Sebastian (Bowen Boys, #5)(20)

“He’s here, my lord. Your messenger has been returned to us.” Wanera started forward and was on the verge of asking why the messenger didn’t come there himself when the being swallowed before continuing. “He’s been returned, my lord, and reeks of faerie.”

Wanera stopped. The being had said “been” returned, not that he’d returned. Wanera felt a bit of fear trickle along his skin as he thought about what the implications were to what the being was saying. The thought “returned” kept circling around in his head.

“Who returned him?” The being shrugged. “Where is he now? And what, if anything, did he bring back with him?”

“He is in the main hall, my lord, the point he left this realm from. And he brought nothing back with him but the smell of female faerie. What shall I do with his remains?”

No body, but remains. He started to tell the being to throw the remains in one of the pits, but thought he’d better take care to see if he might have brought something back with him. Wanera told the being to take him to the remains and show them to him. He didn’t know what to expect, but when he saw what had been done to the body, he nearly grabbed for a wall. She had destroyed him.

There was really no way other than smell to know that the pieces on the floor had belonged to him. The messenger had been with Wanera for a very long time, decades as a matter of fact, but to see this mess now it was hard to think of it as a person he once knew. He knelt down and sniffed. Faerie, and one not as young as he’d been led to believe.

“Where did he come from, can you tell?” The being said that he could not. “I must know where he found her, and go and make her repay me for what she’s taken from me.”

“I cannot, my lord, other than to tell you that he was in the world of humans. I could try to trace him back, but there is very little of him left to go by. Sometimes I can search a mind of a body, but this…. This, sire, I cannot.”

Wanera nodded. He looked at the pieces and wondered how she’d killed him so easily. The messenger belonged to him and thus had some powers of protection, but the faerie that had killed like this had been very strong.

“When you told me you’d found a faerie on the upper worlds, I thought you said she was no more than a child in my lifetime. The one that did this is a good deal older than a mere child, I think.” The being simply nodded. “Are you saying that you agree with me, or that she was a child?”

“Both, my lord. When you had me look for a female faerie, I told you that they might well be extinct. An older one, many years older than even you, died some years back. I mentioned that there might have been another that showed up, but it disappeared and I thought it dead as well. Then when a few weeks ago one came up on my screen, I only thought her to be young, as she had not come fully into herself.”

Meaning that he thought she’d not hit her maturity yet. But the one that had done this had most assuredly been mature. The being had walked away to his computer and was keying in information. When Wanera asked him what he was doing, he said he was looking for the faerie.

“She would have left a magical trail behind after using the amount of magic needed to do this. I am trying to find it. I can only think that it had to have happened within the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours.” As he continued to put in more information, Wanera leaned against the other desk.

“I thought that all beings were to be returned to me immediately. How did this happen so long ago and he’s just now being returned to me?” The being shrugged. “Do you know anything?”

“Yes, sire, I know plenty, but never as much as you.” The answer sounded like he’d been practicing it, but before he could question him on it, the being turned in his chair. “She is young and powerful, my lord. So much so that she’s able to keep her magic to a low hum. I can find a bit of a trail, but it is so small that I cannot know if she used it on this messenger or at another time. I could send something there to check and—”

“I’ll go. I want to see firsthand where she’s at.” The being nodded and turned back to his desk. “When will I be able to be—?”

The alley he was standing in was dark and wet smelling. He looked around the area and tried to find something, anything other than the nasty smell of humans that seemed to permeate the air like a disease. Then as he was ready to call to come home, he smelled something. It wasn’t faerie but…. “Panther.”

He shivered when he thought of weres. They were the most vicious group of beings ever created. He hated panthers more than he did anything else. They were sleek and dark, and were the only beings he’d ever encountered that could take him down—and once had.

It was just after he’d gone to collect the child he’d been promised. Fryda and his mate Pendus had been the only couple that he’d ever known that had bred. Their child had been due that week, and Fryda had lost a bet. Of course, the bet had been a trick—a lie actually, on Wanera’s part—but he’d gone to a great deal of trouble to get the babe and Fryda had said no.

Killing him had drained him. A being so powerful had nearly killed him in the process, but when Wanera had severed Fryda’s wing from his body, he seemed to fall apart. Wanera had never known that a faerie could be killed after their maturity, and he’d done it all by himself.

But he hadn’t been able to get the child. The mate, Pendus, had just given birth, yet she was as powerful, if not more so, than her mate. When she’d raised her hand against him, Wanera had done the only thing he could do and left the house to go back to his own lair to heal. It had taken him nearly five years to heal, not able to make his wounds close until he had finally taken a hot blade to them and closed them off. He rarely looked at the huge, ugly scars on his legs and chest anymore. But the panther that had given the worst ones to him had died that night, too.