Enchanted Guardian Page 7

  One of the shadows moved. A male fae rose, holding Susan to his chest. Nim couldn’t tell if he meant to protect her or use her as a shield, but when she looked into his eyes all became clear. His expression was filled with fury—and that was only possible if he’d drunk from her soul.

  “Who the stars are you?” he rasped. He was shaking, a telltale sign of the damage addicts suffered. Next on the list was incurable madness.

  Nim kept the gun to her side, unwilling to risk shooting Susan. The violinist looked barely conscious, as if she would collapse if her attacker released the arm he clutched around her waist. The fae himself looked barely able to stand, overcome by the emotions swirling inside him.

  Nim kept her voice soft and calm, but she knew better than to beg him for Susan’s life. If the fae had still possessed a better nature, he wouldn’t be there in the first place. “I’m here to save you.”

  “Oh?” he scoffed.

  “From dishonor,” she said in the same even, implacable voice. “You blacken our people’s name.”

  “Does it matter?” His lip curled. “They call this house haunted. What are we fae but ghosts?”

  His barb struck home, echoing Nim’s darkest thoughts. But she took a step forward, knowing every inch closer to her target improved her aim. “Even so, remaining true to our best selves is the test of our worth.”

  Fine words, considering the suitcases already packed and waiting at her condo. They were both running in their own ways, this man with his addiction and Nim with her plans to vanish. They were both running to meaningless ends. The thought made Nim falter, and the fae must have seen it in her step.

  He thrust Susan forward. The girl stumbled forward, but Nim’s reflexes were too swift. She pushed Susan onto the sofa and stepped aside in the same moment. Susan fell hard into the dusty cushions, but now Nim had the opening she needed.

  She took aim, but was a split second too late. The fae had a gun, too.

  Chapter 8

  They both fired, and though the fae’s hand shook, his aim was good enough. Hot pain scored Nim’s shoulder the same instant as she fired.

  The fae stumbled backward, crashing into the furniture. He hung there, clinging to the jumble behind him for a long moment. Finally, he collapsed a bit at a time, first dropping the gun and then folding limb by limb until he sank to the filthy floor. Nim stumbled forward, picking up his weapon and thrusting it into her belt. There was a neat hole in his forehead, assuring her that he was dead. She refused to look at the mess on the wall where he’d been standing.

  Only then did she look down at her own wound, feeling a wave of sticky heat rise to her skin. It was the second wound in two days, but thankfully it wasn’t deep. She bled, but the bullet had only scored her upper arm.

  “What happened?” demanded Lancelot.

  She spun to see him filling the doorway. Someone had brought him an ax, and he was covered in dirt and blood, his hair slicked back from his broad forehead. He’d lost his jacket, and his heavily muscled arms glistened with sweat. Tension slipped from Nim’s shoulders, making her wound throb afresh as her muscles released. There was no doubt that she could have got Susan out of the house on her own, but now that Lancelot was here everything would be so much easier.

  “I found her.” She pointed to the couch.

  His gaze was slow to shift from her bloody arm to Susan’s prone form.

  “I’m fine,” Nim said. “She’s alive.”

  “And he’s not.” Lancelot nodded to the body of the fae. “That was a clean shot.”

  With some surprise, Nim felt a pang of regret. “Perhaps it was a mercy.” Yet those words tasted false, so she tried again. “It was a tragedy.”

  Working quickly, Lancelot thrust the ax into a leather hanger strapped to his belt and carefully rolled Susan over. As Nim had suspected, she was gagged with a strip of cloth. Nim loosened the knots, cursing the fingers of her left hand. The wound was making them clumsy.

  “There’s fighting on the stairs,” Lancelot said, his tone brisk. “I had to fight my way up here. We can’t descend carrying an unconscious girl.”

  Nim finally got the knots undone and pulled off the gag, wincing at the angry marks the bindings left behind. Susan didn’t revive, even when Nim tapped the girl’s cheeks. “Stars!” Nim cursed. “After what’s been done to her, there is no telling if she’ll ever wake up, or if she’ll be right when she does.”

  She met Lancelot’s eyes, nearly falling into their deep brown depths. There was sadness there she’d never seen before. Whatever he’d endured since they parted had left traces behind. She looked away, the room suddenly feeling too small.

  “A house this size would have had servants,” she said. “Perhaps they had a back staircase for the staff to move about the house. We could take her out that way.”

  Glad to have a concrete goal, she returned to the hallway. Lancelot followed, Susan draped in his arms. Nim forced open the remaining doors. The smallest was in a recessed niche off the main corridor, and the settling house had jammed it shut. One slam of Lancelot’s boot sent it crashing open.

  It was indeed another staircase, but the opening showed a cobwebbed nightmare. Nim could almost hear the scuttle of spidery feet in the yawning blackness. “This looks old. It might not be safe,” she said.

  But then they smelled smoke. “Fire,” said Lancelot. “This place will go up like paper.”

  Nim looked over her shoulder and saw flickering light in the direction they’d come from. “There was a candle in the room where I found Susan. It must have tipped over in the fight.”

  Even as she watched, the flames licked the dry, crumbling wood outside the room. Lancelot was right. The old place would go up in minutes, and the fire was between them and the main exit.

  “Go,” he said, his voice firm. “We don’t have a choice.”

  One hand held up to protect her face, Nim took a step into the stuffy blackness. The stairs creaked ominously beneath her foot. “I don’t like spiders,” she said.

  “I know.”

  She could hear Lancelot’s feet searching for the steps behind her. Although she had better night vision than a human, she was all but blind once they were halfway down the old staircase. How he managed was a mystery. Once or twice she heard a scrape against the wall as he misjudged and Susan touched the plaster.

  And then she thought about what she’d said. She wasn’t supposed to like or dislike anything. And yet—a cobweb snagged over her hair and she frantically flicked it away—she really did not want to encounter anything with more than two legs. She felt it with an intensity that went beyond a fae’s self-preserving fear.

  She coughed, smoke sticking to her tongue and throat. It was too dark to see how thick it was, but she could feel the rising temperature around her. She’d lost any sense of how far they’d come, but it was plain they had to hurry. Her thoughts were interrupted when her foot plunged through the wood of the staircase. She threw her weight back, hoping to retreat to the last step, but it gave as well. Shards of wood stabbed her ankle as she pitched into empty air and tumbled over and over into the claustrophobic dark.

  Nim slammed to the tile below, instinct alone making her scramble to get out of the way of the falling chunks of wood and plaster. By the time she gathered her wits, she was on the fringe of the battle raging in the kitchen. She could just make out the combatants through the smoke. Fae and knight were savaging one another in a fight so brutal the fire barely seemed an annoyance.

  Lancelot landed behind her, cursing loud and long enough that he had to be mostly undamaged. She turned to speak to him but nearly came eye to eye with Arthur Pendragon. She spun away, ducking Arthur’s notice. All her fears of LaFaye surged back, but they weren’t alone. Since waking, the king had treated magic users with suspicion and the fae without mercy. If he caught her, he’d kill her on sight, especially in a skirmish like this. Using all the stealth and speed she had, Nim fled the burning house.

  * * *

 
; Dulac landed with a crash, his shoulders colliding with hard tile. He’d been trained to roll out of a fall, but he had a hundred-odd pounds of deadweight in his arms and lumber crashing down around his ears. He might be forgiven for bad form. He got to his feet, shaking himself free of debris and looking around for Nimueh. At least there was light here—enough to see his troubles weren’t over. He might have only fallen six feet, but he’d gone through the steps and onto the kitchen floor. The smoke was thick here, and so was the fighting.

  Susan was a limp bundle at his feet. He picked her up again and charged for the door that stood open to the yard. More men were fighting out here in twos and threes, but the smash of weapons was quieter than before. Where there had been a dozen fae against half that number of knights, Dulac saw only a handful of the enemy still on their feet. He jogged away from the burning house, cursing the hot cinders that floated from the roof. Smoke was leaking from the broken shingles and pouring from windows where the glass had been smashed. He set Susan on the grass.

  The next moment, Nimueh was beside him, bending down to examine Susan’s still form. Dulac studied her a moment, watching the way she moved. Nimueh had always been graceful, but now she was filled with the quick energy he had only rarely seen in her, as if a taste of danger had been an invigorating tonic.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “No,” he lied, ignoring the bruises he’d have the next day. He put an arm around her, giving in to the need for touch. He could feel her bones move as she reached around to touch his hand. She seemed so fragile. “And you?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She looked into his face then, close enough that their noses all but touched. Her eyes were bloodshot from the smoke, her skin smudged with dirt. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “I always do.” His chest ached with more than the abuse he’d just taken. “I know you’re an enchantress of remarkable power, well able to take care of yourself. Yet you just about stopped my heart when you ran to climb up the house. I need to keep you safe, even if you don’t need me to do so.”

  Her lips parted as if she were about to speak, but she didn’t. He was left staring at their soft, plump contours, tasting them in his imagination. He was about to steal a kiss when she put a hand against his chest. “Don’t.” It wasn’t the time or place, but her downcast eyes said her reluctance was more than that. He was wearing down her resistance, but she’d reached her limit of intimacy for right then.

  She looked up, her gaze flicking to his before it darted away again. “Susan needs a hospital. Even if doctors can’t heal her soul, they can tend her body.”

  Frustration burned worse than any sword thrust, but he kept his answer brief and to the point. “I can carry her to your car.”

  “No. If we take her to the hospital, the staff will ask too many questions we can’t answer with honesty.”

  “Are you suggesting that we leave her here alone?” he asked.

  Nim shook her head. “I hear sirens far off, but they are coming in this direction. They will bring help.”

  Dulac listened, but his human ears detected nothing. Still, it was no surprise the neighbors had called in the disturbance. They might be too far away to hear gunshots, but the smoke from the fire would be visible.

  “I’ll stay,” Nim said, “but the knights should leave. A woman is less likely to arouse suspicion than a man with a war ax.”

  “No,” he said automatically. She was the one trying to keep out of sight, and getting her name on a police report was a bad idea. “You go. I’ll meet you at your car.” With that, he straightened and surveyed the scene.

  The fighting had ended. Two of the knights, Hector and Beaumains, were hauling the last of the fae bodies into the burning house. The way the fire was going, it would provide an excellent funeral pyre.

  King Arthur stood dangerously close to the conflagration, hands on his hips and breathing hard. Though he was covered in blood and his red-gold hair darkened with sweat, it was easy to see that he was the king. From the set of his head to the way he planted his feet, his posture spoke of a man who dominated his surroundings. And yet, the weariness Dulac saw was real, too. Arthur was as much one of the knights—working and fighting shoulder to shoulder with them—as he was their leader. That was one of the reasons he ruled them without question.

  Except for Dulac. Their relationship had always been more complicated, but since coming to this new time and place, Dulac had done his best to keep peace with his king. He approached Arthur, hoping that streak would continue.

  “There is an innocent who needs medical attention,” said Dulac.

  “Who is it?” Arthur replied, his eyes fixed on the kitchen doorway. He visibly relaxed when Hector and Beaumains emerged without their burden.

  Some of the knights had scrapes and cuts, but none were seriously hurt. The fae had been badly armed and weakened with soul-hunger, and the only firearm he’d seen had belonged to the male Nimueh had killed. Nevertheless, crazed fae were dangerous enemies. This part of town would be safer with the house and its occupants gone.

  “I found the young woman inside,” Dulac replied. “I pray we got to her in time.”

  Arthur made a noise of agreement and followed the direction of Dulac’s hand as he pointed toward Susan’s still form. Nimueh had disappeared, and he waited for someone to ask about her—but no one did. In all the confusion, she must have slipped away unseen. Good.

  “Did you know the victim was here?” the king asked. “Or was the fact that she was rescued a happy accident?”

  The question didn’t surprise Dulac. He’d been vague about the details and silent about Nimueh when he’d called. “I met someone looking into the disappearance of a young relative from the White Hart. The girl was seen speaking to fae moments before she vanished. Details of her story pointed to this place.”

  Arthur’s blue eyes narrowed. He suddenly seemed less pleased than he had a moment before. “And so you decided to investigate?”

  “For the girl’s sake, yes.”

  “Then these fae broke the law of lore and magic,” said the king. “Ordinary humans should never have known creatures of the shadow realm were hunting here.”

  “It was a good raid.”

  The king rounded on him, temper flashing in his gaze. “As happy as I am to rid the world of this place, you should not have undertaken this single-handedly.”

  Dulac frowned. “I called for assistance.”

  “You called Gawain, not me. An entire house of rogue fae merits a conversation first. We don’t have so many knights that we can take careless risks.”

  Dulac drew himself up. “And yet the girl was saved and the fae are dead. It appears that we won.”

  Arthur’s jaw bunched, reminding Dulac of his father. Arthur was Dulac’s senior by only a few years, but authority made him the parent. Unfortunately, Dulac had never been an easy son to any of his fathers.

  Dulac looked pointedly at the burning house. “Our numbers have grown. We can take these larger targets now.”

  Arthur paused. Dulac could hear the sirens now.

  “That was not your decision to make.” The king took a deep breath. “What if I had let this place remain untouched for reasons of strategy you did not know?”

  Dulac’s temper lunged like a snarling dog, but he held the leash tight. “I would ask you what that strategy was and why I did not know of it until now.”

  “Perhaps you did not need to know.” Arthur’s expression darkened. “You are an accomplished general, but you do not understand this world we’re in. Not yet. There is a reason I am king. It is my job to understand and lead.”

  “And mine simply to kill where and when I’m told?”

  “You’re the well-honed blade I draw when necessary. Weapons don’t make strategy.”

  And weapons didn’t get a say in how they were used. Morgan LaFaye wasn’t the only ruler with personal assassins; Arthur had unleashed Dulac on Camelot’s enemies time and again. “I am more than
just a sword.”

  “I need you to do as I say.” The king’s cold blue gaze was hard to hold, but Dulac refused to look away. They had been the best of friends once, until Arthur’s jealousy over Queen Guinevere had taken root. From that point forward he’d taken out his fury on Dulac in a hundred small ways.

  The heat from the fire licked the side of Dulac’s face, burning in its intensity. Something popped and sparks flew up into the hazy afternoon blue. It was dangerous to remain so close to the fire, but Dulac would not look away from the king. Not even the attention of the other knights, their curiosity equally uncomfortable, could make him back down.

  The sirens cracked the tension, blaring louder now. Arthur gave a quick gesture of dismissal, turning his back to Dulac. “Go. It is time we left this place.”

  Dulac took a last look at the burning house. By the time the fire engines arrived, there would be nothing left to save.

  Turning his back, he went to wait with the injured girl.

  Chapter 9

  Nim waited by the car for half an hour before Lancelot slid into the passenger seat smelling of smoke and in a bad temper. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Without argument, she complied. She’d bandaged her wound with supplies from the first aid kit she kept in the car and the injury didn’t hurt enough to interfere with her driving. She pulled away from the curb and sped down the street.

  Lancelot gripped the door handle, seeming to brace himself against the motion of the vehicle. It had been the same when they’d set out for the Price House. Lancelot had a way to go before he was completely comfortable with his new surroundings.

  As the buildings slipped by in a blur, the late afternoon heat shimmered in a yellow haze. Just when they were turning the corner, an ambulance flew by. Nim followed the vehicle with her gaze, wondering how Susan fared. The young woman might live or die—and Nim hoped it would be nothing in between. Even in the best outcome, Susan would bear scars on her soul. Nim wished she could help, but she had too much damage of her own to understand how.