by Shai August
The drow and Delilah stood at the doorway thanking everyone receiving line style as they swept past them to take their places for the opening scene.
Her heart started pounding faster and faster as the staff orchestra played the prelude. She didn’t even know why her nervousness spiked. Carmen didn’t make her first appearance until eighteen minutes into the production, and there would be no Carmen tonight.
The last of the crew was leaving, when the drow turned to her and Colt. She dropped the sobbing wailing, diva in distress act abruptly.
“Delilah Dennis, I’m Steward Special Agent Colt Landry. This is Special Agent Theresa Freeman, we’re here on behalf of your father.”
They hadn’t known what to expect from Delilah when they revealed themselves to her, but laughter wasn’t it. “My father sent you. Figures. Tell my sweet delusional father I’m never coming home, I’m in love and happy here.” She actually reached her hand out to the drow who grasped it like a teenaged boy. “We’re soulmates,” she said naïvely.
“I’m afraid we can’t leave here without you and without freeing those people outside,” she told the woman.
“I know Stewards,” the drow finally spoke. He pulled his shirt to reveal, four deep scars across his lower stomach. Claw marks.
There was only one way this drow knew of the Stewards, but that was impossible. This couldn’t be the same drow that a Steward Agent tracked to the bowels of the earth to rescue a kidnapped woman?
Delilah opened her mouth to say something, but she never gave her the chance. She hit her with a stun spell that was like getting a few thousand volts from a stun gun. Her mouth closed, and her body locked up as she started to topple over. Colt was already moving toward the falling woman, picking her up and racing out of the hotel to secure her in their magicked SUV. Only a Steward Agent would be able to unlock the truck, Delilah better hope they survived the battle against her boyfriend, or she’d be stuck in there for a while.
Her job was to hold the drow in place until Colt returned and he looked pissed that the Senator’s daughter had been whisked away from him.
There wasn’t much lore on what a drow could or couldn’t do magically, and no witch or warlock in the Steward’s had ever reported battling one. She’d have to use whatever was in her battle arsenal. Lunging she drew a set of glass vials from her thigh holsters, she tossed them at his feet. The drow laughed when the vials bounced harmlessly instead of breaking. “Poor little witches spell didn’t work.”
It was her turn to laugh, the bottles wouldn’t break ever. They were designed on a time release keeping the magic safe inside. She formed her magic into a whip and lashed the drow relentlessly. He backed away, stepping further and further back, there was no outward sign of him weakening under her attack, but the glamour of the room started to flash like a television trying to acquire a signal.
She released the magic of the vials, it was a quick acting confusion spell, while she lashed the drow with more of her battle magics. Stewards training for witches and warlocks insisted that an Agent be able to battle for at least twelve hours. She lashed him again, her battle magic whip landing a glancing blow across his face that drew neon green blood.
Her concern that the drow didn’t offer more of a defense against her attacks disappeared when all the glamour of the hotel dropped to reveal dirt brown walls. Outside the room, pandemonium ensued. Panicked screams echoed off the walls, she could only imagine five hundred humans seeing the giant rats and freaking the hell out.
“You will not take her from me again,” he thundered; his former falsetto replaced by a gravel voice laced with anger. "I've learned a lot in the century since the last Steward Agent came for me," the drow bragged.
All the power that he’d used to fuel the glamours and enchantments were back under his control now. When she lashed him again, she felt him grasp the magical lash. The sound of searing flesh filled the air as he held her lash in his grip. She tried to release her magic but couldn’t.
He used her own lash to pull her toward him, paralyzing her whole body in its grip. His magical grip on Reese tightened trying to close her airway. "Your kind have to follow the rules and rule one is bring them back alive. You won't kill me," he said assuredly.
She struggled to get the words out, "I won't, but he will..."
Over his shoulder, Colt had shifted into a golden griffin. Three tons of golden feathers, a twenty-foot wingspan and pissed off mate. He lunged for the drow, his curved beak crunching dozens of bones as he bit into the drow’s shoulder.
EPILOGUE
Colt
After they’d escorted the drow to the nearest maximum-security prison and returned an unhappy Delilah Dennis to the waiting arms of her family, they’d been assigned desk duty in the subbasement for the last month waiting for Zosime to rule on their case.
The human authorities had been called in to sort out the missing persons cases. Turned out Brian Thorne, the Luke Perry look-a-like was his great-great uncle. The other suitor for Felice’s affections, Carlos was a famous bullfighter who went missing during the reign of Bahamonde in Spain. It didn’t take long for the story of five hundred missing opera singers and their friends and family resurfacing alive and unharmed and mostly unaged to spread from Plainview to Lubbock and to the rest of the world overnight. The headline of every newspaper, blog, opinion piece, editorial column and website screamed about their emergence from a six-storied prairie dog mound in West Texas. Twenty-four-hour news channels ran the story for a solid three weeks until the Prime Minister of Canada was found dead of a drug overdose.
Zosime reclined across one of the divans in her office, her hindquarters elevated off the floor with her dangerous double shod hooves dangling. The early morning sunlight shone off them, blinding him. She frowned at them, and he reached for Theresa’s hand, fear gripped him. He’d wanted this job since he was a child, but he’d gladly give it up for Reese.
“I don’t want to give you two commendations, that feels like I would be rewarding you. However, the constant barrage of media attention from all over the world leaves me no choice but to offer them.” She tossed two navy blue folders across the low glass table that served as her desk, the flashing magical and holographic seal of the certificates winking through the sturdy folders. “I’d love to say, ‘excellent work’ for solving over five hundred missing person cases some going back seventy-five years and capturing a hundred-year long fugitive but in my eyes all of that is overshadowed by the rules you broke in mating. While. On. The. Job,” she said through clenched teeth.
She sighed, her naked torso rising several inches before falling back into its customary place. “The media attention also keeps me from outright firing both of you, which is my preference, but you won’t be able to go back undercover either. Not with every morning, afternoon and evening talk show in the world requesting interviews with the hero Steward couple.” She sounded exasperated; he relaxed a little. A tired Zosime was the one to be feared the most, he could handle her frustration.
The mating bond pulsed with Reese’s happiness, even though she sat upright, and her face was impassive.
“Thanks to some less than stellar advice from The Seer, I’m making you both the Media Relations Department. You will do interviews. All the interviews requested,” she said sternly. “You will promote the Agency around the world, serve as public information officers and you will recruit talented candidates for our training program as you find them.”
She continued, “You will Never mention the drow elf, Yhendorn and how he escaped Steward custody and then remained on the loose for over a century hiding in a freaking prairie dog mound. Don’t want to give other criminals the inspiration. You will never mention how he magically manipulated from what Research can tell ten generations of prairie dogs. You will never mention Delilah Dennis by name or the rest of her family but most especially the Senator. Are we understood about the parameters of your new positions?”
He sat still, face frozen but on the inside
, he was an exploding fireworks display. All he’d cared about was keeping the girl, but he got to keep his job too! Unshed tears gathered in the corners of his mind waiting to be released.
“Yes, ma’am,” they piped up in unison.
“Break another single, solitary rule and I’ll bounce you out of the Agency regardless of your collective hero status.”
She dismissed them, they stood to leave. He quickly grabbed the two folders with the commendations as he turned to follow Reese from the Director’s office. They remained silent as they waited for the elevator. The doors opened silently, and they stepped inside. The mating bond pulsed with Reese’s happiness, but he was about to make her even happier.
He hit the button for the ground floor before she had a chance to hit the button for the basement. Her eyes rounded questioningly, but he held up a finger for silence. He grabbed her hand as they stepped out into the lobby and hurried them outside. Tucking her into the passenger side, he got behind the wheel. In his mind, he’d driven this path every day for the last month thinking it would be the thing to cheer them up after being booted from the agency.
Thankfully, he’d waited. Reese had learned him well enough in the last month that she didn’t bother with questions knowing he wouldn’t spoil his surprises for her, but he felt her curiosity burning down the mating bond to him like a bonfire. Forty minutes later, they were in Downtown Houston. He flashed his shield at the security guard who was coming to scold him for parking on the street.
Sighing, he waited for Reese to come around the car, she’d let him open the door for her getting in, but she was too impatient to wait for him to come around once they’d arrived.
“What are we doing here?” she asked looking up at the building at two-hundred and one Caroline Street. Daily, even with the uncertainty of their employment situation, he’d carried one thing with him, and he reached for it now.
“I know this isn’t the four-karat rock that Felice probably demanded of Troy, but...” he paused as he got down on one knee, “Will you marry me, Theresa Freeman?”
The sparkle in her eyes worried him for a moment. “Colt, I shared my magic with you, we’re married. I don’t need a human license.”
“I do,” he told her. All around them, people were staring and waiting for Reese’s answer.
“Yes, Colt. I’ll marry you.” He slipped the modest one karat diamond on her left ring finger before rising to pull her into a kiss to the applause of the sidewalk crowd. “Only because if I say no, you’ll keep asking.”
“If you said ‘no’, I had one of the warlocks in Development prepare a set of handcuffs that you would only be able to say yes to any questions asked.”
“Colt!”
“Sometimes, a guy has to break a few rules.” He interlaced their fingers as they walked inside the Harris County Clerk of Court to get their marriage license.
Other Works by Shai August
Rare & Unknown World Shorts
The After Market: Volume One
First featured in the Shifted Into Love: Love Changes Everything…
Now with extended ending!
Tarnished by scandal, Jade is abandoned by her Pack, family and friends also trying to escape the taint of the scandal. Jade, with nowhere and no one to turn to, finds herself at the infamous, After Market searching for protection and a safe shelter from the storm of scandal following her.
The infamous After Market offers her more than she bargained for with an escape from the light of scandal and a sexy, scarred Alpha for protection.
Everything is not as she hoped after her trip to the Market, will scandal follow her or did Jade jump from the frying pan into the fire?
Rare & Unknown World Shorts
Social Aid & Pleasure
First featured in the Shifted Into Love: Lust In The Times of Mardi Gras…
This fun Cinderella reimagining is a sexy erotic paranormal romp into Shai August's Rare and Unknown shifter world.
One Mardi Gras, one shifter and two lives changed forever.
One night in the French Quarter, Chantal was dragged from her regular world into a secret ritual where she met the man of her dreams. Anxiety, fear and insecurity drove her away from him.
Three years later, she was going back to redo her hasty decision. She’d missed her chance and regretted her decision every day since.
He hadn't been an ordinary man in centuries, every decade becoming more beast than man. Then she walked into his life and he glimpsed happiness for one moment, before she ran away just as quickly. Can he trust her return? Should he claim her for his own?
Rare & Unknown World Shorts
Camp Pounce
Sally Ann Washington's life has gone through major upheaval and she just spent a nail biting, cringe worthy Thanksgiving with her littermate's new extended pride.
What she wants for the rest of her holidays is to find a little peace and quiet and maybe a little love between the pages of her favorite romance writer's new book.
But her pushy mother has already purchased her a speed dating package at Camp Pounce. Can she speed date her books and ignore the hot guys trying to distract her out of the pages?
Lagniappe About the Author
Shai August is a country girl with a big imagination, more than a touch of wanderlust and a never-ending desire to live in both an RV traveling the world and a library. Her love language is words of affirmations followed by books, bacon and bourbon. She's a born and bred Louisiana native, but has lived in ten states and visited forty-two. She is fluent in English, sarcasm and memes. Her goal is to write fast paced; character driven paranormal fiction for women of color.
She’s found all over the internet and social media as @ShaiAugust (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest (author assumes no responsibility for your falling into her Pinterest board traps), Twitter, etc.) feel free to follow and start any kind of conversation with me.
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