Hunted (Book One of the Forever Faire Series): A Fae Fantasy Romance Novel (3 page)

It couldn’t be coincidence. Ryan had a motorcycle, like the biker gang, but she could have sworn it’d been a horse. He’d been ordinary when she first saw him near the fire, and then he’d been gorgeous.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Because he did something to make me see him as ordinary. Maybe the same way the bikers made themselves invisible to everyone but us.

Kayla turned and ran back. Ryan and the motorcycle were gone, as expected, but undisturbed snow covered the ground where the fire had been. The only sign that anyone had been there were Kayla’s own footprints, sunken into the drifts.

“No,” she breathed. She spun around in a circle. “You can’t be…damn it, where are you?”

In a falling shaft of moonlight, the faintest streak of tiny stars glimmered, like the lights she had seen in his hair. She hurried toward them, and found a barely-perceptible stream of sparkling light hanging in the cold air. It led out of the woods. Kayla ran as fast as she could, stumbling through brush and swatting branches out of her way as she followed Ryan’s trail. She reached the edge of the woods and lurched onto the shoulder of the road. She searched in both direction. On her left the red taillight of a motorcycle shone about a quarter-mile away. But just before Ryan drove out of sight he turned right. Inexplicably he drove across the road, onto the shoulder, and headed directly for a barb-wire fence. Kayla put a hand to her chest and gasped. But at the last second Ryan pulled back on the handlebars and lifted the front wheel high in the air.

“Is he out of his mind?” she muttered.

But rather than crashing into the fence Ryan’s motorcycle sailed over it, exploding in mid-air with a burst of gold and copper light. Kayla shrieked and ran toward him, but the light abruptly faded and Ryan landed on the other side of the fence. She stumbled to a stop and stared after him as he crossed the pasture. Instead of Ryan on a motorcycle, there was a giant, pale-haired warrior astride a huge white stallion with a wild golden mane. He galloped off into the pines and vanished from sight.

Kayla blinked a few times before she remembered to breathe.

“It was a horse. I knew it. But how did he–”

The glare of oncoming headlights made Kayla squint. She realized she’d moved onto the road. As she backed up onto the shoulder, a white and blue patrol car slowly rolled to a stop beside her. The passenger window lowered.

“Evening, Miss.”

K
ayla took
a moment to compose herself. Not only had she just encountered the most gorgeous creature she’d ever seen, he’d vaulted over a barbwire fence on a motorcycle-turned-stallion. But if this police officer was like the others in Florida, he wouldn’t have seen a thing. She glanced back at the pasture before she put on her best innocent-citizen face. True to Ryan’s words, the promised help had arrived.

“Hi, there, Officer.”

“Bit cold to be out walking tonight.” He jerked his thumb toward the back of his cruiser. “That your rental car five miles down the road?”

“Yes, yes, it is. I ran out of gas, and my phone is dead.”

Kayla bent down so she could see his face and make sure he wasn’t a dark-haired brute or a golden-haired demon. The cop was double-chinned, tired-eyed and completely bald. She relaxed a little.

“Could you possibly give me a lift to the nearest service station?” she said.

“No need for that. I called our tow guy for your car, and he carries gas for run-outs.” He reached across to open the door. “Hop in and I’ll drive you back.”

The interior of the patrol car was comfortably warm, and once she belted herself in, Kayla took off her gloves to hold her hands in front of the vents.

“There’s some coffee there,” the cop said, nodding at the thermos cup in the console holder. “Black, but it’s still hot.”

“Terrific, thanks.” Kayla removed the lid before taking a sip and sighing. “That’s really good.”

“My wife sends a thermos with me when I’m on patrol,” he told her, “to keep me out of the donut shops.”

Kayla cradled the cup between her palms and resisted the urge to glance back over her shoulder again.

“Does that work?”

“She thinks it does.” The cop chuckled.

If she told him about her encounter with Ryan he’d take her to the nearest psych ward, so she’d have to be careful.

“While I was walking I thought I saw someone riding out in that pasture back there. Is it part of a ranch?”

“The fenced property across from the woods?” He shook his head. “That belongs to the old Moffett Ski Lodge. They shut down back in the eighties, but the Forever Faire uses it when they come to town.”

“Forever Faire. Pretty name.”

There was something about it that sounded familiar, too. Kayla tried to recall if her dad had mentioned it, but her memory came up empty. She took another sip of coffee.

“What is Forever Faire,” she said, “like a county thing?”

“It’s a traveling Renaissance fair,” he said. “They spend every winter here in Ashdale. They set up their camp around the lodge, you know, like an old medieval village. They do archery and sword fights and jousts and such.” He rolled his eyes. “I never got into all that Dark Ages stuff, but they’re a good bunch. While they’re here they always put on free shows for the townspeople.”

“Must be fun.” Kayla turned toward him and almost asked if they also liked to shape-shift while kissing lost women. “I thought I heard a motorcycle out there, too.”

“All the Forever Faire guys ride them,” he said. Kayla went still. “Saves them from having to haul those big caravans when they have to come to town for supplies, I expect. But up here at the lodge they use their horses. Looks more authentic. Easier to get around on horseback, too.”

By the time they reached Kayla’s rental car, she’d made a plan. Although she needed desperately to get to Tara, she’d never felt closer to figuring out the bikers. The motorcycles couldn’t be a coincidence.

After a few minutes the tow truck arrived. Kayla paid the driver for adding some gas to her tank, and smiled with relief when the engine promptly started. After he left to go on another call she thanked the officer for his help.

“No problem,” he said. “There’s a couple of service stations in town where you can fill up.” He climbed back into his cruiser. “Have a good trip, now, and watch that fuel gauge.”

Kayla waved goodbye before she got back in the car and drove to where she had seen Ryan jump the fence. But there was no way she could do the same in her car. She thumped the steering wheel with a gloved fist. But as she glared ahead at the patch of road illuminated by the headlights, she saw a break in the barbwire. As she nudged the car forward for a look, she wondered if she could climb over the fence. Except the last thing she wanted was to be in the cold again.

“A gate,” she muttered, as she pulled off the road next to it.

Beyond was a small access road. Although she left the engine running, she checked for traffic in the rearview mirror, then up ahead, and hopped out of the car. The gate was closed by a drop latch, but it wasn’t secured. She shoved it open and heard rusty hinges squeal, before she trotted back to the car.

“I’ll just see where he went,” she said, bargaining with her conscience as she turned off the headlights. “Then I’ll drive to town, gas up, and find Tara. Then I’ll have a breakdown, and get my head examined.”

Despite the words, though, she was on to something. If she and Tara were going to stand a chance of not looking over their shoulders all their lives, she had to get to the bottom of this.

The gradual incline of the road led Kayla to the top of a rise where she slowed the car and then stopped. Moonlight sketched out a massive clearing encircled by towering pines and broad oaks. In the center stood a low, wide, stone-walled building that had to be the old ski lodge. Next to it was a barn with two wings of stables. Kayla shut off the engine and climbed out to get a better look. Scattered around the edges of the clearing were large trucks, horse trailers, campers and flatbeds.

The show people probably occupied the lodge. Most of the windows were lit from within, and white wood smoke drifted from multiple chimneys on the roof. Someone had also built up a roaring blaze in a huge fire pit just in front of the lodge, around which several figures stood.

What Kayla didn’t see was a single motorcycle–or snow–anywhere around the lodge.

She walked down, taking care not to stumble or make a sound like last time. As she drew closer she noted the big, rolled hay bales stacked in double rows beside the barn, as if they’d just been delivered. Judging by the size of the stables, the amount of hay, and the number of transport trailers, Kayla estimated Ryan and his friends had at least two dozen horses. If nothing else that indicated how prosperous they were. Maintaining a large, healthy stable was beyond expensive these days.

So he’s rich as well as magical. But then, why bother performing? Maybe a Renfaire is the only place he can use his mojo without drawing attention.

Assuming Ryan hadn’t changed his ride back into a motorcycle, he would have gone to the stable first to unsaddle the horse and bunk him down for the night. To take a look Kayla would have to circle behind or cross the camp, which would likely attract attention from the group around the bonfire.

“This better be worth it,” she said as she started down the slope.

As she stepped out of the snow onto the lush, green grass, a strange shiver ran down her spine. She could feel the soil give slightly under her weight.

“A nice lawn?” she muttered, frowning. “In the dead of winter?”

She skirted the edge of the treeline and moved within earshot of those around the bonfire. All of them appeared to be large, normal men dressed in regular clothes. None had facial tats or short black hair. Every one of them looked as human as Ryan had, at least before he had changed on her.

Speak of the shape-shifting devil.

Kayla’s gaze went to a larger man walking from the stable to the bonfire.

“You’re late,” a man said, his voice sharp.

“For what?”

That was Ryan, and he sounded just as annoyed.

“Trouble,” the man told him. “Jannon caught two mortals stealing from us. He claims he disposed of them.”

A
s he joined his men
, Ryan Sheridan regarded his second-in-command. Like the rest of them, he still wore the glamor of his mortal guise. Fae nature made it impossible for Colm Longacre to utter an untruth among his own kind, and he wouldn’t jest unless he was entertaining the mob.

“He did what now?” Ryan asked.

“Got rid of two vermin,” someone else answered.

Jannon Ferguson elbowed his way to the front of the men as he took a drink from the oversize bottle of snowine he carried. In his true form, which was almost as large as Ryan’s, he resembled a shining god.

“Caught our new groom and that needle-plying wench in the treasury, up to their elbows in our coin.” He spat in the fire, which reacted with the Fae drink he’d been guzzling by sending up a bright blue flare. “Bloody thieving humans.”

Ryan inspected the drunken warrior’s garments for blood spatter, but saw only sparkling blue stains of drink on his tunic

“You did not report this to Colm until now?”

“All he does is coddle them. They needed learning, so I…” He raised one large, bulging arm and tried to snap his fingers, failed to connect them, and then batted the air with his huge hand. “I taught them.”

In the past Ryan had seen Jannon use a single blow to cleave a boulder in two.

“By what manner did you give this instruction?”

“What the bloody hells do you care?” Jannon swayed and staggered a step sideways before he caught himself and drank again. “Weak, worthless scum, the both of them.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his fist. “Got what they deserved, they did.”

“Now I see,” Colm said with an exaggerated nod. Then he sighed. “The fool wants you to think he did away with them, to goad you into thrashing him. I’ll wager he did naught to harm a hair on either.”

Ryan saw that truth echoed in Jannon’s angry fists and guilty eyes, and considered thrashing him anyway.

“You wish to deceive me, brother? Why?”

“You know the reason. We all do.” Colm regarded the drunken warrior. “You can wound yourself a thousand times over, Jan, and bleed on every mortal female in these mountains so they’ll bed you and heal you. None of it will ever make you forget your clan.”

“What would you know of women, Colm Longacre?” Jannon said, his upper lip curling as he fixed the other man with a sneer. “You’ve not pleasured one since you were gelded by that fucking witch.” As the other men muttered uneasily, Jannon wobbled around to face Ryan. “Beg pardon, my liege. I meant to say Her Majesty the Queen, that fucking witch.”

Colm folded his arms. “And now I’d say the great hulking idiot wants the both of us to beat him bloody.”

“What did you call me?” Jannon said, his voice growing louder. He drew a dagger, squinted, and pointed it at the empty space beside Colm. “Come over here and say that to my face, you sodding Érien ponce.”

Wallace Magee, the troop’s blacksmith and spell tracker, silently moved up behind Jannon. At a nod from Ryan he seized Jannon’s arm and plucked the weapon from his hand, all in one smooth motion.

Jannon spun around and smacked his face into Wallace’s massive chest before he scowled up at him.

“What are you doing? Dint you hear? I’ve finally challenged that nosy cockless winge to battle. Give back me blade.”

“Wouldn’t be a fair fight, brother,” Wallace said. The blacksmith tossed the knife through the fire to Colm, who caught it by the hilt. “Tomorrow you can gut him. I’ll even hold him down for you. But for tonight, come.” The blacksmith dropped his arm around the warrior’s sagging shoulders. “Come and drink with me.”

Ryan watched the pair retreat into the lodge before he scanned the faces of the other men.

“What set him off this time?”

“The wench he caught thieving, the new seamstress,” one of the men told him. “Quite comely, that one.” He used his hands to make a voluptuous female shape in the air, and then grimaced. “She also had very white skin, and long gilded hair.”

Colm swore in the old language. “I told Lawrence to hire only dark wenches, rot his soul. I will crack his head on the morrow.”

“Not so fast, brother,” one of the men said. “If we’re to perform we’ll need replacements for them by week’s end.”

Ryan nodded his agreement. “Have new notices posted in town.”

“Aye.” Colm tucked Jannon’s blade into a sheath on his belt before he glared at the rest of the men. “As long as he’s drinking, Jannon stays here. Until he stops, bring no more women to camp. Seek your pleasures in the town. Do you hear me?”

As the other men made sounds of reluctant agreement, Ryan glanced over at the barb-wire fence separating their land from the roadway. He understood exactly how Jannon felt, for his own blood still ran hot. It would for the rest of the night, too, thanks to young Kayla, with her silken dark locks and topaz eyes. Oh, but she had been so luscious to touch and hold and kiss. He’d forgotten how good it felt, to take a woman in his arms for pleasure instead of a necessary healing. He never allowed himself such luxuries, but the sweet curve of her smile had intoxicated him. The kiss had brought him dangerously close to beseeching more from her, which her own desire would have compelled her to provide.

“I best adjust the wards to keep him penned tonight,” Colm said in a low voice as the other men scattered to return to their cabins. “Walk the boundaries with me?”

Ryan followed his second to the trail surrounding the edge of the camp, where an unseen boundary of protective spells kept out the local wildlife, snow, and much of the cold. Beyond it he could see the roadway, on which a car now drove toward town. Someone had left the gate to the access road open—probably Jannon after he sent away the two thieves.

As Colm reworked the boundary spell to now include keeping Jannon in camp, Ryan absently checked the markers, which only he and the other warriors could see and touch. They remained bright and untested, disturbed only by his own passage through them upon his return to camp.

“Jannon likely mindfogged them before he sent them back to town,” Colm said. “’Tis the only spell he can manage when he’s this pissed. I’ll make sure of it in the morning.”

“Aye, but spare Lawrence his skull and your spleen,” Ryan admitted as he lowered his hand. “I am to blame. I paid no attention to the new hires. I should have noticed the woman had Fae coloring.”

Colm grunted. “Mortal wenches all look alike to me.”

Ryan might have agreed with him, but after tonight he suspected he would be looking for Kayla’s golden eyes and exquisite face among every crowd of humans.

“Leave it to Lawrence,” Ryan said, “after you remind him to hire no more pale-skinned blondes.”

His second nodded. “Why were you so late returning from patrol? Did you find someone in need?”

“No Fae.” Ryan saw the other man’s expression. “Wallace may be wrong about what he sensed. He has been before now.”

Light flared briefly between Colm’s hands and the round, hovering ward he touched. “You don’t want to find them.”

“I’ve vowed to serve the lost and needful, just as the rest of you,” Ryan reminded him. “I’ve no reason to abandon the course now.”

Colm shook his head. “After what your clan did to you? You have every right to hold a grudge.”

What his clan did to him? That made it sound so simple.

“There’s more than enough pain and guilt to go around,” Ryan said.

“The guilt is on them.”

Ryan nodded, though he knew it wasn’t true. His clan had disowned him because he’d broken the cardinal rule: never fall in love with a mortal. Though it was centuries ago, he recalled those days with bitter clarity. Maeve’s pregnancy had gone badly in the last days. In desperation he’d taken her to his clan, but they had flatly refused to help. Ryan had watched his wife die along with their tiny infant son, and then the darkness overtook him.

The Sheridan clan, who knew that Ryan was a berserker, had come after him. He had cut his way through half of them before they had been able to imprison him. For months he had screamed and bled as he fought the bespelled chains holding him in the remote cave. By the time his self-control returned, the Fae king had judged him and issued his decree: death or exile. Some days Ryan still wondered why he had chosen the latter.

“Hardening my heart will not change what I did,” Ryan said. “By royal decree we are all exiled to the mortal realm for eternity. We may help the lost Fae, and fight the dark, but we will never again know kinship with our own kind.”

“The king enjoys twisting the knife as much as planting it,” Colm said, and sighed. “But perhaps someday we can…” He stepped closer, sniffed, and frowned. “What is that smell?”

“Doubtless my horse,” Ryan said quickly.

Colm was the closest thing to bloodkin that Ryan would ever have. If he told anyone about Kayla, it would be him—but not now, not with the taste of her still on his lips.

“As for these lost Fae,” Ryan continued, “we will wait another night. Then Wallace can track them. They can’t be left to wander about here.”

“As you will,” Colm said, but then frowned. “No, wait.” He sniffed again. “It is not Titan. What is that?”

His second turned around slowly before he halted and breathed in deeply. Although Ryan tensed, he was careful to keep the concern from his face.

“There,” Colm declared. “I have it. A spell trail, the barest trace of one. You must have passed through it.” He looked back at Ryan. “It’s not our magick. Did you not feel it?”

Ryan released his glamour, emerging into his more powerful, natural form. As he opened his mind to the currents of energy all around them, his hair fanned out and his skin illuminated, drawing to it the particular heat of Fae magick. Within moments he found what Colm had sensed, a faint, subtle burn inside the air, marking the passage of something dark and strange.

“I have it.” He tried to capture the magick with his own power, but it sifted through him and scattered itself across the winter darkness until every trace had disappeared. “It is old. Twenty years or more since ’twas cast.”

Colm stared at him. “No enchantment could endure or linger that long.”

“There is one sort that can,” said a voice from behind. Wallace joined them, and glanced at Ryan. “Jannon sleeps. My fist may have helped him nod off.”

“My thanks,” Ryan said with half a smirk. He turned to examine the dark land around them, looking for any other sign of passing Fae. “I cannot tell if ’twas one or two. Can you, brother?”

“No,” the blacksmith admitted. “But I can tell you the only enchantment that may linger so long in the mortal realm: a curse.”