Once Lost Lords (Royal Scales, Book 1)

by Stephan Morse

  “Shit.” The tiny bartender actually looked upset.

  “Nope, only blood, blood, blood, blood.” I swung the small nearly empty glass around in time to the word. “Blood.” I clanked it down and waited for the magic trick where it was refilled before my eyes.

  “You sure she wasn’t just overly excited about the blood?”

  “Let’s say we needed a safety word, she became ravenous.” I responded happily.

  “Maybe she really wanted to turn you? That girl’s in love bad.” Julianne shuffled around again while trying to find a reasonable explanation.

  “It wasn’t romance, it was hunger.” I shoved the idea away along with a leftover glass. One of the many drunks around me had forgotten to clean up after themselves upon leaving.

  “For real?” She asked.

  “Yep!” Which was about ten times beyond what should have happened. Vampires rarely drank blood in public. Those ones never lost control. Their existence as a race depended on keeping civil.

  Blood was, in theory, good, but not mind-blowing.

  “That’s a little excessive, isn’t it?” I couldn’t tell if Julianne was talking about Kahina’s behavior, or the amount of liquor I had gone through tonight. My magical glass refilled though and that’s all that mattered.

  “Did I mention she chased me around the room? If there had been more sex involved I might have been down for it,” That’s was a lie, I would, no might involved. “But there wasn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Like a damned bottled drink,” I was lost in my rambling. “Chased me around screaming and going on about how I was holding out on her. That I was the one, the best.”

  “Jeff.” Julianne was trying to snap me out of it.

  “That I was hers and she’d never let anyone else have me. Ever.” I drank down the latest glass.

  “Jeff!” A short Indian woman stamping her foot might be cute to some. I was in a place beyond paying attention, though.

  “Then I ran, freaked out and ran. Thought she was going to kill me. Then I’d be gone, gone, gone.” I shook the still empty glass around again in a pale echo of my blood, blood, blood chant. “Gone.”

  “Jay, Jeff.” Both my go by names, but Julianne seemed calmer this time. She leaned over the counter to pull my hand and the swinging glass down. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” God her hands were warm.

  “It’s not exactly like I could file a report.”

  “Why not?” The tiny bartender asked.

  “Because I don’t exist in the eyes of the government, or in the pack Alpha's eyes, or in the Tribunal or The Council. Fuck ‘em, it was easier to leave and hope she calmed down.” Humans, wolves, vampires, and elves, each one having their own version of a bureaucracy. It involved paper, registration, and being tracked and scanned. “Once I left, it was easier to stay gone.”

  “You could have told me sooner, I might have been able to do something.”

  “Oh yeah, what?” I over emphasized the question, my head rebounding a little from the movement. Julianne stared at me for a second and tried to puzzle out what to do. Good luck to her, four years hadn’t done me any good. Kahina wasn’t high on my list of people to get back into a relationship with. Not if she planned on round two of trying to crack me open to get to the good stuff.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll settle for a refill.” The glass had stopped performing its magic somewhere during my rant. Julianne didn’t give me a final round and stayed quiet the rest of the night. I staggered out. They conspired to run me out of town, now they were denying me alcohol. Sisters before Misters.

  I made it halfway and passed out on the hood of someone’s car. Strangely it was one of the most peaceful nights I had in a long time. Even counting random visions of Kahina’s hungry red irises staring out in the darkness.

  Morning light woke me by baking one side of my face. Things swung from content and relaxed to an angry attention demanding headache. I grumbled the entire way back to my hideaway and opened the door.

  Once inside I attempted to block out every shred of light in the place. Getting back to sleep while things were intensely bright would be hard to achieve. Hazily all I could remember was Julianne’s words. Lost my edge? Left something behind?

  Fine. I could do something about that. I would do something. Something really clever.

  In between naps and spurts of clearing out the carefully packed storage room, I found some tools that could be used. I squirreled away a bunch of silver, an absurd amount beyond what anyone in their right mind would need. Entire factories were dedicated to recycling and reusing this stuff, and it wasn’t cheap.

  Could I rewind the clock? Go back to what I had been? Self assured, strong, in charge of myself. Recovering that lost sense of self would restore the status quo. The best solution available was beating someone up. I had been rather good at it once upon a time. Extremely good, with the right tools and things stacked in my favor.

  One night I held it all, a girl, a job that was enjoyable, money, home. Then true fear sent me packing. Coward. I had never run from a fight. No, my job was to start them, fleeing had damaged my entire self-perception.

  First I needed to reawaken the possessive instinct that kept me aware of everything around me. This stupid plan would blow up in my face if I didn’t have that edge.

  Staring out the back window wasn’t helping. Neither was trying to massage a headache that still lingered. A cold shower had only cleared a few cobwebs. My clothes were half dirty and the floor was dusty from where I shuffled around.

  Cleaning the apartment was useful. I went several steps further, trimming my hair, sweeping the porch, putting piles of trash right outside my front door. Each change restoring order to my world. It took a good portion of the day but soon I was left with a nearly pristine living space.

  Mental clarity wasn’t as easy. My prior personality had been built, one block at a time, over a decade. One moment had spun through like a natural disaster and sent it all crashing down. How on earth does a person shift their thought process around completely? No one could undo the past.

  Kahina’s blood madness, my abilities, Daniel’s search for an elf, each item a puzzle piece. The center was still missing. I would start with this Lord situation.

  A modified set of gloves sat on a shelf. It was a nastier version of the silver covered knuckles. Short, stocky claws made of mixed metals for toughness. Leather hide wove around the metal molded into sharp ridges. They pulled backwards so that a fist would slice, and a backhand would rend. The underside was forged iron. Any angle of it would cause an elf or wolf serious harm. My cross and sheer physical presence would take care of the rest.

  Picking them up irritated me, making the voice in my head growl. Whispering that these sorts of parlor tricks were beneath me. It would work, though. The gloves went into a jacket pocket. Only a second was needed to slip them back on.

  Next I needed a mission.

  “Going to need a drink, but not my usual.” I told the other girl behind the counter. She worked part time when Julianne was out.

  “Sure, whatcha looking for?”

  “Don’t think it has a name, but I’ll tell you what to do.” I described the drink from the nervous male elf that showed up in the bar frequently. Luckily, only Julianne served Umbrella Beer’s drinks. This bartender wouldn’t have any clue what the combination meant.

  She slipped it over and asked, “On your tab?”

  “Sure.” I responded. She nodded and threw the numbers into some little touch screen computer they picked up while I was gone.

  A few minutes later, me and the mixed drink were sitting at the remote end of the bar, the same corner where the elf counted out change every time. Not once had he paid with anything larger than a quarter. Shame, he could save a lot of nervous counting by switching to half dollars or those golden dollar coins.

  I sat in the stool and held the drink.

  This elf was my prey, I was going to find him, an
d beat the location of Tattooed eyes out of him. She was clearly in charge, older, and more knowledgeable. The chances of her being a Speaker, like the elf who had called me a Lord, were pretty high.

  Her tattooed eyes fluttered back into my brain. Tiny green dots of ivy spiraling around the outsides, thin eyebrows, large dark glasses. This drink wouldn’t link to her. It should, hopefully, in this spot and with a hand on the counter where he spilled so much change, link to him. I was holding his favorite drink after all, his weakness.

  His addiction. In my hands. My hands, my seat, my fingers pressed against the counter top. Mine. I could feel it. The connection slowly spun together from the items and thoughts.

  Thin, thready, loose, a terrible cord. Wouldn’t hold a newborn. Might break if grasped too hard. Carefully. Tenderly. I follow it, barely touching. Leads somewhere close.

  Sweat dripped down my forehead. My fingers were shaking from the effort of trying to force this tenuous connection. Success was encouraging. I let my other thought patterns control the process, relying on their instinctual nature.

  A house. Clan. Takes up four city blocks. Three story in the center. Trees even taller. Each one is vibrant. Spirits show intense care. Not sparse like the forest trees.

  My eyes had seen that house, that elven block they sat in like a fortress inside of the city. Of course he wasn’t one of the sad ones that permeated the poor parts of town, this fortress was well kept. Likely the clan was somewhere in the middle rung of elven society.

  Cord still tender. Fades in and out. One eye watches. Follows lead to building. I soar closer. Over wood spawned walls. Past gatekeepers. Into a window. Limbs behind me. Slows descent. Catches wind. Barely brushing frail cord.

  I followed it in further, carefully controlling the possessive mind set. My hands on his drink, my hands on the counter where he passed through. My feet placed where his feet had been. His house on a street my feet had walked through. The litany flowed in the background on my thoughts. Each item that looked even remotely familiar was jumbled in. A doorknob that looked like the one at my house, a rug that looked like one I had rolled up downstairs.

  They could very well be mine. Were mine. No, they are mine.

  Air feels odd. Harder to move in. Thick. Swimming instead of gliding. Struggle forward. Force the connection. House is protected somehow. Still, I progress.

  Bedroom. Grown rather than cut from meshed woods. Walls feel alive. Warm. Inside is worse. Harsh colored threads against the natural woodwork. Each feels foreign. Unwelcome. Some are better. Share that same sense of life the walls do. Grown fabrics. Greens, browns. Natural colors.

  Clearly this was not his room. I laughed both in my mind and out loud in the bar. My senses felt the pattern of sound and transferred it over to something understandable. At least a little bit. A husky voice of an excited female.

  “You’d better last longer this time.” Soft tone. Bouncy. The words cut through. Female. Try not to feel the locks of hair. Clean. Well parted. Brushed carefully, constantly. Feels too much of her. Invasive.

  Tattooed Eyes the Blonde was completely naked in all her rail thin glory. The chest barely a step beyond male, but her hips all woman. Her body confirmed what I suspected, that the tattoos weren’t limited to her eyes. Thin patterning spilled down her neck and twisted over shoulders and down even further, ending on the edges of her toes. Beneath her she managed to pin the elf I was tracking. He looked beyond prissy without a stitch on. She was clearly enjoying herself. Umbrella Beer looked like a little boy trying not to blow it early.

  Try not to laugh. Hang there. Ignore the couple. Awkward knowing that I don’t see this. I feel too much. Almost break frail link. Can’t. Need to understand here.

  I didn’t build this thin link to mock him. It was certainly a bonus, though. My mind fell back into default patterns. I looked around the room searching for items of value. Or easy entrances, exits, sharp edges, structural weaknesses. I wasn’t here to mentally peek in on his sex life.

  This was to find him, then find her, only I found both in the first go. Still, there was something else worth testing. Next was checking if either one could see me while projecting.

  Move closer. Try not to pick a revealing angle. Long Ear boy on sheets. Make face. No response. His eyes glazed over. Lost in the moment. Female keeps moving. Feels desperate. Face annoyed. Cheek pinches on one side. Back getting tense, not a build up. Stressed. Her sharp ears twitch.

  Words shouted. Feels like cool water slamming into me. Not painful, quite surprising. Don’t understand. Thin link unravels. Frail anyway. Retreat back to body.

  It fell apart completely. Either because of something she had done or because of my lack of concentration. It didn’t matter, I had gotten the part I wanted. A location for someone that might be able to help me answer a question.

  And clearly.

  She might be helpful. Umbrella Beer was useless to both of us. I raised a mocking cheer to the elf I could no longer see. The man was with a female he couldn’t figure out how to satisfy, which screwed with any man’s ego, no matter the race. Of course his poor choices extended to taste in drinks too. The sip I dared of his concoction tasted revolting.

  Now to get Tattooed Eyes’ attention. I would take Julianne’s advice and ask outright, what is a Lord to the elven people? An hour and a half later and I was in the area from my vision. I found a tree that held a shared view of her little boudoir to park myself at.

  It was stand here or barge in. History had shown a plethora of examples where barging into a clan home without an invite was a terrible, terrible idea. I didn't have the balls to try even with my track record. Government officials didn’t want to cross into an elven block without an invitation or the Council backing them up. Even the youngest elf was outstanding with a bow. Western Sector laws allowed them defense of their homesteads.

  Time passed while I practiced my litany, turning it one way or the other, changing the order of the words. My coat, my pants, my footsteps, my hands, my eyes, my walkway. Mine. It was hard to recreate a point of view that I never realized I had. Nothing felt different, but then there was nothing driving a need to feel different. No attacking vampires, no missing items to track down.

  Mentally playing back the earlier portions of my life revealed a constant change in perception. It had given me an edge, a tool, an awareness that others couldn’t match, for reasons I didn’t pretend to understand. It had to be vampirism. There was nothing else, all the degrees and studies in the world hadn’t turned up any other races since the Purge.

  Why hadn’t I questioned it when I was younger? Then again, if someone had told me that pissing out a third story window every day a high noon gave me superpowers I wouldn’t ask why. If it worked, anyway. This was almost the same.

  My eyes flicked to the window again, canvassing for any sign of either elf. The buildings that comprised this elven block were mostly forest in color. The trees inside had started to shift into autumn’s yellow and reds. Even elves let nature take its course. Separating out the houses was difficult, but possible since they were in a confined space.

  The block itself was surrounded by an earthen wall. It looked like someone had sheared off parts of a cliff face and put it between houses and windows. The pathway channeled visitors through the main entrances and exits. There were some windows that were right on the streets, but those were for communication and trade between clans.

  Elves were one of the few races that hadn’t fully migrated over to a monetary system. Instead they based things on trade goods, each block specializing in different items. Most of them typically owned a store or two to sell their goods for real money along the main roads.

  Once again I tried to shift my mind to the stream of focusing comments. My hands, the path I had walked on, the tree I leaned against, air that came in and out of my lungs, mine. It was all mine, however briefly, however tentatively. Mine.

  A movement at the window caught my eye. It looked female, right hair, right eyes, a h
int of green and purple tattoos. I stared for a minute and tried not to smile like an idiot. How irritated would she be? Hopefully not too annoyed to help out.

  It wasn’t like I knew where else to go. My contacts were scarce, my job typically made me unwelcome in most corners, and elves were rarely in trouble. The choice was to wait or give up and leave, and I wasn’t quite ready for that. A window closer to street level opened and her head popped out.

  “Come on, come on!” She waved me over. Moment of truth. Maybe I should start by asking her name? Julianne said I should try asking things.

  “This may …” I tried to speak.

  “Want to go to your place?” She cut me off. It didn’t help that I could barely focus on her face. For once the woman wasn’t wearing glasses, but it didn’t help because her shirt was essentially see through.

  “Uhhh…”

  “First time’s free.” The elf said.

  “First what?” I was more than a little lost.

  “You didn’t come over here to ask me out?” She was pouting now.

  “Not really, I…”

  She slammed the window shut.

  “I wanted to ask a question…”

  The window propped open again, this time she was wearing a less see through shirt. It didn’t help me focus any because I had seen, not once, but twice, what was under there.

  “Mmmh, for you I’d say, yes.”

  “Do elves have anyone they would call a Lord? Anyone who isn’t an elf?” Just ask. Julianne had suggested I ask my question and not wait for the answer to come to me. Out of all the things I had to figure, why Evan had called me 'Lord' felt paramount.

  There was a pause as she narrowed eyes in my direction. My confusion must have been evident.

  “First favor’s free, sure you want to blow it on this? There are some things that are so much more fun than dusty, old stories.” Then she smiled and leaned over a bit. A hand stretched out in my direction, tantalizingly close. It had been a while and here an elf was practically placing herself in my hands. The choice took me longer to make than it should have.