But I'd been getting better. I'd been standing up to Corey for the first time ever in our relationship; I'd stood up to Rachel; I'd talked back to my mother. Oh shit. My mother!
It was a defining moment for me, really, because no fae Queen would ever be as tied up in her mother's apron strings as I was. Never.
I snatched my cellphone, forgotten that fateful night with men and guns, off of my nightstand and checked the messages. Thirteen from mom, two from an unknown number, four from Rachel. I listened to the messages quickly. My mother's became progressively more frantic until the last became a threat to involve the authorities again; the two unknown were from my sister, Lou, calling solely for my mother's sake; then there were the ones from Rachel. The first two were simple. She wanted to talk. Where was I? I'd forgotten to tell her that I didn't have my phone. I felt ashamed. That is, until I got the last two messages. Then I was downright terrified.
“George,” she whimpered, bringing me full circle to the night that all of this mess had really gotten started when she'd sent a silent call for help to my cellphone. “I need help. You've probably been told the truth by now, so I can tell you this. Bring Samael. I found one of Gadrael's hideouts, and he's here, George. He's here in the flesh, just as powerful as the day he ate the first Gray Queen, and he knows you're not dead, George. Call me.” The message ended, and I frantically skipped over it and to the next, desperate to hear what she had to say.
“George,” Rachel whispered into the phone, voice pitched so low that I had to strain to make out her next words. “George, meet me at the corner of Fifth and Main. Bring Samael. Call me when you get here. Tomorrow morning at six. Don't be late. I'll be waiting.” I checked the time stamp on the message. It had been sent only a few hours before Corey and I had left. I checked the time.
Six forty-five. Shit. I snapped the phone closed and grabbed a robe, racing into the hallway, and down the stairs. The sidhe men were nowhere to be seen, but Corey was waiting, face still very pale, lips still bloodless.
“Where did they go, Corey?” I asked, nearly slipping and breaking my neck on a spot of blood on the bottom stair. He grabbed me at the last possible second and hoisted me to a standing position.
“I was just about to come and get you,” he said slowly as if he were still processing my question. “They had to go.” I stared at the pack of hellhounds, ten in all, tongues lolling, red eyes glinting. “They left them for protection, George. For your protection. They'll be back, but for now, they want you to wait here.”
“Why?” I asked, not liking the extra sheen of moisture over Corey's eyes. He didn't look like himself; he had to be in shock. Maybe I should get him to a hospital?
“Because,” Corey said, blinking several times as if that would clear the fog of confusion from his head. “Samael's mother is dead.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BLACK ANNIS
“If the Other Place were a school yard, then the black annis would be the bully. This creature lives in small, family units usually near sea caves though the black annis has no affinity for the ocean. Their favorite food is, of course, raw meat, especially from creatures that have yet to mature. Sidhe children have been known to disappear when a black annis is at court. Beware, this particular fae can appear as a black, jungle cat, a wizened seer, or in their true form: a hideous, blue skinned, hunch back.”
Corey was wrong: Rachel wasn't dead.
She was lying in the middle of Main Street, usually a main thoroughfare of Eula though disturbingly bereft of traffic during this particular rush hour. Her face was bloodied, limbs bent back, her glamour gone. But she was alive. I knew because I could hear her screaming the moment I pulled up to the corner of Fifth. I had felt a disturbing need to turn away about two blocks back and Corey had absolutely panicked. He'd even gone so far as to try and leap from the moving vehicle, but luckily, I'd been able to knock some sense into him with a resounding crack of my palm across his cheek. His face still bore a red limned hand print. It was another fucking glamour.
The hellhounds leapt from the bed of the Silverado even before I'd come to a complete stop, racing into the open doors of a building situated kitty corner from our current position. Only the big hound stayed, the female, mother of my new pup. She whimpered and scratched at the glass separating us.
I opened the car door, grabbed my gun, and gestured for Corey to follow. He was still dazed, still confused by the rush of information. It was nothing compared to how I felt, but I still felt sorry for him. It couldn't be easy finding out your girlfriend was a long, lost fae Queen.
Don't come, sweetness, please, stay back. This time when I heard the words, I knew right away that it was Samael. I couldn't believe I'd ever mistaken that smooth, male confidence for my own. I ignored him and raced across the black concrete, desperate to check on Rachel.
Her white hair was tangled about her body like a net, her pale skin bruised, cut, and burned; the pale, lavender of her eyes, so like Samael's, was unfocused. I grabbed the true form of my banshee lover, something I had only ever seen twice, and lifted her into my lap. She moaned briefly before falling chillingly silent.
Sweetness, leave, go now. Get away. Please. I cannot tell you what to do but I beg of you. Go.
“Rachel,” I whispered, stroking some of her hair back. Corey came up behind me with the hellhound but remained silent. “Rachel, honey, wake up.” Her eyes continued to stare up at the sky, unblinking.
Do not touch her, Samael hissed. Sweetness, leave her, she has betrayed us. I didn't know what he was talking about, but it almost made me hate him. Despite the attraction I'd felt upon seeing him for the first time and the taste of love he'd left on my lips, I didn't know him. But I knew Rachel. And I knew she would never betray me.
“Rachel,” I whimpered, wanting to shake her, desperate to get some sort of movement from her still form. I was so wrapped up in trying to get her to speak to me that I didn't hear Corey's shouts at first.
“Georgette, watch out!” The sound of gunfire resounded loud and echoing in the empty street. I set Rachel down as quickly but as gently as I was able and grabbed my own gun, spinning around to face the threat. I didn't want to use the gun, didn't really know how, but figured a pull of the trigger should do the trick, at least for the time being. When this is over, sign yourself up for a handgun safety class. Too bad they didn't have any courses for how to use a machine gun.
A splatter of gore on the pavement led my eyes to the body. It was bright blue, like a summer sky, but far less pleasant in texture. Bumpy skin covered a frail, reed thin body. Its face was pointed towards me, mouth gaping, revealing one, six inch long snaggletooth, blunt on the end like a rabbit. The eyes were round and sunken, white with just the tiniest prick of black in the center.
“What the fuck is that?” I choked out at Corey.
A black annis, sweetness. Gadrael is a fenevér and those are his mother's people. Be careful.
Where are you? I thought back at him. If there were more of those things around, more of whatever had felled a banshee like Rachel, then I wanted to be near Samael and Amadan. As much as I still didn't trust them, it was better than standing out in the middle of the street with no one but Corey.
In the building sweetness, stay there, please. I ignored him and stood up, waving Corey over. He came towards Rachel and I grudgingly. My hellhound had since disappeared and I assumed she'd joined the fight inside.
“Help me put her in the truck,” I said softly, hoping he wouldn't choose that moment to brook an argument. He didn't. We each lifted her from opposite sides. It wasn't that she was heavy or that I was incapable of doing it myself, but I wanted her damaged body jarred as little as possible.
We made it about halfway there before the first of the ghouls poured from the building. It was sort of cartoonish, the way they loped, their knuckles brushing the pavement as they galloped towards me. Several of them stopped to eat the corpse of the black annis, but that still left more than twenty of the undead min
ions to attack the three of us.
Corey released Rachel and turned towards them, mumbling a spell under his breath. I could tell he was trying to summon the creatures with his own power, to take over their current master's place. It wasn't working. I stumbled the rest of the way to the truck, apologizing to Rachel under my breath as I practically tossed her into the back seat.
I turned back towards Corey and removed the gun strap from my shoulder before aiming it at the beasts farthest away from him. I couldn't take the chance of hitting him and since I'd never fired a gun before, let alone a machine gun, I had no idea what to expect.
My finger twitched slightly against the black metal and that was all she wrote. My body was knocked backward from the force of the firing gun, something I hadn't expected. Bullets flew out in several directions, hitting the ghouls, the windows of a nearby building, and even the front end of the truck. I landed in a startled heap against a brick wall, ears ringing and head pounding from the impact. I tossed the gun aside and tried to sit up. No luck. My body refused to obey me and with the ghouls now less than three feet from Corey, that meant only one thing.
“Drop the glamour,” I whispered, still slumped forward. My head was spinning; my eyes were unfocused. I didn't want to do it. But I could and I had before. Vanity couldn't come into play here. There was no room for that. It was just life and death. Or undeath. “Drop the glamour!” I screamed.
With a snap, like the ruler of a cruel teacher across my palms, it was gone, and I was up and forward in less time than it would have taken my glamoured form to draw in a false breath. I wasn't pretty and I smelt like hell, but I was fast and pissed.
Five seconds later and I was tossing Corey gently aside, like a prized doll. Seven seconds later and I was tossing aside ghouls like the broken toys I'd never wanted, their skulls cracking on pavement, on walls, on the truck like porcelain dolls. Ten seconds later and I was shouting at Corey to get Rachel out of there while I raced into the open doors of a building that had once served as a pub.
It would never serve that purpose again. Not after what I saw when I entered what used to be a dining room.
I had a hard time discerning what color the walls had once been. I was guessing they had probably been trimmed in some sort of dark wood paneling, but now, they were so caked with black blood and parts of creatures I didn't want to name that it was impossible to tell. The majority of the tables had been smashed to splinters, thrown topsy-turvy across the room, the bar, and several had even attempted the climb up the nearly hidden staircase in the back corner of the room. I picked my way across the carnage carefully, attempting to keep my eyes on the ground for hazards while simultaneously trying to write off what I was seeing. There were things in that room that my mind didn't know whether to classify as undead or fae. Or both. I grit my teeth together, cringing slightly when things wiggled in ways they weren't really supposed to and relaxed my jaw.
I didn't hear any sounds as I shuffled as quietly up the stairs and as any member of the undead could really expect to. As I approached the landing, I heard three voices. One was Samael, one was Amadan, and the third … I shivered. It was less like listening to sound than it was like having a needle driven directly into my eardrums. It didn't hurt; I couldn't feel pain, but it was disconcerting and so uncomfortable to listen to that it might as well have been.
The third voice was hissing and shrieking in what was either another language or maybe just the angry sounds of a supernatural temper tantrum. I bent low and stretched forward, just a smidgen, just enough to see.
All I could see were the broad, and surprisingly clothed, backs of the two fae men as well as several corpses of the black annis and a few, pulpy, disemboweled bodies of ghouls. I shifted forward, confident that in it's shrieking, raging capacity, the thing would not see me.
I could hear it moving around on the other side of the room. It was flinging chairs, tables, and crates at the two men who stepped lithely out of the way and watched with disinterest as the items smashed into the wall. I craned my neck in an attempt to see around them, but my angle from inside the feigned safety of the stairwell kept my view limited. I decided to reach out to Samael.
I'm here, I whispered, hopefully getting my message across to him. If you need me, I'm here.
I'll always need you, sweetness, he whispered back, voice still smooth as silk. And that is why I'm asking you to leave. So that you can be. I ignored him, resisting the urge to creep back down the stairs and check on Corey. He'd do what I said. If not because of me, then for his own safety. He'd leave. If he was smart, he'd leave.
The hissing, spitting thing had picked up its pace. Stuff was flying across the room at twice the rate it had before, causing Amadan and Samael to adjust their positions to opposite sides of the room, their backs pressed firmly against the walls. That's when I got my first look at the creature.
It was another black annis albeit bigger, meaner and bluer than the other ones I'd seen. The damn thing looked a smurf under a summer sky. Except for the gore caked across its unhappy mouth and the dangling bits of pink meat tangled in the crack on its snaggletooth. It was glaring at the boys with a mixture of raw hatred and fear. They had it cornered. The wild look it shot from one to the other of them was enough to tell me that.
“I propose you tell us just a little more about your son,” Amadan said mildly in that lilting accent he always had when he tried to speak English. “And maybe, just maybe, when or if you get to Faerie, the Queens will go easy on you. If you're lucky, they may even kill you.” Amadan smiled his Fool's grin when he spoke until his lips were pulled back so far from his teeth that I could see the pale blue of his gums. Samael kept his face tilted to the side, uninterested but alert and let Amadan do the talking.
The black annis, which I noticed with no small amount of disgust was female, dragged one of its taloned hands up the side of its body and caressed one of its bulbous breasts. It leered at Samael, approaching him with a swaggering gait that I realized was supposed to be some sort of a come hither waltz. It's trying to seduce him! I realized with a start and watched with horror as the creature slipped another hand down to the tangled mass of curls between its bowed legs, and slipped a black tongue out, making a soft hissing noise that sounded like a contented sigh.
A swell of rage rose within me. I didn't know where it came from or why. I couldn't possibly have thought that Samael would ever go for a creature like that. But he could, my irrational mind pushed back at me frantically. He is one of those things, isn't he? I realized with yet another wave of disgust. And that's his grandmother!
“This is wrong on so many levels,” I whispered to myself as I let my emotions get the better of me and rose from my hiding spot to step into the creature's view. “Hey, bitch,” I said, knowing I sounded ridiculous and looked even worse. “Step off.” My possessive urges towards Samael, especially in the face of a lumpy, hump back fae that even the Unseelie would shrink away from allowing into their court, were filling me with an uncontrollable rage. How was I going to act if, no when because Samael was a good looking guy, something attractive actually tried to hit on him? I was scaring myself, and I didn't even like the man.
Samael turned to me, a soft but arrogant smile playing about his full lips. He didn't flinch at my rotting skin or weepy eyes. He just held out a hand and waited for me to take it, completely confident that I would. Amadan didn't look surprised at my zombie form either. He wasn't smiling with his mouth, but his eyes were amused. Despite their warnings for me to get the hell out of there, they looked awfully happy to see me. I took Samael's hand reluctantly, still angry about what he'd said about Rachel, and stepped closer to him. One strong arm snaked around my waist and crushed me against him. I yelped in shock and tried to struggle, but he held me in his tight grip, amethyst eyes focused unwavering on the black annis.
It was back to hissing angrily, both hands now clenching and unclenching at its sides, black talons digging into blue skin while droplets of black blood fell to
the floor to join the rest of the carnage. It focused its bulging eyes on mine and for one frightening second, I thought it was going to charge me. It bunched its muscles underneath itself as Samael spoke.
“I'm sorry Grandmother,” he intoned mockingly. “But I'm afraid I'm not able to accept your offer.” He turned to Amadan with a smirk. “If you would,” he drawled. Amadan winked at me and stepped forward, causing the black annis to shrink back before casting its eyes to the side and making a frantic leap towards the window.
Amadan waited for the glass to clear the air before stepping forward and smiling at Samael and me as he launched himself from the window after it. The two of us stood together in silence for a few moments before I pushed myself away from Samael and ran to the window. Corey's truck was gone and hopefully he'd have the good sense to glamour Rachel and take her to a hospital.
“I wouldn't worry about her,” Samael said quietly as I scoped out the mess on the road. Someone had to clean all of that up. Humanity wasn't ready for this kind of shit. We had enough of our own problems to work through. I ignored Samael and felt around in my pocket for my cell phone. It was gone.
“Why?” I whispered back. I knew my voice sounded angry, dangerous, but most of all, scared. I almost didn't want to hear what he had to say. “Why would you turn on your own mother?” I hissed, turning around and narrowing my eyes at him. He stared straight back at me, unoffended by my gruesome form, eyes still full of the same amount of love and respect he'd shown me back at the house. “What on earth did Rachel do? Besides get cut down in the parking lot?”
“She called us here. She called you here when she knew the danger. She should never have done that, sweetness,” Samael said, stepping towards me again. I sidestepped away from him, trying to inch towards the door. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to be around him anymore. Despite the jealously I'd felt a few moments ago, I was pissed at him.
Gray and Graves: A Dark Fae Menage Urban Fantasy (The Three Courts of Faerie Book 1) Page 17
