Shadowfever

Barrons squeezed. “I said shut up.”

“He has the fourth stone,” I reminded Barrons. “We need him.”

“Keltars!” V’lane said, staring up at the foyer. He hissed through his teeth.

“I know. Big fucking party tonight,” said Barrons.

“Where? Is that who just came in?” I said.

Barrons leaned closer to V’lane and sniffed him. His nostrils flared, as if he found the scent both repulsive and perfect for a fine, bloody filet.

“Where is she?” a man roared. The accent was Scottish, like Christian’s but thicker.

V’lane ordered, “Shut him up before his next question is, ‘Where is the queen,’ and every Unseelie in this place discovers she is here.”

Barrons moved too fast for me to see. One second, V’lane was his usual gorgeous self, then his nose was crushed and gushing blood. Barrons said, “Next time, fairy,” and was gone.

“I said, where the bloody hell is the—”

I heard a grunt, then the sound of fists and more grunts, and all hell broke loose at Chester’s.

“I doona give a bloody damn what you think. She’s our responsibility—”

“And a hell of a job you’ve done with her—”

“She’s my queen and she’s not going anywhere with—”

“—so far, losing her to the fucking Unseelie.”

“—and we’ll be taking her back to Scotland with us, where she can be watched o’er properly.”

“—a pair of inept humans, she belongs in Faery.”

“I’ll send you back to Faery, fairy, in a fucking—”

“Remember the missing stone, mongrel.”

I looked from the Scotsman, to Barrons, to V’lane, watching the three of them argue. They’d been covering the same ground with no new developments for the past five minutes. V’lane kept demanding she be turned over to him, the Scot kept insisting he was taking her back to Scotland, but I knew Barrons. He wasn’t going to let either of them have her. Not only did he trust no one, the queen of the Fae was a powerful trump card.

“How the fuck did you even know she was here?” Barrons demanded.

V’lane, whose nose was once again perfect, said, “MacKayla summoned me. As I walked up behind you, I heard you, as anyone else might have. You jeopardize her life with your carelessness.”

“Not you,” Barrons growled. “The Highlander.”

The Scot said, “Nearly five years past, she visited Cian in the Dreaming, telling him she would be here this eve. The queen herself ordered us to collect her, from this address on this night. We have irrefutable claim. We are the Keltar and wear the mantle of protection for the Fae. You will turn her over to us now.”

I almost laughed, but something about the two Scots made me think twice about it. They looked like they’d been traveling hard through rough terrain and hadn’t showered or shaved in days. Words like “patience” and “diplomacy” were not in their vocabulary. They thought in terms of objectives and results—and the fewer things between the two, the better. They were like Barrons: driven, focused, ruthless.

Both were shirtless and heavily tattooed—Lor and another of Barrons’ men I hadn’t seen before had made all of us strip down to clothing that couldn’t conceal a book, before permitting us access to the upper level of the club. Now the five of us stood, partially dressed, in an unfurnished glass cubicle.

The one arguing, Dageus, was all long, smooth muscle, with the fast, graceful movements of a big cat and cheetah-gold eyes. His black hair was so long it brushed his belt—not that he needed one, in hip-slimming black leather pants. He sported a cut lip and a shiner on his right cheek from the skirmish that had begun at the door and spread like a contagion through several sub-clubs. It had taken five of Barrons’ men to get things back under control. Being able to move like the wind gave them a tremendous advantage. They didn’t warn the patrons to stop fighting—they simply appeared and killed them. Once humans and Fae figured out what was happening, the outbreak of violence ended as quickly as it had begun.

The other Scot, Cian, had yet to speak a word and had escaped the brawl without a mark, but with all the red and black ink on his torso, I’m not sure I would have noticed blood. He was massive, with bunched short muscles, the kind a man gets from weight training in a gym or working off a long prison sentence. His shoulders were enormous, his stomach flat; he had piercings, one of his tattoos said JESSI. I wondered what kind of woman could make a man like him want to tattoo her name on his chest.