Chapter Seven
Neith
“Good point,” Raiden agrees.
From his expression though, I would be willing to bet that as soon as he goes upstairs, he’s going to be looking through the hundreds of shelves in his room to see if he can find anything about the little bitey book.
“Since the book,” Van starts, and I clear my throat, he smirks and corrects himself, “since, Bitey seems to be quite happy to sleep in Baz’s arms, maybe we should talk about everything that we discovered while we were on the moors?”
“I am certainly intrigued,” Baz grins, as he continues to stroke Bitey’s cover.
River starts bouncing, “Oh, did you show them the rock?”
I shake my head, “No, I didn’t.” I fish around in my pocket, and then remember that I left it upstairs. “Oh, it’s upstairs. It’s a hagstone, and there was this giant flash of lightning, and then it just dropped into my hand. I’m one hundred percent sure that it is what Winston wanted us to find.”
“Which means we don’t have to go back tomorrow and search the place again,” River adds with relief.
I can’t say I blame him, the forecast for the next few days is bleak.
And yes, I have reached the age where I check the weather.
“I’ll go and grab it,” I say as I start to stand up.
“Do you want me to go?” Doc offers.
“Oh, the lazy option, yes please,” I grin. “It’s on top of my dresser.”
Doc smiles and disappears. Within a minute, he’s back and holding the stone. He explains to the guys, “It doesn’t really look like much.”
“No, I don’t get any magical reading off it either, except when I first touched it, but it faded pretty quickly, so it could just have been the residue from however it appeared in my hand,” I reply.
The stone makes its way around the table as I explain the human lore behind hagstones, just like I did for River.
“That is partially true, like most things, the humans got it sort of right,” Baz explains.
“Hagstones can be used to see Fae or the creatures from the realm, but that description is too limiting and doesn’t adequately describe what they’re capable of.
They can actually be used to see anything hidden, but what in particular depends on the stone.
So, for example, one could be calibrated to see the creatures from Fae, another could show you demons, one could even help you search for precious metals, or even hidden feelings. ”
My eyebrows rise as I turn the little stone around in my fingers again, “That’s really interesting, I never knew about that.”
“I didn’t even know the human history behind hagstones,” River admits.
“Is there any way of knowing what a stone is for?” Raiden asks.
Baz shakes his head, “Unless you’ve bought one for a specific reason, then no, at least not that I’m aware of. I would assume that there must be a way that you could find out, but I’m unsure what it would be.”
“Since Winston sent us to find it hopefully, he knows what it’s supposed to find,” Raiden replies. “What about the vision?”
I nod, “Yeah, hopefully. So the vision was weird. Obviously, it was, but I mean, it was weirder than normal.”
I explain the vision in as much detail as I can, although I obviously can’t describe anything other than the voices to them since I was just floating in the dark.
“A whole species just wiped out?” Raiden asks, sounding as horrified as I feel.
I nod, “Yeah. The history and memories have been changed as well, so we don’t even know that they ever existed.”
It makes my heart pang with sadness.
“There were no hints of what the supernatural was?” Baz asks, looking disturbed.
I shake my head, “No, nothing, but I was obviously supposed to hear it for a reason, and I wonder if it’s because there is something out there that still exists that has information about them?”
“I hope so,” Reed agrees.
“At the end of the vision, someone was calling for me. I don’t know who. I’m reasonably certain that it was a woman, but I could be wrong. She couldn’t hear me, but she warned me to stay away from the water,” I say, feeling confused.
“Water?” River asks. “In what sense? Can you shower? A glass of water? Rivers? Lakes? Puddles? The ocean? Van?”
“Hey!” Van frowns, and then looks at me with concern, “She didn’t tell you to stay away from me, right?”
I shake my head and smile, “No. Don’t worry. She wasn’t really specific at all, but I’m not staying away from water indefinitely, we’re currently living in Ireland for goodness sake, it’s rained since we got here. I’m just going to be cautious.”
The guys look unsure.
“I realize that it would be impossible for you to stay away from all water, but please be careful, she, whoever she is, wouldn’t have felt it necessary to warn you if you were just going to slip or something,” Doc says.
River smirks, “Yeah, maybe don’t shower alone, just in case.”
“Excellent idea,” Coen agrees with a heated smirk.
I burst out laughing, and so do the others.
“Okay, so we need to be cautious around water, but at least that’s the vision, and what happened at the stone circle is dealt with,” Van says. He looks at me, “Dimitri?”
I grimace slightly and then look at Baz, “I’m sorry, but this is probably not going to make much sense. I’ll give you a quick cliff notes version of who he is before I explain anything else.”
Not that there is much to explain because I have no fucking idea how he did what he did, all I know is that I want him to do it again, bad.
“Anything that you are comfortable sharing, I’m happy to listen,” Baz replies, the scars on his face pulling up as he smiles. It in no way detracts from his attractiveness.
Not even a little bit.
I am so fucked.
Not yet, you’re not my inner voice teases.
The Voices snicker.
For fuck sake.
“Neith, you don’t have to explain anything that you aren’t comfortable with,” Baz says, his eyes watching me with concern.
River, Coen, and Raiden smirk. They all seem to know exactly what I was thinking about, and when I look away from them, I find Doc watching me with gold eyes and a sultry smile.
I decide at that point not to look at the others because I can feel their gazes watching me, and if those four have figured it out, so have the others, and I’m already close to blushing, which I never do.
I clear my throat, “No, it’s okay. Dimitri saved me.”
I continue to explain as much as I can, and although Dimi said that I could talk to Baz and I trust Dimitri, which is a whole weird thing I might have to unpack later, I still chose to leave some of the more personal things out.
Thankfully, the guys take their lead from me and chip in what they can without giving away too much, like what he saved me from, or what kind of supernatural Dimitri is.
At the end of my explanation, Baz just sits quietly for a moment, absorbing what we’ve told him and patting Bitey absently.
“Okay, so there is no way that Dimitri should have been able to appear, hold you, and then disappear again,” Baz says thoughtfully. He adds absently, “I would ask why he would risk punishment by escaping,” his darkened purple gaze meets mine, and his lips tip up slightly, “but that’s obvious.”
“True, I don’t think any of us are questioning why he showed up,” Reed agrees.
I sit there utterly stupefied, I mean, that was hot, right? He meant what I thought he meant by that, right?
Damn.
“What did you say to him to make him risk your wrath?” Coen asks me and the guys stop talking and look at me questioningly as the realization dawns on them.
“He may not give a fuck about whatever consequences he would get from escaping the prison, but the last thing he wants to do is piss you off, and he knows he walks an incredibly thin line right now.”
“I asked for his advice,” I explain. I realize that keeping what I asked of Dimitri a secret is most likely going to cause more harm than good.
So, I meet Baz’s gaze, “I was worried about trusting you despite the fact that it felt like I could. I have trusted people that I shouldn’t have before.
” Understanding lights Coen’s eyes, and he immediately gets up, rounds the table, picks me up, and puts me on his lap, holding me closely while I continue to face the now worried-looking guys.
I continue to explain, immediately comforted by Coen, I have no idea how he knew that I needed him before I even did, but fucking hell does he have my heart.
Coen’s actions put Baz and the guys on edge, and they all tense, their deadly auras coming out to play.
I continue to explain, “Dimitri immediately knew what the real root of my issue was, and he told me that he made sure that he remembered His magical signature, so in the unlikely scenario that he could put his torn and burned pieces back together, Dimitri would know. He was going to use me as a conduit of sorts, look through my eyes to check that you weren’t Him, for me.
I made the mistake of challenging him when he joked that it would be better in person, and I reminded him he couldn’t escape. He was proving a point.”
The guys all stare at me, but not in the way that I thought, more in the way that they think I’m missing something. All of them, even Baz, share a look.
“What?” I ask. I then add, because I think that’s what they’re looking at me for, “Oh, you’re good, Baz. Dimitri said that we could trust you, and confirmed that your magical signature wasn’t His, even though I knew that.”
“That’s not what we were looking at you like that for, Nene. I sort of assumed you would have told us sooner if Baz wasn’t safe,” Van replies.
“Then what was the look for?” I ask, still confused.
Surprisingly, it’s Baz who answers me.
“He came to ensure that you were safe. It wasn’t to prove you wrong, or show off, he risked being punished at the prison, risked you hating him again, all to make sure that you were safe and to reassure you,” Baz tells me bluntly. “I like him.”
“We all do,” Reed agrees.
“I . . .” I trail off, entirely unsure how to process that, but at the same time, it makes sense to me.
Dimitri always put my safety first, before everything else, and that’s why it hurt so much when he stopped.
Except he didn’t, did he? Not really.
He still protected me in the only way that he knew how to, and honestly, that makes me feel big things that I’m not quite sure how to handle.
Sensing that my brain is short-circuiting right now, Van thankfully changes the subject and looks at Doc.
“So, you know there's a breach at the prison and are guarding it just in case someone tries to use it to escape, but you haven’t told anyone or fixed the breach,” Van says.
Doc nods, a smile lighting his eyes, “Yep. Do you really need me to spell it out? You all feel the same as I do. None of us likes the fact that Dimitri is in there. When I found the breach, I considered closing it up, and then I decided not to. Things with us change on a dime, and I thought that it would be better to be overprepared than underprepared, so in the eventuality that we needed to get Dimitri out and we couldn’t do it by normal means, we would have a backup plan. ”
“Brilliant,” Griff grins. “I like it. Although Dimitri has just proved that it’s not necessary.”
“Unless he could only get out because of that breach, is it a magical or physical one?” Raiden asks Doc.
“It’s just a physical one,” Doc replies. “I hadn’t got far enough into the thought process to figure out how we were going to get through all of the magical protections.”
“Which means that Dimitri was able to get through them,” Baz points out with his eyebrows raised. “From what you said about how quickly he got to you, it would seem that he did it with very little effort as well.”
I nod, “He seemed too, but when I spoke to him when he went back, he seemed really tired, so it must magically drain him.”
“That makes sense,” Ransom agrees. “It’s an incredible amount of magic that he had to cross through, and he seemed to do it with a ridiculous amount of speed.”
“Agreed,” Griff replies. “At least we know that there is an option to help Dimitri if we need it.”
“Yes, because it’s not crazy to break someone out of the prison that we have put multiple extremely dangerous criminals in,” Coen says sarcastically with a smirk.
Baz’s eyes widen as he sits up in his chair, “Wait a fucking minute. You guys are law enforcement?”
“We didn’t tell you that?” Raiden asks with a slight frown.
“No, you definitely didn’t,” Baz replies. “That makes the whole break Dimitri out of prison at some point more intriguing.”
River grins, “Van did tell you that we were technically the good guys.”
Baz chuckles, “He did, and now I understand where the ‘technically’ comes from.”
“I promise we will explain in a bit more detail in a moment,” Griff says to him. He looks at me, “I want to know where that shirt came from.”
Baz nods. He inhales sharply, “It’s got blood on it.” His eyes widen, and then become sharp as he studies me, “Not just any blood, the blood of a Beriudeita.”
“A what?” Raiden asks curiously.
“It’s like a vampire kind of creature, but its teeth are different from the vampires' that we have here. At least the ones that I have seen anyway. It communicates via clicks and gurgles, but can talk too, and they die if their heads are cut off,” I explain.