Daughter of Anat

by Cyndi Goodgame

  “Mar, is it?” My eyes were little slits by now. I wanted answers.

  The boy backed against the table in the very spot I’d just displayed the same fear. Well, a different kind of fear.

  “I am going to stand real close to you so if you feel the need to hold your balls in a quick angst to avoid pain, do it now. Meanwhile, my brother here has a question.” I stopped just in front of him like he did me anchoring my legs two feet apart to brace for anything that probably would never happen.

  Both boys were at full attention and ready to comply with our needs. I was hurting someone again. Just like Cord. I was dangerous. Deadly. A man killer, nothing more.

  “Well, sis. Here I thought I was the heathen bringing you here and you seemed to have taken matters well in hand. These are my friends Stace, so before we leave it would be nice if you apologize.”

  My hand slapped his face. He’d gone mad.

  “I defended you. It’s not like I’m okay with it. I just know it’s a might hard to get information when your contacts are unable to breathe.”

  “Let him breathe from his nuts then, brother. Get the information you need so I can leave this hellhole.”

  He cursed and turned to Mar. “Which one is the Elf that runs with Borgon?” Szar motioned back out the door towards the inside of the bar.

  “The one called Minnie,” Mar stammered out.

  Minnie Mouse? Is Mickey in there too?

  I left out the door with Szar on my heels. I headed for the bar where the burly creature that I couldn’t decipher as anything human or otherwise, caught my attention as I snaked onto a stool. I put on my best smile and fingered my palm on the countertop not thinking about what germs lingered there.

  “So, I’m supposed to meet Minnie here and I haven’t the faintest idea who Minnie is. Could I persuade you to help me out?” I smiled my best seductive look I could muster. It was still new for me.

  The big man blinked and then blinked again. Like he was under a spell, he pointed to a woman at the end of the bar. I leaned over the counter and looked down the length of it. There, at the end, was a huge woman the size of a truck. That was Minnie?

  I flipped around knocking into Szar. I don’t think my little ability to sway the guys into submission is going to convince the same out of this Minnie.

  “Gods, sis. You have some kind of power. Are you sure you can’t hypnotize or something like they said?”

  “No.” Oh, yes. That I can do.

  I’ve changed my mind. All these years I hid it from everyone and made it look like I didn’t have it. But now, I’ve decided it might just be a great secret weapon.

  We made our way through the fog to Minnie. I sized her up as she did the same to me. She...underestimated me. Likely, I was doing the same.

  “We need to find a place where Borgon holes up his bargaining chips. I’m getting blunt and to the basic point because I need to find it. Can you help me out?”

  Whatever hypnotizing charms I may have over boys, did not in fact work on three hundred pound girl Elves. Not that I would ever try it again.

  The “lady” name Minnie chewed a little on the gum in her mouth and bellowed out like a man, “You got some nerve little lassie.”

  Great! A three hundred pound Irish Elf girl with bad grammar.

  Quiet for too long now, Szar made his presence known.

  “Even for three bags?”

  Bags of what? I tossed my hair to the side of my neck smelling the smoke in it and wanting to barf. Szar was holding up something.

  A little baggie of leaves. Oh god. My brother had drugs.

  Surprised by the innate turn of events, I just watched as the large elephant sized lady licked her lips in anticipation and reached for the little bags.

  “Nuh! Uh! You tell my girl here what she wants to know.”

  She made her puffy face all evil and drawn up like I’d seen the Elves do. My ability most definitely didn’t work on the female population even if that female was far from female looking. “There is a house. Shack really. Borgon takes them all there except when he took you. Still not sure how you got out of that one buddy of mine.”

  The endearment didn’t strike me as anything appreciative. Szar got the coordinates and only then did he give up the bags.

  Boy, did I have some questions for him.

  I asked him on the way to our next destination. He said it was the only way he’d ever gotten information for the bar patrons in the past.

  I asked him forgetting my own quick tempered ineptness, “So you only ever went there for information?”

  His notoriously well-known to me shy smile told more. “No, my friends and I play poker there a lot.”

  Yeah. Secrets. And probably a few more too. I’d let it rest for now.

  Outside the house we’d been led to, two newly Elf-made Vampires stood ogling our necks like we were steak dinners. I asked them about Cas and left just as quickly with no headway. This couldn’t be the place. They didn’t seem coherent to speech. Only blood. Something was off about the whole thing. I could feel Cas, but he didn’t seem close or himself. It was the oddest feeling.

  And these guys were not your LOTR kind of Elves. Rivendell kicked them out. I knew now why they were not a part of society. They couldn’t even pass as semi-human. My mind pictured a video game I remember Szar playing for years and couldn’t help remember the obvious differences when standing on the street but this...this was the upgraded version of Elves with a few ability points and added talents.

  I knew Cas suppressed his desire for biting others, so who bit them.

  When we left the scene and found our way back to the car, there waiting on the passenger seat where it was still warm from my own body heat, was a book. And not just any book.

  “Take me to Hunter school,” I told Szar who was in the driver seat staring at me like I just said something indecent.

  “What on earth for, sister of mine?” He rolled his eyes still tensed from the leftovers of the little talk we’d just had.

  “To see a traitor. I need to talk to someone.” I held up the book.

  Szar wailed at me, “What? You felt you needed another challenge? Hunters don’t always do well with making friends you know.”

  “No, my father wouldn’t let me.”

  He didn’t reply.

  We talked about the two Vamp Elves. He said he didn’t get the same perceptive roll of doubt I did there, but I couldn’t shake the bad feeling.

  Chapter Seven

  Always forgive your enemy...

  I was out of the car and stealthily hidden around the corner of the boy’s dormitory before Szar could even dream up countermeasures. I rolled the window up like I’d done before and started to climb in the foot and a half wide entry when Szar pulled at my waist. “What are you doing?”

  I growled at him and he let me go. He filed in after me and I adjusted the window for the element of surprise.

  Looking around now I saw that Calum’s things were gone and his side of the room was left empty. I wondered if his room at the little apartment where we’d made pizzas and watched movies was cozy with his personal items and what they might be.

  I sat on the end of Calum’s bed feeling the incontestable coldness and lack of his smell. I’d know his aftershave, cologne anywhere. Deep in thought I didn’t notice my brother searching through the dresser across the room.

  “Don’t do that!” I snapped at him grabbing the book I’d just sat beside me as I leapt for my brother and his inability to keep his hands off other people’s possessions. “Is there anyone’s personal space you don’t invade?”

  “Only the ones that seem to piss you off the most, sis. I know what it means to you.” He grinned sideways for me.

  I barked an order to sit down and shut up. He dropped whatever was currently in his hand and gave me a “Geez!”

  “So you’ve done this before,” he drawled out the S’s in his words.

  I nodded not avoiding the inevitable truth. Sensing my disq
uiet, he asked the obvious.

  “This was Calum’s room?”

  My brother was eyeing the bed I sat on. I hopped up leaving the space of where his dark stare landed.

  “Ahhh. My friend Thorn would not like this place, now would he?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Testy. I can’t say I like the idea of being in one of my sister’s former love nests.”

  “SHUT.UP!”

  “Or the room the boy who tried to steal kisses from my little sister while staying the room next to me at my own court.”

  So he’d figured out this is Lee’s room. I didn’t try to hide it. “Are you here with me or not? If not, leave. I can do this alone.”

  “Oh, no. I will stay here to ensure your whereabouts for my man Thorn as well as your safety, sis.”

  “I’m safer here alone probably more so than with you.”

  Szar cocked his head at me, “How so?”

  “He will talk more if you’re not here.”

  “Ahh. Your flirty little ways.” He flitted his fingers in front of him.

  I sneered hating him presently for knowing me too well. Maybe he did know about my Valkyrie powers years ago and that was why they kept boys away. Of course he would, they all did.

  I was just about to tell him off for good when the door swung open and stayed there for a minute while the figure that filled it quite heavily looked us over. He took up far too much doorway and took all the air out of the room with his assessing look.

  He was taller, bulkier, and forced to duck his head in the frame. Well, wasn’t that just interesting? Of course, I had to comment.

  “You are bigger.”

  If I’d fed Szar a bundle of juicy details with being in the room, I’d sure given him something to skillfully chew on now. Right on cue, Szar snorted his rebuff.

  “Happens when you’re half Hunter,” Lee Dyer, the half Hunter answered.

  His hair was cut short again like when he lived at court with me but he still tilted his head like the hair was falling in his eyes. His voice was a tad deeper too. Closer to a man’s voice.

  He let me note the details of his layering changes and then closed the door not looking back. Lee’s eyes fell to the book squeezed tight in my hands watching it intensely then sort of glazed over and blanked out. I can say now that perhaps I had an uncontrolled use of my ability on Lee and Calum from the past. For all the education they gave me, they left a major part out.

  A throat cleared. I jumped from the edge of the bed where I sat and nearly feel out on the floor. Feeling foolish I sat upright and remembered the throaty alert was from the other body in the room, my brother.

  Lee’s head shook loose of my hold. Confirmation of naturally born powers of the Valkyrie showed it was most definitely potent when I extended purposefully. And...Cas was unaffected by it, I think. He’d never gone catatonic on me like Lee just did.

  “So, as fun as this little reunion down memory lane might be for you two, I know time is important in finding your boyfriend sister of mine. So if you don’t mind, can you tell me what we are doing here visiting the traitor as you so called him.”

  Szar never minced words, only phrased them to his liking. He lived to make me in hell.

  “What does this mean?” I held up the book.

  Szar didn’t resist his never ending plethora of comments, “Oh. Traitors have a book list. I didn’t know you were into the whims of girls and how they view men?”

  Deadly eyes darted from me to Szar, “Seems you have a good enough knowledge of the book yourself.”

  Szar snorted, “That’s because the same man made me read it.”

  All three of us were friends once. Once!

  “It’s there. Chapter four,” Lee pointed to my hand.

  We all heard the turn of worn out pages. This was my own book. I’d not had it since here at this school when I stole from my court for safekeeping. Had Lee retrieved it from my room under the mattress where I’d forgotten it?

  I snatched a look inside the front cover to see my initials were indeed there. The feel of it slithered and seeped into my skin urging me to go back to a time when life was all still a dream to come.

  “I kept it for you. I knew you wouldn’t want to lose it.”

  “Yeah, golden boy aren’t you,” Szar’s venom hissed.

  Lord, these men loved conflict.

  I read it where the crease was bent for me to see. It was there, circled.

  “Were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed in their memories than that their brother's fortune and their own had been acquired by trade.”

  Trade meaning...? I read it again. My family...circumstances beyond our control...brother?

  “What brother do they mean?”

  Szar snatched the book from me and read it. He’d read it alright, but not like Dyer (Lee) and I had. Looking back, I wondered now how long Lee had liked me. We’d read that book together in the bay window of the study not long after he moved into the court. He was forever teasing me about the suitors I would watch soon coming to my own court.

  “I never meant for you to come here,” Lee rubbed his fingers together in nervous tension. One hand ran through his spiked hair sprinkling water everywhere no doubt forgetting it wasn’t long anymore.

  “Your hair is new.”

  He nodded staring wholly at me. I think I might have already told him this when I saw it last time, but I couldn’t remember.

  “Just tell me what it means. Szar will not bite you. He will be a good Doberman for today.” I turned up my mouth at my brother for my witty response. Getting digs on him was a great past-time just like it seemed to be for him when I was in attendance of his most gratuitous attitude moments.

  “When are you going to realize Sis, that you’re not meant to be the funny one.”

  I ignored him and turned to Lee.

  “Thorn is in a house on Ninth and Center St. in the city. You have exactly,” Lee checked his watch in high James Bond fashion, “three hours before the switch is made. Thorn has a blood brother. They are replacing Thorn.”

  “Who did this to him? What switch?” Szar was actually faster than me this time. His face was in Lee’s.

  I pulled Szar’s sleeve and made him even so that we both faced Lee head on.

  “Can’t say. Could be any hard piece of rock solid Vampire crawling around in the dark. And you know who did this. He watched her attack you.”

  Granite!

  Szar stomped like a bull, “You asshole. You f—

  “Let’s go. I got what I needed.”

  My brother looked at me like I was a crazed pig sprouting wings. “Oh, you got this. I suppose you can read turncoat’s freaking face as well as his little girly messages?”

  “Szar. I’m warning you.” I drew my fist up.

  He looked at my hand. “What, sis. Gonna hit me?”

  “I might.” If I need to.

  Szar let out a string of not-so-nice words and climbed through the window. I turned back to Lee and gave him what I thought might be considered a trade-off for the information that could very well save Cas’ life and my own.

  I kissed the side of his cheek.

  His hand was faster than mine. I needed to stop being so trusting of my so-called friends. He pulled his face up to mine and he kissed me. Freaking-out-of-his-mind kissed me.

  I stayed so still keeping my mouth clamped shut. What did he think it would accomplish?

  “I didn’t do it for him.”

  Oh, don’t I know it.

  I left with my face heated not from any kind of desire, but the uncertainty of how I would deal with it later, but in my hand was a folded piece of paper that told me something scarier than an unwanted kiss.

  Chapter Eight

  ...for nothing will annoy them more.

  A short stop at my court for Szar to grab equipment he needed landed me running in to see my father. I wanted to ask him about an old detail that might lead me in the rig
ht direction and it left me with more questions than answers. I ditched Szar at his room and headed straight for where father might be. I asked him about Cord and his right to marry into my family and why that would have been his choice. He said he discussed with all three boys the matter of being prepared for me and never really intended for it to be an all out marriage proposal but more a way to meet an end. He said he had to be sure that all three made my acquaintance within a certain time and gained my trust so that what was happening now would play out. He’d been told by my mother that a human boy would be abandoned and would need to be watched over, for he would bear the mark like me. The only thing I got of the conversation was that two of them were business deals for the court and the third was Cord Ryan.

  While it was mind-blowing to examine all of this knowledge that predetermines the future I stake on choosing, he was saying that I had a small choice in the matters at hand concerning my love interests. Yet I was expected to “hang” will all four. Didn’t anyone else see that as a little crazy weird?

  Yes, I would need muscle to accomplish the feat at hand. Yes, I believe that, but the preposterous plans of the mothers was starting to sound disproportionately out of whack with what any normal group of “take over” superheroes ever had to do in a fictional life.

  Father ended the three-minute conversation with a fatherly discussion on choosing Thorn, my Cas, as the definite suitor and moving on. I was flabbergasted at his forward thinking with me being so young and his desperation for me to be with someone wherewithal to keep me safe with everything in his power. That, I decided was his rock bottom selling point. Who could keep me the safest in his eyes? I had a thought.

  “You followed through with Cas because you thought he could keep me safe. You let him take me that night.” It wasn’t a question, but he knew I’d want an answer.

  “Yes, Lord Cross was the better option for keeping you safe. His control and expertise is better equipped.”

  I didn’t like him making my love life sound like a slice of paperwork. It gave me a paper cut just thinking about it. “Why Cord then, and why not?”