Again, Liam passed out before me, but I wasn’t far behind.
This time there was no Berget, no Giselle. Nothing but a blissful, deep sleep that was interrupted by a loud banging on our door.
“Rylee, you’d better get your ass out here,” Dox called, his voice only slightly muffled by the thick door.
I groaned and rolled over in bed, reaching for a pillow to cover my head before I remembered the night before.
Eve. The missing kid. The psycho father showing up.
As I flipped off the covers, my skin danced with goose bumps, the cold air waking me faster than anything else could have. I slid into my clothes, my ribs feeling like they were about ninety-eight percent. Good, I wanted to be able to run this ass hat through if he gave me even a tiny bit of grief.
Liam was dressed, and he handed me my swords as I slid the straps of my shoulder holsters on. I took the swords from him and slid them home, then strapped on my whip so that it hung low on my hip.
“Ready?” He asked.
“Yeah, let’s get this over with and get this psycho’s kid home.”
Liam led the way, and I slammed the door behind me. Dox waited for us, his eyes wide.
“The father is in the courtyard, behind the bar.”
“Is it that bad?”
He just shook his head. “Not what I was expecting, that’s all. And don’t ask me to tell you, you wouldn’t believe me if I did.”
“Well, that’s just awesome,” I muttered. This was one of those times that I wanted to remind people how much I hated surprises. They never turned out well in my world.
Never.
Liam put his hand out, blocking me. “A plan would be good here.” Damn, he was like a broken record lately.
My fist clenched involuntarily and I forced myself to relax. “I’m just going to talk to them. No fighting today.”
“Unless they piss you off.”
“Yeah, I thought that was obvious.”
Of course, if I’d known what was waiting for me in the courtyard, I wouldn’t have been worried about getting pissed off. I would have been more worried about me being run through.
Is that what I think it is?” Liam breathed out beside me.
There was no way to answer that without sounding like a condescending bitch. It’s a freaking unicorn, what do you think it is? Just doesn’t have a polite ring to it. And there it was, a gods-be-damned unicorn, standing in the middle of Dox’s courtyard. Silent and motionless, if I hadn’t known better I would have thought I was looking at a statue. Except that when the wind blew hard, the stallion’s jet-black mane and tail flew out around him. How did I know it was a stallion? Because I’d met him once before, on the first salvage Liam had ever done with me.
Like a waking dream, staring at him reminded me again that there were beautiful and good creatures on this side of the supernatural, they were just few and far between.
A single, golden horn jut from the middle of his forehead, but otherwise, he was a solid, glistening black from his hooves to the tips of his ears. Leader of the Tamoskin Crush, he had struck me as fair and wise. Not the psycho I was waiting on. Unless he was here for something else? Only one way to find out.
“Wait here for me.” I slid out of my weapons, laying them one at a time on the bar.
Liam put a hand over mind. “What are you doing? You don’t know that he won’t attack you.”
“If I can’t even trust a unicorn, then this world has a hell of a lot more problems than a few missing kids.”
Liam slid his hand from mine slowly, reluctance in his every move. “Be sure about this, Rylee.”#p#分页标题#e#
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “I am.”
He stepped back and I opened the door to the courtyard. If the stallion was here because of a missing child, all I could wonder was how the hell the kid had been stolen. A unicorn crush was harmless until threatened, and then you’d better hope that they didn’t mistake you for an enemy. There were not many supernatural creatures that could stand and survive the single-horned equines when they worked together.
I closed the distance between us, leaving about ten feet of space.
Just in case.
Tracker, there is no time for pleasantries. A foal has been stolen, the first born to us in fifty years. His words rang through my mind, not unlike Blaz’s voice, but with a distinctly different feel. Like a bell being rung as opposed to the distant rumble of thunder that was Blaz’s voice.
“I can vouch for Eve, you need to let her go.” I put my hands on my hips and spread my feet slightly apart. “She hasn’t even been on this continent for the last few weeks, and even flying straight across she would have just arrived home. No time to go foal-napping.”