So, they could die. But then, so could Diego.
The arrow that had left the bow glanced across Diego’s hip, missing because the second Fae had jumped when his colleague went down. Diego aimed again and shot.
The second Fae knew enough to duck aside. The air shimmered and the gate closed.
Diego lowered his aching arm, trying to catch his breath. Would it open again? Would they send more to kill the man who’d just shot one of their own?
His side hurt like hell. He knew an artery hadn’t been severed only because he was still alive. Either that or the arrow was holding the blood vessels closed.
Maybe his gunshots had drawn attention. But the wind was hard, blowing sound away. Echoes could come from anywhere. Diego didn’t dare keep firing in case the Fae returned and he needed the ammo. He had half a magazine now in his gun and that was it.
Find me, Cassidy.
She had to be crazy, telling him to stay away from her. For his own protection. Right.
Love didn’t work that way. That’s what for better or for worse meant. You didn’t run off when times got tough. You worked through it. You helped each other with whatever crazy problems happened and celebrated the good stuff on the other side.
You found your lover when he was stuck on the side of a cliff with an arrow in his side.
Dizziness swirled through him. Perfect. Just effing perfect.
He was going to pass out. When he did, there was nothing to say whether he’d lay here quietly or whether the next gust would send him plunging over the side.
The air shimmered again. When the mist cleared, Diego was staring down his gun at five more Fae.
They had rope. They had a grappling hook-not iron. It looked, as it flew toward the ledge and missed, to be hard, carved wood.
They were going to try to pull him into Faerie.
Not a place he wanted to go.
Diego raised his Sig, his hand shaking like holy hell. “Me and my iron,” he said. “It comes with me.”
Another throw, and this time the hook stuck on a nearby rock. Diego reached over and plucked it out.
The Fae on the other side snarled and started talking in their own language, but not to Diego. A technique to show they had the upper hand. Don’t talk directly to the victim or listen when they talked back. Victims were nothing.
The next thing they threw was a net.
Ropes tried to entangle him. Diego fought, pain rippling through him. Finally, he managed to pull the damn thing off him and drop it over the side.
That made the Fae angry. They started shouting among themselves, and then here came the longbows again.
Diego fired at the Fae. They boiled apart, the air shimmered, and the gate closed again.
Diego sighed and slumped to the ledge, waiting for the next round to begin.
Cassidy held on as the truck rocked over the pitted washboard road. Xavier led the way up the hill with a string of sheriffs’ cars behind them, lights flashing. Diego’s GPS signal had vanished, and Cassidy tried to stem her panic.
The signal had come from a place on the Nevada side of the river, Xavier was told, in a section where no roads led. They’d drive as close to the cliffs as they could, then they’d have to search on foot.
In the dark, Xavier said glumly, hours from daylight. He hoped Diego could hang on.
Cassidy didn’t need roads or light. As soon as Xavier reached the end of the road, Cassidy was out of the truck and tugging off her shirt.
The road was literally at an end; a giant rock wall with boulders strewn at its base rose like a monolith in front of them. Red and blue and yellow lights from the patrol cars and construction trucks swirled across its face.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
One of the sheriff’s deputies trained a flashlight on Cassidy as she stood there in her bra, hand on her waistband. Xavier slammed his truck’s door and put himself protectively in front of her.
“Leave her alone. Let her do what she’s good at.”
“Stripping?”
Xavier moved the deputy’s flashlight so Cassidy was no longer in its beam. “She can help. Go on, Cass.”
Cassidy growled, too far gone to reply. The shift was coming upon her, and she had to get out of these damn clothes.
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?