Midnight Enchantment (6 page)

Suddenly, she dropped her basket and bolted like a jackrabbit into the foliage.

Thank the goddess for her ego. Tonight it might mean the end for her.

He ripped through the bushes in pursuit, branches scraping at his face and pulling at his clothes. The woman was like a deer, able to leap fallen tree trunks and bushes like no one he’d ever seen. It was a damn good thing he was in shape, but even in shape it was a real chore to keep behind her. Tonight it was even more important to keep her on the run since he needed to subtly guide her to where he wanted her to go.

She veered to the left and he went wider, gently nudging her toward the right. Tonight there was no banter, no stopping to chat from a distance. Tonight he was the hunter and she was the hunted—even if she didn’t truly understand that.

Little by little he herded her toward a clearing about fifty feet from her garden. His chest burned from exertion, his face felt on fire from being whacked with branches, and his clothes were torn and dirty.

Just a little more to the right and he’d have her.

ELIZABETH laughed softly as she vaulted a clump of blackberry bushes, enjoying the stretch of her muscles and the faint burn of her lungs. Niall was really serious tonight. It was a good opportunity to show him that he would never be able to
catch her. Maybe she could get him to finally back off and give up. Leave her alone.

Honestly, she’d kind of miss him, though.

And, anyway, he wouldn’t be the last the Black Tower sent. The Shadow Queen would never give up on retrieving the pieces. She could expect others to come after her, maybe Unseelie that weren’t as pleasant as Niall Quinn.

Elizabeth fully anticipated a short life.

She dashed into the middle of a clearing. A stream ran on the other side. That was where she’d make her exit. She didn’t have to dissolve directly into water, but it did seem to make the transference experience go a little smoother.

Leaping over a boulder, she almost flew into the tree line on the opposite side, the run through the woods absolutely no trouble for her at all.

And ran straight into what felt like an invisible brick wall.

SHE impacted and bounced backward, sliding along what seemed like a smooth, hard floor. But that was impossible! Pain exploded through her, robbing her of any opportunity to examine the strangeness of what had just occurred. Instead she sucked in a pained breath, holding her stomach, and rolled to her side, trying to drag air into her lungs.

From some distant place in her stunned mind, she noticed that every noise she made sounded loud and off…
echoing
…like she was in a big metal box, not out in the woods.

Somewhere a door slammed shut. All light extinguished.

“Wha—?” She fought through her disorientation, tasting blood on her tongue from where she’d split her lip. “What’s happening?”

Above her came the sound of sliding metal and a crack of moonlight. “I win,” came Niall’s voice. He sounded exerted and out of breath. “Your ass is mine now, Elizabeth.”

“Where am I?” she managed to ask, rolling onto her hands and knees and spitting blood onto the strange, smooth floor. It
was
a big box made of metal, she noted now. Charmed iron, to be exact. Now that she’d noticed, she could feel it sapping her magick.

Oh. Sweet Lady Danu, no.

She looked around, realization slamming into her. She was in a long, wide charmed iron box camouflaged to look like forest. Even though she was fully dressed, she had no defenses against this much charmed iron.

“You’re trapped.” Niall sounded smug.

He must have had this built during the day, when she’d been sleeping. That whole chase, he’d just been herding her right where he’d wanted her to go.

Trapped
.

Panic clawed at her throat, made a tight fist in her stomach.

She dissolved immediately, shifting to her other self, her body sliding into its watery state.

Slippery. Hard. No earth. No freedom. No surrender. Suffocating.
Dying…

She re-formed, her breath coming in short, little pants. Her lungs burned, her body ached. She rolled onto her side and realized she was naked, her clothes crushed beneath her from her shift. The charmed iron touched the bare parts of her body, sapping her energy and her life force even faster and harder.

“This is going to kill me,” she croaked. “Let me go.”

Niall said nothing for a long moment. “Tell me where the pieces are.”

“No! I can’t.”

The small metal door slammed shut.

She slumped to the floor and concentrated on breathing. It wouldn’t take her long to die in here, with this much of her skin exposed to the iron. Her mother would grieve if she died, but at least her mother would be safe. If she died now, they’d never find the pieces. Never break the walls.

But,
oh, Lady
, she didn’t want to die.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure how long she laid there, her body growing weaker and weaker. Finally the sound of the larger door being opened met her ears and moonlight flooded the box.

“Stubborn woman,” Niall grumbled as he knelt beside her and touched her upper arm with a gentleness that seemed odd.

He hated her, right? So why lay his hand on her arm as if he cared about her welfare? Nonetheless, he rubbed his fingers along her skin, and strange comforting warmth flooded her body.

Pushing his hand away, she reached an arm toward the opening of the box. If she was stronger, she could bolt for it. But all she could do was lie there and allow Niall to pull her hands to the small of her back and snick a pair of cuffs around her wrists.

He pulled her gently to her feet. “Walk,” he commanded, pushing her toward the opening.

She stumbled out of the stifling box and drew the clean evening air into her lungs. That, combined with the absence of so much charmed iron against her skin, seemed to clear her mind. The earth taunted her under her bare feet. She wanted so much to dissolve right into it and escape, but now the charmed iron touching the bare skin at her wrists prevented that. “Bastard,” she spat.

“Now, now.” Niall clucked his tongue. “You had this coming.”

“You made me run headlong into a wall!”

“And you got off lucky. All I see is a little boo-boo on your lower lip. Still have all your teeth, don’t you? No broken nose or cheekbones? No concussion? No broken arms or legs?”

“No. I’m just bruised from head to toe!”

“Bruised is better than broken. I spelled the wall you ran into to be much softer than it would have been naturally. You didn’t slam into it so much as bounced off of it. I don’t have time to deal with a bunch of injuries.” He flashed a cocky smile at her. “You don’t have to say thank you.”

“Good. I won’t.”

“Don’t be a poor sport, now. You’ve been playing with me for the last two weeks. Now
you’ve
been played. It happens to the best of us.”

Yes, but his mother’s life wasn’t on the line.

He led her into the clearing, where she immediately became aware of her state of dress, or lack thereof. “The least you can do is give me some clothes.”

“I don’t have any on me right now.” He gave her a slow up-and-down. “Anyway, I think I prefer you naked.”

“Of course you do, you’re a pig.”

He
tsk
ed at her. “You’re the one who tried to dissolve into charmed iron. It’s your fault you’re naked, not mine. Now come on. It’s getting cold out here.”

He led her through the woods to his SUV. She looked longingly at her garden as they passed it, thinking about all the vegetables that would go to rot and how the people she provided them to would go hungry. She had no illusions she’d be back anytime soon to pick them.

She had no illusions she’d
ever
be back to pick them.

A heavy feeling settled into her chest. If only she’d been more cautious, less cocky. Her capture meant she would be letting people down. Not only her mother, but so many others.

He opened the passenger side and helped her get in. She was practically sitting on her bound hands. “Can you at least move my wrists to the front instead of the back?”

He chuckled. “Yeah and have you take the opportunity to escape the moment the charmed iron leaves your skin? Not even. You’ll have to wait until we get where we’re going for that.”

“What?” she asked sweetly. “You don’t trust me?”

He pulled a blanket from the backseat and covered her with it. “Trust the fae who betrayed her people? Never.”

The words pricked, but she tried not to show it. She looked straight ahead as he closed the door and climbed into the driver’s side. He started the vehicle and guided it down the makeshift path through the woods. She saw now that the path was much more worn than it ever had been before, showing clearly that men and vehicles had been using it regularly for some time, building her trap, no doubt. She shivered.

Why hadn’t she noticed the signs before? Had Niall used some sort of magick to hide the evidence? He was a mage, after all, with powers as unique as hers. She had no idea what his abilities were.

“What are you going to do with me?” Her voice sounded emotionless, flat.

“Right now I’m going to take you to a place where you can change into some clothes, have something to eat, and get warm in front of a fire. Then you’re going to tell me where the pieces are.”

“And if I don’t?”

His voice dropped to a softly threatening purr. “If you don’t, well, then I’ll make you.”

“You don’t seem the type to enjoy hurting women. I’m sort of disappointed to find out you are.”

“I never said I enjoyed it, but there’s a reason I’ve been sent to do this job, Elizabeth.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m very good at finding things and persuading people. Let’s just say I always get what I want.”

“Huh. Funny. So do I.”

“Great, something in common. This should be fun, then, right?”

She locked her jaw and stared out the window of the SUV. He guided the vehicle onto the main road and they drove for about fifteen minutes before he pulled onto a long gravel driveway that led to a cottage. After cutting the engine, he got out, came around the other side, and helped her out.

She made her way up the path, and he opened the door for her. The inside of the cottage was comfortable, with overstuffed furniture and rough-hewn tables and chairs. A large creek stone fireplace dominated one wall.

He led her into the living room and took an object from a small table. Holding it up, he said, “This is a charmed iron restraint.” He opened it, knelt, and snapped it around her ankle. Then, touching the hinge, he murmured a series of words in Old Maejian she could barely hear, and the hinge disappeared. Now it was a flat, smooth piece of charmed iron laying flush against her skin. She had no hope of getting it off, not without Niall’s magick.

He stood. “Get it?”

Numbly, she nodded.

He removed the cuffs and jerked a thumb at one of the doorways off the short hallway that led to a bathroom. “I laid clothes on the bed for you. Get dressed while I make a fire.”

She moved toward the bedroom.

“Oh, and Elizabeth?” She turned to stare at him with an expressionless face. “Don’t get any bright ideas about running away. You know as well as I do that charmed iron will kill you if it stays against your skin for too long.”

“How could I forget?” She shuffled into the bedroom.

NIALL poked a twig into the sputtering fire, making it spit, yet not quite catch the logs. Fuck, he hated tricking her like this.
Trapping Elizabeth was like trapping some wild, free thing. He had no illusions that he’d immediately crushed her spirit—she had plenty to spare—but she did seem a little less vibrant than she had before with that charmed iron cuff around her ankle.

This would be so much easier if he didn’t have a whisper of admiration for her.

He had to constantly remind himself that she was hiding the pieces, working with the Summer Queen. This woman was scum for betraying her people. He could say the words, but something stopped him from really feeling them.

And, fuck, she was gorgeous. All that alabaster skin, the fiery long red gold hair, the swell of her hips, and the curve of her ass. Her breasts…

Damn.
There weren’t even words.

He’d seen a lot of beautiful women in his life. After a while they all started to look the same to him, but Elizabeth was in a class all by herself.

After she’d shifted and ended up nude, it had been really hard for him not to look his fill. He’d managed to refrain. That would have been wrong. She was at his mercy right now, and he was enough of a gentleman not to take advantage of that.

The sound of footsteps behind him made him look over his shoulder. She’d dressed in the long, filmy white nightgown he’d given her. Eschewing the shoes he’d provided, she was still barefoot, the metal of the cuff glinting at her ankle. Her hair hung long and tangled over her shoulders. She hadn’t washed away the blood where she’d split her lip, and a bruise was forming on her forehead.

She took him in, struggling with the fire, and knelt beside him, making a frustrated sound. “Don’t you know how to build a fire?”