RYLEE (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 1)

by Shannon Mayer

  “You aren’t so tough.” She sidled around the counter, pulling her human skin off her face to reveal a pale green, wrinkled reality. Her eyes were cloudy gray, as though they’d been scrambled, and her mouth protruded like a proboscis. I turned, keeping her on my right side. She kept peeling her layers off, showing off her troll skin. All of her was wrinkly.

  “You know, you should get yourself a face lift. Actually, a whole body lift would smooth that shit out for you.” I tipped my chin at her and she snarled.

  “I’m going to kill you!”

  “Seems to be the phrase of the day, but I’m doubting it will happen.” I stepped away from her, then lurched to the side. Even though my arms were still pinned, I was able to flick the swords up by twisting my wrists and then driving them into her belly.

  She screeched, and I spun as I rolled my left wrist with my second blade, bringing it perpendicular. The momentum drove the blade through her upper thigh and femur in her right leg, cutting it in half, the spelled blade sliding through with a wicked ease. “See, even with both hands tied, I can still kick your ass.”

  The troll fell to the floor, one hand on her belly, the other on her rapidly bleeding-out stump. The second her heart stopped pumping, the bands that held my hands to my side evaporated. The color of the blood fascinated me, the deep purple glinting up like flickering jewels. I shook my head, breaking my line of vision.

  I took several steps back and went to the glass door. I flipped the sign to closed. No need to have more humans wandering in.

  But the real question was would Camos come? If he was the brother of the incubus I’d dealt with before, he already had a reason to hate me and want me dead. With Alex’s help, we’d killed the incubus who’d stolen Alex’s sister. So, was this guy coming here to avenge his brother? Probably. Adelaide certainly wasn’t above taking me on, so I assumed Camos would do the same.

  I had no illusions about how it was going to go. He’d try and use his charms on me in order to put me under his power so he could do what he wanted to me. Such was the way with an incubus or a incubus. They didn’t tend to stray from their patterns. All and all, it meant I needed to kill him as soon as I felt a niggling of persuasion off him. I walked across the room and hopped up on the cashier’s counter, grabbed a stack of paper towels and cleaned my blades while I waited. The scent of the troll blood made my eyes flutter and I drew in a deep breath, tasting the flavors unique to Adelaide. Killing her had been . . .

  I froze in the middle of cleaning the blades, horror flickering through me as my eyes popped open wide. Never in my life had I thought of blood, or killing someone, as being pleasant.

  I swallowed hard and slid off the counter. Another thought rumbled through me in defiance. She was trying to kill me. What I’d done was self-defense, and in the midst of it, I hadn’t been happy. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to kill her. I just hadn’t wanted to die. That made me feel marginally better.

  I couldn’t make myself upset by the smell of blood and death, no matter how I tried. I liked it too much to be distressed. And that in itself bothered the shit out of me, and confirmed I was not safe to be around. Hunching my shoulders, I moved across the room to stand next to the humming refrigerator, which partially hid me from view. The cold air that slipped out of the sliding glass door kept the space around me clear of the smell of blood.

  “You have to get your shit together,” I said. “You have to if you want to be with your babies.”

  A sleek red corvette pulled into the parking lot, halting my pep talk. A slim, tall man stepped out of the car. His hair was white with a streak of blue through the side. Very punk rocker if not for his business suit. Though his tie matched his blue streak, I arched an eyebrow. Succubi, they had a thing for fashion. Not necessarily good fashion, either. Though, what would I know? I wore the same brand of jeans and cut of leather jacket for the last ten years.

  He paused at the door, looking at the closed sign, and then pushed his way in, bell dinging over his head. Camos lurched to a stop as his eyes found his dead employee. “Well, that does not bode in my favor.”

  His voice curled around me, made me want to beg his forgiveness. I clenched my teeth, digging my fangs into the inside of my cheek and drawing blood. The sweet coppery tang snapped my mind into focus.

  “What doesn’t bode well is you snatching little girls off the street.” I stepped out from where I’d been and Camos smiled at me. He could have been in a tooth whitening commercial, his smile was so perfect, white and straight. Damn, there was almost a sparkle to them even.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he purred. “You don’t want to hurt me.”

  His words reverberated through me as if trying to find a tuning fork to bring me into line with him. When I’d faced his brother, the spell had woven through me so fast I was under before I’d realized what was going on.

  This time, I found myself able to stand and resist him as if there was a filter inside me that allowed his words to pass through, but not the power behind them. About damn time things went my way. And while I wouldn’t admit it out loud, I knew it was the vampire in me protecting me from his powers of persuasion.

  I slowly lifted both my swords, pointing them at him. “I fucking well doubt that. What did you do with her body?”

  “Whose body?” He arched both brows, his eyes as innocent as any child’s. I opened my mouth and all that came out was a hard snarl that ended like the pissed off growl of a cat.

  His eyes widened and he repeated, “You don’t want to hurt me.”

  “Oh, I fucking well do.” I took a step toward him, swords at the ready.

  “Shit.” His whisper was under his breath, but I heard him. He spun and tried to run for the door. I dropped one sword and leapt at him, propelling myself through the air with a single burst of muscle. I slammed into his back and rode him to the ground while he screamed for me to stop.

  “I didn’t hurt anyone! I learned my lesson when you killed my brother. I only take willing victims, I promise! I don’t take people against their will!”

  I held him to the ground, face down while my heart raced and the blood in my veins pounded out a beat. Kill him. Drain him. Finish him off. Drink him down and taste the sweet life in his veins.

  I struggled to get a hold of my innate desires. Breathing hard, I gritted the words out. “What did you do with her after you drained her?”

  “I . . . I didn’t drain anyone.”

  “Wrong answer.” I pressed my sword to the back of his neck.

  He whimpered. “I don’t know who you mean.”

  I leaned closer. “Belinda.”

  “I sold her.”

  His words stunned me. “Is she alive?”

  “Yes, as far as I know.” He tried to lift but I pressed the edge of my blade harder against his neck.

  “Oh no, we aren’t done yet.” I sat, thinking while he held very still under me. Smart for a incubus. My mind raced as I tried to figure out the angle. He didn’t keep the kid, he sold her. “Is that what this is then, a cover for some sort of kidnapping ring?”

  “I don’t think I want to answer any more questions while you have a knife to me. You aren’t exactly known for your ability to hold back, and that proves I’m right.” He made a tiny gesture to the body behind us.

  He had a point.

  I got off him but kept a hand on his neck. Propelling him ahead of me, I pushed him toward the back of the shop. He slipped in the troll’s dark purple blood and left a series of footprints on the floor that looked as though a kid had been messing around with paints.

  Camos stopped at a worktable and I let him go. He turned and faced me, but I didn’t take my sword far from his face.

  He held up both hands in surrender. I lowered the blade. For the moment.

  A relieved sigh slid out of him. “Look, you don’t know what you’re dabbling in. This isn’t supernatural anymore. It’s not human either.” He hunched his back, and whatever glamor he’d been using to make me t
hink he looked handsome was gone. He looked fucking pitiful. “I don’t even like girls, you understand? I prefer men, young men, but men, nonetheless. My brother was an asshole, and I agree with what you did to him. He deserved it.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But right now I don’t think much of you, either.”

  “Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered. “I’m trying to fight the worst of my nature.”

  I didn’t like that his words so closely resembled my own struggle.

  I smiled, knowing it was far from comforting, feeling the hard lines of my lips. “Then I suggest you help me. You tell me everything you know, every last bit of information and I may let you go. If I find out you held anything back, I will find you and I will fucking slice your balls off in sections, and then kill you. If I’m feeling merciful.”

  He blanched and I knew there was no doubt in his mind I would do exactly that. His eyes flicked to mine and then away. “It’s a deal.” He paused and then started talking.

  “I have a contact. I can give you his name, but that’s all I have. Once a month, he checks in here to see if I have any kids for him. I bring them, the kids, here. I have rooms below the shop.” I glared at him and he held up his hands. “I treat them well. They get food and water. They have a safe place to sleep. Most of them are grateful because most are runaways. Always the runaways. The street kids who are used to being used. They are happy to be safe, you understand?”

  I didn’t nod, just kept my eyes on him.

  He swallowed hard and then went on without having to be prompted. “They have marks on them, something that signifies they are different, you understand?”

  I frowned, my mind picking up speed. “What kind of marks? You mean like a tattoo?”

  He cleared his throat, paused and I made a flicking motion with the tip of one blade. “Show me.”

  “Right,” he said, “I’ll draw them for you. They aren’t tattoos, more like birthmarks. But even that isn’t quite right. They are always at the back of the neck, usually under the hair and very faint. A stamp of bloodlines, I think, one they’re born with. I think if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would never notice them.”

  Camos turned, grabbed a pencil and a sheet of paper for wrapping flowers, and started sketching on the blank side. I stepped up to the left of him, not too close, but enough so I could see what he was drawing.

  “Four marks in total, well, five, but I’ll get to that. Humans can’t see them, and they’re faint, even to a supernatural.” His hand flowed over the paper, the pencil quickly sketching four distinct symbols. I’d never seen them. A set of six lines intersecting in a stack of three, a trio of spirals, a spiral inside four jagged peaks, and a series of ovals put together like a six-pronged leaf springing from the ground. Without having to be told, I knew the lines and curves dictated four elements. Water, wind, fire, and earth.

  “And the fifth?” I asked even though I already suspected.

  “I’ve never seen it on a kid.” He bent over the paper again and quickly sketched something like a reverse spiral with three points curling outward. He glanced at me. “I was told if I ever found a kid with this,” he tapped his pencil on the image, “they would be worth a hundred of any others.”

  I pointed at the first four symbols. “How much do you get for these kids?”

  “Half a mil.” He said without hesitation. Holy shit. Half a million dollars per kid for him to hand off to whatever trafficker it was he dealt with. Fifty million for what I suspected was someone like Lark--a Spirit Elemental. Fuck me sideways and call me royally screwed. The elemental world was not something I wanted to dabble in. I knew how dangerous they were.

  Then again, if that’s where Belinda was, I was going in headfirst.

  “When is the next pick up?”

  “Just happened a few weeks ago, so it will be another week or two, at least. He missed the last few months for some reason.” His eyes widened and he held his hands up. “Not that I had any kids that long. Only the one girl who I picked up two months back.”

  I picked the paper up and stared at it. Kids who had the four elements marked on the back of their necks at birth. I wished I could talk to Lark and ask her what the hell it all meant. Were they elementals? If they were, why weren’t they living within the four families?

  Were elementals somehow stealing kids? And why the fuck would they want human kids with elemental marks? I couldn’t get my brain wrapped around it. But I did know somewhere I could go, somewhere I could get answers if I were careful. Lark might not have a phone, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know where to find her.

  “Your contact, is he human?” I folded the paper and slid it into the pocket inside my leather coat.

  “Yes.”

  Well, damn, that blew my theory out of the water like a hippo doing a belly flop. “You’re sure?”

  Camos rolled his eyes. “I know my supernaturals, and he isn’t one. He’s plain, ordinary, not a single thing about him that even hints he’s working for someone less than human either.”

  Double damn, this was not making any sense. He didn’t say anything about his contact’s smell. Which meant Camos could be missing something. “Describe him to me.”

  Camos twisted his mouth to one side. “About your height, lean, middle-aged. He has really dark hair, not black but a deep auburn. Darker hazel eyes, Japanese bloodlines if I were to guess based on his features.”

  Japanese. What the hell did that have to do with anything? “That doesn’t help me much. Does he have a name?”

  The incubus shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s really his name or not. But he goes by Ito. No check, either, to trace, just straight up cash in a bag. Sometimes gold in payment.”

  I folded my arms and stared hard at him. “So you have a pickup date, and he shows for whatever kids you’ve stashed away—”

  “I’m telling you, I only take runaways. Kids on the street who are happy to have a place to crash and sleep without being molested.”

  My eyes narrowed and my muscles tensed with that last word. “Until your contact picks them up. You don’t know what the fuck they are being subjected to, do you? Do you?”

  He shook his head, and his eyes seemed to shake with the movement. “I’ve told you everything I know. I always thought their life was better, at least being of value to someone. People don’t drop half a million on kids they’re going to treat like shit.”

  I lifted one sword and pointed it at his right eye. “You’d better be right, or you and I are going to have a problem. One where you won’t like the end solution.”

  He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing with the effort. “Understood.”

  I lowered my sword. “Keep picking up the kids.”

  “What?” His eyes about fell out of his head. “You want me to keep bringing them in?”

  “Yes. But you work for me now. Bring them in, take care of them, and keep them safe. I want to see if I can figure out what the hell is going on and why someone would pay so much for a runaway.”

  Camos shook his head. “Where do I get a hold of you?”

  I slid my two swords into their sheaths. “You won’t. I’ll drop in and check on you periodically. If I don’t like what I see, you aren’t going to like what I do.”

  He gripped the edge of the table. “Got it. Boss.”

  I turned my back on him and walked through the store and out the front door. I had a direction, a place to start.

  Time to revisit the Redwoods.

  CHAPTER 4

  I LEFT MAGIC WITH FLOWERS and continued on out of Bismarck. My farm was about two hours outside the main city, and even though the house had been destroyed, the fields razed, and the ground saturated in blood, it would always be the place I thought of as home.

  Not to mention the two remaining Harpies, Eve and Marco, had set up residence inside the barn, which remarkably still stood. As the last two remaining Harpies, at least that we knew of, it was important they were somewhere safe. And the f
arm with all it had been through was one of the places I felt safe.

  Hell, it was in shit shape and we’d had to do serious patching, but it was here, and that counted for something in my mind.

  As I drove, I mulled over the possibilities of what was really going on with the salvage. The most obvious answer was human trafficking, and while there was something to be said for that, it didn’t feel quite right. The situation didn’t feel like these runaways were being taken in to become someone’s sex slave. I hated to admit that Camos was right, but with the high cost, the kids would be treated well. There was a good chance I could bring home more than just Belinda.

  A beat of hope swelled in me. Maybe this was the right case to take on after all.

  I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as I pulled into the long driveway. The flat lands of North Dakota meant I could see the barn in the distance even though it was a good mile away. There was no movement, but I wasn’t surprised. Eve didn’t tend to hang outside the barn unless she was flying.

  I pulled up next to the barn a few minutes later and slid out of the Jeep.

  “Eve, you home?”

  There was no answering squawk, so I peeked into the barn. The interior had been gutted of all unnecessary walls and the Harpies had set up a nest of hay and feathers that filled the majority of the floor space. A nest big enough for two. I couldn’t help myself, I grinned as I snuck close and looked in. No eggs. Though, I suspected that was in the works.

  Ophelia was on the farm too, though out farther, closer to the badlands. She was guarding her eggs with the ferocity only a mother had. There was no way she would leave them in the state they were in. So pretty much, she was out in terms of helping me this time around.

  I backed out of the barn and stepped into the sunshine. I held a hand to my eyes, took a breath, and hollered, “EVE!”

  Not exactly what I would call subtle, but without the ability to Track, I couldn’t do much more than yell and hope she was close enough to hear.

  The flutter of wings in the distance spun me around. Walking quickly, I headed toward the burnt out ground of the farmhouse, deliberately turning away as I drew close enough to see the remains of the sacrificial alter. I didn’t need to be reminded how close things had come, about those we’d lost that day. Not today.