the places to go quite suddenly, why Hell Here?”
My muscles tensed. “You followed me?”
Her red lips pushed into a firm line. “Why didn’t you leave your house before now?”
No point in lying. Might as well tell the truth. “I could never decide if it was really worth it to put on p
ants every day to go out. I just knew when I woke up this morning that today was the day, but don’t worry. There probably won’t be any more special days like this.”
She narrowed her silvery blue eyes. “Why Hell Here?”
I nodded to the wine. “They’ve got good Piss.”
“And yet you haven’t taken a drink.”
“Is that a crime now, too?”
“No, I suppose not,” she said, then lowered her voice. “We know more about you than you think we do, Hadley. We know you dropped out your junior year of school two years ago. We know you’ve been living all alone.” A pause, then, “We know what happened to your family.”
My heart stuttered, and it felt like a kick to the rib cage. I forced a swallow, dragging all those memories back that threatened to surface and bubble up around me until I drowned. Back home, a place once happy and alive, those memories had died. I’d made sure of it. But here, out in the open, where they could sneak in raw and unprovoked at just the mention of my family made me vulnerable. Weak. Something I vowed to never be again.
Claudia leaned forward. “Why have you been hacking into the Isa faes’ computer system?”
I sucked in a breath, one that coated my tongue with a hopefully believable lie. “I don’t know what to tell you, ladies. You must have me confused with someone else, because when it comes to technology, I can count to monkey. Clearly, you don’t know everything about me.”
The three of them sat deadly still, either attempting to gouge out my brain with their icicle stares or to decide if they believed me. Probably the former. Claudia gripped the edge of the table and white-knuckled it. Definitely the former.
If they tried anything magical against me, I was shit out of luck. No witch ever had enough allocated power to duel with the fae and win. They made sure of that by controlling our magic supply with our aterns. My atern read one on the dial in the center of the silver band. One. If I was stupid and performed magic anyway, it would click to zero, triggering the poison spikes inside, and I would immediately drop dead.
Still, I wouldn’t let them intimidate me. A strangling spell drifted toward the front of my mind, one that would bunch up the diamond collars around each of their necks until their porcelain faces turned blue. A good time had by all, except the Diamond Dogs of course. And me. It might just be worth it, though.
The air wavered around them, and Claudia’s face shifted once again to the fae on the right. She stood and her two puppies followed. “Enjoy your Piss.”
The gravel in her voice twitched my lips. Sometimes a bitch slap didn’t need hands at all. “I’ll do my best. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
They turned simultaneously, but not before I heard a quiet growl, “We’ll be watching.”
I had no doubt. I would just encrypt everything better and run it all through anonymous proxies like I always did anyway, be untraceable, cloak my tracks with even more complicated algorithms. And never leave the house for a field trip to Hell Here, or anywhere, again.
Once the Diamond Dogs left, the bar picked up where it left off. Conversations buzzed, quiet at first and with a lot more staring in my direction, but glasses soon clinked and laughter carried over the crackling flames in the center.
It was long past ten. Where was my partner in revenge?
I sighed at the bottle of Necromancer’s Piss. It would be nice to satisfy my hunger for the bottom of that bottle and numb my chronic aches. The bottle had been uncorked, but the thought of pouring the fennel seeds inside and pulling the spout to my mouth filled my hands with a phantom pain that was almost worse than the regular kind. I kicked the table in frustration, then watched in horrific slow motion as the bottle tipped.
A hand flashed out and snatched it before it spilled a drop. Ty Brunoch, my new hero and forever best friend.
“About time, shithead,” I growled.
“Hello to you too.” He sat across from me, unbuttoning his snow-speckled coat to reveal a purple tutu-looking scarf around his neck. His black hair was slicked back, just like I remembered from high school the few years I’d gone, and behind his right ear, he wore a little white bow with the words Fuck You stamped all over.
“Nice bow.”
He flicked his wrist in a showy gesture toward it. “It describes my general attitude quite well, I think. So…” He posted his elbows on the table and pierced me with a knowing look from deep, hazel eyes framed by long eyelashes that had always made me jealous. “The Diamond Dogs, huh?”
“Sitting where you’re sitting. You might want to get a rabies shot.”
“And a flea bath.” He moved the tiny green flame in the middle of the table toward the wall. “I held back until they were long gone. What did they want with you?”
“They noticed I left my house. Said they’ll continue to watch me.”
He eyed the untouched bottle of wine and sat back, a trace of uncertainty pinching his features. “Hadley…”
“Don’t you fucking say it,” I hissed. When he started to shake his head, I half rose out of my seat with the force of the words hurtling to get out of my mouth. “Whatever you’re about to tell me, it’s my job. I deserve revenge against the fae, and you know it better than anyone. So don’t you dare be an ass clown about it and change your mind about why you brought me here.”
Ty’s gaze drifted to a couple onlookers, and he calmly waited until they turned away and I was planted in my seat again.
“This is big,” he said in a low voice. “Too big for fuck-ups of any kind, which is why we’re here, in a public, loud place.”
“I can handle it. Just like I can handle the Diamond Dogs. Just tell me what it is, and I’ll get it done.”
He slid his hands palms up across the table between the bowl of fennel seeds and wine as if asking for one or both of them, but his eyes didn’t spark with a question. They shined with hope.
“This could end winter,” he said, enunciating every word. “This could strip the Isa faes’ power over us for good.”
I snapped back in my seat as if he’d punched me, my mind reeling to stretch out his words and find any holes in them. Was he shitting me?
He shook his head, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “No, I’m not shitting you.”
Had I asked that out loud? My mouth hung open like maybe I had. He’d always been the smart one and could’ve easily landed a good job inside Reykjavik where most other witches worked. Maybe he didn’t want to be a peon for those who had stolen witches’ power for themselves. I sure as hell didn’t. Or maybe it was the Fuck You bow that was holding him back.
Blue flannel smothered into the seat next to me, followed by a vat of spiced cologne. I looked up into the red-rimmed eyes of a male witch I’d never seen before sitting much too close. Sugary alcoholic fumes wafted from his breath, but instead of disgusting me, they made me lean in to inhale, so close our lips almost touched. I didn’t care. My insides gnawed with thirst for anything fermented and sweet.
“Come on, beautiful,” the stranger said in a husky, slurred voice.
And then he took my hands and pulled.
Shockwaves stabbed up my arms with steel teeth. I cried out. The whole world tilted for half a second, and in the next instant, I shot my arm out and shoved it forward with all my might, into the back of the guy’s head and slammed it down on the table.
I curled myself into the opposite corner of the booth, trying to breathe through the pain lighting up behind my closed eyelids, while Ty’s voice drifted in and out. Seconds—minutes?—later, the agony, though never, ever, completely gone, faded some. I cracked open an eye.
“He’s fine. He’s just really tired,” Ty said to a nearby table between a smile so fake, I could hear it. “Is he dead?” he asked me in a hoarse whisper. “Damn it, Hadley. What the hell?”
No, the guy wasn’t dead. He was slumped over the table, his shoulders rising and falling in a steady rhythm, but blood had gathered in a small pool under his nose.
“Is
he one of yours?” I asked.
“No,” Ty said.
“Then pour the fennel seeds in the wine and unwrap that straw.” I nodded toward the straw next to the wall.
He picked up the small bowl, doubt flickering behind those long lashes that made other guys fall all over him. “All of them?”
“All of them,” I said, sitting up. “What’s the job?”
“Is he really out?” His gaze kept ticking to the sleeping stranger so most of the fennel seeds now littered the table.
“He’s out.”
“You’re looking for a man.” Ty swirled the concoction around in the bottle, then unwrapped the straw and handed both to me. “A human. His name is Kason Fields.”
My first sip flooded my taste buds with a sugary tang, and every long draw after that took off the edge so much I moaned.
“Hex on a broomstick, Hadley, this isn’t a porno. Are you even listening?”
I sat back in the corner of the booth, the bottle tucked between my forearm and side until the alcohol had sharpened my senses enough to focus. The last known humans had died out during World War III, and none of them were supposed to have crossed through the portal into the Isa faes’ Earth-mirrored world. The fae rescued as many people as they could from Earth since they fed off human energy, but once the humans crossed over, the portal did something to them—gave them magic and turned them into witches.
The joke was on the fae. Only not really, because without human energy sources to fuel their magic, fae now relied on controlling witches’ power to save up their own. Only the fae supposedly didn’t have a lot of magic either, so they’d frozen everything, created a literal eternal winter, to wipe out the so-called weak witches and take their magic. And now, no one was laughing at any jokes.
Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection Page 1
