City of Fae (23 page)

Andrews’s eyes widened at the sight of my smile. “I wish I could come with you.”

“No you don’t.” I hugged the dagger against my chest. “Just rally anyone and anything you can, and get them to the concert, in case I fail.”

The street outside Chancery Lane Underground Station throbbed with people. Detective Andrews might think he blended in, but really, the way he eyed the crowd, as though scanning the faces to see if they’d been featured on London’s Most Wanted. I’d have liked to have known Andrews in another life, one where we could talk about normal everyday things, wonderfully mundane things. If I had one friend, I’d have liked it to be him.

“How will you keep her out of your head?” He drew me to one side, away from the flow of people.

“With new memories. My memories.” I swallowed hard. “I just hope they’re real enough.” I still wore Reign’s coat. I’d folded up the sleeves so it didn’t engulf me. It was far too large, and swirled around my ankles, but hid the dagger well. Besides, I had more to worry about than my attire.

Andrews peered at my face, as though seeking something important, something he might find deep inside me. I blinked, “What? Do I have ketchup on my lip?”

His smile tilted sideways, and his eyes brightened. Just for a moment he looked proud. “You’re something, Miss O’Connor.” I liked that look on him. Somewhere inside all that detective stoicism there was a great guy.

“Thanks, I think.” I gave him a lighthearted punch on the shoulder. “Hey, anyone would think you’re worried.” He didn’t deny it. By the way his brows furrowed, I might have assumed he really did care. “I’ll be okay.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“Nope, you’re a good cop.” And then I realized why he’d adopted the severe detective look. This was good-bye. Even if I did manage to miraculously kill the queen, it wouldn’t be long before I burned out.

“If you … when you kill her,” he bowed his head, just for a second, and when his gaze found me again, his eyes had hardened with purpose. Clearing his throat, he tried again, “When you kill her, what’ll happen to you? You’re made from her magic, right?”

“I didn’t come with an instruction manual.” I grinned. “If I had, I’d have thrown it away by now.” In other words, I had very little idea how this was going to play out, but it’d be a wild ride while it did.

With a chuckle, he straightened. “Go get her, Alina. These people”—he glanced around us at the steady stream of pedestrians—“they need you to do this. I know you can.”

“Aye-aye, Detective.” I ducked my head and turned away, toward the steps down into the underground. I would not say good-bye. Because this wasn’t the end. It wasn’t over.

“Danny, call me Danny.”

Glancing back, I branded the image of him standing on the sidewalk into my mind; half awkward, half determined. He tossed me a wave, lips tucked into his cheek in a forced smile, and then he bowed his head, turned, and walked away.

I peered down the steps into the station. The crowd flowed around me. The queen waited. She’d know I was coming. The dagger at the small of my back was all I had to face a monster. I wasn’t ready, and still my feet carried me forward, down the steps, toward whatever fate awaited.

What is it they say about rats and sinking ships? Under was empty. Every room I passed, every chamber I entered, every tunnel I strode down, was utterly devoid of fae. They knew, and had gotten the hell out of Dodge before the crap went down. Had I been anyone else, I might have done the same. So, there I was, trainee reporter Alina, striding toward the spider-queen, and with every step she pulled me in. Like the spider plucking a single string of its web, she tapped into my mind, luring me close. Dagger in hand, I kept my feet moving forward and my head full of new memories.
Afraid of spiders, Alina?
Reign had asked, yanking me free of the
Metro
offices. I bet he thought himself hilarious
. I should have said good-bye.
No, I would see him again. It might not be a happy reunion, considering how I’d last seen him, making short work of Warren, but I would get out of Under. I’d walk in the sun again. I’d listen to the heartbeat of London.
Live a little, American Girl.
Damn him for being so right. He’d been right about the cake too. Chocolate cake really was to die for. And then there was the kiss. The mind-numbing, thought-silencing kiss. Sure, I had memories of intimacy, but they weren’t real. Not like those I recalled of the countless fluttering shivers Reign’s touch had summoned, or the short, rapid breaths as we’d parted. Memories, my own, fresh and new, anchored me in my skin, my mind. She would not get to me. I had a life now, albeit a few days old, it was still damn well mine.

Tap-tap …

The terrible darkness slumbering at the back of my mind stretched its awareness through my limbs, and with it came the dreadful urge to follow her orders.

A rumbling grumbled through the tunnel. Dust rained from the cracked ceiling.
Probably a passing train …
The strip lights blinked off and buzzed back on.

A skitter of shivers danced up my arms. I brushed it off. “Suck it up, Alina. Prove Warren wrong. I can do this.” The words echoed ahead of me, and as I rounded a tunnel corner, a wall of FA officials lifted their collective tricolored gazes. I jolted to a halt. The general stood at the center of the line, every lean inch of him wrapped in red and black leather, the queen’s colors. Weapons bristled. Holy crap, Andrews was right. They were the queen’s. The general peeled his lips back into a savage grin and plucked twin daggers free from his thigh sheaths. His officers, six in total, followed his lead, daggers singing, metal on metal. Six trained fae killers, blades glinting beneath the flickering light.

I turned on my heel and ran. Head down, legs pumping, lungs burning, I ran hard.
Okay, this wasn’t the plan.
They weren’t meant to be here, and they certainly weren’t meant to be working against me. I needed a new plan. And fast. Heart pounding, I veered around corners, sliced off into narrow tunnels, stumbled through dark sections and over forgotten tracks before somehow finding my way to the tapestry chamber, where I’d first met Warren.

“Alina!” Shay, draped in angelic white, waved me over. In a rush of words she said, “I can help you. But you must promise to help Reign in return.”

“What? We don’t have time for this.”

She narrowed her eyes on me. “I know what you are. I know you can help him; perhaps cure him of the hound?”

“I …” My thoughts raced.
Cure him?
I said the only thing I could. “Yes. Okay. They’re coming, we need—”

She peeled back one of the tapestries, revealing a crawl space behind it. “Quickly, inside …” I launched myself into the service tunnel, twisting around to grab Shay’s hand and haul her in behind me. The tapestry fell and we both hunched down.

Panting hard, I struggled to silence my ragged breaths. Boots hammered as the FA spilled into the chamber. Shay’s wide-eyes sparkled in the dark. I clamped a hand over my mouth and held my breath.

“She’s here …” The general growled.

Shay hugged her legs close, pinched her lips, and bowed her head. She almost looked to be praying. Who do you pray to when your gods are monsters?

The curtain whipped back. Shay let out a cry as a hand locked around her ankle and tugged. She reached for me, but the fae tugged her out of our hiding place as though she weighed nothing. One of the warriors dove in after me. I kicked out. My heel smacked into the bridge of his nose. He snarled like an animal, speared me with those gray eyes, and grabbed for me. I kicked again, but he caught my ankle and tugged. Dagger in hand, I rammed it down, plunging the blade through his wrist. A terrible cry burst from him. His mouth gaped, sharp teeth glinting, and then he recoiled, pulling back. The tapestry fell between us, hiding me once more.

“Come out, Alina O’Connor,” the general said, “or we’ll slit her throat …”

Shay’s muffled cries confirmed it. They’d kill her. I couldn’t let her die because of me. She’d alluded to knowing something about Reign’s hound … A cure? But there was a good chance I’d die if I went out there. Twenty thousand people needed me to kill the queen.
Bigger picture, Alina.
All of those people would die if I failed. More. The queen wanted London. Once she’d feasted, she’d be unstoppable. She’d turn London into her larder.

“Get her on her knees.” The general ordered. Shay’s yelp followed.

I locked my hands into my hair. I couldn’t let his happen. Shay had tried to help me. I couldn’t listen to her die. My humanity may only be skin-deep, but I still had a heart.

I lifted the tapestry. Hands gripped me and tugged me out of the hole, dropping me facedown on the floor. A knee planted itself in my spine. The fae worked to tug my arms back. Shay knelt a few strides away, tears wet on her pale cheeks, and behind her, the general loomed, hand fisted in her hair, dagger hooked at her throat, drawing a little blood. He smiled a savage lust-drenched smile, and for a second I thought he’d kill her anyway.

“Lock them up. I’ll deal with them personally later. There is much to be done.” He shoved her forward and backed away, wiping the blade on his thigh, but the leer lingered. This wasn’t over.

So much for my grand plan. I sat on the floor at the back of my cell, knees drawn up, and listened to Shay’s sobs from the cell next to mine. I really must have been an idiot to think I could walk right up to the queen. I could feel her claw-tipped legs reaching, hooking into my thoughts. I fought her, drove her back with happy thoughts, but it wouldn’t last. I had only a handful of good memories, and they would fail me soon enough. Here, in Under, I was hers. It was just a matter of time.

“Alina …”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for stopping the general.”

I closed my eyes. She didn’t need to know it’d been fifty-fifty for a while or that her hint about Reign’s cure had helped tipped the scales in her favor. “Don’t thank me. You don’t know me.” I sounded like Reign. She fell silent for a while, her occasional sniffing the only reminder that I wasn’t alone.

“I feel I may have judged you unfairly,” she said.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.” Shuffling to the front of my cell, I leaned against the bars. The lock looked to be some chunky mechanical device that would need a key. Maybe I could pick it. If I had a pick. And a clue how to pick locks. I guessed the queen hadn’t thought to download that useful piece of information into my head. Reign had mentioned I was made of the same potent draíocht as his hound, so maybe I could figure out how to jump myself out of the cell? The problem was, I had no idea what I was doing. I could no more jump myself out of there than I could pick the damn lock.

I sighed. “Thanks for trying to help me back there.”

“I returned for some personal items. They said to leave it all behind, but I couldn’t. I wanted something. A reminder, I suppose, of the time before everything changed.”

“You aren’t part of their plan?”

“No. Some of the darker ones, they were never going to be content with stealing the little amount of draíocht we harvest from people.” She must have moved closer to her bars too, because her next words were hushed, but I heard them clearly. “You have to understand. Faerie is draíocht. It’s the air we breathe, the food we eat. It’s life. But here, draíocht is difficult to find, we’re suffocating, starving. And ever since the Trinity Law was passed, we’ve struggled to survive. We don’t want to be here, but we are, and that will surely never change. The dark ones, the older ones, those like Warren, they remember the freedom they had in Faerie. They want back what they lost.”

I rested my head against the cool bars. This wasn’t going to end with the queen. If the impossible happened, and she was stopped, there would be others like her. Reign was one of the good guys, at least I’d thought he was, but he was just as terrifying and I’d only glimpsed a fraction of what he could do. “I saw Reign,
really
saw him …”

Shay took so long to reply I wondered if she’d heard me, and when she did speak, it was in a whisper. “He despises it, hates the hound in him. He tries to do good, to make right his crimes. I’m not sure he will ever make peace with the hound.”

“What is it? Where does it come from?”

“A spirit inhabits him, it is a blessing and also a curse. His kin are proud, strong. In Faerie, they are feared and revered for their bloodlust in battle. They have the strength of the hound, Cu Sith, in their bloodline, but the price is high. Cu Sith takes one of their sons for every generation, as it has Reign. He can no more control it than he can the wind or the rain.”

“But the queen can?”

“She has the same ancient draíocht in her veins. They are linked, the spirits of the hound and the spider—Arachne—tied together, by draíocht.”

I shivered and hugged myself. “He killed Warren.”

A sharp hiss; an indrawn breath through her teeth. “The old Keepers are all dead. The FA are the new Keepers now. Faerie help us.”

“Shay, how did the FA get so powerful?”

“She got to them. Just a few to begin with. But once she had her fangs in the general, he turned the others, corrupted them. They were honorable, once. General Kael was the finest warrior. Proud, admirable. But now he is nothing more than her tool.”

The queen had to die. But behind bars, I was useless. Outside the bars I’d been pretty damn useless too. “Do you know what I am?”

“We suspected you were a human pet. I believed you were Reign’s bespelled victim. Warren hated you on sight. The way he talked to you … But, when you were here, and after you left, there was something about you I didn’t understand. I saw in you the same stillness I see in Reign, a hint of something hungry and devastating, not of this world. You’re hers, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“How are you even coherent? Constructs are usually simple things. They fulfill their purpose and then die. How did you come to be here? Isn’t she controlling you?”

I swatted the temptation to latch onto the word
die
. “She doesn’t seem to be able to control me all of the time, just when we’re close. She gives me commands, and for a while, I lose myself, but her control slips and I’m me again. Maybe I’m broken. I don’t think I have long left.”