Devil's Gate: Elder Races, Book 3 (7 page)

Wendell scratched the back of his neck. “Aside from your companion, there’s only one that I know of—the Tarot reader. Young girl maybe twenty years old, wears Goth makeup, got a mouth on her.”

“Goth makeup? Oh gods, Duncan,” Seremela said, her creamy skin going chalky. “He’s talking about Vetta.”

Fuck.
Fuck.

“Yeah, that’s her name,” said Wendell. His sharp gaze had turned curious and more than a little avid. “I’ll give you this much information for free, since it’s common knowledge anyway. They say she poisoned a man a couple days ago. Someone who was very important here. They’re going to hang her at dawn.”

Chapter Five

The Depths

Panic and disorientation sank claws into Seremela and wouldn’t let her go.

Vetta was to be hanged? For poisoning someone?

She couldn’t drag in a deep enough breath and struggled for air as she stared at the human and his Light Fae bodyguard.

The Light Fae bruiser stared back at her, his cynical expression turning wary. He took a couple steps back and drew his gun.

“Leash your dog,” Duncan said sharply. “He’s about to get stupid.”

What dog? Duncan moved so fast he blurred, crowding her back against a wall. Seremela stared at him blankly. What the hell was he doing?

When he stopped, he stood between her and the Light Fae, and belated understanding slammed into her—he was shielding her with his body.

At the same moment the nerdy human snapped, “Holster it, Dain.”

Lean, strong fingers came under her chin, and Duncan forcibly turned her face toward him. “Don’t look at him,” Duncan said to her in a quiet voice. “Look at me.”

She tried to focus on him. That was when she realized all her snakes were hissing at the Light Fae. Her panic had turned them deadly. She could feel them, roused and wanting to bite, and as she looked over Duncan’s shoulder, she could tell that the Light Fae male knew it.

“At me, Seremela,” Duncan whispered gently.

Her attention shifted back to him. He raised a hand and stroked it along a few of the snakes, and they quit hissing and wrapped around his forearm. Even though his back was turned to an unknown male with his gun drawn, Duncan looked calm, his dark gaze steady.

As soon as he knew he had gotten her attention, he smiled at her. “
They’re not going to hang her,”
he said telepathically.
“We won’t let them.”

She calmed, marginally. They were only two people in an overcrowded, dangerous and unknown place. Maybe it was ridiculous to believe him. Certainly it was neither sensible nor logical, but she did.

Impulsively she reached up to touch his lean cheek, more of the snakes reaching for him, and his gaze warmed. “
Duncan, I don’t know what he’s talking about,”
she said.
“Vetta isn’t a Tarot reader, and she might be a total contrary shit, but she’s not a
murderer
. That’s insane. If—if by any chance she did kill someone, she wouldn’t have had any other choice.”

He frowned. “
We need to ask some questions now. Whatever he says, we’re going to make this right. Okay?”

She nodded jerkily. “
Okay.”

He took her hand and kissed her fingertips, then carefully disengaged himself. Only then did he turn around to face the pharmacist and his Light Fae guard, who had holstered his gun.

All of her snakes had calmed as she had calmed. She gathered them to her and nudged them behind her shoulder as Duncan said, pleasantly, “Let’s start this conversation over, shall we?”

Wendell regarded them both with narrowed eyes. “Fine, but you’re scaring away my paying customers, so your free sample is over,” he said, chewing gum. “You want to know anything else, you gotta pay. Standard 411 rate is ten dollars a minute, not including additional rates for premium intel.”

Anger sparked in Seremela at the human’s callousness. She had never in her life wanted to hurt another creature, but she was pretty sure she could hurt this one. Just one bite, she thought as she fixed a cold, level gaze on him. All it would take is one, and your heart rate would slow, your skin would turn dry and flake off and you would be scared, nauseated and fucking miserable for a week. And I think I would like that very much.

Even as she thought it, a single snake slipped over her shoulder and rose to the level of her cheekbone. It too stared at Wendell unblinkingly, until the human shifted on his stool and looked away.

Aw, she’d made him squirm. Yee-fucking-haw.

Duncan slipped his hands in his jeans pockets, standing relaxed. “Your rate’s unimaginative but doable,” he said.

The human’s thin mouth tilted sourly, and he shifted again. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

“There are much more valuable things than cash, Wendell,” Duncan said. “Like alliances, protection and immunity.”

Wendell’s eyebrows rose. “You think you could offer me protection or immunity? You’ve barely set foot in this place. You have no social equity here, Vampyre. You don’t know the Power brokers, and you have no alliances. You know nothing.”

“The world is a much wider place than this dusty little pile of tents,” Duncan said. He gave the human a cold smile, and a touch of a whip entered his voice, precisely balanced just so with a delicate lash of contempt. “But no worries, Wendell. If you want money, you’ll get money. Tell us what happened, with details, names and times.”

Wendell paused, regarding Duncan with equal parts greed and caution, and Seremela could tell he was rethinking the last few minutes. Then the pharmacist said, “There may not be any law here, but there is a balance of Power. Or there was, until one of the Power brokers was killed yesterday. Things are a bit destabilized at the moment.”

“Who were the Power brokers, and what did they control?” Duncan asked. “You’re not one of them.”

“Nah,” said Wendell as he glanced at his watch. “My motive is profit, not power. I’m strictly in parking and pharmaceuticals, with a side interest now and then in information. The real Power brokers in Devil’s Gate are hard core. There’s an Elf with an affinity to Earth. Caerlovena is her name. She’s got a lock on most of the diggers. Then there’s a Djinn, Malphas, who has a lock on all the casinos, and I mean all of them. And until yesterday, there was Cieran Thruvial, who locked on prostitutes and protection. All the shops and vendors owed him a cut of their take.”

“Cieran Thruvial,” Duncan said. Surprise flickered in his gaze. “I know that name.”

Seremela shook her head. Inside she was reeling again. “That can’t be right,” she said. “I don’t see Vetta turning to prostitution. I guess she could have, but I just don’t see it.”

Wendell shrugged. “Well, the girl read Tarot, or at least that’s what her tent sign said. She charged for quarter hour and half hour readings. She did a good business too, from what I heard. I don’t know if she was turning tricks on the side or not, but like a lot of other shop keepers, she owed Thruvial protection money. They had a tempestuous relationship and argued a lot in public. I gotta say, it seemed real intimate.”

“Where is she now?” Seremela asked, the words scraping in her dry, constricted throat.

“Malphas is holding her until dawn,” Wendell said, and for the first time since they met him, something like sympathy crept into his gaze. “Scary dude, that Djinn. I’m not sure what he cares about, if anything.”

“Thruvial is a Fae name,” Duncan said abruptly. “Was this Cieran Thruvial Dark Fae?”

This time, both Wendell and his guard shifted their attention to Duncan, their expressions sharpening. Speaking for the first time, the guard said, “Yes.”

Wendell asked, “You knew him?”

Duncan’s face had turned expressionless. He said, “I met him once.”

“Where?” The pharmacist looked avid again.

Duncan gave him a sardonic smile. “That’s not part of our agreement, Wendell. Where’s the best place to find Malphas?”

Wendell made a face but said, “Much as he hangs anywhere, I guess it would be Gehenna—that’s the name of his main casino. Get it? Devil’s Gate—Gehenna. Ar ar ar, right?”

Duncan’s dark gaze shifted to her. He asked the pharmacist, “What do we owe you?”

“You’re not going to ask me how to find Gehenna?” Wendell asked.

Duncan shook his head. “We don’t need you anymore.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be so quick to say that,” Wendell said. “With Thruvial dead, things are shifting. People are making a grab for his territory, and a couple of them are strong magic users. You don’t know who to watch out for, or where to go. You still don’t know anything.”

“Now you’re trying too hard,” Duncan told him. He pulled out some cash and laid it on the counter. “I make it just under fifteen minutes. Keep the change.” He turned to Seremela, his expression softening. “Let’s go.”

She nodded and stepped out of the door, and he followed

Wendell called after them, “You’re making a mistake if you think you don’t need me.”

Duncan shook his head. Once they were outside, he offered Seremela his hand. She took it. His grip was like the rest of him, steady, calm and cool. She gripped it tightly and took a deep breath. The smoke scented night air seemed so much fresher than it had before they had stepped into Wendell’s shop.

“What a scurvy little bug,” she said between her teeth.

“I know. I want to squash him.”

He pulled her around to face him, cupping her elbows in the palms of his hands while he watched the crowd behind her. After a quick glance at his face, she did the same, watching what happened at his back. The red-tinged light from various campfires was indirect. Nearby someone laughed, a sharp sound abruptly cut off. Magic tinged the air, mingling with the physical smells of spilt whiskey and other sour odors.

“Would you leave if I asked you to?”
he asked telepathically.

She glanced at his shadowed face quickly. He looked as casual and indifferent as if they were talking about the weather. A few choice responses occurred to her, but she saw too many reasons for why he asked what he did.

In the end she just simply said, “
No.”

He didn’t look surprised. He nodded and rubbed his thumbs along the sensitive skin at the inside of her elbows, but she didn’t think he was aware of what he was doing.

“The thing that bothers me is the Djinn,”
he said and frowned. “
Well, there’s more than a few things that bother me.”

“Who was Thruvial?”
she asked.

He met her gaze. “
Do you remember that I traveled last year with Carling to Adriyel for Niniane Lorelle’s coronation?”

“Yes,”
she said.

She wasn’t likely to forget it.

Adriyel was the Dark Fae Other land, and last year had been eventful for the Dark Fae demesne. Dragos, the Lord of the Wyr, had killed Urien, the Dark Fae King, when Urien kidnapped Dragos’s mate. Then the heir to the throne, Niniane Lorelle, who had been living under Dragos’s protection, had to travel to Adriyel to claim her birthright. Along the way, Niniane had survived two assassination attempts in Chicago. Seremela had been the medical examiner who conducted an autopsy on the bodies of the would-be assassins.

The Wyr sentinel warlord Tiago had left his position in the Wyr demesne in New York to travel with Niniane and protect her. As far as the public knew, he now worked for the new Queen as her chief of security, but privately, those who knew the couple also knew that he had mated with Niniane.

Since that time, news from Adriyel had come out in snippets interspersed with weeks of silence. A few months after her coronation, the new Dark Fae Queen had imprisoned several noblemen and tried them for crimes committed against the crown, including treason, conspiracy, the regicide of her father and the murders of the rest of her family. Shortly after the trials, the conspirators had been executed.

A short time after, around January or so, Adriyel had officially opened its borders to tourism and open trade. Still, six months later, it was rare to see Dark Fae in the general public.

Seremela asked, “
Did you meet Thruvial in Adriyel?”

“Yes, briefly,”
Duncan said.
“Thruvial was a nobleman, and I was just a part of Carling’s entourage, so he and I had no reason to strike up a conversation. But I have a good memory for names and faces, and I remember him at the coronation and the celebration afterwards. Why would he come here, of all places?”

Now he had her frowning as well. Urgency pounded in her veins. She needed to get to her niece. Vetta had finally bitten off more than she could chew, and the poor little shit had to be scared out of her mind. Sometimes people had to hit rock bottom before they could change. If that was true, Seremela didn’t think there was any lower Vetta could go than sitting in the dark tonight, all alone, while she waited for her own execution.

But as much as Seremela wanted to barge over to Gehenna, Duncan was right to pause and assess the situation. They needed clear heads and to understand as much as they could about what was really going on, and part of that meant trying to understand the victim and why he had been killed.

She said, “
The Dark Fae are famous for their metallurgy. Maybe the possibility of finding a node of magic-rich metal lured him here, especially now that trade has opened up between Adriyel and the rest of the world.”