was. It was obvious the woman was a shifter of some kind, and the man in white had Green Man powers and the ability to take on another’s face. He wasn’t the man I’d trusted. That man, the one my mom had called Dev, he hadn’t had an accent like that, and he’d had no real power beyond a Fae’s usual touch of magic. I’d seen his soul and this wasn’t it.
I was being set up. I’d thought Kor was the threat but now I was surrounded by three of them.
I looked at the Green Man. His eyes were pure emerald orbs and I knew that whatever he’d done to the men wrapped in vines was the least of what he was capable of. This went beyond a mere Green Man. I’d lived on various Faery planes and met several beings with agricultural powers. He was something different. Something powerful and frightening.
He was a god.
Don’t be afraid. Come to me, bella. I will take care of you.
I turned and looked at the man who whispered across my mind. He stared at me, his eyes burning even in the light of day, and I caught a hint of fangs.
Vampire.
I let the sword drop because it would do nothing against these creatures, as Kelsey was proving. I couldn’t access my magic even if I’d wanted to, and I knew exactly what a vampire who wasn’t on his plane was looking for.
I turned and I ran.
* * * *
Kelsey
I’d had a hell of a day already and it wasn’t even noon.
Well it might be where I was now, but back at home it definitely wasn’t noon, and as I punched an asshole in the face, I wondered if Gray and Trent were already worried about me. Maybe they didn’t know I’d fallen through a painting and found myself in Faeryville.
There’s a reason I wasn’t big into art. First of all, it can be pretentious, and I don’t understand how a bunch of squiggly lines represent man’s struggle in the industrial world. It mostly gives me a headache. Second, now I know it can suck me off my happy plane of existence where I should be getting ready to head to the beach with my superhot husbands and spend a few weeks soaking up the sun and having a mega shit ton of great, freaky sex.
But no. I had to fall into a painting and find a chick who looks exactly like the Queen of all Vampire, but she can’t be because I’d left the queen back in Dallas.
How was there another Zoey Donovan-Quinn in the universe? It was far too weird to be coincidence.
But I couldn’t think about that right now because the butt-faced asshole who’d shot me with an arrow was swinging a sword my way.
“Don’t use all those bullets, bella. If we’re going to defend the queen, we’re probably going to need them since neither Devinshea nor myself can figure out how to open that door again.” Marcus had come running up a few seconds before. I’d seen him out of the corner of my eye and though I no longer could feel him pushing his calm toward me, soothing and easing my way, the fact that he was here gave me great strength.
I blocked that sword coming at me with my demon arm. I’m a Hunter and I’m supposed to have gotten a supercool werewolf arm, but when I’d come into that power, I happened to have Gray’s blood in me. My honey’s demonic DNA had overridden the werewolf inside me. For a while everyone had thought it would change. But I still had a demon arm, and I’m one hundred percent certain a wolf arm wouldn’t have stopped that sucker the way my demonic one did. I brought my arm up because I hadn’t realized I would be fighting for my life and had left Gladys behind. Gladys is the traditional sword of the Nex Apparatus. That’s my title. It’s why I was here instead of hopping a flight to Hawaii. Because it’s my job to handle the evil shit that affects the supernatural world.
I considered the dude across from me pretty evil, and I didn’t even know him yet. All I knew was one of his assholes lodged an arrow in my shoulder and ruined a perfectly nice jacket.
His eyes flared when he realized he hadn’t managed to chop off my arm. He said something in a language I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure whatever the