Page 16 of Redeemed
For a moment I wonder how she’d deal with a bodach. Instead, I laugh. “Is that all you got, Grandmother? You alternate between demands and threats and I’m supposed to, what? Be grateful my Tuatha Dé Danaan relatives have taken notice of my presence, that I can shift into a horse whenever I want to?”Because damn. “I’ve been an outcast since the day I was born. Your displeasure doesn’t mean a whole lot to me.”
Somewhere my mother is sobbing into her cereal. She raised me to have the utmost respect for all members of the Tuatha Dé, and here I am, mouthing off to one of the oldest and strongest.
Seems like embodying the specter of death had more of an effect on me than I thought.
While I’m musing, the Morrigan draws power to herself, until her aura is a blinding white light. I sit back with my arms crossed, squinting at her. She grows so bright I have to shut my eyes and then she goes brighter still.
And when I’m starting to think her game plan is to fry my brain with her evil light, she disappears.
Well, not completely.
“You’ll start a war,meascach. Your lover is a vampire and you’re siding with the elves. That can only end in disaster.”
With that, she really is gone. I open my eyes to find David in the doorway, staring at me.
I roll down the car window. “Just a little family business.”
He gives a full body shudder. “When a member is in danger, the rest of the pack can sense it.”
“I wasn’t in danger, not really.”
He tilts his head, fists planted on his hips. “Don’t even go there, Pookie. Whatever that was grew hair on my chest, and I won’t have it.”
I climb out, relieved that my knees don’t give way. Because David’s not wrong. I can pretend I wasn’t in danger all day long, but in truth I was ready to play my ace if I had to.
And the specter of death shouldn’t be anybody’s ace in the hole.
I don’t really have time to worry about the consequences of pissing off a living god, because we need to move along. David’s booked us a two-room suite in a hotel off Sunset, the kind of place where the bathrooms aretoilettesand the coffee stand isla grande buffet.
Which is to say the “two-room suite” is a decent-sized bedroom with a closet large enough to fit a twin mattress. As soon as he walks in, David’s lips twist as if he smells something awful.
“Be careful,” I say. “Your face’ll freeze that way.”
“This place has delusions of adequacy.” He plops onto the bed, hands in his lap as if they might get dirty. Trajan is a silent presence and I’m desperate to find a way to help him.
Since I can’t disagree with David, I get the last bag out of the RAV4, planning my approach. I’ve had a response to the text I sent earlier: Colonel Poole from the Elites is willing to meet me.
I have no intention of going back into the service, but we could sure use their resources.
Trajan, his hair slicked back and his expression blank, excuses himself shortly after we arrive, shutting the door on his glorified closet. His suffering makes me sick, and the only way to fix things is to find where Jacques is hiding.
Find him and destroy him.
“Do you think we should try and track down that other vampire sire, Delia Packard?” David’s hands pause on the keyboard, his expression still stuck in the stinky sneer.
“I have an errand I want to run first, and…” I rake the hair out of my face so I can meet his gaze head-on. “I think one of us should stay here. I don’t think we should leave him alone.”
David’s expression is one of wisdom. “Sure. You go do your thing, and when you get back, I’ll run out for a few.”
“That’s fair.”
He sets his laptop aside and comes over to me, taking my hands in his. “When we get through this, I think we should make date night a regular thing.”
“Absolutely,mo mhuirnin.”I can’t help but smile at his optimism. “We can have date nights, and dress up and act slutty nights, and stay home and cuddle nights, and any other thing you can think of.”
He rises on his toes and kisses me, a soft, sweet gesture that does more to reassure me than anything else.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” I say. In the interest of transparency, I could tell him I’m going to meet with Poole, but I decide I’d rather report good news than to get his hopes up for nothing.
