by Mark Tufo
She knew, of course, what he meant.
"New city, new job. Making friends isn't easy for me. Not that I am – was – reclusive or anything. Real friendship takes time, at least for me. I got tired of going to the theater, museums, and movies by myself. It's funny, I can't even remember who told me about this local social group on a website. We exchanged emails and I was invited to an opening at the De Young Museum. That's where I was, San Francisco. The night was such fun and I clicked with a couple of the other women in the group. We started hanging out and they introduced me to their friends and pretty soon I had a social life. People I couldn't wait to see."
"Men?"
She was glad the Fae couldn't see her face, the hurt and pain that flushed her cheeks, remembering. "Yes. Almost two years with them. Such fun. I cared about them and thought they cared about me. Apparently it is important to enrich the soul with love and attention, makes it tastier. The Soul Eaters play a long game. No rush, you know? Souls keep them virtually immortal from what I've learned. A lot like your Primes.” Tamsin took a deep breath, swallowing down the old pain. “We were at a party. The house of someone I didn't know. That's where my life went so very wrong. There are monsters in the dark. Real monsters. They devoured my soul and left me to die." She shivered, not wanting to remember what came after. "Transition's a bitch."
Feeling the old pain and fear running through her, Drake tightened his hold, his lips brushing her hair.
She sighed. A deep, sad sigh for all that had been. For her grieving family. For the hopes and dreams left behind. Even for all the deaths of the strangers through which she lived again. Being human soul-impaired, as those she jumped into were, did not automatically make you evil. Sometimes it was heartbreaking.
“Did you love someone, in your real life?” he whispered, pushing one hand between her thighs.
“Nobody who loved me back,” she murmured, urging his fingers to find her.
They fell together again slowly, sensuously. Intertwined. Giving themselves up to touch and pleasure, the sweetest balm for wounds of the body or spirit.
◦ Chapter 6
Naked, Tamsin opened the fridge door and stuck her head inside. “I'm starving. Is anything edible in here?”
“From where I'm laying, I can see the only thing I want to eat.”
She stood up, putting both hands over her bottom and, looking over her shoulder, made a face.
He made a face back at her and she laughed. The sweet, honest laugh that had beguiled him over coffee.
“Just for that I'm putting on a shirt.” She located one of his shirts on the floor, the thick plaid one she had worn earlier, slipping the soft material over her head. The shirt smelled like him. She knew that now. A musky scent mixed with wild summer wheat. Tamsin still had on the motorcycle boots. Those must have left some bruises on Drake, she laughed to herself, remembering their energetic lovemaking.
“If I tell you which food is good, will you take the shirt off and lean over again? Waaaay over?”
“You are a naughty, naughty man.”
He gave her a slow, sensuous smile, “Just give me the chance. But leave on the boots, I like that.”
She crossed her heart.
A gurgling, rumbling sound came from her middle, “My stomach is growling big time.”
He gave his big, easy laugh, “Why am I not surprised? There's cheddar cheese in the fridge drawer, bread in the freezer. You can defrost it in the microwave.”
“Oh, yum. I'll make grilled cheese sandwiches.”
The day had come and gone as they slept and made love and slept again, curled together in a nest of cushions and blankets. She was stiff and sore in the best way possible. She wouldn't be able to cross her legs for a week, she thought with a laugh as she busied herself with the food. Or maybe vampires healed fast down there as well.
“What are you laughing about?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said over her shoulder, switching on the microwave and defrosting several slices of thick bakery bread.
Yawning mightily, Drake pulled himself off the floor to his feet. He ran his hands through his thick hair and headed towards the bathroom.
Popping a slice of cheese in her mouth, Tamsin leaned on the counter to enjoy the view. And what a view it was. His skin was a honey bronze, criss-crossed here and there with lighter colored scars. Quite a lot of scars. Strong, broad shoulders and wide chest, tight hips, long muscular legs tapering down to thick calves, the muscles bunched as big as grapefruit. His inky band of tattoos almost made him look like he was wearing a weapons belt low on his hips. His chest hair ran all the way down his belly. Between his legs, jackpot. Tamsin found herself going hot again. What they say about men with big hands and feet was certainly born out in Drake's case. No wonder everyone wanted to run away to Faerie. If Drake was an example of the sort of men they had there, well, good gawd.
“Oh, hey!” she called as he was about to close the door. “Does this place have internet? Or is there a Starbuck's or something nearby? I need to google some stuff.”
He pointed to a spot behind her, “On the chair seat. There at the kitchen table. My laptop. The password is 'Werecat'.”
“Thanks.”
“With a capital 'W'.” He gave a wave and shut the door.
Tamsin brought the laptop to the counter as she put together the sandwiches and heated up a frying pan she found in a drawer under the oven.
From the bathroom came the faint sound of water flowing for the shower.
Keeping one eye on her cooking, she swiftly looked up the Asian Antiquities Institute. From that ephemeral little clue in Prague, she had tracked the statuette to the museum's collection here.
She flipped out one sandwich and slipped in the next.
Hmmm, she could take a METRA train or CTA bus from downtown. Provided she could figure out how to get from here to downtown. Switching to google maps, she inputted her location and the museum's and clicked on the 'bus' icon.
She jotted down the route on a paper towel. Angelique had money stuffed in the soul of her boots. Quite a lot actually, slightly soggy, a couple of hundred dollars at least. The water was still running noisily in the bathroom and Drake started to sing.
Could you fall in love in twenty-four hours, she wondered? Was this tumble of emotions just an overwhelming rush of pheromones and endorphins from fight, flight, and lovemaking? Or something more?
She gave herself a mental slap across the face. 'Don't go down that road, Tamsin!' That was just stupid. Dead-gone-to-dust spirits do not find love and live happily ever after. He probably felt sorry for her, like a lost puppy. Or maybe he was playing out his fantasies for the Prime princess. That was much more likely.
She did like him, though.
A lot.
Why lie to herself?
She'd liked him immediately. Well, once he put the knife down. There was something special about the Fae. She took out the other sandwich and switched off the burner. What did it matter? This wouldn't last. Any of it. Somehow she would lose the Prime's body and be back in the spirit world searching for the next soul-less almost corpse.
Wrapping one sandwich in a couple of paper towels, she rummaged around in the bed until she found Angelique's underwear. A soft wool muffler and oversized sweater were hanging on the coatrack by the door. She pulled them on as well.
Time to go. No point in prolonging this.
The only coat she could find was Drake's big brown suede one. She put it on. Thick and warm, it hung practically to her ankles. Angelique could probably stand the cold but people would wonder why such a skinny young woman wasn't dressed for the windchill. No use drawing unwanted attention. Though given her lean and hungry goth look and the skull tattoos, that was probably a vain hope. She'd get the coat back to him once she found something else, she promised herself. If she lived that long.
Shoving the sandwich in one coat pocket, she opened the door and, forcing herself not to look back, ran down the snowy street. Ran away from the
handsome Fae hunter she had brought back to life.
◦ Chapter 7
Several buses, many (many) blocks and a lot of wrong turns later, Tamsin finally stood outside the Asian Antiquities Institute, shading her eyes against the brittle, late afternoon winter sun. Drake was right, the day gave her a headache. Sunglasses were definitely on her shopping list. And aspirin.
A laughing group of young women passed her on their way out of the museum as Tamsin walked up the sweeping steps to the columned entrance. She, or rather the Angelique part of her, watched them hungrily as they passed close by. They smelled wonderful. So indescribably delicious. A scent that both excited and energized her.
Drake said the Prime's didn't need to feed on blood. Instead it powered them up. A paranormal energy boost. dying, coming back to life, fighting other vamps and her unexpected romp with the Fae probably had Angelique running on empty. So very empty. Tamsin actually turned and started to follow the women down the stairs before she could stop herself. Their hearts were beating loudly, healthy and strong and full of life.
Flicking out a talon she dug it deep into her palm, stifling a little cry of pain. 'Control', she admonished herself silently as she licked the blood away.
She took a deep breath, turned and walked away from the women, back towards the museum entrance. What she told Drake about Angelique's appetites not being her own wasn't a lie. That did not mean she could ignore the demands of this body. A Prime needed blood and Tamsin would have to learn how to feed safely. And soon.
A blast of icy air tugged at her long hair and she pulled the big coat tighter. The coat smelled even more like Drake than the shirt. Deep and musky. Would he be angry with her for walking out? Blissful as the night had been, as much as she longed to see him again, there was no point. A chance encounter, that is all it was and all it could ever be. She was lonely and lonely people blew such things out of proportion. He had been so very nice. She pulled the collar of his coat around her face, inhaling deeply again.
Admission to the museum was free – yeah Chicago! – though the guard did say there was only just over an hour before closing. The museum focused on art, particularly sculpture, from the ancient Near East. The object she sought was uncovered decades ago in Iraq on one of their own archaeological digs. Unlike many other museums of its kind, she'd read on the website, the Antiquities Institute preferred to hunt out its own relics rather than purchase them. Of course most of that digging was done long ago when maps and political affiliations were skewed very differently.
According to her sources, first in Prague and then elsewhere, a small symbol was etched onto the museum's figure of Puzuzu, a powerful human-animal hybrid demon from Assyrian mythology.
Tamsin easily found the disturbing figure on display in the second part of the Mesopotamia Gallery. What a nasty little thing it was, too, with feathered, double insect-like wings, claws and a lion's face. She stared and the statue glared back, lips pulled into a snarl. It did not feel particularly powerful. She renewed her examination with fearsome concentration. Vampire vision rocked big time for something like this.
She didn't just use her eyes, of course. The body switching made it virtually impossible for her to carry any magical talismans, though she stashed a few things in the Swiss safety deposit box along with her little glowing soul vials. Switzerland, however, was far away. Tamsin kept everything she really needed in her head. When she transitioned into a body, she immediately got an indelible pen and wrote all her important spells on her skin. Not because she was afraid of forgetting. Many of the spells needed to be in the spell weaver's possession in some form: a book, etched in stone or wood, as an amulet, whatever. That made them 'yours'. Possession gave the user the ability to manifest the energy and thus send the spell on its maniacal magical way. To hold the spells' power she wrote them on herself. Hers not to reason why. The system worked and that was all that mattered.
Stopping twice on the way to the museum, once to get a black Sharpie pen, a second time at a fast food restaurant bathroom, she wove her own brand of fearsome magic. In the battered stall, Tamsin laboriously drew the runes and sigils on her body right over the skull tattoos, with the really important symbols on her forearms. Unfortunately, the run-off from all this magical energy made the walls of the stall vibrate and set off the hand dryers and toilets, that just kept flushing themselves. A final flourish to a particularly important sigil was just too much for the plumbing and the faucets exploded in showers of cold water. Muttering “sorry” under her breath, she ran out with the other women as two staff members rushed in, mouthes hanging open in disbelief.
Outside, she hurriedly buttoned up Drake's coat. The result of her spell work meant she looked like the winning entry in the International Body Graffiti Olympics. Thank God it wasn't summer and tank-top weather.
Pushing up one sleeve of Drake's coat and shirt, she read the revealing spell the soothsayer in Madrid gave her. Perhaps 'gave' wasn't the right word. Been persuaded to hand over. An alpha female shadow wolf, her body at the time, could be very persuasive. She popped her fangs and bit into her palm, swearing at the jab of pain as she let the blood run over her tongue. All magic demanded a price. Often blood. Luckily this was just a small spell. Focusing her energy, she spoke the incantation of revealing. Whispered words that burned her lips and took the tribute of blood in their passing. She waited for a burst of light, a glow, smoke, something from the statue to indicate she had hit her mark.
The angry little lion's face of the demon looked blankly back. She tried again.
Nothing.
Damn it. Now what? She should have guessed retrieving the runes was not going to be simple. Maybe all the information she gathered together with so much difficulty was worthless. A distraction from her real focus of hunting the Soul Eaters.
One of the security guards walked by. She gave him a quick smile and waited until he moved to the next gallery.
Perhaps this wasn't the right figure at all. Maybe another Puzuzu statue sat somewhere in the vaults, not as perfectly formed and therefore not part of the regular display. That would be bad. Tamsin had some pretty strange experiences in her resume by now. Oceans 11-style breaking and entering museum vaults, however, had yet to be among them.
Tamsin heard a flutter of sound, no more than that, like a rush of wings in the air. A figure landed lightly beside her. The vampire reflexes kicked in automatically. She spun in a fighter's stance, fangs bared, claws ready.
A young man stood next to her, hands on his hips, an impish grin on his face as though finding a raven-haired, hissing vampire poised to strike vastly amusing.
“Hello,” he stuck out one hand. “I'm Theo.” He smiled more widely. “I heard your spell.”
She stayed where she was, not taking his hand, keeping her fangs in place. Her control over both fangs and claws had vastly improved since last night.
“Did you? I was being very quiet.”
“Oh, I have quite the eye for magic. I mean ear. Ear for music, no, magic.” He laughed, a light musical sound. “Too much coffee today. Or maybe not enough.” He laughed again.
The boy looked no more than eighteen. He smelled very good to the vampire part of her. Not in a tasty, blood cocktail way. Something else. Indefinably...magical. Faerie,maybe. He was lightly built, fair with a flush to his skin as though he'd been running. Dressed in slim, indigo jeans and a black V-neck sweater with no jacket. His thatch of dark blond hair, artfully disarrayed, fell in a sweep of bangs across one eye. His eyes were what gave the lie to his almost human form. They were enormous, one green and the other blue, and they both glowed like beacons.
He stuck his hand out a little further and, withdrawing her claws, Tamsin decided to take it. They shook. “Tamsin, Tamsin West.”
“That's a very pretty name for someone as scary as you. And you are a very scary lady. You realize that, don't you?”
She nodded.
“You're looking for Puzuzu,” he waved one hand towards the display case. “Th
at's not him.”
“I think it is.”
“I mean not the right him. He's hidden. The magic one.”
She said nothing, waiting for him to continue.
“The one you want isn't listed in any of the catalogs, only the secret archive. I can help you find him.”
What he said confirmed her suspicions. Still, that was no reason to trust the boy. “Why would you do that, Theo?”
“Because I need something from the demon as well.”
“And...” she let the sentence trail.
“And Puzuzu's vault is a two-person job.”
Ah.
“So tell me Theo, do you just hang around the museum every day waiting for someone to stop at this case and radiate magic?”
“Pretty much.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and cocked his head to one side like a puppy, giving her a disarming smile. He seemed to have quite a repertoire of smiles. “Actually, I have a warding spell around the case that alerts me to any mage or whatever that comes close.”
Tamsin stared, “I don't see it,”
“Take my hand again.”
She did and felt his energy tingling through her fingertips and up her arm. A spiderweb of golden light appeared, arching up and over the case containing the small statue. Quite beautiful.
“Impressive. Been waiting long? For a mage or whatever. Not too many supernaturals coming into the museum, I imagine.”
“No. Or is that yes? “ He gestured impatiently with both hands. “What I mean is that's an incorrect statement. Actually they're drawn here like flies to honey. Or is that bees? You know what I'm trying to say. This stuff,” he waved around the spacious gallery. “Absolutely packed with magic. The digging guys...”
“Archeologists?”
“Those are the ones. Them. Don't seem to realize there's a reason a lot of this stuff was buried. Really should have stayed in the ground. Deep, deep in the ground. Lots of magic in these halls. Lots and lots.”
“And Puzuzu? The other one you mentioned.”
