15. Zeke
Fifteen
Zeke
Since I met Finn, since word slipped out that I could work with enchanted weapons, a handful of interesting people had come to town looking for me.
As I watched the woman at the counter, I couldn’t remember a single other one of them.
Okay, that wasn’t really true, but the instant she walked in, a voice inside roared to life. One I’d never heard before, A humming in my thoughts. An insistence that I pay attention to the stunning redhead who moved like a dancer and held herself like the world might attack at any moment.
I wasn’t in the habit of indulging random destructive urges—not since I quit drinking—and I fought instinct, in order to keep playing the pinball game.
But when she asked about elven weapons…
If Finn sent her, it was either to fuck me or fuck with me. A distraction, to keep me company while he was out of town?
Except that, when I said his name, she gave me a blank look. “I’m sorry—who?”
She was here on her own. Looking for me. My body reacted like I was twelve and just realizing how much fun pictures of bare boobs were.
Seriously, what the fuck?
“You’re looking for someone who works on cosplay accessories?” When I’d heard Gabby suggest such a thing, I had to hide a smile. I’d been coming here for years, and she knew exactly who I was, even if she wasn’t familiar with the magic side of things.
I used to tell her she didn’t need to screen my clients, but it was nice to have people looking out for me, and she insisted again and again that she didn’t mind.
The new woman’s smile stayed on her lips but faded from those captivating green eyes, and she turned her attention to her food. “No. Thanks, though.”
Time to be more specific. “Enchanted steel with elven grips?” When I learned there was a whole other layer of the world, one with immortals and magical beings that existed in ours, I wondered how I’d never seen it.
I realized quickly that most people never did because they didn’t want or expect to. To someone not in the know, a question like mine would raise an eyebrow at the most. Make people laugh and assume I was joking.
The alluring redhead stopped with a fry full of milkshake halfway to her mouth. She resumed eating without a glance at me and just before the large dollop of strawberry fell to her plate.
She chewed slowly. Swallowed. “Still not interested in costume shit.”
There was a shift in her tone, though. Her disinterest was fake now.
I didn’t play guessing games with potential clients. I enjoyed the work too much, and they tended to be dangerous if I made assumptions. “Don’t freak out about this. I’m not threatening you.”
I reached for the back of my shirt, and her hand flew to her hip. I exposed enough of the gun grip for her to see the runes carved in bone, then covered it again quickly.
“Hmm…” She twisted to face me. “Interesting piece. Where did you get it?”
I took the spot next to her, and my knees bumped hers. An unexpected shock spilled through me, and that screaming inside was back. The sensation that didn’t have words but very much wanted more from her.
“A friend gave it to me when I was younger,” I said. Elven accessories worked best when they were genuine gifts. They could be purchased but never stolen. They lost their power if the exchange wasn’t willing.
“A seer who told you your destiny was predetermined?”
Oddly specific question. Then again, no one looking for me was normal in the boring, human sense of the word. “The person who did that was a god I met at a swap meet.” A ridiculous answer, regardless of it being the truth.
“A god. Really.” Her tone was flat. “Random god was wandering through an oversized yard sale, looking for people to bestow knowledge on?”
“He was looking for someone to give him a blowjob.” My early memories of Finn were fuzzy, thanks to how badly I hated the first few months of sobriety. He was the reason I gave it up, though, and he’d stayed by my side the entire time I was coping with detox and what came after. His request for sex when he and I started talking had been a joke, but this version of the story sounded more interesting than we bonded over shared trauma .
She raised her brows, and one corner of her mouth quirked up. “I hope you got paid up front for a favor like that.”
I liked her. Skeptical. Subtle. Perceptive. “I don’t fuck for cash. I didn’t ask for payment at all.” I winced at the half-truth. After the swap meet, we’d continued the conversation in a nearby bar, and I’d let him buy shot after shot, until I was blindingly drunk. That was who I was back then.
If she heard the fib, she didn’t call me on it. “But he’s not the friend you got the grips from.”
“No.” Finn was the one who insisted he was part of my destiny. The fortune teller . Lucky guess on her part? “Where’d you get yours?”
“An elf working a renaissance fair. Not that I knew that until I got older, and she never aged a bit.”
A vague but potent insistence that I pay attention surged inside me. What the hell?
Yeah, I had a similar story, except that I’d gotten my grips at a gun show. Knowing now how many elves and fae walked among humanity, I doubted it was a rare occurrence. And I didn’t realize back then that the guy wasn’t aging, because I didn’t expect something like immortality to be real. I’d assumed he was one of those people who aged well.
One day, you’ll meet your equal and opposite. That was what Finn told me. One of the things he drilled into my head. Your fate and undoing. Your death. Unless you kill them first.
I was thinking too much. Looking for a reason to not like this woman, because of the inexplicable draw. Maybe I needed to shut off the mental dialogue for a while and appreciate the attraction.
Or maybe I needed to find out why she was here, and then move on.
The internal struggle was real. “Did the grip break on your knife?”
“No. The grip is elven.” Despite the duh in her voice, there was a waver.
Because something had broken, which meant the magic failed. How? “I’m Zee, by the way.” Why didn’t I tell her my real name?
Because I wanted to tell her everything. Give her everything and take the same in return. Talk to her for eternity. Drag her into the bathroom and fuck her again and again. Be part of her. Let her consume me. It didn’t matter, as long as she stayed.
And that was terrifyingly obsessive, no matter which world I was talking about.
“Interesting name.” She licked her lips.
“I’m an interesting guy.”
“That remains to be seen.”
No it didn’t. She was as compelled as I was.
How did I know?
Not a clue.
One of Finn’s gifts was to impart knowledge on another individual. With a touch, he could make it so the other person knew whatever he shared with them. It was how he’d convinced me this other world was real when we first met. A kiss. A gift of knowledge. Hey, gods and other immortals walk among us, and most never realize it .
What he’d taught me that day came with an unwavering certainty that he was sharing reality with me.
I had that same feeling about so much when it came to this woman I’d just met.
“I’m A.” She extended her hand. In the circles Finn ran in, a handshake still held its original meaning. This was a temporary truce. Evidence that neither of us was armed.
“Pleasure is all mine.” When my palm met hers, another shock, this one more potent, threatened to consume me.
Pink spread across her cheeks. An adorable, soft blush that contrasted sharply with her posture and demeanor. She pulled her hand away quickly and grabbed another fry without looking, but she didn’t eat.
“Yes, one of the blades broke.” She worked her jaw. “The enchantment is gone.”
So she actually wanted me for my skills. In the forge. “I can fix that.”
“How much will it cost me?”
“No charge.” Another tricky thing about the work I did. It had to be offered freely on my part, with no request for payment. She would choose to donate when I was done.
In her case, I wouldn’t mind sex after instead of cash, but she looked like she would kick my ass if I suggested that.
And any sort of comment about remuneration, even teasingly, could keep the enchantment from taking hold. “Do you want to show me what I’m working with?” I asked instead.
A did an exaggerated surveillance of our surroundings, especially compared to the way she’d watched me in the mirror. “Here? Now?” Her shock was exaggerated as well. “Do you ask every woman you’ve just met to whip out their weapon in public?”
Fuck I wanted her. “Only you. But you look like you might enjoy it.”
“Strike one for you.” She sounded amused. “I’m more of a private person.”
“You’re inviting yourself back to my place before exposing yourself then?” I teased.
Her almost-smile was amusement mixed with challenge and made me half-hard. “He shoots, he scores.”
“Did you just mix sports metaphors?”
“Does it matter?”
I raised my brows. “I promise you want me to have an eye for detail if you’re going to trust me with your goods. Are we leaving or bantering?”
“We can do both.” She made a show of looking around again. “But we’re leaving unless your forge is in the kitchen.”
“Gabby,” I shouted. “Can we get a to-go box?”
A sighed. “I told her I wouldn’t need one. Now you’re going to make me look bad.”
“Not at all. You still look incredible.” What was I doing? Having a fuck-ton of fun.
Especially when the comment earned me another blush. I grabbed my wallet, but she was already setting cash on the counter. She pushed my wallet hand down, with a grip strong enough to pin me in place, unless I wanted to throw us both off-balance.
She leaned in, mouth near my ear and breath tantalizing against my skin. “I don’t fuck for cash either.”
I had no idea how much of the conversation she considered innuendo and flirting, and how much was actual business, but God this was going to be fun.
It only took a moment for Gabby to box up the food, then A and I were on our way. She carried her milkshake in a to-go cup, and I had the bag with a Styrofoam box in it. The route to my house and forge took us through side and back streets. We weren’t hidden from the world, but we weren’t out in the open either. No reason to give the people in this small town a reason to talk about the fact that there was a new woman around and I was with her.
Both mortal and immortal rumors led to unwanted attention.
The pressure in the air around us shifted. It wasn’t a strong change, but I’d had the grips on the gun long enough, been carrying it this way long enough, that I felt the magic even when I wasn’t touching the weapon.
A’s step faltered. She felt it too.
Something growled, accompanied by the sound of running footsteps. A flash of movement caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.
“ Duck ,” she shouted.
I was already moving. I knew what she was going to say. How?
A threw her milkshake, and I heard the messy splat as it hit a body.
“I hope you know how to use that thing, and not on me,” she muttered, as she darted past me, dagger in one hand, smaller, curved blade in the other. The latter had an elven hilt, and she was attacking a decaying-looking body that had melting pink ice cream dripping from its face.
“What the fuck is that?” I took several steps back, drawing my weapon and pulling back the hammer at the same time.
“Draugar.”
Undead. Here, by itself, in the middle of nowhere? I’d seen a lot of odd creatures since meeting Finn, and learned about even more of them, but this was the first time one had attacked me.
A knew what she was doing with her blades, but the Draugar’s reach was longer than hers, which kept her from getting close enough to do real damage.
Please let this be like zombie movies. I leveled my sights at its head, and A dropped low without me saying a word. I squeezed the trigger.
The creature fell to the ground, but kept moving and reaching for A. I hit it in the elbow next, stopping the arm nearest her. She didn’t hesitate to slice her knife across its throat, severing its head from its body.
Like that, the creature evaporated in a cloud of thick ash.
Disgusting, but also a neat trick.
Reality caught up quickly. Holy fuck, we’d just fought an undead beast. I’d panic later. Right now, we needed to get off the street, in case there were more out here. “Are you hurt?” I asked A.
She sheathed her weapons. “Not sure. I can run, if that’s what you want to know.”
It was. “Follow me.” I cut a new path toward my place, all back alleys, while adrenaline slammed through my veins. My workshop was a stand-alone building at the back of a large piece of property, and I had my apartment in a small corner of the converted garage. I let us in quickly, and locked the heavy steel door behind us, closing us off from any threat.
Pulse hammering in my ears, I turned to A. “Are you all right?”
Her freckled cheeks were pink and her eyes wild. “That was?—”
“Intense,” I finished for her.
She nodded, almost smiling. “You know what you’re doing.”
“So do you.”
“I hope so.” Despite her confident response, she looked pleased at the praise.
Her lips were flushed. Her hair mussed. She looked even more irresistible than in the diner. She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her chest, directly over her hammering heart. “A fight like that always gets me wound up.”
“I know what you mean.” I shouldn’t. I’d never done that before outside of practice. “We worked well together.”
“Like we were in sync.”
It was more than that. “Like I knew what you were going to do—” Fuck talking. I needed to burn off some of this energy. I slipped my hand up to the back of her neck, gripped, and crushed my mouth to hers.
She bit my bottom lip hard enough that the tang of copper mixed with sugary strawberry, and she kissed me back. Her heart hammered hard enough for me to still feel it, when I pressed closer to her. Or that was my heart. Or both. An odd sensation wrapped around me, tying us to each other.
I needed more. I needed all of her.