by Kelly Meding
“That tickles,” I said, swatting his shoulder.
“Sorry about that.” He did it again.
I giggled. As I plotted my revenge, he captured my mouth in another, more dizzying kiss. Thoughts of the Break fell away. The rasp of his unshaven skin against mine, the taste of him I knew so well, the heat of his hands splayed across my lower back. He was pushing me forward, harder against him. I teased his tongue with mine, stroking and probing. Exploring depths I’d grown to know by heart.
The kissing I could handle. The touching and holding—no sweat. Hell, we’d shared the same bed the last two nights, finding comfort in our fully clothed selves, and I’d never felt exposed or out of control. I felt out of control only when we started to move past kissing. When my body started taking over for my conscious mind, and when pleasure started mixing with memories of pain. That’s when I’d start to panic.
Only I was determined not to today. Wyatt was patient and supportive. He knew what I’d gone through—he’d seen the results with his own eyes and held me when I died the first time, raped and tortured to death by goblins. The psychological scars didn’t heal as quickly as the rest of me, but I was getting damned tired of waiting.
I raked my fingers down his chest, the cotton shirt soft and pliant and warmed by his skin. He moaned softly. I broke our kiss and pressed my forehead to his. Gazed into his eyes, his breath puffing hot and sweet in my face.
“What do you really think,” I asked, “the odds of that phone ringing in the near future are?”
He blinked. Then understanding dawned. It was quickly tempered by surprise and, deeper still, desire. Desire meant for me and no one else. One of his hands drew a lazy circle in the small of my back. “I’ll break the phone if you want me to,” he whispered.
“Nah, that requires getting up. I like you right here.”
His eyes asked the question: are you sure? I wanted to tell him I wasn’t sure, but I was hell-bent and determined. We’d bared our souls a few days ago, revealing to each other the darkest of our kept secrets. Wyatt’s had been blacker than mine, more damaging, and I was still processing some of the things he’d told me. Some of the horrible things he’d done. I should have hated him for them. Instead, they had deepened my understanding of the complex, haunted man I’d known for four years, and still barely knew at all.
I crushed my mouth to his. His response was nearly instantaneous and impossible not to feel. I urged him on by rocking my hips, adding a bit of friction, and he groaned. His hips jerked hard against me. My stomach quaked, and I matched his groan. His hands cupped my ass and held me there, pressed to him.
His lips left mine, trailing nips and licks across my cheek to my chin, then down to my throat. He found the sensitive spot, just below my ear and behind my jaw. I gasped and rocked into him. He growled, pleased with himself, and did it again. I shifted, pressed forward, hands on his chest. He groaned.
Not a happy groan. It was definitely a pained groan. I jerked back, hands off. He tried to wipe away the grimace; I saw the last edges before it disappeared. It had been barely over a week since he’d had a sliver of metal removed from his back, three inches from his spine. The wound was small but deep, and had proved quite painful as it healed.
“Did I hurt you?” I asked.
“It’ll pass.”
“The way my mood always passes?”
My intended humor hit rock bottom. His expression darkened.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Maybe we should stop.”
Mood Killer 101—your instructor today is Evy Stone. No, I wasn’t doing that again. I didn’t run from things, dammit; I chased them down, tackled them, and slammed their noses into the pavement. It wasn’t about proving anything to Wyatt. As frustrated as he got on occasion, he knew; therefore, he forgave. But just once I wanted him to get mad at me. To tell me he didn’t want to entertain himself with Mr. Righty again.
Only he’d never do that. In this new thing we were trying, we were no longer Hunter and Handler. He wasn’t my boss. He wouldn’t push me or cajole me or embarrass me into positive results. We were partners now and on even footing. He didn’t have to coax what I wished to give freely.
If only the damaged part of my psyche would let me.
“I think—” he started to say, and I silenced him by pressing a finger to his lips.
“You think too much,” I said. “I think too much.”
He nipped at the tip of my finger. I dropped my hand to his chest. He searched my face, long enough to make me squirm.
“If you’re thinking it, say it,” I said, frustrated at his stalling and inability to simply speak his damned mind.
“I’m thinking we may need to take this show on the road.”
I scowled. “To the bedroom?”
“No,” he said with the temerity to laugh at my confusion. Sweet laughter—amused, without condescension. “Out of the city, Evy. We need to get away for a couple of days, far from the Break, the Dregs, and all the reminders of what our lives were before this started. Maybe it will help.”
I swallowed a snort. He had the best intentions, but I seriously doubted a change of venue would alter how my heart reacted to his proximity, or how my guts twisted when my mind wandered back to that tiny closet at the abandoned train station. The place where I’d been tortured and left to die.
“I don’t know,” I said. Nothing else came to mind.
“About leaving, or about it helping?”
“Both. Neither. Take your pick.” The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to stop. For a man who had frustrated me endlessly in my old life, he had become the most patient person on the planet in my new life. He didn’t deserve me jerking him around like this.
I brushed my lips across his nose, a teasing kiss that made him shiver. Smiling, I grabbed the hem of my shirt and whisked it off in one smooth motion. It whispered to the floor, forgotten. His eyebrows arched.
The sofa vibrated.
Wyatt tensed. “Did you feel—?”
The second wave wasn’t so subtle. I pitched off his lap and hit the floor on my back. Both elbows scraped against the rough carpet. Glass shattered somewhere in the apartment. Everything was moving, shaking. Books fell to the floor like thunderclaps. Car alarms blasted outside.
“Is it an earthquake?” I shouted.
“Stay there and curl up.” Wyatt tumbled off the sofa and joined me on the floor, wrapping his body around mine from behind. We didn’t fit well in the pocket between the sofa and the coffee table, but I trusted him.
I’d always thought you got into the nearest doorway—I guess I was told wrong.
The shaking stopped after less than a minute. Car horns added to the mix of alarms coming from the street. Something in the kitchenette fell in a pop of noise and broke. I sat up and gazed around the apartment, taking in the fallen items. The wall by the door now sported a thin crack the length of my arm.
“Holy shit.” I clenched my fists, unsure when my hands had started shaking.
“You okay?” Wyatt asked as he sat up next to me. His wide-eyed gaze was reflective of what mine probably looked like.
“Yeah. That wasn’t just from the Break.”
“No, that was a full-on earthquake.”
The city was no stranger to earthquakes of a much smaller magnitude. Mostly they were barely felt. Earthquakes this powerful were rare and, if hidden history showed anything, usually products of troll activity. Trolls, also called Earth Guardians by the Fair Ones, were part of the Earth itself—dirt and stone and natural elements. They’d had their internal wars a hundred years ago, and the city had suffered for it.
Combined with the earlier Break-hiccup, I had no doubt something bigger was brewing belowground.
Wyatt’s cell phone jangled, no longer on the counter where he’d left it. He rummaged in the mess covering the kitchenette floor. Checked the display. The surprise on his face was hard to miss as he received the call. “Truman.”
I stoo
d up and wandered closer, concerned as his surprise gave way to actual shock. My heart sped up.
“Hold on,” Wyatt said. He pulled the phone away from his ear, hit a button, then said, “Say that again for me.”
On speaker now, Adrian Baylor’s voice came over loud and clear. “I said Boot Camp was attacked, Truman. Unplug your ears.”
A chill wormed down my spine and spread gooseflesh across the backs of my legs. This was so not what I expected to hear. The start of a question squeaked out of my mouth. I clamped a hand over it to silence myself. Baylor was a Handler and a former colleague of Wyatt’s, and among those people who thought me dead. Again.
“That’s what caused the earthquake,” Baylor continued. “At least three trolls were systematically testing the underground security measures for about five minutes before the quake. A couple of their friends must have come along to stop them, because their fight? That’s what shook the city.”
Troll wars. Holy shit. My mind raced. Boot Camp was a secret, supersecure facility in the mountains south of the city. It was where new Hunters were trained to kill, and it was a place where only one in two people came out alive. Four years ago, I’d been one of the lucky ones.
I couldn’t imagine why a bunch of trolls would want to get at those kids and their trainers. But they weren’t the only secrets hiding behind the high, magically secured walls or the deep, oil-slicked, electricity-bound barrier beneath. After the discovery of a macabre lab of science experiments in an abandoned nature preserve a week ago, the contents of that lab had been moved to Boot Camp. Contents including scientific research notes, vials of liquids no one could identify, lab equipment and technology beyond anything I’d ever seen in person, and fourteen living, breathing creatures that had been tortured in the name of science.
Creatures that ran the spectrum from docile and harmless to vicious hellhounds created with the worst intentions. Creatures that could terrorize the public and kill without remorse if set loose.
“Has anyone heard from the Fey Council about this?” Wyatt asked.
“Feelers are out, but the brass says no word yet. We’ve got teams coming in to keep the place locked up tight, but we aren’t making the same mistake we made at Parker’s Palace.”
The mistake of thinning out our ranks to chase after minor incidents while those closest to the imminent slaughter didn’t believe it would happen. Sixty-four people were dead because of that mistake.
Wyatt puckered his eyebrows. “What do you want me to do?”
“Stay by your phone for now, at least until we have a plan.”
“Fine.”
As he snapped his phone shut, I said, “Fortunately, with the advent of mobiles, asking someone to stay by the phone no longer requires them to sit around at home and fidget.”
Wyatt gave a tolerant sigh. “You want to go out there.”
“You’d rather sit around and hope Baylor gives you an assignment? If trolls are attacking, then something’s wrong. They’ve been one of the most neutral species in this city for years.”
“Neutral or not, they seem to take direction from the Fey.”
His accusation struck me dumb. A chill settled in my stomach. True, at Amalie’s request, a troll named Smedge had once rescued Wyatt and me from a group of Halfies. The Earth-bound trolls had some sort of partnership with the Fey, but that didn’t preclude trolls from working for others given the right incentive. Or they had attacked on their own, for reasons beyond my present understanding.
“So now you’re accusing Amalie of turning against us?” I asked.
He scowled. “No, just making an observation based on fact. Amalie has been a staunch supporter of the Triads since the beginning, but she doesn’t speak for all Fey. Just for the sprites and the decisions of the Council.”
“A power play by other Fey?” Saying it aloud sounded ridiculous. The Fey seemed perfectly content to live outside the city, happily roaming the mountains and forests that surrounded us and leaving the more violent, city-dwelling species to kill one another.
“I’m just thinking out loud, Evy,” he said. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything, because I really don’t have a damned clue what’s going on.”
I nodded, knowing exactly how he felt. “Too bad I have no idea where Smedge went to ground. He’d probably know what’s happening.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “That would make things too easy.”
“Yeah, and God forbid anything ever be—” A heavy thud rattled our front door. For a brief moment, I expected the world to start shaking. Instead, whatever had thudded slid down the length of the door until it hit the ground.
I reached under the coffee table and pulled a knife from its hiding place. Weapons were stashed all over the apartment, and this one was the most immediately accessible. Wyatt didn’t try to stop me; he didn’t tell me to be careful. I approached the door on silent feet, glad for the cement floor, and checked the peephole first—nothing in sight except the opposite wall.
Pressing my ear to the door, I listened. Heard the faint, muffled sound of heavy breathing. By my feet, something dark red caught my attention. It glistened on the floor, just under the door’s edge. Blood. I curled my fingers around the knob and snicked the lock back. Twisted. Yanked.
And leapt backward as a man’s body tumbled halfway into the apartment, landing flat on his back. Blood oozed from multiple wounds in his abdomen and had soaked through his once white shirt.
“She knew you were alive,” the man croaked, and I finally took a good look at his upside-down face.
It was Jaron, another sprite and Amalie’s most trusted bodyguard. And s/he was dying.
Chapter Three
Sprite-Jaron was an orange crystal-encrusted woman who barely came up to my waist. Jaron’s human avatar, besides being male, had the height and bulk of a professional wrestler, which made him an ideal bodyguard for Amalie’s avatar. It did not make him ideal for being dragged across the floor to the sofa. Even with Wyatt and me, it took several minutes to get him there. Jaron stayed quiet, grimacing but making no noise, even though he had to be in agony.
We finally gave up on the couch and left him on the rag rug that covered the area nearest the sofa. While Wyatt closed and locked the door, I fetched a couple of towels from the bathroom. I put one beneath his head and pressed another over his wounds. That’s when he cried out.
“Who did this?” I asked, trying to ignore the streak of blood that stretched from his feet to the door.
“Goblin,” he rasped. “I think.”
He thinks? Goblins were pretty damned easy to pick out of a crowd. “Why did it attack?”
“Don’t know.” Sweat beaded on his forehead. His brown eyes were wide, pained, unfocused. “Earth Guardians attacked. I left First Break. Situated myself here. Left my apartment. It stabbed me with … its hand.”
“Its hand?” Goblins had sharp claws, but not long enough to inflict the kind of damage done to Jaron’s abdomen.
“Fingernails, like small knives. Too long.”
Just the mental image of that made my stomach roil.
“Why come here?” Wyatt asked, kneeling on the other side of Jaron. “How did you know Evy was alive?”
Jaron rolled his eyes toward Wyatt. “Amalie knew. Gifted who are in her true presence … she can sense their aura. Their tether to the Break. She can sense you both.”
Creepy and cool. Wyatt and I had both spent time in Amalie’s true presence, seen her as she really was and not just in her human avatar. The aura thing was new information, but I really knew little about sprites and their ways with the Break. She knew I hadn’t died last Saturday, and she also, apparently, hadn’t shared that intel with the Triads. Interesting.
“But why here?” Wyatt persisted.
Jaron groaned. Blood gurgled up his throat, into his mouth, and down his cheeks. He coughed, dim eyes searching. I squeezed his shoulder and leaned in, desperate to know what had driven the sprite to drag a dying man to
our little corner of Hell. His head listed toward me, but he didn’t seem to see.
“Jaron, please, tell us,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not … betrayal.” The words were barely intelligible. I leaned closer, missing most of his whispers. “Don’t … trust …” His eyes flared white, the briefest flash of the power of the Fey possessing his body. Then the light went out. His body stilled.
“Jaron? Fuck.” I rocked back on my heels, stunned. Why did they always die before they finished saying what needed to be said?
Wyatt checked his pulse and found none. We didn’t even know the man’s real name—the man who gave his body over to the will of a powerful sprite whenever she needed to walk among humans and was none the wiser. The man who died because someone had been sent to kill Jaron in her most vulnerable state.
“Betrayal,” Wyatt said. “But who’s betraying who?”
“She said she came here after the trolls attacked.” Or were attacked—either way, she had to be referencing the earlier earthquake. “Could they have turned on the other Fey? Maybe she was going to give that information to the Triads.”
He shook his head. “Then why come to us after being stabbed? Why not call the brass or one of the Handlers?”
“I don’t know.” I thought of how the avatar’s eyes had flashed, glowed that brilliant white at the moment of death. Just the avatar’s death, or … “Wyatt, if a sprite’s avatar dies while the sprite still possesses it, what does that do to the sprite?”
His eyes widened. “I have no idea. I don’t know enough about avatars to even guess.”
My stomach twisted as the implications caught up with me. Had Jaron come to the city to tell us something important about a betrayal? One so big she’d dragged her wounded avatar across town to find us, only to die before giving up anything useful? Possible. Horrifying, but possible. And who the hell was the man/goblin/thing with the clawed hands? Except for certain shape-shifters, I didn’t know of any other nonhuman species capable of manipulating their bodies like that.
