Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) Gwen Rivers (sneezy the snowman read aloud .TXT) 📖

crooked, yellow teeth. “Oh, so that caught your attention. She offered me a girl, a little Norn, though she didn’t know what the creature actually was. Of course, I have no use for a wise woman. I need someone to help protect my treasure.” Again, his greedy gaze goes to the she-wolf.

Liam growls again but Aiden holds up a hand. “We’re not giving you a wolf, but perhaps I can offer you something better.”

“Better than a pretty red-haired she-wolf?” Carmichael’s bloodshot eyes look skeptical. “Whatcha got in mind?”

Ten minutes later it was done.

“I can’t believe you gave him a dragon’s egg.” Harmony shakes her head. “An egg you stole from Freya no less.”

“Call it compensation for the forced detour.” Aiden holds up the pink potion that Carmichael assured him was the key to the pocket realm in the Outer Banks. “Are the wolves ready to travel?”

Liam nods. “They’re gathering there. I’ll drive to the airport, and you can take the car from there.”

Harmony and Autumn could. Aiden would be shifting to sparks to get himself across the barrier as soon as possible.

Two exits from the airport, Liam curses. “We’re being tailed.”

Aiden checks the rearview mirror. “You sure?”

The wolf’s jaw clenches. “It turned out of the development with us and is hanging back just enough to be conspicuous.”

“Where?” Aiden turns in his seat and spies the black sedan. “Harmony? Any insight?”

She shakes her head. “This isn’t part of my vision.”

“Try and shake him.” Aiden grits his teeth as Liam spins the wheel and cuts down a side alley.

The black sedan follows. The driver fishtails in the middle of the street. The sound of blaring horns and squealing brakes fills the cold winter air.

“Oh, he’s not even trying to pretend,” Liam grunts.

Aiden rolls his window down. “Head out of the city. Don’t meet up with the others unless you’re sure you’ve lost them.”

“What are you going to do?” Harmony asks.

Aiden retrieves the vial from his jacket pocket and thrusts it at her. “Stay safe. And whatever you do, don’t let this fall into the wrong hands.”

He dissembles into a shower of sparks and drifts out the window.

Comeuppance

Angrboda and Chloe return to find me poring over family albums with Sophie.

“That was your wedding dress?” I ask, astonished to find it was a pair of cutoffs, a white tank top, and a veil.

She shrugs. “I’m not much of a dress girl.”

“Funny, neither is Nic,” Chloe winks.

“Anything?” I ask when my aunt plops down into the chair next to me.

She helps herself to a cookie and shakes her head, red-gold curls bouncing. “Diddly freaking squat.”

A knock sounds on the door.

“Are you expecting someone?” Angrboda asks Sophie.

Sophie frowns. “Garret won’t be back with the boys until after dinner.”

“Nic, stay where you are,” Chloe advises me as she moves to the door. “Angrboda, watch them.”

A small shiver runs through me. It’s not cold. In spite of the relentless wind, the house is warm and comforting, the fire crackling in the grate. No, it’s more a frisson of anticipation.

And suddenly I know who is there.

“Don’t!” I rise up out of the chair, knocking the album to the floor.

Chloe turns to look at me a second before the door is kicked in by none other than Agent Hanson.

Beside her, her wrists in cuffs, stands Laufey, Aiden’s grandmother. And as a giant, she’s a key to the pocket realm.

“I only want the girl.” Hanson has her weapon drawn. “Give her to me and no one else will get hurt.”

I fight the terror that is clawing at my insides. No, I can’t go back. I won’t go back.

“Not happening,” Chloe snarls. Her eyes begin to swirl.

Before I can blink, Hanson fires her faux Taser weapon right at Chloe. Light fills the small space crackling blue and purple streaks. My aunt shudders and collapses to the ground.

“Quick, out the back,” I shove Sophie in front of me towards the kitchen door. The tranquility of the domestic scene is shattered with the arrival of one determined FBI agent.

“I’ll cover you,” the giantess shouts over her shoulder.

Is Chloe dead? No, that’s not Hanson’s style. She likes to play with her prey. If Agent Hanson has the means to fell my aunt, Sophie and I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.

Sophie stumbles and I pull her upright. I will get her out and then double back with Angrboda to rescue Chloe. I’ll be damned if I let that bitch take my aunt.

A growl sounds from my left, and I turn just in time to see a large black wolf streaking past us down the hill.

I freeze in my tracks. Aiden?

It can’t be. Yet it is, because a moment later, as he runs past us toward the black sedan in the driveway, the vehicle fireballs.

“Come on.” Another man has appeared from gods alone know where. He’s roughly my age with shaggy dark hair. “He told me to get you out.”

“My aunt.” I gasp as I look up into his different colored eyes. “They have her.”

He curses and then begins to…melt. That’s the only way to explain his change, with his skin sloughing off and hair sprouting from where it had been.

Within moments he stands before me on four paws. Only the eyes are the same.

Another werewolf?

“Nic!” Harmony, clad in a thick purple parka, races toward me. “You need to get out of here. There are more on the way.”

“I can’t leave them.” Aiden is here, and Hanson has that Taser thing. The sound of weapons being discharged and a snarl from a werewolf. Energy gathers, like an electrical storm. I see Hanson and her team drag three unconscious forms across the frozen ground to her truck. One human, one giant, one wolf.

“No.” Power the likes of which I’d never known surges inside me. An eerie wind begins to blow off the churning sound. It pushes my hair back and whips sea spray. It’s not the sentient wind from Underhill, not the North wind that I know and love. It is raw, deep and