Cruel Enchantment Page 4

  A knock sounded on his door. He shot up from his place, stalked over, and answered it with a snarl, pissed off at being disturbed.

  Kieran snarled back. “What’s your problem?”

  Aeric stepped aside and let the big man through the doorway. Kieran wasn’t a blacksmith, but still he had the build of one. “Sorry, man, I’m not in the best of moods.”

  Kieran entered, clearly riled by the welcome he’d received. Scowling, he glanced around Aeric’s apartment, seeing the disarray. His eyes lighted on the smashed whiskey bottle. “Your place looks like shit.”

  “Thanks for your honesty.”

  “Anytime.”

  Aeric couldn’t really say it didn’t. His apartment was one of the nicer ones in the keep, since he’d always been one of the Shadow King’s favorites. His ability to twist charmed iron was the reason why. The place was twice the size of the quarters other Unseelie nobles kept in the Black Tower, airy and open with a high ceiling shot through with heavy wooden beams. The kitchen area stood kitty-corner to the living room. His bed was in the opposite corner, separated by a polished black wood partition. Right now the place was a mess—clothes scattered everywhere, empty takeout boxes on the coffee table, dishes stacked up near the sink. He needed to hire a maid.

  Kieran’s gaze lingered on the broken whiskey bottle on the floor. His scowl deepened. “Are you all right?”

  Aeric smiled and swung an arm wide. “Great, my friend. Never better. Just celebrating.”

  “Celebrating what?”

  There was no way he could tell Kieran about Emmaline. Emmaline had killed Kieran’s twin brother during her days as the Summer Queen’s assassin. In Aeric’s opinion Diarmad Ailbhe Eòin Aimhrea had more than deserved it. Kieran knew it, too. All the same, Kieran would want revenge on her—and revenge was Aeric’s to take and no one else’s.

  He lurched to the side and sank into a chair, waving his half-full whiskey glass at him. “I’m celebrating the end of an era and the glimmer of dawn on the horizon. Closure, that’s what I’m celebrating. Want a drink?” He tipped his glass to Kieran and then drained it.

  Kieran eyed him like Aeric had grown another head and then answered, “Not right now. Gabriel’s wondering where you are. Asked me to come find you.”

  Fuck. The Wild Hunt. He’d totally forgotten.

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He glanced at the floor-to-ceiling fae-woven tapestry depicting the fae wars of the sixteen hundreds that hid the door to his forge. “Just have to take care of something before I leave.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting weird.”

  He stood, sliding his empty glass onto the cluttered coffee table. “Are you worried about me, Kieran?” The man had enough worries of his own, what with carrying the mother of all evil curses. It was really sad when someone like Kieran Aindréas Cairbre Aimhrea was concerned for him.

  Kieran grunted and turned away. “I’m just delivering a message, but you know where I am if you ever want a drinking partner, okay?”

  “Thanks, man. Tell Gabriel I’ll be up in a few.”

  Once upon a time the membership of the Wild Hunt had been a closely guarded and well-kept mystical secret. They rode every midnight on the backs of stallions that came from the Netherworld and with mystical hounds baying at their sides. The dogs led the way to the souls of the fae who had departed during the night. The Wild Hunt’s job was to collect them—a task passed on to them from some higher power they didn’t know or understand. The Morrigan, most thought. But last year when the Shadow King had discovered he had a daughter—and subsequently tried to shred her soul in an effort to keep her from attaining the Shadow Throne—all that had been exposed.

  Gabriel, the Lord of the Wild Hunt, had been in love with Aislinn Christiana Guinevere Finvarra, the Shadow King’s biological daughter, and had moved heaven and earth to save her from the king’s wrath. As a last resort to save her life, Gabriel had called on the power of the Wild Hunt. Aeric and the rest of the host had been at Gabriel’s side to help. In the process, the host had been revealed. Now all the fae knew who the reapers were.

  He showed Kieran out and slammed the door behind him. Leaning one palm up against the dark wood, he bowed his head and closed his eyes against an encroaching headache. Pushing a hand through his hair, he grimaced. All he wanted right now was to crawl into bed, but he had a duty to the hunt. He took his responsibility to the parted souls of Piefferburg seriously.

  Only one little loose end to tie up before he left.

  Spinning away from the door, he gathered his courage and headed to the tapestry. Flipping the edge to the side, he opened the door to his forge.

  He stepped inside the dark room. Immediately he grabbed the upper part of the handle of the weapon whizzing toward his head. Pivoting, he wrenched it from her fingers and slammed Emmaline’s slender body against the wall behind him, pulling back a little so he didn’t kill her with his weight.

  But it had been a bad idea to hold back. Moving faster than he’d anticipated, she twisted to the side, freeing herself, then caught his leg with hers and swept his foot out from under him. Stumbling, he caught himself just in time. A heartbeat before it was too late he saw the leg swipe had only been a distraction and whirled to catch the handle of the ax she was swinging toward him. She grunted in frustration as he stopped it cold, only inches from his thigh.

  Goibhniu, that had been close. She’d had a weapon in each hand.

  “No,” he growled into her face. “Bad girl.”

  He yanked the charmed iron ax from her and threw it, making it clatter and scrape against the floor as it hit the opposite wall. He pushed away with her upper arm firmly in his grip and led her to the back of the forge like a recalcitrant child.

  “Let me go!” she raged, trying to yank her arm away from him.

  It was a nice show of spirit, but he was twice her weight and her magick was of the nice, light, Seelie variety—she couldn’t kill with it directly. Not that it stopped this woman from killing. For a pure-blooded Seelie Court noblewoman, she was as deadly as they came.

  He bared his teeth inches from her face. “Never.”

  He roughly whipped her around to face him and grabbed a pair of charmed iron cuffs from a nearby worktable.

  Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare.” Her voice echoed in the huge, dark room.

  He let out a mirthless laugh and slapped them around her wrists. “You can’t even imagine what I would dare. These are to keep you out of trouble and stop you from trying to chop me into little pieces with my own weapons. That was beyond cheeky, woman.”

  “You don’t have to use charmed iron.” She gasped as the magick touched her skin and began to do its work. “My skill with glamour isn’t any threat to you. This is just plain cruel.”

  “Get used to cruel.” He tipped her chin up, a cold smile playing on his lips. “That’s all I have in my heart for you.”

  Her eyes clouded and she sagged forward, catching herself before she crumpled to the ground. Charmed iron lying against fae skin was very unpleasant. It stripped away all magick, rendering the prisoner naked and vulnerable. It also made the wearer sick if left on the flesh for a long period of time. Eventually that exposure killed the fae. During the wars some had inflicted horrible torture on their enemies by injecting charmed iron under the skin. It was not a good way to die.

  “I have a specific reason for using charmed iron on you. I want to see your true face,” he growled.

  She blanched. For the first time since he’d seen her walking toward him in the Boundary Lands she actually looked frightened. Her guise began to fall away, the charmed iron stripping her ability to mask her appearance.

  Her shoulder-length red hair darkened to a deep, rich brown that was nearly black. It became thicker and longer, flowing over her shoulders and curling gently down her back. Her heart-shaped face elongated, the chin and nose becoming sharper and the forehead higher. Her mouth became fuller and a slight cleft formed i
n her chin. Her green eyes deepened to a dark brown flecked with amber and changed contour, transforming from round and guileless to mysterious and almond shaped.

  She remained slender and tall, fragile looking enough to snap between his hands, though that was an illusion. Her eyes never lost that disturbing inner innocence, either. Those were two things he’d been counting on changing. Gods damn her! He wanted the outside of her to match the inside—hard, twisted, brutal, and merciless. Instead she was . . . pretty.

  As she slumped defeated against the wall behind her, dissatisfaction clawed in his gut.

  Pulling her cuffed hands protectively against her stomach, she gazed up at him through the long, dark curtain of her hair. “Happy now?”

  No, he wasn’t happy. She wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. Too attractive by half. Too innocent and vulnerable looking. He’d been expecting a bruiser—someone heavy and hard. Someone who appeared capable of killing a blameless woman in cold blood just because she was jealous.

  He scowled at her. “No, so I guess I’ll just have to find other ways to make you miserable that might content me.”

  Puffing out a breath of air that stirred her hair, she looked down at her feet. “You’re the one person in the whole world best able to make me miserable, Blacksmith. Hit me with your best shot.”

  “I plan to.” He stepped back, not finding the pleasure in the exchange that he wanted. His hands itched for the now broken bottle of whiskey. This woman hadn’t been in his forge for twenty-four hours yet and her presence was already driving him to drink.

  He rubbed a hand over his chin. “Try that with a weapon again and I’ll break it against your body instead of the floor.” He indicated the ax, which now lay in two pieces at her feet.

  He turned and left the forge, locking the door behind him.

  “YOU stink like whiskey. Kieran told me you’ve been trying to kill off a bottle all on your own tonight.” Gabriel, Lord of the Wild Hunt, wrinkled his nose at him as he came up to the top of the tower. “You never drink. What’s going on, Aeric?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he growled, pushing past him and joining the rest of the host.

  Melia regarded him closely with her naturally heavy-lidded eyes, her bright red hair shadowing half her face. She was a battle fae, capable of much destruction in times of war. “Ooh, grouchy,” she gently taunted in her low, raspy voice.

  Aelfdane, her Twyleth Teg mate, sat mounted on a dappled gray beside her, also studying him with a steady, curious gaze. He was Melia’s opposite physically—tall, thin, and light of coloring, whereas she was short, curvy, and fiery headed—in more ways than one.

  Despite the surface differences, they shared a soul and a brain. They were both thinking the same thing right now—what the fuck is up with Aeric? He wasn’t about to enlighten them.

  Bran, the last member of the Wild Hunt, sat on the roof of the Black Tower, talking softly to his pet crow, Lex. Taliesin and Blix, the sleek black Netherland hounds that appeared every night with the horses to sniff out souls in Piefferburg, lounged happily near him. Bran’s magick lay in the realm of nature: he could communicate with animals. One would think he’d live out in the Boundary Lands with the nature fae, but there was a quirk to Bran’s power—he could control animals, too, make them maim or kill. That was what made him Unseelie—that ability to spill blood with his magick.

  The hunt horses were there. Beyond their regular mounts; there were six of them tonight, to carry the six souls of the fae they would collect. Aeric pulled himself up on a bay with a long, flowing mane and a white star on his forehead. Every night the hunt horses and hounds appeared on the roof of the Black Tower and every morning they deposited the host back on the roof and carried the collected souls back over the rainbow. That was what it looked like, anyway. They rode into the dawn every morning and then winked out of existence, presumably gone back to the Netherworld.

  Gabriel mounted the lead horse, Abastor, a huge black without a spot of light anywhere on his muscled body. “So, did you hear the news? A human’s gone missing somewhere in the Boundary Lands.”

  Aeric’s hands tightened on the reins. “Really?”

  Melia chimed in. “Some woman. She was supposed to be an addition to the Faemous crew over at the Rose Tower, but she never made it. My money is on Will the Smith, but it could have been any one of the boogeys out there in the Boundary Lands. The birch ladies can’t help everyone in need.”

  Will the Smith was a man so evil it was said that even the sluagh had rejected him. Spat back out from the Netherworld, he’d been given a second life and the ability to torture or kill anyone he liked—and he liked, very much, to kill all sorts of people. Most humans knew him as the Will o’ the Wisp, luring the unsuspecting to their deaths by taking the form of a pleasing light that compelled the viewer to follow. In reality he was a sociopath who also happened to be a fae. His magick was death related, which made him Unseelie, but he was a loner and wanted nothing to do with the Unseelie court. The court wanted nothing to do with him, either.

  “It’s strange,” said Gabriel. “The Boundary Lands have been safe for humans for more than ten years now. Aside from that Faemous crew at the Black Tower becoming a goblin dinner some years back, I can’t remember the last time a human was attacked out there in the woods.”

  “No one’s looking for her?” Aeric asked.

  “The Summer Queen has the Imperial Guard combing the area,” Aelfdane answered. “But, strange or not, it does appear a loner dark fae like Will the Smith got her. By now the chance of anyone finding anything but pieces of that woman are slim.”

  “It’s bad public relations for us,” Melia added. “Every time a human falls to one of the dark fae, it hurts our possibilities for getting out of here.”

  Bran gave a scoffing laugh. “Right. You really think we have any possibility of managing that, short of opening the Book of Bindings, Melia?”

  “Maybe. There’s the HFF, after all. They’re fighting for us.”

  Bran shook his head. “One small group of humans fighting for fae rights. They’re overwhelmed by the ones who want to keep us here and, worse, the majority of people who just don’t give a shit.”

  Melia blew a strand of hair out of her face in a gesture that revealed her frustration with the conversation. “I’m just saying we have a lot of uncontrolled, bloodthirsty fae in here that need to be leashed. Having them run loose isn’t helping our image.”

  The host went on to discuss all the possible monsters that could have picked off an unsuspecting human traveling through the enchanted woods to Piefferburg City. They didn’t suspect for a moment that the monster was Aeric.

  Interesting. So Emmaline had been posing as a human Faemous crew member and had intended to go to the Rose Tower. What was her game? Had she been planning to take up her old job with the Summer Queen? That was the only possible explanation Aeric could come up with. Maybe she’d grown tired of living among the humans or had some other reason for coming to Piefferburg and wanted to secure a place for herself in the Rose.

  Apparently he’d botched the return of the deadliest assassin the Summer Queen had ever employed.

  All the better he’d waylaid her. Piefferburg was better off.

  GIDEON drummed his fingers on his desk and stared out the doorway of his office. Emily hadn’t checked in yet from the Rose Tower, according to Brother Maddoc, and he couldn’t keep his mind on his work because of it. That lack of focus was telling, since usually nothing kept his head out of the game.

  A viscous dribble of blood crept slowly down his wrist, tickling his skin. He wiped at it with a tissue, but not before it marked the papers on his desk with a brown stain. He’d shown his love to Labrai only twenty minutes earlier, using the small room off of his office reserved for his daily self-flagellation. The cat-o’-nine had bit deeply into his flesh today, deeper than usual, because he was so disturbed by Emily’s disappearance. One wound still refused to close up.

 
Brother Maddoc passed the doorway and Gideon bolted from his seat, racing out into the hall. “Have you heard anything yet, brother?”

  Archdirector Maddoc turned, the lines of his annoyingly pleasant face etched deeper than usual. “No. I’ll be sure to let you know if I have any more news. I must say I’m surprised by this occurrence. Humans have been traveling without trouble to and from Piefferburg City on that road for many years now, ever since the fae began actively courting the sympathy of the humans. It never occurred to me to deny Emily’s request to hike to the Rose Tower.”

  If I had my way, you incompetent, candy-ass weakling, all the fae would have their heads on pikes all along that road and Emily would never have been in danger of anything more than a nightmare.

  Gideon scowled and nodded. “I agree. It’s more than passing strange.”

  Except it was more than passing strange. On that, as much as he hated it, he agreed with Maddoc. Maybe Emily had just had bad luck and happened upon a rogue fae with an urge to harm her.

  Or maybe there was something else odd about this situation. Something odd about Emily.

  Gideon’s intuition had been niggling all morning and he didn’t like it.

  No. Emily Millhouse was a wonderful, upstanding, pious Worshipful Observer. Nothing more. Hopefully she was still alive and would contact them soon. He would pray to Labrai that it might be so.

  “You’re dripping blood on the carpet.”

  He looked down to see that he was indeed plopping dark brown drops of blood onto the cream carpeting of the hallway. Maddoc wore an expression of distaste.

  Gideon used his other hand to close the cuff of his sleeve. “My demonstration of faith was exceptionally vigorous today, my brother.”

  Maddoc’s lips curled in mild revulsion. “Yes,” he drawled.

  White-hot rage raced through Gideon’s veins. In bright flashes, he imagined backhanding Maddoc, jumping on him, and beating that expression off his face until his head was nothing more than bloody pulp and a caved-in skull.

  Gideon forced a smile. “All praise Labrai.”