Pride Before the Fall

by Kaye Draper

  She clutched her fork and knife, her smile never wavering, but her knuckles went white as she fought her anger. Ladies didn't yell at the dinner table, but something he said got to her. Surprising, since I didn't even think she had feelings. But then, he did just question the one thing she loved—her power and standing in the clan.

  "So, this has been great," I said, to stop Oisin from gutting her the way I knew he was about to. Even if she completely deserved it. "Where is Gabbi?"

  Ida plastered her bland smile back on her face and waved her fork. "Oh, she's recovering at the treatment center, Gesa. You can visit her tomorrow. I want to hear more about your companions."

  Her eyes slid to Con and Kaimana, who were having some quiet, one-sided conversation on my right. I had put them there to keep them away from my mother.

  "Girl?" my mother said in a commanding tone, her eyes on Kaimana. "What are you doing with the salt shaker? That is priceless venetian crystal."

  Kaimana had been peering through the beveled glass at Con, making him chuckle at the reflected pattern of fifty dark blue eyes while she obviously imitated my mother's imperious blathering. I snorted. Con immediately grew serious, reaching out a hand to cover Kaimana's and force her to put the salt shaker down.

  My mother frowned. "Is the girl mentally impaired? Oh, now I see," she said nodding. "She's so weak-minded she needs a simple human to help her. Really, Gesa. Where do you find such charity cases?"

  I slammed my knife down on the table to keep from committing murder at the dinner table. "Fuck off, Ida."

  But Kaimana waved her hand as if dismissing the arrogant gryphon cunt, a swell of sea magic caressing us all. She turned back to Con and crossed her eyes, clutching her stomach as the upper swells of her cleavage jiggled in silent laughter. She thought we were all hilarious. I wondered sometimes...something about her felt...eerie. As if everything we puny beings did was amusing.

  Con stifled a smile and patted her on the back. "Poor thing. It's all just too much for her tiny brain."

  I laughed and plopped my butt back down in my chair—surprised to find I'd half-risen, ready to slit my mother's throat just to keep her from talking. My not-pride was amazing.

  "I don't know why you ever left this place, Gesa," Hisashi said with a smile that was pinched at the edges. "It's so much fun here. And your mother is so...welcoming." He looked even paler than usual, which was a feat.

  Ida raised an eyebrow but didn't comment as she polished off the last bite of her roast.

  "I know, right?" I replied. "All this love and acceptance just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside."

  "The mayor's son is out of the hospital now," the demon at the end of the table commented. "You should go see him and make amends, now that he can understand speech. I believe his brain has healed enough that understanding language isn't an issue anymore."

  I froze. "Make amends?" To my rapist.

  She nodded. "Yes. Since you're back here, you might as well patch up that whole misunderstanding and get back in the good graces of the council, don't you think?"

  I growled. "No. I don't think. Fuck the council. Fuck the mayor and his fucking waste of space son. And fuck you for using Gabbi just to get me to come back here."

  I gripped the edge of the table with my taloned hands, claws gouging the wood in deep furrows as I half-shifted, my wings trapped against the back of my chair as they tore through my sweater. It had been a long time since I’d lost control of the wings. Five minutes in this damned place and I felt like an angry teenager all over again.

  "That's all this is, isn't it?” I whispered. “Gabbi isn't really sick. You just fucked with my emotions to get me to come back to this shithole." I should have known better. I was so damned stupid sometimes. "Why? Why the fuck do you even care if I never come back? You certainly didn't care enough to stand up for me when I told the fucking truth."

  She didn't even flinch. "Do stop being so melodramatic, Gesa. Of course your sister is sick. We've all seen the signs for years. And now the council has kindly stepped in and mandated that she be placed in an inpatient facility."

  I gaped at her. My whole body trembled. Gabbi had put up with the clan's pig-headed, old-world treatment her entire life. And they were going to throw her in the loony bin?

  Oisin stood, pulling his silk vest straight and sketching a stiff bow to my mother. "I think that is about all we can tolerate of your hospitality for the evening," he said in his most silky voice. He gave her a feral smile. "Please, do give us the address where we can find the mayor's son, though. I'm sure we'd all like to pay him a visit and thank him for being the reason Gesa found her new family."

  My mother blinked up at him. For just a moment, her cordial mask wavered, and I knew she understood what he was saying. She saw the murder in his eyes. "You can't," she said softly. "Sometimes things happen for a reason."

  He leaned over and planted his hands on the table, getting into her space. "I'm sure you're just full of reasons, aren't you, darling?"

  I felt his magic shiver over the room, enticing, compelling. The magic that made humans lose their minds to dancing and food, lost in pleasure until they died of it. "Oisin, don't," I warned.

  But he was furious. He had blood and darkness in his bright green eyes. And there was nothing I could do to stop what was about to happen.

  "Tell us why you let your daughter's rapist get away. Tell us why you defend the maggot, even now."

  Her gold eyes widened, and her fingers trembled. My mother was over a hundred years old, but there was no way she could fight the compulsion. Not from a being as ancient as Oisin.

  No one made a sound as my mother sucked in a haggard breath.

  "It was better that way. If she was raped, that would be seen as a weakness. But if she was the attacker, then she would just be seen as dangerous. Strong. So strong she took on a male gryphon and won, all because of a minor insult."

  Oisin narrowed his eyes as my heart cracked. She was using me. I wasn't surprised. But it still hurt. I felt the fae lean his power on her. "Is that all? Come now, we aren't fools. Why are you so concerned with her show of strength?"

  She sobbed. "My husband was a fool. I never saw his will until after he died. He willed his position, his power, everything we own, to his daughter. It's not done. No one in the clan would uphold that. Unless...the daughter was so strong, she took the title by brute force."

  I sucked in a breath, feeling like I'd been punched. My father had always been so distant. But there were times when he showed me warmth that I had never experienced from others in my clan. And then he was gone. Lost in a clan skirmish with dragons when I was a child.

  And mother had become a cold, hard bitch.

  "You...you knew this, and you've been...jealous," I accused. "You've hated me all my life." I growled and the sound had a bit of a shriek at the end. My animal side was struggling to burst forth and snap Ida's head clean off her body. "You knew that fucker and his friends drugged me so he could overpower me and use me, and you thought your fucking politics were more important than your own daughter? All you could think of was a way to use me yourself."

  She sobbed, trying to say something else, but it was lost in her tears. The end of the table cracked under my clawed grip.

  "Where is Gabbi? And why the fuck are they targeting her?"

  Oisin tilted his head, a small crease appearing in his forehead at the sustained use of his compulsion. "Well, you heard the lady. Answer her."

  "We're the last of the old families," she said in a cracked voice, eyes rolling as she spilled information she wanted to keep secret. "The council is trying to get rid of our family so they can rule the clans without interference. Your father's position was the only thing stopping them from turning the clan into an entity governed solely by the council members. They hated his new-age ideas. He said we had to change or die."

  I growled. "And if I couldn't inherit his title, then Gabbi would."

  My mother's voice cracked as Oisin's control sli
pped away, leaving a weak, weeping woman I had never seen before. "Not if they prove she's insane and lock her away forever," Ida whispered.

  I slammed my fist down on the table as I stood. The poor thing sagged, this side of it cracked nearly in half. "You couldn't have just fucking told me all this? You and your fucking games."

  She glared up at me, fire rapidly returning to her golden eyes as the compulsion cleared. "Would you have stayed and become the person your father wanted you to be? Would you have fought to save the clan?"

  I looked her in the eyes and told the truth. "No. This clan isn't worth saving."

  Hisashi let out a pained hiss and I glanced at him, my bitch of a parent forgotten. "What's wrong? Did she poison you?"

  He groaned and held his head in his hands, shuddering. Nine fluffy white tails erupted from his backside, tearing his clothes as power swirled around him in a cool, misty haze.

  Oisin was at his side in an instant. "Fox?" He placed a hand on Hisashi's shoulders, and the guy relaxed a bit, pulling his magic in close and snapping his glamour back in place.

  "Fine. I'm fine." He glanced at me, his eyes completely silver. "How long has this house been in your family, Gesa?"

  I shrugged, but there was an icy crawling sensation up my spine at his question. "I have no idea. A while."

  "Several hundred years," my mother said, her eyes round as they studied Hisashi.

  He shuddered. "They don't care for all this fighting among family. It's very...loud."

  Oisin drew back, flexing his hand as if working the sensation back into it. "We need to retire for the evening, I think." His green eyes bore into my mother. "You will have a car ready for us to retrieve your other daughter in the morning. And we leave whenever Gesa decides. You do not get to use her for your political games."

  She bristled at him. My mom had balls, I'll give her that. You'd think after being mind-fucked like she just had, she'd be cowed. Nope. She stood and straightened her immaculate dress, patted her sleek, upswept blond hair, and looked down her nose at the petite fae. "Who are you to give me orders in my own home?"

  He smiled up at her, pure evil. "I believe you just told us this was Gesa's home."

  I shook my head at him. I could feel Con's eyes boring into me, probably flooded with concern. And Kaimana was hovering, her soft hands fluttering over my arm. "This isn't home, Oisin. Home is back in New Paradise. With my pride."

  Chapter 5

  As we all made our way back upstairs, I pulled in my talons and wings and fought the urge to shift. My pride circled me, held me in, kept me secure in a way that was both suffocating and endearing. I was shocked when tears welled up in my eyes. I really was coming to love the whole lot of them. And thanks to my mother, I'd just admitted I considered them my pride. Damn it.

  "Godsdamned bitch," I muttered under my breath, thinking of all the ways I would kill the thing that birthed me, each messier than the last.

  "Why didn't you say anything," Con said softly from my side. I turned and found his kind honey-brown eyes swimming with pity.

  I rubbed a hand over my face and heaved a sigh. Oh, right. The whole rape thing. "Because it's not something I exactly enjoy trumpeting from the rooftops. I glared at Oisin. "I thought you said I shouldn't tell him! And you go shouting it for the world to hear."

  Oisin glanced at Con then back at me. "Oops."

  I growled at him. "Oops? Oops?"

  He lifted one delicate shoulder in a graceful shrug that somehow conveyed not-caring and supreme agitation all at once. He was such a walking contradiction. "I'm sorry, love."

  And that shouldn't be enough, because I was ready to string him up by the balls right now. But somehow, I deflated. That one little "I'm sorry," held a whole wealth of meaning. He was apologizing for losing control. A startling pattern that was becoming frequent for him lately. It must be driving him mad.

  Con's hand on my arm had me turning back to look at him. I heaved a sigh. "I didn't tell you because Oisin said you might not react well."

  Con glared at the fae. "You said what?"

  Oisin lifted a brow and held up a hand, wiggling it back and forth. "It was an inopportune time. Human libidos are...ehh...."

  Con slapped his hand out of the air and turned back to me. "You didn't trust me?"

  I pulled on the ends of my hair. Did we have to do this now? But one look at Con—caring, gentle, giving, pissed off Con—was enough to tell me that yes, we did have to do this now. My human might be mild-mannered, but he did some crazy stupid shit when he was angry.

  I grabbed both his hands and dragged us all to a stop, the others still circling us, clearly uncomfortable eavesdropping, but unwilling to leave me alone. "I trust you. With my life. With my godsdamned heart. But there never seemed to be a good time to bring it up. And... I didn't want you to worry. I didn't want you to coddle me and start seeing me as some weak, fragile thing."

  He squeezed my hands and closed his eyes a moment before opening them again, as if drawing on all his patience. "You're right. That's exactly what I would have wanted to do. Then." He gave me a slight, tired smile. "But I'm learning."

  I nodded and pulled way. Too much emoting. I was going to burst if I didn't get out of here. "I need to go for a walk," I said, spinning on my heel and pushing past Hisashi to head back toward the stairs. I felt four sets of feet start to turn toward me and held up a hand. "No! Just...stay here. In your rooms. I need some space. And we all need to just...digest."

  I thundered down the stairs, not waiting to make sure they obeyed.

  I burst out into the back garden and prowled into the woods surrounding the manor house, where I stripped down and shifted. The dew-damp grass under my paws calmed my racing thoughts until there was only the soft puffs of my breath, of my wings pumping to push me into the night air to circle the place I had once called home.

  I had never felt right here. Not really. Even as a child, I felt like I should love the place and the people in it. But something always felt just a little off. There was potential there, in such an old and powerful people. But it was like I was constantly out of step with whatever song they all marched to.

  Gabbi was different too. But somehow, she always managed to make peace with the clan's ignorant ways, to accept them even when they wouldn’t accept her. That they had turned on her now was, in some ways, the worst sort of betrayal. At least with me, the fault had been somewhat my own thanks to my generally shitty attitude. But Gabbi was sweet—mostly. Innocent in a way not many in the clan could understand. She couldn't help her differences.

  I drifted back down and shifted. Standing naked under an apple tree, I took in huge, gasping lungfulls of night air. I would deal with this. I would handle it. I was a fucking gryphon for fuck's sake. We were nothing if not strong and stubborn.

  I dressed and headed inside to face my disgruntled pride.

  The second-floor hall where our rooms were located was silent. I paced down the hall, not content until I located all my pride and knew they were well. I could hear Oisin and Con's voices as I passed my bedroom. I hoped like hell Oisin was having a man-to-man talk with the human, so I wouldn't have to.

  Kaimana wasn't in her room. A soft splash from the bathroom at the end of the hall drew me that way. The tub here wasn't nearly as nice as Oisin's monstrosity. But it was still pretty big. Kaimana liked to take long baths at the apartment. Being in the water must be soothing to her mermaid nature.

  I frowned to myself, thinking I needed to get her out to the water when we got home. Maybe to Lake Superior, if she could tolerate freshwater. And cold.

  I knocked softly, needing to know for sure she was there. "Kai?"

  There was another splash, and a moment of silence. Then something hit the back of the door with a thud. I pushed the door open a crack. "I just wanted to know you were okay," I said, glancing down at the wet bar of soap that lay on the floor by the door.

  I started to pull the door closed again when Cheney rounded the end of the hallway and head
ed toward my room. The last thing I wanted was to deal with that pompous ass and whatever orders my mother was throwing around now. I slid inside the bathroom and closed the door gently to avoid making a sound. Clearly I was part chicken, not eagle.

  I closed my eyes and leaned back against the door, letting out a breath of relief.

  A wet slapping sound had me jerking back to alertness. "Sorry for just barging in," I said, holding up my hands. "Cheney was out there and—"

  I glanced toward the tub and the words dried up in my mouth. The fuck?

  Kaimana was watching me with her big blue eyes, slightly altered by her half-shifted form. They had a film over them that moved sideways when she blinked. I glanced at her purple freckles and the mottled purplish color of her massive breasts floating in the suds. But I couldn't keep my eyes off the tentacles.

  "You're so not a mermaid," I whispered, taking it all in.

  A roiling mass of purple tentacles writhed and flexed, spilling out of the tub and onto the wet floor, the tips twitching and waving, revealing pink-suckered undersides.

  Kaimana sat up slightly, water sluicing off her beautiful upper body as she held out a webbed hand to me, her expression pleading. Her eyes were fearful. She thought I was about to freak over the octopus in the bathtub.

  I released a sigh, letting my shoulders sag as I shoved the pile of towels off a stool by the tub and sank down next to her. "I really need to stop thinking I know everything. Cause that's usually when reality bitch-slaps me."

  She reached out a hand and patted my arm, sinking back to lounge in the tub again. One of her tentacles wrapped around my ankle as if keeping me rooted in place so I wouldn't run away. She let out a sigh and sank under the water.

  I watched the bubbles slowly pop as I waited for her to come up for air. I felt like I must be having a trippy dream. I was back at home in the apartment sleeping. Not here with my freaking half-octopus roommate in the bathtub and my sister in an asylum.