Boss Fight (Beyond the Aura Book 1)

by Helen Adams

  “You don’t think he… well, fancies you?”

  “Christ, no.” Why was I having to defend the relationship to Lee and Alice? Was it really so fucking odd?

  Alice was still here when Raz arrived. The muscles in his arms bulged from carrying heavy shopping bags. He took them into the kitchen, Ques flitting along beside him. Alice was blissfully unaware of the taufrkyn.

  “I went shopping,” he said when he came back. “I noticed the other night that you were low. This lot should see you through.”

  “You didn’t have to do that!” I squeaked, astonished.

  “That’s what friends are for, right?” he said, echoing Alice.

  That’s what families are for. I wished – not for the first time – that Raz really was my family.

  Alice left after Raz arrived. Mina had let her out of work – grudgingly – to pick me up, but now she had to go back. She’d promised to come by when she’d finished tomorrow. As soon as she was gone I tottered into the bathroom and virtually bathed myself in leighis, using so much the strong tang of ginger made the inside of my nose go numb. When I came out I was trembling and exhausted, and my supply was running low.

  I was signed off for a month. A nurse was due for a home visit tomorrow. I’d have to ring the surgery in the morning to cancel, which was going to be a tricky conversation. All I wanted right now was food and sleep.

  I eased down onto the sofa. Lorl landed on my shoulder, paws hooked into my cardigan, head pressed into my neck. Her solid presence unwound some of the tension that tightened my body.

  Raz disappeared back behind the screen. I heard the tap running and the sound of the kettle being filled. Magic! He was making coffee.

  “Thanks for the shopping,” I called. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

  “My pleasure. You’ve been signed off?”

  “Right.”

  “Then trust me, you’ll need these.”

  I was touched by his thoughtfulness. Raz was a good man. He had his faults – who didn’t? – but he was Good People.

  When he returned he was carrying a plate of biscuits. Losing so much blood, I was probably low on sugar or something. As good a reason as any for snagging six.

  “How are you going to explain this to Lee?” he asked, sipping his coffee.

  “Oh, fuck…. I haven’t even told him yet!”

  “And what are you going to tell him?”

  “Anything but the truth!”

  Raz regarded me with dark, fathomless eyes. “Will you ever let him in?”

  “God, no. I can’t get him involved in our world! He came too close the other night,” I shuddered, remembering.

  “Far be it for me to tell you who you should see –”

  “First rule of Date Club,” I snapped. “You don’t get to tell me who I date. Ever.”

  “Sometimes it would be nice to know who you’re dating,” he muttered, and I knew he was talking about Lukas. “Lee isn’t a berserker. He doesn’t know what you are, and he won’t unless you share your secret with him. How will he ever be able to fully understand you?” His tone was reasonable, as if we were discussing nothing more serious than the weather.

  “I date him for eight months and you want to have this conversation now?” I demanded, deflecting the question.

  How could he be so fucking calm? He just looked at me with those dark, knowing eyes. Was this what having a gazillion kids did for you, teach you the patience of a saint?

  “Have you ever been alone?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Truly alone? Surrounded by people, I mean, but they’re not your friends. Not family. Ever felt that?”

  “I was a refugee. You know that.”

  There was the first hint of emotion. Anger that I’d stirred up old memories, a hint of distant pain and fear. I felt like a shit for bringing them back, but I was making a point and he was damned well going to listen.

  “When I was in prison I had no friends,” I explained. “No one I could trust. Plenty of bitches who wanted me at the bottom of the pecking order, sure. A few women who looked to me for protection.” I smiled, or thought I did – my lips certainly stretched over my teeth. “But I was really, truly alone. Lee spent time in prison, too. He understands me just fine.”

  “I can see how you think your shared experience gives you a connection,” he said, eyes lightning with compassion. “But a prison sentence should never define who you are –”

  “Tough shit,” I interrupted. “It does.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s made you harder, but with that hardness came brittleness.”

  “Stop trying to analyse me!”

  “If not me, then who? I know you in ways that Lee can’t.”

  “Stop it!”

  “You need to hear this.” He was placid as a fucking lake again. “If you want Lee to become something more than just a warm body in bed, you’ll tell him who you really are. Saifa knew…” He faltered, eyes losing focus as he remembered his wife. “She was a dewdrop, but I told her everything.”

  “Did she know about your mermaid kid?”

  Raz flinched as if I’d hit him. In a way, I had; I’d always had the impression that his devotion to his wife had been absolute. Maybe not so absolute.

  “I… visited the mermaids after she died.” He looked away, studied his clenched hands. Crap. I really was a shit. “But during our marriage, we had no secrets. So here’s a secret you should be investigating – how did your boyfriend learn to hold his own against a bull troll?”

  “It’s his job,” I said, hackles well and truly raised. “He’s in security.”

  “What sort of security? SAS? From what you told me, those were not moves that your average bouncer learns.”

  I wanted to deny it, but his level words echoed my own uncertain thoughts. Lee had handled himself well against a Mythic Race tank.

  Too well.

  I didn’t have an answer to Raz’s question. Of course I didn’t. Lee had always been cagey about his job; I respected his need to keep secrets – I had enough of my own – but maybe, just maybe, it was time to start demanding answers?

  I looked away and the tension in the room dropped a few notches. Raz cleared his throat and stroked his taufrkyn, fast asleep in his lap.

  “So what happens now?” I asked. Was it bed time yet? It felt as if it should be bed time. I was so tired.

  “About Lee?”

  “The mermaids,” I growled.

  “We have to go back,” he said, finally dropping the subject. “Tell them that they were wrong about Kristjan. They need to know that their information was bad.”

  “Absolutely not.” My tone brooked no argument, but I knew I’d get one. “Shall I go over the reasons again?” I ticked off points on my hand. “Mermaid sex is addictive, you’ve already got one kid by them and a second on the way, and you know the power of threes.”

  He regarded me with a calm face, but his eyes gave him away: - that wet gleam, the barely-hidden excitement. Yeah. Kassandra had really got her fins in him.

  “What are the alternatives?”

  “There’s Lukas.”

  “Yes, let’s talk to the crazy vaengrjarl prince who ripped a member of the Midnight Conclave to pieces.” He threw his hands up. “Genius. Do you even know where he is?”

  The merry-go-round spun, the same old argument came around again. All I needed now was some candy floss and a hotdog. And maybe a balloon.

  “I can get hold of him,” I hedged.

  He’d left me the occult version of a pager, for use if I needed his help or decided to have his baby. Before today, I’d had no intention of using the thing.

  “If you contact him he’ll think you’ve agreed to have his child!”

  “How is that any different from what you’ve done with Kassandra? She’s carrying your kid, right now.”

  “I don’t need to have sex with her!” he blurted. His lips thinned into an angry line. “I just need to tell her th
at she’s wrong!”

  “You won’t go getting any funny ideas?”

  “Not with you glaring at me all the time, I won’t!”

  “Alright,” I scowled. “I guess we can do this. But just for the record, this is a terrible idea. We can still contact Lukas.”

  “Hmm, the unpredictable, savage vaengrjarl,” he mused, tapping his chin, “who wants to get you pregnant. Right.”

  “Not so different from what you’ve done.”

  “Mermaids don’t rule the universe –”

  “Neither do vaengrjarl –”

  “Has anyone told them that?”

  I glowered. When he put it like that, it really didn’t sound like a good idea.

  Now that we had our plan, it was time to put it aside until morning. I wasn’t fit to go anywhere.

  “I’m staying here tonight,” Raz declared.

  “Uh – not that I don’t like the company, but why?”

  He gave my bandages and bruises a pointed look. I grimaced. If a golem or even a fucking butterfly came calling now, it would walk right over me. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable since my first weeks in prison.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “Let me get some pillows…”

  I helped Raz put away the shopping. He’d opened his mouth – to tell me not to get up, perhaps, or that I should be resting – when he saw the look on my face. He knew me well enough to understand that I meant business. He just sighed, shook his head, and reached for another bag.

  My stitches protested. My knee throbbed. Maybe I’d smear more leighis on before I went to bed. When I woke the stitches would be gone; the wounds would have sealed and might even have faded to scars. The swelling around my knee would have vanished.

  Right now, though, everything hurt like a bitch.

  But I was still going to put my damned shopping away. A girl had to have standards, after all.

  When we were done Raz cooked a meal. I let him get on with it – loading the shelves, while necessary, had been a dick move. I wanted painkillers but I’d be buggered if I’d take any. This was just something that I had to put up with. A reminder, berserker style, to keep my eyes open.

  “More coffee?” Raz called from the kitchen.

  “I’ll pass, thanks,” I said. “You’d have to scrape me off the ceiling.”

  “You sure that leighis is working? Last time I looked you were still white as a sheet.”

  “I need about a week’s sleep. Remind me to take a lighter next time I go out. If any more silk golems come at me I’m just going to burn the bastards to ash.”

  “That’s my Daphne. Always joking, even in the face of things that should make you scream.”

  My heart thumped. Heat crossed my cheeks. This was the highest praise he’d ever given me.

  “Big girls don’t scream,” I said.

  We settled down with a glass of fruit juice and something meaningless on the TV. The juice was good, cool and crisp as it slid down my throat.

  “Alice is in love with you,” Raz announced, out of nowhere.

  I gave the glass a suspicious look.

  “Sorry, I think this non-alcoholic drink is going to my head…”

  “She cares for you.”

  “She’s my friend!”

  “It’s deeper than that. You need to be careful.”

  “Look…” I sat up, wincing as I jostled my stitches. “She came on to me when I first started at the library. We had a talk, OK? I told her that I wasn’t into women. She respects that.”

  “You think a few words can stop the heart from feeling?”

  I flashed back to my childhood. No. Words couldn’t, but a knife through the ribs could. A knife that you had no defence against, because it came from someone you loved. Someone you trusted.

  You went numb. After a while.

  I was half-asleep on the sofa when the doorbell rang. My eyes fluttered open; tucked up on my stomach, Lorl made a sleepy sound. Too tired – or too lazy – to fly to a better perch, she crawled up to the back of the sofa. Ques flitted across to join her.

  “I’ll get it,” Raz said before I could struggle upright. He had a knife tucked into the back of his belt.

  He peeked through the spyhole. I rubbed a hand over my face. I needed sleep.

  “It’s Lee.” He opened the door an inch, but didn’t remove the safety chain.

  “Where’s Daphne?” Lee demanded. His voice was hard with suspicion.

  “Bit late for a social call?” Raz tugged the back of his shirt down to cover the knife. He unhooked the security chain and pulled the door open.

  Lee pushed past Raz, who closed the door behind him. He saw me on the sofa. His eyes travelled up and down my frame, taking in the bruises and bandages.

  “Damn, girl,” he whispered, dropping to his knees in front of me. “Did the police catch the fucker who did this to you?” His fingertips ghosted across my face. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Sorry.” I looked at my lap. “I just… I forgot, Lee, I’m sorry. I only just came out of hospital.” Then, needing to justify myself, I added, “I woke up today. The doctor didn’t want to let me out.”

  Shit. Not telling your boyfriend that you’d been in Intensive Care for the last couple of days wasn’t the sort of thing a caring girlfriend did. Or any girlfriend did. Shit.

  “Hey, it’s OK. Can I get you anything?”

  “Uh, Raz is staying here tonight. I’ve got hot and cold running sarcasm any time I need it.”

  “I heard that!”

  Lee glanced at Raz. “You’re staying?” His eyes flicked back to me. “Couldn’t you ask Alice?”

  “She brought me home from hospital. I didn’t want to impose.”

  The truth – that Alice wouldn’t stand a chance against a golem, vampire, or even a socially awkward teenaged troll – wouldn’t go down too well.

  Lee gave my friend a long, hard look. Raz returned it in spades.

  “Look after her,” Lee said after a testosterone-laden moment. Men, seriously. I half-expected Raz to say ‘Or what?’ But he didn’t.

  “I believe Daphne was about to retire,” he said instead. “It’s late. Maybe you should come back tomorrow.”

  “I have an appointment with the nurse in the morning,” I told Lee. “Got to get my bandages changed. Come by in the afternoon?” The lies were just stacking up.

  “Sure, babe.”

  He took my face in his hands and kissed me, tender and soft. Suddenly I didn’t want him to go… but Raz was holding the door open.

  “Feel better soon, huh?”

  I gave him a wan smile and he left.

  “Raz,” I said as he slid the chain back.

  “Hmm?”

  “Lee knew that I’d been attacked. Who told him?”

  “Alice?”

  “They’ve never met.”

  “And he wasn’t at the hospital.”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t know, Daphne. Maybe you should ask him.”

  Yes. Maybe I should.

  I don’t remember going to bed. I slept as if I was dead. When I woke on Tuesday I certainly felt like a corpse – cold, stiff and half-rotten.

  Corpses didn’t have full bladders, though. I moved through the living room – watching Raz curled up, in deep discomfort, on the sofa – and shuffled into the bathroom, doing the classic ‘I’m dying for a wee’ dance.

  I took care of business then warmed up in the shower. It still galled me that I’d lost so much time. Almost three days of my life that I’d spent in hospital, out for the count. If I hadn’t passed out in the park, if I hadn’t been such a fucking wimp, I could have made it home to my leighis. That’s what berserkers did – fight, bleed, heal, repeat. Try not to die.

  The tired voice inside said that it wasn’t a weakness to pass out when a razor-sharp sword was rammed through your abdomen.

  “I almost died,” I whispered as I rinsed.

  I dropped the sponge and put a hand against the bathroom wall, feeling cool, wet
tiles under my fingers. Spots speckled my vision and I gasped for air. I had to get out of the shower, right now.

  I wrapped myself in a towel and sank onto the closed toilet lid, finally accepting the enormity of what had happened. Violent shivers wracked my body.

  “Say it,” I whispered through chattering teeth. “Say it. You almost died. You almost died.”

  Then Lorl was here. How had she got into the bathroom? Had I closed the door? Didn’t know, didn’t care. All that mattered was that she laid against my damp breasts, insubstantial weight braced on the folds of the towel, soft head rhythmically stroking my skin. Her whiskers tickled.

  I looked down. Her fur was lavender, tinged with the orange of fear. She was frightened for me.

  When I felt better I kissed her nose. She seemed to understand what I wanted without me having to ask; she spread her dragonfly wings and hopped over to the bath. With a neat flick of her tail she began to preen.

  Buoyed by her affection, I stopped thinking about death and got on with life.

  This was the best batch of leighis that I’d ever used, and I made a mental note to send Queen Daisy of Clan Briar a special gift for the Midwinter Solstice. The wounds had healed enough that I didn’t feel as if I was about to rip apart; the worst injuries had sealed and now looked as if they’d been made weeks ago. The cream had seeped inside the wounds and healed the internal injuries, too. There was still pain, but it was at a low, manageable level. There was no danger that anything would re-open in a fight. That was the important thing.

  To keep up the deception that I was still injured, I hadn’t used any leighis on my face. When I looked in the mirror it was a lurid, swollen mess of colour. It fucking hurt.

  I brushed my hair and ran my fingers through the damp strands. I was no stranger to pain.

  Raz was making breakfast when I entered the living room. Hearing my approach, he poked his head around the silk screen.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to say a word. There was sympathy in his eyes, but below that… was he angry that I’d let someone get the drop on me? No, never. He was angry that I’d almost died.