Page 9 of Denied

They have harmed you? I will have their bowels wrapping my fingers.

We just got here. There hasn’t been time. Besides, I thought you did this. Tara uttered a soundless laugh. It must have been the portal.

Dirk’s chest filled with unseen stone. They took you from me? Where? Where are you?

Her smile widened. Now why would I tell you that, big brother? I kept my word. I delivered the Fae to you. I’m free now. She started to fade into a transparency of herself. Free of you, and soon, this miserable life.

I will never let you go. Dirk drove his fists into the barrier between them, feeling his knuckles split as the iron boundary repelled him. Do you hear me, Tara? I am coming for you and the Fae.

If only you had been kind, she whispered, her expression turning wistful. I’ve been yours since we were children. All you had to do was love me, and I would have given myself to you. But there is no love in you, Dirk. Not even for me.

The desperate, mewling part of him wanted her. I will try to love you. Only come back to me…and bring the Fae.

The last thing she gave him was a wistful smile, and a one-fingered salute.

A blast of amber and silver power hurled him out of the dreamshare, and Dirk returned to his body to see his fists oozing blood. He scrambled to his feet and strode out into the club. There wasn’t a moment to spare.

“The Fae seek to escape us,” he shouted at them, and seized the largest of the strippers. “We attack now.”

The mortal female trembled as Dirk hauled her out of the club and shoved her on the back of a motorcycle. As he mounted in front of her and started the bike, his men’s machines roared to life. He led them from the club to the faire grounds, which appeared empty. He passed easily through the gates formerly protected by a spell boundary. Dirk stopped his bike and climbed off, dragging the stripper with him.

“Search the property,” he called to his men. “Find me the entrance to their wretched tunnels.” To his cousin he said, “Bring me rope.”

As Beck and the men dispersed, the terrified stripper fell to her knees in front of Dirk.

“Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone about you. I just want this to stop.”

“So it shall.”

Dirk grabbed her hair and jerked back her head. His blade soundlessly sliced through her soft neck before the whore knew what was happening. He tipped her forward until she bled out on the ground. His blade made quick but messy work of her, leaving only the thick sack of her skin, fat, and what muscles remained. As he’d done with the psychic, he stripped out of his clothes and donned the flesh like a garment. But this was no disguise. The misshapen and distended head and body would fool no one.

Beck returned with a coil of rope.

“The entrance is beneath the lodge,” he said, and eyed the borrowed flesh with a smirk. “You mean to enter the tunnels in your pretty new girl suit? It will only repel the effects of the Fae crystals for a few minutes before it begins to peel away.”

“That is all I need.” Dirk yanked his trousers and jacket back on and shoved the stripper’s hair out of his eyes. “Rope,” he said, raising his arms.

His cousin tied one end around his waist. “Pull it taut if you need to be dragged out.”

“Make sure you drag me out if I do,” Dirk told him, “or you will never have your revenge on my father.”

He entered the lodge, where the lingering spell trace of the Fae crawled against his borrowed flesh and read him as mortal. Beck followed him down to the basement, and stopped at the entrance to the tunnels.

“I can feel the bloody thing from here,” his cousin said, scowling. “’Tis still open. Do not go through it.”

“Do you think me an idiot?” Dirk checked the knot on the rope. “Be ready, Cousin.”

Walking into the tunnel sent waves of nausea through Dirk as the crystals paving the passage activated. He could feel them pelting him with their light magick, seeking what lay beneath the dead stripper’s skin. But he ignored the enchantment and made his way into the caves.

If Dirk had not despised the Fae with all his black soul he might have envied them the beauty and power of their hidden lair. All around him the crystals protecting their cave system glowed as he passed. They sparkled as they funneled power from the earth and transformed it into light. Their glittering facets focused on him, the source of the disturbance, but the stripper’s skin reflected back only the presence of a mortal. He could feel the flesh beginning to thin, and increased his pace until he found the arch of journey stone and beheld its shimmering doorway. His gut clenched as he peered into it, trying to see what lay on the other side.

The mists began to clear, and two tall, powerful warriors appeared in the center, each holding a power crystal. Dirk ducked down behind a broad rock, and from there watched Ryan Sheridan and another man step up to the threshold of the portal from the other side.

Dirk’s hands bunched into fists as he fought the urge to lunge through the portal at them. He knew the skin he wore would never last through such a jaunt. Once exposed to the portal as Dark Fae, he would be wrenched apart before he made it to the other side.

“I can feel someone on the other side, my liege,” the man said to Sheridan. “We must close it now.”

“Aye.”