Hidden Passions (11 page)

"Fuck," he breathed. Sword Guy had just veered sideways between two office towers.

Did the alley dead-end? Was the faerie setting a trap? He knew Tony was behind him. Had he decided to make a stand?

Tony had a small spell-charged crossbow in his right bulletproof vest pocket. The tips of its bolts were solid electrum--unlike the ammo in his sidearm, which was only electrum plate. The bolts
might
disable the pureblood, if Tony hit him right.

Deciding this weapon was his best bet, Tony snapped the bow out and activated it. Too quickly to make himself a target, he ducked his head into the gap between buildings.

The alley went through to the next street. The faerie's star-bright glitter was disappearing from the far end.

Tony took off after him again.

Beyond the alley, the city's landscape opened up. The buildings were lower, with more space between them. Tony signaled Dispatch again, hoping they understood the update in spite of his hard breathing. A sparkle trail led across the empty lot of a gas station up ahead. If Sword Guy was shedding faerie dust, maybe he really was losing steam.

The stuff went up Tony's nose as he ran through it. Gritting his teeth against the mild high it caused, he armed the light crossbow.

Seconds later, he skidded to a halt.

He'd caught up to the fae. The male was cornered, or seemed to be, against the graffitied front of Demon Dan's Motorcycle Repair Shop. The street art was some of Tony's favorite, showing Demon Dan riding a black-winged Harley across a Van Gogh-esque starry night.

Since he didn't have the luxury of admiring it right then, he brought both arms up and aimed. An order to
Freeze
was literally in his throat when an invisible wall of force drove the air from his lungs.

"That's far enough," the faerie said.

Well, fine
, Tony thought. He'd shoot him from where he was.

"RPD," he managed to wheeze.

Tony wasn't the pack's best marksman. That honor belonged to Nate. Nonetheless, what he pointed at, he generally hit.

"I don't think so," the faerie said.

The crossbow fell from Tony's suddenly nerveless hands.

Crap
, he thought. His shoes were stuck to the cracked asphalt. He couldn't reach far enough to retrieve the weapon. For the second time tonight, the faerie had frozen him.

Tony noticed Sword Guy wasn't winded from the chase. He held his bloody long sword at horizontal, its great weight no trouble for him to lift. Seeming more curious than angry, he came a few strides closer.

"Why do you pursue me, wolf?" he asked.

"I'm pretty sure you just killed someone. Pursuing you is my job."

"You aren't powerful enough to subdue me. And what I do isn't your business."

"Everything that happens in this city is my business."

Okay, maybe that was a tad dramatic. The faerie seemed to realize he'd exaggerated. His perfect lips curved the slightest bit in his snow-white face. Tony immediately wished they hadn't. The smile sent extremely distracting waves of lust coursing through his bloodstream.

"Wolf . . ." the fae began but stopped.

The blood that coated his sword had just ignited like a Fourth of July sparkler. The faerie's smile broadened. "Ah," he said as the dazzling light swiftly consumed the gore. "It appears my mission was successful."

"You killed another faerie," Tony realized. That's what happened when fae died. Every cell of their bodies, including blood they'd shed, reverted to faerie dust.

The faerie regarded him with his flame blue eyes. "You are brave. I shall spare your life in honor of my victory."

Given the circumstances, Tony thought it best not to argue. The faerie took two steps back, murmured an unintelligible incantation, and cut a glowing slit in the air with the tip of his now spotless sword.

"Wait!" Tony cried. From the standpoint of apprehension, what the fae was doing couldn't be good.

The fae looked at him like he was nuts. Probably he was, but it didn't matter. Ignoring him, the faerie took hold of the slit's shimmery edges, stretching them wide enough to slip inside. Once all of him was in there, the magic door to wherever winked out of existence.

Tony's feet agreed to move again.

"Crap," he gasped, because his sudden loss of balance had dumped him onto his hands and knees. At the same time, he became aware that he had the mother of all hard-ons, the thing pounding like a jackhammer between his thighs. This wasn't just because Sword Guy was sexy. Among other things, faerie dust was an aphrodisiac. Tony had sucked up a lot of it.

The pain of the monster boner made him want to curl into a ball. Well, that or call his hot fireman and screw him for an hour or so.

The thought of Chris intensified his arousal. Tears squeezed from Tony's eyes. He couldn't even curse; the surge of need was so powerful. Naturally, this was when he heard sirens. His requested backup was finally approaching.

If he were caught like this, he'd never live it down. Gay wolf gets hard-on for homicidal faerie. That was years of jokes begging to be cracked.

There really was no question what he'd do. Desperation drove him onto his feet. He ran around the corner of the repair shop to a scrubby patch of weeds. It was all the cover he could find. He had his cock out in nanoseconds, zipper whining, right fist pumping his unnaturally engorged rod while he drove the left down to squeeze his balls. He couldn't separate pain from pleasure. The ache of need was the same as the bliss of racing to fulfill it. He had to rub one off
now
, before the cavalry arrived. Chris's mouth flashed into his mind: the sound of him sucking, the feel of his tongue working around the rim. Tony didn't fight the image. It was making his pleasure surge. Pressure built, swelled . . .

His nerves went supernova half a breath before his testicles contracted.

His seed hit the ground hard and copious. Tony bit back the moan that wanted to come out with it.

He couldn't quiet his exhalation. Luckily, the climax was quickly done. Tony cleaned up, zipped, and returned to the parking lot. He'd wiped most of the sweat from his brow when two squad cars squealed up. He shielded his eyes with one arm to keep the headlights from blinding him.

The first uniform to exit his vehicle swaggered over like a cowboy. "Lookie who we've been called to help," he drawled. "Where's your perp, Detective Lupone? Did he run away when he found out a wolf of your persuasion wanted to cuff him?"

"Funny," Tony said. "Did your mother help you make up that joke?"

It was a stupid comeback, but the other policemen laughed. Yet another awkward moment made better with humor.

"I was chasing a fae," he explained, his weariness complicated. "He magicked himself away when I cornered him. Maybe one of you could call the forensic psychic to see if he left trace behind."

"I'll do it," said a cop Tony thought was called Jessup. That they all knew him was no surprise. The RPD only had one openly gay werewolf.

"You need a lift somewhere?" asked the cowboy. He'd made his joke, so he was being respectful now.

"Yes," Tony said. "To the Elm and Fifth subway stop. My brother Rick is mopping up a fight there."

Tony guessed he looked pretty ragged. The cowboy's partner got out and held the blue-and-white's door for him.

THE faerie Tony chased to the repair shop had indeed killed someone. Tony and the uniforms arrived on the subway platform to find EMTs sucking up dissipating sparkles with a handheld vacuum. They weren't collecting evidence. The volatile magic dust had medical applications, and the vacuum canister preserved it. Rick seemed upset about them hoovering up the victim but was controlling his emotions. Tony guessed he'd arrived in time to see Sword Guy's opponent die.

Tony didn't like explaining he'd lost his man, but Rick absorbed the news absently. Per usual for a homicide, too many cops milled around the scene. On this occasion, their presence was especially pointless. A couple chunks had been knocked out of the station's concrete, as if something fast-moving had hit them. Aside from that, once the sparkles were vacuumed up, you couldn't tell a murder had occurred. Tony had no idea how they'd pursue the case. The combination of no body, no trace, and a killer who could poof himself away didn't seem promising.

"Where's the victim's sword?" he asked, remembering the report of the fight that had led them here.

Rick jerked as if coming out of a dream. "I don't know. I didn't see it when I came in."

The cowboy who'd given Tony a ride said he and his partner would search the tracks. No cop in his right mind wanted some commuter finding a potentially magical fae weapon. Tony could tell the uniforms were excited to be part of a homicide. If he were lucky, they'd end up feeling indebted to him for getting them involved.

No wind so ill it doesn't blow someone good
, he thought cynically.

Rick took a statement from the RTA employee who, along with Rick, had tried to save the victim with first-aid. The human was more openly shaken than Tony's brother. The skewered faerie had been female. Big guys like the transit cop didn't like seeing delicate women die. It didn't matter that a pureblood, male or female, had the juice to tear any and all of them apart. Instinctive responses to seemingly vulnerable people were hard to get over.

Tony pondered that as Rick drove them to the precinct--along with whether he should have confiscated his car keys.

"You okay?" he asked when Rick took a good five seconds to notice a light was green.

"Huh?" he said. "Sure. I'm wondering what's on the surveillance footage the transit guy handed over."

More was on Rick's mind that that. Not sure he ought to push, Tony pinched his lower lip and said nothing.

~

The surveillance footage showed the sword fighting faeries going at it like supercharged ninjas. All five members of the squad had crowded into Adam's office to watch his monitor. At Rick's insistence, Adam had shut the blinds. Soundlessly--because audio hadn't been recorded--the faeries flipped and rebounded off the station walls while parrying each other's tremendous swings. Their blades clashed so hard sparks flew off. Even more impressive, they moved so fast Adam had to slow the playback to follow it. Despite getting the worst of the exchange, the female faerie had been valiant.

Witnessing her death made Tony extra sorry he hadn't caught her killer. It also made him feel bad for his brother. Even with no sound, he saw Rick beg the bleeding faerie to hang on.

Naturally, his brother kept his upset to himself.

"Doesn't her outfit look familiar?" he asked. "I swear I've seen it before."

The faerie's black silk pants and tunic looked like standard ninja princess clothes to Tony.

Nate's recent honeymoon hadn't blunted his faculties. He snapped his fingers and supplied the answer. "
Mini-Dragons to the Rescue!
Evina's kids are obsessed with that cartoon. That black costume is what the dragon keepers' protectors wear."

An odd cool prickle crawled over Tony's scalp. He'd seen the cartoon too, with his sister's five-year-old pup Ethan. It followed the adventures of small underwater dragons that saved people, usually with the help of a group of kids. The stories were fiction and pretty ridiculous, but they contained a grain of truth. In one of the Pockets that had been founded beneath the sea, there
were
actual mini-dragons called Meimeyo.

"So . . . what then?" their alpha asked, leaning straight-armed on his desk. This was his unconscious I-am-the-master-of-this-room pose. "Our vic is a mini-dragon fanatic?"

Rick rubbed the back of his neck like he was experiencing the same prickle as Tony. "Maybe she's a member of the actual Dragon Guild. As I understand it, full-sized dragons are supposed to be extinct, but their guild could still be active in Faerie. We don't know the half of what goes on there." Rick paused and looked embarrassed. "The faerie said something weird before she died."

Adam was Rick and Tony's blood cousin. The green eyes he shared with them sharpened. "What did the faerie say?"

Rick cleared his throat uncomfortably. "She, uh, was bleeding out, and she told me I was 'The One.' She said I had to warn some woman she was in danger."

Strictly speaking, Tony should have left questioning Rick to Adam, but this was just too weird.

"Who did she mean?" he asked.

"She said I already knew," Rick responded. "She said the universe chose me for a reason, and the destiny of the city depended on me succeeding. She said, 'Don't trust anyone. They're watching.'"

Nate and Tony shivered at the same time, which made Tony feel better about the fear response. He guessed the warning explained why Rick had asked Adam to shut the blinds. Probably they were safe. Their basement bunker had anti-eavesdropping wards galore. All the same, if the dying faerie meant her fellow fae were watching, no one could guarantee what they might spy through. Fae avoided revealing the full extent of their powers. They certainly didn't let on what their limits were.

"She might have been nuts," Tony said for the hell of it. His back was braced on a shelf of procedural manuals. Like the presence of his pack around him, the support made him feel more secure.

"She didn't seem crazy," Rick said slowly. He had one hand shoved in his jeans pocket. Tony assumed he'd stuck it there because he felt sheepish, but when he drew it out, he held something in his fist. "She gave me this before she died."

He opened his fingers with seeming reluctance. Along with the others, Tony leaned in to see. A set of brass knuckles lay on his brother's palm. Runes Tony couldn't decipher marched around the four finger holes, which were topped with wicked spikes. They'd deliver a nasty punch, maybe even kill if you weren't careful.

"I think that metal is electrum," Tony said. If it were, it would hold spells better than silver or gold alone.

The knuckles' soft buttery-white gleam was mesmerizing. Unable to resist, he stretched his index finger to touch them.