by Jayne Hawke
“Tell me why hunters invaded your home,” Gideon said casually.
It was a command if ever there was one, but his tone was relaxed. I felt the tug of the words even if I didn’t hear the steel in them.
“What can I say? I’m just that popular,” I said.
He snorted.
“Tell me the real answer.”
“Why?”
I hated being told what to do. He’d been nice, and I appreciated the suite, but there were limits.
“I’m paying to make your home safe again, and for this very nice suite.”
I ground my teeth.
“Then I’ll be returning back to my apartment.”
He stood up and stared me down.
“Sky. I am asking a simple question.”
I straightened my spine and held his gaze. Now he was showing his war witch ways.
He took a step towards me.
“You are my fiancée, and that means I am very protective over you. Now I want to understand why you were attacked,” he said softly.
The thunderous beat of his magic that swelled against my skin went against the soft tone.
“Do not cage me, Gideon,” I growled.
He stopped dead and frowned. His magic pulled back and deep furrows formed between his brows.
“It’s not my intent to cage you,” he said in barely more than a whisper.
“I worked with the local garou guardian over the summer. We were taking down the Apophis witches, but some hunters got caught up in it all. The Blackthornes were killed in the process. Now the hunters want revenge.”
Rosalyn’s guardian status meant that she had magic where other garou didn’t, and she was also responsible for the safety of all the garou in a three- or four-state area. She had torn down the old council for being corrupt and was working with her life-bond Cole to rebuild a better council. That meant the local politics were messy at best.
We’d killed a lot of people over the summer. Mostly Apophis witches, some hunters, and a handful of fae. I supposed I should have been grateful there hadn’t been more people crashing into my home.
“Apophis, the Egyptian snake?”
“Yea. He’s supposed to devour the sun. Set stops him; he helped us stop the witches this time.”
“I was informed that Set was a chaos god,” Gideon said more to himself than me.
“He’s a protector, as well as chaos and storms,” I said more protectively than I intended.
Gideon’s warm smile returned.
“Your protective instincts are as strong as mine.”
I lifted my chin.
“I do whatever I can to protect those who can’t protect themselves.”
Gideon made an appreciative sound.
“You’ll fit in well with my coven. Enjoy the suite, order as much room service as you please. I’ll let you know when your apartment is ready.”
With that, he turned and left.
My head was spinning. I’d woken up with ten dollars to spare, and now I was enjoying a luxurious suite. I looked over at the phone with the room service menu next to it. The question was, what did I order first?
8
I ordered everything.
The double cheese and bacon burger was heaven on a plate. The burger itself was rich and juicy. The bacon was perfectly crispy, and the cheese was better than I knew cheese could be. By the time I was digging my spoon into the chocolate lava cake, I felt as though I might have overdone it. Still, the aches and pains were leaving, and I finally felt as though I could relax.
I’d been tense since I’d been kicked out of the coven. There hadn’t been a chance to really decompress and get my head straight. The thoughts and emotions began to well up as I ran the water on the clawfoot tub big enough for two people with half a bottle of luxurious bubble bath thrown in there.
The apartment was the first time I’d ever lived alone. I was never a coven favourite, and plenty of the other witches tried to make my life difficult. They were still my family, though, if not by blood then united by the Morrigan. I dipped my toe in the steamy hot water and found it to be perfect.
Slipping down into the water, I felt the heartbreak and betrayal of finding out the coven had been corrupt all over again. I would have done anything for them, and somehow I hadn’t seen that they had turned from the Morrigan. I should have known. The clues were there, from the way the rituals changed to how the upper echelons shut us out. I just didn’t want to think about it. I’d been happy with a clear path and place in the world, and now I was left wandering.
I closed my eyes and felt the anger at the gods bubble up. They had taken control of my life. They had taken away my ability to choose my own life partner. They had stolen my coven from me.
The anger slipped away. It was futile and false. The gods weren’t perfect, but I was incomplete without them in my life. My magic was a core part of me, and I felt empty and lost without it. I was supposed to be a protector, and yet I was unable to do that in my current state.
Set’s presence pressed into the back of my mind, and I groaned. He had so many promises of beautiful powerful magic and the ability to protect all I pleased.
If I remained a Morrigan witch, I would be able to step up and help tidy up the messy politics in the area. As a Set witch, I would be shunned by my fellow witches. Set was deemed to be a darker god due to his chaos aspects. Witches were no different to the shifters & fae in the way they ranked everyone and everything. Zeus witches claimed to be the very top of the ranks, but they had Odin, Jupiter, and Morrigan witches arguing with them about that.
I tried to push it all aside, but my mind refused to quieten. The voice in my head reminded me that witches ran businesses. They weren’t low-level mercs. I was supposed to influence society, and yet there I was wallowing in my jasmine scented bubbles.
“Everything will become clear once you choose,” Set’s silky voice reminded me.
I slid down into the bath, allowing the water to go up over my face. All I wanted was a few hours’ peace to get my head straight.
I HADN’T BEEN ABLE to settle in and enjoy the luxury as I’d hoped. It wasn’t in my nature, and I needed to earn some more money. Thankfully, I had some contacts from my days as a Morrigan witch, and I’d been able to get myself on the merc roster at the Sword and Spear.
All of the room service had given my body the calories it needed to work with my measly innate magic and heal my injuries. I wasn’t on top form, but I was good enough to head down to the bar to try and work out at the gym there. As it was a merc bar, the owner had felt it was a good idea to include a gym to ensure we were all on top form.
The Grim had a few merc jobs posted, but the social media site was more elitist than the bar. Sometimes they took pity on those mercs without magic and tossed out a delivery job, but my chances were far better at the Sword and Spear. I still checked the Grim first, though, as I kept every penny from those jobs, whereas Ben took a ten percent cut from a normal job, and I owed him even more on my next job.
I considered getting into retail or maybe becoming a barmaid, but I knew it wouldn’t last more than a day. I was far too attached to my blades, and people hate when the barmaid threatens to stab them.
9
The Sword and Spear had a rough exterior complete with enough warding spells to keep an army of the dead out. The old brick building had seen better days. You couldn’t see much of anything through the grimy windows, and it had a distinct ‘keep out’ vibe to it. That was all intentional. We didn’t want any humans wandering in here. This was a sanctuary for supernatural mercs, a place we could be ourselves without any worries.
I opened the heavy wooden door and walked through two more layers of protection spells before I entered the main bar. It wasn’t much to look at. Blood stained the old wooden floors, along with what I assumed had been potions gone wrong. The wooden furniture bore the scars of fights gone by: sword notches, charred sections from fireballs, wonky legs where they’d been broken over so
meone’s head.
Ben, the owner and merc agent, had had the good sense to hire a couple of different covens to ensure the furniture and bar could never be broken after the fifth fight in a week. There was only so often you could buy new furniture without people asking questions.
The place was busier than I’d been hoping. A pair of Morrigan witches, women I’d grown up with, glared at me as I strolled over to the dark wooden bar. The pretty little pixie manning the bar today have me a sharp-toothed smile.
“Heard you had a run-in last night.”
His delicate hands wrapped around the neck of a clear bottle as he poured himself a shot of vodka.
“I’m taking double the cost of that out of your paycheck,” Ben rumbled.
The pixie narrowed his eyes at the broad man that had somehow appeared behind him.
“I can send you back to your lady if you’d rather...”
The pixie threw back his shot and gave Ben a big broad smile before he bowed low.
“My apologies, I should have known better. Of course I have no issues you taking the money from my paycheck,” the pixie spoke in syrupy tones.
Sometimes illegal fae dropped by the bar and worked there for a few months. Ben paid them the same as everyone else and pointed them in the direction of places to say. They were usually trying to escape a lord or lady, which’s what the fae called their leaders. We all shrugged it off. As long as they served the drinks and didn’t try any shady magic, it didn’t matter who was behind the bar.
Ben walked past the bar and up the wide stairs. I listened to his footsteps disappear while I tried to decide if I could afford a bottle of water. Room service probably would have supplied one, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead. It was something my coven had always mocked me for. I lived from battle to battle and got a bit fuzzy on the details in between.
The pixie grinned at me, all teeth and promises of violence.
“How much do you owe Ben now?”
“What happened?” a familiar bouncy woman asked.
I turned to see Bea striding up to me in an all-leather ensemble. Her jacket was covered in blood, and none of it was hers. Her straw-blonde hair had been pulled back into a messy bun.
“Some possessed witch jumped me last night. No big deal,” I said.
“Oh, that mess was yours? I should have known,” she said as she elbowed me in the ribs.
“I’m not that bad.”
“Mhm.”
“Skylar, is it true you took down a fae lord for your first job?” a guy barely into his twenties called over.
Bea put her arm around my shoulders.
“It’s true. She was only just coming into her magic and she kicked that fae’s ass.”
I remembered it all too clearly. I was barely sixteen; the Morrigan felt it was time to prove I was worthy of her magic. She sent me after a rogue fae lord that wanted to form a cult out of humans. He was a sight to behold. 6’6 of pure lean muscle and the crackling power of magic. When I first locked eyes with him, I was sure the Morrigan had sent me to my death.
I did it, though. I plunged my Morrigan-given sword into his heart and laughed manically when I walked back into the coven house coated in glitter. The fact that glitter was fae innards hadn’t crossed my mind. I just rode the high of having done it, of having earnt my magic for a whole week.
“She killed a dragon too,” a deep rumbling voice said.
“What can I say? I’m a badass,” I said with a grin.
“And so humble,” the deep voice said.
I knew my limits, and I owned my abilities. It wasn’t arrogance, it was confidence founded on years of experience.
“I’m going to grab a shower and get my pay, you doing some training? Any good jobs?” Bea said.
“Yea, I’m going to the gym. I haven’t looked at the board yet,” I said.
We walked around the bar where the pixie had taken to scrubbing a spot that had apparently offended him. He muttered under his breath as he worked, and I really hoped that he moved on soon. Normally, the fae were pretty cool; they were fae, so they thought they were better than everyone else, but they were easy enough to get along with if you ignored the sneers. This one, though, this one set my teeth on edge.
10
Rolling my shoulders, I ignored the whispering coming from the witches behind me and exhaled slowly. I tried to work out at least four times a week to keep myself in the best physical condition. Witches who depended on their magic tended to die young and brutally. There were always going to be times when you just had to punch someone in the throat.
I double checked the wraps on my hands before I started a simple warm-up routine with the kick bag before me. There was something soothing and comforting about the familiarity of the feel and sound of kicking the bag. The slight give as my foot hit the leather helped me find my focus and slip away from the irritations around me.
Slowly, I picked up the pace until I was sweating and moving around the bag while kicking and hitting it with everything I had. The routines had slipped by the wayside, and in my mind it was a real foe, someone I needed to knock out before they took me down.
“Bad day?”
Bea stopped nearby with her wet hair hanging down her back and a wide smile on her face.
“Bad month,” I said with a harsh laugh.
I stepped away from the bag and looked over to the weights, checking if they were free. I needed to really push myself and feel the ache in my muscles. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d had the satisfaction of the deep ache from a long hard workout.
Gideon’s face popped into my head, and I felt my cheeks burn as my mind thought about the sort of long hard workouts I could be having with him.
“Tell me everything,” Bea commanded.
“You know everything.”
We walked over to the weight bench and set it up to my preferred weights.
“Clearly not. You had a run-in last night, apparently Ben gouged you on the payment for that. And you blushed, you never blush.”
“You know Ben, that’s just how he operates.”
I settled myself down on the bench and got a good grip on the bar above me.
“Come on. You know I’m not giving in. Who is he?”
“Who’s who?”
She rolled her eyes.
“The guy who made you blush.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Mhm. And what about this run in?”
“Just a possessed witch.”
“We both know there’s no such thing as just a possessed witch.”
She was right. I just didn’t want to think about it.
“I’m sure she just screwed up a necromantic spell or something.”
“Sure, and I’m the queen of France.”
There was far more to that witch than a simple spell gone wrong. If it was a spell, it was a big one. Saying that out loud would get a lot of questions asked, though, questions I didn’t want to answer. Top of them being, why did she go after me?
MY LEGS WERE A LITTLE wobbly as I stood on the cold tile of the shower and washed my hair. I felt much better for having worked out, but I still needed to check the job board.
“Why is a magicless witch on the roster anyway?”
“Ben’s probably soft on her. He likes blondes.”
“She was kicked out of her coven. There’s no greater shame. I don’t know why she stayed in Wolf Ridge; I’d have left the country.”
The mercs in the bar fell into two clear and distinct groups. Those who thought I was awesome because of the ass I’d kicked, and those who wanted me gone because I was no better than a human.
“Sky! Hurry up and get in my office!” Ben shouted.
“See, she’s screwing him.”
I rolled my eyes, turned off the shower, and wrapped my towel around myself.
Stepping out into the co-ed changing room, I gave the three part-bred fae my biggest smile and said, “You’re just jealous because I kick more ass with no magic i
n a week than the three of you have all year.”
With that, I went to my locker and got dressed as quickly as I could. Ben didn’t summon mercs to his office for no good reason, and he also hated waiting.
Strolling casually down the hallway with the battered wooden floor and the off-white walls, I kept my head high and ignored the looks from the other mercs. Let them think what they wanted. I was there because I’d proven I was damn good at what I did.
11
Ben’s office was the only well-kept and tidy part of the entire three-story building. Stepping from the battered hallway into the sumptuous office space was always jarring. The thick blood-red carpet felt weird beneath my boots as I sauntered casually over to the broad desk made from a dark wood. I sat down in the luxurious armchair before the desk and threw my legs over one arm.
If I was in his office, then I was either in trouble, or he had a very special job for me. There wasn’t a chance in hell it was the latter, so I made a point of being nonchalant about the trouble I’d gotten myself into this time. The large man before me didn’t always agree with my methods. It turned out it was hard not to leave a mess when you had to take everything down with knives and fists. Blood really was a bitch to get out of silk.
“Skylar.”
“I’m aware of my name.”
His mouth flattened into a tight line.
No one knew exactly what he was. Some bet that he was half bear shifter due to the bulk of him. Bulk that he dressed in only the finest suits, suits that he’d bought thanks to the hefty cut he took from jobs done by the likes of me. Not that I was irritated by that or anything.
I was pretty sure that he was some weird fae mix. The coldness in his eyes combined with the way he was weirdly handsome was incredibly fae. They were all stunning to look at, though some of them were too pretty. There was a slight alienness about them. Ben was striking, but not model worthy.
He placed his powerful forearms on the desk, which was devoid of any personal affects. Only an expensive silver pen with something engraved in runic and what looked like a contract sat on that dark heavy wood.