City of Fae

All the doors would be blocked. While we’d been searching for her inside, she’d been outside, closing her trap around us. The murmur from the crowd grew more urgent as the plaza filled with people. Before long, once they realized they couldn’t escape, they’d panic.

Andrews watched the crowd, the same thoughts clearly running through his head. He apprehended a few of the staff and sent them to check all the exits.

“I have to warn Reign.”

“Go.” He turned, and then seemed to hesitate, as though wanting to say something, but failing to find the words. “Be careful.”

“Not likely.” I grinned.

Fighting my way through the crowd, Andrews’s voice of calm authority rose up above the noise of the crowd. “I’m a police officer. There’s a team outside working to open the doors. Stay calm. There’s no need to panic. We’ll have the doors open soon …”

On my way to the back stage area, I saw exactly what I’d feared. Crowds swelling around the exits. Not yet panicking. They would soon, and if the doors weren’t opened, people would die. I had to warn Reign. If the concert ended now, the crowd would have nowhere to go. He had to keep them inside, and distracted, at least until the cops got the doors open.





***





“I need to speak to him.”

The stagehand blocked my path. “You can’t go out there, you can see he’s in the middle of a performance.”

“This is urgent.”

“No, miss. I can’t allow you. I’ll call security—”

I peeled back my coat and produce a dagger. “Call them if you want, I’m going on.” She balked and backed away.

Stepping out of the shadows into the dazzling lights wasn’t as easy as I thought it’d be. I hesitated, and wasted time tucking the dagger back where it belonged. Onstage, the band gave it their all. A wash of fantastic light and booming sound roused my senses and had my borrowed heart racing. I tried to get Reign’s attention, but he was deep in the zone, eyes sparkling, body alive, lost to the music. Another time, I could have watched him perform all night.

A spider scurried across the floor in front of me. Just one, the size of my hand, and not at all concerned by the onslaught of light and sound. I stepped forward, took a deep breath, and in the next steps I was onstage, bathed in light and sound. Throat dry, body trembling, I half jogged forward. The drummer scowled in my direction.

“Reign!” He couldn’t hear me. The music pounded. A waterfall of light slid over us. “She’s here! On the roof!” The band played on, their combined music devouring my shouts.

Reign missed a beat. The band played on, but I saw the drummer glance up at Reign, mouthing “Your cue.” Reign stood motionless, microphone in front of him, lips parted, but he stared out above the arena as though the concert, the crowd, the band, were all forgotten.

“Reign … ?”

He lifted his head, and focused high above the crowd, among the tangled network of lighting gantries and ventilation ducts. I squinted into the lights, desperately trying to make out what had him spooked. The music faded; the cohesive band crumbling apart, and a murmur rose from the twenty thousand strong crowd, the sound like distant waves crashing on a beach. I willed Reign to speak, to say or do anything, and inched forward. “Reign.”

He blinked, and turned his head. His beautiful eyes flooded with crimson. The hound wanted out, and I knew why.

The queen’s brittle laughter rained down from above. The acoustics of the bowl-shaped arena cast her terrible tinkling sound around and over the crowd. Fear snatched a gasp from my lips. There, above, I saw her hooked upside down in the lighting scaffold. Every inch of her glistening black body sparkled beneath the play of lighting. She rocked, back and forth, her claw tipped back legs working at the silken threads of the web she’d cast behind her. She observed those below her with a wicked slice of a smile.

“My time has come, and I shall feed.”





Chapter Twenty-nine


“The final act …” Reign announced, his voice as smooth and sharp as crystal as it rang out across the arena. He smiled, but fear tightened his lips. And those eyes … Concertgoers pushed against the barriers would see how his eyes had changed. Maybe they thought it was an act. Reign played on that; it was the only way to keep the crowd calm.

He glanced back at the band and gave them a nod. Music sparked to life. The drums beat and Reign spun his spell. Light, sound, sparks, exploded over the stage. I backed up, just out of sight at the stage edges, but close enough to see the queen observing Reign and Touched bring the night alive with sound.

“Alina, my sweet thing …” Her voice scratched inside my head, as though clawing at my skull to escape. Flinching, I stumbled back and bumped into a wall. “It is not too late to prove your worth. You are capable. We are the same, you and I. You feel my life in your veins. My heart beats in you. You have no heart of your own, no life. These are not your people, your family. Only I understand you.”