Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World)

by Steffan, R. A.

  “Yes,” Teague agreed readily, and something about the one-word answer prickled at Len’s instincts.

  Albigard hesitated minutely before continuing. “In the absence of useful guidance from the Court, we must discuss next steps. Those in power seem more interested in maintaining the appearance that everything is under control than in addressing the problem proactively.”

  A shining black Mercedes dating from thirty years ago or more turned onto the street, and Len straightened abruptly. “Albigard...”

  Teague’s expression grew flinty. “That’s not entirely accurate.” A second, identical car approached from the other end of the block. “The Unseelie Court does, in fact, have a plan for dealing with the situation.”

  Albigard’s gaze flicked from one end of the street to the other, and his face closed off abruptly.

  Len’s stomach dropped, even as his anger surged. “Oh my god. You slimy Fae motherfucker,” he said in disbelief. “Are you kidding me right now? You’re stabbing him in the back again?”

  Before Albigard could stop him, Len crossed the handful of steps separating him from Teague and drove his right fist into the bastard’s jaw with all the force he could muster. Teague’s head snapped to the side in a deeply satisfying way, and he took a single, staggering step backward before regaining his balance. Len’s sense of gratification lasted for approximately one half of one second, until the Fae straightened with his teeth bared and magic crackling around his right hand.

  FIVE

  BEFORE LEN COULD properly brace for having his head blown off, or all his bones dissolved, or whatever other horrible thing was imminently going to happen to him, a hand grabbed his shirt and threw him backward with inhuman strength.

  By rights, he should have crashed spine-first into the concrete steps leading up to his porch. Instead, he sailed through a crackling ring of fire that had somehow materialized behind him and landed hard on his back in the dirt, rolling once. Adrenaline propelled him to his feet just in time to see the Fae portal snap shut in his face.

  He looked around wildly, feeling like his synapses were operating on a two-second lag. After a blank moment of incomprehension, he recognized the intersection where the military had set up an emergency operations center after the Hunt had first turned the neighborhood into a dead zone.

  Albigard had tossed him through a short-range portal to get him out of the way of whatever was about to happen.

  “Son of a bitch!” he yelled, as his brain finally caught up with events.

  Around him, the handful of people wandering around were all staring at the guy with blue hair who’d just been chucked out of a flaming oval that had appeared in midair with no warning. He ignored them and headed back toward his house at a dead run, arms pumping—cursing under his breath the entire time.

  He’d made it maybe a block and a half when a pearlescent red Lincoln Continental careened around the corner in a screech of burning rubber and oversteer. Len stumbled to a halt, panting and open-mouthed, as the pimpmobile blew past him and disappeared around the next bend with its rear bumper dragging the ground in a shower of sparks. Two black Mercedes hailing from the late eighties rounded the corner in hot pursuit a moment later. One of them had a crumpled hood, and steam poured from its radiator.

  Len stood frozen in shock for a long moment, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. The ridiculous urge to run after them tugged at him, before he forcibly dragged his wits back together and tried to think.

  He needed transportation.

  The Triumph.

  Rans’ motorcycle was still in his back yard, fueled and ready to go, since he’d been using it to get around while his car was marooned in Chicago. He sprinted toward his street, but ducked into the back yard of the house on the corner rather than continuing along the sidewalk. For all he knew, Teague might still be at Zorah’s bungalow. Bravado aside, Len suspected that if he got within magic-hurling range of the Fae, the results wouldn’t be pretty.

  So instead, he hopped fences and scrambled through the skeletal remains of dead hedgerows like the homeless teen in Detroit that he’d once been. Breathless, he reached the wooden privacy fence surrounding his back yard and stifled a groan as he contemplated the solid six-foot tall barrier.

  There was nothing for it. Gathering the shreds of his adrenaline, he grabbed the scalloped slats at the top and swung his legs as high as he could get them. His right sneaker caught the top edge with just enough momentum for him to roll over the fence and drop to the other side in an ungainly, staggering landing that nearly put him straight onto his ass. He grit his teeth against the sharp curse that wanted to escape. His palms were peppered with splinters, and he wiped them briskly on his jeans in hopes of dislodging a few. It only succeeded in driving most of them deeper.

  On the positive side, the Triumph’s key was hanging by the back door of the house, rather than sitting in the bowl by the front door. On the negative side, if Teague had decided to take an exploratory stroll around Len’s home, he was still likely to get caught while trying to retrieve it. He slid the glass door open just far enough to reach an arm through and snag the key ring from its hook, holding his breath the whole time.

  His arm didn’t get blown off with magic, so he let out a sigh of relief and closed the door as quietly as he could. After unlatching the yard’s wooden gate, he rushed back to the tarp-covered shape next to the shed and ripped the cover off. The bike was vintage, meaning it could be a bit of a pain in the ass to start after it had been sitting unused for a while. Sending a prayer to the god of four-stroke, parallel twin engines, Len turned the key in the ignition, opened the main fuel valve, primed the carburetors until a trickle of fuel dribbled out, and freed the clutch plates.

  He put his back into the swing of the kickstart lever. The engine stuttered on the first try, but caught on the second. Jumping onto the bike with no helmet and no plan worth a damn, he roared out of the gate without letting the engine warm up properly. The tires bumped over the tussocks of dead grass in the side yard.

  There was no sign of Teague. Perhaps he’d jumped into one of the pursuing Mercedes to join in the chase, or perhaps he’d already crawled back beneath whatever rock he usually lived under. Len didn’t care, as long as it meant he wouldn’t face an immediate magical attack.

  The bike rumbled between his legs, wind whipping his face as he turned onto the street and accelerated, weaving around the various trucks and machinery. He tore through the neighborhood at unsafe speeds, following the path taken by the pimpmobile before he’d lost sight of it. Once he’d turned onto Hampton, he scanned the limits of his field of vision, hoping for further clues.

  Ahead, cars were making abrupt lane changes, and Len slowed. When he got close enough, he saw a set of black skid marks turning into Princeton Heights, punctuated by a twisted chrome bumper lying in the road that hadn’t survived the sharp turn. Len clenched his jaw and made a hard right, painfully aware that the neighborhood he was entering was a claustrophobic grid of small, crisscrossing streets—many of them marked one-way only. In addition, there were several possible exits onto highways and major thoroughfares, running both north-south and east-west.

  He pulled up to the first stop sign, trying to sense any disturbance in the area. There were no fresh tire marks in the road, which probably meant Albigard had blown straight through the intersection without slowing, rather than turning left or right. Len continued on, feeling more and more at sea with every block that passed—knowing he was losing ground every time he stopped to assess his surroundings for fresh clues.

  The sound of sirens in the distance reached his ears over the rumble of the bike’s engine. With sick certainty, he headed toward the noise. He could tell the commotion was located further east of him, which made sense if Albigard had continued on his relatively straight course. He followed the familiar rising and falling wail of police sirens past Kingshighway, then beneath the Highway 30 overpass. The sirens sounded like they were converging ahead of him and a little t
o the south, maybe near Carondelet Park. He narrowly avoided getting T-boned by a pickup as he turned onto Loughborough and saw lights flashing a few blocks ahead.

  A terrible sinking sensation hit him in the stomach, the sight erasing the years that separated a twenty-eight-year-old out-of-work nightclub chef from a fresh-faced EMT on a call-out to a fateful single vehicle accident.

  The pimpmobile—most of it, anyway—was wrapped around a broken telephone pole that hadn’t fared much better than the car. The first police cars were just arriving on the scene, but there was no sign of either one of the black Mercedes anywhere nearby. Len screeched to a halt near the accident, almost sending the bike skidding onto its side due to his sudden shakiness.

  His heart stuttered and jumped as he lowered the kickstand, his rubbery knees threatening to give way as he dismounted. A cop car rolled to a stop, two officers getting out as Len walked in a daze toward the smoking ruin of his car. One of cops pointed at him.

  “Hey! Were you involved in this?” he demanded.

  “No, I...” Len swallowed hard. Took a deep breath. “I used to be an EMT. Thought maybe I could help.”

  “A Good Samaritan, huh?” asked the officer. “Okay, whatever. Just stay back for now.”

  Len didn’t want to stay back. The car pulled at his heart like a magnet, filling him with a sick need to know for certain what had become of Albigard.

  Fae are tough. Not much can kill them permanently except iron through the heart. Or, well, beheading. Rans’ phantom voice echoed in Len’s memory. It would have been more reassuring if he hadn’t seen a couple of people firsthand over the years who had, in fact, been beheaded during accidents not dissimilar to this one.

  Police were checking the car, cautiously poking their heads through the broken windows and shining lights beneath the undercarriage. Len clenched his fists at his sides, only peripherally aware of the jabbing pain of the splinters still lodged in his palms.

  “There’s no one here,” called one of the officers. “Day-um. There’s a lot of blood, but I guess he must’ve walked away from it. Too bad it means he’ll get charged with leaving the scene of an accident once we find him.”

  “Must be some kind of a motherfuckin’ Lazarus,” said the one who’d spoken to Len. He sounded almost impressed. “Hey, you. Samaritan. Did ya see what happened?”

  Len shook his head slowly. “No. It was already like this when I drove up.”

  The guy crossed to him, giving Len’s hair and tats a wary look. “I’ll need your name and contact information.”

  “Told you, I didn’t see anything,” Len reiterated, his mind still blank with some strange combination of relief and dread.

  The cop’s expression hardened. “You got a reason for causing me a problem, buddy?”

  Len blinked himself back to the present, and noticed the officer was busy jotting down the Triumph’s license plate number. “Uh... no. No, man. Of course not. Sorry—my name’s Ransley Thorpe.” He rattled off a fake address and a fake phone number, and managed to extricate himself from the scene before anyone started asking for ID.

  With no other option immediately presenting itself, He got on the bike and drove very slowly and carefully back to his house, fighting a serious case of the shakes the whole way. After he’d safely parked the Triumph in the yard and put its cover back on, he went inside and unplugged his phone from the charger. With a call to the local police station, he reported his car stolen by an unknown thief.

  “You didn’t see or hear anything?” the desk sergeant asked.

  “Well,” Len told her, “I saw a weird guy with green eyes and long, light blond hair skulking around the place earlier. About six feet tall. Athletic build. I guess it might have been him.”

  After he sheepishly added that he might possibly have accidentally left his keys in the car that morning, the woman grew increasingly short with him.

  “At least it’s a distinctive vehicle,” she said, when he described it. “I’ll file a report. We’ll contact you if anything comes up on either the car or the potential perp, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope, to be honest. You got insurance on it?”

  Len didn’t bother to point out that no one in their right mind would pay for comprehensive auto insurance on a forty-year-old, eight hundred dollar Lincoln Continental with bullet holes in the quarter panels. Instead, he finished the conversation as quickly as he could. Then he went into the living room and collapsed onto the sofa, which creaked loudly in protest. All the strength drained out of his muscles between one breath and the next, and he stared at nothing, trying to quiet the nausea roiling in his stomach.

  There was no avoiding the logical conclusion. Albigard had been taken prisoner by the Fae again. He was definitely injured... possibly badly. And Len had absolutely no idea how to find him.

  SIX

  “THE SUBSCRIBER YOU have dialed is not available, or has traveled outside the coverage area.” The tinny, artificially cheerful voice repeated the same message it had given Len when he’d tried to call Vonnie’s phone on all the previous occasions. He thumbed the disconnect icon, and let his head fall back against the broken couch.

  “Goddamn it, Vonnie. Is it too much trouble to check your texts or your emails once in a while?” he muttered, staring at a cobweb hanging from the ceiling. His thoughts itched with the need to do something, and he was well aware of how easily that itch could transform into a powerful craving for temporary oblivion.

  It was the middle of the night. He’d been chasing his thoughts in circles for hours, and his biggest defense against the desire to go out and make terrible life choices was the fact that he could barely keep his damned eyes open at this point.

  The police hadn’t even managed to make the connection between the mystery wreck and his stolen vehicle report yet. That would probably come sometime tomorrow, unless the Fae were actively working to obscure the case using their influence behind the scenes. Which was... certainly possible. Not that it really mattered. He’d only filed the police report so he wouldn’t be personally implicated in the accident, and in hopes that someone else would start actively looking for Albigard.

  But the sobering truth was that Albigard could be anywhere right now. St. Louis... Chicago... Ankara... Tokyo...

  Dhuinne.

  He could already be in Dhuinne.

  That must have been what Teague meant earlier, when he said the Fae Court had a plan to deal with the Hunt. It was what the other Fae they’d dealt with had been after all along. They’d wanted Albigard hauled to Dhuinne in iron chains so they could use him as bait—all of them except the cat-sidhe, anyway.

  And now there was nothing to stop them from doing exactly that.

  He ran through the list of people who might in any conceivable way be able to help. It still consisted of Guthrie Leonides, Vonnie Morgan, and a couple of others that he had absolutely no way to reach. The cat-sidhe was back in the Fae realm. Nigellus was in some undisclosed location hiding Rans and Zorah’s bodies to keep them safe, on the off chance he could retrieve their souls at some point in the future and resurrect them. Even if the demon hadn’t been in hiding, Len had no contact information for him. No phone number. No email. No physical address, beyond the vague knowledge that he owned a house somewhere in Atlantic City.

  A Google search brought up nothing useful. Nigellus supposedly had a human servant named Edward who knew about magic and supernatural stuff. But as far as Len knew, Edward was still holed up with Vonnie and Guthrie, helping with the human children who’d been kidnapped by the Fae and retrieved after the battle at Stonehenge.

  Kat would offer a sympathetic ear if he called, but she wasn’t in a position to help him find Albigard. And Len really, really didn’t want to have to ring her in the middle of the night to talk him down from the metaphorical ledge—especially not the night before the Brown Fox’s reopening, when she was so excited to finally be getting back to work.

  He thumped the back of his head repeatedly against the sofa frame, h
ating how abruptly and thoroughly he’d been thrust into his customary role of useless observer, standing on the sidelines while other people died. Len squeezed his eyes shut.

  Please, please, let the prickly Fae bastard not be dead.

  Unbidden, he remembered how Albigard had tossed him through a portal to get him out of Teague’s crosshairs, and he cursed the Fae creatively for that unasked-for act of kindness. Hell, Len was desperate enough at this point that he’d briefly considered trying to contact Teague as a way to get to Albigard, suicidal as that idea probably was. But, of course, he didn’t have an address or phone number for the Unseelie fucker, either.

  It was, he supposed, vaguely possible that Teague would come back here to wreak some kind of terrible revenge on Len for punching him in his smug Fae face. However, he found it more likely that he wasn’t important enough to bother with—and that fact rankled. He lifted his head from his weary inspection of the ceiling panels and found the room full of familiar specters.

  “Oh,” he said stupidly. “Hi.”

  The faces of the dead surrounded him, battered and vacant, and he should absolutely in no conceivable way have found their presence comforting.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he told them, “but if I could figure out the actual logistics of absorbing you all so I could become more powerful or whatever, I’d probably do it right now.”

  Yussef shrugged, apparently indifferent to the idea. The others didn’t react at all.

  “Okay,” Len told them. “It’s good we got that out of the way, I guess.”

  He lifted his phone from the couch. Called Vonnie again and got the same canned response as before. Texted her. Emailed both her account and Guthrie’s for the dozenth time. Looked up at the specters again.

  They stared at him, unblinking.

  “Yeah, you guys are probably right,” he said. “I should see if there’s anything in the house strong enough to put me to sleep for a few hours, and take a fresh stab at things in the morning.” He paused. “Either that, or maybe Teague will show up and drag me away to the same place they’re holding Albigard.”