“Tell me where they are.”
“What can you do to me?” she laughed in my face. “There’s nothing they can’t fix. You can’t stop them, and they will heal me again and again and again.”
Sigridsen was insane. And she had the key information I needed.
I took the final step to her and slammed her back into the couch by her shoulders.
“Tell me,” I snarled in her face.
She laughed, and pain seared through me as the echoing crack of a pistol rang through the room. The bullet ripped through my stomach and sent me stumbling backward as she lifted another pistol she’d pulled out of the couch with her freshly healed arms and bared her fangs at me.
The vampires hadn’t cured Sigridsen’s cancer with a blood working. That would have been too easy for me…
“They made you a vampire in payment,” I gasped, feeling for the wound. It wasn’t cold iron; it would heal. It wasn’t a fatal wound to me—for that, she’d either need the gun she’d left in the hallway, or to be a much better shot.
“I will not betray my new brothers and sisters,” she crowed, raising the gun to shoot me again. I dodged, lumbering to my feet and feeling the bullet whiz past my head. Fire flared through my right hand, scorching the gun and misfiring the ammo with heat. Sigridsen dropped the gun as it half-exploded in her hand.
Her eyes glittered with madness as she pulled a short, heavy knife from somewhere. It wasn’t cold iron, but there were lots of wounds I couldn’t regenerate from.
“What can you do to me?” she said in a hiss. “They have made me immortal!”
I stood, willpower and power driving away the pain as I conjured faerie flame in my hands.
“I can burn your body to ashes, bitch,” I snapped, and threw the flame at her. It burned up her arm, forcing her to drop the machete, and I stepped forward, throwing more flame as she went for the gun in the hallway. I caught her in the side, but it didn’t stop her from sliding into the hallway and grabbing with the ugly pistol with its cold iron rounds.
I didn’t conjure flame fast enough, and the heavy cold-hammered iron round tore into my shoulder. Pain tore through my body, driving me to my knees, and she fired again. Another bullet ripped through my chest, and I coughed up blood as she closed.
“Why aren’t you dead?” she snapped. “I thought this shit killed you fucking fairies dead.”
“I’m not true fae, bitch,” I said, coughing up blood with my words. “I’ve more human left in me than you do!”
Anger and pain flared through me and out my extended right hand. A burst of green flame, an inferno like I’d never conjured before, flashed across the room. Sigridsen screamed as the gun literally melted in her hand, the bullets exploding and flying off wildly. One of them might have hit her, but I would never know—the tendril of flame kept going clean through her, incinerating half of her body and burning a huge hole in the wall behind her.
Normal, yellow flame began to lick around the edges of the hole as I stumbled out. I caught a glimpse of a familiar black Hummer screeching around the corner of the street, breaking at least three traffic laws, before the blood loss and cold-iron poisoning caught up with me and I collapsed.
10
I WOKE UP TO PAIN. My entire body ached, and the two cold-iron wounds burned like fire.
“Shit, he’s awake,” Clementine snapped in a voice sharp with panic. “We can’t use anesthetic for this; someone put him out!”
Cold, cold hands touched my temples, and I felt a flare of power, and then the world was gone.
WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, my body ached, but none of my wounds burned. I couldn’t pinpoint the bullet wounds, which told me someone had cleaned the wounds of cold iron. Which would have fucking hurt, hence them keeping me knocked out.
I opened my eyes to the same spartan room I’d been left in when I first was taken to Clan Tenerim’s Den. I wasn’t alone, but this time it wasn’t Mary or one of the shifters who was in with me. A tall dark-haired woman in a black skirt suit sat cross-legged on a chair by the door. Her gaze locked on mine as I looked at her.
“Good, you’re awake,” she said briskly. “I am Laurie. Oberis sent me.”
I could feel her power across the room. She was fae, not quite Noble but strong enough for that. She stood, and to my eyes her visage shimmered, and I cursed mentally. A single glimpse through the glamor she’d woven around herself revealed the true nature of the woman. She was still tall and dark-haired, but her skin was withered with centuries of wind and sun, warped by birth and age. I was sharing a room with a hag.
Hags wielded great magical power, though physically most would barely be a match for me. I knew who’d kept me asleep while Clementine had abraded cold iron from my flesh.
The thought led me to toss aside the blanket over me to examine my wounds. They’d been bound up, but the bandages were clean and not bloody. I touched them gently and could feel the flesh mostly closed over.
“How long was I out?” I asked Laurie.
“It is Sunday morning,” she told me. She passed me a bundle of clothes. “Dress,” she ordered.
“Can you at least leave the room?” I asked. The hag was creeping me out.
“No,” she said flatly. “I am not to leave your presence until I have delivered you to the Lord of the Court. I am your guard.”
“My guard?”
“I have discussed this situation with Alpha Tarvers,” she told me. “You have lied to the Clan and used the goodwill of the court to your advantage. Also, you have threatened the Covenants.”
She tossed a newspaper on the bed in front of me as I began to dress. The headline blazed:
NORTHWEST FIRE LEADS TO DISCOVERY OF SERIAL KILLER
In the aftermath of a fire in the northwest of Calgary Saturday morning, police have found the remains of no less than six people in the basement of the burnt-out home. Identifications have not been confirmed, but police believe them to be the bodies of several missing persons reported in the area.
“Damn,” I whispered.
“Had you passed your knowledge of Dr. Sigridsen’s location on to the proper authorities, we would not have been at risk of the discovery of a vampire by mortal authorities,” Laurie snapped. “We are lucky that her body was sufficiently destroyed that they will not be able to identify her as inhuman.”
“Now,” she continued mercilessly as I pulled on shoes, “are you going to cooperate, or will I have to geas you?”
“I will cooperate,” I said quietly. This wasn’t good. As a Vassal, I technically didn’t answer to Oberis, and it was a tossup whether Laurie would be able to geas me—but from the way the Queen had phrased her orders, I didn’t think she’d appreciate them learning that.
I followed the hag from the room, avoiding the glances of the shifters as I passed through the Den. When we reached the front door, however, Tarvers blocked it. Laurie turned her glare on him.
“We agreed to this, Alpha Tarvers,” she said coldly.
“I will speak with him,” the big shapeshifter rumbled.
“My orders are clear,” Laurie responded. “I am not to leave his presence.”
“In private,” Tarvers told her.
“I have my orders,” the hag said flatly.
“You have my word, as Alpha of Clan Tenerim, as Speaker for the Clans of this city, and a signatory to Calgary’s Covenant, that he will be surrendered to your justice,” the Alpha told her formally. “Now give me a minute.”
They held each other’s glares for a long moment until the tall hag nodded sharply and stepped around him.
Tarvers turned his cold gaze on me.