by Lauren Dane
Just the balance of their world all in her hands.
No pressure.
Chapter 4
HELENA stood at the head of the room, pacing just slightly as she addressed her crew. Her father, David, sat off to the side, letting her hold the reins, which Faine respected. His own father tended to be like that. He was the symbolic head of Leviathan, but Pere, Faine’s oldest brother, ran things.
“I don’t know how long this is going to take. As head of this new team, I expect to be gone at least seventy percent of the time, so in my absence from this office, David will take the lead, along with Marian and Evan. Things need to continue as they’ve been. I want three shifts of patrols, and keep on those police bands. I’ll still check in via video for the daily briefings when I can, and you know you can contact me if you need to. We’ll continue our position here. We will not back down when locals demand it when our people are in danger. This is the new normal, folks. No one seems interested in protecting our witches, but it’s our job. We will do it. They want to tell us what our power is. But no one knows better than we do. We don’t need to be given our power, it’s already ours.”
Heads nodded throughout the room and Faine noted the pride on David Jaansen’s face. This was a man who’d raised his children from birth—if the stories he’d heard were true—to be hunters. Considering the performance of both Jaansen sisters, he’d done an exemplary job.
These hunters believed in her. Followed her orders without hesitation. That was rare. And important. He wondered if she even saw it.
“I need to get on the road now so I can get into Sacramento. John, you’re with me. Caspar and Bridget will be coming over from San Francisco to staff the Road Show team. I’ll be rotating staff through, so if you’re interested, let Sasha know. She’s keeping a list. The rotations will be in two-week increments.” Helena paused. “Any questions?”
A few hands went up.
“You’re guarding the human? Why not have his own take care of him?”
Helena tapped the back of her hand with her pen for a moment. “He’s risking everything to back us. We’re guarding the whole group, including the other legislators who are Others. It’s the right thing to do. He does have staff to guard him. But we’re better than they are.”
Her smile was cocky, but she told the truth. Despite the danger, it had been the Other guards who’d kept everyone alive, even in the midst of bombings.
A few more procedural questions and she was stalking to the car, her arms full of files.
Faine carried a big lockbox of ammunition that had been specially created to deal with the mages. The Others knew some of the mages still allied themselves with the human hate groups, and they worked on regular humans too. She used guns, knives and magick on her job.
A lot of Others hesitated in using human weapons on their law enforcement teams, though that was changing. In large part due to Helena and Lark.
Faine remembered the look on her face when she’d slapped a magazine of the special ammo in place. She told him she wasn’t about to waste a tool if she could use it to protect her people. He liked her ruthless streak.
A lot.
“I need to stop at my house to grab some clothes,” she said as she got in the car.
He drove the fifteen minutes to her apartment, noting that the warding was still in place and holding. The building was owned by a Clan family and was guarded, not quite as openly as the enclave he lived in, but it was a magickal fortress so he approved.
“I shouldn’t be too long.” The wards recognized her, flaring to life as they admitted her and Faine, re-knitting in their wake. “Sorry about the mess.”
He laughed at that; unless she described a glass on the counter as a mess, he had no idea what she meant. The place was ruthlessly neat and orderly otherwise. “I’ve seen how your sister is. This is positively orderly.”
She shrugged. “She’s a slob. Sort of an anomaly as most witches are orderly. But Simon is a neat freak so I’m sure she works to keep it in check. Mostly.” There was affectionate amusement in her tone but he knew things between the two hadn’t always been so easy.
He wanted her to share that story with him. Of how she and her sister had ended up falling away from each other for the last few years. He knew the details from Lark’s perspective, but he wondered how the story went from Helena’s point of view.
“Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in a few.”
She grabbed a suitcase from the hall closet and disappeared into her bedroom. He contented himself with wandering the living room, looking at her books and the pictures on her shelves.
The woman won a lot of stuff. There were blue ribbons tucked here and there. Not really on display, but in and amongst her things. Statues and plaques. Pictures of her on graduation day, with her arm around Lark, her parents standing with them.
She’d been a swimmer. A runner too. Certainly a prolific reader if her shelves were any indicator. Books were everywhere, and of all types and genres. All in ruthless order by subject and even in like spine colors.
But there was nothing on her walls. They were all the same basic white as most apartments. No pictures hung. No open books sat on the arms of the chair or couch. She lived there, but the space didn’t feel like a home.
Helena came out shortly with a suitcase, a weapons case and another smaller bag; given the scent, probably her toiletries.
“Your weapons case is larger than the suitcase holding your clothes.”
She laughed and the sound of it tightened things low in his belly.
“A girl needs priorities. Also, I have clothes in Sacramento. I’ve got a room there, at the Gennessee building I mean. Weapons? Well, those I keep with me because I have favorites. I can buy four of the same shirt in two colors, but my guns? Well, they’re a lot more expensive and I’m partial to how they fit my hand.”
He sucked in a breath and the moment between them stretched. “There’s a lot to be said for a woman who appreciates a weapon the way you do.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded but refrained from saying anything else. They needed to stop at his place and to get on the road. And he sensed the immensity of anticipation between them. Something was going to happen but it wasn’t the time, no matter how much he wanted it to be.
He cleared his throat. “Have everything you need?”
She swallowed hard and he tasted her thundering pulse in the air between them. “Yeah. If I forget something I can always pick up a replacement.”
He led the way out after she let him grab one of her bags.
* * *
SHE wasn’t surprised that Faine drove ridiculously fast. Or that he had the reflexes to handle the road at eighty without batting an eye.
At his place he exchanged her company car for his. A sleek and sexy BMW. The engine purred even as it roared down the freeway.
Settling back into the embrace of the seat, she pulled out her pad, a pen and her phone. She needed to call Agent Anderson because he’d left her a message while she was in her meeting back at Gennessee.
“Agent Anderson, it’s Helena Jaansen retuning your call.”
“Hello there. I just wanted to check in with you after last night’s events. I wanted you to hear this from me, but Gentry Fenton is out on bail.”
“What?” She wanted to turn the car around and go hunt him down so she could snap his neck. And then she wanted to find this FBI agent to do the same.
“This was over our objections. We argued that he be held without bail. But his attorneys were able to show a lack of an arrest record, no history of violence, he’s got a business in Signal Hill and roots in the community. They argued that he wasn’t a flight risk.”
“This is bullshit. Utter and total bullshit. One of my people died last night. Children were targeted! Or don’t they count because they’re shifters? No one gives a shit because only human children deserve to be able to play without being bombed by terrorists?”
“I understand. I’m p
issed off too, Helena. I promise you this was not what we wanted. My people will keep an eye on him and the others to be sure they don’t leave the jurisdiction. Hell, maybe they’ll lead us to something useful.”
“The other ones were released too?”
He blew out a breath and she knew the magick threatened to boil over from her belly.
“The ones that weren’t in the hospital. I’m sorry.”
“What judge would allow that?”
He paused so long she understood it. That was the problem. The judge was a pro PURITY person and had acted accordingly.
“We were able to get an order for all of them to stay at least five hundred feet away from any known Other community centers or other organizations. Believe me when I say if they step one foot in that five hundred feet we will pull them in.”
“Where a judge will just let them go.” When she hung up, she needed to get one of her team post photographs of the men arrested the night before out on the website and to all the community centers they knew of.
“I’m sure you’re aware that we will consider it self-defense if any of these men get anywhere near our property.” And who knew if there’d be enough left of the perpetrators to call the cops over when it was all said and done?
“Helena, I know this is atrocious. Please understand this task force is on your side. We want to stop all these hate crimes. We’re doing the best we can, and we can do more if you help us.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I’m not saying you don’t have the right to defend yourselves. But a less confrontational manner . . .”
“You’ll need to give Rebecca Gennessee a call on that one. Good luck to you with that. I can tell you it is the policy—a policy we made very clear to Humans First two weeks ago—that we would no longer be turning the other cheek. If you firebomb our children, we will be confronting the hell out of any garbage washing up on our shores trying to do it again.”
She hung up, so pissed that she knew if she kept talking to him she’d say something worse.
“I used to be so much more diplomatic,” she snarled. “Lark, she was the hothead. I was the calm one. Look at me now, hanging up on FBI agents.”
“I heard. The conversation I mean. I think you showed amazing restraint, as it happens.”
“I like having you around. You’re a bad influence. And I mean that in the best way.” She grinned at him, some of her anger ebbing. “I need to make calls about all this stuff.”
“Go on. I’m not going anywhere.”
Helena handled calls for two hours more, including one to Rebecca Gennessee, who let forth a curse-laden invective the likes of which Helena rarely heard. She actually felt sorry for Agent Anderson, who she did believe meant well.
She instructed her staff to deal with the alerts to all community centers, covens, clans, et cetera, with the pictures of the PURITY people who’d been released. They’d have their own team watching the men, and if they got anywhere near anything that could harm an Other, they’d know what a mistake they’d made.
Eventually Faine pulled off the freeway and into a place for some food. It was a little diner she’d stopped at often enough on her way to San Francisco. Nothing fancy, but a lot of food for reasonable prices and their iced tea was good. But their milkshakes were heaven.
It was also run by shifters, which made her feel safer.
She dug into her cheeseburger and watched him drain a milkshake and order another as he demolished a French dip and shifted to his next plate.
“I envy your metabolism.”
He smiled her way. “You seem to do okay.”
“I have a physical job. But if I ate like you, I’d be unable to move.”
“There are benefits to being Lycian.”
Being in a diner run by shifters, being surrounded by Others of all types, meant it was easier to speak about their world without fear. It was nice.
So nice she wanted to keep the topic away from current events. And know more about him, too.
“Tell me about it. What’s Lycia like?”
His surprised smile made her glad she’d asked. “It’s beautiful. Forests and lakes mainly.”
“Industrial? Or? I’m sorry. I know my ignorance is shameful. I guess you’re my brother-in-law and I don’t know much of anything about where you come from.”
“We’ve never taken much effort to educate Others here on what we’re like.” He lifted a shoulder. “Not industrial. We do have machines and production, but it’s nowhere near the scale you have here. Life is slower.”
“Easier I suppose when you live so long.”
He nodded. “Yes. There’s no rush-rush-rush attitude there. Life is savored. There’s much time spent with family and Pack. Our young are kept home for far longer than yours. We tend to live in familial groups. Leviathan land is very large, spread out over hundreds of miles. We live in clusters, usually with our immediate family. I’ll take you. When we get some breathing room that is.”
She smiled. “To Lycia? Really?”
“You’d like that?”
“Are you kidding? I’d love that. I’ve been dying to go since Lark first told me about it. A world of warriors? I’m thrilled.”
His smile, which was normally laid-back and slightly dirty, widened into something else. “It would be an honor to take you.”
“If we survive Thunderdome, that is.”
“Thunderdome?”
“How long have you been here? On this side of the Veil, I mean.”
“Mainly I’ve lived in Lycia. My father has a private security force; I have been a lieutenant there. I came here and lived for thirty years or so in the eighteen hundreds. That was an interesting time. Then for about a decade in your nineteen twenties. I’ve only been here for short periods of time since.”
“Thunderdome is from a movie. Dick of a leading man, but it’s a fun movie. Plus, Tina Turner is in it, big win. Essentially it’s an arena, two men enter, one man leaves.” She bet they had stuff like that in Lycia for real.
“Ah, I understand. You and your sister like cultural references.”
“I can see I need to expose you to more movies. You know, update your knowledge. There’s plenty of downtime stuck in hotels on this damned roadshow. I’ll take your education on.” She winked. “Also, I can’t quite believe you’re old enough to have been here in the eighteen hundreds.”
They paid the bill and headed back to the car after a stop at the mini mart when they gassed up. You never knew when you were going to need Red Vines or peanut M&Ms after all.
Soon he was back on the freeway, which had been mainly empty once they’d cleared the Grapevine and had descended into Central California. They hit pockets of traffic here and there, but nothing too heavy.
He started to speak again, taking up the conversation from back at the diner. “The world here was different then. In eighteen forty. I lived in London.”
“Really? Did you go to balls and dress up and all that stuff?”
“I had a wife.”
She paused. “A human wife?”
“All our lives we’re taught to avoid humans. Short life-span, you see, means that should you love one, you’ll see them grow old and die. Thirty years is nothing to me. But to her, my Lydia, it was from the bloom of her youth until she passed, devastated by tuberculosis. She was fifty-five. Which for then was a ripe old age.”
Helena hadn’t even thought of him being married. She tried to wrap her head about it.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was over two hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Well, seems to me that to you, that’s not so long ago. And some things aren’t so easy to get over.”
He breathed out. His eyes were hidden behind some snazzy sunglasses so it was hard to know what he was feeling just then.
“Was it difficult? The fact that they’d have seen you as black?”
He was nearly unbearably handsome. Tall and broad. Dark skin, luscious lips, deep brown e
yes. Like Simon, he tended to dress up in suits. He often looked like he’d stepped out of a magazine ad for designer menswear. But in eighteen forty, people would have been less accepting of his skin color.
“I had a lot of money. That tends to ease the way. There were plenty who did not speak to me and who avoided my presence. But more who sought ways to ease me into their company because of the wealth I possessed. The rumor was that I was an African prince of some sort.”
“Well, you are a prince, so that part was true.”
He snorted. “Yes. I haven’t thought of Lydia in some time. Thank you.”
“What was she like?”
She had no idea why she asked. It wasn’t really her thing to poke around about a man’s old girlfriends or exes. But his Lydia had been dead over two hundred and fifty years. It wasn’t like there was a threat. Nor should she even be thinking about it that way because, hello, she was his friend and colleague.
“Kind. Beautiful. They’d needed the income and no one had offered for her. It made her sad. She knew horses really well. That’s how I got to know her. She wasn’t helpless like many women of her time were bred to be. She was smart and well read. I loved her.” He shrugged. “We got on. We married and she moved into my home and we had a life together for a time. She died and I went back to Lycia.”
“Did she know? What you were, I mean?”
“No. It wasn’t something she could have accepted.”
Helena reached out, squeezing his hand. She couldn’t imagine having to hide such a big part of yourself that way. She wondered if he felt like half a person.
“You have a good heart, Helena.”
She laughed. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Do you think it’s a secret?”
“I understand how people see me. Lark is the touchy-feely one. She’s wisecracks and wild-colored hair. I’m the cold, logical one.”
He harrumphed. “She’s certainly touchy-feely, as you say. But she’s got her share of cold logic and you have your share of warmth and compassion. I see how you are with your people. You risk your life for them daily. Others see it as well.”