by J. C. Diem
“I’m just telling it like it is, Mamma,” Leroy said in self-defense.
“So, what happens now?” Asha asked.
“We wait for a new mission to come our way, then we go out and kill whatever needs killin’,” I replied.
“I never imagined my life would turn out like this,” she mused.
“It has to be better than being locked in an asylum, girly,” Rudy pointed out. “You were stagnating in that cell.”
“I didn’t have a purpose,” the dryad said. “I was lost and alone.”
“Now you have us,” Harley said. “You won’t be alone anymore. We’re your family now.”
Tears came to her strange eyes and she smiled. “I’ve never had a real family before. It’s going to take some time to get used to it.”
“Pru is your Mamma and Jake is your Papa,” Leroy said with a grin. “Rudy can be your weird little uncle, so I guess that means Harley and I are your big brothers.” Rudy squawked in outrage at his new title, but subsided at a glance from me. He’d already decided Leroy would be the weird uncle in his own mind.
“I’m a lot older than both of you,” she reminded him.
“Only in human years,” the ghost retorted. “You’re just a baby in dryad years. You’re still naïve and you need us to look out for you.”
“He’s right,” Harley agreed. “You do seem really young and you barely look like you’re out of your teens.”
“Okay,” she said in defeat. “I’ll be your little sister then.”
“Now that that’s settled, off to bed with you all,” Pru said and clapped her hands sharply.
“Your Mother has spoken,” I said with a smirk when they all just stared at her. “It’s late and we’ve had a long night. We all need to recharge.”
Grumbling that they were being sent to their rooms like willful children, they all dispersed. I was tired enough to head to my own bed, but first I set a ward around the house. It would prevent anyone else from getting in and it would warn me if anyone tried to breach it.
Stripping naked, I slid between the sheets and allowed myself to fall asleep. Almost as soon as I sank into oblivion, a dream formed. I saw the portal Ari that had blocked surrounded by piles of rubble. A hand came through the shimmering barrier, touched a large boulder, then retreated. The appendage didn’t belong to anything closely resembling a human. It was far too large and furry. From the gray-green color of the fur, it had to be another troll.
More of the beasts were on the other side and they clearly wanted to pass through to our world. I knew there were many portals and doorways that led to the fae realm, but evil creatures seemed to be banned from using most of them. It seemed others existed that would allow the darker denizens of the fairy lands to pass through them at will.
My vision pulled back until I seemed to be hovering above the cave in Scotland. It drew back even further until the entire world was on display. The Earth spun slowly and I saw bright gold dots appear in every country. They were the locations of the fae doorways. Other dots appeared, but they were red, as if in warning. They were fewer in number and they seemed to represent the new portals we’d just discovered existed.
The globe spun until the US was on display, then zoomed in. To my unease, there were a lot of red dots scattered throughout the country. One of them was far too close to Devil’s Peak for my liking. It couldn’t have been the one the trolls had come through. That one had been further to the north.
Making note of the general location of the dot, the dream turned fuzzy as the vision dissipated. A face floated to the surface of my mind, dredged from my memory. Stunningly beautiful, it was Emelia, the fairy warrior who had accompanied Rudy and me on our quest when we’d been in the fae realm when working with the Hunter Elite team. Her long hair was jet black and her eyes were almost as dark a blue as mine. She was tiny, as all fairies tended to be, but strong and fierce. She’d had a premonition that we would meet again.
Seeing her now was a hint that her hunch would come true eventually. I didn’t know when it would happen, but I would be seeing her again one day. While the thought of returning to the fae realm was disturbing, I was looking forward to making the warrior blush again. She was a challenge that I had yet to conquer. As Rudy often joked, I always got what I wanted and I wanted the fae warrior naked and beneath me.
Chapter Forty-One
In the morning, I stuck around long enough to eat breakfast, then headed for my truck. Sensing I wanted to be alone, no one asked where I was going. I left the silver ring in my bedroom, which meant Leroy would be confined to the house again. The spell that allowed him to roam the property was only active when someone was wearing the object he was bound to.
My engine flared to life halfway through a news report. Apparently, a herd of cows had been slaughtered near Devil’s Peak last night. I shook my head ruefully, knowing Rudy would demand I pay him fifty quid, or dollars to those of us from the US, that his prediction had come true. The trollpocalypse had indeed descended and the unfortunate cows had been casualties that couldn’t have been avoided. They were probably the reason why the trolls had straggled to the battle in separate groups rather than together. The delay they’d caused had probably helped to save our lives.
I’d been back in my home town for a few weeks now, but I’d been avoiding a task that I should have performed much sooner. Guilt and sorrow had kept me from completing it. Now that our mission was over, I had no reason not to make the journey to the place I dreaded returning to.
Stopping briefly at a florist to buy some flowers, I continued on. I headed to the east side of town, leaving the houses behind, then slowed down when the graveyard came into view. Like the town, it had grown over the past few decades, but at a much slower rate.
I pulled into the parking lot and climbed out. It had been over fifty years since I’d last been here, but I didn’t need to get my bearings. I knew exactly where to go and wended my way through the old tombstones. In the distance, mourners were attending the tail end of a funeral. Dressed mostly in black, they maintained a respectful silence as the coffin was being lowered into the ground. An elderly woman sobbed into a handkerchief. Her grown children and young grandchildren surrounded her to support her in her time of need.
My heart was heavy when I came to a stop at the two graves I’d been avoiding for so long. Bracing myself, I looked down at the names that had been engraved on the headstones. “Hi, baby,” I said softly to my wife. “It’s me.” I huffed out a sorrowful laugh, knowing her spirit hadn’t lingered on this plain and that she couldn’t hear me. Neither could my daughter, Wendy. Both were beyond my reach and I could never say the words that were locked inside me to their faces.
Pain and loss hit me. I sank down to my knees and placed the flowers between their graves. “I miss you both so much,” I said mournfully, staring at the angel that adorned my daughter’s grave. Teresa had a cross on hers. She’d been a woman of faith and used to drag us all to church every Sunday. “I wish I’d been there to save you that night,” I added, tears pricking behind my eyes. I’d been out drinking with my buddies and had been having a grand old time.
Images from the past began to assail me. I saw myself sitting in a bar with my cronies from work as if watching myself on a TV. I’d been employed as a ranch hand at the time and I was expected to socialize occasionally. Teresa and Wendy had been at our house on the outskirts of town where I thought they were safe.
Back then, I’d already known I was different from everyone else, but I hadn’t discovered what I was yet. I wasn’t able to get drunk no matter how much beer I consumed. I saw an image of myself sitting on a barstool, laughing at a crude joke one of the other ranch hands had made, then I saw myself go still when I was hit with a vision. I remembered seeing my wife and daughter being attacked by pale men and women with long fangs and an unholy appetite.
I left the bar without a word, dropping my beer in the process. I’d moved so fast that I’d been out the door even before the glass
had shattered on the floor. Speeding home, I already knew I was too late before I screeched to a stop in the driveway. The house was too still and the sickly-sweet scent of blood lay thick in the air.
Moving with inhuman speed, I raced up the steps and through the front door that had been left standing slightly open. I found Teresa naked and lying on the living room floor. Bite marks covered her neck, arms and legs. She’d been violated by more than one of the monsters that had murdered her. Her brown eyes stared upwards blankly, silently blaming me for not being there to save her. Her long brown hair lay around her, almost as if it had been artfully arranged.
My breath had hitched, but I’d controlled the black rage that began to swell inside me. Leaving my wife, I strode down the hall to Wendy’s bedroom. I froze in the doorway when I saw her small body lying on the floor as well. She’d suffered the same fate that Teresa had. Only ten years old, the creatures had stolen her innocence before they’d taken her life.
I watched myself crossing the floor and dropping to my knees beside her. I gathered her into my arms and sobbed out my heartbreak, guilt and anguish. My sorrow had turned to rage that burned inside me so brightly that I had to let it out or I knew I would combust.
Placing my daughter on her bed, I drew the covers up to hide her terrible wounds. Then I retrieved Teresa and placed her next to our daughter and covered her up as well. Finally, I headed for the basement to retrieve a machete and a hunting knife. Still not realizing what I was and not really caring, I followed the strange scent the monsters had left behind. I raced for miles on foot at a pace no human would have been capable of matching let alone sustaining.
Following the strange scent to a remote cabin that the monsters had turned into their lair, I moved so fast that they didn’t even hear me coming. Their surprise when I kicked their door open would have been comical if I hadn’t been so enraged. Even without previously knowing that the supernatural world was real, I knew they were vampires on sight. Their pale skin, burning eyes and elongated fangs were a dead giveaway. Hissing in anger and hunger, they swarmed towards me.
I’d blanked the battle from my mind, but I caught flashes of it now. It had been a bloodbath, but I was the one doling out death. I moved like a man possessed, slicing, hacking and chopping the bloodsuckers to pieces. In minutes, they were a quivering mass of body parts that rapidly turned to ash.
Falling to my knees when they’d been eradicated, I dropped my goo splattered weapons and howled out my loss and rage to the uncaring woods. My family was dead and nothing would ever bring them back. Teresa had been the only woman I’d ever truly loved. The golden thread that had bound us together had been so strong that it was unbreakable. It had died along with her.
Upon her death, my ability to form a permanent bond with someone else had been shattered. I’d slept with countless women over the past few decades, yet I didn’t have a single gold thread linking me to any of them. It seemed that I was doomed to be alone for the rest of my lengthy life. The only type of relationship I was capable of having now was a fleeting one.
“It wasn’t your fault, lad,” Rudy said gruffly when he appeared beside me. He reached up to put his tiny hand on my shoulder. “You couldn’t have known the leeches would target your family.”
“You know about that?” I asked in surprise. I’d never told anyone about my wife and daughter.
“I read it in the file Sheridan Harwood has of you,” he confessed. “She’s gathered quite the dossier on you. I have an inkling your fae glamor doesn’t work on the lass.”
I scowled and shifted so I was sitting rather than kneeling. “That woman is too curious for her own good. What does she want from me?”
“It’s a mystery,” the leprechaun said with a shrug, then looked at the graves. “Are they the reason why you took Arienna in rather than fostering her with someone else?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said and scrubbed my face with both hands before dropping them to my knees. “Ari bears a startling resemblance to my daughter. She was four years older than Wendy had been when I rescued her, but they could almost have been sisters.”
“Will you ever tell the girl about your family and why you took her in?”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug of my own. “It’s too raw to talk about. I still feel the guilt that I failed to save them even now.”
“You didn’t have premonitions back then?”
“No. I didn’t even know I was half fae until after I killed the vampires that slaughtered my family. I looked through some old paperwork I had in storage and figured out my heritage from a letter my Grandmother had left me in her will.” My mother had died when I’d been a toddler and my grandma had raised me herself. “It hadn’t made any sense at the time,” I went on, “but she’d mentioned something about ‘a realm where fairies rule’ and that she hoped I could visit it one day.”
“She knew both you and she were half fae,” my sidekick mused. “She didn’t have the longevity your kind usually has, I take it?”
“No. She aged like a human and died of a heart attack when I was in my twenties. She must have known the fairy blood ran a lot stronger in me.” I didn’t know why both my great-grandmother and mother had been bedded by fairies. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I didn’t think so. It was yet another mystery that would probably never be solved.
“You’ve suffered a lot of loss and you could have followed after your father and turned down a dark path,” Rudy said solemnly. “Instead, you’re a champion for humanity. You keep them safe and hunt down the beasties that threaten them.”
“I guess my Grandma’s Seelie side really does help balance out the darkness,” I mused.
“You have unfinished business in the fae realm,” he said in a brooding tone. “We’ll both end up there again one day, mark my words.”
“You’re probably right, my little friend,” I told him, then smirked when he scowled.
“You know I hate it when you call me little,” he said in a sulky tone.
“Yep. That’s why I do it.”
He glared at me, then made a rude gesture and vanished. He reappeared almost immediately to make a final point. “You owe me fifty quid, boyo. I heard about the herd of cows that fell prey to the trollpocalypse.”
He vanished again, leaving me alone in the graveyard. Letting out a chuckle, I pushed myself to my feet, then turned to contemplate the graves I’d come to visit. “I love you girls. I’ll come and see you again soon.” With that promise, I turned and walked away.
My wanderings had brought me home to the place where I’d suffered the greatest loss of my life. It felt like I’d come full circle. Maybe it was time for me to begin a new life without the burden of guilt that had been weighing me down. It was never easy to let go of the past, but I had to at least try to. My gut told me bad things were coming and I had to be at the top of my game. One thing I’d learned was that my gut was never wrong.
Trolls were just one of the strange and horrible monsters we would no doubt be encountering now that the portals had been reopened. I shuddered to think what else would make its way through to our dimension. At least I wouldn’t be facing them alone. I had a new band of hunters to back me up and to make my life both complicated and interesting. With them at my side, I could handle whatever fate had to throw at us. Or so I dearly hoped.
Titles by J.C. Diem in chronological order:
Mortis Series
Death Beckons ♦ Death Embraces ♦ Death Deceives ♦ Death Devours ♦ Death Betrays ♦ Death Banishes ♦ Death Returns ♦ Death Conquers ♦ Death Reigns
Shifter Squad Series
Seven Psychics ♦ Zombie King ♦ Dark Coven ♦ Rogue Wolf ♦ Corpse Thieves ♦ Snake Charmer ♦ Vampire Matriarch ♦ Web Master ♦ Hell Spawn
Hellscourge Series
Road To Hell ♦ To Hell And Back ♦ Hell Bound ♦ Hell Bent ♦ Hell To Pay ♦ Hell Freezes Over ♦ Hell Raiser ♦ Hell Hath No Fury ♦ All Hell Breaks Loose
Fate’s Warriors Trilogy
God Of Mischief ♦ God Of Mayhem ♦ God Of Malice
Loki’s Exile Series
Exiled ♦ Outcast ♦ Forsaken ♦ Destined
Hunter Elite Series
Hunting The Past ♦ Hunting The Truth ♦ Hunting A Master ♦ Hunting For Death ♦ Hunting A Thief ♦ Hunting A Necromancer ♦ Hunting A Relic ♦ Hunting The Dark ♦ Hunting A Dragon
Half Fae Hunter Series
Dark Moon Rising ♦ Deadly Seduction
Deadly Seduction is available for pre-order and it will be published on the 2nd of November. If you would like to be advised of my new releases, email me at: [email protected] or visit my website www.jcdiem.com and sign up to receive my newsletter.