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Turning his large head, Sorin narrowed his eyes on the creature he’d already decided would die by dragon flame.
“Make one more move,” Sorin warned. “And I’ll bite your fool head clean off.”
Fear exploded from the thing, clouding the air as Sorin studied him more thoroughly. To Sorin’s eyes, the thing wavered between a mortal man and a Fae creature he’d encountered often when he’d lived in Europe.
Boggarts, red-comb, powries, fir larrig, all variations of a nasty Fae who killed for sport and enjoyed eating their victims. Many of them were so vicious, Underhill closed the door to them, leaving them lost in the mortal world where they’d eventually weaken and die—after a few centuries of malice, murder and mayhem.
“Redcap,” Sorin said, rising from his landing crouch to look down his nose at the thing infecting the human.
The Redcap backed away, his movements jerkier than they’d been even seconds earlier, likely because the human’s fear of the dragon was powerful.
“I...I...ah, Lord Dragon...I...”
“Be silent,” Sorin said, his tail whipping about in fury. The Redcap’s eyes darted to the east, to a trail Sorin had already seen.
Perhaps that thing wouldn’t die by dragon fire. If the Redcap made a run for it and fell to his death on that muddy, slick excuse of a path, it would be his own damn fault. “You want to make a run for it? Try. You’ll fall in the muck and break your neck, save me the trouble.”
The woman bonded to the guardian spirit he’d sensed moved forward. Her eyes darted toward him warily before she focused on the Redcap and his human carrier.
“I don’t care what the dragon says.” Her words were blunt, her voice hard. “You don’t leave here alive, Robin. Not after everything you’ve stolen from me.”
Sorin hadn’t had a female so blatantly disregard him since...
He pushed the thought aside. This petite female with hair like sunlight might not fear him—yet—but this was his territory. Sorin decided who would live and who would die this night.
Robin...
“Fuck me,” Sorin muttered as his brain made the connection. In a blink, he shifted seamlessly to his mortal body—his dragon self was glorious, but sometimes, the hands of his human self were more practical. The Redcap shrank back as if Sorin were still in his dragon form. “Are you Robin Redcap? The same Robin Redcap who was thrown out of England after it was discovered you’d been dining on the hearts of young girls?”
The way the thing flinched at Sorin’s question was the only answer required.
Sorin rarely concerned himself with matters beyond the territory he’d claimed as his, but even a tired, lonely old dragon had standards. That this...thing had come onto his land and even now threatened others had rage washing over in him in a swath of red. The taste of fire warmed his throat as he stepped closer. “I believe I’ll kill you slowly, Robin Redcap.”
The Redcap’s eyes wheeled around in his head, his terror an obvious answer. He didn’t give up, though.
“That’s not me! I’m not a Redcap. I’m human. See?” He dipped his head, showing his balding pate before knocking on it with a fist. “This is me head, right here!”
“You’re only wearing that human as a disguise.” Sorin hadn’t figured out how yet. But he would. “However, I am curious about this body you wear like a human would a coat.”
“He learned the body hopping as a fluke.”
Sorin felt everything inside him quiver in awareness as the woman came closer, approaching from an angle that let her watch by the Redcap and the woman who’d unloaded a firearm onto Sorin’s dragon-scaled hide.
“A fluke.”
Her jaw tightened, gaze locked on the Redcap. “That’s what he told my mother the night he came to kill her and my father, the night he planned to kidnap me. He’d been wearing the body of somebody we trusted—a friend. He was injured, and came back to try again. I would have been his next victim. But...” Her lips curved into a humorless smile, eyes still focused on the Redcap where he crouched hidden inside his human’s skin. “He wasn’t prepared for the magic of two shadow witches.”
“Shadow witches.” Sorin narrowed his eyes. Ah, yes...the guardian spirits. Fae shades. That explained much.
He’d only met the rare shadow witch in his long years and possessed very little knowledge of them. Of the few he’d met, he ended up killing one of them, although he’d keep that piece of information to himself. “Did the Redcap kill your parents, witch?”
“No,” she said, her voice bleak. “But my father sacrificed himself so my mother and I had a better chance to escape. I’ve been hunting this monster almost from that very day.”
“Your father died a stinking coward, witch.” The Redcap peered at her t, malice and a need to drink in pain making him reckless. “He begged for your life, for your mother’s—”
The woman with hair like sunshine moved with breathtaking speed, striking out with her fist to punch him in the throat. The Redcap staggered back, mouth opening and closing as he struggled to breathe.
“The longer you wear a body, the deeper you connect to a host, the thinner the line between the two of you becomes,” she said in a cool voice. “And this miserable old goat you chose is kinda pathetic.”
