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The curly-haired assassin hunted the quiet suburban streets of Janice Willoughby’s neighborhood, undoubtedly on the trail of Liliana’s favorite red wolf.
The vision was of the future, but not that far. Liliana held her breath in fear for her new friend. Pete did not have the needed magic to defeat such an enemy. If the Wolfhound found his prey, Pete would die.
Liliana did not have any way to pierce a Wolfhound’s protective magic either. If this assassin sought to kill Pete, Liliana would be helpless to stop him.
Instead of Pete, the Wolfhound met a tall, broad-shouldered man with a familiar, burn-scarred face, wearing a maroon button-down shirt and crisply creased black slacks. Liliana recognized the handsome Fae colonel, even though he wore no uniform. His sharply erect stance and buzzed short haircut still marked him like a neon sign as military. Colonel Bennet stood in the light of a streetlamp on the sidewalk in front of the Willoughbys’ house, tall and regal in the proud way he held himself.
A quick glance at the colonel’s wrist phone showed the date, only four nights in the future. And the time, near midnight, the peak of unseelie power.
She tilted her head, studying him in the brilliant light and deep shadows. A man of contrasts, as beautiful as a mountain, his face nearly as cold and remote.
He called to the Wolfhound with a voice resonating with the power of the deep earth, beyond his normal smooth baritone, a bass rumble of a command with magic to back it up. “Obaudio me, servus.”
Liliana recognized the Latin. Her father taught her both his native languages, Latin and Greek. “Attend me, servant,” the words meant.
Was the wolfhound working for the Colonel?
From what she’d seen, she thought the colonel knew of Pete’s nature and accepted him, even protected him. She had assumed he must be a seelie Fae, traditional allies of the Celtic wolves. But the colonel called the Wolfhound, and the wolf-kin, from the order of assassins created specifically to hunt red wolves, came.
The wolf-kin circled the colonel growling, as if uncertain if he should attack or run. “Who are you to dare call me off the hunt in the old way?” The werewolf shifted from human to demi-wolf form. His fangs and claws grew long. Black and charcoal gray fur spread across his skin. His posture hunched into a two-legged crouch.
The colonel stepped out of the circle of white light from the streetlamp into the thick shadows under a big old oak tree in the Willoughbys’ yard. His dark clothes and dark skin would make him virtually invisible if one of the Willoughby children happened to look out their window in the dead of night. The shadows seemed to thicken and embrace him, concealing him even more effectively from prying eyes.
In the shadow, the colonel transformed. He added over a foot to his already impressive height, and his handsome face changed to an inhumanly beautiful image carved out of translucent obsidian, flawed only where the scars had marred his human skin. A row of sharp, silver, backswept horns accented his brow like a deadly crown. He flexed forearm muscles carved from black stone, and silver claws extended from his fingertips. Silver needle teeth glimmered in the unseelie Fae’s mouth when he gave the Wolfhound a cold smile.
Liliana gasped. Surely that was some sort of glamour. Of all the many varieties of Fae, only Titania and her daughter, Aurore, had silver horns in the shape of a crown. It was the trademark of that royal Sidhe family. But the unseelie queen had no family in this land. That was one reason why Liliana, and so many European Others, fled to the New World. There were no Sidhe here of either the court of night or day to fight over the land’s favor.
The assassin’s eyes widened. “Your Highness!” The Wolfhound was a peak predator made of sleek muscle, trained in the deadliest arts and protected from most harm by dark magic. He dropped to his knees before what appeared to be the one thing he feared and obeyed, an unseelie prince of Titania’s lineage.
“Forgive me,” he growled, voice only partially human and accented with something from the part of Europe bordering on Russia. “I did not know any member of the royal family lived in the United States.”
Looking like an elegant piece of the night sky come to life, the shimmering black Fae accepted the wolf-kin’s obeisance as if it were his right to have Others kneeling at his feet. “I forbid this hunt. The red wolf is not to be touched.”
“But Princess Aurore ordered me to...”
A hand made of unforgiving stone with razor-sharp edges struck the wolf-kin across the face. The blow knocked the Wolfhound back onto the concrete sidewalk. “My sister does not rule here,” the obsidian Fae said softly, with no trace of emotion in his voice. “I do.”
The assassin sat up. His long, pink tongue caught a trickle of blood from the corner of his toothy mouth. The blood was the final proof. The leather collar embossed with the silver crown, provided by the queen’s own hand, protected Wolfhounds from most forms of physical harm. Only one of the same royal blood could so easily pierce that protection.
No glamour concealed the Fae’s true nature. Colonel Bennet was exactly who he appeared to be: an unseelie Sidhe prince, a son of the Queen of Air and Darkness.
Liliana shivered and twisted her skirt in her hands.
Janice Willoughby bit her thumbnail but didn’t interrupt Liliana’s vision.
A Sidhe prince lived in Fayetteville. A Sidhe prince with the potential to bond with the land and bring the bloody Fae wars to this continent lived on the Army base, only a few blocks away from her. Liliana considered again her impulse to pack up and move to the other side of the country.
But she fought a Celtic wolf in single combat just the day before for the right to stay in her home. She lifted her chin in defiance, even though the Fae prince could not see. She was not Fae. She owed Fae royalty neither allegiance nor enmity. And the unseelie Fae had, historically, been less hostile to Liliana’s kind than the seelie courts. The Queen of Air and Darkness had never sent her Wolfhounds to hunt spider seers.
Plus, she did not know this man. Just as Pete differed from the packs who slaughtered Liliana’s family, so this unseelie Fae prince was likely to be different from the seelie rulers who ordered the slaughter of her kind.
She would watch him, but if this obsidian prince offered her no hostility, she would do the same. And if the colonel did intend her harm, well then, she would consider whether it would be wiser to flee or to kill him. Sidhe without a bond to the land were not so very formidable. She could probably defeat one if she chose her ground carefully.
She would not give up her home lightly.
The visions of the future fractured at that point, divided into different future possibilities. It was a turning point, a moment when one small decision could fundamentally change all future paths from there.
One branch resulted in serious injury or death to the Fae colonel. The Wolfhound, enraged by the strike, would attack the Fae prince, surprising and killing him. But battles were rarely that simple. So many confounding factors meant the Fae might have a chance to fight back. In those visions, a brutal battle drew blood on both sides, but usually Colonel Bennet won. Even then, he paid for his victory with severe injuries.
