Once Lost Lords (Royal Scales, Book 1) (6 page)

His half coherent effort only shot me a few feet off to the side. A
lifetime of being thrown helped me remember to land on my side and
clench my jaw. I stood up, arm tingling from the lock. Using my
undamaged hand, I managed to grab the cross and get it into position
out front.

That was the hard part.

A few worthless street lamps couldn’t light up the area like
the cross did. That glow had never been a part of television
documentaries or mentioned by any vampires. I was fairly sure it was
all in my head. Another strange aspect of my own abilities. Out of
all the people I knew, the only time it illuminated any color was in
my hands.

My head throbbed. Side ached. Eyes were shooting around the parking
lot taking in all the details. I felt each footstep roll against
asphalt. Bits of dirt and grime ground along the rubbery under soles.
These vampires had attacked me in my territory. My home was close and
I felt that extra sense open up completely, something that hadn’t
happened in a long time. Years.

I straightened fingers around the modified knuckles to get a better
grip. My neck cracked and I stalked to the already wounded vampire.
Belief was something I had, not in God, but in defending what’s
mine.

“Mine.”

The word magnified inside my head, drumming along with a heavy pulse
of rage. My heartbeat would be like a dinner bell to the Vampires,
further screwing them. It was like a mouse attacking the cat.

Ribs hurt from where I’d landed, but not enough to hinder my
bull rush into the first vampire. I carried him backward, slamming
abruptly into a wall. One fist repeatedly lifted and descended while
I kept the cross on my necklace facing him. Even numb, there was a
satisfying crack to each punch.

Mine. My area. Violation. Invaders. Unwelcome ticks. Wait.
Other one. Feel feet slam. Figure charges from behind. Heavier than
my current victim.

I whipped the first one into the second one. If he had been standing
still then the partial vampire could have dodged, but I caught him
while he was moving. They crumpled together in a sad heap. Following
behind the tossed vampire, I slammed a booted foot into the second
one’s groin. Pain couldn’t stop the combination of rage
and steel toed boots from doing their worst to his crotch. Ask any
obsessed woman, vampires are fully functional. Ask any man, of any
species, being kicked in the package hurts.

Stomping the foot back down sent a second shock of pain spiraling up
my spine. That little jolt wouldn’t stop me. One hand reached
out to grip the vampire’s head before he fell backward. I
ripped the cross off of its chain with the other hand and palm it
quickly. Then I slammed the symbol into the other side of his head.
Treating my hands like a vice, I laid the pressure on. Heat flowed
into my palm and radiated down my arm, but this time the pain wasn’t
for me, only his flesh burned.

My turf. My home. My area. A heartbeat thumped, drum-like,
rapid. Neck pulsed against the air. Ticks hiss in frustration.
Fingers claw against my skin.

“Jay!” Kahina yelled behind me, startling my senses. I
dropped the vampire. His face now bore a blistering scar that would
likely become a full-time feature on his face.

Heels clicked as Kahina closed the distance between us. No matter how
much space, in miles or time, my thoughts always came back to her.
For years, the fear of home had kept me away. Coming back was like
closing a four-year gap in perceptions for a brief moment. Across
that distance of time was a woman I’d once felt strongly about.

“Jay.” My hand curled around the cross blocking the
reddish light. Kahina was close enough to hear. Her slow breaths were
being used to taste the air.

Should I attack Kahina too? Should I stay on the offensive? God help
me if I had to fight her. I didn’t want to hit her, not because
she was a woman, but because it was her. She had been mine.

I should never have come back.

She trailed a finger along my arm sending chills throughout. More
memories floated up from the motion. Her trail continued down my
other hand. Her hand spread over the knuckles, across skin that split
and still bled. That tantalizing finger scooped up a drop of blood
and tasted it. I heard a gasp of pleasure.

“Catnip, it is you.”

I was still looking away from Kahina, at the two slowly recovering
vampires. He wasn’t healing as fast this time. A few more deep
breaths passed before I trusted myself to say anything. The word mine
underlined each thought.

“Couldn’t just say hi?” My words came.

“You never said goodbye, so I’m not sure you deserve a
hello.” She was close enough to almost curl along my back. One
hand on my shoulder. Shoving the cross in her face would be a clear
message. Only the scent of peppermint gave me pause. A pleasant purr
of memories that tried to resurface.

“I’m going to bed.” It was a mundane statement.

“Did you want company?” She asked.

I turned around in anger.

“You’re the reason I left in the first place, did you
think I would come back to you the minute I got home?” I failed
to curb my shouting.

Kahina was serious. I saw her face, it was an odd mix of hopeful and
vulnerable. Her eyelids blinked slowly, covering crimson irises then
revealing them like a rose blooming.

“Why not? You belong to me.” As if she couldn’t
comprehend why I’d say no.

“I’m not even close to ready. I don’t know if I’ll
ever be.” Not if it went anything like the last time she’d
tried to bond with me.

“You will not leave again.” Her voice and features
shifted in an instant. Her eyes lost that coy aspect and the words
were icy.

I looked around at the ground, at the area. At what I considered mine
and replayed what happened a few times in my brain.

“I’m not leaving again.”

That much was certain but nothing more. Not right now, maybe never.
Keeping it together out here was growing difficult. I gave one of the
vampires another swift kick and turned away. Kahina let me leave
without further incident.

The adrenaline wore off as I stumbled down the stairs. Shaking
started once I passed my makeshift wall of wards. Sleep came in off
and on bursts for the rest of the night, I couldn’t shake the
feeling that Kahina may have tried to kill me. Again.

An unsteady rhythm of irritation banged out against a wall shattering
my already fitful sleep.

“Wake your ass up, or I’m coming down there! Jay!”

Half asleep, my senses had unfurled across the apartment. Heavy boots
pressed against the upstairs floorboards. The voice was male. His
stretches and pauses in cadence took time to filter into words. Feet
paced away from the basement door, then back and pounding started up
again.

“Hold on!” I think I yelled it back. It was hard to tell,
since what felt like cotton was lodged in every orifice I had.

What time was it? I tried to stand up and slipped to the floor. My
entire body felt woozy, wanting nothing more than to go back to bed
until I felt rested enough to stop the jelly feeling. I made it to
the stairs, proud I managed enough coordination to get clothes on. My
hair a bit mussed, but short enough that no one would really notice.

“Coming, stop, pounding.” My words were broken and half
incoherent.

“Open that god damn barricade, man.” I could make out a
mocking voice upstairs. His vibrations made more sense now. Daniel
had never been patient.

I reached the final few steps and opened the door. I took a careful
back step to avoid being hit by the door or falling backward. There
wasn’t enough room to open the door outwards so it had been put
in with a set of joints swinging inside.

On the other side was Daniel, in a suit that could have passed for
the one he had on before. Daniel was the type of man that had an
entire closet of suits all pressed and ready to go, each one a
pristine clone of the first.

“What the hell do you want?” I demanded.

“Gotta track that elf. I went out to his place and he’s
gone.” Daniel set about pacing while waiting for my mind to
catch up. He had always been wound tight.

“Not my job.”

“Just a direction, man, anything,” He said.

“What’s so important about a cold case?” My friend
was moving too fast. I wanted to put a hand on his head and hold him
still while we talked.

“I ran some searches at work for the elf. His name must have
been on someone’s list, less than thirty minutes later my boss
is knocking on my door asking what’s up.” Daniel’s
face pinched from a sour thought. I stared a moment trying to wind
the whole conversation through my sleep addled brain.

“And?” I asked.

“And I may have mentioned I had a link between the two and
showed the picture.” I groaned at his words. “They gave
me the go-ahead to pursue the elf and bring him in if I could still
find him.”

“He’s gone?” Giving my meal ticket to Daniel had
resulted in a vanishing act.

“I tried to talk to him that afternoon, found him easy enough,
nervous guy. You scared the hell out of him with the hair thing.”

I chuckled a bit at that and pushed past Daniel to the top of the
house, looking for the kitchen, I was starving.

“You’ve got to help me, man. Tell me you have something
more than the picture to link the two.”

“The picture that had my fingerprints on it?” Giving
Daniel the picture had been a mistake already coming back to bite me
in the ass. Fingerprints were a thing, right? I should sit down and
study some criminal forensics. Maybe the government didn’t run
around testing everything in the universe.

“They’ll never check that, don’t worry.”

“The hair?” Something Daniel had already confirmed was in
my possession. More than enough for my kind of link. Daniel was
already nodding as I caught up. My thought process was going faster
with proximity to the fridge.

“Yeah, the hair. Do your thing and give me a location.”
He said in a rush.

“Leave me out?” I asked.

“You know it, man, we got too much history for me to blow it up
over a case.” Daniel was basically a giant, overactive fuzzy
red puppy.

I grumbled and checked for anything edible. Inside the fridge, I
found two hamburgers sitting on separate plates. Neither of which had
been there last night.

“What time is it?”

“Two something.” Daniel rattled a chain link watch a bit
and looked at it. “Thirty-four.”

I mouthed in confusion behind the refrigerator door. Two dinners
waiting for me threw me off. Someone had been inside the apartment.
Not that the top floor upset me like downstairs might have.

“You alright?” He asked.

“I guess.” Both burgers went onto one plate then into the
microwave. My mouth was already drooling at the thought of cooked
meat.

“So?”

“Food first.” I waved him away while staring at the
spinning plate.

“Sure. I’ll be outside, don’t go back to bed again
or I’ll barge down there.” My front door clicked shut as
the agent left. Daniel probably stayed upstairs because he remembered
how much I disliked people coming down. Last time he invaded I threw
a fit. There was still a hole in the plaster that had never been
patched up from the tantrum.

A half hour later I was cleaner and not quite as hungry. Deprivation
still twisted my belly. I would need more soon, but there was an
agent to deal with. Daniel was in his car with trashy dance mixes
playing. His hands flipped through pages on a file and a laptop
powered on inside the car. I had already found the elf. Tracking was
easy between the lock of hair and empty lipstick container.

Daniel rolled down the window after I knocked.

“He’s at a hotel outside of town, looks rattled. Acted
like he was watching over his shoulder.” It was what he wanted,
and getting Daniel on his way would allow me to go hunt for more
food.

“Got an address?”

“Caesars Junction Hotel,” The sign had been overly gaudy.
“North. Close to a freeway.” I gave him the room number
from my vision. Giant embossed letters that had been nailed into
flimsy wood.

“Perfect, man. Get some minutes on your phone and I won’t
have to drop by unannounced.” Daniel had to trash my little
prepaid mobile. The thing had two features, calling out and dropping
calls.

“Call Julianne, she’ll pass it back.”

“Right.” He was already closing folders and piling them
into the passenger seat. The engine fired up and he was off again.
Daniel was taking this case seriously.

My stomach growled as a reminder that Daniel’s problems weren’t
mine. There were places nearby that I had scoped out since my return.
I picked the one with the best barbecue and set about eating a late
lunch. A half rack of ribs made the world bearable. I threw down some
money to cover the bill and headed back to Julianne’s. It was
time to start keeping myself busy again.

Just outside the door was a familiar elf. Not the one I had been
tracking, this was umbrella beer the pointy eared. He had two drinks
and was trying to navigate the door. Tired desperation lined his
feature, like a druggie trying to escape with a fix. The female and
her waggling tongue was nowhere in sight.

“Double fisting it today?” I grabbed the door for him and
tried to act cheery.

Umbrella Beer glared at me. Warning bells went off upstairs. This guy
wasn’t the friendly type. I shrugged and went inside to find
Julianne. The elf followed.

“And who, exactly, are you?” Top ten on my list of
questions never to answer. Especially from an elf.

“Don’t worry, we all got weaknesses.” I was trying
to play it off now. “Julianne, what’s my weakness?”
I shouted down the hallway trying to drag in a witness.

“Dark chocolate!” She shouted back down the hallway,
headed on her way out.