by Mina Carter
“These are my main weapons,” He shifted the heavy belt on his hips and reached to the small of his back. Without thinking his fingers sought and found the guards of the blades in the sheaths fitted inside the back. The next second the blades were in his hands and he doubled his fists, moving easily into a guard position for her. Flexing his muscles and showing off in a way he hadn't done since he was a teenager and started to bulk up to Warrior weight.
The blades weren't knives, daggers, or anything that resembled a human weapon.
More like heavy knuckle dusters they fit across his hands, the razor sharp blades across his knuckles glinted in the light cast from the hallway light. They were ancient weapons. Kyn weapons that had come with the race when they crossed from their home dimension.
“Hmm, those little things?” Tessa's frown and the slight smile on her lips were both sceptical.
“That's it, just diss the blades! Typical woman!” he huffed, pretending to be insulted as he slid the blades away with a flourish.
“Ohh no, after earlier, believe me I'm more than happy with whatever you're packing sweetheart,” she said, the tone in her voice honest. Feral grinned as his mind made a dive for the gutter. This was just too easy.
“Whatever I'm packing huh? You sure you can handle it honey?”
The smile that curved her lips fired his blood, but not as much as the look of challenge in her eyes as she fell easily into the game. “Ohh you'd better believe it... and if we didn't need to get out of here like pronto mister boss man, I'd be proving it to you,” she threw back, reminding him they needed to move.
His chest expanded in a sigh of frustration. “Ok, I'm done. Grab the kid and let's get gone.”
“Mikal, it's Feral. Oh fuck it! I hate these damn things,” he muttered as he slid out of the seat of his truck, phone against his ear. He waited impatiently until the bleep and started again. “Mikal, Feral. Got a bit of a situation, bunch of Pixies broke in and trashed my neighbours place. I got her out and we're at the Grey Lady. Give me a call when you're free would ya mate? Catch you later,”
He flipped the phone shut and reached for the bags Tessa held out for him. “You sure we're going to be able to get a room?” he asked, eyeing the front of the building dubiously.
Didn't these places need bookings or something?
She looked up at him as she slid from the passenger seat, Spud in her arms. She hadn't been too happy about travelling without a proper baby-seat. She had still been arguing halfway there, and then subsided into glares for the rest of the way. Feral hid his smile, she was even prettier mad. He’d have to wind her up more often.
“We're lucky to be here at all! What would have happened if the cops had stopped us?” she demanded, “You'd have gotten a ticket or something and they'd have taken Spud off us... we're not his parents, they'd find that out straight away and then where would we be?”
Feral shrugged, the handles of both bags caught easily in one large hand, the other free just in case they got jumped again. “I'm Kyn remember? I'd just have pulled a Jedi mind trick on them... 'these aren't the droids you're looking for',” He grinned as he waved his hand a la Obi Wan Kenobi.
Her lips quirked a little, behind the glare she tried to reinforce. “I see my subtle charm is working as planned. So, what about it? You reckon we'll get a room here? Not that many paranormal places...” And there weren't. Feral could count the number of paranormal friendly hotels in the city on the fingers of one hand.
Tessa shrugged, setting off towards the door, winking at him over her shoulder. “Bet you dinner I can get us a room.”
He walked with her to the door, his stride shortened to match hers, where he held it open for her before stepping through himself. As he did, he felt a distinctive shiver down his back, like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. The place was warded. He'd know that feeling anywhere.
“Wards, protection spells, daylight shutters. You name it, we got it,” A voice at his side announced, almost as though she read his thoughts. He turned swiftly, his hand already halfway to the small of his back, to find a woman watching him with a smile on her lips.
A woman that looked so much like Tessa, he had to check that she was still on the other side of him. Short and slender, she was nearly identical, the same height, build, and facial features. She only differed in her dress sense. Whereas Tessa was casually dressed in jeans and a tee, this woman could have stepped right out of an Audrey Hepburn film.
He shot Tessa a look, “No bet missy, you get to buy dinner,” he muttered in a low voice before turning to the other woman. She held out her hand.
“Jane Grey, owner of the Grey Lady and Tessa's aunt,” she said with a bright smile.
A few minutes later Feral nudged open the door to their room with his shoulder, since opening it required a fairly complex procedure that involved both hands, twisting the key one way and the doorknob the other.
“Should have had these fitted at your sister's place. Pixie's would have been there for months working it out,” he winked over his shoulder as he walked into the room.
“Oi, watch it you! Pixie in the room, remember?” She threw him a ‘look’ as she followed him in. It was a decent sized room, a family room, with a double bed in the middle and a single set to the side. Not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination, it was nevertheless clean and functional.
“Yeah, but you're not just a Pixie are you?” he said quickly, digging himself out of the hole he could see looming over him with the ease of long practise. Such skills were necessary when your patrol partner was the psychotic vamp bitch from hell at certain times of the month.
On automatic he did a sweep of the room. As promised the curtains concealed full daylight shutters, a necessity for your vampire traveller, and a quick swipe of his hand over the windowsill had the wards there flaring to life for a second. His eyebrow flitted up for a second. Daylight shutters and heavy duty wards? Someone had sunk some money into this place.
“What do you mean, not just a Pixie?” Tessa settled Spud in the middle of the double bed, her voice light. Too light, the slight pause before she answered like a neon sign lighting up. Feral opened the door to the bathroom, paused to look inside before he answered. Like the bedroom it was plain, simple. A fresh lemon scent assaulted his sensitive nostrils. And so clean he could probably have eaten a meal off the floor.
“Well, your Aunt there... Jane,” Satisfied the shutter in there was the same high quality as the one in the bedroom he shut the door and turned to her. “If she's a day under a hundred I'll eat Spud's hat,” He flicked a finger towards the blue fleecy cap covering the baby's day-glo locks. He leaned back, shoulder against the wall, arms folded as he considered her.
She didn't look at him, tickling Spud and making him giggle. A delaying tactic if ever he saw one. Finally she looked his way, not directly at him, but towards him. “Don't be silly, Pixie's don't live that long.”
“I'm Kyn Tessa, not an idiot. I can sense an expanded lifespan when it's looking me in the face,” He told her firmly. What was it with women and not giving straight answers? Vixen was just like this when she didn't want to talk. It was like getting blood out of a damn stone!
She chucked Spud under the chin and sat back on the bed, deep in thought. The tension stretched between them, an air of expectancy as Feral waited for her to say something. That was the trick. Not filling the silence with something and giving them an out.
That way they had to say something, and more often than not the pressure of the silence prompted them into revealing things they might not otherwise.
She sighed, “Ok, Jane's a little... special,” she admitted and bowed her head for a moment. Swivelling on the bed she looked at him, her dark eyes earnest. “You have to keep this to yourself, ok? My family has been keeping this secret for generations,” She searched his eyes, looking for confirmation in his face.
Slowly Feral nodded, intrigued. What secret were they keeping? What secret could be so important
that a family of Pixies, not the most reliable beings in the world, would keep it for generations? “Ok, I promise... cross my heart and hope to die,” he replied, drawing his forefinger across his chest.
Tessa frowned, a little line forming between her brows that he thought was cute, and shook her head. “But you're a vampire anyway...”
“And?”
“Well, aren't you like, the living dead and all that?”
Feral laughed. Again, she caught him off guard.
“Now, now. You're a Pixie, you know better than that!” he chided her. Kyn were demonic, not cursed. Well not exactly. Some would say their demonic blood cursed them but Feral and most other Kyn begged to differ. They were just different, that was all.
She wrinkled her nose at him, a teasing light in her eyes that reminded him they hadn't finished what they'd started in that bathroom. A bolt of desire hit him broadside, bringing a low rumble to his throat.
“And don't try and change the subject missy!” He warned her, folding his arms across his broad chest again. “You were telling me about Jane.”
“Oh buggarit... well a gal's gotta give these things a try! Ok... we're not just Pixies.
There's something odd mixed into the bloodline. You know much about English Royalty?”
Feral laughed, “What, you mean as in Human English Royalty? Hell, I have enough trouble remembering who's President now! You can't expect me to know history as well, not when these humans die off every eighty years or so... uhm, no offence,” He added in haste as two pairs of eyes swivelled to look at him accusingly, Spud adding the weight of his baby stare.
She wrinkled her nose at him, the mock glare fading. “Nah, you're okay. I'm not that easily offended. Okay, long story short. Jane was once Queen of England. Until they chopped her head off.”
Feral nodded slowly. “I wondered what the scarf was for.”
Chapter Five
“But did you see the ass on him? Like two walnuts in a sock!” Jane grinned as she leaned back against the scatter cushions that lined the sofa, her eyes twinkled over the rim of her wineglass.
Tessa suppressed a giggle, or tried to. The two glasses of wine, two large glasses of wine, she had ensured she didn’t quite manage it; some of the giggles escaped her, sneaking around the edges of her lips.
“You, madam, are far too old for thoughts like that! Why I’m absolutely scandalised!”
she exclaimed in mock indignation, wagging her finger at her aunt.
Although, technically Jane wasn’t her aunt. She was Tessa’s great, great, great something aunt. As Feral had instinctively known, she had a bit of a long lifespan for a Pixie.
Which she wasn’t. Quite what Jane was Tessa didn’t know, none of the family did. She wasn’t even sure Jane herself knew.
Jane leaned forwards to put her wineglass on the coffee table. Here in her own apartments at the back of the hotel she relaxed somewhat. The scarf she usually wore looped around her throat was lying discarded across the back of the chair Tessa was curled up in.
She had grown up seeing the horrendous scars across Jane’s throat, knew the story but always the sight of them took her breath away. Tessa swallowed, resisting the urge to rub her throat in sympathy. How the hell did you survive your own beheading?
“Don’t think about it,” Jane said, her voice quieter than usual, “I don’t. Not really something I want to remember.”
Tessa blinked, colour flaring over her cheeks at being caught staring, covering her surprise with a downward sweep of her lashes. “I’m sorry, how did you know?”
Jane shrugged as a sad smile curved her full lips. “You get used to it. The little looks, then the careful look away. The way you can just tell they’re dying to ask. People never look at me properly unless I’ve got my neck covered. Polo necks are possibly the best invention on the planet in my eyes,” she smiled, trying to make a joke of it but it fell flat, the sad tone plucked at Tessa’s heartstrings.
She hadn’t realised it was so bad for Jane but hearing the other woman talk about it and seeing the sadness there, it brought the realisation home for her. “What about healing spells or using glamour?” she asked, “Surely something would work?”
Jane shook her head. “I’m not Fae or Pixie so I can’t cast glamour. Even then, most paranormals would see right through it. And healing spells don’t work. Whatever made me this way… it means to keep me this way,” She sighed and shook herself, as though throwing off bad memories. “Ok, enough about me. Let’s talk about you, sex on legs, and the punk baby for a while shall we?”
Tessa smiled in response, glad to be moving onto another topic. She hadn’t meant to upset Jane or anything, she really should have realised the scars bothered her aunt. After all, most people were offered counselling these days for things like scars and the incidents that lead to them weren’t they? So why should Jane be any different? Tessa had just assumed that because she had them for so long, they stopped bothering her.
Idiot, she berated herself as she wriggled in the chair, reaching inside her back pocket for the note that had been left with Spud.
“Are you ok for time?” Jane asked as she took the folded paper form Tessa’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry, I should have asked you that earlier.”
“What, before you decided to get me drunk? As a role model … hate to break it to you... but you’re crap!” Tessa teased as she reached for the wine bottle on the table to refill her glass.
“Pffft! Role models, who needs ‘em!” Jane dismissed with a wave of her hand, wrinkling her nose and crossing her eyes.
Tessa laughed. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she admitted. “I fed him before I came out and left them watching a game on TV. All boys together!”
“Now the question would be, fed who?” Jane waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“Oh behave you! The baby, I fed the baby!” Tessa retorted quickly. Although… what would it be like to feed Feral? He was a vampire and she heard that, in the right circumstances, a Vampire’s bite could be pleasurable.
In fact, some of the girls she worked with hung out at one of the paranormal joints in town, Moonlight and Magic, just for that reason. Hoping to catch the eye of a local vamp for a … well, it gave a whole new meaning to the word necking! They often asked if Tessa fancied joining them but the thought of a guy biting her neck just turned her right off.
Until she met Feral.
She shivered slightly, the thought of the large vamp back in her room getting all up close and personal enough to bite her neck… and everything else that came with it… sent shivers down her spine. Yeah, she could quite happily get all up close and personal with fang-boy. Preferably the sooner the better!
“Heeeelllloo? Can I bring you back to the land of the living for a moment?” She blinked as Jane clicked her fingers in front of her face to get her attention. She had been staring into space, lost in her own erotic daydreams.
“Huh. Sorry, zoned out there or a moment. Been a long day,” she apologised, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. “I was expecting a quiet night in with a movie and a tub of Ben and Jerry's.”
Jane nodded sympathetically as she opened the note. “Then tall, dark and handsome showed up?”
“Uh-huh, carrying small and cute, complete with dirty diaper,”
“Niiiice…. holy shit!!”
Jane’s voice was shocked enough to bring Tessa half out of her seat, looking around to see where the fire was. Then she realised Jane was staring in shock at the note she’d given her.
“What? What is it? What’s it say?” she demanded, realising whatever it was it had her normally talkative aunt speechless.
Jane looked up. Her eyes held a stunned expression. “I think you might have brought world war three to my hotel!”
She'd been right. Tessa walked back to their hotel room sometime later, deep in thought. The baby was a Morrigan, that much she managed to read for herself but Jane knew the language far better than Tessa. More years to study as well as having
the advantage of dealing with all sorts of Fae on a daily basis.
The note had been brief and to the point. Explaining that the baby had been stolen from his family because his mother was a Morrigan, the note maker said she regretted what she had done but hadn't had time to return him as she was being tracked. There were vague references of what 'they' wanted to do to him. She, whoever she was, had asked forgiveness for what she'd done and that they keep the baby safe.
What was puzzling Tessa though was, why the baby had been left on Feral's doorstep in the first place? She could understand leaving him there for protection. After all, there weren't many beings that could take on an adult Kyn Warrior and live to brag about it. But the note had been written in High Fae, not something you'd expect your average Vampire to read.
Hell, she couldn't read it and thanks to her Pixie side, she had Fae blood!
She turned the corner and headed down the stairs. The place was like a damn rabbit warren!! Then there was the fact they hit her sister's apartment rather than Feral's. It was rare for Pixies, even as arrogant as they were, to break in like that. With brute force rather than employing glamour, and Feral had said they'd been expecting a human and a woman, not a Kyn.
Realisation hit her and she smacked her palm into her forehead. She was obviously far more tired than she thought. The baby had been left on Feral's doorstep by mistake. All the doors looked alike in that block, it would have been quite easy to get them mixed up if you had never been there before and you were in a hurry.
She reached their corridor, doing a quick, automatic check on the numbered plaque on the wall. Last thing she wanted to do was walk into someone else's room! She passed her excitement level by nine o'clock this evening. All she wanted to do now was relax and get some sleep.