Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4) Read online

  My hands came away smeared with blood.

  “Jesus.” I stepped over his quivering form and crouched by his head. “Taeral, he’s bleeding. Bad.” I cleared the gunk from his mouth with a finger as best I could, wary of the bite reflex—especially since Zoba’s teeth were practically fangs. “His leg’s broken, too. Can you…”

  “I’ll heal him.”

  “Thanks.” The convulsions were slowing now, settling into a steady shiver with occasional whole-body flinches. One arm was wedged at a bad angle beneath him. I grabbed his wrist, pulled carefully, and realized he had something clenched tight in his hand. It looked a lot like a knife.

  “What the hell…” I murmured. Prying his stiff fingers open wasn’t easy, but I finally managed to free the thing. It was a short, slim dagger with a polished bone handle, and tufts of hair bound to the base with twine. The blade was coated with blood.

  Somehow I knew the blood was his.

  Zoba spasmed again and let out a long, rattling breath. His eyes fluttered closed. Panic stabbed through me, and I pressed fingers to his throat until I found a weak pulse. At least he was still alive. The next step was to get a look at his back, see how much damage he’d done there.

  “Christ almighty. Zoba!”

  The voice at the top of the basement stairs belonged to Denei, the second oldest and leader of the Duchene brood. Usually, her and Zoba were inseparable. She flew down the stairs, her face a mixture of fear and fury. “Y’all back away from him. Now,” she snarled.

  I got up slowly, and Taeral did the same, meeting her angry stare with a flat one of his own. There’d never been any love lost between the two of them. “You’ve a problem with us helping your brother, then?” he said.

  “You cain’t help him.” She shivered and knelt behind Zoba, sliding an arm beneath his shoulders to lift him up. “Oh, no, couillon,” she muttered gently. “What’d you do now?”

  Zoba groaned and gave a weak cough that sent him shuddering again.

  “Denei…he’s bleeding,” I said. “I think he did it himself.”

  She glowered up at me, and her gaze honed in on the dagger. “Give that over,” she said.

  I handed it to her. In a single, swift move, she sliced his shirt down the back—and let out a horrified gasp. “No,” she whispered. “Zoba, why?”

  He grunted a sound that was indescribably sad.

  “I know, sugar. I know. But you can’t.” She smoothed his sweat-soaked brow and looked at us, her jaw set in defiance against glittering eyes the exact same shade as her brother’s. “You got some kind of sleep spell, don’t you, Fae?”

  I frowned. “You want us to put him to sleep?”

  “Not him.” She lowered him carefully to the floor and rolled him facedown, then pointed at his back. “That.”

  The skin down the back of his neck and the upper part of his spine writhed and wiggled like a snake. Black, insectile legs bristled through a long split in his flesh, skittering aimlessly through the blood leaking from the wound.

  “Jesus Christ,” I blurted. “What—”

  “Just put it to sleep,” Denei said sharply. Her expression softened as she added, “Hurry. Please.”

  I glanced at Taeral, who looked as horrified as I felt, and crouched beside Zoba. At least I’d gotten better at using magic since our little unexpected visit to the Fae realm, so hopefully I could do this without knocking him out, too. I touched a fingertip gingerly to the squirming mass and focused on whatever it was. “Beith na cohdal.”

  The thing stopped moving. Its bristled legs twitched a few times and stilled.

  Denei released a long breath. “Thanks, handsome,” she said without looking at me.

  “Yeah, no problem,” I managed. I was still trying to get past the fact that Zoba apparently had a giant centipede attached to his spine. “Are you gonna tell us what the hell that thing is?”

  She shook her head slowly. “It’s the price we pay for service. And it ain’t your business.”

  “The sleep spell does not last forever,” Taeral said.

  “Yeah. I know.” Denei slid an arm around her brother, and he struggled to his feet with her help. “I’ll take care of that.”

  I moved toward them. “Wait. I can heal that cut—”

  “I said, I’ll take care of it.” Denei shot a sizzling glare at both of us, then maneuvered Zoba toward the stairs. “You jes’ keep your distance, and we’ll all be fine.”

  I couldn’t help thinking her definition of fine was a long way from mine.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Shouldn’t we at least try to help them?”

  Taeral and I were sitting at a table in the parlor—the entertainment center and unofficial meeting room at the Castle, off the back of the lobby. Sadie had heard the commotion and joined us. I’d told her what happened as best I could, considering I had no goddamned clue what happened other than Zoba had tried to cut an oversized bug out of his back. And Denei apparently thought he should leave it there.

  Now Taeral was saying we should just forget about the whole thing.

  “The one the Duchenes serve is ancient and powerful,” he said. “He is a vengeful god, a wicked trickster, and he is without remorse. Help them cross him, and he’ll strike you down just as swiftly.”

  “Come on. A god?” I frowned at him. “Look, if this guy is so evil, they probably need help. Even if Denei says they don’t.”

  Taeral shook his head. “Gideon, they choose to serve him,” he said. “You must understand that, and you must not interfere. He will destroy you.”

  “Who is this guy, anyway?”

  “I’ll not speak his name.” He looked hard at me. “And if you value your life, brother, you’ll leave this alone. They take care of their own.”

  I sighed and sat back in the chair. “All right, man. I’ll try.”

  “You’d best do more than try.”

  “He’s right, Gideon,” Sadie said. “The Duchenes are dangerous. Even I’ve heard the rumors about their master, whatever he is. And some of the things they did back in the Hive…” She shivered slightly. “This whole thing is bad news.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. There was no scenario that made centipedes burrowed under your skin good news. Taeral and Sadie knew a lot more about Others in general than I did, and they’d been around the Duchenes a lot longer. I should probably listen to them.

  Still, the look in Zoba’s eyes—that was desperation to escape. Something I was intimately familiar with. I knew what it was like to be willing to do anything, including self-mutilation, to get away from someone.

  And I wasn’t sure I could ignore that.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go.” Sadie flashed a disappointed look at Taeral, and then stared at her lap. “I mean, if there’s going to be trouble here…”

  Taeral reached over and took her hand. “Perhaps you are right, a’ghreal. We can—”

  “No, you guys should go,” I said. They’d planned to spend a few days out in the Pennsylvania mountains with Sadie’s pack, so she could formally introduce Taeral to her father and hope he didn’t try to kill him. Their sort of secret, on-off relationship hadn’t been easy, especially since weres and the Fae didn’t mix. The inter-species feud had been going on for centuries. “You wanted to be back before the holidays, right? It’s like three weeks to Christmas. If you don’t do it now, you might not get another chance for a while.”

  Considering we were gearing up to take on Milus Dei soon, a while might be never. But I wasn’t going to say that out loud.

  “Yes, I suppose,” Taeral said uneasily. “If you promise to contact me, should anything go wrong. Or should our father return.”

  “You know I will.” It’d been almost two weeks since we got back from Arcadia, and Daoin had decided to stay in the Fae realm, where the stronger magic would help him heal from losing all of his memories. He’d promised to come back. He hadn’t exactly given us a schedule, but time moved slower in Arcadia—so he’d been there for about a mont
h now. He could return any time.

  Sadie gave me a tentative smile. “You sure you’ll be okay without us?” she said. “You know, you could come too. Elara would love to see you again.”

  “No, I’m good. This should be just the two of you.” I grinned and added, “Besides, there’s certain things I really don’t want to know about. Including what you do in your private time.”

  “And I appreciate your not knowing,” Taeral said, with just a hint of aggression. “Very well, then. If you’re certain.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen around here.”

  Even as I said it, I decided to ignore the feeling that it sounded like famous last words.

  CHAPTER 4

  There was a whole lot of information in the files I had on Milus Dei. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of it made sense.

  I’d dropped Taeral and Sadie off at Penn Station to catch a late train to Scranton, Pennsylvania—the closest station to the small town where Sadie’s pack lived in the mountains. That was where I’d gotten all this stuff I was looking at now. Chester Rigby, the town’s resident conspiracy nut, had been inadvertently tracking the cult for years because he thought Milus Dei was orchestrating an alien invasion. He’d made me copies of everything he had.

  His documents and notes pretty much reflected his mindset in terms of order. I should’ve had Taeral drop by to visit Chester while they were out there, and ask if he’d forgotten to give me the secret decoder ring that went with the files.

  I was in my room at the Castle, with folders and loose paper spread out all over the bed. At the moment I was just trying to group everything into general categories. So far those categories included locations, individual cult members, operations, history, and Crap That Had Nothing To Do With Milus Dei, which was the biggest pile I had. Everything from random photos of the Vatican, to post-death Elvis and Kurt Cobain sightings, to badly produced brochures advertising trips to the moon in a ‘reengineered flying saucer’.

  This was going to take a really long time.

  I’d just started reading a file on a ‘mobile unit’ in the Midwest, where Chester had scribbled not-so-helpful, completely unrelated things like gene splicing and freelancers and check the caves, when someone knocked at my door. I frowned and maneuvered off the cluttered bed, hoping there hadn’t been any problems at the train station. I couldn’t imagine what anyone else would want me for right now.

  It was Denei.

  “Hey, handsome.” She looked exhausted—eyes bloodshot, hair loose and damp with sweat. “Wondered if you had a minute. I wanted to apologize for…earlier.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Is Zoba okay?”

  “For now.” Her lips thinned to a firm slash, and she stared at the floor for a minute. “Listen, would you come down to the parlor, maybe have a drink with me? I think I owe you an explanation. And damn, do I need a drink,” she said on a shaky laugh.

  “You don’t have to explain.” I knew all about family secrets. Christ, I had plenty of my own that’d never see the light of day, if I could help it. “Really, it’s all right.”

  She put a trembling hand on my arm. “I want to,” she said. “Please.”

  Damn. And I thought nothing scared Denei. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “I wasn’t getting very far with this, anyway.”

  “Thanks, handsome.”

  I followed her down the stairs, thinking about Taeral’s warning. As a matter of fact, I did value my life—and just hearing her out was probably getting myself involved in a way I shouldn’t, if the guy they worked for was really as powerful as he’d said.

  But I couldn’t stop seeing that desperate look in Zoba’s eyes.

  Reun was waiting for us in the parlor. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how close he and Denei had gotten, but I’d barely seen him since we’d brought him back from Arcadia. The Seelie noble had gone through an ordeal I couldn’t even imagine while he was a prisoner of the Unseelie Queen. I didn’t blame him for withdrawing from everything.

  Right now, he looked as wiped out and on edge as Denei. I had to wonder how much he knew about what was going on.

  I’d guess probably more than me.

  “Gideon.” Reun nodded a greeting and headed for the closest table, where there was an unlabeled bottle of something red next to a small stack of plastic cups. “I do hope you’ll drink with us,” he said. “I’d been saving this for…a better occasion, but this seems to call for something more than that dreadful swill your brother keeps around.”

  “I guess.” Taeral had a strange way of dealing with his drinking problem. He’d pick up bottles of the cheapest rotgut whiskey he could find, and then see how long he could go without drinking them. Usually, someone else did him the favor of emptying the bottles before he could give in to temptation. But sometimes he still got there first. “So what is it?”

  Reun gave a faint smile. “Elderberry wine.”

  “Okay. You twisted my arm.” I had to admit, that was the good stuff. It was a popular drink for the Fae, and not just because it tasted a hundred times better than anything humans had ever come up with. It also happened to neutralize poisons like cold iron and mandrake.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to be poisoned to appreciate the stuff.

  Denei set the cups out and poured three of them about half-full, with the speed of a Manhattan bartender during happy hour. “We fresh out of fancy glassware,” she said, smirking as she pushed one of them toward me. “Hope you don’t mind slumming it.”

  “Works for me.” I sat down at the table, and Denei took the chair across from me while Reun settled between us. “So, you had something you wanted to tell me,” I said. “If you’re sure, go for it.”

  A brief look passed between the two of them, and Denei raised her cup. Her other hand rested on the table, clenched in a tight fist. “Let’s drink first,” she said. “I’m gonna need a shot of liquid courage, know what I mean?”

  I shrugged. “Hell, maybe I do, too. You’re kind of scaring me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re still shaking.” I nodded at her clenched hand. “Never seen anything upset you this much. Except maybe Reun.”

  “Yeah, well…” She closed her eyes briefly. “This ain’t gonna be easy.”

  “Believe it or not, I understand.” I gestured with my cup, and drank.

  The wine was just as sweet, just as incredibly satisfying as I remembered. But there was something different—a bitter, almost metallic note that coated my tongue and caught in my throat. It was like swallowing blood.

  I suddenly realized neither of them had actually taken a drink.

  And then my head started to swim.

  “What the hell?” Despite feeling like I was on the verge of drowning, my voice came out normal and calm. But I was still nose-diving straight for unconsciousness. “Did you…Jesus Christ, what’s in this? Diúsaegh.”

  The spell should’ve woke me up, shaken off whatever this was. But nothing happened.

  Denei looked downright miserable, though her regret wasn’t scoring any points with me. “Sorry, handsome,” she said. “Your magic ain’t the same as mine.”

  Why?

  I wanted to scream it. But my last thought stayed in my mouth as the world faded around me.

  CHAPTER 5

  A long, low whistle sounded somewhere in the fog, like a warning from another world.

  For a minute all I knew was that something had gone very wrong—was still going wrong, out there beyond my closed eyes. And it had something to do with Zoba and the horrific thing embedded along his spine.

  I finally remembered. Denei and Reun had drugged me, with no explanation why.

  The whistle blew again, a blasting note at once mournful and urgent. It was a train, and it sounded close. So close that I knew I wasn’t in the Castle anymore. As the fuzziness of whatever they’d doped me with wore off slowly, I could hear the clack and clatter of the wheels. Hell, I could feel it. And when
I forced my eyes open, the first blurry sight that greeted me was a faintly scratched window with decidedly non-Manhattan scenery rushing past. Dark fields and deserted streets, covered with a fresh coat of snow that was still coming down.

  I wasn’t just close to a train. I was on one.

  Anger bled in around the panic. I made myself take it slow, my senses still thick and churning from the goddamn roofie, and assessed the situation. Aside from feeling like I had ten hangovers at once, I was lying on a lower bunk in what must’ve been a sleeper suite. There wasn’t much light. But when I turned carefully away from the window, it was enough to see a figure slumped in a wide, cushioned chair across the room, watching me with amber-yellow eyes.

  The figure was a female Duchene, and all I knew was that she wasn’t Denei. There were six of them in the family, three male and three female, but the younger ones mostly kept to themselves. I’d met the youngest, Rex, a time or two in the kitchen at the Castle—his was the only name I knew, besides Denei and Zoba.

  She noticed me looking and stirred, then sat forward with her arms resting on her thighs. I figured she was the second youngest, since Rex was around eighteen or nineteen and this girl didn’t seem much past twenty. But her weary expression aged her considerably. “Wouldn’t try to move just yet, cher,” she drawled softly. “It ain’t gonna feel too good if y’do.”

  “Yeah. I got that impression,” I said in thick, unsteady tones. Even a slight shift made my head pound and my gut churn. “Are you supposed to be the prison guard?”

  She laughed, but there wasn’t any malice in it. “Nah. From what I hear, there ain’t no keepin’ you where you don’t want to be.”

  “Then why did your sister kidnap me?”

  The stricken look she flashed made me wince. “Y’all have to ask her.”

  “Believe me, I will.” In fact, I meant to do that right now, wherever she was. I tensed and pushed up on my elbows—then immediately gasped and dropped back as a wave of nausea surged through me, and cold sweat broke on my brow.