After second-guessing himself for another few moments, he finally decided that as long as he was hiding out with a Fae fugitive, there was no good reason to put his ID on file with a Chicago dispensary. Of course, that assumed anyone was even paying attention to his electronic trail—and it wasn’t as though a sufficiently motivated person couldn’t track him from his Uber records. But... fuck it.
He retraced his steps to the drugstore to buy a box of rolling papers, a lighter, and a keyring-sized cylinder of pepper spray, just in case. Thus armed, he wandered further into the city until he found somewhere he could score a couple of dime bags on the cheap—no muss, no fuss.
When he had what he needed, he called for a car and got it to drop him off at the same neighbor’s driveway he’d left from earlier. Since Albigard had opened the wards around the property to him, he had no problem seeing the winding gravel drive leading up to the house. The door was unlocked, so he went inside and dropped his backpack of purchases in his borrowed room. Then he went looking for the vampires. He found them in the kitchen. They looked up from where they’d been huddled in an impromptu council of war with Albigard.
“Rans,” Len said. “I need a few drops of your blood.”
Rans’ brow furrowed. “Are you injured?”
Len waved a hand at his face, once more decorated with metal jewelry. “Only in a voluntary sense. But since you ruined my piercings in the hospital, you can heal these for me so I’m not sore for the next week.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Zorah said. “No offense, but seeing you without them was kind of freaking me out. You look about nineteen.”
“I’m twenty-eight,” he said. “But don’t knock it. Nobody will be laughing at my handsome baby face twenty years from now, right? Assuming I’m still alive two decades from now and haven’t been eaten by a Fae death monster, obviously.”
Rans scored an index finger on one of his fangs without comment and held it out. Beyond caring about appearances at this point, Len steadied his wrist with one hand and sucked the smear of red off it. He probably took way too much satisfaction in holding eye contact with Albigard as he did so, just to mess with him.
Within moments, the raw holes in his face began to itch, healing around the piercings with miraculous speed. “Awesome. Thanks. I bought weed while I was downtown, so I’m going to go out back and smoke enough of it to put me out for the rest of the night.”
Zorah’s brow furrowed. “Um... Len... should you be smoking pot after, well—” The words ‘after spending time in rehab for a drug habit’ went unsaid, but he heard them loud and clear.
“Definitely not,” he said. “What’s your point?”
“Let the poor man get blazed, Zorah,” Rans said, ever the reliable voice of hedonism. “For what it’s worth, Nigellus intends to be back with one or more fresh allies for us by mid-morning. There should be coffee in one of the cabinets if you want it when you get up.”
“Cool,” Len said, and left them to it.
In his room, he pulled out the rolling papers and used his fingers to crumble enough of the back-alley weed for a single joint. The stuff was skunky as hell, lending hope that it would pack enough of a punch to help him become one with his mattress for the rest of the night. After grabbing the lighter, he went downstairs again in search of the back door and the quiet night beyond.
TEN
THE SLIDING GLASS door at the rear of the house led to a pleasant flagstone patio surrounded by a low stone wall. Len sat on the wall with one leg drawn up, looking out at a forest he could barely see in the dark. The rustle of branches in the breeze and the smell of pine needles melded with the occasional hoot of an owl, loosening some of the tension that had been pulling his shoulder muscles tight.
The harsh smoke from his hand-rolled joint was just beginning to unknot his tangled thoughts in a similar manner when the patio door opened and closed behind him, squeaking a bit in its tracks. He assumed, at first, that either Rans had come out to lob witty quips at him, or Zorah had come to express additional worry about the state of his drug addiction. That assumption lasted until the unmistakable aura of Fae superiority hit him.
He didn’t turn around. “Just so we’re clear, the only words I’m willing to entertain from you right now are ‘can I have a toke.’”
The sigh of irritation was barely loud enough for human ears to register. Albigard’s prickly presence appeared at his side a moment later, standing two careful steps away by the low wall.
“Indica or sativa?” the Fae asked in a monotone.
Len shot him a sideways glance. His pale skin and tumbled locks of long, platinum hair seemed to emit a faint glow in the starlight.
“Pot growers are all about the hybrid strains these days,” he said. “The dealer promised it would deliver epic levels of couch-lock, though. Based on that and the pronounced eau de skunk aroma, it’s probably closer to the indica end of the spectrum.”
“Very well,” replied his unwanted companion.
Len frowned at him. “Very well... what?”
Albigard gave him a look normally reserved for children and the mentally deficient. “Very well, I will smoke your cannabis.” He held out an imperious hand.
Len blinked at him, making no attempt to hand over the joint. “Wait. Back up a minute. How does smoking pot not fall under the category of offensive, degenerate human vice?”
Albigard returned his look of perplexity. “Consuming the dried leaves of a common plant does not constitute a moral vice... though inhaling smoke is admittedly a somewhat unpleasant method of delivery. Cannabis is better in food.”
After unsuccessfully attempting to process that statement for a few seconds, Len gave the joint a suspicious look, wondering if it was stronger than it seemed. It smoldered innocently at him, so he returned his attention to Albigard.
“The vice is more a matter of the leaves’ effects than the leaves themselves. Unless... marijuana doesn’t affect your kind?”
The Fae was still staring at him with that you-stupid-fool expression. “There would be little point in inhaling foul-smelling smoke for its own sake, human.”
He was still holding his hand out in unspoken demand. Len looked at him for a long moment, then slowly gave him the joint, still half-convinced that he was actually way, way more stoned than he currently felt. Albigard took the smoldering, irregularly shaped cylinder and brought it to his lips, inhaling deeply. The tip flared, glowing orange... and Len could see that the joint was shaking minutely in the Fae’s grip.
He handed it back. Len took it and didn’t comment on the tremor. Albigard exhaled the smoke after holding it for several seconds, looking out at the night-cloaked forest. They passed the joint back and forth in silence, smoking it down to an unusable roach. At which point, Albigard turned on his heel and retreated into the house without a word. Len continued to stare blearily into the mass of trees he could barely see, until the sudden urge to lie down on the stone patio and rest for a bit convinced him that he should probably go inside as well.
Navigating the mild, not unpleasant feeling that there was lag time between his body moving and his senses recording the movement, he made his way up the stairs to his room, where he toed off his shoes and face-planted on the bed. A moment later, he realized with distant disinterest that he’d left the lights on again. But... having the lights on had worked to keep the ghosts at bay earlier in the day. And getting up again held extremely limited appeal. Couch-lock for the win, he thought. Or bed-lock, I guess.
Whatever the case, he mentally congratulated the street dealer on his honesty in weed marketing, settling happily into the meditative, mindless almost-sleep of the truly stoned. It wasn’t restorative, particularly... but it was at least free of nightmares, waking or otherwise.
* * *
Aside from gritty, bloodshot eyes and a dry mouth, Len felt more or less human when the sounds of someone moving around downstairs woke him many hours later. It sounded like normal morning comings and goings, so he took
a minute or two to try and decide whether his memory of Mr. Cesspool of Deviance and Corruption smoking half of his joint last night had been real, or a weed-and-stress-fueled hallucination.
It... seemed real. In particular, the memory of the faint tremor in the Fae’s hand as he lifted the joint to his lips had a weighty sense of realness about it. Mind you, the part where the supercilious bastard had kept his mouth shut for a solid fifteen minutes without uttering any insults seemed a bit suspect. After a little more thought, Len resolved to pretend that the whole thing never happened, and move on from there.
He brushed his teeth and showered. He changed into his newly purchased secondhand clothing. He took great care in drying his hair and styling it into an aggressive fauxhawk. His reflection stared out of the mirror, once more fully recognizable as him.
Zorah and Rans were deep in conversation at the kitchen table when he went downstairs. They looked up when he came in.
“Morning,” Len said. “Please tell me you weren’t joking about the coffee.”
“I’m reliably informed that coffee is no joking matter,” Rans said. “I think it’s above the sink.”
“Feeling a bit more yourself this morning?” Zorah asked as he went rummaging in the cabinets and came up with a promising Columbian dark roast. “I’ve missed the fauxhawk almost as much as I missed the piercings.”
“If I’m going to be facing one of Hell’s minions today, I’d rather do it with adequate hair product in place,” he said, inspecting the state of a battered French press coffee maker shoved into a corner on the countertop.
“Very wise,” said a new voice, deep and resonant.
Len jerked around with a startled curse, to find the hellish minion in question standing in front of the kitchen window with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out across the wooded landscape beyond.
“Good morning, Nigellus,” Rans said, in a tone that seemed almost aggressively neutral. “Where’s our new ally?”
“En route,” the demon replied, turning to face them. “Where is your Fae?”
“Communing with the trees, at a guess,” Zorah said. “He’s been a bit on edge lately.”
“Understandable,” Nigellus allowed.
Len managed to drag his thundering pulse under control, still unused to people popping into existence unexpectedly.
“Coffee?” he asked, then gestured at the vampires. “I know better than to ask these two.”
“Yes, please,” Nigellus replied, the picture of suave urbanity. “Black is fine.”
Len found a pan and started heating water, relieved to have something to do with his hands. By the time he’d measured out the grounds and the water was just shy of boiling, Albigard arrived. He appeared in the doorway with a frown, bracing one hand against the frame.
“Oh,” he said. “You’ve come alone.”
“Only for the moment, Flight Commander.” Nigellus gave the Fae a piercing onceover. “Forgive me for playing fast and loose with your wards. It seemed more discreet than arriving outside.”
Albigard let go of the doorframe and entered with studied casualness. “My former military title no longer has any relevance,” he said. “These days, I am the commander of nothing.” He scowled. “But you should not be able to pass through my wards as you do.”
Rans snorted. “You’re forgetting. You opened the wards to me, and I sold my soul to him in the eighteenth century. All he has to do is follow the trail to wherever I am. A few piddling wards aren’t going to get in the way of that.”
The Fae’s expression soured further. “Ah. Quite.”
Len was aware in general terms of Rans’ centuries-old ‘bargain with the devil,’ which now encompassed Zorah as well. She’d told him about it once, explaining it as the price for Rans’ survival at the end of the last great war between the Demons and the Fae. It was similar in some ways to the hold Albigard had on Zorah after she’d unwittingly accepted a gift from him... but more binding. A demon who owned your soul could strike you down at any moment and from any distance, reaping you for the power contained within your life force.
Unlike a Fae, however, a demon could also choose to funnel power back to you, healing you from mortal wounds and reversing fatal illnesses. Someone who was demon-bound was functionally immortal... as long as that person stayed on the demon’s good side. This was good news for Rans. With only a tiny handful of vampires left in existence after the war, Nigellus was highly motivated to keep him—and, by extension, Zorah—in one piece.
Honestly, though... trying to keep track of all the soul-bonds in this incestuous little supernatural cadre was enough to make Len’s head hurt, so he focused on the most immediate question. “You want coffee?” he asked, jerking his chin toward Albigard.
The Fae spared him a glance. “No. It’s not to my taste.”
Len nodded, moving on to the next most immediate issue. “Right, then. Next question. No offense, but what the hell are you wearing?”
Albigard glanced down at himself blankly, then back up. “Clothing.”
No longer clad in an unremarkable button-down shirt and wool trousers, the Fae now wore fitted leather breeches tucked into worn, knee-high buckskin boots. His shirt was unbleached cotton or linen—something loose and natural, gathered at the wrists and laced closed at the wide collar. Tattoos peeked above the top, organic black shapes twisting and grasping at his collarbones like upside-down tree roots.
Most strikingly, he’d dropped the subtle glamour that made him look human. Intricate braids kept the waves of his pale white-gold hair back from his face, revealing swept brows of a darker golden-brown color, along with the delicate points of his ears.
“You look like an extra that escaped from the set of The Hobbit,” Len observed.
At the table, Zorah snorted inelegantly and tried to cover it with a cough. Since she was a vampire and didn’t need to breathe, it wasn’t a very convincing act.
Eyes the exact shade of the leafy woods outside landed on Len and held fast. “You have blue hair and holes in your face. Perhaps we should agree not to pass judgment based on appearance.”
“Perhaps we should shift our focus to the matter at hand,” chided the demon standing at the window.
Len poured hot water into the coffee press to steep, and glanced at the old analog clock hanging on the wall to mark four minutes. “Yeah, about that,” he said. “Do you think you guys are going to be able to fix this before any more people die?”
The silence greeting the question wasn’t exactly what one would call promising.
“It is something of an unprecedented situation,” Nigellus said at length.
“If the authorities have the sense god gave a slug, they’ll evacuate a wider area around the dead zone,” Zorah said, sounding uncertain.
Rans shifted in his seat. “How long before the other Unseelie here on Earth realize what’s happening, Alby?”
“Not long,” Albigard replied. “Though if the Hunt has truly slipped its leash, they will have no more power to control it than I do. Fae are powerless against it. That’s always been rather the point of the bloody thing.”
“Your statement is nearly accurate,” Nigellus said, “but not completely accurate.”
Albigard looked at the demon sharply. Len depressed the plunger on the French press and poured two steaming mugs of black coffee. He picked up both of them and crossed the room, handing one to Nigellus, who took it with a nod of acknowledgement. Retreating to an empty chair at the table, Len sipped the scalding, bitter liquid and waited to see if anyone was going to expand on that rather cryptic statement.
When they didn’t, he set his mug down. “Someone want to break that down into words of one syllable for the clueless human?”
A strange noise interrupted whatever answer Nigellus might have given. It came from the direction of the front door—a sound like fingernails scratching against wood. Albigard’s head whipped around, a frown of alarm crossing his face. The two vampires rose from their chairs, a
lso wearing expressions of wary surprise. Nigellus only raised an eyebrow.
“Ah,” he said. “It appears our guest has arrived. Perhaps someone would care to get the door?”
The scratching came again, a bit more insistent this time. Albigard sent Nigellus a dark look. “This will require an explanation, demon.”
Len sipped his coffee and looked between the others. “I assume someone will let me know if I need to be prepared to die horribly in the next few minutes?” he asked. “Because until I’ve had another cup of coffee, I’m not really awake enough to deal with this kind of shit.”
“Your horrific death is unlikely to be imminent,” Albigard bit out, and went to get the door.
A few moments later, he stalked back in, followed by...
“Right,” Len said slowly. “A cat. That’s... random.”
ELEVEN
THE CAT WAS large and black, with slanted green eyes and a diamond of white fur on its chest. It trotted into the kitchen at Albigard’s heels, tail held high, acting like it owned the place.
“Oh...” Zorah’s soft exclamation broke the silence. “Of course.”
Rans shot Nigellus a look filled with obvious speculation. “Hmm. A contact that might be able to help, eh? Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Needs must—” Nigellus began.
“When the devil drives?” Rans finished. “What an interesting turn of phrase.”
Len raised a finger, like someone requesting the floor in a meeting. “Our new ally in the fight against a rampaging death monster from another dimension is a housecat? Because if so, I was wrong earlier. I’m going to need something a hell of a lot stronger than coffee for this.”
The space around the cat twisted, and a human figure stood where it had been. Len blinked. No—not a human figure. The lithe, androgynous form was dressed similarly to Albigard, with the addition of a velvety buckskin vest dyed forest green. More tellingly, he or she had pointed ears showing beneath a neat bob of dark hair.
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 8