by C. T. Phipps
“Hi, everybody!” Gerald said, smiling. It was the first time I’d seen him happy in the roughly one year I’d known the undead doctor.
While I was distracted, Deana almost took my head off with her icicles, only for Emma to push her to the ground and wrap her jaws around her neck.
“Doh ahead, mock mah day,” Emma said, her words jumbled by the circumstance.
“Please don’t kill Deana,” Lucien said, standing up. “I promise you, she’ll be punished for her actions. No one attacks a guest under my roof.”
I stared at Lucien. “Guest?”
It was a poor way to refer to us after all we’d been through.
“Friend,” Lucien said, his enunciation of the word full of bitterness and spite. “A life-long friend whom I will never betray.”
Ouch. Those were some familiar words being parroted back at me. I’d said them after we’d slept together. Was Lucien still not over it? I mean, Jesus and Brigid, he’d certainly not stayed celibate, if the band girls hanging off of him were any indication. It had just been the one time after all. Well, technically twice. Well, okay, it had been all night, but that didn’t mean anything. Yeesh.
“Gerald?” Robyn asked, looking up at the vampire.
“Robyn?” Gerald said, stunned.
“Who is she?” Robyn asked, looking surprised. “Your new girlfriend.”
“I am his creation!” Elena said. “Also lover! Who are you?”
“His baby mama,” Robyn said, snorting. “You will never transfer the curse to someone else, eh, Gerald?”
Gerald looked away, guilty. “Oh dear.”
Elena opened her mouth in shock. “His what?”
Lucien stood up. “Jane, we should talk in private.”
“Your psycho henchwench just tried to stab me with icicles!” I snapped at him, wondering if this was going to degenerate further.
Lucien said, “Her magic can’t hurt you.”
“What?” Deana said, her neck still in Emma’s mouth. “It can’t?”
“No,” Lucien said. “I enchanted you, Jane, so you’re immune to her powers. It was a while back.”
“You enchanted me without my permission?” I said, appalled. That was a gross violation of my personal space even if it was for my supposed good.
Deana tried to speak, only for Emma to put a paw on her chest.
“You are all now under my protection,” Lucien said, addressing the walls of his cathedral. “Let a terrible vengeance fall upon anyone who harms anyone else. Everybody got that?”
“Got it,” I said, glad someone had stepped up before I’d had to kill people. “Emma, down.”
Emma opened her jaw and stepped off Deana. “Don’t try to hurt Jane again.”
Deana held her neck. “This is why we didn’t go anywhere.”
“Yeah, amazing how trying to hurt my friends makes me think you’re awful,” Emma said, her voice contemptuous rather than hurt.
To her credit, Deana looked ashamed, and for once I thought she registered just how much she’d screwed up. I turned to look at Gerald and Robyn, expecting some sort of disaster in the making. Instead, I saw Robyn and Gerald hugging as the former introduced herself to Elena followed by the latter returning the same.
It seemed that I wouldn’t have to shoot anyone after all. “Okay, Lucien, I’ll trust your people not to do anything stupid.”
“Just make sure yours don’t start anything. Mine know how to take orders,” Lucien said, walking to a door on the left I was certain hadn’t been there before.
Seeing as the person I needed to interrogate was leaving the room, I hopped to it and moved to follow him. “Try not to kill each other while I’m gone, guys. Actually, no, there is no try. Do not. I mean that.”
“Have fun!” Robyn waved, looking at Gerald and his new progeny with a sour expression on her face.
“Will do!” I said, waving back.
You have my permission to shoot the vampire, Raguel said.
Hush you, I said. Just tell me I can’t shoot Lucien. I don’t want to know what he’s been up to this entire time.
Raguel took a moment to reply. I generally restrict the final judgment to those who have murdered the innocent, raped, or tortured. Lucien has not committed these sins the way his soldiers have.
“That’s not as reassuring as you might think,” I muttered aloud.
He stands on a precipice with one side solid ground and the other a dark abyss few climb out of. As long as he punishes those who do evil under his command and does not succumb to temptation, he is not worthy of death or damnation. Two hands hold him back.
“I prefer when you speak in short, easily understood sentences.”
So do I.
I reached the door where Lucien was waiting for me. He held the door and I passed before him, entering into a beautiful wooden conference room bigger than my parents’ house. It had a massive conference table in the center of it and a huge circular skylight that showed storm clouds gathering overhead. The place looked more like a movie set than a place of business and I could easily imagine the Illuminati (which didn’t exist—as far as I knew) or the Vampire Nation’s leaders gathering around to discuss ruling the world.
“Talking to your guardian angel?” Lucien asked, shutting the door behind us. It faded away seconds later, leaving us alone. I wasn’t worried about my safety with Lucien, but it was a rather tacky thing to do when my friends were alone with his minions outside. Lucien removed his sunglasses and put them in his pants pocket. I was surprised they fit.
“More like the guardian pain in my ass,” I said, turning around and finding myself face-first in his chest.
Oh my.
I looked up into his eyes. “Listen, Lucien, this is a really complicated situation so I’m going to have to call in every favor you want to—”
“Shh,” Lucien said.
I quieted. Mostly. “Uh…”
He then leaned down and kissed me.
Chapter Ten
Lucien’s tongue met mine and his hands pressed against the soft of my back, sending waves of pleasure throughout my body. Part of the appeal of supernaturals, wizards in particular, was they could control the responses of their partner’s bodies. It was something I’d found out with Lucien and had been left with a somewhat giddy feeling about ever since. I returned his kiss despite my best efforts and moved my hands up and down his chest before he moved his hands to my shirt.
“No, dammit,” I said, pulling away. “Bad Jane!”
Lucien grumbled and pulled away, crossing his arms. “Spoilsport.”
“I told you last time was a mistake!” I snapped, taking a deep breath.
“I remember,” Lucien said, leaning up against the wall. He was channeling his inner James Dean and managing to look annoyed as well as cool at the same time. “It was the most surprising breakup I’ve had, I’ve got to tell you.”
Breakup? Oh, that was rich.
“We weren’t dating!” I said, appalled. “I mean, yeah, we’d go to movies and hang out.
Maybe have dinner every now and then as well as talk about stuff but…oh my Goddess, we were dating.”
Lucien threw his hands out in the air. “For almost two months.”
Oh Goddess, that changed everything.
And nothing.
“You didn’t pick up on the fact I hadn’t had sex with you in all that time or even kissed you?” I said, futilely looking for an excuse. Yeah, that was great, be upset at the guy for being a gentleman. But seriously? He had to have been clued in! Right?
Men are genetically designed to be stupid in this area
No kidding, Raguel, I responded.
Not that women are any better.
Where the hell did you get that kind of sass? I asked.
I can’t imagine, Raguel said. Though please don’t suggest it’s from Hell.
Sorry, I apologized. But don’t distract me. This is a cataclysm of epic proportions.
I’m sure.
; “I just thought you were religious,” Lucien shrugged. “I liked you, you liked me, so I was willing to take it slow for once.”
“Deer religion does not work that way!” I snapped, ignoring the rest of his statement for the very valid reason it made me look bad. “We’re totally sex positive. I think.”
“You think?” Lucien asked, distracted at last from my screw-up.
“I didn’t get to find out much from my mom before she got sent away!” I said. “Also, my gun is an angel. That really screws with my whole Neo-Pagan beliefs.”
“Pfft,” Lucien muttered. “To think I gave up sex with other women for almost six months.”
That diluted most of my sympathy. “Oh you poor baby, you.”
Lucien laughed. “I picked up on the fact that you weren’t interested when you didn’t talk to me for a few months.”
“You didn’t call either,” I said, still trying to weakly defend myself.
Lucien narrowed his eyes as they turned a serpentine yellow with slits. “People call me, I don’t call them.”
I cocked my head to one side. “Does this Bad Boy Sex God thing usually work for you?”
Lucien’s eyes returned to normal. “Up until recently, I had almost a perfect track record.”
“Word of advice, it doesn’t work for all women.”
“I don’t need it to work for all women,” Lucien said, looking to one side. “In any case, I just figured you had someone else in mind.”
“Well, I do,” I said, taking a deep breath and recovering my dignity.
Goddess, he was hot. No, focus! Important stuff to think about like…like… something to do with tree cults?
“Just tell me it’s not Alex,” Lucien said, jokingly.
I grimaced and looked guilty.
“Oh Lord,” Lucien muttered, covering his face. “Really, Jane?”
“Hey, I didn’t ask you to sleep with me!” I said.
“Yes, you did. Three times.”
I paused, thinking back on that night. “Stop confusing the issue with facts.”
“I care about two people in the world, Jane—you and my brother. Sometimes my foster mother, and even then that’s iffy.”
“A rift there?” I asked, never having heard Lucien talk much about his foster mother. I mostly knew about her from Alex and the portrayal he gave of her was Star Trek’s Khan in a dress.
“Diane asked me to choose between her and Alex during one of our fights. I chose Alex.”
Yikes.
“I’m sorry,” I said, taking a deep breath. “As you know, I can sympathize with that kind of rift.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just another sign of the fucked-up nature of God’s creation.”
Lucien had, in his own words, seen too much of the world in order to disbelieve in God. Unfortunately, this had made him sullen and angry at the universe rather than comforted. It was probably why he could make deals with demons and not be tainted, since his distaste for the divine was born from too much love for his fellow man rather than too little.
Alex was the opposite as he was filled with a fury against the existence of evil and a priestly reverence for the universe, but I honestly didn’t think he held any particular one thing above another. As far as Alex was concerned, everyone was a child of the divine and everything was a part of it, so it was all worth adoration. He didn’t even hate evil people, at least as far as I knew, but just wanted to stop them injuring themselves by injuring others. I felt that was an overly complicated viewpoint myself.
The tarnished knight versus the shining one. However will you choose?
Do not get involved in my love life or I will mess you up!
Hehehe. Perhaps the first time I’d ever heard the Merlin Gun laugh.
I’d chosen, too. Sort of. “Listen, I like your brother and I’d never do anything to hurt him.”
“Except sleep with his brother.”
I felt my face. “Just, uh, keep it to yourself, would you?”
Lucien stared at me. “Now you want me to lie for you?”
I sighed. “I’ll…probably tell him, I mean I will, it’s just…listen, this isn’t important now.”
Lucien walked over and put his hand on my cheek. “Jane, you are a beautiful, fascinating woman who easily blows away most of the girls who come here to party. If you don’t want what I have, that’s unfortunate, but I’m a big boy. I’ll live. Just don’t hurt Alex. He’s had to deal with sultry femme fatales like you before.”
I smacked him across the abdomen. It was like smacking a brick wall. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Lucien.”
“I hurt others, I don’t get hurt.”
“Deershit.”
Lucien shrugged. “So what can I do to help you with the dual punches of human sacrifice and the evangelical temple of holy infomercials?”
“They’re related, I think,” I said, trying to put it all in my head. “There’s something called the Grove, a dryad living there, the dead children were left for something called the Brotherhood of the Tree, and Ultralogist guy is after whatever is there. He also wants to kill Kim Su, who he knows is in town.”
Lucien listened to me, nodding his head as I spoke. “Okay, I got it and know how everything relates.”
I blinked. “Really?”
“Really,” Lucien said.
“Because it’s only been a few hours into this and it usually takes me a couple of days to figure out who was responsible for everything. This is like them catching the killer before the first commercial break.”
“Life doesn’t work like television, Jane.”
“I’ve yet to find that to be true.”
Lucien smiled. “The Brotherhood of the Tree is a religious sect that used to live in Bright Falls. They were driven out of England by Queen Elizabeth under the belief that they were secret Catholics.”
“What did they worship?” I asked.
“They were druids,” Lucien said. “Semi-Christian druids.”
“Semi-Christian? How could a bunch of pagans be semi-Christian?” I asked, only noticing the hypocrisy after the words came out of my mouth.
Lucien shrugged. “It’d been a while since the Romans and Saint Patrick smacked them down. Some religious syncretism was inevitable even in a persecuted secret sect. Besides, I get the impression they were able to wrap their head around the idea of a god becoming a human sacrifice better than most. You know, if you believe in that sort of thing.”
Hey, Raguel, want to weigh in on that cosmic mystery? I asked, not really expecting an answer.
Michael has forbidden us from conversing about religion with mortals or each other. It never ends well.
Huh, I said, thinking about that. He is wise.
Indeed.
I paused. “So you’re telling me Bright Falls had a sect of druids a couple of hundred years ago and I’ve never heard of them?”
“You probably have,” Lucien said. “After all, you worship a bunch of Celtic deities along with the Christian God. Eventually, the Brotherhood of the Tree all became shapechangers and their beliefs disappeared into the local folklore.”
I paused. “Okay, I’m feeling really stupid in this conversation. I still feel like I should know this.”
“Well, I learned it from your mother.”
I blinked, trying to wrap my head around this latest series of revelations. “When the hell did you talk to my mother?”
“I talk to her every other week,” Lucien said, staring. “We are both working on making sure Marcus Henry spends the next four hundred lifetimes behind bars, after all.”
I hadn’t spoken to my mother since she’d gone underground. “I don’t even know where she is.”
“You can ask the FBI to talk to her,” Lucien said. “I know your siblings did.”
I lowered my head. “I don’t even know what I would say. Did you know Jeanine and Jeremy want to sell the Deerlightful?”
“Yeah,” Lucien said, shrugging. “I’m Alice’s real estate partner, so I got a heads-
up. Want me to buy it for you?”
“What?” I said, thrown off for the third time today. “No, I’m not going to let you do that! We’ve slept together! That’d be awful! Like kinda-sorta prostitution!”
Lucien rolled his eyes and threw out his arm. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. This is why I’m not friends with any of my exes.”
Were we exes? I hadn’t even known we were dating until a few minutes ago. “Well, we are friends. Also, I’m the shaman of the city and you’re a magic-user in it, so I’m the boss of you.”
Lucien looked at me sideways, amused. “All right, sure you are.”
“Do you know how the dryad fits into all of this?”
“Accent on the ‘the’ in Dryad,” Lucien said, frowning. “It’s not just a tree spirit. It’s the avatar of their god.”
I took a second to parse that. “The druids summoned a god into a tree?”
It actually wasn’t an entirely uncommon mystical practice. After all, I was walking around with the Beretta of Murderangelry.
I can be any type of gun. Not just a Beretta.
It was funny how that was the part he objected to.
Lucien nodded. “Yeah. The Dryad is an avatar of Danu that the Druids summoned into an Elder Oak, a living manifestation of the Earthmother in reality. Every spring, they would send a young man to join with her and sire a new child. It brought fertility and junk to the surrounding lands while also birthing children of exceptional beauty as well as magical power.”
Wow, Robyn was a demigoddess. But who was doing the siring now? I’m pretty sure the young men of the town (as well as most of the old) would be up for it, but it’s not something I’d ever heard advertised. Jeremy would have been unable to keep from bragging.
I took a deep breath. “Speaking as someone who worships the Earth, I’m not sure how it fits with my beliefs that she’s just going to abandon her kids to die.”
Lucien walked over to the conference room table and sat on it. “Nature is cruel, but I don’t think she means to be. Avatars don’t think like human beings, even if they can think more like us than their divine counterparts. It’s possible she never noticed her children weren’t being picked up after the Brotherhood was wiped out?”
