However, that visit hadn’t required secrecy, and the presidential suite was too visible. Hotel staff more than paid attention to the occupant and Fionn didn’t need
that kind of scrutiny.
Speaking of which …
Pulling his mobile out of his pocket, he swiped across the edge and hit the single icon with the letter b on it.
Brannigan picked up after two rings. “Fionn.”
“Update?”
Bran chuckled. “And a good evening to you too,” he teased in a thick Dublin accent time had never diluted.
“Update,” Fionn repeated, in no mood for the boy’s perpetually high fucking spirits.
“Right, right. There’s no sign of the Blackwoods. If they’ve followed you to Zagreb, they’re doing a good bloody job of covering their arses.” Bran paused. “So … was it the girl?”
For nearly three centuries, Fionn had waited for a prophecy to come true. Technically, he’d waited for over two thousand years, but he’d been asleep for most of that. Thank fuck.
As it was, it was hell to wait for the children of Aine’s prophecy to be born.
Seven children born as fae in the human world, with the ability to reopen the gate to Faerie.
Seven children who had been hunted by several factions of the supernatural community, including Fionn himself. Fionn knew only of the existence of two of them. A young woman he called the psychic, and another called Thea Quinn, who was no longer fae, and as such, no longer of use to him.
But the girl, the psychic, she was the key to the ones who were left.
Using fae magic sent up a flare to anyone who knew what to look for and brought Fionn down on her every time. However, as soon as he got within the same city limits as her, she disappeared off his radar. Her signature had become familiar to him now, and he and Bran had studied the events surrounding her appearances.
The girl had been recorded in the same city as three of the seven fae children. Two of those three had been killed by his old acquaintance, Eirik, along with a third that the girl had no connections with as far as Fionn was aware. A woman the girl had met with was Thea Quinn. Fionn had no idea how they had connected, but he knew that days after their meeting in Prague, Thea Quinn had killed Eirik, the oldest vampire in the world.
Thea had then been turned into a werewolf by her mate, Conall MacLennan, Alpha of Pack MacLennan, the last werewolf pack in Scotland.
Fionn could be pissed off that he’d missed the opportunity to capture a woman as powerful as Thea to open the gates to Faerie, but she’d killed Eirik for him. Not that Fionn was incapable of killing Eirik. It was just that he owed the vampire for helping him escape Faerie in the first fucking place.
As the vampire gradually depleted the fae children, however, Fionn knew he’d have to take out his old ally.
Thea saved him from that.
Still, now there were only three fae left. Three keys to the gate of Faerie.
And the psychic woman was one of them. Moreover, he and Bran had concluded that she was searching for the others. To warn them? To connect with them? He had no idea. He didn’t care.
All he cared about was that she’d lead him straight to the fae.
Except tonight.
Upon arriving in Zagreb, he’d felt the girl immediately and had followed her essence to a club fifteen minutes north of his hotel. He’d expected to feel another fae there. Yet, not only did the girl slip through his fingers, he hadn’t found another fae energy.
But he’d felt something from that bartender.
Stretching his neck from side to side to work out the tension, Fionn took a beat before admitting, “I lost her. She sensed me coming and is masking her energy.”
Bran sighed. “Ah, bollocks. What now?”
Fionn thought on the bartender. As he’d moved through the nightclub, he’d felt … something. A magnetic pull toward the circular bar in the center of the old building.
That’s when he saw her.
Staring at him in awe.
That was nothing new. Humans often reacted to Fionn that way. At once terrified but drawn to him. The woman had strained against the bar, as if fighting the compulsion to come to him.
Fionn had sensed … something. Not fae, but something. A whisper of energy around her. At first he’d dismissed it, but after searching that club, he’d found no other that could possibly be the reason for his psychic to be there.
His psychic could have been at the nightclub to dance, but Fionn didn’t think so. Two days ago, Fionn had been on his way to Barcelona to retrieve an important artifact that was stolen from him. However, Bran had called to tell him a bank in Zagreb had reported someone had broken into their vault. No one had been hurt and the cameras showed what looked like a blur moving through the secure chamber.
Fionn would have suspected a vampire or even a wolf, except the safe in question was melted open. Bran had hacked the Croatian police’s computer system and sent Fionn the photographs. There was a handprint melted into the safe.
A witch or warlock might be able to use a heat spell to do such a thing, but they were ultimately human and unable to move with the kind of speed recorded on camera.
Evidence pointed to fae.
Despite the urgency of taking back what had been stolen, Fionn couldn’t turn down the opportunity to find one of the fae. Upon landing in Zagreb, he knew right away it was his elusive little psychic. And if she was willing to stick around the city after robbing a bank, then she was sticking around for something important.
Like another of her kind.
The bartender prodded at Fionn. Facts told him the answer was no, but his instincts said otherwise. “There was a woman … there was something about her energy that suggests she’s more than human. I discounted her at first, but after searching the club and the surrounding streets, I found nothing else that would warrant the psychic’s interest.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“I’ll return to the club tomorrow evening for the bartender.”
“The psychic can’t mask her energy forever. It takes up too much magic. She’ll exhaust herself.”
“Then we can only hope she reveals herself while I’m still here.”
“And An Breitheamh?”
Fionn cursed under his breath. “It will just have to wait.”
“Or you could set someone else on the task of retrieving it.”
He shook his head. “It’s too important.”
“Your control freakery might be the end of you, Fionn.”
“Immortal,” he reminded his only confidant.
“Ah, right, keep forgetting about that. Don’t know how. Must be your modesty.”
Ignoring Bran’s sarcasm, Fionn exhaled heavily. “Anything else to report?”
“There was a murder in Zagreb two nights ago. It sounds like the work of a vampire.”
Bloody brilliant. Just what he needed. Vampires, in general, fed for survival. But like any species, there were always those few who got off on killing for the sake of killing. “I hopefully won’t be here that long to have to deal with it.”
“I mention it because the murder took place outside the club near your hotel. I hacked into police records, and they think it’s the work of a serial killer that’s been killing women across Europe. Always near a nightclub the female victim was reported to have been seen at. Usually found in an alley near the club with neck wounds and drained of blood. They’re working with Interpol on this one.”
“Bloody hell,” Fionn muttered. That probably meant undercover police at the clubs. “Right. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“No movement on An Breitheamh, FYI.”
And that was one of the reasons Fionn put up with Bran. The vampire was young in the grand scheme of things. Only ninety-five years old. He was also brilliant. He managed Fionn’s intelligence system and directed the many contacts Fionn had amassed all over the world.
Moreover, he was the only being that Fionn trusted.
“I want to know if the Blackwoods step a foot in Zagreb.”
“On it. Speaking of the Blackwoods, you asked me to keep an eye on Thea and Conall MacLennan …”
Alert, Fionn st
iffened. The Blackwoods wouldn’t dare meddle with the MacLennans after they promised not to.
If they had, their ruin would be their own damn fault. Arrogant swine. If it were a perfect world, he’d have nothing to do with that magical family.
Unfortunately, he owed the Blackwood Coven even more than he had ever owed Eirik.
It was that debt that stayed his hand against the witches and warlocks who desperately sought to open the gate to Faerie. Not to take down the bitch who had ruined Fionn’s existence but to forge an alliance with her. To live among the faeries, to imbue their magic with pure power at the source.
The Blackwoods were an old, very large North American coven. They were also naive, sycophantic arseholes, and there was no telling them that the fae would destroy the humans. He had to keep one step ahead of them at all times.
Fionn had slipped up with Thea Quinn. The Blackwoods knew of her existence before he did, and they’d arrived in Scotland before he could. Layton Blackwood had met with him in Inverness, a city an hour and a half east of the werewolves’ home in Torridon.
The obnoxious warlock, son of the coven leader, had lounged across from him in the hotel bar. “Thea Quinn is a werewolf and mated to Conall MacLennan.”
It had taken a moment for Fionn to process this. After all, the information he’d gathered suggested the woman in question had survived numerous attacks over the years, many of them in just the past few weeks.
One of them by Eirik Mortensen, the oldest living vampire in the world. Fionn knew that for a fact, for he had known Eirik for over two thousand years.
Of course, that was until Thea had wiped out Eirik and fourteen of his vampire brethren for attacking Conall MacLennan.
Who was obviously Thea’s mate, Fionn had mused.
Only a mate could turn fae into a werewolf without the bite killing her. A little-known secret he’d learned while enslaved to the Fae Queen.
Matings were not supposed to happen between the fae and the supernaturals born from their magic and interference with the humans. Yet, somehow, vampires and werewolves found themselves mated to fae. It had been rare. It had been forbidden.