Once Lost Lords (Royal Scales, Book 1)

by Stephan Morse

  Candy found us a place to park the car. We got out and she put the car alarm back on.

  “Hold on.” She took off both shoes and set them on the ground. Then stepped up to the side of the woods.

  “What are you doing?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Are you sure you want to ask that?”

  “Don’t I have some left over positive karma? I thought I did a pretty good job there.” Better than that other elf at least. That should score me some points.

  “You’ll owe me.” Candy laughed. “It’s simple enough. I’m following the traditions. These aren’t my woods, but it belonged to someone once. They’re weak, but there are signs if you know how to look.”

  I scanned the area trying to figure out what signs she was talking about. Nothing showed itself to my untrained eyes. Maybe it wasn’t an issue of being trained or not. Elves could see things that the rest of us only guessed at. It was almost like trying to see in infrared without the aid of technology.

  Candy stood up and didn’t put her shoes back on. She showed no signs of discomfort. If anything the elf looked thrilled by the prospect of going to play in the woods. My shoes stayed firmly where they belonged.

  “I think there’s a place to drive up somewhere around here. Like an old logger’s path of some sort.” I remembered the path from the last trip.

  She looked disgusted but nodded. “They’d be for trade supplies too.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “If this is an older colony, then the same path would have been used for horses and carts to bring in trade goods from other clans.” She was talking about some old practice that didn’t make any sense to me. It was likely tied to hundreds of years ago when we first migrated over to the Western sector.

  “Not sure where it comes out. I was tied up last time.” I shrugged.

  “I didn’t know you enjoyed that type of activity.” It was her turn to raise an eyebrow.

  “Electricity running through me is a big turn on too.” Being tied up was alright in limited amounts. Typically when I was blissfully drunk after a job and Kahina was dragging me back for some victory sex. She had joked that it kept me from getting lost on the way home. I had never been sure if Kahina meant the being tied up, or the idea of victory sex.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Great. I had given her fuel for a crazy daydream.

  “Any idea where this path is? I think he’s on the other side.” I said.

  “I’ll look. It’ll be easier on us if you wait here a bit.” Candy wagged a finger at me and then turned around.

  “I...” Then she ran off into the woods. “…uhh…sure.” Not that I had a clue if she heard me or not. “I’ll stand here and guard the car then.”

  The car was locked with its alarm turned on. Candy didn’t even do me the courtesy of leaving the keys so I could crawl into the back seat and sleep. The dirt on the side of the road was tempting, though. I settled myself down near one of the trees, careful not to touch her car. Setting off the security system would do nothing but annoy the daylights out of me.

  I fiddled with the lipstick container and tried to figure it out. There was no room for secret compartments or hidden messages. This wasn’t anything rare or special. It was important to Evan somehow or the item would never function as a link. Then there was the hair and picture.

  Why had Evan been allowed to provide a lipstick tube and a picture? These items were personal which meant Evan had nothing else to let go, or he had hoped that Julianne had a true tracker. Trackers were rare, how had he known? I had been gone for years.

  This Lord thing felt familiar. The more I tried to puzzle it out the more my wrist itched. Each attempt at concentrating felt like being on the verge of a revelation. Then fluttering birds or bugs would distract me and I would forget the whole line of thinking.

  History was clear on one point. There had been other races nearly two thousand years ago. They were long gone. The big four races had banded together and engaged in a worldwide Purge. Genocide. Here I was. Not fitting into any specific box.

  Vampires, even partially exposed ones, got groggy during the day. Not me. I healed quickly. Elves didn’t heal any faster than a normal human. Wolves shared some bonds but couldn’t track aside from following scents. Daniel had said the Sector Trackers would all use dreams.

  Once again, I didn’t fit.

  Constant confusion was getting exhausting. The last two days had worn me down from nearly every angle. Before I really understood what was happening my eyes closed and stopped opening back up. The silence prevented circling thoughts from going any further.

  Waking up was quite gentle compared to the last few times. There was a tap at my shoulder and someone kept saying my name lightly.

  “Jay. Wake up.” I must have snorted or something in response. “Jay.”

  It was bright outside, closer to noon. The person waking me up wasn’t Candy, it was Julianne. She leaned over in a rather frightening reversal of our normal height differences. At least she wasn’t wearing something low cut this time. It was a vivid green shirt over tan rolled up shorts.

  “Hi.” I was disoriented. “You’re not an elf,” I said. Probably not the best choice of words to start our conversation with.

  “What does that mean?” She asked. Julianne backed off to let me stand up. A yawn and a stretch later things felt a lot better. Still tired, but not as sore as I had been.

  “Candy was here a moment ago.” I looked around slowly trying to figure out what had happened.

  “Why was she here?” Julianne held a motorcycle helmet in one hand. Her arms crossed as she glared at me.

  “She gave me a ride.” I wasn’t about to mention the return ride.

  “Uh huh. What about Kahina?”

  “Kahina kind of kicked me out.” I scratched my head.

  “Uh huh. Kahina kicked you out, you ran to Candy, and now she’s,” The way she said it made me feel like I was in trouble already. Maybe it was a guilty conscious. “here for what reason?”

  “Part of the deal. She gives me a ride north and keeps quiet about it, then she meets Evan.” I tried not to wince.

  Julianne stared at me then sighed. “Why were you sleeping?”

  “Tired.” Worn. No clue what to do. Three fights in the last two days. A nagging sensation of forgetting important facts.

  Julianne shook her head back and forth slowly then sighed. “You’re a moron.”

  “Can we find Evan and clear this up?” I couldn’t argue with her. My idiocy with regards to females was rapidly becoming the stuff of legend. Dealing with women wasn’t some magic skill that got easier as time went on. Not for me.

  “Fine by me, the weed eater completely buttoned up after you were out of sight,” Julianne said.

  “Weird,” I responded. Evan had been perfectly fine talking to others, hadn’t he?

  “You’re telling me, he’s got some sort of fixation on helping you, but anyone else isn’t worth notice.” She shot me a questioning look. My hands came up in defense.

  “No clue,” I said.

  “Is this tied to that Lord shit you were babbling about back at my house?” Julianne asked.

  I didn’t answer. Julianne was tapping her foot in irritation. Her facial expression seemed to indicate she was seconds away from hitting me repeatedly with her helmet.

  “Not going to tell me?” She said.

  “No.” Given my way, no one would hear that title applied to me ever again.

  “This better be a once off sort of thing, Jay, or I may have to fire you.”

  I groaned in response. It was hard to tell if that was a joke or not with Julianne. “What will I do with my stuff?”

  “Move. You’ll be lucky if you get the deposit back.” She waved the helmet around. Sometimes I forgot Julianne was also technically my landlord. A brief memory of the weight bench melding into the kitchen counter told me that I would be lucky if I wasn’t charged for reconstruction. It was yet another thing to thank Kahina for.
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  “So, do you want to wait for Candy?” Julianne’s tone of voice told me what I should answer.

  “I could check, see if she’s lost.”

  “You got something of hers?”

  “A car?” A few love bites, hours of memories. Never tried that before but maybe it’d work. Never tried a lot of stuff that seemed to be working anyway, maybe it was time to expand my tricks. Of course, the car had an alarm so maybe I’d only pretend to touch it.

  “You could leave her a note and head off.”

  “No, I made a deal,” I said.

  “Like that’s stopped you from breaking promises in the past.”

  I looked at her and tried to figure out what the hell that meant. Was this about the jobs I didn’t quite complete? Sometimes I failed in the past, but I hadn’t deliberately screwed anything up since my return.

  “Never mind, do your thing and let’s go.” She looked mad but turned away to a motorcycle I hadn’t seen. I hope she didn’t expect us both to fit on that.

  With one hand carefully placed right above the car, I tried to switch my mind around to tracking Candy. I flipped through everything I knew about her. Her as a person. In addition to our conversations which constantly seemed to be about two different topics. In addition, she had a little birthmark on her lower left back. My senses unfurled and leapt towards the woods.

  It was easy to think of her as mine, however briefly, after this morning. Possessiveness was a given for most guys right after sex.

  Trees went by, they nearly vibrated with the after image of life energy. Why the hell had she gone so far into the woods? This was like twenty miles. How long had I been asleep? How fast could she go in the forest? My mind swung over the woods and got closer. Then closer. I could see her body dashing at a breakneck speed through the trees.

  One moment it would look like she slipped then her foot would slam down and launch her even further. She found purchase that I could never hope to in the dense wilderness. I followed, but she kept running. Her gaze would look back every so often then focus on the journey.

  The entire time she was headed away.

  Around me, the same pressure that had been present when I was viewing Candy in her bedroom seemed to suffuse the area. It made it hard to catch up. Traveling along in her wake felt like swimming through syrup. Seeing her face was also difficult.

  She stopped, spun and slashed at the air as if attacking an unseen foe. There was no one following her that I knew of. Really the only person in the wilderness was me.

  “No!” Candy yelled, there was more, but that was all I made out in the jumble of tactile sensation. A moment later my concentration shattered and I slumped forward. It felt like I was suddenly forced to switch my focus to an object less than two inches away from my face. Dull thumping started in both ears.

  I fell right onto the car which naturally triggered the alarm. It only served to make the headache worse as my mind retreated into the rest of my body. The noise bounced off of every solid object in the area, causing my back to twitch with irritation. My palm pressed into an eyeball to try and relieve pressure. Julianne was shouting behind me.

  “What?!” I tried to yell past a headache and car alarm that ganged up to attack me.

  Julianne said something again.

  “What?!”

  “What the hell did you do?” She was a lot closer, with the helmet in her hands.

  “I don’t know.” I don’t think she heard my response over the alarm. Julianne pulled at an arm and I followed the tug.

  She got us situated awkwardly on her motorcycle. I limply hung on while we drove away from the car’s whine. The motorcycle was as loud as the car alarm, but nowhere near as piercing. A few minutes later Julianne had us at the edge of a tiny road framed by dozens of warning signs.

  Julianne pulled off to the side and stopped the motorcycle. I was thankful. The idea of going down the bumpy back road on a two-wheeler was more than I could take. Both feet firmly planted themselves on the ground, but my knees didn’t give the same effort. I knelt to the ground, relieved that my first motorcycle ride in years didn’t end poorly.

  “What happened back there?” Julianne didn’t even give me a few minutes to gather my thoughts and figure it out myself.

  “Connection broke,” I said.

  “That’s not normal, right?” She responded. I hadn’t told her how it works, but she had seen it in action numerous times, she had a feel for it by now.

  “No.”

  “If I’d known you moving back to town would turn into such a cluster fuck I would have evicted you.” Julianne glared at me.

  “You like me too much for that.” I weakly joked.

  She didn’t joke back.

  “Sit tight, I’ll make a call and get a truck up here. We’ll take it in from here and see if we can find Evan and solve this. I don’t want Daniel in my business anymore. And Charlie has made it pretty clear that all my extra business activities have come under heavy fire.” She said while tapping a foot angrily.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Charlie? My accountant?” Julianne looked at me with a perplexed expression.

  “Oh. Yeah. I got a similar sort of message.” I said.

  “What kind?”

  “If I go home, everything goes up in a fire.”

  “What?” The skin around her eyes twitched in anger. She flung out a foot at me but was too short to make it the entire distance. Soon she had a cell phone out and started yelling at someone on the other end.

  Julianne’s order of concerns went from her income, to pack, to friends. Maybe Stacy was above that, maybe Kahina too from the way they staged an intervention at her house before letting me deal with Evan. No wonder she was mad at me, here I was screwing up all of them.

  I couldn’t hear the car alarm anymore, but any chance I had of linking to Candy using the car’s presence was gone. Not that I wanted to have her swing a knife at me again. Was she the same as Evan in that regard? Could she feel me as I closed in? Evan had and knelt to wait for me.

  Evan wasn’t a full Speaker, and Candy had implied she was the real deal. Was that the difference?

  She certainly wasn’t trying to find the logging road. If she had then it would have been reasonably swift. Julianne had driven there in maybe ten minutes from where the car had been parked. Was Candy trying to get to Evan first? To prevent him from telling me what I was? Was that why she made me promise to let her meet him? It had to be. I got up and started jogging down the logging path.

  “Jay!” Julianne barked at me while alternating from her phone conversation. “Jay, what the hell are you doing?”

  “We’re losing ground!” Candy had a lengthy lead. She couldn’t get to Evan first. I had to know why there was considerable pressure around what I was.

  Kahina had started something years ago during that first blood draw. It caused her to go crazy, like a sort of thick red ambrosia. Candy and Evan, both elves, knew something. Something that no other elf I had tracked knew or felt. Then Daniel’s armed escort saying I needed to be tested.

  Julianne was yelling after me, then cursed and started down the path.

  Everything was related. Evan had the answers. Arnold Regious no longer mattered to me. If I knew what I was then perhaps some of my own problems would be solved. If I got there first she couldn’t stop me from getting my answers.

  Ten minutes later and my energy reserves were already gone. I’d been run ragged by various activities back to back. Damn Candy, she probably wore me out on purpose. Sneaky.

  “You know it’ll be just as fast to wait right?” She huffed.

  “Beats waiting. Your bike okay?” I had to feel like something useful was being done.

  “I rolled it behind a tree, one of the guys will take it to my grandfather’s.”

  “How long you been dealing with Evan?” I asked.

  Julianne shoved both hands into her pockets and shrugged. “Two years?”

  “Good client?” I asked while
doing my best to walk a straight line. My head was still fuzzy and trying to work through numerous problems.

  “Until a few months ago, sure.” She said. That timing made no sense.

  “Why the picture and lipstick? Why not the usual?” I asked.

  “He seemed desperate. Evan claimed he didn’t have anything else to repay me with except the shirt off his back, and I didn’t want that.” She said. The elf’s shirt had been rather ratty looking. Being dragged around by Julianne and Daniel probably didn’t help.

  “But those items wouldn't work for whoever was doing my old job, would they?” I asked.

  “Not really. The scent was solid but doesn’t stick like hair does. Then again hair doesn’t exactly last long, tends to give me a time limit on my good graces.” How long before she made you pay up, or sent someone out to find you.

  “I was glad you came back, figured I could finally stop paying second rate people, but…” But I had shut myself indoors for a few weeks and crawled into drinks.

  “Sorry.” I was too.

  “The upside is after Francis, I’m sure I can find some use for you.” She smiled briefly. Julianne wasn’t looking up at me and instead seemed focused on the distance.

  “I thought I was the bad guy here?” I said. Julianne had been pissed off at me a moment ago.

  “If you blow up my apartments, then you’re fired.” She paused. “Or if you hit Stacy again.”

  “Look I’m…”

  “Sorry, I’m sure. Both of us should’ve known better, you’re like a wolf in that regard, if pushed too far when someone nips at you, you give the same treatment back. It’s not pleasant, but it’s true anyway. I knew that slap wouldn’t break you.” She was so factual about it.

  “Rung for a while,” I said.

  “That’s what you get for being such an arrogant jerk.”

  “I thought I’d always been one.” Maybe I shouldn’t be joking about this. The arrogant jerk factor must have been part of my whole self-possessed mentality that had given me an edge.