“I’m starving,” he told me, trading grips with Achilles. “Let’s go eat.”
Achilles grunted. “We still on for Buddy Hatchet later?” Talon perked up, noticed the sparring was over, and climbed to his feet with a stretch that almost made me pull a groin muscle by observing it. Then he walked over in silence, eyes darting about the area like a security detail.
I smiled at the name of the bar he wanted us to attend. A Valkyrie he knew had set up shop recently—a bar where the patrons could throw all manner of blades at targets while drinking pitchers of mead, but the place was not limited to Freaks like Achilles’ Heel.
“We’ll see you there later, Achilles. Oh, and Anubis is joining us.” Achilles sputtered incredulously, cursing up a storm, since he knew my talk was likely not going to go well. I had chosen the location because a lot of Regulars would be around us, hopefully making it a tiny bit safer for me.
I turned to Alex, guiding him towards the exit, ignoring Achilles scathing comments. “I’m famished. Hope Dean cooked something good or we’re ordering pizza.” Talon sniffed waspishly.
Alex gave me a very strange look but masked it quickly.
Chapter 5
We strolled up to the front door of Chateau Falco, my ancestral home, and I couldn’t help but smile. It was a beautiful old girl and had been a haven for the Temple family for generations. With over seventeen-thousand square feet and more rooms and sections than I properly knew what to do with, it was easy for visitors to get lost inside. Sometimes I just walked through it, reliving memories of my childhood, recalling things I had forgotten, and checking up on hiding places I had used to avoid Dean or my parents when I had done something particularly troublesome.
But Dean had almost always been able to find me, the posh bastard.
“I want to go check the tree for any sign of Carl’s return,” Talon said, glancing over at the massive, scaled, white tree nearby. Like a giant, reptilian, lawn ornament with leaves. From far away, it looked like a white tree, but there was no mistaking the oddities up close.
“You mean the D?” I asked him, biting back a grin. He ignored me and wandered away.
“He’s very quiet lately,” Alex said softly, so as not to be overheard.
I smiled. “Maybe he just misses Carl.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure that’s not it,” he said, shaking his head at my obvious joke.
Because Talon and Carl were an odd pair and didn’t easily get along. Talon was a very straight-laced, purpose-driven kind of creature, where Carl was…well, Carl was a fucking enigma.
He loved eating the flesh of the unborn—eggs.
He had a bizarre fascination with collecting high-heeled shoes—primarily red, if he could get his claws on them. I had even ordered him a custom pair designed to fit his velociraptor feet, and he frequently paraded around the house wearing them—and he was frighteningly nimble.
He used the bones of his enemies to make new swords and daggers and had been seen and heard speaking to them like a child would their toy dolls.
He had once complimented my vehicle by sniffing and licking the leather seats, informing me that he could almost hear the sounds of the slaughtered cows used to make the leather.
The best part, in my opinion, was that he was gullible enough to convince him of practically anything you wanted, since he had absolutely no understanding of social cues. We’d recently taken to playing Cards Against Humanity with him in an effort to teach him what was absolutely not acceptable in social conversation, because we had failed miserably with trying to teach him what was socially acceptable in social situations.
The only real similarity between Carl and Talon was that they could be incredibly violent.
But with Carl, the strangest things could turn him from a curious sidekick into a terrifying monster. I’d seen him go from calm to Apocalypse-level rage in the blink of an eye.
Carlageddon.
He was an Elder—a race of creatures who were feared by every single supernatural faction I had ever met. They had been so universally feared that the entire supernatural world had once teamed up to banish them from this world.
Carl was currently using the D as some kind of portal back to his realm—which was what Talon was checking on. Because Carl wanted to bring them back—to kneel to me. Carl had deemed me King in his eyes, and not just of St. Louis. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure what he thought I was actually King of. Or what he really thought of me as a person. It was obviously very positive, but I was nervous to ask what kind of expectations he had of me. Did he serve me thinking that I would lead his people to take over the known universe and enslave millions of people? Or something slightly less insane?
Long and short of it was that Carl was a psychopath with horrifying, inexplicable power, and no one quite knew what his intentions were. His people knew some kind of Song Magic, and after a recent vision I’d had, I was beginning to wonder just how close Carl and I were on the magical spectrum. Because in my vision, I had momentarily had access to Songs. Or at least been possessed by an entity that could use Songs as a weapon.
Talon didn’t need to check on the tree, or Carl, since I had given Carl a bit of my blood before he left. He’d told me he could use it to track me across the cosmos or something similarly creepy. Right after he’d Sung a chilling, magical dirge of a prophecy that he’d self-admittedly scraped from my mother’s soul, whatever that meant. He hadn’t finished the Song before suddenly needing to leave.
Because he had thought he’d heard his mother calling out to him through the portal—which hadn’t been functional up until he’d voiced his Song.
Since Ruin occupied the treehouse high up in the D, I knew he would let us know the moment a caravan of scaled, lizard warriors emerged from the trunk. Even thinking about that happening gave me chills. Because it was probably happening sooner than anyone wanted to admit.
I turned back to see Alex wearing a thoughtful frown as he watched Talon circle the tree. “This memory recall of our time in Fae is hitting us both pretty hard,” I told Alex. “Talon remembers more than I do, and I think he’s having a hard time dealing with it.”
Alex grimaced. “Yeah, spending any time in Fae is hard to process,” he agreed. Because he had once been a captive in Fae, too—before I saved him. But I couldn’t risk thinking too hard about that in case it brought on a mental break.
Instead, I strolled up to the entrance of Chateau Falco and opened the front door.
And I was greeted by a line of neon pistols pointed at my face, held by a horde of demons grinning their wicked smiles.
Like a hive mind, they pulled their triggers in unison, and a swarm of Nerf bullets zipped towards my face. I heard Dean shout, “No magic in the house, or you’re on cleaning duty!”
But I wasn’t in the house, so I threw up a hasty shield of magic, blocking all of the darts.
I was grinning triumphantly when I sensed a presence above me. I looked up to see a dark gray cloud hovering directly over my head. “Oh, come on!” And Ruin, the Baby Beast, unleashed his equivalent of a golden shower—primordial piss, since he was some kind of celestial being—all over me.
The army of demons had reloaded and proceeded to tag me with a second onslaught of Nerf bullets—this one I didn’t block.
I ignored the chorus of laughter to shout at the top of my lungs. “Falco! Ruin is grounded!” I yelled at my house. Because my house was a sentient being, harboring a Beast within her walls.
And that Beast was Ruin’s mother. She didn’t reply, although she sometimes did.
Ruin shook his cloudy form like a wet dog, spraying me with more water, his shade of color lightening from gray to white as he emptied his reserves. He’d been storing it up for just this moment. Which pretty much told me who was behind it all. It really was water, not primordial piss. Well, technically, it was both. But scientifically, it was just water. Ruin really was a cloud of mist, not needing to eat any organic matter unless he wanted to take on a p
hysical form, which he hadn’t yet done. That being said, after he’d eaten one of the Nine Souls…
He definitely got soul poisoning, spraying torrents of water all over the place for a full day.
One of the gun-toting demons stepped out of the darkness to reveal his true form. Gunnar walked up to me, grinning from ear-to-ear. “Friendsgiving,” he said. Then he gave me a playful, one-armed shove to jostle me.
But Alex—the weaselly little miscreant—had apparently crouched down onto all fours behind my knees so that Gunnar’s playful shove sent me sprawling onto my ass into a pile of wet, cold, Nerf bullets. I cursed for about ten seconds, while reaching out to try and shove a fistful of muddy Nerf bullets into the back of his shirt, but Alex evaded me easily.
I finally let out a defeated laugh, shaking my head. Friendsgiving was months from now.
Alex and Gunnar helped me to my feet and plopped a plastic crown on my head. “Whose idea was this?” I asked, suspecting I already knew, but expecting others had been involved.
“His,” Gunnar said, pointing to Alex.
I turned to him and dipped my head. “I think…yeah, I think I needed it. Thanks.”
Alex shrugged. “We’ve had a dark run. You’re usually the one to cheer us all up and make us laugh, but since you’ve been so busy lately, I figured it was time for me to strap on the boots. I wanted to bring everyone together for a reminder of what really matters.”
Gunnar nodded approvingly, but something about his face looked tense—almost brittle—like he was pretending to be happy. Or his mind was elsewhere. I hadn’t heard any bad news, and if there had been truly bad news—the imminent danger kind—he would have told me immediately, so it must have been pack business getting to him. The stress of being the Alpha.
Gunnar cleared his throat. “Dark stuff has happened and is going to happen again. Probably soon, knowing Mordred. But we still have to remember what we are fighting for.” His face paled slightly at his own statement, and I wondered if he was coming down with a cold or something.
Alex was nodding. “Thought it would be fun to gather everyone together, even though I know it’s way too early for Friendsgiving,” he admitted, blushing slightly. “It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
“Everything usually does,” I teased him. “You didn’t need to do all of this for me, Alex. Remember when I stabbed you in the heart? Good times.”
“I do, as a matter of fact,” he replied drily. “I remember every single minute of that hour-long torture, for some reason.”
I winced. Then I caught a whiff of cooked food through the open doors, past the others who were scooping up all the Nerf darts—careful to take their shoes off before stepping back inside, or Dean would have murdered them all without even bothering to unbutton his dinner jacket.
I saw Alvara and her daughter Alice and managed to wave at the young girl, careful to keep the sudden apprehension from my face as I focused on my breathing. She waved back, and then skipped away, tugging Yahn along behind her. The Reds trailed like good ladies-in-waiting, smirking at Yahn’s plight. Dragons adoring a dangerous Fae child, I thought to myself, shaking my head.
But I was also tense at the stark reminder that we were headed to Fae tomorrow. I turned to Alex. “Why did you invite them?”
He shrugged. “So you wouldn’t have to pick them up in the morning, which might get people talking, if you know what I mean. Wondering what business you have at that time of morning, and where you are taking them. Thought it best to keep them off the radar. For all the world knows, you were at the Dueling Grounds having a little fun, went home for dinner, and then the bar with your friends. Nothing interesting.” He met my eyes levelly. “In case Mordred has people watching.”
Gunnar was studying Alex thoughtfully, not realizing he was nodding his head in approval. He didn’t impress easily, much like Achilles. Yet here he was, being impressed and stuff.
Alex was the kind of guy you couldn’t help but like, even if you hated yourself for standing in his shadow. And he cast a big fucking shadow. Worse, he was humble about it. Almost unaware. Except…I knew he was definitely aware of it. He just purposely chose not to relish in it.
Where was the fun in that? Arrogance is bliss, as the famous saying went.
Looking at him—reflected by Gunnar’s opinion—I thought again on my Masks.
I saw Talon slinking our way, keeping his eyes to the skies, and I scowled. “You mangy bastard. That’s why you wanted to check on the tree! You didn’t want to get wet!”
“Who, me? I would never…” he said with faux innocence.
I heard a rustling of feathers and looked up to see Huginn and Muninn—Odin’s Ravens—perched atop the door, cocking their heads as they stared at…
Talon.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” they croaked in unison. Then they hopped in a half-circle to aim their rears at him, glancing over their shoulders to check their coverage of the entryway.
There was no way for Talon to walk through the door without them shitting on him, which was obviously their intent. One of their favorite games was chasing Talon around the grounds, trying to crap on him.
Talon looked crestfallen. “Make them stop. This is ridiculous,” he pleaded to me.
I shrugged mercilessly. “Spare the water,” I said, pointing up at Ruin, “Soil the kitty,” I said, pointing at the large Ravens. “Now, let’s go eat,” I told Gunnar and Alex.
I tensed my shoulders as I walked through the door, fearing they would unload their Nordic bowels on me since Talon showed no signs of taking a gamble.
But I made it through unscathed and followed the delicious smells to the kitchen.
I even remembered to take off my boots first.
Dean was good at ingraining lessons into your cerebral cortex. And I’d suffered the loving bastard for thirty-odd years, now.
Chapter 6
We sat around the table, chatting and drinking amicably and, like many times before, I found myself leaning back to observe in silence. No matter what Alex had said, this wasn’t about me. It was about everyone else.
Alex was drifting around the table, speaking with each person directly, involving them individually in the Temple tradition of Friendsgiving. He was also serving them drinks, letting Dean focus on the last-minute meal preparations.
I had never in my life seen Dean let someone help him with something like this. Even with such simple assistance as serving drinks.
But maybe that was because I was Master Temple. The boss. Dean had a strange way of showing his respect at times. I had only just gotten rid of the welts from his gods-damned airsoft gun of corporal punishment.
Anyway, it meant something for Dean to let Alex help. Was it because Alex had orchestrated the dinner? Or was it because Dean was also impressed with Alex?
Alex poured a glass of wine for Gunnar, but Ashley declined, asking for some ice water instead. Alex happily provided it, then squatted down to talk to the two of them. Gunnar and Ashley both laughed, nodded along, and then Alex was off with a brilliant goodbye smile.
He flicked Alice’s hair on the way by her chair and danced clear when she tried to grasp his hand. Then he curtsied to her from a safe distance before reaching Tory, the Headmistress of Shift—a school for wayward kids. At least, that was what the rest of the city thought. In reality, it was a school for orphan shifters, and in addition to traditional classes, she taught them how to control their flavors of monster. Because she was a Beast Master—able to control all shifters with her mind.
She was also incredibly strong, so she could bat around shifters with her pinky finger, before resorting to mind control on the harder cases.
She had recently been working with Raego, the King of the Dragons, to institute her graduate-level students into a kind of supernatural police force. They were still coming up with the name, but I’d heard a few creative ones already. I secretly funded the school, which had been built on the old Temple Industries property after it had be
en bulldozed and destroyed.
Tory had wanted a symbol for her students to wear, a badge of honor, for both the kids to hold dear and for the city to know that they were important—to be respected, trusted, and appreciated. The fact that Tory and her students were unaffiliated with any of the supernatural families was perhaps the biggest reason everyone was okay with the idea. The kids had been cast out or left abandoned by their original families, and Tory had grouped them into a new family.
An objective one.
I’d been carrying around a sack of Olympian Gold that I had won for defeating Athena—yes, her brothers and sisters had placed bets on the outcome of our knock-out, throw-down, hair-pulling bout. I’d come out with a healthy pile of coins for my efforts.
Since the gold had just been sitting around in my office collecting dust, I’d recently melted the coins down to make badges for Tory’s Keepers—as they’d taken to calling themselves until an official name could be decided. Because names were important. Since I was the self-proclaimed King of St. Louis, I had made them in the form of the Temple Crest—the same symbol branded into my palm. The same one that adorned my front door. Because I was determined to make that symbol mean something more than just those elitist wizards who lived in St. Louis.
I wanted to put my Crest to good use. For the people of my city to see it and feel relief. Protection. Even pride, perhaps.
Not pride in me, necessarily, but in something bigger than me. People generally felt better when they had something to unite behind. And with this war that was supposedly coming, I figured it was best to get everyone behind a shield now, before it was too late.
Tory caught me watching her, smiled, and shifted her hair to show me the golden badge pinned to the shoulder of her dress. I smiled at it, as well as at the genuine excitement in her eyes. She had once been a helluva policewoman, but her association with me had gotten her fired—when dragons invaded St. Louis.
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