“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 fuck 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.
The overhang helped with the wind a little, but it trapped him. He couldn’t climb out above, and without rappelling gear, he couldn’t descend.
He had a cell phone. When Diego was at last able to tug it out and open it, he of course couldn’t get a signal. He left it on, though, in case they could find him through the GPS inside it.
It looked like the sky was lightening. Diego didn’t remember that much time passing, but the eastern horizon definitely was a little grayer.
No, wait, the sky itself hadn’t lightened. Mist shimmered about six feet away from Diego’s ledge, right in the middle of empty air. And damned if two more Fae-not dead this time-didn’t just raise bows and aim through the mist at him. Not crossbows, longbows, as though Diego had landed in some kind of Renaissance Fair.
Diego brought up his Sig and fired. The Fae ducked aside faster than Diego had ever seen anyone duck, then they stared at him in amazement.
The gun’s kick nearly dislodged him, but Diego held on and shouted, “This is steel. That’s made from iron. Want a piece?”
More staring. Then the Fae shot. One arrow ripped Diego’s cell phone from his hand and sent it spinning away down the cliff. Diego dropped to the ledge, breath snagging in terror as his face looked into nothing.
He felt a sudden, sharp pain and looked down to see an arrow sticking out of his side.
It shocked him more than it hurt, but he knew pain would come. And blood loss, and weakness. Then death when he tumbled over the side from all of that. He brought up his pistol and fired again.
The Fae ducked back but they nocked arrows to their bows again.
“Damn you, I’m not Reid! I sprang the fucking trap by accident.”
Didn’t look like they cared. Who the hell guards a gate for fifty years? And why do they hate Reid so much?
“You’re hoch alfar, right? I’m human.”
They hesitated when he said hoch alfar, but obviously they didn’t understand any of his other words. Probably wouldn’t make any difference if he said it in Spanish. Maybe if he knew Gaelic.
I really should have bought that audio course.
Diego aimed his Sig again. “Stand down or this bullet goes into your chest.”
Fire spread through his side. He was going to die up here.
The second Fae nocked another arrow and shot, his fingers a blur. Diego fired at the same time. The Fae he aimed at went over backward, blood on his mail-shirted chest.