by Michele Hauf
Kir had really been angry with her. Justified, coming from a werewolf.
“Too bad,” she sang, opening her mouth to the water stream and spinning. “You’re stuck with me now, wolf. Deal with it!”
Because look at what she had to deal with: hair, hair and more hair. And a tail. And talons that had cut down her thigh when he’d tried to pry her fangs from his neck. She couldn’t blame him for hurting her. It had been a defensive reaction. And the cut had been shallow; it was already healed.
So now she had a shifter husband who— Okay, so he wasn’t ugly in werewolf form, just big and growly and noisy. He was also a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, from what she could divine. Not pleased to be her husband, that was for sure. Something about drawing the short stick.
Yet they had both given their all for the wedding-night sex. Again and again. And while the sex had been great, Bea wondered how long before the luster wore away and she’d be jonesing for a return to Faery. At least there she’d always been able to find a willing bite. And along with that bite had usually been some reasonably satisfying sex.
“Never going to happen.” She switched off the water and shook her wings vigorously. “I’m not going back!”
Because nothing could make her return to Faery, and the tyranny of her father’s reign over her. She was free. As free as she could be considering the mark on the back of her hand that bonded her to a wolf.
And now that she was here, she could begin her mission. To find the mother she had never known.
Jumping out of the shower, she performed a shiver of wings to flick away the wet, sending droplets across the walls and mirror. She twirled and leaned onto the vanity before the mirror. Eyeing the wet faery, she winked at her.
“Aren’t you a sexy chick? You know the wolf wants to eat you up. But he won’t because you’ve got fangs.”
She ran her tongue along one fang that descended to a pointy weapon. In Faery she’d been a pariah. Half-breeds were favored for strengthening and adding genetic powers and attributes to the sidhe lines. But vampires were shunned. Filthy longtooths. They were nothing but scum who liked to feed on faery ichor as their favorite drug. They were disliked almost as much as demons. A half-breed sidhe demon was labeled The Wicked and was the lowest of the low. So she did have that going for her.
“Not quite the dregs of the barrel, are you, Bea?”
She decided her father had had the affair with her mother for the reason she must have been forbidden fruit. Something lesser than Malrick. Dark and forbidden. He’d wanted to try her out. And he’d never let Bea forget that.
But in the mortal realm vampires must hold a certain status. Bea hoped so. Because she was done with the shame and ostracism. She wanted to shine, to grow and finally become the fierce woman with wings and fangs that had been stifled in Faery.
“So long as the hubby doesn’t get in my way, I’ll be golden.”
Winking at her reflection, she rummaged through the vanity drawer and found Kir’s comb. She hadn’t been allowed to bring any of her things to this realm. The comb was not like the crystal prize she’d once owned, but it smelled like him. Woodsy and wild. It would serve until she could go shopping. But to do that she needed mortal money. Of which, she hoped the hubby had a lot.
Her übersexy hubby who really knew how to get right to the point concerning orgasms.
“I hate him so much I can’t wait until he gets home.”
Tossing the comb onto the vanity and skipping down the stairs, she decided to explore, as Kir had suggested. It felt great to walk around skyclad, wings unfurled. She didn’t mind the narrow hallway that bent back her wings as she strode into the kitchen.
The note on the counter detailed a phone number and was signed “Kir.”
“Like he thinks I won’t guess who the note was from? Silly wolf.” Though she traced a finger over the name and lifted the paper to give it a quick kiss. “My hubby.”
Tiptoeing about the vast stone-tiled kitchen, she ran her fingers over the granite countertop, not sensing the energy that she normally felt from stones. But the fieldstones paving the kitchen floor were alive, which lightened her steps as she spun and traced her fingers across the glossy stovetop and the sink. No iron here!
At the icebox, she flung open the door and peered inside. Lots of clear plastic bottles holding energy drinks in various pale colors. Fruits and vegetables. “Go, wolf.” And meat. Sliced, chopped, chunked, shredded and cut. “Blech. My hubby likes to eat things that once had a heartbeat. Bad wolf.” She’d married a carnivore. That would be a new one to deal with.
On the other hand, she couldn’t claim complete vegetarianism. Now that she was in the mortal realm, she’d get the opportunity to feast on mortal blood. And that had a heartbeat. Getting a sip of wolf last night had been like popping her red-blood cherry. Blessed be, he’d tasted good.
And she wanted more.
Plucking out a vine of green grapes, Bea danced through the kitchen and into the next room, which was a cozy living area walled on two sides with books and carpeted in what looked like ancient tapestry. Deeply varnished wood and curvaceous carvings gave the room a medieval appeal. It felt solid and earthy.
“Just like my wolf.”
Sitting on the back of the big leather couch, she tilted back her head and nibbled the grapes from the vine. Toppling, she laughed as her feet went over her head and she tumbled off the sofa and onto the floor. She upset the books stacked on the coffee table, and one landed on a wing.
“Ouch.” She pulled up the heavy book and read the title, Exotic Fantasy Figures.
Inside were gorgeous colored plates featuring fantastical creatures that she felt sure did not exist in the mortal realm or Faery. Though a few depictions were close to some of the sidhe she’d known. The text said they’d been created using a computer. She wasn’t familiar with mortal technology but had learned about computers during her mortal realm lessons. The devices were carriers of information.
She needed to get her fingers all over one of those computers if she was going to track down her mother.
Flinging aside the book to land splayed open, she sprang up and skipped to the floor-to-ceiling window and pressed her nose to the glass. Outside lay a small yard with browning grass and some pitiful flowers.
Bea’s smile wilted. “Poor grass. I’ll have to give you some tender loving care.”
A shed stood at what she guessed was the back of Kir’s property.
“Doesn’t own much land. Hmm...let’s hope that means he put all his money in gold, because this girl needs to do some shopping.”
Popping another grape into her mouth, she twirled and flung out her arms, delighting in the warm sun that shone through the window. She only stopped her dance when she felt the odd sensation that she was not alone.
Standing in the archway between living room and kitchen was her new husband, his mouth hanging open and hands to his hips.
* * *
“What?” Bea pulled a wingtip forward and preened it over her shoulder. “Close your mouth, big boy. You act like you’ve never seen a naked faery before.”
Kir’s astonishment dropped and his eyes crinkled. The man’s gentle laughter scurried over her naked skin like warm summer rain. And she did love to dance in the rain.
“I have some work in the area, so I stopped in to see if you’re doing okay. I guess you are.”
“Peachy! Your shower rocks!”
“It does.” He walked in and picked up the book she’d tossed on the floor, carefully placing it back on the table. “Let me guess. You need clothes.”
“Why?” She propped her hands akimbo. “You got a problem with naked faeries?”
“Uh. No. I don’t think I do.”
His eyes took her in from feet to knees to loins, and up where he lingered at her breasts. Bea felt his desire follow that warm rain like delicious sun. Mmm, come here, hungry wolf.
“But all creatures wear clothing in the mortal realm,” he said. “So. You need clothe
s.”
“And combs and jewelry, shoes and purses. Makeup. Perfumes. All that girl stuff. And to get that I’m going to need some mortal cash. Please tell me you have bajillions of the stuff.”
“Bajillions?” Another soft chuckle. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Bea’s shoulders sank, as did her wings.
“But I am comfortable, as they say. You won’t starve or be forced to live in a cardboard box anytime soon. I promise.”
A cardboard box? Did mortals do that? Bea shivered. She’d once had an aunt who would curl up to live in a crustacean shell. Ugh.
“What’s your job?” she asked. “Brit said something about you being an enforcer. Is that like a wolf cop?”
“In essence. Our pack polices the werewolf packs in Paris. Keeps an eye on them. Investigates the blood games and tries to ensure that no wolf makes the front page of Le Monde. That’s the local world newspaper.”
“Cool. So when do you have to guard the portal to Faery?”
“Not sure. Etienne, my pack principal, suggested I probably would not, since I’ve already gotten—”
“The short stick. I remember. You’ve sacrificed so much for your pack. Taking on a wife who is actually interested in having sex with you whenever you desire? Whew! That is so tough. I shed tears of pity for you, wolf.”
“Whenever I desire?” The wolf’s eyes twinkled. Actually twinkled.
“Pretty much.” She fluttered her wings.
“I thought you hated me.”
“Oh, I do.” She crossed her arms and tucked her wings down tightly, a forced show of dislike. Her new hubby’s chuckle made it difficult to keep her nose up and her back straight. So she put her wings away. “Wings are too much for you to handle.”
“I bet they are. I can take you shopping later,” he said. “Uh, you might need to wear something of mine, though.”
“I do have my wedding dress.”
“Which was so sheer every wolf in my pack blushed.”
“Not cool for shopping?”
He shook his head. “Paris may be avant-garde when it comes to fashion, but I don’t think it’s quite ready for a half-naked faery. Look through my closet and see what you can find.”
“You are twice as big as me. You’re troll size. Dwarf troll, at least. And I’m not keen on working the leather. You know an animal used to wear those pants before you decided to tug them on? But I’ll see what I can do. So, you got time for a quickie before you go back to work?”
He quirked a brow. “I thought you hated me.”
“Oh, I do. But I like this.” She danced up to him and drew her fingers down his chest and tapped his cock through the leather pants. “You saying you don’t like this?” Flinging her hair with a tilt of her head, she thrust back her shoulders, proudly displaying her breasts.
The wolf lunged and encircled her in his arms, his mouth landing on her nipple. Bea squealed in delight as he lifted her and laid her on the couch. “I have time,” he said.
* * *
Jacques always rode shotgun and, yet, mastered the radio when they were out on a job. He’d flicked the radio to a rap station, so Kir had turned the volume down. They compromised like a married couple.
Is that what marriage was about? Compromise? Seemed to Kir he and Bea got along just fine. When naked together. An afternoon quickie had put him in a great mood. Even if work was intense.
He’d heard about a pack in a northern banlieue, a city suburb, that was into something weird, and vampires were dying in stranger ways than the usual starvation, death by blood loss, or fighting to the death that some packs had a tendency to inflict upon them. They’d received a frantic phone call from a vampiress who was not in a tribe. Her boyfriend had escaped imprisonment from a pack and now lay on her floor, puking up black blood.
They arrived at the address in record time. Kir shifted the vehicle into Park and looked to Jacques, who smirked and stared at his hair. “What?”
“My man, you sparkle.”
“I— What?”
Jacques couldn’t hide his goofy grin. “So I guess it’s true what they say about faeries when they come, eh?”
What the hell did they say about faeries coming? And who were they?
Bea had come quickly this afternoon on the couch—ah. Kir glanced in the rearview mirror. Sunlight glinted in his hair. He slapped at the faery dust. “It’s all over me.”
“It has been since you came in this morning, but it looks like more since that quick stop at home.” Jacques’s laugh thundered inside the car.
The stuff was hard to get off, and he had some smeared above his temple. Still, he didn’t regret the quickie. Though he wasn’t going to allow Jacques one more moment of mirth.
He slammed his hand up under his friend’s jaw and silenced his laughter. “One more chuckle and you’ll be chewing spine.”
Jacques put up his hands in defeat and Kir dropped him immediately. It was an empty threat. They both knew the other would never hold good on a promise to violence, teasing or otherwise.
“Is it that noticeable? Maybe I shouldn’t go inside.”
“You got most of it off. Call it a night at the club. Let’s go in and check this out. Vamp shields up?”
“Activated,” Kir replied. Since childhood the two of them had shared an aversion to vampires and had playfully pulled an invisible shield of protection over themselves when they’d play vampires and werewolves.
If only he could do as much with his wife.
A wolf should be more upset about being married to a vampire—even if she was only half. But did a wolf who hated vampires have sex with one three times within a twenty-four-hour period? Something wrong with that.
And, yet, something so not wrong with sliding inside Bea and losing himself against her soft, petite body, drawing in her sweet perfume, drowsing him into some kind of all right.
“You coming?”
Jacques had started up the front walk while Kir was still contemplating running home for another round with his half-breed, pretty-smelling wife. But he couldn’t afford to let his thoughts stray in a vampire’s house, he thought, and followed Jacques inside. Vamp shields up, indeed. It wasn’t possible for a werewolf to do that—put up some kind of magical protection shield—but just thinking that he could bolstered his confidence. He knew to avoid the fangs, and the cross on the stake he’d stuck in his back pocket gave him reassurance.
A male vampire, probably late twenties, lay on the kitchen floor in a pool of black liquid. It looked like blood, but Kir couldn’t be sure what it was. Vampires bled red blood. Demons, and a handful of other species, bled black. And the victim’s girlfriend, who was sprawled beside his body, insisted he was all vamp, formerly a mortal who had been attacked and turned only a year ago by a tribe of vampires that had then abandoned him.
“Is he going to live?” the blonde with a skimpy top that emphasized her narrow waistline asked. Her red-painted fingernails were stained with the black substance that seeped from her boyfriend’s mouth.
Kir looked to Jacques. His friend’s brow lifted. Both knew the answer. And was the vampiress blind? Her boyfriend was literally skin and bones, starved to the marrow. They could see his veins, and those veins were not plump with blood. And what was he coughing up in thick black globs?
“You got a stake?” Jacques muttered.
“Of course.”
“What?” the girlfriend shrieked. “I trusted you guys!”
Kir grabbed the woman by the arms, trying to settle her. “Your boyfriend is not going to survive. He’s in great pain. The stake will be a kindness. Can you understand?”
Eyes frantic and filled with tears, her lips tightened and she winced. She collapsed against his chest, her breaths heaving out. Her fingernails dug into his arms, but she wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was trying to accept.
Kir couldn’t relate to such a painful loss. And then he could. His father had left him and his sister when they were little. He could never fill that hole left be
hind in his soul.
Just when he reached to put a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder, she stood up and whispered, “I’ll get something.” When she returned to the room, she handed a stake to Kir. It had a pair of initials carved on it. “It was a backup in case either of us wanted to jump ship. He didn’t ask for vampirism. He wanted the stake months ago, but I begged him to stay alive for me.”
The vampire on the floor whispered, “I love you,” to the vampiress. And then he said, “Get them. The...the...”
Kir and Jacques both bent close, hoping the vampire would give them a clue that would lead to the pack that had kidnapped him.
“The what? Who?” Jacques urged. “Can you tell me what pack did this to you?”
“The...denizen...” The vampire’s body stiffened, his muscles tightening and his jaw snapping shut.
“The denizen?” Jacques looked to Kir.
Denizen was a term for a group or gathering of demons. The very idea of demons being involved caused Kir’s jaw to tense. The last breed he wanted to deal with was demons.
The girlfriend grabbed the stake from Kir’s hand. Before he could take it from her to perform the offensive task, she lunged over her boyfriend and staked him in the heart. Jacques grabbed for her, but it was too late. They’d get nothing more from the pile of ash.
While the girlfriend wept over the ash, Jacques and Kir stepped outside the house. “Demons?” Kir asked. “So, this isn’t werewolves?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if it’s not, it’s not our problem.”
“Right.” Kir clenched and unclenched his fists. “Let’s give her a minute, then see if she’ll let us search his things for clues.”
The wolves waited out on the front step until the sobbing settled. A half hour later, quietly and respectfully, they went through the house but found nothing of use for the investigation.
“You have a safe place to go for a while?” Kir asked the vampiress.
“You think they’ll come after me? The pack?”
“Not sure. Why do you think he was taken by a pack? He said something about a denizen. That’s demons.”
She shrugged. “He’d mentioned something about a wolf following him a few days before he disappeared. I assumed.”