Page 1 of Ivory's Familiars

CHAPTER ONE

Another bar. Another town. Another shitty job, Seth thought, raising the dark ale to his lips and taking a healthy swallow. Sometimes his resentment over his current situation got to him. He had a purpose and it wasn’t that of a travelling vagrant. But, he supposed, if he was ever going to find what he was looking for then he had to keep moving – and working. If he didn’t work, he didn’t get paid. And if he didn’t get paid, he and his colleagues couldn’t afford the constant travel, endless dreary bars and craptastic takeaway meals they subjected their bodies to every day. He knew the others had pretty much given up on their original mission, thinking the chances of finding what they sought decreased as the years went by. But he believed the opposite; the more places they eliminated, the closer they got to finding the right one.

So, although his soul yearned to fulfil its true purpose, he contented himself with his current day job – a bodyguard for hire. They weren’t due to meet their newest client until the following day, thus their current location. Not that it bothered him. They were seated in a booth in a surprisingly homey and clean bar. If he wasn’t mistaken, the seats were real leather in an appealing deep burgundy that set off the rich tones in the darkly stained wooden table tops. The flooring was real stonework in a mixture of greys, blues, and pale green, with the walls being an unusual mix of exposed brick, interspersed with artwork and artefacts.

The large bar stretched in an elegant horseshoe shape and featured more of those real stones as the base and a smooth, shiny, dark granite for the top. Tall stools lined the bar, tables were spread out evenly in the spacious area, bypassing where the solo pool table, jukebox, and small stage was situated. Six booths on either side of the room completed the seating arrangements and were already quite full even though it wasn’t yet six in the evening, indicating the small, out of the way bar in the middle of the mountains was quite popular. To Seth’s mind, it was the perfect combination of modern and rustic charm. He also approved of the name: The Hex Bar. It was the whole reason why he had chosen this particular establishment … and also the reason why Vaughn was currently brooding into his Guinness in the corner.

Vaughn didn’t have much of a sense of humour – but Seth was working on that. However, given he had known the other man for over ten years now and had seen little to no comedic improvement in that time, he figured his chances of success were minute. Seth didn’t really mind. He happened to find the broody look rather attractive. Actually, he found everything about the man attractive from his dirty blond hair, bright green eyes, and chiselled jaw line, down to his broad shoulders, tapered waist, and size twelve feet. And really, his temperamental personality and surly attitude were more than compensated by Ronan – his other colleague.

Although not as outwardly friendly or flirtatious as himself, Ronan was at least a decent conversationalist – and easy-going to boot. His boy-next-door good looks of green eyes, messy brown hair, dimpled cheeks and six-foot-one tightly muscled frame, made him one delicious package of maleness. His own appearance wasn’t too shabby –even if I say so myself, Seth thought. He was tall and ripped with short black hair … and green eyes. The green eyes were a shared trait amongst the three of them, although they were all slightly different in their tones, with Vaughn’s being the brightest and his being the darkest. Ronan’s were a happy medium between them – much like his personality.

The green eyes were pretty much a given for his kind and the three of them were often mistaken for brothers because of them – a fact that always creeped him out given their sleeping arrangements. They were witches’ familiars who shared their spirit with the black panther – black jaguar to be exact. Hence, their feline green eyes – and all that purring during the night. Nope, no tame little black house cats as human law would have everyone believe. The three of them were predators, pure and simple and born to protect and aid the witches of the world. Thus, Seth’s amusement, Ronan’s resignation, and Vaughn’s anger over the name of the bar. They knew all too well that hexes were in fact real, and that’s exactly what had Seth pushing a loudly protesting Vaughn, and an eye-rolling Ronan into the drinking establishment only ten minutes prior. Okay, so maybe it was in poor taste but Seth had to get his kicks somewhere. And given his buddies insisted on going out for drinks instead of spending the evening in their dinky hotel room as he had voted for, he had stubbornly insisted on this watering hole for the evening.

“This place is nice, huh?” he asked his companions cheerily.

Vaughn’s response was typically non-verbal; a deep frown in the direction of the artwork on the wall next to their booth – a pentacle – followed by a deep drink from the cold glass he held.

Ronan was a wee bit more vocal, admitting; “It’s far nicer than most of the places we drink at. You have to give the owner credit for authenticity.”

“Authenticity my arse! There’s a fucking cauldron in the corner!” Vaughn declared.

Seth cast his green eyes to the object in question sitting quite happily in the front corner of the room. It was a large, aged-looking iron cauldron, sitting squat on three small but sturdy legs. A sign in a fancy cursive script above it declared it a ‘wishing cauldron’, prompting customers to throw in their spare coins and make a wish. Seth thought it was rather enterprising of the owner and it actually looked quite legit – if witches still used such a thing of course. Most modern-day witches didn’t use big cauldrons like those, but they did use smaller versions in order to mix herbs and such for their spells – particularly hedge witches. He shrugged;

“Well, I think it adds to the overall atmosphere.”

Vaughn drained his glass, thunking it quite noisily onto the table, “Must you always be so happy?” he demanded.

“Must you always be so grumpy?” he smiled back, sweetly.

“He wasn’t so grumpy this morning when he woke up to my mouth on his dick,” Ronan commented, almost idly, “And you weren’t so happy when you woke up and my mouthwasn’ton your dick,” he pointed out.

Seth laughed out loud at that, nudging Vaughn with his shoulder when the older man coughed out a laugh too. His grin highlighted his sharp cheekbones and his eyes lightened prettily in his mirth. Vaughn really was a good-looking son of a bitch and even he wasn’t immune to the good nature of Ronan. He was their resident mediator and politician – always knowing the right thing to say and the right time to say it. He was a master at balancing Seth’s own perkiness with Vaughn’s pig-headedness.

He winked at Ronan, both in thanks for the timely banter and also in flirtation, “Thanks for reminding me that you owe me a blowjob.”

Ronan opened and closed his mouth for a moment before shrugging, “It’s a hard job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

The three of them laughed at the very deliberate pun, and Seth felt them all finally relax. It had been a long drive to the small town at the base of the Seregil mountains and they had just come off another job without any downtime in between. But the woman who had hired them had seemed desperate to get them here as soon as humanly possible. So, they had finished up with their small-time businessman and his psychotic ex-wife just the evening before and had driven the ten hours to Hadleigh in order to meet up with their new mystery client the following day.

Noting everyone’s glasses were empty, Seth stood, “I’ll get us another ‘round. Same again?” his men nodded, and he stood up, accidentally backing into another patron and spilling some of his brew. “Crap! Sorry about that,” he promptly apologised.

The other man swore colourfully, shaking his hand to dislodge the spilled beer, “Watch yourself, kid,” he warned angrily, causing Seth to raise his eyebrows over the obvious animosity.

“He said he was sorry.”

The words were practically growled out and if looks could kill, Seth was pretty sure the trashy truckie would be six feet under right about now. But then, Vaughn’s scowl could do that to a man. The rude drunk moved on pretty quickly after that and Seth sent his friend a look he knew was filled with both annoyance and resignation. The look the older man threw back was filled with a whole lot of ‘I don’t give a fuck’. Sliding his glance to the left, he looked hopefully at Ronan, only to shake his head when he saw that Ronan was also scowling fiercely after the man’s retreating back.

Seth sighed; they were a little protective of him – a fact he found endlessly amusing given he topped them both in height and also muscle mass. When he was feeling magnanimous, he could kind of understand it. Not only was he the youngest of the three, but he was also the last to join their little trio. Ronan and Vaughn had been in the same coven since before the Salem witch trials in 1692. They had been serving their bloodline side by side for hundreds of years in one form or another before he had even been born. Familiars like himself were always born specifically to one bloodline and although they weren't immortal by any stretch of the imagination, their souls would always return in a new body to be a companion, protector, spy – whatever their witch wanted or needed – to serve a whole new generation of witches. His lovers had been serving the same bloodline for almost ten generations, while Seth was only on his first spin. And truthfully, he was yet to serve anyone, given they hadn’t been able to find their witch!

With his fresh first-time soul, they were far more experienced in many ways, hence, the overprotectiveness. His shiny new familiar soul did not, however, make him naïve. Hell, he was the one who had convinced them all to move past the ‘friend zone’ and into the ‘screw-like-rabbits zone’. Vaughn and Ronan hadn’t even realised they were in love with each other until he had come along. It had taken Seth all of one night in their presence to see the intimate and electric connection between the pair. It had been an unfortunate combination of fear, stubbornness, and pride that had kept them both from acting on their feelings. They were both so close that neither of them had wanted to upset the apple cart by admitting to romantic feelings. On top of that, neither of them had ever been with another man before either. They had both believed themselves to be straight as a ruler – boobies all the way! Seth, having always been into variety, had quickly made them see the error of their ways, and they had all been together very happily on every level for over ten years now.Definitely not naïve!Seth thought in amusement. He had shown the older pair the many benefits to be had in diversity.

“I’ll get those drinks,” he stated, returning to the present.

Vaughn stood up, “I’ll come with you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” he grumbled.

“I need to stretch my legs.”

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