Enduring Retribution e-book (9 page)

Tristan sat down in one of the chairs across from the desk and looked down at his clothes.

He was rumpled. Not only that, but he had another stain on his shirt. Damned woman was not only driving him crazy, but she was changing him as well. He reached down and tried to straighten his tie and looked up startled when Aaron cleared his throat. There was a smile there that Tristan thought he could gladly punch off the man’s face.

“I…” Tristan stared off into space for a full three minutes before he continued. “I’ve found my mate. She’s…she is…she has every right to be angry. I was stupid. And insensitive too. I asked her if she killed him. I’d like to think I knew her better than that. But I don’t…feathers, they were beautiful, you know. So is she, beautiful, I mean. I…she can shift. Had I not seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it, but she was covered in feather and then swish, she was flying away, taking my heart with her. I’ve come to realize I did too. Love her.” He was taking a deep breath when Aaron interrupted him.

“Bailey, the girl you asked me to search for, I take it?”

“Yes.” He wondered if that was what had pissed her off. “The information you sent was incorrect. She isn’t human, nor did she kill those men. I know that…I knew it then. That’s not to say she didn’t kill anyone, but not those two. She’s a hired gun, Aaron. A fucking hired gun.”

Sara hadn’t said much since she’d come in. Tristan liked the woman. She was very sweet, but could be a real bear when it came to her children. He wasn’t sure she was really listening until she turned to Aaron and smiled. “I think you need to go and read a story to our wonderful children, love. They need you.”

Aaron winked at her and kissed her nose then he looked over at Tristan. “Sara is my mate and I love her dearly, but she has connections that she shares with very few people. She is going to share them with you now, Tristan. It’s a trust that I’m giving you that I give to very few. One of my mate being with you without me there to protect her. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Tristan did. It was a great honor to be left with a vampire’s mate, a greater one when the vampire was a master. Tristan nodded.

“You have to understand something else,” Sara told him after Aaron left the study. “What I’m about to tell you is something we don’t share with anyone outside of this Kiss. I’m going to take you to the magical realm that is part of me, a part of all of us. And you will hear, see, and learn things that could very well rip apart the fabric of magic for everyone. Understand?”

“No. No, I don’t. I don’t understand anything right now. But I…I’m willing to keep an open mind. I’ll try and keep an open mind.” Tristan shook his head. “My life was so strict, so orderly, and then I met Bailey. You know, Mrs. MacManus, I don’t think it will ever be that way again, and I find myself hoping it isn’t.”

“Please call me Sara, and honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” She reached over to the wall nearest the desk and tore a hole in the air. She just opened a portal and there it was, the castle that all magic was governed from.

Sara stepped through first and then Tristan. They were met by a company of men, the Royal Guard, she’d told him. They were there to protect her as the queen’s cousin and to escort her and Tristan to the family room.

Tristan gaped at everything and everyone. When he looked up, there were perhaps six thousand tiny flies, but when he looked closer, he realized they were fairies. Tiny winged men and women going about their business, whatever that might be. Walking in front of him was a centaur and a smallish man and they were deep in conversation.

“He’s a dwarf; his name is Paul. The centaur is Jakoal. They are in the Courts of Law-making area. And those aren’t fairies, they’re heather pixies.” He looked at her, startled. “Yes I can read your mind. Over here there is nothing you can shield from me.”

“Why am I here? I don’t understand what this has to do with Bailey and me. You know something, don’t you?” Tristan wasn’t sure what he wanted to think about here, not if she could read his every thought.

She motioned for him to precede her into the large but cozy room. There were four people already in there waiting for them.

“This is James and Phillip and their spouses Savannah and Elizabeth. Phillip and Elizabeth are my grandparents. Mel is late, I see. Well, she is the Queen of Magic. Please have a seat.”

Tristan remembered Bailey telling him to go to the queen of magic or something. He didn’t get a chance to remember before a tray of drinks appeared before him.

“I understand that you are mated to the Printer. Oh my, that is amazing. What’s she like?”

Savannah said in awe as she reached for a glass of amber liquid and took a plate of cookies.

“Like everyone else, we all assumed that the Printer was a male. To think all this time she was a female.”

“The Printer? I don’t understand. The hit man, that’s my Bailey? Bailey is the Printer?”

Tristan wished he could drink alcohol and a half glass of clear liquid appeared in his hand. He looked at the woman across from him.

“Go ahead, young man. Here you can eat food and drink something other than what you normally drink.” Tristan set the glass down with a thud. Savannah grinned as she continued.

“Yes, Bailey, your mate, is a known assassin in our realm. We call on him…err her to help with our rogues. She was nicknamed the Printer because that is the front she uses, a print shop.”

“When the information she needs is sent to her partner, it is sent to a print shop called Fine Printings, Inc. We use the girl quite a bit when we have a rogue that needs to be taken care of. I should have made the connection when Pete told us about the woman and Salvatore. She is good, very good,” the man called James said. “I had heard that she is a chameleon. Is that true?”

Aaron had told Tristan about this man. James had a healthy fascination with all creatures and was working on a book to keep track of them. Pete was actually helping him, setting up a program on the computer to make access much easier and faster. Tristan felt like the rabbit that fell down a hole.

“No. Not a chameleon. She’s a falcon…I guess one of her forms is a—how do you get a job like that? I mean, do you put an ad in the paper? How do people check your references when all your clients are dead? But I suppose that’s the point, they’re dead.” Tristan had the overwhelming need to giggle.

He sat there for several seconds, thinking about her. Bailey really was a hired killer and these people, these beings, had hired her. She had been shot the other day, shot by the person she was hired to kill, or the police, but either way, they were directly involved in her getting hurt.

“She knew the consequences going in, Tristan. It’s not like we didn’t make things clear to her when we approached her.” He stood when a woman of regal bearing walked in and sat down.

“There were three of them when they started this, a were named Tyler Smith and a Cynogriffon called Griff. We have never met neither Bailey, nor Tyler for that matter. Griff is the only one we have dealt with as he is our only direct contact through the front. He’s very protective of her.”

“A Cynogriffon? I’m not sure…isn’t that a mythical creature?” Tristan asked as he could almost feel the hole widening even further.

“Griff? No, he’s as real as you or I. Griff is half eagle and half wolf, an extremely strong and a very intelligent creature. He is very loyal to the other two, or was. He never told us anything about them, not even when they were hurt or killed.” Mel reached into the small basket that hadn’t been there before, Tristan was sure of it. She pulled out an apple and another one appeared to take its place. He decided not to see it, simply not to see anything else or he would surely go insane. Elizabeth continued the tale.

“Tyler was murdered several months ago during an assignment he was conducting in the States. The only reason we heard about it was because we were asked to stop making payments into his account. It wasn’t until his death certificate was sent to us that we discovered he had been killed. He had been shot twice in the head at close range. We tried to get in touch with the Printer, Bailey I suppose, but she had been working in another country. They all have been working for us for about fifteen years and her record is impeccable.” A stack of folders appeared before him.

“You talk about her as if she is a Brownie troop leader, not some woman who murders other beings for money.” He just stared at them, ignoring the stack beside him.

“I brought you those,” Mel said quietly. “They’re the last ten beings that she ‘murdered,’ as you called it, and why we had to call her in. The last one is Salvatore Madison. He was a black mage, dealt in the art of black magic. He was the man she killed the night you went to Paris to save Bailey, the guy that Pete told you about.”

Tristan picked up the heavy folder and against his better judgment, opened it. As soon as the first picture appeared, he wished he could shut it again and found himself instead flipping through them. They were not only horrific but beyond what a person should know how to do to a body.

“As you can see, he likes his victims small and helpless, much like Pete Marshall’s body type is,” Mel pointed out. “He played with them, peeling their skin from them while they were alive. He used their terror and pain like you use blood. Their essences sustained him. We couldn’t catch him. His magic in your world protected him and just when we would get close enough to bring him in for a trial, he would disappear.”

Tristan looked at Sara from a picture of a young man. “That’s Tyler, one of his many victims. I believe he was also one of his lovers. Someone, and now I can only assume it was your mate, found enough information for us to sanction his death. It took her a month, and he was setting up his next plaything when she took him out. Without her, another of our kind’s mate would be dead, my friend Pete.”

Tristan put his head in his hands and leaned forward. He was thinking he could really use that drink, and then he thought of drinking from her. The way she responded to him and him to her, and then he thought of the way he had hurt her, hadn’t trusted her. Without raising his head, he told them all he knew.

“She is a creation—a test tube child. They were someone’s idea of an elite race of beings to go to war. And no, she doesn’t know who they were…but she may have an idea, but I don’t know. I never… They considered her a failure because of something they hadn’t counted on.”

James was making notes, Tristan saw, when he looked up. When he paused, James looked over at him. “And the failure? What was it?” The room seemed to be waiting for his answer. He didn’t like giving out that bit of information. It could be the life or death of her.

“She’s a mortal. Her wounds heal like them, as does her busing. She told me she can be killed and that as my mate…as my mate, I will continue to be an immortal. She also told me to find you, Mel, and ask you to dissolve out bond.”

“Is that what you want, Tristan? Not that I would, but is it?” Mel asked him.

“No,” he answered her without hesitation. “No, I don’t. She isn’t a chameleon per se, but a mixture of immortal DNA. She can fly; I’ve seen her do that, and she claims…no, she said that she can shift into any living thing. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t believe her when she told me. All I could focus on was that she was a hired gunman. Oh, and because I sipped from her, her powers are now mine. And before you ask, no, I’ve not tried to do anything. I didn’t believe her.

Not then.” He looked up at Mel, his heart heavy. “I’ve lost her, haven’t I?”

“No, not if I can help it. We need her, Tristan, but more importantly, she needs you. Without you two paired, you will die, and she will as well. The Fates have deemed this bond necessary.

As for her mortality, she isn’t. A mortal, I mean. When you bonded with her, she took your powers as well.” Mel grinned as she tossed an apple at him. “We just hired her to work someone in the Netherlands. She will be back here in a few days. That doesn’t leave us much time to plan.”

~CHAPTER NINE~

Bailey was hidden in the shadow of a large building waiting for her assignment to walk out so that she could get this one over with. She never thought of them as people unless she was feeling low, which had been happening a lot since she had left Tristan’s home two days ago. It seemed much longer sometimes. Anyway, her target was taking his own sweet time and she had too much time to think.

She was willing to admit that he had hurt her, but she wasn’t willing to examine why it had hurt, or that he above all people, had been able to. She knew that she could be a bit harsh, maybe even slightly rude…okay, she was a bitch, she admitted, but she’d never asked for this. Bailey smiled when she felt a small touch of her mind and recognized the link. Griff, her friend, her only friend.

“Mistress, is this a bad time? I know that you are on assignment, but there is an issue you
need to be made aware of before you return home.”

“Never for you, my friend, never for you. What can I do for you?” S
he saw a group of men come out of the building, but none was her target.

“There has been someone in the print shop as recent as late last night. I do not sense
anything taken, or any damage done to the equipment. There was a thorough search, though, but
without malice or meanness of any kind. What would you like for me to do?”

Her first thought was Tristan, but she doubted he’d care enough after seeing her fly away and what he had gotten from the detective by now to care enough to search for her. Then she thought that closing it down and just quitting would be good, but she knew that she couldn’t. She was still alive and breathing.

“Change the locks, contact the Realm, and let them know…Griff, did you feel anything,
maybe any magic or ‘others’ there?”
Griff was quiet. She knew that he was feeling the room, mentally touching each item to see what he could feel. He was probably angry with himself for not thinking of it too. She grinned bigger. It wasn’t often she could outsmart him.

“Ah, yes, mistress, magic, or rather magic used to hide itself from us. You think the Realm is
looking for something? You work for them, do you not?”