Page 8 of Against the Veil (Endangered Fae #3)

The clothes suited him. The charcoal pants hugged the perfect globes of his backside, the blue shirt clung to the muscles of his chest just enough to tease.

The clothing was unnecessary, though, and Zack certainly had nothing to hide.

Lugh wondered if he might be self-conscious about the scars.

Possibly. Though they were warrior’s marks he should have worn proudly.

Suddenly feeling underdressed in only a kilt, Lugh forced a smile and held out a hand.

“I don’t need—”

“Let me act as escort for you today.” Lugh caught Zack’s hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. “You are the hero of the hour and should arrive borne on a litter of rose petals. But since you would refuse such things, perhaps you might accept arriving on the arm of a fairy prince?”

“Oh, well, since you put it that way.” Zack shot him that charming, crooked grin that always melted Lugh’s heart and fell into step beside him.

Tall for a human, he was still half a head shorter than Lugh. The difference in stature often sent fierce waves of protectiveness through him, though he knew quite well how little Zack needed his protection.

The door across the hall opened. Zack shoved Lugh behind him as Finn stepped out.

“Where’re you headed, bud?” Zack asked.

Finn’s bright grin looked a bit guilty. “I’m coming with you.”

“Doesn’t sound like your best idea.” Zack took a step forward to block his path. “Contagious, remember?”

“It’s been weeks!” Finn actually stamped his foot. “I am bloody sick of being shut up in that cursed room all alone! I haven’t even sneezed since last night.”

Lugh leaned against the wall, waiting for the inevitable.

Finn’s eyes still held a glint of fever.

Sure enough, the pooka’s nose wrinkled and he turned his head back toward his room to let out an explosive sneeze.

Finn vanished, replaced by a handsome black hare sitting in the sudden heap of his clothes.

“Bloody hells.” The hare sneezed and shifted to eagle. Another sneeze and he changed to hedgehog. The hedgehog sighed and trundled back to the bed where it used its thick claws to climb up the sheets. It sneezed once more to become a dejected Finn, curled naked and sulking atop the covers.

“How about I bring you some ice cream later?” Zack asked gently.

Finn sniffed and hid his head in the blankets. “No. Thank you. I simply wanted to see everyone.”

“You’ll be better soon, hon.”

“Hmph.”

Zack chuckled. “Though you’re really cute when you pout. Anyone tell you that?”

An irritated snort came from the blanket nest. Then Finn lifted his head, his expression serious. “Zack, go. Their majesties adore you, but I would not take the notion of being fashionably late too far.”

“Personal experience?”

“Oh, yes.” Finn waved a hand at them. “Go. Heroes should be feted and the feast for you is long overdue.” One last sneeze turned Finn into a shaggy Icelandic pony reclining on the bed. “Tell my husband not to stay overlong.”

Zack promised and closed the door, though he hissed at Finn to shut up when he began to hum something.

“What song was it that offended you?” Lugh asked, gratified when Zack took his arm again without prompting.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

The first set of stairs posed little difficulty, but by the time they had reached the level belowground where the fae had their caves and tunnels, Zack was gasping.

“Shall I carry you?”

“Um, no.” Zack leaned a shoulder against the wall, rubbing at his chest. “Gimme a sec. My heart’s…galloping.”

Concerned, Lugh slid an arm around him and pulled him close.

When Zack accepted the support and leaned into him, his alarm grew.

Zack’s heartbeat thundered in Lugh’s ears, drumming a desperate staccato against his chest. Panting breaths deteriorated into tortured gasps.

Just as Lugh was about to reach with his mind to call for help, Zack sagged in his arms, his heart returning to a normal rhythm.

“Sorry,” Zack murmured. “Guess I’m still a little woozy. Know how Finn feels. Just want to be well again.”

“You will be,” Lugh said atop his close-cropped, golden hair. You will, you must. Gods, please, my Zachary, you must be well again.

He kept an arm around Zack’s shoulders—to steady him, he told himself—and ambled slowly through the corridors with him until they reached the room with the gleaming door.

Two feet thick, of bespelled battle silver that Lugh had forged himself, the door was wise enough to prevent the entrance of those with evil intent and strong enough to withstand modern human explosives and blowtorches.

Diego had wanted the passage through the Veil as secure as possible.

Zack had insisted on installing the retinal scanner as an added security measure since fae retinal patterns differed wildly from human ones.

Anyone could leave the secure room to make the passage from the Otherworld to this one, but only one of the fae and certain select humans could enter from the outside.

A tilt of his head toward the scanner gained them access and Zack’s eyes lit up, as they always did, when the green world across the Veil came into view.

Outside the embassy, a thunderstorm lashed the walls, but through the glowing doorway, high white streaks of cloud painted a brilliant cerulean sky.

A field of lush grass and yellow flowers stretched before them, with the edge of the sidhe forest visible in the distance.

Not far from the doorway, fae crowded the field in all their multihued, multi-skinned glory, lounging, dancing, flying, eating, wrestling and conversing.

A familiar russet-haired figure turned and gave them a flirtatious wave. Lugh chuckled. “My cousin is incorrigible.”

“Sionnach knows how gorgeous he is,” Zack countered with a fond smile. “He just likes other people to notice, too.”

They stepped through and Sionnach bounded to them and stood on tiptoe to wrap his arms around Zack’s neck. “Our hero has arrived!” he exclaimed, pressing his lithe body close.

Altogether too close for Lugh’s liking—he had a terrible urge to shove his cousin away. Now from whence had that sprung? He had never acted in a jealous fashion toward his lovers. Not that Zachary was his lover. Great Mother, but the sergeant confused him.

Others gathered close to greet Zack, wheat-haired Angus nearly knocking him over in his enthusiasm, Faolchú sweeping him up in his arms to swing him around, the féileacán in their small forms dancing about his head in a firefly rainbow. A deep, rumbling growl scattered them all.

“So, boy.” King Balor towered above Zack, eight feet of massive muscle, boar bristles and tusks. “Finally done lying about all day? Not content to be waited on hand and foot in your own bed, you have to come here for it as well?”

Lugh flinched. His grandfather was most likely joking, but his thunderous expression made it difficult to be sure.

“Thought I’d better come check up on things, Your Majesty,” Zack said, tilting his head back to look up into Balor’s face. “You know I can’t leave you all alone without you getting into trouble. And I thought you might want to sit by me and feed me grapes.”

Silence fell over the gathering. Even the birds seemed to hold their breaths as Balor scowled down at Zack.

But Zack obviously knew the Fomorian king well enough by now and met the baleful glare of that one visible eye without flinching.

Balor threw back his head and laughed as he pulled Zack into a surprisingly gentle embrace.

Lugh felt suddenly bereft as his grandfather led Zack away to the abundance of food. That should have been his arm around Zack’s shoulders, him beside his brave sergeant as the fae competed to bring him tempting bits of this and that.

“Sulking does not become you, Shining One.”

Startled out of his reverie, he turned to find Morrigan at his shoulder, her sharp teeth glinting in the sunlight. “Staying out of the way does not constitute sulking.”

She shrugged, her long claws clicking as she watched the scene before them. “Perhaps not. But that pitiable, lost look on your face does.”

“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean.”

“Males are hopeless.” She shook her head on a snort. “Why must you make everything so complicated?”

He arched a brow at his shield companion. “Because sometimes it is.”

At least Zack enjoyed the attention. He smiled and laughed, conversing easily with the fae who would have left him thunderstruck and speechless a year earlier.

But now he knew their names and their histories, had helped many of them with questions about the human world and had even taught some of them—the ones better able to concentrate on rules—to play baseball.

Lugh smiled. Perhaps it was not so blasted complicated after all. Perhaps—

With a soft cry, Zack suddenly doubled over his knees, his face a mask of pain. His previous thoughts scattering, Lugh raced to him, unceremoniously shoving everyone else out of the way.

“Zachary?” He tried to hold him still, but Zack twisted and writhed in obvious agony. “What is it, my dear?”

“God…oh, God,” Zack gasped out. “On fire…something’s eating…my insides…fuck!” He clawed at his shirt, ripping the buttons off in his haste to be rid of it. For a moment, Lugh thought the shirt itself might be the culprit but Zack continued to moan and writhe after he had torn it from his body.

“Lugh! Help me!”

The cry tore at his heart. He had never felt so helpless and useless. “Mother! Where is she? Someone go and fetch her!”

It was not his mother who came, but Danu, the gathered fae parting before her regal passage.

Her green hair whipped about her head from the wind she generated in her anger.

The queen of the sidhe pointed a long finger at Zack and spoke in a frigid, commanding voice, “He cannot be here. Not now. He endangers us all.”

“Grandmother, what are you saying?” Lugh cried out in anguish. “We must help him!”

“The sergeant knows why he must go.” She stepped closer, menace in her eyes. “Go, Zachary Morrison. Run far from here. As far from the embassy as you can. Away from other living things before it is too late.”

Zack staggered to his feet, his eyes filled with horror. He let out an agonized cry and fell to his knees again. Danu came toward him with relentless purpose as he backpedaled, one arm clutched around his stomach.

“Grandmother, leave him be!”

“No. It is death and terror if I do and this field will run red with the blood of slaughtered fae as it did in ancient times.” She raised her arms above her head, the white glow of her magic surrounding her. Before the eye could blink, she had vanished and a huge she-bear reared up in her place.

“Go!” The bear roared and lunged at Zack, her claws raking red trails on his bare shoulder.

Zack backed a step and another, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. Then he turned and fled back through the doorway, back to the human world, stumbling as he ran, his terrible pain radiating to every being within shouting distance.

“No!” Lugh bellowed, his shift to bull as unconscious as his rush after Zack.

“Zack! Zack, don’t go! Please, wait!” He shouted in his mind, hoping for that connection between them.

No reply. Only Zack’s footsteps dashing through the halls ahead of him.

By the time he reached the door to the garden, snorting and blowing, Zack was gone.