The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1) (2 page)

Alric gave me a slow up and down look.

Which would have been flattering had it not been followed by a look of confusion.

“You certainly don’t look like a bounty hunter, Miss...”

His statement caught me off guard so I blurted the first thing that popped in my head, “My name is Taryn, and I’m an archeologist.”

Why in the hell did I say that? And how did he know a bounty hunter was coming? Actually, if he knew about Largen’s crew, he probably could guess more would be on their way.

“Now that I can believe.” A crooked smile appeared, dimples making their presence known. “Which raises the question, why are you here?”

He wasn’t trying to be rude. He’d already discounted me and was looking for the next threat. Those bright green eyes were watching everything— who was in the pub and what they might be up to.

I ignored his question and asked him one: “If you’re hiding from bounty hunters, why are you in a pub?”

His smile came back, but distracted now. “I don’t believe in restricting my life. Besides, I think I’m safe. Who’s going to grab me here? You?” He laughed and held out his wrists. “Please be gentle.”

Now I was pissed. The bastard had so discounted me he wasn’t even looking at me, his eyes were still on the dying fight around us. “Hell yes.” With a quick movement that even my faery companions would have admired, I whipped off the towel and slapped the cuffs on his wrists. The look on his face told me they were stinging like hell. Simple things, those cuffs, but they couldn’t be taken off without a code and unless he stayed within a foot of me he’d collapse in pain.

“Alric, your ass is mine. I’m bringing you in for whatever you did to piss Cirocco off. Hopefully he’ll leave the pretty parts in place when he’s done. Come along quietly, or I’ll have a faery sing at you.”

Even with the cuffs burning on his wrists, he looked ready to fight. Until Garbage Blossom stuck her tiny orange head out from my jacket. A shudder ran through him and he lowered his cuffed hands. “Deal. Only keep it away from me.”

I almost laughed. This man, obviously a trained fighter, one who had started a massive pub brawl all on his own, was afraid of my faery.

I’d take what I could get.

“Agreed. Move slowly along the bar. I have to pick up some friends.”

Alric held up his cuffed hands and tilted his head at the crowd. Most folks would never dream of taking someone else’s sanctioned bounty, but the people in here were all drunk as hell and had been fighting for a while. I couldn’t take a chance that someone would see Alric in cuffs and try to take him from me, so I threw the bar towel over his wrists. The least Foxy owed me for letting the faeries get drunk was a wash rag. Alric shrugged his shoulders and walked where I prodded.

Leaf still sat where I’d left her, but she looked longingly at the open bottle the three faeries had been working on before I found them. “Okay Leaf, new task. You and Garbage keep an eye on our friend here. If he tries to run, you hunt him down. Do you understand?”

Leaf fluttered up and batted her wings in Alric’s face. “Yum, tasty. We going to keep?” Her speech had slowed down, proof that she was sobering up. She had an eye for the attractive males of any species. Much to the concern of the males in question.

Alric almost broke his neck trying to pull his face away from her.

“What’s up with you? She’s just a faery, for Hojt’s sake; she’s only dangerous if I tell her to be.” I was going to tell him she was only dangerous if she started singing, but I liked being able to use his fear. From the odd look on his face, I guessed fear wasn’t something he usually experienced.

I opened my jacket and motioned for both Leaf and Garbage to fly in, then picked up the bottle holding Crusty. Alric moved toward the door without prodding, but he kept glancing to where the faeries sat in my jacket.

We got out the door without incident. Alric stayed a step ahead of me at my urging, head down, but acutely aware. He seemed to know where we were going. I moved alongside of him after a few blocks, secure that the cuffs and his fear of faeries would keep him in line.

He caught my eye when I stepped up my pace, then dropped his glance to the bottle I held in my hands. A shudder across that perfect face told me he’d just seen the contents.

“Why is it in a half-empty bottle of ale?” His voice was rich and elegant, much softer than it had been in the pub. Another curiosity.

Wait, did he say half? I looked closely at the dark bottle. Damn it.

“Crusty,” I said as I shook the bottle around to get the still singing and swimming faery’s attention. “Drink faster. You need to be done by the time we get to the drop point. I’m going to need you sober.”

Alric stopped mid-step. “Wait, you want it to drink more? How is drinking a full bottle of ale going to sober that thing up?”

Along with being unreasonably afraid of them, my pretty boy didn’t know shit about faeries. “Her. She’s not an it, she’s a her. And that’s how they get sober. You have to push them past the drunken stage, they black out, then immediately return to normal.”

I poked him to get moving again, then resumed our march to Cirocco’s headquarters. I doubted the powerful wizard-crime lord would be there himself; it wasn’t a fashionable end of town. More than likely one of his low-level flunkies had been sent down to bring in my catch.

Being a bounty hunter really wasn’t my career goal, so to keep my sanity I tried very hard to not think about the people I was working for or who I was bringing in. That being said, my parents had always told me my curiosity was going to kill me one day. I weighed the safety of not knowing what Alric had done to be worthy of such unhealthy attention against my growing need to know. Of course curiosity won.

“So what did you do?”

At his blank look, I nodded to the cuffs, then behind us in the direction of the Shimmering Dewdrop. “For a stranger in town, you’ve got a lot of folks looking for you.”

“Who said I’m a stranger? Besides, how do you know it’s me? You may have the wrong guy.”

I stopped and looked at him. “You were all but waiting for a bounty hunter, and you started a full pub brawl to avoid Largen’s people. If you aren’t guilty, you’ve got serious paranoia issues.”

He stopped when I did, the cuffs insured that, then shrugged. “Maybe I started the fight for fun. It was a very slow night in that pub.”

I ignored him and resumed walking. The pain from the stun cuffs increased the further apart he was from me, so he quickly joined me. After a few minutes, I opened my jacket and let Garbage Blossom sit on my shoulder. Alric’s corresponding shudder gave me a bit of satisfaction. Fine, he didn’t want to talk? He could just have a pissed-off faery staring at him the whole way. From the way she was scrunching up in her overalls, her eyes narrowed, and lower lip sticking out, she’d sobered up enough to take her surveillance job seriously. Good for me, bad for him.

Aside from a few more mutters on his part, we didn’t say another word until we found the warehouse. The loading door was closed, but a smaller office door still showed light through the dirty window. I pushed my prize through the door.

Three guards greeted me, two holding short rapid-reload cross bows. Cirocco wasn’t holding back. Those things were the top of the line and cost twenty times what he was paying me.

“I’m Taryn. Cirocco hired me to bring him in.” I nodded to the lead goon. Big and brawny, most likely had some minotaur in his family shrub. Hated dealing with them. They had bad tempers and were just this side of dysfunctionally stupid. The goon continued staring blankly at me, reinforcing my prejudices. “Cirocco’s paying me to bring in Alric. Tonight. I. Need. My. Money.” I enunciated for him slowly as I handed over the control tab for the stun cuffs.

Finally, a second and slightly less-idiotic-looking guard stepped forward. At least she could speak. “Leave him here. Gflockin has your pay.”

Her squinty yellow eyes watched Alric like he was her missing dinner. With a nod of her small pointed head, she indicated yet another example of intellectual abandon halfway into the office. With a smile that said good luck, I left Alric and went for my pay.

The guard counted my money out, and the other two took Alric over to a corner. Alric was out of my hair. Whatever he did was no longer my concern. Nothing to do with me.

“So what did he do?” The words were out of my mouth before I could catch them. I didn’t want Cirocco to know I’d asked about someone he was interested in.

The guard’s glare told me the same thing.

“Just asking, that’s all. Oh, I wouldn’t take off those cuffs if I were you.” I’d glanced back and saw that the second guard was fiddling with the spell lock on the side of the slap cuffs. She snarled at me as she continued to fiddle with them. “Seriously, he can fight. He took on a mess of folks back at the Dewdrop.” My attention was drawn back to the man with the coins as he clinked them into my hand.

An instant later all hell broke loose.

The woman guard went sailing over my head, slamming into the man with the coins. I ducked and spun, watching as Alric dropped the first guard with a clean and powerful upper cut. He caught me looking and flashed a smile, dimples and all. With a nod he was out the door before I could recover.

It took a few seconds to get my mind working again. I had my money, but technically the job was still in play. And I couldn’t afford to give back this money if Cirocco pushed the issue, I had to at least try to get him back. “Leaf Grub and Garbage Blossom, grab him.” I pulled out Crusty’s bottle, but she was still wallowing in an inch or so of beer. I toyed with the idea of taking a chance with her, but I could end up worse off. Much worse off. With a few choice swear words, I put the bottle away. Leaf and Garbage circled around my head once, then flew out the door in two streaks of color and dark blue overalls.

Chapter 2

I jumped over the unconscious guard near the door and ran outside. Neither my small flying drunkards nor Alric was in sight.

I mentally flipped a coin. It came up heads so I went left, jogging down the main road. I’d gone about fifteen feet when I heard a scramble and thud followed by the unique sound of faeries cursing.

Really angry faeries cursing.

I turned toward the alley where the sound came from and got hit in the face by soggy faery wings. Both faeries could still fly, but sap covered their wings and they couldn’t get much higher than my head. Lucky me. I finally grabbed them both when they kept screeching and whapping me in the face.

“Where is he?”

Garbage chittered in such a high pitch I couldn’t understand her. I think I even heard a few words of native faery, something they rarely used in public.

“Slow down, breathe deep. Now where is he?”

Garbage took a shuddering breath, then another, finally settling in the palm of my hand. She shook with anger. “It had stuff on its head, on its fur, on top. Bad stuff. We grabbed it by fur, stuff slid all over us. It threw sticky stuff at us. Worse stuff. It got away. Want to kill it now.”

I held the hand with Garbage in it as far from my face as I could. She had the worst temper of the three, but I’d never seen her so pissed. Stuff on its top fur? Hair obviously. Leaf forlornly held up a pair of greasy, black hands and Garbage was trying to scrub her hands clean. As for what he’d thrown at their wings, it was too dark to tell.

I looked down at my furious companions. “Did either of you see his hair without the bad stuff?”

Leaf hadn’t said anything since I’d found them, but she stopped pulling at her wings and nodded. Then she daintily spit out what looked like a long blond hair. “This. His fur is this.” She frowned. “Still yummy, but need to punish first.”

I took the hair from her, ignoring the faery spit as best I could. Yup, in the night lamps of the road, it gleamed a light golden blond.

So, Alric dyed his hair. Yet the people who were looking for him had been looking for a black-haired man, so he hadn’t dyed it to hide his identity. At least not recently.

Interesting.

“Can either of you fly at all?” Leaf shook her head, and Garbage squeaked out more faery swear words. “I’ll take that as a no.” I looked around the dark streets. With the faeries I might have been able to find him. Without them? No way. Perhaps Crusty had finally sobered up. I pulled out her bottle and peered in. She rested on the bottom, but the bottle still held that remaining inch of ale. Hard to tell if she had passed out yet or not. “Crusty? How ya feeling?”

She tilted her tiny blue head at me and belched. Thank the goddess the bottle was still closed. “MINKIES!” Her shout echoed around the bottle. She was still out of the game. With all three of my night-vision experts out of the running, I’d no choice but to call it a night.

***

The pounding on the door the next morning echoed around my brain for a few minutes before I realized what it meant. It had taken a good two hours last night to get the crap off of the faeries’ wings. I’d saved some to show Covey, but I didn’t know if I’d saved enough for her to figure out what it was. It reminded me of tree sap. Monster tree sap. Where Alric had gotten it I had no idea. Needless to say, by the time we went to bed, all of us were ready to kill him. Except for Crusty who had finally blacked out.

“Door!” Crusty’s far-too-cheerful chirp chased me out of my bed. She always announced the door. Probably because she liked seeing who lurked on the other side and needed me to open it for her. Unless their tunnel over the door was open, the girls had to rely on me.

“I’m up,” I grumbled at the bouncing blue faery. I looked down at the clothes I wore, then tossed on a different shirt; good enough. Anyone who wakes me after only three hours’ sleep gets what they deserve.

My apartment was small and crowded, but it felt like home. Unless the girls left their toys in the hall. I swore as I stepped on a tiny prickle ball and careened into the hall mirror.

I limped up to the door and peeked through the view portal. Chest covered in armored plate. Not good. With a sigh, I closed the portal, then undid the five locks on my door. This wasn’t a great neighborhood and I didn’t believe in chances. Giving or taking.

“Good morning, Taryn.” Grimwold’s grating, gravelly voice made me want to slam the door and run back to bed. He was Cirocco’s mage-for-hire and an overwhelmingly annoying person.

“Morning, not good.” I swung the door open the rest of the way and stood back. With or without an invitation I knew Grimwold would come in. “I didn’t beat up the guards.”

The laugh that followed was downright depressing.

“No one would ever say you did.” Grimwold looked down at me, then strode over to the best seat in my living room. I hate mages. Especially minor ones who have “tiny wand” syndrome. They were always trying to compensate. “We would just like to know where Alric went. And talk about the money, of course.”

I took the threadbare chair across from him. “I earned that money. If those guards are trying to say otherwise—” My gut clenched. I had brought Alric in, but it could boil down to my word versus theirs as too how he got free.

“No, no.” He cut me off with a condescending smile. “The guard who is conscious admitted it was Frellyn’s fault that the prisoner got away. She will be repaying Cirocco when she regains consciousness. However, we wanted to offer to double your pay if you will help us find him again.”

A twitch in my left pinky toe told me something was wrong here. And my toe was rarely wrong. Not to mention that neither Cirocco, nor Grimwold, ever offered to let someone keep money. Had they really changed in the two years I had been blissfully digging up artifacts? I covered my laugh with a cough.

“Look, I have no idea why you want him, or what he’s done. And I don’t want to know.” Small lie there, but I sure as hell didn’t want Grimwold to be the one to tell me. He’d make his own mother pay if he told her what time her funeral was. “You might want to warn the next bounty hunter that this guy can fight. Really well.” I wasn’t telling him anything new, he would have gathered that from the condition of the guards. I had brought Alric in once, but seeing him take out those guards didn’t make me want to gamble on a second time.

“What about the other three men with him?” Grimwold said.

“What other men? He was alone. I brought him in, the guards un-cuffed him, and he kicked their asses. All by himself.” Grimwold thought Alric had help? Maybe that’s why they couldn’t catch him; they massively underestimated Mister Tall, Handsome, and Feisty.

“The guard said three large fighting men came in and busted Alric out.”

I rolled my eyes, but bit my tongue to keep from laughing. Grimwold didn’t like being off balance, and he could tell he was in this case.

“I was there.” I leaned forward, peering into his murky eyes. I thought about bringing up the riot Alric launched at the Shimmering Dewdrop, but decided to keep it to myself. That bit might be valuable later on in case Grimwold came back to bother me again. “The guard is trying to cover his ass, nothing more.”

Grimwold stared me down, his own swamp-mud-colored orbs bearing intently into my own. I knew what he was doing, or rather what he was trying to do. He wasn’t using magic, but he wanted me to think he was—using it to get at my hidden secrets. What he didn’t know is that I’m a magic sink. Whether good or bad, magic wasn’t going to work on me. Well, not unless it’s of a better vintage than tiny wand’s.

“Did you need to use the bathroom? You look a bit ill.” I nodded to Crusty who was hiding in the kitchen. This interview was over. I was done with Grimwold and done with Alric.

Crusty, Leaf, and Garbage came swooping into the living room yelling faery war cries. Crusty had once confided in me that they were actually yelling ‘your mother was a gopher, and your father was a turnip’, which I guess in faery was far worse than it translated. All three were wearing feather war-dresses instead of their usual overalls.

Whatever they yelled, it had the desired effect. Grimwold turned green. He’d had a bad experience with the faeries a few years back. He wouldn’t stop bugging me out on a dig in the Zaraxian jungle. When he wouldn’t leave, I had the girls go after him.

Took the searchers five days to find him.

“I won’t take any more of your time; thank-you-for-bringing-Alric-in. We won’t be in touch; er, will be. Later. In touch, I mean.” He leapt to his feet and had the door open so fast his rent-a-guard almost landed on him.

Just how I liked my mages—babbling, panicked, and on the way out.

I didn’t stand, just waved goodbye after reclaiming my comfortable chair. The faeries certainly earned their nectar this week. I stretched as the girls gathered around the open door laughing.

“So can anyone join in, or do I have to go buy some wings?” The voice that echoed down the small hallway to my front door caused the faeries to collectively swoon with delight. I sighed. There went getting any work out of them for a few hours.

Don’t get me wrong, I adored Harlan almost as much as the girls did, and he didn't even have to give me sweets. He’d covered my butt so many times, I think he owned it. Not that a 765-year-old chataling was interested in my ass or I his. But he was good people.

“Come on in, if the girls will stop buzzing long enough for you to get in the room.” All three faeries pulled back from the doorway.

“Thank you, my dears.” Harlan waddled into the room, pulling back when he got a look at their feathers. “Are we at war with anyone I know?”

High-pitched squealing followed his observation. All three faeries buzzed around his head once, then tore off to their castle to change. The faeries had their own miniature castle. It was a play set I’d once received as payment from a grateful archaeology patron. I’d made him a rich man with my finds from the elven ruins and he paid me a pittance and gave me an old doll castle . . . after he’d had it appraised and found out it had no value. Regardless, the faeries loved it, and it kept them mostly out of my hair.

Harlan nodded, then landed on the sofa. His face sobered the instant the faeries left. “I heard you were out chasing someone last night. You missed a good digger meeting.” Harlan rubbed the side of his neck, ruffling up the gray striped fur there.

I actually wasn’t upset about missing the meeting—it would just remind me that I wasn't out there doing what I loved. I missed it more than the faeries would miss ale if anyone was stupid enough to cut them off. “I needed to make rent. I haven’t had a single offer of work in the ruins since Perallan died.” I leaned forward when he didn’t respond. “And? So what did I miss?” Sometimes Harlan liked to draw things out much further than they needed to be drawn. All chatalings love drama; it’s part of their genetic makeup. But Harlan made an art form out of it.

He puffed out his chest fur and settled into his seat. His suit was immaculately designed and cut in such a way that his tail, and a goodly amount of thick gray striped fur, was clearly seen. “A drink if you please? Nothing with alcohol please, my wives have asked that I cut down.”

I rousted myself out of my comfortable chair and headed into the kitchen with only a few grumbles. “Here.” I handed him a glass of lemonade. “We ready now? Or should I wait until I get the news in the Gazette?”

“Testy, testy!” Harlan twitched a feline nose at me. “Karys said you’d left the Dewdrop with a handsome man in tow. Thought perhaps…?” He took a quick sip of his drink, “Or not. Never mind that then, shall we?”

I sighed and ran my hands across my face. Ever since my unlamented ex-boyfriend had taken off for parts unknown seven months ago, it seemed like all my nearest and dearest were looking for me to hook up. It was starting to get on my nerves.

“The meeting. What did I miss at the archeologists’ meeting?” I don’t know if it was me, or the people I associated with who were getting stupider.

“Hmmph.” Harlan waggled a stumpy, clawed finger at me. “No sense of theatrics, that’s your problem.” A low purr rumbled as he settled back further on the sofa. “The interesting bits came after the official meeting, you see. Kerling, Mystral, Lafida, and I were lingering as we do. Any rate, there’s a reason patrons aren’t offering you work.”

I held my tongue while he took a slow lapping sip of his lemonade. I let go of it when he looked ready to take another sip. “Well? Spit it out!” It had been two months since my last patron died. Perallan hadn’t been the best patron, but he stayed out of my way, paid decently for anything I brought in, and managed to get fair commissions for me. Right up until his sudden death.