Chapter Three
I now knew how Alice must have felt when she found herself talking to a rabbit who was late for a very important date in Wonderland. Remy had said “Warden” like I should know what that meant. I didn’t, but I was going to find out.
“So, what’s your secret ability, Warden?” Aside from that sexy, drug-like voice …
His gaze narrowed. “You honestly don’t know, do you?”
Never bluff when it’s obvious that you don’t have the cards. My gambler father hadn’t been good for much, but he’d taught me that. “No.”
A pause. Then, “A Warden is similar to a sorcerer, except much more powerful.”
He’d just admitted that he wasn’t human. Wow. After years of looking, I’d found two such beings in two days.
“I can also manipulate emotions through sound and vibration,” Remy went on. “Or use those as weapons.”
The first part I believed. Movies used sound and music to manipulate emotion, too. His voice had sure done a number on the Beast moments ago. But the second part?
“Prove it.” Why trust when I could see instead?
Remy nodded at a large object on the ornately carved table in front of me. “See that sculpture?”
Of course I did. Under different circumstances, I would have been fascinated by it.
It showed a magical-looking city where three tall, pointy towers loomed over other buildings.
Water wound through the city in mini rivers that snaked up and around those buildings.
The water flowed in reverse as well as down, depending on whether it was going in or out of the city.
The sculpture must have its own hidden pump system to defy gravity like that.
“Sure. Looks expensive.” Like everything else in this room.
“Back away from it, Miss Stone.”
I got off the couch and stood several feet away.
Something came out of Remy’s throat. Calling it a word was like calling Niagara’s waterfall a drizzle. I caught a heady whiff of spices and chocolate.
The sculpture exploded.
But the pieces didn’t fall. They shattered, then hung in the air in an impossible freeze-frame. For a second, I could see how each tiny fragment glittered. Even the droplets from those mini rivers split apart like rain in frozen animation.
Then everything fell, and the pieces turned into a powdery substance that the water quickly saturated.
The Beast did something I’d never felt it do—it flinched.
I stared at Remy before looking at the wet goo that used to be a fantasy-themed cityscape. I’d gotten my proof, all right. His voice had obliterated that sculpture. I sat back down before Remy noticed that my knees were now trembling.
“What does a Warden do?” I asked in a fake-casual tone.
“We negotiate and enforce truces between the other races, as well as oversee the territories entrusted to them.”
Other races. So there were multiple types of inhuman creatures in the world. I knew I couldn’t be the only one.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked with sudden suspicion. “Isn’t this stuff supposed to be a secret?”
He shrugged. “All the non-humans on my lands know it.”
I didn’t, despite spending countless hours researching cryptids and other mythical beings while trying and failing to find anything I could about the Beast. I had to keep Remy talking. He was a gold mine of information.
“Why would other species need a negotiator?”
“Impartiality is impossible for races with thousands of years of spilled blood between them. That’s why an outside mediator was needed, and only humans were neutral, but they were too weak.
So, the races took a human and imbued him with pieces from all their magic, creating a non-human with immunity to their abilities as well as distinct powers of his own. ”
It didn’t sound believable, but I had a Beast inside me. Who was I to say that this was impossible? “And that’s you?”
“No, that was thousands of years ago. There have been many Wardens since. There are also areas without Wardens or treaties. In them, it’s survival of the fittest. That’s why many choose to live on a Warden’s lands, where treaties give them protection.”
With that, Remy rose.
I thought he’d looked imposing before. That was nothing compared to now. Remy was over six feet tall, well-muscled, and he moved with the grace of a stalking tiger. His presence filled the room until everything seemed to shrink in comparison.
“Now, tell me what you are, Miss Stone.”
His voice was smooth, yet the “or else” part was clear. I didn’t like that, but this guy dealt with supernatural creatures as his day job. I could finally learn more about the Beast.
Still, I had conditions. “First, I want your word that whatever ‘trespassing’ crime I’ve committed won’t be punished.”
“You’re demanding terms?”
His magic pressed on my senses, warning me the way sparks from a downed power line warned people that getting too close meant death.
“You’re a big-time CEO and a Warden.” My voice was steady, but I found myself sitting very still. Now I knew why some animals froze when a predator put them in their sights. “Come on, Mr. Fortune 500. Negotiate with me.”
That smile. Danger had never looked so decadent.
“Very well. Unless you’re lying about not knowing the rules, you have my word that your trespassing is forgiven.”
“And any other crimes I might have unknowingly committed,” I added.
“Except premeditated murder.” Remy’s stare dared me to argue. “I can forgive ignorance of my laws and self-defense, but if you deliberately killed any of my people, you will pay.”
I sagged with relief. I’d never killed anyone. Only the thing inside me had, and none of those deaths had been planned.
“Agreed.”
“Then tell me what you are, Lorraine Stone.”
“Raine,” I corrected him. “No one calls me Lorraine anymore.” Everyone who used to had been murdered. I took a deep breath. “I actually don’t know what I am. I know what I was, and that was a normal girl until I was fifteen and something … infected me. I call it the Beast.”
“How did this Beast ‘infect’ you?”
Ice stabbed me. Sound wasn’t the only thing that could destroy in an instant. So could memories.
“I don’t know. It didn’t transfer into me because it bit me; I know that.”
That was one of my few clear memories of that doomed camping trip. I don’t remember much of what happened afterward. Like how I wandered around the smoldering woods for over a week before I was found, or how I survived at all. Fugue state, the doctors called it. A miracle, others said.
Yeah, a miracle. If you liked your miracles covered in blood, soot, and carrying a supernatural parasite.
“It was several feet away from me when it died, so it couldn’t have bitten me,” I went on. Still, somehow the Beast had gone from the other person it had inhabited into me.
Remy cocked his head. “What did this Beast look like?”
My eyes briefly snapped shut, a subconscious reaction to the memory. “Big, dark, lots of teeth, razor-sharp claws … and it had a taste for people.”
“People?” Something sparked in Remy’s gaze.
I nodded as if I wasn’t baring the worst part of my life to a stranger. “I didn’t know it back then, but I found out later that the Beast doesn’t eat people the normal way. It burns through the violence in their auras first, and moves on to their life force if it’s not stopped.”
“How did you survive your encounter with it, then?”
Another awful memory burst forth. Blood bubbling past Gran’s lips as she sighted down the barrel of her rifle.
“Fuck you,” she whispered to the Beast, and fired.…
I forced the memory back. “My grandmother shot it.”
A brow rose. “And that was sufficient?”
“No, but her Ruger with Magnum slugs shredded the Beast’s guts and made it drop to the ground,” I said briskly. “Then I grabbed the rifle and kept shooting until I ran out of ammo.”
And Gran had had a lot of ammo. She said she wasn’t camping in bear country unprepared.
Little did Gran know that the real danger was a cute teen boy who said he’d gotten separated from his hiking group.
I’d flirted with him while Mom made him a hamburger and Gran watched him with suspicion born of her three tours in the military.
That’s why she’d already been close to her rifle when the killing started. …
Remy opened his mouth. Whatever he’d been about to say was stopped by the door banging open.
Brendan burst into the room. “Lass!”
Remy put himself between me and Brendan faster than I could blink. Two other men rushed into the room, giving Remy apologetic looks as they flanked Brendan and tugged on his arms.
“Come on, Brendan, you’re not supposed to be in here—”
“And yet he is.” Remy’s voice reverberated like rolling thunder. “That’s twice he’s slipped away on your watch.”
Brendan pulled against the gentle grips restraining him. “Don’t fuss, boys. I heard my friend, and I wanted to see her.”
“She’s your friend?” Remy looked more shocked by that than he had when I said I housed a violence-consuming monster.
Another beaming smile. “Of course.”
“He remembers her.” The shorter guard with highlights in his brown hair looked between Brendan and me in disbelief.
Brendan’s brows drew together, and pained confusion flashed across his features. “I-I shouldn’t?”
“Stop!” I couldn’t stand this any longer. “You don’t restrain a dementia patient unless they’re a danger to themselves or others. He’s not, so let him go.”
Remy turned. “Sit.”
The single word somehow knocked me back onto the couch.
Anger sparked as I got back up. “I am not a dog, so don’t you dare use your voice to make me sit again.”
“By your own admittance, you’re dangerous,” Remy countered.
Brendan gave me another confused look, followed by a far more tremulous smile. “But you’re my friend. Aren’t you?”
I should say no. Maybe if I did, Brendan would leave. But the vulnerable, almost childlike look in his eyes stopped me. I couldn’t crush that look any more than I could kick a puppy.
“Yes, I’m your friend, Brendan.”
Brendan’s smile was as bright as the flashes in Remy’s aura that, thankfully, I couldn’t see at the moment.