So I loved seeing her, and I was happy that she looked much better than the emaciated, dead-eyed shell of Iris I’d left behind so many weeks ago. That said, she still didn’t look anything like the sleek indoor cat she’d been before her kidnapping. My friend was still far too thin, and her eyes were still haunted. But most telling was the way she stood back, waiting to be noticed.
Iris used to shine so brightly that every eye in the room was riveted.
A hand from behind her touched her shoulder, as if to urge her forward, and I opened my arms. I almost dropped said arms, however, when I realized that the hand on her shoulder belonged to the satyr Caleb. He was huge, with the imposing chest of a muscle-bound human, but he was all goat from the waist down. Well, except for the very human genitalia on proud display. Goat haunches made finding pants difficult, but I would never understand what was so wrong about a loincloth. Anyway, Caleb was impressive as either a man or a goat, not least because of his craggily handsome face topped by his huge ram’s horns. He was, however, also one of my former lover Ryu’s deputies and I couldn’t imagine what the satyr was doing here.
I looked around for Ryu as Iris came close, but he wasn’t lurking anywhere. Then I was hugging my friend, and nothing else mattered.
“Iris,” I mumbled, almost incoherent. Sobs were her only response.
Everyone backed away, clearly giving us space. Grizzie and Tracy seemed confused by what must have appeared to them to be Iris’s overly emotional response to my return from Belize. Little did they know that Iris and I had returned, together, from somewhere much further away: the hell that had been the Healer’s grasp.
“How are you doing?” I asked, eventually, when she’d cried herself out. I pulled the sleeve of my T-shirt down over my palm to wipe away her tears. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, making her look even younger and more vulnerable.
“Better,” she said, after sniffling for a bit. “It’s been hard. But I’m getting there.”
“You do look better,” I said, which was true.
“But I don’t look good,” she said, sadly. This was also true.
“It’s only been a month. Considering everything—”
“Yes,” she interrupted. “Considering everything.”
We stood silently together, but it wasn’t awkward. There simply weren’t words that were suitable, so we didn’t try to use any. Instead we hugged.
“Order up!” Sarah called, whisking past me with a plate full of burger, french fries, and fried cheese sticks. What can I say: My friends knew my vices.
For the first time since I’d clapped eyes on her this evening, Iris finally smiled at the look on my face.
“Some things never change,” she said, stroking an affectionate hand over my cheek. “Go eat, Jane.”
We walked over to the bar, where everyone was sitting and chatting. Sarah had set my food down at an empty chair between Anyan and another empty chair next to Amy, which Iris took. Nell talked quietly with Marcus, who was petting Trill as if she really were the dog she pretended to be. Meanwhile, Sarah kept one eye on the bar as she chatted with Amy, Tracy, and Grizzie. I started in on my food, Iris watching me chow down as Caleb and the barghest talked, but I felt a thrill in my belly that had nothing (or at least mostly nothing) to do with cheese sticks when Anyan put a proprietary hand on the small of my back while I ate.
Granted, he also tried to steal a fry, earning him the same sharp slap on the hand that Trill had received earlier.
“Bad puppy,” I scolded.
Just because I wish to ravage you, doesn’t mean you get to eat off my plate, I thought, staring down his shocked expression. Not unless you like me with ribs.
My libido whimpered at that thought. Maybe he does like ribs? it questioned, alarmed.
I looked between my half-eaten burger and the barghest.
Fuck that, I decided, picking up my burger and greedily dipping it in ketchup. But I did pass Anyan a fry, my expression conciliatory. Then I nearly jumped his bones when he raised the fry to my mouth, smiling sensuously at me as I ate it from his fingers.
Not a rib lover, my libido celebrated, noting how Anyan watched my lips with a hungry expression—his own pursed with wicked intentions. Then, using my lust as a distraction, he swiped a cheese stick, the big bastard.
As I finished eating, Caleb and Anyan resumed talking. They were discussing something that was happening around Rockabill, but I was too busy wondering why the hell the satyr was there to pay much attention. I was also too busy noticing how Iris kept one eye on Caleb, even as she told me about how far she’d come in the past weeks.
“But I owe most of it to him,” she said, as if she were admitting something difficult. She gave Caleb an almost beatific smile of affection, and I nearly choked on my burger. Partly I reacted from shock, but partly from sheer joy at seeing her eyes glow—if dimly—in that telltale succubus way. I’d wondered if Iris’s eyes would ever glow again, after what she’d experienced.
Caleb and Iris? I thought, surprised despite my happiness for her. The satyr was so solid and Iris had always been a fairly typical succubus: flighty and a bit fluffy. The idea of serious, calm Caleb with frivolous, excitable Iris was interesting, to say the least.
“Really?” I said, around a mouthful of food. I really needed to stop talking with my mouth full.
“Yes. I know it probably seems strange. But he came down with Ryu after you were attacked. And he ended up staying.” Because of me was her unstated message.
“Wow,” I said, swallowing hastily.
Ryu was here? I thought. But I didn’t say anything. This was Iris’s time to talk.
“What about, er, the mojo?” I asked hesitantly. The thing was, succubi harvested essence from bodily fluids the same as baobhan sith, like Ryu, harvested essence from blood. Only difference was that any bodily fluid would do for succubi and incubi, but they could feed only off lust—even if it was the sort of twisted, pain-filled pleasure preferred by Graeme, Phaedra’s incubus minion. This reliance on essence meant that succubi, incubi, and baobhan sith couldn’t be monogamous, long term, with another supernatural creature. Not if they wanted to keep their power. Instead, they needed to charge up with either humans or special halflings, like me, who created the right magical essence in their bodily fluids.
So what I was really asking Iris was “Who are you boffing on the side?” After all, I could feel her using a small amount of glamour to keep the humans from noticing how unhealthy she still looked, and her usual succubus juju was beating, if very faintly, against my shields. If she could use magic, she was feeding from somebody.
The succubus’s eyes glowed a bit brighter as she gave me a secret, sly smile, making Iris look like herself again.
“That’s not a problem. Caleb’s a terrible voyeur,” Iris said, pronouncing terrible in a way that let me know she found it anything but.
I blinked at her, sneaking a look at the satyr. His handsome, craggy face was as kind and as placid as ever. He looked like a sexy college professor in a movie, although the sandy blond hair falling down into his eyes gave him a little-boy-lost appearance that was adorably innocent. Granted, he also had goat haunches and was naked as a jaybird, but I needed to stop seeing him through my human eyes, with their human values.
Finally turning back to Iris, I tried to reconcile my established image of Caleb as utterly respectable with my new image of Caleb peeping out of a closet at a couple screwing on the bed. I would have wagered Caleb had sex while wearing an ascot, not him being a certifiable kinkster. But you know what they say about judging a book by its cover…
And yet, considering the fact that Caleb’s impressive man-janglies were one of the more startlingly prominent features of his cover, I guess I should have totally gone ahead and judged.
For a second, the human part of me worried about Iris. She seemed so smitten with Caleb, yet their relationship was hardly going to be the subject of a Hallmark made-for-TV movie.
But maybe it should be
, my brain kicked in. After all, look at her: He’s made her comfortable enough to have the sex she needs to get strong. That couldn’t have been easy after the abuse she endured. And the way they look at each other shows how much they care.
Plus he’s hung like a yak! chimed in my libido, which my brain ignored.
Instead, it touched on a subject I’d been confronted with innumerable times since joining my mother’s world.
Hallmark movies deal with human lives and human relationships: short-lived love triangles, messy divorces, joyful reunions. All of which are played out in the course of a human life span. They don’t deal with near-immortals. Or near-immortality.
And I finally admitted to myself what I’d begun to think about while dating Ryu, but had managed, mostly, to sublimate.
You only have human experience of relationships. And those last, what… fifty, sixty years at most? You have no idea what it would take to make a relationship last for generations of human lives.
I paled, my eyes drifting to Anyan’s strong, tanned hand that was currently stealing more French fries from my plate. For a second, I got so depressed I didn’t even want to slap it.
“Jane?” Iris asked, her voice concerned. Which made me feel like shit and also made me realize how ridiculous I was being.
Quit it, Jane. I thought. Now is not the time to contemplate the exigencies of your supernatural existence.
After all, everything was just about perfect. My friends were with me. My father was healthy. I had no secrets from (most of) the people I loved. Anyan had attempted to jump my bones (although, if I were honest, I had been the one literally to jump). That last thought made me feel a bit fuzzy and smug, and I placed my own small hand over the barghest’s, where it lay on the table, thrilled that I could do so, before I turned to grin at Iris to dispel her concerns.
It’s like I’ve woken up in heaven, I thought.
Until, that is, Stuart Gray shambled up. And I mean shambled. He looked odd, like he was wearing his own skin. I was reminded of the character Arnold Friend, from Joyce Carol Oates’s famous story. Arnold Friend eventually appeared to be something not quite human, dressed in a man-suit.
I nearly fainted when Stuart’s jaw ratcheted open.
“If it wakens death will come. If it wakens death will come. If it wakens death will come,” Stu began to chant, in an eerie singsong voice that was definitely not his own.
Belatedly, I knocked on the wood that was my forehead. Would I never learn?
CHAPTER SIX
We all stood there, mouths agape, as Stu continued chanting: “If it wakens death will come. If it wakens death will come. If it wakens…” Finally, Grizzie took matters into her own hand.
Smack went her palm against his cheek. “Snap out of it, man!” she snarled. Stuart’s eyes suddenly refocused and he raised his fingers to his face.
“Huh?” he asked, clearly dazed. Meanwhile, I belatedly realized I’d lost a chance at legitimately smacking the shit out of Stuart Gray.
Stu continued to look around, obviously confused over what he was doing with “my” crew. Finally, he gathered himself and put his best asshole forward.
“Nice mange, True. Can’t afford a haircut?” he said and sneered, before strutting off.
Anyan’s human throat emitted a decidedly doggie growl, and I laid a hand on his knee. I appreciated his irritation at Stuart, but I was used to the idea that Stuart was, indeed, a fundamentally irritating person. What I was not used to was Stuart stumbling about like a zombie while making vague, apocalyptic threats.
“Bigger fish,” I mumbled at the barghest, as I turned to the others. We all huddled up around the bar to confab.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, watching as Amy whispered something to Tracy and Grizzie. The look of concern that had lit up their faces when Stuart shambled over was replaced by a placid smile, and then they got up and moved to a table in the Sty’s restaurant half. I hated seeing them glamoured and sent away like children, but for their own safety (and sanity) they shouldn’t be party to our conversation.
Amy’s thin mouth bent into a frown. “We don’t know,” she replied. “But it’s been happening all over Rockabill.”
“Since when?”
“It started about a week after you and Anyan were attacked.”
I gave her my own frown. “Do you think the two are connected?”
“In a way,” said Anyan. “We’re thinking the attack was a first attempt at gaining access to the territory. Kill me, and kidnap you to use as leverage.”
“But why? Gain access to what? I mean, the Sty has great burgers, but I don’t think it’s enough to hire professional hit men.” Then I thought of something else. “And what does Blondie have to do with all of this?”
“Blondie?” Iris asked, confused.
Anyan chuckled. “It’s what Jane called”—and here Anyan made that completely unpronounceable series of noises again—“when we didn’t know who she was.”
Iris grinned. “I like ‘Blondie’ better. Her real name hurts my jaw.”
Amy nodded. “Hell, yeah. Blondie it is. Cuz that bitch can party!”
I looked at Amy, confused, till I figured it out. “Do you mean the Blondie?” I breathed.
Amy nodded. “We rocked the seventies,” was all she said, leaving me awestruck.
But Amy’s former lifestyle wasn’t the issue. Our Blondie, however, was.
“So what the hell was she doing here anyway? Why was she following us? And where is she now?” I probably sounded ungrateful toward someone who had apparently saved my life numerous times, but I didn’t care. If someone shows up in my hometown, and then everyone appears to go a little bananas, that person was gonna be suspect in my mind.
All eyes turned toward Anyan.
“She’s out gathering information. She was here the whole time you were in danger—she’s the only one who could pump enough power into you to keep you going when you were bleeding out, magically.”
“And I’m grateful. But that still doesn’t clarify what she was doing here.”
Anyan gestured to our seats, and all of the supes in attendance moved our bar stools so that we could sit and see one another. Nell levitated herself to sit on the actual bar while Trill wiggled into the space between our circle of knees. This was going to take a while, as Anyan cleared his throat like he had to give a speech.
“A lot has been revealed while you were sleeping. It’s all been going on for a while, but what we discovered about Jarl’s operation here in our Territory brought things to a head. Basically, the schism we’ve seen here, between those who strive for purity and those who either ignore or encourage interaction with humans, is happening all over the world. Territories are either picking sides or splitting asunder from civil war. It’s chaos, but with a focus. War is coming,” Anyan intoned.
Despite the fact that they had to know all of this already, everyone still looked almost as shocked as I did. Shocked and scared. I might have been hearing about this war for the first time, but prior knowledge obviously didn’t make it sit any better with my friends. After all, it was one thing to know there was an evil renegade such as Jarl in a position of power, and another thing entirely to know that “renegade” was anything but and was, instead, part of a power structure that could bring real war to our lives. Meanwhile, everyone was looking equally worried, not least because although my supernatural friends had undoubtedly been in their shares of fights and disputes, Anyan and Caleb were the only real warriors in the Sty that night.
“But what does this war have to do with Rockabill?” I asked, and then thought of a horrible answer to my own question. “It’s not going to be fought here, is it?”
Anyan shook his head no.
“The war definitely won’t be here. To be honest, I don’t know where it will be this time. It can’t be the sort of war we’ve fought before. We have too much to lose, in terms of human discovery of our kind.” Anyan’s brow creased in thought. “It’ll be a new kin
d of war—a modern war. But it will be just as bloody and just as violent.”
Way to sugarcoat it, I thought, taking a glum sip of my drink.
“So if the war isn’t going to be here,” I said, after I’d swallowed, “why is all this stuff happening here?”
“Something’s hidden in Rockabill,” Nell said. “Something powerful. Something that the other side wants.”
“What do you mean by ‘something’ and by ‘wants’?” I asked.
“We don’t know exact details yet,” Anya told me. “That’s why Blondie’s gone. Once you were stabilized, she went back out to try to find more information.”
“So what do you know?”
Anyan looked around at the other supes as if he were embarrassed.
“Well, Jane,” Iris said, “to be honest, we’re mostly going on conjecture. And by conjecture, I mean a nursery rhyme. An Alfar nursery rhyme.”
“A nursery rhyme,” I said, unimpressed.
Iris nodded and started in on what was obviously the little ditty in question:
“Four locks for power,
Four locks for force.
Four locks for the old one,
Whose time has run its course.”
As she spoke, my eyebrows rose steadily to meet my hairline. She registered my nonimpressed expression as she continued:
“Four locks to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.”
My eyes widened and I nearly fell off my barstool until Anyan barked “Iris!” I’d been had.
The succubus giggled, looking so like her old self I nearly did a happy dance, but then she forced a look of contrition on her face.
“Sorry. Here’s the real ending:
Unlock the crystals,
Unlock the land,
Unlock the water,
And with it take a stand.”
I frowned. “That’s it? From that you got Rockabill?”
Anyan shook his head. “No, Jane. There’s more to it than that. People have been looking for the source of this legend for centuries… It’s like our Holy Grail, or Fountain of Youth.”
Eye of the Tempest (Jane True) Page 5
