A/N: Rated T for language, will eventually be moved to M.
The Fae world exists on the physical sphere alongside the human one. The One Rule seems so beaten into the minds of every Fae that they forget it sometimes, in their haste to keep themselves and their kind hidden and therefore safe. But sometimes at night, in the seediest parts of the cities, those boundaries begin to blur, and well- the Fae come out to play.
A vampire, drunk on the alcohol-laced blood of the club patrons, stumbles out of a rowdy nightclub, the noise suddenly cutting off as the door swings closed. He barely makes it three steps before he hears a click, and something whizzes out from the alleyway. He hisses, takes a step forward, and collapses to the ground.
A tiny dart, the size of a fingertip, protrudes from his back.
A figure seems to melt out of the shadows, stepping carefully over his prone body and crouching a safe distance away, as long blonde hair spills out across her shoulders. The woman extends a gloved hand and quickly prods the body. When there is no response, she draws a hand mirror from her bag and holds it at an angle to the vampire's head. A grim smile replaces the look of apprehension on her face as she looks down and sees his reflection.
Then she, and the mirror, and the dart, all disappear again like they never existed.
When the Fae police arrive, a bearded wolf-shifter climbs out of the first car. He takes one sniff of the air and knows exactly the person he should be looking for.
She drinks.
It doesn't matter what, as long as it's strong; Tamsin's lost count of the number of glasses stacked in neat rows, three deep, in front of her. Whiskey, scotch, some green concoction that might be fairy mead and might be moldy beer. But it ignites and burns her from the inside out as she swallows, so to hell with identification.
This bar- dank, smelly, and rife with smoke – easily ranks in the bottom five of the worst bars Tamsin's ever been to in her many lifetimes. It's not just the atmosphere; as Tamsin looks around, vision beginning to blur as the alcohol sinks into her system, she sees bodies slumped across tables and chairs, dragging themselves to the door, pouring another drink. Lacking strength, and sobriety, and hope. This is a broken place full of broken people, and that's exactly the kind of place Tamsin is looking for, but even this is better than the place she's made it out from.
Tamsin squints at the clock; it's two already. She has another hour before she needs to be back on the road.
She flips through her wallet, decides she has enough, and the bartender pours her another shot. Tamsin downs it and tries to stop thinking.
But she can't.
They had tried so hard. After Kenzi died, the world seemed to darken, and it became a race against time (and a distraught Bo) to find the second Helskor and maybe, just maybe, to get her back. There was no time to rest, no time to grieve, and no moments of preparation before beginning the terrible task of getting to Valhalla. It fell to Tamsin, in all her Valkyrie wisdom, to take the lead, and she remembers standing in front of those impenetrable gates, and realizing that there was absolutely nothing she could do.
Tamsin rubs wearily at her eyes, trying and failing to swallow the lump in her throat.
They'd successfully found the second shoe, and fought off the spirits battling for their souls in the endless domain of the dead, and finally seen Kenzi, exactly as she'd been when she died, standing alone against a backdrop of Valhalla's endless expanse. There had been joy, for a moment. There had been celebration.
But wearing the Helskor meant you could enter Valhalla. It didn't mean you could bring anyone back.
In the end, even Dark Bo couldn't get her back, blue eyes shining out from the black smoke that enveloped her, driven to frenzy by the realization that for the umpteenth time in her life, she was powerless. They could see Kenzi but not touch her, not speak with her, and whatever little comfort they find seeing her again quickly turns sour.
They should have left it alone. As Tamsin and Dyson hid behind the nearest ghostly tree, helpless against Bo's wrath, they get their last glimpse of Kenzi walking calmly through the chaos. For a moment, she swears she sees Hale alongside the little thief. She says goodbye.
They blamed Tamsin anyway.
Of course they blamed her. Perhaps it wasn't her fault completely; she hadn't sought out Bo's father, hadn't wanted to take the Wanderer's contract to hunt Bo down, hadn't fulfilled the terms of that contract. But she had made a lot of fucking mistakes, mistakes that still linger in the minds of everyone she knows, and the fucking wings on Tamsin's back can't get her through Valhalla and back with Kenzi, no matter how she wishes they could.
They blamed her because they couldn't blame Bo, completely defeated by the loss of her sister. Because you can't blame a lonesome wolf, or a human doctor, or even a Blood King for something as ubiquitous and inevitable as death.
Tamsin is a Valkyrie, a maiden of Odin. Death surrounds her. She's supposed to be able to control it.
Things began to fall apart after that. Bo was yanked out of whatever grieving period she was allowed to have in order to become the bridge between the Fae, the negotiator between the sides. She was growing stronger every day, inspired in no small part by her father, and Trick was teaching her to navigate the complexity of Fae politics as only a Queen would need to know. Because it was obvious now that Bo's presence would change the nature of the fae and of humanity, and through all the agendas and personalities hovering constantly at their door, eager to get into the new Queen's graces, there is precious little time to do anything else.
This is a situation where there are winners and losers. The winners are Dyson and Bo, who somehow bury themselves in enough work to drown out the pain of losing Kenzi a second time. The praise of the Fae certainly don't hurt, and Bo soon falls as naturally into her place in the Fae hierarchy like she was never at the bottom of the ladder.
The losers? Tamsin.
Well, Tamsin and Lauren.
A commotion at the door startles her out of her reverie and Tamsin lifts her head from the cocoon of her arms, turning to the source of the noise. She knows before she sees him, before he sees her, that this cannot end well.
Still, she stays where she is, raising her hand for another drink before a familiar body sits in the seat next to her. He's too close for comfort, and Tamsin's teeth grind together as she shifts away.
"Get the fuck out of my face."
"Tamsin-"
"Now, wolf, before I finish what I started and neuter you for good."
Her knuckles still ache from the last time she'd seen Dyson, arguing with her as she stowed her belongings into her truck. He had called her a coward, a quitter, and she wasn't about to take that lying down. She might have broken his jaw, actually. It's a pity she didn't.
When they returned from Valhalla, Dyson began to disappear into the forest for long stretches of time, coming back filthy and ragged with exhaustion but with a clear head. He still smells like that now, pine sap and sweat. Tamsin wrinkles her nose.
"I didn't come here for revenge, or to try to get you to come back." Dyson says. He eyes Tamsin's row of glasses with a critical eye. "No one sent me."
"Bullshit."
"I'm serious."
Tamsin scoffs.
"Why are you here then?"
Dyson looks around quickly, eyes jumping from one patron to another, but no one's bothering to listen in. No one's bothering, period. He leans in so close his beard tickles Tamsin's ear.
"I'm here about Lauren."
The name takes her a little by surprise. Of all the things Dyson could have tracked her down for, this was the last thing she expected.
Lauren left before Tamsin had. After all, humans couldn't enter Valhalla, and the doctor had no skills to offer in the search for the second Helskor or the journey to the underworld. Tamsin can only wonder how troublesome that must have been for someone like the doc, who valued helping others more than helping herself. So as months had passed searching for Kenzi, Bo and Lauren had suffered as much as any other relationship would, given that much stress. When they returned with empty hands, Bo locked herself away from the world for a time, ignoring every attempt to get her out. Finally, Tamsin had slunk at the Dal one evening, already the pariah of their group, and seen Lauren's meager bags packed at the entrance of the bar.
Bo hadn't stopped her. Maybe she had thought Lauren simply needed a break. Maybe she thought Lauren was joking.
But Lauren didn't come back the next week, or the next, and when they finally did a search for her the doctor was long gone. Tamsin didn't wait around to see the aftermath of that latest tragedy. She followed the doctor's example the following day.
"So she came to her senses and went back to Bo, did she? Good for the doc."
Dyson shakes his head.
"She hasn't come back. Lauren hasn't been seen since she disappeared."
"What's wrong, then?"
Dyson takes a deep breath. Tamsin watches his beard quiver and his jaw work furiously around his words.
"The Fae have put a bounty on her head."
The glass almost splinters in Tamsin's hand as she stiffens, immediately, and her mind suddenly stops focusing on how to get away from Dyson and to the crisis at hand.
What?
"Are you fucking kidding me? Why the hell would they do something like that?"
Dyson sighs and passes his hand over his eyes.
"Do you remember the serum that Lauren tricked Evony into taking, the one that could turn a Fae human?"
Tamsin nods. She had admired the doctor, albeit grudgingly, for that. It took a lot of fucking guts.
"We've found three Fae who have also been turned. A vampire, two red caps. They were injected by dart gun, apparently, and are now in quarantine at the hospital. They were definitely Fae before they were found, and we found no connection between them other than that. But it's not coincidence, and it's not Fae."
Dyson takes something from his pocket and places it on the table. It's a tiny hypodermic needle, a type Tamsin's seen before at the Light Fae hospital.
Shit.
"How do they know it was Lauren? It could have been a psychopath like Taft, like any one of the nutjobs we've put away. Or a Fae hell-bent on getting revenge on someone, who the hell knows?"
"It matched the serum in Evony's bloodstream, down to the impurities they found in the single batch of the formula. No one but Lauren has the knowledge of the Fae required to make a one-size-fits-all weapon like this, apparently. Combine that with the fact that she's gone and in hiding, and they put the obvious pieces together. Besides, I smelled her at one of the crime scenes. It's Lauren without a doubt."
Tamsin pulls air deep into her lungs and thinks hard, wringing her hands together as her mind races. She doesn't have a clue of what to do.
"So, what now? They're going to hunt her down?"
"They're not going to kill her, at least. None of the fae scientists can find a cure to reverse the effects of Lauren's serum. All Lauren's computers, notes, equipment- they were all wiped clean. We found all her physical notes erased or burned. There's nothing left."
Tamsin nods silently. Of course Lauren would cover her tracks. Dyson clears his throat.
"So when they find her, they need her to tell them how to cure it. But if they don't get the answers they want, then-"
"They'll torture her until they do." Tamsin says, flatly. She chews the inside of her cheek for a moment, then looks over at the dejected wolf next to her in sudden inspiration. "But Bo will stop them, right?"
"Bo's powerful, but she's not that powerful. She can't be everywhere at once. This peace we're creating, this alliance between Light and Dark; Bo can't take on their combined armies, if it came to that. She's a powerful woman, but she's not a goddess."
"She'd find a way. She'd do anything to save the doc."
Dyson shakes his head.
"You believe that, and Bo believes that. But there may not be anyone to save, if the Fae get to her first."
Tamsin shakes her head slowly, scrolling through a list of every murderer or revenge-seeker she's ever come across (which makes up pretty much everyone she knows), looking for a motive. Cross-species attacks, though, she's never considered. What made Lauren Lewis tick was a mystery to everyone except Lauren Lewis.
"No, hold on. Lauren's been an asset to them for years, they've sacrificed their own to keep her in Light Fae employ. If she wanted to kill off the Fae she could have helped Taft. She could have put whatever that serum is into the water or something. Why her? And why now?"
Dyson shrugs. He's thousands of years old but this is the first time he betrays that age, the dark crescents under his eyes visible even in the dark of their surroundings.
"We don't know her motives, or why she's doing this. To the Fae, it looks like a human has just declared war on our kind, Tamsin. They're throwing every resource they have at her, and even Lauren can't run forever. Bo wouldn't risk a species war to save one woman."
Somehow, all roads lead to Bo.
Tamsin snorts and leans back against the bar, elbows pressed against the wood. She needs some stability now, and suddenly the decision to get roaring drunk doesn't seem like a good one. By all rights, she should be on the road by now, moving on to a place as far away from here as possible. Is she seriously considering diving back into the cesspit she left?
"You're wrong. You know Bo."
Dyson hesitates but nods, acquiescing. They both know Bo would give up the entire fucking universe to save Lauren.
"That's the worst case scenario. World War Fae."
She tilts her head up and closes her eyes, sighing.
What are you doing doc? Why are you being so fucking stupid?
"Why are you telling me all this? If it's inevitable that the doc's doing to be caught and killed, what difference does it make if I know about it?"
Dyson leans forward and puts his hand over Tamsin's; she draws it away.
"The best outcome here- the only outcome where Lauren ends up alive and the Fae stay hidden- is that she turns herself in and the elders have mercy. They'll punish her, but we could force some leniency from them in exchange for the cure. Send her into exile, wipe her memories, maybe. But that we can work with. There's a chance for forgiveness, but she needs to be there to ask for it."
"But the doc's never going to give herself up."
"Right. So we need someone to convince her." He's avoiding her eyes. Hell, he's not even trying to be subtle.
"Forcibly." Tamsin says, slowly coming to a realization that makes her want to throw up right there at the bar.
"Right again."
It's impossible.
But Dyson just won't stop.
"We need you to bring her in. Find Lauren and bring her back."
Inconceivable.
"Fuck no."
"You're a Valkyrie, Tamsin. You were the greatest bounty hunter the Fae had ever seen in your previous cycles. If anyone can find Lauren, it's you."
"I don't give a shit who I was in an earlier life." Tamsin hisses, lunging forward to come nose to nose with Dyson's stern face. How dare he bring up the life she wishes she could forget. The fury boils up inside her, inescapable but for the clenching of her jaw and her fist inches away from his solar plexus. She won't do it. She can't.
Dyson remains impassive.
"Who gives you the right, after everything that's happened, to come here and act like I'm some sort of mercenary who'll do anything you say? I'm not a bounty hunter now, for a good goddamn reason. Or have you forgotten the Wanderer that quickly?"
"Do it for Lauren."
"I don't give a shit about Lauren."
Something small and forceful in her conscience twitches at that, but Tamsin doesn't care.
"Then do it for Bo."
"What makes you think I give any more of a shit about the succubus?"
"Because you love her."
Her traitorous heart pounds faster at that word, love, and the word Bo, and now she's realized she's never said those two words in the same sentence. Tamsin considers smashing a beer bottle against and nearest wall and is holding it against Dyson's throat. She can already see his Adam's apple bob against the edge of the glass. But the wolf isn't reacting the way she expects him to. If she actually did threaten to cut his throat out, she has a feeling Dyson would let her.
He doesn't want to be here. That much she knows.
"Bo was the reason I left, dog-breath. She's the reason I'm fucking lost, that I'm not the Valkyrie I was before. You know what she said to me? That everything with her father, with Kenzi, Valhalla- that it was my fault she died. That fucking bitch."
Her voice shouldn't be cracking. Why is her voice cracking?
"She was angry. When we couldn't bring Kenzi back, you know she lost herself for a while there. It's the reason you're gone, and the reason Lauren's gone, and she regrets it, I promise you." Dyson is even more somber now as he remembers, his hands clasped tightly together. "She wasn't thinking straight."
"I didn't know it was impossible." Tamsin spits, bitterly. "I fucking lost Kenzi too, and I'm the one that had to take her to Valhalla in the first place. You think I haven't beaten myself up about my part in all this? I don't need the succubitch to do it for me."
"You've seen Bo. When she gets-"
"- she gets dark and twisty, she freaks the fuck out. Yes, I know. But that's not any fucking consolation." Tamsin sits back down, breathing hard. "Do you really fucking think Bo is going to take kindly to me dragging her girlfriend back here, kicking and screaming, to turn her over to the elders to do fuck knows what with her?"
Dyson squirms in his seat as Tamsin looks on. He takes a deep breath, running a hand through his hair, and closes her eyes before replying.
"Bo doesn't know."
Of Dyson's sins, this is the worst.
"What the hell?"
She's running out of expletives to fling at him.
"If she knew we were sending someone after Lauren, she'll stop them. She thinks Lauren can make it on her own, that she can keep running. Bo would keep her away if she thought it would keep Lauren safe. She's blinded sometimes by her need to save everyone, but she can't save Lauren this time."
Tamsin shakes her head incredulously.
"How can you up and betray the doc like this?"
"Goddamn it, Tamsin, I'm trying to save her!" Dyson finally lets loose and slams his fist down on the bar, his face losing its resolve for the first time. He finally looks at her head-on, and Tamsin is transfixed by the emergence of tears in them. This from a man who had once wished for Lauren's disappearance in all their lives.
Funny how these things go.
"You haven't been around for months, Tamsin. You don't know how hard Bo's been trying to keep everyone together. You think Bo wants to stay in the place where Kenzi died and you and Lauren left? You think I want to be caught between Bo and the Council? Nobody wants this. But no one can help but you."
Tamsin is a strategist at heart; she begins to assess her options almost immediately, analyzing and rearranging everything she's been told.
Save the doctor, save the world.
"This is fucked up."
Dyson doesn't say a word.
"This is completely insane. You don't even know if I can do it."
"I have faith in you. I wouldn't ask if I knew any other way."
Tamsin lets the weight of this responsibility settle down on her shoulders, thinking back to every moment she'd shared with the doctor. They are few and far in between; Lauren had been competition as much as she had been an ally to Tamsin. No matter how this ends, she and Lauren will remain where they started: losers. Tamsin is only pouring more gasoline on the tinder that their lives have been reduced to. The match is about to be struck.
But she could save Lauren. Save Bo in the process, and maybe even herself.
Her shaking hands pick up the much-abused glass in front of her, eyeing the few drops of liquor left.
"Where do I start?"