Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) (18 page)

“Nothing.” I passed him a bottle of water and a jerky, and the latter tore a snort out of him. “The clerk wasn’t there.” I ripped open my package and took a big bite. “It was stupid to think he would be waiting for me.”

“No, it’s not.” Graeson tugged a small plastic bottle out of his jeans pocket and handed it to me. “He’s been one step ahead of us this entire time. You were right to think he would monitor this point of contact after he figured out we wrecked his cabin this morning.”

“Do you always carry these on you?” The bottle of flavor enhancer was my favorite brand and my current favorite flavor. “I should shake you down sometime and see what else falls out of your pockets.”

An amused bend shaped his lips. “It’s my duty to see to my mate’s needs.”

A fission of warmth sizzled through me. “You’re better at this mate gig than I am.”

“You give me so much more than you realize.” He tapped my flavor enhancer. “What you do for me can’t be bottled, bought or sold.”

“You’ve got a way with words, I’ll give you that.” I let him pull me against him. “You’re very smooth.”

“You sand my rough edges,” he murmured against my hair. “Look at my wolf. He’s ruined. Defanged.”

“His fangs work just fine.” I had the scars to prove it. Under my cheek, Graeson tensed until I patted his chest. “It’s okay that your wolf is a bit of a caveman.” Instead of clubbing me on the head and dragging me to his cave, he had been content to tear into my calf to stop me from running and then follow me home to my den. “We’re friends now.”

His grumbled response reminded me how gutted he had been to realize he was capable of hurting me. Graeson had been out of his mind with grief at the time, and his wolf had taken over their body, shifting him and taking control of their actions. What made sense to the wolf didn’t please the man, but maybe the wolf was on to something. After all, I had fallen for his playfulness and fluffy belly that loved rubs before I realized that my heart already belonged to the bossy, grumpy, sometimes domineering man within him.

“How do you want to play this?” He let me doctor his drink and appeared pleasantly surprised with the end result. “If we’re doing surveillance, shouldn’t we move to a less-conspicuous spot?”

“Let him see us.” I was bone-tired and heart sore, and the pack was splintered. They deserved a home, a place to put down new roots where they would be safe. “I want this finished.”

So we sat there, holding on to one another, each of us lost in our thoughts. Besides the jerky, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and all the shifting had depleted me. My eyelids grew heavier as the minutes ticked past, until I had to stand and stretch the kinks out of my back just to stay awake, though standing convinced me I might fall asleep on my feet.

A chime rang out, and I fumbled my phone in my haste to check the message. “Mom is home.” That was one less worry. “The dryad touched base with them. She’s participating in a grace ceremony, a vigil where they use the stones to put a dryad in an ailing tree to sleep. It will be three or four days before she can deliver the gems.” I worried my bottom lip with my teeth, but Graeson kept his calm. “There goes that idea.”

Contagious as a yawn, Graeson sat upright and stretched his upper body as if unable to resist after watching me. “How much longer until we meet Thierry?”

“We have about an hour.” I plopped down beside him. “Do you think we spooked him?”

“You know him better than anyone.” His lips pursed, a sour pucker at tasting that truth. “Do you think he’ll run again?”

“No.” I jiggled my knee, in desperate need of a restroom after downing my water an hour earlier. “We interrupted his timeline by killing the kelpie. My involvement might have made this personal, but I can’t shake the feeling he’s the one running out of time. He’s not as careful, not as composed.” The more I considered his actions, the more sense my theory made. “He’s desperate to salvage this—whatever this is. I tie into his plans. He’s made that much clear. Maybe I’m a nexus point since I was involved in the case?”

“Revenge is a simpler motive.” His expression tightened. “He’s put a lot of effort into hurting you.”

Feeding off my pain and misery as he lashed out at my loved ones. “Do you believe in divination as prophesy?”

“The future is too malleable,” he decided. “I don’t believe anything is set in stone. But the Garzas are experts at choosing the most likely path and following it to a logical conclusion.”

“Does that mean you think Faerie is about to throw open its doors and release the Wild Hunt?”

Expression thoughtful, he rolled his shoulder. “Stranger things have happened.”

“You can say that again.” I settled in against him to finish our shift. “I get the feeling stranger days are ahead.”

How did you end a fae who could be anyone, anywhere and at any time? A possibility had occurred to me, a solution that required minimum sacrifice to protect all those I loved, and Graeson wasn’t going to like it one bit. If he caught wind of my plan, he would lock me in the hotel until I was gray-haired and wheelchair-bound, and my family would help.

Forty-eight hours until the doctor released Aunt Dot, Isaac and Theo from his care. Forty-eight hours to bring down this monster once and for all. Breathing in Graeson’s pine-and-musk scent, I curled tighter against him. Forty-eight hours to love him with all I had, in case my plan cost more than I could afford to pay.

T
he gas station
clerk was a no-show, and we ran out of time to wait him out. Thierry had sent another email, this one indicating she was minutes from town. With no choice but to resume our very public stakeout later, we returned to our hotel room and listened for a knock at the door.

A peculiar sense of anticipation swept over me when it came, and I rose to answer. Graeson crossed in front of me and took up position behind the door. I cut him a scowl for mistrusting her, but who was safe to trust these days?

I checked the peephole before Graeson could eyeball it, and saw the person I expected. Which, I allowed, didn’t mean much when it came to Charybdis. Built lean with jet-black hair and piercing green eyes, Thierry didn’t need more than her jeans and ratty T-shirt to be striking. Even through the distorted lens, the runes covering her left hand and arm stood out against her tanned skin.

“Hello?” she drawled, Texas thick in her voice.

One final check with Graeson, who nodded, and I opened the door. “Sorry about that. We’re jumping at shadows lately.”

“Understood.” Her nostrils flared. “Graeson, so we meet again.”

Scowl pinching his forehead, he circled behind me until he stood in front of her and dipped his chin. “Thierry.”

“I’m going to invite myself in.” She shuffled past us. “I’m being followed.” She peered up at him. “Unless that’s one of your people?”

“Our pack is all accounted for.” He cocked his head. “Why do you ask?”

“The person tailing me is a warg.” Thierry pulled out the task chair and sat. “Black fur if that helps with the ID.”

Graeson and I exchanged a glance. I broke the standoff. “Aisha?”

“It’s possible.” He rubbed his jaw. “She does blame you for her expulsion from the pack.”

“Of course she does.” Me, and not Imogen, the female warg who had claimed her title, and her mate.

“I hate to bring bad news with me.” Thierry crossed her legs. “I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it.”

“The prophecy means something to you?” I sank on the mattress and folded my legs under me.

“Let’s make this private first.” She took a charm from her pocket and crushed it. My ears popped as the spell sealed the room. “Decide amongst yourselves if Graeson is privy to this information. I will require an oath sealed in blood before we go further.”

“I want in,” he said before I could ask him.

“You okay with that?” she asked me. I nodded, and she pulled out a charm resembling a charred bird’s nest and a slender dagger. She pricked her finger and fed it a drop of her blood, the wound sealing before our eyes. “Who wants to go next?”

I volunteered, leaving Graeson for last. My thumb was still bleeding when magic raced up my arms, stinging my throat and pricking my lips, binding us to shared secrets. The charm vanished in a puff of smoke, and Thierry dumped the ashes into the small trash can beneath the desk.

“Okay. Where were we?” She dusted her hands. “Oh yeah. The prophecy. It could mean a great many things to me, personally.” She squinted up at me, lips pursed, debating. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” She laughed. “God that sounds cocky, but you were alone with Mai, and she tends to be overprotective. I wasn’t sure whose names she might have dropped to threaten you if you hurt me.”

In my periphery, Graeson bristled. “She threatened you?”

“We worked it out,” I soothed him. “It’s fine.” Focusing on Thierry, I got butterflies in my stomach, like I was at the top of one of those rickety National Fair coasters, high above a crowd with miles of track in front of me. “All I know about you is what I learned the first time we touched. You’re a legacy, so one of your parents is Faerie-born.” Her expectant look pushed me to continue. “You’re a half-blood fae, a very powerful one.”

Thierry sobered. “My father is Macsen Sullivan.”

My gut rocketed into the soles of my feet, and that rollercoaster sensation blasted it right back up in my throat.
“You’re the Black Dog’s daughter?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged like it was no big deal to be the daughter of a legend. “I don’t lead with that, you know? I don’t like to name drop, and I like to keep my private life as private as possible.”

“Who is the Black Dog?” Graeson expected me to answer, but I was too busy scraping my brains back in my head from where her announcement had blown the top off my skull. “Ellis?”

“Let me start at the beginning, okay?” Thierry started cracking her knuckles. “The story is easier to follow that way.”

“All right.” Graeson sat beside me and started rubbing my back.

“The purpose of the Wild Hunt for centuries was to ride through the mortal realm on All Hallows’ Eve, collecting the wayward souls of fae who died on Earth. They returned them to Faerie, where they could sort of evaporate into the afterlife.” She made a slashing gesture. “It’s complicated. Anyway, the story goes that on one such hunt, the Huntsman and his pack of sleek, black hounds crossed a battlefield.” Her voice fell into the cadence of someone used to telling the story. “Their hunger had been temporarily sated, but their noses led them to one last feast. Two souls, one Seelie and one Unseelie, stood with their hands clasped as though unaware the hunt was upon them.”

“The Seelie are light and the Unseelie dark, right?” Graeson leaned forward, listening.

“Yes, well, sort of. Again, it’s complicated. Nothing is black and white.” She gusted out a breath. “Okay, so the pack leader ran ahead of the others. Confused when the spirits stood their ground, he approached them, sniffed them and allowed each to stroke his silky, midnight fur.

“The Seelie held the hound’s gaze while the Unseelie spoke. ‘Only in death have we known peace. If we had raised our voices instead of our swords, much of our grief might have been circumvented. Loyal beast, reaper, it is our final wish that Faerie never endure the misery of another Thousand Years War.’

“‘Mark this day, Black Dog,’ the Seelie intoned. ‘Tonight you are the hunter, but one hundred years hence, you shall become the hunted. One prince from each of our houses will hunt you across Faerie wearing the skins of hounds, goaded by your own Huntsman while you wear the skin of a sidhe noble. Your blood will anoint the new ruler and usher in one hundred more years of prosperity for the fae.’

“Instead of consuming the spirits as the Huntsman had decreed, Black Dog bowed his head to their will. That simple act of defiance shattered the bonds between himself and the Huntsman, and Black Dog gained awareness. As a gift to aid him in the trials ahead, the Unseelie entered his left eye and the Seelie his right, so that Black Dog might always view both sides of any argument with impartiality.

“Black Dog also gained the form of a man so that he might stand toe-to-toe with kings. He named himself Macsen Sullivan and established the Faerie High Court, choosing one Seelie and one Unseelie consul to join him, and instituted the Right of the Hunt.

“Once a century, he was run to ground and torn to pieces. The blood of one man was spilled to determine a king. His sacrifice avoided the slaughter of thousands had the houses gone to war for the crown. For the seven days after he was laid to rest in Faerie’s soil, the realm mourned him. Lore said those tears seeped into the ground and restored him, and he rose at midnight on the seventh day made whole again.”

“Is any of that true?” Graeson wondered out loud.

A shudder rippled through Thierry. “Every word of it is true.” She composed herself. “The Huntsman considers himself my grandfather. Not that I would mind a family reunion, but he shouldn’t be able to cross the thresholds my father set.” Her voice lowered. “I severed the tethers leading into Faerie myself. Only one remains, and it is hidden and guarded.”

“You—?” I choked out.

“Yeah.” She wiggled rune-marked hands at me. “Me.”

Stunned as I was, my brain recovered faster this time. Pieces were clicking together all over the place.

“That’s good news.” Relief coasted through me. “I thought the divination meant the worlds would have to collide for the Wild Hunt to have access to this realm, but it could mean your grandfather came through the tether.”

“The Wild Hunt free in the mortal world is not good news,” she disagreed. “I’m not sure there’s any merit to this divination, and I can’t swear—if this does come to pass—that it won’t be as you say. The Huntsman could use the tether. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.”

“If there is a functional tether, can you get word to Faerie? Find out what reason he might have for coming?” Another thought occurred to me. “What about your father? Can he help?”

“Dad is honeymooning with my mother in Summer.” She grimaced.

So they hadn’t been married when she was born? Or hadn’t been together? She caught my expression and grimaced. I spared her an amused smile. “Let me guess, it’s complicated?”

She huffed out a laugh. “Exactly that. There’s no way to reach them. Not for ten more days when the glamour concealing their hideaway dissipates.” She rubbed her forehead. “They wanted privacy to reconnect. They’ve been through so much.”

“I get your interest based on your familial connection,” Graeson started, “but Tennessee is a ways from Texas. Did you come in person to extract the oaths? Or did you have something else in mind?”

“I did need the oaths.” She bobbed her head. “But if the Huntsman comes, I need to be here to greet him.” Her lips flatlined. “Gramps hasn’t been to this world in a long time, and his hounds will be ravenous. A little-known fact is parents who tell cautionary tales to naughty children about the hounds ripping souls from the living as easily as they capture the lost ones aren’t wrong.”

I blanched, but Graeson appeared torn on the edge of disbelief. This was not his culture, and Faerie was not his world. How strange it must be for him to accept our bizarre history as truth instead of fairy tale.

“You’re here to stop him,” Graeson said, rolling the implications around his mind.

“Not him so much as what else might follow him through,” she demurred. “I’m more concerned about what the implications are that he was mentioned at all than he himself.” She hesitated. “The rules change as rulers change in Faerie. No one has let the Huntsman off his leash in centuries, and the current king is…” She rolled a hand. “He’s a decent-enough guy. Manipulative as hell, which he gets from his mother, but what fae aren’t?”

I shrugged, not agreeing or disagreeing. Thierry was a protector of humans, most likely because one of her parents was one. Her stance on fae seemed…skewed…to me, but I would have to walk a mile in her shoes to understand her position, and I already had blisters on my heels. All that mattered to me was she was here, she was a powerful ally, and whatever was about to go down had a better chance of ending well with her on our side. “So you’re saying you don’t think he would let slip the hounds?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not without a direct order.”

“How does this change our plan?” Graeson looked to me.

“It doesn’t.” I patted his thigh. “We still have to press Charybdis, and that means we have to find the clerk.” I frowned, thinking it over. “He gave me permission to summon him when I ‘made my peace.’ I think that means he’ll answer me if I can get near enough to one of his hosts.”

“What does that mean?” Graeson snapped his head toward me. “Made your peace with what?”

“I could be wrong.” I really, really didn’t think I was. “I believe he wants me as his next avatar.” Gold bathed Graeson’s irises, and he snarled. “He wanted to punish me, and he failed. Harlow is all he’s got left, and she’s human. His kind of power will burn her out. She ought to have a higher resistance than most, given she’s been exposed to magic all her life, but she won’t last forever.”

“You’re not trading places with her.” He made it an order, not a question.

“No, I’m not,” I hedged. “But the only way for us to win this is if he thinks I am.”

Thierry threw out a hand to forestall more growling. “No, listen. This could work.” She stood and began pacing. “We isolate Charybdis while he’s riding Harlow. Ask for a meet somewhere remote. You’ll have the upper hand, and he’ll know it. Harlow is his last bargaining chip. Offer to take her place, and before he makes the jump, we take her down.”

I leapt to my feet. “We don’t hurt her.”

“I’ll tranq her. From a safe distance.” Thierry tapped her head. “I’m protected by layers of heavyweight spells these days, mostly to keep fae out of my noggin who might have heard about the tether and want its location. That ought to keep me safe from this guy too.”

“Then why don’t you—?” Graeson started.

“He doesn’t want me.” Thierry faced him. “I’d do this in a heartbeat if I could, because I’m confident I can walk out the other side. My mate is too, or I wouldn’t be here. I’d be tied to a chair in the basement of a building half a world away. But I can’t provide the incentive. He wants Cam. That’s what we have to give him.”

“I don’t like this, Ellis.” All the jumping and pacing must have irritated Graeson’s wolf, because he rose too. “I know you have to do this.” He clenched his fists. “Your sense of honor won’t allow anything less.”

“We’ve tried to catch him for months, and so many lives have been lost in the process.” I didn’t mention Marie, but he flinched the same as if I had. “I have one shot to end this now before anyone else is put at risk. He’s fixated on me.” I kissed him tenderly. “Let it end with me.”

Let the ghosts of all those murdered by his hands be laid to rest. I owed them that peace for my role in their deaths.

He circled my wrists, his grip iron. “You are not
ending
.”

“Poor choice of words,” I allowed. “That’s not what I meant.” Mostly.

“This can work.” Thierry sounded certain. “I’ve had the same training as Cam. I can handle a gun. They’re just not my favorite thing.”

“What about the tranqs?” Butler was tiny, and I doubted she could root out the supplies she needed locally.

“I’ll put in a call.” She pulled out her cell. “I can have the gun and ammo here by morning.”

A tiny pang of longing zipped through my chest. Once upon a time, I’d had all the conclave’s resources at the tips of my fingers, and it had been a beautiful thing.