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When they walked out to Tomi’s car, Rory stared at the door. Dax had no idea if the fae man couldn’t touch iron or if he just didn’t know how to open it. Dax had used the time while he waited for Tomi to look up a bit about the fae, though he had no idea if the internet was a reliable source for information about a real magical person from the land of faerie.
He had never talked about it with the Morrigan— He cut off the thread of thought before he could go deeper, but anger furrowed his brow and set a fire in his gut. Rory shrank back, terror filling his eyes.
Returning to the core of his human body and the feel of the car door handle in his hand, Dax held his breath before exhaling. He had no desire to scare Rory over a momentary slip of mental discipline. He couldn’t let thoughts of her possess that kind of power over him.
“My apologies, Rory. My anger wasn’t related to you, but to a past…incident.” He opened the back door for Rory, waving him in.
Rory, giving him a wary eye, slipped into the backseat and scooted to the other side of the car to sit behind Tomi. Shrugging, Dax slid into the passenger seat and buckled his seatbelt. He took a couple calming breaths then reached out to find Rory’s life thread so he could get a sense of direction.
The ranger had offered to direct them to the place where he and his companion had been ambushed. Dax hoped the fae man knew how to navigate his way through a modern human city, but if he was a ranger, he probably could. Being in the car might make it trickier, though.
Rory had no issues guiding Tomi through the turns and straightaways to find where he had been ambushed, leaning between the seats and pointing as he recognized landmarks. Soon, they parked on a dark side street and slipped out into the night.
They blended in with the limited foot traffic as they followed closely behind Rory. Soon, they entered a part of old town Redemption City with narrow streets and narrower alleys. It would have been the perfect place to hunt, with corners to hide around and alleys to disappear in.
Reaching out with his senses, Dax found plenty of evidence of cut life threads, some old laying like fraying lace over the streets while others felt fresh, very fresh.
He had trouble sorting through them all, trying to find where they might intersect with Rory’s. Pushing away, Dax pulled his awareness back into his head and let Rory guide them into a particularly dark and smelly alley. Here, he could practically feel the recent death surrounding him.
Finding a cut thread with possibilities, he let it lead him to a nook next to a dumpster.
“This fucking stinks, Dax. Why do we always have to go to the worst places?”
Dax chuckled. “You could have stayed at work, but you asked to come.”
“Someone has to drive your motorcycle-having ass around.” Tomi crossed his arms over his broad chest, grumbling.
Waving Tomi off, he squatted down and found a dark stain on the ground. A large amount of blood had been spilled here. So much so that the victim had succumbed to the wound.
He stood and backed away from the blood. “You two go stand at each end of the alley. I need to concentrate.”
Tomi nodded and headed back to the end of the alley they’d entered from. Rory narrowed his eyes, flicking his gaze from Tomi and back to Dax a few times. Sighing, he twitched his shoulders and walked toward the other end of the alley.
There was little he could do within the cage of his human flesh. Drawing in the shadows, he pushed them out around him and let his skin, muscles, and other tissue disappear, revealing the form he’d been forced into as a part of his exile.
The ratty black cloak fluttered in the light breeze. Returning to the pool of dried and coagulated blood, the bones of his feet clacked on the hard pavement of the alley. He stopped and squatted, reaching to touch the blood. With the bleached white bones of his fingers, he dragged his forefinger and middle finger through one of the patches that looked wetter and brought it up to his face to examine.
The life force of the victim pulsed strongly in the blood. In life, whoever had bled it must have been robust. Tuning into it, he let the blood sing the victim’s last verse…
The creature. Furious at being challenged. Lashing out. A slip of a foot and the slash of a claw. Blood spurting and a triumphant roar.
Dax latched onto the roar and followed it.
Indignation. Fear, so strange and unfamiliar. Desperation. Nothing.
Straightening to his full height, he looked around to where the last bit of the creature’s essence ceased. He thought he saw scrape marks on the ground—large ones. A cage?
Returning to the spilled blood, he squatted down and returned the bloodied fingers to the pool and rummaged around for the other side of the cut life thread. If he could find the piece still tailing from the body, perhaps they could find the corpse and the men who’d removed it along with the creature and Rory’s companion.
“Dax… Shit. I can’t see you. You almost done, boss?”
“Almost.” His voice came out hallow and oddly disharmonic.
There. There were the frayed edges of it. He grabbed onto it and fixed it in his mind, walking toward the side of the alley where Rory stood sentinel.
“Go get the car and meet me where I emerge.”
“Fuck, boss. You can’t be walking around like that. You’ll cause a panic.”
