There was a woman who brought us food. Well, who brought me food. It had been a while since anyone had given Gabriel a plate to eat off of, or a fork and spoon to eat it with. When I handed him my breakfast that morning, he stared down at the scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and lone waffle as if he’d never seen them before.
“You eat it,” I told him slowly, pantomiming with an invisible fork and spoon. I groaned to show that my fake meal was delicious. “Food good,” I reiterated. “Eat food.”
Sending me a long-suffering look, he shook his head.
“I’m perfectly aware of what food is, Phaedra.”
Oh.
“Then stop glaring at it like it owes you unpaid child support,” I snapped, trying to ignore the way my face reddened. He snorted, but complied, shoveling the food in his mouth with an enthusiasm that put my own eating habits to shame.
“So,” I began, “you want to get out of here or what?”
I figured since he’d already slipped up and used his gift, then it wouldn’t hurt to use it to escape. To my disappointment, he shook his head.
“I haven’t used it in a few hundred years. I’m out of practice. Plus, I couldn’t take you with me even if I was at full strength.”
“Why not?” I grumbled.
“Well. You’re human,” he told me simply. “What I do is like pulling cells apart. If I broke you, I wouldn’t be able to put you back together again.”
On that note, he went back to his breakfast, leaving me to imagine that lovely scenario.
At one point he looked up at me with smeared cheese from the eggs on his face and I felt it. That shiver. That quake. That nameless something that told me I was in love. My upper lip curled in distaste.
“Damn,” I thought, “he got me.”
“What’s wrong? What did I do?” Suddenly self-conscious, he set down the now empty plate and gave me the old puppy dog eyes.
Guaranteed to melt the heart of any woman.
Reaching over, I wiped the egg from his cheek with my thumb and sighed. “Nothing,” I said irritably. “You’re just too damn cute.”
Earnest worry morphed into smooth swagger in an instant, and I was almost relieved when Liam stepped into the room so that I could look at something other than all of that smoldering sex appeal.
“I’ve been thinking,” I spoke before Liam could open his mouth. For this to work I couldn’t really afford for him to get too distracted by Gabriel. This was about getting us out there.
Liam blinked at me, then turning to speak softly to someone out in the hallway, he came fully into the room and shut the door.
“Really?” he said, indulging in curiosity. “This should be interesting.”
I chose my next words carefully. “It’s occurred to me that you and your Huntsmen are thinking too small.”
His eyes narrowed and I felt Gabriel stiffen beside me. “What are you talking about, Conners?”
I smiled, “Have you ever heard of a creature called a ‘Sidhe’ Agent Liam?”
Regarding me levelly, he wandered deeper into the room so that he could lean against the window that separated Gabriel’s old cell from mine. I didn’t plan on letting him go back in there.
“It’s a fairy isn’t it?”
I nodded, “For lack of a better term, yes. A very ancient breed of Fae. My classic lit teacher used to talk about them all the time. There are two types of Sidhe, the Seelie and Unseelie. They live on a different plane than us, and the only way to reach their world is by entering the Sithin. It looks like a giant mound of dirt, but as we all know, looks can be deceiving.” I sent a smile in Gabriel’s direction, begging him silently to go along with me.
I’m pretty sure what he’d done the night before constituted as using his power. Even now, the Wild Hunt could be tracking him down. If they were, I didn’t want to be locked in a cell when they found us.
But if we could use the FBI and the Huntsmen against them…
You know what they say. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, but he’s too busy beating the ass of the other guy to bother paying attention to me. Classic Art of War stuff.
“What does any of this have to do with me?”
“It could be nothing,” I said, “Or it could be everything. It just depends on how you look at the big picture. I’m just trying to tell you what I know.”
“And what do you know?”
“I know that the Sidhe were responsible for creating the first werewolves.” I didn’t bother mentioning that it was because they’d cursed random humans whenever they’d needed extra hounds during their hunts. I saw Liam’s interest spike visibly and I hid a smile. “I also know that they’ve had no reason to bother coming to this world. Until now.”
“Explain,” he barked. I could see his mind working, still dissecting the news that the Sidhe knew the secret to creating Weres.
“Well, you have one of their pets,” I indicated Gabriel with a nod of my head. “They’re going to want him back. They probably won’t be pleased why they find out how you’ve been treating him.”
Liam snorted derisively. “Let me guess. You expect me to let you both go all so I can gain the goodwill of a bunch of Tinkerbells?”
“I’ve seen that movie,” Gabriel spoke up suddenly. “My masters are nothing like the tiny woman in the small dress. They also don’t secrete fairy dust. They would eat you and yours alive.”
“Is that a threat?’
“It’s a fact,” Gabriel spoke with the same blunt honesty that he reserved for most everything. He wasn’t boasting or exaggerating to try and frighten Liam. He was simply telling the truth as he understood it.
“You don’t expect me to believe-”
“You want the secret to creating Weres?” Gabriel interrupted. Liam hesitated, but finally nodded. “The Sidhe can give you that.”
“Why don’t I just turn a bunch of you loose? I’m sure I’ll have my pick of new recruits from among the survivors.”
Gabriel shook his head in disgust and I felt as if we’d switched places without my realizing it.
“That’s just a myth. Being a Were isn’t like having a virus. You don’t catch it from a bite or a scratch and we don’t pass the curse along to our children, in the event that we have any.”
Growing frustrated, Agent Liam began to pace.
“You’re lying,” he stated finally. “Otherwise you would have died out a long time ago.”
“That’s true, but I’m not lying. The curse is just that. A curse. It’s magical in nature. The moon chooses who changes. If the magic in you is strong, you shift, and if the magic is weak…” He shrugged helplessly and I finished the sentence for him.
“If the magic is weak, you turn out like Marcus. A defective wolf. All bark, but no bite. I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for is it?”
“No,” he spoke absently, “It certainly isn’t.”
Gabriel and I let him stew on this new information for a moment. When I knew the time was right, I nodded for Gabriel to start in on him again. He did so without a second’s hesitation.
“We all want something, Agent Liam. I’m sure with a little negotiating we can reach some sort of compromise.”
“Say I let you go,” Liam mused, “where does that leave me when it turns out that you’re both lying?”
“We’re not lying,” I said.
“And I’m supposed to believe that? Even if I did, what’s to keep me from simply using you as leverage? The Sidhe tell me what I want to know and I give them back their dog in return.”
“Remember what happened last night?” Gabriel asked quietly. “That was child’s play, a parlor’s trick compared to what the Sidhe would do to you. They have ways of tracking down what’s theirs and they’ll find this place sooner rather than later. When that happens, you won’t get the chance to offer a trade. They’ll just come in here and take what they came for. In the end, even if they leave you alive, you’ll still be left with nothing.”
There was such conviction, such col
dness in his words, that even I felt the hairs on my arms rising and goosebumps breaking out over my skin. I watched the insidious seed of doubt began to sprout in Agent Liam’s throat worked as he tried to swallow. I saw him give in to the inevitable before his next words could confirm it.
“Why would they help us? Why would they tell us what we wanted to know about how to create your kind if force is out of the question?”
“You catch more flies with bees than honey.”
Liam blinked, and I shook my head. Damn. Things had been going so smoothly, too.
“What?” Liam asked, and I placed a hand on Gabriel’s arm as if he were a senile old man.
“What he meant to say was that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”
“Of course,” Gabriel patted my hand in gratitude. “What she said. If you give the Sidhe something they want, something they can’t get on their own, then they’d be more than willing to tell you whatever you needed to know.”
“What could we possibly offer them in exchange?”
Gabriel fell silent, and his hand tightened almost painfully on my own. I could see the muscles in his jaw working as he thought, and even as I watched his eyes darkened. When he glanced over at me, I knew it was to reassure himself about whatever bomb he was about to drop.
“There are a number of fugitives of the Sidhe hidden away in your world,” he began. “The Sidhe can no longer hunt them down like they used to, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want them back. If you gave them just one of these fugitives…”
He let the sentence trail off, but Liam seemed to get the idea. Avarice made him ugly, and he took two quick steps towards us in his rising excitement. “Who are they? Where are they? How do we—”
“There’s only one way to hunt down an enemy of the Sidhe,” Gabriel interrupted him quietly, looking down at our joined hands as he continued. “Only one way that the Seelie and Unseelie courts would view as honorable.”
“What is it? What do we need to do?” Liam snapped when Gabriel had grown silent once again.
“You have to call for the Hunt.”
The Wild Hunt. Oh God.
I spoke without thinking. “But you can’t. They’ll—”
“I no longer recognize them as Leaders of the Hunt,” he told me, voice soothing. “And neither do the others. If we called a Hunt together in this world, we would be operating under our own authority.”
“Isn’t that just as dangerous?” I whispered, and he nodded.
“A Hunt without a Master to lead it can be…” he blew out a shaky breath, “a mistake.” I somehow got the impression that he had made the understatement of the century. He continued, “Which is why I’ll be the only one doing any actual hunting.”
There seemed to be a lot of holes in his plan. So many, in fact, that I wasn’t sure which one to pick at first.
“But-”
“You’ll be my rider,” he said, overriding whatever protest I’d been about to make. “One rider, one hound.” He said the words as if they were intimate. As if they were a promise. The rest of his words were aimed at Agent Liam, though he went back to staring at our hands. “We’ll track down our prey and hand them over to you and your men. That will give you the leverage you’ll need against the Sidhe.”
“What do you get out of it?” Agent Liam sounded suspicious and I was reminded that he was man of some intelligence. But only some. He was no match against the wide eyes of innocence that Gabriel leveled on him in response to his question.
“Why, our freedom. And of course, a promise that your government will sweep this entire Werewolf fiasco under the rug.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because you won’t be needing the Huntsmen to search out and capture any more Weres. Your alliance will be with the Sidhe, in which case secrecy will be your friend. Don’t want people finding out that their government is turning innocent bystanders into Wereanimals. Make this disappear, lie low for a few years, until people forget about it, and during that time you can do whatever you damn well please in the privacy of your own backyard.”
When he still looked unconvinced I gently added, “Letting Werewolves exist will only make things more complicated for you in the long run.”
Gabriel and I were both tense as we awaited Agent Liam’s decision. But in the end, I suppose we didn’t have anything to worry about. Liam wasn’t an idiot and Gabriel and I were a hell of a team when it came to making deals.
There was really only one answer to what we offered, and Liam gave the right one.
“Get some rest. You’ll need it for the Hunt tonight.”
Kids are more wolf than human. They understand the basics. The essentials. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and fight when all else fails. I can really get behind that kind of mentality.
—Phaedra Conners
Chapter Fifteen