Fae of the South (Court of Crown and Compass Book 3) by E. Hall (libby ebook reader .txt) 📕

the corrugated steel door, I hear the clink, clink of metal striking metal. As I pass shelves piled with materials, the air gets warmer and already fills me with the comfort only Tyrren can bring.

Huxley, the master blacksmith, doesn’t look up when I linger in the doorway. Tyrren isn’t by the fire or the work table. The hammer doesn’t go quiet in Huxley’s hand when he says, “Tyrren is at work.”

That’s all I need to know.

The rules I promised to follow get thrown out the window when I meet Tyrren at the garage six blocks away. The owner is a member of the Brooklyn Vampire Club.

It’s an underground society—yes, consisting of vampires.

No, I’m not one. Neither is Tyrren. They just hooked him up with the cushy parking attendant job, babysitting fancy cars.

My uncle is the president of the club and vowed if any of them tried to turn me, he’d do worse than destroy them. Pays to know people in high places.

The Brooklyn Vamp Club mostly does good—they help old ladies cross the street, keep threats off those same streets, and live fast, die never.

Tyrren doesn’t ask questions when I march up, wearing a sneer and staring daggers. He dangles a set of keys in the air, knowing exactly why I’m here.

I get behind the wheel and we go.

I put distance between myself and the gymnasium along with the stupid, failed attempt at being a normal girl. I should’ve known better. There’s nothing normal about me or my life.

Glancing at the Lamborghini’s speedometer in the dashboard’s muted glow, I remember the day sophomore year when I wanted nothing more than to drive away from this life. After the registry of motor vehicles failed my road test, it didn’t look like I was going anywhere anyway. They argued that I drove too fast, recklessly even. Story of my life.

Fortunately, Tyrren remedied my problem with private lessons in cars belonging to wealthy people who don’t know about our joy rides. He’s the boy next door and probably the last remaining good boy on earth. However, due to my influence, he takes no issue with enabling my penchant for driving fast...or stopping me from running away a few years ago.

The upholstery in the charcoal Lamborghini smells of new money. It isn’t that Ivan, my uncle, doesn’t have luxury cars of his own. Rather, for me, it’s the thrill of doing something bad and getting away with it. As I’ve just learned, when I try to do good things, I fail.

“You’re quiet,” Tyrren says.

For once, I let speed do the talking, shifting through the streets of Brooklyn, hitting the green traffic lights strung up like Christmas bulbs. I bring the car up to sixty, then seventy, and take a corner at eighty-five and we spin.

“Who-hoo.” Tyrren whoops with his arm out the window.

By a ramen restaurant, we rocket past two girls and two guys who holler after us to slow down.

Never.

The engine purrs and the wind tangles my long dark hair into a web.

I throttle the car toward an abandoned area by the bridge, snaking around crater-sized potholes, not because I want to avoid them, but because I want to see what I can make the car do. It handles like a hot knife as I drop my right foot heavily. I turn the wheel sharply to the left and we spin again, sending a rooster tail of dirt and rocks into the air as I brake.

The song playing from the stereo makes me think about all of the things I’ve done wrong and replaces the roar in my ears while I drove away from reality.

Yellow light pours from the streetlamp illuminating fresh graffiti slicing through the concrete, a cleft as sure as the one driven between who I tried to be and who I am. It’s also a reminder of a night I’d rather forget. I shiver as though suddenly frozen here, stuck in neutral, staring in a detached kind of way at my surroundings. My mind can sometimes disconnect, but my body doesn’t forget the attempted attack and how I defended myself.

“Lea, we better head back,” Tyrren says over the music as though recognizing that my thoughts went to a dark place.

He’s always the voice of reason. I don’t want him to get in trouble or lose his job. Nonetheless, I turn up the volume on the stereo, release the clutch, and speed past wooden pallets, rusty machines, and toward the waterfront.

The steady vibration of guitars and bass, rubber on the road, and the possibility that it could all end in one final breath, at any moment, at a purposeful jerk of the wheel, or a vampire’s bite to the neck fuels me.

Life on the edge.

The moonlight reflects off the choppy water like ebony-white jewels. I make a decision. I’m leaving. Now and later. Sirens wail in the distance. Time to get out of here.

The windows are down and for a moment I dream that it’s a sunny day, Tyrren and I are on the open road, traveling somewhere in the south. A scream from nearby shatters that reality.

I hadn’t yet locked away the memories of the night I was attacked. Without thinking I get out of the car. I can’t run away from someone’s plea for help.

Boiling tar, rotten eggs, and decay waft through the air. This part of the city hasn’t yet seen gentrification and there’s everything from trash to construction materials under tarps, in bins, and bags.

The scream comes again, closer now. I spot four silhouettes beneath an underpass. One has bowed shoulders. The others tower over her.

Crackling energy lights up my veins. Because of my uncle’s position as the president of a covert vampire empire, and the many risks it involves, I learned to fight young, if only to defend myself. From experience, sometimes when