Moonlight flowed like water, lighting the rocks, the thin snake of river below, and a vertical wall that stretched upward above Diego’s head. Skeletal, metallic towers leaned over the gorge at intervals, none, of course, conveniently within reach.
Diego recognized where he was, and it wasn’t Faerie. He’d been here before, or at least somewhere around here, chasing a crazy suspect with Jobe, long before he’d manifested a watery terror of heights.
He was high above the Colorado River on the tip of the southern Nevada border, a mile or so below the Hoover Dam. And how he’d get down from this perch in the middle of nowhere, he hadn’t the faintest f**king idea.
“Holy crap.” Xavier jerked back as the rock wall solidified between himself and Diego.
Cassidy threw herself against it. “Diego!”
“What happened?” Reid pounded on the wall as Cassidy dug at it with her claws.
Peigi put her hand on it. “The magic’s gone.”
“Gone?” Reid demanded. “How can it be gone?”
Eric also touched the wall, too damn calm for Cassidy’s taste. “Part of the trap, maybe.”
“Why try to close it once someone’s inside Faerie?”
“Because it’s not Faerie,” Eric said. “Smell is wrong, too metallic. Those poor bastards probably died of iron poisoning stuck up there waiting.”
“I know where it is,” Cassidy said. The fact that Diego hadn’t actually been pulled into Faerie didn’t stem her panic. “I run up there, sometimes.”
“Where?” Xavier demanded.
“The Colorado River gorge. In the cliffs up there. I don’t know exactly where Diego is, but that’s the area.”
“Shit,” Xavier said. “Well, let’s go get him, then.”
Xavier strode out without another word, not looking back to see if any followed him. Cassidy ran after him. She heard Eric calling out for her, but too damn bad. This was Diego. This was her mate.
She climbed into Xavier’s truck as he started it up. Xavier deftly maneuvered the truck around to go back down the mountain. “I bet you’re going to tell me Diego’s not in a place that’s easily accessible,” he said.
“Maybe, if you’re a Shifter. Maybe not even then.”
“Damn it. I’ve been in those cliffs. Hell of a trap.”
Cassidy clutched the seat as Xavier rocketed the truck down the hill. “They made Reid think he’d found the gateway,” she said, thinking it through. “They put guards there to doubly fool him. They put the other side of the ‘gate’ in so remote a place that humans never see the guards, alive or dead. Probably even mountain goats don’t find them. If the guards don’t kill Reid when he steps through, he falls to his death. Or gets stuck on a cliff to die of exposure.” Cassidy swallowed, thinking of Diego clinging to the side of a cliff face. “Diego doesn’t like heights.”
“I know he doesn’t. Those meth-heads we arrested in Mexico did that to him. Diego was fearless before that.” Xavier thumped the steering wheel. “Damn him. He can’t stop being everyone’s older brother.”
Cassidy thought of the story Diego had told her about taking torture so that Xavier would be released by the gang leader. Her heart burned. Diego did that for people, went into danger so they didn’t have to.
Maybe that was the reason she loved him so much.
“This is going to take forever.” Xavier’s jaw clenched as they wound down the track, still a long way from paved roads.
Cassidy said nothing, because there was nothing to be said. They had to drive all the way down the mountain, back through the city, across the desert on the other side, and then to the roads around the dam.
No public roads led to those cliffs along the river. The area was patrolled, but probably not patrolled enough that anyone would notice Diego, in the dark, on the side of a cliff.
As soon as Xavier’s truck rocketed onto the highway, he had his cell phone out. He steered down the straight road with the hand of his splinted arm while he punched numbers on his cell with this other thumb.
“Hey, Sheila, this is Escobar. The younger one. Diego’s got himself into deep shit, and I need backup.”
Cassidy heard the woman on the other side give a startled exclamation.
Xavier went on. “We need to comb every road to either side of Hoover Dam and south of it. Can you get me sheriffs’ departments on both sides of the state line? Diego’s stuck up on one of the cliffs. We need to get him down in one piece.”
I’m on it. Cassidy heard the woman’s voice buzz through the phone.
Xavier hung up and called everyone he knew. Eric would be doing the same behind her. Rallying his trackers, Nell, all of Shiftertown if need be.
Cassidy’s heart warmed in spite of her frantic worry. They were coming, they were helping, they wouldn’t let Diego die.
But only if they got to him in time.
Diego clung to the tree root and refused to look down. Panic poured through him in waves, sometimes receding enough to make him believe he was over the fear, only to have another wave buffet him a second later.
The wind kicked him around as well. The gorge of the Colorado, made deeper by the dam that collected the river upstream, was a giant wind tunnel. The river was nice when you were down on the beaches beside it, when you took a day off to fish or just laze around on a boat. It wasn’t its best when you clung to the side of the cliff far above, trying to find handholds.
No way in hell was Diego going to let a gust of wind lift him and send him over the edge. He would climb the hell out of here and call for help. Right?
How the f**k did I get into this?
Helping Reid. Because I felt sorry for him. Teach me to have compassion.
No, this was the fault of whoever had persecuted Reid. Their trap was perfect and cruel. They’d give Reid the hope that he’d found his way home, and then kill him up here.
Two thoughts chased that one: Sadistic bastards and What the hell did Reid do to garner this treatment?
Maybe nothing. Some people were simply cruel, like Enrique. They practiced brutality because they could. They liked to watch people twisting in the wind, like Diego was now.
A gust blasted Diego, and his toes lost their hold. “Son of a bitch!”
He grabbed for another handhold, his fingers bleeding, toes desperately scrabbling for a crevice. He managed to lodge one foot on a protruding rock. Hanging on to the tree root, he swung the other foot back to the ledge. Scrambling and swearing, Diego got himself on the narrow ledge and wedged his body back against the rock.