Chapter 14
After the flash drive was safely tucked away in her hidey-hole, already crammed with similarly recorded data, Kenzi tiptoed into the bedroom to cast a cautious look at the sleeping form of the man she used to love. For a second, she listened to his even breathing and then silently withdrew into the main room, reassured she hadn't exceeded the dose. The recent events were dancing merrily in her mind, her sister – so powerful and yet so vulnerable, the wolf she had considered a manipulable ally who had given her his jacket because she was cold.
Cold? She used to like the austere Canadian temperatures, braved them with extra short skirts and fish-nets, these days, however, she so often felt cold, even at the height of summer. So, she ran scorching-hot baths, wrapped herself in extra layers of wool, cranked up the heating, most often, she tried to banish the cold in her docile lover's arms – and failed more often than not. But that particular night she hadn't even been able to bring herself to try so she drugged him instead of giving explanations or simulating a migraine.
Kenzi headed for the shower but, as if punishing herself, took the coolest shower her unpadded body could take and emerged from the en-suite bathroom wrapped in a big towel to the sight of Hale sitting in the arm-chair, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his face propped against his locked hands.
"My mistr…, Kenzi," he leaped up to his feet gracefully, his despondent expression changing to a radiant smile, "I am devastated – I fell asleep while you were out to see the Queen."
"I didn't tell you to wait up for me, did I?" the girl shrugged her shoulders dismissively, "No biggie."
"I thought you might need me when you came back but I just couldn't fight the drowsiness," the fae admitted dejectedly, dropping his gaze to the carpet.
"This chamomile tea is such a calming effect," Kenzi allowed a mischievous smile onto her composed face, "It's really ok, Hale, I was tired and wasn't after any entertainment, I would've woken you up if I had been desperate."
"If you are now, we could …," the young siren let the conditional hang suggestively, knowing from past experience how often Kenzi sought oblivion and comfort in his warm embrace and eager to redeem himself.
The girl, however, only wrapped the towel tighter around her damp body. "No, I am not," she replied firmly, "I'll tell you when I need you."
Her tone mellowed as she saw the sincere misery on the dark face and the words slipped out, almost beyond her volition, "I went to see our child yesterday, Hale. Well, I obviously mean the grave. I pretended to speak to him or maybe to her. I just call him my little Sasha."
"Would you like me to go with you?" the siren asked with concern and took her hand into his.
"Are you offering because you're programmed to serve me and please me or because you are grieving for our baby too?" Kenzi looked up into his face and cursed her own remnants of naivety as Hale's face contorted with the pangs of residual self-awareness fighting the losing battle with the overpowering thrall.
"I must make you happy any way I can," he finally replied through clenched teeth, "And I feel bad where you feel bad."
Kenzi slowly released a breath she was holding and shook her head, her eyes cold again, "You won't make me happy by tagging along to the cemetery but if one day, by a miracle, you get your willpower back and want to go there, please, do."
Lauren woke up, stiff and disoriented, when the sun was already seeping through the venetians into the lab. She stretched her aching body into a more comfortable position, her joints creaking in protest and her head ringing.
"What the …?" she muttered under her breath, looked around drowsily and passed the tip of her tongue over her dry lips, "I haven't been doing solitary drinking, have I?"
Her memory obligingly pushed her late-night talk with her sister to the forefront of her addled mind and Lauren frowned. "It's not the first time over the last couple of months that I have zonked out like that," she chided herself, "I'm overworking and over-worrying. Kenzi is right – I can't control everything and should probably get more bedroom action."
Her fingers floated over the keyboard, waking up the computer and closing the windows she had left open. Quickly bouncing back to her usual collected and tidy self, the doctor turned to deal with the leftovers of her little tea party she clearly remembered as her last conscious action and a puzzled expression crossed her features. The tea things had been neatly cleaned away, the cup washed and put back in its place on the counter. Before she could fully process this totally un-Kenzi gesture, the door swung open and a boisterous succubus made her way in and in a heartbeat curled her arms around the slim figure in her stubbornly immaculate lab coat.
"Spent the night working again, my love," Bo whispered in her ear, ticking the tender skin with her hot breath and fully aware of the effect produced, "I decided to let you be, but I'm not going to keep cutting you so much slack. You don't want your chief of security to run on half-tank – tonight will be all mine."
"My experiments," the blonde waved a hand towards her equipment and her PC.
"And tonight we'll be doing mine," the succubus smile was 100% pure seduction, "No solitary confinement for you, baby."
"It wasn't solitary," Lauren corrected, unable not to reciprocate the smile, "Kenzi was keeping me her usual begrudging company, huffing and scoffing, but basically, I think she came to thank me for the car. Though she'd never have said that out loud – she made me tea instead."
"Did she spit in it?" Bo chortled good-humoredly, "Just to prove she can and that she's still the rebellious one."
"Hey, she even washed my cup," the blonde grinned, "The first labor of Kenzi."
"Kenzi washing up?" Bo was earnestly surprised and went over to the counter as if to check with her eyes what her ears had difficulty accepting, "She barely bothers to pitch her dirty clothes into the laundry basket around here. And when she does, it's usually the wrong basket and I get my whites stained from her red panties."
"Maybe she's growing out of her attitude after all," the doctor commented, busy with returning her desk to its pristine condition while the succubus inspected the counter and squatted down to surreptitiously peek into the bin. Her nimble finger quickly ran through the little waste it contained and a heavily doubtful expression settled onto her fine features. "And she seems to have taken the used tea-bag as well," the brunette muttered, her voice pitched low enough not to carry as far as the doctor's ears.
Dyson woke up fuelled with a sense of purpose and completely unruffled by the altercation he had had with Tamsin the night before and well past feeling any compunction about withholding the Kenzi-related information from the valkyrie.
"I promised to take care of her, not to be at the ready whenever she's got the itch in sensitive parts," he reasoned with his reflection in the mirror as he contemplated taking a razor to the stubble covering the lower part of his face – the thought that hadn't occurred to him in centuries. His gaze swept over his Spartan array of bathroom things and he had to put the shaving on indefinite hold as it blatantly required an implement he obviously didn't possess.
"First things first," the wolf told himself and set about getting himself in decent shape for the task he had set himself. After a quick shower and a meteoric breakfast he felt as good as new, his still stinging wounds aside, and stepped out of his loft with a good idea of how to find the Russian who hadn't exactly endeared himself to the wolf through being heavily suspected of playing both sides. Using his ex-cop list of unsavory contacts, when coupled with the wolf's persuasion techniques and quick punches where his wits were not quick enough, was the most expedient way to reach the goal both in the fae and in the human world.
If Dima had only known he happened to be a werewolf's goal that day, he might have enrolled into witness protection. If he had had any inkling of what depth of shit his restless Slavic spirit was getting him into, he would have steered clear of deserted alleyways, but foresight was not one of his numerous survival skills. In fact, his day started highly promising as he exited the back door of a strip joint he had just got his cut from, money in his pocket, a smile on his face and sauntered down the alley the biggest current worry on his mind being where to spend the hard-earned cash at such an early off-peak hour. Despite being inordinately proud of his cop-detecting nose, he got not a foreboding until it hit him right in the face, or to be precise, until a hefty fist hit him right in the face.
More astonished than hurt the Russian went down, scraping his ass on the hard gravel of the sidewalk, and looked up at a tall man who didn't even try to look intimidating as he simply was just that. After lightning-quick assessment of the opponent's blue eyes, fair hair and athletic figure, Dima immediately reached two simple conclusions – that fighting back was out of the question and that his assailant had most likely nothing to do with his Chinese or Italian competitors.
"Don't tell me the Irish are back," he mumbled to himself and felt obliged to fumble for his switch blade but was immediately dissuaded by a foot pinning his restless hand down.
"Hey, that's my turf," the Russian tried for rightfully outraged but quickly changed tack, "But I can share if you are short of cash."
"I am not with the mob and you skanky life style is none of my concern," Dyson growled with distaste looking down at the lowlife, "You were to find some information for a girl called Kenzi, your cousin."
Dima recognized the statement for what it clearly wasn't – a question and didn't waste his breath denying any of the above.
"Instead of getting her the intel, you seem to be giving the intel on her to the others, though," the wolf laid out his suspicions and didn't see a shadow of guilt in the transparent blue of the other man's eyes. And again, Dima refrained from denying not certain of what the stranger was after or whose side he was on.
"Did you tell anyone about your meeting with her last night?" the wolf squatted next to the Russian without stepping off his wrists that cracked ominously under his shifting weight. Dima cried out in pain and threw out through gritted teeth, "Kenzi sent you? She's gone against her people now?"
"If your answer to my question is yes, then it's her people who have gone against her," Dyson stated flatly, "Was it a woman with curly dark hair, fancy dresses and an abundance of arrogance?"
An extra second of hesitation cost Dima a broken wrist, which finally convinced him the stranger was the immediate and very real danger against all the other, more remote threats.
"Yes, she approached me about a week ago, told me to call her Milady and said she was willing to shell out for any info on Kenzi or Lori, her elder sister," the Russian whined, cradling his finally released but fractured arm to his chest.
"And you agreed to sell out your cousin, just like that, for a handful of cash?" the shifter inquired casually, reigning in an impulse to snack on the conscience-free opportunistic scum.
"Not just like that and that was much more than a handful she offered," the Russian muttered defensively, "And what's the harm in that? I just told her some bits and pieces about Kenzi, nothing she couldn't have gotten off her police record."
"Plus a little something on where to find the girl," Dyson added, "Didn't it occur to you that you were setting your cousin up for something really nasty?"
"Hey, dude, I don't know what Kenzi has gotten herself into but she's become the focus of interest for some really scary peeps," Dima bumbled on, "Like the muscle mountain that was with that woman, you don't say no to that kind of heavy, he looked like he lives in the gym and has no social conscience."
"Does he have claws as well?" Dyson was losing patience fast as he grabbed the other man by the fold of his shirt and pressed his own extended talons to front of his shirt, "Cos if he doesn't, then you haven't met scary yet."
Dima felt pricks of something frighteningly sharp against his chest and knew it was a now-or-never moment.
"I haven't told them everything," he cried, desperately whipping out his trump card, "Neither Kenzi nor this woman, I haven't told them about this doctor Taft … I've found him … more or less. I was going to sell it to Milady."
"You've got yourself a stay of execution but not yet a pardon," the wolf told him quite honestly and let his claws retract, "I need all the information you've found on the good doctor and then you're going to call this milady and arrange for a meeting."
"She'll get my hide for that," Dima squeaked as the cell was unceremoniously extracted from his pocket and shoved into his good hand.
"No, she won't, and anyway, I already have your hide," the shifter said almost good-naturedly, flashing a toothy grin at the Russian.