Chapter 9
Analia jerked away from the hands that had grabbed and pulled her into a circle. It took her a heartbeat before her eyes adjusted and her mind caught up, recognizing she’d gone from daytime to deep dusk, that the three owners of those hands had propelled themselves backward, away from her, their palms facing outward. That instead of the tall figures who had burst through the mirror, quickly encircling her, the men she now looked at were short, the tops of their heads barely above her waist.
Her pulse quickened at recognizing their faces. They’d been huddled several blocks away from the Artist’s Loft when she’d seen them yesterday. They’d also been tall.
She’d thought they were a grandfather, son and grandson, trying to decide on a direction or destination. They’d worn shorts and loud-patterned shirts. But now their clothing looked as if it’d been woven from rough wool or fiber.
She looked around, finding herself in an orchard.
“Who…who are you? Where are we?”
The men exchanged glances. The young one took a hesitant step forward. “We are known as grigs. We mean you no harm.”
His earnest voice and raised hands helped ease the wild pounding of her heart. “Then why did you bring me here?”
A fevered urgency entered his expression. “We are searching for something that belongs to us, that centuries ago was stolen from us by trickery.”
They had to be after the charms.
Outrage chased away some of her fear. “You could have asked me to meet with you! You didn’t need to search my apartment or hire someone to attack me!”
The grig’s eyes widened and he back-stepped. “We used no violence. I swear it.”
With a glance he handed off the task of convincing her to the grizzled, bearded elder. The old man stepped forward hands still raised, palms facing outward. Voice vibrating with tension, he said, “Please, tell us about this attack. Why do you think it is related to our search?”
Analia told him about the mugging and the interview at the police station, though she omitted mention of Kellen and made it sound as if the dog that had come to her rescue was an ordinary canine and not a fey hound.
The elder grig lowered his hands. His shoulders hunched forward. “It’s as we feared,” he whispered. “Our enemies are aware that the artifact has surfaced.”
The grig who’d be middle-aged by human standards placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “All is not lost.”
The young grig reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Analia gasped when he held it out to her and she saw the tree-shaped charm. He said, “The other piece of the artifact, where is it?”
“You were in my apartment!”
He nodded vigorously. “This is one half of the item. The magic fled from it when we took possession. We chased the magic and found you at the end of the trail. Please, where is the other piece of the crystal? We face enslavement and slaughter by our enemies if it falls into their hands!”
The fear and desperation in his voice, along with the old grig’s reaction to learning an enemy was after the charm, struck a chord of sympathy in Analia. She wasn’t ready to trust them, but she could give them a measure of relief and hope. “The other piece of crystal is in a safe place.”
In the distance she heard a burst of children’s laughter. The grizzled elder said, “Come, join us at the fire circle.”
The invitation sounded formal, as if it came with rights and responsibilities. Curiosity got the better of her. This was really happening to her! She was in another realm, conversing with supernatural beings that were the stuff of myths!
That is—if she hadn’t somehow been knocked out in the real world, possibly by a falling full-length mirror, and was now lying in the hospital in a coma. Or on the surgery table and having an out-of-body experience thanks to anesthesiology.
“I’ll join you,” Analia said, then followed them deeper into the orchard, walking beneath trees laden with red, green and yellow apples. The deeper they went, the older and wider the trees got.
They reached a clearing and several men jumped to their feet. Some wore scowls but others had expressions of painful hope.
The old grig who’d been leading the way to the campfire turned toward Analia, “Your name, so I can welcome you.”
Was it safe to give her name? She didn’t remember very many childhood fairy tales, but she did love to read urban fantasy and more than once, those worlds were places where giving your name meant giving others power over you. Her hesitation had additional men standing, as if by not offering her name, she was signaling she’d come to their campfire with ill intentions—even though they’d been the ones to snatch her from her world and bring her to theirs!
The elderly grig met her gaze. “I am Gellawin.” He indicated the youngest of his companions. “This is Furgil, and next to him, his father, Burloksson.”
There were no shocked exclamations from those around the campfire, or worried exchanges of glances to suggest there was danger in his having revealed their names. Analia took a deep breath. Trust had to start somewhere, though thinking it brought Kellen’s image and a sharp stab of pain.
“I’m Analia.”
Gellawin smiled. “Welcome to our fire circle.”
Space opened and Analia accompanied the three grigs to the camp fire, taking a seat between Gellawin and Burloksson.
The men who’d jumped to their feet slowly, one-by-one, sat. A few cautious smiles were offered, but mothers held infants with their faces pressed to breasts or shoulders, and the young children whose laughter had reached her through the orchard hid behind parents and much older siblings.
The pop-pop-pop of what sounded like gunfire sent Analia’s heart racing. She started to scramble to her feet, but Gellawin rested a calloused palm on her forearm. “Nuts are roasting in the fire.”
“Oh.” There was additional popping, the first few making Analia flinch. And then the popping grew louder, the time between each pop lessening and lessening until it became a barrage of sound, like popcorn just before it burns in the microwave.
Dusk gave way to starlit night, the change far more abrupt than she was used to. An elderly woman on the other side of the campfire stood. She poked a long stick into the flames as a second, younger woman scooped through fire and ash with a forked stick that had thick vine woven between branches to form a net.
Every few seconds she lifted the net, shook it to put out tiny licks of flame, then dipped it into fire and ash again. When it was heavy with nuts, she dumped the nuts into a large wooden bowl.
The bowl was stacked on two others, and given the rings, had been carved from a tree trunk. A man sitting behind the stacked bowls lifted the one containing the nuts, shook it as if to cool them, then took a nut the size of Analia’s pinky before passing the bowl to a young man on his right.
He took a nut, passed the bowl to a woman with a familial resemblance. She took a nut and passed the bowl.
Next to Analia, Gellawin said, “We gather at the fire circle each evening to share our daily accomplishments as well as to share song and stories from our past.”
When the bowl reached him, he took a golden-brown nut. “These nuts are plainly roasted. The next bowl will be spicy, and the one after, honeyed.”
Analia accepted the bowl and, following the example set by the others, took a single nut then passed the bowl to Burloksson. She bit into the nut. It tasted like a lightly salted almond.
A barrage of pop-pop-popping had the old woman prodding the fire with the stick and the younger woman scooping fresh nuts.
Near the two women, a dark-haired young girl with a smattering of freckles peeked out from behind her mother, then ducked out of sight, making Analia smile.
The girl peeked out again. By human standards she looked like a miniature version of an eight or nine-year-old.
Analia gave a quick wave before the girl once again ducked out of sight, only to peek out again on the other side of her mother and return the wave. Analia’s laugh had other children peeking from behind parents and siblings, which further emboldened the freckled girl. She stood, remaining behind her mother for a moment before coming out and sitting cross-legged, her size only adding to her adorableness.
She reminded Analia of Christmas and birthday trips to toy stores, and wanting dolls that were the same size as the grig child on the opposite side of the campfire.
“I’m called Gwendolen,” the girl said in a clear voice before her face scrunched up in a frown. “You don’t feel magic.”
“I don’t think many humans have magic.”
The little girl hugged herself. “Oh. Then how are you going to help keep Herrica and her sisters from getting us?”
“Shhh. Shhh. Shhh,” several adults around the fire said, more than one of them glancing over their shoulder as if whoever it was they feared could be summoned by the use of a name.
Analia’s heart skipped into a faster beat. She half turned toward Gellawin, but before she could question him about their enemies or the charm, there was a gout of flame in the dark orchard.
A high-pitched shriek was followed by a second gout of flame, then the sound of something crashing through vegetation.
Analia tipped onto her knees. Gwendolen said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of. They’re just dragonettes. They look like miniature dragons, but they aren’t dangerous to us, well, not usually.”
The little girl made a face. “Mostly dragonettes use their fire on big insects and small rodents. That’s how they cook their meat before they eat it. Yuck. We don’t eat meat. Do humans?”
“Some do and some don’t,” Analia said, then to divert the conversation before she was forced into admitting she was one of those who did, she asked, “So dragons exist?”
Gwendolen nodded sagely while several of the much older children exchanged glances. Then a red-haired girl, a teen by Earth standards, said, “Haven’t you met one? Dragons go to your world all the time. That’s where many of them find their mates.”
Taine’s image popped immediately into Analia’s mind and her mouth literally dropped open. Was it possible?
Everything inside her said, Yes, not only possible, but likely. Every time she’d encountered Saffron’s significant other, he’d been wearing a T-shirt that referenced fire or dragons.
“Tomorrow I’ll catch a dragonette for you,” Gwendolen said, recapturing Analia’s attention. “Then you can see what a real dragon looks like.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I wouldn’t want you to get burned.”
Gwendolen’s tiny chin jutted outward. “I won’t get burned. I catch dragonettes all the time.”
Beside her, her mother tsk-tsked and said, “Careful my darling, that exaggeration comes close to a falsehood.”
Gwendolen crossed her arms over her chest, and though her chin remained thrust forward, her lips quivered, creating a pang in Analia’s chest.
“Are there dragons here?” she asked, wanting to restore the girl’s happiness but glancing skyward and thinking that gathering around a campfire in the center of a clearing might be begging to become a meal—even a banquet.
“No,” Gwendolen said. “They have their own realms. We don’t have to worry about them getting us. We have to worry about…”
She trailed off before being shushed again for naming their enemy, and yet several adults still glanced over their shoulders as if searching the darkness for the thing they feared—and that fear was palpable, not just in the adults but in the children.
Analia rubbed her palms over her knees, her heart beating faster and faster, mimicking the rapid-fire popping of nuts in the fire as she came to a decision about the charm.
The woman gathering the roasting nuts dumped those she’d collected into another bowl carved from a tree trunk. The old man lifted and shook the bowl, before taking a nut and passing the bowl.
Maybe it was foolish, but she trusted these people. They’d searched her apartment, taken the other charm and abducted her, pulling her into a world she hadn’t known existed, and yet … the old man at the supernatural fair had said that possession of the charms would begin a journey of discovery, and it had, starting on the beach with the encounter with the fey hound, and leading to Supernatural Ops and being with Kellen…
A shaft of pain went through her chest. Was he even looking for her? Or had he taken the charm to IRE headquarters and asked Maksim to have someone else search for her?
The old man’s warning had come true. She’d lost possession of the charm to an IRE agent and almost immediately her chance at happiness with a true mate had disappeared.
She blinked away sudden tears, refusing to allow their escape. She wanted to learn more about the enemy the grigs feared. She wanted to know more about the charm and its magic. But as the bowl moved from person to person, she had an increasing sense that time was running out, and that she would ultimately be the cause of their deaths if she didn’t tell them where to find the remaining charm.
We face enslavement and slaughter! an impassioned Furgil had said. And Gwendolen had touched Analia’s heart, though she couldn’t bear the thought of any of those around the fire being killed.
Analia closed her hands into fists, took a deep breath and said, “Kellen has the other half of the crystal. He took it from me shortly before we got to The Magic Shack, the place where you came through the mirror. The charm is in his pocket.”
The bowl came to rest on a young man’s lap. Every gaze fixed on her.
“Who is this Kellen?” Gellawin asked, his voice holding encouragement and hope.
The pain of moments earlier returned in a rush, embedding itself in her heart like a hundred splinters. It was too easy to hear the cold fury in his voice when he’d accused her of ditching the charm outside of the astrologist’s house, the suspicion and disbelief after she’d told him she might have gotten the charm at The Magic Shack, the finality when he’d asked her if it’d all been a lie.
Her fingernails digging into her palms, she said, “He’s an IRE agent.”
The bowl of nuts tumbled to the ground as the young man who’d had it on his lap jumped to his feet. He glanced around the fire circle, gaze coming to rest on three old women and three old men, including Gellawin. “I beseech you, Elders, send me on this quest. I am agile and do not fear death.”
A middle-aged woman, her brown hair coiled and worn pinned at the sides of her head, also stood and searched out those same old grigs. “Send me along with Lobiris, Elders. I can add my experience in the human realm to his swiftness of action. My loss would not be a burden as I have no mate or children.”
One by one, other grigs stood, each of them stating how their choice would benefit the effort to retrieve the charm, each of them stating a willingness to die.
The painful splinters in Analia’s chest turned to icy shafts. She hugged her knees to her chest then forced her arms down and stood. “No one has to die. I can—”
“There is nothing you can do to aid us,” Gellawin said. He took her hand between both of his. “Because of what you’ve shared, your name will be sung by those gathered around the fire for generations to come. But this must be our fight and we must hurry to it. Is the crystal contained in something that will mute its power?”
“No.”
“Then there is hope, and opportunity, as long as this agent doesn’t reach the IRE vaults or fall prey to our enemies.”
“What if he’s not near a mirror?”
Despite his tense features, Gellawin laughed. “The mirror was an accidental passageway. There was some trace of magic attached to it, probably an old sorcerer’s spell. We were following the magic that fled the charm in your apartment, and took the most direct route, encountering you, thinking you were in possession of what we sought since you were in our path.”
Gellawin, along with the other five elders, moved around the circle, each choosing one of the grigs who’d volunteered.
Analia felt like screaming, like weeping, like demanding that she be allowed to go with them to Earth.
Burloksson placed a hand on her arm. “Our realm is like yours, magic poor. And like your human sorcerers, we channel magic, though unlike them, we each draw from the land and have a reservoir of that magic residing within us. When we brought you here, it drained our collective power. If you had magic of your own, we could return you to your world and be sure of getting back to ours. But until the magic builds again, we can’t risk being too weak to recover the artifact.”
“I understand,” she said, forcing the words out though her chest remained tight and her hands clenched.
The prospect of them hurting or killing Kellen—or him doing the same to one of the six selected volunteers was intolerable.
Several adults and children were crying, though when the elders returned to their places along the circle and held out their hands, even those agonizing at the potential loss of a loved one joined hands.
Rather than reach across her, Gellawin clasped Burloksson’s hand behind Analia’s back, making her feel included in the circle though she had no magic to offer. In the center, around the fire, the volunteers stood, their hands also clasped, their gazes fixed on their loved ones, as if to carry those images to their deaths.
She expected chanting, but the grigs hummed a series of tones. Their voices rose and fell, moved through a number of octaves.
The hair on Analia’s bare arms and neck lifted. Her very bones seemed to vibrate with the tones.
Her skin tightened and tightened and tightened. Her ears felt clogged the way they did when taking off in an airplane—and then popped, the pressure suddenly released as the six grigs in the center of the circle winked out of existence—at least in their own realm.
* * *
“We can’t allow him to return to IRE headquarters!” Tobik screeched, grabbing the door handle on the passenger side of Deidra’s rented vehicle.
Deidra’s hand snaked out and locked around the grig’s arm, her nails stabbing into his skin. “You have no chance against a fey hound, much less a fey hound and a dragon. Wait. You sought me out because I’m the superior hunter. Wait.”
His hand fell away from the door handle and she released him. If not for her determination to ultimately rule as Kellen’s mate, she would have happily allowed the foul-smelling grig to rush to his death. She had no use for a traitorous being who would betray his own kind.
Even with the windows open, the car stank of fetid meat and baked apples. The rank smell seemed soaked into the very seats after hours spent in the car, waiting outside the human mongrel’s apartment building, then following Kellen and the inferior bitch as they went first to the astrologist’s house, then to The Magic Shack.
Something must have happened inside the magical junk shop, given Kellen’s rush out of there alone, and the arrival of more IRE agents. If not for Tobik being positive that Kellen now possessed the artifact, she would have entered The Magic Shack and made it clear to the human trash that her existence was barely tolerable and would end if she didn’t stay away from Kellen.
A block in front of the rental car, Kellen and the dragon scion finished their conversation. The dragon drove away in his expensive sports car.
Kellen got into the human’s small car and Deidra snarled as she imagined the scent of the human clinging to Kellen’s clothing and skin.
She’d soon rid him of the stink of another female. She’d soon ensure that all of his thoughts and all of his desire to please were focused on her—a truly worthy mate though he wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough for her. But sacrifices had to made, and she was willing to sacrifice to fulfill her destiny.
“He’s leaving!” the foul-smelled grig screeched. “We have to do something!”
He was right in that Kellen could not be allowed to reach IRE headquarters with the artifact. But now was the moment for her to use the advantage she possessed.
Drumming long fingernails against the steering wheel, she said, “We’ll catch him and acquire the artifact.”
“How?” Tobik’s voice rose with increasing panic as Kellen neared a corner, marking an intent to turn with a blinking signal light.
“The how is my concern. Right now I require proof that you can deliver on what you’ve promised. How is it that I’ll gain the control I seek over Kellen?”
“Follow him! Follow him and I’ll tell you!”
“Tell me now and I’ll follow him.” Deidra flashed gleaming white teeth. “Don’t tell me and our alliance is ended.”
Tobik tugged at his clothing, releasing shirt buttons and flooding the interior of the car with more stench. He reached inside his shirt and a hound’s acute hearing captured the sound of him opening a hidden pouch, freeing a strong wave of fey magic.
She sniffed, but didn’t recognize the magic’s origin. The grig pulled a long, silky chord of silvery, woven hair from beneath his shirt.
Tobik’s tongue glided over thin lips and his pupils dilated. He pressed his mouth to the weave and inhaled deeply. “This is my mistress’s hair. She’s a baoban sith.”
Deidra shuddered even as her heart raced in anticipation and her mind conjured images of turning the woven hair into a collar securely fastened around Kellen’s neck.
The baoban sith were creatures of myth—of nightmare. She’d thought them extinct, killed millennia ago because of their ability to so thoroughly ensnare other fey with their blood and hair.
Their enslavement didn’t require constant presence or the continued use of power. And the enslavement was total, complete, taking over another being’s will, not just making them compliant.
For the baoban, no delicacy was greater to feast upon than human blood. But the baoban didn’t possess the magic to easily enter the human realm nor did they possess the glamour essential to completely mask their appearance.
In olden days, the baoban had turned other, far more powerful fey into slaves whose wealth and magic—whose very lives—were plundered for the purpose of taking the baoban to the human realm or fetching humans to the fey realms.
In one of Tobik’s long diatribes as they had waited for Kellen and the human interloper to emerge from her apartment, he had whined about the unfairness of being cast from his clan. He’d also let it slip that grigs could create their own portals.
Now Deidra smiled, understanding the purpose behind this hunt—one she’d use to her advantage. She shook off the fear that mention of the baoban had brought.
Pleasure filled her at imagining the fate of Kellen’s unworthy bitch. What better type of slave for the baoban to possess than ones who could provide a steady stream of human prey—human prey that would include the female who’d dared to catch Kellen’s interest.
“Give me the braid,” Deidra said, reaching across the seat and snatching it from Tobik.
He didn’t lunge forward in an attempt to reclaim it but wailed, “Now go! Go before we lose him!”
Because it suited her, Deidra started the rental car’s engine and pulled from the curb. The innocuous white car was like thousands of others in San Diego. Unnoticeable. Until it was noticed—and then it would be too late.
With a surge of speed she caught up to Kellen, though she kept her distance. It was easy enough to mentally plot his path to IRE headquarters.
“He’ll be on the interstate soon,” Tobik said, his voice continuing to grate on her as badly as his stench. “If the artifact is placed in one of the vaults, I’ll be punished. You said you had a plan. What’s your plan?”
“Shut up,” she growled, needing to interpret the sudden edgy feeling along her spine that had come when she considered peeling away and racing ahead of Kellen so she could get onto the freeway ahead of him. There were a multitude of places where they could lay in wait to ambush him in the neighborhood he’d pass through to reach IRE.
That was their best bet at catching him off guard and having time to act. That made sense…
But some instinct kept her behind him. Blocks passed. Up ahead was a turn that would lead him to the freeway.
“He’s going to get away!” Tobik yelled, his gaze drifting to the braided hair on her lap, his body tensing, betraying his intention to snatch the magical weave.
Deidra glanced at him, bared her teeth and snarled a hound’s warning. Even in human form, the warning was enough to have him pushing backward against the passenger door.
He was a loathsome, pathetic creature, one she doubted his mistress would avenge, though Deidra intended to honor the bargain she’d made. Her hand dropped from the steering wheel to the silky, silver braid that would soon be Kellen’s collar. There were advantages to a continued alliance with a baoban sith.
Deidra tapped the gas pedal, closing some of the distance between them and Kellen, then smiled when he sped through the intersection and turned away from the freeway. She’d been right to listen to her instincts.
“Where do you think he’s going?” Tobik asked, his voice holding less panic.
“Home.” But Kellen couldn’t be allowed to get there, not with a dragon as a neighbor.
Deidra turned left, instead of continuing to follow Kellen, then accelerated.
“What are you doing!” Tobik shrieked, the panic returning.
Deidra didn’t bother to answer.
She mentally followed Kellen’s route, speeding through yellow lights and cursing the increasing number of pedestrians as they got closer and closer to the beach. “Tell me when you can sense the artifact.”
She turned onto a street perpendicular to the one that passed by Kellen’s townhouse—the one Kellen would soon be on—and halted fifty yards from the stop sign, leaving the engine on. They would have one chance, and only one chance.
“Take out your weapon,” she said, focusing on the smell of the cold iron beneath his stink.
Tobik pulled a knife from a sheath sewn into a shirt pocket across his stomach. The blade wouldn’t kill Kellen, but it might help hold him at bay long enough for her to wrap the baoban’s hair around his neck.
A delivery truck stopped behind the rental. Its driver laid on the horn before swinging around them, sending an angry look and raising his hand, exposing his middle finger as he passed.
Deidra imagined herself shifting, ripping out his throat. It was said that when they could get away with it, demons carried humans to their realm for the hellhounds to hunt.
Maybe when she ruled the fey hounds…
The truck reached the stop sign and turned, leaving the path clear. Tobik jerked forward in his seat. “I can feel the artifact!”
“How close?” But even as she was asking he was shaking his head, admitting to his failure and lack of ability.
She drummed hard hound nails against the steering wheel, then dropped them to the silken hair on her lap. She slipped it through a belt loop and stroked the long braid as Tobik got more and more animated.
“It’s closer. I can feel it getting closer!”
She wondered what had happened inside The Magic Shop. The grig had had no sense of the artifact when Kellen and the human tramp went inside.
Why had Kellen raced out alone seconds after Tobik had yelled that he felt the artifact?
Maybe the magic had been cloaked, and they’d encountered something in the shop that unmasked it. That would explain the arrival of other IRE agents, but not the human female’s absence—or Kellen’s going back to the astrologist, his desperation leading him to shift into hound form and hurl himself through a window.
Deidra gnashed her teeth. There was no avoiding the obvious explanation any longer.
Her hand fisted on the braid. Something had happened to the female, and Kellen was willing to risk himself on her behalf.
“Almost here,” Tobik gasped.
Deidra’s hands returned to the steering wheel. She held the brake while pushing the gas pedal down. The car rocked in reaction to the opposing forces.
Tobik’s free hand covered his seatbelt clasp, wrenching unwilling admiration from her at his being prepared to attack now that he understood her plan.
“Almost,” he said. “Almost. Almost—”
She released the brake.
The car catapulted forward, burning rubber and gaining speed with each yard they traveled.
Hound reflexes had Kellen trying to get out of their path but the human’s car was no match for the heavier rental.
Deidra barked out a laugh as they whipped past the stop sign. She bared her teeth in satisfaction as she slammed into the smaller vehicle.
She struck behind the driver’s seat with enough force to throw Kellen sideways toward the driver-side window. Airbags exploded in both vehicles as metal crunched and crumpled.
Deidra fought free of the collapsed airbags. She escaped the car with only one goal: enslave Kellen.
She slammed her fist into the shattered passenger window, knocking the glass out while leaning against the car door in an effort to keep Kellen from using his larger mass to his advantage. The glass fell away and she reached in, trying to grasp him with one hand while the other tore the silken braid from her belt loop.
His expression was dazed, as if he’d received a blow to the head, but enough instinct remained that he felt the magic and understood the threat.
Kellen jerked back and no doubt would have attempted escape through the passenger door, but he found his way blocked. Tobik stood in the doorway, cold iron knife slashing the air.
Deidra surged through the broken window, uncaring of the tiny particles embedding themselves in her skin. Kellen turned toward her, blocked a punch meant to daze and sent pain pounding up her arm.
He hissed as Tobik sliced across his back and she knew from experience the kiss of cold iron produced a cauterized wound that sent fiery agony radiating outward.
Another of Tobik’s slashing cuts provided enough distraction for her to get the baoban’s silver braid around Kellen’s neck.
“Stop fighting me,” she growled and he slowed, his gaze fogging though he wasn’t yet fully in the grip of magic.
He pulled back, keeping the strands taunt so she couldn’t create a collar fully encircling his neck. In slow motion his hands came up.
“Do something!” she hissed at Tobik, but the command freed Kellen enough that his hands moved quickly and were only slowed when she immediately shouted, “Stop.”
He froze.
“Lean forward,” she ordered. “You care only about pleasing me.”
Kellen tried to resist, but time slowed and his will ebbed.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
The words reverberated through him, tried to etch themselves onto his soul, tried to command his heartbeat.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
He conjured Analia’s image and the enslaving fog clouding his thoughts and taking over his will receded.
Gritting his teeth, he fought to reach the length of hair around his neck. If only he could reach it, jerk free of the fey magic.
He could defeat the bitch then use the collar on the grig wielding the cold iron blade. It had to be a grig—a grig after the charm—that was the only thing that made sense. He would force his attacker to take him to Analia.
“Stop moving your arms,” Deidra growled, crossing the braided hair so that more of it touched his throat, catching him in a wave of compulsion.
“You care only about pleasing me,” she repeated.
Inches from grasping the cursed weave his hands stopped, his arms trembling with the will he exerted to break free. If not for the strength forged by surviving his childhood, if not for having met and made love to Analia, he would already have been enslaved.
But even as he thought it, the fog in his head was growing stronger. The words Deidra had spoken were pounding against his will, rewriting it.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
Deidra’s eyes blazed with triumph. “If you weren’t your father’s heir, I wouldn’t bother with you. I’d leave you in this world to fuck your little human. I wouldn’t risk the chance of whelping deformed pups. But because allowing you to touch me is a necessary sacrifice, we’ll soon mate and return to our realm.”
“Lean forward,” Deidra commanded, licking her lips in anticipation of victory. “Maybe I’ll allow you to see your pathetic little human one last time. And her last memory will be of you shifting form and ripping out her throat.”
Fury burned away some of the compulsion fogging his brain, and once again Analia filled his thoughts. He needed to get to her, he needed…
“Stop resisting.” The weave around his neck tightened, filling his head with nothing but the command—
A command that became his heartbeat, though everything inside him fought to still that heartbeat even if it meant his death. He had to fight, had to fight.
He clung to Analia’s image but it wavered, faded—only to return with the pounding race of his heart as the hair collar was jerked away.
Behind him the grig scrambled out of Analia’s car.
In front of him was Crew.
Kellen glimpsed Deidra rising from where Crew had tossed her. And then Crew was wrenching the door open and pulling Kellen out onto the roadway.
“Stop them,” he said.
But it was too late. A lemon-yellow convertible had slammed to a halt to avoid hitting Deidra and she’d used it to her advantage, wrapping the collar around the driver’s neck.
As Kellen stood, swaying for an instant in the aftermath of the magic that’d fogged his mind so completely, Deidra forced the driver to do a U-turn and speed away, with both her and the grig as passengers.
“Fuck!” Kellen said, forcing himself to take several steps from Analia’s crumpled Prius as a test of stability.
“Fuck? That’s all you have to say? What about: Nice save, Crew. I owe you big time. And speaking of fuck, what the fuck did she have around your neck? It smelled like fey magic, but it looked like braided hair.”
“It stole my will,” Kellen growled, sharp fear streaking through him with the memory. “It fucking stole my will.”
It was similar in ways to the woven magic they’d used to turn the unicorns into docile beasts. But those weaves of magic wicked away energy and calmed, they didn’t enslave.
Kellen shuddered. He would have mated her. Would have returned to the hound realm with her. Would have been her puppet.
Fuck! He shivered, a hard, whole body shiver that in hound form would have left his fur standing and doubled his size.
“Thanks for the save.”
“Yeah, return the favor sometime. If you can tear yourself away from the little mate.”
“I’m not mated,” Kellen said, recognizing just how much effort it took to force a growl into his voice.
“Yet.” Crew smirked. “Why do you think I got here in time to save your ass? I’ll tell you since I can read your expression and see you’re dying to know.”
“Someone’s going to be dying,” Kellen muttered.
Crew’s smirk widened. “There I was, heading toward HQ, thinking you were behind me because, hey, you said that’s where you were going and our boss ordered you to take the artifact to the vaults. But then this thought crept up on me, that a man will take crazy chances when he’s found his mate, and I couldn’t shake it, so I circled back, figuring it’d be best for all concerned if I kept an eye on you.” He glanced at Analia’s wrecked Prius and shook his head. “This mating business is hard on cars. Taine torched three of them and now you’ve put a big dent in the little mate’s vehicle.”
“I did not put a dent in it,” Kellen growled.
The sudden scent of apples hit him, hit both of them, and they spun so they were back to back to face their attackers—only to find themselves surrounded by little people, five men of varying ages and a woman.
Grigs.
Kellen had only enough time to make the connection between scent and supernatural being, then release his human form before the grigs clasped hands and he was sucked into a vortex of power.
A heartbeat later, a new reality snapped into place, a nighttime clearing and air laden with the scent of apples and burning wood.
Kellen growled and lunged at the closest grig, taking the man down to the ground, deadly canines only inches away from his throat.
“No!” came a scream that reverberated through Kellen’s body and had his heart pounding wildly.
Analia!
“Crew, don’t let him attack! They’re friends!”
Kellen turned his head. He saw her rushing toward them and his heart swelled at seeing her unharmed. He leapt off the grig and with a thought, reclaimed his human form.