Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Abi
Iawoke with a confused snort and reflexively grabbed the book resting on my chest. “Mine.”
Beckett chuckled—a low sound that was dangerous for my brain capacity. “You can take the book back to the carriage house. I was just moving it so you could sleep more comfortably.”
I let go of the book so Beckett could take it, and blinked owlishly as my brain kicked into gear.
I was splayed out on one of the comfy sofas in Beckett’s enviable library, a few books stacked on the coffee table nestled at the sofa’s side.
I rubbed the side of my mouth, just in case I’d drooled.
How long was I out of it?
I’d come to the library during my afternoon break, and had found a few books on the history of Algoma and the Door Peninsula. I’d settled down to read for a few minutes, and had apparently fallen asleep.
“What time is it?” I asked, my voice rusty.
Beckett checked his watch. “It’s almost 4 p.m.”
“Four?” I snapped upright and pushed an unruly lock of my mushroom brown hair out of my face. “I’ve been sleeping for almost an hour!”
Beckett shrugged. “So?”
“It’s work hours!”
“Perhaps, but as it seems you are prone to wandering around at night, I imagine you’re exhausted.”
I surreptitiously checked the velvet pillow I’d been resting my head on for any drool marks. (I wouldn’t forgive myself if I at all marred the beautiful library. This place was a sanctuary!) “No way. I know from experience that I can operate on four hours of sleep for days at a time!”
Beckett gave me a look of mild concern. “It doesn’t strike me as healthy that you know that.”
“Tax time,” I said hauntedly, recalling the even longer hours than usual at my previous workplace. “It’s the great leveler of mankind. All shall fear it, until the sweet release of death.”
“Right,” Beckett cautiously said.
I stretched, fighting back a yawn. “Did you need something?”
“I was coming to see if you wanted to join me on an errand.”
I suspiciously eyed him. “What kind of errand?”
“One of a supernatural sort,” He admitted.
“So in other words you’re inviting me because I’m a convenient shield?”
He mysteriously shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps.”
I stood up and smoothed out my t-shirt. “Hm. Well, what is this supernatural errand?”
“Returning this creature to his kind,” Beckett said, his voice dripping with acid as he held up his phone for me to inspect.
His cellphone displayed the live video feed from the doorbell camera, which was mostly frizzy white hair and redness.
“Hellllo? Liege, I know you’re in there! You cannot hide your noble self forever!” The camera feed added a slightly tinny echo to the voice, but I still recognized Bobby the sacrificial gnome/emergency rations.
“The gnomes are here again?” I said.
“Worse.” Beckett put his cellphone away in a suit coat pocket. “They dropped this one and ran. He’s out on the porch, alone.”
“And so the errand is to take him back home?”
“Correct.”
I scratched the back of my mind, thinking. “Sure, I’m game. I’ve never seen gnome homes before.”
“How lucky for you.”
“Liege, it is not right to return a kind gesture. As a kind of fae, allow me to say it is bad manners,” Bobby the sacrificial gnome complained from the back seat.
“How unfortunate,” Beckett said from the driver’s seat, relaxed as he directed the vehicle—a silver SUV, he said no to the sports car due to Bobby’s presence—down a back road. “Since I’m so rude, you gnomes should snub me as a punishment.”
“Liege!” Bobby whipped off his pointy red hat and held it to his chest in a scandalized gesture. “How could you say that? We need you for your strength!”
“And there we have the real motivation for their actions,” Beckett said to me. “Fae can’t lie. Usually they like to spin phrases for deception. The Algoma gnomes, however, have never been ones for subtlety.”
“We can’t be subtle.” Bobby complained as he smoothed the bush of his fake beard. “If we’re anything but obvious, you’ll take it as an excuse to slip away instead of using your powers.”
“Regardless, with the exception of the Algoma gnomes, if you ever meet a fae, you need to be careful with them,” Beckett continued. “Never make a bargain with them—they’ll always get the better deal and will take far more than you believe you’re offering.”
“So in other words I should be careful when I go see the mermaids on the other side of the peninsula?” I asked.
“Yes,” Beckett confirmed.
“Understood.” I flipped to a page in my Algoma guidebook and made a note on a margin about the mermaids.
Curious, I twisted in my seat and peered back at Bobby. “Do you feel insulted by what Beckett just said?”
“Not at all.” Bobby rolled up his red hat. “Those mermaids are a bunch of hags. They just lounge around on rocks all day—they’ve lost all instincts since they just get fed and protected by humans and human tourists!”
“I see. And you aren’t angry that you’re a… sacrifice?” I asked.
“No. But today I’m not a sacrifice,” Bobby brightly said. “I’m a bribe!”
“A bribe for what?” I asked.
Beckett abruptly slammed on the brakes. The car screeched, protesting as he violently turned the wheel, swerving to avoid something.
I wheezed as I was thrown against my seatbelt, which dug into my chest and forced all air out of my lungs as I braced myself against the door.
Before the car had entirely rocked to a stop, Beckett was looking me over. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I coughed. “What happened?”
Beckett didn’t answer. Instead he scanned me, seemingly unable to take my word for it.
“Oh! Perfect!” Bobby brightly said in the back seat. “I’m a bribe so the most righteous and responsible liege will take care of that!”
Bobby jerked his thumb backwards, gesturing out the back window.
I peered down the length of road, and all the blood in my body turned cold at the sight of the creature standing there.
It was insect in nature, and visually looked like a cross of a praying mantis and a wingless wasp, except in a man-eating size. Standing upright on its back pair of legs, it had two additional sets of legs that it rubbed together, and all four of those legs were topped with scythe-like claws.
I was no entomologist, but given the way its brownish body glittered like a beetle, I was pretty sure it had an exoskeleton, and its serrated jaws were nightmare fuel.
Taller than Beckett, the horrifying creature oozed a kind of wrongness I felt in my soul.
“What is that?” I asked, shivering in my seat.
“A mantasp. A monster from the fae realm,” Beckett grimly said before turning back to address Bobby. “I suppose there is more than one?”
Bobby held up two fingers. “We saw two.”
“Of course.” Beckett sighed, then looked at me and narrowed his red eyes. “Stay here.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“I mean it.”
“I know,” I said. “I have enough sense of self-preservation not to even think about facing that monster, no matter the life experience it would bring. Plus, I’m not sure my legs would hold me if I even tried to get out from sheer fear.”
“Good.” Beckett eyed me, then slipped out of the SUV.
Bobby shivered. “It is a good thing we ran into it with the liege.”
“Why, are these… whatever Beckett called them hard to kill?”
“Mantasps,” Bobby said. “And yes, they are very dangerous.”
While the insect monster scuttled closer, Beckett casually walked around to the trunk of the SUV and swung the trunk door open.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my tense tone easily carrying to the back of the SUV.
Beckett rummaged around. “Getting a weapon.”
“You might want to be a bit quicker about your selection!” I stressed as the monster drew closer and closer.
“I need to choose my blade carefully.” Beckett held up a sword—one that looked vaguely European in design. “If I can’t take it out with a few quick thrusts, things will get messy.”
Wow. His priorities are questionable. I better make standard operating procedures for everything in the house before my contract ends on behalf of whomever takes it over.
“What’s so bad about messy?” I could almost hear the unnatural clicks of the creature’s joints and exoskeleton.
“You’d faint from the blood,” Beckett calmly said.
“Maybe don’t worry about that right now and just kill it,” I suggested, rather impressed with myself that my voice was calm even though my heart had proverbially shrunk and flopped down into my stomach to slosh around.
Beckett shut the trunk door, then casually sauntered toward the creature, which was closing in with a loping gait.
He cocked his head, taking the mantasp in. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes Beckett had gone from in front of the monster to behind it, still surveying it with stoney serenity.
My eyes couldn’t even follow his movements when he thrust with his sword, he moved so fast it wasn’t even a blur. It was like he teleported, and stabbed his blade through the mantasp’s carapace with a sickening crunch.
The mantasp squealed and staggered to a stop.
Beckett leaped onto its back and—using only his sword’s scabbard—smashed it on the top of its oddly shaped head. It fell with a splat, collapsing on the roughly paved road, deceased.
“Woah,” I said.
“Yes,” Bobby agreed. “Now do you see why we call him liege, even though he isn’t a fae?”
Beckett stepped off the mantasp and turned in a slow circle. “Stay in the car,” he yelled, his voice muffled but audible inside the SUV. “Its cries should draw the second one out.”
Bobby and I waited in silence, straining our ears for any sounds.
Twisting in my seat so I could peer out the back window, I saw the bushes violently shaking farther down the road. “There!” I pointed.
Beckett had already heard the creature as he had repositioned himself to face it.
The mantasp burst out of the underbrush that caged in the road, its serrated jaws clicking open and shut. This one’s exoskeleton was more of a green hue, and it was even bigger than the first monster.
Beckett waited, his posture relaxed as the monster barreled toward him.
When the mantasp was within attacking distance, it tried to grab him with its front legs.
He ducked, the razor sharp claws whistling overhead, then made one precise thrust with his sword into the monster’s thorax.
The mantasp froze for a moment, then collapsed, frantically clicking its jaws and writhing in place.
A few moments and it was also dead.
Beckett pulled his sword free, and the short but decisive battle was over.
“He is impressive,” I said.
Bobby sighed wistfully. “If only we could convince him to come forward and take command of the area, as he should.”
“Good luck with that,” I said. “He doesn’t seem likely to budge on that, and just so you know, I have been all over his house and can personally attest that he doesn’t have a blood donor.”
Bobby scratched his scalp. “Yes. We gnomes have tried brainstorming other methods of encouragement, but he is fonder of you than he is of us despite being neighbors for decades.” The gnome slumped for a moment, then brightened up as he tossed his fake beard and hat aside.
“Say! How do you feel using your feminine wiles to plead our case to him?”
Is there something about being a supernatural that makes you constantly teeter back and forth between sanity and the chasm of insanity? No, scratch that. Daphne and Flint are very logical and of sound mind.
“I believe I should do my employee duties and go check on Beckett,” I said, paving a way to exit this unhinged conversation.
“Think about it!” Bobby encouraged, speaking louder and faster as I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the door. “Surely we could strike a deal!”
I shut the door, frowning.
Why do supernaturals seem so eager to imply Beckett is unusually friendly with me?
Daphne had reacted with surprise, too, when I’d called Beckett by his name.
Was this a cultural thing? Or was it merely that Beckett didn’t fraternize with fellow supernaturals as he didn’t want to encourage their not-so-subtle efforts to make him join them in the public eye?
As much as I liked Beckett, and as attractive as he was, I was a realist. Beckett had a system he kept to in order to hide his supernatural-ness. This system didn’t have space in it for a human at his side without adding unnecessary risks.
I slowly made my way around the car, pausing in case I ended up being unexpectedly susceptible to bug blood, too, and swooned like a regency villainess vying for male attention.
Thankfully, it seemed the mantasps had similar biology to their tiny insect cousins, as what little spatters of blood I could see were hued green and yellow. (It seemed Beckett was a tidy hunter.)
“That was very impressive.” I leaned against the car and watched my vampire employer. “Your European blade and experience with the sword makes me suspect you learned to use it when it was the only available weapon?”
“Are you calling me old?” Beckett wiped his sword on some long, fuzzy grasses growing on the side of the road.
“Would that be old for a vampire?” I asked. “I am admittedly ignorant about your culture, and the internet seems to be mostly filled with speculation and romantic drivel.”
“Half of the so-called drivel is likely written by other vampires,” Beckett dryly said. “Vampires are even more vain than fae, and to inflate our influence on humans add baseless rumors and gossip in an attempt to outshine other supernaturals.”
“An admirably sneaky move,” I laughed.
Beckett started to smile, which shockingly softened his stoney face, until all expression was wiped from his face. “Abi.”
“Yes?” I heard something rustle behind me, so I started to turn around.
A third, unexpected mantasp emerged from underbrush on the side of the road next to the car… and me.