He gave a sharp nod, started the truck, pulled an illegal U-turn, and got back on the interstate. “Portland it is, then.”
With each mile marker we passed, the tension in the truck grew until I choked on it. I rolled the window down, breathing in the deep sharp bite of the west coast winter. Humid, not unlike London, rain spattered down and I lifted my face to it.
“Roll the window up,” Dox snapped.
“Chill out,” I snapped back, leaving the window down.
“Roll it the fuck up! If we’re anywhere close, an ogre can smell the difference between human and supernatural. They don’t have to see us to know that we are trespassing on their territory.”
I rolled the window up. “You could have just said that, no need to get your extra large panties in a twist.”
He glared at me and I glared back. Dox didn’t scare me. The idea of other ogres gave me pause, though.
There was a hell of a lot I didn’t know about that species, despite having Dox as a friend, despite having read everything I could find about them (which wasn’t much) after meeting Dox for the first time. Despite everything that Giselle had taught me.
So we drove with the windows up and recycled air that very quickly smelled like corn chips and sweat socks. Liam’s nose wrinkled up and his mouth clamped shut. Hell, how much worse was it for him with his extra sensitive nose?
Mid afternoon, and we were in the city proper. Clean and picturesque, overcast and dreary, Portland had a relaxed feel to it. Maybe it was the west coast, maybe it was the weather keeping everyone mellow, maybe everyone was taking an afternoon drag, but whatever it was, I could feel it under my skin as we drove.
Dox’s eyes softened and his breathing, which I hadn’t realized had been hitched and shallow, evened out. Apparently, it wasn’t just me feeling the vibe the area was giving off. Liam though, I checked him out in the mirror If anything, he was on high alert. No relaxing there.
“Hey, you smoking something over there that we can’t see?” I punched Dox lightly in the arm. He shook his head, his eyes never leaving the road.
“It’s the smell of home.” As if that said it all. Maybe it did; I couldn’t wait to get back to the farmhouse, to my own bed and my own space. But I surely didn’t look stoned when I was jonesing for my own bed. But if it was the smell of home, why was I picking up on it?
“It’s a ruse.” Dox glanced over at me. “Something to keep other supernaturals calm and mellow before—”
“Before they get slaughtered?”
He nodded and I took a deep breath. Clever, very clever.
Dox parked the truck at a pay parking lot, slid out of his side and looked around, like a seven-foot tall trying-to-be-subtle FBI agent. I slid out, checked my weapons, and Liam followed, checking his two blades and straightening his clothes. Around us were red brick buildings, each one no lower than three stories. Stamped concrete below our feet collected miniature rivers in the grooves with the steady rain that fell from the overcast sky. At least it wasn’t snow.
“I’d like to go somewhere warm after this,” I muttered.
“Mexico?” Liam’s eyebrows quirked upward and I nodded.
“Yeah, Mexico, where I can just slowly roast in the heat.”
Dox glared at us. “Shut up, you two. And don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”
I opened my mouth and he clamped a big hand over it. “I mean it, Rylee. Your mouth will get us killed without so much as a ‘fuck you’ slipping out of it. And if things go sideways, you will get the hell out of here. Understood?”
There weren’t too many people I would let get away with man-handling me. Dox was one of them, Liam the other. And that about did up my tally of man-handlers.
Jaw tight, I gave him a stiff nod. Damn, I had no idea that Dox could be such a hardass. Even if it was kinda warranted. But if he thought I would leave him behind, for any reason, he didn’t know me as well as he thought. I didn’t leave my friends behind, not ever.
With long strides, Dox crossed the wide open courtyard that cut between the buildings. I scrambled to keep up, trying to take everything in, our feet slapping in the accumulated water on the concrete.
There were no humans around that I could see; maybe everyone really was on a doobie break. Or maybe it was just the steady rain. Or maybe it was something I hadn’t quite put my finger on yet.
Liam and I settled into a jog, catching up to Dox as he rounded a corner and entered a second wide courtyard, this one with small metal trivets sunk at intervals in the ground. It looked like a setup for a fancy water fountain, but I didn’t ask. Nope, I managed to keep my mouth shut. At the center of the courtyard, I could feel the difference in the air. I let my eyes droop to half mast, seeing the slightest of differences. This was not a mirrored reflection like Doran’s house, this was an actual entrance to the veil. In the middle of the gods-be-damned courtyard. The entrance point seemed to be one of the sunken metal trivets, rusted and bent; I would have bet good money that the humans didn’t think it worked anymore.
Dox crossed the veil as he stepped on the metal trivet, his body shifting between the human world and the supernatural. Liam and I followed.
Before we could finish crossing the courtyard, three ogres stepped out from the buildings around us, their skin shimmering in the rain. Each one of them towered over Dox, their faces bejeweled with gold. Bright gemstones pierced not only in their eyebrows, lips and ears, but were set in their cheeks and chins too. Dressed in deep brown leather pants, knee-high boots, and vests, their arms and much of their torsos were bare to the weather, but they didn’t seem to mind. I caught a glimmer of steel when they moved. Weapons, of what kind I couldn’t be sure, but they were packing. And they were big boys.
More disturbing than the weapons though—they had violet skin, the skin that had covered the book of the Lost. The book Milly had stolen. A chill swept over me that had nothing to do with the inclement weather. Coincidence? I think not.
“Motherfucking pus monkey, will you look who it is,” the largest of the ogres crowed, his hands on his hips, violet eyes dancing with laughter. I took that as a good sign. An ogre who was quick to laugh, that had to be good, right?
Dox though, he tensed. Maybe I was wrong.
My friend shifted his stance and lifted one big blue hand to the others, palm out. “You are hale, Tin?”
Tin gave a laugh. “We don’t stand on puke drinking ceremony here, little man. You know that.”
The second largest boy stepped up, eyes narrowing as he eyed me up. “You bring dinner with you? A little Tracker with a side of wolf. Not bad. Not the best combination, but I’ve had worse. Remember those smelly shit waffles that Sas brought home?”
It took everything I had to stand still, to not tell him where he could stuff his dinner and just how to season it, shit waffles or not.
Dox laughed, but I could hear the force in it. “Yeah, those were … not good. But don’t tell Sas I said that, she’d skin me alive. And no, these are my friends. Rylee and Liam, meet the triplets. Tin, Dev, and Lop.”
The second biggest one was Dev; the smallest one, who still stood at least nine feet, was Lop. Their eyes widened as Dox spoke, and it was Lop who blurted it out.
“Listen, dick nose douche biscuit you might be, but even you aren’t that stupid, are you? You don’t bring ‘friends’ here.”
Everything in me wanted to let them have it, and it took all my willpower to keep my mouth shut, though I had no doubt Liam could hear my teeth grinding. Doran had said to follow my guts, and my guts were screaming at me to give these three a big freaking piece of my mind. The potty mouth piece.
Lop took a step forward, his eye’s widening as he took me, and all my barely contained fury, in. “Ah, look at the little Tracker. I think the white trash taint jockey wants a shot at us.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, and then glared at Dox, but it was Liam who stepped forward. Yeah, neither one of us did so well with insults.
“What did you
say?” His voice was a bare growl, his lips rippling as they pulled back over teeth that didn’t look so human.
A swell of appreciation caught me off guard. In my life, there weren’t a lot of instances where someone stood up for me. Usually, it was the other way around.
The triplets started to laugh, slapping their big hands on their thighs, like distant cracks of thunder. “Ooeee, I think the Tracker is banging the dog. What a slutty cock knob she is!”
I managed to get a hand on Liam before he took another step, but his whole body vibrated with anger. I knew what this was about; they were trying to get us riled up, to make us stupid. I’d dealt with supernaturals long enough to know that Dox was going about this the wrong way, even if it was his species.
Again, I looked at Dox, whose eyes were lowered. “You think submission is going to gain their respect? Look at them; we’re a joke to them! You’re a joke to them.” I kept my voice as low as I could. “You think that they respect you because you won’t defend yourself or your friends?”
Their laughter continued and I knew then that perhaps, as much as these were his people, Dox didn’t understand them. This, in some ways, was more my world than his. He’d lived, hiding out and being ‘human’ for too long.
“I trusted you.” I stepped out in front of Dox. “And now you’re going to have to trust me.”
His head snapped up, his eyes uncertain. But he didn’t try to stop me.
That’s what I’d thought.
With my boys at my back, I faced the triplets. “You three about done with your idiotic fuckery?”
Roaring with laughter, Dev actually went to one knee, holding his guts with one hand. “Oh, gods. What a pompous bitch nazi she is.”
I sensed Liam moving without actually seeing it, and I held up my hand, staying him. This was a game, one I’d played before. Like a schoolyard stand off. I’d never lost one of those, and I wasn’t about to start now.
I smiled at them and took a few steps closer. “Which one of you is the youngest?”
Without error, Lop and Dev pointed at Tin. He smiled at me, all big white teeth.
I beckoned him with one finger. “Mind coming a little closer, ass face?”
With three long strides, he was more than a little closer. He loomed over me, all ten-plus feet of him.
“Close enough for you, pie eating—”
I swung hard, the height perfect for an upper cut. My fist connected with his oversized man jewels, and he dropped to his knees, where I grabbed the ring piercing his eyebrows, pulling until blood dripped. “I am not a child, to follow the rules of your children. You are going to be polite to Dox, and you are going to be polite to me, or I will let my wolf rip your tiny little purple balls off and feed them to the Roc. You understand?”
He groaned, but I saw the flicker in his eyes, the twitch in his muscles. With a roar, he jerked backward, but I didn’t let go, the rings tearing out above his eyes. He slapped his hands over the open wounds, covering his eyes as he bled.
“WHORING SLUT BLOSSOM!”
His brothers didn’t join in the fight, which I was counting on. Instead, Dev rolled on the ground with laughter, while Lop leaned against a building heaving for breath, tears running down his violet-skinned cheeks.
“Tin, you’re getting roasted by a WOMAN! A pussy is taking you out!” Dev shouted, his voice reverberating through the courtyard.
Dox moved up beside me. “You cannot do this, Rylee. You will have to kill him!”
I looked up at him. “I know. But I have no choice. They do not respect you, and I don’t want you to have to kill one of your friends. So I will do it.”
That seemed to get their attention. The two ogres stopped laughing, and Tin rubbed the blood from his forehead.
“What did you say?” Lop straightened.
I pulled a sword from my back and rolled it in my hand, the weight and feel of it a steady comfort. “I’m going to kill him. Will you respect me then?”
They went very still, like statues.
Dev shook his head. “Nah. We’d have to kill you then. And what the hell kind of fun is that?”
I frowned at him. “Are you three always this confusing?”
They shared a glance, then nodded and spoke in unison.
“Yes.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Dox. His eyes were wide as he shrugged. “I played with them when I was a child; they were my only friends. They are the only ones I could bring you to that I didn’t think would try to kill you outright.”
“Bitch tore out my rings,” Tin grumbled, swiping the blood from his forehead.
“Then don’t talk to me like that. Only my friends get to call me names.”
Maybe we wouldn’t have gotten any further, except for one thing.
A new group of ogres showed up. And they were not laughing.
There were ten of them, and they had the deepest ebony black skin I had ever seen, and I’d tangled with demons. Their clothing echoed their skin, and it was hard to tell where cloth began and skin ended. Even their eyes were black, the depthless dark of a predator made to kill. The only splash of color, if it could be called that, was their weapons. They carried an array of weapons, but mostly spiked clubs that carried flecks of blood and flesh on them from whatever slaughter they’d come from. There was no time for thought, though, after the initial realization that the courtyard had just filled up with ogres.
They spared us and the laughing triplets no words, just launched an eerily silent, brutal attack.
Seven went for the triplets, and three came for us. Dox hesitated.
I didn’t. I ran forward, ducked under the swing of the closest ogre and drove my swords upward, through his ribs and pierced his heart. As he fell, I spun toward the ogre going after Dox.
Liam’s snarls ripped the air, and I thought at first he’d shifted again. But no, he stood, dodging blows, using his now seemingly puny blades against the ogre. But he was doing damage, hamstringing the ogre, dropping him and then slicing his throat. Fighters, the ogres might be, but they hadn’t expected us to fight back, or to know how to fight.
The third ogre had Dox by the throat and had his back to me, which made killing him swift and easy. I slid my blade through his black hide from the back, again piercing the heart and dropping him instantly. Dox shook him off and scooped up the club the black-skinned ogre had held. A rage I’d never seen before clouded his eyes.
Screaming a wordless battle cry, he ran toward his one-time friends and the melee across the courtyard.
Apparently, we’d had the weaker ogres come for us, because the seven that were left were not dying so easily. The triplets had their backs against each other, their roars raised above the clash of the black-skinned ogre’s clubs against the finer swords and axes that the triplets carried.
Three more of the black-skinned ogres peeled off and faced us. Close up, I could see the battle scars on their bodies, glimmers of faint silver against their skin. These were the battle-hardened warriors. Whoever we had faced first, I’d bet it was their introduction into raiding. Or whatever the hell this was.
Fan-freaking-tastic. A chill of fear swept me and I forced it down. Liam moved up beside me.
“Don’t let them separate us,” He growled.
Easier said than done. The ogre closest to Liam had a club with no spikes, just a solid smooth wood made for bashing, and he swung it hard, catching Liam in the stomach and sending him flying into a door on the building closest to us.
Which was rather bad because Liam didn’t slide to the ground like I’d expected.
He disappeared.
Damn it! There had to be a doorway through there, and the courtyard was like the castle, a gods-be-damned gateway for travelling through the veil.
But all that passed my mind in a flash, and then I was dodging two ogres and had no time
to worry about Liam.
Liam hit the wall hard, the sounds of the fight ringing in his ears, but as he slid downward the world twisted, and then he was face down on a rocky beach, waves crashing up around him, startling him out of his momentary stupor.
“What the hell?” He pushed himself to his feet. The shoreline stretched for miles on either side of him, the smell of rotting fish and salt water filling his nose.
A tittering laugh spun him around. There, just behind him lay a stunningly beautiful woman, her blonde hair studded with pearls and curling around her heart-shaped face, with luminescent blue eyes that stared up at him. Her soft curves were bared to the open sky, but there was no shame in her. He blinked a couple of times and she reached for him.
“Stay with me, wolf.” There was a command in her voice, a spell that stirred his wolf and the strength to deny her more than anything else could have.
He snarled, reached out, and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her high. She let out a scream, high-pitched and warbling, the lower half of her body coming clear of where she’d hidden it. From the waist down she was all fish, a pearlescent collision of scales, a rainbow of colors that danced in the lights.
“How do I get back?”
Fury lit her pretty features, twisting them into something ugly and monstrous. “The darkness will rise and he will swallow you, wolf. I see it, even now. You will die. And your death will be meaningless.”
“TELL ME OR I’LL SNAP YOUR NECK.”
She trembled in his hands, but he didn’t care. With a thrust, she pointed at a rock, somewhat more square than the others, one that almost resembled a doorway.
With no ceremony, he dropped her to the jagged rocks and ignored her grunt of pain. Leaping past her, he didn’t hesitate, but hit the doorway at full speed, expecting it to give way to him.
Blind Salvage: A Rylee Adamson Novel (Book 5) Page 11
