by Amy Sumida
The car went silent again and then I burst out laughing.
“Yeah, all right,” I conceded. “I was having a moment, okay?”
“Moment over?” Killian asked.
“Moment over.”
“Good, I'd like my badass wife back now.”
“You got her, babe,” I said. Then I looked at Williams through the rearview mirror. “Thinking that the Fey are invulnerable would be detrimental to me for two reasons. First, it isn't true, and believing myself indestructible would be a recipe for disaster. And second, the human part of me would be really pissed off if it thought that humans were completely defenseless against fairies.”
Williams grinned at me. “I didn't forget that you were an extinguisher, Ambassador Seren. None of us have. We just respect the fact that you're more now. Much more. And you're fighting at our side. It's an honor to be on this mission with you. A great honor to be on your team.”
I blinked at him, then gave him a lopsided grin. “Thanks, Wayne.” Yeah, I know what I said about being on the mission, but the moment required some familiarity. “And, uh, thanks for never repeating any of this.”
Williams laughed. “I heard nothing.”
I nodded at him gratefully and then remembered that Drostan was right behind me. I'd had a mini-breakdown in front of him. Way to go, Seren. Throw a temper tantrum in front of a Seelie baron. But when I glanced at Raza and Killian, I found them smiling at me proudly.
Boys are so weird.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“We're here,” Williams announced as he pulled the SUV over.
We'd offered to take Drostan home before we checked out the address Eddie had given me but he'd adamantly refused. Getting shot, killing a man, and watching another die had changed things a bit for Drostan. This wasn't a fun excursion anymore. Now, it was personal.
Williams took out his cellphone, set it to speaker, and dialed.
“Kavanaugh,” a woman's voice answered.
“What's your ETA?” Williams asked.
We had called the rest of the extinguisher team on the way there and asked them to meet us since Sloane, Teagan, and Murdock were busy with the corpse.
“We're here, Sir,” Extinguisher Bridget Kavanaugh said. “We've done some light reconnaissance. The place looks empty. No movement inside.”
“Is there a back door?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Take two extinguishers and circle around back. Send the other two to me,” Williams said. “We'll go in the front and meet you in the middle.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Williams looked back at us, “All right, since Kavanaugh has already scouted the place, we're going straight in. But the extinguishers, the current extinguishers, Ambassador”—he paused to give me a stern look—“will take lead. Then, the rest of us will follow. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Killian said. “Let's go already.”
“Okay, everyone, move out!” Williams jumped out of the SUV and we scrambled out after him.
A couple of extinguishers quietly ran up to us and took lead—which I thought was silly but if it made them feel better, fine—and the rest of us took up the rear. We scurried through an empty parking lot and up to a dark building that could have held anything from conference rooms to dentist offices. It had a generic cement facade with a few small trees planted before it and no windows in the front wall. With only a single story, it was dwarfed by the other buildings on the block but didn't seem bothered by this. The solid security door that served as an entrance clearly conveyed its importance. An important place without a name—there wasn't a single sign advertising what the building contained.
Extinguisher Henry Sullivan approached a security panel beside the door and pulled a keycard hacker—a small, black box—out of a pocket in his vest. He flicked it open, turned it on, then removed the dummy keycard that was attached to the device with wires. He slipped the card into the slot on the panel, the device lit up and did its thing, then something buzzed. The door opened with a soft click.
Sullivan packed the hacker away and pulled out a gun. He opened the door with one hand and brandished the gun with the other. Williams took out a small flashlight, lifted it above the extinguishers' heads, and beamed it into the corridor beyond. Extinguisher John Teagan held the door open while Sullivan headed in and slapped his hand down on a light switch. Overhead fixtures buzzed on and illuminated a glossy hallway that branched off at the end, forming a T.
We stepped silently into the building. A security camera rotated toward us at the far end of the hallway. Williams aimed his light directly into the lens, following it until we were past. Not that it really mattered. Whoever owned or rented the place already knew who we were and if they were monitoring their security cameras—which I'm sure they were—they'd know we'd found their drug warehouse.
At the end of the corridor, Killian and Drostan went with Sullivan and Williams to the left while Teagan led Raza, my guards, and me to the right. We cleared rooms as we passed them and continued on rapidly. A more thorough search would be conducted after we confirmed that the building was empty. The hallways angled around and met at the back of the building, meaning that our group reunited there as well. A single door waited in the middle of this last hallway. Sullivan nodded to us crisply before opening the door and stepping through. He swept the room as Teagan and Williams shot in behind him, but the rest of our team was already there, having entered through the back door, and they had the lights on.
“Security cameras have been disabled, Sir,” Kavanaugh reported.
“Good.” Williams frowned at the contents of the room or, rather, the lack of them. “I was expecting a bit... more.”
A table stood in one corner, nestled within the L of some standing shelves. Laboratory equipment filled the shelves in neat rows and a few glass canisters stood on the table beside stacks of trays. A stack of plastic storage tubs, perhaps fifteen of them, sat to the side. A sitting area with couches and a TV took up an opposite corner and a dining table sat across from that. That was it.
The extinguishers holstered their guns.
I went straight to the table with the lab equipment. Some residue remained in one of the canisters but other than that, the equipment was clean. A transparent shell lay forgotten beside one of the canisters—the type of clear capsule used to hold powdered medication. I left the table and went over to the plastic tubs. Drostan and Killian were already there, looking through the contents. Raza stood nearby, staring around pensively as he sniffed the air.
Killian stood up and tossed me a plastic bag. Inside it were smaller plastic bags of pills, each capsule filled with white powder. All of the little bags had the newt emblem stamped on it, identical to the bag we'd found previously.
I let out a sigh of relief and said, “We've got their stash.”
“Some of it,” Drostan said as he stood. “We don't know how much they distributed before we found this place.”
“Get this shit out of here,” Williams said to Extinguisher Kavanaugh as he waved at the bins. “Put it in your SUV for now.”
“Yes, Sir.” Kavanaugh grabbed a couple of bins and headed outside.
The other extinguishers split up— some started doing the wall-scanning thing while others went back to search the rooms we'd cleared.
“They're not here,” Raza growled.
“Alicia and her thugs are probably hiding out somewhere more comfortable,” I noted.
“No, I meant the Alp Luachras,” Raza said. “I had hoped...”
“Their bodies aren't here either,” I said gently. “That's a good sign. Alicia's probably keeping them with her so she can brew up a new version of newt.”
“If she's working a new formula, she wasn't going to sell this stuff anyway,” Killian grumbled. “All we're doing is taking out the trash for her.”
“We still have this place,” Williams said. “And we're going to search it from top to bottom. If I have to take down the fucking walls, I will find
something that leads us to them.”
Raza wasn't the only one using his nose. Conri sniffed deeply and frowned. He suddenly turned on his heels and headed back into the corridor. I followed him. So did Raza, Kill, Felix, and Drostan. Conri prowled around a corner, continuing to sniff deeply, and rushed into a room. There wasn't much there, just a single chair. And a puddle.
Conri crouched over the puddle and inhaled. A snarl rolled past his lips on the exhale. “They were here. And they were afraid.”
Raza started to growl. I took his hand as I cast a pointed look at the other men. They left the room and closed the door behind them.
“I don't need coddling, Seren.” Raza opened the door and pulled me out of the room, past Killian and Drostan. “I smell them now too.”
I shrugged at the other men as Raza headed for the front door with me in tow. His boots thudded on the industrial carpet and when he reached the security door, he slammed it open with a flat hand. We stepped out into the cool night and he let go of me to prowl forward. The other men came out and gathered around me, all of us watching Raza. Raza sniffed again, then scowled.
“Conri!” Raza called.
“On it!” Conri rushed forward and started sniffing industriously as he roamed the parking lot. He got to the entrance, then doubled back to stand before us with an irritated expression. “I can't find the scent.”
Raza growled.
“It's okay, Conri,” I said as I took Raza's hand again. To Raza, I added, “At least now we're certain that they're alive. We'll find them.”
“They were manipulated, Seren,” Raza growled.
“Yes.”
“And now, they've been captured.”
“Yes.”
“One of them is female.”
“I know.”
“Someone's daughter,” he whispered.
I took a soft breath. So, that was it. Raza loved his people but now he did so as the father of a little girl. He'd been a father before but he had raised Rayetayah on Earth and he'd never had to confront the possibility that his son could be hurt or taken from him. Now, Raza was King of Unseelie with another child to raise and although Fairy was currently at peace, he was being forced to face the fact that peace could be a tenuous thing and the security you think you're providing for your child can be bashed to bits in a heartbeat.
Thanks to Danu, Shahzadi was the first full-blood Dragon-Djinn child to be born in over a thousand years. She was the hope of the Dragon-Djinn race as well as Raza's pride and joy. She was headstrong and as ferocious as her father and pain in my ass, but also very precious—Danu's gift to Raza for everything he'd done for his people. But, even more than that was the fact that she was his daughter.
There's something about a father's relationship with his daughter, especially when she's young. It's different from the one men have with their sons, even though it shouldn't be, and it's different than a mother's relationship with her children. As a mother, I understood Raza's fears. I knew that what happens to other children immediately gets added to the list of things that could happen to your own child. Seeing a child hurt becomes ten times more traumatic when you're a parent. But for a father, every woman—from infant to crone—becomes a symbol of his daughter. They are another man's little girl. His pride and joy. His gift from his god. If Raza couldn't save this Alp Luachra woman, he would fail a fellow father. And because of Shahzy, Raza knew exactly what that father would feel.
“Yes, she's someone's daughter,” I said evenly because only one of us could fall apart at a time; it's an unspoken rule. “But she's not our daughter. Shahzy is safe with her grandfather and her sister and a giant puka who will tear out the throat of anyone who even looks at her wrong.”
“She's my responsibility,” Raza said firmly.
I knew he wasn't talking about Shahzadi.
“They are all your people. But they chose to live here, Raza. They could have come home but they didn't. What happened to them is not your fault. You can't be responsible for fairies who live beyond your reach.”
“They're not beyond my reach now, Seren,” Raza snarled.
“Yes, they are. But they won't be for long. We'll find them and then you can bring them home.”
Raza nodded.
“You know, you've got this all wrong,” I said wryly.
“What?”
“The dragon is supposed to be the one who puts the fair maiden in danger, not the one who rescues her.” I sidled up and wrapped my arms around his waist. “But you just can't stop playing the hero, can you?”
“And I don't even have a scar.” He smirked at me.
“I could give you one if you like,” Killian offered dryly. “Or Drostan could with his fancy lightning. It might even match Tiernan's. Maybe then you two would stop acting like a couple of soppy, whiny civilians and start behaving like soldiers.”
Raza lifted his face to scowl at my other husband.
“It's annoying because he's right,” I said to Raza as I stepped away from him. “Parenthood has turned us into saps, Dragon.”
“No, Shahzadi has turned us into saps,” Raza corrected. “That child could drive Danu herself insane.”
“Shahzadi is their daughter?” Drostan asked Killian.
“Yeah, and they're right.” Killian chuckled. “That little girl is a demon in sheep's—wait, no—she kinda looks like a demon too. She's a demon in demon's clothing. I guess that just makes her a demon.”
“A demon? Really?” Drostan smiled strangely.
“Killian!” I snapped.
“My daughter does not look like a demon!” Raza snarled.
“Let's see... demons have wings—check. They have claws—check. And they have sharp teeth—check.” Killian shrugged. “They're also immune to fire—check.”
“And they live in Hell and are the embodiment of evil,” I added.
“Check and check,” Killian said.
“Embodiment of evil?” Drostan lifted a brow. “That's a little harsh.”
“What do these checks mean?” Raza asked me.
“They mean that Killian is about to get his ass kicked.” I started for my grinning husband.
“Fine! Fine!” Killian held up his hands in surrender. “Not a demon then. She's the other D word—a dragon. But honestly, is there really much difference?”
“Yes, dragons are heroes and demons are villains,” Raza said smugly.
Drostan made an amused, snorting sound.
“Oh, here we go with the heroics again,” Killian grumbled. “You know what's heroic? Doing your damn job and not whining about it. That's heroic.”
Raza's smirk shifted into a grimace. “I concede your point.”
“Good. Now, let's get back in there and we can all be heroes,” Killian declared as he turned around.
“Just one problem,” Drostan said.
“What now?” Killian whined.
“The door shut behind us and it appears to have locked automatically.”
I snorted a laugh and headed for the back.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“We're really not emotional wrecks,” I said to Drostan as we shuffled into his house later that night.
We'd searched the building and hadn't found anything else, but Williams had called in for a special, investigative team to come down to St. Louis and search the place again. They were already on their way from Kansas City—flying instead of driving to save precious time. Killian stayed behind with a few of the extinguishers to wait for the team and to touch everything he could find. I wanted to stay with him, but he insisted that I go back and get some sleep. He was right, it was late and we all needed some rest.
“This is a delicate situation,” Drostan said generously. “Even I was not immune to moments of wrath and sorrow.”
“Thank you,” I said softly. “And thank you for your help tonight. I'm glad you were there.”
“Me too,” Drostan said with a smile.
We bid the extinguishers and Williams goodnight, then headed u
pstairs to bed—Drostan going right while Raza, my guards, and I went left. Felix followed Raza and me into my guest room and closed the door behind him.
“Felix?” I asked in surprise.
“I need to speak with you,” Felix said softly. The skin around his eyes tightened.
“Yes?” Raza prompted.
“This may be nothing but when I touched Drostan earlier—when he was injured and fell onto you...”
