The Problem with Promises (21 page)

I heard a click.

“Don’t shoot her,” he murmured to his boys.

His voice is too steady.

The world narrowed to him and me. His pupils contracted. His smile—that lopsided peculiar lift of lip and cheek muscle—turned into something almost feral. I tensed my neck muscles, then slowly, with a deliberation to match his, I lowered my chin, and nailed him, dead on, with all the power of my flare.

Bend to me.

I put everything I had into it. If he’d been a Were like Ryan, he’d have fallen. If he’d been spooked by the supernatural, he might have shot me in fright. But he was none of those things. He didn’t even blink—even against the strand of hair teasing his lashes.

The man with the crossbow has got iron on him,
I realized. A lot of it. Buried beneath that vest, underneath that denim jacket. Its drugging poison was a wave of numbing icebox air curling toward me. The real stuff too. Cold iron, or as close to pure as one could hope to find in this modern world.

My Fae sensed it and the soulless quality to his steady gaze.

“I’d have fun with you,” he mused.

“No,” I said, my flare licking his face. “You wouldn’t.”

He raised his arched brow another eighth of an inch. “Don’t be too sure,” he said, unzipping his jacket.

Neither Merry nor I was ready for it—though I should have been because the entire world had received the memo about Hedi Peacock. Small and round, doesn’t like blood, has issues with a certain type of ore. The guy with the crossbow wore a big iron cross around his neck. Antique looking. Ornate and heavy. He walked toward me, holding the cross like a shield against my light, as if I was the bad vampire, and he was the good guy with the stake.

“I’m not a bloodsucker. I’m a Fae,” I said.

“It’s a multipurpose tool,” he answered, sinking into a crouch in front of me.

He was too close. Polar air streamed from the crucifix. Merry shivered at my neck. My face stung, my belly contracted. Anu let out a whine, birthed from the back of her throat. She scrambled away from both of us.

“What would happen if I touched you with it?” he mused.

A tear slid down my cheek. “Get away from me.”

He leaned forward. I could smell his breath—he liked mints and parsley. That was the last linear thought I had before he rested the cross against my skin.

That was when I should have gone ballistic. To the bottom of my empty heart, I wish I could say that I punched him, kicked him, or even flattened him with my flare.

Maybe before you act with courage, you need to think of yourself as a contender. You need to believe that you’re a superhero that Marvel hasn’t yet inked. You need to be confident in your ability to win.

I was none of those things. In the face of the iron radiating from his grasp, my flare winked out, and my Fae went shrieking downward into my belly, her cry as awful as the rasp of claws on chalkboard.

He smiled. He had a wide mouth and a good jaw, but the devil roamed this world when that killer smiled.

For a shattered moment, defeat stung and I allowed the iron to tinge every thought with despair. I lowered my head and curled myself over Trowbridge, hardly able to breathe because the loss—
oh Goddess, the loss! It’s accumulating. Rising like dirty floodwater inside me.

Trowbridge’s hand didn’t come up to cradle the back of my head. His lips didn’t turn up. His eyes remained vacant. He lay beneath me, unresponsive.

Wake up.

The guy with the cross and bow said, “You’re a little thing for so much trouble.”

There was no answer to that.
The iron … it’s making thinking so difficult. It’s robbing me of me. Stealing essentials from me. My confidence, my hope, my grit.

“Are you going to give Liam a problem?” he inquired. He used the edge of the cross to comb my tangled hair.

A trail of ice scored my scalp. “That depends on who Liam is,” I said, bile rising. Trowbridge’s mouth was slightly open. His breath was gentle on my chin.

“I’m Liam,” he said pleasantly.

Of all the bad guys I’ve met tonight, he’s the worst.
Evil should have a smell, but I couldn’t pick it off him. His body was permeated with hair product and the faint sweetness of dope. He looked human but he was missing a few ingredients that the best of the mortals carried.

I knew him to be hollow. A mind without empathy.

“Don’t hurt the others,” I said quietly, my dull gaze fixed on Merry. She’d slid onto Trowbridge. “Don’t,” I whispered.
Don’t call attention to yourself. Not now. Wait.

“What?”

“Leave them alone.” I swallowed. “Please.”

“Okay,” Liam said easily.

I felt his gaze on me but I didn’t lift my eyes to confront him. I didn’t want him to have a reason to pull me away from my mate. Until Liam dragged me from Trowbridge, he was mine to hold, mine to protect.

That was the least I could do.

Liam rose. His heel ground into the linoleum as he pivoted for a slow three-sixty to take in the bullet holes and the body. “I told you to keep them here, not shoot them,” he said to Ferris. “You could have killed her.”

I glanced up. They definitely wanted me alive. Why?

“They were getting ready to leave,” Ferris replied stiffly. “I had to slow them down.”

Liam did something so mundane, I couldn’t believe how it stoked my fear. It was the simplest mannerism—he dropped his chin to study the medic from under his dark, satanic brows. That’s all he did; he simply considered Ferris, like he was a shark and the medic was the tourist who’d strayed from the boat. “You don’t have the proper appreciation for life.”

Ferris licked his lip.

Liam gestured to Harry’s body. “I hope that’s not Biggs.”

Biggs?

My disbelieving gaze swung to the kitchen to where Biggs crouched behind the pathetic protection of an overturned chair. He’d wrapped his arms around his lowered head and had kept them frozen there. Waiting for the aftershock.

I eased myself into a sitting position. “What do you want with Biggs?”

Liam followed the direction of my eyes. “That’s him?” He crossed the room, his crossbow dangling from his grip. “Hey.” He prodded the cowering wolf with his weapon. “Where’s the stuff you promised Brenda?”

Biggs slowly dropped his arms. Indecision and muted defiance flickered across his features. He tried to buy time. “What?”

Liam cocked his head. “Brenda’s expecting Knox’s stuff. I’m here to accept delivery. Where is it?”

“Biggs,” I whispered, appalled. “What did you do?”

Biggs’s gaze bounced from Liam to me, then he said numbly, “I don’t know anything about Knox’s stuff.”

Liam shrugged and lifted the crossbow. “I’m very good with this. I can start with the transvestite’s knees, then move on to the kid’s.”

I opened my mouth but Biggs beat me to it. “It’s in the backpack,” he said. “In the front pocket.”

“See how easy that was?” Liam murmured, moving to the bag. He carried it to the table. Tunelessly whistling, he placed the crossbow down to work the zipper. “Watch them,” he told Ryan.

“You knew where Brenda Pritty was all this time?” I stared at Biggs in utter disbelief. “Last night when your Alpha said ‘We need to find Brenda Pritty,’ you just sat there and pretended—”

“I didn’t recognize the name!” Biggs shouted, his guilt exploding. “We hung out for an entire summer two years ago and she would never give me her real fucking name—”

“Oh, spare me from that stinking pile of twaddle.” Cordelia’s voice as a low growl. “Harry’s dead, you stupid, stupid—”

“Stop it!” I sucked in an unsteady breath, then swallowed. “You’ve known all this time where to find her. You told her where to find us. Did you call her and tell her that we were here? Knowing that she’d tell them and—”

“He texted her,” Liam answered. Having extracted the clear plastic bag filled with Knox’s things, he dropped the backpack to the floor. He rolled the bag into a cylinder and tucked it into his waistband. “Three times. Using Knox’s phone.”

There were no words for what I felt at that moment. I watched Biggs’s eyes fill, and felt nothing but detachment.

“She was mixed up with Knox. You saw what Trowbridge did to Fatso,” he said brokenly. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I needed time to think things through. I never thought anyone was going to get hurt.”

“Tell that to Harry,” I heard myself say. Biggs recoiled like I’d whipped him. I wished with all my heart I truly had.

“You don’t understand,” Biggs said.

“No. I don’t. Make me.”

“No time for that. We have to make tracks,” Liam said, casually lifting his bow. “Ferris?”

The medic turned.

Liam’s bolt flew. Ferris didn’t even gasp, he simply folded; a victim to a William Tell experience gone wrong.

Anu gasped.

“Shhh,” I said automatically. But I didn’t turn to console her. I stared blankly at Ferris’s body, my hand resting on Trowbridge’s hip. He was warmer than he’d been minutes earlier.

Hurry back.

“Only way to kill them,” I heard Liam say. Then he clicked his teeth, the way you do when you want a mare to break into a trot. “Up you get. It’s time to go.”

I lifted my gaze. Liam smiled again—slow and confident.

He nodded to Ryan. “Put the wolf in my trunk.”

Peanut, the mortal biker who’d checked out the backyard, returned. “All clear.” He had a gun—
we’re freaking Canadians, what is it with all the guns?
—which he waved at Cordelia and Biggs. “What about them?”

“Kill them, then set fire to the place,” Liam said.

No. No more loss.

“What about this girl?” The biker reached for Anu.

In a smooth, almost amused tone, the devil said, “Bring her. She might prove entertaining.”

That’s when fear turned to bitter rage.

Chapter Thirteen

Merry worked tirelessly to guard me against the shivers, using her inner heat to warm the base of my throat. But still, I was cold beyond cold. The type of chill that goes to the bone. Being this close to a man carrying iron robbed me of energy and sapped the warmth right out of me. And yet the heater was on, the dial turned to the right, the digital readout set for 17 degrees Celsius. Colder for comfort for most drivers, but the man behind the wheel was wearing leather. Ryan drove with one wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel.

Harry’s dead. Cordelia. Biggs.

The devil walker lolled in the front passenger seat, his body half turned toward me. He was polishing his crossbow with a strip of yellow cloth. He didn’t lift his gaze from the task when he said in a casual tone, “How are the hands?”

Ryan had zip-tied my paws. Then, as final precaution, he stripped a pillow of its case and used that to sheathe my fists, securing it around my wrists with another zip tie.

My wrists hurt.

I turned my head and looked out the window again, my gaze following the gray steel road divider. In my mind’s eye, I played the same segment of awful. The sight of the shack as we pulled out of the driveway. Flames, yellow tongues of fire, licking the side of the house. He’d set fire to the house. With Biggs and Cordelia still inside it.

“I know you’re Hedi,” I heard Liam say. “But I don’t know who the other girl is. What’s her name?”

“Katrina,” I said, thinking of devastation. “She’s called Katrina.” I flicked a covert glance toward Anu. She turned her head sharply toward me, perhaps waiting for just such an exchange.

What could I say? With just my eyes?
Wait for an opportunity.
That’s the message I hoped my gaze conveyed. Though I’m not sure if it did, because her gaze fell, and she went back to contemplating the tape around her wrists.

I had to get her out, if nothing else. I would see her safe.

And then I could be done. I could shut my weary eyes and go to sleep. Right after I killed them: the one called Liam; Ryan behind the wheel; and two other patch-wearing bastards who’d stayed to clean up the crime scene.

Merry had subtly changed her aspect during the drive, sharpening each tip of her leaves until it was piercingly uncomfortable. All her movements were covert, amounting to little more than shifts of her slight weight, but it was enough; her prickling needle nips had kept me from falling into a iron-induced doze.

As long as Liam was here, sitting this close to me, exhaustion was near smothering me. I wanted to sleep, and I wanted to kill. Too bad you can’t kill in your sleep.

My Fae was quiet, too quiet. Did she think she could bury herself so deep inside me that the cold poison hidden on Liam could not touch her?

That’s not how it works.

“Tell me,” said Liam, tapping a bolt against his bent knee. “Were you the one who killed Itchy and Gerry?”

It took effort to turn my head. “Do you really care who did it?”

He thought about that, and lifted one shoulder. “Not really. Just curious.”

Yes. I will kill them all.
Because those I loved were not dead when Liam set fire to the little shack behind the general store. My inner-bitch said nothing, but inside me, I could feel her bristling fur. The predator, wary of danger, but determined to attack.

Given time, we would kill them all.

And then we’d go find my twin.

*   *   *

The driver put on his indicator. Up ahead, a familiar landmark loomed—a giant thirty-foot peach, topped by a jaunty green leaf, sitting on the roadside edge of a commercial property that sat a jowl to an acre of unplowed field. The Peach Pit: part roadside oddity, part bakery and restaurant. A huge billboard announced its name and exit number, while another sign, quite a bit smaller, informed the world that they’d baked over three million pies. Though, judging from the information collected by my olfactory senses, I’d say the greater balance sold were apple, not peach.

So said my wolf, anyhow. She’d moved into the empty hollow left by my Fae.

I was sitting straighter, feeling stronger, which could have been the result of my wolf’s presence, or the fact Liam was in the front passenger seat and I was lolling in the back behind the driver. A fortuitous arrangement, because it put a modicum of distance between me and the iron cross. I didn’t want to puke, though I wasn’t up to handsprings either. Let’s face it, an SUV is a closed environment. Liam still wore his iron cross, and it still streamed polar air. Bit by bit the temperature inside the Toyota had fallen—perhaps the vehicle’s sensor hadn’t recorded it yet, but I could sense it, even if the front passengers couldn’t. I was about as comfortable as a model doing a swimsuit spread on an ice floe with a bunch of penguins. Chilled. In my case, inside and out. Skin goosefleshed, emotions suspended in a block of frozen water.