Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (8 page)

“We swore to protect you and to share you, not necessarily to include you in every word spoken between us. In order to facilitate your safety and your happiness, we must work together, Cassandra. Have patience, for the concept is as foreign to us as it is to you.”

God love that Elf, he handled the diplomacy of the situation better than Jacob could imagine.

“Fine. I’m going to take a bath. You two go ahead and conspire, but I want to know what is going on with Michael.”

“Tell her my men are investigating. Michael spelled a guard or someone helped him to do it and he walked out.”

The Elf repeated the words verbatim. He could imagine the tense look of outrage on Cassie’s face.

“Is Jacob coming home?”

“Yes.” Jacob flicked a glance in the rearview mirror. “As soon as I am positive no one is following me.”

“He could trace her through you.” Yes, the bastard could.

“I am aware. But I think we’re okay for now.”

“Good. She is gone upstairs. What happened?” The Elf’s keen observation wouldn’t let Jacob’s prevarication slide.

“The Wizarding Council is convening in three nights. Michael has sought sanctuary with the inquisitor general. He refused to let me take the bastard back into custody.” Anger edged the words. “The Council will hear the charges against him, but only if Cassie appears before them to levy them herself.”

“No.” The Elf’s response was an immediate echo of Jacob’s reaction.

“Yeah, I’m not real fond of the plan either. We have three days to figure out an alternative or the Council will be gunning for her head, too.”

“She is going nowhere near your Wizards. Your laws won’t protect her.”

That fact churned the acid in his stomach into a frothing mess. “We are sworn to protect humans, Elf.”

“Cassandra isn’t human, Wizard. We
both
know that.”

There was the sticking point. Cassie wasn’t human. Her maternal Fae lineage guaranteed that. Jacob had his suspicions about the paternal contributions. The absence of any grandfather and father suggested continued interference in her bloodlines, but they had no proof.

“Yeah. I know.” Staring out the window at the ebb and flow of traffic, Jacob scowled. “But they aren’t going to take no for an answer. So we need incontrovertible proof to present or I’ll be cutting all ties to the Council.”

“It is not as difficult as you might believe.” The Elf understood. By swearing his oath to Cassie, he’d severed his obedience to the Danae. The Danae was Queen of the Fae and Cassie’s great-great-grandmother. It was the Danae’s preoccupation with a human and her subsequent pregnancy that launched the current domino of events right down to Cassie’s birth. It was only after Michael arranged for the deaths of Cassie’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother that the Danae made her move. She contacted Cassie and hired her to bring the Fae out into the world.

“Your Danae is preoccupied at the moment, but I imagine we’re still going to have to deal with that issue.”

“Later, perhaps. Her devotion to Cassandra will arrest her moves as will her negotiations with the human world. Your Council on the other hand.”

“Exactly.” What if Cassie was pregnant? That would be more ammunition for the Council. “You realize her child could be a Wizard, right? If you’re the father.” Wizards came into the world one way, as products of a Fae male and human female’s liaison. Any child Cassie had with Helcyon would be a Wizard.

“Maybe.” The hedge rasped across Jacob’s nerves.

“Explain.” Not for the first time, he wished he could portal. It would save an enormous amount of time. The Glashtyn could, but Domoir, like Jacob, preferred to avoid the dangers of Underhill, particularly now in this unsettled time. Underhill, the land between worlds that lay tucked firmly against their own. The shared reality served as a wellspring of magic, but turned into a prison when the Fae were driven away and the pathways between closed. Now the world would reap what was sown from the discord between Fae fathers and their Wizard offspring.

“She’s not human, Wizard. She has a powerful lineage of Fae blood, and her eyes glowed. Human women glow once they are pregnant, not when they are fertile.”

Did that mean she wasn’t pregnant? Or had the Elf just managed to knock her up while Jacob was dealing with this mess? A fist of irritation pounded in his gut.

“It means I have no idea. They glowed for you. To my knowledge only a pure-Fae female’s eyes glow for her chosen mate. It could simply mean her magic has found both of us suitable candidates.”

“Nice and detached there, Elf. You can’t tell me you don’t want her pregnant.” It was the driving force behind the Fae resurgence into the outside world, the loss of their females coupled with their declining birth rate.

“I will not deny it. As I told her, I hope that my seed is proven worthy and takes root.”

“Another child to abandon—”

“I will
not
abandon my child.” Cold anger crept into the Elf’s words.

Jacob forced a breath out through his nostrils. The jibe had been an unfair, backhanded attack. Helcyon wasn’t like most of the Fae. Or maybe he was just letting Cassie’s affection for the Elf color his viewpoint.

“My apologies.” The words tasted like charcoal on his tongue.

“Accepted. We both swore that oath, Wizard, and I will not break it. We swore to her our protection, our affection, and to allow the other a place in her life. Wizard, human, or Fae, I will not abandon any child she gives life to, not even yours.”

“The Council isn’t going to let this go, Elf.”

“Nor will the Danae. Her plans go further than our release. We knew that.”

“Yeah, we did.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, Jacob let the tension bleed out of him. “We’ll take care of her. Elf?”

“Yes?”

“You have my word, I will protect her child no matter which of us is the father.”
God help anyone, Wizard, Fae, or human, that comes after her.
“I’ll be there shortly.”

“Until you arrive.” The phone clicked off, and Jacob glanced at the rearview mirror. The Glashtyn growled.

He’d seen them, too.

Four black cars trailed them, trading tailing positions but not well enough to escape their notice.

“Shall we hunt, Domoir?”

The goblin purred a menacing noise.

Ringing off, Jacob purged the call information from his phone. He should have waited to call, but he’d needed the reassurance of hearing her voice. The question of pregnancy simply hadn’t occurred to him. He took precautions and wore condoms with other women, most often, but with Cassie, even his most jaded decisions, such as never allowing for another child or a woman to get her hooks into him, took on a new meaning.

Think about it later.
Behind him, three of the four sedans shifted their positions. He spared a smile. Two of the sedans crawled up along his right side while the third slid up the left and the fourth closed in on their tail.

Domoir surged a hard left, slicing into an open space between a smart car and an SUV hybrid. The sedan trying to block his left was forced to come up on the right, and Jacob cut a look toward the driver.

Vanagan Marcus glared icily back at him.

The Glashtyn snarled and struck across another lane, sliding into the fast lane ahead of a fast-approaching semi, and lurched forward, the accelerator screaming they were passing the one hundred and forty miles an hour before flatlining the needle on the right side of the speedometer.

The sedans fell together in a continuous stream of darkness closing behind them, and Domoir cut right, sliding across the three lanes of traffic and burying their pursuers in the clogged artery of the Los Angeles freeway, and then they were gliding off an exit and shooting forward, racing from the exit point to the access road and then back on the freeway, sandwiching a dozen vehicles between their pursuers and their position.

The SUV rippled around him as it reshaped itself and melted from a Hummer-sized tank to a Jaguar XKR-S. The seat bucked beneath Jacob as Domoir zipped in and out of traffic, the sun dazzling around the shifting vehicle. Tires squealed and angry drivers cursed as the glare seemed to refract off the Glashtyn’s shimmering body.

Orange construction cut the lanes back to two, and Domoir pushed himself to the two-hundred-miles-per-hour mark, zooming through spaces between cars that were both there and not there.

The inky-black river of his pursuers stumbled against the construction and separated, two heading off while the other two fought every car length to close on them.

Digitized yellow arrows ordered the cars over, trickling traffic from three lanes to one, and Domoir swore as they pushed into Underhill and then out, racing down the exit ramp. The sprawling canyons of Los Angeles high-rises and skyscrapers closed around them. Jacob loosened his tie and reached into his pocket to check for a small bag of stones.

Each of the hematite pebbles could carry one charge. After the misery of the Feth Felen, he’d made a point to carry the dangerous little pouch everywhere he went.

“Find a warehouse.”

A flash of black in the rearview mirror infuriated the Glashtyn. Their pursuers weren’t giving up. Not that Jacob expected anything less. Vanagan’s presence warned that elements within the Wizarding world were marshaling their forces. The Brotherhood of the Rose Cross represented the reclusive gentry among the Wizarding Council. They preferred an aesthetic adherence to the Wizard code, with little regard for who they trampled in the name of their cause.

Nearly a century before, he’d turned down Vanagan’s attempts to recruit him to their side. Jacob lived in the world, a part of it, not separate, divorced from human concerns.

Close.

The whispered word rolled through his mind as Domoir downshifted, tires scraping smoke from the pavement as he turned hard right and shot down an alley into a series of dingy-looking warehouses, grass-cracked pavement, and wavering chain-link fences.

The Glashtyn spun a one-eighty, braking hard to face their pursuers head-on, and Jacob popped the seat belt and exited to stand next to the creature. Steam rose from the beast’s heaving sides as he shimmered, taking his true shape of a great black horse, with fire flickering in his eyes and cloven hooves striking sparks against the cement.

Four sedans slid into a
V
formation, blockading the exit. Magic surged through the air, raising the hairs on his body, a shimmer bubbling the cracked pavement with its litter of old newspapers, dusty refuse, and broken liquor bottles. Rats scrabbled away at high speed, and a dustbin slammed as two stray toms leapt onto a rusted fire escape. A forgotten window fell shut, sending down a shower of clouded glass.

“Wizard Book.” Vanagan stepped out of his car, but his three companions remained shrouded behind their blackened windshields and growling engines.

“Wizard Marcus.” Jacob slid his left hand into his pocket, and his right hand gripped the gun he unholstered as he exited the vehicle. The weapon’s grip was warm on his palm and the gun’s metal cool against the pant leg.

Vanagan Marcus was nearly seven hundred years old. The dangerous ancient dressed in completely unrelieved black from his duster to his combat boots. His head was topped by yin-yang hair in black and white, and a pair of aviator glasses shielded his silver-mirrored eyes. Everything about the man screamed death, pain, and suffering.

With the most casual of shoves, he closed the door of his car and walked around to lean against the hood. He dwarfed his vehicle, his broad shoulders more suited for armor or wielding a giant axe than the keys he swung around his index finger.

“You seem vexed, Book. What troubles thee?”

“Really?” Jacob’s eyebrows rose over the tops of his sunglasses. The Wizard in the far-left car exited his vehicle, teleporting a dozen feet to Jacob’s immediate left, while the Wizard in the far right mirrored him by shifting a dozen feet to the Glashtyn’s right. The goblin creature shifted his position, facing that Wizard, challenge etched into every muscle.

The fourth driver didn’t appear in Jacob’s periphery, but the hairs on the back of his neck told him where he’d gone. Jacob kept his gaze on Vanagan.

“We do not have to do this the hard way, Book. You may simply surrender the boon we demand and this will be over.” Vanagan’s relaxed pose meant nothing. The man was a skilled combat Wizard with over five hundred years more experience than Jacob. He was the threat. To think otherwise would be foolish.

Jacob was no one’s fool.

“And what boon do you seek so aggressively, Wizard Marcus?”

“The woman, Cassandra Belle.”

The gauntlet of words slammed down on the pavement between them. Rolling his neck from side to side, Jacob’s joints crackled with tension.

“The inquisitor general gave me three days to present her before the Council,” he hedged, pretending to misunderstand Vanagan’s demand.

“I could care less what Gustav wants. This is not a matter for the Council.”

“Those are treasonous words, Wizard Marcus.” And punishable by confinement, or Gustav could have him executed. The inquisitor general wasn’t known for his patience, goodwill, or compassion.