Flesh and Blood_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t have a guest bedroom. How much do you think they pay detectives, anyway?” I scoffed. “But I know what you meant. I also know what happened the last time I saw the coven. I know what they said to me, and I know what they think of me. They threw me out, Scott. Threw me out like I was garbage. The only reason I’m even alive today is because I was too fucking stubborn to let them win. I swore I would never let those people get the better of me ever again, and I meant it. I wouldn’t care if the entire world was falling down around my feet. I’d never ask them for help.”

  “What if it was falling down around Renee’s feet?” he asked, his brows shooting up accusingly. “Because that’s what’s happening, baby brother. She might not be my favorite person in the world, and I might think she’s being less than truthful with you, but I know you care about her. I just don’t want you to think you could have done more if this doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. I don’t want it to be like Essie.”

  “What did I tell you about talking about her?” I asked, my hands balling into fists at my sides, a new flash of anger rushing through me.

  “That you didn’t want me to mention her,” he responded with a shrug. “Well, guess what? I don’t listen. Never have, probably never will. What happened between you and Essie wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have changed her mind, baby brother. Nobody could have.”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it!” I shouted, pushing my first wife’s face out of my mind with more ferocity than I even knew I was capable of. “We’ve got a hell of a mountain right in front of us, Scott. I don’t see any need in climbing ones we’ve already been over.”

  “I do,” he said, nodding at me. “If you’re intent on re-making the mistakes of the past, then we’re going to have to endure the trials of the past too. That’s just how it goes.” He swallowed hard and continued. “You fell in love with Essie and lost yourself. You were a kid. I get that, and I hoped that, as you got older, you might have grown to understand you’re not the sort of person who can afford to dive into another person completely.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” I asked, my jaw tightening and my eyes narrowing. Scott was dancing around some pretty dangerous territory, and he knew it. Digging up the past in front of me wasn’t in his best interest, not when he played such a destructive part in it.

  “You’re two very different people all stitched together and trapped in one body, baby brother. You can pretend you’re not. You can pretend you’ve got it all under control; that your shiny badge and your brand new friends means you don’t struggle with your nature, but I know you. I watched the hunger rear its ugly head. I saw what it did to you, how it tore you apart and made you question everything about yourself.” He placed his hand on my shoulder, and for some strange reason, I didn’t pull away from it. “It’s always going to be there, isn’t it? That’s what you told me when we were younger. It’s what you came to me saying in the middle of the night with those tears in your eyes, and it’s just as true now as it ever was.”

  There was no question mark at the end of his sentence. There didn’t need to be. He knew he was right. We both did. The hunger would always be there. The demon would always be alive inside of me, just under the surface ready and waiting to strike.

  But what the fuck did that have to do with anything?

  “This is about Renee,” I growled, finally pulling away from my brother’s touch. “Not my hunger,”

  “This is about a lot of things, Roy,” he answered, slipping the unwanted hand into his pocket. “The fact you think it’s just about her tells me everything I need to know. You’re always fighting yourself, Roy. I can definitely see the allure of a strong person, the sort of person who might make you forget who you are.” He shook his head, regret in his eyes. “But you can’t. You remember what happened when you did that, Roy. You remember what happened with Essie.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I said, my voice breaking. “I would have never done that if I’d have been in control, but-”

  “But you weren’t,” Scott answered. “And I understand that. You’ve grown since then. I have no doubt you’ve got a better handle on that particular situation. It still doesn’t mean you can let your guard down. It doesn’t mean you can afford to forget.”

  “I’ve never forgotten,” I said, my eyes blurring and my mind jumping back into the past. “Not for a minute have I forgotten.”

  “Really?” he asked, breathing heavy. “Isn’t that the point of your little girlfriend, of the assistant district attorney or whatever she is? To make you forget? To make you feel like an actual person?”

  “I am an actual person,” I growled, tightening my fists together so strongly they began to tremble.

  “You know what I mean, baby brother,” Scott answered, shaking his head and trying to steady his voice enough to calm me down.

  It wasn’t going to work.

  “Do I?” I asked, shaking my head and squeezing my fists together even tighter. “Because it sounds like you’re still calling me some kind of monster, like I don’t deserve to be happy.”

  “Of course you fucking deserve to be happy. Stop acting like this is some kind of crappy romantic comedy. This is real life, and there are things more important than being happy. You deserve to be safe,” he responded. His eyes were full of a sort of fire I’d forgotten he was capable of. I’d seen my brother in all sorts of different ways when we were growing up. He was a complex person who had a lot of different dimensions. Chief among those dimensions though was a primal need to protect what was his. That was why it hurt so much when he turned on me. It wasn’t what he did so much as the fact he did it. He’d move heaven and earth to protect people he looked at as his own. After that day, I realized I wasn’t one of those people. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “Not enough,” I answered. “Not when you still don’t trust me enough to believe my girlfriend is telling me the truth.”

  “It’s not about trusting you, Roy, but if you want me to believe Renee has your best interest at heart, then let me do what I need to do to prove it to myself.”

  Scott’s hand slid from his pocket as he spoke. In it was a bright red stone with flecks of gold speckled across it. My stomach turned.

  “An Eye of Amarose?” I asked, the corners of my lips turning down distastefully. I had seen that thing before. They used it on me after my demon side flared up back in the coven- after I nearly killed Essie one night when the cravings got too bad. “Not a chance in Hell.”

  “Come on, Roy,” Scott said, rolling his eyes at me. “You want to convince me Renee is telling the truth? What’s the harm in letting me use a talisman that makes lying impossible?”

  “It doesn’t make it impossible. It just makes it unbearably painful,” I answered, glaring at the damned thing and thinking of all the torture it put me through back in the day. I was a scared kid. Still wet behind the demon ears and thrust into an arranged marriage I didn’t want and wasn’t prepared for.

  “So?” Scott said, raising an eyebrow at me. “If she doesn’t lie, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Life’s not like that out here, Scott,” I huffed. “People actually trust other people out here. They believe the people they care about because they care about them.”

  He glared at me, something dark settling in his eyes. I could tell whatever thought was brewing in his head was one he didn’t want to share. I should have known that wouldn’t stop him though.

  “Do you think that’s what your mother thought, baby brother?”

  A spike of pain and anger thrust into my heart as he spoke.

  How dare he talk about my mother? How dare he allude to what happened to her, to what the coven did to her?

  “You need to leave,” I said flatly, grabbing the handle of my door. “I get why you came here, and I appreciate it, but whatever you thought was going to happen here isn’t. It’s obvious that you still don’t understand anything about me.
You never will. So why don’t you just get the fu—”

  A loud scream emanated from inside the apartment. I didn’t even think. My body just went to work, pushing through the doorway and powering up.

  My eyes went red as blood as I took in the room. Renee was in the corner, with Gary standing in front of her as if his foot and a half frame would be enough to save her. Bandhal was in the center of the room. His knees and his face were both touching the ground as he crouched in reverence, muttering something in his native tongue.

  Looking up, I saw the reason for all of this. Having pushed right through Scott’s new and improved protective runes, a woman with the most perfect ink black skin I had ever seen in my life stood over him. She had white hair and white eyes. Her pearl dress was soaking wet and clung tightly to her lithe body.

  I didn’t need to ask who I was looking at. I could tell from the look of her. I could tell from Bandhal’s reaction. I could tell from the storm cloud swirling directly over her head.

  After all his searching, Bandhal had finally come face to face with his rain queen. Awesome.

  23

  “My God,” Scott said, pushing me forward a little as he forced himself through the doorway to check out the scene.

  “I told you to hit pavement,” I said, my heart racing and my attention split almost evenly between Renee and Gary in one corner, and the powered-up rain queen and her souped up protector in the other.

  Aside from the scream (which could have just come from shock), I had no reason to believe the sopping wet woman in my living room posed any threat. For all I knew, she had been looking for Bandhal much in the same way he had been looking for her. Still, something told me that wasn’t the case.

  “And I told you, I don’t listen,” Scott answered. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was way too stubborn for that, and at the moment, I didn’t have the time or inclination to fight with him about it.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “Try not to get yourself killed. I don’t want to have to explain to the coven why there’s dead douchebag all over my carpet.”

  “Love you too, baby brother,” he answered, and I sensed him moving off to the side, trying to get the best tactical angle.

  “Aren’t you right on time,” Gary said, his mouth pulled back, revealing his fangs fully. “Halle Berry here just popped up.”

  My imp had a point. This chick looked a hell of a lot like the X-Men character with similar abilities; almost like a carbon copy. Whether or not that was intentional was both unknowable and beside the point. Perhaps this particular rain queen was something of a comic book geek and she wanted to really hit the nail or the figurative head. Or maybe Chris Claremont was a fan of South African mythology, and I was only now looking at the proof of that.

  “Stay back,” I said, looking over to Renee and Gary. “Let me deal with this.”

  “Roy,” Renee said from behind Gary, her voice a concerned warning. It told me not to get any closer. It told me not to get myself hurt on her behalf. I brushed it off.

  “Roy!” she repeated. “Roy, don’t you dare do something stupid.”

  A sly smile crossed my face as a strange thought occurred to me. I was sure someone probably told my mother something similar when she met my dad, when she made googly eyes at a really seductive demon.

  If she’d have listened, I wouldn’t be here. How could I listen now then? I was the product of something stupid. I was the living incarnation of something stupid. Asking me not to do follow in that regard was like asking Jerry Rice not to go deep when the game was on the line. It wasn’t going to happen.

  “Don’t worry, babe,” I said, my voice much too carefree given the situation at hand. What could I say? I wanted to make her feel better. “I got this.”

  “You better be talking about life insurance, because this woman literally appeared out of a bolt of lightning, and she doesn’t look friendly,” Renee said. “Now, for once in your life, will you just listen to me and walk out that door? She wants me, not anybody else. I’m not going to—”

  “Shut up, Renee. Don’t ever let me catch you talking like that. If she’s coming for you, then she might as well be coming for me too. There’s no difference as far as I’m concerned,” I said, moving toward the woman.

  Her white eyes considered me, and even though I didn’t see any energy jutting from her person, I felt a tingle of electricity run through my body.

  “Besides,” I added, trying to push past the tingling and the urge it gave me to giggle and scratch myself. “We have no idea what she’s after. For all we know, she just wants a place to dry off.”

  I didn’t think so though. The rain queen had become property of the same vampire clan who bought the genie and the vial of Cypress blood from the auction. I had no idea what they wanted with the blood, but they had mystically convinced the genie to off herself right where the rain queen now stood.

  Though a powerful noblewoman dropping dead in my apartment didn’t pose an immediate threat to our safety, it obviously meant a horrible fate for Renee was one step closer. Besides, I had no idea of knowing how Bandhal would react if his queen died. Would he blame us for it? He had nearly tossed me into oblivion the last time we had a disagreement. Though I was pretty sure my brother and I could take him together, I didn’t want to fight him. What was more, this woman was innocent in all of this. She didn’t need to die today, not if I could help it.

  “Bandhal,” I said, ignoring Renee’s pleas. I did, however, shoot Gary a look telling him to keep Renee in place. If I knew her, she’d come rushing out to help me, which would only serve to get us both killed. My imp nodded at me, understanding what I meant without my saying it. I got way too lucky with that one.

  Bandhal paid me about as much as I had paid Renee, his knees and face still planted on the floor, chants still pouring from his mouth. I had no idea what he was saying. South African wasn’t one of the languages I spoke. Still, I had to imagine this was some sort of adulation, maybe a prayer of thanks for having found the woman he was so fervently looking for.

  “Get away!” Bandhal cried, looked up in horror. “She’s going to kill us all!”

  Or it was something else entirely.

  Bandhal jumped up, energy like green and blue ribbons dancing around him as he circled the rain queen. Instinctively, I knew what I was looking at. This energy, these ribbons, they were representatives of the ancestors, of the power Bandhal was channeling right now.

  “They can read her, Detective Morgan. They know what is coming. He who has control over the rain queen wishes to see her dead. He wishes for her to be a sacrifice to unlock that which resides inside her.”

  His eyes moved to Renee and settled there.

  “There is but one way to stop it. The power of the Benefactor is too great. Even the ancestors cannot rival it in their current state. You have been kind to me, Detective Morgan, but it is my sacred duty to protect the rain queen. The only way to do that is to take away the threat, to take away that which the Benefactor would see her dead to acquire.”

  By the time I understood what Bandhal was talking about, it was too late. I tensed up, shock and realization lighting me up like electricity. He grabbed the rain queen’s hand, channeling her power through the ancestors’ energy.

  My heart sped up, and I turned on my heels, rushing toward Renee. Her eyes went wide with what had to be a mixture of confusion and fear. A bolt of lightning appeared overhead, rushing from the storm cloud above the rain queen’s head and darting toward my girlfriend.

  I leapt toward her, hoping to take the brunt of the blast.

  I was too late, but Gary wasn’t. He hopped toward the lighting. It hit him hard, and I watched his little body shake all over. He wasn’t big enough though. The lightning leapt from him and struck Renee. The force of it strengthened as it hit her, blinding me as it blasted her.

  I landed hard against the floor, my jaw clenched together as one undeniable truth settled in the forefront of my mind.

  I had failed. Renee
was dead.

  24

  My heart shattered in my chest as I lay on the floor of my apartment. Quick, shallow breaths seemed to bring only more hurt, more concern, more dread. I had just watched both my best friend and my girlfriend fall victim to a pretty terrifying lightning attack from a South African rain queen.

  Gary might have survived it. Imps were durable, and it didn’t look like he had taken the brunt of it. After all, this assault had been aimed directly at Renee, and there hadn’t been a thing in the world I could do to stop it.

  I’d failed. I’d watched her get fried to a crisp like the useless bitch I was. Scott had been right about me all those years ago. The coven had been right. I was a menace. I was trouble. Everyone who ever allowed themselves near me was doomed to suffer and die. My mother had, and it wouldn’t stop there. Gary and Renee, they were just the proof of that.

  The stink of burning rubber and charred hair filled the room. It stung my nostrils as I breathed it in, blinking up at the ceiling and fighting against both the hurt in my body and the ache in my heart.

  I needed to get up. I needed to move. If there was a chance-however small- that Renee and Gary had survived this, then they wouldn’t be in good shape. I needed to do what I could to protect them. I needed to fight back, dammit.

  To do that though, I needed to move my goddamned ass. I struggled through a deep breath, a nose full of pungent aromas filling me and causing my gag reflex to kick into high gear. I swallowed the bile down though. I couldn’t afford it right now. I couldn’t afford anything other than a pinpoint laser like focus on what I needed to do. The rain queen was still out there. Bandhal was still out there, and I didn’t have any way of stopping them.

  “Hey, you treacherous son of a bitch!” I heard a familiar voice call from above me. “Get the fuck away from my brother!”