Priceless

by Shannon Mayer

  But this was the bright side, literally, of the supernatural. I found myself standing outside of my Jeep, the pang in my chest thrumming as I walked toward the battle. One of the Harpies was down, her body pin-cushioned by horns, her chest rising in shallow breaths.

  A hand grabbed me from behind. “Get in the Jeep,” O’Shea said, biting off each word with a tug on me.

  I looked at him, giving him the full force of my eyes, knowing the three colours would shift and swirl with the emotions rising in me. “No.”

  There was no way I could explain what it was I needed, or why in this moment I chose to find something bright to cling to, only that I had to. Something about this case, something about dealing with O’Shea was, in a sense, forcing my hand. If I was being honest with myself, it was the guilt this case brought up, the ugliness from my past. I needed to know there was more than the blasted ugliness in this world where I lived.

  A need for the bright, for the brilliant and pure side of the supernatural, called to me, and I heeded that cry.

  My feet carried me to the edge of the battle, where the remaining Harpy screeched well above the unicorns, her voice echoing out across the badlands.

  “Tracker, you will die for this. I will gorge on your heart.” The words weren’t all that unexpected, and it wasn’t the first time I’d been threatened.

  I nodded. “I hear you.” Even as she threatened me, I could show the respect due. I was a mere Tracker, a human that had somewhere in her family history gained some funky abilities. But Harpies were legendary, creatures that had been around far longer than humans.

  She peeled away from the herd, swirling back into her own territory. It was going to be difficult to get past her. No doubt, she would sit on the mineshaft waiting for us to come back.

  The herd, or Crush as they were known, if you want to get specific, turned their attention on me. Eyes of all colours, from pale grey to black, the traditional violet to bright blue and green eyed me with open curiosity.

  But it was the lead Stallion who stepped out of the Crush toward me, jet-black body gleaming in the sun, sparkling with iridescent rainbows across the black satin of his coat.

  Child, you are broken.

  His words sliced through my mind, as if his horn had pierced me clean through. O’Shea gasped, and I had no doubt he’d heard the same words.

  Tears slipped from my eyes. “Yes.” I lowered my face.

  The tip of his golden horn lifted my chin up, my eyes meeting his. A wave of warmth washed over me, empathy, pity and faith flowed from him to me. He manipulated my ability to sense others, but I didn’t care.

  You have a far way to journey yet, do not lose heart. A bright spot in the darkness; that is what you can be, if you choose. Steel your resolve. You are not alone. There are those who cheer you on, those you cannot possibly know; those who believe you will be the one to break his hold on us. Do not let your guilt blind you to the future that awaits you.

  Blinking, I wiped the tears from my face. “Whose hold? What are you talking about?”

  If unicorns could smile, this one did. I have said too much already.

  At some unspoken signal, the Crush of Unicorns spun in unison swirling around us, close enough to smell the lavender and whisper of jasmine clinging to their hides. Their split hooves pounded out a rhythm around us, rattling my bones until my heart beat in time with theirs.

  Just like that, they were gone. There was no malice in them, not even toward us, who’d brought their age-old nemesis right into their territory.

  The dust swirled and settled, the sun beat down, and it was like nothing had happened. Minutes passed; the silence thick and heavy. It was O’Shea who finally broke the spell the Crush cast.

  He stepped in front of me. “Question her. She’s our only chance for info on the Coven.”

  Though I didn’t need him to tell me what I already knew, he was right. Turning, I headed over to the Harpy the unicorns had pinioned. She was barely breathing, blood pouring from multiple punctures.

  “Well played, Tracker, well played,” she coughed out, her mouth twitching.

  “Why are you working for a rogue Coven?” The sound of my voice seemed so harsh and unreal after hearing the Stallion’s voice inside my head, feeling his emotions in my heart.

  The Harpy shuddered. “They are powerful; they spelled us so we had no choice. Please, free my sister. She is young yet, a child in our years.”

  Ah, fuck.

  I crouched down to her. “You know I can’t. I’m seeking another child, one the Coven stole.”

  “You swore an oath once, Tracker. To seek out and save any child you could, for anyone who would ask for your help. Do you renounce this oath now?” Her eyes, though dulling as death stalked her body, filled with sharp intelligence.

  There was no way around it. “No, I do not renounce my oath.”

  She twitched again, her eyes shifting to stare behind me. Alex crept forward, sniffing the blood, his lip curling at the bitter scent.

  He got too close. She lashed out, pinning Alex to the ground with a claw, her eyes fierce. “Give me your word, Tracker. Free her from them, when you free the human child.” Her claws dug into Alex and he cried out, struggling against the impossibly strong claws. Her meaning was crystal clear.

  Double fuck.

  “I will free her, one way or another,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed, understanding exactly what I said, but more importantly, what I hadn’t. I would set her sister free, or I would kill her. Either way, the Coven would no longer control the young Harpy.

  She withdrew her claws from Alex, who scrambled backwards until he pressed up against O’Shea. “That will do.” She coughed and shifted her weight. I couldn’t stop the involuntary tensing of my muscles. Even this close to death, she was a deadly adversary, one that could kill me with barely a flick of one claw.

  “Do you know why the Coven is stealing children?” After seeing the mineshaft I had no doubt the kidnappings had been going on for a while, which meant there was more than one kid down there.

  The Harpy took a deep rattling breath, the scent of coppery blood on her words as she exhaled. “The Coven tagged us, with this.” She lifted a claw and I saw a ruby embedded in the top of her foot.

  I bent over and put the edge of a knife to it, popping it free, and slid it into my pocket.

  The Harpy blinked twice, eyes un-focusing in between each movement. “That is what you must remove from my sister if you are to free her. My sister’s true name, call her by it and she will know you mean her no harm. Eve, her name is Eve.“ Her chest stilled, and the last of her life escaped from her as she breathed her sister’s name. Damn it.

  Standing up, I brushed the dirt off my jeans. “Let’s go.”

  O’Shea and Alex climbed into the Jeep in silence, but it didn’t last for long.

  “I think we should pull up the files on the other three kids that are missing,” O’Shea said, his voice steady, considering the last half an hour.

  I put the Jeep in gear and headed out, taking a long loop back to the highway. “At this point it doesn’t matter. We’ll find the other kids when we find India.” I tapped the steering wheel with my left hand. “They’re looking for something, children with certain abilities. Don’t you ever wonder about those cases where kids just up and vanish? They’re stolen by people like the Coven. But we’re running out of time if we are going to get any of them back.”

  “Stolen,” Alex grumbled from the back.

  I glanced back at him to see his lip curling up, and looked back to where I was going. The light started to fade, our day almost done. We would need the cover of night to break into the Coven’s stronghold and get India out. And maybe a pile of other kids.

  “I wish Milly was with us,” I said softly.

  “Why isn’t she here?” O’Shea asked.

  “Sorry, I’m not used to anyone but her riding along with me.” I turned back onto the highway and headed into Bismark. Giselle’s place
was loaded with gear, ready as my backup stash.

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  My shoulders tightened, and I had to resist the urge to push O’Shea out of the Jeep at high speed. Taking one long, slow breath, I answered him, albeit through gritted teeth.

  “Milly’s a Witch, a damn good one, but she’s finally been accepted into the Coven, which means she can’t have contact with anyone outside of the group. In the past, she’s gone with me, always been my partner on the hard salvages. The ones I couldn’t do on my own.”

  Silence reigned for all of three seconds. “You’ve got me, you don’t need Milly.”

  I wanted to bash my head into the steering wheel; it would be less painful than trying to explain a lifetime of knowledge to one oblivious agent who thought he understood. I settled for shouting at said former FBI agent. “YOU AREN’T A WITCH.”

  “So?”

  Unbelievable. The arrogance of some people truly astounded me. Again, I struggled for control; a slight glance at O’Shea stiffened my spine. He enjoyed this back and forth. A smile curved up the edge of his lips and his eyes definitely sparked with humour. The bastard.

  Slamming my mouth shut on the response I’d been prepared to assault him with, like how stupid could he possibly be and what was he thinking taking on supernaturals as a human, I swallowed the words down instead.

  “You going to go all Ice Queen on me now?”

  Alex barked from the back. “Icy Queenie!”

  Good grief. Alex’s excitement and apparent happiness was infectious, and it took all I had not to laugh out loud.

  Biting down on the laughter that bubbled up, I stared at the road, focusing on the need to get to Giselle’s and get loaded up. My humour faded. This was going to be a bad hunt; really, really bad. Nothing had gone right so far, and my gut feeling was that it wasn’t going to change.

  The sky was dark when we pulled into Giselle’s yard, and I wasn’t expecting company, which was my bad. Lights flicked on, sirens came alive, and we were surrounded by police officers with guns drawn and pointed at us before the Jeep rolled to a stop.

  I glared at O’Shea next to me, wishing again it was Milly in the passenger seat.

  I hated being right.

  20

  The processing took about three minutes tops. O’Shea was cuffed and flung into the back of a police cruiser, and I was hauled out to the back of the Jeep for questioning, my hand never leaving Alex’s collar. If it came off, everyone would see him for what he was, which would create a shit storm of problems we did not need.

  From what picked up in the scattered radio squawks I could hear, there was an anonymous tip that O’Shea was with me and we were headed to Giselle’s. My gut was telling me that it was the black Coven getting inventive with ways to slow me down. I couldn’t prove my theory, but it was the only thing that made sense.

  Alex pressed hard against my leg, his teeth chattering, but he had enough understanding of the situation not to say anything. I tried my best to focus on what the officer in front of me said.

  “So, you’re telling me that Agent Liam O’Shea tracked you down and forced you to drive him . . . here?” The disbelief in the officer’s voice told me everything I needed to know. I was about to go down with O’Shea. Two birds, one big nasty, lying stone. There was no way I would be walking away from this.

  I let Alex’s collar slip through my fingers. “Find Milly.” He lifted his big dark eyes to mine and nodded, then took off like a shot into the overgrown and junk-filled alley that ran alongside Giselle’s home, much to the dismay of the officers around us. Even though we were at odds, she would look out for Alex, would maybe even come to pull my ass out of this fire. Maybe.

  “Oops,” I said. “Fingers slipped.” The officer glared at me, his face darkening to a shade that, in the light of the sirens, looked a distressing shade of purple.

  Unable to help myself, I asked, “Do you have high blood pressure? You look like a plum that’s about to explode.”

  Without further ado, I was spun, frisked and handcuffed with my hands behind my back, then shoved inside the same police cruiser as O’Shea. Or Liam, I suppose.

  My hip bumped against his; he glanced over at me, but said nothing. All that spark and humour I’d seen earlier was gone, wiped out. Back were the cold, distant dark eyes I’d grown used to seeing glare at me out of his sharp angled face. There were no handles inside, nothing to even rattle in an attempt to get out. But I wasn’t panicking, at least not yet.

  Leaning back into the pleather seats I stared up at the battered ceiling of the cruiser. It looked as though more than one set of feet had been smashed into it. “You never told me your name was Liam.”

  He said nothing, so I kept talking. “It suits you.” I shifted down a little further and put my feet on the ceiling, setting them inside the prints of the previous passenger. “He had big feet. At least a size fourteen or fifteen. Maybe he was a Big Foot.” That got his attention.

  “They aren’t real.” No one was in the cruiser with us yet, so I leaned toward him and put my lips to his ear.

  “You sure about that?”

  He shivered and a flash from a camera went off behind us. A picture of me snuggling up to the agent who’d shot his partner while hunting me. Oh, that was not going to help us any.

  An officer got in the car, flipped the lights off, and stared at us through the metal bars that kept us from climbing out. “Was she worth it?”

  O’Shea glanced over at me, and I smiled up at him and gave him a wink. “Go ahead, tell him the truth.” Something in me wanted O’Shea—Liam—to smile again.

  There it was; a flicker of devilry in those dark eyes. “I don’t know. Yet.”

  Heat, intense, searing heat flared between us. I couldn’t look away—the promise of that one, single, simple word was all it took to spin my mind back to a very tight cramped bathroom and the feel of his chest under my fingertips. The taste of his lips and tongue against mine. I swallowed hard, my heart pounding, blood rushing to places I’d ignored for a long time.

  “You’re a disgrace, piece of shit cop killer,” the officer said, breaking the spell between us.

  I looked out my window, feeling the distance between O’Shea and I seemingly shrink. His side pressed up against mine, and I knew my mind hadn’t been playing tricks on me.

  His hand stole around my back, hampered by his handcuffs, but undeterred. Even if I’d wanted to pull away from him, I couldn’t, there was nowhere for me to go. Fingers linking with mine, he leaned into me harder. I stared at his mouth, only inches away from my face, and tried to form a cohesive thought other than how good he tasted.

  Then he jabbed his key into my hands. Key? Blinking, I flicked my eyes up to his, which were almost laughing at me. My fingers curled around the key and I slid it into the handcuffs. A small “snick” of metal unlatching and I was free. In a manner of speaking.

  “Now what?” Still crushed up against him, my voice was whisper soft.

  “We give them a show, one that’ll make them pull over and try to separate us.”

  “You just want another chance at my lips.” My whisper was just a tad too breathy. Damn I sounded eager. Maybe I shouldn’t have employed Milly’s tactics. They were certainly landing me in a whole different pot of hot water.

  His lips quirked up, putting a slight dimple in his cheek. How had I not noticed that before?

  He pushed his face even closer to mine, a mere shiver away from touching. “You don’t?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t damn me all to hell and back, and my own reaction to him did that well enough.

  The same officer who’d interrupted us before did so again. Thank the gods.

  “You two, chill out.” His babyish features pegged him for the rookie he obviously was. That, and the way his hand never strayed from the butt of his gun.

  O’Shea obediently slid back to his side of the seat, and I sucked in a large lungful of air. Moments
later another officer joined the first and we were off to the police station. Or at least, that was what I thought. About ten minutes into the drive the silence broke.

  The young officer turned to his partner. “Where’s our escort?”“ I thought we were going to be flanked by the FBI?”

  In answer, the older cop shook his head. “Pull over.”

  What was this? The young cop did as he was told, without question, putting the car in park. Not a good thing, even I knew that.

  “Shit.” O’Shea mumbled under his breath. “Be ready.”

  For what? I wanted to ask—

  The older cop pulled his gun, placed it right against his partner’s head and pulled the trigger, the shot reverberating, shaking my eardrums. Blood and brain matter splattered the inside of the cop car in a macabre graffiti. I almost pulled my hands up to my ears, at the last second managing to keep them behind me, hiding the fact they were no longer cuffed.

  The older cop’s image wavered, and then I stared at one of the ugliest trolls I’d ever seen. Not that any of them are particularly handsome, but he won the “nasty looks” contest hands down. Orange and yellow spotted skin hung in folds off his body, the clothes he’d been wearing tore and revealed far too much for my taste. His four-fingered hand clutched at the gun and he waved it at us, one eye hanging from its socket, the other blinking rapidly as if to clear some unseen haze.

  “Get out,” the troll commanded.

  I knew there was a reason this would work out in our favour. “Can’t, no door handles inside. It’s a human thing you know.” I shrugged. “You want us out you need to get the door open for us.”

  Grumbling, the troll smashed the side door to let himself out.

  Now it was my turn to be pithy. “Be ready.”

  “For . . .” O’Shea started to ask when the troll grabbed the door on my side and wrenched it off.

  “Get out.”

  Sliding carefully, slowly, across the seat, I wracked my brain for the best way to handle this. Trolls were sketchy at the best of times. One minute your friend, the next they were trying to eat you alive. This one didn’t look to be interested in making new friends. He (and yes it was a he by way his double genitalia hung nearly to his mid-thigh) glared at us and clicked his broken teeth together, bits of tooth flicking out around him. The only upside I could see was if we had something he wanted, he could be swayed to our side, momentarily at least. Trolls were fickle, and that could work in our favour.