Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
T his was the first time I’d called a meeting in the blue house. Depending on Ben’s persuasiveness, it might also be our last one here for a while if he and his wife came to stay.
We sat around the table. Dylan and I shared all we’d learned. Even before the far darrig hacked into Ben's records, I had guessed that the bowman tried to kill me because of my connection to Ben. And also because of my previous fight with the man-made guardians. This was what I’d expected after the success I’d had taking them down with Conn’s help.
It might have also been the fact that I’d freed Rasmus from their hold on him as well. I was a threat to their scientific future, and they needed to neutralize me.
My death would have yielded far greater results for the man-made guardians than they or their support group could have ever imagined. If they killed me, it would also sever Conn’s bond with me. His contract would pass to another of my kin, and not to Fiona, who might have continued my work in shutting them down.
When we finished explaining what we’d learned, everyone was frowning. Rasmus frowned so hard that I thought his jaw might lock into place.
He glared at the missing bad guys even while his gaze stayed locked on me. “The dilemma is that genetic experimentation on this planet is inevitable. Our problems arise from their relentless attempts to weaponize every single one of their findings. Less-biased scientists should be doing the genetic study.”
“Aren’t all scientists biased one way or another? Research takes money. The source of that money is the root bias they must follow. Ya have to support the interests of the people paying yer bills.”
“The monetary price humans use to value their work is yet another issue. Nothing productive will be done about that until many centuries from now. We must seek a solution to the current problem within the limitations of current thinking.”
Zara smiled at Rasmus’s careful yet pompous ranting. His superior thinking was projecting into the future. I didn’t know whether to worry about what the female guardian was thinking or like her for finding Rasmus as amusing as I did.
When Zara turned her laughing gaze to mine, I nearly winced at my suspicious thoughts. But I just couldn’t trust her completely. I doubted I ever would.
“Colonel Benson and his witch wife should definitely come here,” Zara said. “We could protect them better. Rasmus and I both think the new wards will hold off future attackers. Someone from inside could betray us, but your efforts have reduced the capacity for another surprise attack.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why neither she nor Rasmus had offered to do anything but I didn’t want to start an actual fight among us. I diplomatically returned to discussing Ben’s issues instead.
“I invited Ben and his wife to stay here until the threats to them pass. I don’t expect them to accept our help, but I can see a benefit for all of us if they do.”
“If they come here,” Zara said cautiously, “I would volunteer to protect the wife. Perhaps we could become friends. Maybe we could work together on tasks.”
I grinned. “And maybe ya could learn her magick.”
“Well, you’ve already admitted it would benefit us for me to do so.”
“I do that think still, but don’t get up yer hopes up.”
Rasmus watched us both. “Did you two discuss this before this meeting?”
I laughed and turned to him. “No, but we discussed a related issue. Women quickly synthesize lots of disparate information into the simplest solution that serves the majority. Both Zara and I believe that Felicity Benson's magick holds a potential solution for transforming the demon wolves back into humans. In the short term, Felicity would get a bodyguard and Zara would learn something new. That’s a win-win scenario.”
Zara beamed at me while Rasmus frowned at her. I’d have to ask him later why the idea bothered him so much. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been the one to think of it.
I looked at him and then at everyone else. “I’m not suggesting we spend all our time hiding out here. Ben will have jobs, and we’ll do them. However, we will stay on alert for future attacks. Someone had to tell them where I lived and about the wards.”
“Who would do that?” Rasmus asked.
“The only person with a grudge against me is Ezra. If that evil fairy put a significant price on my head, more will try to gain entrance here, and some may possess the power to break wards. I’ve warned Henry to be on alert. Speaking of Henry,” I looked around, “he and Gale have guests coming this weekend. He said he would text us with meal plans and arrangements. Ya’ll be on yer own for lunch each day. I suggest ya stock those little mini-fridges in yer bedrooms.”
Conn chuckled. “They would never make you rely on a mini-fridge to feed yourselves. Trust me. However, Mulan and I will feed ourselves until their guests leave. I’ve been asked to keep my presence to a minimum in the main house.”
“Why?” I asked, truly curious.
“Because the workers stop working when I’m around. They wait to see what I might ask them to do instead. It’s a reflex.”
“Conn is very impressive,” Mulan said with awe before rolling her eyes.
Conn’s pinch had her yelping and Zara laughing.
“Ah...” I said with a chuckle. “Henry told ya to keep yer kingly butt in the Wu Shaman’s house where it belongs.”
“It’s a request I find quite reasonable to follow since it’s the place I most want to be.”
I laughed. “Good, because it’s yer fault that I like the way they spoil me. Please don’t ruin it by playing king of the main house when they ask ya not to.”
Conn chuckled. “After all those years in Demon Hunter prison, you deserve some spoiling. I’m glad our situation has worked out for all of us.”
“So am I,” I said. “When Fiona gets home, everything will be perfect.”
Conn didn’t reply. Neither did anyone else. I glanced around the table. “What?” I asked. “Do ya all know something I don’t?”
When no one answered me, Rasmus cleared his throat. “She belongs to the angel until he’s done with her. Did you not see his brand on her arm?”
“What brand?” I demanded.
Zara pointed at her upper right arm. “There was a mark on her about here. I asked Rasmus what it was. He said it denoted ownership.”
“ No one owns my daughter.”
Rasmus blew out a breath. I’d learned it was his way of summoning the patience to explain something to me.
“Fiona is the guardian of the second sacred ring, Aran. Her angel mentor is making sure she is protected until she finishes her training. Then he will remove his mark, and she will have to protect herself. It is their way. I verified it with Orlin. He said I’d gotten it right.”
“Tony never told me he owned her. He’s full of all kinds of shit, but I know for sure he would have told me that. He’s more arrogant than ya are, Rasmus.”
Rasmus lifted a hand. “He may have assumed you recognized his symbol and accepted it as a necessary step. I looked the symbol up to see who it belonged to, but I kept getting distracted. I finally found the answer while you were recuperating.”
“Are ya saying ya know Tony’s actual angel name ? Did ya tell everyone but me?”
“You were unconscious and visiting with the beings in the Dagda stone. I had to wait until you were whole again. In the meantime, I had to tell Conn because he’s your family’s second-in-charge. He told Mulan. Zara was with me when I found out, and Dylan helped me do the research. I’ve not told Henry yet because he seems to hate all angel-kind.”
“Bloody hell,” I said. And I didn’t even believe hell existed. But if I believed, I'm sure I would classify this situation as hellish.
Sighing, Ramus pulled a small notebook from his pocket and a pen. I needed one of those myself. Then I remembered Rasmus liked to draw. He flipped forward in the notebook, wrote something on a blank page, and then ripped it out. I took it cautiously when he passed it across the table.
“Do not say the name aloud, Aran. To call an angel’s sacred name aloud is to summon him to your side. It will give him the right to ask you for something in return. We don’t want to do that. Keep calling him Tony. I’m sure he gave you that fake name so you would not call on him for real.”
I stared down at the paper clutched in my fingers. On it, Rasmus had written ‘ Semyaza’ with his pen. Though my pagan roots hadn’t demanded it, learning about the existence of guardians prompted me to study the original watcher legends. That study revealed the names of the fifteen original leaders who had gotten remanded to eternal punishment for copulating with human females and creating offspring that nearly destroyed the earth.
Those leaders now served as powerful overseers with no end of their enforced penance in sight.
The rest of the original two hundred watchers were required to clean up the mess as their path to seeking forgiveness.
The task of making things right was also given to the others who came after the originals. It had taken little effort to figure out why the guardians—formerly known as watchers—had been so hard on the females of their kind. Guilt about what they had done to their human females had been a powerful motivator.
The personal story Rasmus told me about the fall had been heart-wrenching to hear. The Earth unleashed its fury upon the hybrid children, drowning them in a cataclysmic flood that brought both relief and devastation. My guardian’s painful memories of that time still haunted him. I would never forget how devastated he’d been when he’d confessed it to me.
But he hadn't shared with me about his leaders—the ones people of many religions referred to as fallen angels. What I knew about them came from the Book of Enoch.
A watcher named Semyaza had been the primary leader of the watchers. He and Azazel —whom some believed were the same being—were the first of the watchers to suggest that they all take human women as wives.
Semyaza was a womanizer of the heavenly sort, and now he had marked my daughter as his property.
And to think I’d been concerned about Fiona’s lusty admiration of a centuries-old fairy male. What if the watcher-turned-angel decided Fiona was too tempting a human female to pass up?
What if she returned his interest? Because how could she not?
Power like the angel had combined with his stunning looks was hard to resist. Hadn’t I learned that the hard way in my own life?
Jack didn’t have guardian power, but he’d inherited something that drew me to him. I still felt the occasional lustful tug in his presence. It made me extra snippy until hate washed it away.
But Rasmus was exactly the powerful kind of male Fiona was now stuck dealing with—Goddess help her. I couldn’t seem to stay mad at Rasmus, nor had I ever sent him away without eventually taking him back.
The guardian drove me mentally crazy, yet I still wanted to keep him around. And I still wanted to crawl into bed with him every night.
If Fiona succumbed to her angel, I would love any hybrid grandchildren she might end up giving me. But I hoped things never went that far. My daughter was too young to be a mother.
While that was ironic of me to think, looking back on my life, I could see that I’d been too young when I’d had her. Loving Jack had overruled every self-preservation instinct I possessed. That made a woman vulnerable in ways that it took a long time to recover from. It took eighteen years in my case.
In my heart of hearts, I wished fervently for my daughter to avoid making the same mistakes I had made. I’d done the best I could to shield her from poor decisions, but a mother shouldn’t always be lying to her child’s father. Or vice versa.
I rested my head in one hand and stared at the name on the paper I held in the other. “Fiona doesn’t know she’s been marked by her angel mentor, does she? There was no sign of attraction between them. She talked so hateful to him that Tony kept using his magick to shut her up. Maybe she’ll be smart enough to do what he says, so he’ll leave her alone.”
“When you first explained her training, I thought perhaps your angel might be a jinn. They are angelic-like beings from King Solomon’s original culture. Some consider them demonic, but their power is not related to the kind demons wield.”
I chuckled dryly at the lecture. “Yes, Professor Rasmus. I know what a jinn is. I’ve even dealt directly with a djinn before. In the beginning, I kept thinking that yer kind were fallen angels. Yer intervention on our planet seemed so much like the stories I’d heard about them. Now I see that was a pretty good guess. Not that ya ever confirmed it before today.”
“Well, there is a connection, but sharing so much of our past is both painful and not condoned. I meant to tell you what I’d discovered about Fiona’s mentor after you were healed, but focusing on Ben’s situation made me forget. It was the symbol Dylan recalled seeing on Fiona’s arm that set me on my path of discovery.”
Dylan winced at being named as a contributor. I had to work hard not to laugh at his pained expression. “I thought you saw it on her too, Aran. If I’d known you hadn’t, I would have said something.”
“Yeah, I know ya would have.” I wadded up the paper and held it back out to Rasmus. When he extended his hand, I dropped it in his palm. “Do something with this for me. The longer I hold onto it, the more likely I am to use a cease-and- desist spell and set it on fire. That would definitely make things worse for my daughter.”
Rasmus curled his fingers around the piece of paper in his palm. When he opened his hand again, the paper was completely gone. “Her angel is known as the master of enchantments. He is also the being who taught me magick. If I had been here to meet him when he brought Fiona, I would have known who he was and told you about this then.”
As so often happened, I blinked at the guardian’s effortless use of magick. Zara could control people with her thoughts, but that was different. Rasmus could create something out of nothing, command the elements, and seemed able to perform more magick than I held in my entire witch arsenal.
And, as usual, he used nothing more than his thoughts to direct it.
Confirming the connection of the guardians to the fallen angels felt like a complicated puzzle finally getting solved. The guardians—those once known as the watchers—kept themselves detached from their former leaders. If Father Peter lived long enough, I would take him to lunch again and tell him what I’d learned. He’d share it with his church, but I doubted anyone would believe him. Humans didn’t like it when creatures of myths turned out to be real beings.
But for sure, I was never telling Ma who the angel was. Bridget O’Malley would not take kindly to losing her illusions about the beings she considered above reproach. I hoped Fiona never told her either. In her sixties, Ma had lost enough illusions. I was rapidly approaching a time in my life where I didn’t want to hear the truth if it caused me more grief.
But I said none of that to the magickal being I’d fallen in love with. “Ya always surprise me, Rasmus.”
“That sincerely is the witch pot calling the guardian kettle black. And now I finally understand that strange saying. The context is rarely present when you use it.”
He was teasing me, and I laughed at his fake irritation. I didn’t know who was more surprised by my laughter—me or Rasmus.
Then I realized we’d had an entire conversation that had excluded all the others listening to us.
“Sorry,” I said, glancing guiltily at them. “I believe I just found out why people say ignorance is bliss. Rasmus and I are both learning the truth about clichés today.”
Conn was the only one who laughed at my joke. His sense of humor was a big reason why I loved him like a brother. My demon was the best companion a daughter of The Dagda could have hoped for.
I smiled at him. “Do you have time to talk privately with me?”
“Sure,” Conn said.
“Give me a few minutes, and I’ll meet you on the porch of yer house.”
“Perfect. It’s my turn to change and wash the bed sheets. Maybe Mulan might grow impatient enough to do them herself if I’m occupied with you.”
Mulan chanted something and reached out to touch Conn’s ear. A spark leaped from her finger into his earlobe. He yelped and laughed at the same time. Those two loved to torture each other.
Conn looked ready to make use of his dirty bedsheets once more before they got washed.
I turned away from watching them and rose with a sigh as I looked around the room. “The blue house will become the guest house for Ben and his wife if they come. If that happens, we’ll meet in the stables. At least there aren’t any horses in there yet.”
“Are we getting horses?” Dylan asked.
“Not if I can help it,” I said. “But I can’t promise ya Conn won’t morph into one. He’s fond of taking that form.”
Conn neighed like a horse as he followed Mulan out. Dylan chuckled at the noise he made and smiled at the couple.
“Dylan,” Zara began. “Can I ask you something about your animal talents? I was on my way to visit the demon wolves. It’s feeding time, and I like to help with that. I’m trying to get them to like me. Would you like to come along?”
“They like you,” Dylan said bluntly. “They just don’t trust you.”
I ducked my head to hide my grin but raised it again to watch their exchange play out. A frowning Zara followed Dylan out of the room, lecturing about why she was right.
“Well, it’s not like I can change that opinion yet. I don’t remember transforming them, yet they recall it too well. They’ll have to find a way to work with me.”
“I have some suggestions on how you can win them over,” Dylan said as they walked out together.
Soon, Rasmus and I were the only ones left in the blue house. “Do you need me to go along with you?”
I shook my head. “No. Conn and I need to spend some quality time together. I’ll tell ya about it later.”
“As you wish,” Rasmus said, bending to kiss me goodbye. He insisted on doing it every time we parted now and didn’t seem to care if we had an audience.
“I’ll work on organizing the third-floor library until you finish.”
My face wrinkled in confusion. “When did we get a third-floor library?”
“Henry asked Zara and me to secure the books we use for our studies because his people were growing too curious. We’re calling the room the ‘big library’ and keeping it locked when we’re away. Even Henry doesn’t have a key to it. Zara, me, and you will be the only three with access. We will grant Dylan access on an as-needed basis until he stops courting his lady demon.”
“Those sound like wise precautions, given Orlin’s books from the Venusians are in there,” I said.
“Indeed,” Rasmus said, smiling as he headed back to the main house.
I strode off toward Mulan’s house with a smile on my face. My life was still a mess, but it was a good mess. Having this property truly had worked out better than I ever dreamed.
While the news about Fiona’s angel disturbed me, I understood my daughter was in an unchangeable situation. Worrying about how she was doing wouldn’t help her. Only she could release herself from the obligation. And it was her choice to make, not mine.
In my heart, I knew guarding the ring was Fiona’s destiny. And not just because it had told me when I wore it. And not because Orlin had confirmed it to Rasmus. I had known all my daughter’s life that the power she’d gotten from my family would be used for important things. Now that her destiny had manifested, all I could be was her backup person.
Until my daughter needed me, I would keep doing what I felt compelled to do. My next task would be to turn Ben's beast form into a valuable asset rather than a liability.