“I know where we need to go next. That’s what my vision was about.”
In all the fighting, he’d almost forgotten about the vision. He glanced at her. She was so tall, they were nearly on eye level. “Oh?”
“Tokyo. We need to go to Tokyo.”
Shock hit him first.
Then anger.
Because surely this fae woman was totally and utterly yanking his fucking chain.
4
Although Niamh was grateful the werewolf had come to her rescue, ultimately that wasn’t why she’d decided to stick with him.
Part of her vision had been about him. His name had tickled her mind as images of Tokyo came at her. The mountain was Mount Fuji so the garden must be in Tokyo … and it all had to do with Kiyo.
Unable to return to either her hotel or Kiyo’s apartment, Niamh had used her steadily building strength to conjure a backpack Kiyo had described that was in the dingy flat. It had his passport and a change of clothes inside it.
Niamh conjured the emergency bag she kept ready to go in her hotel.
“So this vision … it’s about me, right?” he asked as he reluctantly drove toward the airport. “That’s why you want to go to Tokyo and all of a sudden, you want me to come with you.”
She sighed, knowing it was too obvious to hide the truth. “Yeah. There’s something there about you, and it’s important. I don’t know what. My visions don’t work like that. They come in waves … almost like chapters in a story. Each chapter provides a little more information and usually it happens the closer I get to my destination or quarry.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
Niamh remained stubbornly silent. She didn’t know why this new flood of information in her vision included Kiyo, but she knew she didn’t trust him enough to confide in him. About any of it.
“Are you kidding?” His voice was worryingly calm and low.
Glancing at him, their eyes met as he took his off the road to glower at her. She wondered what his smile was like.
“Seriously? You want me to haul my ass back to a city I haven’t been to—” He cut off abruptly.
Interesting. “You haven’t been to …?”
“You tell me nothing, I tell you nothing.”
“Can you really blame me?” Her tone was conciliatory. Niamh wasn’t the type to be at loggerheads with someone. It wasn’t in her nature. And it seemed she was stuck with the werewolf for a while. “Think about it from my perspective. You kidnapped me using the only weapon on earth I’m vulnerable to. For a start, not many folks know what I am or what can hurt me, so you’re immediately in my ‘be wary of’ category.
“Plus, when I came out of my vision, there were dead bodies everywhere, hearts ripped out, and one of them was decapitated. When you appeared in all your naked glory, you had no sword in hand—actual sword, I mean.” Her cheeks bloomed hot and she cursed the nonsense blushing this man incited in her. She’d rarely ever blushed in her life before. Damn him. “So, one can only conclude that you ripped a man’s head off with your bare hands.”
The werewolf didn’t respond. Instead he gestured to a gas station. “We can change here.”
Niamh rolled her eyes at his evasiveness. “Fionn wouldn’t hire just anyone to watch out for me. He’d hire the strongest supernatural he knew that he could trust.”
Kiyo flicked her a considering look as he glided the car into a parking spot.
“He trusts you, but that doesn’t mean I do. I only started to trust him a few months ago, for goodness’ sake.” She sighed. “It’s going to take a lot more than a bloody fight in the snow to assure us of one another’s intentions. I can’t tell you about the vision. Not yet. If ever. But I promise you that we absolutely should go to Tokyo. I feel it in my gut. And my instincts about these visions have never let me down. I’m the reason Rose and Fionn are together. Did they tell you that?”
“They’re together because they’ve become Fate’s bitch. True mates.”
Niamh raised an eyebrow. “You have a low opinion of the bond?”
“I have a low opinion of anything that tries to control me.”
“That’s a funny way to look at love.”
Apparently done with the conversation, Kiyo moved to get out of the car.
Niamh grabbed his arm to stop him, and he cut her a bored, questioning look.
Feeling a strange tingling sensation running up her arms from her fingertips, she released her grip. “I just need you to know I’m not messing you about, taking you somewhere you don’t want to go for the hell of it. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”
His beautiful upper lip curled into that irritating sneer of his. “I don’t get upset.”
She grinned, mostly just to annoy him. “Well, you do a wonderful impersonation of it, then.”
The wolf’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly on her smile. “Please tell me you’re not one of those ‘I can make sunshine and roses out of piles of shit and pools of blood’ kind of people?”
Niamh chuckled and pushed open the passenger-side door but she didn’t answer him.
Her lack of response to his curtness seemed to perturb him. He grabbed their bags out of the back and handed over hers. His eyes scoured her face, as if he couldn’t quite figure her out.
They separated inside the twenty-four-hour gas station to their respective restrooms. Despite lingering weariness, Niamh’s mind turned over and over at the recent developments. Kiyo’s anger at returning to Tokyo only validated the vision. And he was angry. He was good at hiding how much, but Niamh sensed it. It pulsed beneath his skin. There was something important there, though not just to the werewolf but to her, and possibly others. It was maybe even about the bigger picture. The rest of the vision certainly had been.
For weeks she’d wanted her visions to have a coherent direction and mission. Like the visions before when she was trying to save the other fae-borne.
Well, wish granted. The visions had returned to the fae-borne.
And now Niamh bloody wished they hadn’t.
Despite her turmoil, or perhaps because of it, as Niamh changed into dry clothes, she imagined Kiyo changing in the men’s restroom. Heat bloomed on her cheeks, and other places on her body tingled in delight at the thought. When he’d come rushing out of those trees naked and wounded from defending her, she wasn’t going to lie—a very deep thrill moved through her.
The werewolf might be a brooding pain in the ass who’d tried to coerce her into accepting his guardianship, but all that beautiful fawn skin wrapped around taut muscle made him very fun to look at. Granted, she was somewhat wary that he was powerful enough to remove someone’s head from their body with his bare hands.
Also he moved faster than other wolves. He’d caught her completely off guard back at the club. And only someone fast and powerful could have taken down five members of The Garm by himself.
The airport was only forty minutes west in the light, early-morning traffic. They were both tense, on guard for The Garm in case they’d sent more than one unit after her. Once they abandoned the car in a parking lot, they strode determinedly toward departures.