Kiss of Vengeance (True Immortality 2)

“Perhaps he’s like Rose,” the other mused.

He felt Rose tense behind him and could have sworn he tasted her fear on his tongue.

Fury that these men would frighten a woman who had been strong enough to deal with a lot so far turned his blood hot.

The other warlock, the taller and older of the two, shook his head. “You’re not our business. Rose is. The woman belongs to us. Step aside and you won’t get hurt.”

Fionn bit back a curse. They were O’Connor Coven members. They had to be. Whether they wanted to protect her or kill her was uncertain … although Rose had felt danger from them.

He had to be sure. He needed to know if he was now bound to protect her from two bloody covens.

“What’s your business with Rose?”

He felt her small hand settle on his lower back and a surge of possessiveness almost floored him.

“That’s none of your business.”

That’s when he felt it. The escalated heart rate, the dread in the gut.

An

d when she whispered his name, fear in her voice, he knew for certain Rose felt it too.

These fuckers had come to kill her.

Her own bloody coven.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sorry at all. “You shouldn’t have come.”

Magic crackled in the air and several branches snapped off trees as if by invisible hands. They flew toward Fionn in a shower of lethal stakes.

Fionn swiped a hand over the air in front of him, easily overpowering their magic with his own, changing the message in the energy wrapped around the stakes. They did a sharp U-turn and flew back at their senders at high speed. There was nothing they could do to stop them.

The stakes hit the warlocks with such velocity, they yanked them off their feet. One found himself impaled into a tree trunk, the other collapsed at an awkward angle. Branches stuck out all over their bodies.

It was a gruesome sight and one he wasn’t sure Rose needed to see. He tried to stop her looking, but she pushed past him and then stumbled to a halt.

“Oh my God.”

“That was meant for us. I just turned it back on them.”

Pale, trembling, she looked up at him with horror in her blue eyes. “Who were they? The Blackwoods?”

He shook his head. “The Blackwoods know who I am—they’d approach with more caution … I can’t say for sure but I think those were O’Connor warlocks.”

“My family?” She looked like she might be sick.

“There’s no evidence your adoptive parents know of this, Rose. I know it’s a lot to take in but we can’t stay here. I need to retrieve my things from the car. Stay here. Do not move. I’ll be back in seconds.” Hoping she’d obey, Fionn traveled and appeared by the car in the field, heard the sirens in the distance, and instinctively knew they were for his wreckage.

Fuck.

He quickly retrieved his mobile, iPad, and clothing from the car and returned to Rose.

She was right where he’d left her, staring at the impaled warlocks.

His jaw flexed as he took in her pale face. Those freckles he’d barely noticed before now stood out in sharp contrast to the whiteness of her cheeks. “Rose.”

Slowly, she glanced up at him. After blinking a few times, she seemed to come out of her daze. “What do we do now?”

“They must have something of yours to trace you. I had the apartment wiped clean so they must have gotten the item from somewhere else.” Like her adoptive parents.

Rose frowned. “What does that mean? That they went to my parents’ house and took something … or are you insinuating my mom and dad betrayed me?”

At her defensive tone, Fionn trod carefully. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything. In all likelihood, your parents could do nothing to stop their coven from taking something of yours.”

“So … what does this mean?”

“It means we’ll have a tail until we get to Ireland. There are faerie pools near my home that have special properties. One dunk in them and it’ll wipe you clean. They won’t be able to trace you then.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain later. For now, it means we need to watch our backs, and we need to get moving.”

Fionn took her small hand in his and led her out of the woods. There was no car in the driveway of the first house they approached but there was a Volkswagen Golf at the next. Fionn touched the license plate on the back of the car and concentrated on switching out a letter with another. He kept a hold on Rose as he did the same to the front license plate.

Sending electrical impulses into the mechanism with just a press of his palm to the door, he unlocked the car and ushered Rose into the passenger seat. He dumped his stuff in the back seat but kept his phone in hand.

As he got into the driver’s seat, he saw the front door to the house open. A stocky man flew toward them, face scrunched with fury, but Fionn was already speeding out of the driveway. Pulling out of the small neighborhood, he turned left, and then left again, following the signs that would lead them back onto the highway.

Fionn dialed Bran with his free hand and wasn’t surprised when he picked up on the first ring.

“Fionn, are you okay?” He sounded frantic.

“Fine. Two warlocks found us. They’re dead. But they weren’t Blackwood. I’m sure of it. I think they might have been O’Connor, and they wanted Rose dead.”

Again, he swore he could feel her tension rather than merely sense it.

What the—

“I’ll look into it and get back to you on that. For now, change direction. An Breitheamh went up for auction last night.”

Fionn bit back an expletive.

“The Blackwoods must suspect you’re going after it because they’ve got people at Venice Marco Polo Airport and people at El Prat airport in Barcelona. More than that, they’ve put in an offer. Along with a bunch of other powerful supes.”

Bloody hell, it would take them weeks to get back to Ireland at this rate. “When does the auction close?”

“Four nights from now.”

“Pull up train schedules from Ljubljana to Barcelona.”

“Just a second …” Fionn could hear Bran’s rapid typing. “Okay, there’s a train leaving in three hours for Ljubljana. It’ll get you to Milan. From there you’ll take a couple more trains to get to Barcelona. It’s about a day’s journey.”

Fionn sucked in a breath. Bloody brilliant. “Buy the tickets for me and Rose. First class if you can and then email them over.”

“You got it. She okay?”

Fionn flicked a look at her. Her color was returning to her cheeks, but he could tell she was lost in her thoughts. He had to hope he hadn’t damaged the tenuous trust between them by killing the warlocks. “Time will tell,” he answered honestly.

“Remember to feed her.” Bran hung up.

Fionn dropped his cell in the open armrest as they drove through Drnovo. Ljubljana was an hour away. “Are you hungry or can you wait until we get to Ljubljana?”

“What is An Breitheamh?” she turned to him. “And why are you really helping me?”

“I told you why.”

“You’ve killed. A lot. I can tell by the way you just brushed off their deaths like it was nothing.”

Hearing the judgment in her voice, Fionn ignored the pinch in his chest that felt remarkably like betrayal and pushed down the anger she inspired. “I was a warrior. Of course I’ve killed. And they were there to kill us. I turned their magic back on them, nothing more.”

Rose blanched.

Then, she sagged. “I know,” she whispered. “I know that. I’m sorry. But … no one helps someone out of the pureness of their heart. No matter how much they identify with them.”

That unwelcome but now familiar niggle of guilt reappeared, and Fionn stuffed it down inside himself too. He’d gotten good at controlling his emotions while living on Faerie but since meeting Rose, it was getting harder. “I’m trying to protect the world from the fae,” he blurted out the lie. “To understand, you need to hear the rest of the story.”

He flicked a look at her and watched as she squeezed her eyes closed, her features strained with stress. “It can wait,” Fionn surprised himself by saying. “Take this time to process everything that’s happened. We’ll pick up the story later.”

10

It had taken them an hour to drive to the capital city of Slovenia and in that time, no more words had been spoken between them. Fionn had meant it when he said he’d explain everything later.

Truthfully, despite the feeling Rose got that he’d insisted on waiting for her sake, she imagined he was kind of glad for the reprieve from conversation for a while too. He seemed more comfortable with silence.

Once in Ljubljana, Fionn abandoned the car near the train station, and Rose pondered when it became okay to her she was his accomplice in murder and theft. It seemed her survival took precedence over morality. What disturbed her most was how quickly—not easily—she defended Fionn’s actions.

Those warl

ocks were sent to kill her, and Fionn had saved her.

She felt sick to her stomach every time she saw their deaths again in her mind, but it was either her or them. Right?

Thinking perhaps Fionn would find somewhere private at the station to tell her the rest of the story, Rose was bewildered when he settled them in a dark corner of a café and said nothing while they waited for their train. At the nightclub, people had stared at him. He was a huge guy—it wasn’t a surprise.

But people weren’t staring, and it made no sense. Fionn was someone you stared at.

“Why is no one looking at you?”

He quirked an eyebrow.

She shrugged. “You’re kind of hard not to look at.”

After a moment of studying her, expression typically blank, he relayed, “It’s a trick. If I don’t want to be noticed, I cast an illusion. I become nondescript, of no import, to the people around me.”

Rose’s pulse increased as she tallied up his list of talents. “Can I do that?”

“In time, you’ll learn how.”

“You didn’t do that at the club. I noticed you right away.”

“There was no reason. I wasn’t being followed. I was following Niamh. And she knew I was coming, anyway.”

Rose nodded, and they fell into companionable silence.

Now and then their gazes would meet and hold. Butterflies fluttered in her belly and a hot tingling sensation gathered between her legs as those green eyes wandered over her face. Her reaction to him was inexplicable considering how unreadable his cool expression was.

“Are we safe?” Rose eventually asked.

Fionn gave a slight shake of his head. “We’re not being followed. You’ll sense that like last time. But that doesn’t mean you’re safe, Rose. You’ll understand soon.”

Soon crawled toward Rose, her patience wearing. Without Fionn’s storytelling, she was left to think about her parents and how they had lied to her about her very existence. Then there was the possibility they’d betrayed her to their coven. Fionn suggested they wouldn’t have had a choice.

Still, she was furious.