“No, that is why you should’ve pulled the door open.” He slipped my coat off a hanger and handed it to me. “Not pushed.”
“Well…” I growled into my coat’s collar as I shrugged it on. “Doors are stupid.”
“Spoken like a true hacker.” He tightened the coat around me and snapped it into place, studying his own movements with too much care. “You must hate doors of all kinds.”
“Stop buttoning my coat like I’m a child.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
I glanced down at the gun wedged between his feet, barrel aimed high. “Careful or you’ll shoot your dick off.”
He chuckled, a rich sound that rubbed softly against my skin like the grain on wood. “Not with the safety on, I won’t.”
“Accidents happen.”
“I’m glad your threats have moved past cutting of any kind. This is progress.” He pointed to the closet. “There are extra boots in there. Two of them, if you want them.”
I forced myself to look at him, to read between the carefully drawn lines of his life and find out his true purpose for helping me right then. Did he feel guilty? Ashamed that he’d lit up my whole soul and then just as quickly crushed it? I hoped so. Otherwise, I would wait for him to feel either of those emotions until we were both dead.
“Thanks.” I kicked two black rain boots out of the closet that I wouldn’t even need to lace up. “These are kind of perfect.”
He gazed at me, each moment pinching my chest tighter until I had to look away.
“You’re welcome,” he said, voice soft. He turned and gripped the knob on the front door. “What are you going to do about them?”
“I don’t know. I’ll make it up as I go.”
“If that doesn’t work?”
I shrugged. “Pull their hair and scratch their faces?”
“Seems reasonable. I’ll stay in here with the poppies like a real man.” He opened the door, and a cold blast of air and blowing snow bit at my face.
“Lock the door behind me.” I buried my nose into the zipper of my coat, my body tensed against the wind and a threat I couldn’t see. My hair whipped around my face, waving dark stripes through the twilight sky.
And then there they were, the three of them casually strolling up the sidewalk toward the house as if here for a Necromancer’s Piss kegger party. I marched toward them as fast as I could so they wouldn’t come any closer. Claudia stopped in front of me, snow catching on her red lipstick. All three of their blonde, silky hairdos remained perfectly in place even with the wind raging around us, which somehow made me hate them even more.
I raked my arm across my forehead to try to contain some of my flyaways. “I liked it better when I never saw you three,” I shouted into the wind.
Claudia jerked her chin to the house. “Who’s he?”
I turned. Kason stood inside the doorway, firmly planted inside the house, with his gun at the ready and his finger at the trigger. What the hell? I told him to lock the door behind me, not stand there like a gunslinger in white socks and flannel pajamas. Gunshots would likely rile these dogs up even more. I shooed him back inside, and just like the pain in my ass that he’d become, he ignored me. Again.
“Him?” I faced the Dogs again. “He’s no one.”
“If he’s the one who lured you out of your house, he’s definitely someone.” Claudia locked her gaze on Kason and licked her painted lips.
The other two looked him up and down.
“There was no luring,” I said, blading my voice with a jagged edge. “He’s just a guy living in a—” I glanced again at the much smaller house than the one I’d ran into yesterday—“tiny house.”
“A guy.”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t know enough about humans to differentiate them from witches or the fae, and I hoped they couldn’t either. Luckily Kason’s flannel sleeves covered the fact that he didn’t wear an atern. Except these fae were dogs, and dogs had a keen sense of smell. Was that why they kept looking at him like they wanted to lick him all over? Or was that just Kason and his natural effect on anyone with a pulse? A slow burn ignited in my chest, and I widened my stance in an attempt to bulk myself up to block their eyeball fucking.
“We’ve never seen him around,” Claudia said, inching closer to me. “Why don’t you introduce us?”
I glanced over my shoulder and waved him back inside with the hand behind my back. “As you can tell by the gun, he doesn’t particularly like houseguests.”
Claudia gazed at me, her green eyes hard and flashing, and stepped so close I could taste her rotting fish smell. “Introduce us, Hadley.”
No way. Not ever. I summoned a grin that hopefully oozed innocence, but I would accept a menacing scowl too. On my face, they looked the same.
“I’m glad we had this talk.” I turned to leave them standing there, knowing full well that this was far from over. Their curiosity was piqued, and I was the one who did the piquing.
Their glares lanced into my back as sharp and cold as the wind. They weren’t leaving. Not like I expected them to, but a girl could dream.
Go back inside, I mouthed to Kason as I came toward him.
But both his gaze and the barrel of the gun aimed past me, never wavering. Except the slightest twitch on the trigger.
I swept toward him faster, the gusting snow slowing me to a crawl, but at the same time braced myself for whatever was about to happen behind me. For whatever Kason had seen to shake his confident grip on the trigger. My insides plunged to my shivering knees because I wasn’t going to reach him in time.
The ground shifted under my feet, spilling me face-first to the snowy sidewalk. Instinct flashed my hands out to catch my fall, and they slammed against the hard-packed snow. A scream pitched out of my mouth at the ice-tipped needles piercing my palms.
A gunshot fired, and the sound bounced around my skull. I looked up, dazed, to see cast spells bursting toward Kason in the doorway, but they fizzled out before they entered the house to touch him.
He leveled his gun again, his expression calm, composed, but the next word he uttered was a deadly snarl. “Leave.”
A heavy weight pressed on the back of my leg, then another and another, up my thighs and back to my shoulders. The Diamond Dogs were walking over me like I was a meek snowflake on the path to get to Kason.
Hell no. The only things meek in my body were my hands, and I didn’t need them anyway.
“Diaboli solis,” I growled into the snow. My atern ticked down five. Thirty-five clicks left.
Murky orange light filtered across the ground, extinguishing instead of brightening the glittery twinkles on the snowscape. Screams filled the night that sounded vaguely like howls. I wished I could have laughed, but a spell of that magnitude dragged my energy to the black depths where that spell came from. Instead, I hefted myself to my feet and gazed up at the enormous black and orange sphere rotating slowly over Kason’s house.
The Devil’s Sun. Lucky for me, I’d been the one to cast the spell, which protected me with SPF ten thousand. But it looked as if the Diamond Dogs must have forgotten their sunscreen. Their porcelain skin bubbled up into a thick black soup then sloughed off their bodies in long, stringy puddles studded with diamond necklaces. Their blonde silken hair turned crispy black and slid down their cheeks with the rest of their skin like grotesque tears.
They ran screaming from Kason’s front door while he looked on, his face stricken with terror.
I hauled myself toward him as their screams faded somewhere other than here. The Devil’s Sun burned itself out and vanished.
“Hadley,” Kason yelled. “Behind you.”
I turned to see Claudia, red lipstick washed out from blood and sliding flesh, except one corner of her mouth that hadn’t peeled away. A green eyeball dangled halfway down her face.
She tilted her bald head, then jerked a mangled arm toward me. I wasn’t quick enough to react, to yank myself away from her touch, because I could barely
keep myself upright.
“Get away from her,” Kason shouted.
She brought her skeletal finger to my forehead, and it knocked me to my knees.
Another gunshot rang out. A hole blasted through Claudia’s pulpy, singed neck, but she didn’t even flinch.
“Cogitarus,” she snarled, and it sounded like crumbling dead leaves.
My thoughts and memories scrambled on top of each other in their haste to attach themselves to her finger still pressed to my forehead. All of them funneling toward her had to do with Kason, the Legacy knot, everything I knew and the fae should never know. I reached out as if to stop them, to stop her, but she grabbed my outstretched hand with her free one and yanked it backward with a sharp hiss between her almost lipless mouth. Agony from her grip carved itself into the backs of my fluttering eyelids. My scream scraped my throat raw.
She pushed me into the snow and stared with one dangling eye at Kason, who was bellowing my name.
I dragged my gaze toward him as Claudia stepped closer to the porch, only two yards away from Kason. Would she force her way inside? Search for an atern on his wrist that wasn’t there?
His toes balanced on the threshold of the doorway, his pointed gun unwavering. “Take one step closer. I dare you.”
Claudia stopped just inches from my head.
I pushed to my elbows and knees but collapsed back into the snow cheek-first.
Kason ticked his gaze to me, concern etching his forehead, and he inched his bare toe farther over the threshold.
“Back inside,” I begged, but the wind swallowed my shaky voice.
Claudia whipped a hand out and snatched a fistful of my hair. Pain exploded over my scalp. The sound of ripped flesh burned my throat with bile. She dragged me to my feet, and my boots drilled into the snow for purchase.
“How good a shot are you, lover boy?” Claudia asked.
“Let her go.” His leg stretched for the porch.
Blue light rolled from her fingers toward him at the exact same instant he fired.
Time seemed to slow. His mouth dropped open as he saw the light spiraling closer. His boot touched down onto the porch. The blue light detonated against his chest in an explosion of sparks.
And then he collapsed. As soon as he hit the ground, his body vanished.
7
I blinked at the spot on the porch, my heart racing empty beats at the place Kason should’ve been. He’d gone outside the house, so had the poppies affected him before Claudia’s blue spiral had done much damage? Or was he lying in bed while the life seeped out of him? A choked moan pushed between my clenched lips.
Please don’t be dead, Kason.
Claudia looked on at the open doorway with her one dangling eye as if she could sense the magic contained within. She shoved me away.
“Legacy, huh?” she growled. “You only wish he could end fae power over you witches.”
She knew everything now, and she would likely tell the rest of the fae all about it whether she took the Legacy seriously or not. I’d just invited a whole fish-smelling shit-storm to Kason’s doorstep.
I stumbled into the howling wind up the porch steps, my body weakened from all my magic-using, my hands prickling in angry, bitter waves.
“We’ll be—” Claudia started, her voice carrying inside with me, but I slammed the door shut before she finished.
Yeah, yeah. They would be back after they healed themselves and would bring a horde of others. No need to state the obvious.
“Freir,” I said to the front door, and an ice wall sealed it off once again.
I didn’t know what I would find upstairs, but I hoped it wouldn’t break me even more than I already was. If anything, I’d proven I didn’t handle death well. He had to be alive, not just for me, but for all the factions in this cold, shitty, fae-controlled world. But for me, too, for having my back out there with the Diamond Dogs. For making me feel not quite so alone, even if he didn’t want me.
I held to the stair banister with my forearms, each step as exhausting as scaling the highest mountain ten times. At the top of the stairs, my vision tunneled and the doorway to his bedroom sloped at an odd angle, but I refused to pass out until I knew he was okay. Somehow I kept upright as I stumbled into his room, and there he was, lying on top of the covers on the bed. Eyes closed. Not moving.
“Kason,” I cried.
Cold sweat clung to my skin as a shot of adrenaline spiked through my blood. I launched myself at the bed and straddled his hips, my gaze flitting over every part of his body to look for damage or some kind of movement or anything. Then finally I had enough sense to stare at his chest for more than a second, and it moved. I dropped my chin to my chest with a relieved sigh, but just because he was breathing didn’t mean Claudia hadn’t injured him.
“Curare,” I whispered, and my atern ticked down two. Thirty clicks left.
A buttery yellow glimmer of light curled off my tongue, and I bent to slide it across the seam between his lips in a gentle caress. He looked so peaceful while he slept, so achingly handsome, that if total exhaustion hadn’t wilted my body, I would have stayed pressed to his mouth until he woke up and kissed me right back. Instead, I slumped on top of him, asleep before my head hit his shoulder.
I woke sometime later, the fireplace heating my back, while Kason’s warm side cradled my front. My left hand rested against his chest, and I stared at it, mesmerized. I must’ve subconsciously touched him while I slept and been so out of it that I hadn’t registered the pain I usually felt when I touched something. But even now, it didn’t hurt. Very curious.
Kason stretched and a deep sigh ruffled the hair on the top of my head. I froze, prepping myself for him to kick me out of his bed, and at the same time faking like I was asleep. With my eyes open.
“Hey,” he said, sleepiness deepening his voice. “You okay? What happened after the poppies made me their bitch?”
“Was it the poppies or the fae?” I asked, my gaze rooted to my hand instead of his face.
“Good point.” He shifted and stretched until his toes popped. “You were truly frightening out there. Not gonna lie.”
“I was trying to protect you.” I tried and failed to solidify my voice into more than a whisper. “Next time, do what I say or—”
“You’ll cut me with a sharp object, I know.” He brushed his thumb under my chin and forced me to look at him. His dark eyes held a kindness to them that bloomed warmth inside my chest. “I won’t make any promises. But thank you.” He smoothed the hair off my cheek while his gaze wandered to my mouth and back up to my eyes. “You didn’t answer my first question though. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
With a shaky breath, I looked again at my hand on his chest. I should’ve probably moved it. “I don’t know. But they know about you. Claudia, the one who tried to take you out, stole my thoughts, and now they know who you are and that you’re important enough to end their power.” I recalled my thoughts funneling toward Claudia’s dripping-with-flesh finger and shuddered.
“No one can get in, though, with the house’s magic and yours,” he said. “That’s the one thing we have going for us.”
Us. The word sounded so perfect rolling off his lips while we lay entwined on his bed. I wished this could be my forever in this bright, warm house. With him. Only he didn’t want me, and that scorched the backs of my eyelids.
“I’m running out of magic. I only have thirty clicks left.” My voice came out wobbly, and I cleared my throat against the sudden knot. “They could press on the walls of the house until we turn into wet noodles.”
He laughed. “Now there’s an image.”
“You’re taking all of this pretty well. It’s a little scary.” I stared at his face, memorizing how his eyelashes fanned against his skin when he blinked, how he studied me like a complicated puzzle.
“I guess I’m taking it well because of the extraordinary woman in my bed who has put my whole arm to sleep,” he said, his voice rough and ridiculously
sexy. He traced a fingertip up my jaw that roused my pulse. “I think it’s affecting my brain.”
My cheeks burned. Extraordinary? If I were the only woman he’d been around in a while, then of course I was extraordinary. He had nothing to compare me to. But I wasn’t extraordinary enough for him to have sex with.
“Sorry.” I unfolded myself from him and climbed off the bed. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“No, it’s… It’s fine.” He shook out his arm, then crossed them both behind his head, propping himself on the pillow to gaze at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
But it wasn’t fine. In between finding another way to untie the Legacy knot, I would fantasize about slicing him up into Diamond Dog kibble for sending some seriously mixed signals. And maybe fantasize about other things too. I’d witnessed Kason’s sexual urges firsthand—my entire body flushed at the memory of his magical touch—so it wasn’t as if he were a eunuch or something.
“Meet me downstairs to talk when you’re ready.” I scooted between the narrow space between the bed and the wardrobe and walked out.
My ice walls seemed to be holding up well both upstairs and down, and there wasn’t any more structural damage to the house after last night’s attack. If we were lucky, the walls would last until I found a way to get Kason out.
With a new bottle of wine stuffed with fennel seeds and a bowl of cereal, I made myself horizontally comfortable on the couch with everything within easy reach and Nasty balanced on my stomach. I pulled up Kason’s tattoo again on the screen. Even though sex would untie the Legacy knot and maybe fill in some of the gaps in his memory, he didn’t want to. Wouldn’t he want to know everything, especially the why and the who behind all this? I would, and not just because of my raging libido. Something must’ve been holding him back. That was the only thing I could figure.
I researched the Legacy knot on Nasty until my eyes fell closed. When they opened again, gray morning light slanted in through the curtains.
I stretched out my muscles and blinked down at the strange plastic contraption attached to my lip instead of my regular straw. Except it was a straw. At least a couple dozen of them had been cut to create a sort of intricate straw labyrinth that connected me to a glass of juice on the coffee table. My wine bottle and empty cereal bowl sat next to it. I took a sip, unable to help the grin that cracked over my face as the juice zigzagged a complicated path to my mouth. By the time the juice spilled its sugary flavor over my tongue, I felt lightheaded from all that sucking. Still, it was sweet. Not the juice—it needed more wine. But no guy had ever made me something before.
Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection Page 7
