by Lil Hamilton
“Find her and keep her safe until the bond is secure. I will owe you a favor, Raylien.”
Having him owe me a favor, an open promise to help me when I needed was as useful as having his court assistance. “Why do you protect this child so much?” I asked unable to help myself. A fae with an attachment. Maybe a secret one, but still a phenomenon that was unique. Or suspicious.
He leaned back slightly, manufacturing a mildly offended look. “You think I would want my blood be tortured like you were in the Seelie Courts? Unable to defend herself properly?”
It was a fairly good attempt to distract me, getting me to focus on my own history rather than his motivations and he enhanced it with a healthy nudge to my mind. I waved a hand dismissively, while at the same time batting off any influences he was sending my way. It was hard for me to get a read on him though, as the landscape was thick with his presence and resistant my influence. “I’m not sure why you would care. If she can’t defend herself, she has no value. You didn’t seem to have any difficulties torturing me, Gilliad. All fun and games to your sort.”
He shrugged and smiled slowly. “I made it pleasant for you, did I not?”
“I believe that actually made it worse,” I said.
His crystalline turquoise eyes glittering with amusement, but then sharpened. He had his father’s eyes, which reminded people he was the one true heir to Faerie. “My mother’s violent whims get worse every century. This child is not going to be her toy. I will not allow it.”
A disgruntled prince was intriguing. “Yes, her ruling on the matter is harsh. My mother, for example, exiled and kept from her mate, to torment the both of them and my father causing a war over it. She would kill your child for her breeding and kill her for this demon mate bond. Or torment her to have a firm hold on you. It weakens us to have her hatred of the demons prolonged when compromise and treaties could be created. She cannot let go of a war no one even remembers the cause of.”
“We remember the cause, but mother is the one that cannot remember her blame in it,” Gilliad muttered, and inwardly I smiled. I was seeding the idea of a demon treaty as well as nudging his discontentment. With the pure, raw use of words, such an understated thing to some fae.
“With a demon as a son-in-law you might want to think about her rulings and in whose benefit they are. Alliances are to be valued and if your daughter can be used to make one perhaps it is best you consider that value.”
He narrowed those vivid eyes and gave me a long shrewd hooded look, as a slow smile grew. “Raylien, you will find I have little trouble making such alliances. I perhaps, see more value than you do. Any mating allows for fae blood to enter the high halls in the Hells and that is never a bad thing. We remember where our roots come from.”
It was one thing to stash his daughter away as a dirty secret but quite another for him to actively see her as having value. I considered it my own personal mission to cause as much political instability amongst the fae. Kept them focused off others. I finished my tea and stood up. “What’s your daughter’s name?”
He gave me a startled look. Incredibly rude to ask for the name of a Seelie fae. If you did not know it, it was because it had not been granted to you.
“She is using Lily Storm,” I said dryly.
He smiled slightly. I could feel how very amused he was, but whether that was from the fae name or something more disturbing I could not decipher. I sighed. Sometimes fae mind games were so tiresome. “Yes, that is her recent one. You can call her Lily. That was given to her at birth.”
I nodded. “Superb. Honestly, the fae that co-mingle with humans ought to have the decency to stick to one damn alias. Just Lily. Sure. We will find her.”
If I had to go walking through the city calling out ‘Lily’ I would do so. The girl could not have just vanished. Not with the attention she was getting.
“I might blame your father for being unable to keep her here. It is because of that war and the truce we cannot keep humans here,” he said, yet the flat tone did not match the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“Ah, so you had her mother here in the Faerie before the treaties.”
“Yes, for many mortal decades. It was for the best that she left. Lily may not be doomed to mortality, but she also has no claim to Faerie and I am not permitted to have her. She could have so much more than this patch, be so much more, and all I can give her is this.”
I nodded, but since his words were absolutely coated with the desire for me to believe him, I knew he was hiding something. “Blame him if you wish, but it was the Queen who took my father’s mate and caused the incident that forced us to make a deal with humans.” I did not even bother going into the back history of the conflict, since it had been going on for a millennium or two before my existence.
He smiled and it was honest amusement in it. “I do not deal with humans. You do. I suggest you find Lily before the humans will deal with me.”
That would not be good for business. The majority of fae in the border realm were Unseelie, who lived with humans, rather than lorded it over them. Of the Seelie fae most of them were lower court and that meant I could usually handle them. When the high court came out to play I could do very little but clean up the mess. Having Gilliad ripping through the city looking for his daughter would be just as bad as a raving mad rogue demon, but for entirely different reasons. Thankfully, they were limited it the border realm for their own reasons, so they certainly had no desire to reside there. All that iron and such.
We left the cottage and followed the path back to the circle. “What are these Chambers he spoke of, Raylien?” Lan asked so calmly, so distantly curious, but I felt the pulse of his aura against my skin and it was very aggressive, very possessive. He was resisting the constructed atmosphere of the plot, but not enough to be displaying his true outrage.
“Please call me Ray. Raylien is too formal,” I muttered. “I don’t like it.”
“Well, Ray-Ray?” he asked, mimicking Sebastian.
I stopped by the circle, marked with small white stones. “What do you think they are, Lan? They are torture chambers. The Chamber of Illusions is designed to break open your mind and force on you your worst nightmares. It is designed to prevent healing unless they allow it. Not that the Queen cannot do that of her own accord, but the Chambers are meant for longer term punishments. It is living magic that feeds on the victims.”
He rocked back on his heals giving me a thoughtful look, but what he was thinking was beyond me. The Hells, despite popular human religious beliefs, were not all the hellish generally. They considered it more honorable, or perhaps more entertaining, to have duels. Duels for almost any reason, usually some manufactured slight to their honour. Duels did not involve powers, because there was no fun in that and demons could be quite destructive if they wanted to be, which rather limited an audience if things got out of hand. Of course, they were also overly fond of war. I found them refreshing really. Mental warfare was so damned exhausting.
“For information?” he asked, from his expression trying to understand it.
“I suppose sometimes,” I said. “But more so for punishment or because she wants to exert her authority and show how much more powerful she is. Or amusement. Or she is in a pissy mood. She has always been cruel and ruled with an iron fist. By that I mean an iron fist of undeniable mental manipulation over others. She needed to, in order to hold the fabric of Faerie so. Her particular punishments began to get creative the last time someone tried to overthrow her and have been rather long lasting since. She’s a tad paranoid now. She so thrives in her control over landscapes.”
“So she worries over another rebellion and to prevent it, she uses the full strength of her fae influence over her courtiers,” he said.
I shrugged. “Pretty much. Of course, she was also supremely enraged anyone would defy her will. People still talk about that century. It was a dark time, where the Queen hunted down anyone who was associated with those traitors. She punished those tr
aitors for a very long time and very publicly. Still does actually, since the lords involved in it had planned to put a fae of strong blood on the throne in her place. It would have to be someone of royal blood to hold Faerie and they supported her daughter. As far as I heard her daughter is still being punished somewhere. Maybe just confined, but who knows? She can’t kill her outright, as she is her blood, but forgiveness will be a long time coming.”
“This strategy will inevitably be counter-productive as this disgruntled prince has shown us.”
“It may seem that way, Lan. It may seem that eventually the masses will rise up and take down that vile tyrant. That’s not how things work. She’s not Queen of a realm so much as holding that realm with her will. She is Faerie. Hard to argue with that power. In fact, damn impossible, since you take her away and who would hold Faerie together? It would have to be someone from a very pure line or an Unseelie Lord and no one wants to grant the Unseelie power again when they do not have to. So unless some rebels corrupt Prince Gilliad, we need the Queen,” I said. “You were never captured during the many wars?”
“If I had been, I would be dead. Or held for ransom. I assumed those returned to us by trades had been treated as prisoners of war, but it would be disrespectful to ask them what they endured. What mattered was they had survived. It has been a very long time since there has been open warfare.”
The spat the open the eyes of humanity to us hardly counted. To humans it had but it had been merely a brutal conflict.
“Well, then you cannot know, Lan, what the Chamber is like. And I won’t be sharing those stories.” It occurred to be the Queen would be tickled pink to capture me to keep us apart if I ever did complete a demon bonding. All the more reason not to do so, but Lan was convinced it would give me protection. I freakin hated politics, which was odd considering my job description, but I had to make cash somehow. Trying to think what the Queen, a raving sadistic lunatic would do, made my head hurt. I could not think like her, she had a few thousand years of crazy to make her so creative.
“Do you wish me to kill this prince?” he asked, he was asking if I wished for him to get me a piece of pie.
“What? No. Why would you say that?”
“Because he hurt you. I can feel it.”
I shook my head. He knew so little of fae politics. “You would be a busy man if you went around killing anyone that hurt me, Lan. Gilliad will have his uses. I think. If he is not fucking with me to get rid of his little ‘issue’ before mommy dearest comes down on his ass.”
Lan looked around the patch. “You have a place like this in Faerie?”
“I have a home, like any other, but not within a realm controlled by a lord. I secured myself a plot, if you will, and I hold it.”
“And does it look like this?”
“Not at all, it looks like I want it to look. Although, actually, we are close in theme. House, garden, woods. Very basic small plot décor really.”
“So it is all illusion and glamour?”
“No it is imposing your will on what is. It is the fae that control what their area is. Faerie is flexible, it responds well to our will. It is just how the realm is. It is real substance but attatched to the mind of who holds it.”
I scowled, looking around. Yeah, it was bizarre. I could see the grass, feel the wind, but nothing in Faerie was composed of concrete matter and elements like the Hells or earth. It contained compact energy, just in a different manner and in such a way the fae mind or being was always attached to the environment. There was really no way to explain that to an elemental demon.
“Can you leave some mark here, so she know we have been here looking for her, just in case she returns?”
“No. I can’t overwrite the pattern of another landscape like that. I have to play by its rules.”
We took the circle back and walked right out of the room into the apartment. It caused Dill to turn with his knives in hand until he saw us and sheathed them.
I slumped into a chair, feeling so intrusive in someone else’s home. “You first Dill.”
“I found her appointment book. Her second more hidden appointment book for job links. Who hired from this vamp attack and apparently decided to assassinate her. That gives us a start, to track down this vamp organization once we get some info from Viv. Other than that I found some witch spell books in the kitchen. Advanced stuff.”
“Well, she had reason to be paranoid. Take those with us, Chera may be able to find out what she was working on,” I said.
“And what did you find?”
“A Faerie patch. I’ll explained that when we meet up with the others.”
***
Chapter 10
The best laid plans of mice and men often go with rye.
I had Lan take Warren out of my trunk and down into the basement. I’d almost forgotten about him and laughed when Lan reminded me, like I’d forgotten to turn off the car. My bad. Now that I knew for a fact a lot of witch mojo had been used to take Lily, Warren likely either knew the identity of the witches involved or was working with them. Downstairs Sebastian was sitting with Chera talking shop and drinking beer. He didn’t even blink as Lan lugged the unconscious warlock into my storage room to tie up. Thankfully Chera had her back to us. I would try to ease it into the conversation that I had the little weasel.
-I’ll tie up the warlock.-
-Good. I got some duct tape in there.-
He flashed me a wide grin and closed the door. Duct tape always made men happy.
Chera was incredibly shy normally, but depending on the buzz she had the trait was not always there. She was chatting with Sebastian about celestial omens when I walked up. I could tell when she was buzzed on something. Her eyes were all bright and she talked a lot and faster. She would lean forward and do the hand talking with broad gestures and seemed so very engaged. Completely the opposite of normal behavior for her. I was pretty sure the girl barely slept given the time and the fact she had studies as well as her work with me. I was the one that could physically stay up about a week but chose to sleep about ten hours a night.
Vivica sat across from them, glaring at Sebastian. Not a glare of mild irritation, but an intense, predatory vampiric glare. Viv had her issues. I’d never met someone without issues, but these were vamp issues, all tied up with their instincts. Viv was very possessive of Chera since Viv had made a claim on her.
For a moment I simply frowned at Viv. I had no right to say anything, but it was deeply disturbing she would stake a claim on such a fragile young mortal. Like getting a two year old to sign a lifelong legal contract with a slavery clause. The claim though was already made. It had been made when Chera had been rescued from vampires in order to make her hands off to any others. So, initially, it had been made to protect her. In some way I couldn’t recognize, Chera was marked as being Vivica’s. I hadn’t asked for details, but knew to turn a mortal required three sharing blood rituals. One was complete and that tied the two of them together. I pressed my lips together and rubbed my shoulder. That was the link I now had with Lan. His mark deeply imprinted on my essence, marking me as under his protection or his to claim. And I’d let that happen, in a moment of swirling lust. Really given no more choice in the matter than Chera.
As usual the slim vampire managed to emphasize her physical assets to seduce people with her looks; the pouty lips, liquid amber eyes and wavy auburn hair. She wore low ride jeans on slim hips, and I assumed some tantalizing underwear could be seen, with a corset, that pushed what breasts she had up. It almost distracted a person from her invasive aura, that if I allowed it to, I would simply find myself agreeing with her and nudged into feeling what she wanted me to. Usually she pulled that with me when I was distracted. An amusing game to see how much she could get away with, but without me noticing. A vampire’s aura was what made them such exceptional predators. It was thicker than a fae intrusion, more tempting to submit to. It was also more expansive, as in always spread out, so that even subconsciously a vampire wo
uld influence a person if they were within its sphere. It was their demon blood that made their aura an instinctive part of their being. I had to admire a predator like that. In the same way I admired sharks when I watched Shark Week on the Discovery channel, but I had no intentions of jumping in a tank to swim with either of them.
Why she was so interested in having Chera as her first servant was beyond me. Chera was exactly the opposite of what Viv was. Viv was a born vampire so she had no angst or internal conflict when it came to her nature. She neither hated humans nor liked them; they were simply blood donors and co-inhabitants of the realm, lesser co-inhabitants because they were fragile. A joke Viv found so amusing was that without humans the world would collapse, too many predators and not enough administrators. One of the best ways to make ties with the human world, to claim your own piece of it, a vampires ‘estate’ you needed human vamps. Human vamps didn’t get all the perks and so one needed to be carefully chosen who could benefit growing an ‘estate’. The next phase of estate building was finding a mate, then spawning true born children and finally making alliances and making other born vampires loyal to you. A process I was familiar with, since that is what Vincent did with his little fae lady. When I first got my job monitoring Haven it had been just after we were outed and Haven became noticeable to humans. Most of the Unseelie remained even after a huge influx of those damned parasitical witches. Vamps were next, pushing witches out of territory in the city they ‘claimed’ and Vincent started his Estate by ‘claiming’ Haven. It was allowed. As in the Queen permitted Other human races to populate the city. I really doubt Vincent saw it that way. Either way, I had watched the process of making an Estate by spying on him.