A Fae in Fort Worth (7 page)

“If there is no nest here in the city, how come there were so many vampires together in one place last night?” I asked.

Brokk grinned and the action exposed his stubby, sharp-looking teeth. “That is what we wish to discuss with you. We have a problem we think you will be able to help us with and we believe the two matters to be related.”

That sparked my interest. I glanced at Mitch before returning my attention to the dwarf, but his expression was still impassive. “We’re listening.”

“I don’t know if you are aware,” Brokk continued. “But recently our queen banished her son, Prince Avery, from the Seelie Court.”

When Mitch stayed silent I knew it was time to test out my acting skills. I feigned surprise. “Really? Why would she banish her own son?”

Brokk’s expression turned to one of distaste. “Avery is a troublemaker. I don’t know what he did to displease the queen on this occasion and I don’t care. We don’t want him here in the sanctuary and we would like you get rid of him for us.”

“Get rid of him?” I gawped at Brokk. “Surely you don’t mean…”

Durin raised his hand to get my attention. “We’re not asking you to kill the prince. We only want him out of the sanctuary. We’ve asked him to go, several times, but he refuses to even consider leaving. Either you convince the queen to accept him back into the Seelie Court or you convince Avery to leave this place for good. Do this for us,” he said, turning his gaze on Mitch, “and I will consider your debt to be repaid.”

“What is the connection between Avery and the increased number of vampires in the city?” Mitch asked.

Durin turned to Brokk and only answered the question after the Fae elder had nodded imperceptibly. “When Avery was banished from the Seelie Court, he brought something with him, a book. A very important book.”

“A book,” I repeated, keeping my expression to one of mild curiosity. “I don’t see the connection.”

“The book is a grimoire,” Brokk explained. “It contains some very dark magic. Vampires, as I’m sure you are aware, are evil, soulless creatures. They are attracted to the dark magic which the book contains. I believe they all sense that magic and are congregating in the city, drawn to its power. For as long as Avery and the book remain here, I am sure we will see an increase in, shall we say, undesirables? It is one of the reasons that we want Avery removed.”

I couldn’t believe our luck. Essentially, the Fae had an almost identical agenda to ours. They wanted the grimoire out of their city. That was certainly something we could help them with, but I doubted the task would be as easy as it appeared. Not only did we have to talk Avery into giving us the book, but we had to convince him to leave the sanctuary. Just how we were going to do that when the Fae themselves couldn’t get Avery to leave was yet to be determined.

Chapter Five

After our meeting ended, Durin opened another portal so that Mitch and I could get out of the sanctuary quickly. We got on the Harley, which Mitch had parked near the entrance after retrieving our belongings the night before, and rode to a small motel nearby. We hardly spoke to each other as we checked in and made our way to our rooms. It was uncomfortable and disconcerting. Mitch was like a different person to the one I’d come to know. He let himself into his room and closed the door without looking at me or uttering a single word.

Overnight, Mitch had gone from flirting excessively to barely being able to meet my gaze. He was a mystery. We’d talked a fair bit during our pit stops on the ride up to Fort Worth, but I didn’t know much more about him than I had before we’d met. I hadn’t asked him why he didn’t hunt anymore and he hadn’t volunteered the information. As I took a long, hot shower, I pondered the likely scenarios, but didn’t come up with anything useful. The only thing I was certain about was that the sanctuary ‘desert’ had spooked Mitch. The rainforest illusion had been difficult for me, but I figured I’d handled it better than Mitch because I’d let go of the anger which had consumed me after my parents’ deaths a long time ago. It was obvious that something bad had happened to Mitch in his past, something which still haunted him. I was certain that the only way to find out what made him tick was to find out what that something was.

After I’d put on clean clothes—another denim mini-skirt, a baby-pink T-shirt and my cowboy boots—I towel-dried my hair, grabbed my cell phone, which I’d left on charge, and stuffed it into the pocket of my skirt. I’d called Roland when I arrived in the motel room to give him a status update, but it had gone straight to voicemail so I’d left him a message. He’d yet to call me back. I picked up the key to the room then went in search of Mitch.

I knew logically that whatever Mitch was holding onto was none of my business, but we had to work together. That meant my life could very well be in his hands, just as it had been the night before. I trusted Mitch, but I needed to know that he was able to make rational decisions at all times. If whatever was bothering him prevented him from doing his job properly then that could affect me too.

I paused outside Mitch’s door and pulled a deep breath into my lungs before knocking. When the door opened, I sucked in another breath—this one not so much to calm my nerves, but to control my errant libido.

Mitch stood in the doorway wearing nothing but a crooked smile and a white towel wrapped low on his hips. The tattoo I’d seen on his arm was now on full display and it was by no means the only tattoo on his body. An array of beautiful designs covered his arms and chest. They were all black, mostly tribal markings, but they were interspersed with the most amazing pieces of artwork I’d ever seen. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. A set of dragon wings covered most of his chest, the body of which sat on his sternum and the tail wound down over his sculpted abs, ending on his hip. When Mitch cleared his throat, I remembered myself and looked up at his face. He was still grinning, but now he had one eyebrow cocked.

“Miss me already, huh?”

I’d been all set for silence. I’d even prepared myself for moodiness. What I hadn’t expected to be greeted by was the old Mitch—the smart-mouthed, wisecracking, flirtatious Mitch who annoyed the hell out of me, but whom I’d actually started to like. It threw me.

“We need to talk,” I informed him, ignoring the quip.

Mitch pushed the door wider, but he only stepped aside a fraction of an inch so that when I entered the room, our bodies brushed together. The heat which radiated from his bare chest hit me like a freight train. I forced it out of my mind and strode inside. Mitch closed the door then crossed to the bed. He stacked a couple of pillows against the headboard before sitting down and leaning his body back against them, the towel barely covering his modesty.

He looked up and his lips quirked. “Care to join me?”

“Mitch, I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours, but I didn’t come here for this,” I said, motioning to the bed.

“Take a load off, babe,” he shot back. “You wanna talk, we’ll talk. No sense in you being uncomfortable when we do it.”

I counted to ten.

Then I took a load off.

“We need to discuss the plan for tonight,” I informed him. That might not have been what I wanted to talk about most, but if I just stormed in there and started asking him personal questions, it wouldn’t get me anywhere. During our meeting with Durin and Brokk, they’d told us where Avery spent most of his nights—a bar which was frequented mostly by Fae. Mitch said he knew the place and he’d chosen our motel because it was the closest to where the bar was located.

“We get there, find Avery and ask him to give us the book. How’s that for a plan?”

“What? Mitch, we can’t just ask him straight out for the book!”

“Why not?”

I did not know why not, but that wasn’t the point. “What about what Durin and Brokk want?”

Mitch shrugged. “No big deal. Figured we’d just sound Avery out, see how he feels about going back to the Seelie Court and if there’s anything we can do to get him there.”

“No big deal,” I repeated. “Huh.”

Mitch let out an exasperated sigh then before I could do anything to prevent it, he grabbed my arms, tugged me up the bed and pulled me into his side, pressing my head against his bare chest.

“Mitch!” I protested, rather lamely if I’m being honest. My effort to pull away from him had zero effect.

“You need to relax, babe. You take this shit way too seriously.”

“It is serious,” I pointed out. “I can’t believe you’re
not
taking it seriously.”

“I am. I also know that there’s a lot more to life. I get that this job is important to you, but you also need to learn to kick back once in a while, live a little.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way I live,” I said snottily.

Mitch’s chest started shaking and I realised that he was laughing silently. I mean, seriously, what did he find so damn amusing? So I asked him.

“What’s so funny?”

In response, Mitch cupped my chin, tilted my head up, leant down and kissed me—
hard
. He used my gasp to his advantage and slipped his tongue into my mouth. I should have pushed him away, but the kiss was far too good and my brain evidently hadn’t been firing on all cylinders. I couldn’t believe that Mitch and I were kissing and that I liked it, as in a
lot
. I moaned into his mouth, grabbed hold of his head and pulled him closer, deepening the kiss. Mitch groaned and the arm around me got tighter. When he pulled back, we were both breathing heavily and still clinging to one another. I looked at his eyes then down to his mouth, expecting him to kiss me again. But Mitch’s lips quirked.

“Mmm, maybe you do know how to live.”

My glare was interrupted by the cell phone in my pocket buzzing. I pulled it out, pressed a button and answered the call without looking at the display, relieved beyond measure that I had a few minutes’ reprieve from thinking about Mitch and that kiss. I was especially relieved that I didn’t have to think about what that kiss meant or the fact that I hadn’t wanted it to end—like at all.

“Hello?”

“Ashley, it’s Roland. I just got your message.”

“Um, hi,” I replied cautiously. I tried to move away to take the call, but Mitch slid his arm around my waist and pulled me back into his side. Crap.

“What the hell are you doing in Fort Worth with Mitch Rakowski?” Roland questioned. “Are you
insane
?”

I felt Mitch’s body stiffen next to mine and tried to pull away again, but Mitch wasn’t going to let me go anytime soon. His hold on me was steadfast.

“He’s been helping me,” I fired back. “It was Raven’s idea.”

“Well, it was a damn stupid idea,” Roland told me. “Mitch quit three years ago and the Council is not happy to learn that he’s back in the field without their permission, leading one of their hunters astray.”

Okay, I was seriously starting to get pissed. “He isn’t leading me astray, he’s helping me. If the Council doesn’t like it, well, that’s just tough.” My words surprised me. I’d never gone against the Council or done anything that would make them unhappy with me. The job was too important to me to risk losing it.

“Ashley, will you stop and think about this for a minute? I know how much you love hunting. Don’t jeopardise your career over this. Do you know anything about him? Do you know why he quit his duties as a hunter? Did he tell you what happened to Jenna?”

I hadn’t thought it would be possible, but Mitch’s body became even stiffer. I sighed. “I can’t talk about this now. I’ve got to go, Roland. I’ll call you when I have information about the book.”

“Ash—”

I disconnected the call.

Mitch and I were silent for a couple of minutes and I stayed pressed up against his side, not that I could have gone anyway. His hold on me had become impossibly tight and it was like his entire body had turned to stone.

I chewed on my bottom lip then said, “I guess you heard all that, huh?”

“I heard,” Mitch replied curtly.

I nodded against his chest. Then I put an elbow into the pillow next to his head and rested my chin in my hand. I looked at Mitch’s face and noticed that it was closed off again, as devoid of emotion as it had been in the meeting back at the Fae sanctuary.

After some time, Mitch sighed and his eyes came to mine. “Aren’t you going to ask who Jenna is?”

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jenna was the cross Mitch bore. She was also likely the reason he’d given up hunting. I’d wanted to know all the details of his past, but now it seemed so personal that I didn’t have the heart to ask him about it.

“I don’t think it’s any of my business,” I said quietly.

Mitch carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Jenna was my partner. We’d hunted together for twelve years, since we left the training school.”

I nodded but stayed silent. I decided it was best to let Mitch tell me what he wanted to at his own pace.

“We knew each other inside out, always anticipated the other’s moves in a fight, had each other’s backs. We were a good match.”

I wondered if Mitch and Jenna had been more than just hunting partners, but his next comment more or less answered my unspoken question.

“Things changed when Jenna fell in love with Evan. He was a hunter too, a couple of years older than us. She was distracted a lot, talked about settling down in one place, maybe starting a family. They’d only been seeing each other for a few months and I thought she was being premature, but she loved him, said she knew he was the one.

“They found a place together in Henderson, Nevada where Evan grew up. The Council had offered him a position at the training school there so he quit hunting and took the job. I went out there with them because Jenna was still undecided about whether or not to quit and I didn’t have anything else going on. It was as good a place as any to hang my hat.”

Mitch turned to stare across the room and a frown creased his brow. I didn’t know what was coming but I sensed it was bad.

“There wasn’t a lot of action in the city,” he said at last. “A couple of vamps passing through on their way to Vegas, but mostly it was low on supernatural activity. We’d been there about two months when Jenna and I got a tipoff about a nest of vampires that had moved in.