the portal, but the light blinked as a single limp figure was shoved through the gap. Then the portal between realms closed, as surely as if it had never been.
The man who lay unconscious on the floor moaned and shuddered.
“Theo!” Rhys exclaimed and fell to his knees beside their fallen comrade. Theo, a fellow Pyr, had been lost in Fae for over a month. He’d been cursed, too, and had attacked Arach when they both had been in that realm.
Theo was bleeding heavily and Lila, with her healing skills, was quick to join Rhys. Kristofer couldn’t even see Theo’s wounds for all the blood on his skin. There was a burn on his left wrist, as if a string had been tied too tightly there, and his fingers twitched convulsively. His skin was pale and Kristofer feared that he had been tortured by the Fae before release, like Alasdair.
“Dragon bait,” Chandra warned and took a wary step back.
“She’s right,” Arach said, coming in from the patio “It could be a trap.”
“But we can’t not help him,” Lila protested.
“He could be infected with something fatal to us,” Quinn said.
“He could have been forcibly turned against the Pyr,” Arach added. “I saw how potent the Dark queen’s spells can be.”
But there was no red light around Theo’s fallen figure. He looked so broken that Kristofer couldn’t ignore his need. “I think we have to help him,” he said and Bree nodded agreement.
“His aura is heavily damaged, but its color is true,” Lila said, dropping to her knees beside Theo. “I think he’s badly injured but he’s himself.”
“Then why did she release him?” Chandra demanded, holding her son closer. “It has to be a trick.”
Lila considered Theo’s injuries. “He might have told her everything he knew.”
“He might not be useful anymore,” Bree agreed, her tone hard.
“He might be a spy, and not by choice,” Chandra said, her suspicion undiminished. “I think we should be cautious.”
“I’ll take custody of him,” Lila said. “With Rhys. We’ll take him back to the city and Niall can Dreamwalk to help him, just the way he helped Alasdair.” She looked up at Rhys. “He can’t lie to Niall in his dreams, can he?”
Rhys shook his head. “No, he can’t.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “I think that’s a good plan.”
Bree shook her head. “I wonder what price he had to pay to gain his freedom.” She clearly didn’t expect a reply. Kristofer hoped Theo could tell them.
Thorolf and Hadrian returned then in a flurry of dragon wings: Hadrian carried an unconscious Alasdair. Alasdair was in his human form and murmuring incoherently.
“He just passed out,” Thorolf said with disgust, after shifting shape. “Good thing we were there because he would have fallen right out of the sky. It would have been curtains.”
“He dropped like a rock,” Hadrian confirmed, setting his cousin down on the couch. His English accent was stronger, as it often was when he was agitated. He was close to Alasdair and even more worried about that Pyr than the others.
Thorolf stepped forward, evidently noticing the body on the floor for the first time. “Hey, is that Theo?”
“They threw him back,” Chandra said. “I think he should be isolated, maybe even confined.”
“Hard call,” Thorolf said.
“You trust too easily,” she countered and the air crackled between Pyr and mate. “He was delivered here for a reason. We should be careful until we figure out what it was.”
Kristofer couldn’t suppress a shiver, because he suspected she was right.
“We need to talk to Erik,” Quinn said with authority. “Someone call him now.”
“At this hour?” Kristofer asked.
Quinn shook his head. “If I know Erik as well as I think I do, he’s already awake.” A cell phone rang in the distance then and Sara appeared in the doorway, offering the ringing phone to Quinn. The Smith of the Pyr nodded as he checked the name of the caller. “Hey, Erik,” he said, moving out to the patio to take the call.
“What’s in his hand?” Bree asked, peering at Theo.
Kristofer pulled what looked like a page torn out of a book from Theo’s limp grasp. He was startled by the shimmer of red light that emanated from it, then it was just a sheet of paper. “It’s a list of the Pyr,” he said.
“It must be the inventory from Maeve’s book,” Arach said, scanning the list then heaving a sigh of relief. “No recent losses. That’s got to be a good thing.”