Page 28 of Filthy Fae

“Is there any way I can convince you to—”

His fingers covered my lips, and he shook his head. His golden eyes clearly conveyed the message, no fucking way, Scarlet. He wasn’t leaving me here alone, no matter what I said.

My heart picked up speed as I surveyed my options. The distinctive sound of spraying, shushing, and scrubbing waited in the room to our left. The soft tread of feet pattered on the floor above. An open doorway twenty feet ahead led to the argument at the front entrance. Clearly, the room to our right was the only direction we could go without the guarantee of capture.

Meeting Aaron’s eyes, I nodded my head in that direction and crept forward. One look through the doorway showed me an empty kitchen with gleaming, marble countertops that had recently been scrubbed. The smell of rotting meat and cleaner was nearly unbearable, as if it was the epicenter of the reek, but I couldn’t see anything in there that could have caused it.

“Coast is clear,” I whispered as I crouched and slipped through the doorway. The moment I passed through, I realized my grave mistake. The room was filled with fae—forty or more. Stepping through the doorway was like stepping into a bubble of sound and color.

Three-foot-tall, willowy humanoids hovered around a long line of open coolers. Their giant colorful wings held them aloft as they tipped canisters of salt and bottles of bleach into the open top of the coolers. Men and women with their upper bodies human and lower half goat held cleaner bottles under spigots at the bottom of the coolers, refilling with bleach and salt.

All around the room, thin creatures flapped their multicolored wings while scrubbing discolored blood stains on the walls and ceiling. At one side of the room, a man with the lower body of a horse pushed a sander over the wood flooring with white earbuds in his ears. Furniture, splattered with blood and bits of flesh, had been piled against the far wall. At the room’s center, I saw the origin of the reek.

Where a table should have been stood a perfect circle of mushrooms, and all around the mushrooms labored six short men I immediately recognized as Redcaps from their hats that dripped with blood.

Everyone gawped at us except the centaur, their jaws unhinged. A severed arm dropped from one Redcap’s limp fingers, but instead of hitting what looked like solid wood floor, the hand vanished into the mushroom circle. One second it was there, the next only smooth hardwood.

A hand wrapped around my waist and tugged me back. “Scarlet,” Aaron whispered, “Run!”

Too late. The shock fell from the fae’s faces, and they charged. I didn’t make it ten feet before strong little hands grabbed my hair, arms, and legs.

Aaron grabbed a fairy creature off my head and chucked it across the room. “Change.”

“We can’t hurt them,” I yelled back, knowing that if I let my wolf out, there would be another room full of dead fae, and this time it would be entirely my fault.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He kicked away a Redcap who’d grabbed onto his leg.

There was a loud pounding sound behind us, and then someone grabbed my arm and hoisted me off the floor.

Both Aaron and I looked over at the exact same moment to see the centaur hoisting both of us to dangle from his massive arms. “You shouldn’t have intruded here, Alpha,” he said in a booming voice. “Our orders were that if you forced your way in, we have to bring you to the queen.”

“We’ll leave,” I said quickly. “I just want to find the truth. I just want to stop a war between the werewolves and the fae. That’s all I want.”

“If that’s true…” He sniffed, his bright blue gaze landing on my hand where I still pinched the horseshoe earing. “Why did you bring a weapon in here?”

“I found it on the ground,” I said. I tossed it to the far corner of the room and away from all of the thin fairy creatures. “See? Take it. It’s not mine.”

The fae all shied away just slightly.

“Please,” I called up to the centaur. “I just want to figure out what really happened here and get justice for the dead.”

The centaur stomped his hooves, interrupting me, and then he pulled me up until we were eye to eye. “I don’t believe you are innocent, and I don’t believe that your wolf is, either.”

And then I was flying toward the mushroom circle. A body smacked into mine, and I just managed to wrap my arms around Aaron before we fell straight through the floor.

Chapter Twelve

Scarlet

The world blurred into a mess of gray and white as we fell through the air.

“Scarlet!” Aaron reached for me, grabbing my wrist. Something hit my foot, and I looked down to see a blood-soaked couch cushion falling along with us.

“Aaron! We should—” Before I could finish telling Aaron that we should get ready to roll, a stone room came into focus below, and we smacked onto a giant pile of wood and fabric.

The air whooshed out of my stomach, and I slid down the side of the pile, sending salt canisters avalanching with me.

Aaron’s hand squeezed mine, and he groaned. “What the fuck?”