by Sierra Dean
“No, but I think I’ve made a few people regret saving mine.”
She smiled and tapped a finger to her nose before releasing his leg. “I’m sorry. I’m just used to being with people who have been raised to know these things. The ignorance of humans is sometimes…staggering to me.”
If Shane was offended by her calling him ignorant, it didn’t show. “Are you not human?”
“I’m…more than human.” She wanted to say better, because pride of her line made her believe she really was better, but she stuck with more seeing as he was being patient with her attitude to this point, and she thought it better not to push him too far before he agreed to help her.
“Define more than human.”
“I’m a druid.”
Shane sat all the way up and crossed his arms over his chest. “Like, ancient Celtic dudes in cloaks who built Stonehenge and sacrificed humans to the gods? Those druids?”
Siobhan huffed out a breath, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “Close enough,” she said with a sigh. Trying to explain the different clans, their purposes and the gates they protected might take hours. She was going to have to give him the CliffsNotes version. “Druids are protectors. There are gates…metaphysical passageways between this world and the reality belonging to the fae. The two realities exist simultaneously, one on top of the other but never mingling. These gates allow fae to pass from their reality into ours.”
“And that’s bad, I take it.”
“It isn’t always disastrous, but it’s never…advisable.”
“Okay, so if these gates are such a bad thing, why doesn’t someone close them?”
Siobhan snorted. “The gateways have been open for millennia, since the fae wandered freely on this realm and wreaked havoc at will. Then my people became the defenders of mankind and—”
“The defenders of mankind?” Shane started laughing and didn’t stop even when Siobhan glared and started thought-stabbing him. “Lady, you’ve got a pretty inflated sense of purpose.”
“Siobhan,” she replied curtly. “My name isn’t lady, so I’d appreciate it if you either called me Siobhan or kept quiet. In fact, given your habit for saying truly moronic things, I think it would be best if you just didn’t interrupt until I’m done.”
“You sure know how to woo a dude into helping you…Siobhan.”
Siobhan thought it best to ignore him at this point and plow forward with her story. “The gates are now guarded by druidic clans all over the world. There are two gateways in New York. One is under the protection of a fae guardian. The other is exposed and watched by my people, the Claughdid clan.”
She waited for Shane to interrupt, but he only nodded, and she carried on. “The few who break through are not the kind we want mingling with humanity. Fairies have freedom to pass at will since they are the guardians on their side as we are on ours. It’s the lesser fae we have to worry about. The trolls, like the one you saw today, goblins and sprites, and other unique and repulsive creatures who would rather eat people than coexist with them. That’s what we are here to protect people from.”
“You’re doing a bang-up job of it if things like a giant fucking troll are getting through on a regular basis.”
She glared at him. “I am the only person protecting that gate. My clan is spread throughout the country, and I am the sole gatekeeper for the passage.”
Shane shut his mouth.
“That’s not why I need your help, though.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve got a bigger problem.”
“A bigger problem than escaped trolls?”
“Yes.”
“I’m all ears.”
She looked away and felt her cheeks flush. “I’m the first daughter in seven generations of Claughdid. Sons beget sons, and the line is carried on through them. I’m an anomaly. I’m a problem for them.”
“You can shoot. You can kill. What’s the problem?”
“Well…traditionally in our clan the job of daughters was much more cut-and-dry than what I do. I’m a guardian because my father sired no sons. Only me. But my time is almost up.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I’m almost twenty-five. When my birthday comes, so will the high council. And I will be sacrificed.”
“I’m sorry, you’ll be what?”
“Sacrificed. By the dudes in cloaks as you so politely phrased it. To appease the gate. That’s the duty of my clan’s daughters. Our job is to die.”
Chapter Six
Shane sat next to his heterosexual partner in crime Nolan Tate, and they each stared into barely touched pint glasses of beer.
“She…” Nolan started, then his voice trailed off.
“Yeah.”
“’nd there was a troll?”
“Yeah.”
“Lemme see if I get this straight. The lady-druid version of Hawkeye wants you to help save her life from her own crazy druid family. People who can make magic light circles out of blood that’re designed to suck bodies into a differen’ dimension?”
Shane took a swig of his beer and swallowed hard. “Yup.”
“Huh. You got some thoughts on how you’re gonna manage that?”
“I was going to call Secret and see if maybe she wanted to shoot me in the head first.”
“Don’ suggest it. I think since the whole…situation with the wolf king, she might take you up on the offer. She’s probably itchin’ to shoot somethin’ right ’bout now.”
Hell hath no fury like a vampire Tribunal leader scorned.
They both drank.
“Funny thing about certain death,” Shane said. “It’s usually pretty certain.”
“Why would she keep workin’ with them knowin’ they would kill her on her twenty-fifth birthday? If it were me, I think I’d hit the ground runnin’ and never look back.”
“Guess these aren’t the kind of guys you run from. There isn’t really a Druid Witness Protection Program. Maybe she thought she’d die of other causes before it ever came up.” He shrugged. “It isn’t like the work we do comes with a high life expectancy.”
Nolan swished his beer around in the glass. “If she’s tough’s you say, wouldn’ the guys she’s scared of be tougher?”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
Shane’s head pivoted as a waitress in a short dress passed them with a sly, flirty smile. Nolan elbowed him, bringing Shane’s attention back to his mocha-skinned friend.
“’re you going to help her?” Nolan asked.
“I said I would.”
“You once said you’d had a three-way with two supermodels, so forgive me if I call bullshit on your word.”
“You can’t prove that never happened.”
“An’ you can’t prove it did.”
“This is different. She saved my life.”
“That’s somethin’.”
“It is. I think I owe it to her to at least try.”
“Man, I dunno. This ain’t like she loaned you some money and now you’re gonna help her move a couch or somethin’. She’s askin’ you to put your life on the line.”
Shane shrugged and finished off his beer. The waitress who’d been circling like a hungry shark darted in and leaned close to him, rubbing her breasts against his arm as she gave him a predatory leer. “Can I get you another one, honey?”
It wasn’t until she touched him that Shane realized what was strange about her. Her skin gave off no heat whatsoever. She wasn’t cold, but she didn’t have the natural warmth of a living human woman. And she was trying really hard to catch his gaze.
“Yeah, and you can stop trying to enthrall me.” He fixed his stare on her forehead right between her eyes. “Don’t think the Tribunal would take too kindly to knowing you’d tried to dupe their hunter out of a bigger tip than he was planning to give.”
The vampire huffed an offended sigh and placed Shane’s pint glass on her tray. “How about you, babe?” she asked Nolan.
“I’ve got a
vampire girlfriend ’lready.”
Their undead waitress looked back and forth between them, her expression a mix of impressed and exasperated. “I meant your drink.”
“Yeah, okay.”
She took his mug and wandered off.
“When did you figure out she was a vamp?” Shane asked.
“Soon’s we walked in. Spen’ enough time wit ’em and you learn to see the signs.” Nolan, once a little-league vampire hunter, was now dating a vampire warden named Brigit, and his former hatred for all things undead had diminished a great deal with the pretty blonde’s attention.
The waitress returned and thumped their drinks down without a smile before walking off for less resistant fodder who would be easily taken in by a big smile and a little vampire enthralling. It wasn’t against the law for vamps to use the thrall on humans unless they were using it to do harm. If they tricked someone into letting them feed, it was fine, so long as that person walked away alive at the end of the ordeal and was none the wiser about vampires existing.
Rules in vampire society were a funny thing.
And by funny he meant fucked up.
“Back to my problem.”
“Damn, man, I dunno. Did she tell ya what she wanted?”
“She said she’d meet me at my place tonight so we could discuss it.”
Nolan licked a film of beer foam off his lips and gave Shane a funny look. “Good luck, man. I mean it. You’re gonna need it.”
Siobhan was surrounded by a precarious tower of books in the rare book room at the main branch of the New York Public Library. She’d been coming so often since she’d learned about her fate, the lady at the front desk didn’t give her a lecture about treating the manuscripts with respect anymore. She would just smile and nod to Siobhan and occasionally say, “Still working on your PhD, honey? You’ve been at it a long time.”
She sure had. Long enough she knew these texts—all in old Gaelic—cover to cover. But the answer was in here somewhere, a way to protect herself from being killed. Under normal circumstances she had the utmost respect for the wacky rules her clan enforced on her. No boys, no booze, no fun. Fine, she was a sworn protector, she could accept that. Yet her male cousins were allowed to fornicate with the regularity of frat boys because they had to spread the seed.
This one rule, though—it being her duty to die—wasn’t fair, not as far as Siobhan was concerned. In seven generations no one had been sacrificed to the gate, and in all that time nothing terrible had happened. Her being born a girl was a complete fluke. One chromosome of difference and she wouldn’t have to worry about this.
She closed the book in front of her and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
What did she think Shane could do to help? He wasn’t a scholar and he didn’t know anything about her people’s laws. Yet since meeting him she was becoming more and more certain he was the key to protecting her rapidly dwindling future.
Flipping open another book, she scanned the familiar pages, the Gaelic words translating before her as if the whole thing were written in English.
And the daughters will be not mothers. They are pure of blood and virtue, and the untainted women of the clan, on the day of their twenty-fifth year, shall give their virginal essence to the gates—
Siobhan’s head shot up and her heart hammered. Virtue. Untainted. Virginal. Those were loaded words in any language. And her father had practically beaten it into her how important it was she remain pure.
At the time she’d thought it was because a pregnant guardian of the gateway would be next to useless in battle. Which was true. But somehow she’d missed the underlying reason even after reading the texts hundreds of times. And it was so simple and obvious she actually smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead.
Shane could help her after all. He might be the perfect person to do it.
She needed to have the virtue fucked out of her.
Chapter Seven
After leaving the bar, Shane had done his own reading.
He’d sat on his living room floor and switched back and forth between a text called Ancient Druidic Weapons—which didn’t give him the warm and fuzzies for Siobhan’s family—and the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Goblins and trolls and griffins and hydras, oh my. He knew it wasn’t a decisive collection of real monsters, but if the first two were real, he was betting some of the other shit in the book might be legit too.
It helped to be prepared for anything.
A soft knock on the door announced Siobhan’s arrival. Shane grabbed a wrinkled Iron Maiden shirt off his fourth-hand couch and tugged it on, covering his bullet scar and tattoo. He did up the button on his jeans as he was pulling open the front door.
“I’ve been doing some research on these dru…” His voice drifted off when he looked at her.
Instead of the tough-chick, all-black, warrior ensemble she’d been rocking the previous night, it seemed like a different woman was standing in his doorway. She wore a pretty—if old-fashioned—blue floral dress cut short above the knee and had a plunging neckline that drew his attention right to her breasts. Her red hair was styled in waves, and he couldn’t help but see she was blushing. It made her freckles stand out. Freckles—he noticed—that covered her shoulders and peppered the otherwise creamy skin on her chest.
He swallowed hard.
“Hi,” she said, an unfamiliar shyness in her tone.
“Hi?” he ventured, unsure of what he should be saying. “You look…pretty.” He prepared himself to be punched by stepping back into the apartment. Instead of unleashing her fury, Siobhan took the move as an invitation and followed him in.
“Thanks.” She looked down at her ensemble and blushed a deeper shade of red.
Shane pushed past her and shoved a pile of old chip bags and dirty socks off his couch onto the floor. “Wanna sit down?”
Siobhan shuffled nervously. “I…”
“Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“I’m not saying I’m an expert in what’s normal for you, seeing as I’ve known you all of twenty-four hours and all, but you’re acting a bit weird.”
“I did some reading this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
“I figured out how you can help me.” She edged a step closer and set the purse she’d been carrying on the coffee table. It made a heavy thunk, and Shane assumed in spite of her new girly ensemble she was still carrying the bow with her. Another step closer and he could smell the spicy fragrance he’d gotten a whiff of on her back in her bedroom. He stopped thinking about what was in her purse, because now he was in good range to be staring right down the front of her dress.
She looked up at him, and he forced himself to meet her earnest gaze. Siobhan nervous made Shane sure he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next.
“How can I help?” he asked, trying to move them both forward from the awkwardness of the moment.
Placing two hands firmly on his chest, Siobhan raked her short nails over his pecs and batted her lashes at him. It didn’t seem quite right, somehow, but there was no explaining that to his cock, which practically shot to attention at the lightest touch. He tried to step back, but her hands balled in his shirt and held him close.
“I need to sleep with you.”
“Uh…what happened to your moving speech yesterday about no romantic entanglements? Wasn’t that sort of a big deal? It sounded—” He stopped talking when she trailed a hand down his chest and her fingers touched his fly. He made a small whimpering noise.
“This doesn’t need to be romantic,” she said, some of the forcefulness he’d come to know returning to the surface. “I just need you to fuck me.”
“Well that’s plenty unromantic,” he replied. Meanwhile his cock was asking him where his brain was because he was making a mess out of the silver-platter offering standing before him.
Resistance is futile, it warned him.
Siobhan’s fingers hooked into his belt loops, and she tugged him toward
s her, his pelvis bumping against her stomach. “Don’t pretend you don’t want to.” She cupped his bulge, and it was his turn to blush.
“This is sort of…unexpected.”
She rose on her toes and kissed him, her mouth demanding and needy. His brain shut down the instant her lips met his. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tightly against him and groaning into her mouth as the pressure on his erection proved almost too much to handle. Her tongue flicked against his in a greedy, coaxing kiss that promised to end only when he gave in to what she wanted.
Her dress was so short it took no effort at all for him to lift the hem over her hips, and he grabbed her round bottom in both hands, giving a rough squeeze. She made a small noise and fumbled with his fly, pausing briefly for them to both catch their breath.
Shane, panting and still groping her ass, opened his mouth again, much to the chagrin of his dick. “Not to sound like I’m complaining, but how is this going to help save your life?”
She’d managed to undo his zipper, and her hand played over the strained material of his boxers when she said, “They can’t kill me if I’m not a virgin.”
Shane’s cock, suddenly less eager, thought, You just had to ask, didn’t you?
Shane himself moved his hands in record speed from her ass to her shoulders and pushed her away, keeping her at arm’s length while he tried to redirect the blood flow from his crotch back to his brain. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
“If I’m impure, they can’t sacrifice me.” Siobhan reached for him again, but he managed to keep her far enough away she couldn’t touch anything that might make him forget what he was doing. She gave him a confused look. “You want to fuck me.” She pointed to his dick, which was still mostly erect.
“Siobhan, look, just because my cock likes getting touched doesn’t mean this is a good idea. Believe me, if I left all the decision-making up to him, I’d sit around jerking off all day and my motto would be She’s better than nothing.”
