The Fey

The Fey

by

Claudia Hall Christian

Copyright © Claudia Hall Christian

Also by Claudia Hall Christian

ALEX THE FEY SERIES

The Fey

Learning to Stand

Who I Am

THE DENVER CEREAL

The Denver Cereal

Celia’s Puppies

Cascade

Copyright © Claudia Hall Christian

Licensed under the Creative Commons
License:

Attribution – NonCommercial – Share Alike
3.0

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ISBN
(
13 digits
) : 978-0-9822746-3-7

(
10
digits
) :
0-9822746-3-7

Library of
Congress :
2009909008

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously.

Second edition © September, 2009

Cook Street Publishing
PO Box 18217

Denver, CO 80218

For the
Silent Partner.
If you
were truly silent,
the Fey would never exist.

PROLOGUE

October 8 – 12:42 P.M.

Paris, France

“
This is it?”

“
We thought you’d like to
see a familiar face,” her childhood friend said. His bright cricket
smile flashed across his face.

“
Well, they got it wrong
in Catholic School.”

His top hat bounced on his head when he
nodded. Adjusting his ascot, he held a white-gloved hand out to
her.

“
Take my hand.”

“
What about the others?”
She pulled her hand to her chest. “Don’t you have to take them
first?”

“
Except for one, they have
moved on,” he said. “It’s your time.”

“
I think I’ll stay
here.”

Jiminy Cricket’s head fell back in laughter.
The buttons on his vest strained against the gale.

“
I am thirty years old,”
she said through her teeth. “I am a Special Forces Intelligence
Officer. I am a Sergeant in the United States Army. They call me
the Fey. My name is….”

The lights came on. The cricket faded.

She was sitting cross-legged with her best
friend’s head in her lap. Touching his face, she confirmed what she
already knew. Sergeant Jesse Abreu was dead. She collapsed back
against the door to the limestone vault. She would join him
soon.

Her heart jumped. There was movement to
inside the vault. Someone survived! Shifting her torso toward the
vault, Jesse’s head ground further into the gaping wounds in her
left hip. She clamped her mouth shut against the scream forming in
her throat.

Overwhelmed with pain, her focus slipped.
The cricket’s smiling face came into view. She screwed up her face
and squinted her eyes.

She was not dying.

Not yet.

Her beloved childhood friend laughed and
fanned her with his umbrella.

She was sitting in the doorway again.

“
I wondered if you were
alive,” a slight dark-haired man said in Arabic. “Don’t
move.”

Pressing the muzzle of a handgun against her
forehead, he kneeled in front of her. His hand reached under her
jacket. Pulling her dog tags from under her T-shirt, he jerked the
secondary tag from the longer chain.

“
From the look of things,
you’ll be dead soon enough.”

He rummaged through Jesse’s shirt ripping
his secondary dog tag from its chain. The man held eleven dog tags
in front of her face.

“
You’re quite valuable.”
Holstering the handgun, he stood and looked back into the vault.
“Now, where can I find that security token? No token, no
payment.”

“
Gosh, I wish I could help
you.” She replied in Hebrew knowing it would make him angry. She
opened and closed her eyes in an attempt to bat her large brown
eyes.

“
Yes, fuck me.” The man
sneered then kicked Jesse’s dead body. Continuing in Arabic, he
said, “I’m not the one who is fucked. You should be grateful. Death
is preferable to what is planned for you. Just give me the token,
and we’re even.”

She glowered at him. Under Jesse’s body, she
slipped her hand into her pocket to find her Zippo lighter.

“
No matter. You’ll be dead
in a few minutes.”

Drawing on her deepest reserves, she jerked
her torso left causing the man to look into the vault. With a quick
flip of her right hand, the lighter bounced down the dark limestone
hallway. When the man jumped after the lighter, she pulled a small
journal from inside her jacket. Tucking the journal deep into the
front pocket of Jesse’s shirt, she sagged forward.

“
Nice try, Fey. I have the
token.” The man bent and kissed her cheek. “Thanks. With this, I
can afford that house in the South of France.”

The man’s expression turned to disgust when
he noticed he was holding a St. Christopher medallion on a
secondary dog tag. Spitting on the medallion, he threw it into the
pool of blood forming around her. She grabbed for the St.
Christopher, the only gift Jesse ever received from his mother.
With his foot, he moved the medallion just out of her reach and
smirked at her.

“
I am sorry. I did like
your team… and you.”

“
If you like me so much,
why not just kill me now?” she asked in Hebrew.

“
I am not a killer. I am
merely a business man.”

“
You hire people to do
your killing. You must have known that I would kill
him.”

“
In fact, I predicted that
if we left you alive, you would kill our associate. But you were to
be left alive.” He shrugged as if to say that the shooter’s death
was a reasonable business expense. Looking into the vault, he said,
“Did you have to shoot him in the head? So messy.”

Pulling a neck gaiter up over his mouth and
nose, the man retreated into the blood-drenched vault. He glanced
around the vault, and then began rummaging through a stack of clean
clothing. Finding what he needed, he wrapped the shooter’s head
with T-shirts.

The man jerked to a stop.

Footsteps in the hallway!

Through drooping eyes, she watched him press
into a dark corner of the vault.

“
Take my hand,” Jiminy
Cricket said. “It is time.”

She took the gloved hand and looked into the
cricket’s beloved face.

“
Can we sing?” she
asked.

“
Of course,” her cricket
began singing her favorite song, “When you wish upon a
star.”

They sang as they rose through five floors
of limestone tunnels and into the building above. They were
floating through the bright fall Paris day when a male voice joined
in their song.

“
Max,” she whispered the
name of her identical twin.

A strong deep voice, with a distinctive
London accent, joined the song.

“
John,” she whispered her
husband’s name.

Like a beacon, their voices called her
home.

Turning to Jiminy Cricket, she let go of his
hand. With death on her tail, she dove back to the pain. She leapt
toward the horror. She pushed her spirit back into her broken
body.

Feeling a brush across her lips, Alexandra
“The Fey” Hargreaves opened her eyes.

F

CHAPTER ONE

Two weeks later

October 22 – 3:00 A.M.

Somewhere deep within the Pentagon

Arlington, Virginia

Sergeant Marcia Wizinski walked down the
long dark corridor toward a conference room. For the last three
hours, the men’s angry voices echoed through the deserted halls.
She tapped on the door to let them know that she was entering. When
their voices dropped and the room became silent, Marcia opened the
door.

“
Sir?” Marcia looked for
her boss, the Admiral in charge of Special Forces.

“
Yes, Marcia?”

The Admiral was sitting at the end of the
table facing the door. Marcia could tell he was angry. She noticed
that three of the men had turned away from the door to avoid
recognition. Stepping into the room, she kept her eyes on the
Admiral.

“
You asked me to let you
know when they have landed.”

“
And?”

“
The Air Force reports
that the Fey has touched down.” Marcia looked at a piece of paper
in her hand. “Sir, um, the Jakker?”

“
Sergeant Zack Jakkman?”
the Admiral asked.

“
Yes, Sir. Sergeant
Jakkman insisted on taking her all the way to Walter Reed. Her
husband and twin are with her in the Black Hawk. There is a Green
Beret waiting for her…. A Sergeant Matthew Mac Clenaghan? The Army
says that he is AWOL.”

“
She’s alive?” a
nondescript brown-eyed man near the middle of the table
asked.

“
Yes sir. She is alive.
She remains in a medically induced coma.”

The tension in the room dropped like the
barometer before rain showers. A handsome man with caramel colored
skin, broad shoulders and cropped hair stood and walked toward
Marcia. Shifting her eyes toward the movement in the room, Marcia
felt a jolt of attraction rush through her.

“
Thank you, Marcia,” the
man said in a Queens accent. “May I walk you to your
car?”

“
I…” Marcia looked up into
the man’s grey-hazel eyes then blushed. She forced her eyes back
toward the Admiral. “Sir? Will you need me any further?”

“
No, Marcia. Thank you for
staying. Please let Agent Rasmussen walk you to your car.
Raz?”

“
Yes Admiral?” Homeland
Security Agent Arthur J. Rasmussen turned toward the
Admiral.

“
You’ll report from Walter
Reed?”

“
Yes sir. And Sergeant Mac
Clenaghan?”

“
We’ll take care of his
status,” the Secretary of Defense replied.

“
Shall we?” Raz said. He
moved through the door then held it for Marcia.

When the door closed, the men were silent.
No one was quite sure what to say. In the single largest attack on
a Special Forces team, ten soldiers were killed under the streets
of Paris. Not just soldiers, these men made up the most successful
and talented team in Special Forces. The very best of the very best
were cut in two by AK-47 fire in a matter of minutes.

And, beyond all reason, the Fey clung to
life.

“
I need to get to Walter
Reed,” General, turned Senator, Patrick Hargreaves said breaking
the silence. “As I see it, we have three remaining issues:
maintaining our relationships with our allies in Europe,
determining the cause of this action, and protecting the survivors.
Have I missed anything?”

“
I believe that covers it,
Patrick,” the Admiral said.

“
When this gets out, our
allies will be furious,” the Secretary of State said. “Why was an
unauthorized Special Forces team working in Europe?”

“
They were authorized to
operate in any country where someone was held hostage,” the Admiral
replied. “The Joint Chiefs, as well as NATO, gave them authority to
go where they needed to go. You know their track
record.”