Shadow's Kiss (Monstrous Hearts: Fleur's Story)

Chapter Thirty-One

Fleur grew aware of grass prickling her cheek. Then of something snorting right above her head. The earthy smell of cattle filled her nose just as she felt a mild tug on her scalp. Slowly, painfully, she shifted enough to find a brown calf chewing on the ends of her hair. She tugged them free and pushed herself upright with shaking hands. Cows placidly watched from all around as she realized she had rolled halfway through a goddamn pasture.

The raised road waited in the distance, and so did a huge gate for the pasture, its iron proudly marked with a name on either side.

STAHLBAUM DAIRY.

"Goddamn it," she growled, realizing what Dario had done. He had magically shot her over to a place where she would be safe from the random men who had attacked them.

No, not random. Even as she staggered up and began a wobbling path out of the pasture while her body tried to remember how to work properly, her mind felt laser-sharp. Who would have the resources to send thugs to kidnap them? Who would know what Dario was and therefore care about having him? And most of all, who had enough contact with Kenzie and Tatum to find out she and Dario were together in Sonoma?

Fucking Hayley.

Fleur's steps grew steadier as she reached the wire fencing and crawled through it. The road stretched out on either side. On the left was an intersection that she knew they hadn't taken. That meant Dario's car was on the right, and she thought she could even see the clump of trees where they'd been attacked. She forced herself to run on the empty road, every muscle burning with too much rage to feel anything like pain or weakness.

The shadow world had been very clear on what she had to do. If she was the only one who could kill Hayley and end this entire fucking ordeal, then she was more than ready.

Dario's car still waited by the trees, empty. The doors had been left open, and a few bloody patches remained in the gravel. They'd overpowered him.

She got into the driver's seat and slammed the doors shut. The engine roared into life, and she wrenched the car onto the road in a spray of gravel. Some part wanted to scream and claw at anything in reach, but the rest of her felt eerily numb, aware of just what to do.

"Find him," she hissed out loud, and felt a dull pain in her heart, barely more than a twitch. Like an unpracticed muscle trying to follow a command.

"Find him," she repeated, willing herself to reach the coven's magic still attached to her life. If she could make it take her to the shadow world, then she could make it do anything as long as she didn't care what it took in return. Agony flared in her chest. Her next breath felt thick and shallow.

Unthinkingly, her fingers reached at the GPS and typed in an address in Sunnyvale. She didn't smile so much as bare her teeth while activating the directions. Back to Silicon Valley, then, probably to a place owned by Hayley's new crypto boyfriend that Tatum had briefly mentioned.

She drove without any sense of time, coldly responding to the detached voice and its directions as if she were an AI herself. No extra thoughts in her mind. No concern for what she was about to do. Just a complete focus on reaching Hayley.

The afternoon sun glared hot and bright as she reached the right street. Luxury homes were jammed together, bloated and cramped inside their fences. The one with the right address must have been three stories high, with a cement pathway and a cheap iron fence circling it like a border. Fleur parked a few blocks away and walked back to the house, searching for security cameras.

Then a glimmer of light caught her eye from somewhere on the ground floor. She recognized the vague, shifting reflections on the ceiling—it was the kind of light cast by a swimming pool whenever someone was in it. As she continued watching, a familiar figure in a red bikini floated within view of the glass doors that opened out to the yard: Hayley.