The rest of the tiny office gathered around and everyone hoisted a “the week is over” beer—Trysta, Bill, myself, Jake and the other two drivers. It wasn’t much of a courier company, all told. But they’d offered me a job and a place, and I wasn’t going to turn that down.
My weekend blazed past in a blur of cheap beer at the Manor and shitty motel TV—it wasn’t like I had much else to do! My first week in the city had passed far better than I was expecting. I spoke to the motel manager and parted with over a third of my remaining cash to pay my room up to the end of the week and my paycheck.
Looking over the paltry remaining funds in my wallet, I budgeted out food for the four days between my succor expiring and my first paycheck. It just, barely, covered me going out and buying a knee-length heavy gray winter jacket.
With that, and the new job, I managed to settle into a routine by Tuesday—get up at oh-Powers-o’clock, get out of the motel and down to work by bus, scrape in the door for six, and be out by six fifteen in the van. The job was pretty simple, pretty easy to be good at. Trysta greeted me with bright smiles each time I came back, and when Friday rolled around, there was Bill with the beer again, and this time, paychecks all around.
“Hey, Jason,” my new boss interrupted me as I was leaving. “You have a place yet?”
“I’m still living at the motel,” I admitted. “Need to save up for rent.”
“There’s a place near here,” Bill told me. “My sister owns it, wants a handy man to rent. Can front you the deposit and you pay me back over the next coupla months. Sound decent?”
I blinked at him. Bill hadn’t been any less gruff or terse with me since he hired me. I hadn’t expected this. I guess the generosity fit with the man; it was just in contrast to his usual demeanor.
“Can I take a look at the place first?”
“Sure. Can take you now,” he offered.
“Okay.”
We trooped out to Bill’s aged red Chevy pickup truck and drove over to the apartment. It was within walking distance of the dispatch, really—not that I’d want to do that in the winter; the weather remained utterly frigid. It was a short little four-story brick building, and Bill’s sister—a stocky older woman with graying brown hair—was waiting for us.
“So, this’s Jason?” she asked, and Bill responded with an affirmative grunt. She offered her hand. “I’m Rhonda; come take a look at the place.”
“You can make it home yourself?” Bill asked. I nodded. One of my smartphone’s many features was an ability to plot bus routes. “All right, places to be,” he said shortly, and returned to his truck as Rhonda led me down the stairs into the basement of the apartment building.
The tour of the apartment didn’t take very long. It was basically one big public room with a kitchen off of it and a bedroom tucked away out of sight. Walled in plain white drywall, floored in worn-but-solid dark blue carpet.
Rhonda quoted me a rent figure that was a bit under half of what I expected to be bringing home from Direct. Certainly more than I currently had to pay.
“My brother and I talked, and he’s agreed to front me your deposit and half your first month’s rent, and take it off your pay for the next few months,” she told me, “to give you a chance to get settled right away.”
“When do you need to know?” I asked, finally, unsure if I was willing to accept that degree of charity from my boss.
“Let Bill know on Monday and we can sort things out,” she told me. “I can throw in a mattress too, but that’s about all I can do for furniture, sorry.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I answered awkwardly. “I’m not sure how comfortable I am taking charity.”
“Hardly charity, boy,” Rhonda laughed at me. “It’s Bill’s way of making sure you keep working for him!”
I shared the laugh, but I was still feeling awkward at the thought as she walked me back up to the apartment building entrance. Walking outside, I stopped in sudden shock.
In the half hour or so we’d been inside, the temperature had skyrocketed. It was still not warm, but it was getting dark, and I was now quite comfortable inside my heavy winter jacket.
“Ah, the chinook finally came in,” Rhonda observed.
“Chinook?” I asked.
“Warm winds over the mountains—give us a boost of warmth in the winter. Are you okay to get home?” she asked.
“This is the warmest it’s been since I got here,” I told her. “Hell, I can walk home in this. Thank you kindly for the offer, ma’am; I will think on it and let Bill know.”
“Sounds good,” she agreed. “Enjoy your weekend, Jason.”
She walked over to her new silver sedan and I settled my jacket carefully on my shoulders and queried my phone for a walking route back to the motel. It looked like about forty-five minutes’ walk, which wasn’t too bad in the actually non-frigid night.
The walk took me north to one of the major roadways through the city, with several bars along the stretch I had to walk. I’d just passed one of these when I heard the sound of a scuffle on the other side of a fence along the road. For a long moment, I paused, not wanting to get involved.
Then I heard a girl scream, then stop in mid-sound. The next thing I knew, I’d run halfway up the fence, grabbed the top and was vaulting over to land in the deserted alley on the other side.
I headed toward the scream, jumping two backyard fences and coming into a deserted residential side street. A petite girl, hair dark in the shadows, backed away from her three attackers, one hand pressed against her throat.
The three attackers were my size and closing in on her. They moved with an odd grace—very similar to the inhuman grace of the fae, but not quite there.
One of them grabbed the girl’s arm and yanked her to him. “Why struggle, baby—it’ll hurt less if you don’t—you may even enjoy it.”
I had a quick sensation of cold air as I charged, and then I was next to the thug and pulled his arm off the girl.
“I don’t think so, motherfucker,” I told him, and introduced his face to my fist. The thug stumbled backward several feet, his nose broken and spewing blood.
“You’ll pay for that, food,” he snarled, and long white fangs flashed in the streetlights. Vampires. Nobody told me this city had a vampire problem.
I wasn’t quite sure where the girl had got to, but I kept myself between the three vampires—and I quickly confirmed all three were vampires, now that I knew what to look for. This was going to suck.
One of the non-bleeding vampires came for me from the left. He was an amateur, telegraphing a wild haymaker that I managed to easily deflect, only to stumble back in pain as his unexpected snap kick caught me in the stomach. Okay, so he wasn’t the only amateur in this brawl.
They had speed on me, but I was stronger, so I grabbed the feeder before he got too far away and dragged him in close. He tried to bite me, the bastard, so I headbutted him. Hard. His eyes started to glaze, so I did it again. He stumbled backward, and I kicked him in the nuts.
Each of them was faster than me and almost as strong. I didn’t have time to play fair. As it turned out, the other two had been closing while I grappled the other one, and I paid for the first vampire’s kick to the nuts with a sledgehammer blow to the side of the head.
I half stumbled, half dodged sideways and avoided the kick from the third vampire, shaking my head to clear my vision as they closed in. I faked a jab at the feeder on the left and then bodily charged the one in the middle, the one I’d junked a moment before. With him still dazed, I managed to drive him back a step or two and toss him to the ground, but then a deathly cold hand grabbed the collar of my jacket and yanked me back from him.
Panic flared, and familiar warmth flowed through me. Hoping that I could convince the girl to stay quiet afterward, I let the feeder drag me back until I could see him. Then I grabbed his arms with both hands and called faerie flame.
The feeder screamed as green fire seared up his arms, burning away his cloth
es and roasting his already-dead flesh with a sickening stench of burning pork. He scrambled back from me and snarled again.
A moment of silence followed, broken by the characteristic thunk of a shotgun being pumped, and I turned to face the vampire I’d punched in the face to start the brawl. His face had healed, and he held a sawed-off pump shotgun pointed at me.
“Fucking faerie,” he spat. “End of the line.”
“Suck it, motherfucker,” I answered with an obscene gesture, and he lifted the gun to aim at my head.
Then a hundred and something pounds of screaming wildcat slammed into the side of his head and the shotgun went flying. The vampire screamed as claws tore his skin, the wildcat shapeshifter returning the favor of my rescue attempt.
One feeder out of the fight, but that left two more, and the one I’d burned had regenerated his arms and found a knife somewhere. Even from a few feet away, the knife felt wrong—cold-forged iron.
I was changeling, not a true fae. That didn’t make my kind’s ancient bane much less effective on me. It just made its touch crippling, not instant death.
While I was busy staring horrified at the knife, however, the third vampire was sneaking up behind me and slammed both his fists into the small of my back, his foot into the back of my right knee, and his knee into the back of my head as I crumpled.
I hit my knees, my head spinning as I saw the vampire with the knife approach me, a sick grin on his face. From the corner of my eye, I saw the girl, back in human form and in torn clothes, get pitched away from the feeder she’d jumped. A silver blade glittering in her shoulder explained why she’d shifted back.
The vampire she’d fought rose to his feet, an aura of darkness gathering around him as he called on the blood powers of his kind to end the fight I’d foolishly joined.
Then he vanished, replaced by the front of a black Hummer. There was a blur of motion, and the vampire with the cold iron knife was suddenly in pieces, replaced by one pissed the fuck off grizzly bear.
The third vampire ran, and the bear growled. Even through my spinning head, I caught the note of command, and I saw a tall fair-haired man shift into a wolf and leap off after the feeder. If feeders deserved pity, I’d have pitied it.
The bear was gone, I realized, and the burly black-haired giant from the Wizard’s Tower replaced it, kneeling by the shifter girl, gently removing the silver knife. I felt a hand fall on my shoulder, but before whoever it was could say anything, I collapsed, pitching face forward onto the pavement.
4
I woke up to the feel of a warm, wet cloth being used to gently clean my face. For a moment, I had no idea where I was or what had happened, then I jerked upright at the memory of the vampires beating on me.
“Hey, hey, take it easy,” a female voice told me, and I found myself face to face with the wielder of the cloth. Bright green eyes looked directly into mine, atop an adorable button nose and a scattering of freckles. “You took quite the beating.”
“I heal quickly,” I answered slowly, relaxing back slightly and taking in the rest of the petite redheaded woman—enough to recognize the girl I’d leaped to the rescue of in the street. “What happened?”
“I have a panic pager and I hit it when they caught up with me—before I even knew they were feeders, to be honest,” she told me. “I wasn’t expecting Tarvers himself to answer—or for you to show up.”
“And we’re all lucky you did, changeling,” a deep bass growl interjected, and I looked up to see the door to the small bedroom I’d been placed in filled with the hairy form of the leader of the shifters in Calgary. “Our girl here might have managed to escape if you hadn’t shown up, but we would have lost the feeders then. This way, everyone wins.”
The bear shapeshifter crossed the room to me and offered his immense hand. “I know your kind don’t heal as quick as us shifters, so I brought you back with us so we could treat your wounds. We owe you a debt, stranger. I am Tarvers, Alpha of Clan Tenerim, and I and my clan are in your debt. What’s your name?”
“Jason Kilkenny, sir,” I answered politely.
He snorted. “Don’t call me sir, Jason,” he ordered. “Now, listen. I had our doctor check you out, and he says you’ll be fine by morning but you shouldn’t move much till then. So, you’re a guest in this house till this morning and a friend of the clan for your actions. If you have need of us, call. Now, rest!”
With that final barked command, the sheer presence of the man faded as he strode from the room, and I looked back to the girl I’d saved.
“What’s your name?” I asked. “If I almost got myself killed for someone, I’d at least like to know their name.”
She giggled. “I’m Mary,” she told me. “Also of Clan Tenerim. I’m the younger of two lynx shifters in a clan of wolves and bears, so they all treat me like their baby sister. And the Alpha overestimates my chances of escaping—I’d have been toast if you hadn’t intervened.”
Mary inspected me critically, and leaned in to wipe off a last speck of dirt and gravel from my face. She kissed me on the cheek, softly.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Now, Dr. Clementine said to let you rest, so I’m going to get out of your hair.” She smiled. “I took the liberty of programming my number into your phone.”
With that implied hint and a brush of her fingers against my cheek, Mary left the room, leaving me in the dark room with some healing bruises and her scent.
I barely managed to open the room’s door in the morning before it was yanked out of my hand and I was urged gently back into the room by a shaven-headed young man with a stethoscope around his neck. He was built quite similarly to Mary, and I presumed some relation.
“You don’t move one more step until I check you out,” he told me firmly. “I’m Clementine Tenerim, Mary’s brother. Now sit down.”
Somewhat bemused, both by the energy everyone in the Clan seemed to bring to everything and the care they were showing, I obeyed. Clementine poked and prodded, listened to my heart with the stethoscope and flashed a light in my eyes. Then he apologized.
“Sorry, but most of the folks I work with and on are shifters,” he told me. “Even silver wounds, like that stab Mary took, will heal almost immediately once you abrade the silver out. Even with another inhuman, I have to be a bit more careful.”
“Thanks for the worry, doc,” I told him. “It’s appreciated.”
He nodded, and gestured for me to follow him out of the room. The front room of what turned out to be some sort of townhouse was occupied by Tarvers and three men who were almost as large.
“Have a seat, Jason,” the bear Alpha asked. “We have some questions about last night, though we’re waiting on one more.”
A car pulled up outside and a door slammed. A lean man I recognized as the wolf shifter from last night stepped up to the door, his hand going inside his open jacket. He relaxed at the sight of the man on the other side of the door, and opened it to reveal Oberis.
I bowed my head to the Lord of the fae Courts. I hadn’t seen him since my first night in Calgary, and I was quite content to avoid his attention if possible.
“Per our Covenant with the Wizard, I can only ask you questions with a leader of your Court present,” Tarvers rumbled, gesturing Oberis to a chair by mine. “Welcome to the Den of Clan Tenerim, Lord Oberis.”
“I am grateful for the invite and the welcome, Alpha Tarvers,” Oberis replied with the instinctive grace and charm of a fae noble. “Kilkenny, are you all right?” he asked me directly as he sat.
“I’m fine; these gentlemen took good care of me,” I answered quickly. I didn’t want to get tied up in the politics of inhuman factions. Avoiding them was why I was in Calgary.
“He protected one of our own, at risk to himself and with no call for reward,” Tarvers rumbled. “You should be well pleased with your man, Lord Oberis.”
“So it seems,” the fae Noble replied, impenetrable even to me. I hoped that meant he agreed. I didn’t want to be in trou
ble with Oberis right now.
“I need to ask you about the vampires, Jason,” Tarvers told me. “Did anything about them stand out? Any tattoos or symbols?”
“Um.” My response was hardly the most eloquent of answers, but I had to think. “Didn’t you have a better look than I?”
“There wasn’t enough left of the bodies to really examine,” the big shapeshifter answered, his voice somewhat self-satisfied.
“I didn’t see any symbols,” I answered, thinking carefully. “But I did notice... I burned one of them pretty badly, and he healed it almost instantly. They had to be very well fed. And one was beginning a blood working when you hit him.”
“Not a lot of vampires can actually work their blood magic,” Oberis interjected grimly. “Most feeders use up most of their power just staying alive and enhancing their bodies.”
“So, well-fed, well-taught vampires,” Tarvers concluded grimly. “A cabal has entered our city. I guess we have to tell the Wizard.”
“I will accompany you and speak for my changeling’s words,” Oberis agreed. Hopefully, his doing so got me off the hook of seeing the Wizard again!
“Now, Lord Oberis, I ask you to stand witness,” the bear Alpha told my lord. Tarvers stood, looming to his full seven feet in height and removing a length of gold chain from a pocket. He crossed to me and draped the chain around my neck.
“By my word and the witnesses here, I acknowledge a debt owed,” he said formally. “Jason Kilkenny is named friend and ally of Clan Tenerim, and is owed a Boon. Call upon us at your need, and we will answer in payment for the life that you saved.”
I inclined my head, accepting the debt. “Thank you,” I said quietly. Boons were a big deal among inhumans—it was more than your life was worth to refuse a Boon without a good reason. I couldn’t have refused the Alpha if I’d wanted to.
With that business concluded, Oberis stood and gestured for me to follow him to his car. I traded a firm handshake with Tarvers, watching my hand vanish in his giant fist, and followed the fae noble out.
Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1) Page 3
