A Killing Moon

by Alexis D Craig

  “Get off him!” Vasily snarled, eyes bright yellow and exuding all of his threatening predator aura. His gun was trained on Cora and did not waiver at all.

  “Oh Jesus!” Eyes averted from the scene, Devon’s gun dropped immediately as he cringed. Xander had no such delicacy, smirking and not looking away at all.

  “Imma call you back.” Smooth as you please, eyes bright gold and dead-looking like they were at breakfast, Cora slipped her phone back into her pocket and hiked the cloth back up onto her shoulders to almost cover her tits without even a hint of self-consciousness.

  Finn pushed to lean up on his elbow, hard to do when she refused to yield his lap, eyes on his best friend and personal Guards. “What, and I cannot overstate this, the fuck is going on here?”

  * * *

  CORA

  In her entire career, she’d had more than a couple severely awkward situations, but none quite this bad. But the look on Vasily’s face? Yeah, he wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of seeing her upset or cowering.

  “Get off of him,” he repeated, reaching for her arm.

  “I’ll clip your goddamn wing, fledgling. Try me.” Maybe it was the threat, she made sure to keep her tone soft and conversational, or the shimmer of feathers that danced across her skin, but his hand stopped before it made contact, and he stepped back from her, out of arm’s reach. She’d fight, and she’d likely lose, but there would be blood.

  “She’s not who she seems, Highness,” Xander supplied helpfully, gun still out and on her, but without the urgency with which they’d entered. Everyone started talking at once at that point with the words ‘whore’ and ‘liar’ making an appearance more than once.

  “I know she’s not.” The warmth of Finn’s hand on her thigh never moved even an inch. Maybe she would feel differently about that later, but in this moment, it was kinda nice. Finn’s proclamation brought the arguing to a halt and she could see them all mentally working to regroup. “Here’s a thought. Why don’t you spit out whatever it is you feel you need to and then we’ll get back to what we were doing before you all got here, okay?”

  “But Finn, you don’t even know her real name.” Addressing Cora, he pulled her multi-colored collection of passports from his pocket. “Liza Gibbons.” He slapped the first one down on the coffee table next to their drink coasters. “Isabella Ortiz y Velsaco.” He slapped the next one down.

  “Claro,” she murmured, still bored with his little display. Apparently, she’d managed to go from Skinemax to Showtime at the Apollo without ever leaving her seat. She hadn’t expected him to lay siege to her underwear drawer and was minorly impressed with his work even if it was blowing her life apart at the moment.

  “And finally, Elsa St Denis. Am I missing anyone?”

  Even if he was just asking rhetorically, the slow grin that spread over her lips was more than enough of an answer to visibly raise his blood pressure. He was an easy toy and she was just mad enough to make use of him. A hand squeezing her thigh got her attention, though.

  Finn’s eyes, normally so blue and warm when he looked at her, were cold, distant and reserved. “You promised no more lies.”

  Scooting back out of his lap a bit, she shook her head. “‘No more lies’ is not the same as ‘confess everything.’”

  With a triumphant swoop of his arm, Vasily held out his hand as if presenting her as a debutante. “Finnegan O’Casey, meet Commander Coretta Ashai Westgate, née LeStrange, Royal Guard. On paper, she worked out of Operations and Base Logistics.”

  “On paper?”

  The Strigian nodded smartly. “Yeah, on paper. In reality, the Commander was assigned to the Special Protectorate Division, a specialist in firearms, language acquisition, subterfuge, clandestine operations, and espionage.” On an afterthought, he threw out, “Honorably discharged.” And then the mood in the room blew the hell up.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Finn asked.

  “You're a Guard?” Devon exclaimed.

  “You’re nobility?” Xander questioned.

  “Commander?” Also Devon said.

  “LeStrange? As in Marius LeStrange, Chief Advisor to the king?” Xander again.

  “And what the hell is Special Protectorate Division?” Finn questioned.

  “You’re a spy? Are you running an op?” Devon again asked.

  Everyone was talking at once again, but at least the guns were all abandoned back in their holsters. Taking advantage of their distraction, she unfolded herself from Finn’s person and closed up the bathrobe with a knot in the sash. Snagging the glass with the most whiskey, she threw it back in one sustained swallow until all the voices died out and she was left with four very interested sets of eyeballs on her.

  Rubbing a line between her eyebrows, she focused on releasing the tension that was gathering in her shoulders as she leaned against the arm of the couch farthest from Finn. “Yes, I am the daughter of Marius LeStrange, Marquise of Ravenscroft. No, he does not know I’m here, and that’s by design. I used to be a spy, now I do some freelance work.”

  “You’re not a raptor.” Devon’s puzzlement was clear in his narrowed dark eyes and skeptically arched brow, even if his question wasn’t. It wasn’t strictly required that a Royal Guard be a raptor, merely heavily suggested.

  “Nothing gets by you, huh, Chief?” she snapped before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath and held up a hand, physically warding off his retort. “Sorry.”

  The dimple in his cheek made a quick appearance as the corner of his mouth twitched. “No worries.”

  As she spoke, Finn pulled in on himself, emotionally and physically, knees to his chest with his arms wrapped around them. She wanted to comfort him, but clearly that ship had both sailed and been set on fire. “I do mostly corporate fixer-type stuff, nothing that would require your attention normally, but then I was hired for a job. This job.”

  “This job involve fucking my best friend?” Vasi’s mouth was clearly still full of acid from the way he spat questions at her.

  “That’s a longer conversation I don’t intend to have with you,” she replied with a forced cheerfulness. Her situation with Finn was complicated and the very last thing it needed was more external input.

  “Who hired you?” the Strigian demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the job?” Xander inquired, looking mad enough to strip her feathers, and she was tempted to entertain him, just to have something to hit.

  “Get next to him and keep him alive, whatever it takes.”

  “If the prince is in danger, we need to know.” Devon crossed his arms as he took up a position on the arm of the couch beside Finn.

  Cora nodded. “I agree. Someone’s tried to kill him. At least twice since yesterday.”

  “Twice?” Vasi’s owl screeched and everyone in the room flinched. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘twice’? I’m still working the shooting.” Turning on Xander and Devon, he railed, “Did you have anything?”

  Xander’s hands came up in the universal symbol for ‘not it’. “No! Nothing.” Turning to her, he demanded, “Explain yourself.”

  She sighed and wished, not for the first time, this conversation could wait until she was wearing actual clothes beyond a borrowed bathrobe and panties. “Don’t yell at them. They don’t know because we didn’t report it, because we needed to be sure.”

  “Sure of what?” The way Vasi’s chest was heaving, he looked close to hyperventilating.

  “That you weren’t part of the problem.” To Finn she said, “That’s the phone call you walked in on. I wasn’t going to bring them in without assurances.”

  The Night Watch Commander looked clearly mad enough to spit three penny nails. If she’d been any other animal, she would have been terrified. “Who the hell do you know that has the clearance to pull our jackets?”

  “Classified,” she replied with a smile, clicking her teeth at him like she would with her beak just because she could. “Though I could ask you the same thin
g, since my actual service record counts as state secrets.”

  Devon’s hands came up in a ‘T’. “Hold up, time out, wait. So you’re telling me you were hired for a job by an unknown party and told to protect Finn, our job by the way, and then had us investigated like we were potential assassins?”

  That hit all the salient points more or less. “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened.”

  Xander stalked over to her, leaning down to get in her face, his brown and white feathers and beak shimmering just below the surface of his skin. “I have worked with this family, for the king, for my people, since I was eighteen goddamn years old. I cannot fucking believe you would think—”

  Cora held up a hand. “Hey, I agree. Your record is exemplary.” Looking over his shoulder at Devon and Vasi, she nodded. “All of yours are. Beyond reproach. But when I was tasked with this, I needed to know I could trust you, and not just because of a work history.” She shrugged.

  “Says the woman trained to lie for a living.” Snarling, Xander stalked over to the writing desk and flounced himself down in the chair.

  “Oh fuck off, you’d do the same.”

  Vasi grunted but didn’t reply to that. “So, what? Now you’re gonna read us in on your little op?”

  “Wait a minute! Wait a goddamn minute!” Finn shot to his feet, stopping with his face mere inches from hers. “Coretta LeStrange, the daughter of the Marquise LeStrange. The man I had lunch with a little over an hour ago?”

  “Yes. That’s why I facilitated the coffee incident. The whole ‘slightly clumsy socialite’ cover works when you have enough truth in it.” And she learned from the best, considering her mother definitely qualified as a flouncy, foofy, socialite.

  “You have two sisters and a brother, and all of you were raised here in the diplomatic wing.”

  She nodded halfheartedly, not liking the direction this was taking, but helpless to stop it.

  “Which one are you?”

  Brows down, she was confused. He really didn’t know? “What do you mean which one am I?”

  “You’re not married, right?”

  She shook her head again, watching him work it out with a growing pit in her stomach.

  As if they didn’t know, he informed the guys, “The two oldest sisters are married to varying nobles, your brother is an adjunct adviser to the king, so that leaves the youngest—Holy Fuck!”

  Annnnnnd there it is. Her split with her family had not been exactly broadcast news, but it was pretty damn noteworthy. She’d left for college and she and the O’Casey brothers would see each other on breaks but not like it had been when they were young. When she went to law school, she came back with a non-shifter husband and a desire to leave the family business.

  Realistically, her family could have absorbed one hit, but a human husband with the potential for halfling children, and abandoning a family duty that stretched back centuries? Yeah, far too much to ask, and to say her father never forgave her and likely never would was an understatement. He just happened to take the rest of the family with him when he left, or rather, had her leave.

  Of course, her marriage dissolved because of certain fundamental philosophical incompatibilities, so when the Special Protectorate of the Royal Guard recruited her after her law school graduation, she went, with the understanding that she was not required to interact with her family. Easy enough to do with so many undercover and covert missions she’d lost count. Westgate was her married name, and she just never changed it back, finding it to be the perfect cover to keep her family in the dark about her life.

  The moral of the story was the damage to her family, her reputation, and her standing among the nobility was irreparably razed. And then she went and slept with the prince. For reasons.

  He closed his eyes and sank back down on the sofa, head in his hands as he mulled over this new/not new information. “I've known you my whole life.” She couldn't tell from the tone of his voice if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but the vibe she was getting was definitely leaning toward ‘bad’.

  “More or less. With a few notable exceptions,” she confirmed.

  Finn pulled a hand down his face, stretching his features, even as he couldn’t even look in her direction. “I—I need some time.”

  “As you wish, Highness. You're coming with us.” Vasi was on his feet and reaching for her again with a snotty little smirk on his lips.

  Again she ducked his attempt to manhandle her. “I’ll hurt your feelings,” Cora promised him with a vicious grin as she walked over to stand next to her overnight bag of belongings. “Shall we?”

  * * *

  VASILY

  How someone managed to strut down the hallway barefoot, and in a bathrobe, while under guard, he would never know, but damn if Cora didn’t manage. Back straight, chin up, her eyes didn’t wander from the front as she marched alongside them.

  The suite they’d placed her in was directly next door to Finn’s. He unlocked the antechamber and held the door for her as they entered. It was all mahogany coffered walls and ceilings with royal blue brocade furnishings, and as far as guest rooms went, it was almost larger than the whole of his apartment.

  “I instructed the staff to put your things away,” he opened tentatively as he dropped her bag on the bed. The mood was different now, sharper, without the buffer of Finn between them. There were no doubts in his mind that she would make good on her threats if pushed. His hold on his temper was fragile and as much as he wasn’t in the mood to pick a fight, he was not opposed to scrapping if she wanted to.

  “Thank you. Does that include the rest of what you pulled out of the drawer with the passports?” Her words were clipped as she turned to face them, hands falling to parade rest likely without her even noticing.

  “It does, but I don’t think you’ll need that here.” Hell, between him and the staff, she hadn’t even carried her own bags. She didn’t need money as a guest of the crown.

  “I’m surprised the vulture didn’t find it when he was working the crime scene. Is he here?” Smugness dripped from every word.

  “He’s not on yet, and he’s still new. He and I will discuss this later.” He did not have to justify himself to her, even as he felt the need to defend the kid from her verbal barbs.

  Cora seemed to consider his answer for sniffing like she was no longer interested. “So then am I a prisoner?”

  “In these accommodations? You’re joking. Though arguments could be made.” Part of Vasi wished it was just the two of them, both of equal stature and understanding and they could just hash it out as they needed to. Having Xander and Devon along for the ride complicated things, in addition to providing possible unintended witnesses.

  She rolled a shoulder with a secretive little smile, heading over to the sitting area and going straight to the globe which hid the liquor cabinet. “Not my fault you’re not as good as you thought you were.” After pouring a finger of whiskey into four glasses, she nestled herself into the corner of the couch. “So, did you burn any other aliases I should know about besides those three?”

  Vasi froze for a second reaching for his drink as Xander snorted in amusement. He was off duty for another hour yet so he could afford a sip or two. “If it makes you feel any better, SPD called me after I ran the third one.”

  “I actually don’t feel better but at least you didn’t get the chance to fuck anything else up.”

  “Wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place if you’d’a come clean right away,” he mused as he leaned back to occupy the other end of the couch with a cushion between them that may as well have been a demilitarized zone.

  “Oh yeah, because a drive-by shooting scene with forty million people around is exactly the place to say ‘hey, nice to meet you. I need to talk to you about attempted regicide.’ Just rolls off the tongue.” She sniffed and took a mouthful of bitter amber into her. “You find the truck yet?”

  Devon shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Nothing personal, but I do
ubt you will. I know I hit at least one of them, if you haven’t started checking hospitals yet.”

  The Day Watch Commander pulled his cell phone from his pocket and fired off a text. “Noted. So you think this was a professional job.”

  “I know it. I just don’t know how deep this goes, so I had to take precautions.”

  “Our crew is solid. Our investigators do good work. They are not involved in,” he gestured around the room, “whatever this is.”

  “I’m sure you believe that. My reports bear that out so far but they’re far from complete.”

  Vasi slammed his glass on the table, drops of amber liquid sloshing over the side. “You’re auditing my staff?” The outrage was so swift, he didn’t know where to begin to articulate it. “You can’t possibly believe that one of us…” he trailed off, too incensed to even finish the sentence.

  Sitting up, she turned to face him head on, obviously unafraid of his wrath. “I have reason to suspect the attempts on Finn’s life are coming from his brother. You remember him, our crown prince and the current heir to the throne?” Closing her eyes, she made an effort to call back her sarcasm. “I don’t know what to believe. And I’m auditing everyone’s staff. All I know is someone is gunning for Finn and my employer wants me to keep him safe. So that’s what I’m gonna do. Whatever it takes.” Taking a deep breath, she scooted back on the couch like she was physically disengaging from the conversation. “You don’t have to like it; you just have to stay out of my way.”

  Devon and Xander were watching the conversation like a tennis match, doing their best to stay out of the line of fire. As staring contests went, this one seemed to have a greater potential for bloodshed than most.

  “I assume you have proof of you claims.”

  Nodding solemnly, she reached into the pocket of her robe. If everyone happened to stiffen up until she came up with a cell phone, well, that was just a hazard of the job. “Give me your number.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can send you what I have.”