Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) by Gwen Rivers (free ebooks romance novels .TXT) 📗

lunge for the toilet. The smell of the chemicals within is the final straw and I heave, emptying the meager contents of my stomach down into its murky depths.

When is the last time I ate? I can’t remember. So much had happened, what with me going from prison in Underhill to one here.

I’ll send her back and she can resume the course she was set upon.

That had been the deal Underhill had cut with Aiden. But not really Aiden. My Aunt Addy had glamoured herself to look like my wolf.

Another ripple of nausea goes through me. What if it was Addy who’d been stabbed in the heart? Can a silver knife kill a Norn—one of the goddesses of fate?

The chains rattle as I turn on the water and splash some on my face and rinse the taste of bile from my mouth.

I take a deep breath, trying to scent the air. It’s all canned, recycled through a vent system. So, we’re underground somewhere. Even without fairy queen magic, I have always had an affinity for air. The details are foggy, the haze of pain that infected me clouds my memory of the journey to this place. Sooner or later someone will have to come. To feed me, to interrogate me.

To vivisect me.

I shy away from that thought. The one notion that keeps panic clawing at my innards is the idea that these people knew enough about me to cover my mouth when they’d captured me. How had they found out how I kill?

My goodnight kiss has been my biggest secret for most of my life. Up until last spring, I’d used it only in self-defense or to protect an innocent from a monster. I’d been the butterfly no one suspected, the stalker in the shadows, the being who went bump in the night and took out the biggest predators around.

No one who saw me guessed the petite blonde with cornflower blue eyes was capable of killing full-grown evildoers. And had been since I was six-years-old.

Men. Women. Those who hurt others for no reason other than they were scum. I’d laid the traps, often using myself as bait, and closed it on those who fell into it. They culled the herd like a disease, and like a vaccination, I destroyed them.

Really, it had been a public service.

My aunts, Chloe and Addy, had helped cover for me. They disposed of the bodies whenever possible. A couple had slipped through our grasp though and the FBI had been tracking my victims. But I hadn’t killed a mortal in months. So how had they caught on to me?

My hands clench into fists as the answer surfaces. The diary. That damn diary where I’d stashed the licenses of all my prey. I’d done this to myself, kept those trophies and incriminated myself. How many times had Addy warned me that doing so was foolish? That I was helping the feds build their case?

Note to self. When a Fate says something is a bad idea, listen.

So okay, they have the diary. It had my fingerprints all over it0 and the IDs inside. They knew who and how I killed. But still, I could get away.

I just needed to find an angle.

“You’re awake,” a disembodied female voice says from a tinny speaker.

I stare straight at the camera and will my eyes to water in fear. It isn’t difficult to conjure a few tears. “This must be some kind of mistake.”

“No mistake,” the being within says. “You’re Nic Rutherford, adopted child of Chloe and Addison Rutherford. You live on a farm in the North Carolina mountains. And I have been hunting you for a very, very long time.”

A chill goes through me at those last words. “Who are you?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Gas filters down through the vent in the ceiling. I cough and choke, eyes stinging, lungs burning. This is why the room was airtight, so they could gas me whenever they chose.

I fight, trying to hold my breath, even struggle to reach for magic. But it’s no use.

Terror courses through me as the world around me tunnels and I slip into oblivion.

Burn it Down

Through the Wolf’s Eyes

He sees his destination ahead. The fortress that holds the Green Throne and his target. The man who shares his skin cautions him to use stealth. There is wisdom to the man, an ancient knowledge that comes from his long years. Perception and many times courage as well.

The wolf hadn’t appreciated those traits before.

The place is set in a valley, surrounded by trees and a mystical enchantment of protection. A blockade of air. The magic smells of his mate. The wolf had run for leagues, intent to get what he needs from the place and then cross back through the Veil to Midgard so he can be with her. She needs him, he can feel it in his bones.

He knows she is not within but her spell crafting has held fast. And would until the new queen of the Shadow Throne arrives, waves her hand, and obliterates it.

No time. The man thinks. The people don’t know what has happened. Don’t know that a new queen sits on the Shadow Throne and that she is really an immortal wolf who hungers for their blood.

How many people still live within the boundary? He has come across no others. Underhill is a wasteland of corpses.

He studies the scene in the valley below his perch. This place should be abandoned as lost. The wolf is a survivor and the unnatural dead things walking are growing in numbers.

A sea of them swarmed in front of the barrier. They are thick on the ground, like leaves after a hurricane. Relentless, unwavering. They hold no doubt, remorse or fear. They have a singular goal—the annihilation of all that lives.

From what he witnessed on his way here, they have mostly succeeded. Every village empty, every home abandoned. The dead don’t need a home or a place. They have no feelings and nothing can alter their