Page 65 of Fortune's Blade

“Okay, okay, I was afraid of this,” Ray said, and I heard him that time, because he was holding something in front of my face. Something tasty. Something—

I grabbed it and stuffed it into my seemingly insatiable mouth.

“Is—is she alright?” someone asked, sounding worried.

“No, keep ‘em coming,” Ray said, and more little cakes appeared, every time I finished swallowing the last one. Ray did his best to keep pace with me, stripping the small items out of their cellophane covers almost as fast as I could eat them.

Almost.

I do not know how many I consumed, but judging by the scattered boxes and mountain of wrappers around my feet when I came back to myself, it was a lot. I stared at them numbly, feeling crumbs on my face that I was not currently strong enough to wipe away. If felt as if my stomach had commandeered all of the blood in my body and was not giving me access to any of it.

I did not understand why I was so hungry. If my memory was correct, I’d eaten a large part of several dragons, ripping through layers of fat and meat and bone, crushing it all under the force of my bite, and having the hot, rich blood run down my throat. It had felt delicious and satisfying at the time, like sweet, sweet victory.

Now, it made me want to throw up everything I had managed to get down.

They had been sapient and I had savaged them, and yes, eaten some of them, maybe a good deal of them; I couldn’t entirely remember. It had been like being in an animal’s mind, yet not. I had possessed a few of those in the past, and understood the simple, linear way they thought, but these weren’t animals and enough of their higher mind had remained that—

I was going to throw up.

“Okay, okay, over here,” Ray said, putting an arm around me before I collapsed and leading me somewhere. It was to a chair, a comfortable one that I hadn’t noticed before, perhaps because it was located on a small balcony. But not like any balcony I had ever seen, although not because of the space itself, but because—

“What is that?” I croaked, distracted by what appeared to be a furious sandstorm raging only a few yards away.

It was the reason for the shushing sound I’d been hearing, which was louder out here, but still strangely muffled, and none of it was touching us. I reached thoughtlessly toward it, despite knowing that there must be some kind of ward there keeping it back, because the glittering, golden bands were almost hypnotizing. But Ray grabbed my hand, pushing me gently but firmly back into the chair.

“Nope, nope, nope, let’s not do that,” he said, and then looked at someone behind us, back in the bedroom. “Where are those damned pixies? I’m almost outta oatmeal pies!”

“I’ll go get ‘em, boss,” somebody said, and I heard a door opening and closing, but didn’t feel well enough to wonder what that was all about.

“Yeah, I was afraid of this, too,” Ray said, as I started to shiver uncontrollably, and something touched my lips. I opened my eyes to see a glass with some water in it, and I obediently drank.

It seemed to help slightly.

“What is happening?” I croaked, as Ray settled into a chair beside me. He must have been out here before, because there were butts from the type of cigarettes he liked all over the small wooden table, and spilling out of a little glass bowl he was using as an ashtray.

I did not know where he’d gotten them, as we’d had none before this, but I was probably to blame for the mess. I vaguely remembered bumping the table when I sat down, and moved to help him pick up the butts with trembling hands, but he shooed me away. And did it himself, faster and more efficiently than I could have.

“You want more Little Debbies?” Someone asked, and I looked up to see one of Ray’s boys standing in the doorway to the bedroom, a box of fudge cakes in hand.

“No, damn it! I want those goddamned pixies to do their job and bring her something nutritious. She’s shaking from all the sugar already. Go help Dan hurry them up,” he added, naming another member of his family. This one was a handsome, Korean-looking man whose face I knew but whose name I didn’t recall, but he ran to obey.

“Why . . . are they here?” I asked, watching him go. “I thought you didn’t have family in Faerie.”

“I’m not supposed to,” Ray said sourly, wiping my lips with a handkerchief. His beard was gone, I noticed, and he had on new clothes. I must have been out for a while. “If I’d known the bastards were here, it would have saved me a lot of trouble,” he added. “The same amount I’m gonna cause them, soon as I get ‘em home.”

“I don’t understand.”

He sighed and sat down in the other chair. “You know I parked them at the senate, right?”

I shook my head. Then thought about it some more and nodded, because I seemed to remember something about Dory having to find a home for Ray’s family, once he became her Second. That made them part of her family as well, something that every other senator had, but that she had never before had to worry about as a dhampir.

Dhampirs couldn’t have children, neither of the body like humans nor of the blood like vampires. We were the end of a line, genetically speaking, something that sent a pang through my heart whenever I thought about it. So, I tried not to, and between that and the confusion of sharing a single body with a second consciousness, I had had little incentive to get to know Ray’s boys.

I recalled them vaguely, however, as a rag-tag bunch of sometime smugglers, sometime nightclub attendants who had been rather overwhelmed at the idea of joining the illustrious Basarab family.

“Good,” Ray said, watching me. “I’m not sure what you remember from the times Dory is in charge—it gets confusing. But as a senator, she has rooms at the consul’s place in New York, so I left ‘em there while I figured a few things out. They shoulda been happy—no real work to do, cushy surroundings, and no one is tapping them for the war. They had the life of Riley, right?”

I nodded. I found myself calming down somewhat the longer I sat. I usually found Ray’s presence soothing, even when he was yelling at me, and could listen to him tell stories like this all day long. It didn’t even seem to matter what he said; just the lilt and fall of his voice, and knowing that he was watching out for me were enough.

---