Kyn Series (14 page)

And there weren’t. Feral could count the number of paranormal-friendly hotels in the city on one hand.

Tessa shrugged, setting off toward the door, winking at him over her shoulder. “Bet you dinner I can get us a room.”

He walked with her to the door, his stride shortened to match hers, where he held it open for her before stepping through. As he did, he felt a distinctive shiver down his back, like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. The place was warded. He’d know that feeling anywhere.

“Wards, protection spells, daylight shutters. You name it, we got it.” A voice at his side announced, almost as though she’d read his thoughts. He turned swiftly, his hand already halfway to the small of his back, to find a woman watching him with a smile on her lips.

A woman that looked so much like Tessa, he had to check she was still on the other side of him. Short and slender, she was nearly identical; the same height, build, and similar facial features. She only differed in her fashion sense. Whereas Tessa was casually dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, this woman could have stepped right out of an Audrey Hepburn film.

He shot Tessa a look. “No bet missy.
You
get to buy dinner,” he muttered in a low voice before turning to the other woman. She held out her hand.

“Jane Grey, owner of the Grey Lady and Tessa’s aunt,” she said with a bright smile.

A few minutes later, Feral nudged open the door to their room with his shoulder—once Tessa had completed the complex procedure that involved both hands—twisting the key one way and the doorknob the other.

“Should have had these fitted at your sister’s place. Pixie’s would have been there for months working it out.” He winked at her over his shoulder as he walked into the room.

“Oi, watch it you! Pixie in the room, remember?” She threw him a glaring look as she followed him. It was a decent sized room, a family room, with a double bed in the middle and a single set to the side. Not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination, but it was nevertheless clean and functional.

“Yeah, but you’re not just a Pixie are you?” he said quickly, digging himself out of the hole he could see looming over him, with the ease of long practice. Such skills were necessary when his patrol partner was the psychotic vamp bitch from hell at certain times of the month.

On automatic, he did a sweep of the room. As promised, the curtains concealed full daylight shutters, a necessity for a vampire traveller, and a quick swipe of his hand over the windowsill had the wards there flaring to life for a second. His eyebrow flitted up. Daylight shutters and heavy duty wards? Someone had sunk some money into the place.

“What do you mean, not just a Pixie?” Tessa settled Spud in the middle of the double bed, her voice light. Too light, the slight hesitation before she answered flashing like a neon sign. Feral opened the door to the bathroom, pausing to look inside before he answered. Like the bedroom, it was plain, simple. A fresh lemon scent assaulted his sensitive nostrils. And so clean he could’ve probably eaten a meal off the floor.

“Well, your aunt there…Jane,” satisfied the shutter was the same high quality as the one in the bedroom, he shut the door and turned to her, continuing, “if she’s a day under one hundred, I’ll eat Spud’s hat.” He flicked a finger toward the blue fleecy cap covering the baby’s day-glow locks. He leaned back, shoulder against the wall, arms folded as he considered her.

She didn’t look at him, tickling Spud and making him giggle. A delaying tactic if ever he saw one. Finally, she looked his way, not directly at him, but toward him. “Don’t be silly, Pixie’s don’t live that long.”

“I’m Kyn Tessa, not an idiot. I can sense an expanded lifespan when it’s looking me in the face,” he told her firmly. What was it with women and not giving straight answers? Vixen was
just
like this when she didn’t want to talk. It was like getting blood out of a damn stone!

She chucked Spud under the chin and sat back on the bed, appearing deep in thought. The tension stretched between them, an air of expectancy as Feral waited for her to say something. That was the trick. Not filling the silence with something and giving them an out. That way,
they
had to say something, and more often than not, the pressure of silence prompted them into revealing things they might not otherwise share.

She sighed. “Ok, Jane’s a little…special,” she admitted, bowing her head for a moment. Swivelling on the bed, she looked at him, her dark eyes earnest. “You have to keep this to yourself, okay? My family has been keeping this secret for generations.” Her focus remained intense.

Slowly, Feral nodded, intrigued. What secret were they keeping? What secret could be so important that a family of Pixies, not the most reliable beings in the world, would keep it for generations? “Ok, I promise…cross my heart and hope to die,” he offered, drawing his forefinger across his chest.

Tessa frowned, a little line forming between her brows that he thought was cute, and shook her head. “But you’re a vampire anyway…”

“And?”

“Well, aren’t you like, the living dead and all that?”

Feral laughed. Again, she’d caught him off-guard. “Now, now. You’re a Pixie, you know better than that!”

Kyn were demonic, not cursed. Well not exactly. Some would say their demonic blood cursed them, but Feral, and most other Kyn, begged to differ. They were just different, that was all.

She wrinkled her nose, a teasing light in her eyes that reminded him they hadn’t finished what they’d started in that bathroom. A bolt of desire hit him broadside, bringing a low rumble to his throat.

“And don’t try and change the subject missy!” he warned her, folding his arms across his broad chest again. “You were telling me about Jane.”

“Oh buggar it…well a gal’s gotta give these things a try! Ok…we’re not just Pixies. There’s something odd mixed into the bloodline. You know much about English royalty?”

Feral laughed. “What, you mean as in human English royalty? Hell, I have enough trouble remembering who’s the President now! You can’t expect me to know history as well, not when these humans die off every eighty years or so…um, no offense,” he said in haste, as two pairs of eyes swivelled to look at him accusingly, with Spud adding the weight of his baby stare.

She wrinkled her nose, the glare fading. “Nah, you’re okay. I’m not
that
easily offended. Okay, long story short. Jane was once the Queen of England. Until they chopped her head off.”

Feral nodded slowly. “I wondered what the scarf was for.”

“But did you see the ass on him? Like two walnuts in a sock!” Jane grinned as she leaned back against the scatter cushions that lined the sofa, her eyes twinkling over the rim of her wineglass.

Tessa suppressed a giggle, or tried to. The two glasses of wine, two
large
glasses of wine she’d had, ensured she didn’t quite manage it, as some of the giggle escaped her, sneaking around the edges of her lips.

“You, madam, are
far
too old for thoughts like that! Why, I’m absolutely scandalized!” she exclaimed in mock indignation, wagging her finger at her aunt.

Although, technically, Jane wasn’t her aunt. She was Tessa’s great, great, great-something aunt. As Feral had instinctively known, she had a bit of a long lifespan for a Pixie. Which she wasn’t. Tess wasn’t quite sure what Jane was, none of the family did. Besides, she wasn’t sure that Jane even knew.

Jane leaned forward to put her wineglass on the coffee table. Here, in her own apartment, at the back of the hotel, she’d relaxed somewhat. The scarf she usually wore looped around her throat was lying discarded across the back of the chair Tessa was curled up in.

She’d grown up seeing the horrendous scars across Jane’s throat, knew the story, but the sight of them always took her breath away. Tessa swallowed, resisting the urge to rub her throat in sympathy. How the hell did someone survive their own beheading?

“Don’t think about it,” Jane said, her voice quieter than usual, “I don’t. Not really something I want to remember.”

Tessa blinked, colour flaring over her cheeks at being caught staring. She covered her surprise with a downward sweep of her lashes. “I’m sorry, how did you know?”

Jane shrugged as a sad smile curved her full lips. “You get used to it. The little looks, then the careful look away. The way you can just tell they’re dying to ask. People never look at me properly unless I’ve got my neck covered. Turtle necks are possibly the best invention on the planet, in my eyes.” She smiled, trying to make a joke of it, but it fell flat, the sad tone plucking at Tessa’s heartstrings.

She hadn’t realized it was so bad for Jane, but hearing her aunt talk about it, and seeing the sadness there, brought the realisation home for her. “What about healing spells, or using glamour?” she asked. “Surely something has to work.”

Jane shook her head. “I’m not Fae or Pixie so I can’t cast glamour. Even then, most paranormals would see right through it. And healing spells don’t work. Whatever made me this way…means to keep me this way.” She sighed and shook herself, as though throwing off bad memories. “Okay, enough about me. Let’s talk about you, sex on legs, and the punk baby for a while, shall we?”

Tessa smiled in response, glad to be moving onto another topic. She hadn’t meant to upset Jane, she really should have realised how much the scars bothered her aunt. After all, most people were offered counselling these days for things like scars and the incidents that lead to them, weren’t they? So why should Jane be any different? Tessa had just assumed that, because she’d had them for so long, they’d stopped bothering her.

Idiot.
She berated herself as she wriggled in the chair, reaching inside her back pocket for the note that had been left with Spud.

“Are you okay for time?” Jane asked as she took the folded paper from Tessa’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry. I should have asked you earlier.”

“What, before you decided to get me drunk? As a role model, hate to break it to you…but you’re crap!” Tessa teased, as she reached for the wine bottle on the table.

“Pffft! Role models, who needs ‘em!” Jane dismissed with a wave of her hand, wrinkling her nose and crossing her eyes.

Tessa laughed. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she admitted. “I fed him before I came out and left them watching a game on TV. All boys together!”

“Now the question would be…you fed who?” Jane waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

“Oh, behave you! The
baby,
I fed the baby!” Tessa retorted quickly. Although…what would it be like to feed Feral? He was a vampire, and she’d heard that in the right circumstances, a vampire’s bite could be pleasurable.

In fact, some of the girls she worked with hung out at one of the paranormal joints in town, Moonlight and Magic, just for that reason. Hoping to catch the eye of a local vamp for a…well, it gave a
whole
new meaning to the word “necking!” They’d often asked if Tessa fancied joining them, but the thought of a guy biting her neck had just turned her right off.

Until she’d met Feral.

She shivered, the thought of the large vamp back in the room getting all up close and personal enough to bite her neck…and everything else that came with it…sending shivers down her spine. Yeah, she could quite happily get all up close and personal with fang-boy. Preferably the sooner the better!

“Heeeelllloo? Can I bring you back to the land of the living for a moment?” She blinked as Jane snapped her fingers in front of her face to get her attention. She’d been staring into space, lost in her own erotic daydream.

“Huh. Sorry, zoned out there or a moment. Been a long day,” she apologized, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. “I was expecting a quiet night in with a movie and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s.”

Jane nodded as she opened the note. “Then tall, dark and handsome showed up?”

“Uh-huh. Carrying small and cute, complete with a dirty diaper.”

“Niiiice…
holy shit!
”

Jane’s voice was loud enough to bring Tessa half out of her seat, and have her looking around to find the fire. Then she realized Jane was staring in shock at the note she’d given her.

“What? What is it? What’s it say?” she demanded, realizing whatever it was, it had her normally talkative aunt, speechless.

Jane looked up. Her eyes held a stunned expression. “I think you might have brought World War Three to my hotel!”

She’d been right. Tessa walked back to her hotel room sometime later, deep in thought. The baby
was
a Morrigan, that much she’d managed to read for herself, but Jane knew the language far better than Tessa. More years to study, as well as having the advantage of dealing with all sorts of Fae on a daily basis.

The note had been brief and to the point. Explaining that the baby had been stolen from his family because his mother was a Morrigan, the note maker had said she’d regretted what she’d done, but hadn’t had time to return him, as she was being tracked. There were vague references of what “they” wanted to do to him. She, whoever she was, had asked forgiveness for what she’d done, and that whoever found him, to keep the baby safe.

What was puzzling Tessa though, was, why had the baby been left on Feral’s doorstep in the first place? She could understand leaving him there for protection. After all, there weren’t many beings that could take on an adult Kyn warrior and live to brag about it. But the note had been written in High Fae, not something they should have expected a vampire to read. Hell, she even couldn’t read all of it, and thanks to her Pixie side, she had Fae blood!

She turned the corner and headed down the stairs. The place was like a damn rabbit warren! Then there was the fact they’d hit her sister’s apartment rather than Feral’s. It was rare for Pixies, even as arrogant as they were, to break in like that. With brute force rather than employing glamour—and Feral had said they’d been expecting a woman and a baby, not a Kyn.

Realisation hit her and she smacked her palm against her forehead. She was obviously far more tired than she thought. The baby had been left on Feral’s doorstep by mistake. All the doors looked alike on that block, and it would have been quite easy to get them mixed up, especially if a person had never been there before, and they were in a hurry.

She reached their corridor, doing a quick, automatic check on the numbered plaque on the wall. Last thing she wanted to do was walk into someone else’s room! She’d passed her “excitement level” by nine o’clock this evening. All she wanted to do now was relax and get some sleep.

Oh well, the intrigue would be over tomorrow. In the afternoon, Jane would be taking them to the Fae Court so they could get Spud back to his parents, or at the very least, to the Morrigan who was bound to know who his parents were.

She nibbled her lip as she walked. The poor things must be going out of their minds with worry, and she didn’t like the idea that she was contributing to their distress. She didn’t know them, but she was sure any parent whose child was missing had to be going through hell, wondering where their baby was… Whether they were okay, who had them, whether they were being looked after, fed enough, kept warm enough…the list went on.

She’d been all for going to the courts straight away, getting the baby back as soon as possible. Until Jane pointed out that Fae, especially temperamental ones like Mab and the Morrigan, were not people someone awakened from their beds, nor did they need Feral ending up as a crispy critter. Reluctantly, she’d conceded that Jane had a point, agreeing to get some sleep so they could leave as soon as the sun set.

Reaching the door to their room, opening it easily, her lips quirked in a smile as she remembered Feral’s earlier grumbling about how difficult it was to open the door. Honestly, all it took was a light touch, not going at it like a bull at a gate. She pushed the door open and slipped in on silent feet. It closed behind her with a soft click. Her eyes flew to the inhabitants of the room to make sure she hadn’t woken them. She knew only too well how grouchy babies could be if they were woken before they were ready.

Her eyes fell on the bed and she smiled, all but melting inside. Stretched out full length across the bed was the large form of her vampire warrior, and curled up trustingly on the broad expanse of his chest was Spud, his pink hair a bright halo against the darkness of Feral’s skin. She itched to rush over to her bag and grab her phone. She
so
needed to take a picture of this, it was just too cute for words. Big, scary looking thug, but so gentle with the baby he cradled.

But then, her attention was diverted by the lean form of the man himself. Shirtless again. He seemed to have real issues keeping a shirt on for any length of time, mostly wearing only jeans. Jeans that clung to his lean hips and powerful thighs, the top button undone—revealing the slight “V” of hair that disappeared under the denim.
Oh my god, he’s commando under there!

She swallowed convulsively. There wasn’t a spare ounce of fat on him. He was all hard muscle and satin skin. Even as relaxed as he was, that charisma of his couldn’t be shrouded by sleep, and she was still fascinated…still felt that pull toward him she had felt earlier. The desire to run her hands over those ripped muscles. Explore that scar she could just see on his abdomen with her tongue…

Okay, I’m definitely a pervert!
Her hands flew to her cheeks as heat flooded them. It was one thing to lust after a guy when he was conscious and asking for it, but quite another to do it when he was sleeping and holding a baby. Just how low could she get?

She shook her head, crossing the room to get her bag. A quick search through the organized chaos of the contents and she located her phone by touch, drawing it out of the bag and flipping it open as she turned, only to find Feral watching her, his dark eyes unreadable.

“That won’t work, Kyn don’t pick up on cameras well.” His voice was barely more than a whisper, low enough so he wouldn’t wake the sleeping baby. “Like not at all.”

Tessa frowned, pouting slightly in her disappointment. It would have made for
such
a cute picture. She flipped the phone shut and slid it back into her bag, saying the first thing that came to mind. “So how do you get a driver’s license then?”

“Who said I had a license?”

“What?” Tessa squawked, the shrill sound making Spud jump a little. Feral glared at her warningly, soothing the baby back to sleep. If he wasn’t a vampire, he’d make a great dad, Tessa thought to herself absently, before her indignation at being driven by someone without a license got the better of her again. “You don’t have a license? You shouldn’t be driving at all then! What if you got caught?”

Feral just shrugged, rocking the baby in his arms. “Jedi mind tricks, remember? What else am I supposed to do? We don’t photograph and I don’t have a birth certificate. Not easy to get a license without those.”

She nibbled her lip, caught once again at making assumptions. She hadn’t had a lot to do with the Kyn. In fact, Feral was pretty much the only one she’d done more than nod at.

“He’s gone back to sleep.” Feral’s deep voice was still quieter than normal, as he levered himself up from the bed, his posture rigid as he kept the little boy held in his arms in the same position, a look of contentment on his tiny face. She watched as Feral carefully placed him in the travel cot, making sure he was tucked in nice and tight.

Her heart melted again, a sense of amazement filling her at the gentleness he showed toward the baby. She knew he had issues with Pixies. There was an edge in his voice at times, a flash of anger in his eyes, when he spoke about them that tipped her off. It wasn’t surprising, the Pixie race as a whole weren’t nice. It was one of the reasons the women were peeling off, choosing to live and marry among the humans. It was a better life.

Feral straightened, watching Spud for a moment then turning to her. “He’s asleep,” he announced, a smile spreading over his face.

The smile hit Tessa like a speeding bullet, her heart fluttering in her chest. Feral was dangerous, not just physically in that “mess with me and I’ll rip your limbs off” sort of way, but dangerous in other ways, too. Something deep inside her, something inherently feminine, told her he was dangerous, emotionally as well. Without much effort, she could fall for him and fall badly.

She tried to ignore the feeling as they settled in on the double bed, to watch an old film Feral found on one of the channels. It was strange, but, despite the day she’d had, followed by all the excitement of the evening, she wasn’t tired yet. But it didn’t matter, they could sleep in late in the morning. Until the sun went down they were pretty much trapped, so they might as well make the most of it.