by Rhys Ford
“Partially,” I conceded, opening my eyes only to discover Ryder leaning over me. If my belly wasn’t already twisted up from the ache along my muscles, it churned in double-time with the sight of his dark emerald eyes swallowing up all the light around us. I couldn’t see anything past his handsome face and its golden fall of hair, the glittering metallic strands curving into a curtain around us. It wouldn’t take much to tangle my fingers through it, wrapping bits of starlight and sunshine around my own flesh, but that was a whole lot of trouble I wasn’t prepared to deal with. “I think we’re coming to a point, lordling, where you’ve got to decide what exactly is it you want from me and who the hell you think I really am. Because so far, we’ve danced around a lot of things, including each other, but the hard reality of life is… I’m a Stalker and you’re the Lord of a Court. My life is full of blood and monsters, and that’s not where you spend most of your day.”
“I know who you are, Chimera,” Ryder whispered. “I’ve never forgotten.”
“No, I don’t think you really understand.” I sat up, holding my left side until it stopped screaming in agony. Ryder’s chin came up, and he threw his shoulders back, giving me room. “You’re ruffled because I’m going to go digging around under the city for a fugitive and not taking you with me. Here’s the thing. You’ll be a distraction. You can’t shoot for shit, and there’s no way in any hell that you’ll be able to blend in with the crowd. You simply are not someone I’d take for that run. I can’t babysit. I can’t trust your instincts to tell you when someone’s dangerous, and I sure as hell don’t want to spend my time keeping one eye on you while on the lookout for someone who would sooner stick a knife between my ribs for a bit of spare change than to look at me.”
If I thought he was stiff before, he was practically a redwood by the time I got done speaking.
“This is how I live, Ryder,” I continued as gently as I could. “This, all of this around us, that’s how you live. And neither way is bad or better. Okay, so maybe you’ve got better food and beds, but we each have our places. And it’s been cute flirting with the idea of something… more than what we are, but I’m going to ask you something—what the hell do you think I’m going to do here in your Court? I bring nothing to this place. And before you start talking about destinies and towers with a hard-on for me being here, I want you to really fucking think about what it is you believe I can do here. Because I’m going to be honest and say I have no idea. Living here in a tower like this would kill me. I’m a hunter of monsters, Ryder. I go out and I kill things so other people can live their lives, and they might hate me because I’ve got pointed ears and fangs, but their money spends the same whether they love me or spit when I walk by.”
There was so much more to him now than the lordling who’d pounded his fist against my front door, demanding I dance to his tune. I wanted him. All of the gods knew I did, but I wasn’t going to bend down and show my throat to whatever tickle our blood shared.
“There’s something between us. I know it. I can feel it. And I’m not denying it’s there,” I said, moving Newt onto one of the pillows. “But I’m not going to let that tangle dictate to me how to live. I’m not going to be your puppet, Ryder, any more than you’re going to be someone I drag along on runs for shits and giggles.”
“I never once thought of you as… a puppet.” His whisper loosened as he continued, but the tension in his throat kept his muscles tight. “I want you with me. Not just because you make my bones sing, but because I can… count on you. You’re not just someone I reach for because you’re there. You’re a friend, and sometimes the only one who tells me what I really don’t want to hear. I depend on that. I need that. Do I want you in my bed? Morrigan, there are days where it hurts so much with the want of you, but I know you’re not… you’re not one to be bound. I know that. I might not like it, but I know it. I don’t know what your place is here except… that I want you with me. So whatever that looks like, that’s what I need. And if that means there are times when I have to watch you ride off toward a killing field, then I’ll have to deal with it. Just… stay here with me. In some way, Kai. That’s all I ask. Because that’s all I need.”
Thirteen
“YOU’RE STUPID for going, boy.”
I had to look up to make sure it was Jonas talking and not Dempsey because, except for the difference in their grumbling voices, those were Dempsey’s words coming out of Jonas’s mouth. The man looked like shit, his skin stretched tight over his strong bones, and he looked half warmed up from dead, his mouth and eyes tight slits in his ashen face. Leaning against the old International Scout he’d somehow driven from the ranch to the courtyard I’d claimed as my own, Jonas looked like he was ready to do battle despite his shaky stance. A few feet away, his son Razor met my curious glance with the universal expression of a son backing off arguing with his old man—a widening of his eyes, a shake of his head, and his hands held up in a quick surrender.
Najiri’s son was no fool, and other than an apologetic grimace, he used the long legs he’d gotten from his father to quickly take himself back to the battered Chevy truck he’d bought off Dempsey months before. I had fond memories of that truck and was mostly responsible for the Bondo-repaired shotgun holes along its front quarter panel and hood, but Razor’d done his own mark or two on the vehicle, having played apprentice to more than a few runs in his youth. Now a fully licensed Stalker himself, he’d taken up residence at Dempsey’s old place in exchange for keeping the place up, and despite the slight distance between him and his family—or perhaps because of it—he seemed to be getting along fine.
Right up until the moment his father decided he was going to drag himself out of his doctor-enforced rest and Razor volunteered to keep Jonas company. Or at least that’s how I imagined things going, and then I heard Jonas’s link chirrup angrily and caught a bit of his own grimace when he glanced at the message.
It was early afternoon, and the sun was making the same soft whispering promises a fickle lover made about loving forever, but in a half-drunk slur no one with any sense believed. Around us the Court was going about its day, and I’d spent most of the morning on my link or scanning vid feeds, looking for any sign of Dempsey’s younger brother. I started to get hits at noon—small trickles of information leading to a few possible sightings—and then word began to solidify, mostly because of the famous Dempsey lack of charm leaving a distinct impression on people as Kenny fucked them over. The disgruntled murmurs left in Kenny’s wake pretty much reassured me he hadn’t grown any more pleasant, and I couldn’t imagine having a price on his head improved his mood any.
The rain backed off before I had my first cup of coffee and a handful of painkillers, and from the growling sounds Newt made over his dish, I assumed breakfast was suitable enough to fill his belly. Other than a few tender spots and a spread of inkblot bruises along my right side, I seemed to have survived Gibbons’s attack. Still, I was surprised as hell when Jonas showed up, arm in a sling and with Razor in tow, slowly maneuvering through the Court’s maze of roads to get to my tower. His spouses were going to kill him for sneaking out, was my first thought when I saw him nearly tumble out of the old battle tank of a Scout he’d brought for Cari and me to use on our bounty hunt. The second worry came hot on its tail, a deep fear Najiri and the others would think I’d convinced him to bring the Scout himself.
Behind us, the Court went about doing whatever it was that occupied a nest of elfin in the middle of an enormous overgrown park. Ryder was up before me, leaving the bed we shared before I’d been forced out from under the bedsheets by my ravenous cat. The sheets still smelled of him, and I’d taken a long moment inhaling his scent on my pillows before creakily stumbling toward the bathroom. There was a part of me aching to crawl back into that bed and bury myself back into its soft caress, but Kenny had a piece of my past I wanted and I had a piece of his I needed to give to him. The wafer of Dempsey’s ashes was beginning to weigh on me, a negligible white disk shaped ou
t of the remains of the man who’d fed me, taught me how to shoot, and in his own way, called me son.
And now I was going to hunt down his brother, force him to hand over whatever it was Dempsey gave him to hold on to, and possibly drag him back to the Post to cash in on the bounty on his head while trying to avoid getting killed by anyone coming after me like Gibbons did.
Or, a typical Gracen Tuesday.
“That Mom?” Razor’s voice cracked, at odds with the growing redwood height he’d also gotten from his father. His face was all Najiri—elegant lines stamped with a regal beauty—but the rest of him was pure Jonas, including the healthy respect he had for the woman who’d brought him into this world. “Because if you don’t answer, she’s going to ping me next, and there’s nothing you can promise me that’ll make me not answer.”
“Hold on. Just….” Jonas gritted his teeth, huddling over his link. “Give me a minute. She doesn’t know I came with you.”
“Well, that takes the teeth out of the dog’s bite,” Cari drawled, swinging a duffel into the Scout’s open back hatch. “And it’s not like you’re going to be alone. I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t get me started on you going with him,” Jonas hissed under his breath, one hand covering his link. “Because—”
“Hi, Najiri,” I said loudly toward Jonas’s wrist as I walked by with the bag I’d packed up. He gave me a panicked look, and I heard Najiri’s querulous prod at her husband, asking him where he was. “Thanks for dropping the truck off, Jonas. I should let Razor take you back home.”
“Oh, that’s just cold,” Razor called out from the Chevy’s open window. “Dragging me into this. Dad, get into the truck!”
“I’ll be fine, Jonas.” I dumped my bag into the Scout, then ambled back over to where he stood, still trying to dampen down Najiri’s rising voice. Patting him on his uninjured shoulder, I murmured, “Thank you for letting me borrow the Scout. If it gets blown up, I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Do not—Najiri, let me call you back. I need to talk some sense into this boy,” Jonas muttered. “No, the pointy-eared one. The one you and I made is hiding in the truck trying to pretend he didn’t just yell at me to move my ass.”
Razor rolled up the window and began to studiously ignore all of us, burying his nose into a battered paperback I’d read more than a few times myself, its pages rolled and stained from living in the Chevy’s glove compartment.
“There’s going to be hell to pay when I get home, but I couldn’t in good conscience let you go wandering off to get killed without at least trying to talk some sense into you.” Jonas lurched his way around to the back of the Scout, his mouth set into a thin, painful line. Medical probably argued like hell to keep him in, but knowing Jonas, he’d bullied his way out, promising to do everything his spouses told him to do in order to get better… then promptly broke every single one of those promises before Medical was even a dot in the car’s rearview mirror. Still, I appreciated his stubbornness, even if I thought it was misplaced. “Did you pack enough sterile shot packs? Different sizes? You’d be surprised at how many of those thin ones you go through. Seems like I’m constantly replacing them.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting shot that much,” I drawled. “It’s a simple recon. Go down, ferret him out, and drag his sorry ass back up to the surface. He shouldn’t be that hard to find. I’ve already got a lead on where he’s holed up. I just need to pin him down. The med kit is set up, and if push comes to shove, we just blitz out of there.”
“I just think it’s a mistake. And yeah, I know you can handle yourself. Christ knows I’ve watched you get out of some tight scrapes, but this time it feels different. I don’t like someone putting a target between your shoulder blades.” Jonas wiped at his face, but the fatigue graying his skin didn’t magically disappear. He looked beyond tired, edging close into old, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was his needing to step back from Stalking or the stress of Gibbons’s attempt on his life. “How far in are you going to be going? Past the river?”
“Yeah, past the river.” I mapped out in my head where one of my contacts said Kenny was spotted. “Not past the tik-tik lines but close. I’m guessing he’s trying to avoid any LEOs. Farther in you go, the less badges you run into, but people are going to know he’s got a bounty on him. He’s got to stay hidden, but why come down here? At least up in Vegas, he’d have his own contacts. He’s spinning in the wind here.”
“Unless he’s burned all his bridges there and someone down here owes him a solid. Kenny’s worse of an asshole than Dempsey ever was.” Jonas grunted, and he shifted, easing his shoulder. “He’s down here for something or someone. Think he’s going to pull you into something?”
“Hasn’t tagged me, so I don’t think so, but Kenny’s never met a knife he didn’t love to stick into someone’s back.” I shook my head. “I don’t know why Dempsey gave him the contract stuff to hold on to, but he said it seemed like the last place in the world anyone would think he’d stash it.”
“This stuff’s that important?” Jonas eyed me. “What do you think it’s going to tell you? You know where you come from. I mean, you said you’re wearing your daddy’s face. What more do you need?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, scratching at the black-pearl dragon scale beneath my skin. “It’s stupid, and it’s not like it’s going to change who I am, but I feel like I’ve got to at least know who is out there putting targets on me. Tanic made me. I don’t even know the Sidhe he used to get that half, but I can’t imagine their family being too thrilled about it, if they even knew. There’s just too many pieces floating around out there, and I’ve got to put a face on whoever knows I exist and wants to make sure I stop existing.”
“And we’re sure it’s not the Wild Hunt Master? Wouldn’t put it past him to want someone else to do his dirty work. He’s sent others before. Maybe he figures sending a human this time will do the job.”
“Now, maybe? Back then, no. It was someone else. Dempsey was paid to pull me out of there and hand me over, dead or alive,” I reminded him. “So that’s one unknown. The contract on me now could still be that person or Tanic. Whatever Kenny’s got will give me some idea on where to start on the past, and push comes to shove, I’ll start digging into the now if he doesn’t get me any answers.”
“So you’re figuring either way, you’ve got to know who besides Tanic knew you were alive then.” He chewed on his upper lip, staring out into the forest beyond the Court’s gardens and roads. “Makes sense. I guess I keep… forgetting there was someone who hired Dempsey to pull you out of there.”
“Pull me out or kill me. They didn’t care which.” I shrugged. “So I’m going to find Kenny, dig that out of him, and then decide what to do with him. No matter what, I need to find him before anyone else does, no matter why he’s down here.”
“Just try to keep an eye out.” He grimaced when his link beeped again. “Tag me if you need help. I might not be able to get loose from the wives and husband, but I might be able to find you someone to help in a pinch.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Going to be hard to tag anyone for help down that deep. Signal repeaters are still screwed to hell,” I reminded him. “City didn’t want to fix the routing system. Took a lot of arm-twisting just to keep the transit running. You think they care if there’s free links up? I’ll be lucky if my satlink can punch through the streets down there. It’s far in.”
“That is not what I want to hear,” Ryder said, strolling out of the walkway, a plastic grocery bag folded up and tucked under his arm. “Hello, Jonas.”
“Goodbye, Jonas,” Cari shot back, closing the Scout’s tailgate. “Let me help you up into the truck and you can head home so Najiri can skin you. Hey, Ryder. Nice shirt. Stole it from Kai?”
“Seemed prudent. It’s one of his favorites. If I keep it and his cat, I figured it would give him incentive to come home.” He mocked my frown, getting out of Cari’s way as she steered a still-grumbling Jonas toward
the truck. Peering into the back of the Scout, he held the grocery bag out for me to take. “Here. Because you’ll forget to eat.”
“I’ll be with Cari. We’ll be eating on the hour every hour. She’s like a pika. Have you forgotten that?” I peeked into the bag anyway, delighted to see packages of my beloved coconut-marshmallow-covered cupcakes. “Okay, these are awesome. Thanks.”
He stepped toward me, pinning me to the Scout’s side. His fingers were warm on my belly, tucking up under the hem of my T-shirt—my second-favorite T-shirt, since apparently he’d taken a liking to the one I’d gotten from a San Francisco ink shop. His mouth sang against mine, sending a fire through my blood, and I nibbled on his lower lip, reminding Ryder he couldn’t always just take what he wanted, even if it was me.
“Hey, lordling,” I cautioned. “Getting kinda ballsy here. I mean, I just let you sleep in my bed. Haven’t done anything to bring on a big dramatic goodbye kiss in front of the kids. It’s not one of those old black-and-white movies you like. I’m not a soldier going off to war, and you’re not my husband wishing I were already home before I’ve even left.”
“I do want you to come home. I wish I were going with you. And yes, damn it, I wish I’d done more with you than simply sleeping in your bed, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for you to come home safe. Just….” Ryder leaned his forehead against mine, inhaling my breath when I exhaled. “And it’s not because I don’t think you’re capable. Gods know, you are fierce and feral and so much more of a survivor than I can ever be, but I just… don’t want to let you go. Even as I know I have to.”
“I’ll be back.” I groaned when his fingers dipped down against the button of my jeans. “Stop that. Seriously, you’re going to lose your napping-with-me-and-the-cat privileges. I’m literally not leaving the city. I’ve been on worse. This is a simple bounty hunt… with the slight complication of other Stalkers who might or might not want to take me down too. Not much different than a Pendle Run. Just with less dragons.”