by Lexi Ostrow
In response to her fervor, Philippe’s prick twitched a little.
The Guildmaster was used to dealing with finally returned and the elderly, concerned man vanished. His soft brown eyes sparked with anger, and his fist slammed onto his desk as his voice boomed and echoed through the generous office space.
“You will take note of your tone, young lady. I do not care what you were in charge of, or what hells you’ve faced in this life, when you to speak to me, you will be respectful.” His nostrils flared as he spoke, and Philippe noted the way his chest rose and fell with great effort—Thomas was older, exertion wasn’t right for him.
Philippe cleared his throat, and both pairs of eyes landed on him. For a split second, he wished he were back out in the streets with the Jikininki Demon attached to his shoulder. “Not to interrupt, but if I’m to sit here, bleeding down my arm and most likely onto your lightly upholstered chairs, might someone fill me in?”
Odette’s mouth fell agape, and he heard her take a deep breath and blow it out before snapping her mouth shut. She huffed again and turned her gaze away, something he found upset him. He liked looking into her eyes, even if she was being a spoiled brat.
“You’re injured?” For the first time since he’d arrived at the office, the Guildmaster looked at him, instead of his daughter. “Bloody hell, Philippe. This,” he gestured at the younger man’s injured arm, which by then must have had stained his sleeve red, “this is why you will no longer be hunting alone. Kellan is a splendid hunter, and you will not leave him behind anymore.” His employer’s voice was authoritative, but it lacked the anger that had been spewing towards Odette a moment before.
He clenched his teeth so hard his vision blacked out for a moment. Slowly, his head nodded yes, Kellan was by far a better option than Lucius, who he’d been paired with for the past five months.
Thomas nodded back at him and sighed. The sound was full of sadness and remorse, and Philippe almost wished he had not asked to be informed. He had a feeling it was a story he did not want the details to. However, it was too late for that.
“As you’ve heard, this is my daughter, Odette Cosgrove.” He paused as if waiting for her to say something pleasant, but she remained staring at the wall. “She was operating the smallest section the Alliance has active… had active. To be proactive, three years ago, I sent her to the Americas to begin one. As far as we knew, the area was untainted by demons Seven months ago, the sect was attacked, and all were killed. Except for my daughter, who had been out on an errand for one of the ruling parties out there. I cannot remember the dignitary’s name or his position title.”
“You left out the part where one of those members was my husband, and the other two were your grandchildren.” The fury in Odette’s voice could have rivaled an active volcano, not that he had ever seen one, but he imagined it was so. He looked at her hands and saw them stark white as she clenched the arm of the chair.
“I did not leave it out, Odette. I was attempting to be sensitive.”
Philippe’s heart almost hurt for the pair. The woman must have loved her family dearly, and yet, her father was one of the best men Philippe knew. An ugly situation, one he truly wanted nothing to do with. He didn’t like death, unless it was of an enemy, and a fellow Alliance member was family. He knew she must be broken in ways he could never comprehend, never having dealt with loss himself. Even his parents were alive and in good health.
“My condolences on your family. I know many have been lost to the demon threat among us.”
The chair she was sitting in flew and slammed into the wall so quickly he almost didn’t recognize what the loud banging noise had been. She was in his face, her eyes staring directly into his, and her whole body trembled with anger as her hand reached out and slapped him.
The strike stung, and he felt a tiny blossom of pain where her fingertips had landed. He resisted the urge to bring his hand to his face and rub it. He had a feeling Odette Cosgrove took after her father, despite being married and no longer sharing the Guildmasters’ name.
No one spoke. The silence hung in the chamber like the fog over the Thames in the early morning on a winter’s day. He could hear Odette’s small puff of breath, Thomas’s deep, shallow breaths and his own rapid ones as he tried to figure out just how he was going to get out of the room. Fuck the report. He’d stumbled onto a battlefield he didn’t belong on.
Ignoring Odette, he did his best to look around her at her father. “I came to report. I have no place in this conversation, and I wish you the best in whatever arrangement you two were trying to settle before I appeared.” He pushed out of his chair but didn’t even make it a step when the authoritative tone burst through the room.
“Sit. Down.”
On impulse, having been a trained soldier, he sat. His eyes focused on his employer and he blinked rapidly, trying to understand what he had done wrong and why he was stuck there.
“Whilst I understand you’ve been dragged in here by mistake, which is not entirely unfortunate, I would have called for you sooner or later. My daughter has nothing in The Americas. Without an Alliance team, she is vulnerable to whoever launched the last assault. So, she has finally seen the light, after nearly falling prey to an Illusion Demon’s traps, and returned home.”
“You ordered me home, Father. Like I’m nothing more than a worker.”
He turned his head and found that she, too, had sat down. Apparently, neither of them had been particularly certain whom the order had been for.
“I did it for your safety. Just as I am to do this. Philippe, how injured are you?”
Curious question. “Barely, sir. The Jikininki, which is dead thanks to Lucius, latched onto my shoulder and took a chunk out.” He pulled the collar of his shirt down to expose the slowly bleeding wound. “It stings, just needs cauterization.” He swallowed as he said the word, he’d never had a hot iron put to his body, but he’d heard the screams of fellow soldiers and wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Good. Magnificent, even. Then you're temporarily reassigned.”
“Why? I just said it was all right.” His eyes narrowed as he frowned.
“Precisely. I needed you in proper health because my daughter is not going to make this easy.”
“What?” Both he and Odette spoke in unison.
“Mr. Clemis, until further notice your one and only duty is to see that my daughter is settling into her position at the Alliance main headquarters appropriately and isn’t running off and partaking in actions that may kill her.”
“Father! No there is no—”
“Sir, I apologize but I will not—”
“Oh do shut up the both of you!”
The roar and the informal expression did the trick, and they both grew quiet.
His mind reeled with the implications of being a glorified babysitter. He’d thought being paired with the youngest active hunter had been a travesty; the new situation was an offense of the utmost insult.
“She is a mighty hunter, or I wouldn’t have sent her off to The Americas, Philippe. But she is known for irrational choices and dangerous hunting practices, much like yourself. So until I know she is not going to racing off after every demon, including Lucius and Greyston, I need you to be her partner.”
“C'est de la merde! That is not a partner; that is me being a nanny!” his voice was higher pitched than a man’s should be, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t disobey an order, but he certainly wasn’t going to take it quietly.
“No, Philippe, it is not shit, as I believe that sentence translates. That is your new position, and whether or not the pair of you find it accommodating, my priority is keeping my only child alive long enough to outlive me.” Thomas looked down at the papers on his desk. “You may go now. Odette, go with him to the physicians, and I will find Lucius to do the report.”
He began to flip through the pages, and Philippe knew that meant the conversation was done. Odette however, did not.
“This is insanity, Fathe
r. I will not be treated like a—”
“Child? Let me supply the word for you as it is precisely how you are behaving. He is in charge, and if he’s giving you an order, you do it. I don’t give a bloody hell if he is your father. Now if you don’t mind, I’m bleeding.”
She pulled her hand back as if to slap him, but rose and pulled the door open. Before he was able to stop her, she was out of the room. He looked at the Guildmaster and glared.
“I do not need to look up to see the expression, Philippe. You’re the best hunter I have. Keep her safe.”
Four
Her pulse was racing so fast she could hear the roar of her own blood in her ears. Obscenities flashed through her mind as she slammed out of her father’s office. What he’d done, what he’d ordered, was preposterous. “Watch me, I’m not a child. I had a child, two of them!”
The cry tore past her lips just as her legs collapsed out from under her, and she felt the marbled floor beneath her arse. One moment she had been trying to get as far from her assigned nanny as possible, and the next, she had been standing outside the Alliance of Silver and Steam locale in The Americas, the United States. She wasn’t truly there, she was watching from a distance, like when someone attended a play or read a novel that transported them away. Her memories, only she could feel the memories.
She stared in horror as her pale hand reached for the brass knob and twisted. Her stomach knotted with fear, just as it had the day she had looked at the mess that littered the floors. Blood splatters traced gruesome patterns on the light blue wallpaper. The carpet flooring made a sickening squish as she moved foot after foot down it. A plant had been tipped over off to the left, and a vase had been shattered next to it. Fear began to climb from the pit of her stomach to her throat where she felt as if she would choke on the sensation.
Her heart beat quicker than it should, and her hand went to the specialized crystal gun hidden inside her skirts. She wasn’t wearing her protective goggles, but she didn’t always, and so long as she was careful about not staring at the ray of power, she was safe.
She blew out a deep breath, and her bangs rose off her face and settled back down as she counted to three in her head. Bile was rising in her throat by the second, and an ominous chill tracked over her body.
“Hello?” her voice wavered. She chastised herself. If something didn’t belong there, sounding like a scared child would not send them packing.
Her hand reached out and twisted the golden colored handle on the door to the meeting room. It pushed open easily, no eerie sound, and it wasn’t locked. As it pushed open, she noticed one of the purple crystals they used instead of candles was faintly glowing in the corner of the room, but the candles they used for supplemental light were out. At a half past nine in the evening, it should not have been the case.
Tears pricked the back of her eyes, and she forced herself to breathe, refusing to give into the terror that almost suffocated her. She moved to walk towards the counter where they kept the candles, and a strangled gasp came from her as her foot bumped into something where she knew there wasn’t a piece of furniture.
Instinct had her pulling the gun from her waistband as her eyes adjusted to the faint purple glow, and she found the matches and candles. Not setting the gun down, she struck the match on the wall.
An orange glow filled the room, and she screamed as the scene flickered in the flame. Ten bodies on the floor. Six Alliance members, her husband, two children and a brown demon covered in boils. Illusion Demon. Blood coated the floor from head wounds and stomach gashes. Her colleagues’ eyes stared lifelessly at the wall and the ceiling. Some held their guns, and others their daggers, but all lay dead on the floor.
The tears she’d been holding back streamed down her cheeks as her eyes landed on her husband—her defenseless Shawn, who had been a tax collector, not an Alliance member. His throat was slit from ear to ear, and the angry, red gash looked as if it had only just stopped spilling his blood onto the brown carpet he lay dead on.
She screamed and screamed for her husband, and her eyes dared not to go to the bodies of her children she had seen in the initial flicker of the flame. Her breathing was short and shallow, and her cries mingled with her choking gasps. The flame from the match finally reached the end of the wooden stick, and she felt the quick singe as the fire licked against her skin and went out.
Her scream into the darkness was raw, and her throat protested the sounds, but she couldn’t stop them from coming. The room was black, save for the glow again, but the images would never leave her mind.
“Lucius! Get the fuck away from her. Mon Dieu!”
She vaguely heard the voice of the man she had just met. Her mind swirled, and she could hear herself screaming. She knew she wasn’t sitting amongst the dead, but she couldn’t seem to break free of the image. She cried out again, this time at the fear of being trapped in a memory she never wanted to relive.
“Lucius! I swear to whatever it is you demons do fear, if you don’t back away from her this instant, I will kill you, Eliza or no,” the man growled. She couldn’t focus on him, though; her husband’s dead eyes and bloodied throat were seared into her mind, no matter how hard she tried to remind herself where she was.
She felt a hand wrap around her forearm, and her scream changed into a cry of alarm. She felt a tug, and suddenly, her eyes were open, and she wasn’t in America. She was in the hallway of the London guild, just outside her father’s office, and she was staring at two men who looked as if they were going to kill one another.
Without thought of how it would look, she quickly scrambled back and pressed her body against the wall, trying to get away from them, just as the door to her father’s office opened and he stepped out.
“What is going on here?”
She didn’t have to look at him to know the fury that must be radiating in his eyes. He’d already turned it on her once in the three hours she had been back home in London.
“What has been done to my daughter?”
The man facing her, the one she didn’t know and who must be Lucius, terrified her. At her father’s words, he visibly paled, but his expression didn’t change. His eyes were black and soulless, and a cruel smile curved over his lips. Philippe was a step away from him, a dagger trained on the man.
“I came when you communicated I should. I was on my way to check on this bloke, anyway. I stumbled across someone in the hall that did not belong. I attacked for the safety of the guild, of the Alliance,” coldness dripped off the man’s words.
She tried to comprehend what had happened. There hadn’t been an attack. She hadn’t been touched.
“That gives you no right to fucking unleash a night terror on someone. You don’t bloody well belong here. Anywhere!” Philippe’s words were harsh, but he put his dagger back in his boot.
She was trying to comprehend what was going on, the image of her dead husband was gone as quickly as it had come, but it was as if they were talking nonsense.
“You don’t get to tell me how I defend my family, human. Especially not after I just took down one of my own to save you from death this morning.” Lucius nodded to her father and leveled his steely gaze on her.
She watched as some of the danger and evil seeped out. They remained solid black, but they were softer somehow.
“I’m sorry miss. I’ll be leaving now before you decide to change the details of my employment.”
“Just be more careful next time, Lucius. I commend you for defending us and am honored we are now your family. It was my life you were protecting, and it is just a shame my daughter was caught up in it. I will make it a point to introduce her to everyone, to see that this does not occur again.”
Lucius nodded at her father and then turned on his heel and took off.
Her mind was spinning. She wasn’t able to keep up. Lucius had called Philippe “human” in a way that implied that maybe he wasn’t. Yet, her father and Philippe knew him, and he seemed to be an Alliance member.
Fear and anger collided with the confusion, and the stubbornness she had inherited from her mother reared its ugly head. Odette pushed off the wall and leveled a stare at Philippe. For a moment, she was caught off guard by how handsome he looked—how dashing and protective. She blinked and shook the inappropriate thoughts off.
“What just fucking happened to me?” Both men looked at the ground, and her anger only grew. She had a feeling the memory had not been brought up from her being in another Alliance hallway. “What did you mean that I was caught in an attack?”
Philippe’s body was tight with tension; she could see it from the muscular square jaw down to the bend in his knees.
“I’m done. That thing has pushed me too far, just when I was starting to not disdain his being here. Done.” The Frenchman threw his hands up over his head and muttered a chain of French words that she assumed were curses as he stalked off. She couldn’t help but watch the pure power he emanated as he walked and wondered just what a Jikininki Demon was that it managed to injure a man such as him.
Her father put an arm around her. “I fear this morning is upon us. You know the hours we keep, and with the sun rising, it’s time for us to sleep to be best prepared for the evening and what it brings.” He guided her through the hallway towards the strange lift that she never liked riding in. “It’s time I caught you up on the members working within our doors, Daughter.”
Her father sounded weary, and as they entered the lift, she looked at him, really looked for the first time since she had arrived that evening. He looked so much older than he had when she had last seen him three years before. Time, and the job had drawn the salt and pepper of a much older man into his hair and the wrinkles on his face aged him much older than his five and eight years.
Generally speaking, he was old. Especially by Alliance standards when a demon could end someone’s life in the blink. He had never seemed old to her before. Even after the Fallen had tempted her mother with its blood and lured her to her death. Her father had always been the strongest man, and seeing him on the verge of breaking drew tears to her eyes. He was all she had left, the demons would not stop until they took everything from her, and she knew it. It was not personal; she had just grown up in the crossfire of battling species since she was young. War claimed many; those at the heart of it were no exception.