The Problem with Promises (27 page)

“Return to me,” I said. There was no doubt in my voice. No plea or petition.

She will obey.

“We will destroy them,” I promised her. Whitlock. Liam. Every single being that stood between me and those that I loved. Every person who chose to stop me. Every wolf who made the mistake of thwarting me. I will get back what is mine. And then—

“Liam first,” murmured my Fae, spilling down my throat.

Agreed.

The world did a drunken spin around us as I pushed myself upright.
Don’t think about the hot pain. It will flare, but it will go.
Clenching my jaw against a whimper, I did an awkward turn in my seat.
Oh, sweet heavens.
I forced myself to butt-shuffle toward the open door. That minor flex of hip, spine, and torso was bad. In terms of body revolts it was very,
very
bad. Standing was going to be worse.

Do it anyhow. Don’t think about the bolt. Think about Liam.

He of the bolt, and the desire to hunt Anu.

I stood, holding on to the door. Things tilted, then righted themselves.

Where was Liam?

Coming up from the pond, his back to me, his attention focused on navigating Ryan’s corpse over the lip of a walkway without leaving a telltale trail of the red and the awful. He gripped the wolf’s collar as he had done with me, but this time, he was straining. Ryan’s dead weight demanded more muscle.

Cautious son of a bitch. He hadn’t given up on the crossbow.

My Fae was with me—indistinguishable from me. In my blood, in my bone, in my thoughts. Magic streamed weakly from the fingertips. Goddess. We’d taken a heavy hit—my normally fat serpent of green was thin as a wafer; our fluorescence muted to tepid spits and sparkles of fire.

Not good.

I couldn’t see strangling Liam with it. My gaze frantically swept the area. Next time I met a biker, I’d arm myself with an Uzi. Better yet, I’d order a flamethrower from Amazon.

Come on. Give me something, anything.

What can I turn into a weapon? There were signs. Wooden ones. Pounded into the ground with sharpened stakes. Giving directions, tossing out reminders, and warnings about perceived dangers.
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE SHOULD NOT
 …

The closest one read
BEWARE OF RABBITS.

My magic was an extension of me—of my hand, of my rage. It grafted itself onto the sign and tore it from the turf. Turned it upside down so that those worried about feral bunnies would be required to perform a handstand in order to read the caution. The stake had been honed to a nice point. A long sharp spear for stabbing, slightly encumbered by a tailfin of signage.

I lifted my hand.

Liam dropped Ryan’s corpse. Fast as a zombie-killer, he raised his crossbow.

He aimed. My inner-bitch saw his eyes tighten.

We both fired at the same time. Two separate events, in two separate streamlines of intent, like a poorly scheduled synchronized swim event.

My sideways lunge would have made a stuntwoman proud. I registered air being squeezed by a fist of cold as his bolt brushed past us, but little else.

Unbelievably, he’d missed. Even more miraculous? I’d hit the bull’s-eye. Or close enough. Okay, a fragile bond, at best—my bunny stake had torn right through into the meat of his thigh and kept going until the sign’s rectangle would let it go no farther. But we were connected, Liam and I. This time I had him on
my
hook.

Before he could wriggle free from it, I willed my magic to slip off the dirt-smeared pointed end of the stake and wrap itself around his upper leg with the squeezing power of a famished python.
Gotcha, Hook, line, and sinker. You—thing that must be destroyed—are now mine.
My serpent was strong, tensile. Invisible, indomitable, damn near indestructible. She did another circle around his abductor muscles.

Any other man would have reacted to a
DON’T FEED THE BUNNY
placard nuzzling his package. Liam spared the briefest look for the stake skewering his thigh. Eyes slit, he reached behind to wrench another bolt from his quiver.

Doesn’t he feel pain?

Fine. I’d give him a harsher lesson in remittance costs. I slashed my hand viciously to the left. My invisible cable of magic jerked his thigh right off the ground and held it raised, hip high.

Every joint from my knuckles to neck howled, “Son of a bitch, that bastard’s leg is heavy!” My fingernails felt too tight and the bolt in my opposite shoulder took exception to sudden movement.

I swear I heard it grate across a bone.

Stake through thigh plus an invisible tourniquet tightening near his groin should have unmanned him. For crap’s sake, his leg had been plucked, squeezed, and suspended in an awkward side lift.

The fucker smiled and swiftly rebalanced his weight to his other foot.

So standing like a crane was no big deal, huh? Resolve tightened my hand into a fist.
I will bring him to his knees.
I put everything I thought I had into my next move. Body, mind over matter, hatred, fear. I lunged to the left.

Liam offered no resistance to my savage tug—anticipating my reaction, he simply leaped in the same direction, using my magic’s momentum to his full advantage. Baldly put, Liam went with it, going all the way to the edge of my serpent’s physical limits, and from there, a scant inch beyond it. Without losing his grip on the damn crossbow.

He slowly lowered his leg, stretching the line between us until it trembled. Feet planted, sign fluttering from his groin, he calmly leaned back. That’s the problem when your magic is a rope—strings have two ends. Fae Stars. I was the bantamweight in a tug-of-war game against a heavy hitter. My bare feet lost a layer of dead skin on the asphalt. I stumbled, did a few skittering steps in his direction, then found my balance.

Magic bound us.

Hate too.

Without lifting his hooded gaze from mine, he groped for the stake spearing his thigh. He yanked it out. Stood, frozen and silent as he absorbed whatever irritation that injury produced. Then he lowered his chin and threw the blood-smeared sign on the ground between us.

I knew what he was going to do. He was going to reel me in using the thin rope of magic connecting us. Once I was dragged past the gauntlet-sign … he was going to hurt me. Not with a bow, but his bare hands. His touch would sear my skin. Leave it bubbling with heat blisters.

My fingernails throbbed. My shoulder burned.

Screw him. If he was going to make me suffer more, he was going to have to work for it.

Feet, don’t fail me now.

“Break!” I said harshly to my magic. I meant it to cut in two or to unravel from him. I wanted it to follow my retreat like a hive of bees. But worn to extinction, my wire-thin talent didn’t splinter so much as dissolve. No good-bye burst of sparkles. No hovering mass of flickering bits of fluorescence sparkling in the air around me. It just … disappeared as if it had never been part of my soul.

It’s gone.

Inside me I heard a terrible wail. “I’m dying,” my Fae wept.

A horrible, knowing smile creased Liam’s face, plumping his hollow cheeks and webbing the lines drawn from the corners of his eyes. It drew my attention to the fleck of glitter, glinting dully on his cheekbone. Another similar particle glimmered on the bridge of his nose.

My stomach squeezed.
Goddess, he’s coated in bits of my magic.

“I’m fading,” Fae-me sobbed.

“No you’re not.” I shook my head, even as my frantic gaze traveled. More glitter on the ground. Bright specks on my sleeves. “I won’t let you.” A faint coating of magic dusted the feathers on the bolt protruding from me. A sheen of it clung to the wet, copper-scented patches of my shirt.

“Having a burnout?” inquired Liam.

A stone bit into my sole as I spun on my heel. Run. That’s what I planned to do. Even if it was futile. Even if he caught me before I made it four feet. I wasn’t going to stand like a sheep waiting for slaughter.

“You can’t run from me,” he called as I darted up the little hill toward the parking lot. He followed at an easy lope. “I can see for miles. I can track you—”

Headlights bit into the gray of the early dawn.

Karma, for all the pity in your mean little heart, throw me a freakin’ bone.

Liam’s head spun, his lips splitting into a delighted grin, as he took in the sight of a truck tearing down the Peach Pit’s private drive.
What? More bikers?
The truck hit the speed bump at full power; its front wheels dipped and the undercarriage issued a stream of sparks. Undeterred, the driver stomped harder on the gas. The engine revved and the vehicle careened across the parking lot straight toward me.

Liam’s smile faded.

A woman leaned out of the open passenger window. Her hair streamed behind her, a Valkyrie’s mane. Her gun arm was solid and muscled, braced on the side of the car. Her wide mouth was set into a snarl. She fired. Once. Twice. Again. Very fast, very sure. But the vehicle hit a depression in the asphalt and the bullets went wide.

That’s when Liam threw me under the bus. A few strides collapsed the distance between us. I didn’t even see it coming—I was standing transfixed, not believing my eyes—and then I was being shoved right into the oncoming vehicle’s path.

Brakes were trod, tires burned. The driver slewed the car violently to the left. Back end swinging into a skid, the truck’s path altered at the last moment.

It almost missed me.

I’d have come out clean if I wasn’t impersonating a felled tree. Liam’s shove had caught me right between the shoulder blades, upsetting my center of balance. My head snapped forward, my hair flew. My mane—such as it is—slid over the mirror and got caught.

I cried out.

And things went briefly gray. Too much pain. Too many hurts.

It’s a bad feeling falling backward, knowing you’re bristling with a bolt. Mostly because under the right circumstances (example: the potential for body injury) the same brain that can’t make up its mind whether it wants to supersize the fry order proves itself perfectly capable of working faster than a computer. “You know that bolt?” it inquires. “It’s going to be the first thing to kiss the pavement. And that, my dear friend, will feel comparable to being crossbowed all over again.”

Shit.

“You may,” it says dourly. “Particularly since the sharp end won’t be the first thing to meet the ground. It will be the
other
end.”

It’s just too damn bad you figure out all of that before you have a chance to put your hands up to break your fall.

Not the feathered end. Please, not the—

On impact, an exquisitely awful blast of agony shuddered through me, robbing me for 2.2 seconds of the ability to breathe, to scream, to even think. Then I did an inhale and wished, with every strand of my outraged nerves, that I hadn’t.

Sweet pea scent oozed from my shoulder.

I must be bleeding again.

Was it a call to arms? The speck of dull glitter on my knuckle sparked bright. And then another spitfire—tinier than a scintilla’s wink—twinkled at me from the nap of my shirt. My magic was reviving?

Come to me. I need all parts of me.

A well-shod foot thrust open the vehicle’s door. The shooter slid out, took three long strides, raised her gun and aimed. Bang. Bang. A short pause to adjust aim as Liam pitched forward, and … a final bang.

That’s when the impossible happened.

His body exploded.

Literally. From the inside, as if he’d swallowed a pound of C-4. A blowout of skin, sinew, and bone. I shielded my eyes as gore pit-pattered on the hood of Ryan’s car. The rainfall of Liam parts was mercifully brief. Something soft and light fell on the web of my fingers. I peeked.

A feather?

A long black crow feather?

My gaze slid to the epicenter of yuck. A huge bird—dark as a piece of wet jet—shook its wings, the way I’d shake an umbrella after a heavy deluge.

Liam’s a bird? Am I seeing that? Or am I hallucinating that?

The crow erupted into flight. He—it—could have flown in any direction. The trees, the sky … but it swooped toward me. I rolled onto my hip with a stifled scream—
Goddess, stop the hurting
—burying my head under my elbow and doing my best to tighten into a snail.
Don’t take me like a mouse from a field.
A sharp talon dragged itself along my exposed cheek, caught a strand of limp hair and tore it free. Then the bird wheeled away with a terrible scream. He—it—did a circle high above me, its cry loud and shrill.

Horrifying.

I watched it go. Thoughts suspended. The smell of cordite pinched my nostrils.

A tiny flicker of jade-green light glittered over me.
Isn’t that nice. A piece of my magic’s found its way home.
Another one joined it. Twins. Ah, now a cloud. Green. Shiny. Bright. My magic hovered over me, forming a low blanket of protection, if one was to subscribe to the idea of my Fae talent having any softer dimensions.

“Open your mouth,” pleaded Fae-me. “Bring us home.”

Okay.

I unhinged my jaw, and my magic funneled back down my throat. It warmed me, and heated my insides, as welcome as warm chocolate on a wet fall day. I held my lips wide until every particle of light was consumed, then swallowed.

“Better,” murmured my Fae.

Uh-huh.

My gaze slowly—achingly, disbelievingly—slid to my left.

My rescuer stood under moonlight. Her clothing was in dreadful disarray. Her wig was askew. In the gloomy light, her hair color looked brown, maybe black, but to my eyes … I saw fire. The glorious vermilion, the wondrous golden, and the royal blue of the flames from which the phoenix rises.

“Darling,” Cordelia said. “Were we late?”

Chapter Sixteen

The world blurred. There she was standing by the car, smelling of perfume, and blood, and home. “You’re dead,” I said flatly. Ghosts all around me. In the cemetery, and now—right here in front of my watering eyes.