Then he had wolfed down a whole pizza himself, hungry after a good night’s work. They had toked, shot up, burned and drank themselves into a very happy oblivion. Sergio vaguely remembered pulling the girl into his bedroom. She hadn’t been willing at first, but she had soon come round to his way of thinking. He was good at talking girls around.
His orgasm had been the topper on the night and sleep had grabbed him almost straight after that.
Sergio blinked. The late afternoon sunlight was his alarm clock. It always fell almost directly on the bed, waking him up with the heat and brightness. It wasn’t quite to the edge of the bed yet, making it around four, he guessed. Too early to wake him, so what the fuck had? If that little whore had banged something around out there, he’d have to explain it to her all over again.
He rolled onto his stomach and contemplated the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. He couldn’t be bothered lifting his arm to pick them up. Too much effort.
There was a very soft sound of breathing. So soft he might have missed it if he hadn’t been lying so still, watching the dust motes dancing in the sunlight.
A breath. An unsteady breath.
“Lilla?” he asked. If that slutty bitch was sitting watching him, just sitting on her ass, not even bothering to do something constructive like make coffee, he’d tan her ass. He rolled back onto one hip and forced his eyes open, blinking.
Ruffy was staring back at him.
Wh’fuck?
Sergio stared back at Ruffy, trying to figure out what he was doing in his bedroom, and lying on the carpet like that, too. And Julio, lying on top with his eyes closed. Queer for each other? Sergio’s badly shocked mind pondered slowly.
Then he saw the blood on Julio’s mouth and the truth began to filter through. He sat up, still not getting it completely, but he would in fewer than sixty seconds.
He scratched at the hair on his chest lazily, staring at Ruffy and Julio, lying on top of each other. Lying very still....
Understanding blazed in his mind like a Hollywood spotlight and he scrambled out of bed, whirling to face the door. His heart was pumping too hard, his abused and weakened pulmonary system stressed by the massive shock.
Lilla stood there, naked as a jay. She was looking at him, both eyes filled with something that Sergio thought might be hate, or glee, or some animal emotion he didn’t get. Even the eye that was dark and almost swollen shut glittered with it. Who the fuck understood women, anyway? Except she was naked; no weapons. And she was a cunt, a split-tail. No way would she be able to do Ruffy and Julio in. No way would she have the guts to stand there and wait for him to find them.
Sergio turned toward the corner where the closet spilled its contents onto the floor like it had spewed them all forth in a violent eruption of fabric.
He was there.
Sergio clutched at his chest as massive pain ripped through it. “You.”
The fucker stood there calmly, like he had been waiting just for this moment. He had both hands resting on...on a fucking sword. It stood point down, the tip pushing a furrow into the wooden floor. The bottom two feet of the blade were red with blood, which had pooled around the point.
“I know where you live, Sergio,” the fucker said.
Pain gripped Sergio’s arm in a vice-grip. Oh man, he’d never felt such pain before. He groaned.
The fucker turned his head toward the girl. “Go.”
She lifted her chin and shook her head.
“Very well.” The fucker lifted the sword, spinning it in a way that told Sergio he was an expert with it. Then he fell on him and Sergio learned the real meaning of pain.
* * * * *
Asher climbed out of the cab and looked around. It was peak hour, no time to hold up a cab on the side of the road. Where was he?
Darwin stepped out of the early evening shadows pooling around the base of the lion and crossed the sidewalk to where Asher stood. He looked into the cab. Charlee was curled up in the far corner, wrapped up in a blanket. Her wounded cheek was hidden by a fold of the blanket. She stirred sleepily.
Darwin turned back to Asher. He looked like he’d had a tough time of it lately. Maybe even have lost weight, but the shoulders were still those of a bear. “Your phone call was a surprise, Mr. Strand.”
Asher winced. “We’re back to last names.” He sighed and stepped away from the side of the cab. “The driver has been paid to take you both home. You can tell her parents you brought her back from the hospital.”
“Charlee thought it wasn’t safe for me to go home.”
Asher shrugged. “It’s safe now.”
Without warning, a cold finger rippled its way down his spine, making Darwin shiver. “Is that so?” he asked.
“This time, I’m absolutely sure of it.”
Another echo of a shudder ran through him. “What do I tell Charlee?” he asked.
Asher smiled. “Tell her that when she’s ready, when she’s well, I’ll see her after school, at the restaurant.”
Darwin looked at Charlee again, at the dressing on her face that was visible now. It was like no other dressing he had ever seen, and it wasn’t the one she’d had when he’d been at the hospital. “Will she be well again?” he asked.
“She will,” Asher said with complete confidence. He pushed his hands into the long coat he was wearing, which struck Darwin as odd for the end of April. It wasn’t light enough to be a raincoat. He pulled out a hand and held out a jar, a pretty thing made of green glass, squat and bulging. The lid was ceramic. “Tell her to leave the dressing in place for two days, then leave the wound open to the air and put this on it twice a day.” He pushed his hand closer to Darwin.
Darwin picked up the pot curiously. “What is it?”
“It’ll help with scarring.”
Scarring. It was Darwin’s turn to sigh. “That poor girl,” he muttered. “As if life wasn’t hard enough for her.”
“Well, that’s something I will remedy the best I can.” Asher pushed his hand back into the coat.
“Hey, I’m waiting!” the cab driver yelled.
“Keep it down,” Darwin told him. “You’ll wake her.” He turned back to have a last word with Asher.
The sidewalk was empty.
Chapter Fourteen
Full battle formation, Asher thought, letting his gaze move across the faces of those assembled as he walked the length of the great hall.
Stefan stood in front of his big chair, and Eira in front of her only slightly smaller one. Roar was to Stefan’s right. There were a handful of other earls. Not all of them, for they would not have been able to assemble so quickly. The portals were instantaneous, but the far-flung halls still had to cope with time differences, sleep cycles, and simple things like finding the earl at the other end and bringing him to the nearest portal. Mere human transportation took time.
There were no stallari present, which told Asher exactly how seriously they were taking this.
But Sindri was hovering just behind Eira’s shoulder, watching Asher approach the dais with his black, beady eyes. Had Sindri always been slightly repugnant to look at? Had the scales finally dropped from his eyes? He thought that perhaps, yes, they had.
He stopped ten paces from the dais, a position close enough to speak easily, but not too close. He didn’t have to lift his chin to look at them from here.
No one sat down.
Asher nodded to Stefan and bowed low to Eira. “I came as soon as I got your message.”
“You know why we are here,” Stefan said. “Is it true, about the girl? You brought her to one of our halls and had her treated?”
So, it wasn’t to be quite what he had been braced for. “The matter of three human bodies does not stress you, but the saving of a wounded girl does?”
“You broke laun! Willfully!” Stefan cried.
Roar stirred, shifting on his feet. Asher spared a moment to feel sorry for him. He was between a rock and a hard place right now. He believed in laun as avidly as St
efan did, but family ties were also strong. He would be feeling stress because it was his brother standing before the quorum, who handed down summary justice on matters of laun. It had been nearly a century since the last Kine had been sentenced by the quorum instead of his case being heard by the general council and discussed and decided upon. Roar’s face was a rock, hiding everything.
“I did not break laun,” Asher replied. “The girl—her name is Charlee—was taken to the private home of one of the Eldre. She had no idea where she was except that she was in the home of a human friend. She still has no idea of the truth.”
“Is it true that she was treated for wounds?” Eira asked. “Ylva treated her, yes?”
Asher flashed on Ylva’s quick comments over the top of Charlee’s sleepy head resting on his shoulder, as he’d picked her up to take her home. “I am one of the Eldre now, Asher. My skills are not what they once were.”
“A woman who was one of us a long time ago treated her wounds as best she could,” Asher replied.
“She used Valkyrie skills,” Eira pressed.
“She used her considerable medical expertise,” Asher replied, his irritation stirring. “Ylva has not been one of yours for over eighty years.”
Eira drew in a breath, as if she would respond, but then she subsided. Ylva’s history still roused tempers and put them on the defensive. But then, they’d tried to ignore her all these years because it was more comfortable to pretend she didn’t exist anymore. Now they were getting their noses rubbed in it.
Asher was suddenly sick of the side-stepping. “There is nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Charlee knows nothing and never will, not from me. There is no threat, and laun has not been broken.”
“Is it true,” Hamish, the earl of the hall in Baghdad, asked, “that you’ve known this human girl, this Charlee, for some years?”
Asher glanced at Sindri, anger touching him. So much for the confidentiality of Sindri’s salon. He didn’t remember speaking of Charlee in any specific detail, but the little man was superb at reading between the lines.
“I’ve known her for some years, yes,” Asher agreed.
“Forgive me for the personal question,” Roar asked, “but in what capacity have you known her?” He sounded genuinely curious.
“Charlee is a friend,” Asher replied flatly.
Torville, earl of Madrid, snorted. Asher held in his reaction. Torville would leap to the worst and, in this case, the wrong conclusion. But then, it was unspoken knowledge that Torville kept a harem of men in his hall whose ages would qualify them better as “boys”. He would naturally distrust any claims of a simple friendship.
“You’re friends with a girl. A human,” Roar clarified.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Roar asked.
“I like her.”
“And you have managed to maintain a friendship with this young human for many years without her suspecting anything at all?”
“Yes.” There was no need to get into details, and the more he explained, the more guilty he would look.
The assembled quorum looked at each other, a puzzled expression passing from one to the other.
Sindri cleared his throat. “Perhaps we could simply accept that such an unlikely friendship is possible and move on?”
Asher scowled. The man’s support would do him no favors with Stefan.
“Do you intend to keep seeing the human?” Stefan asked.
“Charlee comes to check up on me each day at the restaurant. I don’t think I have a choice in the matter,” Asher told him.
“Check up on you?”
“She likes to know that I am keeping safe.”
Silence.
“Does that mean, then,” Eira asked, “that she might have reason for thinking you could be unsafe? How did you meet?”
“I saved her pet mongrel from a gang that were going to kick it to death,” Asher told her. “Charlee decided I was her personal superhero after that.”
Eira began to smile.
“This would be the gang we had to...clean up, then?” Stefan asked.
“There were only three of them,” Eira murmured. That told Asher that she was now on his side. Roar was still a question mark. As for Stefan.... A year ago, Asher would have bet that Eira’s switch to his defense would sway Stefan, but he couldn’t say that with any certainty now, not after Stefan had fired that shot across his bows last week.
“We still had to clean up a mess that could have been a disaster,” Hamish pointed out. “You used your sword on them.”
“I made sure they were all quite dead before I left,” Asher pointed out. “I didn’t leave anyone behind to tell tales.” It was a lie, but he felt quite comfortable speaking it. The girl Lilla had been filled with the sort of silent fury that only a woman could carry. Afterward, as he had put her on the bus for L.A., she had been almost glowing with victorious satisfaction. She had kissed his cheek and muttered in Spanish, her one good eye staring at him. No, she would never speak a word of what she had seen. Ever.
Stefan stepped down onto the intermediate step, just before the floor level, where Asher stood. “We well know your feelings about laun, Asher. You must see this as we do. Help us to understand that we have not been exposed.”
“My word is not enough?” Asher asked. “It always has been, until now.”
“Your behavior has been alarming lately,” Roar said. “We would like to take you at your word, but you are not the man whose word we could so easily trust, anymore.”
Asher nodded. “Fair comment,” he agreed. He didn’t look at Sindri while he spoke. “I’ve been distracted lately. That’s why Charlee was hurt in the first place. That’s why I’m going to stay involved in her life and that’s why you can trust my word now.”
Eira tilted her head. “Would you explain that, Asher? I would like to hear the story.”
Asher began to speak. It took a while to tell the full story, and he carefully omitted the one fact that would condemn both him and Charlee; he did not tell them she had seen his sword. But everything else was innocent, and he had no need to lie. He told them everything up to and including his visit to Sergio’s apartment yesterday afternoon, and the results of that, including the reasons why he had left such a mess for the Kine to clean up.
“They would have kept hunting down Charlee and her family. It had turned into an obsession. It was time to stop it from progressing. I cauterized the situation.”
“You certainly did that,” Roar agreed. He looked at Stefan. “I do not see where laun has been broken. There’s no threat here.”
“You are not the best person to judge that, surely?” Sindri asked. “Someone with a more neutral perspective would be easier to agree with, and I, for one, would like to see agreement reached on this matter. One human child has already taken up far too much of our time.”
Sindri was trying to minimize the problem and make everyone see it as a trivial thing, but Asher resented his interference. He had done enough damage. Asher wasn’t certain that Sindri didn’t know exactly what his contribution to this “situation” had been.
Was it possible that Sindri was a better schemer than everyone in this room? Better than the most powerful of the Kine?
Or was it just that he moved in the background, mainly unnoticed?
Asher stared at him openly, not smiling. I have noticed you now.
Stefan crossed his arms, considering. He still stood on the step below everyone else, but it also put him out in front of everyone. “My concern is the risks that this friendship of yours could pose in the future. We already walk such a tightly held line. We must protect them, we must mingle with them and pretend to be human, just like them, but human relationships come with such great dangers that to do more than merely pretend to be human brings perils we cannot ignore.”
Asher’s heart squeezed. Was that to be the price for his sins? They would make Charlee verboten, off-limits, and enforce it?
He held up his hand and he wasn’t
surprised to see it was trembling, but none of them standing on the dais facing him were close enough to see it. “I can allay your fears,” he said. “There is a simple solution.”
“Something we’ve missed?” Roar asked, genuinely curious again.
Asher let his hand fall. “Let Charlee live her human life for now. When she is old enough, she can be recruited into the Amica.”
Silence. Again. Asher knew he had astonished nearly everyone in the great hall.
Eira was the first to speak. “You would let your friend…you would have her chosen by another?”
Asher shrugged. “She might be selected for domestic duties. It doesn’t matter, does it? If she is one of the Amica, laun is preserved. Where she ends up within their ranks is irrelevant.”
Stefan was smiling. “I believe that I, all of us, have underestimated you, Asher.” He turned to face the quorum. “Is this an acceptable solution to the matter? Raise your hand if you feel it is not.”
Silence. For the last time.
Asher let out a heavy breath, hiding it from those watching him.
“Very well,” Stefan said, turning to face him once more. “Once the girl Charlee is old enough, she will be recruited into the Amica. I thank you for your frankness, Asher. You have made it easier for us to reach a peaceable solution.”
Asher bowed his head and the quorum began to break up. One or two of the earls from halls on the other side of the world yawned and stretched. They hurried away, heading for the portals and their halls, to catch up on sleep.
Eira stepped down onto the floor of the great hall and swept over to Asher’s side. She was wearing a dress in pulsing, vibrant red, which went well with her dark hair and olive skin. “It is a pity I cannot meet your Charlee just now,” she said. “She sounds like someone I might like.”
“You would,” Asher agreed truthfully.
“Perhaps when she has joined the Amica, you would introduce me?”
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Asher replied.
Eira turned him away from the dais, her hand on his arm gently insistent. “There is something about this matter that you have not shared with us,” she said. “You would not so easily sell your friend to the Amica, not when you have stood here defending a right you do not have to stay friends with her.”
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 22