The Faerie Master (Aaron's Kiss Series) (29 page)

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
What money?
This girl is insane.
She should be locked up.”

Ferris started to back away from Cade.
She walked to him until she felt a hand on her arm.
She didn’t even turn to look at Shawn, but continued talking to Ferris. “I remember you from when you came to the office.
You told Gabriel that if I didn’t do as you said he was to make me understand that you were the boss.
He did.
He beat me so badly that I spent seven days in intensive care.”

“Cade, you sure this is the man?
Is he the one who Gabriel was working for?
You sure about this?”

“Yes, Mr. MacManus, I’m sure.
He hit me.
And when he did I grabbed onto his shirt and tore it.
He has a tattoo on his left breast.
It’s a heart with a knife through it.”

“She’s nuts. Vamps can’t tat, you know that as well as anyone.
Hell, all it does is make us a little sore for an hour then it’s gone.
I tried it once a long time ago.
I’ve never seen this girl in my life.”

“Then perhaps you won’t mind if we have a look at your chest.
It won’t take a minute and then you can finish your business with me.
I, for one, have never seen your chest, might be a moving experience.” Shawn moved to stand in front of Cade. She tried getting around him, but he’d have none of it.

“I don’t know where you get off talking to me that way, Shawn.
I’m your master.
You should have more respect for me than that.”

Cade finally got around Shawn and moved two steps toward Ferris.
Her intent was to tear his shirt from his body.
But that’s not what happened.
Just as she moved in front of Shawn Ferris issued his demand with a raised hand.

“I challenge you.
I challenge you to the death.”

~CHAPTER 20~

“Mother fuck.
I told you to stay in the house.
I begged you to. But you couldn’t, could you?
You just had to come out and challenge him.
Why didn’t you just tell me through our link what you suspected?”

Shawn had been ranting for the past ten minutes.
Cade sat in the kitchen chair and didn’t say a word.
Not a word to him or anyone else in the room.
He wasn’t sure why, but that bothered him a great deal.

“Cade, sweetheart, you need to listen to me.
You can’t win against this man.
He’s not very old, but he knows how to—”

“So I was supposed to support you and you don’t have to support me?
That doesn’t sound very good, does it?
Or is it because I’m just a Lesser Faerie and not a two-thousand-year-old vampire who lives off of other people’s blood?”

“That’s not what I meant.
He has more experience.
He knows how to fight and he won’t play by any rules.
It’s to the death. Do you understand what that means?”

When she looked up at him Shawn’s heart clenched.
He’d hurt her.
Not physically, but he’d hurt her all the same.

“Yes.
I’m well aware of what death means.
If you don’t mind, I need to take a short nap. I want you to stay away from me for a little while.”

Cade left the kitchen.
When Shawn made to follow her Vladimir stopped him.
He looked at her father and started to snarl at him to mind his own business when he realized the man was smiling.

“She’ll win this challenge.
There isn’t any way for her not to.
I put her mother’s chest in her room.
Cade will look and realize what she has, what she is.
You will be fine.
What I would do if I were you is wonder how you are going to make her happy.”

“He’s going to kill her.
I can’t...even without the need of her blood I couldn’t live without her.
She is my life, can’t you understand that?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth Shawn regretted them. Of course Vladimir would know.
His own mate had been taken from him along with Cade.
He started to tell the vampire that when Vladimir started talking.

“I met Cade’s mother just before I turned. I’m a pure blood so my change was different from yours.
At thirty-five I went through the transformation and became what you see today.
I’d had years of training preparing me for what I’d be, what I’d need to do to survive, and how I was to survive.
Most of it is imprinted into us before birth, but a lot is from the experience of those around us.”

Shawn didn’t know what this had to do with what Cade had done, but he didn’t interrupt.
He wanted to know the man who had lived for nearly three decades looking for a child he didn’t know had lived or not.

“Jasmine was centuries older than me.
When I met her she had already lived several of my lifetimes and yours as well.
But she was mine.
I knew it as soon as I touched her.”
Vladimir stood up and began pacing.
Shawn had seen Cade do the same thing.
He wondered if it was hereditary to want to pace. “When we mated and bonded in the way of our kind, vampires, I knew there was something more, something that Jasmine needed.
It was nearly a century before she told me that I had not bonded with her.
She said to share her sigil with a mate was something few Lesser Fairies did.”

“Why?” Shawn asked just as Mel shimmered in the room and sat quietly next to him.
She had the most serene look on her face. Vladimir didn’t seem to notice either interruption.

“Her mark was a faerie, a golden faerie.
She told me that I would become beyond myself when I took the sigil into me.
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I was willing to do most anything for her.
She was so...” Vladimir’s voice caught so Shawn waited.
“She was so excited to share this part of her.
Everything she was, everything she had done, experienced, lived, said, smelled, or touched became mine.
I knew all that she knew, including her magic.”

“That’s what makes Lesser Fairies what they are.
It isn’t that they are diminutive, it’s because the next generation needs to know less and less because of what they pass on to each other.
They are the most brilliant beings ever created.
I need them more than I need my next breath.
Jasmine was my friend,” Mel told him.
“No, not just my friend, but the sister of my heart.
I would do anything for her, and her for me.”

“That’s why you haven’t died.
You haven’t died because of the friendship between Jasmine and Mel.
She let you live because of the connection.” Shawn had wondered how Vladimir had lived without his mate.
And now he knew.

“Yes.
And Mel is Cade’s godmother.”
Shawn sat back in the chair.

He could understand it now.
It wasn’t just a father’s love for his child; it was a woman who had lost her friend and a child too.
They both had suffered great loss, each of them needing Cade.

“When a being is killed like Jasmine was her magic goes to the one who killed her. In this case, Garrett.
I’m not sure he ever understood what was making him do most of the things he’d do magically, but for the most part he was totally unaware of the magic in his body.
So when he was killed the magic was supposed to go to his killer and so on and so forth.
In this case, I was the killer.
Jasmine’s magic came back to me.
And now I have given it back to her daughter.”

Shawn knew he was supposed to be getting something.
Something important, as a matter of fact, but he wasn’t.
Magic transferred from killer to killer.
It seemed slightly macabre, but he’d seen worse things over his lifetime.
Just as he started to ask he felt Cade.
Power moved through her and into him.
Surges and surges of energy and magic.
His body stiffened with it, his head spun.
When he reached for something, anything, Mel grabbed his hand and started talking. He couldn’t understand her.
Cade, he had to get to Cade.

“I’m fine.
Please, I’m fine.
I can feel you.
Listen to me, I’m fine.”
Her voice sounded far away, yet inside of him.

“What is that?
What’s happening?” Shawn could feel something burning though her and into him. His heart pounded hard in his chest at first then slowed to a normal rate.
Energy flowed
through
them.

“I’m learning.
My mother’s things, there was a necklace, a moonstone I think.
I put it on, felt compelled to put it on, and everything, and I mean everything, came rushing into me.
She really was very beautiful.
And she loved my father so much.”

Shawn looked at first Mel then at Vladimir.
He had to concentrate hard on what they were saying. He could barely make sense of anything for a few minutes.

“...to make it work.
Are you listening to me?
Shawn!
Pay attention. Cade will need to go through her mother’s things and see what she was left.”
Mel turned to Vladimir.
“I don’t think he’s paying attention. I think he’s in la-la land or something.”

“I hear you.
And she already has.
She said there was a necklace.
She thinks it’s a moonstone.
Cade said she felt compelled to put it on.”
Shawn turned to Vladimir.
“I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, would you?”

Vladimir looked guilty and Shawn knew that he’d put the compulsion on the necklace.
He was about to comment when he felt Cade moving toward them.
Laughter and warmth surrounded him.

“I’ll take care of my father.
And I knew that something was off about it as soon as I touched it.
Shawn, will you forgive me for this?
I only meant to protect you.
I never meant for this to happen.”

“I know that, love.
And I want to protect you as well.
I can feel what you’ve learned.
You are so powerful.
Maybe more so than me.”

“Never that.
You hold my love.
That makes you supreme in my book.”
She walked through the door and his breath caught.

Cade had changed.
Everything about her was more.
He couldn’t really say what it was, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
She glowed with health and well being; her body moved with more grace and confidence.
Even her eyes seemed to hold more beauty, and vastly more strength.