Zero Hour Read online

  Shady Grove became a giant market between realms. Summer brought fruits and vegetables from their fields. Winter brought meats from their hunts. All of it was traded at the Food Mart in town which had been rebuilt after the Battle of the Veil.

  “Then, do it. I’ll help,” he said. I smirked at him. “What?”

  “You don’t want me to have my own place,” I said.

  “Actually, I want you to be happy. I just hope to be a part of that happy,” he said.

  “You promised not to talk about this,” I warned him.

  “I’m not talking about it. I’m talking about being a part of your life. That’s all,” he claimed.

  I leaned down and kissed his lips. “I don’t want to stay in Shady Grove.”

  The animal in him stirred. “The world beyond this haven is dangerous for us. You’ve heard the stories about the Sanhedrin. You know the trafficking has increased. I’d die if something happened to you.”

  “No, you would kill if something happened to me.”

  “Damn straight, I would,” he growled.

  “I don’t want that,” I replied. I sat up, turning my back to him. “Maybe when the Fairy Bureau building is completed in Birmingham, I can go work there. I need to see what it’s like before I decide what I want. How can I say I want to be here, if I don’t know what’s out there!?”

  “Death is out there.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I never said you couldn’t.”

  “Great! We are arguing again,” I said, jumping up from the ground. I brushed the grass from my jeans.

  “We aren’t. I’m sorry. I just…”

  I turned to face him. He looked up to me with pleading eyes. I knew he couldn’t help it. I understood the wolf’s desire in him. He needed to understand that the phoenix in me needed to fly. Dylan, my father, had travelled the world before he came here. I just needed to get out of Shady Grove for a bit. I hated that I was hurting Mark, but I knew it was something that I had to do. I’d never be completely happy with him unless I had seen the world from the other side of the veil.

  “Say it. Finish the damn sentence, Mark!” I demanded.

  “I promised,” he muttered.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I said, then used my fairy power to skip back home.

  I stood in the driveway looking at the house my mom shared with Uncle Levi. It was a strange combination. Mom married Uncle Levi who wasn’t really my uncle, either. I just called him that from the day I first met him. There were a lot of make-shift families in Shady Grove. He had more power than she did as a Bard, Love-talker, and King of Winter. He also carried her father’s sword, Excalibur. Yep, that one.

  Mom and I stayed at odds, but I always knew, no matter what, she had my back. Uncle Levi, who was like a father to me, was easier to talk to about life, but he clearly thought I should stay here with Mark.

  Mom was supposed to be in the Otherworld for business, but I felt her presence nearby. She appeared to my left near the gazebo. She didn’t speak but took a seat on the steps of the rounded house beside the swing set that I’d outgrown. Her ice blue gown sparkled in the moonlight, and her eyes glowed a turquoise blue. She never pushed me, but I knew I could talk to her. Perhaps it was time to really talk to her.

  Slowly I walked toward her while forming the right words in my head. She smiled as I approached.

  “Hello, my beautiful daughter. Why is your heart heavy?” she asked.

  I took a deep breath and tried to smile. “Mark.”

  She patted the wood next to her. As I sat, the gown disappeared. She’d replaced it with a pair of worn jeans and a long-sleeved black t-shirt. Her platinum hair cascaded down her shoulders, but the crystal crown she had worn remained on her head. I had one similar to it. Her father, Oberon who was once known as Arthur, had given it to me when I was very little which was only a few years ago.

  “He isn’t the real reason,” she prompted.

  “Not really. I’m not happy here,” I admitted. Waiting on her response, my stomach churned with anxiety. I was telling my mother I wanted to leave her.

  She slipped her cold hand into mine. “I know. Where do you want to go?”

  “Out there,” I said.

  “I got that part,” she smirked. “Where out there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Winnie, I’m not going to warn you about the dangers. You know these things. Yet, I think you need to go. I won’t stand in your way, but to leave, you need to have a specific place you are going with a specific reason. I don’t want you just wandering around the world.”

  “Are you serious?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Yes. You bear a mark that shows the fairy world that you are my daughter. I dare anyone to mess with my child. Not to mention, you have plenty of fire power yourself. If that doesn’t dissuade trouble, then I hope they are prepared for a Bard, an Alpha wolf, the White wolf, and the Thunderbird.” She smiled perfectly with the statement, but I shuddered at her words. We did pack a powerful punch.

  “Out there, they won’t know me.”

  “They will know of you. Trust me.”

  “So, if I pick a place with a job, I can go?” I asked to clarify.

  “You have something in mind.” Damn. I hated when she already knew everything. I felt like Uncle Levi who always seemed to be a step behind her which I think he just pretended to be for her ego. He loved being in her shadow.

  “When the building is done in Birmingham, I want to go there and work with Nick,” I said.

  She sighed. “That’s as good a place as any.”

  “I can’t believe you are going to let me go.”

  “I want you to stay here where I know you are safe, but I also want you to be happy. It can’t be about what I want and need. It has to be about what is best for you. I’d rather you go out there in a somewhat controlled environment, than having you fly off without telling us where you were.”

  She knew I’d leave whether she let me or not. She played with the blonde strands of my hair, waiting for me to speak again.

  “It’s not that I don’t love you.”

  She smiled, then pulled me to her side. “That thought never crossed my mind, Wildfire.”

  “What would Dad say?”

  “He would tell me to let you go. He adored you and would have given you the world. I’ll just have to do it for him.”

  “I’m going to sleep on it,” I said.

  “Alright. Did you tell Mark?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Kinda.”

  “What about Kyrie?”

  “What about Kyrie?” I didn’t want to talk about the other man in my life.

  “Have you told him?”

  “He and I aren’t like that.”

  “He’s the kind of guy that would go with you,” she said. I knew that, but Kyrie and I always seemed to get into trouble. He was handsome enough. However, if I chose him over Mark, it would ruin my werewolf friend. He’d set his heart on us. I walked away from Mom, trying to get the starry-eyed Kyrie Babineau out of my head. “I like the blonde.”

  I’d gotten into the habit of changing my hair and eye color on a daily basis. I never knew what I wanted. Just like the rest of me, I hadn’t figured it all out yet.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “One more thing, Winnie.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Give it a day and think on it. And if at the end of tomorrow, you still want to leave, then I will support you in whatever way I can.”

  Another day. My family held my heart. I couldn’t tell her no.

  “Okay,” I responded, then ran into the house.

  Chapter 3

  Raya and I sat next to each other in the back of the community center as the council gathered to hear the news that Dominick Meyer had been brought from beyond the veil.

  Soraya Harris was my best friend. We had latched on to each other from the day we met. She could connect to the Netherworld and had so
me creepy wish granting abilities that she wasn’t allowed to use, except for special occasions. Her black hair shimmered under the florescent lights of the meeting room. Her skin was ten shades darker than mine, and she only got darker in the sun. She had an exotic beauty to her that I envied.

  “I don’t like the blonde,” she whispered.

  “It’s okay,” I muttered back with a shrug.

  “Hey,” a deep male voice startled me from the other side. Kyrie Babineau slid into the seat next to me.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “To sit by the prettiest girl in the room,” he grinned. His facial expression always leaned toward arrogant smirk. It was adorable and full of shit. I couldn’t be the prettiest girl in the room, because I looked different every day.

  “Stop talkin’ before my momma calls me out,” I muttered.

  He grinned at me, then put his arm around the back of my chair. I leaned forward so he wouldn’t be touching me. Raya rolled her eyes at me. She was firmly on Team Kyrie.

  “This meeting is called to order,” Betty Stallworth called out above the crowd which quietened down quickly. Betty and her partner Luther ran the local café. They were Soraya’s guardians. Betty was a banshee. For a mini white-haired woman, she could project over a whole town hall full of loud fairies and shifters. “It is November 15th by the human calendar. We are in the second year of the reign of Queen Gloriana and King Levi of the Winter Realm and Exiles. They are present to witness this gathering. Also, the town council over Shady Grove, the Edge of the Veil.”

  “Thank you, Betty,” Levi said, standing before the crowd. He wore his simple antlered crown made of platinum. He wore that one if he wore one at all. “Dominick, Malphas, and Echo have returned with information from the outside. We called this emergency meeting, because we feel like this is vital to all of us.” Levi nodded to the threesome, and Nick walked to the front of the stage.

  Dominick Meyer was Mark’s Beta. Nick thought that Mark would choose another Beta since he had been Troy’s Beta, but Mark wanted someone he could trust. Dominick had lost his hand in a battle in the Otherworld as my mother tried to retake the throne from my evil uncle, Brockton. Levi made Nick a magical cuff which helped him to manifest a usable hand as well as a paw when he shifted into his wolf form. Nick was hot. I didn’t think that a year ago. Mainly because, I didn’t know what hot was. His dark hair and dark eyes made him a mysterious figure, but his smile would light up his face. It seemed like I remembered him having a crush on my mother, but of course, who hadn’t? But Nick hadn’t dated anyone in Shady Grove that I knew. Raya and I speculated once that he was gay, but Callum informed us that our gaydars were broken considering both of us liked the opposite sex.

  Nick traveled with Malphas and Echo, raven shifters that who had sworn their allegiance to my mother after she took the crown in Winter. They were from a dying race known as Cambions. They were the children of a human parent and an incubus or succubus. They had turned out to be very valuable to my mother. Malphas had a total sexy goth thing going on with pale skin, dark eyes with reddish rings around the edges of them. He wore a side cape which covered some of the best tattoos I’d ever seen. Beautiful raven feathers like wings. I’d seen him once without a shirt and the wings stretched from elbow to elbow.

  Echo was a black man with the same tattoos that you could see despite his dark skin. He was mute. He was more muscular than Malphas, but I’d found him to be a gentle giant. He taught me the sign language that he used when he wanted to speak, which wasn’t very often.

  Together, they formed the raven pair of thought and memory. Like the tales of Odin, the Norse All-father, ravens always traveled in bonded pairs. They weren’t together sexually, because I’d seen them both with women from town. However, I didn’t think a woman could ever break the connection between them. Using my fairy sight, as my mother had taught me, I could see the swirling black smoke that snaked around their bodies to show me their supernatural bond.

  “I’m better lookin’ than he is,” Kyrie whispered in my ear. I slapped him on the leg to get him to shut up. I didn’t know if he was talking about Nick, Malphas, or Echo. They all had something he didn’t. Maturity.

  As I turned my attention back to the stage, my eyes met the burning stare of Mark. He sat beside his mother and father among the pack which represented almost a quarter of the population of Shady Grove. I ignored him, focusing on Nick because he began talking about the Fairy Bureau of Immigration in Birmingham. My ticket out of Shady Grove.

  “While working on the finishing touches on the Birmingham building, one of the workers found a young man leaning against a dumpster on the north side of the structure. He had been beaten to a pulp. He also had brands magically seared on his arm and forehead,” Nick said. The crowd gasped, and anyone who wasn’t paying attention, now focused on the Beta wolf. “Despite our best efforts, the young man died. He was a banished Winter fairy from Oberon’s reign. He did warn us before he died that the Sanhedrin had grown in power. Malphas and Echo were able to track his history back to Steelshore. It seems that the Sanhedrin are using the city as a stronghold against fairy kind. It has a large port that fairies use to move back and forth between here and other continents.”

  Nick looked at Levi who nodded as if to give him permission to tell the rest. They were like brothers. They bickered and fought, but if you picked a fight with one, you picked it with both of them.

  Nick cleared his throat. “Through Levi’s network via Stone and Bronx, we have discovered that a bulk of the trafficking is going through Steelstore.”

  The crowd’s murmur increased as the second threat was presented. A couple of years ago, Levi’s network was built by a man named Tennyson Schuyler, who was the knight, Lancelot. He died in the Battle of the Veil, but fairy folk had the unique benefit of being reincarnated. When Tennyson died, Levi inherited his entire empire. An empire built by a mobster. Levi had taken it over and made changes, but the fact remained that it had its hand in the darkest of the dark in the human world. When Tennyson returned, he didn’t want anything to do with that life. His focus was on Jenny who was once known as Guinevere, and on being a knight for my mother as a completion of his oath to her father.

  My brother, Aydan walked in the back door with Remington Blake. Remy had become the only judge in town after the war. He meant a lot to my mother and she gave him an honored spot in her kingdom. Remy had been training Aydan in the old ways of the First People. Remy was Star Folk like Kyrie. They possessed an animalistic magnetism which drew people to like them, no matter how bad they were. They moved quietly to the side as to not draw attention for being late. They should have known better.

  Mom. The Queen noticed everything.

  “Glad you could join us, Judge Blake,” Grace said over the murmur. I’d watched her long enough that I knew her tactics. She would draw the attention of the crowd to something new, breaking the tension of the news about the fairy trafficking.

  In our world, there were individuals who trapped fairies with desired abilities, crated them around like cattle, then sold them to the highest bidder. It was disgusting. I would burn them all to ash.

  Kyrie’s hand slipped over mine. I looked down to see the pulsing purple to orange glow beneath his.

  “Cool down, Sunshine,” he whispered.

  “Sorry,” I responded. He squeezed my hand, then let go.

  “Well, pardon us, Queen Gracie.” I was surprised she didn’t freeze him solid for calling her Gracie in front of everyone. Probably at one point in her life, she might have.

  “Care to explain why you and my son cannot arrive on time for an emergency meeting?” she asked. I saw the humor dancing in her eyes. For someone who could be completely terrifying, she knew how to have fun.

  “Well, we were attending to some important matters that I wanted to have straight before presenting them to you. Nothing but the best, for my queen,” Remy replied with a flourished bow.

  “And what might that be?”
By this point, she had a huge smile on her face. She delighted in taunting her friends. If she didn’t taunt or tease you, she might kill you. Remy loved to be taunted.

  “We’ve completed the paperwork for the building in Birmingham. It’s ready to be put to use as soon as you staff it. The government has agreed to all of our terms, including the disciplinary measures that we requested,” he replied.

  “All of them?” she asked in disbelief. Our fairy contacts within the state government and higher had pushed back on the idea of allowing the fairies to handle our own as we saw fit. We had serious criminals beyond what humans could imagine. The Summer King, Astor, and my mother had spent many nights discussing how to handle our own misfits. All of them had been exiled at some point, and Mom knew what it was like to be separated from homes and families. She’d turned herself around and made a family and home. She wanted to give that opportunity to all exiles that chose to try.

  The difference was that most fairies from the Otherworld didn’t care about such things until lately. The exiles of the human world experienced life differently from the rest of the Otherworld. They learned to love the things that the rest had never considered valuable. However, it seemed as though the indigenous fairies were paying attention to my mother’s example. Many wondered about the Fairy Queen with her faithful husband. She refused to have a harem as her father had. The stuffy fairies in her court shunned her for not taking on more than one man, but she didn’t pay them any never mind.