City of Fae (22 page)

He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, and turned away, about to break into a jog when Warren rounded the corner of the building. Seeing him now sent my already confused mind deeper into a spin. “Warren … ? What’s happening?”

He held up a hand, and shook his head. “You need to leave.”

“What, why?”

Reign, several strides beyond us both, stumbled and fell to a knee. He wasn’t getting up. Why wasn’t he moving?

“Warren, what did I do?” I moved closer, but Warren’s fierce glare stopped me dead.

“You’re too close to the queen. Your draíocht unraveled his control,” he said, as though that would explain everything. “Get out of here, Alina. Go! Now!”

I wasn’t going anywhere. Something was wrong with Reign. I’d hurt him. Warren stalked toward me, lips raised in a vicious snarl. Screw him. I wasn’t damn well leaving Reign until I knew what the hell was happening.

“Back off Warren,” I warned, but my attention drifted over his shoulder, to the emerald-green vapor whipped up by the breeze. I’d seen that before. When the queen’s spiders had come for me, when I’d stabbed one of the FA. Raw draíocht in its natural form. “Oh my God …”

Reign rose up, as though dragged to his feet by invisible threads. Movements wooden and jerky, the vapor teased around him, spiraling faster and faster, whirling into a storm.

Warren spat a curse. “See those people in there?” He pointed at the restaurant windows beside us where diners chatted blissfully unaware of the chaos unraveling outside. “I don’t care what you do, but make sure nobody leaves. No human can witness this.”

“What’s happening?”

“You wanted to know what the hound is? What Reign is? Now you will.”

A warm, sweet blast of wind tore past me, whipping my hair about my face. Ahead, by the water’s edge, Reign’s figure drowned inside a storm of liquid green. Fae magic danced in the air and tingled on my tongue. I could taste it as surely as I’d tasted it on his kiss. “I did this?”

“You’re her. She controls that.” Warren clutched my upper arm and shoved me toward the corner of the building. “Go! Don’t let anyone out. Do something important with your miserable existence, Alina.” He snarled, unfiltered rage and disgust burning in his eyes.

Fear spurred me on, and I ran. Whatever Reign was turning into, I had to warn those people. I made it as far as the hotel doors, when a horrifying howl surged through the night. The harsh wind barreled the hideous sound around the dock. I froze a few strides from glass doors and the brilliantly lit hotel interior. Fear crawled up my spine. The howl wasn’t of this world. Nothing real made that noise, not in London, only in nightmares. But even as I lied to myself, I heard its deep, even panting. Heard the click of claws on the dockside.

Reign couldn’t be a monster. He was too ethereal, too beautiful …

I saw it then, saw the reflected gleam of blood-red eyes in the glass. Lips pulled back over curved teeth the size of a forearm, and a growl rumbled like thunder, trembling the earth below my feet and rattling the hotel doors. Hot breaths burned my back. I kept my eyes ahead, on the reflection. Terror rooted me to the spot. It towered behind me. Eyes ablaze, maw open. I held its reflected gaze. It wouldn’t attack me. I was her, of the queen, and she controlled it. Recognition widened its blood-red eyes.

“Reign …” My voice came out as barely a whisper.

Its leathery ears lay flat against the huge misshapen skull. A growl thundered through its quivering mass of muscle.

“Sovereign!” Warren called from the dockside.

The hound whipped its head up. Streams of drool slid from snarling lips. It pinned its glare on the ancient fae, hunkered down, muscles bunching, and leaped. I spun in time to see the monster plow into Warren, clamp its jaws around him, before it plunged off the dockside into the water.

“No!” This couldn’t be happening. I sprinted to the edge and dropped to my knees, peering over the dockside into the dark waters. Bubbles broke the surface, but too soon they vanished. “Warren?” They would be okay. It was an accident. Reign didn’t mean to do this. It wasn’t his fault. “Reign?” They had to be okay. Any second now they’d surface, and it would all be some awful joke. But as the minutes ticked on, and the night air cooled, taking with it the scent of draíocht, it became clear they weren’t coming back.

I rocked back and hugged Reign’s coat to me. I had to call someone. The police. The FA. What am I going to tell them? A hound attacked an ancient fae and they’re both at the bottom of the dock? Only the FA would believe me, and they wanted me behind bars, unless Andrews had convinced them otherwise. Andrews would know what to do, but I couldn’t leave, not yet. They might still be okay. They had to be okay. Standing on trembling legs, I paced the water’s edge until the restaurant had closed and London slept.

Nobody surfaced.

The unidentified body of a male fae was discovered at Victoria Docks this morning. Police are appealing for witnesses who may have been in the area between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. The Fae Authority has been informed. They’ve asked for anyone who might have seen the prominent rock star Sovereign dining with an unknown woman, to come forward. It is not thought Sovereign or the woman are suspects, at this stage. The death is being treated as accidental.

Accidental.
There are no such things as accidents for the fae
, Charmaine had said
.
At least I knew Reign was alive.
Just one body found.
Andrews skewed a glance my way, eyebrow raised, and used a remote to turn the volume on the TV down. “About that confession … ?”

I couldn’t shake the image of the hound. I’d only seen it clearly while reflected in the glass doors, but that had been bad enough. “The last Keeper is dead.” My words grumbled, voice dry. I sounded like I’d spent the night on the town, which I had, walking to Detective Andrews’s place.

“Warren.” Andrews confirmed.

Hunched on Andrews’s couch, legs drawn up, Reign’s coat draped around me, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and sleep, but the memory of the hound stalked me. My mind refused to marry up the fact that the hound was Reign. Sweet, sexy, Sovereign. He’d told me he wasn’t what I thought. He told me over and over again. I knew he’d killed the other Keepers, at least I’d suspected as much. He said he didn’t have a choice. He’d told me he’d done terrible things. But, that hound … “The fae, all the fae … they aren’t what we think they are.” I tucked my chin into the collar of the coat. “They look gorgeous. All smiles, and charm …” I lifted my gaze to Andrews. “But they’re poison, Andrews. They’re monsters.” It seemed crazy, especially when surrounded by the normalcy of Andrews’s place. Somewhere inside, was I a monster too?

Andrews’s face said it all. This wasn’t a surprise, not for him. “And the queen has a date with Sovereign’s twenty thousand fans tomorrow.” Andrews tossed the TV remote onto his couch. “I told the FA everything. They said they had it in hand.” He raked his fingers through his hair and puffed out a sigh.

“You don’t believe them.”

“No, I don’t.” Drawing a hand across his chin, he cast his gaze high and started to pace. “The queen bespelled Miles. What if the FA are working for her too?”

I opened my mouth to deny it, but couldn’t bring myself to say the words. The FA had been tracking Reign since I’d met him. I assumed because of the murders, but what if they wanted to take him to the queen, or just keep him behind bars and out of the way while the queen had me terminate Warren? She hadn’t seemed convinced of Reign’s loyalty when I’d seen them together. She’d tasked me with his death. She’d told me he’d failed. Although, in the end, he hadn’t failed her. Fate really was a bitch.
There are worse things than fate.
Reign was right.

An ache bloomed behind my eyes. Rubbing my forehead wasn’t helping. “I don’t know. Maybe. Warren said they were independent. They train for years and are elected by the fae population …” A fae population who were tired of living in the shadows, who coveted the light. What if all the London fae wanted her to escape? Reign had said they were a predatory race, constantly at war. What if this was just the beginning?

Andrews dropped onto the edge of his couch and bowed forward. “They’ve been working on this for years.” He rubbed his hands together, tired eyes glittering. “It’s all been one massive PR campaign. We love them. What they are, what they do. Kids want to
be
them. People pay to look like them. Even with the laws to protect us, it’s like we just can’t help ourselves. I told my superiors everything and they looked at me like I was insane. We should have seen this, should have prepared for it. The bespellment. It’s not natural. They’ve always been poisonous. But we’ve all fallen under their spell. Nobody wants to believe the fae are anything but wonderful.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

I wanted to reassure him, but after what I’d seen, the things Reign had told me, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

Reign’s image on-screen caught my eye. “Andrews, turn that up please.”

“… has confirmed the concert on Saturday at the O
₂
Arena will proceed as planned.” The news footage cut to a live feed of Reign leaving his Kensington apartment, shades on, hood up, hand out to fend of the swarm of paparazzi trying to get a clear shot of his face. “Sovereign, is it true you’ve been linked to the accidental deaths of four prominent fae officials?” “Reign, your fans want to know who the mysterious woman is? Are you in a relationship?” “Where have you been for the last week?” “Do you have anything to say about the recent death? It’s understood you were seen with the deceased hours before he was found …” The barrage of questions went on, and Reign ducked them all, before slipping into a sleek Mercedes. The feed cut back to the studio where they went on to speculate how his recent PR would be good for ticket sales.

He had looked okay. A little pale, lips pressed into a determined line, but otherwise, more Reign-like and less terrifying-hound.

Andrews watched me closely, reading my expression. I swallowed and rested my chin on my knees. “I don’t think we can trust Reign.”

“I assume he killed Warren,” Andrews said softly.

I didn’t want to admit it. Admitting it made it real. And what I’d seen … I didn’t want that to be real. “It’s just us.”

He mustered the smallest of smiles. “A detective and a ghost.”

“You can’t trust me either. I’m okay now, but … I’m fae, Andrews, at least I think I’m more fae than human. And like Warren said, I’m closer to her than anyone—
anything
— else.” So close that I’d done something to Reign, somehow summoned his deadly secret. But why then? What had been different about that encounter? Was it the kiss? Reign had said the sensation I felt when we touched was fae draíocht mingling. If I was part queen, then my draíocht was too. In his apartment, when he’d pushed me away, his eyes had bloomed red. He’d been close to turning. The FA had used iron shackles to tame him. Iron hurt the hound. It helped trap the queen. Iron was a weakness, but how could we exploit that?

“You can get to her.”

I chewed on my lip. “Yes.” All I had to do was go to Chancery Lane and let myself into Under. I’d find my way to her, like a compass needle finds its way to magnetic north. I knew it in my blood.

“How close?”

Pretty damn close.
“Close enough.”

“Could you kill her?”

If he’d seen the queen, he wouldn’t ask that question. Even if I got close enough to her to brandish a dagger, she was vast, and in her world, she really was queen. And then there was the question of where my allegiance lay. Up here, in London, I was Alina, but down there, in Under, surrounded by her magic, I was something else entirely.

“If I managed to keep her out of my head, I could, I think. I’ve fought the FA. I know I’m quick, and strong, when my instincts take over. But she’s … terrifying.”

“I think this might be on you. I wish I could help, but I can’t get into Under. There’s nobody left to trust.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right.” Warren had said the hound could kill her, but Reign couldn’t control it. The queen could, perhaps in the same way she could get to me. Reign had killed for her. He wasn’t a coward, but he wasn’t stupid either. Either I
was
stupid to even consider going up against her, or insane, or, quite possibly, both.

Andrews got to his feet. “Wait here …” He disappeared from the living room and returned a few moments later with a towel-wrapped bundle. As he unfolded it and presented the dagger to me, my palm instantly itched to have the weapon back where it belonged. I reached out, but hesitated. The tiny gems scattered along the hilt glinted. It was a terrible weapon, terribly beautiful, something only the fae would know how to wield with deadly accuracy. I knew how to wield it. The same as I knew nothing was real in my life. My silly little Alina life was just the mask, covering a whole heap of bad. Taking the knife, wrapping my fingers around the handle, feeling its solid weight, meant accepting the truth.

“You had it on you the night I picked you up.” He didn’t seem to want to touch it. Neither did I, but for entirely different reasons.

My palm burned and my fingers twitched. If I took that dagger, I’d have to face her, and my fate.

Who was I kidding? Of course I was going to face her. There wasn’t anybody else to do this. There was no other way. If we waited until the concert, then what? A detective and a ghost girl couldn’t do a damn thing. But in Under, I wasn’t a ghost, I was a nightmare. Bits of the queen’s fantasy stitched together to make a monster.
I’m really going to do this …
“I’m not a hero.”

“True heroes rarely are.”

Curling my fingers around the handle, I eased the dagger off the towel and into my palm. Yes, it belonged to me. It felt right, weighted and balanced, an extension of my arm, my will. I could kill with it. I was capable. And terrified.

Do something important with your miserable existence.
Warren’s last words drove steel into my heart. I would. If I had just days to live, I’d make those days count. No fade-out for me, Alina O’Connor would go out in a blaze of glory. A satisfied smile settled on my lips
. I can do this.