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“You dare to touch my wife?” The deep, growling voice behind me belonged to Liath, who had left the counter and was now right behind me. He set me carefully back on my feet and grabbed the male who had shoved me by the throat. “I ought to break your fucking neck!” he snarled, lifting the male high into the air.
“Holy shit!” I heard the first man mutter. He dropped the girl—who he had mostly been supporting—and rushed for the door.
I grabbed the human girl before she could fall, noting that her sparks were much diminished—probably because she had been drugged.
“Quickly, Liath—don’t let the other one get away!” I told my husband. “They were both in on it together!”
Liath dropped the first human male on the floor and went for the second, who was nearly at the door. He clearly hadn’t counted on an Unseelie warrior following him. Liath’s long arm reached him before he could make his destination and his big hand caught in the back of the man’s collar. He dragged him back, choking and gagging, and dumped him by the first male.
“Hey, what’s this—what’s going on?” One of the human bartenders—a male one—had come out from behind the counter. “What’s happening here, Liath?” he asked, frowning. Apparently, he knew my husband.
“These two were trying to drug the little female,” Liath growled, nodding at the human girl I was mostly supporting. She had one arm slung around my shoulders and her head was lolling onto my shoulder. Clearly whatever potion they had given her, it was an extremely strong one.
The human bartender looked angrily from the two males cowering on the floor to the human girl.
“That’s not true—we were just helping her home!” the first one babbled.
“Yeah—she’s had too much to drink. She’s my sister!” the second one exclaimed.
“Your sister, huh?” the bartender looked at him with a frown. The human male did have the same shade of brown hair as the girl, though I didn’t think they looked alike at all, other than that.
“He’s lying!” I exclaimed indignantly. “He slipped something into her drink—I saw him.”
“No, I didn’t—I’m telling you, she’s my sister, man!” the human male insisted. “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I wouldn’t drug my own sister.” He apparently thought he had found a lie that worked and intended to stick with it.
I wished the girl wasn’t so drugged. She needed to speak up for herself in this matter and let the bartender know the human male was lying.
Without thinking about it, I gathered some of the many swirling sparks in the room and knotted them together with a bit of mental dexterity. Then I pushed the ball of sparks at her, whispering a word of cleansing under my breath. I needed to clean her of the toxin that had been given to her so that she could speak in her own defense.
The girl took a deep breath, gasped, and then lifted her head. She looked at me in a confused kind of way.
“Elf…maiden?” she whispered. “What…who are you and what happened to me?”
“I am Alira of the Unseelie Court,” I told her truthfully. “And what happened is that these men drugged you and were trying to drag you away from the tavern.”
“The…tavern?” she looked confused.
“The bar,” Liath growled. He shook the human he was still holding by the collar. “Is either one of these males your brother?”
“My brother?” the girl frowned and straightened up. “No, of course not. I don’t even have a brother.”
“You see, Harry?” Liath growled at the bartender. He glared at both of the human males who shrank back from him in fear and confusion.
“I see all right,” the bartender who must also be the owner of the establishment said grimly. “You watch them, Liath—I’m calling the cops.”
“Hey, no!” one of the men begged.
“You can’t arrest us—we didn’t do nothing!” the second one exclaimed.
“You drugged this girl and you were dragging her away to take her virtue!” I snapped at them.
“Her what?” the first one demanded. But the second man apparently thought that now was the time to run for it. He scrambled to his feet and headed for the door, barely evading Liath’s big hand as my husband reached for him.
Without thinking of it, I gathered more sparks and threw a binding at his legs. I felt the magic wrap around his ankles and he fell on his face, full length on the floor.
As he went down, he knocked into a woman holding an enormous glass filled with sloshing liquid. She gasped in surprise and the contents of the glass spilled directly onto the man’s head in a pink waterfall that smelled sharply of alcohol.
“Oh! My eyes!” he screamed, rubbing at the streams of pink drink that were pouring down his face. “Fuck, that hurts!”
“You want to try and run too, bub?” Harry the bartender asked the other male as Liath went and dragged the first one back, away from the door.
