Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (20 page)

The warning blast of an air horn woke her from her frightened trance and she turned in her seat expecting to be obliterated by a massive truck bearing down on her from the west end of the bridge. Instead she saw the lights of the bridge warning system flashing, and the red and white striped arms beginning to descend. Through the body of the Jeep she could feel the thrum and groan of the Burnside Bridge machinery, the same shuddering vibrations she had felt the night before in Thomas's strange little bolt hole.

To the south, a ship was headed for the bridge.

Behind her, the collection of black cars crept onto the bridge and began to gather speed as if they had recognized her as their prey, and with that recognition, had found their courage. Their speed began to increase, narrowing the safe gap by the moment.

Ahead of her, the arms were almost down across her lane.

She slammed her foot on the accelerator, cut the Jeep hard to the left, grabbing for gears as she sped. She looked over her shoulder to see the black posse forming a barrier across all the lanes of the bridge. If they thought she would drive right toward them, Tess had other plans.

Even the terrors of Underbridge were preferable to the things waiting at the east end of the bridge. She rounded the end of the gate and zoomed into the no-man's-land between the red and white striped arms, where the leaves of the bridge would separate.

She pushed the Jeep faster, cutting back into her own travel lane, racing for the dark crack she could see in the middle of the bridge. Sparing a glance in the rearview, she saw the SUV and several of the chase cars coming fast, oh, so frighteningly fast, passing the first arm.

Through the windshield she saw the bridge operator out on the deck of the western tower, waving his arms to stop her. But there was no going back, even if she and the Jeep went into the Willamette. The Jeep neared the center of the leaves, where the crack in the bridge was widening ever so slightly and the deck tilt was becoming noticeable. Tess stuffed the Jeep into third gear and torqued the engine harder than she'd ever pushed it before. Fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, and the Jeep crossed the center of the two leaves, bumped sickeningly across the little maw that was opening there in the bridge, sixty-eight and the engine was screaming and the RPMs were into the red but she was across,
across
. She slammed the Jeep into fourth gear and shot past the line of east-bound traffic waiting politely behind the second barrier, slewed down the slope of the bridge and sob-blessed the red light at the bottom when it winked green. She dared a glance behind her.

The SUV alone still followed her. Had the rest of the things been too afraid to cross? Too slow? Halted by the iron and the running water beneath? Or would they come slithering in from elsewhere, like rain-drunk worms from the earth? She recklessly jammed the stone to her eye to scan the area at the foot of the Burnside Bridge, but there was no plague of fairy things swarming up from Underbridge. At last she had to jam her foot on the brake to gain enough control to negotiate the city streets without killing herself or someone else in the process.

The Jeep smelled hot and angry with the stink of scorched clutch as she pulled it sharply to the right into Chinatown, beneath the ornate crimson welcome gate flanked by two guardian
fu
dog statues. She knew she had pushed the old engine too hard, but she hoped with all her might the faithful vehicle would continue on just the way it always had. It was the only thing she had to get herself out of this mess.

The light ahead of her turned red, and a stream of pedestrians flowed into the crosswalk from both directions. A sob built in her throat and she turned to stare behind her through the stone, where, sure enough, the black SUV had just turned the corner into her street. Tess heard the note of eager triumph in its deep-pitched engine growl, but suddenly the SUV slewed to the side and rocked hard, nearly off its wheels. She couldn't see what it had struck to knock it so, but then it occurred to her to use the stone—
I should just build it into a pair of glasses, never take it off, look like a freak the rest of my probably very short life at this rate—
and what she saw next made her jaw drop in utter astonishment.

It was one thing to see a gargoyle coming to life on the side of a building and snacking on pigeons.

It was another to see the
fu
dogs launching from their pedestals on either side of the gate into Chinatown, ripping at the rider and his mount with claws the size of dinosaur teeth. The skeletal horse reared and tossed, a spray of sparks like fireworks spewing from the damage the dogs' claws left wherever they struck and tore. The noises she heard were no longer just the SUV's roar; somewhere mixed in was the outrage of the guardian dogs as they protected their territory, tails lashing, giant heads tossing like dragons in the Chinese New Year celebrations. The rider lifted his bow and shot an arrow into the air. From the fletching trailed a net of brilliant oil-slick light, rippling over the dogs and falling harmlessly on their golden backs.

Chinatown's guardians didn't like the hunting, prowling creature any more than she did. But they had better weapons with which to fight it, and fight it they did, driving the beast backward slowly but steadily. The rider launched arrow after arrow, which passed through the
fu
dogs as if they were only smoke. Yet she could see the
fu
dogs' claws laying open cloth and flesh.

Here in Chinatown, something other than the fae held sway. No wonder Thomas had always walked around its border, rather than through.

The car behind her honked, long and loud, and she flinched, meeting the irate gaze of the driver in her rearview mirror. The light had changed; the pedestrians were back on their curbs, safe and waiting, and though half of her needed to stay and watch the astonishing scene behind her, to
know
the SUV and its driver had been stopped for good, the wiser half knew this was the moment to flee, while the dogs kept the fae monster busy, before it realized other streets weren't guarded by such ferocious power.

Tess let out the clutch too fast, hopping the Jeep across the intersection, and sped away, the battle growing quieter behind her with each successive city block.

She kept going, barely pausing even at red lights, pushing her luck, expecting a police car on her ass every second.
I'm so sorry, officer, I know it was wrong to cross the bridge like that when it was opening for the biggest boat I've ever seen, but you see there are evil fairies after my boyfriend and me. Here, you can see them if you look through my magic rock...
She dodged left and right and left and right and always trending northwest, always looking in her rearview, missing parked cars by inches and scaring pedestrians back onto the sidewalk, headed for the only safety she knew, however dubious: Home.

T
HE
BREATH THAT SLAMMED INTO
his lungs hurt worse than anything he had ever felt. Thomas put an arm across his eyes to shield them from the glaring daytime brilliance above, gasping and thrashing, not ashamed to weep. Apparently Hunter had gone, and with him the spell that turned Thomas to stone. He rolled onto his belly and coughed weakly.

"Not dead," he gasped.

But why not? Hunter wasn't known for his mercy or his self-restraint. Therefore he must still have a use for Thomas, or else he was not certain the Queen would excuse Thomas's death so easily.

That meant Thomas still had an edge somewhere. He just had to find it. The very thought of looking for it overwhelmed him, and he lay still on the chill earth of the mound, simply breathing, feeling his heart calming from its desperate panicked restart.

A noise downslope caught his attention and he turned his head, careful to move slowly and make no noise. It was Hunter's hound, the broken bogle, struggling to its feet and wailing pitifully, screeching like a wheel on an ungreased axle. Thomas could hear it calling for help but felt no compunction to assist it. At least the thing hadn't been killed outright. He could take some cold comfort in that fact. He lay where he was until the bogle was out of sight and earshot.

Did he dare go to the Queen and try to learn more? Did he even care any longer? What if he simply turned his back on the whole mess and walked away?

He rolled onto his back again and stared up into the bare branches. Leaving wasn't a real possibility. The Queen would use the band to call him back, and he would go. She owned him body and will. Meanwhile, his need to protect Tess was rising again like a will-o'-the-wisp in a marsh, driving him to sit up, and then to get to his feet. Protecting Tess meant he needed information only the Queen could provide. He stared downhill in the direction of Tess's house, not visible through the trees and undergrowth and the choking, ubiquitous ivy.

He could end all this right now if he were to go back, gather up the Queen's things, and drag Tess into the mound to face the Queen's displeasure whether it was deserved or not. The temptation was strong, but his stomach churned with dread. The easy way out was not the right way out. He hated himself for his cowardly but very human thoughts.

I am not like them.

Thomas squared his shoulders, stretched out some of the sore places Hunter had left with his stony magic, and hiked along the ridge to find a troll and an entry into the mound. He might have earth and stone magic himself, but it wasn't sufficient to create an entrance into the hollow hill the way Hunter had. It would behoove him to remember Hunter wasn't simply a bad-tempered killer. He was an ageless thing of guile and power and motivation, likely second only to the Queen in ability and skill.

The troll, when Thomas found it, was unresponsive and immovable. Daylight turned them to massive stones, an admirable deterrent to any curious human who might suspect the large, moss-free boulders hid an opening into the hill. Thomas used what little magic he had to dig his way past the troll, who was wedged among the massive roots of an old-growth oak tree. He charmed a little earth back into the gap he had made, but left the soil loose in case he returned this way before nightfall.

Just beyond the troll, he found himself in a tunnel sloping steeply downward. The walls were lit with the usual meandering clusters of glowworms and the faint fae magic keeping the tunnel open and dry. Stones pressed into the clay soil walls sparkled occasionally. It was an entrance he had not used before, and he took the way slowly, pausing often to listen. The whole place vibrated with the excitement and magic of Allantide. The closer he got to the series of enormous caverns composing the fae's festival halls, the more he felt the eagerness that had always meant ferocious, unrelenting pleasure was in store.

Soon the tunnel was more crowded and more complicated, with side tunnels stretching away into the depths of the hill where the Unseelie kept their dwellings. Pixies flitted past with fierce, joyous cries, colliding with Thomas and the other fae, occasionally snatching glowworms from the walls and devouring them on the wing. This was their season, brightly garbed in the leafy forms of their home trees. The pixies were little more than self-aware pets for many of the fae, who tolerated them for their frolics and utility in carrying gossip in the mound.

At last the tunnel opened into one of the halls, where clusters of the Unseelie swirled and laughed. They waited excitedly for night, for the moon to reach its zenith. At that moment the trees above the mound would pull their earth-clogged roots aside, creating shafts for the cold light to blaze down into the interior. Thomas pressed himself against the wall behind a spindly, cobweb-laced column and waited to hear news of the Queen. The whispers bouncing through the cavern were confusing and scattered, deflected a thousand times by the jagged, glittering crystals that formed the ceiling and walls. At last he heard one that mentioned the Queen—not by name, for even here, speaking the Queen's truename could bring her awareness or wrath down upon the unwary—and her night's attire. A shallow topic that passed for importance in the minds of the mound fae. It was just one more reason Thomas chose to live outside the mound, where he could find more of interest and substance and humanity.

Yet part of Thomas longed to see the Queen garbed in her fae glory, a gown made of webby silk and desire, flame both burning and quenched, a gown that concealed even as it revealed. He wanted to dance in the drugging spirals the fae would weave through their mound and sate himself without consequence wherever his fancy suited—drink, food, sex. But the rest of him wanted nothing more complicated than to walk into Tess's quiet house and dine on milk and new bread with her seated across from him at her little kitchen table.

I want to be human again.
How the urge had grown so strong, he didn't know. Tess was part of it. Perhaps even most of it.

He listened again and heard that the Queen rested in her divan. The full moon on Allantide meant power beyond imagining, but also a great cost when she harnessed that power. If he wanted to learn her secret plan, he would need all the guile at his command. He closed his eyes and forced away the trow-form, making himself appear as the human who had drawn the Queen's eyes so many decades ago. Perhaps there was still human charm in him despite how long he had spent among the Unseelie, taking on their manners and morals. Perhaps she would find him innocently pleasing and relax her guard.

He removed the bulky oilskin and carried it over his arm, walking through the halls until he reached the doors of her chamber. There, two kelpies smirked and dripped, baring their horsey teeth at him in what passed for a leering grin.

"Is she within?" Thomas queried, staying well back.

"Aye." The left-hand kelpie was the one whose finger he had severed on his last visit here; no hope of help from that one.

"Please announce me."

"She's not alone." The kelpie's leer grew broad. "She's with her new one. Younger than you. Younger than you
were
, even."