Free Blood Before Sunrise by Amanda Bonilla

leading her along, “and you’re going, going, going. Move along, out the door, and up the stairs.” I looked at Raif and shook my head. This Oracle was off her nut .
    “Marking time, time’s Keeper weeps, along a crumbling path she creeps. Moments long and short she reaps, until the dawning seconds meet!” Delilah laughed as she rhymed, emitting a deep, guttural sound that reminded me of a diabolical cartoon character.
    “Sure, sure,” I said through my teeth, pushing her up the stairs. God, could she walk any slower ? “The Man is coming, and his girlfriend too. They’re probably crying because they have to follow your slow ass! I get it, Delilah. You’re one crazy bitch.”
    She continued on, babbling and laughing and babblingsome more. From the look on Raif’s face, he was about to spontaneously combust at any second. It was probably a good thing we were unloading her on the council. Better them than us. Besides, if he’d had to keep her one more day, I doubt I could’ve prevented Raif from granting Delilah’s wish and sending her after her dead sister.
    We loaded her into a sleek black Lincoln Navigator, and I couldn’t help but feel a little “covert ops” riding around with the SUV’s tinted glass windows shutting out the world. Raif sat shotgun while I sat in back with Delilah. A Shaede I’d never met before drove us; his straight back and serious countenance in Raif’s presence told me chauffeuring us around town was the high point of his life. Raif was just one of those sorts. No matter whom he met, people wanted to please and impress him. I hated to admit, I did too.
    We drove toward the outskirts of the city, away from the Sound and the noise and the people. Crowded streets became an open four-lane freeway, and within twenty minutes we were leaving Seattle behind. “Care to tell me where we’re headed?” I asked, willing to test Raif’s foul mood.
    “Away from the city,” Raif said, staring out the window.
    “Thanks, Captain Obvious. I could tell that on my own.”
    Raif didn’t take the bait, and I folded my arms, put out that I hadn’t been able to engage him. Another fifteen minutes of our prisoner’s crazed mumbling filled my aching ears before we turned onto a paved and gated drive. Our driver stopped, pushed a button on an intercom, and waited.
    “State your business,” a crisp male voice said through the speaker.
    “We’ve come to deliver High King Alexander’s prisoner,” our driver said. “The Oracle, Delilah.”
    The gates whined, slowly opening, and we passed through with considerably less fanfare than I expected. Our driver nodded in greeting as we passed the guard station a few yards past the gate, and he waved us on. Imarked the passage of another two minutes and forty-four seconds as we drove up the winding drive before coming to a stop in front of a mirrored glass building, bigger than a grocery store, but considerably smaller than a skyscraper.
    “PNT Washington headquarters?” I ventured.
    Raif nodded his head.
    He didn’t wear a CIA-issued black suit, but the PNT’s security escort looked no less intimidating. My bones hummed in my body, a reaction to the energy projected by the man approaching us, no doubt Fae. I’d become quite astute at recognizing other creatures by the way their energy made me feel, and the Fae, well, standing next to them was like wrapping myself up in a vibrating massage pad. Not an altogether unpleasant sensation.
    “Raif.” The tall Fae with auburn hair greeted us, his eyes the color of forest moss. His build was lean, though I could tell every inch of him beneath his black military-style garb was corded with muscle. A short saber hung at one side and a set of knives at the other. He reached out his hand, and Raif took it before standing aside.
    “Adare, this is Darian. Darian, meet Adare.”
    I stepped forward, looking him straight in the eye as we shook hands. “So, are you running this show?”
    “Cordial, this one,”