I knew better than to reach out. Right now, she was processing the odds that Rafé was still alive. At that moment, her phone rang. Startled, she glanced at the screen and murmured something that sounded very akin to “Oh, fuck,” which was unusual, because while Angel swore, it usually didn’t involve the F-bomb.
“I’ll be right back. I have to take this. Ember, will you come with me? I want a witness to listen in.” She led me back to our room, where she punched the speakerphone. “Go ahead. What do you want, DeWayne?”
Great. DeWayne again.
“You promised to tell me who my kid is. I tried calling your mother over the years, but she never answered my calls. I know she was pregnant when I left—but I want to know. Who the hell is my kid? And what did Nina leave him or her? I ought to know about my kid. I have a right to know!” His words were slurred and it was obvious he was drunk.
Angel glared at the screen, shaking her head. She looked up at me and anger filled her eyes, replacing the fear from a moment before. Finally, she let out an exasperated sigh.
“You know what, DeWayne? My mother didn’t answer you because you aren’t the father. She told me so years ago. She met somebody else before you left. He was the father. And Mama J. told me she was glad you left because it saved her the trouble of breaking up with you. As to who my sibling is, you don’t need to know. Your sperm didn’t do a damn thing but hop around, unloved and unwanted. And in case you might be sniffing around for money, think again. I sold Mama’s restaurant to pay her debts. What little was left ended up incinerated by a house fire this year. So don’t call me again.” She punched the end talk button and then brought up his number and blocked it.
I stared at her. “Is that true? He wasn’t DJ’s father?”
“Of course it’s not true. But DeWayne doesn’t know that. And what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. All he wants is cash or stuff he can pawn. As for DJ, well, Cooper’s been more of a father than DeWayne could ever hope to be. So no, I didn’t tell him the truth and I’m not sorry.”
She dropped to her bed, holding her head in her hands. “I have a splitting headache.”
I sat beside her, gently placing an arm around her shoulders.
“I know. It’s the storm,” I said. The storm that was bringing her headache was actually the storm going on inside of her, but I didn’t say anything about it. “You did the right thing. DeWayne would have disrupted everything and he would have left DJ confused.”
“Right. I’m not going to let DJ be used by his creep of a father.” Angel shook her head, covering her eyes.”
I rubbed her shoulders, murmuring soft sounds. While I knew she was upset over DeWayne’s calls, I also knew she was upset over Rafé, but I wasn’t going to approach that subject until she was ready to talk about it. She could deflect her anger and fear onto DeWayne for the moment and safely feel it without facing the fear that Rafé was in trouble or dead.
“You know what gets me?” she asked after a moment.
“What?”
“DeWayne…the first time I met him, I told Mama J. he was trouble. And she nodded and said, I know, child. I know. But something good’s going to come out of this, you wait and see.” She paused. “Do you think she was talking about DJ?”
“I think that’s likely. Who knows what that brainy little brother of yours is going to grow up to do? He’s brilliant, and he’s such a good kid. He might end up saving the world.” I rubbed her shoulders another moment, then pulled away and leaned back to stare at the ceiling.
“Do you think Rafé’s alive?” Angel asked softly after a few seconds.
“I don’t know, but my gut tells me yes. So let’s listen to that until we find out otherwise, all right?” I hadn’t even realized that I did believe he was still alive until right then, but as I answered her, it felt right—it felt true in my core.
“All right. I’ll pull myself together and we’ll go back in. I just hate not knowing. I hate having to wait. It’s the worst thing in the world.” Angel crossed to the bathroom, where she washed her face.
There was a tap on the door and Raven peeked in.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
I motioned for her to enter. “Sure. We’re getting ready to rejoin the others.”
“You might want to give it a couple minutes. Kipa just arrived and he and Herne are hashing out something.” She raised her eyebrows. “They’re apparently arguing over how to proceed from here.”
“Lovely,” I said. “Just what we need. More testosterone wars.”
“Tell me a little about Kipa. He’s gorgeous,” Raven said, and I caught an undercurrent in her voice that I doubted she was aware of.
I cocked my head, staring at her for a few seconds. “Well, Kipa is Herne’s…you might call him a distant cousin. He’s Lord of the Wolves. An elemental god of the wolves or something like that, from Finland. He was banished from Mielikki’s Arrow—an agency like the Wild Hunt run by the goddess Mielikki—for putting the moves on her. He also stole Herne’s fiancée, a long, long time ago. But he’s a good guy, basically, a bit more chaotic than is good for anybody, but he’s saved our asses a couple of times.”
Raven’s eyes flickered. “He’s incredibly hot.”
Hot was an understatement. Kipa was darker, with a Mediterranean skin tone. He had long dreads that were a dark brown and eyes the color of melted chocolate. He was muscled and strong and had a sly smile that made it easy to want to lick him up. Kipa—whose full name was Kuippana—had five earrings on each ear, tiny hoops that banded the lobes, and he had a dolphin bite piercing on the center of his lip—the two rings that ran vertically were silver.
“Yeah, Kipa’s gorgeous, I’ll say that much for him.” I watched her for a moment. Since Ulstair had been murdered, she hadn’t shown any interest in men but now, I sensed a spark. “He’s single, you know.”
“How is that possible?” Raven laughed, then as if she caught her thoughts wandering in a direction that made her uncomfortable, she shook her head. “Anyway, the men are arguing, Talia and Yutani are searching for Rafé’s signal, and Viktor is cleaning up the remains of lunch.”
Angel returned at that moment. “What did I miss?”
“Kipa showed up. As usual, the tree twins are arguing.” Recently, during a tipsy evening, Angel and I had come up with the name for Kipa and Herne. Neither one of them had seen the humor in it, but we decided that it bore remembering.
“Oh, lovely. One more thing to add to our list. But Kipa might just come in handy. He can track like nobody’s business—hell, between Herne and him, they own the woods. Maybe they can think of a way to track down Rafé.” A glint in her eye told me she had caught hold of a slender ray of hope.
“Good idea. Let’s go in and see if we can get them to stop bitching at each other and actually get something done. Coming?” I asked Raven.
She blinked. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said.
And right then, I knew that she was clawing her way out of her own melancholy, whether or not she realized it.
CHAPTER TEN
The first thing I noticed when we entered the room was that Yutani wasn’t around. Talia and Viktor were sitting at the desk that served as a table, watching as Kipa and Herne stood in the corner, grumbling at one another. Whatever argument they’d been embroiled in seemed to have calmed down. Angel wiggled her fingers at Kipa and I gave him a smile and nod. I was cautious with how much I interacted with him because Herne had a jealous streak, and given the background between the two men, I didn’t like bringing up bad memories. As we sat down, I glanced at Raven, who was staring at Kipa with a calculating look on her face.
“Hey, Kipa, how goes it?” I said. “You haven’t met Raven yet, have you?”
Kipa flashed her a quick look, then did a double take. He blinked and a slow smile spread over his face. “Well, well, if it isn’t one of the Ante-Fae? And aren’t you just a welcome sight for sore eyes?”
She paused for a moment before an
swering. “And just how sore are your eyes, Wolf?” She held his gaze in a way I couldn’t have managed—firmly, without blinking, with a sly smile to match his. “So, Ember tells me that you’re the Lord of the Wolves? I’ve no doubt of that.”
Kipa slowly approached the table where we were sitting. He stopped near me, but faced Raven. “How now, you’re a necromancer, aren’t you?”
“I’m known as the Daughter of Bones among my own people, and yes, I’m a bone witch.” She straightened, lifting her chin just enough to tell me that she could sense his interest. Hell, everybody in the room should be able to, I thought. He was sniffing around her skirts like a wolf on the prowl.
“You work with the dead under the moon, don’t you, O Ancient One? Yet, you seem very young compared to most of the Ante-Fae.” He leaned toward her ever so slightly and I scooted my chair back, feeling like I was in the middle of a pair of magnets. “So, what line do you descend from?”
Raven cleared her throat. “My mother is Phasmoria, one of the Bean Sidhe, and my father hails from the Hanging Hills—Curikan, the Black Dog.” She paused, then asked, “You are Herne’s cousin, Ember tells me?”
Kipa nodded. “I am that, in a distant manner, milady. I hearken from Finland.” And with that, he held out his hand and she stared at it for a moment before placing her own in his palm. He lifted it to his lips. “It’s an honor to meet you, daughter of death.”
I glanced over at Herne, who was suppressing a smile. After a moment, he said, “If introductions are done, we should get down to business. If my cousin doesn’t mind.”
Raven, as if suddenly aware she and Kipa had been exchanging more than pleasantries, shook her head and blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hold up the meeting.”
“Don’t apologize. Herne just likes to hear himself talk,” Kipa said, winking at Raven.
At that moment, Yutani returned to Herne’s room, carrying his laptop. “I’ve tried time and again but…” He paused, glancing from Raven to Kipa, back to Raven. I realized that he could smell their pheromones. The smile slipped off his face, but he stoically placed his laptop on the table and cleared his throat.
“As I said, I’ve tried several times, but I can’t seem to bring up Rafé’s signal. I’m not sure what’s going on, or what we should do next.” He turned to Herne. “I can think of one thing, but I’m not sure you’d like it.”
Herne looked at him steadily. After a moment, he said, “I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say. And it may be the only way. I don’t like the thought of it, but with what we’re facing, and the pressure from Cernunnos, I think it’s our only choice right now.”
I glanced at Yutani, then back at Herne. “You’re both being extremely cryptic. What are you talking about?”
“If Yutani is thinking along the same lines I am, it means we’re going to kidnap Nalcops and get the truth out of him as to where the Tuathan Brotherhood makes its headquarters.” He gave me a veiled look, and I could see his father in his eyes. Once in a while, Herne had a way of reminding me he was a god, and that he didn’t mind doing things that most people would shy away from.
I suppressed an automatic We can’t do that, forcing myself to think it through logically. Nalcops was our only connection to the group at this point, and Rafé’s life depended on finding them. When I thought about it that way, the idea made a lot of sense.
“I think you’re right,” I said, glancing at Angel and Raven.
Raven nodded. “You can’t just leave your man in there. Just who is this Nalcops? And what kind of powers does he have?”
“He’s Dark Fae, as far as I could tell,” Angel said. “As to powers, I have no clue. I tried to shake his hand but he avoided me, and I couldn’t get a read on anything about him other than that.”
Herne turned to Viktor. “Best way of going about this?”
Viktor thought about it for a moment, then said, “I think we head over there this evening after dark. We render him unconscious and smuggle him back somewhere private. We don’t want to stay at his house, but we should search it while we’re there to see if we can find anything important. The question becomes, what do we do with him afterward? We can’t free him. The first thing he’d do is contact the brotherhood. Also, once we find out what we can, we better get our asses up to Port Angeles, to find Rafé. The moment they discover Nalcops is missing, they’re going to know something’s wrong and they’ll probably suspect Rafé.”
“Good points, all of them. All right, next question is, how do we knock out Nalcops without raising any sort of alarm? We can do it the old-fashioned way, but we run the risk of accidentally killing him, and then we’d be out of luck. We need him alive long enough to find out where the headquarters are. As to what we do with him afterward, I suggest we take him to Cernunnos.”
“But do you have a contact around here able to send him through to Annwn? If there isn’t a portal handy, we can’t just lug him around with us,” Talia said. “I’m afraid that I have to opt on the side of getting rid of him. Then again, what do we do with the body? We need to make him just disappear.”
“I can handle that,” Kipa said. “There are enough of my children around that I can call on them to devour him. All I need is a patch of woods, and there’s no lack of that around here.”
Angel was sitting there silently, her expression blank. I knew she had a hard time with decisions like this.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She nodded, surprising me. “Rafé’s life is in danger. Nalcops has been party to killing numerous people. I have no problem with what’s being discussed.”
“Then I suggest we stop by Nalcops’s house and grab him. We can question him on the way to Port Angeles, and stop off in the woods to let Kipa do his work.” Herne leaned back, a dark gleam in his eye.
“What about Angus and the Cailleach? We can’t just leave him in the lurch, can we?” Yutani shut his laptop, pushing back on the table.
“We’ll have to take care of that situation after we’ve found Rafé. I’m afraid the Cailleach will just have to run amok for a while. I’ll tell Angus to hide out until we return. In fact, he can come with us if he wants.” Herne stood and stretched. “I’m going down and pay our bill through tomorrow. That way, we can leave when we need to. Meanwhile, get your gear packed. Viktor, you and Talia come up with a way to knock out Nalcops without harming him. We’ll also need rope and a good gag. All right, let’s get busy. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
And with that, the meeting was adjourned.
IT WASN’T long until dark. Once we were packed, we carried our stuff out to our cars. Kipa would be riding with Viktor, Yutani, and Talia. As Herne and I arranged the suitcases and bags in the back of the Expedition, he jostled me in the ribs with his elbow.
“Was I imagining, or did you sense a spark between Raven and Kipa?” He sounded hopeful.
I nodded, handing him Angel’s suitcase. “Yeah. I doubt if Raven would admit it, but there was definitely something there. I think they’d suit each other, to be honest. I’m surprised Ulstair was able to keep up with her, but he apparently had a courage and fortitude that we never got to see.” I paused, then I just had to needle him a little bit. “Are you still worried that I find Kipa attractive?”
“I can see the appeal,” Herne said, grumbling.
“All right, listen to me. For the final time, Kipa is a gorgeous man. God. Elemental spirit. Whatever you want to call him. But the thought of trying to deal with his personality fills me with as much dread as it would if I were considering Raven for a lover. I consider both of them friends, and they both have good hearts. But I pity the fool who gets involved with either one of them. On the other hand, given their natures, I think they’d make good foils for one another. Are you at peace with this now?”
Herne straightened up, sighing. “I’m sorry. I am, and I won’t bring it up again. I know in my heart that you aren’t interested in Kipa, and while I won’t ever trust him fully aga
in, he does seem to have changed. So I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I don’t think he’s out to get you. I just… Ember, I love you so much, but I know I have baggage. A lot of it. I suppose I’m afraid that you’ll get tired of dealing with the crap coming out from my past. You’ve been wonderful about Danielle, more so than I had a right to expect.”
“Danielle is your daughter. You didn’t even know she existed. She’s happy now, and we seem to have made our peace. As far as your past lovers, unless one of them returns, sniffing around and wanting to dig her claws into you again, well… We all have our own baggage. I’ve got several boyfriends in my past. And then there’s Ray.” I grimaced, wishing I had never met Ray Fontaine.
“All right. I promise, I’ll stop worrying about you and Kipa. I won’t mention it again.” He pulled me into his arms, leaning down to place his lips against mine for a long, luxurious kiss. “Are you ready for what we’re facing next?”
I shook my head, snuggling in against his chest, secure in the warmth of his embrace.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for this sort of thing. But I understand the necessity. So, I suppose the answer is yes. I just hope Talia and Viktor figured out some way to knock him out so that nobody notices.”
“You and me both, love. You and me both.”
BY THE TIME we reached Nalcops’s house, it was dark. The days were growing shorter, heading toward midwinter, and sunset came early. Angus had opted to stay at the hotel, and he promised he wouldn’t go home until we contacted him. In a way, I was relieved. The fewer people we had in on this, the fewer chances we had of somebody going off kilter.
Yutani had fashioned a smoke bomb with a sedative in the gas. He had also managed to procure a gas mask from somewhere, and he volunteered to take the lead. There was nobody parked around the house once we got Port Gamble, and the lack of people actually inhabiting the town made it much easier.
Both Herne and Viktor parked in front of Nalcops’s house, and we watched as Yutani headed up the front sidewalk. The moment the door opened, he slammed down the gas mask and lobbed the bomb in through the open door, shoving Nalcops back inside. He slammed the door behind him, and I held my breath until I sputtered, realizing I still needed to breathe. We waited until Yutani texted all of us in a group text.
The Silver Mist: A Wild Hunt Novel, Book 6 Page 11