“You just leave that so-called Master MacManus to me. Marlus, underlord will not be
waylaid in this. Understand, little man? It is in your best interest that I succeed. If I fail, you fail as well.”
When the voices went silent after a bit Tess stayed where she was until she was very sure they were actually gone. Then she leaned unsteadily against the stone wall and tried to think what she should do now.
Tess no longer worked for the queen and had not for some time. While she felt no loyalty toward her, Tess still had a keen sense of responsibility. If Tess told the Fates then she knew that they would tell the queen. Tess did not see any way of getting out of a face-to-face with the queen, however, and that more than anything would keep her from talking.
Turning to go back the way she had come, the outing now ruined for her, she made her way to the mouth of the cave. Nathaniel was there waiting for her.
“I thought you’d be gone by now. Gone back to the human world, I mean. Don’t you have
friends there, a job?”
“You’re here. I have a case to settle, but I need only to write my findings. With the death of Manchester, thanks to you, the case is closed unless he wasn’t alone. Why did you leave our bed, Tess?”
“It’s my bed and I wanted to clear my head—it’s my only day off this week. You shouldn’t really concern yourself with what I do and don’t do. Didn’t you tell me once before that you didn’t need or want a mate? Well, I don’t want one either and, no matter what the Fates have said, I won’t be taking you.” She started down the hill toward the orchard and he kept pace with her. She did not run, though she wanted to. So she walked as she normally did when she had nowhere to be and no one to report to for a change, a pace that ate up the ground fairly fast.
“Tess, we really need to talk about our bond. Because I drank from you, as my mate, I can no longer feed from anyone else but my maker and he is dead. I’ll need to be where you are.”
“I’m well aware of what I have to do to accommodate your needs, Nathaniel. Why don’t I just meet you somewhere and you can feed from me when you’re…you know, hungry? That way you can go on with your life and I can mine. That’s the way you wanted it in the first place, isn’t it? At least until Athropos blackmailed you. You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had just not fed me the first go around.”
She had not meant for it to come out so mean, but she could not keep the conversation she had overheard in the caves from popping up and distracting her.
“So you have no intentions of completing this bond between us, do you? I thought that once we were together you’d change your mind. I never thought you to be a coward, Tess. And what I said before was wrong of me. I, at least, am willing to admit that.”
“You have no right to think anything of me; you don’t know me any more than the Fates do.
You’re the one who wanted this bond, not me. I refuse to move my life around to suit you or the Fates. Now, do you need me to meet you somewhere to feed every day or not?” She knew she had gone too far the moment he looked down at her. She had told him it would not work. She had told him not to do it. His anger was rolling off him in heated waves and touched her skin like a torch.
“I’ll contact you when I need you. When I find your friend, Albadar, I’ll have him take me home and I’ll also make sure he has my cell phone number so you can contact me. Since you keep a tight hold on your mind and enjoy keeping me out it’s the only way I know you can reach me. I should probably have yours as well, unless you’d rather I just waited until you got around to contacting me when you think I should need you.” He looked off into the distance and then back down at her. “Things could be so different between us, Tess, if you had only allowed it. If you need me…well, I’ll be seeing you around.”
He turned on his heel and left her standing there. She stared after him until he was out of sight then she simply dropped to the ground on her knees. Tilting back her head to look at the sky she let the momentum pull her back and she landed on her back in the grass. She hurt. Her chest felt as though it had been crushed and she had been the one doing it.
Tess watched the clouds without seeing them. Birds flew over her head in singles and in groups and she barely noticed. If asked, Tess would not have been able to tell anyone what she was feeling nor why the tears streamed down her cheeks. Closing her eyes, she fell into a dreamless sleep. It was the perfect way to make the sudden pain in her chest go away.
Sometime later a shadow crossed Tess and woke her up. She stared up at the stranger to these lands for a few minutes before it spoke softly, telepathically through Tess’s mind.
“You’re Tess Knight, are you not? The queen has sent me to locate you. She has been
hoping for some time now to speak with you, Lady Knight, if you please.”
Tess sat up slowly and wondered how the messenger mist had found her. Then decided that she did not care; it was here now and she needed to deal with it. If she did not, then it would follow her everywhere until it delivered the message and took one back to the sender.
The messenger did not have a form, but was literally a cloud of energy that only looked like mist. The messenger was from one of the sacred mountains in Molavonta that bordered one side of the castle. To form a messenger mist a person needed to have a pure heart and an opened mind. The messenger would serve only the magical creature that formed it and would do so until their maker died. This one was a beautiful shade of light pink, which made it about three thousand years old. The brighter the color, the younger they were. This one had probably been serving the queen since it had been formed by her.
“Tell your queen that she and I have said all we need to. And that I wish that she would leave me alone. I have moved on with my life and she should as well. And that I would die happy if she would just fuck off.”
Tess felt the being looking down at her with disapproval. She was sure that if it had a face it would be staring with wide eyes and opened mouth. She guessed they did not get many people telling them no when the queen sent a request or she summoned them.
“I cannot say that to my mistress, Lady Knight! She will be most displeased when I tell her that you do not wish to speak to her. I cannot think that she would be overly happy if I tell her that as well.”
Tess rose to her feet and the being backed up. Tess could not harm the creature, but if they touched for too long it could absorb a lot of energy from Tess. She would not die, but she would be very weak for some time.
“Just tell your mistress that I am not coming to speak to her and for her to leave me alone.
She has nothing to say to me that I wish to hear and I don’t want to hear her try.” Moving a few feet away Tess bowed low before the messenger. “Goodbye now.”
The messenger rose high in the sky in a long stream of pale pink then shot away toward the distant mountain tops.
~~~
Nathaniel sat at his desk for another hour before he pushed the print button on his computer.
He watched as the printer spewed out the report and the photos from the robbery/crime scene.
The disc with the camera footage was still in his drive and he sat up slightly to pull it out and put it into the case.
The crime boys had taken all the footage from all the cameras in the bank job and pieced them together into a long, continuous video for the file. It followed the eight men into the bank and filmed as each one of them met their death one by one by Tess’s hand. She had never hesitated, nor had she flinched from anything or anyone while she took out the men, not even when she had been shot. The only deaths that Tess had had nothing to do with where the bank manager and Manchester himself, just as she had said. Manchester had first killed Thomas then later turned the gun on himself. There was no sound on the tapes from the bank, but it was obvious that Manchester had been in a great deal of pain just before he had done it.
There was no doubt in Nathaniel’s mind that Tess had cared nothing for herself. She did not care if she lived or died at any point in the entire rescue. And if her taking on the armed men had not proven it, then watching her crawl away from help just before the police stormed the bank told it all. She had not been trying to get to help, but rather get away from it.
“Tremont! You’re wanted in the office, ASAP. Boss wants to see you.”
Nathaniel looked up at the other agent, nodded once, and stood. But not before slipping the disc that he had taken out of his computer and slipping it into his pocket.
He had already taken care of the lab boys who had put it together. He had had them make another version of the information that did not include Tess’s face. It had taken him nearly four hours of re-edits to get it just right, and in the end he was satisfied no one would ever know Tess Knight was even in the bank. Not even the customers she had rescued knew that a lone woman had saved them, having never seen Tess at all.
“Want to tell me what the hell this is supposed to mean?”
Nathaniel caught the file tossed at him by his superior as soon as he walked into the office.
He closed the door and opened the file. Sitting down, Nathaniel looked over at Special Agent Donaldson and sighed. He had hoped to leave without having to do this, but apparently not.
“I believe you can read as well as I can. It’s my resignation, effective immediately. I told you last month this was my final case. You can’t possibly be surprised by this.” He tossed the file back on the desk.
“I’m surprised by the fact that you can even spell resignation. Now tell me the real reason you’re quitting. That says personal reasons. Can’t be too personal if you won’t tell your best friend.”
“What makes you think…ah hell, Justin, I’ve met my mate and I want to be with her. But I have to convince her that she wants to be with me.”
Justin was a human and his best friend, as he had said. They had met while they had worked a crime scene together one night and Justin had been shot. Nathaniel, knowing that the young man had a new family, could not let him die. He had done something he had done for very few people in all his thirteen hundred years; he had opened his vein for a stranger. Justin had remembered, something very few others have done. Nathaniel had thought about trying to adjust his memories again, but had decided that he liked the man knowing. It was nice to have someone else to talk to for a change.
“Yeah, I can see her point. You are sort of ugly and homely-looking. Could be that she has better taste than you think. I like the girl already…it is a girl, right? What sort of things have you tried, to convince her that she needs you? Brow beat her? Pistol whip her? While those can be enjoyable pastimes under certain circumstances, they are not necessarily all that good when you want a woman to fall in love with you.”
“Of course it’s a girl, you moronic asshole. You make it sound like you think this is entirely my fault. How do you know that I wasn’t my charming self and she is the one pistol whipping me?” Nathaniel asked with a bite of anger.
“'Cause I know you. You can be a bully when you need to be, you can sometimes be pushy when the occasion warrants it, but charming you are not. Let me guess, you told her this is the way it was going to be and you probably used the line, ‘it’ll be good, you’ll see,’ right?” Justin leaned back in his chair and it was everything Nathaniel could do not to knock him backwards.
“So? What’s your point? It will be good if she would just do it my way.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew he had done just that. And by the look on his friend’s face, he did as well.
“I’m thinking I’ll accept this resignation and let you go. I’ll miss you, but I think you need this woman in your life much more than you need this job. Find her, my friend, and tell her you’re sorry. And then tell her that every hour of every day until she believes you or kills you.
And then name your firstborn after me.”
Nathaniel left knowing he needed to find Tess.
~Chapter 8~
“Sire, there is a man here to see you. He said that he has some important news to tell you.
He said that his name is Tribuin. Shall I show him in?” Duncan asked Aaron.
“Of course. Take him to the half room. I’ll be down soon. Has Sara left yet to get the children?”
“Yes, sire, she has gone to get the little ones from school. I will bring in some refreshments.
This man, he is vampire I believe, and has two men with him. Bodyguards, he called them.”
~~~
“My lady, a demon imp has entered the home of MacManus. There are three of them and
two more shadowed. The missus is not in residence, nor are the children. I believe them to be at the school. The other two people of the house are in the kitchen. What would you like for us to do?”
Tess tensed. She had sent three of her men to the MacManus household the next night after what she had heard in the cave. They were not to engage, but to watch at all times. Since there were a few day walkers in the house she had sent someone to watch any vehicle that left and to watch over the lair during the day. It had taken three extra men to keep up with the family’s comings and goings. She had also been informed that the vampire Tremont had left four days ago and had not returned since. She knew this was it and needed to act quickly if she were to save the master vampire.
“Gather twenty men. I want you to take five more men and, when I give the word, gather the mate and children and take them to the household quickly. I want another three to keep the ones that are usually in the kitchen safe and out of harm’s way. Tell five of them to watch the perimeter. The rest will be with me. Shamus, good work.”
“Oh, and the vampire is back. He just arrived as the demon did. What shall I do with him?”
Damn it, Nathaniel was back. Now what? she thought, then she realized that he would either be a help or not, but right now she did not have time to think about it.
“Take three more men—experienced men—with you. He is old and will have powers that
younger men won’t be able to combat. And Shamus, tell them not to harm him or they’ll answer to me, understand?”