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“Hello. Might I help you?” Juniper pushed her behind him when the woman, she could see now, stood up. “We’ve only just gotten home, but if you were to allow us to go inside for a few minutes, we’d be able to talk to you. It’s been a terrible morning thus far.”
“You’re all sweet and sugar when it suits you, aren’t you? As for you getting into the house, go on ahead. I do think you’ll enjoy the recent updates I’ve added to it. Or not. I don’t care one way or the other, but there you have it.” The woman grinned at him. “Your son, Sorrel. I’m assuming you are aware that he’s taken out all the money you’re ever going to get from the bank, correct? You’ll also find that none of your credit cards will work. Other things too, but I think you figuring them out on your own will be a great source of entertainment for me and the others.”
“Do you know why the bank isn’t allowing us to have the money we worked hard for?” The woman said she should know two things but didn’t explain them. “Why are you talking to us anyway if you’ve no plans to—?”
“I could explain them to you at length, but I don’t want to. I have better things to do than sit around here with a couple of morons that thought stealing millions of dollars wasn’t going to catch up to them.” Rose asked the woman who had lied about them. “No lies, I promise you, but I am glad I got to see your faces when things started to fall apart. If you need a name to curse, I’m Remi. That’s all you need to know for now.”
“You’re one of the queen’s birds.” It wasn’t a question, but the woman affirmed what Juniper had said. “Why would you be here when the queen has been dead for longer than anyone in this town has been alive?”
“You fucked up.”
The woman shifted from herself into a vulture. Then as she stepped off the porch to the sidewalk, she grew to a monstrous size. Screaming, Rose fell back and hit her head. They knew, was all she could think about as she passed out.
Chapter 2
Harlin Tayler tried to keep his nerves under control. This thing was about to end, and he couldn’t be happier. Four years of this man was more than he ever thought this would take. His bosses and their bosses didn’t think that Sorrel was nearly as smart as he apparently was. The man so far had eluded every kind of trap they’d set up for him before Harlin had come on the scene.
Being an undercover agent for the Feds wasn’t what he’d wanted as part of his long-term goals. Being an agent at all hadn’t been in his mind. But here he was, not only an agent but with skill sets that made it so he could go deep undercover and no one would ever know who he was. He supposed it was because of the little extra he’d gotten one night when he’d been out too late and was just a little tipsy.
Glancing at his watch again, he wondered where the hell Sorrel was. He said to meet him here at the diner at noon, and it was now coming up on twelve-thirty. Harlin decided he was only going to give him ten more minutes, and he was going to leave. Fuck this shit.
The Feds knew that Sorrel was the head honcho in some of the major drug rings. There had been so many leads going back to him that Harlin was surprised he’d not been arrested. But, as he’d found when he’d started making his way into the cartel, Sorrel seemed to be one step ahead of every bust they’d made, even when Harlin knew the man had been in the building when the Feds arrived.
That was when Harlin figured out that Sorrel wasn’t just not a human, but he was fae. Sorrel had a very special way of blending into whatever their surroundings were.
Or to simply change himself into whatever piece of furniture or other items that were close at hand so he could go undetected until it was safe again. Harlin could and did see him each time the place he was in had been raided. It was that skill set, the Feds called it, that made him a perfect candidate to find Sorrel and have him put into prison. And today was going to be the last time, he hoped, that he’d have to hang out with the monster.
Sorrel was a sadist. He didn’t just abuse and end up killing the women he would take to his lair, what he called his playroom. But he would maim and then kill people working for him, making them suffer beyond what their crime, as he saw it, warranted. Harlin had been witness to just one of such killings, and he vowed never again. He was sick beyond anything Harlin had ever seen.
The slap to his back had him reaching for his gun. When Sorrel sat down next to him, Harlin asked for his bill. Sorrel asked him if he’d been there long.
“Long enough. I have shit to do today, so I’m going to have to meet up with you a little later.” Harlin stood up, well past being pissed enough that he wanted to just kill the man, but he was sick of this job. “See you later.”
“No. Sit down.” He just stood there watching Sorrel. “Please? I’d like to talk to you. There is something going on at my house, and I might need you to help me with it. My parents are in trouble.”
“What did they do now?” He’d heard all the stories about his parents. Not just from Sorrel, but the fae he knew, as well as the Feds he worked for. It seemed that not only had they had faked their own deaths, but Sorrel’s mother was supposed to have been married to the fae king. Not that Harlin didn’t believe the last part—he’d seen her with the other man—but Sorrel wasn’t the king’s child. “I have shit to do today, as I told you when you asked me to meet you here, Sorrel. I also explained to you that I hate having to wait on you. You either show up when you’re supposed to or—”
Harlin felt the magic tighten around his body. His throat started to close up even as he stood there. Not struggling with the magic, which he could have vanquished immediately, he stared at the other man as his lack of breathing started to make his eyes water. Then it was gone.
“Christ, you’re a hard ass. Sit down, please, and I’ll explain to you what I need. By the way, you’re going to have to teach me how to just stand there and not give a shit if you die or not. That’s a wonderful trick.” Harlin told him he didn’t care if he died or not. “So you’ve told me. But I know better. Anyway, this woman showed up at my parents’ house. They were told that they’re in trouble. Before you ask me how I knew about this, I was hiding in the bushes beside the door when not only did the woman just appear there, but she also turned into a fucking huge buzzard.”
Everything in him seemed to cease working. His mind wouldn’t work, so his breathing and his heartbeat seemed to pause too. The queen’s birds. Harlin knew enough about them to know they were real and that they were dangerous as fuck too. It wasn’t until the pain on his face that he realized he’d blanked out for a few moments. Harlin sat down hard on the seat he’d been in before.
“I take it you know who this woman might be? Dad was going on about some kind of birds of prey that belonged to some queen when he was living around that area. I didn’t really believe him until today. Christ, it was fucking huge, Harlin.” He asked if he knew her name. “She said it was Demi or something like that. I was just too shocked to remember it after she just up and changed like she did. Do you know her?”
“I’ve heard of her and the others. But no, I don’t know them. There are supposed to be six of them, all birds of prey. Larger than life.” Sorrel told him that’s what his father had said too. “To be honest with you, Sorrel, if these people are after you, I’d just turn myself into them. They’re not to be fucked with.”
“I’m not going to do that. Let my parents deal with them. They’re forever afraid of shit that has nothing to do with me.” Sorrel laughed. “They’re going to be in for a big surprise when they find out about the deal I have going. I’ve done it all in their names.”
Harlin nodded when he thought it was appropriate and grunted when Sorrel seemed to need a verbal answer. Instead of listening, he thought of his buddy Grant and how to get in touch with him. It had been years since he’d contacted the older man, but now he thought he had to. When Sorrel stood up, he did as well, not remembering a word that had been said.
“Okay, so I’ll see you at dinner. We’ll meet up at my house. All right?” Nodding, he thought of the deal going down tonight and wondered if he should ask about it. However, Sorrel brought it up when he was thinking of a way to work it into the conversation. “The deal we have going is going to hit at midnight at the dockside. You and I will be there, but we’re not going to be getting our hands dirty with it. I’m not going to prison when life outside of it is so profitable. Get it?”
“Yes.” He laughed, but he could hear the strain of it in his ears. “I’ll see you later. I have some things I’m working on, but I’ll be there on time. Will you be?”
“Yes. I said I’d not be late with you again. Get off my back, will you? I had a very good buzz going about this woman I had, and you’re crapping on it. Just chill.” He’d have to tell his boss that they’d have one more body to add to the count they already had. “I might even get me another piece before you get there. Hey, I know, we can share one. That’ll be a blast.”
“We’ll see.”
