Read Online NocC 021 - Jessa Slade - Dark Hunter's Touch - Harlequin 2012-08 by Nocturne - Free Book Online Page B

close the circles before we all run
out.”
    Then he turned the ax on himself. Not a pleasant end, and
frustrating too since it left many questions in Vaile’s uneasy mind.
    The very next night, he had found two missing undines at a
human watering hole where they had been killing men in their cups—literally.
They were crouched over an unconscious man, pouring the frothy contents of a
beer can right up his nostrils.
    “He was already drowning his sorrows,” one of the willowy
sprites told Vaile.
    “We are granting their wishes when we drown them,” said the
other.
    The undines reminded him of Imogene. They were too skinny and
sinuous for his taste, lacking the sylfana ’s sleek
flight muscles, but something about their winsome sideways smiles weakened him.
So he followed them to their stream to see why they had left. And it was true,
the humans had tossed enough empty beer bottles, snack bags and cigarette butts
along the reedy banks to make a path that led straight to their guilty lips.
    “You know the Queen won’t interfere if you kill men,” he
reminded the undines. The memory of Imogene agonizing over how she had been made
to do worse roughened his voice. “But you can’t leave your phae waters.”
    “We couldn’t before,” said one. “Not when horses crossed our
bridges on iron-shod hooves, not when the miller’s iron-bound wheel circled
through our stream…” The other undine finished, “But now we can. And we will.
This world will fall to the steel-born phae .”
    Then, without even counting to three, they pushed him into the
stream.
    What they lacked in muscle they made up for in ferocity, needle
teeth and the slime that oozed from their skin when they were roused to a
killing frenzy. They fought him past all reason, past the point where any of
them could have stopped. As they coiled around him, dragging him down through
the water—that was barely deeper than his waist, damn it—he had a moment where
he thought maybe it would be better to let the last of the air bubbles past his
gritted teeth. If they were so determined to be free, who was he to stop them?
Did he really care that much about living?
    Imogene’s blue eyes had flashed in his imagination. She hadn’t
been able to hide that brilliant color—it shone even through her human guise.
She had risked everything to live.
    As water poured into his mouth, he released the magic in the
amber ring. The light—brighter than the sun—exploded through the roiling waves,
and the grasping hands fell away from him. He shot to his feet, flailing and
choking.
    Water streamed from his eyes, and he clenched his wings close
to hold them away from the undines, floating belly up beside him. Even as he
watched, they started to unravel in strands of algae.
    The amber sun was a weapon of last resort. Too many phae had been lost during the Iron Wars, and every
passing weakened the Queen’s power. Although now that she was drawing magics
from human collections, perhaps she would kill him in a fit of grand annoyance at his failure to bring the undines back alive.
    He slogged out of the stream. By all that was dark and shining,
why hadn’t they yielded? As overwhelmed as the Hunters were, the undines could
have pretended compliance and returned to their killing as soon as his back was
turned.
    His boots slipped in the mud as his knees suddenly weakened.
Was Imogene planning exactly that? He had turned his back on her as soon as the
gate had opened to the phaedrealii. But he hadn’t
been able to stop himself from glancing around. Her sylfana sisters had bustled forward to surround her, and he caught
only a glimpse of her amber hair when she averted her face without meeting his
gaze.
    If she did escape again, the Lord of the Hunt might send
another Hunter—one who would not hesitate to use the amber sun’s fatal power
against her.
    He didn’t understand what was happening in the Queen’s court,
but he knew a certain sylfana who hadn’t been afraid
to step