Page 36 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)

Chapter twenty

Suspending Disbelief

D iego? Through the red haze, Finn felt the brush of his beloved’s mind, a brief, fleeting touch, enough to know his Diego was in agony. Somewhere in the back of his thoughts, he had known Diego was held captive as well, but what had these monsters done to him to cause him such pain?

Oh, my love…a stronger male would shred these bonds and charge to your rescue. But I’m fading. Failing. Sweet goddesses help us, we need a hero, and it’s bloody certain that’s not me…

“Mr. Sandoval?”

Diego turned his head, too weary to lift it from the pillow, to meet worried gray eyes. “Please stop calling me that,” he whispered.

A flicker of surprise ran through him when Sergeant Morrison blushed. “I can’t call you by your first name, sir.”

“Because I’m a civilian? A prisoner?”

Morrison sank into the chair by the bed, staring at his feet. “Well, you’re right there. It is protocol to call civilians ‘mister’. But it’s more ’cause you’re, you know…” He made a circular motion with his hand as if he needed to pull the word out of the air. “Famous.”

The bitter laugh leaped from Diego’s chest before he could stifle it. “I wrote a couple of mildly successful books. That’s hardly famous. And even if I were, it wouldn’t do me a lot of good now, would it?”

The blush had reached all the way to the sergeant’s ears. “You’re in the paper sometimes and there’s websites about you. Websites other people’ve made. Fans. I’d say that makes you famous.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I think you’re a good guy, Mr. Sandoval. You put your heart into the things you write. And it’s a good heart. And I hate seeing you like this. So if you wanna tell someone about it, I’m here. About the…not-so-aliens and Finn.”

“Because they won’t believe me and you will?”

“Yeah. You know, what do they call it? Willing suspension of disbelief.”

“That’s for fiction. When you suspend disbelief for a time so you can enjoy the story.”

“Could work for real life, too, sometimes, don’t you think, sir?”

Diego opened his mouth to disagree and shut it again. The man had a point. “They’re not aliens.”

“Yessir, you said that.”

“They’re not from some distant planetary system. There’s no ship—mother, scout or otherwise—orbiting the Earth.”

Morrison nodded. “Got that much, sir. So what are they? Mutants or something? Like Wolverine?”

“They’re fairies.”

A frown creased Morrison’s handsome forehead. “I’m trying to help here, sir. Not nice to get all sarcastic.”

“I’m completely—” Diego broke off when he understood. “Oh. No, sorry. Not that kind of fairy. I mean the kind you find in fairytales. Magical beings who’ve lived alongside humans since the beginning.”

“But they’re, um, big. None of these guys would fit on a flower. And they don’t have wings.” A look of horror spread across Morrison’s face. “Did we take their wings?”

Diego heaved a slow breath. He wanted the sergeant to go away and leave him in peace, wanted to spend all his energy trying to reach Finn. But if one soul believed, there was hope others might, and the more people who did, the better their chances of getting out alive.

“No one took their wings. There are lots of different kinds of fae. Some of them have wings. The four held captive here don’t. Not in their current forms.”

“So what kind do we have here?”

“You have one sidhe , two Fomorians…and Finn.”

“And Finn is…”

“A pooka.”

Morrison scrubbed his hands back through his short, blond hair. “Maybe you should start at square one for me, Mr. Sandoval. Tell me how you met Finn.”

Diego settled with his hands laced over his stomach. The camera in the corner recorded every word and they both knew it. Maybe this was the sergeant’s way of sparing him a longer, grueling interview if he voluntarily told his story first. Fair enough .

“I was driving home one night over the Brooklyn Bridge when I spotted a naked man on the rail. There weren’t any first responders on the scene, so I figured I’d better try to talk him down…”

He related the whole first few weeks with Finn, how sick he had been, how Diego had assumed he was delusional, how his assumptions had been shattered when Finn had sat him down and run through a rapid series of shifts from one animal form to another, on and on, until he’d had no choice but to believe.

He skipped the part where they had gone to Canada and Finn had inadvertently woken the wendigo.

No need to give his listeners any more ammunition if he admitted that, yes, magical creatures could also be malevolent.

But he did tell the rest. About his seizures and the lightning in his head, as Finn put it, about the Veil and the Otherworld, how the fae had been failing and what they needed to be whole again.

“Okay, so what you’re saying,” Morrison said with a little frown, “is that if our world and their world are cut off from each other, if the magic, um, currents don’t have a place to flow back and forth, they kinda…

stagnate? Like a pond without a fresh water source?

And the fairies get poisoned by the stagnant magic? ”

“Not a bad way to think of it.” Diego nodded.

“The two worlds are separate. The magic in them is different flavors, if you like. But they can’t be cut off completely from each other.

They’re two halves of the same Earth. It was certainly about to be the death of the fae , and I think it would have had terrible consequences for humans eventually as well. ”

“And you were using your house as a fairy ER. Got it. So how do they get back and forth?”

“That, my friend, is not something I’m going to tell you with half the base probably listening.”

“Oh. Right.” Morrison stood and puttered about the room a few minutes, cleaning up supplies, taking Diego’s vitals. Finally, he asked so softly the monitoring devices might have missed it, “You love him, don’t you?”

Diego squeezed his eyes shut against the hard thud of his heart in his chest. “Yes.”

“G’night, Mr. Sandoval. I’m off shift. You try and get some rest.” Morrison gave his shoulder a last pat before he walked out, his brow still furrowed in a troubled expression.

Diego’s few minutes of peace were cut short when Dr. Brennan came to see him. She took the chair Morrison had vacated and pinned him with her gaze. “Your story has holes, Sandoval.”

“Was everyone listening?”

“Those involved, yes.”

“Of course there are holes. I can’t have entire populations of fae put at risk.”

She tapped her pencil on her knee. “No, I mean, it’s really hard to believe the things you did say. You claim you can feel their magic. That you can manipulate it yourself. So why don’t you? Why can’t you just poof out of here? Why don’t they?”

“Because there’s something blocking the magic here, something…

” Diego trailed off as a sudden realization slammed into him.

“The lead. The lead shielding around the base. That has to be it. All the steel would hamper their abilities but iron doesn’t bother me.

” He sat up, rubbing a weary hand over his face. “Of course…of course…”

“Rather convenient explanation, don’t you think?”

“Honestly, Dr. Brennan, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. That is, I do care but there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about it.” He reached out and gripped her forearm. “Go see Finn. Take the damn gag out of his mouth and talk to him. Give him his hand back. Then you’ll see magic.”

“You think I’m an idiot? That subject bit three staff members before they muzzled him. Nearly tore one person’s finger off.”

“He’s not a ‘subject’,” Diego said. “He’s a person who thinks and feels, who will listen, if approached with calm compassion. Just…think about it.”

She tore her arm free and stalked out, leaving Diego with the sinking feeling that he had gained one ally only to lose another.

Short of some miracle of diplomacy, he couldn’t imagine how he was going to get his friends, much less himself, to safety.

He eased out of bed, wondering if they’d even locked him in, and nearly fell flat on his face when his ankle shot fire-lances of pain up his leg.

Teeth gritted, he hopped on his good foot to the door.

The knob turned, he eased his head out, and encountered the broad backs of the two armed guards stationed in the hall.

I guess that was asking too much.

He made his way back to bed and flopped down, panting.

Ridiculous. If he couldn’t even get across the room and back without exhausting himself, how did he expect to mount an escape?

Even in perfect health, on the off chance the door might be unguarded at some point and assuming he could make his way undetected to the experimental rooms, how in the world would he manage to break four disabled, ailing fae out of locked rooms and drag them out of a heavily guarded base?

No, there had to be another way. If he could get a message out to Miriam, she might be able to use her government contacts, her vast network of family and friends, to influence matters here.

Maybe he could send a message with Zack somehow.

He didn’t want to cause the sergeant any problems, but a quick ‘I’m in trouble’ note might work, provided he was willing and didn’t think it an act of treason.

Diego slid back under his blankets to rest. Zack wouldn’t be back until morning, so there was little else to do at the moment.

When did I start thinking of him as Zack?

And why do I trust him when I shouldn’t trust anyone?

He did, though, on a gut-instinct level.

Had Diego met him in a bar or at a party a few years before, he would have dismissed him as too nice, too earnest, the kind of man who would never put up with the unstable, scattered life of an aspiring novelist for long.

But as someone to have at his back in a bad situation, he struck Diego as ideal.

He drifted for a bit, in and out of troubled thoughts and anxious half-dreams, until he finally fell into a restless sleep.