by Jeff Hale
“They’ve got him,” I said.
TWENTY-THREE
DARIEN
We got to The Velvet Flame as soon as we could. We stopped by Kat’s apartment so that we could let her know. She answered the door in her bathrobe, her hair wet and dripping, her cell phone held to her ear. It looked like the caller had interrupted her in the shower. She held one finger up.
“I know, I’m worried too. Just a sec, Dave. Darien and Alex just got here, so maybe they’ve heard something.” She put her hand over the phone and looked at us expectantly.
“The fae picked him up. They’ve take him to Lucien,” I told her.
She exhaled softly as mixed emotions chased across her face. On one hand she was happy that Aerick had made it out of Baba Yaga’s alive, but on the other hand, she was unhappy about the situation regarding Henry’s pack.
“Darien says they’ve brought him in, he’s okay,” she said into the phone. She listened for a moment. “Yeah, I know, me either. I’ll keep you posted though, okay?” She was quiet again, chewing her lip. “I will. Talk to you later, Dave.” She snapped the phone shut and looked at me and Alex. “Just give me a couple minutes to get dressed, then we can go figure this out,” she said, turning to head into her bedroom.
Alex and I were both wearing button up shirts, mine black, his dark red, to go with new jeans. I tried to ignore the way my heart raced at seeing Kat come out of her room wearing a pair of tight black leather pants, a clingy blue t-shirt and her black leather biker jacket, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
I frowned a bit when I noticed the conspicuous absence of the jewelry I had given her. The earrings, the bracelet, the necklace, were all gone. Instead she was wearing a gold chain with a little crystal unicorn on it. When she saw me looking at it, she tucked the pendant away under her shirt.
Kat opted to ride with me and Alex, and when we got there the Cyclopes guards of Lucien’s let us in and escorted us to a back room that had a small black plaque on the door that read ‘V.I.P. Lounge’ in red flames. They indicated we should go in. Inside, it looked like a company board room, with a long table and swivel chairs.
I stopped just inside the room, letting Alex and Kat move past me, staring at Aerick where he sat in a chair in the far corner. Other than the night Kat had broken up with me, I hadn’t seen him since he had skewered me with one of his conjured blades, and I self-consciously flared my Alpha aura in a show of dominance.
He looked nervous, but I didn’t think it was because of me. I had seen the way his eyes had lit up when he’d seen Kat and I realized that Kat’s friend Dave had been right; despite the cruel things Aerick had said to Kat when he’d accused her of knowing Lochlan’s plans, despite the hate he had thrown at her then, the boy still loved her.
As I watched him, a little ball of flame formed in the air in front of him, quickly put out by a tiny blast of ice. He did this a few more times before it began to grate on me. Of course, it didn’t take much on Aerick’s part to get on my nerves.
“Stop that,” I commanded, almost growling the words at him.
“Go fuck yourself,” he replied, continuing to summon and extinguish the small spheres of fire. I got the feeling he was doing it to piss me off now.
I strode up to him, leaning forward, the wolf in me wanting very badly to tear him limb from limb. “How about you go and…”
“You are in my establishment, and you will conduct yourself in a civilized manner, wolf!” The Phoenix was suddenly in front of me, between me and Aerick. “Aerick is my guest, and if he feels the need to do the Aetheric equivalent of tapping his fingers, then he will be allowed the leeway to do so.”
I backed off. There was no way I was going to argue with Lucien. “Fine.”
“What’s wrong, wittle puppy?” Aerick asked mockingly. “The big bad bird scare the wittle doggie?”
That tears it. I let the wolf have its way, shifting to my Aspect form as I leapt across the table at him. He stood, ready for me, blades of ice and fire conjured in an instant.
“Come on, dog boy,” he taunted me. “Let’s see if you’re any better than that bastard that tried to kill Celeste!”
I didn’t have time to answer before Lucien had me by the throat, the slight Primal Aspect holding me easily. The fae royal guard that had also been in the room when we entered, looking much like his counterpart at the palace, had a hand outstretched in Aerick’s direction, holding Aerick into the wall somehow.
Aerick raised some sort of energy shield and rushed forward, slashing at the fae with both blades, the one of fire aiming for the throat, the ice blade going for the abdomen. Lucien shouted at Aerick to stop what he was doing, letting me go in the process, and I shifted back to human, backing away to stand with Kat and Alex.
Both of Aerick’s blades seemed to connect with the fae, but the creature’s body seemed suddenly out of sync. He looked down at Aerick, his eyes glowing, bright green light emanating from him, and then Aerick went flying backwards.
Aerick landed, stumbling a little, but came right back up, both blades plunging into the fae and continuing up vertically through his shoulders. The blades looked different than they had before, almost as though they were more defined, more real than anything else in the room; they reminded me of the Fae embassy.
The fae screamed, a sound that made every hair on my body stand on end as I stared in stunned amazement. Jagged cuts appeared on the fae where Aerick’s blade had torn through, blood pouring from the wounds. I glanced at Kat, knowing how violence affected her, but saw that she had it under control, her eyes on the seen in rapt fascination.
Suddenly there was the feeling of a large amount of power being let loose, a bright light, and then Aerick collapsed to the floor, not moving. I heard Kat let out a cry of worry, saw her run and kneel next to Aerick, then look over at the badly wounded fae again.
Unlike lesser fae, fae nobles couldn’t be harmed, at least not by anything other than another fae; most supernaturals knew this, which was why we didn’t mess with them.
But Aerick had just hurt one, severely.
I was beginning to see why Lochlan wanted him dead.
_______________________________________
Lucien called a recess until Aerick was conscious and coherent again. I decided it would be a good time to do a little more digging into what happened between Aerick and Henry’s pack.
Once we were all back in the car, I turned so I could see both Kat and Alex. “There’s still some daylight left. We should probably go talk to what remains of Henry’s pack, see if they say the same thing he does.”
“Does it really matter?” Kat asked. “They’re probably just going to tell us what Henry wants us to hear.”
She was right, but there was still protocol to be followed. “I know, but I would still like to hear it from other than just Henry.”
We tracked Henry down at his home in one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in North Las Vegas. It was painted a chocolate brown, the paint needing some touch ups, and looked to be maybe a two or three bedroom. There were several cars out front, and when we got out, we were met at the door by a short, stocky man with close-cut black hair. He crossed his arms on his chest in an attempt to look intimidating, his brown eyes challenging.
“Knock it off, Wally,” Henry growled out, pushing past the man to stand on the porch. “Well?”
“I need to talk to what’s left of your pack,” I told him. I could see a woman staring at me through a large curtainless picture window in the living room.
“This is it. Just Wally and her in there. Had one more but found him dead not long after I talked to you earlier. That puts the count to nineteen.” Henry motioned towards the window and the woman moved away from it, coming out to stand next to him. She was at least partly Native American and her hair was long, straight, and black, her makeup thick around her dark eyes. She was almost anorexically thin, and perhaps five and half feet tall. “This is Jill. Tell him, guys.”
Jill just blinked at me a few ti
mes, then she nodded. “I was with Henry when we found the others. It was awful. And I saw the tape. It was that guy that tried to kill Henry awhile back. The one that interrupted the Blooding ritual.”
I glanced at Wally. “Do you think it was him too? The guy on the tape?”
Wally glanced over at Henry, then back to me before nodding his head. “It was him.”
Henry just laughed. “Happy now? Since you couldn’t just take my word for it?”
“I did just take your word for it, Henry. I just wanted to be sure. Now, what about that tape? I’d like to see it for myself.”
“You wanna get your rocks off watching my pack get wiped out?” Henry sniggered at me.
“Don’t push me, Henry,” I warned.
“Why? Will you have your little shaman turn into a dragon again and try to eat me?” He looked over my shoulder at Kat and ran his tongue suggestively over his lips. The woman next to him, Jill, actually smiled a little.
“Like I would eat him,” Kat muttered softly from behind my right shoulder. “He’d probably give me food poisoning.”
But Henry still heard her, and for a moment I thought he was going to try to go through me to attack her. Then he just let out a loud rumbling laugh and slapped his huge thigh with one wide hand. “I’m starting to see what you like in her, Darien,” he said by way of a backhanded compliment. “I don’t have the tapes here.”
“Tapes?” Alex asked from behind me.
“Yeah, tapes. Some of the pack was at the warehouse, but the rest were in their own homes. All my people have security cameras on the premises, inside and out, so all their murders were caught on tape,” Henry explained.
Convenient for him. He probably had them there so they would have a record of their debaucheries. But it made it all nice and easy to try to prove Aerick was running around killing his pack.
“How about a computer? Do you have one of those? I need you three to type up printed statements and sign them,” I told him.
“Right this way. Jill has one.”
We followed Henry into the house. It wasn’t all that messy inside. There were some remains of take out on a wood carved coffee table that sat in the middle of a huge sectional that took up most of the front room. The opposite wall of the living room was dominated by a flat screen television that was a minimum of sixty inches, easily viewable through the front window.
“Is that really safe?” Kat asked, pointing to the TV and then the window. “This isn’t exactly the best part of town.”
Henry just shrugged. “No one bothers me. Hell, I can leave my damned doors wide open, come back home, and nothin’s been touched.” He moved over to the dining area. There was a desk cluttered with beer bottles and soda cans and an inexpensive computer. He grabbed Jill by the arm, yanked her over, and pushed her down into the dining chair in front of it. “Time to play secretary, baby.”
She threw him a dirty glance over her shoulder, but took the computer out of sleep mode and started a word processing program. “What am I typing?”
“Let’s start with your statement, then Wally’s, and then Henry’s,” I suggested. She began to type and I glanced over at Kat. She had her arms crossed over her chest, almost defensively, making sure that Alex and I were between her and Henry.
It took about half an hour for Jill to type up and print out the statements. Henry and Wally dropped down onto the sectional and turned the television on to some reality program, calling out across the room to Jill what they wanted her to write down. Alex leaned against one of the dining room walls, while Kat hadn’t moved. Once Jill had the statements done, she printed them out and handed them to me.
“I just need you to sign yours,” I reminded.
“Oh. Yeah.” She searched the desk for a pen, finally found one, then scrawled her name and the date at the bottom of the paper. “Henry, Wally. Mr. Adjudicator needs you to sign.”
“Bring the papers here, bitch,” Henry replied, motioning.
She sighed and took the papers to the two men, who signed them on the coffee table, then sent her back to me with them. “Here.” She just about shoved them at me.
“Thank you,” I said. “We’ll be taking our leave then. Like I said, don’t go anywhere. Get those tapes, and anything else you have for evidence. I’ll be getting in touch when we need your testimony,” I reminded him.
“You do that,” Henry said. He watched us as we left the house and walked back to the car. I pulled away from the curb and headed us for home.
“Well, that went well,” Alex remarked.
“Well enough. I’m not sure I believe those other two are saying anything Henry didn’t coach them on,” I said.
Kat nodded at me. Alex and I took her home and then went home for the evening ourselves. Tomorrow we would confront Aerick.
____________________________________
Morning saw us all back at the Flame, waiting in the same room for Aerick to show back up. We hadn’t been waiting long when he entered the room, dressed in the same black Levis and dark green button up shirt that he had worn the previous day. Kat, Alex, and I were dressed much the same as the day before as well, Alex in a white button up, me in a clean black one, and Kat switching the blue shirt out for red one.
We all gave Aerick cautious looks, although I had to admit I felt a little bit of happiness to see the openly hostile one Kat directed at Aerick after a while. She was beginning to believe he was guilty.
He sat in the same chair as yesterday, irritating me again with his constant conjuration and extermination of the little fireballs. I ignored it as best I could. I saw him glance over at the fae royal guard, the same one he had injured, saw the scars that were left over, reminding me again of what Aerick was capable of.
I looked back over at Aerick, knew with more certainty than I already had that I didn’t want him ever coming after me. I was a strong shifter, stronger than a lot of shifters out there, but I was no match for him. Still, if it came down to it, it if he tried to hurt Kat, or Alex, or anyone else under my protection, I would fight him until my dying breath. I let it show in my eyes, let him know that I wouldn’t back down.
“The defendant has arrived to hear the accusations from those that would attempt to prove his guilt in this case,” Lucien said after Aerick got settled.
I leaned forward, took a breath, then stated clearly, “My pack and I have questioned our shifter brethren, or what remains of them in the area, and collected their statements. All coincide with the initial accusation. Aerick Kerensky will stand trial for first degree and second degree murder, assault with deadly weapons, and assault with deadly Aetheric powers with intent to commit all of the above.”
Lucien waited a moment to make sure I was done, then turned his gaze on Aerick. “And the accused may now state his innocence or guilt to the charges.”
“Yeah. I killed them,” Aerick admitted in a low voice. “But it was in self-defense.”
“Then you plead guilty?” Kat asked him, and I could hear the catch in her voice that wanted him to deny it.
“No, I plead self-defense and the defense of others,” Aerick reiterated.
“What others?” I asked. Henry had said they he and his were nowhere near Aerick after the attack where Aerick had killed the ones in self-defense. Then again, I couldn’t entirely believe Henry since he would only bring up what would be advantageous to him.
“Five humans that were there. Three were female, and they did infer that they would rape and kill them.”
“And?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound as disinterested as possible. I wasn’t sure if Aerick was trying to come up with what he believed was a valid excuse to kill shifters or not, but maybe I could goad him into losing his temper. It wasn’t that I thought it was all right for shifters to just go around hurting humans, but that was for the human authorities to bring to our attention. If a shifter did it enough, our own Council would take care of them.
“And? That’s all you can say to that? Are you saying that
you’re okay with the idea of a human woman being raped and then killed just because she’s human? Let alone three of them? Besides one of them was… important to me,” Aerick protested vehemently.
I smiled, wondering just how far I could push him to prove my point. “She’s just one human… not worth you killing sixteen shifters over.” My comment got his attention, but unfortunately it got Kat’s as well. She didn’t realize that I was trying to draw a reaction from Aerick.
“Darien!” She stood and gave me a hurt look. “That human he’s talking about happens to be my friend, Celeste!”
“I know, Kat. I was just trying to goad him to prove the point of our accusations, that he would kill a shifter if given even the smallest motivation. That all he would need was an excuse, any excuse, to kill one of us.” I gave her an exasperated look and sighed. “Anyway my point stands. Hell, one person’s life is not worth sixteen other people’s lives. That’s what you killed, Aerick. People. I know you don’t see them as such, but they are just as much a person, with a right to live as you are, or your precious Celeste.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Darien. To me, Serena’s… Celeste’s life is worth all the other lives on this planet, even my best friend’s life. Dave knows that, and he’s perfectly fine with it,” Aerick said somberly
I was surprised to hear him say that, because I figured there would be at least one other person who would mean that much to him. Kat had claimed that Aerick still loved her. Now was the time to find out for certain. “Is that so? So if Kat were to harm Celeste you would kill her over it?” I asked him pointedly.
“Yes. Absolutely, if I thought Kat was a threat to Celeste, then yes, I would kill her,” he replied without hesitation.
“What?!” Kat demanded, standing up. I hated to see the crushed look on her face, but now maybe she would give up on Aerick, realize he was done with her.
Aerick gave her a half apologetic shrug. “Oh, what? You wouldn’t kill to protect someone you loved?”