Jack Addison vs. a Whole World of Hot Trouble - The Complete Series

by K. A. Merikan

  The heavy brows lowered farther. “Did I come at a bad time?”

  Jack cleared his throat. “No. He just cleaned a spill. I’m ready,” he said and put on his leather jacket, which had been thoroughly oiled for the occasion. He supposed most people saw him as a man of success, but whenever Jack glanced into the mirror, all he could see was a coward. Not that long ago, he’d promised Roux he would stand by him, but he’d failed him again and didn’t know how to take back his actions, while wading deeper into the mud.

  “Two glasses of wine though?” Father smirked.

  Jack rubbed his face. “One’s for you, dad. To err… celebrate.”

  Father’s eyebrows rose, but he took one of the glasses and patted Jack’s back. “I’m so happy to have you here. Your fame will give our cause lots of publicity. I might be the Kraken, but in Europe I’m seen as a bit of a relic. You, on the other hand, are the face of young venators. People look up to you.”

  Too bad people didn’t know Jack’s thoughts, because he’d been careful to remain neutral whenever he spoke to the press. “I’m sure my stories will be entertaining.”

  “Not only that!” Father took a sip of wine. “People living in Paris have no idea what their world has become. Your words will surely inspire those present today to dig deeper and seek the truth beyond government propaganda. There are journalists, novelists, and anthropologists present.”

  Jack frowned. Was he missing something? “What has the world become?”

  “We are becoming overrun, Jack. You’ve seen it yourself. Werewolves murdering human children, Vampires running amok in Romania. It needs to stop.”

  Jack chuckled. “Dad, when’s the last time you’ve been to Romania? There’s nothing amiss going on there. Are there murderers among vampires? Yes, but humans aren’t angels either.”

  Father frowned in a way that had Jack’s heart stopping briefly. “I hope that’s not the kind of picture you intend to paint in your speech.”

  Jack shrugged, even though his muscles were already calcifying under the scrutiny of Father’s dark gaze. “You asked me to talk about my adventures. That’s what I’m going to talk about. I’m not going to pretend all werewolves are out to murder virgins or that gnomes are a danger to society.”

  “I don’t have time for this nonsense. What are you talking about? These are dangers to our society, so you better not take this speech in some strange direction.”

  Jack gritted his teeth and rose, downing his wine in one go. It was sour, but then again his fan wouldn’t have ‘treated’ him to bad wine, so what did he know? “You said it yourself. I am the face of young venators. I am not going to lie in my own name, so if you’re afraid my opinion about creatures isn’t sufficiently negative, maybe let’s call it off.”

  He didn’t dare look at Father, and pretended the tiny bit of liquid still remaining in the glass was the most fascinating thing in the room.

  Silence extended for endless seconds.

  “This isn’t a joke,” Father said in a grave voice. “You better give that speech, and you make it good, Jack. I didn’t push you through school so that you could go gallivanting all over Europe. You bear the Addison name, and if you want things to stay the way they are, deliver a speech I can be proud of.”

  Jack found it too hard to form an answer, but he didn’t have to. Father left, having barely touched his wine.

  Jack’s throat tightened when he got nauseous, but he rested his hands on a marble counter and took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. A glance at the clock told him it was high time to leave the room, so he drank Father’s wine before adjusting his hair and stepping into the corridor with a stiff gait reminiscent of the mummies he’d once seen when he visited the Natural History Museum in London.

  It would be fine. He’d just ignore Father’s request and keep the content of his speech to anecdotes, sprinkle some of the good and bad throughout, and that would be that. Hopefully, Father would never ask him to make a speech again and keep sending money. Two birds with one stone, really.

  He walked down the corridors of the elegant hotel that held so much history, yet today served as home to a conference that would discuss the rights of non-humans without their presence. If Roux saw him now, he’d only feel contempt, angry at himself that he wasted so much time on a human lowlife. If any of his creature friends found out, Jack wouldn’t know how to look them in the eye.

  Why was it so hard to do the right thing? Did he even know anymore what the ‘right thing’ was? Maybe the right thing was to leave through the window and never come back? There was no one watching. Maybe Jack could do that?

  “Jack!”

  Clearly, it wasn’t to be.

  Jack steadied himself for another confrontation with a misinformed fan, only to spot a familiar face.

  “Drake? What are you doing here?” he asked, shocked to see his friend approaching him with a large wheeled table with some empty plates on top.

  Drake frowned. “I’m here to ask you that question. I came to visit you in Paris, only to see your face on all those posters.”

  Jack’s head was empty, but he still looked back, to make sure they were alone. “I-- Father roped me into this.”

  “So you’re not actually making the speech?”

  Jack’s throat yearned for more wine, but his focus went in another direction when he saw a black, bristled leg ending in two claws push out from under the long white cloth covering the table.

  Tapping in Morse code, it spelled out D-A-D-D-Y.

  His heart got so heavy he kneeled and pushed away the fabric, revealing Chad’s eight cute black eyes, looking at him with so much admiration he could hardly cope. He pulled Chad into his arms without thinking and petted him through the tiny tuxedo he wore for the occasion.

  “Daddy’s here. I missed you! Drake, he’s grown so much.” He glanced at his friend, who stared at him with a somber expression. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “You’re hardly easy to track down. We heard you’d be in Paris, so we wanted to make the trip and surprise you, but then I saw you were doing your dad’s event and… err, yeah, here we are.”

  Chad tapped excitedly that he wanted to see Uncle Roux again and fall asleep in his fur. Jack could empathise with that sentiment, but the baby’s excitement only made him feel worse about the whole thing.

  “I’m sorry, Chad, but Uncle Roux isn’t here. I’m sure he would have made it if he’d known you were coming,” he said before gently ushering the kid back under the cloth. It wasn’t a safe place for a young tarantoid, and he didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. “Be a good boy and stay hidden. We can make a game out of it.”

  Drake cocked his head. “I don’t think Roux would ever come here,” he whispered, only making Jack feel worse, but the show had to go on.

  Chapter 2

  Jack hated the speech before his own. His father’s friend and Jack’s former professor took his time explaining a bullshit theory about creatures lacking the capacity for higher feelings, and that their family relationships were based on ‘collective instinct’, and ‘the need to procreate’ rather than love, in the human sense of the word. Jack knew this wasn’t the case, since he would never believe that Chad, not even a chat or vampire but a tarantoid, didn’t feel love for his adoptive parents. And Roux… Roux was the most compassionate, loving person Jack had ever met.

  The bogus claims then continued when the professor presented creature-made art as derivative compared to the art created by humans, as if the idiot hadn’t even taken his time to dig that bit deeper. Hadn’t he ever heard of belor, the body modification technique of nymphs, which involved the person controlling the pigmentation of their own skin to create elaborate patterns? And that was only one of so many unique things various creatures used to enrich their lives with culture and meaning.

  By the time the speaker left the stage to a storm of applause, Jack felt physically sick over having to enter the same space as that bigoted idiot.


  A storm of clapping followed him up the stairs leading to the podium, as if his presence were the cue for the atmosphere to change from contemplative to more rowdy.

  “Show us the Gouger!” someone yelled.

  Jack gave a nervous laugh and pulled the sword out of its sheath to hold it up for everyone to see. Maybe the talk wouldn’t be so bad after all? Then again, he was no public speaker, and despite having notes, he was already lost over what he wanted to communicate.

  “So, um, my name is Jack Addison, and it appears that I’m a famous venator.”

  The laughter that followed made him feel a tiny bit more confident. Maybe he could play up the village idiot act.

  “My experience with creatures and monsters is extensive, despite my age. I’m twenty-four, I’ve travelled all over Europe, and some of you might have read about my exploits.”

  “Love you, Jack!” yelled a woman from the crowd, shaking her elaborate hat in the air.

  Jack laughed. “Well, you wouldn’t be so fond of me if you knew what a swarm of sentient bees did to me once.”

  The room roared with laughter, but Jack tried to focus on his memories rather than all the ears itching to drink up his words. He was standing in front of a large auditorium, but with the lights focused on him, he couldn’t see that many details, and the audience beyond the first couple of rows melted into a dark mass. Maybe that would make this torture easier to survive.

  He found himself speaking a lot about Siberia and its breathtaking nature, and while he didn’t reveal how little he had to do with the death of the kitsune, he made sure to stress Akito’s role in the endeavor. The fact that werewolves were ‘useful’ in hunting down other creatures seemed to go down well with the audience.

  He went on to talk a lot about the lifestyle of a traveling venator and focused on his personal struggles rather than on the monsters, because the public’s eagerness to hear about slaying was making him increasingly uncomfortable. He could only hope Chad, who’d stayed behind the stage with Drake, wouldn’t take any of it the wrong way. In the eyes of all the people present, Chad would be a threat, a creature to be eliminated before they could even find out what he could do or who he was.

  Jack ran out of steam far quicker than he’d intended, so he pretended he’d purposefully left twenty minutes for questions from the audience.

  When the lights went on and he spotted a gray head topped with chat ears, his heart might have skipped a beat, and he chose the man to ask a question. But Jack knew this wouldn’t go his way the moment he heard the first sentence.

  “This is more of an observation than a question,” the chat said, ogled by the people around him as if he had grown two heads. “I wanted to say I applaud this symposium. While I don’t agree with all theories mentioned, I believe it’s right to push for separation. Paris no longer feels like a human city. They are still in the majority, but the crowd in the streets is a mongrel bunch of everything from dog-sized flies to yetis. I’m all for tourism, but things have gotten out of hand. I would also like to address the risk of interbreeding. No hybrids have yet been seen, but I want to keep my species pure, or we will disappear one day, leaving behind a race of mutts.”

  Jack bit his lip. “Um, thank you for the…er… observation. Has anyone got any questions?”

  He was somewhat glad that most of them were quite useless. One man in the front row shared that he’d written a book about the dangers of yet unknown creatures dwelling in people’s walls and ranted about no one wanting to publish it, a woman asked Jack to explain what kitsunes were yet again and why werewolves made such good adversaries for them, even though Jack already had, and then another wanted to know what he used to polish the Gouger.

  It was a train wreck, but Jack was glad that he didn’t have to work his way out of something really uncomfortable.

  “I have a question!” yelled a voice from the back. “Where do you stand on sexual relations between humans and other creatures?”

  It took Jack two seconds to recognize the voice, but the moment he saw a spot of ginger, his skin covered in cold sweat, veins filling with dread despite the laughter the question caused. He was ice cold when he saw a woman toss a crumpled piece of paper at Roux. But when the impromptu missile hit Roux’s head, Jack broke out of the stupor.

  “May I ask for order? We’re civilized people, and if I see anyone physically attack other attendees, that person will be removed,” he said, though once he finished speaking, his head was just as empty as it had been. So he stalled, staring at Roux, who stood in silence at the very back with arms crossed on his chest and chin up high.

  He’d come.

  He was here.

  Jack could dismiss the question, say that it was inappropriate for the nature of the conference, but his heart ached to break out of the confines of his chest and dash at Roux. This was the moment for him to take a stand, regardless of what anyone else said or how much money or fans he’d lose.

  And yet his voice wouldn’t stay as steady as he would have wished. “I… um, I believe that… I mean, if two—or more!—consenting adults—”

  “How do we even judge if a creature is an adult within their own species?” someone yelled.

  “I think you answered your own question,” Jack told him, feeling as if he was about to go up in flames.

  Roux raised his voice. “So it’s perfectly fine to fuck creatures, as long as you deny them other rights that humans enjoy?”

  The cacophony of boos and hissing made Jack’s insides ache. Roux was so brave to come here as an outsider and state his opinion in such a bold way, while he stood on stage, using up valuable time to be a coward who couldn’t even admit he didn’t believe in his father’s agenda.

  “I—” He choked up, cringing when the microphone picked up his breath. But his gaze met Roux’s, and for the blink of an eye, it felt as if they were alone. As if there was a whole conversation going on above everyone else’s head.

  And if he couldn’t declare his attachment to one side of the argument presented, Roux would never accept him again. This was a test. One he couldn’t blow.

  “N-no. I think it’s not right to deny creatures any rights humans have,” he said, more shaken than he’d been in the clutches of Chad’s mother.

  He exhaled when murmurs drilled their way into his ears, but words rose in his throat like long-suppressed bile, and he wouldn’t hold them in anymore.

  “I also do think it’s okay to have sex with creatures. To love them, and to have relationships with them. I didn’t think so in the past, but in years of interacting with a whole variety of other creatures, I’ve understood this. We’re not all the same, we have different needs, since some of us have hands, some paws, some tentacles, and a yeti needs ceilings much taller than humans, but we can co-exist.

  “And that is why I’ve applied to join JUSTICE, The Jolly Union for Sovereignty, Truth and Interdimensional Creature Equality. If they will have me, I would much rather spend my career defending others than looking for monsters to slay, no matter how much more glamorous that might seem.” Hit last few words didn’t echo through the crowd, and blood rushed to his head when he realized someone had cut the power to his microphone. But that would not stop him.

  Jack took a deep breath, about to step into the shadows behind the stage, but his thudding heart wouldn’t let him. The attendees might as well not exist, because he only saw one person. “I love you, Roux! I’m sorry. About everything,” he yelled through hands folded into a tube, over the heads of a crowd so silent he could’ve heard a pin drop. And then, a collective exhale that powered shouting and boos.

  Father rose from his place in the front row, his face dark with a flush, but Jack couldn’t go back on his words. Not now. Not ever. But most of all, he didn’t want to. Roux didn’t smile the same way humans did, but his body language told Jack everything there was to know about his approval.

  “You should lose your license, you monster-lover!” shouted the same woman who’d earli
er declared her love for Jack. Her face was wrinkled with fury, as if he’d just murdered her new puppy.

  Jack grabbed the microphone when it creaked, on again, and dragged it to the back of the stage, surprised to spot Drake behind the curtain, wide-eyed but silently clapping.

  “I will not be silent. Most of you, even those who appeared here today in the roles of experts, have hardly had any contact with creatures. You don’t know what you’re missing. Yes, some are bad, just like some humans can be bad, but humanity can be found in the most unexpected places,” he said and stepped toward the curtain, diving under the wheeled table as soon as he saw it.

  High on adrenaline, he pulled Chad out, who instantly clutched him with all his legs. The auditorium let out a collective gasp when he emerged, and Jack went tense when he spotted the glint of a blade in the second row.

  But nobody could stop him now.

  “This is Chad, and I’m raising him as if he were my own son.”

  When voices of disbelief rose, Jack put the microphone close to Chad’s leg.

  I-M-S-C-A-R-E-D-D-A-D-D-Y, Chad clicked in Morse code, and Jack hugged him to provide some relief. Chad really was getting heavy. Soon enough, he wouldn’t be scared of anything.

  “It’s okay, we’ll be out of here soon,” he whispered to his boy before looking back at the crowd. “Every venator here has been trained in Morse code, so you know what he’s just communicated. Chad is scared. He’s only four years old! But he is so smart, and so interested in the world around him. Maybe if his mother got the same attention, she wouldn’t have grown into a beast. I’ve read about humans who survived alone as children, and they were just as beastly as any other wild creature. If we want to establish good relationships with other species, we need to nurture those who we don’t understand, and listen to those we can. We need to seek dialogue and stop seeing them as our inferiors.”

  But no matter how reasonable this was, the crowd wasn’t having it. Some of the people rose, shouting and booing, but their body language was becoming increasingly hostile. Jack had seen enough aggression in his life to recognize it. When a heavy flask flew their way, missing Jack’s head by only a couple of inches, he knew it was high time to retreat. He would be fine, but what if someone got their hands on Chad?