Azrael pushed him against the brick wall in a sudden flurry of motion. “Shut up.”
Duncan’s lips quirked at the corners. Normally he’d have come off the wall swinging, but right now, he seemed pleased to have made Azrael lose some of his cool, proving his point. “How has it been, seeing her again? Are you still just as ready to drag her to kneel at Faer’s feet?”
“Of course.” Azrael patted his brother’s shoulder before he stepped back, as if he were dusting him off. “What matters is restoring the autumn court. Protecting the Fae world. Let her face her sins…or at least, some of them.”
“The sins she doesn’t remember?” I asked, my voice barbed.
I had my own plans for the queen, but I had to admit, her punishment hardly seemed fair.
“She still committed them,” Azrael said, his voice as relaxed as ever. “Let’s go bring our wayward royal home.”
He broke off as Alisa stepped out of the clinic. Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head, revealing the long line of her neck. She still wore scrub pants, but her long-sleeved t-shirt cuffs had been pushed halfway up her slender forearms.
A truck turned the corner, moving slowly. As it came close to Alisa, something rang a subconscious alarm bell for me, and I started forward.
The truck slowed. Alisa started down the sidewalk, heading for the metro stop. She turned suddenly, as if she felt the threat coming.
One of the men leaned down and snatched her, picking her up with ease that no human should have.
I broke into a run, chasing the truck. It picked up speed as soon as her feet had left the pavement, even though they were still wrestling with her. She kicked one man in the face, and he almost dropped her back over the side.
Her purse fell on the pavement and exploded open, scattering makeup and a paperback and knives across the ground, and I jumped over the debris.
One of the guys hit her across the head, and she fell to her knees in the back of the truck. Her wide eyes met mine, just for a second, full of fear.
Then she fell forward, into the bed of the pickup.
I launched myself into the air to catch the back of the truck, knowing it was an almost impossible feat.
I almost made it. Landed hard on the pavement. Stumbled, caught myself, kept running, despite the sudden ache in my ankle.
Then another car slammed its brakes to a stop just ahead me. Duncan glowered at me from the driver’s side. “You could be smarter.”
“I could,” I admitted. I threw open the back door and jumped in, and Duncan sped off before I even managed to get the door shut.
But he kept a distance from the truck, staying back so they wouldn’t realize we were following them. Azrael rubbed the back of his neck absently, and Duncan glanced over at him, one eyebrow cocked, as if he knew that Azrael was worried about her.
“Faer doesn’t care if we bring her back in pieces,” Duncan said.
“Would you shut up?” Azrael said. “I know you want to pretend you never loved her either, but your attempt at keeping your distance is exasperating. And it doesn’t actually fool anyone.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed, his hands tightening on the steering wheel, but he didn’t answer.
I desperately wanted to know more about that, but from the way Duncan reacted, now wasn’t the time to press.
“Let’s go rescue a princess.” Azrael’s tone brightened. “She’ll be thrilled to see us again. This couldn’t be more perfect. She should be much more compliant when she realizes how much she needs us.”
I’d say they were probably both psychopaths, but well, they were Fae and they were royalty. That made them both psychopaths twice over.
Chapter Eight
Alisa
I woke up slowly. My head ached, and so did my neck. When I shifted, trying to get comfortable, I couldn’t move far. My arms were behind me, my shoulders tense, and I couldn’t change position.
Fuck.
My head jerked up as I realized I was tied to a chair. My vision was blurry at first as I looked around. There were two men standing in the room with me, both with big shit-eating, evil grins. I was in what looked like a haunted house.
Or what might soon become a haunted house.
“Oh, there she is!” The man in front of me clapped his hands together in an expression of sociopathic joy.
My neck still ached, and I moved my head back and forth, trying to work out the kinks enough to raise my eyes to his face. Right now I was stuck looking at the paunch that strained over the waistband of his jeans.
I blinked at him. “Your ugly face is oddly familiar.”
“You’re going to have an ugly face by the time we’re done with you,” he promised.
“Where do I know you from?” It was so hard to remember who I’d pissed off most recently.
“This might refresh your memory.” His friend said as he stepped too close to me, then pulled up his shirt to reveal a jagged scar across his blindingly white skin.
I winced. “No, it really doesn’t.”
I rarely left a bad guy alive behind me, and this was why. If you were going to fight, better finish it.
The first guy stepped close to me, grabbing the back of my chair in one hand as he leaned down. His other hand landed on my thigh, and I gritted my teeth against the burning sensation of an unwanted touch.
I didn’t remember anything from my life before, but I hated being crowded at the best of times. I always wondered if something had happened that made me that way.
“A year ago, we were looking for breeders,” he said, his voice intimately close to my ear, and I would’ve leaned away if he wouldn’t have interpreted the movement as fear. “You interfered.”
“You’re shifters,” I said. Not all shifters were bad—I’d worked with some before—but there were pockets of evil. Just like humans, only these assholes were furrier. Then understanding dawned. “Oh! You’re the pack that was stealing girls off the street and turning them against their will. The assholes with the roofies!”
Yeah, I’d ruined their fun. I’d gone into the bar where they hunted, looking cute and harmless. They’d tried to roofie me, and I’d played their game. Until they got me out into the alleyway, where they discovered I was actually very, very awake.
I hadn’t realized I left Mr. Zig-Zag Scar alive. Sloppy work. I shook my head at myself. I still had to talk to Elly about my solo Hunting escapade and now I’d have to tell her I’d Hunted sloppy a year ago. Carter was going to laugh his ass off at me. I’d never hear the end of it.
I’d been headed to dinner at Elly’s after work. Would she and the other Hunters be suspicious enough to come looking for me? Would they even have a chance at tracking down these dirtballs before they killed me?
Zig-Zag finally dropped his shirt. Thank Zeus. It was bad enough I was probably going to die here, I didn’t need to be blinded by his ugly stomach too.
“Now you’re going to be one of our breeders,” the first one promised me. “Once you give me a baby, I’m going to cut off little pieces of you until you beg me to let you die.”
“That’s no way to treat the mother of your child.” Thank god, that was a very long-term plan. They didn’t plan to kill me today.