Iron Bones Read online

  “I have to be okay, don’t I?” I put down my compact. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but if Morgana wants me there, I don’t have a choice.” I stared at the desk for a moment. “I knew someday I had to face this moment. I don’t necessarily mean meeting the Queens—not every Fae gets to meet the Courts, but…facing my fears.”

  “Just take it easy, okay?” She gave me a quick hug. “Don’t lose your temper. Don’t let them rattle your cage”

  I nodded, gathering my purse and tablet. “I’ll try, Angel. I’ll try.”

  THE TRIP OVER to the Eastside was a breeze. Traffic was light, given it was nine in the morning and the rush hour was mostly over. Around the greater Seattle area, rush hour extended from about seven to nine in the morning, and from three until six-thirty each afternoon. Other times, traffic was catch-as-catch-can, sometimes bogging down, but mostly, fairly smooth.

  We drove across the 520 floating bridge. One of the longest pontoon bridges in the world, it was a testament to the love of convenience, the massive spans arcing over Lake Washington.

  “Where is Ginty’s?” I asked as we reached the Eastside. “Is it in the UnderLake District?” Angel had lived there until she moved in with me. It was a dark area of town, with a lot of dangerous creatures, and UnderLake Park itself was creepy as fuck, with a number of unexplained deaths attributed to whatever forces were lurking within.

  “No, it’s halfway between TirNaNog and Navane, on the outskirts of Woodinville.” Herne kept his eyes on the road, maneuvering around a stalled car.

  The cities of TirNaNog and Navane had taken over the area around Woodinville, and the area there was mostly inhabited by the Fae, just like the Bothell area had an influx of shifters. No one was ostracized from moving into those areas just because they were human or any other race, but here and there tensions flared that were difficult to ignore.

  The Eastside was a beautiful area. The intense urban sprawl had given way as the Fae had built up the natural environment again, blending it seamlessly with housing and shopping developments. I had to give props to my people. They knew how to preserve the environment, making it possible for people to coexist with nature without sacrificing their little luxuries.

  We wound through the suburbs until we approached the outskirts of Woodinville. I cringed as we passed A Touch of Honey, Ray’s bakery.

  “I hope he doesn’t see us pass by,” I said.

  Herne cleared his throat. “He’d better hope he doesn’t see us pass by, for his own sake. I’m in no mood to deal with him, and if he lays one finger on you, I’ll break him in half.”

  I blinked. Herne had tossed Ray around once or twice before when he showed up at work and wouldn’t leave me alone, but he hadn’t said much about him otherwise.

  “You really would do it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would. He’s had ample time to wrap his head around the fact that you don’t want him around. You’ve told him to back off, and if he doesn’t, I’ll take action. I won’t put up with anyone who thrusts themselves uninvited and unwelcomed into someone else’s life.”

  Herne sounded so grumpy that I wondered if something else had happened to trigger it. Granted, Ray had quickly made himself into one of my least favorite humans, but I just had the feeling something was wrong.

  “Are you all right?” I lowered my voice, knowing full well that Talia could still hear us, but it just seemed appropriate.

  Herne hesitated, then shook his head. “Don’t worry yourself over it. A private issue that I can take care of on my own. It’s nothing to fret over, but thank you for asking.” He glanced at me, blowing me a kiss. I knew he wasn’t telling me the truth, but let it go for now. We all had our secrets that we needed to mull over in private, and he was no exception.

  Talia leaned forward. “Not to change the subject, but I haven’t been to Ginty’s for several years. You think he’s still got that gorgeous shifter acting as bouncer?”

  Herne laughed. “I have no idea, but don’t go wandering off looking for him until the meeting is over. We need to have all ears on board for this. I don’t trust either Saílle or Névé to tell us everything we need to know, so listen for nuances, anything that sounds off-kilter or unsaid.”

  “We should have brought Angel. She’d know if they’re lying.” I frowned, wishing she could have come with us. She helped me keep myself grounded in a way nobody else did.

  “Angel is the receptionist and she needed to stay back at the office. Each of us has our job for a specific reason, and Angel’s good at organization and light on self-defense and fighting skills. That’s the same reason Talia’s a researcher, but Yutani doubles as a field investigator.”

  Talia sobered, a distant look in her eyes. “Don’t be so sure, Herne. I may have lost my powers, but I’m still a formidable foe. However, I prefer to remain on the sidelines. I spent too much time on the hunt, angry.” She paused. “I wonder, sometimes, if my powers suddenly returned, would I be the same Talia that I was before I met Lazerous?”

  I was watching her in the rearview mirror. The distant look grew cloudier. “Who was Lazerous?” I had never asked Talia about the loss of her powers, though I knew roughly what had happened. We were friends, but not so close yet that I felt comfortable prying into such a personal subject.

  Herne shifted, glancing at her in the rearview mirror, but she shrugged.

  “I might as well tell you. You’d find out sooner or later. You can tell Angel. I know you two talk about everything, anyway. Lazerous was a liche—one of the undead, but he wasn’t a vampire or a ghoul or a zombie.”

  “Liche are magical, aren’t they?” I had never encountered one and never wanted to.

  She nodded. “Yes, and Lazerous was a powerful sorcerer. Anyway, Lazerous lived—and died—in Greece over a thousand years ago. I was young, barely moved away from my mother’s nest. I lived near what is now Mount Olympus Park. I was out hunting for dinner one night and didn’t realize I was near an ancient burial site. It wasn’t a churchyard in the traditional manner of thinking, but a creaking hulk of a mausoleum. Anyway, I was chasing a rabbit into the burial grounds, when I saw something move near one of the gravesites.” She paused, rubbing her head.

  “You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

  “Don’t sweat it, girl. It’s one of those memories that I’ll never be able to shed.” She let out a long sigh. “I lost track of the rabbit, but my curiosity compelled me to find out what was going on. My mistake. I came face to face with Lazerous as he was exiting from a marble tomb. He was the most hideous thing I had ever seen. He was a walking corpse with fiery eyes. His skin was desiccated, like a mummy without the wrappings. I can still hear the crackle as he moved, like old paper rustling on the wind. I had time to get the hell out of there, but I was young and foolish and full of my own powers. In other words, I was like every other teenager who thinks they’re hot shit.” She laughed, though it sounded strained.

  “I think we’ve all been there. Some of us more than others,” I said.

  “In my case, it changed my life forever. I flew down to land in front of him and he turned on me. I guess he hadn’t fed for some time because the next thing I knew, he was draining away my powers. I struggled to get free, and finally managed, but I could barely fly out of range. I landed hard on the ground and broke both wings. I eventually made it home by walking, dragging my wings on the ground. I don’t know how long it took me—weeks, I think. My memory from that time isn’t clear. It’s as though a fog descended as the liche drained me. I don’t know how I made it home, to be honest.”

  “I think we all have that instinctive drive that leads us home when things are bad. There have been one or two times I’ve driven by the house from my childhood without realizing what I was doing. I suppose I wanted to touch base with the past, to see if maybe it was all my imagination and my parents were still alive and living there, waiting to welcome me in.”

  Talia nodded. “
Yes, exactly—the homing instinct. When I finally arrived home, my mother wasn’t pleased to see me. Once we leave the nest, we’re on our own. But she mended my wings. It took a long time for me to heal. At least a hundred years, they were still so broken and I was so weak. When it became apparent my powers weren’t going to return, my mother kicked me out. Weakness isn’t considered a virtue with my people, and neither is deformity. I spent a long time hiding in the forests. I tried to hunt, with some success, but I couldn’t fly except for brief distances, and my screech had vanished along with my song. I could still sing, but I couldn’t mesmerize or harm others.”

  “A harpy without her song is handicapped in more ways than one,” Herne said softly.

  “True, very true,” Talia said, shifting to lean back in her seat.

  “As a race, we don’t get along together, and I was attacked by others of my kind when they realized I was vulnerable. So I learned to hide, and I taught myself how to fight with a sword and use a bow and arrow. There were times I thought that I’d go crazy, but I grew reclusive, and kept myself hidden. Eventually, time passed and the world began to change.”

  “How did you meet Herne?” I asked.

  She laughed. “That’s another story. I couldn’t keep still, because there was too much chance of being caught. So I traveled, mostly at night, through the mountains and back roads. I left Greece and eventually I found myself up along the coast near the Strait of Dover. It occurred to me that maybe I’d have better luck across the water, so I stowed away on a ship. From there, I lost myself in the forests until one day, I happened to be chasing a doe when a massive silver stag raced through the area and intercepted me.”

  Herne’s lips tilted at the corner, a gentle smile spreading across his face. “I’m grateful that I was out there that day. Otherwise, we might have never met.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I stopped her from hurting the doe. The deer was pregnant, and well…baby deer grow up to make more deer. But as angry as Talia was, she didn’t try to hurt me.”

  “I knew you were a god. I could tell,” Talia said. “And when you offered to take me home for a good meal, my instinct prompted me to accept, although I had barely talked to anybody in months.” She leaned forward to pat him on the shoulder. “He took me to his father’s palace and that one night changed my life. I met Morgana, who took pity on me and offered me a new chance. My wings and talons scared people away. She couldn’t restore my powers, but she could change my form with a permanent glamour.”

  It occurred to me how chance meetings altered our lives so often. If I hadn’t been searching for Angel’s brother, I might not have met Herne. Except Cernunnos had hinted that it was my destiny to join the Wild Hunt. Maybe Talia had been fated to meet Herne as well.

  “What made you choose the form you did?”

  “I thought about it a lot. If I chose to look forever young and beautiful, I’d constantly be fending off unwanted advances. I wanted respect. I wanted to blend in without being too homely or too pretty. I decided that an older woman, attractive but not too much so, still active and strong…that felt right. It would give me a lot of freedom in many ways.” Talia shrugged. “Herne offered me a job with him, and I accepted. Morgana gave me freedom from both my broken wings and my natural shape. I had been given a second chance. A do-over, you might say.”

  “And you’ve been with the Wild Hunt since then?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’ve been through four human husbands, and five stepchildren. Countless dogs and cats, and once, when we were still in the UK, a horse. I doubt that I’ll ever marry again, though I date. But I’m content in my own company and I love my pets, and I’m good at my job. So here I am.”

  I was about to comment when Herne pulled into a parking lot. I realized that Talia’s story had carried us through the drive to Ginty’s.

  The bar was homey-looking, like a place that you’d go back to for not only drink and food, but for friendship. It was a standalone building, at the end of Way Station Lane, off of Paradise Lake Road near Bear Creek.

  Ginty’s had a rustic exterior, rough stained lumber with bronze trim, and it was a single story high. The parking lot was large enough to hold at least forty cars, and I wondered just how many people could fit into the bar. As we exited the car, the warm breeze filled my lungs with the scent of wildflowers from a meadow to the left of the bar. The steady drone of bees echoed even from where we stood, and it felt as though everything else—all the city sounds—had been muffled.

  Herne looked at us, then back at the bar. “Well, are you ready to go meet the Queens of Light and Dark?”

  I simply nodded, even though that was the last thing I wanted to do.

  Chapter 4

  YUTANI AND VIKTOR had pulled in right behind us. They joined us as we crossed the nearly empty lot to the front doors. The double doors were wood, with bronze handles—no wrought iron, no silver, which made them friendly to shifters, Fae, and vampires alike.

  “Peace bind your weapons before we go in,” Herne said.

  I snapped the sheath closed on my dagger. Peace binding wouldn’t stop us from drawing our weapons, but it would be obvious if we tried, giving the other party time to act.

  As we opened the door, a very large man gave us the once-over. “You are now entering Ginty’s, a Waystation bar and grill. One show of magic or weapon will get you booted and banned. Do you agree to abide by the Rules of Parley, by blood and bone?”

  “We do, by blood and bone.” Herne said, giving the hulking bouncer a solemn nod. “By blood and bone” was an oath essentially putting your own blood on the line, should you break your word. At risk? Forfeiting anything from a hefty fine to indentured servitude, depending on who was running the parley.

  As we moved past him, toward the bar, I looked around.

  The inside of the bar was as homey as the outside. The bar itself was polished mahogany with brass fittings and a granite inlay. The surface gleamed, polished to a high sheen. Booths skirted the edges of the bar, and a number of tables filled the center of the room.

  A large rack of antlers hung over the center of the bar, and there were paintings of Mount Rainier and the other Cascade volcanoes scattered around the room. The walls had a log-cabin feel, though they were less rustic than most log cabins, and the lighting was bright enough so that all the wood didn’t feel claustrophobic. A large picture window stretched across two-thirds of the front wall of the bar, and to the right and left, windows lined the upper third of the walls. A stairway behind the bar led up to a second floor.

  I paused, frowning. “I didn’t see a second story to the bar outside.”

  “That’s because there isn’t one. Not in this dimension. That staircase leads to private chambers that are under the sanctuary rule. Nobody is allowed back of the bar except those who come to parley, those claiming sanctuary, and Ginty and the wait staff. And even then, everybody who works here undergoes a number of background checks and security training.” Yutani glanced around. “Not a very big crowd today.”

  “It’s barely ten-fifteen,” Herne said.

  “What are the hours here? I thought most bars didn’t open until noon or later.” I glanced around, looking for anybody who might look like a Fae Queen, but mostly, I saw a few scattered shifters at one table eating pancakes, and a lone Fae woman at another, who was absorbed in a book.

  “There’s always somebody waiting to open the doors if a person arrives seeking sanctuary. But I think the regular hours are from nine a.m. until midnight. No booze served until noon.” Herne motioned for us to follow him to the bar, where we situated ourselves on the stools.

  “What’s the difference between a Waystation and a sanctuary house?” I hadn’t even been aware of the existence of either thing before six months back. I had kept my head in the ground far too long. Even though I wasn’t interested in my people, I should have taken time to get more involved in the SubCult community.

 
Herne leaned across the bar to ring the bell that hung from the transom. Made from stained glass formed into the shapes of leaves and flowers, the transom was illuminated from behind. I wondered how many hours it had taken to create.

  “You know how sanctuary houses are run by the United Coalition?”

  I nodded. “Right, and all four groups that make up the coalition agree to the rules.”

  The government—the United Coalition, or UC—was composed of the Human League, the Fae Courts, the Vampire Nation, and the Shifter Alliance.

  “Well, a Waystation is pretty much limited to the SubCult population, aimed toward those belonging to one of the SubCult—or Crypto—races, whereas a Sanctuary House is open to those of human blood as well. And usually, those seeking sanctuary at a Waystation are fleeing from some inter-Crypto skirmish.”

  “So, similar but with a slightly different focus. What does the UC think about the Waystations?” It occurred to me that they had to have some policy about them.

  “They work with them, actually,” Herne said, ringing the bell again. “Often, those brought into the Sanctuary Houses first seek shelter at a Waystation.”

  At that moment, a door at the back of the bar opened and a dwarf appeared. He was about four foot five, and burly as all get out. He had a blond braid that hung down to his mid-back, and a glint in his eye that sparkled like gems. He was a ruggedly handsome man, well-proportioned, and my first thought was that I wouldn’t want to meet him during an altercation. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, and a pair of motorcycle boots. He grabbed hold of the bar, and the next moment, he was staring us straight in the eye. There had to be a running board back there.

  “Herne, you old dog. Good to see you, my man.” Ginty clasped Herne’s hand and they gave each other a bro-shake, along with a grunt.

  “I wish we were here for fun, rather than on business,” Herne said.