Mercenary

by Jennifer Blackstream

  My mouth went dry, and I gripped the talisman harder. “An ifrit. You’re sure?”

  Katie rolled her eyes. “Tall, Middle Eastern, eyes of fire? Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “He wasn’t wearing a mask?” I pressed. “Something with the eyes cut out?”

  She gave me an annoyed look. “No mask. I could see his whole face, and he looked pissed.” She held out her hand. “That’s all I know. Give me my talisman.”

  I pressed my hand harder against the piece of metal, keeping her from grabbing it. “What about Nathan. A baobhan sidhe. Do you know him?”

  The witch opened her mouth to answer, but before she could say a word, a commotion erupted beside the ring. I whipped around in time to see Liam lurch away from where Rafe lay gasping for breath on the floor. His eyes shone with amber light, and his nostrils flared as he surged into the crowd that had gathered to watch his fight.

  “What’s he doing?” Peasblossom demanded.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but then something caught my eye. No, not something. Someone.

  Baobhan sidhe.

  Chapter 16

  The lights from the arena were bright enough to catch the hairs on his arms as he lifted a fall of dark red hair, running his fingers through the long waves. The motion drew the attention of more than one woman in the room. I watched them glance from the thin needle-like spines on his arm to the pale skin of his graceful neck, weighing whether the pleasure to be had would be worth the bloodshed.

  I saw the moment the sidhe realized something was wrong, saw him follow the stares of the rest of the crowd toward the bloody werewolf heading straight for him. I didn’t know if Nathan guessed who Liam was coming for, or if he was just the sort of man to err on the side of caution, but he took off with all the speed his fey heritage gave him.

  “Is that Nathan?” I asked.

  Katie grabbed the chain of her talisman and yanked it out from under my hand. I hissed as the metal grated against my palm, glaring at her before checking to make sure she hadn’t drawn blood.

  “Yes,” she snapped. “And good luck catching him. Your furry boyfriend is limping.”

  She was right. Liam was running, but he was definitely favoring his right leg. He’d closed some of the distance between him and Nathan because the sidhe had to maneuver around the tables and chairs while Liam had a clear shot running out of the arena, but as soon as he cleared the threshold, he had the same obstacles.

  Sort of.

  My eyebrows shot into my hairline as Liam snatched a surprised Kendrick off his feet. He said something to the goblin I couldn’t hear from this distance, then heaved the goblin through the air like a javelin. Kendrick sailed through the air over the crowd, passing Nathan and striking the wall with a bone jarring thud. Nathan didn’t see what was going on until it was too late. By the time he realized the crumpled goblin was part of Liam’s plan, the goblin had already struck out, grabbing the sidhe’s ankles and sending Nathan crashing to the floor.

  I dove into the thickening crowd, muttering “Excuse me” over and over like a mantra as I fought to get to the fallen sidhe. Liam was still moving, still at least ten feet away from the sidhe. I could hear the sounds of a scuffle as Nathan tried to escape Kendrick’s death grip.

  “He’s getting away!” Peasblossom shrieked.

  I hadn’t even realized she’d taken to the air. I glanced up to see her hovering over the spot where Kendrick had grabbed Nathan, and I tried to move faster. Unfortunately, the drama of the situation had drawn the interest of more than one monster, and none of them were inclined to let me pass.

  Liam growled in frustration and pushed past the last of the onlookers. He ran past the bloody mess on the floor, loping down the hall where the crimson footprints indicated Nathan’s getaway route. I skittered to a stop and stared down at the goblin.

  “Sorry,” Kendrick rasped.

  He shouldn’t have been able to speak with a broken jaw—and his jaw was most certainly broken. One of his eyes was punctured, a ruined mess that dripped down the side of his face. It was hard to tell more than that through the wash of blood that covered him from head to toe, so I couldn’t see how badly he was injured.

  He was chuckling now, and lying on the floor with his head lolling from side to side, so probably pretty badly.

  “Thank you for trying,” I told him.

  “Any time.” He winced, then laughed again. “So much fun.” His hand dragged over the floor as he rolled, and there was the sound of plastic hitting the floor. He paused and looked down at his hand. “Oh. Forgot. Here.”

  I looked down at the blood-slicked object. A phone.

  “Is that Nathan’s?” I took the phone, waving a hand over it to clean it off.

  “Yes.”

  I bit my lip to keep from offering to heal him. I’d learned the hard way that sounded more like a threat to a goblin than an offer of help. But it was hard to ignore all the blood, the obvious broken bones. This close, I could see his arm was bent at the wrong angle.

  A wall of buzzing heat like a beehive on fire pressed against my back, burning whatever else I’d been about to say to ashes. I swallowed hard and fought the urge to close my eyes, forcing myself to turn.

  Liam stood behind me. Blood and sweat covered his face, and he had a swath of cuts from his eyebrow to his lip. His left eye was already swelling, and there was a wet sound to his breathing that made me think of internal bleeding.

  “He got away,” Liam rasped.

  I nodded and swallowed hard, searching for my voice. I waved the phone. “Kendrick got his phone. And Katie had some interesting things to say about the night Stasya disappeared.”

  Liam didn’t say anything. I wasn’t even sure he heard me. He just kept staring at Kendrick and his broken body. There was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t quite read, and wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  Slowly—very, very slowly—I eased to my feet, slipping the phone into my waist pouch next to my own cell phone. I draped Liam’s arm around my shoulders. It was laughable that I’d be able to hold him up if it came to that, but I wasn’t trying to support him. Just guide him. Gently urge him to leave without giving into what I suspected was his wolf’s urge to take a bite out of a goblin.

  We made it to the elevator, and I braced myself to be alone in an enclosed space with the skin-searing inferno that was the aura of an injured, adrenaline-infused alpha werewolf. Liam’s eyes burned a tarnished gold so bright, the sight of it emblazoned itself on my eyes and I could still see them when I blinked at the elevator keys, trying to see the one that would take us back to the parking garage.

  Liam made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a groan. I frowned and glanced at him. Even with the enhanced healing, he still looked awful. I turned to face him and reached for the pouch around my waist.

  “What are you doing?”

  His voice was deeper than usual, and I had to avoid eye contact as I unzipped my waist pouch and peered inside at Bizbee. “Could I have some wet wipes and antibiotic ointment, please?” I glanced up at Liam, keeping my spine as straight as I could manage. “You can’t walk out looking like that. We need to clean you up first.”

  “No time for that,” Liam said gruffly, gesturing at the pouch. “No offense, but I—” He snapped his mouth shut, cutting off the rest of his sentence as Bizbee popped out of the pouch with the requested items in his arms. The grig’s fuzzy antennae bounced as he jerked his head to meet Liam’s stare.

  “Not going to win any beauty contests now, are ye, lad?”

  Liam blinked. Well, he winked. One eyelid didn’t move, pinned shut by the swelling.

  I waved a hand at him, cleaning the blood spatter from his pants with a small flex of magic. I couldn’t clean the blood from his face and skin the same way. For one thing, he was still bleeding. And for another, the clotted blood was part of the healing process, so ripping it away would do more harm than good.

  I opened the wet wipes and pulled one out to begin dabbing some of the bloo
d from his face. “Rafe had a talisman that let him take more damage than he should have been able to,” I told him. “That’s why he didn’t go down sooner.”

  “How?”

  I frowned at a particularly thick patch of blood and pulled out a new wet wipe. “He was there with a witch. The goblin said they pull this sort of stunt frequently. She sells information, specifically, fighting maneuver preferences.” I frowned and met his eyes. “Especially about alphas.”

  “Sounds like I’ll have to have a word with her.” Liam winced as I dabbed at a cut near his eye. “Rafe said the glass room is for promoters. If they like what they see, you can get a contract for a paid fight.”

  I finished cleaning away the blood that I could and unscrewed the cap from the antibacterial ointment. “Sounds exploitive.”

  Liam caught my wrist before I could squeeze the ointment from the tube, and my heart leapt into my throat. His large hand made my wrist look delicate and breakable, but he kept his grip firm but not too tight. Careful not to hurt me.

  “I heal fast,” he said softly. “I don’t need that.”

  His voice already sounded better. Not as raspy. And as I watched, the eye that had been swollen shut opened a sliver. I stared at that line of burning amber for longer than was comfortable before forcing myself to focus on the cuts and the swelling that covered the rest of his face.

  “You look awful. The ointment won’t hurt you.”

  My attention dropped to his bare chest and the blood rising to the surface to hint at the bruises trying to form. He would probably heal too fast for them to grow into a dark purple, but if they were this red already, then they had to hurt.

  I tried to squeeze the tube again, but he tightened his grip. “Don’t waste it.”

  It was hard to tell if he was crowding me on purpose, or if he was just trying to move as little as possible. Either way, the physical contact wasn’t helping the temperature in the elevator. Any second now my brain was going to melt and leak out my ears.

  “Fine.” I screwed the cap back on the ointment. “But we’re going to see Charbel now, and it would be better if you didn’t look like the walking wounded.”

  “Charbel Nassir, the ifrit?” Liam rolled his head to the side, filling the air with a dull popping sound. Suddenly he gritted his teeth, his head bowing and his breathing growing heavier.

  “Are you—”

  “What did the witch say?” he interrupted.

  He let go of my wrist, and I barely resisted the urge to rub the skin where he’d touched me. “She said the night Stasya disappeared, she had to be carried out after a fight with a troll. And the man taking her away was an angry ifrit.”

  “You said earlier she was dating Charbel. Do you think Aaban did it without his knowledge?”

  Liam reached for me, and for a second, I froze, my eyes widening. He arched the eyebrow that still moved and slipped his shirt off my shoulder where I’d draped it. I’d forgotten about the shirt.

  Blessedly the elevator door chose that moment to slide open. I exited first, hoping the fresh air would cool the heat pooling in my cheeks on the way to Liam’s truck.

  “I think Wince is right,” Peasblossom whispered in my ear.

  “Don’t call him that,” I said automatically.

  “What?” Liam asked.

  “Nothing.” I climbed into the passenger seat and closed my door. I retrieved the cell phone from the side pocket of my pouch and frowned down at it.

  “I think Liam likes you,” Peasblossom whispered.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them. “He can hear you.”

  Peasblossom leaned out from my shoulder far enough to look around my face at Liam. “No he can’t. He said ‘what?’ that means he didn’t hear me.”

  “He heard you, he just didn’t understand what you meant when you said Wince was right.” I sat up straight again, resigning myself to having an embarrassing drive. Again.

  “No, he didn’t hear me.” Peasblossom paused. “He hears me now, because I’m not whispering. But before, I was whispering. So he didn’t hear me.”

  “I heard you,” Liam said dryly.

  “Oh.” Peasblossom frowned, then her wings lifted. “So, do you?”

  “I think we’re getting a little off track here,” I said, my voice loud in the small confines of the truck. I waggled the phone in my hand. “We need his fingerprint to unlock it.” I bit the inside of my lip and studied the phone. “He had to touch the phone to put this case on. Maybe…”

  Liam sat there staring at me as I worked, but it wasn’t as distracting as it might have been if I weren’t used to having a pixie sitting on my shoulder commenting on everything I did. With Bizbee’s help, it took very little time to locate the fingerprint kit and silly putty I kept in my pouch. I ignored the shifter’s stare as I removed the cell phone from its case and lifted a print from the back. A science experiment later, I had a reasonable facsimile of the print, and I said a small prayer as I pressed it to the screen.

  “Success,” Peasblossom crowed.

  I smiled as I stared down at the screen, quickly accessing Nathan’s recent call log. “Damn. None of these numbers are labeled with names, and I don’t recognize any offhand.”

  “Probably burner phones. Write them down and I’ll see if I can trace any of them.”

  I nodded and lifted the flap of my pouch to get a paper and pen. Then one of the numbers caught my eye. “Wait a minute.” I pulled Charbel’s card from where I’d tucked it next to my cell phone and compared the numbers. Charbel had hand-written his personal number on the back of the card—and his brother’s. “This is Aaban’s number. His personal number.”

  “Aaban was talking to Nathan?”

  “It would seem so.” I tapped the card, my mind spinning with new possibilities. “I have their address. We can head there now and ask Aaban in person what his relationship with Nathan was.”

  “And see if his brother knew about the circumstances around Stasya’s exit from the club that night,” Liam added.

  The cab of Liam’s truck was even smaller than the elevator. And his body was in overdrive, trying to heal the damage he’d sustained in his magically prolonged fight. His energy hummed and sizzled against my skin, and I pressed as close to my door as possible without looking like I was afraid he’d give me cooties. I had ten minutes of blessed silence before he noticed.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  I gave him what I was ninety-nine percent sure was a smile. “Yes.”

  “Because if you lean any harder on that door, it’s going to pop open.”

  “I am not leaning.” I stopped leaning on it.

  Liam glanced at me before fixing his gaze on the road. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

  “No, why?”

  “Usually you lean closer.”

  I studied his face, trying to gauge his reaction to that last observation. “I’m not trying to be offensive. It’s just, your aura is burning particularly hot.”

  Liam rolled his shoulders again, filling the air with a muffled popping sound as his tendons released their tension. “Sorry. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in a brawl.”

  Against my will, an image flew into my head of the last time I’d seen Liam in a brawl. “How’s Stephen?” I asked quietly.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Fine.”

  I shifted in my seat, folding and unfolding my hands in my lap as I tried to think of something to say. “Is he—”

  “So you think Aaban killed Stasya without his brother’s knowledge. Wouldn’t that mean Charbel lied when he gave his brother an alibi?”

  I accepted the change in subject. “If Aaban was there with Stasya, then Charbel definitely lied about his brother’s alibi. But that doesn’t mean he knew where Aaban was. And if they’re as close as they seem to be, then it probably never crossed Charbel’s mind that Aaban would do such a thing.”

  “If that’s true, then convincing him his brother
is guilty is going to be hard,” Liam said grimly. “I’ve questioned brothers before. You’d be surprised how strong denial can be when it comes to facing the fact that your sibling isn’t the good person you thought they were.”

  He wasn’t talking about me. I had to remind myself that Liam didn’t know anything about me or my sibling. For the first time in a long time, I reached inside myself for the golden thread of power that had once connected me to my sister. Allowed me to drain energy from her when I needed it.

  She’d never known about that bond. She’d been ignorant right up until the day I severed it, the day I’d stopped thinking only of myself and given her life back to her. She must have felt it break, but I doubted if even now she’d admitted to herself what I’d done. She’d always loved me.

  “We’re here.”

  I startled back to the present, jerking my attention side to side as I attempted to regain my bearings.

  The house in front of us was old, still grand in a manner that most houses weren’t anymore. The structure was muted red brick, with a broad front porch, and green trim around the gutters, windows, and railings. Some of the brick was bleached, and the wooden porch had seen better days, but the old building had a sort of class about it that you didn’t find in newer homes. It also had the benefit of a large yard. The property had probably been a farm at some point. No nosy neighbors to worry about here…

  We got out of the truck, and I took a deep breath. Even the June air, which was well over eighty degrees, felt cooler in comparison to being trapped with the shifter’s aura. No mere AC could battle that sort of heat.

  There were no cars parked in the driveway, and the garage was closed, so I had no idea which, if either, of the ifrits would be home. I opened the pouch and peered in at Bizbee. “Is my shield ring—”

  He raised the silver band with the blue runes etched into it and frowned. “You’ll need more than that to handle an ifrit.”

  “We’re not going to fight,” I assured him, slipping the ring onto my finger. “I just want to ask him a few questions.”