Chapter 25 – Hogmanay
Maeve
“We need to leave before the human police arrive,” Remington barked as he scooped Mother Shipton in his arms.
I stifled a scream when I saw it. The flesh around her neck was torn open, almost as if someone or something had tried to decapitate her. Instead of red gushing blood, there was a slow tar-like substance bubbling at the jagged edges of the lacerations.
“So many people left here screaming.” My gaze raked over the surroundings for dead monsters or any indication of what had attacked. “What were those screeching creatures?”
“Unseelies,” he clipped, and motioned with his head. “Let’s get to the shadow of that tree.”
“The humans... they saw them.”
“It’s Hogmanay, and most people have been drinking. The human officials will chalk it up as a prank or hallucination.”
I hurried along beside him and looked over at the motionless vampire. She looked like she could have been sleeping, except her eyes were open, and I knew vampires didn’t sleep. Was she dead?
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’ll be fine,” he assured me. “Now, hold on to my arm.”
I was starting to get used to shadow jumping and even felt a bit envious of his ability. My hands gripped his large bicep, and the dark mist wrapped around us. That floating feeling took over, and the images of exit points started to appear. I recognized the dark corner of the bar below Dead Man’s Pint, and Remington pitched us forward.
Music and laughter filled the bar, and no one seemed to notice our sudden appearance. Supernatural’s dressed in formal wear stood sipping out of different colored goblets and dancing to a live band I had never seen before. Remington moved for the stairs with Mother Shipton still in his arms, and the bartender with reptilian eyes noticed us. Remembering Mother Shipton didn’t get a chance to feed tonight, I decided to make a quick dash to the bartender.
“What can I get for you, Princess?”
“A goblet of your finest blood for my guest.” I turned to find Remington waiting for me at the top of the stairs.
“Of course,” he reached for a golden chalice and poured from a black canteen.
I thanked him and climbed the stairs to join Remington, careful not to spill the contents. The door through the cleaning closet appeared, and we stepped through. I turned to see the door had disappeared, and the corridor was completely silent. Though I knew the Hogmanay celebrations were in full swing with live bands at both bars, I couldn’t hear a sound up here.
“That was thoughtful of you,” Remington hummed.
“I didn’t want her to be thirsty when she woke up.”
“Come, we need to take her upstairs to my apartment.”
“Because of the enchantments?”
“So she doesn’t escape and go into hiding before we get what we need.”
We reached the top floor landing, where black double doors automatically opened to what looked like a New York-styled, luxury penthouse apartment. My legs stopped moving, and I stood in stunned silence, openly gawking at the sophistication of this massive apartment. The floor to ceiling windows had to be enchanted because that is not what the building looked like from the outside.
“Maeve.” Remington gently placed the injured vampire on the sofa, and motioned for me to join him.
I set the goblet down on the glass end table before I could spill it. “Does she need a vampire healer or something?” I asked, even as I could see her neck had started healing.
“No. She should be fine soon.”
“Is this apartment enchanted?”
“Why do you always doubt yourself, Maeve?”
“I do not,” I snap back. “I just asked a question.”
“What have those wolves done to you?” He nearly growled. “Even when the truth is right in front of you, you struggle to believe it. You let anxiety and panic seize you when you’re much stronger than that.”
“Those wolves loved me and took me in when my parents abandoned me!” I heard my voice grow louder with the sting in my chest. “Those wolves became my friends and family when I had none… when no one wanted me.”
His face hardened. “And where are those friends and family now, Maeve? You’re hiding from everyone because you trust no one—not even yourself,” he replied, his patience waning. “Your parents didn’t just abandon you. They gave up everything to be with you.”
My parents? My chest grew tight, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. The magnitude of his words hit me.
“You knew my parents?” I whisper.
His eyes assessed me for a moment before he gave a slight nod. “Both sets.”
All at once, it suddenly became clear to me. “Balor,” I murmur. The story of the kelpie demon becoming mortal for a woman. Balor was his demon brother who gave up everything. He was right. The truth had been dangling right before me, and I doubted it.
Silence stretched between us, heavy and tense.
“Balor was my father,” it wasn’t a question.
“Of every soul I have ever encountered, my little brother deserved death least of all.”
I’d heard that name before in mythology. It was in the book of Celtic Myths I had picked up, but this Balor was an evil giant with a third eye or a single eye. He burned crops, scorched the earth, and terrorized people. “Did he ever take the shape of a Cyclops?”
An intense expression flashed over his face. “Leave it to the humans to get things twisted. That was Asmodeus, the Lord of Lies, who always tried to tarnish Balor’s good name.”
“If my father was a demon… that means… that means I’m…”
“Human,” the corner of his lip twitched. “You have demon and faerie blood in your veins, but you’ve been in this realm too long. You’ve become mortal.”
“My mother was a faerie?”
“Again, with the doubting,” he shook his head. “You know the truth.”
Deep in my heart, I knew the truth but had chosen not to acknowledge it sooner. I’d suspected there was more. I felt it the moment Remington called me his niece. The moment those trees saved me from Jack. I wasn’t built like a shifter, and I didn’t have a wolf. I didn’t look like either of the parents who raised me.
“Tell me about my mother,” I sniffled, searching his eyes for answers.
“I met her once,” he said, swallowing hard. His head turned away from me, gazing into the flickering flames of the fireplace. “Balor brought her to the Dark Realm to seek permission from the Demon King to allow her to live in the realm with him.”
“And… he refused,” I whispered in understanding. I hated the Demon King already.
“Demons are not born with souls, so when Balor showed up claiming to have found his soul mate… it seemed impossible. Balor was benevolent, but he was also stubborn.”
Remington was my father’s big brother and my uncle, who had offered me protection. He had met my mother. There were so many questions swimming around in my head.
“What did my father look like?”
“In human form, he looked a lot like me… very handsome,” he grinned. “His favorite demon form was a white horse, and he also favored wolves. The legend of the Wulver, who would leave fish for poor families or help guide the lost back to villages, was also Balor.”
“He shapeshifted into a wolf?”
“Among many other things,” he smiled somberly. “When the Highlands pack went on hunts, he sometimes joined them in the shadows. He always said lycans would rise to power in this realm again, and he was right.”
“And my mother?”
He stepped closer to me and placed his hand on my shoulder, spinning me so that I was looking at my reflection in the large window.
“You look just like Calista, except she had green eyes, pointed ears, and golden wings.”
Calista. My mother’s name was beautiful. I looked like my mother. “Golden wings?”
“A mark of faerie royalty,” he answered. “Faeries are also believed to be benevolent or malevolent. Those with light-colored wings are from the seelie court, and the dark ones are from the unseelie court.”
“You said the unseelie attacked Mother Shipton?”
“I never thought I’d see the day,” her voice croaked, and we turned to see Mother Shipton watching us. Her hand continued rubbing her neck, which appeared to have been fully healed, “It seems I’m indebted to you dem—”
“Remington, please, call me Remington,” he smiled.
“Very well, you may call me Ursula.”
“Ursula, this is my niece, Maeve.”
“I thought I scented—”
“You did,” Remington told her. “She’s expecting a lycan pup.”
Her eyes widened a bit in surprise. “But she’s also a—”
“That she is,” Remington nodded. “Calista was her mother.”
“That would make her…”
“Balor’s daughter,” Remington finished, and the exchange felt like Déjà vu.
“Does the Alpha King know yet?” She rubbed her throat again.
“Not yet, and we’d like to keep it that way for now.” He reached for the goblet and handed it to her.
I had never seen a vampire feed before and had imagined it being a grizzly sight. Her neck was fully healed, and she looked like she was casually sipping wine. Oddly enough, her gray hair started to regain a dark brown color, and her wrinkles began to fade. Vampires remained frozen in time at the age they were turned, but suddenly, she didn’t look like the seventy-year-old woman I met earlier this evening.
“That worked quick,” Remington seemed to be speaking to himself. He had also noticed.
“I’m feeling much better already,” she stretched her neck from side to side to ensure it was fully connected.
“Was it the Demon King's blood?”
She held her hand up and examined the back of it. The skin looked smoother. “Strength and beauty, though I think repairing the injury will likely use most of its power.”
“You look twenty years younger already.” It shot out of my mouth before I could stop myself. If she had been hoping for a forty-year age reversal, she would have been sorely disappointed.
“Next time, I should be able to finish those unseelie myself,” she grumbled and took another long drink from the goblet.
“Ursula, humans have a difficult time delivering shifter pups,” Remington said.
“That’s not just a shifter pup. It’s a lycan,” her eyes turned to me. “Come here, Maeve,” she tapped the cushion beside her.
My heart beat wildly, and I knew she could hear it. I wasn’t sure if it was her vampire energy or her seer intuition that scared me most. The urge to protect my unborn child filled me as I sat beside her with my hand protectively over my belly. The dark orbs of her eyes turned icy white, and her cold hand clasped mine.
My breath hitched in my throat, and the seconds ticked on, feeling like an eternity. The chill of her hand left mine, and when I lifted my gaze to meet hers again, the dark orbs had returned to normal.
“There’s a trace of faerie magic still in you,” she looked at me curiously. “Woodland magic.”
“Is it enough to protect her and the pup?”
“I have seen three roads,” she said pensively. “If she stays here without a strong mate bond, she will die.”
“And my child?”
“The child will survive.”
A mate bond was something I was never going to have. The Moon Goddess wasn’t spending much time in the matchmaking business these days. I’d probably conceived easily because I had demon blood in my veins. The Alpha King would still end up with my child now that I was fated to die.
“And if I take her to the Dark Realm?” Remington asked thoughtfully.
“Will the Demon King break the rules?” She eyed him curiously.
“Perhaps if I knew the answer, I could worry about the rules afterward.”
“If she remains in the Dark Realm, the cradle will be empty, but she will live.”
The Moon Goddess must really hate me. I was part faerie, and Eos was the Goddess of faeries. She had probably cursed me with the desire for Rex just to torture me. To prove her shifters were too good for someone like me, but was she cruel enough to curse my child?
If I start praying to Eos, would she spare the both of us?
“What about the Fae Realm?” I asked.
“That depends on the Moon Goddess and mate bond,” she told me. “The road is slippery, but must be traveled if you both wish to survive,” she offered, and I jerked my head back to Remington, wondering if he could get me in.
“If she enters the Fae Realm, will it strengthen her magic?”
“There is a field of flowers at the entrance of the realm. Beautiful fields of purple-shaded flowers from Foxgloves, Bluebells, Periwinkles, Bella Donna, Nightshade, Devil Lily, Wolfsbane, and so on. All beautiful. All deadly to humans, shifters, and demons. In the center of all the deadly flowers is the mystic spring that rejuvenates magic.”
If my mother were part of the royal family, she’d be related to the Queen.
“The Fae Queen… is she good or evil?” I asked.
“There are those who will tell you she is both because she rules over both courts, but do not let that fool you, child. She killed her sister and will stop at nothing to please her Goddess.”
It was almost midnight when I returned to my room. I still had so many questions, and I knew the list would get longer, but Remington had something important to take care of, and he insisted I get some rest. He offered Mother Shipton a place to stay, but she wanted to return home to her cats, where she also had enchantments to keep people from finding her. She allowed Remington to shadow jump her home with a case of O-negative as a first-footer gift.
The flickering flames from the small fireplace warmed the back of my legs, casting a soft glow in the dark room. It was a modern convenience with a flip of a switch, but I preferred the crackling sound of burning wood instead of the gas flames over fake coals. I shuffled to my nightstand and found the new flannel nightgown I bought while shopping with Kit before Christmas.
Once my wool socks were pulled on, I moved to the large window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fireworks in three minutes. The street below was bustling with cheerful people walking or staggering east in the direction of the castle for a better view of the fireworks.
My fingers gathered my hair over my shoulder and started working on a loose braid. The humans seemed so happy and content, moving along with their ordinary lives, unaware of the supernaturals that lurked all around them. The ones that hunted them in the night.
My mind kept replaying what I heard upstairs. I wanted to know everything, but I was afraid to know. There were different realms… demon and faerie. It was all surreal. The hair tie stretched around my fingers as I secured the end of my long braid.
A flutter of kicking from the inside unleashed just as I caught sight of a sparkly silver firework in the sky. My hand instantly shot over the place where all the kicking was happening, and the baby went still, teasing me.
“Happy New Year, sweetheart,” I whispered, silently hoping the new year would be a happy one.
It was midnight, and people around the city would be hugging, kissing, and toasting in the new year. The singing of Auld Lang Syne was probably ringing out in homes, villages, pubs, streets, and gatherings at this very moment. I closed my eyes, thinking about all the New Years’ Eves I spent in a shadow watching Rex, wishing and praying he’d be mine someday.
I may not have Rex, but I have a piece of him.
In the silence and warmth of this room, I felt the empty echo in my heart, longing for him. I fought the sickening fear pulsing through me, and the urge to break down in tears. Remington had assured me it was all going to be okay, but the seer had given me little hope.
I felt another flutter of kicks and opened my eyes. A man with thick black hair caught my attention. Unlike the others, he didn’t seem to be moving at a quick pace, trying to get to the festivities down the street. For a moment, I was sure it was Rex, but I knew Rex was with Flaym and the others. He wouldn’t be walking around Edinburgh alone at night at the stroke of midnight. I waited silently, hoping he would look up, but he never did.
The sound of three light knocks at my door sounded, and I pulled my gaze away from the man on the street below.
“I wasn’t sure if you were sleeping yet,” Kit smiled. “I brought you some shortbread, a silver drachma, salt, a lump of coal, and some tea. No whisky for you, but I did add a Kit-Kat bar.”
“My first-footer,” I opened the door and welcomed her in.
“Happy Hogmanay, Maeve.”