The Ruby Kiss (7 page)

A red mist filled Ruby’s gaze, and she punched Nightshade on the shoulder. “Embarrassing
us?
I’m the one who’s been kidnapped and dragged here half-naked.” She struggled in his arms. “Put me down!” She hated depending on anyone else. She could look after herself.

Nightshade lowered her to her feet, scowling; then the sharpness of his gaze softened and he released a pent-up breath. “I’m sorry.”

As he looked down at the ground, she felt a little kick of
remorse in her chest. Nightshade had answered her cry for help and stood up for her. Yet, here she was taking out her anger on him when it was clearly the king’s fault she’d been kidnapped.

She touched Nightshade’s arm, and his eyes rose to meet hers. “I’m really glad you’re here. I wanted to see you again. I’m just a little stressed out right now.”

He gave a single brief nod, and she hoped she was forgiven.

Ruby faced the king with a questioning lift of her eyebrows. “Why
did
you have me dragged here against my will?”

Twister dug in his pocket and tossed three gold coins toward the beak-noses. Then he pivoted around and stared at Ruby. He subjected her to his brooding scrutiny while he fingered his scarred chin. “Tell me about your parents, Ruby.”

The coil of tension inside her wound tighter. She doubted he wanted to know that her mother had been obsessed with supernaturals and it had eventually gotten her killed. He wanted to know about her father. She did, too, but she had a nasty feeling her father’s identity was about to get her into trouble.

Nightshade stepped closer, and his hand rested lightly at her waist. “You have nothing to fear while I’m here,” he said softly.

She drew in a shaky breath and released it. “If my mother’s to be believed, my father looked like an angel.”

Devin said under his breath, “I assume ‘angel’ translates to golden hair and white feathery wings. Got to be Kade.”

An excited chatter rose from the crowd, and people started to scatter with a patter of running feet.

“Thor’s blood!” Twister glanced around as if he’d just woken from a trance. “I should have known better than to do this in public. Word that we’ve found the new Mistress will get back to the Seelie Court within minutes. We must get her to safety before the Seelie huntsmen send out their specters to track her.”

The unquestioning acceptance that her father wasn’t human numbed Ruby with shock. Despite her mother’s stories and Ruby’s strange magical affliction, until that moment, she hadn’t entirely believed it was true.

“Hold on! Why’s she in danger from the Seelie Court? Tell me what’s happening,” Nightshade demanded. But Twister had already hurried away, issuing orders to break camp.

Ruby had been wondering the same thing. On unsteady legs, she took half a step back against the reassuring solidity of his body. His arms closed around her, and his warm strength helped ground her.

Devin closed in and placed a hand on Nightshade’s shoulder, making sure to keep his whispered words quiet. “Kade is one of the few winged individuals in the Seelie Court. His mother was the Mistress of the Beasts. I’m sorry to be blunt, Ruby, but I haven’t time to dress up the truth. Kade’s one of the Seelie huntsmen, and he’s a nasty piece of work. Eavan and Nairne, the Seelie king and queen, have threatened to throw him out of their court many times, but they’ve never followed through because they couldn’t risk offending his mother. Now his mother’s dead, his only chance of maintaining his privileged position is if he controls you.”

So, her father was a selfish jerk. No surprise there after the way he’d seduced her mother, then never shown his face again.

“I’m not a lost bag he can reclaim now he thinks I’m useful. He can go to hell,” Ruby snapped. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

“I’m afraid that’s not how things work here,” Devin said on a sigh. “If you are the new Mistress of the Beasts, you’re a valuable commodity. As an unbonded female, some male will claim you. We must make sure whoever it is has your best interests at heart.”

Ruby laughed without humor. “The man who tries to claim me better have balls of steel.”

A grin flashed across Devin’s face, and he slapped Nightshade on the shoulder. “You might have met your match, my friend,” he announced.

Nightshade glanced suspiciously at the nearby crowd. “I must take her to safety.”

Devin ran his gaze over Ruby, annoying her. “She’s well built. Can you fly carrying her?”

“Hey, pretty boy”—Ruby poked Nightshade’s friend in the chest—“I’m not deaf.”

His hands skimmed through the air, outlining the shape of a curvy woman. “Well built in a good way, Ruby. Take her to the Unseelie Court,” he added to Nightshade.

Nightshade glanced at her, clearly seeking her agreement. “Sounds like the safest place for you at the moment,” he said.

She huffed a frustrated breath. What she really wanted to do was return home with Nightshade and take up where they’d left off, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think she could protect herself if these Seelie huntsmen followed her home. “Where exactly is the Unseelie Court?”

“Follow me.” Twister appeared out of the bustling crowd and snapped his fingers to capture their attention. The air shimmered. His outline dissolved, then re-formed in the shape of a golden eagle, and without touching the ground the bird soared into the night sky.

Ruby’s mouth dropped open. “Strewth,” she whispered. “He just changed shape!”

“That’s what he’s named for.” Devin glanced up when the eagle swooped low with an impatient screech. “Twisting means changing shape. Better get going before you lose him.”

After seeing Twister morph into an eagle, being carried into the air by a man with wings seemed almost prosaic.

* * *

By the time Nightshade landed near Twister beside a grassy hump, Ruby was shivering with cold on the outside but tingly and hot on the inside. With all the kerfuffle before they took flight, she hadn’t considered what it would feel like being in Nightshade’s arms while he flew. The intimate ripple of his muscles against her body as he powered his wings soon wiped all worry from her mind and reminded her of the excitement of having his big body pressed over hers in bed.

Between one blink and the next, Twister had transformed back into a man. “We need to get inside. The Seelie specters have found her.”

Ruby followed his gaze to see two ghostly white shapes streaking through the air toward them. A shiver racked her already chilled body. They exuded malevolence.

“Open the damn door,” Nightshade shouted.

Twister kicked a boulder half buried in the ground, exposing a hole in the side of the mound. Nightshade jumped through, carrying Ruby, Twister close on his heels. The door thumped shut behind them. They caught their breaths in stunned silence.

“Were those ghosts?” Ruby whispered, having found the insubstantial white creatures more disturbing than anything she’d ever seen.

“Seelie hunters send out specters to track their prey,” Twister explained. “As far as I know, specters are thought forms created by the hunter’s minds. The strength of a specter depends on the strength of the hunter. Some specters can only track; others can disable prey until the hunter arrives.”

Ruby hugged herself, hoping she didn’t meet the Seelie hunters whose minds had produced those two sinister creatures.

The door opened again, and Devin stepped through. “The specters have chased you down,” he announced.

“Old news, Dev,” Twister replied. “Show Ruby and
Nightshade to my study. I’ll be back shortly.” He strode away down the hall.

Ruby shivered. Devin shrugged off his coat and held it out.

Nightshade stiffened. “I’d have given you my coat if I had one,” he whispered.

“I know you would.” She pressed her cheek against the bulge of his pectoral muscle, his heart thumping steadily beside her ear. She didn’t know what she would have done without him tonight. She was deeply in his debt.

He lowered her to the ground and draped Devin’s coat around her shoulders. Ruby snuggled into the warmth of the oversized garment and closed her eyes. The fabric smelled wonderful, like the incense she burned in her art studio while she worked.

Devin led them along a corridor of hard-packed earth. Ruby kept a wary eye on her feet, ready to evade any attack by rampant plant growth that might occur. Devin noticed.

“You can relax. No one’s powers work in the Bunker,” he said. “The place is ensorcelled to absorb all magic to feed its protective spells. Nothing gets inside the Bunker unless Twister wants it in.”

Magic?
In the back of her mind, she’d known her power to make things grow was magic, but since her mother died in suspicious circumstances she had tried to rationalize magic away. It seemed she couldn’t hide from the truth any longer.

The short earthen corridor soon gave way to a stone-built hall that sloped down at a gentle angle, taking them deeper underground. Wooden doors were set into the walls at intervals. Every ten yards, a narrower passage led off to either left or right. After about ten minutes, Devin took a turn and opened the door at the end of the corridor.

“These are Twister’s private rooms,” he announced, holding the door open. Nightshade went in first and checked to make sure it was safe.

She had no expectations of what she’d find on the other side of the door, so Ruby was momentarily transfixed with surprise when she entered. All green leather and dark wood, the room seemed a masculine study lifted out of a historic house and buried underground. A Chesterfield settee flanked by matching chairs sat in front of a roaring fire in a hearth. The richly polished antique furniture glowed in the firelight, along with gleaming brass knobs and handles. Lights flickered within glass sconces on the walls, giving the room a slumberous glow. The only modern thing visible in the room was an Apple MacBook on a desk at the far end.

The upside of having no windows was extra wall space. Bookshelves stacked with old leather-bound volumes covered one wall, while a fascinating collection of metal contraptions decorated the other three. Devin dropped into one of the chairs, but Ruby and Nightshade both circled the room examining the whirring, ticking, clicking metal curios: circles spun within circles, hands clicked back and forth, pendulums rose and fell, and small doors opened and closed on tiny figures and animals.

Nightshade stopped by a leather-topped table holding a complex model of a wheel containing ball bearings. “One of Leonardo Da Vinci’s perpetual motion machines,” he said, dropping to his haunches to get a better look. He glanced around with awed incredulity. “Fascinating. All these devices must be perpetual motion machines.”

“Are you an enthusiast?” Twister asked from the doorway.

Ruby turned, surprised she hadn’t heard the door open. Twister tossed her a blanket. She removed Devin’s coat, wrapped herself in the blanket like a disaster victim and, feeling shell-shocked by the bizarre changes in her life, sagged into a chair before the fire.

Nightshade and Twister discussed perpetual motion, so Ruby sank into a sleepy stupor. She roused when a small creature
with brown stick-thin legs and arms, which she recognized as a brownie, brought oatcakes and mugs of mulled wine. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she started eating. But as she chewed, a terrible thought hit her.

“My house is unlocked, and I’ve forgotten about my poor dogs.” She put down her plate and forced herself up on aching legs. What she wanted to do was sleep for a week, but she couldn’t leave her dogs alone.

Twister cast her a veiled look. “If you leave the Bunker, you’ll be an easy target for the Seelie hunters. Once they have you, you’ll be lost to me. Lost to
us,
I mean.”

“Is there no way I can sneak out without the specters seeing me?” Ruby asked. “Nightshade can fly me home and back. Quick. It would give me a chance to get some decent clothes.”

“Seelie hunters now know the taste of the Mistress’s power. You’ll never evade their specters,” Twister said. “I can find you something more suitable to wear.”

Reality hit Ruby like a slap across the face. She couldn’t go to fetch her dogs. She couldn’t even wear decent clothes. While she had her damned affliction, fabric made from cotton, silk, or wool unraveled and behaved like rabid spaghetti.

Her legs trembled. She dropped back onto the sofa and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to hold back tears of weary frustration. She hated her affliction, hated having to depend on these people. She just wanted to go home.

Twister issued orders to someone to fetch her dogs and secure her house.

“Ruby?” Nightshade said. He put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure your dogs will be all right.”

“It’s not that,” she mumbled. When she’d finally reached the age where she could be independent from her harebrained mother, she’d promised herself never again to allow anyone control of her life. Her mother hadn’t cared what was best for
Ruby. She had been obsessed with finding Ruby’s father and expected Ruby to somehow use her power to sense where he was. When she couldn’t, her mother accused her of not trying hard enough. Because of her affliction she’d been made to feel like a failure. Now Ruby had a home and career she loved, and she would never allow herself to lose her independence, all she’d worked so hard to achieve, everything she’d done to be normal and forget the past.

Twister came and stood over her. “It’s a formality, but I want to verify that you are the Mistress of the Beasts.”

“What sort of power does the Mistress wield?” Nightshade asked.

“Who cares,” Ruby snapped. “Just tell me how to get rid of it.”

A stunned silence met her statement.

“That’s not possible,” Twister replied. He signaled to Nightshade to move out of his way, and he sat beside her on the sofa.

Nightshade crouched down in front of Ruby. He squeezed her hands. “I’ll be right here all the time.”

Ruby watched the king warily. She sensed no malice in him, but the chilling resolve in his eyes set her nerves jumping.

“The Mistress of the Beasts can manipulate the life force present in any living organism,” the Unseelie king began. “Magic is muted in the Bunker, but if you truly are the new Mistress, my beasts will connect with you. I’m a shape-shifter,” he reminded her. Then he held out a hand, the palm scored and callused.