City of Fae (14 page)

A blush warmed my cheeks but I wasn’t backing down. “But it’s not real. What they feel for you … They don’t really
care.” Like I do,
I added silently, and then scolded myself for my own bespelled idiocy.

His eyes narrowed, just a fraction, and his lips pulled tight into a mockery of a smile. “You’ve clearly never been fae-fucked.”

I slapped him hard enough to tingle my palm.

He worked his jaw around the pain and slowly drew his gaze back to me. “Feel better now that you’ve got your righteous speech out of your system? It doesn’t change anything. I still need to feed, the fans still want to hear me sing, the queen still holds my reins.”

“Don’t touch me again, Reign. Ever.”

“Gladly.” He whipped around, and waved a hand. “Get out, and the next time the queen comes looking for you, don’t expect me to be there to save your ass.”

Snatching up my dagger from the table, I strode for the door. “I’ll get my story without you.”

“You do that.”

Growling, I yanked open the door and blinked up at the menacing presence of a bristling FA assassin. By some miracle of reflexes I blocked his dagger strike with my own. Metal sang, our blades kissed, fear and potent adrenaline trilled through me, and then Reign gripped my shoulder and whirled me away.

Three fae, armed to the teeth, lunged for Reign. Daggers flashed. He deflected a jab, cracked a fist into the face of one, but a dagger got through and plunged into his shoulder. With a snarl, he rounded on the attacker, only to be met by the business end of a short sword.

“Get him in irons, before he turns on us,” one growled.

Reign pulled up short, just as another flung a dagger into his back. It punched deep. Reign let out a cry and dropped to a knee, his bright stare locking onto me. He’d wasted his draíocht getting me away from my apartment and couldn’t vanish, couldn’t escape. They had him. To prove it one of them locked iron shackles around his wrist. A deep warning growl rumbled from inside him, but he had nothing left to fight with.

Half their size, twice as slow, my only option was to run. I made it out of the apartment before something hot and hard slammed into my back, tight against my shoulder blade. Agony poured through me. I fell, knees cracking against floor.

“Alina!” Reign’s cry barely penetrated the mental wall I’d rammed down to seal off the worst of the pain.
This can’t happen. I cannot be caught, I’m not finished.
Reaching over my right shoulder, I clasped my fingers around the dagger in my back and yanked it free. Pain flared, but like everything else, I shut it out, slammed a mental door on it. An armed fae bore down on me, face impassive, tricolored eyes black, gray and blue. Dark. Emotionless, but for the clear intent to kill. He
would
kill me. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. Cool control washed over me. All signs of panic and the rattling fear, vanished. I peered through my bangs, panting breaths rushing across my lips, saw him pluck a short sword from his belt, and smiled. He had no idea whom he’d engaged. None of them knew the truth.

When he drew up close, I kicked out, knocking his leg away and throwing him off balance. He righted himself with a grunt, but by then I’d twisted, and with perverse glee I stabbed the dagger into his boot. His bellow sounded sweet to my oddly serene mind. My body didn’t feel like my own. Muscles moved, alien commands burst through my mind. Impossibly, I knew I could beat him. It wasn’t fantasy. It was fact. His short sword came down in a wide arc. I jerked back, caught his wrist and twisted. Bones shattered inside my grip. My victim crumpled to his knees. He swung a left hook wildly, glancing off my chin. Pain sparked up the right side of my face. I turned my glare on him, snarled, and punched my dagger into his chest. Those fae eyes widened, his thin lips parted, and finally he saw me for what I was, what I’d yet to understand. Green vapor swirled between us, rising from the dagger buried in his chest, from my hand … from me.

With a start I jerked back and fell on my ass. Reality flooded back in. I tasted blood, my blood, on my lips and felt the burn of agony in my back. “What … ?”

Through the open door, inside the apartment, Reign tried to break free of the fae flanking him, but his hands were cuffed and their grip on his arms didn’t falter. He stilled, his gaze flicking to me, dread draining all color from his face. Hands scooped me up from behind. As before, instinct locked into place and I reacted, as though it was simply a matter of following through on a well-rehearsed routine. I spun, punched down into the crook of the fae’s arm. He swung for me. I blocked, ducked, and punched my dagger into his side, feeling the blade ease through flesh and settle into the wound.
Attack,
one, two, three. Enemy. Escape.
Shoving him aside, I ran.

“Alina!” Reign’s cry followed me down the hall, down the stairwell, and out into the night.

Detective Andrews took one look at my bloody and torn dress and leaped from his car. He shrugged his jacket off and swept it around my shoulders as I sagged against him. “What happened?”

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know, didn’t understand any of it. What had happened? Jumbled words were all I could muster.

He swept a stack of papers off the passenger seat and gently sat me inside his car. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” My shoulder burned but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I lifted my head and peered at pale faces staring through the window of the twenty-four-hour store. The staff had wanted to call the cops when I’d rushed in, bloody and disheveled. I’d hidden the dagger inside my dress, otherwise they’d have raised the alarm. I’d borrowed a phone, and after several attempts at remembering Andrews’s number from his business card, I managed to connect with the detective. I’d placated the store manager by explaining the friend I’d called was a cop.

Now, wrapped in the warmth and comfort of Andrews’s car, I watched the London streets blur by. Headlights wove milky streaks though my unfocused vision. What had I done?

“Alina, talk to me. Has someone hurt you? Did a fae—?”

“No.”

I hunched forward and pulled his coat tight against my chin. His keen gaze darted from the road to me every few seconds. Several times he asked what had happened, but I couldn’t find the words. Not yet. When I realized he was taking me home, fear spurred panic, and I begged him to take me anywhere else, just not back there, back to the spiders.

“If I take you back to headquarters, I’ll have to file a report.”

I heard the unspoken words. Whatever I said would go down on record. I’d assaulted members of the FA. Maybe worse. Would they come for me? “Not there.” Ignoring his weary sigh, I scanned the street outside. Reign had said to look up for the fae. I did, but I couldn’t see much beyond the glow of the streetlights. I might have gotten away with knocking one of the FA out back at the café, but the events in Reign’s Kensington apartment … I couldn’t bluff that. Did I kill them? Were they dead? It shouldn’t have been possible. I was human, weaker, slower. They should have easily overpowered me. Those things I did, the thoughts in my mind, the horrible urges. They weren’t my thoughts, my urges. They couldn’t be mine.

“Pull over.” I groaned.

“Alina?”

“I’m going to be sick, pull over.” He careened off the road in time for me to get the door open and empty my stomach contents onto the sidewalk. Hot shivers rippled through me and my skin itched, as though trying to crawl from my flesh. Something was very wrong with me.

“You need to go get checked out at the hospital.”

I wiped at my mouth. “No. I’ll be alright …” It was shock. Just shock. “Please, just take me somewhere safe.”

***

Andrews’s apartment looked like it had been burgled. He mumbled something about his roommate being away, and cleared magazines and papers from a chair for me to settle in. Despite the chaos, his home had the kind of warmth mine lacked. Maybe it was photographs of family gatherings and friends on nights out crowding the fireplace mantel, or the back issues of
Wired
magazine tossed on a coffee table. His place felt real, and safe, to my addled mind.

Sitting askew in the chair, my mind still, I tried to keep it that way by focusing on how the orange glow from the outside streetlight poured into the room and over stacks of paperwork. Clearly Andrews wasn’t a fan of filing. Scribbled notes decorated printed documents. Some articles about the fae had been circled so deeply the pen had scored through the paper.

Andrews returned to my side with antiseptic wipes. He noticed the dagger I’d placed on the table. Questions widened his eyes, but he cleaned the wound in my back without a single word. His gloved fingers worked carefully, almost reverently. “You should really get checked out at the hospital.” I mumbled a “No, it’s fine,” my thoughts too numb to care. Once the wound was clean, he let me sink in the chair, and before long, I was asleep, woken by daylight settling on my face.

“Coffee?” he asked. I blinked up at him. In loose jeans and a shirt, hair mussed from sleep, he looked utterly civilian and not at all like the steely-eyed detective I’d come to recognize. Even his smile had relaxed; sitting easy on his lips. He scratched absently at his head, caught in awkward honesty. “No offense, but you look like you need it.”

“Coffee would be great, thanks.” He left the room, I assumed for the kitchen. While I’d slept, he’d attempted to tidy. The circled articles had gone. Probably tucked into several leaning stacks of magazines and paperwork dotted about the floor. The chaos brought a smile to my lips. He seemed so controlled when in detective mode. I hadn’t expected him to be, well, normal.

Shay’s dress and my lack of shoes confirmed I hadn’t dreamed the nightmare at Reign’s apartment. Reign. Had the FA taken him? Would he be okay? Damn bespellment, even after he’d stolen from me again, I couldn’t stop myself caring. That asshole. I’d seen a side of him I didn’t like one bit. But my feelings for Reign paled in comparison to the horror left behind by my own actions.

I shuffled upright in the chair and hissed as my shoulder resisted.

Andrews returned with a steaming mug of coffee. “Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”

I smiled up at him and took the mug. “
I’m
sorry, about all of this …” I winced, shoulder ablaze. “I’ll be out of your hair soon. You must have work, and … I shouldn’t have called, it’s just … I … I didn’t know what to do.”

“It’s okay.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, a tentative smile forming onto one cheek. “I’m not working today.”

I curled my hands around the hot drink and took a sip. It tasted good, sweet, just what I needed. Andrews busied himself with tidying, which he was terrible at. “This isn’t me, y’know; the guy I share with … my sister’s boyfriend.” He straightened, frowned at the mess, and raked a hand through his hair, regarding the chaos like it was a losing battle.

I smiled behind my coffee. He had an awkward appeal, the sort of nice-guy charm he probably wasn’t even aware of. So caught up in his work, he wouldn’t be the type to worry about the little things. “Is your sister the girl in the picture?” I asked, nodding at the framed photo on the mantelpiece.

“Yeah.” He dropped his hand. The cheerful glint in his eyes dulled. “She’s the reason I moved from uniform to SO-Thirty, became a detective.”

I’d have to be a fool not to see the change in him. He withdrew from the room, without moving an inch. It was in the way he straightened, leveled his shoulders, and hardened his gaze.

I mentally scrabbled around for something to say that wouldn’t have him clamming up on me. “You … you’re kinda young to be a detective.”

His smile was a genuine one, the topic of his work more comfortable territory than his family. “I specialized in fae relations when I was in uniform. Fae Command, part of Special Operations, recruited me because of my experience. That’s what SO-Thirty do, keep an eye on the fae, or try to.”

I wondered if SO-Thirty Division came under the same “confidential” information Andrews had mentioned in his car. “Andrews, do SO-Thirty do more than monitor the fae?”

“Like?”

“Like, maybe … I don’t know,” I searched for the words. How do you tell someone another world exists, and it’s full of monsters? “Do they look into Faerie at all? Ya know, the land the fae say is a fantasy, but maybe it might not be fantasy, and could maybe be, ya know, real.”

He held my gaze. “SO-Thirty Division was created after the ’74 fae reveal. We investigate, shall we say, some of the less savory aspects of the fae. What makes you think Faerie is real?”

He was as straight-faced as always. I couldn’t tell if he was testing me, or just asking out of curiosity. “What if it was?”

“Well, then, the fae would have a lot of explaining to do.”

He knew. At least, I thought he did. “If Faerie was real, would you be able to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay then. I’m glad we cleared that up.” I placed my coffee down, and shoved the blanket back. Dark patches of dried blood stained Shay’s beautiful dress. Blood: mine, the fae’s, and lots of it. My startled gasp drew Andrews’s attention.

“Why don’t you take a shower?” He could have asked what the hell had happened and started with the interrogation. I expected him to. I did not expect his sympathetic expression, or the explicit sadness on his face. “I’ve left out some of my sister’s clothes. She’s about your size.”

I muttered a thanks and quickly retreated to the shower. No amount of soap and hot water was going to wash away the wretched guilt. Or the gut-churning sense of unease. Andrews knew about Faerie, or at least suspected. He wasn’t going to tell me anything; I was a reporter, and he was a professional, but I wanted to talk to him—needed to talk to someone.

I dressed in Andrews’s sister’s pink leggings, which were too tight, and a stretchy top that so wasn’t me, but I was grateful all the same. My reflection didn’t pull any punches. Dark eyes, pale lips. Exhausted. Wrung out. But that wasn’t all. I peered closer, eyes narrowed, and tried to place what had changed. My hair, my face … Something. I touched the faded bruise I’d received when getting up close and personal with the floor of a subway train. How many nights ago had that been? The bruise was almost gone. The mirror—I didn’t look as I remembered she should. Sure, I looked like me, of course I did, but also
not
like me. Poking at my cheek, around my eyes, it was all where it should be, but something fundamental had shifted. I tried to smile; dragged the twitch across my lips and pinned it to my face. My reflection grimaced back. “Idiot.” And then I remembered how I’d stabbed two fae cops, and my forced smile vanished. Would the FA tell the police? Or would Andrews cuff me and hand me over to the Fae Authority? No. I wasn’t subject to their laws. I was human. Human laws protected me. But they weren’t likely to forget what I’d done.