Storm's Heart er-2 Page 2

  However.

  “That was then, this is now,” said Tiago.

  Dragos nodded, expelling a breath in an explosive sigh. “Agreed.”

  Tiago rubbed the back of his head. Unfamiliar emotions cascaded through him. Niniane had escaped when her uncle Urien had taken the Dark Fae throne in a bloody coup and killed off her family. She had run straight to Dragos for sanctuary and had been part of the Wyrkind inner circle for almost two hundred years.

  For all that, Tiago hardly knew her. Most of the time he was off with Dragos’s army, embroiled in distant conflicts. He had met her maybe twenty times over the years, usually in meetings such as this one during his rare visits to New York. He had spoken with her one-on-one maybe a dozen times.

  Still, she was one of theirs. He had gotten used to her infectious grin and that sexy wriggle she did with her cute little ass when she was flirting either with the camera or with someone in person. Anger burned that someone would dare try to harm her. She was so small and delicate, maybe all of five-foot-nothing and a hundred pounds, soaking wet. And now she was missing.

  His hands fisted.

  Dragos grunted and pushed a button. “There.”

  Tiago looked back at the flat-screen along with everybody else.

  The female reporter came back, speaking more news babble. Blah-fucking-blah. More sexy footage of Niniane, winking at the camera and blowing a kiss. Damn, that mouth of hers was made for Playboy TV. He clamped down on the thought and concentrated on being relevant.

  She had arrived in Chicago with an escort of Dark Fae that had been made up of some second cousin or other and assorted guards. She had met with a small delegation that was headed by one of the Dark Fae’s most powerful governmental figures, Chancellor Aubrey Riordan. She and the delegation stayed in the penthouse suite at the Regent, preparatory to crossing over to the Dark Fae Other land for her coronation. She had, by all accounts, left the hotel last night for dinner with her cousin and a small escort.

  The usual swarm of paparazzi had bayed in pursuit. The Dark Fae lost the paparazzi after a high-speed chase. What happened for the next couple of hours was unknown.

  Tiago gritted his teeth as he glared at the screen. Get to the fucking point already.

  And there it was, the fucking point, sprayed all over a fiftysix-inch plasma flat-screen and, apparently, all over the Internet as well. One million, seven hundred and fifty thousand hits and counting, as of 1:30 A.M.

  The grainy, badly shot footage showed a dirty alley that could have been anywhere, in any city in the world. The scene jerked. Whoever had recorded the footage couldn’t have done a worse job if they’d tried.

  Still, Niniane was unmistakable in a red halter dress that accentuated her compact hourglass figure. Two Dark Fae were already on the ground. She was locked in some sort of struggle with the third.

  The Dark Fae struck her hard in the ribs. The breath left Tiago in a growl as if he had been the one who had taken the blow. The asshole with the cell phone kept filming this shit and did nothing to help her? The scene jostled. Shit!

  Then it came clear again. The last Dark Fae was down.

  Niniane stood over her attacker, gasping and disheveled, one hand pressed to her side. She started to kick the body. “I hate my family!” she shouted. “I hate my family! I hate my family!”

  The scene cut back to the MSNBC reporter, but Tiago had seen more than enough. He pivoted on one heel toward Dragos and growled, “Leave of absence.”

  The dragon looked at him, no less furious than he. Dragos said, “Go.”

  Rune followed Tiago out into the hall. He turned to face the gryphon as the door settled into place.

  All of the immortal sentinels carried an intense furnace of energy that boiled the air around them. Dragos’s First sentinel was as tall as Tiago but not quite as bulky. Rune was the most handsome of the four gryphons. He looked like a Greek god masquerading as a Grateful Dead fan. He wore a Jerry Garcia T-shirt that strained across the chest and at the biceps, faded jeans with the knees torn out and steel-toed boots, the treads of which had been imprinted on more than one Wyr ass. He had sun-bronzed, fine-grained skin with laugh lines at the corners of lion-colored eyes. Both the camera and females seemed to adore his even features and rakish white smile, and the tawny mane of sun-streaked hair that fell to broad shoulders held glints of pale gold, chestnut and burnished copper.

  Tiago regarded the other sentinel with a warrior’s assessment that never fully went to sleep. He had seen Rune fight in his gryphon form many times. Rune’s gryphon shape was the size of an SUV, with a lion’s heavy muscular body. He had a feline agility in both of his forms and projected an aura of lazy easygoing indolence that could, when he was provoked, vaporize in an instant into a roaring attack. In his human form, Rune had the lean hard muscles of a swordsman. He was built for both power and speed, whereas Tiago sometimes fought with his feet planted wide apart, a battle-axe gripped in one hand and a war hammer in the other. Tiago had been known to chop his enemies into pieces, or just smash them into the ground through strength and sheer dogged endurance. He had been called many things over the centuries. Subtle wasn’t one of them.

  Tiago said, “Talk to either Riehl or Jamar about stepping in for me until—”

  “T-bird,” Rune said. “Don’t worry about the troops. I got it covered, man. I’ll call Tucker in Chicago, so that you’ve got transportation and supplies waiting for you when you get there.”

  “Thanks.” Tiago gave him a grim look, which Rune returned.

  Neither male said what they were thinking. There were a whole host of reasons why they may not have heard from the faerie since the incident, and most of those reasons were not good ones.

  “Tricks is okay,” Tiago said. She’d better be okay, or he would make sure there was hell to pay.

  “Niniane,” Rune said.

  Impatient, Tiago shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Rune clapped Tiago on the shoulder. “Well, go find her and make sure she stays okay.”

  “You know I will.”

  Tiago jogged up the stairs to the Tower rooftop. He turned his face upward to look full upon the bright orb of the sun. With a sense of unutterable relief he let his human form fall away, along with the shackles of the city. He lunged upward. Massive wings hammered down as he climbed into the air, and a thunderclap tore through the sky.

  He slipped into the oldest, truest part of his soul.

  He did not know his actual age, but he remembered soaring high above the Great Plains as vast herds of bison covered miles upon miles of land. The bison had once been his favorite prey. He would plummet from a great height, a murderous juggernaut that would slam down on the beast he had chosen and shatter its spine. The rest of the bison herd would stampede in a panic, leaving him to gorge in solitary peace as the wind undulated through an endless sea of prairie grasses under a colossal turquoise basin of sky.

  He was known to many of the American Indian nations as the creature that commanded thunder and lightning, quick to stir to wrath and war, but his true identity was as a sojourner of the Earth. He would take flight for days on end, slipping into a fugue state as he watched oceans and lands scroll by underneath the glimmering shadow of his giant outspread wings.

  When curiosity brought him to ground at last, he shapeshifted for the first time to walk among humans in a land filled with golden desert temples and palatial burial tombs of kings surrounded by cities of the dead. The humans clustered in a vibrant green fertile strip of land that followed the snaking path of a river like the folds of a silken dress molding to the curves of a voluptuous woman.

  He mingled for a brief time with a small, dark, intelligent people who wrote of him in the Pyramid Texts, from the time of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The people worshipped his winged form and called him a god of the wind. They claimed he brought with him the breath of life.

  The people of Egypt had offered him everything a human being could desire, but he was not human. They tried to hold
on to him with offerings of gold, and chains of worship, sex and dynasty, but he would not be chained or held. Only when the great winged serpent Cuelebre hunted him down, pinned him to the ground and spoke to him with patient beguilement and cunning intellect of a vision of a nation of united Wyr did he consent to listen.

  Cuelebre had faced a formidable challenge with the oldest and strongest of the ancient Wyr. He could not bludgeon them into submitting to his rule and then hope to trust them in any kind of high-functioning level of governance afterward. Instead, he had to use persuasion to bring them to his side, to ask them to partner with him in the creation of a Wyr nation. Cuelebre coaxed Tiago into realizing that growth was inevitable for both humankind and the Elder Races. Civilization’s dance had begun an inexorable waltz across the world.

  Tiago must participate in the waltz. He must change as the world changed or become irrelevant. He refused to be reduced or set aside in the new formation of the world.

  Thus, long ago, he agreed to work in a sometimes fractious collective partnership. He grew to admit it did not lessen who he was but enhanced him and used him to their best mutual benefit.

  He was a warlord. To an ancient people he was a god of storm and lightning, a prince of the sky.

  He was Wyr.

  TWO

  Motel 6 wasn’t so bad. In fact it was kind of cute in a polyester sort of way.

  Sure, it wasn’t the Regent, or the Renaissance, or the Ritz-Carlton. But the desk attendant had been cheerfully disinterested when Niniane had checked in, the prices were affordable and, most important, they had smoking rooms. Score.

  On the one hand, there wasn’t any room service or those darling little liquor bottles in a small refrigerator. On the other hand, there weren’t any assassination attempts or a pending coronation. Hmm. Niniane wondered if they offered a twelve-month lease.

  She limped into the room. She pulled her new sunglasses down her nose and took a long, careful look over the rim at the surrounding scene. The warm afternoon sun toasted the asphalt of the motel parking lot, and a fitful wind swirled dirt and exhaust fumes into a toxic soup. The motel was located near some interstate exit, along with several fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and a Walgreens. The sound of traffic was a constant in the background, but it shouldn’t be too disruptive once she had the door closed.

  She couldn’t see or hear anything unusual in the motel’s immediate vicinity, and her sight and hearing, along with her sensitivity to magic, were inhumanly acute. She wasn’t up to a more strenuous inspection. A visual scan from the doorway would have to be good enough.

  After she shut the door and put on the security chain, the first thing she did was kick off her stylish four-inch heels. Ah, thank you, god of feet. She set her sunglasses on the TV. The double room was either painted or wallpapered beige. It had bright bedspreads patterned with an insistent orange, a window covered with short heavy curtains that hung over a long thin wall air-conditioner unit, and a plain table and chair that were pushed against the wall. She dropped her shopping bags on the nearest bed, limped to the air conditioner and turned it on full blast.

  Life had sure gone to hell since Dragos had killed her uncle. Oh, Urien had to die, without a doubt. She was glad he was dead. She just wished it could have happened in a couple of decades or so. This business about her becoming the Dark Fae Queen? She was so not in the mood.

  She dumped out the contents of the shopping bags. The items chronicled a long, busy day.

  She’d had a lot to do once she had killed her second cousin Geril and his two cohorts. First item on her agenda was to run away. The second item was to get stuff and keep running. She had walked into a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, bought bandages, a pair of sweatpants, sunglasses and a T-shirt, changed in their bathroom and walked out.

  Sunglasses at midnight. Huh. Idiot.

  Those had gone into her first shopping bag until daybreak. Then she stole a car and drove in aimless circles while she tried to think past the frozen tundra in her head. She stopped at a superstore and bought more stuff, left the stolen car in the parking lot and got a cab, took the cab to the airport where she got another cab, and here she was.

  Her path had been so random, so erratic, made up as it was by stress-induced on-the-spot decisions, that she defied anybody to figure out where “here” was. Hell, even she didn’t know where “here” was, just that she was still somewhere in the greater Chicago area. Neither ride had been long enough to get her anywhere else, more’s the pity. She hadn’t wanted to imprint herself too deeply in the memory of either cab driver, so she had tried to keep both trips as normal as possible. She could always steal a car again and drive away from the area, but first she needed a few hours to recuperate while she considered what her next moves should be. At the moment she was too awash with conflicting impulses, pain and exhaustion to be sure of anything.

  One shopping bag held her crumpled red halter dress and the matching evening bag that carried a compact powder, a lipstick, her wallet and two small stiletto knives. She kept the tips touched with poison and had a variety of places she could wear or carry them, in the side pocket of a purse, strapped to her arms, or underneath her dress and strapped to her thighs.

  Good thing the red color of the dress hid the bloodstains, or she might have occasioned more attention at the pharmacy. She set that bag aside. Another bag held an unopened bottle of vodka, a bag of Cheetos, three packs of Marlboro reds and a lighter.

  Say hello to tonight’s hot date. Why did she always want to smoke when she was stressed? She sighed and set it all on the bedside table near the head of the second bed.

  The third bag held a first aid kit, extra bandages, toiletries and underwear. The last bag had jeans, flip-flop sandals, a pair of shorts and a couple of tops.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and inspected the blisters on her heels. Should have changed into the flip-flops as soon as she bought them. Should have bought the flip-flops at the first store and the sunglasses later, but all she could think after the attack was, oh gods, I can’t be recognized.

  Shoulda, woulda, coulda. They were the Three Stooges of regret. All they were good for was saying whoop-whoop-whoop and smacking each other over the head.

  She gritted her teeth. She had slapped a temporary bandage on herself when she had changed in the pharmacy bathroom, but she needed to clean and bandage her knife wound properly.

  She showered first. It was harder and more exhausting than she had counted on. Afterward she sat on the toilet and hissed as she blotted the knife wound with fresh cotton pads. She poked it to see if there were any cloth fibers from her dress or any other kind of dirt still in the wound. Gray stars bloomed in front of her eyes. Damn, that hurt. A deep puncture, it kept seeping a slow, steady stream of crimson.

  She put antibacterial goop on it, doubled up on the padding and taped it in place as best she could. She smeared more goop on the blisters on her heels and put Hello Kitty Band-Aids on them. Then she put on her new underwear. Teeny-tiny little camo boxer shorty-shorts that rode low on the hips.

  The next bit wasn’t so easy. She grunted as she worked her way as carefully as she could into a sports bra. Structurally she may not be very big, but her perky pair of puppies made her a C-cup. Shoulda bought a bra with a front clasp, but today hadn’t been a shining example of her best thinking. Whoop-whoop-whoop, smack. After she managed to get the bra on, she eased on a matching camo spaghetti strap T-shirt that stopped above her pierced navel.

  Then she put her hair in pigtails. Because it was layered to fall in an outward flipping bob, the pigtails stood up on her head like twin black starbursts. She pouted at herself in the mirror, wrinkled her nose and said, “Sowwy.”

  Didn’t she look cute? Looking cute and helpless could get you a long way sometimes. It had gotten her out of a whole lot of trouble in the past. You never know. The way things were going, she might need to rely on it again.

  And now it was past time for that hot date. She limped to the bed and eas
ed her sore, bruised body onto it, lit a cigarette and flipped on the TV. She tore open the bag of Cheetos and popped a bright orange puff into her mouth.

  Then what was playing on the television registered in her tired brain.

  She stared. Put the cigarette in the ashtray. Picked up the vodka bottle, opened it and took a stiff drink.

  That was the first time she saw the cell phone video footage of the attack in the alleyway, where she had kicked the crap out of her second cousin Geril’s dead body.

  It wasn’t going to be the last time. Not by a long shot.

  Tiago believed in giving credit where credit was due. The little shit had tried like hell to avoid being tracked down.

  By the time he had reached Chicago, the SUV Rune had requisitioned was waiting for him, along with a detailed list of supplies, including cash, a couple changes of clothes, a laptop and an assortment of his preferred types of weapons. Tiago picked up the vehicle in Lakeview from their Wyr contact, Tucker, who had already stashed the supplies in a large duffle bag in the backseat.

  Tucker was, like his Wyr badger nature, a short, powerful, stocky and antisocial male. He did well living in relative isolation outside the social structure of the Wyr demesne. The badger was content with a job that had sporadic, often strange duties and irregular hours, as long as he could live within walking distance of his beloved Wrigley Field.

  Although Tiago hadn’t thought to ask for one, there was also a cell phone tucked into a side pocket of the heavy canvas duffle bag. He discovered it when it rang as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  He clicked it on. “What.”

  Dragos said, “Preliminary autopsy report is in on the three dead Dark Fae males.”

  Tiago’s eyebrows rose. “That was fast.”

  “With the next ruler of the Dark Fae demesne missing, the authorities put a rush on the job,” Dragos said. “All the Dark Fae males died of the same kind of poison T—Niniane favors on her stilettos.”