The Royal Hunter Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Just what in the hell is going on here? Who are you? Some kind of cop or something?” He didn’t look like a cop. And the old man hardly looked like a cop’s partner. It might not be wise to remain outside alone with him, but he knew something about her mother. She shuddered again and rubbed gently at her neck. “How did you know my mother? And what does that have to do with Jimmy?”
    “Mother?”
    “You said you were looking for Eleri Trahaern.”
    Archer swore. “Where is she?”
    “I—She’s dead.”
    Just then the older man materialized behind her, seemingly out of nowhere. Archer took the dog from its happy perch in the old man’s arms. “You didn’t take us far enough back. This is her daughter. We need Eleri.”
    “We are precisely where we need to be,” he said calmly. “Eleri was pregnant with young Talia here, you see. That is why she left.”
    “
Now
you tell me?”
    “Now is when it matters,” he said simply. “Going back to her lifetime would have yielded us nothing. We wouldn’t have convinced her to return with a young child.”
    Talia’s attention flickered between them. She had no idea what they were talking about. “My mother died when I was six.”
    Pain flickered over Baleweg’s smooth face. “I know, my dear, and you have my deepest condolences. I tried to help, but she was a stubborn one. However, now your time has come. Only you can help us.”
    Talia felt as if she’d been dropped into Oz. “Help you with what? Wait a minute,
you
knew my mother?”
    He nodded and smiled gently. “I did. And I’m sorry to barge in on you like this.” He sent a baleful look toward Archer, then turned his sublime countenance back to her. “What we have to tell you, Miss Trahaern, will seem fantastical, but I’m asking that you open both your mind and your young heart and hear us out. Lives are at stake.”
    He took her hand and what felt like a mild electrical current smoothed up and down her arm. She would have pulled away, but the sensation felt soincredibly good she didn’t seem to have the willpower to end the contact. His eyes were so blue, she realized absently, you could stare at them forever.
    She shook her head then and blinked a couple of times, frowning as she pulled her arm free. The pleasurable sensations lingered, however. “I don’t know how I can be of any help to you. I remember very little about my mother.”
    “What do you remember?” the old man asked.
    For all that Talia was enthralled with the idea that she had finally met someone with clues to her past, this was just too strange. She folded her arms. “I think perhaps you should explain yourself first.”
    Archer sighed in disgust, drawing her attention back to him.
    “What is your problem?” The tension finally snapped her control. “And why were you after Jimmy? What did he mean, ‘I found her first’?”
    “You mean Dideon? I’m guessing he was sent here to kill you.” He said this as smoothly as if he’d been discussing the weather. “I thought you’d appreciate me stopping him.” He turned to Baleweg. “I get no gratitude.”
    Talia’s mouth dropped open. So he
was
a cop. But their accents … they were both Brits. That made a strange sort of sense, as her mother had been Welsh. So what kind of cops could they be? Some sort of secret agents? Like James Bond or something? This was all too surreal. Maybe he wasn’t a secret agent, just deranged. They’d both escaped from some mental institution and they’d just thought they’d known Jimmy. Except … Jimmy had definitely recognized Archer. And they both knew Eleri. They had her picture. A headache of mammoth proportions spang to life inside her head.
    Baleweg sighed the sigh of the eternally weary andfolded his hands together. “If you’d allow me to conduct this in the manner in which we’d agreed—”
    “No, mate, you instructed, I never agreed.”
    “And they wonder why I don’t get involved in the affairs of the court,”