Thea Harrison: Storm's Heart

Tiago shook his head, anger roiling inside. He wrestled it under control before it could slip loose. “I told you some of us should have gone with her!”

“There’s no point in rehashing an old argument,” said Dragos, shooting a glare at him. “Tr—Niniane and I both decided nobody from the Wyr demesne would go with her. Otherwise it would look like the Wyr were making a power play for the Dark Fae demesne.”

There were seven demesnes of Elder Races that overlaid the human geography of the continental United States. The Wyr demesne, which Dragos had ruled for centuries, was based in New York. The seat of Elven power was based in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Dark Fae’s demesne was centered in Chicago, and the Light Fae in Los Angeles. Aside from discrete geographical and political differences, the Dark Fae and the Light Fae were also different in coloring and in manifestations of Power. The Light Fae was a blond, charismatic race, with either blue or green eyes, and they had an aversion to iron. The Dark Fae were black haired with pale skin and gray eyes, and they often had a gift for metallurgy.

The Nightkind, which included all Vampyric forms, controlled the San Francisco Bay Area along with the Pacific Northwest, and the human witches, considered part of the Elder Races due to their command of magical Power, were based in Louisville. Demonkind, like the Wyr and the Nightkind, consisted of several different types that included Goblins and Djinn, and their seat was based in Houston.

Dragos and the faerie had good reason for coming to the decision they had made. All of the Elder Races were jealous of their territories and the current balance of Power. They would take violent exception to one demesne attempting the takeover or control of another.

However.

“That was then, this is now,” said Tiago.

Dragos nodded, expelling a breath in an explosive sigh. “Agreed.”

Tiago rubbed the back of his head. Unfamiliar emotions cascaded through him. Niniane had escaped when her uncle Urien had taken the Dark Fae throne in a bloody coup and killed off her family. She had run straight to Dragos for sanctuary and had been part of the Wyrkind inner circle for almost two hundred years.

For all that, Tiago hardly knew her. Most of the time he was off with Dragos’s army, embroiled in distant conflicts. He had met her maybe twenty times over the years, usually in meetings such as this one during his rare visits to New York. He had spoken with her one-on-one maybe a dozen times.

Still, she was one of theirs. He had gotten used to her infectious grin and that sexy wriggle she did with her cute little ass when she was flirting either with the camera or with someone in person. Anger burned that someone would dare try to harm her. She was so small and delicate, maybe all of five-foot-nothing and a hundred pounds, soaking wet. And now she was missing.

His hands fisted.

Dragos grunted and pushed a button. “There.”

Tiago looked back at the flat-screen along with everybody else.

The female reporter came back, speaking more news babble. Blah-fucking-blah. More sexy footage of Niniane, winking at the camera and blowing a kiss. Damn, that mouth of hers was made for Playboy TV. He clamped down on the thought and concentrated on being relevant.

She had arrived in Chicago with an escort of Dark Fae that had been made up of some second cousin or other and assorted guards. She had met with a small delegation that was headed by one of the Dark Fae’s most powerful governmental figures, Chancellor Aubrey Riordan. She and the delegation stayed in the penthouse suite at the Regent, preparatory to crossing over to the Dark Fae Other land for her coronation. She had, by all accounts, left the hotel last night for dinner with her cousin and a small escort.

The usual swarm of paparazzi had bayed in pursuit. The Dark Fae lost the paparazzi after a high-speed chase. What happened for the next couple of hours was unknown.

Tiago gritted his teeth as he glared at the screen. Get to the fucking point already.

And there it was, the fucking point, sprayed all over a fiftysix-inch plasma flat-screen and, apparently, all over the Internet as well. One million, seven hundred and fifty thousand hits and counting, as of 1:30 A.M.

The grainy, badly shot footage showed a dirty alley that could have been anywhere, in any city in the world. The scene jerked. Whoever had recorded the footage couldn’t have done a worse job if they’d tried.

Still, Niniane was unmistakable in a red halter dress that accentuated her compact hourglass figure. Two Dark Fae were already on the ground. She was locked in some sort of struggle with the third.

The Dark Fae struck her hard in the ribs. The breath left Tiago in a growl as if he had been the one who had taken the blow. The asshole with the cell phone kept filming this shit and did nothing to help her? The scene jostled. Shit!

Then it came clear again. The last Dark Fae was down.

Niniane stood over her attacker, gasping and disheveled, one hand pressed to her side. She started to kick the body. “I hate my family!” she shouted. “I hate my family! I hate my family!”

The scene cut back to the MSNBC reporter, but Tiago had seen more than enough. He pivoted on one heel toward Dragos and growled, “Leave of absence.”

The dragon looked at him, no less furious than he. Dragos said, “Go.”

Rune followed Tiago out into the hall. He turned to face the gryphon as the door settled into place.

All of the immortal sentinels carried an intense furnace of energy that boiled the air around them. Dragos’s First sentinel was as tall as Tiago but not quite as bulky. Rune was the most handsome of the four gryphons. He looked like a Greek god masquerading as a Grateful Dead fan. He wore a Jerry Garcia T-shirt that strained across the chest and at the biceps, faded jeans with the knees torn out and steel-toed boots, the treads of which had been imprinted on more than one Wyr ass. He had sun-bronzed, fine-grained skin with laugh lines at the corners of lion-colored eyes. Both the camera and females seemed to adore his even features and rakish white smile, and the tawny mane of sun-streaked hair that fell to broad shoulders held glints of pale gold, chestnut and burnished copper.

Tiago regarded the other sentinel with a warrior’s assessment that never fully went to sleep. He had seen Rune fight in his gryphon form many times. Rune’s gryphon shape was the size of an SUV, with a lion’s heavy muscular body. He had a feline agility in both of his forms and projected an aura of lazy easygoing indolence that could, when he was provoked, vaporize in an instant into a roaring attack. In his human form, Rune had the lean hard muscles of a swordsman. He was built for both power and speed, whereas Tiago sometimes fought with his feet planted wide apart, a battle-axe gripped in one hand and a war hammer in the other. Tiago had been known to chop his enemies into pieces, or just smash them into the ground through strength and sheer dogged endurance. He had been called many things over the centuries. Subtle wasn’t one of them.

Tiago said, “Talk to either Riehl or Jamar about stepping in for me until—”

“T-bird,” Rune said. “Don’t worry about the troops. I got it covered, man. I’ll call Tucker in Chicago, so that you’ve got transportation and supplies waiting for you when you get there.”

“Thanks.” Tiago gave him a grim look, which Rune returned.

Neither male said what they were thinking. There were a whole host of reasons why they may not have heard from the faerie since the incident, and most of those reasons were not good ones.

“Tricks is okay,” Tiago said. She’d better be okay, or he would make sure there was hell to pay.