She grinned. "I didn't know you were squeamish, tough guy."
"I simply have discriminating taste," he said haughtily.
"And skunks don't taste good."
They both laughed.
She bit her lip, always a sign of nerves with her. "So you don't ever get, I don't know, maybe a little bored?"
He wondered how to avoid any hidden reefs in this conversation. "Well," he said cautiously, "there are times when I wonder if I could be of use for more than vacation and leisure."
Her eyes lit up. "Exactly! Not that we want to go back to the way things were, but maybe we could do something to help someone once in a while. You know, not officially but on a kind of pro bono basis."
He grinned at her and leaned back in his chair. "Yes. I think I'd like that. Only if you would, of course. I'm perfectly content to spend all day every day licking that place on your--"
"Alaric!" Her cheeks turned scarlet, as they always did when he teased her, and he marveled anew that his wanton wife was so shy in so many ways.
A commotion at the front of the lodge caught their attention, and a man and woman clutching each other ran in, shouting and crying.
"Our son, please, somebody help us, they took our son," the man shouted.
His wife, for clearly they were a couple, just sobbed, unable even to speak.
"We were on the trail behind the lodge, and they came out of nowhere, like giant hairy ghosts," the man said, his eyes wild. "We've never seen such monsters! You must believe me, we would never make this up. They were gray, with red eyes, and at least eight feet tall--"
The old man nursing a whiskey at the bar interrupted him. "We've got a feral pack of shape-shifting yetis around here. They like to take kids, young and juicy. Let 'em sit around for a couple of days before they kill 'em, so you still have a chance if you go now."
The woman's eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped like a stone--fainted dead away. Her husband caught her on the way down, but then he burst into tears. "Who will help me?"
Quinn put her hand on Alaric's. "Oh, honey, isn't it a lovely day for a hike?"
"It's freezing outside."
She stroked her lips with one finger and then lightly licked her lips and finger, both, while she watched her husband's eyes glaze over.
"Brisk, is what I meant to say," he amended. "Great day for a brisk walk."
Quinn stood up and walked over to the couple sitting on the floor. "Don't worry. We'll find him for you."
"Yetis," Alaric said, coming up behind her with her coat. "It had to be yetis."
"Better than skunks," she reminded him. "Our life together will never be boring."
"Thank the gods for that," he murmured, before he helped her into her coat and walked out onto the frozen mountainside to hunt for shape-shifting yetis.
In the very back of the bar, a large man with eyes that constantly shifted from blue to green to blue again watched them go.
AND HE CALLED ME A DERANGED FOOL, Poseidon thought, smiling fondly. I'LL HAVE HIM BACK YET. ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY FIND OUT THEIR FIRST DAUGHTER IS ON THE WAY. THEY SHOULD NAME HER AFTER ME.
POSEIDONA, I THINK.
Still smiling, the sea god dropped a gold coin on the table and vanished. He had the next generation of Atlanteans to worry about now. That Prince Aidan was going to be a handful . . .
* * *
Keep reading for a special preview of Alyssa Day's new paranormal romance series
THE CURSED
Coming in May 2013, from Berkley Sensation!
* * *
On top of the Ramble Stone Arch, Central Park, New York, three A.M.
Getting stabbed is hell on the dry-cleaning bill.
Luke Oliver looked down at the silver blade stuck between his ribs and then up at the only person still alive who'd known him back when his name was Lucian Olivieri. "I'd kill anyone else for that, Maestro."
He pulled out the knife, wincing as it scraped a rib, wiped it on his jeans, and then put it in his pocket. "You didn't want it back, did you?"
The other man, his face hidden by the shadows cast by his fedora, laughed. His laugh sounded like rock being crushed beneath a giant's boots and was just as appealing. Luke suspected the maestro knew it, too, and used it as one of a lifetime's worth of weapons.
"Consider it a gift. And I was just checking," the maestro said. "When silver starts burning you like acid--"
"I know the terms of my own curse," Luke said, cutting off the reminder. Beating back the past. "What do you want? I have a job to get back to."
"Still doing those jobs? Trying to save the world from your hideaways in the dank, dingy corners of Bordertown?"
It was Luke's turn to laugh. "No hideaway. A crappy office. And I'm only trying to save one person. The world can go to hell for all I care, but right now I'm too busy to reminisce about old times."
"We didn't have any old times. We were on opposite sides. Your mother was a thug."
"Even enemies have old times. And my mother was an aristocratic thug. Never let it be said that Lucrezia Borgia didn't do her murdering with class," Luke countered, as he silently watched a trio of gang bangers, smelling of cheap booze and acrid smoke, saunter underneath the arch while trading raucous and profane insults. Secure in their mistaken belief that they were apex predators in the darkest hours of the night. He wondered briefly what they'd do if he dropped down among them and showed them the face and power of a true predator.
Wet their pants and run screaming for Mommy, no doubt.
"Do you still do it? Hunt the criminals?" The maestro's voice held only a calm curiosity, as if he were asking about the weather. "Do you feel the pull to stalk them as prey and crush them? Burn them to cinders?"
Yes.
Always.
No.
Never.
Never again, at least.
Luke settled on a nonanswer. "You have one minute to say something relevant."
The other man pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket and held it out to Luke, and then he said the two words Luke had never wanted to hear again.
"Black Swan."
Shock knocked Luke back like a crossbow aimed at his heart, and he fell off the arch, but recovered in time to land with his characteristic grace on the path thirteen feet below.
The maestro laughed once more and tossed the envelope down through the night air before he disappeared. Luke caught the envelope as it fell, almost in spite of himself. The glossy black-and-red logo was embossed on one corner, as he'd expected; the sinuous arch of the swan's neck stark against the Templar cross and mocking him with its elegance.
He needed to get back to his office. His client's missing child was far more important than anything that could be inside this envelope. He'd burn it. Destroy any evidence that the League had ever reached out its slimy tentacles, and move on with what was passing for his life these days. He told himself all that, even as he tore open the envelope right there on the path, and pulled out its entire contents: a single photograph.
The moonlight seemed to caress the woman in the photo, highlighting with vivid, shocking clarity her perfect bone structure, the curve of her cheek, and her wary expression. The world tilted on its axis, and the edges of Luke's fingers shimmered with blue flame, nearly incinerating the photo before he extinguished the fire. He stared at the picture--still perfect but for charred edges--and another kind of fire flashed to an inferno inside him. It was Rio. Rio Jones, the one woman he'd ever truly wanted.
The one woman he could never have.
The League of the Black Swan was back and it wanted him to get involved with Rio Jones. It was the end of the world, all over again. An immortal just couldn't catch a break.
Rio Jones knew she had maybe an hour, tops, before somebody found her. She had that kind of luck: the kind that trips over cracks in sidewalks, falls off her bike in the middle of rush-hour traffic in Times Square, and sees a major crime boss kidnapping a kid in broad daylight.
A major n
onhuman crime boss. She'd heard a flash of something so wrong--so other--in his thoughts that she'd nearly wrecked her bike when she'd turned to look at who or what was making that horrible noise. The taxi hadn't even clipped her that hard; she'd had far worse working as a bike messenger for Siren Deliveries.
Not that any of the fancy companies she delivered to would believe they'd hired a company owned by an actual siren. They just knew they got their packages on time. Ophelia liked to hire humans as messengers. She said they were slower but harder to distract. More reliable. Gave her more time to focus on her budding opera career, instead of dealing with Fae and demon hatreds, feuds, and failures to deliver on time. Punctuality was king in the cutthroat bike messenger wars. In fact, if Rio hadn't been so focused on making it to her next delivery on time, she wouldn't have taken that shortcut through the alley, and so she never would have seen the tall, dark-haired man step out of a limousine and snatch a small girl right off the street.
The girl had screamed, Rio had slammed on the brakes of her bike and nearly gone over the handlebars, and the kidnapping bastard had met her gaze with eyes that seemed to blaze across the distance between them. Black eyes, almost all pupil, had tried to bore into Rio's soul, until the struggling child had screamed again and the man had thrown the girl into the limo and slammed the door. He'd given Rio one last contemptuous, dismissive glance and then slid into the front seat next to the driver. By the time he'd changed his mind and the brake lights had flashed on the limo, she'd disappeared. She'd used her throwaway cell phone to call in an anonymous report to the human police, complete with license plate number, for all the good it would do. The human authorities had no pull in Bordertown and she knew it, but that little girl had been human. Somebody needed to know. A few minutes later, still shaking, she'd tossed her cell phone to the first homeless man wearing a cardboard sign she saw, with some vague idea that somebody might trace it.
It was all too little, too late, though. She knew it. She'd heard the dark-haired man's thoughts--they'd shattered the everyday barrier she wore around her mind like a scarf. The barrier was plenty to keep out human thoughts; if she heard everything that people thought around her all day long, she would have gone insane years ago.
But this man--the kidnapper--he wasn't human. Okay, she was used to that, working for a company in Bordertown and living there, too, but he wasn't a low-level demon or a Fae or an ogre or anything else she'd ever heard of before. His thoughts had been wrong. Dark and terrifying, and yeah, demons were often the same to a degree, but this guy was something . . . more. Icy. Determined. Powerful. She wasn't even sure how she'd known, but she'd somehow felt it. His thoughts had crawled with power and focus--and once he'd changed his mind about her being beneath his notice--no loose ends had been the exact words running through his jagged mind--that focus was aimed at her.
That had been eight hours ago, and she had no doubt that he'd been tracking her every minute since.
"And one little freak of a telepath isn't going to have a chance against that," she muttered to her tiny stuffed tiger before tossing it in her backpack. She was already wearing her locket, as always, so there were the only two mementos of her childhood safely retrieved. Other than that, she didn't know what to bother taking. A couple of changes of clothes, all available cash, and her laptop computer. Packing wasn't exactly difficult when you lived in a closet disguised as a studio apartment and owned next to nothing.
She was wasting time. She knew where she had to go. The one person who'd promised he'd help her, any time and for any reason. The one person she'd ever felt safe with--until he'd abandoned her, like everyone always did. But he had power; she'd known it, and everybody in Bordertown, even the riffraff, knew it, too. He could help her figure out a way to find and help that child, and she was smart enough not to let Luke Oliver break her heart all over again. Not that it mattered. She'd seen the terror on the little girl's face. Nothing was more important than that.
A knock on the door broke through her temporary paralysis and scared her so badly she stumbled and nearly tripped over her milk-crate coffee table.
"Rio? Rio, it's me. Are you okay?"
Rio's heart slowly dropped out of warp speed, and she took a deep breath and opened the door. Mrs. Giamatto, her landlady, stood just outside the door in a pale pink robe that had to be older than Rio. The elderly woman gasped when she saw Rio, and the tips of her ever so slightly pointed ears turned a vivid pink where they peeked out of her fluffy white hair.
"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry to bother you at this time of night, but I had a very odd phone call just now, and I wanted to warn you--"
"I know. I'm leaving." Rio picked up her bike and stepped into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind her, locked it, and handed Mrs. Giamatto the keys. "Thank you so much. I might be in a little bit of trouble, so I'm going to go stay with friends for a while. I don't want to bring any problems here. Linda down the hall just had her baby, and of course I don't want anybody to bring you any--"
"No!" Mrs. Giamatto folded her arms across her frail chest and raised her chin. "I won't have it. I know you, Rio Green, and you're no troublemaker. Even if you did do something you shouldn't have, and the gods know that's easy enough to do in Bordertown, well, we stick together. Nobody is going to mess with my tenants."
For an instant--only a fraction of a moment--Rio saw someone else underneath Mrs. G's little-old-lady surface. Someone ancient, far older even than the renovated Victorian home in which they stood, and maybe older than New York itself. Her landlady was more powerful than she appeared, it seemed, like so many in Bordertown. But the memory of the kidnapper flashed into Rio's mind, and she shuddered before shaking her head.
"I love you for it, too, but it's not an ordinary bad guy. This is more trouble than we can handle. I have to get help. There was a child. He . . . took her. I think he plans to kill her. Or worse."
Neither one of them mentioned the human police. They both knew better. And Bordertown didn't have any law of its own. That was the draw for most of the creatures who lived, worked, and played there.
Mrs. G slowly nodded. "You're going to Luke?"
"I don't think I have a choice." Rio took a deep breath and hugged her landlady and dear friend. "I'll try to keep in touch. I'll try to come back."
They both knew neither might be possible. When trouble came to somebody in Bordertown, it was often of the permanent kind.
Mrs. Giamatto fiercely hugged Rio back and then let her go. She put a hand in her pocket and held out an envelope.
"Take this. It should help."
Rio glanced in the envelope, which was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
"I can't take this. I'm fine. I have money; I just need to get to the bank in the morning--"
"You'll take it," Mrs. G said firmly, closing Rio's fingers over the envelope. "I never paid you for planting those flowers last week."
Rio heard the edge of panic in her own laughter, and knew it was time to go. "The going rate for landscapers is not a thousand dollars an hour, but I'll take it as a loan for now. I have to go. If they called you, they know where I live."
"Go. The back stairs." Mrs. G hugged her again and then gave her a little push toward the dimly lit stairwell. Rio grabbed her bike, ran lightly down the stairs, and opened the always locked door a couple of inches. What she could see of the garden from her vantage point was empty of anybody and anything other than the marble statue of a very plump Pan eternally playing his lute in the fountain. She slipped out and made sure the door clicked shut behind her, not that a door would hold out anybody who really wanted to get in, and headed for the garden gate, only to skid to a stop when the gate crashed open and three enormous, oddly misshapen men pushed their way into the yard.
"Is that her?" one of them said, in a broken, growly voice, like only part of him was human and the other part was something ugly. Nothing unusual for Bordertown, but this guy was big. World Wrestling Federation big. Half a mountain big.
Rio dr
opped the bike and backed up, step by slow, cautious step, wishing for the millionth time that if she had to have a superpower it could be something useful. Like flying. Or invisibility. What was the use, really, of reading other people's thoughts at a time like this?
"I don't know, she has a long braid, the boss said she had a long braid," another one said in an unexpectedly high, squeaky voice that nearly surprised a laugh out of Rio. Things that ugly and that big shouldn't sound like Mickey Mouse.
"Look, if you're Rio Green, the boss just wants to talk to you," the first one said, his hands out at his sides in what was clearly meant to be a nonthreatening position.
Ha.
"I don't know anybody named Rio Green," she said evenly, eyeing the distance between her and the fence. "You have the wrong person."
"See, that sounds like a lie," Mountain Man said, taking a step forward.
The other two moved to flank her, and she pushed her fear aside and dropped her mental barrier, listening frantically for whatever they might be thinking that might help her figure out how to escape.
Mountain Man's thoughts were so unsurprising she didn't have to be a telepath to figure them out. Too bad the boss said not to kill her. Wonder if he'd mind if I play with her a little first?
Squeaky's mind wasn't quite on business. Shouldn't have had that spaghetti Bolognese. I need some antacids in the worst way.
And the third guy's thoughts were so oily and incoherent that Rio nearly gagged just from brushing up against them. Rip, shred, tear, bloody, bloody, Tuesday, lovely pie, yummy candy, rip, shred, tear--
She slammed her mental barrier back in place and tried something only an idiot would fall for. She whipped her head to the side, stared at the gate behind them, and screamed.
"Rio! Run! These guys are here for you!"
All three of them turned around, and she ran the other way for the fence like she'd never run before. She put her hands on the flat surface of the wrought iron between two spikes and vaulted over like some kind of track star, marveling even as she flew through the air at what adrenaline could do for somebody in fear for her life. Her ankle twisted under her as she landed; not enough for a sprain, but enough that she knew she'd need to ice it soon or pay the price the next day. If she lived to see the next day. She hit the ground running and raced through the streets faster than she'd ever moved before.