Magaestra: Found: An urban fantasy series

by Katherine Kim

  "I did not wish to kill him, but I was left with little choice," Aldric said quietly. A mug was put down by his elbow and Marc stepped back to the kitchen counter. Faith glanced over and realized that it was a steaming mug of water with a heavy-duty plastic bag full of something dark red sitting in it. It reminded her of how they had warmed the bags of breast milk Crissy had stashed in her freezer back when Kaylee was an infant.

  Right. Okay then.

  Faith sighed and sat back on her heels. She rubbed her now empty hands over her face and just breathed for a moment.

  "Look," she said. "I'm not worried about the health and wellbeing of some violent kidnapping jackass. I am worried about the health and wellbeing of the apparent idiot that saved us this morning. I'm worried about my sister and about Kaylee, and about your clan people who are still out there in the woods with those kidnapping jackasses, going by the number of wolf howls I heard a little bit ago."

  Faith dropped her hands into her lap and gazed back up at Aldric. She was tired and stressed and near tears again, knowing that he had been hurt badly by the people who wanted her and Kaylee for some reason. Not even the fact that she was watching the smaller wounds she had just cleaned out seal themselves up while she stared at them helped her feel better.

  Marc came back to the table with three steaming mugs full of actual tea, and pulled a chair out for her. After a few sips of tea, she started to feel a bit steadier, though she did keep glaring at Aldric's bandages. She watched him poke a hole in the now warmed bag of blood and stick a small straw into it, like the world's grossest juice pouch, and take a long pull. His jaw relaxed slightly and his shoulders dropped a bit, and she sighed again. She was glad he was settling down, even if she thought it was kind of gross, and told her stomach to get over it when it squeezed at the whole idea.

  "For now, I think the threat has passed," Aldric said after he set the empty bag back down on the table, on a paper towel Marc must have brought for exactly that purpose. "The two remaining wolves fled when Mia called the alert, and now they are fully aware that our clan has claimed all three of you. Before they ran, I demanded your sister's return, and they simply snarled at me, so I think we can safely assume that the wolves have her or know where she is,”

  "I agree. I'm going to call your cousin in a moment and see if maybe he can start working tonight. It's not too late yet, and he's a night owl anyway. I don't want to let this go too long if I can help it," Marc said. "That being said, now that you're fortified, I want you to drink your tea and get some rest. Those wounds won't heal if you don't take care of yourself." Marc took a deep breath and turned to Faith. "Thank you. For being so accepting of my people and for taking care of my friend. For that alone I feel a kinship to you. You and yours are welcome in the Frostwalker Clan, should you choose to stay, and if you do not, you will still be considered friends and allies."

  Faith blinked at the man. His voice and expression were both serious and formal, but she could still see the twinkle of humor in his eyes.

  "Thank you, Marc. That means a lot to me. I don't really know much about your clan or your people, but everyone here has treated us with kindness and I can't thank you enough for your hospitality and protection," she said. Marc smiled and patted her hand gently, and then stood.

  "I'll be in my office for about half an hour, if I can get hold of Leo. You two get some rest. If you both want to sleep in tomorrow, that's fine, I'll handle the kids." And with that the giant man left the kitchen.

  "Come on, you big brute, let's get you tucked in this time," Faith said. She drained the rest of her tea, the bitter sweetness of the chamomile lingering on her tongue. For a brief flash she wondered how well it mixed with the metallic taste of blood.

  "Hey," she asked, "Does blood taste gross and metallic to you? Or, like, does it taste like... I don't even know what to compare it to. Steak, I guess?"

  Aldric stared at her, a crease forming between his eyebrows. "I suppose it tastes a bit like whatever the animal has been eating. Human blood certainly does reflect the diet of the person who donated it. Deer blood tastes gamey. I... I suppose I have never particularly thought about it."

  "I guess you wouldn't. Huh. How do vampire babies drink blood? Are they like, born with fangs? Wait, do vampire babies drink blood? I mean, I'm making a pretty major assumption that vampire babies are even a thing, but–"

  Aldric's laugh rolled through the kitchen and stopped Faith's rambling. She must be tired. Usually she was better at filtering her mental ramblings. Still, the sound of his laugh– especially after this long, bloody, mostly awful day– warmed her more than the tea had. She finished rinsing all the cups and hesitated briefly over the empty blood bag.

  “We have a separate garbage for these," he said through his chuckles. He stood and pulled a small, lidded biohazard box from the top of the refrigerator. "We take anything we need to dispose of to the clinic in town once a week and they dispose of it for us. It's run by several of our wolves, and my cousin, so there is no concern for accidental discovery. And yes. Vampires have babies just as humans and wolves do, but the need to consume fresh blood doesn't manifest until later in childhood. The same is true of wolves ability to shift and, I believe, humans' abilities to channel magic."

  Faith nodded. That made an odd sort of sense, really. She hadn't been able to do any magic at all until just before preschool, and that had barely even been anything to worry about. Crissy was the same. “Sort of like eating solid food, or walking, or… well. Baby stuff. Well, anyhow. It's all slightly irrelevant at this moment. Right now we're getting you upstairs and tucked into bed. Marc said you need rest. I'd say you need a doctor, but what do I know?" She ushered him out of the kitchen ahead of her and up the large stairs in the front hallway. "And I thought your cousin was a computer guy?"

  "Leo is a computer guy, but his sister Madeline is one of two doctors at the clinic in town. They handle everything from basic health checks to broken bones and stitches. They are not quite set up as an emergency room, but they are the closest thing we have in town. The nearest hospital is almost twenty minutes away by car.”

  "And you're sure we shouldn't take you in to see her?"

  Faith hovered behind him as he climbed the stairs, stiffly. She wasn't sure that she could catch him if he fell, but she'd rather try than let him just tumble backward with those injuries. His back was still badly gouged, and the bandages she applied might need to be changed before he woke up. Assuming they weren’t healed perfectly by then.

  Besides, it was one hell of a view. The parts of his back that weren't covered in bandages were pure muscle. Not gym rat muscle, which she had never understood the attraction of, but the kind that spoke to active use. Like the gymnasts in the Olympics. Okay, so she was pretty sure that athletes actually did hit the gym regularly, but still. It wasn't all free weights all the time or whatever.

  And now she was rambling inside her own head. Fantastic.

  "I am certain. Madeline would laugh at me for asking her to look at the wounds you have already dressed so well. Then she would amuse herself with the fact that I let the wolves surprise me, in the first place" Aldric sighed. "She would consider it her familial duty."

  "I think I would like to meet her sometime," Faith grinned. As stiff as Aldric was, it was interesting to see how many people were attached to him. It was clear that he wasn't just a commander or whatever his title was. He was family. Or a friend. From the way Marc and Tamika spoke of him, they weren't in the slightest afraid of Aldric, though he seemed concerned about people's perceptions of vampires.

  "Hey, Aldric?" Faith asked quietly as they walked down the hallway. They both stopped to glance into Jake's room, and the children were both sprawled across the trundle bed like it was their job to cover as much space as possible, but they were both breathing softly and regularly, sleeping deeply the way only children do.

  "Yes?" Aldric pulled the door closed without latching it.

  "How old are you, exactly? You speak so form
ally,"

  One of the things that she had learned today was that while werewolves had a longer than human lifespan at right around four hundred years, vampires could be effectively immortal. It didn't do them any mental favors to live that long– they would often go crazy in one way or another, and would have to be ‘put down’ as Marc had phrased it for the safety of those around them. It turned out that it wasn't especially complicated to kill either a vampire or a werewolf, though, if you were fast and accurate enough.

  "I am just over one hundred years old. One hundred three, to be specific. My mother was very formal. My father was not, but I spent less time with him due to his job outside the coven I was born into," Aldric said. He let her usher him into his room and just smiled, amused, when she pointed him to the bed. "May I change into sleep pants first? Or must I wear my filthy blood covered jeans to bed?"

  "Okay, that's a little gross. Yes, pajamas. Oh man, you can't shower, though, can you? With the bandages? What will you do tomorrow? Ugh, living with massive injuries is complicated. I still can't figure out how you're even upright and walking!" She had to get a handle on this rambling thing. It was getting out of hand.

  "Vampires heal quickly," Aldric shrugged. "Not as fast as movies and books would have you believe, but by tomorrow afternoon the worst of the wounds will have closed enough for me to shower. Until then, a washcloth will suffice."

  Faith watched as he pulled pajama pants and a soft looking t-shirt out of a dresser drawer, then stepped into the bathroom and, with a small smile, closed the door behind him.

  14

  The next afternoon Aldric felt fully healed. There were still scabs covering the worst parts of his injuries, and pink still-healing lines of new skin at the edges, but they hardly bothered him.

  After Faith tucked Aldric into bed, Marc had received several reports from the enforcers tasked with tracking the strange wolves off Frostwalker land. The trail ended at the road, as it had at the Latham’s cabin, so they were once again without a lead.

  Mia herself had dragged the corpse of the dead wolf back to a work shed on the property to see if they could somehow discern his identity, but when that failed, they had cremated the creature and would bury the leftover remains.

  First thing this morning he checked in with all of his enforcers and sentries, as well as several wolves that lived in and around town, looking for signs of the strangers. There again, he met with a dead end, and he would have given in to his seething irritation had Kaylee and Jake not crept, wide-eyed to his office door and asked in anxious voices if he was, in fact, going to die from fighting in the night.

  Aldric was amused by the children's deep concern for his health, and their visible relief when he showed them the healing injuries. He promised that Faith had been an excellent nurse and he barely hurt at all. It had been somewhat tricky when Kaylee asked why he was healing so fast, and Faith had finally just told the girl who she was staying with.

  At which point Kaylee turned to Jake, wide-eyed once more, and asked, in an awe-stricken voice, "You can turn into a wolf?"

  "Not yet, but Daddy says pretty soon! Daddy can, and he’s huge!“ Jake said proudly, his almost six-year-old chest puffing up until Kaylee smacked his arm and started complaining that he hadn't told her, and weren't they best friends, and shouldn’t best friends tell each other everything?

  It resulted in the most entertaining argument Aldric had ever witnessed before the two finally made friends again and ran off to play on the swings, supervised– and guarded again– by Tamika, who ended up answering a lot of questions about werewolves and why Jake couldn’t just tell her and why Kaylee now had the important job of keeping the secret.

  "Well. That went better than I thought," Faith said, flopping into the armchair by the window in his office. She could see most of the play set from her position, but she watched him instead. "How are you doing, anyway? I've been busy with the kids all morning, trying to keep them out of you and Marc's way. We made cookies. They're in the kitchen."

  "I shall try them when I get up from here, thank you," he answered. "I am healing well enough, as you saw. I may have a scar or two from the worst of it, but otherwise by tomorrow evening it will seem as if I was never injured."

  "I'm glad," Faith smiled at him. "I've been worrying about you. I didn't sleep well because of it. Well, and the rest of it all." She grimaced and sighed.

  "The two remaining strangers were tracked out to the road. They must have had a car waiting there, because their scents vanished again. I have the clan's trackers spread out searching for traces of the scents. My cousin Leo is also scanning the area for unusual activity or video of your sister or the strangers," Aldric said. He wanted to make her smile again, but did not have any news that would do that.

  "How does he know what Crissy or the strange wolves look like? I mean, We don't even know what they look like. Not as people, anyway. Well, not as human people. Ugh, this is so confusing."

  Aldric nodded. "I understand that. And we do not know what the strangers look like, but if they were following your sister he could see that, and make an educated assumption. As far as your sister, I believe Leo hacked into a state driver's database of some kind." Aldric sighed heavily. He kept discouraging his cousin from such blatantly illegal activities, but in this case he couldn't argue that it wouldn't help them. Now everyone had not only Crissy's scent from the clothing she left in the cabin, but also her image, which Leo sent to the enforcer's and tracker's group chats.

  "Well, tell him not to get caught," Faith muttered before turning to watch the kids though the window.

  She just curled up in the chair and, after a few minutes he watched her eyes droop closed and a moment later soft snores drifted to him. He tipped his head to the side for a long moment and wondered at this human who was so comfortable around him that she would simply drift off to sleep as if she had no cares in the world to worry her. He stood and left the office to retrieve a blanket, which he draped around her, then returned to his desk to continue his work.

  When Faith woke again several hours later, it was time to call the children in for a snack. Aldric joined them, having coffee rather than milk with his cookies and apple slices. The knock at the front door felt like it echoed through the entire clan house, and the three adults in the room froze, instantly alert.

  "I will answer the door," Aldric said, standing from his seat. The command to the others to stay in the kitchen with the children remained unspoken, but Faith and Tamika both nodded.

  At the front door, he paused, listening and trying to scent the visitor. He wasn't as skilled as the wolves, even in their human forms, but he was still a predator after all. Under the familiar scents of his clanmates was another scent, less familiar, but still an ally. He hoped. He opened the door.

  "Detective, any word on Miss Latham's sister?" he asked.

  Detective Lincoln smiled broadly at the abrupt greeting. "Good afternoon to you as well, Mr. Donnelly. No, there has been no sign of the elder Miss Latham as yet, though we are still investigating. How are you? You look tired, if you don't mind my saying. There seems to have been a lot of wolf activity in the woods last night, I hope they didn't keep you awake?"

  Aldric's eyes narrowed and he stared at the human in front of him, but the detective gave nothing away.

  "No, I was up late regardless of the wolves' howling," Aldric said. “Something about missing friends and dead bodies tends to keep one up at night.”

  “That’s very true. But try not to worry too much. Just leave all that up to us. It is our job, after all,” Detective Lincoln said. His forced friendliness was becoming familiar. "Anyhow, I'll get to the point. We have tracked down some reports of visitors to the area who had an altercation in town involving the man you and Miss Latham discovered yesterday. We have a couple of photos from the security cameras at the gas station where the altercation took place, and I hoped to show you both. See if either of you had seen them around before."

  Aldric stared at the
detective for a long moment and decided that the human wasn't lying. His better-than-human senses detected none of the usual signs. Not even a stutter in his heartbeat. So, decision made, Aldric stepped back and gestured for Detective Lincoln to come in.

  "We are having snack time in the kitchen with the children. Kindly temper your conversation accordingly."

  Lincoln blinked at the phrasing, but nodded and followed as Aldric led the way.

  "Good afternoon, everyone!" the detective greeted the small group before turning to the kids and smiling like a kind old uncle. "Howdy, kids. How's your day going?"

  "Okay. Are you looking for my mom?" Kaylee looked at the detective with the pointed shrewdness only a child could bring to bear.

  "Yes, I am. I am one of the people looking for her, at least. I was hoping I could ask you and your aunt and Mr. Donnelly some questions really quick," he said.

  "I guess." Kaylee glanced at Faith, then reached a hand for Aldric. "Mr. Aldric, come sit here. We've got more cookies and you haven't had any yet."

  Detective Lincoln's eyebrows rose at the clear display of allegiance from the child. Faith, behind the detective just smirked and Tamika looked to be biting back a laugh.

  "Would you like some coffee, detective?" Faith asked,

  “Thank you, yes. Just a splash of milk, please, if you have it.” He stepped over to the table and sat across from Kaylee and Aldric and pulled out a tablet. He tapped a few things on the screen, then glanced over at Faith. "I just want to make sure that I have all the details. You three came up here to your family cabin, five days ago?"