"Don"t say s.h.i.t like that, you don"t know they"ll be fine. That"s not how it works in our world. People die all the time. This isn"t a movie where the good guys always miraculously pull through."
He growled, low and under his breath. "What, do you want me to say that they"re going to get themselves killed?"
My feet stilled, the loose gravel underfoot shifting even though I"d stopped moving. "You know what, just don"t say anything. Can you manage that?"
The main door to the bar slammed, and Dox took a single step toward us, then froze. "I thought you two were getting along now."
"We are," we said at the same time. I drew in a sharp lungful of cold air, the bite of it along the back of my throat cooling my anger a little.
"I"m just being a b.i.t.c.h," I grumbled.
Dox laughed. "You worry like a mother hen. It"s kinda cute."
I punched him on the arm as I pa.s.sed and headed into the bar. "I"m not f.u.c.king cute."
Liam followed me in, and as he pa.s.sed Dox, said, "Mother hen?"
Dox shrugged. "Well, I didn"t want to go with the more obvious mother bear. No need to encourage her bad behavior."
The two men laughed together and I kept my back to them so they couldn"t see the smile that crept across my lips. No need to encourage them ganging up on me.
I stepped up to the bar and slumped onto one of the stools.
Doran emerged from the shadows and slid into the seat beside me. "Good to see you"ve kept your humor intact."
I lifted an eyebrow at him. "Dox, I thought you said you cleared this place out?"
The ogre grunted as he stepped behind the bar. "Daywalkers, they"re like every other species of vermin. You think you got them all, but you always miss one."
Doran pressed a hand to his heart, batting his eyes. "You wound me. But even if you had tried, I would have stayed. I have a message for you, Rylee." His green eyes darted away from mine, unable to make contact. c.r.a.p, we"d done this dance before. Everything in me tensed. It seemed that lately, Doran was my messenger boy, and none of the news he had for me was good. I didn"t like it.
"She sent you something for me?" She being my little sister-turned-psycho-vampire, Berget. I was just guessing that she was the one with the message for me. Who else would Doran have contact with? Louisa and the other shamans would just contact me through Dox. They wouldn"t use Doran. I really didn"t want any messages from Berget. Like as in pretty please leave me the h.e.l.l alone.
"I did not see her, but yes, she sent one of her messengers to me. She wants to make peace between you and her." He did make eye contact with me then, and in them I could see the fear that I would take her up on her offer. Not likely after everything he"d told me.
I snorted, let the interior tumbling of my emotions continue while I did my best to keep my face smooth. "You mean after she tried to have us killed, and didn"t succeed, she wants to make nice? Play in the sandbox together like one big happy messed up family?"
Doran shrugged and slid closer. I put a hand on his chest, keeping him at arm"s-length, my eyes flicking to Liam. Doran was a touchy feely kind of guy. Though I didn"t actually care, Liam would. "That"s close enough, thanks."
"She wants to hire you to Track for her. The money is considerable; you probably would never have to work again. Could go pro bono for every other salvage for the rest of your life."
I drummed my fingers along the wooden bar, not really contemplating. I already knew my answer. "Would you do it for her, if you could?"
His eyes were as serious as I"d ever seen them. "Not even for the redemption of my soul would I do this for her. It will solidify her as the Empress if you do what she wants, and that is something the world cannot have." He paused and gave me a wink. "In my humble opinion."
"Humble. Yeah." I took the gla.s.s of orange juice Dox slid across to me and took a sip before saying anything else. "What is it that she wants me to Track, do you know?"
He shook his head. "No, I don"t know. I was to give you the message that she wishes peace and wants to hire you. That"s it."
Dox snorted. "Like always, not much help, are you?"
Doran turned to him. "Tell me, how is it that you came to be here, in this ogre-less place, anyway? Did you leave to see the world? No, wait, that"s right, you were kicked out, banished by your own kind because of how weak you are-"
Dox smacked the flat of his hand on the bar, startling the h.e.l.l out of me and stopping Doran mid-sentence. His eyes narrowed and a faint purple flush ran up his neck and over face. "Shut your mouth before I remind you why even Daywalkers don"t p.i.s.s off ogres."
Well, well. This was a side of Dox I"d never seen. Not in all the years I"d known him had he been anything but pleasant. I"d never seem him pull any of the "ogre-ish" tantrums I"d heard about his kind.
His eyes flicked to mine and he let out a big breath, the additional color fading from his blue skin. "Sorry."
Fatigue washed through me, and as much as I wanted to wait up for the a.s.sholes that had a missing kid and thought blackmailing me was a good idea, I also knew I needed to sleep if my body was going to be even close to healed for this salvage.
"Doran, tell the messenger no. I won"t do it. I won"t help her."
He nodded and let out a sigh of relief. "She won"t give up. She will try to force your hand."
"I know."
Berget was a spoiled child and she wanted what she wanted. No doubt her next message would be less polite. Seriously, even knowing that all families are messed up to some degree, this-having a psycho, power hungry vampire for a sister-was going a bit far. Even for me.
"Dox, you"ll let us know if anyone shows up?" I knew his schedule was wonky, awake all night, and then sleeping through the better part of the day, so I could trust that he would be awake to receive this parent when they showed up.
He rapped his big knuckles on the bar twice. "You bet, Rylee."
I slid off the stool, but Doran stopped me, his hand shooting out to grab my elbow. "Do you have your obsidian blade, the one I sent for you?"
Frowning, it took me a second to remember that he had indeed sent me an obsidian blade via Eve on her last trip home from New Mexico. "No. Why? Is it something special?"
His eyebrows quirked up to his hairline. "You just need to keep it with you."
Warmth circled around me as Liam moved to stand behind me. "Why does she need it?"
Doran let out an exasperated sigh. "Listen, getting a read on Rylee is impossible, you know that, right?"
Neither of us moved, and Doran seemed to take that for encouragement.
"So when I have a niggling suspicion that you need something, Tracker, I follow through. I don"t know why you need the d.a.m.n blade with all the other ones you have. Just that you need it. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point, you will need it."
I shook my head; there was nothing I could do about it. The blade was at home in North Dakota. "I"ll get it when we"re home next. For right now, I"m going to bed."
As we walked across the parking lot, Liam took my hand. "We still need to talk about Alex."
I stopped walking. "Seriously, now?"
He glared at me, his jaw working for a moment before he answered. "No, that discussion can wait until after the salvage. But this can"t be ignored."
"Fine, after the salvage, once we"re home, we can talk about Alex." Yeah, not like I was going to for one second let Liam pull the alpha card. Just because he was an alpha, it didn"t mean he had to act like one all the time. Okay, s.h.i.t, I knew that was naive on my part. Maybe I"d just dealt with too many a.s.shole alphas and there was a large part of me that was worried Liam would take that route.
Our room was cool and the sheets downright frosty, but with Liam wrapped around me, I warmed up fast. And that was the beautiful part of him and me. Only moments before we"d been glaring at each other, and he wasn"t happy with me. But there was no way we"d let that get between us. Not after everything we"d fought through.
Again, Liam pa.s.sed out before me, but I wasn"t far behind.
This time there was no Berget, no Giselle. Nothing but a blissful, deep sleep that was interrupted by a loud banging on our door.
"Rylee, you"d better get your a.s.s out here," Dox called, his voice only slightly m.u.f.fled by the thick door.
I groaned and rolled over in bed, reaching for a pillow to cover my head before I remembered the night before.
Eve. The missing kid. The psycho father showing up.
As I flipped off the covers, my skin danced with goose b.u.mps, the cold air waking me faster than anything else could have. I slid into my clothes, my ribs feeling like they were about ninety-eight percent. Good, I wanted to be able to run this a.s.s hat through if he gave me even a tiny bit of grief.
Liam was dressed, and he handed me my swords as I slid the straps of my shoulder holsters on. I took the swords from him and slid them home, then strapped on my whip so that it hung low on my hip.
"Ready?" He asked.
"Yeah, let"s get this over with and get this psycho"s kid home."
Liam led the way, and I slammed the door behind me. Dox waited for us, his eyes wide.
"The father is in the courtyard, behind the bar."
"Is it that bad?"
He just shook his head. "Not what I was expecting, that"s all. And don"t ask me to tell you, you wouldn"t believe me if I did."
"Well, that"s just awesome," I muttered. This was one of those times that I wanted to remind people how much I hated surprises. They never turned out well in my world.
Never.
Liam put his hand out, blocking me. "A plan would be good here." d.a.m.n, he was like a broken record lately.
My fist clenched involuntarily and I forced myself to relax. "I"m just going to talk to them. No fighting today."
"Unless they p.i.s.s you off."
"Yeah, I thought that was obvious."
Of course, if I"d known what was waiting for me in the courtyard, I wouldn"t have been worried about getting p.i.s.sed off. I would have been more worried about me being run through.
IS THAT WHAT I think it is?" Liam breathed out beside me.
There was no way to answer that without sounding like a condescending b.i.t.c.h. It"s a freaking unicorn, what do you think it is? Just doesn"t have a polite ring to it. And there it was, a G.o.ds-be-d.a.m.ned unicorn, standing in the middle of Dox"s courtyard. Silent and motionless, if I hadn"t known better I would have thought I was looking at a statue. Except that when the wind blew hard, the stallion"s jet-black mane and tail flew out around him. How did I know it was a stallion? Because I"d met him once before, on the first salvage Liam had ever done with me.
Like a waking dream, staring at him reminded me again that there were beautiful and good creatures on this side of the supernatural, they were just few and far between.
A single, golden horn jut from the middle of his forehead, but otherwise, he was a solid, glistening black from his hooves to the tips of his ears. Leader of the Tamoskin Crush, he had struck me as fair and wise. Not the psycho I was waiting on. Unless he was here for something else? Only one way to find out.
"Wait here for me." I slid out of my weapons, laying them one at a time on the bar.
Liam put a hand over mind. "What are you doing? You don"t know that he won"t attack you."
"If I can"t even trust a unicorn, then this world has a h.e.l.l of a lot more problems than a few missing kids."
Liam slid his hand from mine slowly, reluctance in his every move. "Be sure about this, Rylee."
Swallowing hard, I nodded. "I am."
He stepped back and I opened the door to the courtyard. If the stallion was here because of a missing child, all I could wonder was how the h.e.l.l the kid had been stolen. A unicorn crush was harmless until threatened, and then you"d better hope that they didn"t mistake you for an enemy. There were not many supernatural creatures that could stand and survive the single-horned equines when they worked together.
I closed the distance between us, leaving about ten feet of s.p.a.ce.
Just in case.
Tracker, there is no time for pleasantries. A foal has been stolen, the first born to us in fifty years. His words rang through my mind, not unlike Blaz"s voice, but with a distinctly different feel. Like a bell being rung as opposed to the distant rumble of thunder that was Blaz"s voice.
"I can vouch for Eve, you need to let her go." I put my hands on my hips and spread my feet slightly apart. "She hasn"t even been on this continent for the last few weeks, and even flying straight across she would have just arrived home. No time to go foal-napping."
He shook his head, mane flicking in the frosty air. I smelled lavender and springtime, even though neither was possible.
The crush has spoken; she will be held until the child is returned. Though we are not happy with her presence, you are showing her the way to her roots, to the Harpies of old that we danced with on moonless nights. No, I do not believe your Evening Star did this.
He pawed at the tiled courtyard with an iron hard hoof and tossed his head again, mane flying about. His hide shivered, as if touched with flies. But I knew there were no flies, not in this weather. And what was this about Eve? She was my Evening Star? This was one of those times I just pushed it all away. Supernaturals loved their "Confucius says" s.h.i.t. You just had to learn to ignore it, or you"d end up never able to do anything, so afraid that you might take a step wrong.
"You want me to Track your foal?"
Yes. Track her, and bring her home. Sorrow, heavy and thick like fog in the morning, laced his words.
I removed my hands from my hips, slid them into my pockets. "This is your daughter that"s gone missing?"
Yes. She was stolen away from us, six nights ago. There were no footprints, no sign of another pa.s.sing this way. Harpies were our first thought. Except for a single mark in the snow, there was nothing. Again he tossed his head, eyes flashing. But there are no Harpies in this area except for your Eve. If you do not find my daughter quickly, it will be all I can do to keep the crush from ending her life, regardless that I know it was not her. Our children, they do not come along often and are treasured by all.
c.r.a.p, I would have to move fast. If I didn"t find the foal, Eve was toast. "So we"re a.s.suming something that flies took your daughter? What did the mark in the snow look like? Presumably something large enough to pick up a ... how old is she?"
She is nigh on six months old, a suckling filly, yet. Unable to fend for herself, her horn is a bare nub on her forehead, dull and useless. He gave a long, low snort. The mark resembled that of a talon or claw, digging through the crusted snow.
I tapped a toe on the bare red tiles. Already the urge to go after the foal had begun to eat at me. Like a sickness I had no cure for, Tracking was something I couldn"t run away from, didn"t want to. Unlike other things.
"I need a picture of her, and her name."
Her name is Calliope. She will be our mystic when she is of age.
Without any warning, an image flashed in my mind, the "picture" I would need to Track the foal. Gangly long legs, pet.i.te head and ears, miniature nubbin of a golden horn. Her body was white as new snow, but her mane and tail were jet black, and she had black socks up to her knees on all four legs. A black star sat at the base of her horn. She was stunningly colored, and I knew without asking that she would be a prize mare in the tribe as she grew, regardless of her apparent status as an up and coming mystic.
I closed my eyes and Tracked her, tied myself into her threads. Her life force beat strong through me, humming lightly with an energy very different than the human children I Tracked. For lack of a better term, her threads vibrated, dancing and jumping about as if they were a true electrical pulse.
"Her name suits her. Is there anything else I should know?"
If I had more information, I would give it. Bring her home, Tracker, and you will have our loyalty past the day that you die.