chapter 6
Powerful hands gripped her shoulders, digging into muscle as they shook her violently.
“Stupid woman. Wake up!”
Frenzy’s voice was rough and full of gravel. Moaning, she shook her head from side to side, groaning from the fiery ache spreading like acid through her chest.
The knife was ripped from her and she screamed, bending over double as the wound throbbed unmercifully.
“What the hell were you thinking?” He slapped her face, not as hard as he could have—more like he was trying to help her come to.
Swatting his hand off, she sat up and then glared at him, grabbing hold of her still-aching chest. “Why didn’t I die? I stabbed myself through the heart. I should have died.”
“You weren’t a watcher, were you?” Silver eyes full of brimstone cut through her.
Rolling her lips inside her mouth, she refused to speak.
“Because if you were, you’d know stabbing a vampire through the heart only immobilizes them. It doesn’t kill. To kill you need to rip the heart out and destroy it. Or give it death’s kiss,” he hissed.
Looking down at the red, angry wound in her chest, she watched, amazed, as right before her eyes the flesh and muscle began to knit itself back together. “I…I…” Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head. “I was a watcher. I just wasn’t in the field.”
“Damn you, woman,” he growled, and the low timbre of it shivered down her spine, made her hot and achy in strange places. What was wrong with her? Why was she even thinking about how nice his voice sounded? The reaper looked like he wanted to strangle her himself. And why, because she’d tried killing herself?
Slapping his hand away, she scooted back on her heels. “Let me die. Kill me yourself. I don’t care. But kill me. Please.”
She cursed the fact that her voice broke just then.
“Why?” His face contorted into a frightful mask, giving his regal beauty a hard devilish bend, making her pulse race and her mouth dry. “Because you lied. Because it’s not the humans coming out to find you. It’s the drochturach. Isn’t it? That’s why you’re so desperate to off yourself.”
“No.” She shook her head, tasting the adrenaline on the back of her tongue. “No.”
“Yes,” he spit out.
She shook her head harder.
His smile was cruel, showing off the canines of his teeth, the sharp pointed edges that made him look so much like the vampire he was not.
“I won’t let you die. Want to know why, little baby vamppie?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve suddenly realized just how precious you really are.” Standing to his feet, he glowered down at her. “And you want to know something else? You’re not a vampire, not really. You’re a vampire/shifter hybrid. You’re just about impossible to kill.”
Something hot and wet shaded the corners of her eyes, making her vision blurry. “No. You’re lying!”
He laughed. “Am I?”
What did that even mean? The possibilities rolled through her mind in fast forward. She’d never heard of a mixed breed, let alone what he claimed she was. “I…I…”
“Get up and get yourself together. You and I are taking a little trip.”
“Where?”
Spinning on his heels, he walked back to the monk still standing in the corner, and that’s when her tears fell. She knew she was in trouble and there was no way out of this.
Their heads were bent and they were whispering furiously back and forth to each other. Her hearing was ten times what it’d been when she’d been alive, so she could hear the gentle scraping of claws on stone as rats and other vermin scampered through cave tunnels. The constant drip of water echoed like thunder all around her. It should have been easy to make out what they were saying so she could decipher the meaning behind the curious looks they kept passing her way. But they were supernatural beings themselves and likely knew how to keep their thoughts hidden.
A sick sort of feeling began to gnaw its way through her belly, twisting her up in knots. The monk was a shifter. It hadn’t escaped her notice that while he looked nothing like the typical werewolves she’d seen in movies, he definitely didn’t look human either. The film over his eyes reminded her of the dull sheen a fish got after sitting on ice for three days. His skin was so bluish gray that if it weren’t for the fact that he was actually talking, he’d pass for a corpse. Not to mention the fact that the tip of his nose looked as if it’d been bitten off. He was missing a large portion of one ear and he was exceedingly careful with how he handled things. He moved slowly, methodically, as if making certain he didn’t trip or tumble over something.
Lone wolves didn’t heal well. She knew that much, and yet she had. Maybe they were lying; maybe she wasn’t really a shifter. Because the thought of being a vampire was bad enough, but being a shifter on top of it—it made her want to vomit.
But the thought that she hadn’t died, she hadn’t even gone immobile from the knife wound bothered her. Because a blow to the heart for a vampire meant they were as good as dead. It completely paralyzed them, gave their killers enough time to regroup and shove the stake all the way through. Aside from the fact that the stabbing had hurt like hell, she hadn’t gone catatonic.
“Let’s go.” Frenzy was back in her face, mercurial eyes glaring hard at her.
Setting her jaw, she wrapped her arms around her legs. Yanking her by the hand, he forced her to her feet. “Where are you taking me?” she asked, trying in vain to tug out of his grasp.
“You’re still not telling me everything, and if I’m going to guard you, I have to know it all. There is only one place to learn it.”
Fear clamped ahold of her soul. Mila had pretty much fibbed and blustered her way through his interrogation. Truth was, she’d been a part of HPA only peripherally. They’d contacted her when her services were needed, but up until the point of the Candyman, she hadn’t been around the task force much. All the knowledge she’d gained of the creatures hadn’t come from studying up on them through fieldwork. It’d been passed down from one generation of O’Fallens to another, down the family tree.
Frenzy’s barrage of questions had distracted and rattled her enough that she’d finally blurted out the truth of the shadow. The mere fact that he’d just called it drochturach meant either he or George had figured out what it really was. And if he knew that, then he also knew there was only one place in the world he’d find the rest of the answers he needed.
Faerie.
“If you’re thinking about taking me to your home, no!” She held up her hands, taking slow steps back. “I canna go there.”
Looking at her like she was a curiosity he couldn’t make sense of, Frenzy’s lips thinned. “And why not?”
“I’m an O’Fallen.”
His brows formed a question mark. “I already know that.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” She sighed. “My bloodline is ambrosia to a fae. One whiff of me and they’ll try to enslave me, make me their own. The power inside me, it’s potent, especially on fae soil, and they’ll know that.”
He didn’t move. She looked at George, hoping that maybe he could back her up on this. “Tell him, monk. It’s true. You know it is.”
“George?” Frenzy didn’t take his eyes off her, the look so pointedly heated that it was all she could do to remember to take a breath.
“It’s true,” the priest said, English accent much more pronounced. “The girl cannot go. She steps a foot on fae soil and she’ll never leave.”
“And I should let them keep her,” Frenzy growled.
“No.” Her nostrils flared. Staying in faerie was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to her. Faerie wasn’t what the tales made it out to seem.
As beautiful as the light court was, the night court was equally as terrifying. She could not know who would find her first, and honestly neither option appealed. Because they would both want what she had. That was why the shadow was after her. The shadow had been after her line for centuries. The creature was obsessed, mad with lust for a taste of her power.
Ironic as it was, her best chance of survival (at least for the time being, until she could convince Frenzy to figure out some way to take her life) was to stay with him. Because though he was fae, he was also death. In his own way he had the gift of sight and did not covet hers. Which meant he was safe. Terrible option though it was, it was the only one available.
“George, you watch her.” Frenzy patted the wolf on the back, then, staring down his nose at Mila, said, “Don’t let her do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
He swiped his bony hand through the air, opening up a fabric in time before them. Mila’s jaw dropped. She’d always heard of their ability to bend time and space to their will, but the tear in time was almost too beautiful for words: a spiraling helix of shimmering blue and dusted silver that grew from a pinprick to a large gaping veil. Standing there before the rift, his flame-red hair billowing behind him, he appeared frightening and powerful, and again she wondered why her dreams had revealed him to her.
Visions were never a certain thing; there were so many variables, so many different choices to be made to decide an exact and true path. But he’d been in her dreams for so long, what was Frenzy to her? Could he actually save her? Was it possible that death could bring hope?
From one blink to the next, he was gone. Leaving her alone with George.
“Monk?” she said softly.
Turning toward her, he nodded. “Hmm?”
“You have to help me die.”
* * *
Choppy waves and salty air smacked Frenzy in the face the moment he stepped onto Alcatraz Island. Covering himself in glamour to remain hidden from the milling tourists, he ran toward the ancient tree, the nearest entrance to his sithen, imbued with enough faerie magic to act as a portal between earth and his home.
Chanting the blessing beneath his breath, he stood and waited for the tree to open her doorway. The ancient oak shuddered, groaning loudly as a knot on the trunk transformed from mere wood to a man-sized hole. Mortals could not see what happened; the tree was enchanted to only appear as a tree to those not of faerie blood. The gaping darkness beckoned. The instant he stepped inside, the entrance sealed shut. A heartbeat later he was back in faerie and breathing deeply, letting the natural beauty and serenity of his lands ease the tension from his shoulders.
Frothy sea foam splashed his face. A cool hint of frost licked at his nose. Even in faerie it was close to winter. Jack’s kiss lay heavy on the land. Hawthorns and berries spun their scent through the rolling winds that rang with the clear, angelic choir of sylphs flying through the spun-cotton clouds.
Above him a crimson-eyed crow perched on a dead branch watched his every move. The queen knew he was back. Badb and Nemain were her eyes and ears throughout all of faerie.
“Badb, tell The Morrigan that I have arrived and wish an audience.”
With a loud caw, the enormous crow flew toward the spiraling black steeple of the castle off in the distance. After a millennium of living at the queen’s palace, he knew how much she hated surprises. And after what Cian had done, following protocol seemed like the wise thing to do.
The skies, which had been white when he’d first stepped through, now began to gather, turning gray and black around the edges. Lightning struck patches of earth around him.
This was new. Clearly The Morrigan wasn’t the only one aware of his coming, but so was the earth god, Dagda—The Morrigan’s consort. Normally her male counterpart was known for being calm, or at least calmer than the queen herself, but clearly his mood indicated that was not the case today.
The castle was bustling when he entered. No one seemed uptight; in fact the mood was electric and rowdy. There was laughter and revelry, and maidens and warriors mingled, doing what lovers do.
Ignoring them all, Frenzy headed deeper into the labyrinth of the keep. Into the heart of it, where the consort and queen lived. The door to their chamber opened the moment he came to within a foot of it.
The queen was dressed in shadow, swathed in it. It veiled her body in a smoky, ephemeral draping from her neck to her toes. Her skin was polished ivory, gleaming with shades of mother-of-pearl. The black strands of her hair curled enticingly around her heart-shaped face, giving her a more youthful appearance than typical. She was the most beautiful woman in all the world. Deep red eyes stared at him intensely. Whenever the queen used her crows to “watch,” her eyes would match theirs, and right now they had the same cold, dead stare of her prized birds. Her fury was palpable; it was a stench in his nostrils.
She did not move, or even breathe. She sat still as a pillar of marble, just staring at him from her throne of crystal clear glass. Dagda sat beside her. His burnished skin was a stark difference from the queen’s, and brown hair came to rest just above the collar of his golden robe. Rich sable eyes sparkled with light, but it was a ruse Frenzy knew well—because the king controlled the elements, and outside the castle, it raged.
“Welcome, Frenzy.” The queen’s voice was cultured, full, and throaty, which made him shiver with an uncomfortable desire to either possess, or be possessed by her. But it was always thus with the queen, she commanded desire, reverence, and respect, even while you cursed her to a bloody and vile death.
Inclining his head, he waited for one or the other to speak first.
He didn’t have long to wait.
“So tell me, where is the girl?” The Morrigan lifted a fine black brow as her ruby lips turned into a slight sneer.
“She is on Earth.”
“We see that,” Dagda said so softly Frenzy had to strain to hear. “Why?”
Schooling his features to remain impassive, Frenzy spread his hands. “She is of the O’Fallen line and therefore cannot safely cross into our lands.”
The moment he said it, he understood why the queen and her consort were giving him the look that said they wanted his blood.
Mila hadn’t lied, and how he’d not figured it out sooner was beyond him. Her powers must be strong indeed for the queen and king to notice. It wasn’t mere curiosity making them ask this question; their lust at the thought of collecting a seer was a tangible presence. It snaked through the air like the sparks of hot metal beating metal.
Hissing, The Morrigan stood. “You’re no fool, Frenzy. Never have been. We want the girl.”
Suddenly the floor beneath them grumbled, rolling like a shifty tide. There was a bright snap of intense white light, and when it cleared, Lise stood a little to the left of him. Again she’d come in her crone guise, skin sagging and liver-spotted, hair a snowy white and gathered high up on her head. But there was a regality about her that even the great Morrigan could not compete with.
“She is not yours to take, queen of the fae.” The sound of her voice was like cracking thunder.
The queen shuddered, then righted her chin and gazed down haughtily. “Why put something so precious in the hands of death? Give her over to me. I shall protect her, guard her. Keep her safe.”
Lise laughed, the sound harsh and grating. “Ha! Do you truly think I’d ever fall for your lies?”
Nostrils flaring, it was the only outward sign that the queen was angered by the Ancient One. Her smile was bright and benevolent and so fake Frenzy almost choked on his tongue.
The band of a hurricane had nothing on the queen’s fury. It brushed against him like cold, terrible barbs, made him cringe with the need to take a step back. Dagda remained immobile, neither coming to his queen’s defense nor speaking up on the side of Lise.
All knew of the deal the consort had struck with Cian many months ago. Often the queen and her consort did battle on opposite sides. It was no secret of the queen’s hatred of Lise, or that Dagda had actively thwarted The Morrigan’s plans for the first grim reaper in fae recorded history to abandon his post so that he could take up with his witchy lover.
“If you’ve given her over to Frenzy’s hands, then she must have been captured and killed. Correct?” The Morrigan’s lips twitched.
“That is none of your concern.” Lise’s voice dripped honey, but beneath that honey was steel. The Ancient One would not cower, not even to the queen of air and darkness.
Licking her lips, the queen sat once more, crossing her legs and shrugging. “True enough, old one. No difference to me whatsoever.”
As she narrowed her eyes, the air in the room suddenly felt thicker, cloyingly so. Like trying to take in oxygen through water, making it hard to breathe.
“You do not go after the girl. Or I shall come after you.”
Snorting, The Morrigan turned her eyes up to the ceiling. “If she steps foot in faerie, she is mine. ’Tis the only sure way to keep her safeguarded.”
The Morrigan rarely let her brogue show, not because, like Mila, she felt she had anything to hide, but more because she found the burr repugnant and not befitting a queen of her stature. That she was doing so told Frenzy she wanted Mila badly. Very badly indeed.
“You told me to guard her?” Frenzy turned toward Lise, who nodded and smiled.
“Aye, I did. You must keep her safe.”
“From what? The shadow?”
A dreamy sort of expression crossed the Ancient One’s face. “From herself. She is her own worst enemy.”
“And yet you trust a grim reaper with the task?” The Morrigan’s laughter shivered through the air like the ringing of demonic bells. “Ironic.”
Nose crinkling, Lise deigned not to answer the obvious goading by the queen.
“What can you tell me of the shadow? Of her enemies?” he asked softly.
The room became suddenly, unnaturally quiet. As if both consort and queen waited on bated breath to hear Lise’s response.
Her mouth twisted. “I told you not to come here. Did I not, death?”
His jaw flexed. Why was she saying this? He had a responsibility to his queen, to her consort. He wasn’t Cian and would never be. He had no intention of flying solo and pissing off his entire race just to win the hand of one previously mortal woman. He’d done that before, and it’d nearly cost him everything. He’d learned one simple truth from that time. It hadn’t been worth it then, and it wasn’t worth it now.
“Because she is my queen. It is my duty.” He bit out the words, holding his head high. Daring her to deny it.
The Morrigan’s lips twitched with obvious satisfaction.
“Be careful to whom you show such blind fealty.” Lise’s words were sharp and quick.
The queen exhaled an angry breath. “He does still belong to me. I don’t care what you did with Cian. Frenzy is loyal and always shall be. Are you not, my dear reaper?”
A blur of shadow passed in front of his face and then the queen was there, standing before him. Gazing down at him with her star-filled, jewel-like eyes. Her scent of clover and spring filled his head, his heart.
“Aye, my queen.”
Snorting, Lise crossed her arms. “Pathetic. Me? I think not, Queenie. Do ye always enthrall those who surround you? I wonder what you’d do if any one of them ever saw you for what you really were? Oh, wait.” She smiled sweetly. “One did, did he not? And as I recall you very nearly had him eviscerated.”
“Be gone from my presence, hag.” Flicking long, daggerlike claws in the Ancient One’s direction, The Morrigan excused her.
“I think I made my position quite clear with you before, Queen,” Lise bit out. “You are not to trifle with what is mine. And death, in all its incarnations, belongs to me.”
Haughty disdain flashed across the queen’s face.
But Lise obviously chose to ignore it. Turning toward Frenzy, she lifted her brows and, scanning the memory of the conversation, he tried to answer the last question she’d asked. “You did tell me not to come. I told you I must.”
A happy sound came from their left.
“I cannot think with her in the room.” Holding her palm out in the direction of the thrones, Lise froze time. Just as she had the first time they’d met.
Frenzy chuckled, eyeing the frozen form of his queen. “She will not be happy with you.”
“I am not happy with you.” Her words were loud and shrill. “There are reasons why I told you to stay away from the queen. Reasons that involve that woman. You must guard her at all cost.”
“But you told me nothing—”
“I told you enough!” The great room boomed with the rumble of thunder. “You are an immortal. An old one. Could you not figure it out?”
“What?” he snarled, beginning to become vexed by her attitude.
“The queen and consort both want her. All of faerie will want her. The only one immune to the compulsion to obtain her is death. In the wrong hands, she is a weapon of mass destruction. To know the future. To see it, to wield it like a blade.” She curled her fingers inward. “’Tis a power many would kill to possess.”
Scratching the corner of his jaw, he eyed the queen. “But surely—”
“I know what you’re going to say.” Lise held up a hand to stay his words. “Neither queen nor consort are omniscient. They are old and very wise, but they cannot read the futures. They cannot know each conceivable outcome to every situation. Mila must be protected, for the good of all.”
“So you pawn her off on me?”
Her smile was knowing. “Do you want me to take her to another? To Astrid, or Genesis, perhaps?”
Thinking of the flaxen-haired fae with eyes of pure gold made his gut hot and tight. There was no love lost between Frenzy and Genesis; the two of them were now nearly mortal enemies.
“You would give her to him? To that psychotic—”
Her lips twitched. “Of course not, that’s why I sent you to her first. But if you choose not to accept the task, then I will have to find her another guardian. She must have a protector.” Tilting her head forward, she lifted a brow.
Laughing, though the sound was wholly without humor, he shook his head. “Cian would have been perfect for this job.”
Lise’s thin, pink lips stretched. “Aye. That he would have. Though I think he’s too attached to his mate to do this task properly.”
Scrubbing a hand across his hair, Frenzy realized there was only one possible outcome for him to make. He could toss her off to Genesis, or maybe even Astrid, but not in good conscience. Genesis was a well-known misogynist and would just as likely rape her as he would kill her once she bored him. Astrid was only interested in coin, and the fact that Mila was a woman wouldn’t sit well with the raven-haired beauty, one of a rare few female grim reapers.
There were other reapers, of course, but Lise was obviously making the point none so well suited as him. Which smacked of irony if he was the best choice.
“You like her. I can tell.” She said it softly, and because she didn’t seem to be mocking him, he didn’t bother to deny it.
“I’ve not been forced to interact with a human for centuries. I’ve no idea how to do this.”
“Then it’s fortunate for you that she’s no longer mortal. She’s a shampire.”
He snorted.
“Show her how to survive in our turbulent world, make her understand the severity of her plight.”
Rolling his eyes, Frenzy could already picture this and didn’t like what he was seeing. Lise wasn’t saying it, but he knew she was suggesting he become a glorified babysitter. The thought irked. He was death, master of life. Being with Mila served no purpose.
She sighed. “I hear the thoughts in your head. Deny it to yourself all you want, Frenzy, but we both know you were considering hanging up your sickle after harvesting her soul. You no longer wished to be a reaper. I’m offering you a chance out.”
Shaking his head, he said, “The queen would have—”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed, “you think the queen would have rolled out the red carpet to you? Let you become her manservant?” Her blue eyes lit with raw anger. “No. We both know that’s not what would have happened. She would have locked you away until you faded into the ether. You know it.”
He wanted to deny it. Deny her. Tell her she didn’t have a clue of what she said. But he couldn’t, because the fact was, The Morrigan would have done that and more. She would have butchered him the way she had Cian. That’s what he’d been prepared for. He’d known telling the queen he no longer wished to serve in death’s capacity would have ended badly for him.
But to have to guard and protect a woman for eternity. Goddess, the thought was as a stench in his nostrils. A loner by nature, he’d never wanted a mate. There’d been a time, centuries ago, where he’d envisioned the impossible. But with Adrianna’s death had gone the last shreds of his humanity. That was if a fae could even be accused of being humane.
Still, he could not deny Mila intrigued him and even occasionally made him laugh—a feat unto itself.
“Fine.” He shuddered. “I’ll do it. I’ll guard her. But you have to tell me more about this shadow.”
“As I told you before, Frenzy, I cannot tell you too much.”
“Why?” he snapped.
“Because the telling can alter so many things. As Mila will tell you, no future is set in stone. There are so many different strings on the loom, so many possibilities. To tell you too much alters every possible outcome I’ve already seen.”
Talking to Lise made him realize something. The Ancient One was also a seer. Which meant she knew of every possible outcome. But that wasn’t what he wondered about.
“Did Mila know I was coming?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know how this will end?”
“No.” She laughed. “I’ve purposefully kept her in the dark about most of it.”
Rubbing a hand across his whiskered jaw, he asked, “But if she’s a seer, how can you change what she sees?”
Hearing this gave him a whole new level of healthy respect for the frail-looking woman standing before him.
“I may look like this. But I am so much more than I seem, death. Never forget it. And I’m not giving away trade secrets.”
Pulse pounding, Frenzy wondered for a brief, crazy moment if Lise wasn’t the only one of her kind. An ancient legend sprang to mind, one spoken of in many languages in many parts of the world. Of a group of immortals known as the fates, but the story at its core was of a group of women who encompassed the whole of the world—not just Earth, but infinity—within the palms of their hands.
How with one snip of a scissor they could snap the string off the loom of time and place. Of course, he’d always thought of it as myth.
Because in a world full of others, to think that the gods and goddesses might not only exist, but take an active role in one’s life, was an unwelcomed thought.
“So even she knows nothing of her future?”
“No.”
“Then how do we know we’re getting it right?”
Her smile was serene. “You just will. Now.” She looked over her shoulder. “If I’ve answered your questions sufficiently, it is time to get back to her.”
“Why can’t she simply die? Then we wouldn’t have to worry about others trying to find her and enslave her.”
“Because every life is precious, even a mere mortal’s. Oh, and Frenzy…”
“Yes?”
“Do not come to The Morrigan again until it is time.” She smiled sweetly.
When the last word was spoken, the translucent bubble they’d been encapsulated in ruptured. But instead of him turning toward a stunned Morrigan and Dagda, he found he’d been transported back to George’s cave.
The sight that greeted him should have been one he’d expected, but he hadn’t.