by brett hicks
She nodded and pointed to the third option form the middle row, the “faerey big breakfast.” We have a Hollowing into one of the fae dominated dimensions in the kitchen. It backs up to a fae market and a bakery. That was one of the original reasons we bought this building because Seri knew that the Hollowing to the fairy realm was here. The former Winter Queen of Manhattan had spent a lot of time here for that same reason.
Skylar was busy taking in the view when the large ogre ahead of us in line finally trot off to find a seat to eat his three large Philly steak and cheese subs. Several of the feline pack of shape-shifters was hold-up in the corner booths with a few of the cait sith shifters. They all nodded to me almost in unison when they saw my gaze land on them.
“You hungry Sky? You can order whatever you want.”
“Where are the prices?”
He asked, furrowing his brow and I sniffed.
“This is all free to our residents, when we do allow outsiders in, they pay, but not our people.”
Skylar’s mouth hung open.
“That’s crazy, how do you afford to keep this place open?”
I waved my hand over to my girlfriend.
“Please, her interest on any given day covers this overhead and then so much more!”
He blinked at me a few times and nodded and he looked at the menu while I began to order for myself and Seri. The hyper nixie, Anya, was constantly flicking her eyes between me and her three skillets frying various meats and eggs. Her sister Tanya was bouncing between coffee machines and the espresso maker.
The two girls were physically identical, except for their wings. The glittering patterns on their wings were exact opposites of the others. Even with their wings tucked back now, I could tell the two apart by their different body language. Besides, Anya was straight, so she was obviously different from her sister to a girl with gaydar.
Anya began to flip burgers, bacon, and sausages. This place was filled with enough red meat to kill a mortal! That was likely the reason the shifters hung out in here so much, they had the heaviest appetites of any species of inhuman.
Skylar began to rattle off his order and I was hardly surprised at the lengthy order. He was in his early twenties, and he was completing his transition. I remember how ravenous I had been when I first woke up that first day!
“Um, Thea, what’s the difference between cooked over fairy fire and normal fire?”
I snorted and rolled my eyes.
“Just always go with the fairy flames if given the option. It brings an extra dimension of flavor to the foods.”
Anya nodded vigorously and put in, “Yep, yep, fairy flames are tasty as truffles dipped in chocolate!”
Her violet eyes danced with excitement. She loved cooking and she loved talking about food. She bats her multi-toned lashes at my fledgling Dhampire a few times and she turned, while her sister stacked items onto the plates.
“Here you go, Princess!”
I reached out and took the massive tray with two perfectly garnished dishes heaped high with food. Gold specs of a special fairy realm herb flaked across the top of our dishes. This was royal pepper, a very expensive and exotic ingredient mainly reserved for nobles or royalty—hence the name.
“You two are true artists!”
I praised the twins and they beamed with pride at their artful and tasty work.
“You do us honor my princess!”
I winked and I turned to go hand over Seri’s food. I could see her getting grumpy, that told me she had not been feeding herself properly.
“Hey, fancy a meal with me hot-stuff?”
I asked in a very cheesy tone, mimicking some lame club pickup. Seri raised a brow, but I saw that flicker of amusement in her eyes and the twitch of her down-turned lips. I swallowed and tried to stop staring at her perfectly bright-pink lips. That girl would never wear make-up if I had anything to say about the matter! She was a twenty on a scale of one-to-ten as things stood!
She pulled out the chair for me and her eyes landed on the platters of food.
“Hey, where’s my kiss?! No food for you!”
I chided her like a moron and she leaned in and pressed her soft hot lips against mine. I felt like I was about to melt into a puddle of a girl at her feet, but then the kiss broke.
“I hope you don’t kiss all the girls like this!”
Seri smiled, still only a few inches from my lips.
“Just the one I love.”
She lightly brushed my bangs out of my left eye. I could get lost in her gaze, so lost that I prayed to never be found again!
My moment was shattered like glass in a five-car pileup in the next moment. I could feel the air shift as the two aging humans crossed into the café. My inhumans and the stray daemon and witch seemed to still. This is our sanctum from the rigors of “co-existence” so I had zero problems understanding why everyone tensed up. Several of the more exotic species even began weaving glamour magic to make them pass for human.
Skylar’s mom raced across the floor and honed onto her son with torpedo-like focus speed. Sky stood up and he hugged his mom but I noted how he kept his face as far away as possible. He was no doubt feeling the pangs of bloodlust. This is why I didn’t want him around humans for now, but I could hardly deny his parents the chance to see that he was unharmed and mostly still the same person.
Inspector Johnson strode over with more caution and his gaze lingered on each face in the café committing details to memory. He was a good cop and this habit was impossible for him to put down when he was off duty.
Seeing the inspector was a bitter pill for me, but I was intent on being mature and making this visit about Skylar’s needs. I was pissed with the Inspector for throwing me under the bus after I had just saved his son’s life. I get that humans fear what they cannot understand. They also become angry when you turn their only son into a Dhampire.
Many would see this as the greatest honor, a gift, but not Inspector Johnson. He saw this as some sort of defilement. While he had seemed willing to work next to inhumans, this did not extend to us slipping out of his pre-approved lane for us and in turn, us changing people. That was particularly hypocritical since he was one of the people who asked if I would be willing to sire inhuman cops or military soldiers for the US government.
I just plastered on a passable smile and kept the hostility out of my body language. This was more for Skylar’s sake than out of some misplaced sense of duty.
I had dreamed of being a cop most my life. The thought that one day I could help others, kept me going in some of the darkest and most deprecating moments of my life. Inspector Johnson had stolen that dream from me. He gave me a job and a way to help using my newly awakened skills, and then he snatched it back within a week of my graduation from the academy. If nothing else, it was humiliating and painful.
In my time training over the last eight months, I became very well acquainted with the Inspector. He had become a mentor to me and I had thought a friend as well.
Then a deranged racist Captain set up an ambush for me and Skylar was caught in the fire-fight. I saved Skylar’s life and I get booted off the force for turning him. He Captain who set up the ambush, he is sitting fat and smug in his post without any reprisal. If you ever imagined the world to be a fair and just place, then abandon that thought right now!
My attention was split between finishing my food and eyeing Skylar like a hawk. He was handling the pangs of thirst well, but I had expected him to be reasonably capable of self-restraint. One of the perks to turning a former police officer was the rigid control ingrained into him, down to the very bone.
Mrs. Johnson fussed and cried over Skylar, never once letting go of him. I made a point to pretend like my plate held all the answers of the universe. I could also feel Seri’s bristling mood beside me. She was likely feeling snippets of my emotions in our kin bond. I could feel some of hers but she was a hell of a lot better at hiding her emotions.
I began to feel Skylar’s control s
lipping and his thirst was beginning to make me crave blood. I swore to myself and I stood and gripped his upper arm firmly and he swung his gaze and met mine. I leveled him with my most serious look.
“We should go now, Skylar.”
Skylar had a wide range of emotions play on his face and in his eyes before he finally resigned himself and nodded.
His mother didn’t want to leave, but I wasn’t going to have Skylar living with biting his own mother for all eternity. He would never forget that and I was absolutely going to be a better sire than that to him!
The Inspector looked at me with an impassive expression. I didn’t have time to bother taking note of the mild judgment or the way he seemed to see me as some sort of tyrant holding his son hostage.
***
We barely made it back to my apartment before Skylar rushed into the kitchen and began to chug the first blood substance he found. His thirst was worse than mine had been. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected that was due in large part to my particular pedigree. I was not one-hundred-percent sold on Atlas’ little story, but the facts seemed to line up.
Five:
Rumbling and quaking rocked the city and I nearly lost my balance about half-a-dozen times. Considering my species, that was quite the accomplishment.
Bix and Vivi strode into my apartment where I had been trying to catch up on some sleep while Liam was willing to babysit my new fledgling Dhampire.
“Lady Atlantis!”
The giant came storming into my bedroom and I grumped to myself as I swung myself up into a sitting position.
“Atlas, what the hell is going on? Is the damn sky falling or something?”
My sassy tone didn’t pause him in the least. His eyes and face looked even drier than was typical of him, which was really saying something. Atlas seemed to be stuck in a permanent frown like someone had shoved a very large object somewhere very uncomfortable.
“I would have insisted we set out for your mother’s capital city if I had the slightest inkling that the cur witch-blooded necromancer could penetrate the bridge and operate the controls!”
I blinked and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes hastily.
“What do you mean? What is Henry doing that has you all freaked out?”
He looked at me impassively.
“Besides the tectonic movement of the east coast of the United States, nothing.”
I would have thought him incapable of sarcasm, until just now. I swore to myself and I hopped off the bed just in time for another quake to rock me. I staggered slightly and I quickly regained my balance. Atlas was hovering, ready to grab me if he needed to. He seemed to take this nanny roll deathly serious. It made a girl wonder how in the holy shit I had managed to spend my formative years in such dangerous and potentially fatal situations.
‘What exactly s Henry doing that can cause these bloody quakes?!”
I asked hotly and Atlas grunted and said, “He had gained some operational control of the Capital City of the Old-Blood Clan. The city named for the child your mother was carrying when it was completed, the city of Atlantis.”
I blinked at him in surprise.
“I guess the random ancient mythological name dropping continues, huh? Do we have any unicorns or kappas set to attack next? Is the city of Avalon going to magically appear on the coast?”
Atlas huffed and lightly chided, “Be still My Lady.”
“What do we do and how the fuck do I stop Henry?”
“We have to get to your city before he manages to raise it from the depths of the earth. Atlantis is the ultimate offensive and defensive city. If he is allowed to utilize it at its full potential, he could destroy large swaths of the modern world.”
My chest constricted at this and my eyes were bug-wide.
“Why is it that all these dangerous little toys seem to always end up in the hands of megalomaniacs?! Why can’t we get someone like Gandhi in possession of this damn city?!”
“Because Gandhi is dead and only the selfish seem to seek out power so readily.”
Said Bix from inside my door and I snorted at her in amusement. M humor was short lived with the rumbling and violent shaking of the after-shock.
“We need to get to that damn city and quick! Suggestions?”
“We need to go visit The Sky Lord first so that he knows what the stakes are right now.”
That was from Seri as she moved around Bix to stride in quickly. Her gaze was sober and filled with barely veiled worry.
“Fine, but we’re going to fly over. I’m not going to even try to drive in this pandemonium.”
“I just called Arius; he is on his way over here now. I figured you would say something like that, so I made the proper arrangements.”
Even as we spoke, the sound of a mighty gust beat against the windows. I rushed over to my bedroom terrace and opened the doors. Arius and his equally tall bodyguard were perched on the ledge with their mighty wings now tucking tightly against their backs and slowly disappearing to where the hell ever wings went when they took a purely human guise.
Arius was the new leader of the sky tribe of fairies and inhumans. He is the most powerful sylph in the entire world and he was our new neighbor and ally. While we had gotten off to a rocky start with him taking the Brooklyn Kingdom from Seraphina, once we proved our innocence in the failed attempt to coup the entirety of New York from our control, Arius had since been willing to work peacefully alongside our Manhattan Island kingdom.
His golden eyes rest on me, assessing as they always seemed to do. He frowned slightly and he turned and looked to Seri and nodded slightly to her in polite greeting.
“Princesses, tell me what you know of these unnatural quakes. Many of the ground-dwellers in my kingdom are fearful.”
He was never one to mince words.
“Arius, here’s the cliff notes,”
I then began to fill him in on everything that had happened over the past few days, including all the facts about the murders committed by the revenant Henry had been controlling.
He listened without interrupted even once, despite the many visible indicators of his state of unrest.
“I see… That explains why your aura has changed so much since the last time I saw you, Thea. I was very surprised and a little worried about the powers I could detect in your raw aura. I was alive for the end of the war, so I know very well what an Alchemist’s aura looks and feels like. Yours is very similar, but not exactly the same.”
“Is that a problem for you Arius?”
Seri asked in a very light tone, but the traces of threat were detectable to anyone with basic deductive skills. Arius shook his head slowly.
“I have never been given a single reason to distrust your kin Seraphina. Thea has been more than fair to me and mine, so I will not judge her based on her genetics.”
Seri seemed to relax in increments now. Arius did not play games, he would tell you to your face if he planned to kill you.
“Atlas, where exactly is the entrance to the city of Atlantis—and I cannot believe I am actually asking this question!?”
Atlas rumbled out, “It is buried deep beneath the city in which I left you to grow in while I slumbered to rebuild my strength.”
“Boston?! Shit, fuck, damn!”
I cursed in a string that would have made a Navy man proud.
“Yes, the human city called Boston.”
Atlas stated as if it were no big deal.
“Well, how the hell do we breach the damn wards around Boston?!”
I asked and Seri narrowed her gaze on my giant revenant nanny.
“How did you get here from Boston big man?”
Why had I not thought to ask that?!
Atlas made another grunting sound and said, “What you call wards, are energy fields that were erected by my masters back before the ancient war. The territorial divides were Morrigan’s way of giving each species and sect enough room to thrive and grow, without being obliterated by any others. I hold just enough of
her essence in my body to allow me to tweak the wards. You Atlantis could destroy them with a thought and a drop of blood. Your power is the very source of the territorial divides. So, to make a passage for a few, would be an easy feat for you.”
I blinked and nodded, I had noticed how easy wards had been for me since my awakening. I never really had to try to make wards or to fuel the ones that already existed. That magic was like breathing, purely instinctual. I could feel the wards and I could sense life inside them. I have only recently learned that this level of in-depth knowledge about the inhabitance of my city, was far from normal.
“Wait a second, why the hell does Henry even know about this city? How is he suddenly able to cut it on as well?”
I asked while Arius and Seri nodded in firm agreement, clearly, they were thinking the same thing.
“I do not have enough data of this time period to give you any accurate information on this line of inquiry.”
Atlas sounded like a very brassy version of C3PO as he said this.
“There is only one potential source I could think of and it is the most logical leap all things considered. Dean Sylvester, he is from the ancient warring time, so he would be able to recognize a budding Old-Blood Clan being when one confronts him with all her available powers.”
Seri said it with a bitter tone like she was swallowing bitter poison. She looked enraged and Arius didn’t look much better. Dean Sylvester had killed his father, literally stabbing him in the back last time he was in New York.
“If that’s the case, then this is only the first move in many Seri. Arius, we are going to need your Kingdom to cover for us while we infiltrate Atlantis. I will make sure my people know that you speak for me while I am away. I trust you not to burn down the kingdom, or attempt to wrest control.”
I said it all casually and Arius looked bemused for a split-second.
“I am in no hurry to piss off a budding godling, or demi-godling, whichever is more accurate to your case Thea. I will shift the sky defenses to cover your territory as well as mine. You have air and flight-type subjects to aid as well, correct?”