Crimson Veil

Page 3

The guards told me that Erin was out for the evening—she was off to a movie with friends—so I left a message for her to call me when she got home, and I pulled out of the driveway.
I glanced at the clock. Ten P.M. It felt odd not to be down at the Wayfarer at this time of night.
I knew I shouldn’t. I told myself not to, but I couldn’t help it. I drove by the ruins of my bar and parked outside the burnt-out shell. After a moment, I got out of the car and picked my way through the rubble, making my way into the hollow husk of the building. The sky had clouded over and the scent of rain hung heavy. It was the perfect night for walking in ruins.
As I stood on the threshold of what had been my bar, my stomach lurched. The Wayfarer was more than a business to me, more than my livelihood. It had given me a sense of purpose. It had become a friend.
And now that friend was as dead as Chrysandra. I started to turn away when I thought I saw something in the corner. I spun around, ready to defend myself. There, in the murky pile of sodden wood and plaster, hovered a faint white light. I could swear a face stared at me from the mist, but then it vanished as the lightning crashed overhead and the rain pounded down in a steady stream.
I gave one last glance in the corner, but there was nothing there. Heading back to my car, I wondered if I’d really seen anything. Was it a trick of the light? Something I expected to see, given the circumstances? Or had it been Chrysandra’s spirit? Was she unable to rest even though we’d done our best to free her spirit? Was she out wandering? Or maybe… maybe it was one of the others who had died. Feeling numb again, and weary, I climbed back in my Jag and headed for home.
The road out to Belles-Faire was slick, the water beading across it as the steady rain became a downpour. My wipers were going full steam and I was doing my best to see between the streams of water racing down my windshield. As I neared the turn that would take me to our house, a blur emerged at top speed from one of the driveways.
Fuck! Another car! And it wasn’t stopping!
I slammed on the brakes and the Jag began to spin. As I drove into the skid, trying to regain control, the other car loomed large and I realized it was headed straight for me. Holy fuck, this was bad—this was so bad. I considered jumping from the car—I could do it and live, but then my Jag would lose all control whatsoever.
So I did what I could. Muscles and reflexes took over as I attempted to gain control of the spinning car and steer it out of the path of the oncoming vehicle. The other car was in front of me now, skidding wildly across the wet asphalt. And then, everything blurred as my Jag spun into a crazy dance, directly into the other car’s embrace.
The crash was surprisingly muffled, but then a loud shriek filled the air as metal slid along metal and my airbag deployed. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer.
As my Jag slowly rolled to a stop, I realized that I was still sitting there, still intact. Instinct took over—and shaking, I forced my hands to unbuckle my seat belt, then struggled to open the door. I half climbed, half fell out of my car, stumbling out of the way. I’d seen too many movies where the cars went up in flames, and while I thought that might be more fiction than fact, I wasn’t taking any chances. Fire could destroy me.
After a pause, in which I struggled to make sense of what happened, I realized there were no flames. No explosion. I patted myself down. I was okay. Jarred but all right, I turned my attention to the other car as I pulled out my cell phone from my pocket and put in a call to 911.
The heel on my boot was broken, so I limped over and yanked open the driver door, which was a mangled mess. My strength allowed me to pry it loose, thank the gods, and with growing relief, I saw that the only passenger in the car seemed to be the driver—a youngish woman. But she looked unconscious, and I could only pray that she wasn’t dead.
Chapter 2
I leaned in to feel for a pulse. The scent of blood hung lightly in the air and, right off, I could see the woman had sustained several cuts from broken glass, though none of them looked like they were bleeding out.
While the adrenaline rush of fear didn’t work on me the same way it did for someone who was alive, the psychological aspects were still there and they set me on edge. My thirst rose at the scent of blood, but I pushed it down, burying it as I took her hand in mine and felt for the beat of her pulse.
There… yes, strong, if a little fast. The emergency dispatcher had said a unit would be here in minutes, and I tried to gauge whether she needed help before then. But at that moment, the woman jerked back as she opened her eyes and sucked in a deep breath.
“You’re alive.” She stared at me.
“Yeah, I lucked out. How are you? Can you move? The cops are on the way, along with fire department and an ambulance.”
She frowned and began to shift, trying to get out from behind the steering wheel, which had been pushed toward her. “You’ve already called them then?”
I eased the seat back—luckily the controls still worked—and offered her my hand. “Yes, I figured I’d better. They’ll be here in a few minutes. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head and, ignoring my hand, slid out of the SUV, easing past the skewed metal frame. I stood to the side as she struggled away from the twisted auto.
When she had fully stepped away from the car, I realized she was Fae. Which probably accounted for her being more shaken than hurt.
She eyed me up and down. “Well, that was exciting. You’re sure you’re all right?” Her jacket hung oddly on her and she didn’t look terribly pulled together. The jeans and motorcycle boots beneath the soccer-mom camel coat didn’t jive.
Slowly, I edged back. “I’m fine. Shaken, but okay.”
“Good. Very good.”
As I glanced at her, rain pounded down, illuminated by the streetlights on the side of the road, and I could have sworn that she was scowling. Oh yeah. Alarm bells, for sure. But then again, could the alarms be ringing because I was already having a horrible week?
“Maybe we should move away from the cars, just in case there’s a gas leak.” I wanted to ask her what happened—why she’d been screeching out of the driveway so fast. But all the insurance agencies warned against saying anything about the actual accident, and I doubted if she was going to admit her fault.
She followed me, but stood a respectful distance as I put in a call to Bowman’s Towing. My Jag had a lot of what looked like superficial damage—a lot of scrapes and the passenger door looked dented where I’d slammed into her. It would take a complete inspection to figure out just what kind of a mess I was looking at. If she’d hit me at a slightly different angle, my car would have been totaled and I could have easily either gone up in flames, or been skewered by some piece of metal.
But the SUV… when she had glanced off my car, she’d spun and hit into the concrete retaining wall, which had caved in the driver’s side of her vehicle.
“Seems we’ve had quite the little adventure.” She sounded almost disappointed.
“Yeah. But I’d rather get my adventure from somewhere else.” I gave her the once-over. Something wasn’t tracking right. “I’m Menolly D’Artigo.”
She nodded. “Eisha te Kana.” After a pause, she added, “You sure you’re okay?”
Why did she keep asking that? It wasn’t like I could sustain any real internal injuries. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“Good. You know, I have to be somewhere in a hurry. Let me give you my insurance information, and then, if I can still drive that hunk of metal, I’ll be off.” She headed back to her car.
I was about to protest—there was no way in hell that she could get the SUV going again, but paused, something nagging the back of my brain. Then it hit me—why wasn’t she running up to her house? She’d pulled out of a driveway. So either she lived there, or had been visiting a friend. Either way, wouldn’t she go up there to let someone know what had happened?
She was OW Fae for sure, her name told me that much. Back in Otherworld I was Menolly Rosabelle te Maria. But we were a long ways from home, and on this dark, rain-slicked road, Otherworld might as well be a million miles away.
As I said, back in Otherworld, I’m Menolly Rosabelle te Maria. The mother’s first name is always the child’s last name among our Fae kin. But when we came over here to Earthside, my sisters and I chose to use our mother’s last name for our surname, so here, I’m Menolly D’Artigo.
My sisters and I are half-human from our mother’s blood. And we’re half-Fae on our father’s side. Unfortunately, our mother died when we were small, and our father, Sephreh ob Tanu, is currently missing and presumed dead.
We work for the OIA—the Otherworld Intelligence Agency. At first we were ostensibly sent over Earthside due to our poor performance evaluations. In reality, Camille’s supervisor—Lathe—was out for retaliation since she wouldn’t blow him. He bided his time, plotting his revenge, until he was finally able to get rid of her—and us. However, sometimes there’s a silver lining. After a couple years here, and all too many battles, we now run the Earthside division. I’m not sure whatever happened to Lathe, but I have a feeling he’s dead. If we were lucky, maybe some pissed off agent killed him. Whatever the case, he was a prick. One better off out of the gene pool.
During the time Camille worked for him, we were with the YIA—the Y’Elestrial Intelligence Agency. Y’Elestrial being our home city-state. But then, when the OIA was formed and the portals ES opened, Lathe assigned her transfer. He finagled Delilah’s and my transfers, too. We spent a year training on the cultures, habits, and other features of our mother’s people.
So a little more about us. Camille is the oldest. She was born a witch, but thanks to her half-human heritage, her natural powers fritz out at all the wrong times. She’s also a priestess of the Moon Mother, and she’s married to three men: Smoky, a dragon; Morio, a youkai-kitsune who is teaching her death magic; and lastly, but not least, her third husband is Trillian, a Svartan—one of the dark and charming Fae. Camille studies with the Queen of Shadow and Night, out at the ES sovereign Fae nation.
Delilah is our middle sister. A two-faced werecat, her natural Were form is that of a gorgeous golden tabby, long hair with billowing pantaloons. She’s not too good at controlling her shifting in tabby cat form—again the half-human thing. But the Autumn Lord turned her into one of his Death Maidens and she developed a secondary ability to transform into a black panther. The Autumn Lord has decreed that she will one day bear his living child, via proxy father by her lover and fiancé, Shade, who is half–shadow dragon, half-Stradolan—or shadow walker.
Delilah had a twin. Our sister Arial died at birth—we never knew about her till after we moved over ES. Arial lives at Haseofon, the temple of the Death Maidens, emerging only in spirit leopard form. She drops by to help us on occasion, mostly during battles. Delilah was very naïve for a long time, but living Earthside has cured her of that and she’s growing up strong and capable.
And then there’s me, the youngest. Before I was turned into a vampire, I was a jian-tu, an acrobat and spy for the YIA. Hampered by my mixed-breed heritage, I lost control at a crucial moment and landed—literally—in the middle of a nest of vampires. Meaning I fell from my hidey-hole in the cavern roof. Dredge, the worst vamp in OW history, caught me. He tortured and raped me, then turned me. After that, he sent me home, a maddened, crazed creature, to destroy my family.
Luckily, Camille had her wits about her and stopped my attack. The YIA, embarrassed by their fuck-up—they’d sent me in without backup—decided to rehabilitate me rather than stake me. So here I am.
When we were sent Earthside, we thought we’d be pulling a long, leisurely sabbatical, exiled to an out-of-the-way pit stop where we couldn’t fuck up. Little did we know that Shadow Wing, Demon Lord of the Subterranean Realms, was planning a coup on Earth and Otherworld.
He aims to raze both ES and OW to the ground and make them his private stomping grounds. And he’s leading the war on two fronts. Telazhar, his necromancer general in Otherworld, is decimating the land as he leads his army of sorcerers in a war to rival the Scorching Wars of millennia ago. And over here, well… we’re not sure what Shadow Wing’s next step is. But I’m pretty sure we’re going to find out before long.
Eisha clutched her purse as she crossed to my side. The sheets of rain had became a torrential downfall, and she was shivering.
“Do you mind if I sit in your car for a moment? I need to call a friend.”
Shrugging, I nodded. “Get in. It’s cold and you’re going to freeze your ass off while we wait for the cops to get here.” I slid back into the driver’s seat, pushing the airbag out of the way. She did the same on the passenger’s side. I wasn’t sure what to say next. I was already being sued once, and I didn’t relish any more legal problems. And she really didn’t seem all that friendly.
“So you’re from Otherworld? Whereabouts?”
She blinked. “I guess you would recognize that I am. I’ve been over here for about eighteen months. I’m originally from Ceredream. I’m here studying comparative Earthside cultures.”
A lot of budding anthropologists from OW came over to study ES cultures. It was a convenient way to take a long vacation to an exotic land and get educational credit for it.
The arrival of a police cruiser—from the FH-CSI, since I’d called them—saved me from any more small talk. I hurried out of the car, telling Eisha to stay where she was. No use both of us getting soaked through, and she would feel the cold more than I. The officer was Kane—one I recognized—and I ran down what had happened.