Key to Redemption

by Talia Gryphon

Reading the surface thoughts in her mind, Aleksei picked a piece of grass out of her hair. “Truly, dolcezza, you look lovely.”

  He meant it. Rumpled, in his shirt, with grass in her hair, she was still the loveliest thing he’d ever seen.

  “Thanks, Aleksei. That makes me feel a little better.”

  At least they weren’t fighting, but she wondered how understanding he would be when he found out what had actually triggered the night’s events. That is, if she was right in her assumptions. She, Helmut, Perrin and possibly Dalton needed to have a little chat if Perrin’s therapy was going to continue on-site.

  “No thanks are necessary; it is the truth.” Glacial gray eyes warmed her as a smile made his face even more breathtaking. He looked up and around. “Where are we heading, by the way?”

  “Moose wanted me to go down to the road before the orgasmatron broke loose and I want to check it out.”

  Dropping his hand, she drew the gun, made sure a shell was in the chamber and continued forward, her body adopting a more predatory stance. Aleksei watched her admiringly. She truly had no fear when it came to protecting those she considered hers.

  “Ew! Goddess above!” Gillian veered away from a shapeless mass on the ground and Aleksei was at her side in a heartbeat. Both of them stared, unsure of what action to take, if any.

  Trocar was in a tangled mass of tentacles, attached to . . . Dear Zeus, she couldn’t even look at it. Sluagh. It had to be. Nothing else could possibly be that repulsive. In the faint light from the parking lot, it was part fuchsia colored, part pond scum green and in between—yuck! She couldn’t even tell its gender when it drew back from their approach in a rolling movement that nearly turned her stomach.

  “Trocar?” she asked tentatively, desperately hoping that he was all right and she didn’t have to pull him out of that. If that thing was feeding on him . . .

  One crystalline eye opened. “Not one word, Gillyflower, not one. I am not in the mood.” The eye closed again.

  Nope. Definitely not being eaten. Well . . . that line of thought wasn’t helping. She really ought to not go there. At least that answered the question as to what one of the three shadowy shapes she’d seen earlier with Tanis was. Oh, dear goddess, that left two more unaccounted for. Great. Now they had to find those as well.

  Trocar had been glaring at her, daring her to say anything, then shut his eyes, appalled that she should witness the scene. The juxtaposition of the heartbreakingly lovely Grael versus the monstrosity of the Sluagh struck her as outrageous and she could not stop herself.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Both crystalline eyes opened that time, and Trocar pinned her with an iridescent glare. “I am absolutely certain that you have somewhere else to be, which is not here.”

  Gillian couldn’t help it. Having the elegant, annoyingly perfect Dark Elf in a position that she was sure would haunt him for a long time was so ridiculous that it doubled her over with helpless laughter. Besides, he looked like he was being molested by a giant calamari.

  “You want some tartar or marinara sauce to go with that, dollface?” she snorted inelegantly. “Or are you two in the throes of Post-orgasmic Elf Dishevelment?”

  Trocar’s eyes shifted to Aleksei, who was now laughing heartily along with Gillian. “What did I tell you, Vampire? Abusing her extraordinarily lovely backside is a thought which eventually comes to us all,” he said dryly.

  That made Aleksei laugh harder, pulling Gillian to him, who was trying to get control of herself and failing. “It’s a gift, really,” came out in breathless gasps as Aleksei grabbed her wobbling gun arm and held it away from everybody. Not particularly effective since he was laughing just as hard as she was.

  Trocar rolled his eyes, throwing his arm over his face and muttering about needing a mercy killing before he lost all credibility. Giggling against Aleksei’s yummy bare chest, Gill allowed him to help her not shoot those immediately present.

  “Yes, it is,” said a uniquely accented voice.

  Gillian and Aleksei spun, placing themselves in front of Trocar and his, er, lover. Gillian blinked and wiped tears out of her eyes while Aleksei helped steady her gun arm toward the voice. Her eyes cleared as Aleksei grew quiet beside her. Perrin. Oops.

  “She does bring out very distinctive male qualities, such as a peculiar need to protect her, even while she risks everything to protect us. Impulsive, beautiful and in need of loving reproof occasionally, I would surmise,” he remarked in a darkly musical, silky voice.

  The extraordinarily handsome fusion of races walked smoothly toward them, head up, waves and whorls of ebony hair tumbling over his forehead and collar. He met her eyes valiantly, his mask a stark reminder of his difference. The black robe he wore was calf length with heavily embroidered lapels and sleeves; white shirt open to his chest with cloth ruffles that oddly looked more at home than lace on his skin. Long legs in those yummy pants and killer boots. If anything, he looked even more stunning than Gillian remembered. Had it only been last night? Shit, it was last night.

  Gillian opened her mouth to retaliate and abruptly the oppressive air was back in full force, instantly shifting her thoughts and verbalization. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood up as she pushed Aleksei behind her toward Perrin.

  He was the most vulnerable of all of them, and because he was her patient, she was responsible for him. “Aleksei, keep him here and keep him safe!”

  All trace of amusement and hilarity gone, she snapped at Trocar, “Get up. I know you’re armed in there, I can’t do this myself and I don’t have time to unravel anyone else from their immediate paramour’s clutches.”

  Trocar extricated himself immediately from the mass, fully clothed, which brought a quirked eyebrow in his direction from Gillian. He murmured something in one of his arcane languages and the Sluagh galumphed off into the darkness.

  A flick of his right wrist brought a wicked-looking stiletto into his hand; the other drew a main-gauche from a slender scabbard strapped to his left thigh. Both blades were pure silver and had runes carved into them.

  “Where, Kynzare?” Trocar was listening with all his might and couldn’t hear what was spooking her. He did, however, trust her empathy.

  “That way”—Gillian indicated with her gun—“and what the hell does that mean anyway? Finian called me that earlier.” She was moving forward slowly, trusting Aleksei to keep Perrin out of the way if things went badly.

  “ ‘Soul healer,’ Gillyflower,” Trocar responded in a distracted manner.

  He was starting to sense something. It wasn’t magic, in the literal sense, but it was twisted and evil. Evil, he knew about intimately. He broke off from her to circle to the left. Gillian watched him go out of the corner of her eye. The Grael melted into the trees without a whisper of sound.

  There was a slight sound of a scuffle behind her and Perrin’s voice full of worry. “No, he is leaving her! She cannot go alone! Why are you not going? You must keep her safe!” Perrin felt the oppressiveness as well and was horrified, watching Gillian’s short form dressed in an oversize man’s shirt and boots, creeping down the drive slowly.

  That question was apparently to Aleksei, who responded, turning Perrin’s face gently to his own, his supernatural voice laden with a compulsion, “Look at me. Only at me. She is all right and will remain so. She knows what she is doing. Do not fear for her and do exactly as I tell you.”

  Gillian heard him but couldn’t pay attention to what was going on behind her at the moment. She knew that Aleksei wasn’t above using compulsion to keep Perrin safe. While he might bitch about it later, right now it couldn’t be helped. Having the masked man running after her, loose in the night with whatever was stalking them, wasn’t an acceptable outlook to either of them.

  Aleksei was trying, his brow furrowing with effort. His place was by Gillian’s side, but she had asked him to protect this man, and that he was now honor bound to do.

  The man’s mind was proving difficult to
suppress as he had a steadfastness about Gillian that it was proving hard to sway him from. The top layers were there for Aleksei to read when he looked into the gray green gaze using his considerable willpower. He tried to avoid noticing the man’s private thoughts, but nonetheless, he found out more than he wanted to know.

  Perrin struggled in his grip, but Aleksei held the lighter-built man easily. “No, my friend. Let her go. If you distract her, you can get her or the Elf killed. I cannot protect her and you at the same time, you are in two different places.” Satisfied that he had made his point when he saw the panic subside, then understanding come into the remarkable eyes, he let the other man go.

  Perrin stepped back, looking up to search the taller, spectacularly handsome man’s unique silvery eyes. “I will stay here, do as you say; just please keep her safe!”

  “Gillian does not require me to keep her safe, mon ami,” Aleksei said, partly to himself.

  He surprised himself by realizing that he meant it. She didn’t need him. She was perfectly capable and had other perfectly capable friends. What else could he offer her other than his protection, all that he owned and his love? Was it enough for her? Did she really want it? Any of it?

  Shaking off those thoughts, he focused on the masked man in front of him. Perrin was grasping his lower arms; the perfect half of his face was full of worry and something else. He was also completely oblivious that he was standing near a half-dressed Vampire in the moonlight, Aleksei observed, then realized Perrin had no idea what he was, nor cared. He was concerned only about a certain little blonde.

  Dammit all, he thinks he is in love with her, Aleksei grasped with uncomfortable clarity.

  Complete understanding came crashing down then, as his normally very ordered but currently exhausted mind finally connected the dots: this was her patient. He must be more distracted than he’d realized. He’d not met the man before this so it hadn’t occurred to him that this was the one she . . . no . . . that was dangerous thinking and he stopped himself from completing that particular notion. What little he had gleaned of the man’s surface thoughts, by virtue of simply being in his mind, hadn’t been pleasant.

  Perrin was part Sidhe, which Aleksei assumed had produced his physical beauty, and part Gargoyle, which was a bit of a surprise. But the depths of despair and the level of utter loneliness that Perrin had known were things Aleksei had never encountered, even in maladjusted Vampires who had lived too long.

  He didn’t know what lay behind the mask that seemed sculpted to that otherwise perfect face, but he was gambling it had contributed to Perrin’s isolation and continued solitude. Whatever Gillian had done or needed to do to help this elegant, lonely, tormented soul regain hope and maintain his sanity, Aleksei grimly knew he would support. He did not have to like it but he would not interfere again.

  Perrin deserved compassion and mercy, if for nothing else than for not becoming a monster after how he had been treated by everyone he had encountered. The level of intellect Aleksei had stumbled on during the brief meld was alarming. Perrin was truly a genius, disciplined, creative, brilliant and fragile.

  It was by the grace of God that he had chosen to use his talent in such an artistic and rewarding manner rather than being a vengeful psychopath. In an unaccustomed gesture of support, Aleksei warmly squeezed the other’s shoulder and was rewarded by a ghost of a smile before Perrin’s attention turned back in Gillian’s direction.

  Walking silently toward the road, Gillian felt rather than heard someone at her back. Powerful, familiar and Vampire. Tanis. On cue, he moved into step next to her, watching the woods on either side.

  “Thanks,” she whispered.

  “I am sorry for before, piccola sorella,” Tanis said just as quietly. “I hope I did not shake your faith in me for my lack of control.”

  “Of course not. You couldn’t help it. But I think I know why it happened.”

  “I am glad to hear it. Please do not let it happen again.”

  A twig cracked to their left and both whirled. Not Trocar, that she knew; he’d have cut off his own foot before he made a mistake like that. Gillian nodded to Tanis, who misted out, moving to circle the noise. She squinted, trying to make out the erratic shapes of the forest and differentiate if there was a threat out there.

  Giggling. What?! More giggling and a low voice chuckling in amusement. Another branch snapped and something moved in there.

  “Whoever you are, come out slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them. You have beings all around you; they are armed and will shoot you if you do not comply,” she ordered.

  They were still too close to the compound. A glance over her left shoulder showed Aleksei and Perrin still watching her intently from the elevated hillside.

  More crackling in the bracken and a very large shadow loomed. Gill tightened her grip on the gun, arms steady, her mind going to a very silent, still place, focusing only on what was immediately in front of her. To her astonishment, an attractive older Human woman stepped out, holding hands with . . . Samuel? Great Hera’s peacock, it was Samuel. He was grinning from ear to ear, looking at the woman as if he could eat her up in one sitting. One thing was glaringly obvious—Samuel looked possibly more put together than he originally had when she’d first met him.

  As he moved into the moonlight, out of the shadow, she could see it definitely wasn’t the same face she’d been looking at night after night for the past week. Samuel was still very ordinary by any standards, but the terrible raw scarring on his neck and head appeared to be healing and his skin looked more evenly toned. Even the patchy reddish hair was grown in fully over his head. He wasn’t ugly anymore. At seven feet tall and over three hundred pounds, he looked like a great, hulking, plain Romanian farmer. But he wasn’t ugly. How had that happened?

  “Gillian! How nice it is to see you this moonswept evening!” Samuel actually chortled. It was a scary noise.

  “Oh, uh, hi, Samuel,” Gillian managed to get out as Tanis materialized behind the pair.

  She shook her head at his questioning look. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude or dismissive, but do you think the two of you could hurry a bit and get back to the castle? It really isn’t safe out here.” There, another diplomatic brownie point for her since she really wanted to rant at them for being out in the night without anyone knowing where they were with all the potential hazards around.

  Speaking of Brownies, she wondered where the local herd of them had got off to; she hadn’t seen them all night. At least Samuel and his Human’s presence answered what the other two dark shapes she’d seen the night before had been. Gill felt a small sense of relief in that knowledge, except the oppressive, nearly suffocating air was still hovering.

  “All right.” Samuel laughed. “This is Esi, she owns the coffeehouse in town. I think I am in loooove!”

  The aforementioned Esi giggled and waved happily at Gillian before letting Samuel lead her up toward the castle, both whispering in scheming tones. They were still giggling like a couple of schoolgirls in a conspiracy as they passed Aleksei and Perrin, who waited at the top of the hill.

  Gillian looked up at the night sky adorned with moon and stars. “Why? Why do I get all the weird shit on my watch?” It was more of a prayer than a statement.

  “Gillyflower,” Trocar’s voice said over her right shoulder, making her and Tanis both jump. Lucky for Trocar he didn’t smirk at being able to sneak up on a Vampire. Tanis might have just killed him. Gillian would have beaten him up first.

  “Yes?” This was going to be another one. A night that just fucking would not end.

  “Come with me. Bring Tanis, and prepare yourself,” Trocar added cryptically, turning back to lead them through the forest to the road where Finian and several other equally beautiful Sidhe stood in the distance, about ten feet off the highway in a mowed field, weapons ready and faces grim.

  Gillian had just glimpsed the others milling around and talking with each other when Tanis breathed in sharply, stopping her with
a hand on her shoulder. “Stop, Gillian. I can smell the blood from here.”

  “Tanis, I have seen death before in most of its forms. Hell, I’ve even caused it more times than I care to think about. I can handle it.”

  He regarded her briefly. “As you wish, but I did try to warn you.” The Vampire could scent the blood like a shark; he knew what the blood was from: Human. Female. Young. And that she’d died badly.

  Gillian stuck the gun back in the makeshift belt as they approached the group of Sidhe. With that many weapons, Fey warriors, Tanis and Trocar around, she was overly armed. Finian stepped out to meet her. “Are you sure you want to look, Kynzare?”

  “No, I’m not, but I’m going to because I have to.” Gillian moved slowly forward as the Fey parted. The grass wasn’t particularly tall here, having been mowed recently. As the last Fey stepped aside, she could see the body clearly. Steeling herself as she had when she worked as an investigator for the coroner’s office during her college years, Gillian walked close enough to see detail, but not too close to disturb any evidence.

  To Tanis, she said, “Get Cezar’s brother, Ivan, down here, please. Tell him to bring whatever people and equipment he requires, but we need him to collect evidence.”

  The Vampire obeyed her, shifting into mist and streaking off toward the small town. Ivan Jarek was the head of the local constabulary and the closest thing they had to a coroner or a CSI team. Their resources would be limited but it was better than nothing.

  Gillian squatted down, tucking Aleksei’s shirt around her for some modesty, and studied the body. Human, female, and about twenty from what she could tell looking at the mutilated face. Forcing herself to focus on the injuries one at a time, she tried to ignore the loops of intestines that had been eviscerated from the woman and tossed above the corpse’s right shoulder, and the smell that came with them.

  She ticked off the injuries in her mind: nose cut nearly off, face slashed, the entire right cheek cut open down to the bone. She held the sleeve of her shirt over her nose and mouth, trying to breathe shallowly. Throat cut: one hesitation cut, then the one that had probably killed her, that had severed all the major muscles and vessels in the neck. It was almost a decapitation, she realized, seeing white bone from the spinal column amid the deep red muscle tissue.