I had to double-take when I saw the Elf leaning over to play with Nyx's hair as he said, “Alas, I'll have to find another to woo. Nyx, has anyone ever told you that you've the loveliest lavender eyes?”
The poor Fae girl was just about melting into a puddle in front of our eyes. The Princess explained, “That one's a helpless flirt.”
Then she let go of my arm and stepped away, back to whatever experiment she was working on as she prompted, “I'm sure you didn't come to exchange dating tips. You wished to speak with me, and that you've made it this far, I'm assuming it is quite important.”
My smile dropped. And I re-centered myself. Get with the program, Knith, this is how the Fae entrap the unwary. She's a suspect until you clear her, so act like it.
“Miss Ashryver, I'm investigating a string of murders down-ring, and had a few questions that maybe you can help me with.” I looked up to her sculpted cheekbone, careful not to take her face in.
She set her beaker down again and frowned, all the playful tones out of her voice as she asked, “So it's Miss Ashryver now is it?” Then she looked almost excited as realization dawned. “Oh, how exciting, I'm a suspect.” Then she added as I looked at her like she was a few shovels short of an ore cart. “Please, ask your questions Enforcer Shade.” She looked as if she were seconds away from clapping excitedly in front of her chest.
I sighed then said, “As I said, I'm currently investigating a string of murders. Unauthorized organ harvesting to be precise. I wanted to know if you knew any of these men.”
With a flick, I accessed her extensive network of holo-projectors, and pictures of the victims bloomed between us. She looked at them and shook her head. “No, no, no, no. And yes. That's Reiner, everyone knows him, he's the interior designer for everyone who's anyone.”
Ok, Fae answer. No could mean anything with a Fae, like no she didn't know them before she harvested their organs and left them to die, or no she's never seen them before. And she didn't really answer definitively about Mr. Katan, she could just know him from the commercials on the waves.
I sighed and rephrased as I put up the crime scene photos beside each. “So you are saying that you have never met the first four? And Mr. Katan, did you know him by reputation or have you had dealings with him?”
It was all I could do to look away from her smiling lips, back to her cheekbone. Her lips were full and inviting with a tinge of blue that played off her almost stark white skin to make her look like some sort of ice sculpture herself.
She chuckled. “Not your first time dealing with the Fae I see. What do I get for playing this game?”
Shaking my head I assured her, “Peace of mind that you did the right thing in helping to bring a killer to justice, and peace for the victims and their families.”
She contemplated that, then shook her head. “All noble pursuits, and tempting, but a shameless attempt to play on my morality. So as you seem to know that isn't our way, and because of that, instead of freely answering as my conscience would have had me do, how about I answer each of your questions, and you answer questions in turn as payment.”
Always dealing, the Fae. But what profit could she make with me answering questions? What questions could she possibly have for me? Or was she stalling because I was on to her? I exhaled in exasperation and nodded. “Within reason. And if you refuse to answer any, I may have to bind you by law and bring you down to Central to ask again.”
This seemed to please her, especially the threat. Then she asked as she shifted in my vision again, “Why won't you look at me?”
I chuckled. “You know why.”
She sighed. “You're afraid I'll glamour you? One, it doesn't work that way. Well except for the Winter and Summer Ladies. We have to will it to enthrall you. And two, I will not do so to you unless you ask it of me. I cannot lie so you know I speak the truth.”
Against my better judgment, but bolstered by the fact she had plainly said she would not do it to me, and she could not lie, I looked up and caught my breath. Aurora was perhaps the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes upon, and her doll-like features, flawless skin, flowing white and silver hair, with those sublime pointed ears sticking through her locks, coupled with bright violet eyes had me gaping at her. But to my relief I didn't feel my free will slipping away, she was just that breathtaking.
She cocked her head and smiled in a way that had the attention of all my most interesting spots. “There, that's better. Now we can take measure of each other as we spar. Your eyes are gorgeous, I've never seen a human with brown eyes which had that lilac ring around them. Varied species interbreeding?”
What? Wait. Wasn't I supposed to be asking the questions? My cheeks were burning now. I'm not supposed to be attracted to a person of interest. Mother whispered in my ear, “Knith, are you alright? Your heart rate is elevated.” I typed on the virtual console. “Not now, Mother!”
The smirk on Aurora's face was priceless, snapping me out of it, and I said, “Don't get full of yourself, woman, you're not as pretty as you think.” Lies. All lies.
Then I said, “One hundred percent, red-blooded human.”
She arched an exquisitely sculpted brow at that, then inclined her head.
“I owe you an answer now. Yes, I have had professional dealings with Mr. Katan.” She leaned back almost suggestively against the counter.
I blinked it away, she knew exactly what she was doing to me. I had stupidly shown weakness when I basically admitted I preferred women and Fae are quite fluid in their sexuality. I'm sure she saw it as a tool to get what she wanted out of me.
But then she suddenly stood straight and stepped up to the projections and enlarged the wounds on each of the victims. She started tracing them with her fingers, eyes wide and studying. “How were these incisions made?”
Ah to the meat of the matter. I exhaled, pulled my eyes from the ten thousand chit white heels she was wearing which I caught sight of under her gown when she strode forward. The price of them helpfully displayed in my peripheral by Mother. Why would I care what they cost? Sometimes Mother can be weird.
Then again, maybe my eyes lingered on them longer than was professional and she tried to anticipate what I was looking at. The silly AI knew my pathetic bank balance, and impractical shoes like that would set me back three month's pay.
I was startled out of my thoughts when a hand rested on my arm. “Are you alright, Enforcer Shade?”
I said absently, as my blood chilled when I saw the talon shaped Ionga ring on her thumb, “Knith.” Space me, that put a damper on my libido instantly. Circumstantial Knith, many Fae wear Ionga rings, remember?
She smiled and said, “Then Rory, please. You were stating how these incisions were made.”
Tonelessly I supplied, “I didn't say. But do you recognize this?”
My attention snapped to her violet eyes to see the reaction when I flicked the projection of the scalpel up between us. She didn't even blink when she said simply, “Yes.” Oh, she was good.
I narrowed my eyes and added, “Care to expound upon that? Do you know who owns it?”
She shook her head, tapping her lower lip. “Those are two more questions, that isn't how this game is played. You'll have to be more specific in the future.”
I was suddenly feeling like she was a predator, and I was the prey. Could I see her being a woman who could kill these people in cold blood to steal organs from them? What could be the motive? To sell them on the black market? She had enough money to buy every person on the world and still have more money than the gods left over.
She was going through the data on the wounds a line at a time, like she was absorbing it, or was she a killer admiring her own work? She circled the other way around the projections as I circled toward her. She smirked like she was enjoying this game of cat and mouse. Maybe this really was a game to her. The bored rich girl who was doing this for the thrill? No... that didn't track.
Her question sur
prised me.
“Do you know what all the missing organs have in common? Knith?”
I blinked and admitted, “I was researching that, but haven't had time to dig deeper yet. Why, do you?”
“Yes. I do.”
Doh! I facepalmed and dragged my hand down my face at wasting a question. Graz said out the side of her mouth, “Good going, genius.” I made a show of double zipping her lips and she sat back, crossing her arms over her chest with a harrumph.
Aurora asked her question, “When was the first killing?”
I wasn't going to put the whole file up for her to see, so I read off the first date.
I looked at her expectantly since she already knew my question. She nodded and said, “Each of these races, are the most rare of every preternatural species on the world. They all have the distinction of not being Fae, but still being able to either hold magic or absorb it. Your killer has been removing the organs from them that allow this ability. There is just one anomaly to the apparent pattern.”
Ok, that made me sit up and take notice. So there was some sort of connection between the killings, maybe... I said to the air, “Mother, can you start building a predictive model, utilizing this new information?”
She replied in a rather good mood so all could hear, “On it, Knith.”
Rory blinked at that. “Was that, Mother? I've never heard her emote before.”
I said quickly, “Yes. My turn.”
She realized her mistake and laughed that silvery laugh as she pointed at me accusingly and said, “You would make a fine Fae, Knith.” She seemed to like to use my name. Wait, a lot of magic was tied to knowing someone's true name. But though Knith Shade was the name given to me. I knew my true name, what I called myself in my heart, and that wasn't it. So if that was her game...
I wish she'd stop smiling at me. I absently wondered if that glossy sheen of blue on her lips was actually ice. Turning back to the projections I asked, “You say you recognize the surgical instrument, do you know who owns it, and as part of the questions, if so, then who?”
She shrugged and smiled winningly at me like I had just asked the right question. She chirped out like it was a prize, “Me.” She strode over to what looked like some sort of dissection table and grabbed a canvas roll as I lowered one hand to rest on an MMG. The probable murder weapon was hers, and she admitted it.
She unrolled the canvas on the counter and a dozen gleaming silver surgical instruments were displayed, sticking out of little pockets in the canvas, but right in the middle was an empty pocket. She asked, “Do you have it? It has been missing for some time now.”
I smiled at her and she made a pained look, then she shook a finger at me as she smiled as I said simply, “Yes.”
I still had some questions that needed clarification, but I was starting to suspect something more was going on here than what it all looked like. I had to do my due diligence first. Establish her relationship to the decedents and get an alibi, which my gut was starting to tell me that she just might have, otherwise why would she be playing this game and why admit to owning the murder weapon.
Instead, what I asked was an inane, “Who has access to this room and those implements?”
She answered very specifically, with urging in her eyes to pick up on the exact terminology she chose, “Only myself, my two palace guards, the Winter Lady of course, and Oberon's children.”
She had stressed 'Oberon's children', was she trying to tell me something? She prompted with her eyes. Wait, was she under some sort of geas and couldn't speak freely about something? That was the worst kind of magic, a geas affected your mind and sometimes even your body to prevent you from doing or saying something.
She looked hopeful as she saw me putting things together. Ok, Mab had thirteen children, who all begat thirteen children, and so on.
But Oberon. Oberon was the lover of the Summer Lady, Queen Titania, before the world of Faerie was torn asunder, and when the dust settled there were two great houses, Seelie and Unseelie, Summer and Winter, light and dark. Then Oberon had to choose, and he believed he could tame the wild and volatile Mab for the good of all Faerie and unite the houses, so wed the Winter Lady to be her subordinate. But Mab only begot one child with Oberon... Aurora. The youngest of all Mab's children which broke the odd cycle of thirteen, her being the fourteenth, before Oberon went missing under suspicious circumstances while leading the Wild Hunt.
If she was Oberon's only child here in Ha'real, then I didn't get what she was trying to tell me. I'd have to think on that.
Then she sighed in frustration and put a smile back on her lips, which just made me look at them as they glistened in the lights... lights? There were none visible in the space. Must be magic.
Her next question threw me for a loop.
“What do you know about DNA? Fae DNA to be precise?”
Not knowing where this was going I shrugged. “Not much, just that DNA is the code for all of us, and that any Fae trace DNA, in any case, has to be put in a stasis field or it degrades in hours even though something like a Fae's severed limb will last forever, never decaying and can even be reattached at a later date, days, years, or even centuries later.”
She was looking at the door, looking rushed as she said quickly, “You should brush up on the population levels of the Leviathan over the years and why Equilibrium cannot be reached at this time.”
She kept looking at the door, a frantic expression on her face but then she blinked and said, “Wait. You aren't the Knith Shade of the Beta-Stack Reproduction Clinic are you?”
I blinked at her in shock. How did she know that? Her eyes widened in what looked almost like joyful recognition.
Then I was spasming on the ground, my armor's systems shorting and my playlist started blaring in my ears, everything seemed to be spinning and I couldn't orient myself as “Bohemian Rhapsody” threatened to shatter my eardrums. Then everything went silent, and I could smell burning hair and electronics as a rich soprano voice as chilly as the heart of winter itself demanded, as I found myself held in an unyielding grip of magic which was causing ice to form on my skin, “What is that... Human, doing in my house!?”
Chapter 7 – Another Brick In The Wall
I shook my head to clear it and focus on what was happening. And my eyes widened at Graz's body laying a couple inches in front of my face. Oh thank the gods, she was still breathing.
I felt the vice-like grip of this cold magic which held me, and I growled out as I pushed against it, “Let... go... of... me!” And the ice that was forming a cocoon around me cracked a little. It wasn't real ice, it was magic, cold magic. But I still had my scatter armor on so it couldn't get a purchase on me, so I screamed, “Get off!” at the magic, and it crackled and broke as I forced myself up to my knees, throwing my smoking helmet aside, then I stood and looked up. That was my mistake.
I already recognized the voice and knew whose icy magic that had been, but I was still disoriented and made the mistake of looking into the face of beauty incarnate, and she was my entire world as I fell back to my knees to worship at her feet. All I knew was her and my desire to please the Winter Lady, Queen Mab. My goddess.
She said in such a hypnotic tone, “You're a resilient one, how did you break that binding? What a wonderful pet you will make. Would you like that... pet?”
I was nodding frantically, I would do anything to be at her side, I would tear out my own still beating heart and hand it to her if she asked. She said, “A deal then? A trade of a kiss for your free will?”
Another voice said, “Mother don't. It's cruel.”
I knew that other voice. But my goddess was going to trade a kiss for me to belong to her. I was on the cusp of an orgasm at the thought of her lips on mine as I stood on shaky legs to move up to her. She parted her lips in anticipation, like a lover. She was love, she was everything, and I was nothing.
I hesitated and shook my head. No, I wasn't nothing. I was Nobody.
That was the true name I had adopted in my head, as a reminder that I was more than those who believed it. What was I doing? I blinked, seeing I was in her arms as she leaned in to kiss me with blue lips glistening with ice, and glanced over to see a terrified Aurora tugging at her mother's arm in a useless attempt to stop her.
I looked up at Mab's cheek, not making the same mistake twice, and I growled out, “Get off me, you bitch!” And I shoved her away.
Dozens of pikes were jabbed in at me, a couple penetrating armor and skin while most stopped shy of stabbing me. I grunted with the pain, which cleared my head. Mab looked amazed as she studied me. “Fascinating. She broke my thrall. No human has ever done that, even against the lesser lords. Maybe she will make a more interesting plaything than I thought, in recompense for her trespass into my palace.”
She made a dismissing motion and the Captain of the guard said, “But my Queen, she laid hands upon the Winter Lady. She called you a bitch. There is but one punishment for such an act.”
Mab chuckled as the guards pulled back, then with another dismissive gesture, they reluctantly left the rooms we were occupying while she said as she stepped around me, appraising me like I was a cow she was going to buy at market, “Well to be fair, I am a bitch. But I'm more interested in how she could possibly break my thrall and my binding.”
Were all Fae stupid? Scatter Armor was designed to break apart magic, scatter it as it implies. I shuddered in delight at her voice as I shook off the last of the artificial blind devotion I had felt toward her. Then I shuddered in fear because I remember just how right it felt under her gaze and how I didn't even want to resist. So that was Fae glamour? It made all the Greater Fae on the ship suddenly terrifying to me.
And while under thrall I almost made a bargain with her to lose my free will that any court would uphold. A deal struck with a Fae was a binding contract. That was the danger of dealing with the tricksters.
Leviathan Page 7
