When the Sky Breaks (Skyfall #1)

Chapter 1

One

Neal

Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, USA

This was not my ideal first day on the job.

A crackling white bolt split the dust-stained desert sky.

Static built in the air like an electrical storm threatened, but the horizon remained disturbingly clear.

Then a tall, grey figure stepped through the blinding white rift.

It strode forward on unnaturally long limbs, its massive head balancing impossibly on top of the spindly body.

I watched in horror, already scrambling up the rock-strewn hillside, as the grey-skinned creature grabbed Cormac Wilson, High Lord of the Elven Outer Court, and simply sucked the life out of him.

Blood flowed from Cormac’s ears, from his nose, even his eyes, flowing down to the creature’s grip on his arms and along the monstrosity’s skin until it disappeared at the base of its featureless grey head.

Cormac’s body collapsed when the creature released him and stalked back toward the crackling, whooshing portal on the hilltop.

His desiccated flesh disintegrated when it hit the ground.

The air went silent for the first time since a portal had opened in the city plaza barely ten minutes before.

A growling, slobbering midnight-black dog had emerged from that one, sending Santa Fe’s citizens screaming and running for shelter in the cathedral.

The dog howled like a ghost, grabbed a pigeon from the air mid-flight, and returned through its portal.

Apparently, this larger grey monstrosity had a taste for bigger prey than pigeons.

An old native woman came rushing up the hill, shouting for me between gasping breaths.

“Lady Sorcha,” she cried as she climbed the scree. “Lady Sorcha. She was out riding looking for her bears. Someone must go find her!”

Definitely not my ideal first day on the job.

Seventeen weeks prior, I received a telegram from my father, Glen, announcing his official retirement as Steward of the Elven Outer Court and instructing me to leave my current posting in Bratislava for the New Mexico territory immediately.

Da was tired of the heat, had bought a cottage up in Islay, and was resigning effective the day I reached US soil.

He was on a boat across the Atlantic now, bound for quiet and peace in the Scottish Hebrides.

And I was here, facing a supernatural horror the likes of which the Outer Court hadn’t dealt with in centuries.

And my High Lord, to whom I’d sworn fealty not two hours earlier, had been reduced to a pile of grey-white ash on the red-tinged dirt.

Worse? My new liege, Sorcha Wilson, was lost in the hills, at the most supernaturally volatile moment in Outer Court history.

“Go find her!” the old Comanche woman shrieked. “Hurry!”

I shook myself from the useless reverie of self-pity and hurried over the crest of the hill.

I immediately spotted the cloud of dust from a galloping horse.

Following the trail down the juniper-specked slope, I spotted a flash of dark, sumac red under the clump of night-blooming Datura growing in the wash below.

I ripped back some foliage, careful on the uneven ground, and finally came upon the unconscious form of Sorcha Wilson, newly minted High Lady of the Outer Court.

And suddenly it was like something had stolen the breath straight from my throat. I’d spent all day in Cormac’s offices and hadn’t laid eyes on the daughter until now. And, though I kicked myself for being so unprofessional as to even let the thought cross my mind, she was gorgeous.

I knelt beside her body, brushing curly, golden-blond hair, now damp and sticky with blood, back from her freckled forehead.

“Lady Sorcha!” I said as I shifted her onto her side. “Lady Sorcha, wake up! I said wake up, Lady Sorcha!”

She didn’t stir. And for a moment panic gripped my chest. Cormac was understandable—a freak supernatural incident. But if I managed to lose the daughter too? On my first day? Da would kill me.

I shook her shoulder, begging anyone listening to have mercy and let her bloody live. A wave of relief washed through me like ice water in my veins as she stirred and opened her eyes.

“Can you move at all?” I asked.

“What the hell? Who are you?” Sorcha was already pushing me away, trying to sit up, still gasping as she regained consciousness.

“Your Steward, Lady Sorcha,” I replied. “Now tell me, can you move? Fingers and toes on both hands?”

“You’re not our Steward.” Sorcha’s brow furrowed as she ignored my questions, finally succeeding in pushing herself upright and wincing at the movement.

“I’d ask you don’t move so quickly, Lady Sorcha,” I said urgently. “Best I can tell, your horse threw you. You could be injured.”

“I’m bruised, but I’m fine,” she insisted. “Now who are you?”

“We’ve not been properly introduced I’m afraid,” I said. “I’m Glen MacCairn’s son, Neal. I took over as Steward this morning.”

“What happened?” Sorcha asked, rubbing her temples and smearing a stream of blood that ran down her forehead.

“You’re bleeding, Lady Sorcha,” I said, dabbing at her forehead with the cuff of my sleeve. “We need to be sure you’re not otherwise hurt, my lady.”

“Drop the ‘my lady’ bullshit and tell me what happened,” she snapped.

I paused for a long moment. How was I supposed to break that kind of news? Definitely not sitting in the mud while she bled from an untreated head wound.

“I said tell me what happened,” Sorcha pressed. “And once you do, I’ll let you get me back to town and check me for injuries.”

“A portal opened in the plaza,” I finally managed, voice low, words careful. “Some kind of beast emerged, but no one was injured. Then another one opened on the hilltop. And another creature came through and . . .”

I couldn’t finish.

“Spit it out,” Sorcha insisted.

“And it killed your father,” I said.

Sorcha’s face paled, her breathing hitched—and then she went limp, her dark green eyes rolling back as she slumped into unconsciousness.