Steal the Sun (40 page)

“Promise?”

“Promise.” I was sure my dad could come up with something. He was retired for the most part, but he still had good connections. I wondered though if Chad wouldn’t have something to say about his boyfriend’s criminal activities. Neil and Chad might not be married but Chad was incredibly possessive. I held the lock in my hand and started to gently glide the pick in.

Neil looked up from his perusal of the gold and gave a startled laugh. “Seriously?” he asked, looking at the picks in my hands. He reached down and pulled the chains apart with little effort on his part. He tossed them aside and opened the chest.

I frowned. “You have no appreciation for a soft touch.”

Arctic blue eyes rolled. “You have no appreciation for speed, honey. That frost giant out there is about to have himself a Daniel sandwich. We need to pick up the pace.”

“Fine.” I agreed with him even though I doubted Daniel would ever let himself be made into a sandwich in a nonsexual way. There was a whole lot of roaring, and not all of it came from the frost giant. Daniel was doing some yelling of his own. He was obviously getting impatient. I sat down beside the treasure. Neil and I sifted through the contents of the chest. This was where the leprechauns kept the good shit. It was full of jewelry and gold and silver housewares, and what looked to be the deeds to land and houses. It had been stuffed with anything a gambler could use to pay off his debts.

“Wow,” Neil said in a reverent tone. He held up an unmounted stone.

“That’s the Blood Stone,” I said with no small amount of awe. It was beautiful in a freaky way. I shone the light directly on it and the reflection filled the cavern. It made everything look like it was bathed in rich, sweet blood.

“Creepy.” Neil handed the stone to me, shivering just a little.

I shoved the stone in my pocket and we both stood up, leaving the rest of the treasure regretfully on the floor. I heard a single gunshot and then a triumphant laugh.

“Take that, fucker!” Daniel’s yell echoed through the cavern.

I looked at Neil with pursed lips. “What do you want to bet he just shot that frost giant straight through the eye after he tried everything else?”

Neil held his hands out. “I try to stay out of your marital arguments.”

“No, you don’t.” I made my way back out to the front of the cave. Neil followed after me. He was naked, so I knew there was no chance he’d palmed that sapphire I’d seen him looking at. I wasn’t concerned about the stealing—that came naturally—but those little leprechauns really would come after us.

It was easier to see in the big part of the cave. The moonlight made everything glow in a silvery shine. I could see Daniel trying to push the now-dead frost giant off Lee’s wolf body. With a great grunt he managed the task, and when he turned I noted his shirt was covered in blood. I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was his or the giant’s since he healed so quickly.

“You just had to try everything else, didn’t you?” I shook my head as I studied them. There was a neat little hole in the giant’s eye. “You couldn’t just take my word for it.”

Lee changed and groaned as he tried to get up. “God, Donovan, is she always this way? How the hell did you work with her?”

My husband grimaced as he looked down at Lee, trying to ascertain the extent of his injuries. “You want to know something, Lee? She’s been this way since we were eight freaking years old. She used to tell me how to play Monopoly. She’d roll her eyes anytime I made a wrong move. I think your pelvis is broken.”

“You broke my wolf?” I asked, shocked.

“He’ll heal,” Daniel shot back.

“Not like this I won’t.” Lee groaned. “Somebody’s got to reset it.” I started to open my mouth to offer my services. “Anybody but Zoey.”

Neil ran forward. He got in behind Lee and maneuvered his arms under Lee’s armpits. Daniel took his feet. They nodded at each other and Daniel realigned the bones. Lee proved he knew lots of cuss words.

“Better?” Daniel asked.

“If you can call it that.” Lee laid back on the cavern floor. “It’s going to be an hour or two before I can move.” He turned his head to me. “Did you get it?”

I pulled out the stone and tossed it into Danny’s waiting hand. He held it up and the moonlight hit it. My little flashlight hadn’t done the stone justice. Now we were all covered in its bloody beauty.

“This is mine,” Daniel said with a possessive sigh. “This belongs to me.”

I walked up and put my hand on his back. His arm went around me out of habit. “According to the information Marini gave me, it has something to do with the last king.”

“What does it do?” Neil asked.

We were all damn certain it did something. It was a powerful object. I could tell that just by touching it.

I shook my head as Daniel watched it, mesmerized by the glow. “I’m not sure but I think I know who to ask. Marcus gave it to the queen. I think he was smuggling it out the best way he knew how.”

“Marcus has some explaining to do,” Daniel commented, his attention still on the Blood Stone.

“Daniel, we’re going to have to give that stone to Marini.” It was the plain truth of our situation.

He pocketed the stone. “Like hell we do, Z.”

“Daniel, he could kill you.”

“We don’t have any proof of that,” my husband replied, a stubborn look on his face.

I put my hands on my hips. “Oh, and that X-ray of something shoved surgically into your heart proves nothing, huh?”

He shrugged a little. “It proves Marini can bluff, baby. Just because he has some box he carries around doesn’t mean it works, and I’m not turning that stone over to him because it doesn’t belong to him.”

“No, it belongs to me.” This was my job. I’d done all the background for it. I would be damned if I let Danny decide to change our entire plan because he liked the stone. “I’m the one who found it.”

“Yeah, you could have run this job by yourself…”

“Shut up!” Lee shouted from his place on the floor. “How do you two get anything done? You’re either fighting or fucking. God, I never thought I’d want the faery back.”

Daniel and I stopped and looked at each other. It was true. Daniel and I both had big personalities that often rubbed each other the wrong way. When Danny had been human, he’d had much better control of his temper. His vampire DNA had taken over, and we fought a lot since his turn. I was just now considering how Dev balanced us. If Dev were here, he would have steered us away from the fight. He would have suggested other options or said something ridiculously outrageous and turned our minds from our stubborn positions.

Danny pulled me back into the warmth of his body. “We’ll figure it out, Z. Let’s get back to the palace and find a way to stop this war so we can get Dev and go home.”

I nodded.

Daniel looked back down at my broken bodyguard—who probably wouldn’t have gotten all broken if Danny had followed my advice in the first place. “I’m going to take Zoey back to the tent. She’ll be warmer there while we wait for your bones to heal.”

“It won’t take more than an hour or two.” There was an unnecessary apology in Lee’s eyes.

Daniel leaned down for me to hop on his back. I jumped up and wrapped myself around him. He looked back at me. “It’s just until we get past the winds and then we’ll fly the rest of the way. Neil, stay here with Lee. I’ll be back for the two of you in an hour if you aren’t down the mountain by then.”

Neil nodded and Daniel leapt out of the cave. He made his way down much faster than we had come up. I was thankful when Daniel stopped and let me down briefly before cradling me to his chest and taking off for the final part of our journey.

“We’ll be back at the palace tomorrow, Z,” Daniel promised as we floated toward the ground. “I’ll fly us as far as I can before dawn tonight and then we’ll be there after the sun goes down. We’re not going to let him kill himself.”

“Thank you, Danny.” I was so grateful to have him with me. I grinned up at him. “I’m cold. I can’t feel whole portions of my body. How am I ever going to get the feeling back?”

His smile was all male promise. “I think I can help you with that particular problem, baby. You just show me where you’re having sensitivity issues and I’ll make sure all those parts are functioning.” He leaned down and kissed me, his tongue making a brief, sweet appearance across my lips. “I’ll warm you right up. We have an hour. I can’t think of any way I’d rather kill some time than making sure you’re hot.”

We hit the ground softly and his hands were already delving into my shirt, his mouth back on mine in a possessive kiss. I went up on my toes to deepen the kiss and started backing us toward the tent and our somewhat comfy makeshift bed when Daniel’s head came up.

“Zoey, run,” he yelled as the arrow slammed into his torso. He flew back and was impaled on the trunk of a tree, his body stuck and unable to move.

I turned as fast as I could and saw a group of
sidhe
warriors advancing on us. They were led by a single female who had the nastiest grin on her unfortunately familiar face.

“I would not run if I were you.” Gilliana was wrapped in a fur-lined cloak and looked comfy. “I will order my men to kill that nightcrawler you are so attached to. They missed his heart. Barely. I could make sure they do not this time.”

I moved backward, standing beside Daniel and not letting that bitch out of my sight.

“Don’t, Zoey.” The tight tone of Daniel’s voice gave away the amount of pain he was in. “It’s silver tipped. I can’t move, baby. Just go.”

“She is not going anywhere,” Gilliana said. “Well, not anywhere she would want to go. I will take whatever weapons you have on you, please. Or I will order my men to fire. We can take you out with arrows, too. You should understand we’re prepared. After we heard you were looking for the leprechauns, I set my trap. Everyone in this part of the kingdom knows where the leprechauns hide their treasure. We’ve lost more than one citizen to that monster who guards it. I rather hoped he would eat you, but I do have a backup plan.”

I gritted my teeth and slowly pulled my gun out and laid it on the ground. There were too many of them to try taking a shot and Daniel was a big target. I pulled the knives out and gave them up, too. “What do you want, Gilliana? Killing me isn’t going to endear you to Devinshea.”

She sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid I got caught in that little web of Miria’s. Who would have guessed a mortal could be that good in bed? Trust me, if I had known what that fluffy piece of impurity could do to me, I would have begged Miria for a betrothal earlier.” She shrugged. “Some things do not work out the way we could hope. I had planned on getting him back with a baby. You ruined that. Father came up with a much better plan. I lose Devinshea, but at least you do not get to keep him.”

“Turn the Seelie against the Unseelie.” It was exactly what I had decided they were doing.

“That was the easy part,” she admitted. “The common folk hate the Unseelie. So does that idiot prince. Getting the queen and our good priest to agree to a war was the difficult part. Father is clever, you see. He knew the only way the priest would ever push for war was to engineer a very personal loss for him. He tried to take you out, but the baby proved easier.”

Rage pulsed through my system, and the only thing that kept me from tearing her throat out was the fact that Daniel was vulnerable. I wanted to, though. She’d taken my child, killed my baby. Dev had asked me if I wanted revenge and I did, but I couldn’t risk Daniel. “I’m going to kill you, bitch.”

“I am sure you would try.” Gilliana looked back at her guard. “Wrap the vampire in the silver chains. I would be careful if I were you. It might be best if one of you held a knife to his wife’s throat to ensure his compliance.”

I quickly found myself hauled against a body with cold steel at my throat.

“I’ll cooperate,” Daniel promised tightly.

“I know you will.” Gilliana turned back to me. “I would rather kill you, but I am afraid Father needs you alive. Even as we speak, Devinshea is weakening. The people will listen to him. The army will listen to him. I have to make sure he wants this war. He will be incensed when he realizes the two people he is closest to in the world have been taken as slaves by the Unseelie. I hope you like it rough, Your Grace.” Gilliana walked right up to me and slapped me as hard as she could. I tasted blood but refused to show it to her. “That was for humiliating me.”

“All of this for money?” I had visions of slicing her open and playing in her entrails going through my head.

She looked down at me. “This is not about money, Your Grace. This is about power. Father has been trying to kill Miria for decades. That guard of hers is good, but things happen on the battlefield. We will take out Devinshea and Declan, and then we will make certain that Miria meets an accidental arrow. The battlefield is chaotic. When we win, my father will take the throne and we will rebuild the Seelie into a pure haven for the
sidhe
.”

She glanced back at something I couldn’t see. I saw only that Daniel moaned as they pulled his body off the arrow and quickly bound him in heavy silver chains. He remained still, though he could have fought. His flesh smoked where his skin met the metal.

“I hand you off to your Unseelie hosts, Your Grace,” she said to me before addressing someone behind me. “I think you will find these two will get you a good price on the slave block. The vampire is exotic and can do the work of ten men, though precautions must be taken, of course. As for the girl, consider her a well-trained pleasure slave. She kept a sex god satisfied, so I think she can be called an expert.”

The voice behind me was scratchy, as though it hurt him to speak. “They’ll never make it to the auction house. I’ve already secured a private buyer to take them both.”

“Excellent,” Gilliana said. “I hope he is well satisfied with the purchase. I will make sure that the tale makes the rounds on this side of faery.”

“I have no doubt,” the voice said. “It may be time to up the rhetoric, my lady. King Angus is talking about negotiating.”

“He will have no choice but war after news of Her Grace’s enslavement is known. It is better than merely giving them a dead body.” Gilliana turned back to me. “I wish you joy in your new profession. I assure you serving that vampire of yours has not prepared you for the roughness of an Unseelie lord. They are barbarians. I will be surprised if you survive the night. Knock her out.”