Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale (26 page)

Luc didn’t just wake up swinging; he awoke swinging, swearing, and strangling an unsuspecting Graham.
That didn’t last long, since Missy immediately shouted something nasty and leapt forward to plant her foot on his arm.
Graham used the opportunity to wrench himself out of the enraged Fae’s grip.

“Calm down before we decide to leave you to bleed to death,” Rafe said, speaking calmly over the sound of Missy’s furious chatter and Dmitri’s low chuckle.
“Save the righteous rage for the one who tried to gut you.”

“Where’s Corinne?”

“Gone.”
Graham rubbed his hand over his bruised neck.
“Presumably with the one who tried to gut you.
But there’s no blood or evidence she’s been hurt.”

“Fergus.”
Luc spat the name like a bitter taste from his mouth.
He relaxed a little, though, because now that he took the time to breathe, he could feel that she was still alive.
He would know if his heartmate had been taken from him permanently.

Rafe nodded.
“I could smell him here, but I don’t claim to understand what happened.”

“I’ve got my theories,” Luc growled as he pushed himself to his feet.

“Hey,” Reggie scolded, rushing to press a thick gauze pad to a sullenly bleeding wound in his side.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?
You’re wounded, here!”

He tried to brush her away, but she clung like a barnacle, and with Dmitri watching closely he couldn’t exactly put his back into it.
“Don’t worry about it.
I’ll be fine.
We need to go find Corinne.”

“Fat lot of good you’ll do her.
What are you going to do to rescue her from Fergus?
Bleed all over him?”

He started to protest, but by then Missy had assured herself of Graham’s safety and climbed on board with Reggie.
“You’ve got to take care of these wounds before you go anywhere, or you’re not going to be much good to Rinne or anybody else,” she scolded.
“These stab wounds look awful.”

Luc scowled.
“They’d look worse if he’d been smart enough to use iron, but these are from silver.
They’ll heal fast enough.
We need to go now, though.
He’s already killed once.
He won’t hesitate to hurt Corinne.”

“He’s already hurt you.”
Reggie pushed hard enough against his wound to make the damned thing throb uncomfortably.
“And I, for one, don’t want to be the one to explain to Corinne that we let you run off untended, and you bled to death before we could catch up with her.
She gets mean when she’s angry.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“Then do us a favor and sit down and shut up long enough for us to bandage you up.
Then you can go after Corinne, okay?”
Missy didn’t wait for his reply but headed back toward the bathroom.

“Bring lots of adhesive tape!”
Reggie shouted after her before turning back to Luc.
“Right.
Now that shirt has to go.
Strip.”

Luc’s eyes widened and shot to Dmitri’s face.
The vampire looked somehow amused and jealous all at once.

“Why don’t you tell us about these theories you have regarding Fergus, my friend,” Dmitri suggested, crossing his arms over his chest and keeping an eagle eye on his tiny wife as she and Missy began mopping up Fae blood.
“It will distract me so I do not give in to the urge to give you a few new wounds myself for having my wife’s hands on you.”

Luc could sympathize.
He spread his arms wide to give the women access to his wounds.
“I’m kicking myself that I never suspected,” he said, “but now I realize Fergus was the problem all along, not Seoc.
It never did sit right with me to think that Seoc had killed that rabbi.
He’s just not the violent type.
Fergus, though, is a different story.”

“You mean you came here for nothing?
Seoc was never wandering unattended through the city?”

“No, the Queen’s nephew is irresponsible and annoying, and I don’t doubt he was the Fae all those witnesses reported seeing, but it was never him trying to open the doors.
That was Fergus.”

“But why would he do that?”
Graham asked.
“Doesn’t he have as much to lose as any of the Fae if the doors open?
At least with Seoc, I could see it as a revenge-against-his-controlling-aunt thing.”

“I haven’t decided on a why yet,” Luc said, “but I think I’ve nailed the how.
Fergus was the guard on duty the night Seoc slipped into
Ithir,
and I think that not only did Fergus know about it, he helped, knowing that Seoc would provide the perfect distraction while Fergus went looking for the door.
It wouldn’t be hard for a guard to slip through fairly regularly on his shifts without anyone suspecting.
He had access, and no one would question the loyalty of the Queen’s guardsmen.”

“The perfect cover.”
Dmitri scowled, and Luc just hoped it was at the idea of Fergus’s betrayal, and not the fact that Reggie was currently pressed up against his chest while she passed the roll of adhesive tape behind his back.

“Exactly,” he continued, figuring distracting the vampire with his theories couldn’t hurt.
“It probably wasn’t even all that tough.
All he had to do was nose around while Seoc provided a red herring; he could even use his place on the Guard to keep up-to-date on how close we were to finding Seoc.
And yesterday, we gave him everything he needed to find the door.”
His mouth twisted in disgust.
“We practically handed the location to right to him.”

Reggie ripped off the last bit of tape and pressed it against his skin before stepping back and handing him a clean T-shirt.
“True, but he doesn’t know any more than we do.
We’ll get to him before anything happens.”

Graham nodded and handed Luc the duffel bag he’d left at Vircolac.
They must have brought it with them when they came looking for him.
“Regina is right.
We know where he went, and we know what he’s planning.
He’s an idiot if he thinks we won’t find him and stop him.”

“True,” Luc growled.
“He is an idiot, but he’s the idiot who has my heartmate.”

Corinne cursed as she stumbled on another root.
The sun had well and truly set, making the going over the rocky, uphill terrain slow and treacherous.
She’d already skinned both her knees and lost the rest of her aspirin in one big pile a few stumbles ago.
Still, maybe there was enough of a trail for Luc to find her.

She never doubted for a minute that he was on his way.
She just hoped he managed to get to her before Fergus succeeded in opening the Faerie door.
She was still struggling to get accustomed to the fact that she was sleeping with a Fae; she definitely didn’t want to see what would come traipsing through into
Ithir
if Fergus got his way.

“You know, I don’t want to make you play out the villain cliché,” she said as she scrambled over a fallen tree trunk, “’cause mainly I just want you to drop dead, but I’m having trouble with the why of this whole scenario.
Why the hell would you want to open the door?
You’ve got as much to lose as any Fae if humans start pouring into Faerie, right?”

“Humans are so simple-minded,” he scoffed.
“I couldn’t care less if Faerie teems with your detestable little species, so long as that faithless bitch is dethroned and I rise in her place.”

Corinne paused to look back at him.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed.
“You’re not just an asshole, you’re a megalomaniacal lunatic, too.
Oh, man, this so sucks.”

He drew back his hand and hit her so casually, she never saw it coming.
One minute he was looking at her with his characteristic sneer, the next she was picking herself up out of the dirt, wiping the trickle of blood away from her mouth.
“Watch what you say, human.
I still have the option of killing you slowly if you piss me off.”

“Is there really any way I can
not
piss you off?”

He paused for a moment.
“No, I don’t think so.”

She wiped her bloody fingers on her shorts and watched him consult his glow-rock.
“How much farther?”

He ignored her.

“I can change that to
Are we there yet?
but I was trying to be nice.”

“We’re nearly on top of it.”
He didn’t even bother to look at her.
“Now shut up and keep moving.”

She moved, but she also plotted.
They were making too much noise for her to hear if anyone was following them yet.
Well, to be honest, she was making too much noise.
Fergus seemed to move silently, though how anyone could walk over dead leaves and twigs and loose rocks without making a sound was beyond her, even if he wasn’t human.
Since she couldn’t tell if Luc had caught up to them, she tried to slow him down.

“Okay, fine,” she huffed, “I get the power goal.
That’s understandable, but if you’re the one who’s been causing all this trouble, where has Seoc really gone?
Was he the one who sent Hibbish to limbo and killed the rabbi, or was that you?”

He laughed coldly.
“The only one in limbo is Seoc himself.
All the humans are dead.
I didn’t want them telling the story of two Fae wandering through their city.
Having spotted Seoc was a convenient cover, but spotting me was too much to let go.”
His mouth twisted in a sneer.
“No one was supposed to find the rabbi, but I didn’t have time to dispose of him like the others.
He cried out when I struck him, and I could hear someone running toward the sound.
I had to leave him out in the open.
It was my one mistake.”

Corinne felt her stomach turn at the callous way he related the news, as if their deaths meant nothing to him.
Clearly they did mean nothing.

“Oh, I think you’ve made more than one,” she growled, “but that’s the one I’ll see you pay for, you miserable little prick.”

“They were human and, therefore, expendable.”

“Who isn’t expendable in your fucked-up universe?”

His grin flashed, unrepentant and soulless.
“Just me.
I’ll even see Mab dead eventually.
After I’m done with her.”

The tone he used to speak of the Queen dripped with bile and a sick kind of desire.
It made Corinne’s stomach heave, but the longer she kept him talking, the longer she gave Luc to find them.

“What, you think you’re going to screw the Queen of the Faeries?”
she scoffed, deliberately taunting him.
“I doubt she gets off on insanity
or
disloyalty.
I imagine she’d rather spread her legs for that
barghest
you sent after us.”

“An impulse, one that almost worked out better than I had anticipated.
But it wouldn’t be the first time the Queen spread whatever I asked her to.
I’ve had that bitch in ways you can’t even imagine.
She took me as her favorite more than a century ago, and she made promises to me that I’m going to see she fulfills.”

He must have seen the shock on her face, because he chuckled deeply.
“Oh, I’m sure she made quite an impression on you earlier, human.
Wearing her crown and her all-knowing, all-loving expression.
She likes to make people fear her almost as much as she likes to make people love her.
It’s just too bad she’s not capable of returning the emotion.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, shaking her head and staring at him in disbelief.
“You’re about to destroy all of Faerie because you’re pissed off that the woman you were seeing dumped your psycho ass.
And you have the nerve to look down on humans as if we’re less evolved!”

He struck her again and this time she saw stars for a minute before the world righted itself.
She knew she was right, though, and she wondered what Luc would say when he learned he’d been betrayed by his friend over a bruised ego.

“I’ve heard enough from you,” he snarled.
“From now on, you can keep your mouth shut.
We’re so close, I could probably kill you and still get the door open before anyone found us, so don’t push me.”

Fergus grabbed her by the arm and shoved her forward, ignoring her pained hiss.
When she stumbled yet again, he hauled her to her feet and pushed her faster.
He had her nearly running up to the crest of the hill, struggling frantically to keep her balance.
Her breath came in shallow pants by the time he dragged her to a halt and shoved her down against the base of a tree trunk.