by Rhys Ford
But I was always worried about the ainmhi dubh. Especially since Dempsey assured me I’d pretty much knocked on the Unsidhe’s front door and announced I was still alive. They would be coming for me, if only to make me an example of what happens to a piece of magicked flesh that dared walk away from its master. Tanic cuid Anbhás, Lord Master of the Wild Hunt for the Unsidhe, was definitely not going to just let me go. I didn’t need Dempsey or anyone else to tell me that. I knew that in my guts. Mostly because his hands had played in my bowels nearly every day since he’d made me, and I remembered the pain of his dragging iron spikes through my flesh in every breath since Dempsey pulled me free.
I had the Mustang’s carburetor torn apart and spread out over a tarp when I heard footsteps on the cobblestones behind me. The stride was hesitant, confident when far away but a stammering clop closer in. I ignored whoever it was, intent on getting the guts of the carb cleaned out for the run I still wasn’t sure I would take.
Yesterday I’d woken up sprawled out on a strange bed, alone except for my cat, Newt, kneading at my bare shoulder and another pounding hangover dug into the inside of my skull. This morning my sheets were perfumed again with a hint of green tea with a whisper of cinnamon chasing after it, woven into the fine cotton threads as deftly as the scrolling Sidhe leaves embroidered along the linen’s edges. Showering didn’t get Ryder’s scent off my skin, and I stumbled downstairs for some food later that day, whispers and soft smiles cresting in my wake.
I’d have punched the asshole if he hadn’t been with our nieces when I found him, so instead, I spent the afternoon wincing when one of the mini-banshees let loose her ear-piercing sonic blast and trying to match their laughter when they giggled. It was alarming how tired I got chasing after a pair of barely sentient twin Sidhe babies, but I’d returned to the tower the Court made me, fed the cat, then face-planted on the bed, not bothering to take off my clothes.
I’d oddly gotten used to waking up in the middle of the night with Ryder wrapped around me and Newt someplace on my legs. In the half week since Dempsey’s funeral, I’d fallen into a numbness, coming up for air only for a Sidhe Lord and the occasional feline demand for ear scritches and belly rubs.
Today was the first day I felt halfway normal and mostly… human, still shuddering a bit when the Sidhe chatter in the halls played havoc with my nerves, and my stomach knotting in anticipation for the glut of whiskey I longed to pour down my throat.
Drinking was out. It was a crutch too many Stalkers used to wipe away the blood, guts, and gore splattered over their memories. I’d pulled Dempsey out of more than a few bars, dragging his argumentative dead weight behind me before both of us got our faces punched in. During every single one of those times, I thought he was drinking to somehow dull the loss of his mobility and the end of his Stalker career. Now I wondered if it wasn’t because of me. I was the reason he’d become an outsider in the only community that embraced his irascible, hardheaded personality. Three—no, four—days wasn’t enough time for me to get over Dempsey’s death, and I still hadn’t wrestled with the demons left in my brain from his final words to me.
I couldn’t pull a scent off of the person standing behind me, but the wind was toward my face and some of the elfin didn’t always register with me, the light hint of fragrance from their skin too delicate for me to catch. The midmorning sun was a splash of warm amid the cool shade of the surrounding forest, and while the Court’s main cobblestoned square often soaked in the heat, the retreating storm left it stripped of any warmth, dampening the bricks and the chill so deep they practically shivered in their mortar. If I’d been smart, I would’ve brought something to sit on besides the tarp, but the cold creeping through my muscles kept me alert and the tingles of pain along my nerves reminded me I was alive.
“Dempsey would’ve scolded you for sitting on the cold stone.” Cari’s voice wavered as she spoke. “He used to tell me doing that would give me hemorrhoids.”
The carb’s choke valve had been sticking, and I wanted to see if it could be cleaned or if I was going to be stuck with rebuilding the damned thing before I headed back out. Turning the parts over in my hand, I tilted them up one by one, ignoring Cari’s approach.
Her legs appeared at my left side, and I caught a glimpse of her fingers reaching for my shoulder. “Kai—”
“What do you want?” I didn’t trust myself to glance up at her. There was still anger in my blood at everything, including her giving Jonas her link to call me. She was my little sister, or at least the closest thing I had to a sibling, and something small and dark in me ached every time I thought of hearing Jonas’s voice when I’d expected to hear hers.
“At least you give me credit for hunting you down and not asking how I found you.” She crouched, her dark hair curving around her strong jaw.
I knew every inch of Cari’s face, having watched her grow from a swaddled lump of crying meat to the woman she was now, and somehow I’d missed the faint lines beginning to form at the edges of her eyes. I’d blinked and the years were now in her face and hands, a stretched dryness along her skin, chafed red from the cold wind cutting into the courtyard’s open expanse. Dressed in one of my old jackets I’d outgrown years ago, she’d shoved up the sleeves until they rode her upper arms, the worn leather scrunched up over her ropey muscles. She was still vibrant and strong, but there was an earthiness to her face and demeanor, one I’d missed her gaining over the years.
“You’re a witch, remember?” I curled my lip at her. “Pretty sure you could have sliced open a pigeon and it would have led the way. Lots of damned pigeons around here. They like to crap on cars as much as the trees do.”
“Like I’d waste the meat looking for you,” she sniped back. “Still got that folding chair in the Pony’s trunk? Because if I’m going to talk to you, it’s not going to be crouched over like some auntie picking through peas.”
I couldn’t hold on to the kernel burning hot in my belly. No matter how much I tried. I’d learned how to be human with Cari, taking each mental footstep with her as she grew. I was still pissed. That wasn’t going to go away, but her coming to poke at me was… so normal, and at the moment, I needed a bit of normal after quieting the raging shitstorm through my head.
There were more birds taking flight above the canopy, but they were too far away for me to identify. Not enough to alarm, but certainly something to take note of. I listened with half an ear as Cari wrestled the metal chair from the Mustang’s trunk, gauging the size of movement through the forest beyond the Court. It didn’t seem large enough to startle more than a few flocks, and I couldn’t hear the telltale thunder of a heavy animal breaking through the underbrush. The woods around the Court were largely unexplored, left to grow feral and heavy with roaming wild animals.
“Still think something’s going to come up and snatch someone from the forest?” Cari asked, shaking the chair out until the seat locked down.
“Lions’ territories go out to more than a hundred miles sometimes. It’s not that far from here to Kearny Mesa, even with the river cutting across the valley. And as far as I know, the damned pandas have gotten a taste for flesh after years of chewing down bamboo. No sense being stupid and losing someone when having a lick of common sense will keep everyone alive,” I retorted, going back to scrubbing at the crevices of the Mustang’s carb. She got settled, hunched over in the leather jacket, and gave me owl eyes from under its upturned collar. I snorted, too used to her wheedling ways. “Don’t give me any shit, mija. Speak your piece—”
“You never sounded more like Dempsey than right now.” Her words went in smooth, sharpened with the keen edge of someone who knew every single one of my weaknesses. I felt the cut down deep, but I had nothing more to give her. I’d bled out days ago, left white and lifeless in front of the Presidio’s Death Wall. “Listen, I’m sorry about giving Jonas my link, but he’s going crazy thinking you hate him, and I’m pissed as hell at Dempsey for dragging that stuff out when it didn’t need to be. T
hese are your people, Kai. I’m your people. Yeah, they were assholes for one little moment in your life, but they changed. If you can’t see that, then you’re more of an ass than they ever were. What the hell are you thinking? And why the hell are you hiding here? Don’t tell me it’s because of the food, because I’ve eaten with Alexa. They’ve got bug burgers. I spent five hours one time trying to pick some damned leg prickles out from between my teeth.”
“It’s sure as hell not for the bug burgers,” I confessed, making a face. I’d eaten a lot of things over the years. There were times when hand-sized larva plucked from the insides of fallen trees fed me and Dempsey for a month while tracking down a large pack of black dogs in Colorado, but if I had to choose, I preferred my meat to have four or two legs. “I’m not pissed at you. Well, a little bit. I get why you did it, handing the link over, but sometimes, Cari, I need some space to figure stuff out. I just buried Dempsey, dammit, and there’s all the crap he dumped on me that I’ve got to deal with. You all have to listen to me when I need time. You can’t come picking at me until I’m ready to blink.”
“But time to you isn’t going to be the same as it is for us,” she pressed, shoving her hands into the jacket’s pockets, shivering when the wind picked up. “Dempsey shouldn’t have—”
“Dempsey was a hell of a lot smarter than a lot of people gave him credit for, and behind that Irish-hick asshole mask was someone who manipulated the hell out of everyone around him, including me,” I dropped in, putting the carb down. My knees were a bit stiff from the cold tarp, but they worked well enough to get me up on my feet and over to the Mustang. I tossed Cari a blanket from the back, then sat down in the passenger seat, stretching my legs out in front of me to ease the ache running through them. “I got drunk—shitfaced drunk—and in the middle of all of the haze, I realized Dempsey was trying to kick me back to here. To the Sidhe. Or at least to the Court. He wanted to shake my trees because it was his way to dealing with shit after he was gone.”
“What? By yanking away the only family you’ve got?” She made a small mound of leather and plaid, the swaths of cloth burying any hint of the chair she sat on. “Jonas raised you. So did Sparky. They’re always going to be here for you.”
“Until they’re not. Because they’re going to be gone, and I’m going to need allies that are going to be around. This is the long game. I can’t hide behind a ring of humans anymore. Sooner instead of later, Death’s going to pick off everyone who gives a shit about me, and I’m going to be stuck in the middle of some stupid blood feud without anyone to back me up. Dempsey knew that. Shit, I wasn’t listening to him when he told me, so he pretty much ripped me open until I saw it.” I’d spent the past few nights lying in a bed big enough for an elephant to stretch out in, shoved to the edge by my little cat’s sprawl. Sleep hadn’t come easily while my brain picked apart Dempsey’s final hours with me, and I’d had a lot of time to think about the old man manipulating me to find my way out of trouble. “Dempsey knew me. Coming at me with the truth wasn’t going to get him anywhere, so he did what he always did—shoved at my weaknesses until I moved to where he wanted me to be.”
“So what? He had to crack apart you, Jonas, and Sparky so you’d go dancing into the Court?” Cari gave a small snort that only lasted long enough to wet her nostrils. Her luminous eyes grew wide, and she looked around. “Hell, that’s exactly what he did. Because here you are.”
“Yeah, here I am.”
I’d sprayed cleaner on the wonky parts and let them sit on the tarp, hoping it would do the trick and I wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole damned thing. From how it responded in my hand after I tweaked at it, I didn’t have a lot of hope for its quick resurrection. Finding a new one would be a bitch and a half, and I’d cut off my supplier with my anger. It wouldn’t feel right to go hat in hand to Sparky and ask her to find me a new one, especially when I’d been the one to toss up the fence between us. Jason was an option, but I didn’t want to put him in the middle of it. The fewer people in the stew, the better.
“So now what? You just sit here with the Sidhe and wait out your pissiness, or are you going to go do something about the crap you’re sitting in?” Cari leaned forward, clasping her hands between her knees. She was shivering beneath the blanket, her cheeks turning pink from the crisp wind sweeping through the courtyard. It caught up a pile of sodden leaves, lifting up the edges enough for a few dry pieces to swirl around her feet. “They’re sorry, Kai. And if you don’t fix this, then you’re going to end up losing people you’ve considered your family. Is that what you want?”
It wasn’t. Shit, I was angry as hell at them, but also at myself for not seeing how my life was going to play out. I’d lived in the moment, a true Stalker, jumping from contract to contract, kill to kill without planning for any future other than a retirement filled with scars and aching muscles. Dempsey’d known better. He knew Tanic would come for me eventually, and I wouldn’t be able to stand up against him and his Wild Hunt with only humans by my side.
I just hated like hell on how he decided to show me the truth. I needed some time to work through all of the crap in my head, and luckily I had an out to give me space to get my head together, a small Run up the interior to hopefully outrun some of my stray demons.
“What I’m going to do right now is take that handful of Dempsey’s ashes to his brother in New Vegas, and when I come back, I’ll talk with Jonas and Sparky.” I shook my head, cutting off Cari’s sputtering protests before she got too deep into her arguments. “I’ve got to do this, Cari. He’s got some stuff of Dempsey’s from back when he accepted the contract on me. After I’m done, I’ll have a better idea on what I’m up against. Or at least what was behind me. Alexa said she’d watch Newt for me. Shouldn’t take more than a week or so to get this taken care of. It’s just something I’ve got to do.”
“I’m coming with you,” Cari argued, mad turning her eyes hot beneath her hooded lids.
“Well then, I’m calling shotgun,” Ryder drawled, sneaking up on us with silent footsteps. “That’s the expression, right? Shotgun? Because to borrow one of Kai’s snarling expressions, there’s no way in hell I am sitting in the back seat.”
“YOU’RE NOT coming with me.” I hadn’t planned on taking up residence at the Court, so my duffel didn’t have a lot in it. Just a few pairs of jeans and some T-shirts, but I’d learned my lesson years ago and packed enough underwear to withstand a siege on a city until someone rolled a wooden horse up to its gates. “You’re the damned High Lord here. You can’t just go wandering off into the desert every time you feel like it. You’re like one of those starship captains on the telenovelas. ‘Look! I’m the ship’s leader, and I’m going to take every other important person with me to look at this dangerous planet. Let’s leave the fry cook and that guy with the one wonky eye in charge. What’s the worst that can happen?’ Seriously, take the red shirt off, Ryder, and sit your ass down where it belongs.”
From his nest on my bed, Newt gave a mewling snort and rolled over, showing me where his balls used to be, while Ryder leaned back against the door frame, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked comfortable. Smug even. And I flipped him off with a backward V, guessing he didn’t know what it meant.
I was wrong.
“Don’t take that tone of fingers with me. Alexa can take care of both the cat and the Court.” He pushed off the wall. Then his long legs quickly nipped away at the distance between us. “You need someone right now.”
“Lordling, I don’t—” He was pressed against my side before I could finish the half-baked excuse sitting on my tongue. The Court wasn’t ever noisy, not like the city a few blocks away, but I would have sworn at that moment it dipped down into a silence so pure I could hear the beat of his heart through his fingers as they clasped my wrist. “Ryder….”
My body remembered him holding me, my arms wrapped around his shoulders and waist, pulling him close to snuggle against while my soul grieved and my head pounded from too much
whiskey. The scent of his skin filled my lungs—a tang of teas or maybe even maile and vanilla. I wasn’t sure anymore, but my tongue ached for a taste of his lips, to slide across the plump of his mouth and leave teeth marks on them. This was more than some primal drive to become a part of the Sidhe Lord who called to my blood. He carried a part of me in him now, without even sharing anything other than a sheet and a curled-up cat, he was under my skin, and no amount of digging would get him out.
I wasn’t ready for that kind of complication in my life, and I needed to tell Ryder to step back, to go away, to go hide someplace safe and dark and warm until I was able to come back without any strings or slavering black dogs on my trail. Right now I was nothing but trouble, and I would bring all of the Hells mankind ever could think up down upon his Court if he did more than touch me.
The gold-green flecks in his forest-and-emerald eyes told me he knew all of that and didn’t give one shit about it.
“You do this all the time. I watch you. Every time. Whenever someone gets too close, you hiss and snarl like your gargoyle on the bed, pushing them away.” He whispered, leaning in closer until his breath tickled my jaw, “You’ve just lost the man who pulled you out of a nightmare and gave you purpose. He spent what life he had as a human to prepare you for the day when the Wild Hunt Master would come for you, and he taught you to shove away anyone who could love you, because he knew you’d turn yourself over to Tanic rather than watch your loved ones be taken or killed. Because you know what Tanic will do to anyone who stands with you.