Dying Dreams (Book 1 of Dying Dreams Trilogy) (32 page)

“Thanks, Luce. Why don’t you and Allie come sit here and listen to what these gentlemen, Agent Rice and Agent Fulsom, have to say,” Clara said. “We’re going to attack Arty’s mansion.”

“Sweet,” Allie said. “It’s been boring as fuck around here lately.”

*SLOANE*

The redcaps took up positions around Arty’s house, and Fulsom and Sloane watched the building from the bushes. The afternoon sun beat down hard and the cars zipping past them on the road behind meant they had to move fast, before someone got suspicious. Luckily for them, the satyr seemed to love green growing things and had filled his small side and front yards with bushes and trees that gave them plenty of places to hide.

“This is without a doubt the dumbest thing we have ever done,” Fulsom hissed next to him.

“You can go any time.” Neither of them should have been there and they were very likely to get killed and then fired. He didn’t want Fulsom to leave, but he didn’t want his partner’s death on his hands, either. The plans Clara brought, borrowed from the courthouse where she worked as a clerk, gave them the layout of the house, but it didn’t give them any idea what kind of security system he had or how many guards, or even how many people lived there. The plan was a typical redcap plan, to storm the mansion and take out anyone they saw.

Fulsom grunted, as the redcaps crept up around them. “No one outside,” Newton whispered. “Let’s move in.”

The redcaps led the way, with Sloane and Fulsom following. Sloane held his gun, loaded with iron bullets, in one hand and a knife, with a gnarly eight foot iron blade, in the other. Strapped on his back was a sword that he’d had only a little training on, but could use in a pinch. He had two more blades on each leg and a gun on each hip, as well as another gun in a shoulder holster. Sloane knew he should be feeling something. He’d been in firefights, and he’d killed exactly three people before, but he’d never gone into a situation determined to kill everyone he saw, intending to rip the house apart to find Liza. He knew he should take a less destructive approach, that he should let logic lead, but all he cared about, all he could care about, was getting Liza out and keeping her safe.

Fulsom, a full fae who’d immigrated to the human world eight years ago, felt no such qualms. When Sloane had suggested they hold back, Fulsom had looked at him like he was crazy. They took Sloane’s mate, he said, and they should pay for that. In fairy, there would be no mercy given. Sloane hadn’t pushed farther, except to suggest they keep Arty alive for questioning, but Fulsom said they’d let Liza kill him. She was the one he’d hurt, and she could decide what kind of death he received.

By the time they reached the porch, the redcaps had already blown the door away with light explosives and were inside fighting a pixy and five trolls. Sloane and Fulsom sauntered past them and started looking for Liza. “You take downstairs,” Fulsom said. “I’ll go up.”

“No,” Sloane said, surprising himself. He felt a pull for the first time. “She’s upstairs.”

They were halfway up the stairs when a shot hit the wall inches from Sloane’s head. He and Fulsom dropped and peered through the railing to see a troll standing on the marble floor below, his gun still raised. Sloane and Fulsom fired at the same time and took out the troll in a matter of seconds. Two shots clean through the eyes. Trolls had skin so tough bullets wouldn’t penetrate and a shot to the eyes was the only way to kill them.

An explosion rocked them from below and Sloane leapt up the stairs, with Fulsom close behind. The stairs ended in a long hallway, filled with doors. Sloane started right and saw two satyrs, heading toward them. Satyrs were generally fun-loving creatures, but he’d never met one who didn’t fight dirty when they had to.

Sloane raised his gun, but the satyrs got low and moved fae fast, meaning they were full-blood. They took Sloane down at the knees, and he saw Fulsom go down next to him out of the corner of his eye. Sloane raised his blade, but the satyr crawled on top of him and grabbed his wrist, kneeing him hard in the balls on the way up. Pain flooded Sloane’s senses, along with the smell of liquor and brown sugar. Satyrs always smelled like liquor and brown sugar, and he’d never figured out if it was because they drank all the time or if the smell was just a part of them.

He bucked against the satyr, and the satyr hit him hard in the face with the butt of his gun, then wrapped his hands around Sloane’s neck. Sloane fought blurred vision and the stars that exploded in his head. He gasped for air and fought to shift enough to get his gun arm out from under his body, but the weight of the satyr had him pinned hard.

The hands at his neck were replaced by cold metal and he saw regret in the satyr’s eyes. Sloane twisted, but when he moved the blade bit into his flesh. He was trapped and his biggest regret was that Liza would be stuck there. Even if Reynolds got her out, she’d be sent to West Virginia to be a guinea pig. “Please,” Sloane said. “I have to save her.”

The satyr frowned. “She is necessary to our cause. You can’t have her.” He leaned forward a bit and Sloane tensed for the killing blow. “I’m sorry to have to kill you, it is not my nature.”

The satyr’s face exploded with a bang, and blood and bits of flesh dropped onto Sloane before the satyr’s body collapsed on him and was still. Sloane pushed him off and stood, wiping enough blood off his face to allow him to see. “Thanks,” he said, once he could see Fulsom standing before him, gun in hand.

Fulsom grunted and they moved forward together, Fulsom limping. Sloane glanced at Fulsom’s leg, a question on his face, but Fulsom shook his head and motioned for them to keep moving.

They found her behind the third door, in a pink, frilly room that appeared to have been designed for a six-year-old. Sloane almost didn’t see her in the bed, she was covered in so many layers of blankets, but her face stood out against the pink, pale white, thinner than it had been when he’d seen her last. She was asleep. Sloane went straight for her, but was stopped by Arty, who stepped into his path and put a gun to his chest.

“I might have let you take her,” Arty said. “She’s broken, I’m afraid, and of no more use to me, but you broke into my house and killed my staff, so I’m going to have to kill you.”

“No, you aren’t.” Liza’s voice sounded thin and hoarse, and she didn’t open her eyes. “You are going to die two days from now when I remove your head from your body and cut out your heart. Rice is going to survive today, and you’re going to walk away.”

Arty winced, but he gave no other sign that he’d heard Liza. “Out of respect for your mate, we should take our
discussion
into the hall.”

Sloane had left Fulsom in that hall and he had no problem turning and heading for the door to let his partner have a whack at Arty. He just had to make sure Fulsom didn’t kill Arty, since Liza clearly wanted that job. He was two steps from the door when a loud crash swung him back around to see Arty slump to the floor. Liza stared down at him, an ugly pink lamp in her hands, before her eyes went wide and she swayed on her feet. Sloane was next to her in a moment, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her to his chest.

“You look like death,” she said, her eyes wild, before she passed out. Sloane remembered the blood on his face and thought Liza’s description accurate. Sloane ran from the room, Fulsom next to him and headed for the stairs. A redcap, whose name he’d never learned, intercepted them.

“Feds are here,” he said. “Can’t leave this way.”

Sloane remembered there was a back staircase from the plans, and the redcap herded them in that direction. He didn’t lead them down the stairs, but took them up to the roof. The roof that had its own helicopter landing pad. Sloane shook his head, wondering what kind of people Arty knew with the carbon credits to fly a helicopter.

“The house is surrounded,” Newton said, a grin splitting his face. “I’ve always wanted to escape this way.” He shrugged off his backpack and pulled a cord on the bag. In seconds, the bag became a huge inflatable ball with a hole for them to climb inside it.

“Uh, yeah,” Fulsom said. “Or we could just take the fire escape.” He pointed across the heli pad to two metal struts on the roof.

Newton laughed. “Go ahead. I’m taking the ball.”

Sloane followed Fulsom, wondering how he was going to carry Liza and climb down the fire escape, but his concern was short-lived. When they reached the edge of the roof they could see that the metal ladder had been cut off about three feet from the rooftop. Fulsom groaned and started back toward Newton, who was already leaning the ball against the foot-high wall that surrounded the heli-pad. Newton winked at them and held the ball open for them to climb inside. It was suffocatingly tight and hot inside the ball and, when Newton slid in, Sloane was sure he’d be crushed by his accomplices before he made it to the ground. Not to mention the target they’d make trapped inside the ball.

Newton started rocking his body to get the ball off the roof, and Fulsom and Sloane followed suit. The movement forced them all even closer and, just as the ball tipped over the wall and off the roof, Liza started to scream.

The ball bounced off something and sent them careening to the ground at an even faster rate. The ball hit the ground with a bone-rattling thud, bounced once, hit again and popped, leaving them encased in two layers of plastic. “Woo-hoo,” Newton hollered. He pulled out a knife and slit the plastic open to allow them all to escape. Newton and Fulsom took off for the woods behind the house and Sloane followed, hoisting Liza back up into his arms. She fought against him, pounding his chest with her fists and swinging her legs like she was looking for something to kick.

“Liza, please. I need you to calm down.”

She didn’t hear him. She kept screaming and struggling. Her eyes were closed, scrunched tight, and he didn’t know if she was dreaming or if she was awake and the ball and the fall had frightened her.

“Liza,” he tried again, putting more force into his voice. “It’s Sloane. I’ve got you, but you’re going to get us both killed if you don’t calm down.” He repeated this in increasing volume, until it seemed to sink in, and Liza whimpered and stilled. He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to make it all better, but he had to get them as far away from Arty as possible, even though he wanted to go back and kill Arty long and slow for whatever he’d done to Liza.

He’d only made it a few steps into the woods when a shot whizzed past and embedded in the tree next to them, shooting out bark that smacked him in the face.

He dropped and moved behind another tree. He put Liza down and rose, pulling his gun as he did. He scanned the woods but saw nothing.

“Don’t shoot the pixy,” Liza muttered. Sloane didn’t know if she was speaking to him or dreaming. He noticed a flutter of green at the edge of the forest. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought they were wings. He swore under his breath. If there was any chance the shooter was a pixy, he couldn’t shoot. Liza had never asked him for anything, and he couldn’t deny her request, even if it was just a dream.

“If you’re a pixy, walk away. I’ve got Liza and I’m helping her. Just let me take her somewhere safe.”

“Where?” A male voice yelled. “To a lab where she’ll be treated like a science experiment?”

“No, I’m trying to keep her out of there.”

A shot rang out and Sloane ducked back behind the tree. He should have moved, but he couldn’t leave Liza and picking her up and moving her would give away any new cover he found. He didn’t have a whole lot of options, so he went for the truth and hoped it worked. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but Liza asked me not to shoot the pixy. I’m listening to her, because I’m her bonded mate. I’m not going to let any harm come to her.”

Silence settled over the forest, and Sloane figured he was screwed. “If that’s true, why doesn’t she tell me that herself?”

“Just shoot the fairy and let’s go,” Fulsom called from somewhere deeper in the forest.

“I’m a pixy, asshole. And I’m the one with the gun trained on your buddy, so let him answer the question, or I keep shooting.”

Sloane looked down at Liza, who was on the ground where he’d left her, her eyes open wide but blank, her mouth moving but making no sound. “She’s not…” Sloane’s voice cracked and he swallowed hard. “She’s not lucid.”

“I’m coming out. Don’t shoot me. I can help.”

Sloane watched the pixie, the same one from the front hall of Arty’s mansion, flitter up and fly through the trees to him. He landed gently next to Liza and placed a hand on her forehead. Sloane felt an unreasonable surge of jealousy, but he forgot it when Liza’s eyes cleared and she looked at the pixy. Pain filled her eyes and contorted her features, and she screamed. “Sleep,” the pixy said. Liza’s eyes closed, and her screams stopped.

The pixy fluttered up to Sloane’s eye level. There were tears in his eyes. “Arty used her. He made her touch ten different bodies and forced her to sleep after each one. It was more than her mind could handle. I’m not sure if she’ll ever be able to cope with what she’s been through. I told him… But I didn’t stop him.” He shook his head. “Her pain is on me. I will do what I can to heal her, but she needs time. She needs to sleep and stay inside herself until she’s ready to face the world again. I can’t help her until then.”

“And if she’s never ready?” Sloane asked, his heart pounding and his chest sore.

“Then I can help her to die.” The pixy looked down at Liza and sighed. “Where are you going to take her?”

“To Curtis,” Sloane said. He hadn’t thought it out, hadn’t expected Liza to need to be hidden, but he knew that there would be no better place to take her.

The pixy nodded, needing no more information. “I’ll check on her in three days.”

Sloane watched the pixy fly out of the forest, then bent to pick up Liza. When he lifted her, something pulled in his chest and pain exploded, making his vision go white and nearly causing him to drop her. He leaned against the nearest tree and breathed slowly and deeply, until he could see again. Exhaustion still nipped at his vision, making it a bit blurry, but he tightened his grip on Liza and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He moved in the general direction he’d heard Fulsom. He knew he could call out and Fulsom would help him, but he didn’t want to let go of Liza.