She's No Faerie Princess (35 page)

Tess was the one who put a stop to the debate. Pushingfirmly against her husband's side, she managed to duckbeneath his arm to stand just in front of him.

"Sheesh. You're the one who asked me to come out here and evaluate the thing, but you've got to let me get a look at him before I can tell you what I think," she grumbled, turning her surprisingly shrewd blue eyes on the crowd at the doorstep.

She looked first at Walker and Fiona, her gaze scanningcarefully over them, lingering on their weary expressions. She blinked when she saw the imp peering out of Fiona'sshoulder bag but said nothing. Then Tess's gaze turned

to Rule and lingered for a moment on his stern face and

deep black eyes.

"All right," she said, turning to reenter the club. "They're

cool."

Rafe's hand shot out to stop her. "That's it?" hedemanded. "That's all you're going to do? What about aspell? This isn't a decision to be made lightly."

"I'm not making it lightly, but what did you think I was going to do? Give each of them a polygraph? I don't need to. They're fine."

"I never mentioned a polygraph, but there must be some kind of spell you have to use to tell if everything's all right."

Tess sighed, sounding put-upon. "I don't need a spell totell me that. They're fine. No one is under any kind ofcompulsion to follow the demon's orders, and Rulehimself has no ill intentions toward anyone in thisbuilding. It's written all over them. Now can we go in? I'mnot wearing a jacket."

Rafe looked ready to launch another protest, but Tessshoved hard against his belly and pushed him back intothe entry hall. "Come on in," she called over her shoulder. "I'll get Mr. Grumpypants a saucer of milk and see if thatsweetens his disposition."

Somehow, Fiona doubted it.

She led the way up the stairs and into the front hall of Vircolac as if she'd been doing it forever. True, it had onlybeen a week, but she already felt almost as comfortablehere as she did in Walker's apartment. Maybe it was

because she'd spent so much time here, but maybe it had more to do with the fact that the people here were Walker's pack, his family. And now his family was hers.

"Graham and Missy are in the library," Tess said, leading the way. "I think he said something about wanting to be close to the liquor for this."

"He's a smart man," Walker grumbled, and followed them

down the hall.

CHAPTER 26

The library offered plenty of comfortable seating, but thatdidn't stop Walker from claiming a position on one end ofthe wide sofa and hauling Fiona directly onto his lap. After enduring yet another threat to her life—at least thethird in the past week, which was exactly as long as he'dknown her—he seemed to want to keep her as close aspossible whenever possible. Within arm's reach at thefarthest, closer when he could manage it. He managed it

now.

She didn't protest, just gave him a curious look, thensettled back against his chest. "I think we have a list ofquestions we'd like to ask Rule," she said, turning herattention to the rest of the room, "but maybe it's better ifhe tells us his side of the story first."

Leaning up against the fireplace mantel, Rule quirked his

mouth. "That story is not a brief one, nor is it simple, but I

vow to do my best."

Fiona doubted the demon had missed the way Rafe and Graham had taken up positions between him and theirmates, still unconvinced of his apparent amiability. Hecertainly hadn't missed their insistence that he leave hissword in its sheath with the doorman, but Rule didn't giveany indication that it bothered him.

He looked casual and comfortable in the warmatmosphere of the library. Somehow the relaxed settingdidn't serve to make him look any less like a warrior thanhe had when he'd been striding through the forestwielding a sword. He looked no softer, but Fiona sensedthe concentrated power of his determination had easedback a bit. Not vanished, just been banked like a fire thatwould be stirred back to life whenever it was needed.

"I will assume that none of you is any more expert in those who live Below than is the Fae, so perhaps it would serve to clarify if I gave you all a brief introduction to demons," he began. "I would think that, given most of you have lived all of your lives in the mortal world, you have adopted something of the mortal view of my kind."

"You mean that you're bloodthirsty killers who tear mortal bodies into chunks and feed on their living hearts?" Graham glowered. "We may have heard a rumor or two, but I think it was seeing it happen that swayed us."

"Exactly," Rule said. "The mortal view." He sighed. "Our history goes back many thousands of years, as long as that of the Fae, so to tell you the whole of it is beyond the scope of this conversation. Suffice it to say that the creature you have just described is only a small part of

the portrait of my kin."

He glanced at Fiona and nearly smiled. "It is the nature ofhistorians to describe wars from the point of view of thevictors. Whether they are mortal or Fae, that is simply theway of it, and the histories of the Wars between yourpeople and mine were so described to you."

She nodded. "It's still talked about. There are poems andstories about the great battles that all the young oneshear from their earliest days. In my case, my aunt keepsthe library, so I've heard a little more than some others."

Rule nodded. "And what did you hear?"

"About the Wars?" Fiona frowned. "The usual, I suppose. That the demons resented the Fae for stepping in to defend the mortals from their attacks and declared war against us. It was long and bloody, but in the end we won and the treaties said that the demons would have to retreat to Below and could only pass out of that realm by a direct invitation. Which happened, because mortals aren't always so smart, and after a few centuries they forgot what the demons had been like and decided it would be fun to see them again."

"That is what I thought you had been taught." He looked at the others. "Can I assume you all share the same understanding?"

Tess shrugged. "That's what I'd heard, but my friend Cassidy mentioned there was another version of thestory. Her mate is… I guess you'd call it the historian ofhis pack. They ran into a demon a while ago, and Quinntold her that the demons actually used to be some kind ofmessengers, carrying information between all the

different worlds. He said something about the Wars not starting over an urge to defend the mortals but over some rules the Fae set up to keep the demons out of Faerie."

Rule's eyebrows lifted. "I am impressed. That storycomes a bit closer to the truth, though it still fails to offerthe whole picture."

"And you think your version does?" Fiona asked. She didn't like the idea that suddenly her people were about to be painted as the villains in this story. Even if he had saved her mate, he had no call to insult her ancestors. "Wouldn't any story that's been passed down through your people be almost as biased in your favor as you seem to think the stories my people tell are in ours?"

"Certainly," he agreed with a faint smile. "But I propose that if I tell my version of the story, we might be able to see that the truth lies somewhere between the two."

"Tell your story then," Rafe said, his tone wary, "and we'll

see what we make of it."

"The condensed version begins a bit like this. A very long time ago, when humans had only begun to understand that the world around them consisted of more than the gnawing of hunger in their bellies and the bite of cold on their skin, all beings lived together here Above." He

eased into the tale with the familiarity of a well-practiced storyteller, his voice deep and riveting. "The Fae ruled their glittering kingdoms in the greenest places they could find. Shifters hunted in the woods and the fields.

Humans, with their small numbers, scraped their living from what they could hunt and gather. Even my kind, those you now call demons, traveled freely, bearing news from one end of the Earth to the other. And among it all,

magic flowed through everything, as thick and deep as a

river current.

"This was no paradise, of course," he said wryly. "We all squabbled together, as any mix of cultures living side by side is wont to do, but there was no talk of war. That came later.

"It didn't take long for the humans to do what humans do best—multiply. From the small minority of their early years they began to spread, grown stronger with the knowledge of growing food and raising livestock. They began to move into places where before humans had never ventured, and some of us started to get nervous."

Fiona listened from her perch on Walker's lap, her browslightly furrowed. But she made no move to interrupt.

"The Fae were the first to leave. Some of the tales say that the humans had originally believed them to be gods because of their facility with magic. But as the humans' wits grew, they began to have doubts. Those tales point to this as the time when the Fae decided to make themselves a new home in another world.

"They offered a place to the shifters at first, but those who change skins had too great a tie to the land and the moon, and they refused to leave. They could blend in with the humans, they said, and knew how to defend themselves against any attacks. The demons, though, were not invited to the new land called Faerie."

His mouth quirked, though Fiona thought it had less to dowith humor and more to do with an appreciation for thefolly of their mutual ancestors.

"Our tales say that the Fae believed my kind, demons, were the ones who originally helped the humans to see them as something less than godlike. In any event, whatever their reasons were, the Fae not only didn't invite the demons to their new world; they decreed that demons would be forbidden to pass its borders. This didn't sit well with my people. Can you imagine that it would for those whose place in the world had been to function as messengers? How could we serve our purpose if we were not given leave to move freely across all borders?"