Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  I sighed. “You’re too smart for your own good,” I told her. “Yes, I was there.”

  “Shit,” she said flatly. “Are you okay?”

  “Barely,” I admitted. “I can’t say much more at work.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “Should I come over and cook you dinner and you can tell me about it?”

  “You may have to order in,” I warned her, her offer bringing a smile even through my continuing weariness. “I don’t think I actually have enough pots to cook with.”

  “That’s probably good,” she replied with a laugh. “I’m a terrible cook. I’m off at five; should be at your place at quarter to six?

  “Sounds good,” I agreed.

  I walked back out in the office, aware that Trysta was watching me. I returned her gaze calmly, and she glanced away. Sighing to myself, I went to load up my afternoon truck. I was pretty sure I knew what her issue was, and there was nothing I could really do about it.

  By a quarter to six that evening, I’d managed to clean up my apartment, clean all the dirty dishes, put away all the clothes, and generally make the place look less like a bachelor pad. I’d also checked my email and discovered that Oberis had organized a funeral for Dave and Elena on Monday afternoon.

  I bounced an email to Bill letting him know I would need to get off work early that day, and then found myself looking at the two guns sitting beside my desk. The Jericho’s black carrying case would pass as a briefcase, but the Micro Uzi and its shoulder rig were a little harder to conceal, as was the Kevlar vest.

  Both ended up being bundled into my closet as the buzzer for the front door of my building rang. I closed the closet door and made it back to my intercom as the buzzer rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Mary,” she told me cheerfully. “Its freezing out here, so can you let me in?”

  “Of course!” I buzzed her in immediately and had to keep myself from racing to the door like a horny teenager. I still opened it while she was still halfway down the hall, and she greeted me with a brilliant smile as she closed the distance and kissed me very thoroughly.

  “Good to see you,” she purred, snuggling into me through her heavy winter jacket, which, it finally processed, was really cold.

  “Let’s get you inside and out of that coat,” I said, gently drawing her through the door and closing it behind her.

  She quickly shed the coat and curled up, cat-like, on my couch. Smiling at me, Mary patted the couch next to her. As soon as I sat down, she uncurled slightly to snuggle up to me as I slid an arm around her.

  For a minute or two, we cuddled in silence, and then she gave me a quick kiss and pulled back to look me in the eyes.

  “So, what happened last night?” she asked.

  “We were investigating a lead we had on the cabal,” I said quietly. “I think...” I paused, not sure if I was certain of what I was about to say, and then went gamely on ahead.

  “I think someone told them we were coming,” I told her. “They destroyed too much rather than moving it for it to have been a planned move; they did it on short notice. And they knew it was fae coming, too—they used cold iron-loaded mines to start their explosions, to make sure any fae in the office were dead.”

  “But you made it out,” she said, taking my hands in hers and squeezing gently.

  “By luck, and timing, and the power of a fae noble with just enough warning,” I said, squeezing her in turn. “Two of the gentry who went in with us didn’t, and a third was badly wounded.”

  “Damn,” Mary whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t even a fight we could win,” I whispered. “We were expecting that, initially. It was just a trap. Someone set us up and killed two good fae in the process.”

  “Who?” she asked, although she had to know the answer in advance.

  “I have no idea,” I told her. “I’m not even sure who knew we were going other than those of who went, and all of us nearly died.

  “I’m going to find out,” I continued grimly. I was sure that between Oberis and me, we could manage it. And then someone was going to pay.

  Mary squeezed my hands again, hard, bringing me back to the moment.

  “Relax,” she told me. “You will find them. For now, let it rest for a bit and come here.” She pulled me to her, just wrapping me in her arms and holding me, letting me focus on something other than memories of explosions and blood.

  After a while, she started kissing my neck, causing me to focus on something else entirely for a while.

  Mary left quite late. I insisted on calling her a cab, though she refused to let me pay for it.

  “Call me in the morning,” she told me, kissing me on her way out the door. With a sigh, I went to bed.

  Morning came way too soon, and two late nights left me fuzzy with fatigue that coffee only took a slight edge off. Nonetheless, I struggled into the Queen’s enchanted armor vest and work clothes, and headed in to the office.

  I traded vague pleasantries with Trysta and Bill while setting up my morning loads. I knew I was noticeably slower than usual, but neither of them commented.

  Bill did call me aside when I was done.

  “I got your email about the funeral,” he said quietly. “What happened?”

  “There was an accident,” I told him. “They died together, a brother and sister.”

  “Friends?” he asked.

  “Members of my home community I was working on a project with,” I answered. It was close enough. “The accident was related, so I feel obligated.”

  “It’s not an issue,” he told me firmly. “I’ll have Trysta note not to schedule you for an afternoon trip. You seem tired,” he added, “are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I told him. “I, um, have a new girlfriend...I think.”

  He laughed. It was actually the first time I’d seen the man laugh, and it was a resounding, deep belly laugh that echoed around the office for a moment.

  “You think, eh?” he said. “Yeah, that’s about the way of it with women. Enjoy it while you can, son, and try to avoid the messy divorce at the end, eh?”

  I nodded, blushing slightly. He gestured me out to get started on my route.

  Halfway through my morning run, I got the normal text from Michael to meet him at a Starbucks. For once, this Starbucks wasn’t exactly on my route home. Apparently, the Enforcers gifted with part of the Wizard’s Sight were not totally omniscient.

  There was another Enforcer waiting with him when I arrived. They all seemed cut from the same press—the same black suit, the same rough build, the same orichalcum tattoos. This new one was a black-haired version I hadn’t met before.

  “Mr. Kilkenny,” he greeted me, offering his hand as if it was balmy and warm outside instead of fifteen degrees below zero. “I am Enforcer Percy; Michael works for me. I handle all of our deliveries and out-city shipments. I wanted to meet you in person.”

  I shook his hand. He may have been totally oblivious to the cold, but I was wearing gloves, which made it mostly tolerable.

  “I always like to know the people I’m using for deliveries,” he continued silkily. “We have two packages for you to deliver today. One is for the airport outbound flight; the other is for Ink Quill again.”

  “All right,” I said. “Give me the packages.”

  “I must say that we do appreciate your willing assistance,” Percy told me. “It’s always preferable to not have to force cooperation.”

  This guy really needed to work on his small talk.

  “If you tried, I’d go to the Court,” I replied, trying to keep my voice as calm as his. “There are always limits.”

  He smirked. “Of course.” He gestured for Michael, who’d remained silent throughout the entire exchange, to pass me the packages.

  One got slightly squished between us, and we quickly double-checked the box as Percy stood there, watching us. It didn’t look too damaged, though I got a noseful of a strong, spicy scent—cinnamon or someth
ing like that. Powers only knew why the Enforcers were shipping cinnamon, but the one I worked for wasn’t overly talkative.

  Michael and I loaded the boxes into my truck. Percy leaned against the blue sedan, watching us, then got in and started the car while waiting for the junior Enforcer.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Michael as we lodged the box for Ink Quill under three other pickups.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “You having that douche for a boss,” I said dryly.

  Michael tried valiantly to glare repressively at me, but the clear agreement in his eyes totally undermined the effort.

  17

  My airport drop-off went without any issues, all of the packages loaded up and ready to make their flights. Somebody in a rush to make sure he made his flight, however, was in an accident while I was offloading the packages. The entire road on my route to Ink Quill was blocked by emergency vehicles, and out of two lanes each way, only one lane was getting through.

  I was running over an hour behind schedule by the time I made it through the accident, and was cursing out the Enforcers for adding this extra stop to my route. I pulled my courier van into Ink Quill’s parking lot and parked next to a giant black Hummer.

  In more of a rush than was probably good for me, I grabbed the package and pushed through the outer doors into the office, only to stop at the sight of the inner door halfway off its hinges with its glass paneling shattered.

  The scene inside the office had frozen as I burst in, and I looked in at it in complete shock. A security guard was lying groaning in the corner, his broken arm lying at an impossible angle and a pistol lying at his feet in two pieces.

  A secretary with long blond hair was cowering behind the remnants of her desk, which looked like it had been broken by having someone slammed into it. Repeatedly.

  A very large, very ugly semiautomatic pistol was being pointed at me by a gentleman I recognized as Barry Tenerim, one of the wolf shifters who seemed to follow Tarvers everywhere. Two more dark-haired men with the angular features I’d come to associate with the Clan stood behind him.

  The final element of the frozen tableau was Tarvers standing there with James Langley held two feet off the ground by the collar of his expensive dress shirt, blood leaking from the human executive’s clearly broken nose.

  “Help!” Langley squeaked when he saw me. “These men are totally insane!”

  I walked in slowly and carefully, stepping around the debris while mostly ignoring the pistol trained on me.

  “Tarvers,” I greeted the big man in my slow, soft drawl as I lay the package I was carrying on the floor next to the shattered desk. I looked from the Clan leader to the sobbing receptionist and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. “He’s just a big teddy bear unless you piss him off.” Still squeezing the receptionist’s shoulder, I looked back to the Tenerim Alpha and the print shop VP, still half-frozen in tableau, and sighed.

  “Tarvers, would you care to explain why you have the man I’m delivering packages to floating in midair?” I asked. It seemed that unless I said something, everyone was just going to stand around like statues.

  “I told you we were tracking the lifesblood,” the Alpha growled in answer, his face inches from Langley’s face. “We traced it, all right. The heartstone came from here; we’re sure of it.

  “And this mewling prick knows something,” he continued.

  “I don’t know...” Langley trailed off as Tarvers met and held his gaze. The human met the angry glare of an Alpha. It took a strong will to lie to an Alpha.

  “Tell me,” Tarvers growled.

  “I don’t even know what heartstone is,” the VP whimpered.

  “Dark gray stone or dust,” Tarvers explained helpfully. “Smells like cinnamon.”

  Even as the poor human slumped in mute admission, Tarvers’s words struck a chord, and I grabbed my package back up and sniffed it.

  “Shit,” I whispered, and tore the package open. Inside the shoebox-sized delivery box, packed in bubble wrap and Styrofoam, were three small velvet bags. With the box open, the distinctive smell of cinnamon with a metallic tang I now realized was heartstone drifted through the air.

  “The Enforcers had me delivering it to him,” I told Tarvers. “What for?”

  “We use it in ink for special books for them,” the printer exec exclaimed.

  “All of it?” Tarvers asked, locking gazes with the man again. He didn’t answer. The human had caught on to the only way to avoid incriminating yourself when speaking to an Alpha.

  The big bear shifter shook his victim like a bear shakes a fish.

  “All of it?” he repeated his demand.

  “No,” Langley whispered, his voice broken as he slumped in Tarvers’s hands.

  Before anyone could say or do anything in response to the human’s admission, the outer doors to the office flung open again to unleash a flurry of activity.

  In a blur of motion, four men in black suits carrying bullpup assault rifles hit the ground in a kneeling row, the muzzles of the odd rectangular guns sweeping the room and settling in to each cover one of the shifters.

  Two more Enforcers followed them through, flanking the door and covering me and the security guard. I realized that at least some of the bullets in the guns were cold iron, and I slowly stood up, raising my hands above my head.

  A seventh man, his head shaven bald and the second-tallest person in the room after Tarvers’s giant frame, stalked into the office. Orichalcum tattoos wove across his visible flesh as he stepped through the firing line of his men.

  “Tarvers,” Winters said flatly. “Put him down or my men will shoot you. The guns are bane- and cold iron–loaded. You will die before you reach them.”

  “This man has dealt with vampires,” Tarvers growled. “By the authority of the Covenant, I claim the right to interrogate and judge him.”

  “And I will point out that he is an employee of the Enforcers and hence of the Magus, and under his jurisdiction,” Winters, leader of the Enforcers, told the Alpha calmly. “Put. Him. Down.”

  Tarvers dropped the human and turned to face Winters fully.

  “I have traced lifesblood found in the possession of a vampire to this man,” he told the Enforcer. “This matter has nothing to do with the Enforcers. Leave.”

  “As I said, this man is employed by us and hence under our jurisdiction,” Winters replied. “I will investigate your claims and advise you of our findings. Please leave; at this point, your presence will only impede the investigation.”

  “One of your employees is passing heartstone to vampires, and you expect me to walk away?” Tarvers demanded.

  “The authority to investigate these matters and deal with this alleged Vampire incursion falls to the Magus under the same Covenants you appealed to,” the Enforcer said. “I have the jurisdiction here, not you.”

  “The Covenants don’t even mention you, you arrogant shit,” Tarvers told Winters. The distance between the two seemed to be shrinking without either of them noticeably moving. “The Wizard has failed in his obligations. I will investigate this attack on my Clan. Either stand aside or have the Wizard himself speak to me.”

  “You aren’t worth the Wizard’s time,” Winters responded, his voice never changing from the same flat, level tone he’d been using since arriving. “That’s why we Enforcers were created, so that the pointless troubles of the lesser creatures of this city would not be carried to him.

  “I will investigate your allegations,” he continued, “but right now, the only thing I have proof for is that you assaulted someone under the Magus’s protection. There will be sanctions leveled for this action.”

  Tarvers laughed, literally in the Enforcer’s face. “You are a piddling little man,” he growled at the human. “The Magus signed the Covenants as one among equals, and you are nothing but servants. By relying on you, he has failed in his charge, and so I will tell him.

  “We are d
one here; get out!” the massive shifter bellowed.

  The image would forever be burnt into my mind. Six armed Enforcers, carrying weapons that could put down most of the other people in the room with a few shots, covered everyone in the room. Three wolf shifters faced them, their every muscle tensed as they readied to spring into action. A handful of humans and me, scattered around the outside watching the confrontation in horror.

  And in the center, Tarvers, a bear shifter and a giant of a man, faced Gerard Winters, a smaller, shaven-headed man whose golden tattoos glowed gently on his flesh.

  I could never say who struck first. One moment, the two men were still, facing each other amidst their followers, and then they were a blur of motion. Fists and claws slashed, and I could see Tarvers begin his transformation as the other Enforcers’ guns started to aim.

  He never finished it. Before the Enforcers could open fire, the fight was over. Winters stood, panting slightly, with his suit jacket and shirt torn from his frame but his tattooed flesh unmarred. Tarvers’s body lay on the floor; his severed head dripping blood from Winters’s hands.

  A glittering silver short sword was now visible in the Enforcer’s right hand, slowly dripping blood from its blade of bane. The other Enforcers’ guns snapped instantly back to the other shifters, cowing any further attack before it started.

  Winters tossed the shifter’s head onto his corpse and turned to look at the other shifters.

  “Take this carrion and get out,” he ordered.

  18

  For a long moment, no one moved or did anything. Then I took a deep breath and stepped forward, aware that at least one gun barrel was following me as I moved, and carefully hooked my hands under Tarvers’s shoulders. I pointed with my chin for Barry to take the Alpha’s feet.

  My movement started the shifters into motion as they quietly obeyed the orders of the man who’d just murdered their leader. I led them out, carefully avoiding looking at Winters. I don’t think I could have done so and stayed calm enough to continue this course.