Cassidy shoved her jeans down and kicked out of her shoes at the same time. She unsnapped her bra as she ran, and flowed out of her underwear as her wildcat took over.
She hit the ground running on all fours. One of the deputies whistled as she bounded up the desert hill. Below her, Xavier started shouting about search patterns and dogs.
Cassidy leapt on up the mountain, trying to get away from the smell of exhaust and the dogs. Rocks slid under her feet as she scrambled to the top.
She couldn’t call out in her wildcat form, and she couldn’t take the time to shift back to do so. Calling wasn’t going to help her. Scent was.
Below, she heard Eric arrive. He’d brought Shane and Brody and his other trackers. Cassidy distanced herself from them, shutting out their scent and focusing on finding Diego’s.
She loped to the cliff tops. Below her, far below, the river flowed, released from its confinement by the dam and Lake Mead. It snaked southward in the moonlight, serenely making its way toward Baja, where what was left of it would empty into the gulf.
Diego could be anywhere along the miles of cliffs. They’d narrowed the search to this side of the river, but that was still a lot of ground to cover.
Cassidy covered it for an hour, which soon became two. Her paws hurt from the gravel and hard ground. Behind her, the deputies, dogs, Xavier, and Eric’s trackers fanned out, going over ground she’d already covered.
She smelled it at the end of the second hour. The faint but acrid odor of Faerie.
Cassidy dashed to the next cliff top and looked down. She saw nothing but blackness, but the scent came to her. Mint and smoke—definitely Fae.
Gray mist formed in midair about a quarter mile from her position. The stink of Faerie came to her on the wind.
Galvanized, she dashed along the cliff edge. When she was parallel with the opening, she saw ropes float out of the mist and attach themselves to something on the cliff wall.
She heard Diego’s shout, then the boom of his gun, and she smelled the scent of gunpowder. Cassidy frantically looked for a way down to him, finding only a tiny crevice in the cliff that was nearly vertical.
Cassidy picked her way down this as quickly as possible, her wildcat’s balance taking over, Cassidy ceasing to think. She leapt the last six feet to land on top of the trussed form of Diego, her mate.
“Shit!” he yelled.
The ropes went taut and yanked Diego off the ledge. Cassidy clung to him, her claws digging deep, Diego clenching his teeth against the pain.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, my love.
Diego didn’t unclench as they swung over empty space and were hauled up onto the muddy ground of Faerie. The misty gate snicked shut, and the dry desert cliffs were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Faerie was muddy and cold. Diego lay flat on his back, tied with ropes that had fastened themselves around him, with a snarling wildcat on his chest. Cassidy splayed herself protectively over Diego, growling at the Fae warriors that ringed them.
They looked like extras in a Knights of the Round Table movie, Diego thought. Shining mail, long braided hair, black surcoats, swords and bows, and hard expressions.
The light was gray like dawn, but Diego saw that the land was bathed in fog. Not a pea-souper, but enough mist to darken the sky and slide between the trees of the dense wood at the bottom of the hill.
One of the warriors, who had the stance of a leader or a general, spoke to Diego. Spoke at him. Demands, questions, who knew?
“Do you know what they’re saying?” he whispered to Cassidy.
She only growled again and lowered her head to his chest.
The general gave a curt command. Three came at Cassidy, swords drawn.
Diego, who still had his hand around his Sig, pointed it. “No. Back!”
The warriors hesitated. The general snapped something at Diego.
Diego shook his head. “Lo siento, no comprende.”
The general looked slightly surprised, as much as his granite face let him, then he came back with a halting sentence that sounded Italian. No, not Italian. Latin.
Great.
He wished Cassidy would shift and help him out with the linguistics. At the moment, Cassidy’s claws were raking down his chest, raising all kinds of welts, but she wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was cutting the ropes.
The general noticed this and motioned his men forward. Diego brought up the Sig.
“You touch her, and I will shoot you.”
The general snatched a crossbow from the warrior next to him. Diego fired, his sharpshooting skills wrenching the crossbow out of the general’s hands. But the bolt had already flown and struck Diego’s wrist.
The bolt glanced across his skin instead of embedding itself, but it dug deep enough in passing. Diego yelled, his gun falling from nerveless fingers.
Cassidy attacked. She landed on the general, all four feet on his chest, claws ripping. Her Collar went off, electricity arcing around her neck, but she didn’t stop.
She fought for a few seconds more before two of the Fae grabbed her and wrenched her away from the general. Cassidy landed on the ground, shuddering with the Collar’s pain, while the Fae collectively laughed at her.
Diego was going to pass out. He didn’t want to, but he had an arrow, the end of which had snapped off, stuck into him, and pain was catching up to him. Blood loss, shock. All there.
“Cassidy,” he said.
Before he blacked out, he saw Cassidy crawl to him and once more drape herself over him. At least she’s warm was Diego’s last coherent thought for a while.
Cassidy didn’t speak the languages of the Fae fluently, but she knew a little from the Shifter rituals and Shifter lore. She got the gist of the word slave, referring to her, and fun for what they wanted to do with Diego. One suggested they make Cassidy hunt Diego herself, but the general said no.
The Shifter female would become a fighting slave for the clan leader, he said, and the human would be put to death for his dealings with the dokk alfar.
Cassidy shifted to her human form. “He came through the gate by mistake,” she said. “Send him back and leave him alone.”
They didn’t understand, and Cassidy didn’t know enough to find the words in Fae.
“We’re friends of the warrior called Fionn Cillian,” she said. “Heard of him?”
From their reaction, they had. Also from their reaction, maybe that hadn’t been a smart thing to say.
Four of the warriors dragged Cassidy off Diego. She fought, but between the chain mail that protected them and the continuing pain from her Collar, she did little damage. The others cut the ropes from Diego that Cassidy hadn’t finished shredding. One kicked Diego’s gun away into the mud, then that Fae jerked back his booted foot as though even the small contact burned him.