Haunted by Pride

by Kaye Draper

  He shrugged. "I have a feeling your bestie won't be surprised when we show up with extras. Did you notice how many rooms there are down below?"

  I grimaced. I had noticed. But I didn't think much of it. There was certainly space enough—and now that I thought about it, food enough for more people. I just assumed White was making silent commentary on the number of lovers I had. And my appetite.

  "Godsdamn it," I muttered.

  Whatever. It would all work itself out, I supposed. I did worry about what the hell White planned on doing with a bunch of sirens. That had the potential to be anything from weird to fucking scary….

  Oisin leaned against me and hummed. "What's really the matter, darling?"

  I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off, then clapped a hand over my mouth and rushed to the railing to puke.

  "How fucking long 'til we get back to Africa?" I asked on a gasp, as soon as my stomach stopped heaving.

  Oisin patted my shoulder absently. "A week. Do you feel that?"

  I started to say no. But then I did feel it. A cold caress, like a hand walking up my spine. My eyes met Hisashi's across the way and he frowned, turning to say something to our guests before he headed toward me and Oisin.

  "Let's go find Halstad," the fox said as he approached. "Someone wants to talk to him."

  I heaved a sigh. Ghosts. Halstad might be pissed because he thought we killed a bunch of kids, but somehow, I had a feeling that was nothing compared to the rage we were about to face when he realized we were talking to the ghosts of his dead friends and that at least two of us knew all about his past.

  We found Halstad pacing in the narrow hallway outside our bedroom. He had put on the clothes I brought him, and he looked more himself in dark jeans and a black wife-beater. Although, he was still missing his beard and his belt of mage tools. And he was barefoot. Since all I'd ever seen him wear were boots, and that was not going to fly in the tropics, I'd brought him sandals. But apparently, they didn't fit.

  He stopped when he saw us, and a confusing array of emotions drifted over his features. Then he shut it down and gave us a stern, blank look from his mismatched fae eyes. I shook my head at him and opened the bedroom door, gesturing for everyone to go in. Kai sat on the bed reading a book. She set it aside when we entered and smiled up at me, her tone sweet.

  "Oh, Gesa, it's you," she said. "I thought maybe the mage finally got up the nerve to come in and yell at me for being a murdering monster."

  I snorted. "Actually, the pouting mage has people who want to talk to his grumpy ass. Gods know why."

  I plopped down beside Kai as the others settled in on the couch and chair. Halstad stood in the doorway for a minute before storming in and slamming the door. He fumed silently from where he stood.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. "Look, fucker. Tell me I didn't just come all this way, on a Godsdamned boat for fuck's sake, to drag your ass back home when you don't really want to come with us."

  He crossed his burly arms over his wide chest, making everything flex. Not that I was noticing that. I imitated his gesture, making one corner of his lips twitch before he got the laugh under control.

  "No one killed anyone," Con said with a tired sigh.

  Kai nodded. "Yeah. For the love of the Gods, stop glaring and fuck already."

  I turned my glare on her. She smirked.

  Hisashi sat forward on the edge of the couch, loosening the waistband on his pants to make room for his tails so he could half-shift. His cool power snaked around us all, and he held out a hand to Halstad. "Hal. Come over here and stop glaring. Someone wants to say hello."

  The mage narrowed his eyes at the fox and his unbuttoned clothes. "That better not be a dick joke, kid."

  Oisin stood and went to sit beside Hisashi, taking his other hand. "Here, let me talk to them. So I can tell them I'm done with this whole fucking thing."

  I watched Oisin's eyes glaze over, as if he was looking at some other place. "I did what you wanted me to do," he said in a haughty tone. "It's not my fault the man is an idiot. No. I most certainly will not look after him. Go pass over or whatever the fuck you call it."

  I smirked. Gods, the fae was even a bitch to ghosts.

  Hisashi rolled his eyes and addressed the invisible people in the room. "Ignore him. He gets like that when he's forced to admit he's wrong. Or that he cares. King Silverleaf will watch over your teaghlach."

  "What…?" The way Halstad's rough, gravelly voice broke made my eyes water a little. He looked like someone had just punched him in the gut.

  Then he cleared his throat and got a grip again. "I don't need watching over. For the love of the Gods, I'm a grown-assed man. I don't need no fairy princess looking out for me."

  He was trying to be scathing. But I could see the hope and yearning in his eyes.

  "Okay," I said, clapping my hands together. "Everybody but Halstad and Hisashi, fuck off for a while."

  Con stood and made his way to the door, pausing to clap the glowering mage on the shoulder. "Hey, glad you're okay, by the way. I'll make you some tea."

  Halstad just looked at him, his face saying what he thought about tea. And emotions.

  Kai followed behind Con, stopping to glare down into the mage's mismatched eyes. "I have one question for you, mage," she said in a soft, deadly voice that reminded everyone she was a fucking ancient sea monster.

  Halstad kept his arms crossed over his chest, his expression wary. "What?"

  Kai's face was dead serious. "Do you like feminine women too? Or just the butch ones like Gesa?"

  He stared at her. She tilted her head. "Okay, two questions. What about men?"

  I went to them and grasped Kai's shoulders, steering her out the door. Oisin followed me. He stopped in the hallway to look up at Kai, hands on his hips. "I'm not sharing Hisashi with a mage," he hissed.

  I slammed the door on them. "Assholes."

  Halstad sighed and walked over to Hisashi. "Boy, no offense, but I'm not joining this little fuckfest, so you can tell your fae girlfriend to stop worrying."

  Hisashi barked out a laugh. "Oh, Halstad. I missed your grumpy ass."

  I sat in the chair across from them. "Go on," I said, impatiently. "Do your thing."

  Halstad sat beside Hisashi and some of the pasted-on anger and defensiveness left his face. It made him look younger. More vulnerable. "Is it true?" he asked. "Is it really them?"

  Hisashi smiled and held out his hand to the mage. "Come on old man."

  I watched as the two of them went wherever it was you went to talk to ghosts. They were still there, in the room with me, but their eyes went distant, focused on something I couldn't see.

  Halstad made a choked sound and clutched Hisashi's hand tighter. Hisashi smiled this sad, knowing little smile.

  "What are you doing here?" Halstad whispered to the invisible fae. Tears streamed down the gruff, burly mage's cheeks.

  He seemed to listen for a time, nodding. All the while, the tears poured down his scarred cheeks from his stolen fae eyes.

  All of the sudden, he reached for me, blindly groping for my hand, his eyes still on whatever he saw. Hisashi looked at me with his silver eyes and held out his other hand. "They want to meet you."

  I took each of their hands, inhaling sharply as Hisashi's magic opened up my sight to the unseen world.

  The fae ghosts were about what I'd expect fae ghosts to be. Slender, beautiful, sharp-featured. Usually the otherworld was shades of gray, as if all the color had been leached from it. But these fae had glowing eyes, gold and purple just like Halstad's.

  "Gryphon," the male said in a hollow voice. He bowed his head slightly. "It is an honor to meet Hal's mate."

  I was still trying to adjust to being half in the otherworld, half in the real world—not fully shifted over like we’d been before. Was this how Hisashi felt all the time? Cause, fuck, that would suck. It made me feel unbalanced. I glanced at Halstad, where he sat beside me. "Uh. Thanks, I guess. But I'm not sure he's really decided
to claim that title yet."

  Hisashi was smirking, with that look on his face that said he knew everything and the rest of us were so slow. Damned psychics.

  The fae woman moved forward and tried to touch my shoulder, her hand falling through with a tingle of cold. "He's stubborn," she whispered, her purple eyes twinkling. "But so are you."

  I nodded.

  Halstad swallowed, still looking shaken. "Gesa, this is Declan," he said nodding at the male. "And Fiona," he nodded at the female. "They were…the only family I ever had. I…Gods, I can't say how happy I am that you could meet."

  I squeezed his hand harder. I could hear what he wasn't saying. The only people he'd ever really trusted were standing here before us, asking him to risk trusting someone else. Me.

  "Thank you," I whispered. To Halstad. To the fae. To Hisashi for giving us this amazing gift.

  The male fae looked over his shoulder, at something the rest of us couldn't see. "Ah," he said with a soft, glowing smile. "Finally." He turned back to Halstad, putting his arm around the woman. "It's time for us to go, Hal."

  The woman beamed. "You have others to protect you now."

  Halstad didn't speak as the fae walked off into the mist.

  Hisashi let go of his connection to the otherworld and the real world around us came back into focus with a jarring sharpness. The colors seemed too vivid now, and I had to blink repeatedly, feeling disoriented.

  Halstad was staring straight ahead, at the place where the fae would be standing, if they were still there.

  Hisashi stood and gripped the mage's shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "I'm going to go get some air and check on the kids."

  He ghosted out the door, leaving me alone with a shaken, emotional mage.

  Oh Gods, I hated emoting. And I was so bad at that whole comfort thing.

  "They were really important to you," I said softly.

  He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath, pulling himself together. "Yes."

  I sighed. "Halstad. I know this is all weird and fast and…I don't even know what it is but…no one is going to force you to stay with us. Oh—and we didn't really kill those siren-rejects. They're up on deck eating all our food and making plans for their new life in podunk Michigan. Lots of water there, you know."

  He turned a bit to face me on the couch. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice rough.

  I blinked at him. "What?"

  He flung his hands up and I realized he wasn't wearing the leather gloves he usually wore to hide his scarred, blue-veined hands. "I'm sorry for thinking the worst. I'm sorry for being such an asshole all the time." He snorted. "I'm not…good…at this whole whatever-it-is. I've never had…real relationships. People only use me…."

  I grabbed his hand to stop it from waving around. "It's okay. Really. I fucking suck at emotions and peopling and all that crap too. And I mean it, Halstad. I know you belong here. I feel it with this stupid part of me that thinks it's an alpha lion. But I'm not going to force you to stay with us if you don't want to. And…you've said it a couple of times now and I must just be slow, but if you're not into the whole sex thing, I get it. I don't care. It might sound dumb, but that's not what being a part of a pride is about—not really."

  He laughed. "Gods. We are a couple of fucked up jackasses. I think we both use grumpiness to hide the fact we don't have a fucking clue what's going on, don't we?"

  I frowned at him. But I couldn't argue that point. He knew me well, it seemed.

  "So," I said, leaning back. "You going to tell me about your fae? Or is that too top-secret?"

  He heaved a sigh and sank back beside me, still holding my hands. "I…do you know where mages come from?"

  I met his mismatched eyes and deadpanned. "The stork? Gods, Halstad are we really going to have the birds and bees conversation?"

  He laughed, scrubbing a hand over his blond five-o-clock shadow. "No. I mean, how the guild gets ahold of us. They hunt down kids with mage potential and take them in." He shrugged. "I'm pretty sure there are mages out there who are free—who maybe had families who protected them, hid them. But most of us…well, mage genes are rare, not something a human parent expects. And no one wants a freak kid with freak powers. So human parents like mine throw us out."

  He swallowed and I let him have time to let it out at his own pace. "I lived on the streets for a while. At some rat-hole orphanage that I can barely remember. The mage guild found me when I was about five or so. Took me off and started my training. I had pretty strong magic, so they trained me for the highest paying jobs—ones where they used me like a high-end warhead."

  I kept my grip on his hand, even though the gryphon in me wanted to pace and lash its tail. "Damn."

  He nodded. "Mage kids are so young when they take them—poor kids can't do anything to fight back, if it even occurs to them to fight."

  "And they put the bind on you right away, don't they? So you can't ever run." It was all getting worse and worse in my mind. Jesus, Buddha, and Odin.

  He gave me a feral grin. "They slap that bind on before the kids even get to the training facilities. If a mage tries to break their written contract or the orders of their owner…bad things happen."

  I wanted to ask him so many questions, but it seemed important to just let him talk. My mage was usually so short, so tight-lipped.

  "I was stronger than most. And by the time I was in my late teens, I was already fed up with their bullshit. Sick of being rented out to the highest bidder to do whatever foul things they wanted us to do. I worked for crime lords, terrorists, foreign rulers. It was disgusting. And yet, a mage can't disobey an order, thanks to the bind."

  I pulled him closer, sensing that the physical connection was helping him open up. He let me pull him against me as we leaned against the arm of the couch.

  "I was purchased by a rich Chinese wolf shifter. He was waging a war on some neighboring fae. He brought me in with a bunch of others to end a long stand-off between them. By burning their ancient forest to the ground and killing any fae we found—men, women, children. Very Genghis Khan."

  Acid coiled up my throat and I swallowed it down. I couldn't imagine being ordered to kill people and not being able to refuse. Let alone to desecrate another creature's holy site the way he'd been forced to do.

  "I had to go into the fae enclave undercover to try to find out where their greatest source of power was coming from. So we could destroy it." He let out a short laugh. "I'm pretty sure Declan and his sister knew who I worked for and why I was there. They led me on a merry goose chase for weeks on end.

  "But somewhere along the way…I fell in love with them. With the fae. With their way of life. What we were being asked to do was wrong. The shifter who hired us was rabid. He'd lost his mind. There's no way a shifter would destroy the earth that way, even to eliminate his enemies."

  I growled softly, the noise rumbling up through my chest and into his back.

  "So, in my infinite wisdom, when the battle came, and I was standing in the middle of that fucking bloodbath I just…snapped. I pulled on my magic harder than I ever have before, found depths I didn’t even think were possible. And I joined the fae. I killed the guy who held the contract, and most of his shifters. I was gearing up to turn on my fellow mages when the bind kicked in."

  He shuddered. "Most mages who break their contracts explode. Like into little pieces. I don't know why I didn't, honestly. I've got stronger magic than any mage in ages, or so I’ve been told. But it shouldn't have been enough to save me. As it was, my eyes were blown out and I was bleeding from every orifice. I think my veins kind of…exploded inside me with some sort of magical backlash. I was out of it. Lying in the middle of a muddy, bloody field that had once been a sacred grove, gasping like a fish, drowning in my own blood, bleeding out because I decided to think for myself and do what was right for once in my life."

  I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed, but he was rigid. He didn't shake or cry. This was Halstad we were talking about. He'd been literally
trained not to have emotions.

  "They did it to themselves," he whispered. "I didn't steal their power, Gesa. They stole my renegade death." He shook his head. "I don't know what happened, really. I think they were already injured, probably dying. Gods, I hope so. I hope they didn't waste their lives for me."

  "They gave me their eyes. One each. They wove the magic and mingled our blood, pumping their essence into my destroyed veins. Some part of my innate magic must have taken over to help the process along."

  He shrugged. "I woke up when one of the guild flunkies dragged me out from under their dead bodies and hauled my ass back to the guild. The official story is that I was wounded in battle and I scavenged parts to stay alive. The higher-ups know better. But they didn't want to put me down, since I'm worth money. And they're afraid of me—of whatever power let me live through trying to break my contract."

  I was quiet. I didn't know what the hell to say to that.

  "I want to stay," Halstad said in a gravelly whisper. "But for some reason the guild doesn't want me near White. That's why they took me away."

  I stroked his dark blond hair, carding my fingers through the tangled, shoulder-length waves. "We will find a way," I said firmly, even though I didn't have a fucking clue how. "You're my mate. I can feel it through my animal side. They can't split up shifter mates. The shifter community will rake them over the coals."

  He shifted to sit up, giving me a look. "If I defy them, I might explode again."

  I swallowed hard. "Okay. So, maybe we don't push it."

  He shook his head. "No. You're right. There has to be a loophole. And I'm fucking sick of being nothing but property. I'm tired, Gesa. In case you haven't noticed, not a lot of mages make it to the ripe old age of forty. If I can't stay with you…then I welcome the explosion."

  I stared at him. "You're terrifying."

  He grinned, all teeth and menace. "I'm a murdering, carcass pillaging mage, sweetheart. Nothing scares me, not even death."

  I leaned forward and kissed him hard, letting him feel my desperation to keep him by my side.

  Halstad slipped his big hands into my hair and kissed me back, softening things, slowing me. His touch was surprisingly gentle for someone so burly and gruff. He pulled back to study me with unguarded vulnerability in his eyes again. "There's more…stuff I need to tell you before we get all hot and heavy, gryphon."