No Sanctuary: Iron Bound, #3

By Z.J. Cannon

I'm Kieran Thorne—immortal half-fae and wanted criminal. Don't worry, I'm innocent. Mostly.

 

Arkanica is on the verge of going public with their new "miracle fuel"—blood harvested from captive fae. To stop them, I need to track down the elusive Mr. Engstrom, the man at the center of their operations. A man so deeply hidden that as far as the mundane world is concerned, he doesn't exist.

 

I'm prepared to cross any line to get to him. The part I'm not prepared for: how to stay incognito when every law enforcement agency in the world is after me.

 

And did I mention my magic keeps quitting on me at the exact wrong moment? It's almost like it's trying to get me killed. Good thing death is just another Tuesday for me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Z.J. Cannon
• Release date: Nov 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201350956

Book preview

Chapter 1

From just inside the thick row of pines that hid the house from view, I watched the battered old Toyota station wagon pass back and forth three times, slower each time. The driver kept glancing away from the road to check what I assumed was the maps app on his phone. Delaney had given him clear directions in the anonymous email she had sent inviting him to visit, but I was beginning to think we should have put out a flashing neon arrow pointing to the driveway. Although that wouldn’t have helped with the whole secret meeting thing.

The beat-up car wasn’t what I would have expected from someone who had been on a first name basis with the past three presidents. But it matched the photos Delaney had found on social media when she was checking up on her old friend. The ancient car was a good sign. It meant he probably wasn’t in anyone’s pocket just yet.

With any luck, soon he would be in ours. Although I wasn’t sure if that was the right way to phrase it, considering how quickly Delaney’s money was running out. If anyone was getting in anyone’s pocket here, it was more accurate to say we hoped to be in his.

Or somebody’s, at least. And soon.

On the man’s fourth trip down the road, he slowed almost to a stop. He squinted out through his half-moon glasses to one side, then the other. He frowned at his phone, tapped the screen, tapped it again.

Maybe the row of trees was keeping him from seeing the narrow entrance. That was what they had been planted for, after all. They were more effective than any privacy fence, rising at least fifty feet in the air compared to the average fence’s six. And growing them to that height would have been child’s play for any fae with the slightest resonance to the element of earth. They had probably stood as tall as they were now mere minutes after they had been planted.

But I had a feeling there was other magic responsible for our would-be visitor’s confusion. Something had to be hiding this place from the eyes of anyone who didn’t know it was here. Otherwise, it would have been on the market mere weeks after its owner had disappeared. Some opportunistic house flipper would have taken one look at the stone mansion—with its indoor waterfall, its impossible array of tropical plants that bloomed in all seasons, and its bedrooms that bubbled out from the roof like the penthouse suite of Barbie’s Dream Treehouse—and seen dollar signs pass in front of their eyes.

But months had gone by since I had killed Lady Iliana, the Summer Court’s Lady of the Balance and the former power behind the throne of the Arkanica corporation, who had built this place as a private hideaway and refuge from the bitter Massachusetts winters. And yet, when Delaney and I had shown up at the door with our suitcases in hand, the place had been exactly as I had left it. And I mean exactly, right down to the bloodstains on the floor. Not only that, but in the months since we had made it our home, we hadn’t gotten a single utility bill, piece of junk mail, or door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. Which was proof enough to me that something supernatural was at work.

That made it a perfect hideaway for us—which I had mixed feelings about. If I’d only had myself to worry about, I would never have considered coming here in the first place. I would rather have lived in my cramped, noisy apartment above Ugly Dan’s garage for all eternity than move into the house where I had essentially tortured Lady Iliana to death. The fact that I’d had no choice in the matter, that I would have killed her cleanly if I hadn’t been trapped in a barbed-wire cage with no weapon but that same wire available to me, was small consolation. But for the sake of keeping Delaney safe, staying here was worth it. Except when the nightmares hit.

The man’s mouth was moving now. Arguing with his phone, it looked like. He took another look to either side, and gave a confused shake of his head. It looked to me like I was in for another few minutes of waiting, at minimum. I briefly considered stepping out and pointing to the driveway with both hands—maybe that would be enough to break through his magic-induced blindness. But if I did that, the whole plan would be in the toilet. It wasn’t time for me to show myself just yet.

That was all right. I didn’t mind waiting. I leaned against the rough bark of one of the trees, breathed in the thick pine sent, and smiled. Soon enough, this part of the planet would start to tilt inexorably away from the sun, and just stepping outside would be painful again. But right now, and for another couple of glorious months, it was summer. My season. Even this long after sunset, the air was hot and thick. The heat sang in my veins, urging my fae blood to the surface and making the skin under my steel watch pulse with pain.

But just as I had gotten comfortable, the man’s turn signal flashed. Moving at a crawl, like he was half-convinced he was about to drive straight into a tree, he turned onto the winding dirt driveway. With a sigh, I straightened up and faded back into the shadows. It was time to go through the familiar routine all over again. For both my sake and Delaney’s—not to mention our visitor’s—I hoped it ended differently this time.

He drove slowly down the unlit driveway, making it easy for me to follow him. I stuck to the trees that lined the path. It was almost, I thought wryly, as if someone had designed this driveway specifically to make it easy to stay hidden while keeping a careful eye on anyone who approached the house. That was one benefit of taking over someplace that belong to one of the fae. Especially the Summer Court. They loved beauty of all kinds—a mansion-sized greenhouse bursting with color, a straight and sturdy row of majestic pines—and loved it even more when it could double as a mask for the vicious poison lurking underneath.

Not that I had anything lethal in mind for our visitor. Not unless things went very wrong.

If I hadn’t been sticking so close, I might have missed the second car that pulled in behind him. This car was black and boxy, and came in with its headlights off. It parked halfway down the driveway, while our visitor continued up to the house. I took a step back, just to be sure I was out of sight, as I took out my phone and texted Delaney. He brought security. I’ll handle it.

It wasn’t the first time we’d had this problem. Most people didn’t take that extra step, but a couple of the others had embraced their paranoia and brought well-armed friends along. Which was why I had come prepared. I patted my pocket gently, and felt the reassuring rattle inside.

The man’s headlights traveled on into the distance, then stopped as he parked in front of the house. I stayed where I was—I was waiting to see how far up his security would come. But the man was still close enough that I could see him as he got out of the car and stared up at the house, taking in the sheer size of the stone confection. He rubbed his glasses on his shirt, put them back on, and stared some more. I couldn’t blame him—in this part of Massachusetts, the mansion fit in about as well as its former owner herself would have without a glamour, or at least the right haircut to hide the delicate points of her ears. Still, if he was this taken aback by the outside, I wished I could be there for his first sight of the lush garden that was the cavernous main room—not to mention the indoor waterfall.

A sudden quiet alerted me that the second car had come to a stop. I turned away from the man and crept down closer to where it had pulled over. The glow of a phone lit up the car, showing me the silhouettes of a man and a woman. One scanned the environment with the alertness of a professional, while the other tapped out a message on her phone, probably letting our visitor know they were in position and ready for him to call on them if he needed them.

I waited until she tucked her phone away. I wanted their message to get through, so the man up ahead wouldn’t wonder what had happened to them. Then I crept closer to the car, step by careful step. This would have been easier with illusion magic. But my talents didn’t run in that direction. Magic, I had in spades; it was the control part that was lacking. If I took off my watch and set my magic free, I would be more likely to blow up the car than mask the sound of my footsteps. Effective, sure, but hardly subtle.

And subtle was what I needed tonight. At least for now.

When I was almost to the car, I let my foot land hard on a fallen branch. It let out a loud crack. The two people in the car both snapped to attention and looked around. As soon as the man’s eyes landed on me, I faded back behind the trees, intentionally half a second too slow to avoid being spotted. I waited where I was, hand in my pocket, as the two bent their heads together in a brief exchange. Then the man got out of the car, hand on his weapon, and started toward where I was standing.

Lucky for me, I knew this place backward and forward by now. And they hadn’t turned their headlights on, which meant he was navigating in the dark. By the time he reached the place where I had been, I had already crept across the driveway, crouching down and using their own car to shield me. I had to get to her first—that was the key. The other way around, and she might raise the alarm when he took too long to come back. This way, she would be assured that he was already handling it.

I took one last glance in his direction to make sure he was still looking for me, and not back at his car. Then I took the first of the syringes from my pocket and uncapped it. Still crouched down, I hurried back around to the driver’s side. Which put me more at risk of being seen by the man than if I could go around to the passenger’s side, where the woman was sitting. But her door would still be locked, whereas I hadn’t heard the click that would have told me she had locked his after he had gotten out. Kicking in the passenger’s-side window would hardly fit with the subtlety I was going for.

Besides, I no longer had the money to just go and replace a good pair of pants if I got the leg torn up and stained with blood from doing something as stupid as breaking a car window when there were other options available.

Another look to the side showed me that the man had disappeared behind the trees. He was still looking for me. Not for long, though—he would be back soon. As quietly as I could, I opened the driver’s-side door.

I was quiet enough to keep the man from turning back around. But his partner turned sharply toward the click. She drew her gun and aimed it at my chest, opening her mouth to call out.

But by then, my syringe was already buried in her neck. Before she could get a sound out, the weapon fell from nerveless fingers, and she slumped forward in her seat. She slid sideways until her head hit the window.

I said a silent thank-you for the syringes Skye had obtained for me through one of her black-market sources. I didn’t like the fact that she was poking around in corners of the internet where a drug that would knock someone out in less than two seconds was as easy to find as a two-pound box of chocolate chip cookies as big as my head—which she had sent me in her last care package along with the knock-out drug. I liked it even less that I had found myself asking for her help again, when I had already gotten a firsthand demonstration of the fact that that however well I kept hidden her away, she would never be impossible to find. Sure, last time it had been my son and his human sources who had found her. Next time, though, it could easily be Arkanica.

But letting her stay involved in little ways made it less likely that she would get antsy and do something big and risky. At least, that was what I told myself to justify it. And if I had still been relying on a chloroform-soaked rag, like when I had abducted Delaney herself a couple of months back, I would have gotten a bullet to the chest for my trouble. It wouldn’t have killed me—not permanently, at least—but by the time I recovered, Delaney’s meeting would have been long over.

I hastily ducked out of the car before the man could come back. When I faced him, I didn’t want to crammed awkwardly into a seat meant for someone a full foot shorter than me while he stood over me with a weapon. In fact, I already had a good idea of how I wanted to face him. I padded toward the trees, trying to keep my steps silent.

It took only three steps for my foot to find another branch—and this time it wasn’t intentional. What can I say, stealth has never been my strong suit. When you have power that lends itself to breaking down someone’s front door and wrecking the place, that’s what you tend to do. But I had no desire to tear up my own front lawn—let alone let our visitor know his security was out of commission—so here I was.

I shoved my hand into my pocket and uncapped the remaining syringe. By the time I pulled it free, the man was already staring straight at me, weapon raised. So much for creeping around behind him in the dark and jabbing the syringe into his neck before he knew what hit him.

Hands up, he ordered. Tell me what you’re doing out here, and who you’re working with.

I let my eyes go wide with fear as I stared at the gun. Most of it was feigned. I had been shot before, and had never suffered any permanent ill effects. Even the scars were gone by now. I was less afraid of what his weapon could do to me, and more about the damage it would do to Delaney’s efforts if the man inside heard it go off.

But that was a real fear. It wasn’t as if Delaney had many options left, at this point. She had run through all her prospects, one by one. The last time I had snuck a look at her rapidly dwindling list, Abner Carroll had been the only name not crossed off.

Besides, it might have been seventy-five years, but I still remembered the pain of a bullet penetrating my heart all too clearly. I had no desire to go through that again anytime soon.

Who are you? I did my best to make my voice tremble. "What are you doing on my property? Is that… is that a gun?"

The man didn’t lower the weapon. My employer, Abner Carroll, came here to meet with an anonymous informant tonight, he said stiffly. He believed his life might be in danger.

I shook my head. I don’t know who that is. Please don’t shoot. I… I’ll do whatever you want.

He kept the gun aimed squarely at me. A soft touch, this man was not. He frowned. What is that in your hand?

A cigarette. I came out for a smoke. I hoped the darkness would make it hard for him to see that the vaguely cigarette-sized cylinder between my fingers was nothing of the sort. Look, this is all some kind of misunderstanding. You’ve probably got the wrong house. So why don’t I just go back inside, and—

Stay where you are, he barked. He took out his phone. I’ll call my partner and have her check on our employer. If everything is all right on his end, we’ll sit down and work things out. He didn’t mention what would happen if everything was not, in fact, all right.

Now that wasn’t good. As soon as that call failed to go through, he would know for sure that something was wrong. For that matter, all he had to do was shift a little to the left or the right, and he would get a good view of the driver’s-side door of his car hanging open, and his partner lying against the window, having an early bedtime.

Sure, sure. Whatever you say. Just don’t shoot. I added an extra note of fear to my voice, and raised my hands a little higher.

He might not have been a soft touch, but that added show of weakness got him to take his eyes off me for the second it took to press the call button on his phone. That was what I had been hoping for.

While some people who represent a genuine threat know how to hide it until it’s too late, a surprising number have a lot invested in wanting people to know how dangerous they are, even if their show of force weakens them in the long run. Case in point, this man in front of me, who would have been better off having a casual conversation with me while trying to suss out the situation here and how much danger his employer was likely to be in, all the while keeping one hand on his phone to call his partner and the other on a hidden weapon. Instead, here he was, aiming a gun at my face. Here was someone who thought the appearance of weakness was the same as weakness.

I could use that to my advantage. At least I hoped so.

The second his eyes flicked down to the screen, I lunged. His head jerked up a second too late. His fingers tightened on the trigger.

Time slowed down as I watched his finger move. It was too late to change my trajectory— there was no way I could dodge or duck in time. The advantage to being immortal was that it freed me up to take more risks than the average fragile human could. The disadvantage was that sometimes I landed on the wrong side of those risks, opening myself up to a hell of a lot of pain. Not to mention the devastated look in Delaney’s eyes once Abner Carroll rushed out at the sound of the gunshot and tore away into the night before she so much as had a chance to make her proposal.

In all fairness, I thought as I hung suspended in time, still waiting for the gun to fire, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known I wasn’t the stealthy type. Maybe I should have reminded her that I hadn’t even been able to do something as simple as kidnap her without drawing the attention of her fae bodyguard first, and shortly after that, the entire FBI. But that would have required getting too close to one of the subjects that, by mutual agreement, the two of us never brought up. The time I had kidnapped her was one. The time I had almost killed her—also not subtly, I should add—was another.

I didn’t know what kind of miracle let my forearm slam into his wrist at just the right angle, popping the gun from his grip a fraction of a second before it would have gone off. Whatever it was, I knew better than to count on that luck holding. I took full advantage of the moment, sending him tumbling to the ground with the weight of my body, then landing on top of him hard enough to wrench the breath away from both of us. Before I had a chance to pull in another breath—let alone give him the chance to wrestle free—the syringe was in his neck. His attempt to throw me off ended before he could do more than raise one arm, and he went limp under me.

I carried him over my shoulder back to the car and propped him up in the driver’s seat. I was as gentle about it as I could be—they weren’t the bad guys here. I pocketed both their phones, and tossed their guns into the trees, just in case they woke up prematurely. Skye had told me this stuff should last for a good eight hours, but the operative word there was should—this was my first time trying it out, and I knew better than to take any claims made on the internet at face value.

I stepped back and regarded my handiwork. Not bad, considering this was far from my forte. I hadn’t made anything explode, or even done any damage to the landscaping, and for me, that was an achievement. I only hoped Delaney felt the same way.

Then I checked my watch, and winced. Delaney’s meeting would be well underway by now. I only hoped she was doing all right in there without me.

With one last glance behind me, just enough to assure myself Skye’s drug was still working, I jogged up the driveway.

Chapter 2

Thankfully, there were no branches to step on inside the house, which meant it was easy to creep in without being heard. Whatever magic the house was still imbued with caused any twigs, leaves, and other assorted biological matter shed by the plants to disappear into the floor almost as soon as they fell. I didn’t understand exactly how it worked—I had tried to learn the finer points of magical theory once, but I had come away from the attempt with nothing more than a raging headache and conviction that only the fae could understand the how and why of magic. And while I had fae blood, I was not fae.

So I had long since stopped wondering how the house did any of what it did. I was just grateful it didn’t try to eat me when I walked across the floor barefoot in the middle of the night.

As I padded through the hallway, which curved back and forth and twisted around on itself in ways that didn’t match any human design sensibilities, Delaney’s dog walked up to me with a wag of his tail. He gave a hopeful whine, sniffing at my pockets.

Quiet, I warned him in a whisper.

He jabbed my pocket insistently with his nose, then stared up at me with his one good eye. The message was clear.

You want a bribe? Fine. Will this buy your silence? I held out one of the scraps of beef jerky I had learned to keep in my pocket.

The jerky disappeared. Buster lay down with a contented sigh and closed his eyes, no longer in any danger of revealing my presence to our visitor. It pays to know someone’s price. I bent down to give him a quick scratch behind his good ear, then tiptoed past him and into the main room.

The room was an explosion of color. Oranges in one corner, mangoes in another, oversized purple grapes hanging from a vine that climbed up one wall. And everywhere was green—greens of every possible shade. The room was even warmer than the outdoors, and more humid. Delaney kept making noises about putting in air conditioning, but I always pointed out that the fae magic would probably ensure the temperature stayed the same regardless. Besides, I had suffered through too much of the bitter Hawthorne winter to give up a single moment of the summer heat that brought my blood to life.

Most of the roof was taken up by a giant skylight—or what looked like a skylight. During the day, it always showed a cloudless sky, no matter what the weather was actually like outside. Once the sun went down, every night was a full moon, bright enough that we didn’t need electric lights. The moonlight provided plenty of shadows for me to hide in as I approached Delaney and her visitor. I ducked behind a cluster of trees in bloom with garish orange flowers, trying not to sneeze as the sweet scent tickled my nose, and peered through the branches at the two of them.

They were sitting together on a stone bench in front of the waterfall. Delaney sat straight-backed, hands folded in her lap, her face a neutral mask. Only a slight tremble at the edges of her lips betrayed her tension. She wore a sedate navy blue suit—one of approximately three colors of clothing she owned—that looked like it had come straight off the ironing board. As usual, she didn’t wear any makeup, which made the toll the past couple of months had taken on her that much more obvious. She might as well have aged ten years since she had faked her death back in March. At least the last of her injuries from my attack had finally healed, and without leaving any scars.

Carroll looked to be about Delaney’s age, somewhere in his mid-sixties. He had what I suspected was a permanent hunch to his back, and the face of a good-natured professor. He dressed like one, too, in a tweed jacket and suspenders. Unlike Delaney, he made no attempts to hide his emotions. Behind his glasses, his eyes kept darting from the waterfall, to the parrot perched at the top of a tall palm tree, to Delaney herself. I couldn’t tell which of the three bewildered him more.

He shook his head. I still don’t understand. He had the voice of someone who had been tired for so long he had forgotten what it was like to be anything else. You’re dead. Murdered by that man who held you hostage. I went to your funeral, for Christ’s sake.

A funeral without a body, Delaney pointed out, her voice crisp. I know it’s hard to take in, but we have a lot to go over tonight, and to be frank, my survival is going to be the easiest part for you to accept. So can we take that as fact, and move on?

He started to shake his head again, then stopped and took a breath. All right. You’re alive. It’s not as if you aren’t proving it to me right now, just by sitting right there in front of me. He reached out a hesitant hand toward her, but pulled it back before he could touch her.

Delaney placed her hand gently on his. In the flesh, she said softly, as he visibly tried not to jump.

Well, I can’t say I’m not glad to see you, he said, staring down at her hand like it was the eighth wonder of the world. When I found out you were dead… Another shake of his head, more like a twitch this time. There were so many of us out to change the world, back when we first got started. We were all so young then, and even the worst of our planet’s problems seemed solvable. All we had to do was recycle and drive less, right? He gave a bitter laugh. It sounded more exhausted than his voice did.

Not for the two of us, said Delaney. We had the right idea from the start. Leave the feel-good stuff to the aging hippies, and go straight for the throats of the big polluters. I think that’s why we worked so well together. A soft smile spread across her face.

I stared. I didn’t think I had ever seen her look so… comfortable before. Of course, a lot of that probably had to do with the fact that every time I saw her, she was with me. Standing mere feet away from an unexploded bomb of uncontrolled a magic—magic that had come within inches of killing her mere months ago, no less—wasn’t the kind of thing that was likely to put her in a smiling mood.

I still can’t believe you actually took that last step and went into politics.

A sheep in wolf’s clothing, that’s me. Delaney laughed—a bright, genuine laugh that, for