Feral closed his eyes and dropped his head down to rest against Tessa’s shoulder. Frustration and disappointment surged through him, fighting a battle for dominance. He couldn’t believe this…not again.

“I fucking hate pixies,” he breathed vehemently. His fist bunched instinctively under the pillow with the need to hit something.

“Tell me about it.” Disappointment and frustration colored Tessa’s voice as she pushed at his shoulders. He rolled away, already looking for his boots as she headed for the door. “And I am one.”

Feral didn’t answer, just nodded as he jammed his feet into his boots and grabbed his shirt. Behind him, Jane barreled through the door as soon as Tessa opened it, gaze sweeping the room and latching onto his semi-nakedness immediately. It was something Feral was used to. Sometimes kyn warriors had that effect on other races, particularly women...something about their demon blood. The fact that most of them stood over six feet and were ripped as all hell didn’t hurt one bit.

“Put it away, lover boy. We don’t have the time,” Jane told him as he pulled his shirt over his head, the material stretching over his broad shoulders. He pulled it down, emerging from the fabric to give her a look, but didn’t reply. From the pale look on her face she’d already had one hell of a shock. Worry was etched into the features so like Tessa’s. Must be where she got the attitude as well, he mused, grabbing his weapons belt and buckling it quickly around his hips.

“Grab your bags,” Jane ordered as she headed to the cot to pick up the sleeping baby. Wrapping him tightly in the blanket, she cradled him against her, heading back to the door.

“We’ve got pixies downstairs looking for you, and they aren’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. You need to get out of here and now!”

Neither of them needed to be told twice, grabbing their belongings and stuffing them into the bags as quickly as they possibly could.

“How the hell did they find us so quickly?” Feral demanded. He zipped his bag up with a quick flick of his wrist and held it out to Tessa. She glared back at him, a “carry your own damn bag, buddy” look on her face. It wasn’t until he pulled one of the heavy blades from the back of his belt that her expression cleared. Nodding, she took the bag and looped the strap across her body, the fabric sitting diagonally between her breasts as she picked up the other two.

Feral wrestled his attention from her delectable body, one he’d nearly had his hands on and was having trouble wrestling his mind away from even now. Images of what she would look like naked flashed across his mind’s eye, causing a very predictable response lower down in his body. He shook his head.

If the pixies caught up to them, he would need a clear mind, as well as his hands free, to deal with them. Rampant erotic fantasies of Tessa were just going to distract him. Well… distract him more than her presence and that delicate scent that was all hers did. A scent that had wound itself around him, creeping into his nostrils and crawling under his skin until it was a part of him.

He hardened his features as he settled his blades more comfortably in his hands. Any pixie stupid or unlucky enough to catch up to them was going to wish he’d never been born. They’d interrupted him and Tessa twice now. Not once, but twice…right as he was about to get some action. Which was not something he would forgive lightly; not when he had the worst case of blue balls this damn century.

He nodded to the two women when he was ready, both watching him with that wide-eyed look that said they half-expected violence to just occur all around him, without him needing to lift a finger. He sighed. Civilian women got that look. Vixen would’ve just slapped him upside the head for showing off and flexing his muscles because Tessa was watching, right before she’d demand to know why he wasn’t out in that corridor already.

Casting a quick glance about the room to make sure they had everything, he moved past the two women to the door. With control hard won over the years, he blocked out all other distractions and concentrated on the corridor.

It was empty. His keen senses picked up nothing. No breathing, no heartbeat, zilch. He’d heard of some people holding their breath to avoid detection, but he’d yet to meet anyone who could shield a heartbeat from a kyn. Especially one that hadn’t fed for a while.

“Okay, we’re all clear.” Pulling the door open, he headed out into the hall.

Progress through the corridors was quick, with Feral hurrying the two women along as fast as he could. He didn’t even have to remind them to keep quiet, which was a minor miracle considering how they’d been chattering away down in reception earlier. Even the baby was down with the deal, watching the proceedings wide-eyed and silent. The little one must have picked up on the sense of urgency shrouding the adults.

It was the time of night when the corridors were deserted. The sort of time any clock-watching insomniacs had finally succumbed to exhaustion and before any early bird had yet to spring to life. Even so, dawn approached, the telltale heaviness settling into his limbs as Jane led them further into the depths of the hotel, down through the kitchens and beyond into the darkness of the basement.

Feral breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the comfort of the ground closing around him and shielding him from the worst effects of the approaching sunrise. Of all the facts humanity had picked up, or made up, about vampires, their habit of seeking the earth was the most accurate. The human books and films each gave their own reasons, of course, but the reason was simple. The layers of dirt between him and the rising sun lifted some of the heaviness trying to settle into his muscles, paralyzing and crushing him. But the earth stopped that. He chuckled to himself in amusement. Good old dirt—SPF factor, one billion.

“Well, here we are,” Jane announced as the two women stood at the bottom of the stairs, Feral joining them a moment or so later. The barred door at the top of the stairs might not stall a determined pixie for long—hell, by the looks of it, it might not stop a determined Chihuahua for long—but sometimes a person had to make do with what they had. At the moment, Feral was taking every half-second he could lay his hands on.

The basement wasn’t what he expected, the musty odor of age and mildew combining to attack his sensitive nostrils. At first glance it looked like an average, clutter-filled basement with the random cast of paraphernalia from running a hotel lining the walls. Like the dining room chair to his left, resplendent in all its faded glory, the seat ripped to spill its fabric guts out onto the floor. Next to it sat a cot with three broken slats, filled with what looked to be ripped up old sheets…and so on. Half formed shapes in the shadows were cast by the single bare bulb overhead, all pretty standard basement-type stuff.

Until he turned and saw the huge magic circle painted across the floor. It continued in a sprawl across the wall as though the painter had realized halfway through he’d run out of space and had just carried on along the next available surface.

He followed the design, half expecting it to continue over the clutter, painted across more broken chairs and the like. But it didn’t. That area of the basement was completely clear to allow the circle to continue unbroken. In the middle, stood a door. Well, it looked like a door… if doors didn’t have doors and led to raw dirt instead. Absently, he wondered how the dirt was being held up and why it hadn’t just fallen into the room.

“Err, silly question, but aren’t magic circles supposed to be drawn on the floor?” he ventured, noting that not only was the floor space the circle was drawn on clear of clutter, but someone had swept it recently. Their housekeeping efforts only extended as far as the circle, leaving a ridge of dirt and dust around the clean area. Not randomly, as though the wielder of the brush couldn’t be bothered, but very precisely. Too precisely to be anything other than deliberate. A circle within a circle, he realized with a start. Old, old magic. So old, most people didn’t realize it was actually magic.

“Well aren’t we Mister Picky? Do you see enough floor space in here for a proper circle?” Jane demanded. “No, we had to adapt things slightly. Use what we had.”

She handed the baby over to Tessa, who was beginning to resemble a packhorse. An amused quirk of her lips told Feral she was thinking the same thing, as an understanding look passed between them. Hiding his surprise at how in sync they were, he went back to studying the circle.

Painted with what looked to be a domestic decorating brush and leftover emulsion, the designs seemed crude at first. But then, his attention was drawn inward. The lines weren’t as rough as he’d thought after all. Yes, they’d been done with less than ideal equipment, and that had thrown him at first. It was like giving a concert pianist a child’s keyboard. But something beautiful had been created despite it. The lines had been drawn confidently and with a flourish. A labor of skill and love he’d not seen in a long time.

“This was done by a warden. A good one,” he breathed as he opened his hand and passed his palm over the nearest marks.

The Witching flared violet, the symbols etching themselves into the air itself and hanging there for a second before falling away like purple fairy dust. He frowned for a moment. He didn’t know of any warden families that cast in purple. Not in the local area anyway. Jane must have shipped someone in.

Jane chuckled. “Someone give the boy a prize!” She cast a look at Tessa and then winked. “You sure can pick the bright ones, can’t you, sweetie?”

Feral colored a little, unsure why he’d become the butt of jokes around here. He’d noticed that about women. Get a woman on her own and she was fine, but get them in packs of two or more, and suddenly everything a guy said or did was wrong.

He caught the baby’s eye, looking for some moral support from the only other male in the room. The baby just blinked back at him, a look that plainly said, “You’re on your own, buddy. I’m cute and milking it for all it’s worth.”

Sighing, he turned back to the matter at hand, ignoring Jane’s comment. “Okay, what I don’t understand is why you got a warden to recreate a Faery gate? Why not just apply to them for a licensed one? I hear they relaxed the rules. Even nightclubs are getting them now…”

Jane arched an eyebrow, turning to look at him fully, her expression clearly telling him she didn’t think he was playing with a full deck.

“Err, perhaps because I don’t want them to know it’s here? You know, like…keep it a secret?” she replied, scathingly. “Not exactly a secret anymore, is it? If half the court admin knows about it. And there’s no sense in expecting a Brownie to keep its mouth shut when there’s some gossip to share.”

He had to admit she had a point. Brownies had to be the worst gossips, often making things up if the real news wasn’t spicy enough. If something was said within earshot, guaranteed the rest would know by lunchtime. He shuddered. And they gave him the creeps. Because of his paranormal blood, he could see through the weak glamour they cast to fool human minds. A glamour that made them appear to be small, neat men of indeterminable middle age. Underneath though, Brownies were wizened, spindly creatures with bulbous eyes and overlong fingers. They reminded him of spiders, with their quick movements and thin limbs.

“I see what you mean,” he conceded, curious as to why an aunt of Tessa’s needed a secret back door into the Faery realm. He didn’t get to ask that question, however, as the next moment a heavy thud sounded against the door at the top of the stairs.

“I suggest you do whatever it is you’re planning,” he said quickly, moving over to the piles of broken furniture and other clutter, throwing all of it into the stairwell. That way, if they were to get through the door, they’d still have to fight to get down the stairs.

Jane flashed a brief, reassuring smile as she started to chant, moving around the circle as she did and triggering wards on its perimeter. Tessa watched in amazement, the baby cuddled up tightly in her arms. Her worry about the pursuers was momentarily forgotten as she watched the beautiful symbols flare brightly in the air for a few seconds before they faded to nothing again.

Her own magic wasn’t particularly strong, just enough for will-o’-wisps and personal glamour. In fact, the stunt she’d pulled in the nursery, getting will-o’-wisps to attack that pixie, had been the most magic she’d pulled since her teens. Attempting to become more human and blend in, she’d just stopped using it.

But now, seeing Jane using her power, Tessa wondered whether that had been the right choice. Whether she’d been right to turn away from that side of her heritage. Perhaps that was why she didn’t feel like she fit in her own skin sometimes?

Finally, Jane stopped moving, holding her hand motionless over one symbol. Expectation built in the room like pressure in an airplane cabin as she carried on chanting. Her voice rose steadily until she reached the end of the incantation, saying the last words with a flourish of her fingers.

Something hit the air in the room, not a sound precisely, more like a sound wave or the ripples in a pond after a stone had been dropped into the water. She shivered as it hit her, reverberating through her body before it passed on and rippling outward.

As Tessa watched the dirt “door” changed, a shimmer passing over it like quicksilver and filling the frame until it looked like the surface of a mirror. A mirror that reflected nothing other than the pale swirl of opaque mist that curled and moved within its rectangular confines.

Behind her, the door cracked, startling a squeak from Tessa. She ducked instinctively, expecting hordes of pixie warriors to pour down the stairs at any moment. She clutched the baby to her as Jane shoved her toward the strange door.

“You need to go, now!” She shoved a folded parchment into Tessa’s hands. “This’ll show you the way to go.”

Feral caught up with them, barely even breathing heavily at the exertion of hauling furniture about. “That door’s not going to hold them up much longer,” he announced, his voice sounding urgent. Even as he spoke, the heavy thud filtering down changed in quality. A different note, as though it wasn’t just a shoulder or a heavily applied boot, but something else.

“Crap, someone got a brain and decided to use the fire extinguisher,” he muttered, grabbing Tessa’s arm.

“You’re not coming?” he asked as Jane held back.

She shook her head.

“This is your journey,” she replied. “This is as much help as I can give you. Other than to wish you good luck!”

Worry speared Tessa’s heart. If these pixies were anything like the ones that had broken into her sister’s apartment, they could hurt her aunt. Even though Jane was hundreds of years old, definitely old enough to look after herself, Tessa still worried.

“You have to come with us,” she insisted, trying to grab her aunt’s hand. Feral stopped her, lacing his fingers with hers.

“Leave it be, love. If she says she can’t, then she can’t.” His gentle voice comforted her somewhat. “Will you be okay?”

Jane pulled herself to her full height. “Young man, I’ll have you know I was Queen of England at one point,” she said imperiously. “I think I can handle some bloody pixies. Now, you need to damn well go!”

Tessa screwed her eyes up as Feral propelled the three of them bodily through the strange opening, the sharp crack of wood sounding as the door above them gave in. The sounds of triumph cut off instantly as the three of them hit the quicksilver barrier, a cold chill passing over Tessa’s skin and making her shiver.

It didn’t splash or stick to them as she’d expected, her hand over the baby’s face just in case. Instead, there was an odd sound, like the pop in her ears as they equalized on a plane. She stumbled forward a little and a fresh breeze hit her face. The smell of the outdoors and rain filled her nostrils, and she knew they were outside. The question was, where?

Her eyes snapped open, looking around. They were in a small clearing in what looked like a forest. Leaves and other debris were wet underfoot, the shine of the moon overhead glinting off the moist surfaces. Tessa wasn’t particularly afraid of the dark, or of being places at night, but there was an unsavory feel about the shadows around them that had her shrinking closer to the large form of the vampire beside her.

Feral moved in front of her, his blades back in his hands. He stood still, every line of his body stiff as he checked their surroundings. She knew without asking that he was ready for anything this place might throw at them, the look in his eyes telling her he was ready to react violently and without mercy. Despite her worry at their situation, being chased into the Faery realm by homicidal pixies, the sight of him still took Tessa’s breath away. He was quite literally the hero of her erotic fantasies.

She shivered, half imagining what a future with him would be like. What it would be like to have him around all the time. She already knew he could be sweet and gentle… his behavior with the baby was evidence of that. Right now though, he was channeling badass with a vengeance. To have that “tame me if you can” bad boy attitude and that heavenly body, which was to die for, on tap… She shivered. Heavens, it would be like all her Christmases rolled into one.

Determined, she tried to concentrate although her eyes kept sliding to check out his ass. It was a nice ass, hard and firm, and she just ached to grab a handful.

“Mind on the job, Tessa honey.” His voice barely reached her in the darkness. “I can’t concentrate if you do that.”

A flush filled her cheeks as he went back to his scan, standing so still she was sure he’d become a statue. She’d heard vampires could do that, but she’d never seen it herself. How had he known she was checking him out, though? He hadn’t even been looking her way…

Finally, he moved, blinking and coming back to life again to smile at her.

“Okay, so how did you know I was checking you out?” she demanded. “If you’re reading my mind, fang-boy, I don’t care if you’re the god damn Vampire King himself…I’ll kick your ass into next week!” she promised, her eyes flashing fire.

He laughed and held his hands up in surrender. “Well, it’s lucky I’m not…Marak’s too busy getting his ass kicked by his wife, Maria. She’s just as damn awkward as you are. I really feel for the guy.”

Tessa grinned broadly. “Good for her! Can’t let you men get away with anything. Give you an inch and you take a damn mile. So, are you going to answer the question, or what?”

Feral slid her a sideways glance, moving past her to get a look at the door they’d come through. “Maybe, or maybe I should go for the ‘or what’…”

“I’ll give you or what…”

Feral grinned as he turned to study the doorway, so she did too. An honest to goodness ordinary doorframe just stood there in the middle of the clearing. Unlike the complicated wards and markings that graced the one they came through in the basement of the hotel, this side was completely unadorned.

“One-way gate,” he murmured. “Smart. Don’t want anything from this side getting through.” He smoothed his hand over the wood, and she saw the brief flare of active wards to mark heavy duty protection spells buried in the flimsy wood. “Some fancy warden work here, I’d say. Your aunt must have paid a pretty penny for this lot.”

Tessa shrugged and then shivered as she cuddled the baby closer, breathing in his familiar scent while she looked around. All babies smelled the same, like warm baby powder and well…pure baby. The ultimate comfort smell, if anyone could bottle the stuff, they’d make a fortune.

Feral’s comment about not wanting anything from this side to get through caused a chill to run down her spine. That didn’t sound good, not good at all. Her teasing mood, which she had been clinging to despite the odds, disappeared as a new thought occurred to her. A very unwelcome thought.

“We’re on the Night Plains, aren’t we?” Her voice was quiet, wary. She’d heard of the place. Who hadn’t? It featured in every scary story told to any child with fae blood. But she’d never thought her aunt meant it when she’d talked about traveling to the Fae Court.

“I’m afraid so.” Feral pushed away from the door and held his hand out to take a couple of the bags. Without a death squad of pixies breathing down their necks, they didn’t need to be on such constant alert. She hoped his finely honed senses would warn him if anything even thought about getting within spitting distance while they kept on the move…should they make it through this.

“Come on. We need to get going.”