Rezso

by Kat Parrish

  She leaned over and kissed me hard, her mouth tangy…

  Has she been drinking wine? Nobody offered me wine.

  I opened my mouth to her probing tongue and sucked it out of her mouth into mine. I heard her moan softly and was instantly stiff, my cock straining.

  Fee reached down with one hand and fondled my junk through the fabric, her small hands teasing me, torturing me.

  Oh God.

  I reached down to unbutton my shorts as she unzipped her jeans, pulling them off to reveal a lacy thong so delicate it looked like it would break if she pulled on it too hard.

  She wriggled out of the thong with a complicated shimmy that left her naked on top of me, my cock protruding from the crotch of my jeans.

  She crumpled the thong in her hand and crushed it to my nose so I could smell her sex on it. I pulled her closer, feeling her nipples harden against my chest. I reached up to cup her breasts and she laughingly pulled away, turning her back on me so she could pull my pants the rest of the way off.

  She settled into Reverse Cowgirl, putting one hand on my knee and offering her beautiful little breasts to me.

  I took what was offered, kneading their softness with my work-roughened hand. She made little animal noises of pleasure and they brought me even closer to the edge. Keeping her one hand on my knee, she took my penis in her other and guided me into her.

  It was like…bathing in liquid silk. She was so hot and ready for me it was like we’d been made to join like this. When she started rocking back and forth, I felt it all the way to my toes. And when I exploded into her, she climaxed so hard I thought she was having a seizure.

  Afterwards, I felt something I had never felt before.

  Contentment.

  The strangest thought came to me.

  She is the other half of my soul.

  There’d been an emptiness inside me ever since I lost my animal.

  Sexual healing? I thought. Whatever this had been, I was grateful for the gift.

  “Thank you,” I whispered into her ear.

  I love you, I thought.

  Afterwards, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to shower together. The bathroom was small, but we managed without getting too much water all over the floor.

  Later we went into the kitchen to grab something to eat. Drago and Li were cool but Axl was grinning like an idiot when he saw us together.

  He started to say something, but I gave him a death stare and he went back to the game he was playing on his phone.

  Somebody had gone shopping because the fridge was full of food and I started pulling out items to assemble dinner.

  I sliced up some summer squash, a yellow onion and four ripe tomatoes and threw them in a pan with some olive oil and black pepper. Back home in my kitchen I had little pots of marjoram and basil I could have chopped up and included in the dish, but I made do with some dried Italian seasoning. There was a round of sourdough bread and I sliced that up and put out some hummus to spread over it.

  While I cooked, I told Fee what Dannon had said about the fairy child and it sparked a memory. She grabbed my hand to share it.

  A hard-faced blonde woman stood at the door of the X-ray room. She was standing next to a small child whose face was turned away. He was wearing a blue t-shirt and the skin of his exposed arms was dark with bruises.

  He was very thin.

  There was a bandage in the crook of his left elbow. As if he’s recently had blood drawn.

  The phlebotomist, I thought.

  The woman was nervous, but she also seemed angry with the child. “He’s so clumsy,” she told Fee. “Always playing rough. Taking foolish chances.”

  My skepticism mingled with Fee’s anger and pity.

  Fee asked the boy a question I couldn’t hear and when he turned to look at her, I could feel her shock. The boy is the ugliest child I’ve ever seen, with facial differences that no amount of plastic surgery would ever be able to fix.

  Poor boy, I could hear Fee think. Poor unloved little boy.

  I realized I was looking at a changeling. That somewhere in the Lost Green, the part of L.A. the fairies have claimed for their own, there was a human child who had been swapped out for this boy. Probably at birth. That’s why the obstetrician had to die.

  Fairies don’t thrive in the human world. They get sick a lot. Grisha wouldn’t have taken the boy to a regular doctor, he would have relied on a series of “doc in the box” clinics where no one would keep records. But the boy’s appearance was so singular, he’d be remembered. And that’s why the nurse-practitioner had to die.

  The blonde woman who appeared to be the boy’s keeper had said he got hurt a lot. There’d probably have been blood tests, which would have revealed his paranormal DNA. He would have been given prescriptions.

  For whatever reason, Grisha didn’t want anyone who’d come in contact with the changeling or be able to make a connection to him.

  So, what was his end game?

  I went back to Fee’s memory as she positioned the boy for the X-ray.

  What’s wrong with his arm? I asked her in my mind.

  It’s broken, Fee said. Someone’s been treating him roughly.

  All the mellow feeling drained out of me and I felt my anger start to rise.

  “We need to find this kid,” I said.

  6

  I arrived at the restaurant promptly at two. My father was sitting in the dining room, waiting for me. A glass of tea at his right hand, a tumbler of water in front of him. There was only one place setting at the table. That was fine by me. I wasn’t interested in breaking bread with the man who’d spawned me.

  He looked older than the last time I’d seen him, and I counted the months in my head. It had only been about six years, but he looked like he’d aged a decade, his blond hair now almost pure silver. Still, his eyes were still sharp and cold.

  He’d always been a big man, tending to fleshiness but now the collar of his shirt was loose around his neck and the skin on his face sagged off his bones.

  “How sick are you?” I asked, sitting down in the chair across from him. I saw the two watchdogs he’d brought with me shift position from where the stood sentry. He lit a foul-smelling cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter, took a puff and shrugged. “Death does not take the old but the ripe,” he said in Russian. I shuddered at that because it was something he used to say about the men he killed. He called it “picking the ripe fruit.”

  He looked at my stone face and said, “No questions? Not even to ask how long?”

  I mirrored his shrug. “You have been dead to me for years,” I said. “I did not mourn you then, I won’t pretend to grieve for you now.”

  “You’re a hard man,” he said. “Good. You’ll need to be.”

  What the fuck does that mean?

  “Your cousin is a psychopath.”

  No shit. Oleg would get no argument from me on that score.

  “This madness with the killings.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Of course,” he said, blowing smoke in my face. “It’s attracting attention. It’s bad for business.”

  “Because that’s the most important thing here.”

  My father looked at me as if I was a particularly interesting species of insect he’d just discovered crawling in his salad. “Always the smart ass.”

  “What’s with the bogus legend?” I said. “Whose idea was that?”

  “Grisha has a flair for the dramatic,” he said, which didn’t really answer my question but came close enough.

  “Grisha get tired of waiting for you to die,” I said.

  “Young bulls are ambitious,” Oleg said, shrugging off my observation.

  “Was he behind that fire at your house last year?

  My father paused with the glass of water halfway to his lips. “That was an electrical accident,” he said evenly.

  I laughed. His two bodyguards tensed, and he waved them off.

  Oleg stamped out his ci
garette as a waiter approached with a bowl of borscht. The server shot a questioning look at me and I shook my head. The waiter retreated as my father picked up a spoon and began inhaling the soup with lip-smacking relish.

  I’ve had the borscht here, it’s not that good.

  I watched him eat for a minute or two. Patience isn’t my strong suit, but I can play a waiting game. Finally, he patted his lips with his cloth napkin and set it aside.

  “I have no beef with the witches,” he said, finally. “I settled things with your mother’s crazy coven years ago.”

  He looked to see if mention of Alice had set me off. I returned his look blandly.

  It’s not as settled as you think, old man, I thought, but didn’t bother to say out loud.

  “So, what’s he want?” I asked.

  Oleg shrugged and dug out his cigarettes again. Out of habit he offered the silver case to me. I shook my head, irritated, and he laughed. “such a Boy Scout,” he said. “You mother made you soft.”

  “You think so?” I asked, not bothering to hide the hatred behind my words. I was getting tired of this dance. “I know about the kid,” I said.

  Oleg paused, his stinking cigarette halfway to his lips.

  “The kid?”

  My father is not a subtle man, and, in that confusion, I read truth.

  “See if any of this sounds familiar,” I said. “Say there’s a byk who has a kid, probably a good-looking kid because well—none of your crew hangs with the uglies.”

  Oleg didn’t like me using the derogatory word for his kind, but he did smirk at the comment about the quality of women his men “dated.”

  “And this guy, your guy, isn’t really the dad type so he thinks—how can I work this deal to my advantage?”

  Oleg put his cigarette down. I had his attention.

  “We have no problems with the fairies,” Oleg said. “they have their business and we have ours.”

  “But maybe they want to…expand,” I suggested.

  Oleg waved his hand dismissively. “Fairies…”

  “Could the byks stand against the fairies?” I pressed.

  “We can stand against anything,” he said.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” I said. “Remember, the Romanovs thought they would rule for a thousand years.”

  “You’re saying Grisha is planning something with the fae?”

  “You’re telling me you don’t know anything about it?”

  His face tightened. “You’ve been jealous of your cousin since you were a boy. You walked away from your birthright and now you’re back, trying to weasel your way into my good graces by telling me lies?”

  I stood up. “Tell Grisha I know about the boy. Dannon knows about the boy. The secret is out. If he makes a move, goes after the witness, there will be consequences.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I expect there will be.”

  I turned away.

  “Nikolas,” Oleg said. I turned back.

  “I can always use another guy like you,” he said in Russian. “Big and stupid.”

  One of the bodyguards laughed.

  I turned again and walked away.

  The buzzing in my head was back. The need to hurt someone.

  The feeling got worse the closer I got to the safe house.

  7

  There was a police car blocking access to the street where I wanted to turn, so I drove past it and went up an alley to come up the back way. As I got close, I could see a scrum of emergency vehicles and a gathering crowd of people. A news copter buzzed overhead.

  I saw Jon sitting on the front porch, a bloody bandage around his head.

  I skidded to a stop, threw the car in park and was on the porch before the car stopped moving.

  “Fee?” I asked Jon, frantic.

  “Safe,” he said. “We stashed her in the panic room under the garage.”

  I bulled my way through the clutch of first responders. I saw Fee across the living room, leaning over Axl’s prone body as an EMT worked on him. I saw Anton crumpled in a corner as another team of EMTs tried to stop his bleeding.

  I shoved one of the paramedics aside.

  “Where’s the boy?” I asked Anton.

  He looked at me with glazed eyes.

  “Grisha?” he said. “I fucked up.”

  “You need to back off,” the paramedic I’d shoved said. I ignored her.

  “It’s okay Anton. Just tell me where the kid is.”

  The paramedic put her hand on my arm. “Sir, you really need to move.”

  I shook off her arm. “Not until he answers my question.”

  I looked back at Anton. His face was gray. “Where’s the kid?”

  “Oleg,” Anton said, and then he spit up about a pint of blood, which got all over a second paramedic who was doing chest compressions.

  Anton wouldn’t be answering any more questions, but that was fine. I had the answer I needed.

  I left the paramedics to their work and went over to Fee and opened my arms wide.

  She came to me, hugging me so tightly she nearly cracked a rib.

  “Axl’s dead,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. The gory wound in his chest was deep and wide. It looked like someone had tried to cut out his heart.

  “But his wolf is lingering,” Fee said, looking over my shoulder. I slowly turned and there was Axl’s wolf, a huge animal with black-tipped gray fur and a scar on his snout.

  Am I really seeing this? I wondered. No one else in the room but Fee and I seemed to be aware that there was an actual wolf standing in the living room.

  “Axl Wolf wants to know if you would consider accepting him,” Fee said. “He is not yet ready to die.”

  I looked into the wolf’s yellow eyes; felt the enormity of the request he’d made to me.

  “I have to ask Mickey,” I said. “He’s the alpha, it’s his decision.”

  “Mickey would approve,” Jon said. He’d followed me into and heard my conversation with Fee.

  “You can see the wolf?” I said.

  Jon nodded. “You’ve always been our brother,” Jon said. “Accepting Axl’s wolf is just a formality.”

  I turned back to the animal. “I would be honored,” I said.

  The wolf gazed down at Axl’s body, nuzzling him as if saying a private goodbye and then it…he…sprang at me, melting through my skin and settling inside me as if there was already a custom-made space waiting for him.

  It felt strange but not uncomfortable.

  It felt…right.

  What is your name? I asked.

  The wolf seemed confused. I was Axl Wolf. Now I am Rezso Wolf.

  No, I said. You deserve your own name. Something strong and brave.

  The wolf was silent for a moment. It was going to take a while to get used to having another voice in my head. I’d lost my inner byk so young we’d never really communicated.

  What is the Russian word for “warrior? he asked.

  I told him.

  Call me Voin, he said. Is there anything to eat? I’m hungry.

  8

  At some point Dannon showed up to smooth things over with the regular cops and the coroner’s people took the dead away. All of the attackers had died. Grisha had not been among them.

  Of course, Oleg hadn’t been with them either. He’d been having lunch and keeping me occupied.

  I was suddenly so enraged that the buzzing in my ears blocked out any other sound. That fucking bastard had played me.

  For the last time.

  I looked around. The house was a wreck. The walls were Swiss-cheesed from gunshots and mortar fire. Molotov cocktails and incendiary devices had done their work. The deck I’d built so meticulously was now scraps of charred wood. The garden Fee had brought back to life was trampled; flower petals shredded like so much used confetti.

  Fee came up to me and squeezed my hand. “We have to get the boy,” she said.

  “We aren’t doing anything,” I said. “You are getting out of L.
A. right now.”

  “Not without you,” she said. “Not without the boy.”

  “I’ll come back for you,” I said. “With the boy. And then we’ll go home.”

  “Home,” she said, and it was settled.

  It felt good to say the word.

  I knew Oleg and Grisha would be at the Toluca Lake house. I knew they’d be waiting for me. But I knew something they didn’t know. It wasn’t just a man walking through their front door.

  Which they’d left open to show their contempt for me.

  I found Grisha first. He was sitting in a deck chair by the pool. The pool he’d once tried to drown me in.

  A beautiful, bare-breasted blonde was giving him a blow job. She looked up when she saw me and Grisha pushed her head back down.

  ‘Get dressed and go,” I said to her in Russian. She looked to Grisha for permission and he waved her off petulantly.

  “Don’t go far,” he said to her in Russian.

  She didn’t have to be told twice.

  Voin? I said. I need you.

  And just like that the wolf pounced, tearing Grisha to chunks.

  Grisha died screaming and begging.

  I might have enjoyed that once, relished the music of his pain, but that wasn’t me anymore.

  Grisha had to die, but I would not dance on his grave.

  The wolf ate his fill and then we turned to the house.

  No one came forward to challenge us. I guessed word of the slaughter at the safe house had returned to Byk Central and no one wanted to be around if the police showed up asking questions. But I knew Oleg wouldn’t have run.

  Not Oleg.

  He’s not an honorable man, as I have said, but he is proud.

  He was waiting for me in his palatial bedroom, armed with the ceremonial knife all the byks carry. He held it clutched in his right hand as if ready to use it.

  I wasn’t fooled. He wouldn’t do this man to man. He’d try to lure me in close and then he’d shift into the Minotaur. I wouldn’t give him that chance.

  “Let me show you where the crawfish hibernate,” he said, smiling. To most, the phrase might have sounded like my father was offering to share the location of his favorite fishing hole with me. But in fact, the idiom has a much more sinister translation. It means someone wants to hurt you bad, sometimes—but not always—to teach you a lesson.