Bahlin stood motionless next to me, staring at Tarrek. “I could grab a bite now, my fellow Council member.”
“Do not threaten me you vile overgrown lizard,” Tarrek snarled, clearly pissed off at being reduced to a part of the food chain. A slight wind was emanating from around him again, stirring the men’s hair in the breeze.
Bahlin laughed, though it sounded bitter, lacking any sense of amusement. “Worried about sullying that pretty outfit, Tarrek?”
I hopped up onto the coffee table and was shocked that I didn’t knock anything off, over, or out. “Let’s stop posturing for a minute, guys. Bahlin, I have to go. You know that. Eat my dinner when it gets here since I didn’t touch it. I’ll see about grabbing a burger on the way. We all know the scene is degrading by the hour, so cut the crap. Tarrek, there’s no reason to goad him. I’m taking your side in this. So both of you shut the hell up and let me do my job. A fae’s life is at stake, and that’s got to be more important than either your pride or his,” I said, glancing first at Tarrek, then at Bahlin.
Both men looked at me, then each other and, finally, away.
“You shame me, Maddy,” Tarrek said on a sigh. His voice was soft and held sorrow like the brush of a butterfly’s wings—faint, soft, barely there. “Let’s be off and see what there is to see.”
“He’s right, much as it galls me to admit it. You shame us both.” Bahlin shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got to eat, and your dinner won’t be nearly enough for me to refuel. And it’s too near dawn for me to get to the sithen via the air without risking being seen. I’ll have to get some food and then grab a ride out there. I’m remiss to let you go without me, but I’ve no choice, sweetheart.” Bahlin’s voice was full of both mockery and misery. He stepped close to me and ran a hand down the back of my hair to my neck and then straightened to his full height, like a marionette whose strings had been pulled, and he grinned wickedly.
“Stay with me, Maddy. I’ll take you myself within the hour.” I stared at him, and my surroundings seemed to soften. I realized I had leaned into him and I shook my head, stepping back so quickly I stumbled. His hand shot out in a move too quick to be seen, and he stopped my fall.
“Thanks for making it easier to leave, Bahlin.” Disappointment laced my voice and lay heavy between us.
He smiled a very self-deprecating smile and shrugged. “I had to try. Be off with you then. I’ll eat and meet you there as soon as I’m able.” The last was said to me while he looked at Tarrek.
“Fine. Oh, um, what did my great-granddad do to keep notes for you?” I asked, shifting from foot to foot, uncomfortable at having to ask how this was going to work. After all, I’d just given him a warped version of the “kiss my ass I’m leaving” speech, and now I had to ask how to do part of the job.
“He had a photographic memory. Notes weren’t necessary,” Bahlin said.
Naturally, I thought, and I sighed. I was worried that someone else was about to die because of my inaptitude.
“Let’s be off, Maddy,” Tarrek said. His tone was as gentle as the hand he put under my elbow.
And I let him lead me away from Bahlin despite the blossoming dread in my chest.
Tarrek and I stepped out of the hotel lobby into the early morning air, he on his cell phone speaking softly and I taking in my surroundings. It was cool, and I was grateful for the protection of his jacket. The lights from London obscured the stars, giving the sky an eerie, artificial glow. Traffic moved by us intermittently, the tires making a whooshing sound on the wet pavement. Despite the open air, I felt somehow cocooned with Tarrek, isolated from the world.
Tarrek snapped his cell phone shut, stepped up to my side and said, “The car will be here in a moment. I’ve instructed our driver to have the heat on.”
“That’s kind of you, thanks.” I looked over at him, and he appeared surreal in his black clothes with his black hair and ethereal complexion. In the short amount of time we’d been outside, small drops of the heavy mist had collected in his hair and the streetlights gave him the look of a fallen celestial being, an angel, come to walk among mankind.
“What is it?” he asked, reaching out to touch my cheek before thinking twice and dropping his hand.
“You’re absolutely stunning.” Realizing I’d answered his question with such base honesty embarrassed me, and I turned my head away. He smiled and before he could reply, a black Mercedes sedan pulled to the curb. He stepped to the rear door and opened it for me. He nodded, motioning for me to get in. I slid into the car. The black leather was buttery soft, and the car still held that new car smell. The privacy tint on the windows so effectively prevented light from entering the car that I couldn’t see many of the interior details in the pre-dawn darkness. It reeked obviously of opulence and, less obviously, of menace.
“Impressive. Is this how you usually travel?”
Tarrek slid in after me and pulled the door shut behind him. “Only if I’m dealing with mundanes or, now, you. Faeries dislike being around so much metal. It inhibits our powers.” He settled back into the seat. “We are creatures of nature and much of our magic is tied to it. This is why we are so particular about where we build our sithens. There are certain things we look for, and certain things we avoid.”
Well that’s cryptic enough, I thought. I made a mental note to pick up several books on Celtic and Norse mythologies when I had a little free time.
Tarrek looked out the window, and I could see his face reflected softly over his shoulder. “When we travel alone we use what you might consider teleportation. It’s called waxing and waning. While it’s not tied to the cycles of the moon it is very similar. It means to appear and disappear, yes?”
I nodded, all thoughts of book shopping forgotten.
“It’s a matter of willing ourselves from one place to another.”
“Is it magic?”
He turned back to me and smiled. “Not for us.”
The car pulled away from the curb quickly, setting deeper into our seats. I buckled my seatbelt then turned to try and look out the darkly tinted windows as the driver sped through the city. It was impossible to see anything through the double darkness of night and tinted window so I turned back to look at Tarrek, and he smiled. He was so startlingly attractive it took my breath away for a minute. I stared openly, but his smile never faltered.
He shifted in his seat and put his hand over mine on the center console. That same electric spark seemed to jump between us yet again. It was more than a simple attraction, more than what I had thought of earlier as intangible chemistry.
“Why are you and Bahlin so interested in me?” I blurted out. I blushed and cursed my pale skin and big mouth for the hundred thousandth time in my life.
Tarrek tightened his hand on mine slightly, and I shifted my grip to hold his hand back. There was something about the contact that was as comforting as it was confusing. “You are beautiful,” he said, stroking his thumb over the back of my hand repeatedly. “Surely you’re used to the attention of men?”
“Um, not really to either thing—not beautiful or used to the attention.” I turned to face him, completely flustered with this conversation. “I mean, compared to you two, I’m like a third wheel on the beauty bike. Totally out of place.”
“Beauty bike?”
“It’s just a phrase. It means that a bicycle by definition has two wheels and a third is seriously unnecessary. You two are the wheels, and I’m out of place between you.”
“Oh.” He continued rubbing my hand. “I disagree. It seems impossible that you would see yourself as unattractive…” The look of concentration on his face lent me to believe he was having trouble finding the right words to convey his feelings. He looked down at our hands, then up at my face. “I sense no false emotion from you, so—”
“You can sense my emotions?” I asked a little too loudly. I saw the driver’s glance in the rearview mirror, and I gasped. His eyes were dark orange, and it wasn’t a trick of
the dash light reflection. They were dark orange, as in navel. The pupil was a pinprick of red. It was disconcerting as hell, and hell was exactly what he brought to mind.
“Maddy?” I turned my wide green eyes back to him. “I realize I’ve not prepared you for this morning’s visit to the sithen, or at least the exterior mounds. Unless something goes terribly wrong, there will be no need to expose you to the dangers that lie within for a mortal. Regardless, there are undoubtedly things you’re going to see that are new to you and will cause you some…well, let’s just say that you’re likely to see things you’ve never seen before. I would encourage you strongly to avoid staring at those things that catch you off guard.” He smiled gently again then turned and said something to the driver in that same flowing language he’d used earlier. The man nodded his head and sped up. Apparently we were in a greater hurry now that we were leaving the city. “You need to prepare yourself. Most Seelie love to be stared at—”
“Seelie?” I asked.
“There are two different types of fairies—Seelie and Unseelie. The Seelie are what people often think of when they think of fairies, beautiful and ethereal, though not small and winged. They are what light mythology is made of. The Unseelie are the less traditionally appealing side of faerie, the things from which dark mythology was born. But what you will find is that not all that is beautiful is soft, and not all that is visually unpleasing is harsh. It can be just as likely that the opposite holds true.”
“So you’re telling me not to take anyone, or anything, at face value.” I gently extricated my hand from his. He looked at me, unblinking, and took his hand back from the middle of the seat.
“That’s precisely what I’m telling you,” he said, his voice sounding and feeling detached, emotionless. His eyes cooled perceptibly. “A contingent of my guard will meet us at the edge of the mound nearest where Jossel was last seen. I would encourage you to stay within my site, even with them near us.”
“I meant no offense.” I looked down at his hand in his lap and then back to his eyes. “I’m only trying to find where I fit.” I wished fervently that Bahlin had come with us.
“No offense taken.” His eyes and voice both softened. “I forget myself. It must be difficult for you, with all of the changes to your life in the last day and a half.”
I ignored that. “You never did finish explaining why you and Bahlin are so interested in me,” I said. “Not that I want to push, but it might help me understand.”
“Ah. You are persistent.” He leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. “You might have noticed that Bahlin and I don’t get along too well.”
“Nope, hadn’t observed that at all.”
He rolled his head toward me, staring without smiling before he responded. “Sarcasm? Very well. So you’ve noticed. Bahlin and I have a long history of discord between us, though it has escalated to violence several times in the last several years. We had both been forewarned that the time of the next Niteclif was near—”
Interrupting him, I asked, “By whom?”
“If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll explain. There is a wizard on the High Council who foretold of your coming, and we both have access to Seers within our individual races. The three voices all foretold the same future. The time of the Niteclif was near, you would appear through the stones, and you would be a young woman. What neither of us expected, what I didn’t expect, was that you would be so desirable.”
I snorted and crossed my arms under my breasts. Just having breasts prevented me from truly crossing my arms over my chest, but I did the best I could.
“I am sincere, Madeleine. You’ll find no falsehood in my words. When Bahlin entered your dream yesterday morning, I felt the contact because I’d been preparing to do the same.” Tarrek shifted toward me, putting his arm across the back of the seat and tugging at the end of my hair. “So when I followed his magic trail into your dream and I saw you, I was stunned.”
I thought about what he’d said about the Seelie fairies. “But you see beauty all the time. There’s nothing special about me, Tarrek.”
He reached out and pulled my hair, hard.
“Ow!” I leaned my head away from him and turned on my hip to face him, the movement partially restricted by the seatbelt.
“I’ll tolerate no disparaging remarks about your person, Maddy, not even from you.”
“Fine. Go on,” I snarled.
“You were beautiful, and I was incensed that he had made it to you before I had.”
“So I’m what? A competition between the two of you?” The words were ground out between clenched teeth. “Nice.”
“No, not…really. You are the Niteclif, and you deserve respect. But you are also a woman, and we are men, and we have both found ourselves interested in you as more than our kinds’ detective. Does this make sense?”
The answer was yes and no. Yes, I understood that they both were interested in me because I was the Niteclif, and I was the first female Niteclif at that. And no, I didn’t understand how they could both be interested in me in a personal capacity when either of them could have had any female on the planet. I cleaned up okay, but I wasn’t in their league. I’m average-plus on a great day and only average on every other. So as usual when it came to men, and especially these two, I was already conflicted. Even my newly developed skills of logic wouldn’t help me out with this one because lust shuns rational thought. I answered as honestly as I could—I stayed quiet.
Tarrek stared at me as if trying to divine a response. Finally he said, “I am better for you than he, Maddy. I am able to offer you more than Bahlin can even dream of. Dragons are selfish and manipulative, and they care little for anything beyond that which brings them pleasure in the moment. At most you will have his passing affection. Consider that before you do anything rash.”
I was quiet for a while before I turned toward him again, curiosity once more getting the best of me. “You act as if you’re sure I’ll choose one of you as a partner, lover, whatever. Why does it matter so much, Tarrek?”
“Your decision matters more than you can imagine.” He reached for me, but I shifted slightly so that I kept some distance between us. Tarrek sighed, removing his arm from the back of the seat. We rode in silence for a while, the shifting rev of the engine, the hum from the tires on the road and the sounds of our breathing the only noises.
Tarrek turned toward me as if to say something but the car began to slow and he paused, sitting up straighter. “We’re almost there.”
Chapter Five
The faerie mounds were out in the middle of a large field. We turned off a paved two-lane country road and followed the single dirt and grass lane until it came to a dead end directly in front of the mounds. Lacking the disruption of the city’s lights, the stars shone brightly in the pre-dawn sky. The mounds were equivalent to gently rolling hills placed very close together in an otherwise flat expanse of pasture. Sheep grazed nearby. There were no distinguishing markers that announced we were near any supernatural location other than four copses of trees, one at each point of the compass, at the farthest edges of the mounds in each direction. Tarrek got out of the car at the same time the driver opened my door. The driver was much shorter than I’d expected. I took in his appearance and, belatedly remembering Tarrek’s directive not to stare, hastily looked away. What I’d gathered in my initial glance was that he was around five feet tall and dressed in very odd leather clothing, with decorative stitching at the cuffs and a large, rusty knife hanging awkwardly from his waist on his left side and strapped to his thigh. He wore a gun, holstered, on his right. As previously noted, his eyes were orange and his nose was slightly bulbous. He had grinned at me before I looked away, and his teeth looked rather sharp.
Tarrek was suddenly at my side, and I jumped. He put his arm around my shoulders and turned me toward the north, where his contingent of guards had appeared. They were all brutally attractive men, though there was something in them that I recognized as distinctly
inhuman. One of them, apparently the leader, stepped forward and Tarrek walked to meet him. The guard offered Tarrek a lump of something dark. He accepted it and said something in Fae and then turned back to me and held out a new jacket. It looked like it was about my size. I shrugged out of the borrowed suit jacket and he nodded, stepping toward me. I slipped my arms into the sleeves, and it drew a sigh out of me. It was some type of leather, but it was softer than anything I’d ever touched. It fit like a glove, without being tight, and hung to my knees. Because it came from Tarrek it was black. I instantly loved it.
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate the use of it.”
“It’s a gift. Our seer gave the head seamstress general dimensions and the information that you would visit us on a cold morning. I couldn’t have you getting cold on your first visit to my home.” Dimples decorated his cheeks when he smiled like this, and they made him even more appealing.
I couldn’t help but smile back. “Then thank you even more,” I said, and stood up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek where the dimple lay.
He looked very pleased and, as he bent at the waist to bring his face nearer, he turned into the kiss and made it a gentle contact between our lips.
I started, pulling back and blushing like mad. I was liable to pass out given the number of times I’d blushed in the last twelve hours. Embarrassing.
“Do I apologize?” he asked, grinning again but looking mischievous this time.
I rubbed my lips with cold fingertips and shook my head. “No. No, I don’t think so. But in order to keep my head clear, can we go on to the site of the disappearance?” Something bothered me, but I couldn’t quite put it together. I looked around at the guards and they were all armed even better than the driver had been. Maybe I was just uncomfortable with all the weapons. The only thing I had available to stop an attack was my mind, and it wasn’t bullet proof.
Legacy: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 1 Page 7