Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  “It was what I could afford. And then I had never had time to move elsewhere,” I admitted. “But this kind of attack can’t be allowed to recur. Not just the deaths but also the risks to the Covenants.”

  “The asura have paid heavily for their attacks here,” Oberis pointed out. “Surely, they will stop.”

  “They have accepted a contract. They will complete it,” I said. “Or at least, we don’t know what will make them stop.”

  “You can’t stay in that warehouse,” Mabona told me. “I will talk to Eric; we’ll find somewhere to put you. Somewhere more defensible and secured than a mortal apartment building.”

  “If you insist,” I allowed. I knew when I’d lost an argument, after all. “But we need to find these asura.”

  “They are shielded from my Sight,” MacDonald said grimly. “I’m starting to get quite sick of people shielding. I enjoy having near-omniscience in my territory.”

  “These Asi Warriors have hunted some of the planet’s most powerful creatures over the decades,” the Queen noted. “They know many tricks and have many games. They will reinforce and try again. I do not know if you can avoid that, Kilkenny.”

  “They have to be based somewhere,” I argued. “We have to find where.”

  “I have people looking,” Oberis told me. “I have seen nothing to suggest a hiding spot yet.”

  “Then you must prepare a new trap,” Mabona instructed. “We must find you a base of operations they will not have to threaten mortals to engage, and one where we can gather a significant force for your protection.”

  “That’s assuming we can trust anyone we can gather,” I said. “Even fae from Vancouver have turned out to be working for the Masked Lords. Is there a force we can draw on that isn’t at risk?”

  “No,” Oberis said calmly. “But we have sufficient forces we can trust to keep you safe. I must admit, I am concerned by the Masked Lords’ lack of direct activity. I wonder what other plans they may be acting on.”

  “There are many possibilities,” Mabona noted. “I will pass the thought on to Ankaris.” She shook her head. “For twenty years, they have hidden unnoticed. I fear we may not be able to track their operations now.”

  “We need to,” I replied. “Or we may find we’ve missed another attack coming at us sideways.”

  “The Wild Hunt will find them if anyone can,” Oberis concluded. “We will do what we can to keep you safe. You remain our best bait for their main striking forces.”

  The tiny side room that had been put at Mary’s and my disposal was silent when I reentered. She was there and she was awake, but she was sitting quietly, looking at something on her phone.

  “Mary?” I asked.

  “Hi.” She shook her head. “Clem says he has a copy of the picture of our mother I lost. Not sure what else I can duplicate, though.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You didn’t pick this fight,” she reminded me.

  “I didn’t?” I snorted. “I seem to remember at least one plan involving having me parking my butt in one of the old forts in Ireland that we still control. Put an army of fae between myself and the Masked Lords, with no mortals in any kind of danger at all.”

  “And if I hadn’t come with you?”

  “You’d at least have been safe.”

  She sighed and gestured for me to join her on the bed. Wrapping her arms around me, she pulled my head down on her shoulder.

  “If I’d wanted to be safe, I could have left you, too,” she pointed out. “There were always options. I decided I wanted to be with you more.”

  I nodded against her shoulder.

  “I’m not happy with what I lost,” Mary admitted. “But your stuff was there too.”

  “I’d lost anything of real value by the time I made it here,” I told her. “I don’t even have any pictures of my mom.”

  “You didn’t?” she asked. “I hadn’t realized that. I should have.”

  “I don’t talk about it, love,” I reminded her. “It is what it is. I’m sorry your stuff got caught up in this. I’m sorry you got caught up in this.”

  “I seem to recall you getting dragged into at least two fights and rescue attempts because I asked,” she pointed out. “We’re here for each other, Jason. If these fuckers come at us, they’re going to come at us. There’s nothing we can do about that.

  “I wish I’d kept a few things somewhere else, but…” She sighed again.

  “I spoke to our landlady. She was glad to hear we were okay, but she says the building is a total write-off. The firefighters aren’t even letting people back in to try and get their stuff. It isn’t safe.”

  Mary smiled sadly.

  “I told her we would be fine, we’d already made arrangements. I didn’t want her to worry; she was always so sweet.”

  I chuckled and squeezed her gently. Our landlady, Rhonda, had been the sister of my first boss when I’d moved to Calgary. I’d spent a few months working for a courier company, and they’d helped me get set up in the city.

  My duties for Mabona had eventually forced me to leave, but they’d been good to me.

  “I’m glad you spoke to her,” I admitted. “I’m not sure I would have remembered, and you’re right. I wouldn’t want her to worry.”

  “Have we made longer-term arrangements than this?” Mary asked me. “There are nicer places we can crash with the Clan if we need it.”

  “Talus can put us up in his goblins’ spare units if we’re that desperate,” I said.

  Talus had helped evacuate a goblin clan from Vietnam during the war. They now owned a townhouse complex in the northeast of the city, where they kept a few units free for Talus’s friends.

  They’d made for a reliable safehouse in the past and would again in the future, I was sure. Even if the goblins weren’t inhumanly sneaky and strong, a number of them had trained with Viet Cong guerillas before they’d left Vietnam.

  I wouldn’t want to tangle with their defenses.

  “We could do that,” Mary agreed. She’d always liked the goblins—as had I. They were secretive, but they were good people.

  “Shouldn’t be necessary,” I told her. “Mabona asked Eric to take care of it.”

  Mary raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Well, that should be interesting.”

  “What?”

  “Last time Mabona asked Eric to take care of something for you, you ended up driving a Cadillac, Jason.”

  Right. That…could definitely be interesting.

  10

  Eric joined us at the warehouse a few hours later, the gnome looking particularly pleased with himself.

  “And just what canary did you swallow, Master Keeper?” I asked as he entered the lounge area I was waiting in and dropped into a chair.

  “I don’t know if canary is the right word, but I’ve arranged a meeting for you that I didn’t expect to manage,” Eric told me. “There aren’t a lot of Indian supernaturals outside that subcontinent—something to do with the sacred rivers.

  “But where a people go, their myths follow,” he continued. “And some of the deva are less bound than the asura, for whatever reason. There is a deva family in the city, but they are very insular.”

  “Why didn’t anyone mention them before?” I asked. “When the asura showed up, we should have been talking to them immediately!”

  “Because pretty much no one knows they exist,” Eric told me. “That I’m in contact with Pankaj Gupta is a gesture of extraordinary trust. The deva who have left India are…inherently vulnerable. Without access to their sacred waters, they lose much of the invulnerability many of us supernaturals take for granted.”

  “So they get paranoid,” I said with a sigh. “But he agreed to meet us?”

  “Agreed to meet you. Only you,” Eric said with a raised palm. “He gave me the address of a temple in the northeast and said to send you there for three this afternoon.”

  He paused.

  “Jason, Gupta is…a deva-sur
a, the equivalent of one of our Fae Lords. He gave up a lot by leaving India, and I’ve never worked out why he left. He’s not as powerful as he once was, but he demands the respect due his blood.”

  “And his family?” I asked quietly.

  “Born here, except his wife. Two generations of deva who don’t even know what their sacred waters feel like. So far as I know, they’ve never gone back.”

  “Which suggests that he can’t go back. That he’s an exile.”

  “The highest deva-sura are Powers. If they banned him from the sacred waters, then they thought they were killing him,” Eric pointed out. “My research suggests that there are only three deva-sura outside of the Indian subcontinent and that Gupta was the first to leave.

  “He is very old, very well informed…and, as you say, he is an exile. Tread carefully, Jason.”

  “Then why are you sending me to him?” I asked. That was a lot of warnings.

  “Because if anyone in this city understands these Asi, it’s him. If anyone knows how to turn them away without killing them all…”

  I sighed and nodded.

  “He’s probably not going to try to kill me, right?” I asked.

  “Almost certainly not. He’s paranoid, not hostile.”

  “Wonderful.” I checked the time. “I guess I should get going. What about you?”

  “I’m here to grab Coleman,” the Keeper told me. “I want his opinion on the defensibility of the house I’m getting you.”

  I sighed.

  “Is it too much to hope for something low-key?” I asked.

  “It will be low-key, I assure you,” Eric replied. “And defensible. And worthy of your status.”

  I glared at him, but I wasn’t sure it got through to him. Eric wasn’t that thick-skulled…he was just very certain in his view of the world.

  The Hindu temple in Calgary’s northeast was quiet on a weekday afternoon. There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot of the gray-and-red brick building, and no one challenged us as I parked the SUV and headed up to the door.

  “Stay here,” I told my bodyguards. “I’m supposed to meet with Gupta alone. If there’s a problem, well, I’ll make my way back.”

  Kristal and Riley nodded and split apart to flank the door. Jumping Between from inside a building to the front door wouldn’t take me very long.

  A young man in a conservative black suit was waiting inside the door as I entered, bowing slightly as he saw me.

  “Mr. Kilkenny?” he asked.

  “That’s me,” I confirmed.

  “Follow me, please.”

  I nodded and fell in behind him as he led me deeper into the building. The office he guided me to was roughly what I expected: a normal-looking administrative space, with paintings and statues in keeping with the nature of the organization it administered.

  Pankaj Gupta was sitting behind the desk and dismissed the young man with a gesture, studying me as the door swung closed.

  I returned his study levelly. Gupta was a tall man, broad-shouldered and heavily built. Like Raja Asi, he wore his hair dark and long and there was a golden tone to his skin that was ever so slightly different from the more natural dark tones of the man who’d shown me in.

  “Lord Gupta,” I finally greeted him, bowing slightly. “I appreciate your willingness to meet with me.”

  He grunted.

  “Sit down,” he instructed.

  I sat, waiting for the older supernatural to speak. If he was as old and powerful as Eric suggested, respect was an absolute necessity. If he wasn’t…well, it didn’t hurt.

  “So. The Asi have targeted you.” His words were slow and deep, though he had less of an accent than I would have expected.

  “Yes. Eric said you knew about them?”

  Gupta grunted again.

  “As much as anyone,” he told me. “The organization is older than I am, though they lose enough young and old warriors alike that I doubt they have any members of my age.”

  I waited.

  “They are the guardians of Asi itself, the first sword,” he continued after a moment. “Their mercenary activities are an extension of that. They believe they are descended from Asi when it took the form of a man.”

  Okay, even for supernaturals, that was stretching it. A sword who’d turned into a man and spawned a line of supernaturals to be its guardians?

  “Are they right?” I asked.

  Gupta chuckled and smiled for the first time since I’d arrive.

  “I don’t know. Their origins pre-date me, and those few who are old enough to say do not talk of the past.”

  “How do I get them to stop hunting me?”

  “You kill them,” he said bluntly. “Kill enough of them, and they will walk away. Of course, what qualifies as ‘enough’ changes from year to year and century to century. Certainly, Raja Venkat Asi is one of their more determined commanders, with the influence to bring vast resources to bear.”

  He shrugged.

  “Your enemies knew what they were doing when they hired him. If he cannot kill you, there are few people on this world who could.”

  “I intend on frustrating him,” I said drily.

  “So have his previous enemies. I wish you luck, Mr. Kilkenny. You will likely need it.”

  I sighed.

  “So, what, I just keep killing them as they come? That seems…time-consuming, if nothing else.”

  “Once they have accepted a contract, you cannot outbid it. You cannot defer them or negotiate with them,” Gupta told me. “They were once charged to drive me from India.” He grimaced. “Clearly, they succeeded. They are asura, demon warriors.”

  “I was hoping for something more useful, I’ll admit,” I told him.

  Gupta snorted.

  “I will reach out to Raja,” he said. “I doubt I can buy you anything, not even time, Mr. Kilkenny. But I will talk to Raja and see.”

  “I appreciate that. But…why?” I asked.

  “Because I can,” Gupta told me. “And sometimes an old man wants to feel useful.”

  That didn’t seem like enough to me, but…I wasn’t going to turn down his help.

  11

  I met up with Mary again for lunch and she looked tired. I hugged her wordlessly and she squeezed me hard.

  “So, my morning was weird,” I told her without letting go. “How was yours?”

  “Fortunately, my boss has seen everything over the years,” she replied. We each dropped into our seats at the restaurant we’d picked basically at random. “On the other hand, a firefight outside a burning building… We’re swamped today with cleanup.”

  And the Shifter Clans hadn’t even really been involved. I wasn’t entirely sure how Eric was finding time to house-shop for us.

  “Eric should have left the house-shopping to us,” I concluded aloud.

  Mary shook her head at me.

  “Oberis is probably running the cleanup for your side,” she pointed out. “And Eric doesn’t trust your sense of your own importance.”

  “The last thing I need is a mansion somewhere like Eagle Ridge,” I said. Eagle Ridge was one of Calgary’s more upscale communities, full of the type of house that just reeked of pretentiousness to me.

  “You can afford it,” Mary reminded me. “And it might be more defensible, which is pretty important these days.”

  I sighed and nodded, the arrival of the waiter temporarily suspending the conversation.

  With our drinks and meals ordered, the young man disappeared and I leaned heavily on the table.

  “The whole plan of being bait to lure the Masked Lords into a mistake sounded a lot better on paper,” I admitted. It had been my plan, sadly. Mabona and Ankaris had wanted to hide me in a fortified bunker somewhere.

  “A lot of people are dead, Jason,” she half-whispered. “We didn’t anticipate that, but that’s not really your fault. Most of us keep things quiet.”

  “We weren’t expecting them to attack the apartment building to get at us,” I
agreed, shaking my head. “I don’t know what Eric’s criteria are, but we need some place isolated enough that when the asura come for us, we’re ready.”

  Our food arrived then, cutting off further conversation—and then my phone buzzed before we finished our meals. Eric was texting me.

  Found a place. Can close the deal tonight, want to take a look?

  “He’s got a place,” I told Mary. “Are you free this afternoon?”

  “Yeah, Grandfather told me to go clothes shopping before I came back to work,” she said, then snorted. “I hate clothes shopping, but I literally have what I’m wearing at this point.”

  “Well, let’s meet up with Eric and see what white elephant he wants to hang around my neck. Then we can go clothes shopping together.”

  Mary chuckled.

  “I suppose being ogled while I change will make the process more pleasant, won’t it?

  I had the grace to blush. That hadn’t quite been my intent…but it hadn’t been far from my mind, either.

  We met Eric in one of the southwest’s larger shopping centers. Signal Hill was spread out across a dozen square kilometers of stores of various sizes. It wasn’t even a shopping area set up for walking; you needed to drive if you wanted to get from the grocery store on one end to the bookstore on the other.

  It was often very obvious that most of Calgary had been built after cars became a thing and before people started to think driving less might be a good idea. Eric was sitting on the hood of his Land Rover, in front of the Starbucks and with a tray of three steaming cups balanced on his lap.

  The gnome seemed utterly unbothered by the subfreezing weather. He waved us over and then passed the coffees through the window once I’d parked the Escalade next to him.

  I’d spent time living in a Seattle independent coffee roaster’s café, the Manor in that city. I was only somewhat reconciled to drinking Starbucks still…but it was cold out.

  “You already found a house, Eric?” I asked.

  “Hey.” He spread his hands wide. “I’m good. And I found something worth the effort, too, my boy.”