by Jeff Hale
“Silence in the court!” Kat yelled out, giving them a very angry glare. The demand was met in short order. “I’m sorry, Celeste. You know not all of us are like that.” Kat motioned for her to be seated.
Lucien began with his questions after she had taken the oath. “Please state your full name.”
“Celeste Ivory Lynn,” she stated. The first time I had ever heard her full name. I saw one of the fae near Kat lean in and whisper something to her.
“Celeste, please, tell us your full name. The truth this time,” Kat said, giving her a confused look.
Celeste also looked confused. “Celeste Ivory Lynn,” she stated again. The fae leaned in, said something, and Kat motioned. A fae approached Celeste, and asked for her identification. She handed it to the fae, who handed it to Kat.
“There must be some misunderstanding. The fae are telling me that you are lying about your name, but obviously, something is going on here. Either way, continue.”
“Now, do you know the plaintiff?” Lucien asked.
“I don’t. Kat, ya know I don’t!” Celeste replied, turning to look up at Kat.
“Please, Celeste, Adjudicator Katelyn. We’re not friends in here right now, and you need to answer his question. It doesn’t matter if I know it or not,” Kat said softly.
“Oh. Right. Sorry. Adjudicator Katelyn,” Celeste said sheepishly.
“In what capacity have you been around the plaintiff?” Lucien inquired.
“When he threatened me, mah friends, and Aerick,” Celeste answered.
“Do you know Aerick, the defendant in this trial?”
“I… we have met before, yes,” Celeste replied, looking at me.
“Where did you meet?” Lucien asked.
“I first met him when he got food at the Sonic I work at,” she answered. The fae leaned in to say something to Kat, but she just nodded her head and shrugged.
“Would you consider him a friend?” Lucien asked pointedly.
“Yes,” she answered.
“And would he consider you a friend as well?” Lucien questioned.
“I believe so, yes,” she answered.
“Do you believe that Aerick would protect you, no matter what?”
“I do. Yes.”
“I see. So if Henry really attacked you, you’d be able to tell me what his shifter animal is,” Lucien said.
“Yes. He is a bear,” Celeste supplied.
“Did you ever feel that your life was truly in danger? Did you feel that if Aerick had not killed the shifters in Henry’s pack that you would have been raped and killed?” Lucien asked.
“Absolutely. The… wolf behind me was already… ready.” Celeste hesitated to go into great detail. Didn’t surprise me; Serena would have seen it is as vulgar. I was trying to keep my anger under control. I hadn’t noticed what she had said about the wolf at the time, probably because I was too worried about Henry trying to create modern art with me and a car.
“Very well, that is all. Thanks for your time in this matter, Celeste,” Lucien said.
Phil stood up, and I glared at him the entire time. If he rattled Celeste, I would kill him. Darien caught my attention and gave me a slight shake of his head. He knew what I was thinking.
“I have it on good authority that Aerick claims to hate you, is this true?” Phil asked, throwing a glance Alex’s way. Alex looked surprised.
“I… he…. Yes. He did claim that, but… I believe he said it in anger,” Celeste answered, giving me an apologetic look.
“Why would he protect someone that he hates and wants no part of?” Phil asked.
“I-I… I’m not sure. H-he didn’t say that until after that incident,” she stuttered.
“But didn’t he go hunting the shifters down after he told you that?” he asked. Darien leaned over and whispered something to Kat, who nodded.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know when all of this took place, it’s been a very… I don’t know,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.
“If he told you he hated you, then he had no reason to hunt them down…” Phil began
“Advocate. Stop claiming Aerick hunted down those shifters. We are already aware that Malachai is the one that killed those shifters. All except the coyote. Do not pretend otherwise,” Kat warned.
“Fine. Then what reason did he have to hunt down and kill a poor coyote shifter if he hated you, except as a hate crime. To kill a shifter out of pure hatred for poor Guy?” he asked.
“I… I don’t know,” Celeste said, tears now flooding her eyes.
“Enough. Advocate. Get to your point, or finish your questions now,” Kat ordered.
“I’m done,” Phil said, going back and picking a file up off the table. “The Vegas Pack calls… Raven Black to the stand.”
I looked behind me and saw that Raven was just as surprised as I was. She shrugged at me and started to stand.
“Hold! You will not call a fae to the stand, especially in this farce of a trial!” Queen Cynthia demanded.
“But, your Majesty, Raven here not only drove the defendant to the home of Guy Alejandro to kill him, but she actively helped hunt him down using her abilities as a fae. Her testimony is relevant to this trial. Surely you won’t…?” Phil said, trying to make his case.
Queen Cynthia wasn’t having any of it. “I said no. We saw the tape, and Aerick does not deny killing Henry’s packmate. We also know that he did not kill the rest of the shifters. I do believe that the adjudicators have plenty to base their verdict on, enough so that I’m not even going to bother to tell you what you already know about Baba Yaga. I am personally calling this trial to a close. Now. Henry! You and your pack will show the adjudicators the mark!” she said.
“Fuck you, lady! I ain’t gotta…” Henry yelled back. The lights got brighter it seemed, and the room got a lot hotter. The queen seemed to fill the room with her presence. It felt… comforting to me. Lucien even had a serene look on his face. But Henry and his pack cried out in pain in unison.
“I said show them!” she said, her voice echoing throughout the room without her even raising her volume.
Henry turned and dropped to his knees. A beam of light focused on the back of his neck. Wally turned and lifted the back of his shirt high enough to bare his shoulder blades, while Jill pulled the front of her pants down to show hers on her hip.
“There! Now the truth is shown, and the light of justice knows the path it must take,” the queen said, the room slowly getting cooler and going back to the dimmer lighting. “You may take them as you please, Adjudicators.”
“Then we are done today,” Kat announced. She turned and said something to Alex, who nodded and looked relieved, and they all left with Queen Cynthia following them through the door again as Darien and two fae guards arrested Henry and his pack.
Celeste approached me and I shook my head. “You’re done here, just go home,” I said, and turned away from her. I was tired and still too raw to deal with her. Henry and his pack might be in custody, but I still had to await the outcome of the verdict the next day.
____________________________________
I was lying on the bed watching TV late that night, when a knock came at my door. I got up to answer it, and opened the door to find Kat standing there, dripping wet from the rainstorm outside. Good chances were the streets were all partially flooded. It didn’t rain often in Vegas, and the city was not built for it.
I stood there, staring at her in shock. She was wearing a black leather mini-skirt, a dark-blue suede corset and knee-high black leather boots with straps and buckles all over them. Her dark-red hair had obviously been done up at some point, but now it just hung dripping water down her face as she looked up at me with those blue, blue eyes.
“You gonna let me come in? Or do I just stand here all night?” she asked, obviously tired of waiting for the invitation that wasn’t coming while I stood there and gawked at her. I stood to one side and motioned for her to enter.
She walked in an
d sat on the bed, and I groaned inwardly at the fact that my bedding was getting soaked while she sat there.
Oh well, there’s a hot chick on my bed, who am I to complain?
“Come to lecture me more? Or call me names? Or just to tell me you want to see me dead and that your verdict has been decided and that I’m going to die tomorrow?” I closed the door behind me and went to stand in front of her, my arms across my chest almost defensively.
“You deserve the lecture at least. There was no call to hunt down and murder someone for the actions of someone else.”
“You didn’t listen to Alex very well, did you? Or hasn’t he talked to you yet?”
“He did. And believe me, we know Henry’s pack is a still bunch of deranged psychos. I’m not surprised. I guess Darien was just hoping it was all Henry and that his pack might take a different path. Alex says not.”
“You should listen to him. I never got the idea it was just Henry that was like that. None of them seemed to be against the idea of raping and killing Celeste and the others. And are you not hearing the fact that they work for Baba Yaga? The Iron Hag that wants to bring a demon army into our world?”
“Did you have to kill them?”
“Look, they were shifters. If I don’t kill them they just keep coming back until I do. They would have kept coming at me until I was dead or they were. I just expedited the process a bit.”
“How do you know?”
“Ever fought a crazed shifter who has lost themselves to their animal entirely? From what I understand it doesn’t happen often. My second job for MAGE was just that. I thought that the poor soul could be saved, despite what MAGE kept telling me. I kept trying to incapacitate him, and he kept healing and coming after me. Eventually I just had to kill him. I didn’t have a choice. Once a shifter sets their sights on something, crazed or no, they don’t let go until they get what they want. You should know that by now. So what choice did I really have? Was I just supposed to let them kill me?”
Kat sat there quietly for a moment or two, then blew air out through pursed lips and shook her head. “No. Of course not. Now that you put it that way. But you do realize that constantly lording your greater powers over other Aetherics is just a form of bullying? You keep showing them off and telling people to not fuck with you or you’re gonna use them.”
“Yeah, ‘cause your precious Darien is any different.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You do realize he beat the hell out of Alex for kissing you, right?”
“Yeah. I know. Am I happy about that? No.” She frowned and this time her sigh was one of disappointment.
“He lords his power as Alpha over shifters and even over humans, and you can sit there and think that he is any different than me? And by the way, I have never used my powers for anything except work, self-defense, and defense of others. Check the facts on that and I guarantee that you won’t find a single instance where, at the time, from my point of view, I wasn’t doing any one of those things when I actively used my powers.” I sat down on the bed next to her. “Have I threatened with them to get Aetherics who wanted to have a pissing contest to back off? Sure, but that’s harmless. The hope on my part is that they will back down when they see what I’m capable of. But no, they think I’m just a human with some neat tricks, so of course they have to push, and they have to test. Especially shifters. It just ends badly for them because they just have to go that extra stretch and try to kill me. If they came at me like they were sparring, or trying to just incapacitate me, I’d do the same, but the moment they use lethal abilities, so will I.”
Kat looked over at me and scooted a bit closer. She put her hand on my leg and gave me a very familiar look. One I hadn’t seen in almost a year. “I know it’s been rough for you. With Celeste, and how you must feel about her, and me not being very understanding with you. I know my kind can be… difficult sometimes.”
“Yeah, ‘sometimes’ she says.”
“Okay, most of the time, and I can see why you felt the need to kill Henry’s pack members. No, I don’t expect you to just lie down and die for them. I just don’t like it.”
“I know, and I feel bad that they couldn’t take a different path, but they didn’t and I did what I had to do to protect myself or others. You didn’t see the werewolf standing behind Celeste, claws in her shoulder, ready to… kill her, maybe worse. I mean, I know you saw the tape… but in person was… different.” I clenched my hand and tried to keep control.
“I know, Alex told me. He also said that you were giving up any chance at being with Celeste so she could be safely away from our kind and live a normal life. That couldn’t have been easy.” She squeezed my leg gently.
“No. It wasn’t. It isn’t. I want… I don’t know what I want right now. I sent her away when she wanted to talk after the trial today. It hurt like nothing else. I can’t stand to continue this with her.” I sighed and buried my head in her shoulder. I had always been able to let my guard down around Kat and that hadn’t changed. I finally let go of the tears that had been threatening and felt them spill hotly onto my cheeks.
“It’s okay. I know it hurts you to do this, but maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s for the best. Besides, there’s always me,” she said softly, her hand coming up to run gently through my hair.
I looked up at her and blinked in surprise. “What about…?”
“Let me worry about Darien. We’re not together anymore. He’s being an ass again. I can barely stand to be around him right now. I’m just glad that I was wrong about you on this Henry thing. I kept wondering where that great guy I met in High School went to. I’d thought you’d lost that person forever. I’m happy to see that you’re still the same deep down.”
She leaned in closer and I caught a faint scent of melon, coconut, and rain water. She pressed her lips lightly against mine, and I opened my mouth a little. She took the invitation and moved her tongue into my mouth, and I matched it, my old feelings for her resurfacing without hesitation. We continued to kiss passionately, lost in each other for what seemed an eternity of bliss, until it was broken by what sounded like a surprised gasp.
I pulled away from Kat and looked over my shoulder to see Celeste standing at the door, still wearing what I had seen her in earlier. Her eyes were locked on Kat and her hands were clenched. She glanced back over at me, her bottom lip trembling, and I could see pain and frustration and betrayal in those emerald green orbs. She looked so small and helpless in that moment and it broke my heart more than anything ever had.
Kat glanced towards Celeste and then back to me with a confused look. “I thought you told her to stay away?” she whispered.
“I did,” I responded.
“Yeah, ya did! Obviously so ya could be with that little tart! I see how it is! Damn ya ta Hell, Ricky!” She turned on her heel and stormed out.
I stood abruptly and ran to the door, stopping with my hands on the frame. I had to go after her, there was no longer any doubt in my mind.
“Um, so I guess Celeste’s kind of mad at you? I really am sorry,” Kat said, although her tone didn’t sound extremely sincere.
“Yeah. She is. But that wasn’t Celeste. That was Serena.”
SEVENTEEN
I broke into a run and jumped the entire set of stairs to the next landing, then turned and did the same down the next set of steps. I found Lucien waiting for me at the bottom. I tried to go around him, but he stepped in my way. Not wanting to lose my momentum, I tried to shove past him, but he simply held up a hand and I was pushed back to the stairs.
“Luce, I gotta go after her, let me past!” I begged, frantic.
“You know you can’t leave the building until after the verdict has been given,” he said calmly. “Besides, she is in a very fragile state right now. She needs to deal with everything that has happened. You pushing her right now very well could break her. Permanently.”
“Dammit!” I punched the wall next to me, and I continued to pummel it for th
e next several minutes. The wall was Aetherically reinforced brick; my hand was a bloody mess by the time I was done. I felt soft hands on my shoulders as I hunched in and cried myself out. Serena had been right there, and I had fucked it up. When I finally looked up, I found myself curled up on Kat’s lap as she rocked me gently.
“You feeling better now?” she asked, concern very evident on her face.
“Not really. Can you guys just pronounce your verdict now and get it over with? I really don’t give a damn what it is anymore,” I said in a hollow tone.
“We can’t, I’m sorry, it has to be given officially tomorrow.” She stood and held out a hand to help me up. “I can go after her if you want. If she still remembers the past several months, then I can talk to her. After all, we were friends. Well, that is if she isn’t too mad at me for what happened in your room,” she offered as I stood with her assistance.
“Are you sure? I’m not sure it’s the best idea…” I said, not entirely certain that Kat wouldn’t just chase her off even further. Maybe it would be for the best if she did. At least then she’d be away from me.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find her for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, still not sure what I wanted.
“Yeah, don’t mention it. Ever,” Kat said in a sad voice as she headed out the door.
I went back up to my room at Lucien’s insistence that there was no reason for me to pace the width and breadth of his bar while he was having it remodeled. About an hour and a half later I got a phone call from Kat.
“Hey, I’ve checked the sorority house and her home, but she wasn’t at either. Got any ideas?” she asked.
“Not a clue. You have no other ideas as to where she might have gone?”
“No. But… you really think that she’s Serena?”
“Yeah, I do. Why?”
“Because I found her diary. I hate snooping into someone’s private stuff, but if she really is Serena…. Anyway, I could bring it to you, there might be some clues in it,” she offered.
