Shifters’ Fae Captive by Lacey Carter Andersen
Chapter 7
Dusk
Grave trolls. Rot monkeys. All the bastards have arrived with the darkness, just as we expected. Just as they always do, only there’s more in our area than usual. For a minute I wonder if they’re starting to narrow in on where we live, but I push the thought aside. We’re always careful.
And I don’t have to guess what they’re doing out of the Void. Or what comes along with their arrival. The monkeys--and there are three of them--run when I come near.
Typical. The trolls are sent here to fight us. But the monkeys? Those little assholes are here for trouble, and only trouble. I just wish they weren’t so damn fast, or I’d kill more of the bastards.
“This way,” I whisper to Ann, switching directions.
She stumbles, and I grasp her arm, pulling her along. But as beautiful as she is, as brave as she is, she’s much slower than my kind. Dragging her along with me is definitely harder than just leaving her behind, not that I would. I’m tasked with keeping her safe, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to stop the monkeys.
Especially after what I just saw with the moon shard...
“What are we chasing?” she says between pants.
“Demons,” I hiss. Okay, so they aren’t demons, but they may as well be.
They’re so quick that if I wasn’t so experienced with dealing with them, I wouldn’t even know for sure that that’s what they were. Unfortunately, I would know them anywhere. But as fast as they are, I only get a good glimpse of red eyes in the dark night. They stick to the shadows, because in this world, everything is too bright for them. It’s only their king’s power that keeps them from turning to ash beneath the light of the moon, even in the shadows.
Yet, I can’t seem to catch up with them. It’s irritating as hell. But with my much slower mate at my side, I guess that’s to be expected. There are three heading deep into the woods, deeper than I took Ann, racing through the undergrowth of the woods like the nightmarish little tricksters they are.
Luckily for me, the moon shard still glows brightly, lighting the forest around us better than any torch. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it before. Moon shards always glow a tiny bit in the night, but not like this, never like this. But for right now, I can’t focus on why it’s doing such an incredible thing, or how it’s connected to Ann.
I race along, still holding the shard of moonstone in one hand, and chasing a rot monkey holding another shard. Because now that I’m gaining on them, I know for sure he’s holding a shard. They always glow with the same light, not quite like the crystals in the Elder’s cave, but with a pale blue light that I’ve never seen anywhere else in this world, or ours.
But as beautiful as the shards are, as much as a small part of my soul longs to touch them, to be close to them, I fight the desire to do anything but collect them. They’re dangerous. And as we’d learned the hard way, their power had a way of corrupting. No matter how much time I spent focused on the moonstone as a boy, no matter how much I missed it, I’m not happy to see the shards here. Because they can only mean trouble now, and trouble we have more than enough of already.
If they’re planting a perimeter of shards, the Shadow King is up to his usual shit.
Bastard.
I’ve chased my share of these little fuckers, but these guys must be training hard. There’s only one moment when I think I’m gaining on them before they take off again, and I’m left in the dust faster than ever before. But even if they are getting quicker, I have a job to do. We’re getting too far away, and I can’t let them get away.
If the Shadow King succeeds, it’s game over. No more humans. No more supernaturals. No more world as we know it. And this world can’t be destroyed like our own.
Phantom and Onyx can deal with the pair of grave trolls they’re fighting--they’ve never lost to a troll--but I wish it was one of them chasing these monkeys. The monkeys don’t have the fighting skills of a troll, but they fight dirty--biting, clawing, spitting in the eyes. Last time I hunted a pair, one threw the other at me then they both attacked. I’d had eleven separate bites.
But I guess it makes sense, Phantom is clever enough to handle the trolls, and Onyx is… well, the best warrior I’ve ever seen in my life. He isn’t just big, he’s smart, calculated, and well trained. While I’m not exactly bear shit, they both handle trolls better than I do.
Even though I hate that fact, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.
Plus, I have Ann with me, and I’d much rather have her around these fools than the trolls, who could easily kill her with one well-placed blow. Yes, it’s easy for me to slip into my duties in this world, but I have to remember that keeping Ann safe is now my most important responsibility.
When the monkeys are about thirty yards ahead, they stop and turn. I have enough time to think, oh shit and tuck the moon shard into my belt, before two of the trio roll themselves into balls and the third launches them one at a time like bowling balls. I push Ann out of the way and sidestepped one, then the other changes course and takes me down.
“Fuck!” I manage as I go flying back.
From my position on the ground, I fend off one attack, holding the rot monkey over my head while another climbs up my body and goes right for the ears. He has a hand on each, legs around my throat which puts his dick dangerously close to my nose and this thing stinks. I drop the one in my hands and grab this nasty bastard by the scruff and fling him so he smashes into a tree.
He yelps and goes down, head wobbling back and forth before he slumps forward, out cold. One down, two to go. The one I dropped sinks his teeth into my ankle, which sends a shot of pain through my leg, and I yank him off by the tail and hurl him. He goes up then down and lands at an odd angle on a mossy patch. But he recovers quickly and comes running at me, arms curled outward, teeth bared, eyes wide.
One big boot later and it’s down to me and the last little rot monkey. His eyes are red and he’s pounding the ground like he’s a three-hundred-pound gorilla. It would be comical if not for the eyes. The angrier these things get, the brighter they glow. And judging by that fact, this guy is super pissed.
He circles me and I turn. Maybe I should grab him first, but I want to see what he has planned. These things are fast, but hand to hand combat isn’t their forte. This guy though, facing someone ten times his size, has balls of steel. He’s hissing and snorting, nostrils flared. He’s dropped the shard, and before he moves, Ann touches him and a light shines out of her. No, it bursts from her, like a laser, or electricity, rather than an actual light.
My jaw drops, and I just stare and stare. What the hell is that light? And did it actually come from her? I know she’s a light fae, but as far as I know, her kind can’t literally make light.
Whatever it is, it’s powerful though, and monkey-man flies back from her, smashing into a tree and crumbling to the ground. Without any direction from me, she walks toward the other monkey at the base of the tree with a confident stride and her lips in a tight line. He’s starting to stir when she kneels down over him. But when she touches him, the glow in his eyes dies, like a candle being snuffed out, and I have no doubt that the monkey himself is dead. D-E-A-D.
She turns on her heel and starts toward the last living money, but she stops halfway to him. I wait for her to keep going toward the third, but it’s like she’s waking up from a dream and finds herself sleepwalking. The confidence is gone from her face, and her expression is confused and maybe even afraid. She looks at her hand, open-mouthed, twisting it, palm over then knuckle up.
“Wh-what was that?”
“You don’t know?” I ask, surprised.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know how that’s possible…”
Yeah. I feel the same way. Whatever just happened was like nothing I’ve seen before, or even imagined, and we’ve been fighting these assholes for longer than I can remember. I know for sure Phantom and Onyx aren’t going to believe any of this.
When she glances at me, she asks, “Should I touch the third one?”
Honestly, I can’t think of a reason not to.
I shrug. “Go ahead.” Partly because I want to see it again. Seriously. It’s better than any parlor trick to see creatures that have been torturing us for so long get snuffed out from the touch of a tiny fae woman. But partly because I want to confirm that everything I thought just happened actually did.
She draws her shoulders back and gives a nod, before marching the rest of the way to the monkey. Again, she looks between it and her hand, as if she’s not sure which thing is scarier, but then kneels down beside it. I see her take several deep breaths as the monkey begins to stir. Some unexpected instinct makes me hold my breath. If it tries to hurt her, I’ll be there in an instant, and I’ll make it wish it had never touched my mate.
But I need to give her a chance to try out that light thing again...
Before the monkey can fully sit up, she lays her hand on him and the red light in his eyes fades away just as fast as with the first one. But instead of pulling away, her hand remains on him, and her brows draw together.
Within a few seconds, the fucker actually bursts into flames.
“Holy shit.” Her whisper in the now-silent forest mirrors my thoughts exactly. I don’t know if she knows what this means, but we need to figure out what to do about it.
I nod to her, gesture for her to join me so we can get back to the others. But as we pass the last body of the monkeys, it turns to ash, just as all rot monkeys from the shadow world do. The trolls are worth enough to the king that if left alone here, they’ll come back to life, just like they do in the shadow realm, but not the rot monkeys. They simply turn to ash. Every time.
“Is that… normal?” she asks.
“With the monkeys, yes. The grave trolls are... more complicated to get rid of.” She doesn’t need to know about the beasts coming back to life if we don’t burn them, she seems scared enough.
We go to where the other moon shard was left by the monkeys. And just like the one in my belt, it glows brighter and brighter the closer Ann gets to them.
“Those are beautiful,” she whispers.
“Beautiful and terrible.” I lean down, pick it up, and tuck it next to the other moonstone.
The shards we collect are hidden by Phantom. We’re the only shadow beasts that know where they’re concealed, because the power within them could tempt any man, even men with good hearts. And not all our shadow beasts are as bound by honor as they once were. So, these will go with the others, in a place the Shadow King can never find.
As we walk, she continues looking at her hands. I don’t know if it’s for my benefit and she already knows what she is, or if she’s legitimately confused by what she saw and what she did.
Neither of us speak, though, until we get back to the cave. Onyx has one of the trolls thrown over his shoulder, and his broad sword back in his belt. We’ll burn and bury him in the pit at the edge of the forest before morning comes. I’m not looking forward to it though. Trolls smell like a sewer when they’re alive. Burning them doesn’t help the stench, but we don’t have a choice. The trolls can’t be allowed to regenerate.
At the beginning of this war, we didn’t realize just how durable they are. We knew that in the Shadow World the trolls were formed by the bodies of various dead creatures and could die over and over again. I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that they could find a way to come back here too.
Even if getting rid of them for good is irritating.
But any day we can send a troll back to The Wasteland, the better. Onyx drops his troll with a thud that echoes through the trees and cocks his head at me. I sign the story then repeat it again for Phantom out loud, who’s already taken his troll to the pit.
I don’t bother keeping my voice low. Ann was there. She knows what she did.
He looks her up and down and doesn’t speak. Onyx purses his lips and signs at me. “We should get rid of her now. Before she kills one of us and before the king hears about her.”
He’s probably right. He usually is. Ann’s power to kill the rot monkeys so easily, along with her ability to make the moon shards glow could turn the tide on this war, which will make her even more of a target to the king. But a part of me can’t stand the thought of sending her away, not just because of our mate bond, but because the king might find her at home just as easily as he could find her here.
“We can’t just get rid of her.” Before I’ve finished the sentence, she lifts her head and stares at me like I’m the one who made the suggestion.
Watching her handle those rot monkeys was actually one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. All she did was touch them. It’s like this tiny, beautiful woman has a strength that doesn’t come in muscles and tactical moves, but is just as important. If not more. And that’s sexy as hell, and also a little scary.
“Ann…” I begin, trying to find the right words.
But instead of talking to us, explaining what she knows or doesn’t know, she stalks into the cave, head high, back straight. She turns to stare for a second and there’s no doubt that if there was a door, she would’ve slammed it.
