Bad Relatives

Liliana woke early. She basked in the heat of her prince's body for a while. He took up nearly her entire single bed, with his feet hanging off the end. There wasn't much space left for her, but she couldn't say she really minded.

She slipped out from under his heavy arm, favoring her leg. She experimentally put some weight on it, and found it wasn't that bad. The puncture wound had been deep, but not wide. It would be gone completely in another day or two.

In the shower, she explored a few timelines to check on things. She found an odd satisfaction in watching the jackal who hurt her prince, Kimura, sit alone in his little cell. Her prince had taunted him the day before, told him that he would make sure he spent a lot of time in prison, and then was put to death for what he had done. The jackal mentioned the second Grimm.

Ah. So, her prince knew at least that another Grimm was in town.

Speaking of the second Grimm, Liliana checked on Nick and his mom. They were having an awkward attempt at breakfast, where Kelly tried to cook for her son and failed. It made Liliana very sad for them both.

Kelly wanted to speak with the jackal. He knew something important about the local royalty and the coins, and the wreck that killed Nick's father and Kelly's friend.

Uh, oh. That was not good. Her prince was not ready to reveal himself, and the jackal surely would.

Kelly Burkhardt still sought an answer to why her husband and friend had been murdered. Liliana knew the answer lie in the coins themselves. The royals sought them constantly through the centuries. They played games with people's lives like pawns on a chess board, trying to find those bits of poison metal. Anyone who came in contact with them had their lives tainted in some way.

Liliana had only to watch the painful way Kelly and her son interacted to see that.

Sean slept, while Liliana dressed as silently as she could manage, not bothering to re-apply a dressing to her healing leg wound. Sean's face looked younger. It was too soon for the venom to have that profound an effect on him, so it wasn't that. His face normally carried so many worries, and so much careful restraint. He almost always looked a little bit angry, or at least, focused in concentration as if he were thinking deeply about something important. Now, he just looked peaceful, despite the bruises still on his cheek and medical tape still on his brow.

Liliana let him rest. He had had a very difficult day yesterday. He needed some time to recover. She had come far closer than she wanted to consider to losing him permanently.

There were enough eggs in the refrigerator to feed a small army. Liliana sometimes lived on just eggs when she didn't feel much like cooking. She diced a bit of ham and pulled out some rich, creamy farm cheese, and a whisk.

She would wake Sean with breakfast in bed. She had strong coffee brewing in a French press. She couldn't stand the stuff, but Sean practically lived on it.

She just got two nice omelets made when someone knocked on her door, the home one. She cocked her head sideways, wondering who it could be. Hopefully, just a salesperson or a religious proselytizer.

She looked, and her heart jumped into her throat.

It was Marnassier, her sister's husband.

The mauvais dentes' senses were very sharp. He could already smell the food she had just cooked, and hear her soft footsteps. He knew she was home. She just hoped he hadn't noticed the lingering traces of Sean's unique scent of leather, gunpowder and expensive cologne.

Liliana opened the door. "Bonjour, Marnassier."

He greeted her with a bright, charming smile that made her skin crawl a little. "You look well, Liliana. Comment ça va?" He walked in without being invited.

"Ca va," Liliana said and stepped aside to let him in. It grated on her that he used her full name. Only her prince did that here, and she liked that it was special to him. "Why are you here?"

"Can't family come to visit without having a reason?"

"If you came to Portland to visit, you would have come with my sister."

He looked in her little kitchen and saw the two plates laid out with omelets still steaming. "Hah! I should have known I could not surprise you. You saw me coming." He took one of the plates and sat down on her couch.

Liliana gritted her teeth together. She had not made that for him. "I saw that you would come to Portland. Prince Eric Renard sent you to kill Portland's Grimm. That is why you have come."

"So I have. I hear he took out two reapers at once, that Grimm. He will be a worthy opponent." The big man shoveled food into his mouth, finishing the omelet off in seconds.

"You should not have accepted the contract, Marnassier."

"Oh, why do you say that?"

Liliana sat down beside him on the couch. "You will not win this time, my brother. If you fight him, you will die."

"So certain, eh? I have no chance at all?"

"Virtually none." Liliana fiddled with her skirts. She had made sure that was the case.

"I have killed Grimms before. Why is this Grimm so much more formidable than any other?"

"He is well-trained and he has good friends who aid him. There are other reasons, but they are not my secrets to share." She shrugged. "The reason does not matter. The only way you will survive is not to fight him." She put a hand on his huge bicep. "Go home, Marnassier. My sister would be very sad to lose you."

He woged and growled low. "Isabella would probably be delighted if I got myself killed by a mark."

Liliana blinked. She had not checked on her relatives in … more than a decade. She hadn't realized it had been so long. "What happened?"

As Marnassier got control of his emotions and came back to human form, Liliana noticed something she had missed. Wrinkles. Marnassier had wrinkles around his blue eyes that had not been there the last time she saw him. He had not been sharing venom for a while if time was already touching him enough to show.

"She did not care for my choice of companions," Marnassier said. "Or the way I treated them, even when they were ones that she liked."

Liliana looked, both into him to see that he was glossing over something, not being entirely truthful, and at his past to see what it was. She saw him go through floozy after floozy, with Liliana's aristocratic sister looking on in disgust. He treated the girls roughly, leaving bruises, broken bones, and slashes in their pretty faces, as if he liked marking that he had possessed them. A few even died from his treatment of them.

Isabella had covered her husband's tracks, even helping him dispose of bodies, but she had not been pleased. When she confronted him about it the last time, he attacked her, slashed her face as he had done the other girls.

Isabella threw him out a fourth floor window, took their youngest daughter who was only thirty-two and not quite fully grown, and disappeared. Marnassier had not seen either his wife or adolescent daughter since, although he had searched.

This had happened over a decade ago.

"Oh. You are no longer my sister's husband." It made her sad for Isabella, but she couldn't help but feel a little thrill of sibling victory. Her mother had always held Marnassier up as the ideal mate, and pointed out to Liliana how well her sister had chosen. Liliana had never liked the mauvais dentes.

"No. I no longer have a mate, it seems." He smiled at her. His hand came up to push her hair back from her face.

Liliana pulled away from him.

"I think you should go, Marnassier." Liliana stood up and pointed to her door.

"Don't be like that," he said, standing to face her. "We have been family since before you were born."

"I did not choose you. Isabella chose you, and you treated her badly."

He snatched her wrist faster than Liliana could avoid. "You still haven't mastered fighting with your fourth eyes open," he said, a wide grin on his face.

"I did not know we were fighting," Liliana said, feeling a little afraid. Marnassier was a brutal fighter, and he weighed more than double what she did in pure muscle.

"Which is why you should learn to use your fourth eyes more." He snatched her other wrist.

Liliana tried to pull away, but couldn't.

His big hands held her arm blades where she couldn't use them. He pushed her hands together and engulfed both her slender wrists in a single huge hand. "This doesn't have to go badly, pretty little sister. All I want is a kiss." He yanked her arms high, and pulled her in close, pressing himself against her. He woged, so that the face he pushed close to her had fangs as long as her hand.

"I will kiss you with the edge of my blades when I get free," Liliana spat at him. She snarled, showing him her far less impressive fangs. "Get out of here, now, or I will see you dead."

He put a clawed hand on her jaw, and forced her face toward him. "Just one bite, ma jolie, and I will let you be for now." His claws dug into her cheek, drawing blood. She saw in his mind what he meant by "for now." Marnassier intended to stay in Portland and use her as a source of venom to keep himself young.

"If you wanted venom, you should have been nicer to my sister." Liliana tried to knee him in a tender spot, but he was too experienced a fighter to leave himself vulnerable. He caught the blow on his thigh.

He leaned in to kiss her with a face full of fangs and fur, probably expecting her to defend herself the only way she had left, with her fangs. It was the same strategy she had advised Nick to use against, Adelind, ironically enough.

Sean, wearing only his pants, dove over the couch and knocked Marnassier down with a flying tackle.

Liliana fell with them, since the mauvais dentes didn't release his grip on her wrists at first.

Sean hit him hard enough in the temple to daze him and make him shift momentarily back to his human form. Sean kept hitting him, trying to keep him disoriented, but Marnassier blocked instinctively with his free hand. Most of Sean's punches only hit muscle.

Marnassier growled, woged and turned on Sean, finally releasing Liliana.

The two big men's maneuverability was limited by the small confines of her living room. Arms, legs, punches and claw swipes flew wildly. Liliana scrambled just to get out of the way of flying fists and feet, as they tore into each other.

Sean held his own at first against the two-hundred-year-old clawed and sabre-toothed assassin with superhuman strength and speed.

The fact that he managed to stay alive for the first few seconds put Sean head and shoulders above ninety percent of the hand fighters in the world.

But Liliana didn't need her fourth eyes to know he wouldn't win.

She had seconds before Marnassier killed her lover. Her first instinct was to dive into the fray, but in such close quarters, she was afraid she would hurt Sean with her blades.

Liliana fought for calm. Right now, Sean needed her to think. She could freak out after. She did the only sensible thing. She opened the closet by the front door and pulled out Sean's gun. Marnassier had gotten Sean by the throat, and shoved the taller man against the wall so high that only his toes were touching the ground.

Sean gasped for breath, and threw blows with his hands and feet that Marnassier either blocked with his free hand or ignored.

Liliana put the gun against Marnassier's temple, fourth eyes wide open so that the mauvais dentes could not surprise her again. "Let him go, or the Grimm will not have to kill you. I will do it for him." She considered simply pulling the trigger, but her fourth eyes warned her that Marnassier's death reflex might crush Sean's throat.

"What do you care? Who is this man anyway?" Marnassier asked.

"He is my mate."

Marnassier laughed. "Isabella always said you would choose someone too soft and get him killed. I'll just save you some time and break his neck."

"If you kill him, there is no place on this earth that you can hide from me," Liliana whispered softly. She pushed the gun harder against his temple. "Let him go now."

That at least got Marnassier's attention long enough for Sean to land a solid kick between his legs, where Liliana had failed to strike earlier.

Marnassier's grip on Sean's neck loosened as he hunched in on himself in pain.

Sean got a full breath and got his feet back on solid ground.

The prince did a hold and twist on Marnassier's hand that simultaneously got it off his neck and gave him leverage on the mauvais dentes' arm, which he used to throw the big man through Liliana's front window.

Marnassier landed, rolled, jumped to his feet, and turned to face Sean, growling through his fangs, ready to spring back into the fight.

Liliana handed Sean his gun.

Marnassier's eyes widened in alarm. He sprang away with superhuman reflexes. Sean aimed and fired, repeatedly, as the mauvais dentes ran for his life.

"Damn," Sean swore softly. "Missed."

Liliana jumped onto her mate, and held on with both arms and legs.

Sean caught her, as she unexpectedly launched at him, only stumbling back a step.

"You are amazing, magnificent, wonderful, …" she told him, as she kissed him again and again. Her former calm exploded in an emotional tidal wave. Her fear for his life mixed with extreme admiration, and perverse delight that he had defeated Marnassier. Her prince had proven himself to be more formidable than Isabella's perfect assassin.

Sean gave her an odd half smile. "Your sister, apparently, thinks I'm not strong enough to make a good match for you."

"My sister has no room to advise me on mates." Liliana grinned at him. "I always disliked Marnassier. He has no self-control, a terrible attitude toward women, and he eats people, which is just disgusting."

Sean's stomach chose that moment to rumble.

Liliana laughed. "And he ate your breakfast, which is unforgivable. But that's okay, you can have mine. I will make more."

"I might have some explaining to do at the office if someone reports this," Sean said.

"I won't report it, and most of my neighbors left for work a half hour ago. But I do need a new window."

"I'll take care of it."