Stormbreak: Chapter 1 – Favors

As promised, here's a first look at one of the other novels that I've been chipping away at a little bit at a time. ~Eric

***

A light rain splattered me as I walked. The dark clouds overhead gave the streets a feeling of premature dusk and threatened something more serious than light rain. Of course, that was nothing new in Stormbreak. There was always heavy cloud cover and the sense of an impending electrical storm that never arrived. A young woman sulked along next to me, throwing surreptitious glares at me when she thought I wouldn’t see. I saw, but I didn’t say anything. At one point, she tried to throw a hex at me. I sighed. The elven magic was potent and cascaded around me in iridescent waves. I paused, turned and looked at her.

I didn’t raise my voice when I said, “Stop it.”

The magic flinched like I’d cracked a whip and fled to wherever magic goes when it’s been badly frightened. The girl stared at me in equal parts shock and outrage, like she couldn’t believe I’d had to bad taste not to be obliterated by her hex. She stamped her foot in mute frustration.

“It’s not fair.”

“Probably,” I said. “Keep annoying me like that, though, and I’ll hit you on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You wouldn’t dare. I’m royalty. My mother-,” she started.

“Gave me complete latitude,” I said, pulling a rolled up newspaper out of the pocket of my weathered bomber jacket.

It wasn’t lost on the girl that the newspaper couldn’t have fit in the pocket. It was clear she didn’t know who I was, yet, but that I was more than I appeared. It finally seemed to dawn on her that I’d waltzed into a pocket dimension and dragged her out of it without even breathing hard. It hadn’t been as easy as I made it look. Nobody storms someone else’s pocket dimension on a whim. It’s painfully difficult when you get right down to it. Still, I’d done it. She huffed for a few seconds and then looked away.

“There you go,” I said, setting off down the street.

I slid the paper back into the pocket of my jacket. We walked a few more blocks in silence as the soft rain slowly soaked my hair. A little of the water trickled down between my shoulder blades and I rolled my eyes. There are few things more aggravatingly uncomfortable than a wet cotton t-shirt. I spotted a couple young lizardmen hanging around on the front stoop of a building. They were all decked out in leather jackets, smoking something that gave off a reek that made me wince. Synthetic lotus flower joints had become all the rage recently. Personally, I didn’t see the appeal. It struck me as little better than taking dementia out for a test drive.

The elven princess was so busy glaring at me that she didn’t notice them until they came down the steps to block our way. When she saw them, she went stock still and even paler than she already was.

“We should go another way,” she whispered to me.

I glanced at her. “Why would we do that?”

Of course, I knew why. There was a long-standing feud between the elves and the lizardmen that dated back to time immemorial. I doubted anyone alive could actually remember what started it, but they avoided traveling alone in each other’s territory. I didn’t need to worry about such things, but I guess these punks hadn’t got the message. The biggest of the lizardmen stepped forward. He had a good foot on me. It’s really too bad the lizardmen couldn’t pass for human, because they’d be brutally efficient NBA forwards. He barely glanced at me, focusing his rage on the girl.

“You shouldn’t be here, little thing,” he said. “Still, I guess we won’t have to go hunting tonight after all.”

The lizardmen aren’t really masters of threatening repartee. Then again, their whole social structure is defined by leadership through strength, so I guess talking wasn’t a priority. I made a point to look through the lizardmen and yawn, obviously and loudly.

“Stand aside, children. She’s not for you.”

The lead lizardman turned his reptilian glare on me. “Silence or I’ll cut you into tiny pieces for the hatchlings.”

“Oh please, I’ve had cups of coffee scarier than you.”

The princess grabbed my arm hard. “What are you doing?”

“My job.”

The whole situation looked like it was about to descend into violence as the lead lizardman took a step toward me. Then a cheery voice called out.

“I wouldn’t do that, Frank.”

I turned to see who’d spoken and saw an old friend crossing the street. Retro Annie, the Atomic Blonde. She wore her blonde hair long, sheathed her slender legs in pristine white go-go boots, and rocked a floral pattern minidress in psychedelic shades. She literally stopped traffic as she went. It wasn’t because she was gorgeous, though she was, but because she was the Atomic Blonde. Retro Annie could reduce buildings to radioactive slag when she got into a mood. She swayed up and planted a kiss on my cheek.

“Annie,” I said, offering her a smile. “It’s been a while.”

“That’s your fault,” she said, pouting in a way that hadn’t been fashionable in a long time, but she made it work.

I conceded the point with a nod. “I’ve been under the radar recently.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she said, turning her attention back to Frank the lizardman. “Frank, sweetie, you’re really about to make a very bad, very final, very fatal mistake.”

Frank seemed confused, but he looked at me when he spoke. “I can kill this little human.”

Annie looked surprised. “Don’t you know who this is?”

“No,” admitted Frank.

Annie looked at the elven girl, who seemed as perplexed as Frank. “I suppose you don’t know either, do you?”

The girl shook her head. Annie gave me a look. “You’re manners are slipping, Emmett. Well then, I’ll just have to be the polite one. Frank, Mirandelle, I’d like to introduce you to Emmett Cutting. You probably know him better as the Hard Man.”

Mirandelle jerked her hand off my arm so fast you’d have thought it was made of molten lava. Frank the lizardman didn’t back off, but his flunkies vanished from sight in seconds. I’m sure they reasoned that they hadn’t picked a fight with me, so there was no good reason for them to get killed. I gave Annie another smile. She had a flair for the dramatic. She winked at me and then walked over to Mirandelle. She laced her arm through the elven girl’s arm and started to lead her away. I heard her whispering.

“You don’t really want to get too close when Emmett decides he’s had enough. It can get messy.”

Frank sized me up and sniffed. “You’re not the Hard Man. He’s not real.”

I shrugged. “Think what you like.”

Frank lunged at me. He was young, strong, and fast. He would have killed a normal human being in short order. Annie hadn’t been lying though. I really was the Hard Man. I have advantages. I stepped out of the way, grabbed his tail and swung him into the wall. It wasn’t hard enough to kill him. I just wanted to make a point. Frank didn’t seem to get the point. He pulled a Bowie knife from somewhere and advanced on me with 8 inches of killing steel extended. I made an immediate mental gear shift from “teach lesson” to “end this.” He wanted to play for keeps, so I had to do the same.

A vaguely female voice screamed. “No!”

Frank visibly jerked and his head whipped around to look. I glanced the same way and saw a much older lizard stalking toward us. Her scales were so dark that they were almost black. She approached with as much dignity as she could muster. She stepped up to us and read the situation. She frowned at Mirandelle, nodded at Retro Annie, gave me a worried look and then slapped Frank across the back of his head.

“Put that away before he decides to kill us all, you sewer crawling buffoon,” she ordered.

Frank made the knife disappear and he looked downright crestfallen. He started to open his mouth and she hit him again. He backed away, looking cowed. He might have been the leader of his little pack of adolescent idiots, but she was obviously the stronger. She turned to me with unreadable black eyes. At least, they were unreadable to me. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

“I apologize,” she said. “He is a stupid child. Much as I was stupid, long ago.”

Then I remembered. She’d challenged me once in a bid for power. I’d taught her a lesson, but spared her life. I’d been relatively new to the position of the Hard Man then. I guess she’d thought I’d be easier prey than the last guy who had the job. I cocked my head at her, considering, before I nodded.

“I suppose allowances must be made for youth,” I said.

Some kind of tension went out of her and she simply pointed at the building. Frank finally realized that he’d dodged something awful and slunk away. The elder lizard frowned at Mirandelle again and turned back to me.

“Why would you bring her here?”

I shrugged. “I forgot you moved your people here. I wasn’t trying to start a fight. It was just the most direct route.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ll pass the word along not to bother you.”

“Much appreciated, ma’am.”

She made a noise I read as the lizard version of a snort. “I’m younger than you.”

I smiled at her. “So you are.”

She shook her head and went back inside, probably to beat Frank about the head and neck for gross stupidity. Mirandelle and Annie came over to stand beside me. Mirandelle stared at me like she didn’t quite believe I existed. Annie looked bemused.

“Well, that was certainly exciting,” said Annie. “Emmett, you really must call me. We could have a lovely lost weekend.”

“You’re too much woman for me, Annie.”

“True,” she said. “But you might actually survive the experience.”

She offered Mirandelle a brief goodbye, patted my bottom and then swayed off on her go-go boots. I’ll admit it. I watched her go. It’s not that I wasn’t a little tempted or intrigued by the idea, but a man needs to know his limits. She might look like a young woman and I supposed she was, most of the time. It was that “most of the time” part that gave me pause.

Retro Annie had been living in Stormbreak since 1963. The way I’d heard the story, she’d been the secretary for some kind of nuclear researcher. He was convinced he’d found a new radioactive element. Turns out that he was experimenting on the petrified spirit of something old and mighty. His freed all of its power and that power went looking for a new home. It vaporized the researcher and four lab assistants before it found Annie. Apparently she had something buried deep in her soul or her DNA that made her compatible. No one knew exactly what she was now, but everyone knew not to annoy her. Only a fool pisses off a one-woman nuclear winter.

By the late 70s, it was pretty to clear to everyone that she wasn’t aging. At least not at a rate that was discernible. So she started seeking out those who were hard to kill and long-lived to be her friends. I made the cut. I’m not immortal by any stretch of the imagination. I can be killed or so I was told when I took the job. Under the right circumstances, I can retire. At which point, I’d start aging like a regular person and the hardest bastard of all, time, would catch up with me. That’s why I was sure Annie would still be go-go booting her way across the city long, long after I was dead. We all start somewhere. I started out as a human being and that meant I’d be ready to die someday.

Mirandelle was still staring at me with huge, unbelieving eyes. I blinked at her once or twice and then started walking again. She fell in beside me and didn’t say anything for a long time. None of the other lizardmen bothered us. I frowned for a moment. I wondered if it was lizardpeople now. I found it harder and harder to keep track of those changes. Then again, I admitted to myself, it wasn’t like I’d been making much of an effort to keep track in recent years.

“Is it true?” Mirandelle asked.

“Is what true?”

“Are you really the Hard Man?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Mirandelle shuddered. “My mother told me stories about you, when I was a child. How you fought against us during the Quell. How you fought with us when the lizardmen came here. Your battles against the Oblivion Knights and the Under Folk.”

“Not very good bedtime stories,” I muttered.

Those had been bloody affairs, even by my standards. I still had bad dreams about the Oblivion Knights. They’d come sweeping in with their future tech and self-proclaimed holy mission to wipe out abominations. The problem was that, as near as I could tell, the only people they didn’t consider abominations were their fellow knights. I’d been away on one of my rare trips back to the regular world when it started. By the time I got back, they’d murdered so many people that the bodies were stacked in the streets like cordwood. They thought they were hard men. So I hunted them down and showed them what a real hard man looks like. These days there are no more Oblivion Knights.

“Of course they were,” said Mirandelle. “They were wonderful stories! All that death.”

I forgot how bloodthirsty the elves were sometimes. “What’s the problem, then?”

She looked at me like the answer was so obvious that it should be plain to anyone. “A human man, a mortal, with that kind of power? What could be more frightening?”

I gave the elf princess an unamused look. “Retro Annie has more power than I ever will. She’s mortal.”

“Whatever gave you that silly idea?”

I let her comment sink in for a moment. Now, that was food for thought. “Must have been my weak mortal reasoning.”

“Ah. Naturally. I suppose you think that this will indebt my mother to you. Give you a favor to call in someday.”

I shuddered. “God, no. I’m paying one off. The only thing worse than owing your people a debt is being owed one by them.”

“Not so stupid, after all.”

She fell silent and we walked a few more blocks before Mirandelle stopped and glared at me. “Is there a reason we’re walking. Some form of obscure punishment my mother told you to inflict?”

I eyed the girl. She gave a significant nod at the passing traffic. I don’t much care for automobiles. The first steam powered cars were just becoming a thing when I arrived in Stormbreak. I know how to drive, but I don’t enjoy it. It was one of many reasons I don’t own a vehicle. Once gasoline powered cars started showing up, it’d been worth your life to take to the roads for several decades. It wasn’t like we had city planners, let alone traffic laws or traffic cops. With so many disparate cultures, there was zero chance of establishing anything like common laws or punishments. Still, some enterprising soul conned someone into paying for traffic lights, which got ignored about half the time. Even token adherence to rules of the road had only come about from a century’s worth of people finding their way in from the mundane world.

I sighed and started eyeing the traffic. It took a few minutes before I spotted what I wanted, a wolf’s head etched into the door of a yellow cab. I hailed the cab and it pulled next to us. Mirandelle and I slid into the backseat. I pulled the door shut and waited on the cabbie. I could only see part of his face, but even in profile there was something lupine about it. That’s why I’d waited.

There were several cab companies in Stormbreak, but Wolfpack Cabbie was the only one that I considered nominally safe. It was run by an extensive family of werewolves. Sure, it was a little risky to hail them around the full moon, but they were professionals the rest of the month. Plus, they had a reputation for putting up with no shit from anyone. You pick a fight with one, and you pick a fight with all of them. There is nothing like the threat of several thousand pounds of howling savagery, red in tooth and claw, to discourage people from bothering your passengers. That same threat also meant no one ever tried to rob one of their cabbies. Suicide comes in a lot of flavors, most of them quicker and less agonizing.

The cabbie growled over his shoulder. “Where to?”

“The Seelie Court,” I said.

The cabbie turned to look at me. His eyes went wide and then he gaze shot over to Mirandelle. I heard a quiet rumble from him. Not threatening, just unhappy. I couldn’t blame him. The two of us probably looked like a heaping pile of problems he wasn’t sure he wanted to dump on his pack’s head. He seemed to think it over for a minute, probably deciding whether he wanted to make me angry, before he grabbed his radio.

“Come in, Control. You there, Petra?”

“This is Control. Go ahead, Willem.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a double VIP fare headed to one of the fairy courts. I need to go secure.”

“Copy Willem. Secure mode authorized.”

“Thanks Petra. Out.”

A panel opened in the dashboard and an honest-to-God, big, red button appeared. Willem the werewolf cabbie pressed the button. There was a series of clanks and bangs from all over the car. Steel shutters slammed home over all the windows, including the windshield. Willem reached over into the passenger seat and picked up a helmet with an opaque face shield. I frowned at the helmet and Willem noticed.

“Holographic head’s up display,” he told me.

He plopped the helmet over his head, plugged a wire from the helmet into a special jack on the dash and adjusted a few buttons and knobs. He tightened his seatbelt a little and then he dropped the hammer. The vehicle slammed into the traffic like a wrecking ball, based on the number of impacts I felt. The acceleration was so intense that it pushed me hard into the seat’s padding. I was very glad I couldn’t see out the window for the next ten minutes. From all the noise, Willem did appalling things to any vehicle that got near us. He also didn’t let off the gas until he spun the wheel hard and brought us to a skidding, sideways stop. He pulled the wire out of the dash, took off the helmet, and dropped it into the passenger seat. Then, he hit the big, red button again. There was another series of jarring thunks, clanks and bangs before the shutters lifted.

I looked over at Mirandelle. All the color was gone from her face and it seemed like she wanted to vomit. As soon as it was clear the cab wasn’t in motion anymore, she opened the door and threw herself into the open air. Willem noticed and shook his head.

“Amateurs,” he muttered.

“What do I owe you?” I asked.

He told me without a shred of self-consciousness. I could have bought a small building for less. VIP service comes with VIP pricing, I guess. I dug deep into my coat pocket. I had to push the newspaper, a revolver, a sandwich I’d forgotten about, a small chest of drawers and something that purred like a cat out of the way before I found my coin purse. I hauled it out and fished around for a moment before I flipped a thick gold coin over the seat.

“What’ll that get me?”

Willem hefted the coin and smiled. “To the Hades Seal, not that you’d want to go there.”

He was right about that. No one goes to the Hades Seal willingly, but it was on the farthest border of Stormbreak. I took his meaning.

“Wait here,” I said. “I’ll want a ride back.”

Willem held up the coin. “You’re the boss.”

I got out the cab and looked around. We were in what looked like a clearing in a primordial forest, but I rather doubted that impression. Elves loved glamour like junkies loved drugs. We could very well be standing inside a warehouse or on a toxic waste dump and I’d never know for sure. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in the ruins of a sanitarium. It wouldn’t hurt the elves, but it’d play merry hell on any normal mortal who showed up. Add that to your list of reasons never to accept food or drink from the elves.

I got out of the cab and gave the clearing an imperious glare. Mirandelle stood on the other side of the car, arms folded across her chest. She pointedly didn’t look at me. There was a single path that led deeper into the forest. I didn’t trust it one bit. It was too easy, which meant it was certainly intended for the stupid and unwary. I walked around the car and regarded Mirandelle with cold eyes.

“You can tell me how to really get there, or I can push you ahead of me down that path. Your choice.”

Her eyes went wide with anger and then fear. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

She searched my face for something. Weakness? Compassion? Giving a crap? Who knew? She didn’t find whatever it was and looked away. She nodded. She waved a hand at the forest and a second path appeared. I smiled at her. It wasn’t a friendly thing.

“Ladies first,” I said, extending an arm toward the path her magic revealed.

She glared at me before taking the second path and resuming her sulk. I walked a pace behind her, eyes scanning the undergrowth and listening for anything out of the ordinary. Not that it would help. If there was a trap ahead, they’d never let me catch wind of it before they sprang it on me. We walked for maybe five minutes before we stepped into another clearing and a castle appeared ahead of us.

It was an enormous thing composed of towers and spired roofs. It reminded me vaguely of Neuschwanstein Castle, only more delicate. The spired roofs appeared to be single pieces of clear crystal. The walls were solid mother of pearl. Walkways of spun glass stretched between the towers hundreds of feet in the air. I thought a stiff breeze would shatter them, but I saw tiny figures moving on them. I felt a brief spasm of sympathetic vertigo before I looked away. It wasn’t my problem. I directed my gaze to the front gate. It had to be forty feet tall, built from impossibly large slabs of dark wood.

I felt a scowl settle onto my face as we approached it. There were two-dozen armored elves waiting with swords drawn. I decided I wasn’t taking any chances. I pushed my hands into my coat pockets and dug around until I found what I wanted. We came to a stop ten yards shy of the armored warriors. I gave them a once over and then sniffed in contempt. It’s not that they weren’t dangerous. I just didn’t feel like giving them satisfaction of acknowledging it. Their leader separated from the group and walked up to us, arrogance personified. He looked at Mirandelle, frowned slightly, and then deigned to spare me a glance. He managed to make it seem like he looked down his nose at me without bothering to lift his chin. It was a nice move. I’d have to practice it when I had time.

He waved a hand at me in dismissal. “You can go. You have no business in these walls.”

Mirandelle started to move forward and I grabbed her arm. She looked at me in utter shock. The lead guard looked at me in utter shock. The guards by the gate made ominous, angry noises. I fixed the lead guard with an expression I save for cockroaches that show up in places they aren’t wanted. He took a half-step backwards before mastering himself. I gave him a knowing smile before I went back to giving him a hard look. I let go of Mirandelle’s arm and put my hand back into my pocket, sliding my fingers into a surprise for the elf guards.

“I don’t deal with lackeys,” I said. “I’m here to see the Queen. I’m expected. So make like the servant you are and open that gate.”

The elf guard gaped at me for a moment before blistering fury contorted his face into something utterly inhuman. He swung at me, expecting his magically-enhanced speed and strength to overwhelm my pitiful human reflexes. I blocked his punch so hard that it broke his wrist. He cried out in equal parts shock and pain. I drew my right hand out of my coat and punched him in the armored chest. The stainless steel knuckleduster shattered the enchanted armor and sent the lead guard flying through the air. Cold iron, I thought, never visit the elves without it. He hit the ground, rolled once, and slid into the feet of his men. I slipped another pair of knuckledusters onto my left hand and showed them to the guards.

“I’m the Hard Man,” I told them in a calm, quiet voice. “Think it over. Then make the smart choice.”

The elves looked from my face to the knuckledusters, then down to their possibly dead boss. Most of them started to move back toward the gate, but a few of them charged at me. I blinked in mild surprise and then shrugged inwardly. Okay, we’d do it the hard way. One of them leaped high into the air like he thought it would impress me. I took two steps, jumped into the air on a slightly different trajectory. As we met at the apex of his arc, he tried to slash at me, but I had the metaphorical and literal high ground. My left hand shot out at a downward angle, knuckleduster met blade, and the sword exploded into a fine, silvery mist. The elf was so distracted that he didn’t realize I’d grabbed him with my other hand.

I couldn’t arrest his motion, so I let it turn us both in a crazy spin. I threw my legs up toward the sky. It changed the angle of the spin enough that when I released him, he hurtled toward the ground. It all happened so fast that no one had time to react. I paid attention to where I was going for a moment, twisted in the air and bent my knees. I hit the ground facing towards Mirandelle, flexed my legs to help absorb the impact, and slid several feet. I took a deep breath and sprinted at the other guards who had attacked. I move fast when I’m motivated. I caught the slower of the two guards unawares. I hit him with an open palm strike to the center of his back. It sounded like I’d hit a gong. He went down hard and his sword flew out of his hand. The second guard heard the noise and spun, his slender sword whistling through the air. I dropped into a slide and the blade passed over my head. I punched that guard in the knee as I passed by on the ground. Again, armor shattered and his leg collapsed beneath him. I planted a heel and let momentum carry me back to my feet. I turned and looked at the guards by the gate. The whole thing had taken maybe ten seconds.

“I’m the Hard Man,” I repeated. “Think it over and…”

They rushed to open the gate. I extended a hand toward the gate. “After you, your highness.”

Mirandelle stared at me for a long five count, like she couldn’t process what just happened. She shivered and started toward the castle. One of the guards walked inside with us, waving off anyone who even looked like they might be considering talking to us. It took forever, but we were finally led to a door covered in ornate carvings. I didn’t recognize the symbols, but I could feel the obdurate power emanating from them. It would be a very bad idea to try and force that door open. The guard spoke a few words under his breath and then stepped into the room. He came back out a moment later and opened the door wide.

“I present to you, Emmett Cutting, the Hard Man of Stormbreak,” the guard announced.

Mirandelle stepped into the room and I followed. The door swung shut behind us. The room was opulent to the point of parody. There was so much gold and silver, so many jewels of so many types, so much silk and fabrics finer than silk that my brain simply refused to acknowledge it. It substituted everything I was seeing with the word wealth and promptly started ignoring everything that wasn’t alive. That was when I noticed that I was standing alone in a room with Mirandelle. She regarded me cool, distant eyes. I frowned at her.

“Where’s the Queen?” I asked.

Mirandelle flicked a finger and the glamour melted away. The elven girl was gone, replaced with her mother. The differences weren’t dramatic. Her hair was longer, her face leaner, but she was painfully beautiful, as all elves were. Golden hair flowed around her face and down her back. A crown of aspen leaves kept the hair out of her eyes. A gown of barely opaque purple was tied at the waist. It revealed a v-shaped splash of ivory skin from her collarbones to her smooth, taut stomach. I tried really hard to be surprised. It was the polite thing to do. I raised my eyebrows and let my mouth hang open a bit. The corner of the Queen’s mouth quirked up at one corner.

“You were always absurdly self-possessed. I suppose you knew the whole time.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t, but it never hurts for people to assume you’re superhuman in more ways than one. “I consider the favor repaid. My efforts were in good faith.”

“Yes, yes,” murmured the Queen. “It was a trifling thing.”

I regarded the ancient fairy and let the implications play out in my head for a moment. She’d gone to all the trouble of manufacturing a non-existent problem. Then she’d playacted as her own daughter all day. She’d allowed her own palace guard to attack me and then let me brutalize them. Why? I pondered on that for a few moments before the obvious became transparent. It was a test. She wanted to know if I still had it. I guess it was a fair concern. I’d been letting the young bucks take on more and more of the work the last few decades. I kept an eye on them, but the stupid and incompetent never lasted very long. Stormbreak isn’t a place for the weak. The test, though, meant she thought the new guys couldn’t handle something that was in the works. I sighed. “So, what’s coming?”

She froze for the barest fraction of a moment, but I saw it.

“So grim,” she said. “So serious. Perhaps I just wanted to play. I brought you all the way to my chambers. How do you know you’re not here so I can seduce you?”

She glided over to me and trailed a finger across my lips. I felt the terrible power in her, the inhumanity of that power, but it played across my nervous system. Blood started rushing to my groin without any kind of committee meeting with sanity. The truth of the matter was that she probably would take me to bed, if I expressed the slightest willingness. She could show me infinite pleasures. Of course, you can kill with pleasure if you know what you’re doing. Plus, there was another little stumbling block.

“I’m in no hurry to give your husband a reason to seek vengeance on me.”

She laughed. It was cream and sugar and everything sweet that’s bad for you. “We are elves, not mortals. He has his playthings. I have mine. What is life without fresh experience?”

She slid behind me, brushing her lips across the back of my neck. She pressed her lithe body against me and it got very difficult to think about anything. It’s not like there was any law against it, I rationalized. It took an enormous effort of will, but I forced myself to reason. There might not be any laws, but there were lots of good reasons. Literally getting into bed with the fairy nobility could compromise me. She couldn’t alter my mind with magic. I was protected from that. That didn’t mean she couldn’t manipulate me with sex and carefully worded suggestions. I might be the Hard Man, but I was still a man. Her hand slid across my stomach and down to my crotch. She massaged it gently.

“You aren’t going to feign disinterest, are you Emmett?”

I turned to her. She lifted a pale eyebrow as amusement danced in her eyes. What the hell, I decided. I reached up and pushed the fabric of the robe off of her smooth shoulders. It dropped to the floor in a fabric puddle. Her smile widened in satisfaction. I slipped a hand around her waist and pulled her against me. I leaned in close.

“Tell me what’s coming,” I said.

She started to pull away in annoyance. “Mortals.”

I pulled her against me again. “Tell me and I’ll look into it. Starting tomorrow.”

She stared up at me with some wholly alien emotion on her face. Then she whispered, “Perdition’s Shadow.”