Undeniable (The Druids Book 1) Read online

  Granger finished the thought, “a fey.”

  Chapter Six

  Waking brought the pain, but not as deeply as Peyton expected. Shifting even the slightest bit elicited an unconscious groan. Every muscle ached as if he’d hit the gym mercilessly, and now could barely convince his rebellious body to move. At least the surface beneath him had some give, and didn’t jab into his back, like the stone floor had. With effort, his eyelids managed to slit open. The glare from the sun pierced his brain, but he blinked and fought to focus despite that.

  “Returning to the land of the living?” A woman’s voice asked.

  Turning his head, slow because his body protested endlessly, he mumbled, “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  The dark elf woman didn’t look older than twenty, but she would look exactly that way for the endless centuries of her life, as long as a bounty hunter like Peyton didn’t catch hold of her. Like what he had been, he corrected, until his old bosses got crushed in the Brightner Building that day. Her black hair sported blue and amber streaks in the long pixie cut, and given the fey, it was hard to know if that was dyed or natural. The wooden chair supporting her was rocked onto the back legs, and propped against the wall next to him. Her crossed ankles rested by the foot of the small cot where Peyton reclined. She gave him an overly bright smile that proved that she delighted a bit too much in his personal agony.

  “Water?” He asked, his parched tongue wanting to stick to the roof of his mouth. More than a small part of him expected her to just laugh at him. Not that he deserved anything different. Not from the fey.

  She handed him a half emptied bottle of water. Peyton didn’t care who’d been drinking on it. He downed the rest of it anyway.

  Bringing the chair down onto all four feet, she asked, “How do you feel?”

  “Like stir fried crap.” Bottle emptied, he let his arm flop limply at his side.

  “Good.” She grinned brightly. “I had hoped I didn’t heal you too much.”

  His eyes closed. A masochist healer. How was he not surprised? “No worries there.” His hand responded to his bidding and rubbed at his face. The lingering tingling wasn’t from the healing, and he groaned in recollection. “I’m cursed.” The words whispered, testing the reality of the nightmare.

  “That you are, handsome.” The dark elf healer patted his cheek, and grinned wickedly.

  Even the light impact sent pained flares firing across his nerves. Peyton drew aside, wanting away from her merciless amusement. An uncoordinated arm brushed her away. Diverting her from the torment, he asked, “You’re Selandra?”

  “That, I am.” She rose from the chair and, with her arms crossed, she moved to stand at the foot of the hospital cot. “I’m sure we’ll be getting well acquainted in the future. I’ve no doubt Deacon isn’t done beating the hell out of you.”

  “Good to know you’ll have my back,” he groaned with sarcasm, forcing himself to sit up on the side of the cot. The infirmary consisted of six identical hospital cots, but the others were empty. “What happens now?” He wouldn’t necessarily buy into whatever the plan was, but he wanted to know what they had in store for him, since death wasn’t it.

  “Now you get to work.” Deacon’s voice was the last thing Peyton wanted to hear, but he wasn’t surprised by it in the least. The Changeling emerged from the doorway at the end of the long room. “On your feet, slave. The boss has a job for you.”

  Not arguing the ‘slave’ part just yet, he pushed himself up, and was moderately surprised that his legs supported him. No one had been concerned enough with his comfort to have even taken off his shoes. “What job?”

  “Lying, cheating, stealing, possibly a kidnapping or two.” Deacon slapped a not-so-friendly hand to Peyton’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough to make him wince. “Something perfect for your skill set.”

  There didn’t seem to be much benefit in fighting Deacon’s insistent push that ushered him out of the modern environment of the infirmary into the more medieval flavor of the small hamlet outside. Dozens of fey milled about, living their lives in this hidden away place. Peyton glanced around, taking it in. The entire village appeared to consist of a couple of handfuls of small buildings backing against a city wall of stone. A modest castle, with a footprint smaller than most mansions, rose to his right. It didn’t surprise Peyton that Deacon prodded him in that direction.

  The throne room opened before him with onyx and obsidian accents to compliment the gray marble with its black veins. The throne itself seemed fashioned out of some black lacquered wood and deep purple satin. The Sidhe lounged upon his throne, long, sleek black hair falling to his waist. The gunmetal gray and purple of his cloak and centuries-out-of-date finery matched the throne room. Probably had them commissioned at the same time. This was Credne, and his chosen domain proved his superior opinion of himself.

  With Credne’s cold glare on them, Deacon planted a foot in the back of Peyton’s knee, forcing him down on the marble floor. Jerking his elbow back, Peyton slammed it into Deacon’s thigh in retaliation, earning himself a punch in the back of the ribs.

  “Enough.” Credne’s voice reflected his boredom.

  Kneeling on the cold, unforgiving stone, Peyton understood his place in this Sidhe’s scheme of things. It wasn’t the place Peyton was willing to accept, but when he tried to rise, Deacon snatched his hair and forced him to raise his face towards the Sidhe. Peyton hissed, “I won’t serve you.”

  “Of course, you will.” Credne rose with a slow grace. “Where else would you go? The magic of the enchantment will only last a brief time, dissipating like the mist, leaving the terrible torment of emptiness in its stead. Only the renewal of the enchantment can save you from madness and death, and whom among the Sidhe can you count as friend enough to aid you in your time of need?”

  A sobering thought, indeed. Given all he’d done, the most mercy he could expect was a bullet to the brain. Or maybe a swift beheading with a sword. But Peyton knew he didn’t deserve that much, and couldn’t bring himself to even contemplate the idea deeply. He stopped struggling against Deacon and just fixed his attention on Credne, his doom and, apparently, his only hope. If one believed the rules and couldn’t finesse a way around them. “What do you want from me?”

  “You will serve me, and the fey you have harmed, to balance the scales of your debt.” The Sidhe’s long, tapered finger stroked from the curve of Peyton’s jaw down to the tip of his chin. This time the trail of magic that he left behind tingled with an ache that echoed a longing deeper into his soul. As much as Peyton wanted to pull away from it, to twist his head away and deny Credne’s influence upon him, he knew there was no escape while the magic latched onto him. Credne’s voice was cool, utterly without compassion, as he murmured, “You will be redeemed, even if it takes the remainder of your life to do it.”

  With the barest nod from Credne, Deacon reached around and tore open the front of Peyton’s shirt. When he started to protest and struggle the Changeling hooked his arms under Peyton’s and then locked his hands behind Peyton’s head in a full nelson, forcing him to keep his arms outstretched. Peyton could do nothing as Credne violated him again with magic; this time painting with a burning finger across his chest in some scrolling mark that reached the caps of each shoulder and coiled down his sternum. With his face forced down like it was, he watched the black magic penetrating his skin, branding him like a tattoo, in a pattern that could have been a mixture of Celtic knotwork and thorn-like tribal markings. It smelled like seared flesh, and hurt like it, even if the skin showed no damage beyond the discoloring.

  When Credne finished, and Deacon released him, Peyton gripped at the marks still burning into his flesh, unable to dig it out of himself. He hissed, with equal parts pain and fury, “What did you do to me?”

  “I’ve marked you as mine. You will be my agent in
the human realm and deal with the matters that a fey could not. Deacon will aid you and be your liaison.” With the upturning of his palm, the Glamoured illusion of a bowl appeared in his hand. Fine gold filigree wove in Celtic knotwork to create the designs that reflected the images of the four seasons as the bowl slowly rotated before him. “This is the first of the Treasures of the Tuatha de Dannan. It is Cerridwen’s cauldron. Lost to the Sidhe it has been since ages past, when the Great Veil was woven and the wizards driven out of Ireland. We know it still exists, but it eludes discovery. I believe the wizards made off with it during that dark time.” The illusion faded from the Sidhe’s hand, and, empty once more, it closed. “Now, you will discover its location and return it unto me.”

  “That shouldn’t be an impossible task,” Peyton said, more to himself than anyone around him. The pain in the markings faded back into just the insult of it. “But more than a little tricky and hell of a lot of dangerous.”

  “Then you, my very capable agent, are the right man for the job.” Credne dismissed him, with the turning of his back, one hand sweeping the cloak aside as he spun and walked away without looking back.

  It was a job he’d do, for now, but this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. Credne wouldn’t own him. No one would.

  There had to be a way out of this.

  And he would find it.

  The game wasn’t over.

  Chapter Seven

  After the incident at the wizards’ headquarters, which the BBC would no doubt talk about for months to come, Peyton dumped his old phone. The SD card, however, he’d kept. He rummaged for it now, from the bottom of the cup that usually just held a bunch of mostly dead ink pens that he meant to throw away, but instead always tossed back into the collection. A thousand pens, not a single drop of ink. Blowing the debris off the card, he inserted it into his new phone. The numbers and a few other files transferred quickly, and then he tossed the SD card back into the cup until the next time he needed to replace a phone. It happened far more often than one would have imagined.

  Running his fingers through his still wet hair, and walking across his flat in nothing but the bath towel, Peyton thumbed through the contacts list until he found ‘Tower’, his personal codename for London. Given how she seemed to haunt him and spell trouble at every turn, he thought the ‘Tower of London’ was a good association for the druidess.

  With the phone pressed to his head, he willed her to answer. Moving aside the curtains just a finger’s width, he glanced down from the second story flat over the pub to the pizzeria across the street. Deacon was just walking out with the takeout he’d gone for when discovering that Peyton’s fridge hadn’t been freshly stocked in months. Besides from an empty carton of OJ, some now fossilized take-out, and some packets of ketchup of dubious age, he’d not bothered to stick around the flat long enough to go shopping, much less cooking.

  “Who is this?” London’s voice edged with exasperation and suspicion.

  “Who were you expecting?” He almost smiled at the taunt. Almost.

  There was a pause, before she answered, “Not you, anyway.”

  She recognized his voice, Peyton could tell, but that wasn’t quite the attitude he was anticipating. Initial instinct suspected that she wasn’t free to talk. And he didn’t have time to mince words. “Just touching base,” his own reluctance telegraphing the need to talk with her soon.

  “Right.” London’s response held the right nuance. Message received.

  Which was good, since the sound of Deacon’s boots on the exterior wooden staircase drew closer. “Catch up with you later, then.” He hung up and tossed the phone through his open bedroom door into the pile of blankets, and walked back into the bathroom, where the shower water was still running, just as the door to the flat open.

  “Get your butt out here or you’ll get nothing but crust. I’m starved.” The Changeling shouted.

  “Be right there.” Peyton stepped into the shower, claimed a liberal sprinkle of water over his person, and then shut off the water before he stepped back out. With a fresh towel around his hips, and another one scrubbing through his hair, he emerged with a lazy stroll. The open pizza box adorned the coffee table, along with a couple of bottles of Guinness. Peyton snagged a slice of pizza on the way to his bedroom. With his mouth full, he called back to the Changeling. “No mushrooms next time.”

  “Then next time you get it yourself.” Deacon propped his foot on the coffee table, not too close to the food, and switched the station to a rugby game.

  Surely, Deacon didn’t intend to hound his every step for eternity. Peyton hoped this as he dressed, the door to the bedroom a quarter of the way open to keep an ear on Deacon as much as to keep him from getting suspicious. Not that the Changeling needed much of an excuse for that. It wasn’t like Peyton gave him a lot of reason to trust him. Their history spanned a lot of deception and backstabbing, as well as reluctantly working together, and it looked like that wasn’t going to change any time soon. It’d been that way when they’d worked for the wizards, and it was that way again under Credne, only the roles between him and the Changeling had reversed.

  Karma, Deacon had called it. And he wasn’t kidding.

  Frenemies wasn’t a good way to describe their dysfunctional association, but nothing else seemed to fit better. Screwing each other over and periodically trying to kill each other aside, he’d known Deacon longer even than London, and most of his history with the wizards tangled with Deacon’s time with them. And to be fair, Deacon was probably right. Getting Peyton cursed by a Sidhe was almost poetic in its justice.

  But cursed or not, he wasn’t out of this game, yet. Even if it was a game not so much about winning as surviving.

  Dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a gray pullover with the sleeves pushed up, Peyton returned to the main room of his flat. Only half-listening to the game, he set himself up with another slice of the pizza, a Guinness, and his laptop. Time to hit the research. “Was that image of the bowl accurate?”

  “It’s a cauldron, mate. Get it right.” Deacon slumped in the sofa when the other team scored. “Oh, come on! They should have got that!”

  Accessing the hidden partition on the hard drive, Peyton checked the files from the last time he hacked the wizards’ corporate server and backed up everything he could get his sticky fingers into. Escaping the wizards had always been his hope, and his plan. When London put the opportunity in front of him, he’d barely hesitated long enough to be certain she had the skills to pull it off. Even figuring that she fell a little short, Peyton knew he could tip the balance either way, and he’d opted to end his conscription to them.

  Sure, it had benefited the fey, but that hadn’t been his reason.

  Benefiting the fey wasn’t his reason now, either.

  Peyton tipped the bottle back as he considered the files before him, then pulled up the search function. Credne thought the wizards made off with the cauldron. If they had, there would be a record of it, including photos.

  Finding the image didn’t take long. Credne had gotten it right, down to the filigree of the design. Even with mundane photography and bad lighting, the beauty of the fey treasure stunned the eye. It was the details of the chain of possession log, which the wizards had been as meticulous in keeping as they were distrustful of each other, that had him slumping back in his seat with a thoughtful frown.

  The wizards had possessed the cauldron alright. And it had been in the safe in the Brightner Building when it came crashing to the ground.

  Just bloody perfect.

  Chapter Eight

  London thumbed off the phone, dropped it into the pocket of her leather jacket, and then leaned back with her elbows braced against the bar. The place smelled of meadows, wild flowers, and frost; the scents she’d come to associate with the various races of fey. On the far side of
the long club the band called the Fey Bangers played covers of popular songs. The club gave out fake fey ears of various lengths and styles for the audience to wear. Those who didn’t already have pointed ears, that is. It was one of the few places where the fey and non-fey mingled so openly. Even the band was really fey, not that most of the humans had any clue. London being one of the few exceptions.

  But, then again, she hadn’t been ‘just human’ in a long time.

  Across the crowded club, London watched the band’s drummer. The Unseelie boy just turned eighteen, and it was hard to imagine the deadly Sidhe was really so young. At the end of the day, she served her patron, but Malcolm had managed to claw his way into her heart. Hard to believe, given their past, but somehow it managed to happen. Knowing that agent Granger was picking through the magical evidence around the destruction of the wizard’s headquarters meant that probably, sooner or later, he’d clue in on Malcolm.

  They’d saved each other that day, London and Malcolm. Neither of them could have seen that coming. If at all possible, she was hoping to avoid the need to have to save him again. Not when the train wreck of a kid was finally getting his life on track. He had his band, with its modicum of popularity, and his girl, the band’s lead singer. He deserved a break.

  Tilting back her beer, more to fit in than to actually drink it, London scanned the crowd. No one that looked like an Interpol agent trying to act casual. But there were more dangers than just government spooks to worry about.