NocC 021 - Jessa Slade - Dark Hunter's Touch - Harlequin 2012-08

by Nocturne

  The wind of their flight nudged tears from her eyes—just salty water. There was no magic of emotion in them.

  Although the tears seemed to sap Vaile’s power—because he dove toward the shore—he backwinged abruptly, in one leathery sweep, to land them with a knee-jarring thud. He kept a grip on her arm as he circled around in front of her. It wouldn’t take but a moment for the hounds to catch up. For that moment, though, they were alone.

  But his expression wasn’t horrified. He looked pissed, his eyes sparking with the same light as the angry hounds. “What you saw the Queen do to enhance her power is terrible, no doubt. But the illusions of the phaedrealii must remain intact. If all the Hunters had been killed the night the old Lord came Undone and if all the phae were loosed of the Queen’s restraints, do you think they would stay behind the walls of the court? No, they would take to the sunlit world with their havoc. We save two realms by holding ourselves apart.”

  “At what cost?”

  “It could be worse. It has been worse, though not since the Iron Wars. But now that I’ve found you, that is over. The phaedrealii will take you back like nothing ever happened.”

  “Exactly,” Imogene whispered. “Like nothing.”

  He growled, making her heart race faster than when the hounds were on her heels. “You. Aren’t. Nothing.”

  “But I will be, once I’m back there.”

  “At least you’ll be alive.”

  She had come alive, one night in his arms. “Never again.”

  His jaw worked, but he didn’t answer. He tightened his grip so she had no chance to flee as he reached into his back pocket and withdrew a narrow steel vial. The steel held just enough carbon to contain but not destroy the phae magic inside.

  If only humans realized how much protection they had lost against the phae, purifying all their iron into steel. But then again, if they did know, she—silly little sylfana that she was—would never have been able to cross into their world. The steel-born phae would no longer be kept at bay with the old charms.

  But now Vaile was conjuring the way back. He uncorked the vial and sprinkled the contents in a circle around their feet. The dust drifted into the sand, and the spores sprouted with preternatural speed to mark the shifting boundary between realms. Button-sized caps spread like little golden wings, and Imogene couldn’t help but breathe the whiff of honey that floated through the widening gateway.

  The fragrance was another lie; there was nothing sweet about the phaedrealii. If a human stepped into the circle before the gate magic dissipated, he would awaken to find himself trapped in a realm that would probably destroy him, his mind and soul if not his body.

  And if a human ate the sprouted spores… The phrase “magic mushroom” was more appropriate than mortals knew.

  She closed her eyes as the gate magic encircled her, and she slipped into the dream.

  Or, considering the darkly menacing phae Hunter behind her, into her nightmare…

  Chapter Six

  Vaile hadn’t caught even the briefest glimpse of Imogene in…forever. In the sunlit world, only a couple of weeks had passed. But in the phaedrealii court, the separation stretched like an eternity. That one night of fierce sensation had obviously skewed his perceptions.

  The Lord Hunter—one of the Hunters who had been away when the old Lord had come Undone—had kept him busy since his return. His brethren’s eyes were on him, watchful and wondering why he had taken a full cycle of the moon to find a missing sylfana. Since he couldn’t admit he had found her on the very first day and then proceeded to run after her every day thereafter, on foot, without actually catching her, he bit his tongue and took the hounds’ dung tasks the Lord Hunter slung at him. He had to be the unflinching Hunter; if they thought he was losing his edge, they would turn on him quicker than the hounds. And then they would turn their vicious attention to Imogene.

  But a dozen more phae repatriations—most of them straightforward, though three had been lethal—couldn’t keep his mind off one sweet sylfana. In fact, the captures had only made him think harder.

  Just as his brethren were watching him, he was listening to them. The Hunters were being called on more and more often to find wandering phae. The mood of the phaedrealii, always mercurial and secretive, was changing, and the power of the Queen’s illusions—though holding for the moment—seemed to be thinning. He might not have even noticed the pattern except that Imogene had forced him to open his eyes. What if the phaedrealii deserters had wanted only what she wanted—a chance to feel, to live?

  Ever since the old Lord Hunter had tried to unwing him as a whelp, he had believed in the Queen’s edict against the Undoing. More than believe in it, he had fought and killed to defend it.

  What if he had been wrong?

  Certainly the three delinquent phae he had confronted had been abroad with nefarious purposes. The crazed dwarf had been hacking down a ring of birch trees that marked the Queen’s permanent private gate into the sunlit world. When Vaile had tried to talk to him, the dwarf had cackled, “We must close the circles before we all run out.”

  Then he turned the ax on himself. Not a pleasant end, and frustrating too since it left many questions in Vaile’s uneasy mind.

  The very next night, he had found two missing undines at a human watering hole where they had been killing men in their cups—literally. They were crouched over an unconscious man, pouring the frothy contents of a beer can right up his nostrils.

  “He was already drowning his sorrows,” one of the willowy sprites told Vaile.

  “We are granting their wishes when we drown them,” said the other.

  The undines reminded him of Imogene. They were too skinny and sinuous for his taste, lacking the sylfana’s sleek flight muscles, but something about their winsome sideways smiles weakened him. So he followed them to their stream to see why they had left. And it was true, the humans had tossed enough empty beer bottles, snack bags and cigarette butts along the reedy banks to make a path that led straight to their guilty lips.

  “You know the Queen won’t interfere if you kill men,” he reminded the undines. The memory of Imogene agonizing over how she had been made to do worse roughened his voice. “But you can’t leave your phae waters.”

  “We couldn’t before,” said one. “Not when horses crossed our bridges on iron-shod hooves, not when the miller’s iron-bound wheel circled through our stream…” The other undine finished, “But now we can. And we will. This world will fall to the steel-born phae.”

  Then, without even counting to three, they pushed him into the stream.

  What they lacked in muscle they made up for in ferocity, needle teeth and the slime that oozed from their skin when they were roused to a killing frenzy. They fought him past all reason, past the point where any of them could have stopped. As they coiled around him, dragging him down through the water—that was barely deeper than his waist, damn it—he had a moment where he thought maybe it would be better to let the last of the air bubbles past his gritted teeth. If they were so determined to be free, who was he to stop them? Did he really care that much about living?

  Imogene’s blue eyes had flashed in his imagination. She hadn’t been able to hide that brilliant color—it shone even through her human guise. She had risked everything to live.

  As water poured into his mouth, he released the magic in the amber ring. The light—brighter than the sun—exploded through the roiling waves, and the grasping hands fell away from him. He shot to his feet, flailing and choking.

  Water streamed from his eyes, and he clenched his wings close to hold them away from the undines, floating belly up beside him. Even as he watched, they started to unravel in strands of algae.

  The amber sun was a weapon of last resort. Too many phae had been lost during the Iron Wars, and every passing weakened the Queen’s power. Although now that she was drawing magics from human collections, perhaps she would kill him in a fit of grand annoyance at his failure to bring the undines back alive.<
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  He slogged out of the stream. By all that was dark and shining, why hadn’t they yielded? As overwhelmed as the Hunters were, the undines could have pretended compliance and returned to their killing as soon as his back was turned.

  His boots slipped in the mud as his knees suddenly weakened. Was Imogene planning exactly that? He had turned his back on her as soon as the gate had opened to the phaedrealii. But he hadn’t been able to stop himself from glancing around. Her sylfana sisters had bustled forward to surround her, and he caught only a glimpse of her amber hair when she averted her face without meeting his gaze.

  If she did escape again, the Lord of the Hunt might send another Hunter—one who would not hesitate to use the amber sun’s fatal power against her.

  He didn’t understand what was happening in the Queen’s court, but he knew a certain sylfana who hadn’t been afraid to step into the unknown.

  In a small oxbow of the stream lay the broken circle of toadstools that had been the undines’ gate to the phaedrealii. He completed the circle with his vial of spores and stepped through.

  There was only one more phae he needed to catch.

  So when guard duty at the Queen’s next feast was tossed his way, he just bowed his head in acknowledgment while his brother Hunters jeered, but this time he bit his cheek to hide his smile.

  Surely Imogene would be there.

  Sometimes the Queen led her courtiers out of the phaedrealii to dance in the reflected sunlight of a full moon, but apparently she was loathe to risk any more runners. For this gathering, the shifting walls of the court had drawn back far enough to resemble a poppy field at dusk. As if a summer sun had just set, a warm glow lingered across the illusory sky, but the scarlet blooms were already darkening toward purple.

  The Queen held her phae in concentric rings. Her attendants lingered nearby with less privileged courtiers farther out. Her inner circle stood close at hand, her goblin chancellor hopping at her elbow while her current favorite—a whispered half-blood with rounded human ears and catlike elvish eyes—solicitously guided her over the rolling grounds. Dozens of other phae drifted across the field in small groups, their laughter like distant bells. Someone had even procured a badminton set, and the soft thwack of rackets was as indolent as a lazy heartbeat.

  Vaile took up a Hunter’s stance on the farthest edge of the court. From the small rise beside a spreading tree, he had an uninterrupted view across the crowd.

  The vantage point also made him clearly face the fact—despite the idyllic picture—he was not protecting the phaedrealii but imprisoning it.

  He shifted restlessly, ruffling his wings to create a little breeze in the sultry air. He should curse Imogene for making him realize how unhappy the phae were…and how unhappy he had become. But he couldn’t close his eyes again; that was not a Hunter’s way. He was on the hunt, and his knack would find his answers.

  The glow of the sky did not falter, held in stasis by the Queen’s magic, but will-o’-the-wisps emerged to dance among the poppies. Their glinting light brightened the crimson petals like the explosions of miniature fireworks, making the shadows beneath his tree seem darker by comparison. Through the heavy drape of leaves, probably no one would even notice him except for the wisps, and they would never tell anyone, except maybe…

  The slow wave of his wings halted, but the breeze still swirled around him with a fragrance that haunted his waking dreams.

  He turned just in time to catch a flutter of white.

  “Imogene.” His voice caught raggedly on her name.

  She paused, though he had used no force to stop her, and glanced over her winged shoulder. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  He wondered if he should believe her. Without his skin against hers, he couldn’t be sure. But when he took a step toward her, she sidled back. Her hands fisted in her gold spider silk skirts, whisking the long train away, as if she didn’t want any part of her near him.

  He stopped. “If you are looking for a place to hide, there’s still room under here.”

  “Is that what you were doing here? Hiding?”

  “I was hoping to see you.”

  She snapped out her wings in a well, here I am motion, but she pulled her arms close to tighten the spider silk around her like golden armor. “I have plenty of phae watching me. They make sure I don’t go anywhere alone, and I don’t have access to any gate spores. I suppose you can see me whenever you want since I’m going nowhere.”

  The glitter in her blue eyes, sharp in the otherwise soft-focus setting, was a clear warning he might see her, but he had better not touch. So he looked his greedy fill.

  She was thinner than he remembered, as delicate as the young sylfana who had wished his wing whole. His fingers clenched, as if he could gauge the slenderness of her wrists without touching her. Barely any part of her was exposed to touch; her gold gown covered her almost entirely, from the long sleeves ending in deep scallops over the backs of her hands, to the high collar that flared out at the points of her jaw. The red-gold amber of her hair gleamed against the dress, which made her face more wan by comparison. But he supposed she hadn’t been out running lately. Even the intermittent Oregon sun would have given her some color.

  When she had said she would never feel alive again, he hadn’t believed her. Now he did. He had brought her back, but he had left something precious behind.

  Remorse nipped him, a sharpness like accidentally sitting on an annoyed wisp. “Hunters are being sent out to retrieve more and more fugitive phae. You started something when you bolted.”

  “There were always phae runaways. The only difference is no one noticed before.” She glanced down, and the aggressive spread of her wings wilted. “It is only because of me that anyone notices now.”

  With her attention diverted, he took the opportunity to close the distance between them. When he caught her arm, his fingertips met. She was thinner, fading before his eyes.

  As he tugged her into the shadow of the tree, the backs of his knuckles brushed the side of her breast through the silky weave of her gown, but he ignored the awareness that sizzled through his body. “If anybody is guilty of turning attention to the runaways, it is me. So go ahead and blame me.” He would rather face the bold, angry Imogene than this pensive sylfana he barely recognized.

  She finally raised her eyes. In place of the cold glitter, her gaze clouded, like the smoky occlusions in his blue amber. “I can’t blame you, not when I know why you are so afraid.”

  “I am not—”

  Avoiding his studded Hunter collar, she lifted her hand toward his shoulder, where the knot of scar still twisted over the wing joint. “The Lord Hunter almost undid you, as he came Undone himself.”

  Vaile stiffened at the almost imperceptible brush of her fingers. “It’s nothing. You wished me back together again.”

  “What did you wish for? To fly? Yet here you are.” She shook her head. “I guess I was never strong enough to be a fairy princess.”

  “Imogene—”

  She jerked her hand away. “Don’t say my name. It reminds me of…things.”

  “I want to remind you.” He tightened his grip on her arm to draw her up against his bare chest. Sometimes he resented the Hunters’ archaic garb—or lack thereof—but now he appreciated the absence of at least that barrier between them. “We don’t have to lose what we found out there. We can still have that, here, without the risk of the Undoing.”

  In the imaginary heat and faked shadows of the phaedrealii, only the feel of her was real. When he pressed her close, her breasts were a softer warmth through the gold gown, and the silky folds of the skirt fanned around his leather-clad legs. He slid one hand behind her neck, though the spider silk came between them.

  “Hunter…” she murmured.

  Her breathy sigh tightened the already-snug fit of his jeans. “Vaile,” he reminded her. “Whatever you might think, I am not still that nameless whelp.”

  “If only you were, then I would still be t
he thoughtless sylfana, and I could forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “Everything.”

  He leaned down, angling his mouth above hers. “Even me?”

  “Especially you.” She stared up at him without blinking. “If you kiss me, I will bite like one of your hounds.”

  “I almost believe you.” He shifted his grip to cup her jaw, just at the edge of her high gold collar. “But not quite.”

  The soft, shining silk was nothing like the studded Hunter leash around his own neck, yet he thought perhaps they were both bound, in their own ways. He took a breath and ran his thumb over the hollow of her cheek to her lower lip.

  “Skin to skin, we cannot lie,” he told her, as if she might have forgotten that.

  And he covered her mouth with his own.

  She did not bite, but her sharp inhalation seemed to yank the air from his body. For a dizzy heartbeat, he felt as if they had gone aloft; every muscle was tight with yearning, his breath and heart suspended. His wings spread in impulsive reaction, rattling the leaves above their heads.

  Though he had meant to tease her with the touch, the sensation of her lips softening and opening under his caught him like a gale force wind and ripped away any intention and all thought.

  With a groan, he buried his hands in her hair, tangling his fingers in the red-gold locks to tilt her head to his onslaught. He swept his tongue across the inner rim of her lip and sealed their breath between them as he locked his mouth over hers. The taste of her reminded him of their one night in her island cabin, how she had come apart so sweetly in his arms, how she had whispered his name without hesitation, how she had told him she was happy.... His wings arched forward, like a raptor mantling its prey. He wanted that from her again, wanted everything, from her violent release to her sleepy smile.

  The bone-deep force of the primal response stunned him into gentling the kiss. He lightened the pressure of his mouth and smoothed his hands down her arms—as much to soothe himself as to apologize for his ferocity. Not that she had ever been afraid of him, or of anything else for that matter.