Reid didn’t want to. Peigi jerked her hand from Reid’s, turned it palm up, and let her claws come out. As Cassidy had at the club when she’d vouched for Diego, Peigi slashed her own claws across her human hand.
Blood welled up on her palm, and she pressed her hand against the rock wall.
Nothing happened.
Diego kept his eye on Reid as he approached Peigi. Peigi lifted her hand, leaving blood smeared on the rock. Shane tapped the wall. Solid.
“It won’t work,” Reid said. “It needs more blood. Forget it.”
“Spells are tricky,” Eric said. “Especially Fae spells. It’s not the ingredients that matter, but what they represent. Does the blood stand for life essence? Or a Shifter death?”
His words gave Diego an idea. “If these Fae seriously want to keep you from finding your way back, they won’t make the solution one you would like. You hated Shifters, and you were perfectly willing to kill one to open the gate. So maybe spilling Shifter blood really won’t work, because you were so eager, even happy, to do it.”
“I wasn’t eager,” Reid growled. “Or happy. I don’t like killing anything. Except hoch alfar.”
Diego continued. “What I’m saying is, when you talked to me about Shifters, you despised them. You were ready to make yourself sacrifice one. So do the Fae think it would be harder for you to kill a Shifter? Or to save one?”
Diego drew his Sig and trained it on Peigi.
Reid snarled in pure rage. He threw himself at Diego, slamming them both into the wall, right over the smear of Peigi’s blood. Reid knocked Diego’s hand into the rock until the gun fell from Diego’s grip.
Diego felt the rocks behind him give. He grabbed Reid and hauled him out of the way, turning to see a gray mist forming where the rock wall had been.
The misty patch expanded until it was about ten feet high and three feet wide. A doorway.
Peigi stared, openmouthed. “What happened?”
Eric gave Diego a thoughtful look. “The sacrifice was Reid saving a hated Shifter. Not killing one. Good perception, Diego.”
“Yeah,” Shane said. “But what’s that stink?”
Wind swirled through the doorway, bringing with it cold and a stench of something rotting.
“Goddess,” Cassidy said, waving her hand in front of her nose.
“This isn’t right,” Reid said. He started forward, but Xavier and Diego grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back.
“Wait,” Diego said.
Picking up his gun, Diego moved slowly toward the misty air. As he neared the door, its outline grew more and more clear. The mists rolled back in a sudden burst of cold, to show them a man-shaped figure silhouetted in the doorframe.
The figure turned and brought up a weapon.
“Down!” Diego shouted.
Shifters and cops hit the ground. A bolt pinged a rock in the cave and fell to the dirt, and at the same time, the man fell through the opening.
Not a man. He was tall and strangely lean, like a human who’d been stretched, and he had white blond hair and pointed ears.
He was also dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The figure stretched across the floor, his half-putrefying flesh black against his torn clothes.
“What the f**k?” Xavier asked softly.
“Trap.” Reid folded his arms over his stomach and looked sick. “They set guards compelled to shoot whoever manages to open the gateway. They’re spelled not to leave their post, not even to find food or water. Not even if they die.”
“They carry out their mission even if they’re dead?” Xavier asked. “Why the hell would anyone do that?”
“It’s a hoch alfar thing,” Reid said. “A sick, twisted hoch alfar thing. Suicide mission. Their families are handsomely rewarded.”
“What’s to stop you now, Reid?” Shane asked. “The guard missed, he’s dead.”
Diego moved back to the opening, around which thick mists had gathered once again. “Careful. There might be more than one.”
“Diego, don’t you dare,” Cassidy said, fury in her voice.
“He aimed at Reid, not me. I’ll make sure it’s clear, then Reid can go.”
“No!”
“Me and Xav,” Diego said. He held Cassidy’s gaze with his. “We know how to do this, and we’re the best shooters here. We’re cops, Cassidy. This is our job.”
Xavier drew his Sig and stood at Diego’s back. Even though Xavier’s left arm was still in a sling, Diego knew Xav could outshoot everyone in this cave, including himself.
“We know what we’re doing, Cass,” Xav said.
Diego nodded at Reid. “If any other guards are out there, Xav and I will draw their fire and take them out. Then you run through and get the hell home.”
“No!” Cassidy snarled.
“Cassidy,” Eric said sharply. “They’re right. Let them.”
Cassidy swung on her brother. “Don’t you dare treat them like they’re expendable.”
“I’m not.” Eric sounded more alert and focused than Diego had ever heard him. “I’m treating them like part of the team. We each contribute our strengths. Peigi did her part. Let them do theirs. Our part is to back them up. Now stop emoting and start working.”
Cassidy gave him a look that didn’t bode well for Eric’s future, but she subsided.
But the exchange gave Diego a little more insight into Eric. The laid-back Shifter act was just an act. Eric was a watcher, an assessor, who put together pieces while he pretended to laze. And then he struck. Diego decided he’d hate to be on the receiving end of his strike.
“Go,” Eric said.
Diego focused his pistol and quickly stepped through the thick mists, his foot landing on solid rock.
There was a guard with a crossbow pressed against the wall on the other side of the gate in the dark. Only one.
There didn’t need to be more, Diego’s mind hummed, because the opening led to a ledge about four feet wide that hung five hundred feet above… nothing.
In the split second that Diego saw this, the Fae tried to shoot him. Diego grabbed the Fae’s rotting arm and spun him away as the bolt left the crossbow. The dead man crumpled, then he and the crossbow bolt twirled into empty air and fell down, down, down, to a moonlit river far below.
Diego grabbed a dried tree root to steady himself and tried to duck back through the opening to the cave.
And found that he couldn’t. The rock had sealed up behind him, leaving Diego standing five hundred feet up a cliff face.