City of Fae (17 page)

“You see now,” she said. “Good. Go. Be quick. Be clever. They sense you are different. But they do not know … not yet. Kill the last keeper.”

I dipped my head and turned away from my maker. Spiders rippled over my bare feet, and I welcomed their touch, for they were of the queen, and so was I.

I walked Under and felt as though I’d returned to a childhood home, a place familiar, but different in ways I couldn’t fathom. No, I was different, I had changed. Each twist and turn I knew like the back of my hand. Some chambers swelled to impossible proportions, others had crumbled to little more than dust and debris. Tunnels flowed through intersections, forgotten ticket halls, and dead-end tracks. As though someone had stirred up neglected parts of London’s Underground system, stations and all, and buried them. Some of it was real and solid beneath my bare feet. Other parts seemed deeply wrong; with shadows so thick they might swallow me whole. Things waited in the dark, hideous, unseen, forever hungry things sent here from Faerie, discarded and forgotten.

The tunnels changed, softened, warmed. Light filtered through in places, in others bare electric bulbs fought off the dark. My palm itched, seeking something. I curled my fingers into a fist. I needed weapons.

What must I look like? A young girl, barefooted, dressed in pink leggings and a silly top; nothing really. My outer shell was camouflage. I was the most deadly thing in these tunnels, besides the queen herself. Her draíocht, her desires, her thirst for freedom. It all flowed through me, pooled clear intent in my mind.

A spider scurried over my shoulder. I swept it off, and broke into a jog. The ancient thread I followed was older than these tunnels, older than Under. I could see the last Keeper clear in my mind. He wouldn’t expect me. If I was quick, and clever, he’d never see the killing blow.

***

My feet carried me toward the holding area where disobedient fae were detained while the FA decided their punishment. The remaining keeper was inside, his thread aglow with ancient draíocht. Did he know how the queen watched him? It didn’t matter, not any more. I entered the chamber. Empty cells capped with iron bars hugged the wall to my left. Iron had no effect on me, but it did them. Warren stood outside a cell dead ahead, leaning heavily on his good leg. “Can’t trust that girl. She’s not real.”

“She’s
hers
…” Sovereign said, out of sight inside his cell. “The queen is using her. C’mon, Warren, how did I get her down here? Humans can’t get inside Under. I’d still be walking the Chancery Lane platforms with her if she was human.”

Warren whipped his head around and fixed me in his unforgiving glare. Doubt widened his eyes, but only for the slightest of moments, before suspicion and realization contorted his face into a savage scowl. His scar cut deeper, tugged to one side by a crooked snarl on his lips.

My stride didn’t falter. I clocked the dagger sheathed at his left thigh, and adjusted my balance as he reached for the weapon. Another three seconds and I’d be on him. My hand itched. His dagger would soon be mine.

“You!” He tore the dagger free and lunged. The imagined unreal part of me watched in horror as I twisted, blocked his thrust, and cracked my elbow under his jaw. We clashed, coming together in a frenzy of blows, and yet my heart beat steadily; my thoughts never clearer. The queen strummed her web from a distance.
Watching, always watching; tap-tap, Alina. “Follow your design. Fulfill your purpose.”

“Alina!” Reign’s ragged hiss tugged on my consciousness. A twitch of recognition jolted through me. My gaze found him locked behind bars, face twisted in disbelief. No, not disbelief … Regret. Warren plunged the dagger into my shoulder, then yanked it free. His fist cracked across my jaw, snapping my head to the side. Bigger, heavier, he thrust an arm under my chin and slammed me back against the bars of an empty cell. Pain bloomed through my jaw, and my already wounded shoulder screamed a protest.

Warren’s eyes, red on black, burned into me. “I knew you were trouble.”

“Warren, don’t hurt her, she doesn’t know what she’s doing …” Reign’s words wove into my thoughts and picked at a mental wound.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing …
What
was
I doing?

“I taught you better, Sovereign. She’s not real,” Warren snarled. I bucked, and his forearm pushed against my throat, threatening to cut off my air. “You’re not seeing what I’m seeing. She came here to kill me.”

“Damn it, Warren … She’s different. She feels. She’s not just the queen’s tool, she’s conscious. We can use her.”

“Different,
hmm
… Not different enough. If I let her up, she’ll go straight for the dagger, won’t you, pet?”

“No.” A lie. He held the dagger below my chin, and could easily cut my throat if he pulled back. He’d do it too. I knew killers; Warren and I had that in common.

“No,” he snorted. “It’s all tricks.” He moved closer, so close I could smell the almonds and peaches scent of him, sweet and sickly, old draíocht, he was from another time, another place. Ancient. Powerful. Strong enough to trap the queen; once. Not anymore. “She’s the queen’s. You, better than anyone, know you can’t manipulate the queen’s control.”

“Alina, tell him … Please,” Reign said, but there was nothing to tell. “You’re not hers, not really.” Warren witnessed the simple truth in my eyes, a truth Reign couldn’t see. Reign continued as Warren glared into my soul, “I saw something real in you. I saw it …”

Warren’s ragged lips lifted into a soft curl of a smile. “Whatever you thought you saw, it’s gone. The queen has her now. This thing needs to be put out of its misery.”

To better twist the dagger for the killing blow, he eased off, and I stole the moment, hooking my leg around his, and yanking him off balance. He wobbled on his bad leg, leaving himself wide open. His wrist gave easily inside my grip. Bones shattered as they had with the other fae I’d attacked. Warren barked a cry. The dagger fell, but I plucked the weapon out of the air and tackled him. Plunging the dagger deep into his side. The quiet calm in my head erupted into a sudden broiling mass of emotion. “
Yes, finish him. The last Keeper.”
Warren clung to me, and I to him; locked in a deadly embrace. He staggered, face twisted with rage, eyes wide.

“Alina, no!” Reign slammed into the bars. “Stop! You can’t do this. If he dies, she’s free … She can’t be free. Alina, Please … Look at me.”

I couldn’t move. Broken inside, the pieces of me shattered and swept aside by the horror of my own actions. I was a killer. A tool. A construct, organic human parts combined with fae magic. A monster. And Warren, bleeding in my arms, was proof.

He relaxed, let me go, and staggered back, bumping against the wall. A glistening wetness crept down the front of his black and red leather coat.

I must finish him,
I thought. The queen would be pleased.

The dagger slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor. I laced my fingers in my hair, knotted them, twisting, welcoming the pain, real pain.

Reign’s voice cut through the madness. “Alina O’Connor. That’s who you are. The smart-mouthed reporter who saved me on that station platform. The woman who asks too many questions. Who’s afraid of spiders, and heights, and failure? You want the story, Alina?” Slowly, I lifted my head. Reign clutched the iron bars, face pressed against them, even though it must have burned him. “Yes, front-page material standing right here. I’ll give it to you. Everything. All my secrets. It’ll make your career.”

My job? My life? I’d needed the story; his story. I’d had another purpose once. Killing wasn’t all I was made for. Something wet cooled on my hand. Blood.

“No, focus on me. Alina. Look at me.” Why was Reign behind bars? Didn’t he have a concert in a few days? Shouldn’t he be schmoozing with London’s elite? “Yes, I see you in there, American Girl.” Where was I? Under … I wasn’t meant to be there. “Come back to me.” I reached for the bars and closed my hand around them. Cool, hard, unyielding. Real. Swallowing the swollen knot in my throat, I lifted my head and faced Reign. Why was he scared of me?

His attention flicked to my right and those butterfly eyes widened. “Warren, don’t!”

An arm hooked around my neck and tugged me backward, clean off my feet, before planting me face-first into the wall. Reign’s shouts blurred beneath the cacophony of pain bouncing around my skull. Blood swelled in my mouth, dribbled over my chin.

“You can’t beat the queen’s control.” Warren’s words were the last I heard before the hungry darkness devoured me.

“If she’s rabid, I’m putting her down.”

“Would you just trust me, Warren?”

“I did trust you. You told me you had a plan … and I ended up with a dagger between my ribs.”

“Alina is my plan. Quit complaining. You’re alive, the others aren’t. Be grateful.”

“Grateful you had an attack of conscience before you ticked me off your hit list? Faerie help me, I must be as insane as she is to let that,
and you,
live. You can’t control the queen’s constructs—what are you thinking?”

“Just give her a chance.”

I cracked an eye. Warren paced, crossing my tiny living room in three strides, back and forth, back and forth. He still wore his red and black leathers. The cut in his side gaped as he strode, but there was no evidence of blood. A snug white bandage embraced his wrist, but otherwise he looked as pissed off and prickly as always. And very much alive.

“You know why I have to follow the queen?” Reign said, voice softer than before. He stood by the window, arms crossed, coat buttoned up to his chin. Milky light from the streetlamps outside pooled over his striking features, lending him an unreal glow, as though he wasn’t really there at all. But I was the one who didn’t exist, wasn’t I?

“Yeah, you’re a selfish son of a bitch, literally.”

Reign grumbled a curse, clearly aimed at Warren. “You don’t know what it’s like to have your control ripped out from under you. I can’t escape her. What she does to me … And the
hound.
That’s not something I get a choice in.”

Warren fell quiet. His boots tapped out a muffled beat against the carpet. Back and forth, back and forth.

“I know it’s not you. I’d have had you executed by now—I’d have done it myself if I didn’t trust you.” He raked his hand through his long hair, drawing it back from his lean, angular face. Lips pulled tight, the scar gave him the appearance of forever half-smiling. “She’s close to escaping. I feel it.
You
don’t know what
that’s
like.”

Reign angled himself away from the window, the fall of light casting half his face in shadow. “Alina …” He said my name in that way that sent shivers sprinkling across my skin, half scolding, half growl. He knew I was awake, and listening.

Warren froze. His hard glare pushed into me. “Before you get any ideas, pet, Detective Andrews is tied up down the hall. If you make any move to attack, your detective friend won’t see daybreak.”

A twitch tugged on my consciousness;
her.
I tried to move and sit up, but my arms were trapped behind me, wrists tied. The two fae glared back at me, faces like stone. I focused on my even breaths, how the air filled my lungs, expanded my chest. Yes, focus on anything but her scratching inside my head.

“It’s possible, the farther away from Under you are, the less control she’ll have over you.” This from Reign. He came toward me, stride smooth, elegant. Crouching within touching distance, he captured my wandering gaze with those marvelous eyes, peering into me as though searching into my soul. What did he see behind my eyes? Was I empty?

“You’re restrained for your own safety, and ours,” he said.

Warren muttered something unsavory but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Reign. Panic slithered beneath my calm exterior. In Under I’d been different. Horrible. Cold. Stripped of free will. And definitely empty. But I didn’t feel like that now. This was my apartment, my home … This was my life.

“Can you hear me?” Reign whispered. He reached out a hand but stopped short, fingers hovering close to my cheek. “Are you still with us, Alina?”

“If she’s not snapped already, she will soon. I’ll bet my good leg she was only designed to last until the end of the week. The queen’s constructs do not last beyond a few days. She’s not yet strong enough to wield them efficiently, even if she’s being fed.”

If I spoke, would it shatter the illusion, would I go back to being that cold thing? The thing that stabbed Warren. The construct, the tool.
Her tool.

Reign worried his bottom lip between his teeth, his eyes pinching with concern. “Tell me you’re in there.”

“You can’t trust a word it says,” Warren hissed.

“I have a name.” The words sounded dry, and scratched up my throat, but they were real, not the queen’s; my own, born from my thoughts, and they sounded angry as hell.

Reign rocked back on his heels as Warren stared me down, or tried to. I’d tried to kill him. He had every right to be angry right back at me. “Is Andrews really here?” I asked.

Reign nodded, “Yes, he was here when we arrived. He’s, er …” The words lodged in his throat, prompting him to clear it with a growl. “He seems to think there’s some sort of conspiracy going on.”

“There is.” I twisted onto my back and peered up at the ceiling. “I’m okay, I’m me—”

Warren growled a warning but Reign shushed him. “Hear her out.”

The queen was close to me, but not in control. Her control felt like a terrible feverish madness. In that moment, tied up on my own couch, I might have been walking the tightrope between sanity and insanity, and I was numb from shock, but I was definitely me, back in my own skin. “She wants Warren dead. He’s the last. When he’s gone, the draíocht restraints keeping her locked in Under will shatter.” Damn, my shoulder hurt. I gave it an experimental roll. Pain surged and nausea pooled saliva in my mouth. But pain was good too. It was my pain.
Don’t throw up. Get a grip.
Everything was just fine. Peachy. “It’s all she thinks about. Even now …” Her voice crept into my thoughts, scurrying, like the thousands of arachnids under her command, seeking me.