"I'm not sure this is the best idea, Jess." Showered and changed, Jess had her traipsing through the streets of London.

"You've got to start practicing, Ria."

"Practicing what?" she called after her.

Jess stormed ahead, but for once Ria had no problem keeping up. Her friend's small flat was in Whitechapel, but in no time at all they'd made it through the financial heart of the capital, past the luxurious residences in Mayfair and stepped out into the largest open space in the city—Hyde Park. Considering the distance they'd travelled in such a short space of time, Ria was surprised how level her breathing was. In fact, she didn't feel out of breath at all.

She'd always thought London's parks were scary at night. They were too quiet and too dark, but as she looked around, she didn't feel scared at all. The moonlight illuminated the trees and flowerbeds, giving everything an eerie glow, yet she'd take that over darkness any day. Far from being quiet, the park was alive with nocturnal noise. The fluttering of bat wings rang out overhead, their cheerful chatter oddly comforting. She could hear the murmur of voices from the few people out and about in the park. Scanning the area, she realised just how far away they were. She shouldn't be able to hear anything from that distance, but there she was, eavesdropping on a private conversation from over five hundred yards away.

"This way," Jess whispered, leading the way past the Joy of Life Fountain, towards the Broadway and Hyde Park corner.

"What are we doing here anyway?"

There was a split second when the air around the woman seemed to shimmer, and then Jess vanished. Ria's jaw dropped as her heart skipped a beat. What the...

"Yoohoo! Over here!" Jess reappeared two hundred feet away.

Before Ria could react, the air moved again and Jess was back where she started, standing right beside her.

It wasn't possible!

"What the hell was that?" Ria whispered, still not believing her own eyes.

Jess grinned, the tips of those razor-sharp fangs gleaming in the moonlight. "That, my dear girl, is your best form of defense. Half-breed or not, the ability to dematerialise is within you, and the quicker you master it, the better."

Ria's eyes widened. Yet again, the evidence in front of her belied what she knew in her mind. Fae or not, dematerialising was just not possible. It couldn't be.

"Look, I know all of this is pretty new to you, but you have to trust me. The Fallen are still after you, and until you learn to fight—"

"Fight? I can't fight!"

"My point exactly."

"But I haven't got the first clue how you did"—she waggled her hand at Jess—"whatever the hell it is you just did."

"It's easier than it looks, I promise."

Ria arched a brow. "Uh huh, sure.”

Jess pouted. "You're such a party pooper."

"I am not!"

The woman crossed her arms. "You have to learn this. I'm serious when I say the Fallen are still after you. If you can't fight—and I assure you, the Fallen have bested some of the fiercest warriors I know—then you need to know how to get yourself outta trouble. They're fast and they can be deadly, but they've lost the ability to dematerialise. This could very well save your life."

Ria could tell Jess meant every word. The anger, regret and determination she could sense from the woman were very real. Sighing, she replied with a nod.

"That's my girl. Now, all you need to do is visualise where you want to go."

"That's it? No magic words or incantation?"

"This isn't Hogwarts, Ria."

"Right. Sorry. Visualise," she replied feeling suitably chastised.

"Now, we'll start small." Jess pointed to a flowerbed about twenty feet away. "Visualise yourself standing in front of that flowerbed."

Ria nodded and took a deep breath. Didn't seem so hard. Just visualise herself standing by the flowers. She stared at a patch of grass just in front of the bed. And stared. And stared a bit more.

Absolutely nothing happened.

She could count every blade of grass, see a parade of ants marching their way across it, even see the soil moving ever so slightly as an earthworm passed underneath. She closed her eyes, and built a picture of herself standing there. She started with her feet, clunky boots sinking into the soft grass, then bootleg jeans leading up to a black v-neck T-shirt, up further to her messy ponytail and the top of her head. She was standing there. Right where Jess told her to be.

She cracked open an eye, and her shoulders slumped. She hadn't moved a millimeter.

"What am I doing wrong?" she asked, sounding defeated.

"You're overthinking it, hun."

"Overthinking it? Of course I'm overthinking it! You're telling me to will my body from one place to another. It's just not possible."

"Of course it's possible. I just showed you. Now stop whining and get on with it."

Ria huffed. "Fine."

She glanced over at that flower bed again. C'mon, Ria. You can do this.

This time she tried not to try too hard, convincing her brain that being over there was just a passing notion, not one she needed to overanalyse. A simple jump from one place to another.

She felt a shift in the air, like the space around her was trying to bend. Her body and mind started to disconnect, preparing themselves. She felt fluid, yet she still hadn't actually moved. She would though; she felt sure of it. Everything in her was about to shift.

To her left, she heard a hiss from Jess right before a dark, unfamiliar voice spoke. "Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

* * *

"I can't tell you what an honour it is to be here, My Lady. To actually serve in the Order is beyond anything I could have hoped for."

Lena couldn't help but smile. "I've told you before, Roarke, I am no lady. Please just call me Lena."

Roarke gulped, shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

"C'mon, out with it. What's the matter?"

"Well, um, that was before..."

Lena rolled her eyes. "I'm still the same person. I haven't grown an extra head or anything."

The new recruit looked aghast at the very suggestion. "Of course not! It's just, well, um, I'm not sure I could ever get used to calling my Queen by her first name."

Lena's lips pressed into a tight line. She supposed she ought to get used to it too. As much as she didn't like to face it, things had changed. She wasn’t just another Guardian or even Steward of the Watch anymore. She was Thorn's mate. By blood, she was already Queen, and after the stupid handfasting the whole race would see her as just that. The title didn't sit well with her.

"Did I say something wrong, My Lady?"

She feigned a smile. "No, no. It's alright." Taking a deep breath, she pushed those thoughts aside and moved over to the transparent OLED screen in the middle of the command centre. "I see you've hit the ground running."

Multiple programs were running simultaneously, but the one that caught her eye looked like live-feed. She pointed at the footage. "What's this about?"

A small smile crept across the guy's face. "That's something I've been working on for a while, but I needed the Blackwood servers to pull it off. You've got some impressive hardware here, let me tell you."

"It looks like CCTV footage."

"It is. I hacked into the police network. Plus I'm working on a code that will give us access to any private feed with a wi-fi signal."

Lena nodded her understanding. "What do you intend to with it?"

Mercury and Ryver came bowling through the door at that moment. "I'm tellin' ya, mate. The potential is astronomical."

Roarke shrank back a little as the two warriors seemed to suck up all the available space. Lena stood her ground, crossing her arms over her chest. She stared at Ryver, who looked even worse than he did earlier.

"Sorry to interrupt," Mercury said as he saw Lena and Roarke. He turned to their newest recruit. "You show 'er yet, kid?"

Roarke shook his head.

Mercury rolled his eyes. "C'mon, what are you waitin' for?" He clapped Roarke on the back and the poor guy actually winced in response.

Lena made a note to give Roarke some pointers in the gym. He needed to stand up for himself.

Roarke shuffled towards the screen. "Well, as I already explained to My Lady here—"

Both Mercury and Ryver failed to hide their sniggers at the use of her title.

Bastards. Lena shot them a look that said she'd be having words with them later and they both looked at their feet. Yeah, you know, arseholes.

"Sorry," the pair of them replied in unison.

Lena nodded and turned back to Roarke. "Ignore this pair of fucking idiots. You were saying?"

Roarke paled, no doubt at her choice of words, but she wouldn't apologise for who she was. The guy swallowed hard before nodding and turning his attention back to the screen. "Um... Right... So as I just explained, with the use of the Blackwood servers, I managed to hack the police network so we now have access to all their CCTV cameras."

"Spose that'll come in handy," Ryver said.

"Well, yes. Eyes all over the country is useful, but what will make it extra useful from House Blackwood's point of view is this." Roarke's hands flew over the keyboard and data streamed across the screen. A new application opened, more video footage, but this time people's faces appeared with white squares surrounding them, little data tags attached to them.

Lena stepped forward, scrutinising the screen in more detail. "Is that facial recognition?"

Roarke beamed at her.

"Got it one!" Mercury whooped.

Lena continued to watch the screen. The amount of information was mind boggling, but she still didn't see the application. How was this supposed to help them? She'd clearly missed something because Mercury and Roarke looked like they'd won the lotto.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ryver's head cock to one side. "Bloody hell! That's brilliant!"

"Guys! What the hell are you talking about?" Lena demanded.

Mercury nodded at their newest member. "Go on, kid. You tell 'er."

Roarke nodded. "I've been working on a way to track the Fallen. Your immense talent for tracking is impressive to say the least, My Lady, but the rest of us are not so lucky." He pointed at the screen again. "I'm working on something that'll allow us to track them digitally. I'm combining facial recognition with other algorithms that will be able to recognise the Fallen specifically, taking into account the way they move, the features we know to be common to them: the black eyes, sunken cheekbones, etcetera. Mercury gave me access to the Fallen Archives you hacked last year. The information there—mission reports and so on—can help us predict where they'll be next."

"You've been here less than twenty-four hours and you're already trying to drag us into the next century! This is amazing, Roarke!" Lena said it with an enthusiasm she definitely meant. Anything that gave them an advantage over the bastards who stole her childhood was always going to get her vote. "Does Kaden know about this?"

"He does," Kaden replied from the doorway.

The boss man made his way over and joined them in front of the OLED. After checking the progress for himself, he turned to Roarke and said, "Good work, Prospect."

The guy looked flustered at the Keeper's compliment, but there was no mistaking his smile of joy. Lena couldn't help but smile too. Just one night away from his awful mother and Master Bowman had already proven his worth. Lena had no doubt Thorn would initiate his official transfer immediately.

"Anything happening out there tonight?" Kaden asked, still studying the footage.

"Well officially it's still in beta mode. I haven't input any of the data from the archives yet, but I have been able to add some basic characteristics and some photos of known Fallen operatives, so we can try."

Excitement stirred in Lena's stomach. Mercury was right; the potential for this development was endless.

"Go for it, kid," Mercury said as they all waited to see what happened.

Roarke hit a couple of buttons. The images on the screen flew passed in a blur whilst a continuous stream of data entries scrolled along in a great list of numbers and letters in a separate window.

She had to admit it was a bit of an anticlimax.

"Just for fun," she suggested, "can you focus on parkland, isolated spots, yet not far from a lot of human activity. She was thinking of that night in Soho Square. While the hustle and bustle of the streets, full of tourists, were great hunting grounds for the Fallen, it was the quiet back streets and green spaces where humans were really vulnerable.

"Sure," Roarke replied, hitting the keyboard to enter the new parameters.

Lena watched with renewed interest, images of places she knew well skirting across the screen. The footage skipped from location to location, analysing any faces present before moving on. Just as she thought they'd be left disappointed, the system stopped on one scene in particular. She let out an involuntary hiss. Roarke's program has indeed found the Fallen. Six of them were closing in on two young women in Hyde Park.

"Bloody 'ell, it only bloody worked!" Mercury said, clearly impressed.

"We've got to do something, Kaden," Lena suggested, already making a weapons checklist.

To her side, she noticed Ryver stagger forward, a pained expression on his face. He watched the Fallen approaching the women with abject horror burning in his hazel eyes.

Lena frowned. "Ryver, is everything alright?"

He shook his head.

Mercury stepped forward. "Ryv, bruv, what's goin' on?"

The guy’s hand shook as he pointed at the screen and answered his brother's question. "Don't you recognise them?"

Mercury's face crumpled, clear that he didn't have the slightest clue what Ryver was talking about. Kaden and Roarke didn't look like they were in on the secret either.

The footage switched to a different angle and the two women came into better focus. Mercury's expression changed in an instant. "Holy fuck!"