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  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Everything that had happened since the Erlking came to Avalon now suddenly made a sickening kind of sense. I had assumed that what the Erlking wanted was for me to ride out into the mortal world with his Hunt so he could get his jollies killing mortals. But I realized now he’d been playing me from the very beginning. He guessed correctly that I wouldn’t be willing to take him into the mortal world, so he made a big production about how he wanted it, and wanted it bad. Made me think that my riding with the Hunt was his ultimate goal, the Big Bad. When all along, he’d wanted more. Much more.

  “So what you’re telling me is that if I, er, fulfilled my bargain with the Erlking, he’d become a Faeriewalker himself?” I asked, just to make sure I fully understood what Grace was telling me. I knew there was at least a slim possibility she was lying to me, but her words had the devastating ring of truth.

  “Exactly,” Grace said, sounding incredibly self-satisfied. “And so would begin a reign of terror the likes of which the mortal world has never seen. Mab and Titania were similarly able to guess the Erlking’s intent, of course. He’d have a dramatic effect on the mortal world, but the Queens must be horrified at the idea of him absorbing a Faeriewalker’s ability to bring dangerous technology into Faerie. They’ll be even more eager to kill you now.” She made a mock pouty face. “Too bad they won’t get the chance.”

  Yeah, that was a real shame. But I still wasn’t dead, and every word Grace spoke made me more and more certain that wasn’t a good thing. She touched her tongue to her upper lip, like she was literally savoring the taste of victory.

  “I could kill you now, of course,” she said casually, moving the gun away from Ethan’s head and pointing it at me. I had the vague thought that I should take advantage of the fact that Ethan was no longer an inch from death, but I couldn’t imagine how. “But where would be the fun in that?” Grace continued, and Fred the Mountain Man laughed.

  The gun moved back to Ethan’s head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fred rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

  “Naturally, I don’t know the exact terms of your agreement with the Erlking,” Grace said. “But I can make some educated guesses. He released your boyfriend from the Wild Hunt, so he must have felt he’d completely ensured your cooperation. Which means he has to have put in place a stipulation that there will be unpleasant consequences if you were not to preserve your virginity for him.”

  My stomach heaved as it dawned on me just what Grace was leading up to.

  “He can’t kill anyone unless given permission by one of the Queens, so he can’t have controlled you with threats of killing your loved ones. I suppose he could have threatened to kill your brother, since he doesn’t belong to the Courts, but you don’t even know Connor, so I hardly think that threat would be potent enough.”

  She turned and looked at Ethan. “But this one is a different story. This one still bears the Huntsman’s Mark. And I’ll wager if you were to lose your virginity to someone other than the Erlking, that would void your agreement and lover-boy here would be bound to the Hunt once again.”

  I tried to shut off my emotions, my fear and my horror. I didn’t want to give Grace any evidence that she was right, plus I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I failed miserably. My stomach heaved again, and this time I couldn’t get it under control. I puked up everything I had in my stomach, then followed that up with a few dry heaves.

  “Disgusting creature,” Grace said, wrinkling her nose delicately. “Are you sure you want her, Fred?”

  Fred laughed, the sound nasty and spiteful. “She’s not really my type, but for what you’re paying, I’m happy to make the supreme sacrifice.” I could hear just how much of a sacrifice he thought it would be.

  I spit a few times, trying to get the foul taste out of my mouth, but it didn’t work. I sent Grace my most pathetic, pleading look, even though I knew it didn’t have a chance in hell of working.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said weakly. “It’s me you’re mad at, not Ethan. Just let him go. Please.”

  I was giving Grace just what she wanted, and her cheeks flushed with pleasure. I clamped my jaws shut and resisted the urge to beg some more.

  Heedless of the gun pointed at his head, Ethan struggled against the other man’s hold. I think at that point he’d have found it a mercy if Grace shot him, which was probably why she didn’t. He was too badly injured to have much hope of escaping, and his face was etched with pain.

  Grace frowned at Ethan. “I don’t want you distracting me. I want to savor every moment of this.”

  Instead of shooting him, she slammed the butt of the gun against Ethan’s wound. He screamed, then went limp. Grace’s half-Fae friend let Ethan’s body collapse to the floor, then planted a foot in Ethan’s back and pointed his gun at his head.

  “I’ll keep him under control,” he told Grace. There was no emotion in his voice, like he didn’t care what was going to happen one way or another.

  Grace turned her full attention to me, and if I’d had anything left in my stomach, I’d have hurled again. Fred grabbed me by one arm and yanked me to my feet with so much force I would have fallen down again if he hadn’t kept his hold on me. Then he slammed me into the wall, knocking all the breath out of my lungs. While I was still struggling to breathe, he grabbed my wrists and pulled them up above my head, pinning them to the wall with one big hand, his grip so hard I could feel my bones grinding together. Ethan yelled a protest, but injured and pinned to the floor as he was, he couldn’t help me.

  No one could help me. Or Ethan. No one but the bad guys even knew we were here, and we weren’t anywhere near the more populated regions of the tunnel system. Fred was going to rape me, and in doing so bind Ethan to the Hunt once more. And then Grace was going to kill me.

  Despite all my lessons with Keane, I knew my self-defense moves weren’t going to be enough against Fred. He was just too much bigger than me. The best I could hope to do was slow him down.

  My terror was like a living creature writhing in my chest and belly. Tears streaked my cheeks, but I didn’t care about that, didn’t care about appearances, or how much satisfaction my pain and horror were giving Grace.

  I knew now what hatred felt like. It was an ice-cold burning sensation in my gut. It was an enraged scream that clawed its way up my throat. It was a narrowing of my world until there was nothing that existed except me, the hatred, and its object. Fred put his hand on my breast and squeezed brutally hard. I felt it, and the human part of me cringed, but the hatred had taken charge, and Fred was barely worthy of its interest.

  I turned my head to stare at Grace. Grace, who blamed me for every mistake she had made. Grace, who wasn’t satisfied to get her revenge by simply killing me, but who had to torture me and condemn Ethan.

  I was in what could only be described as an altered state, and everything I did, I did from pure instinct.

  I began to hum under my breath, just tuneless noise at first, but my fury searched out the angriest song I knew, and the hum turned into “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. Fred was dragging the bottom of my sweater up, but I ignored him, my entire being focused on the song I was humming so quietly no one could hear.

  I felt the first prickle of magic almost immediately. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, seeing as I’d still never actually accomplished anything remotely like a spell before, but I had nothing better to try.

  My utter lack of response to his groping had made Fred complacent, sure that I was completely beaten down and helpless. I could tell by the hard lump that swelled behind his zipper just how much he liked helpless.

  Maybe I really was helpless. Maybe I still couldn’t get the magic to do anything useful. But I wasn’t going to lose everything without putting up one hell of a fight. The magic was still gathering, but I knew I could call more, and the more I called, the more powerful the hypothetical spell I could cast. Which meant I had to find a way to stall before Fred got
around to the main event.

  It was hard to hum and fight at the same time, but all those lessons with Keane had created a lot of muscle memory, the kind that worked with a minimum of conscious thought. Since Fred had gotten careless enough to leave me a little room to move, I managed to stomp down on his instep.

  He had me pinned firmly enough that I couldn’t get a whole lot of leverage on the stomp. I think it surprised him more than hurt him, but it accomplished its purpose, interrupting his groping and slowing him down. The magic was still building, and I hoped like hell Grace was far enough away that she couldn’t sense it, or she’d be sure to destroy my last chance.

  I might not have hurt Fred very much, but apparently he didn’t appreciate me stomping on his foot. He retaliated with a backhand that made my head spin, even though he hadn’t been able to get a whole lot of leverage, either, not while keeping me pinned.

  Blood filled my mouth, and my humming screeched to a halt. The magic started to recede, and I desperately reached out for it, the song rising once again in my throat. Fred was giving me a funny look, which probably meant I was now humming loud enough for him to hear. He must have thought my elevator wasn’t going to the top floor anymore, but that didn’t lessen his eagerness to rape me. His hand dropped to my jeans, and he began fumbling with the button.

  Panic tried to seize hold of me, but I fought it off with all my might. If I allowed the panic to take hold, I was doomed, and so was Ethan. We probably were anyway, but I was determined to take that one, desperate last shot.

  The magic was everywhere now, so thick in the air I could hardly breathe. Fred was so eager to get down to business he was being clumsy about opening my jeans. As long as the intensity of the magic kept growing, I kept humming, determined not to unleash it until the last possible moment, until I’d drawn every scrap of it I could to me.

  The zipper on my jeans rasped down, and I realized I was almost out of time. The magic was so strong now I didn’t think I could breathe well enough to keep humming, and I was starting to feel lightheaded with it.

  Fred was my most immediate threat, but he wasn’t the one I needed to take out, at least not first. I was probably only going to have one shot—assuming I had anything like a shot at all—and there was only one person whom I wanted to absorb that blast of fury.

  Fred was trying to tug my jeans down when I unleashed all the magic I’d gathered to me, sending it at Grace with an incoherent cry of fury, a screaming high note that would have shattered glasses if there were any around.

  My scream made everyone pause for a moment. Even Fred forgot his efforts to get my jeans down, gaping at me.

  The blast of magic slammed into Grace, the force of it making her take a step back. Her eyes widened in alarm and shock. The light spell she’d cast fizzled out, leaving the tunnel lit only by Ethan’s dropped torch.

  I wanted Grace to poof out of existence, to melt into a puddle of goo, or to go up in flames. Some sign that my magic had hurt her, would destroy her even if in the end I couldn’t save myself or Ethan. But other than that one step backward and the death of the light spell, nothing happened.

  Grace shook her head and took a step forward so that she was standing beside her henchman and Ethan once more. There was a hint of worry in her eyes, but there seemed to be nothing wrong with her, and she smiled her evil smile again.

  I closed my eyes in despair. I’d failed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Fred turned his attention back to me, and I was so shattered by the failure of my spell that I barely had the will to struggle. What was the point anymore? Struggling would only prolong the inevitable. However, I’m one of the most stubborn people I know, and even though my heart wasn’t in it, I still put up a fight, enough to get Fred cursing. I opened my eyes just in time to see him draw back his fist to hit me.

  “Now!” a deep, familiar voice shouted, the sound echoing so much it was hard to tell where it was coming from.

  Everyone was startled by the sound and started looking around wildly, trying to find the source of the voice. Grace immediately started chanting something, which I figured was the start of one of her nasty offensive spells.

  But one person apparently wasn’t startled by the voice. Ethan took advantage of his captor’s momentary distraction to surge to his feet and throw the bastard off. In a moment of déjà vu, I saw the glint of silver in his hand, and realized that knife of his had appeared out of nowhere again.

  Grace turned to him, and I screamed out a warning. I’d seen what Grace’s magic could do, seen it completely crush a car. But although Grace was now shouting the words of her spell, nothing seemed to be happening, and Ethan plowed into her. His knife found a space between her ribs, and he shoved it in all the way to the hilt.

  That was the last of Ethan’s strength, and he let go of the knife, falling limply to the floor. Grace stood there in shock, staring at the knife that now protruded from her chest. Her hand shook as she reached out to grasp the hilt and pull it out. She cried out in pain as she pulled, and when the knife was all the way out, blood poured from the wound.

  A cloaked and hooded figure materialized out of the darkness only a few feet from me and Fred. Fred decided that the new arrival was more of a threat than I was, so he let me go and charged forward with a battle cry that might have been intimidating, if his target were capable of being intimidated. Fred’s hand reached for the gun tucked into the back of his pants.

  “No!” Grace yelled, but even if Fred heard her, he ignored her, firing off a muffled shot that hit Arawn in the head and momentarily rocked him back. But the Erlking had survived having his head chopped off, and the bullet didn’t seem to bother him much. He let his hood slide down so Fred could see his unmarred face.

  Either Fred wasn’t very bright, or he was just completely desperate, because even once he saw that his bullet had failed to hurt the Erlking, much less kill him, he still kept firing. Until the Erlking’s sword skewered him right through the chest, that is. The light went out in Fred’s eyes, and the gun fell from his limp fingers. The Erlking calmly put his hand on the dead man’s shoulder and yanked his bloody blade free.

  Grace’s other accomplice had much more sense than Fred, and started running like hell, quickly disappearing into the darkness. I was betting he had a flashlight on him, but he didn’t turn it on. Better to run blindly than to light a beacon, I supposed.

  “He won’t get far,” Arawn said as Fred’s body fell in a heap at his feet. “The Hunt is waiting for him.”

  Grace had sunk to her knees, her face ashen as blood continued to flow from the knife wound. She was pressing on the wound with both hands, but it seemed to have little effect. Ethan dragged himself away from her. He was obviously still weak and in pain, but he was also obviously in better shape than Grace. Even the exertion of fighting his way to his feet and stabbing Grace hadn’t started his wound bleeding again.

  Either Ethan had hit a more vital spot, or my spell had had more effect on Grace than I’d thought. I remembered her light spell going out, and remembered her failed attempt to cast something at Ethan before he’d stabbed her.

  Arawn kicked Fred’s body out of his way and advanced on Grace, who forgot about trying to stanch the blood and held her hands out in a warding gesture.

  “No!” she begged, but Arawn kept coming.

  I wondered what was going on. Arawn had been able to kill Fred because Fred attacked him, but Grace was just sitting there, helpless and bleeding. I thought maybe he was trying to trick her into attacking him in self-defense—like he’d tricked Ethan—but frankly, she didn’t seem to be in any shape to attack even if she fell for it.

  “Please,” Grace tried again, but this time, to my shock, blood dripped from her mouth, and she began to make a noise somewhere between a cough and a choke. It should have taken more than a small stab wound, no matter how well placed, to kill one of the Sidhe, even if my spell had taken her healing magic offline. So why did it look like she’d taken a mortal
wound?

  The Erlking’s sword whistled through the air, moving blindingly fast. It sliced clean through Grace’s neck without even slowing down.

  I caught only the briefest glimpse of what happened, because the Erlking quickly stepped between me and her, his cloak completely blocking my view. But that brief glimpse was more than enough to haunt my nightmares for years to come. It might have been a quick death, but it sure as hell wasn’t a pretty one. Even Ethan’s face turned green at the sight.

  Blood still dripping from his blade, the Erlking turned to face me. “Are you all right?” he asked, and the question was so absurd it startled a nearly hysterical laugh out of me.

  “Oh, sure, just peachy,” I said between giggles. “I was just almost raped, and I watched you stab one guy and behead my aunt, oh, and I got knocked around a bit, but other than that, I’m having a blast.” I was still laughing, but there were tears on my face, and I was having trouble getting a full breath into my lungs. Okay, so maybe that sound coming out of me was more like sobs than laughter.

  It was hard to read the Erlking’s face in the flickering, erratic light of the downed torch. His eyes were hidden in shadow, but I felt the pressure of their gaze on me even as he pulled a rag from somewhere under his cloak and started wiping the blood from the blade.

  “I am sorry I could not get here sooner to spare you some of what you’ve been through,” he said, sounding like he meant it.

  The calmness of his voice and his manner took a bit of the edge off my hysteria, though now that it was over, I started to shake all over.