Chapter 21
Dyson and Hale burst into the abandoned storehouse, guns drawn. The man they had been chasing was already running out of the back door leaving the smuggled fae artifacts behind. The Ash's explicit orders were to bring the culprit to justice as the ruler of the Light was baying for the blood of the fae who had been turning a nice profit selling antiques and rarities of his kind to anyone with ready cash, fae or humans indiscriminately.
"Hale! I'll get him, you collect the goods," the shifter shouted to his partner and hot-footed it after the fugitive. The wolf ran out of the storehouse and saw the quickly retreating back of the man who was clearly aiming for a van parked at the curb of the road. Another couple of meters and the criminal would have been out of range and scot-free. Not that Dyson took stolen fae antiques close to heart, having served as a homicide detective for many years he had got used to treating anything short of a fatality as a minor crime. But he didn't particularly relish the prospect of displeasing the Ash again after the last confrontation over his taking Kenzi's offender down a year ago. No burst of speed would have brought him within striking distance of his opponent, so the wolf opted for a simpler option – he braked, drew a deep breath to calm his heartbeat and steady his arm and took aim. The shot rang in the air and the man went down a mere step away from the car. Dyson accelerated and swiftly handcuffed the criminal who was alive but had only sustained a leg wound.
The detectives loaded the man and his loot into their car and returned to search the van for any more stashed illegalities. Hale was looking into the cabin of the car, while Dyson broke the lock on the back door and yanked it open. There was a big bundle on the floor of the van and in the seconds it took the wolf to adjust his vision to the relative dark of the van's interior he realized that the bundle was actually making noises and wriggling about. Then a distantly familiar smell hit him full force and in a flash the shifter was kneeling beside the gagged and tied woman on the floor, untying her bounds and pulling the dirty cloth out of her mouth. "Ciara," he whispered accustomed to trust his senses but still beyond believing. The woman before him was equally stunned, her huge green eyes full of tears and the perfect porcelain of her face marred by a bruise and several dirt stains. The wolf proceeded to rub her numb wrists and ankles to restore circulation as questions were gaining momentum in his confused mind. Behind his back he heard his partner's light footfall.
"Dyson, what have he got here? More fae treasure?" Hale asked peeking in, his brown eyes immediately going round with surprise. "That's one way of putting it," the wolf remarked and went on with introductions, "This is Ciara Gordon, the widow of a very good friend of mine and the wife of a very bad enemy of mine."
"You haven't been keeping track, wolf," Ciara mildly scolded in a gently accented melodious voice, unhusked by the gag, "I prefer to go by my maiden name now – I am Ciara Munro and I am currently a widow again."
"Did the old Gordon finally turn up his toes? The highlight of my day!" Dyson said gruffly.
"It might have come about a few centuries earlier if someone had informed me that my second husband killed my first one," the woman retorted in an even tone but her beautiful face was suddenly overshadowed with an expression of long-standing grief. "Gordon is dead for what he did to Stefan and to us, Dyson", she added firmly.
"How did you find yourself here?" the wolf asked caught up in a tightly-woven knot of emotions.
"I was kidnapped for ransom," Ciara explained simply, "I am a rich woman now."
"Seems like the sleazy antique dealer was about to branch off into a new line of business," Hale whistled softly, "The Ash will be happy to string him up and we'll get some Brownie points. Dyson could sure do with some after his exploits."
Ciara shot the wolf a curious look, but asked nothing as Dyson helped her out of the van and turned to his partner, "I waive the honour of bringing the culprit to justice and forego the pleasure of seeing the Ash, Hale. I'll bring Ciara to Trick to sign in at the way station instead."
Hake nodded with a knowing smirk, he had never seen his partner so bothered by a woman. And quite the woman she was – tall and graceful, pretty and obviously smart with an aristocratic carriage and a dignified air about her and evidently a centuries-old acquaintance of the wolf.
"Known her long and close?" he whispered with a conspiratorial wink to the shifter.
"So long that she faded to a distant memory," Dyson hurried to say, but Hale was not buying it, he nudged the wolf in a pally fashion, "Women like her never fade, my friend, they are always in your thoughts when they are not in your bed". Dyson, his thinking processes still fuddled, responded by giving Hale what might have been considered a friendly but substantial push to send him on his way. In his turn he took Ciara by the elbow to lead her to his car.
Trick was all glowing smiles of joy, on the constant to and fro alternating his position behind the counter with that at his younger friends' table. Ciara, who had insisted on showering and changing into a modest dress she ordered at the local Zara's right from her freshly taken hotel suite at the Drake, was looking smashing and surprisingly rested. Dyson, still reeling from the reappearance of the woman he had never hoped to see again, was unable to tear his eyes from her lovely face. The only discordant note in this entourage of happy miens was Kenzi's pouting little one. Perched at the bar stool, a couple of meters away from the miraculously reunited pair she was making a valiant pretense of doing her home assignment while, in fact, straining her ears to their top capacity to catch the most of conversation between her wolf and this beautiful stranger who represented all Kenzi herself could not boast of – ladylike manners, money and obviously an intimate knowledge of Dyson.
From what the girl managed to make out, Ciara and Dyson went back such a long way that Kenzi had considerable difficulty determining whether it was before or after King Arthur who was her only landmark in the history of the British Isles. Ciara was the wife of Dyson's best friend Stefan and he got killed and Ciara was captured by the king they all served at the time and forced to become his wife. "Poor lovely Ciara," Kenzi jeered in her inner running commentary, "such a victim to circumstances and now the king has snuffed it and she is rich and free and ready to make a grab for Dyson!" The girl couldn't suppress a shudder the though gave her and took the chance to swipe a yet-unclaimed shot of vodka Trick had absent-mindedly left on the counter. "A girl needs to straighten her nerves every now and again," she mused philosophically downing the alcohol and winced as the burning liquid made its way down. Then she spotted another ownerless shot and handled it in the same fashion with a significantly smoother effect. "A typical Russian, aren't I? Take my liquor without a murmur and spectacularly suck at my personal life"
At around eleven Dyson at last surfaced from the depth of Ciara's green eyes and regained track of time. "Kenzi! We are leaving, you need to be off to school tomorrow," he collected the unobtrusively tipsy girl from her bar stool. Kenzi immediately perked up, "We are going home?"
"Yes, just making a detour to get Ciara to her hotel," the wolf answered sniffing the slightly fumed air coming from the young human's mouth with a slight suspicion. Ciara materialized right behind Dyson's shoulder. "So this is your human, Dyson? Haven't yet had the chance of making your acquaintance," she gave a charming smile and extended a hand to take Kenzi's. The girl gathered her scrambled notion of decorum and mumbled with a comic little bow, "The pleasure is all mine." The three fae around her laughed and Kenzi was about to take offence but felt too dizzy from the vodka and too dazed by the woman's overpowering charm and gracefulness.
After they deposited Ciara at her slap-up hotel the girl released a long-held sign of relief but Dyson crushed her hopes of never seeing the lady in the designer dress again in the next sentence he uttered. "Ciara is coming to our place tomorrow, so I count on you to help with the dinner and tidying up and being on your best behaviour."
"Ciara coming? But why?"
"Because she is a dear friend and I haven't seen her in centuries and she wants to see where we live and we have loads to talk about," Dyson patiently explained.
"You were talking all evening while I was eavesdropping to my heart's content at the risk of dislocating my ears. Besides, if you are such dear friends why in all the hundreds of years apart did neither of you move their respective asses to see each other? Connection across the Atlantic has been pretty reliable for the last couple of centuries. Something doesn't gel here," the girl ensconced herself deeper into the passenger seat while Dyson pursed his lips without taking his eyes off the road.
"It's complicated," he finally supplied in a low voice.
"No secrets, I seem to recall," Kenzi chirped up.
"You can start practicing what you preach by explaining why you are reeking of vodka then," the wolf growled mildly.
"It has always been my understanding that the policy only applies to major issues," the girl retorted with dignity, "vodka is not, Ciara is."
The silence between them was thick enough to cut with a knife and pregnant enough to be rushed to the maternity ward. In the end, Dyson caved as usual before the imploring grey eyes.
"When Stefan was killed in a mission we all knew that the king had sent him to his death to get Ciara for himself. His soldiers grabbed her even before Stefan's body was committed to the ground," Dyson said in an even tone, "I chased them and fought them to free Ciara but she stopped the battle and told me to go away. She knew the king would prosecute us both if we escaped and didn't want to put our lives in danger. I was confused and hurt. I loved that woman to distraction and while I couldn't have her when she had been my best friend's wife I was more than willing to risk the king's wrath to be with her. So, I did what she begged me to do – I left without turning back and thought that we would never see each other again."
"And here she turns up like a bad penny, if we suitably use the currency of her country," Kenzi murmured.
"You see, she didn't know that the king had Stefan killed, when she found out a lot later she revenged her husband," Dyson's eyes lit up. But Kenzi was significantly less admiring of Ciara's valiance, in fact, she was more in the mood for a little girly bitching session.
"Let me sum up, she spends centuries living with a man who forced her into a marriage seconds before her first hubby's funeral, she nobly hands the mitten to the hunk of a man who passionately loves her, of course, strictly out of consideration for his health. Then at one point when she supposedly finds out that her present hubby offed her late hubby, she offs the second one and here she comes – the stinking rich young merry widow who conveniently shows her pretty face and her expensive wardrobe in the city where you have been living for I don't know how many years. The fact she certainly had no prior knowledge of. Cute!" Kenzi delivered her summary with no little amount of vitriol and looked out of the corner of her eye at Dyson's deadpan profile.
"You are yet so young," the shifter sighed dismissively, "You don't know what laws and rituals governed out lives then, you can't imagine what Ciara has been through. Don't judge, Kenz, not until you get to know her better."
"So, the knowing her better is in the cards?" the girl asked drily.
"I'd like you to try and be friendly to Ciara, try to keep more of an open mind in the matter," Dyson pulled over to the curb next to their house and turned to Kenzi, "For me, babe." Kenzi nodded but refused to meet his eye.
"I think you might come to like her, who knows?" the wolf added playfully nudging her out of the car.
"Oh yeah, you dumb wolf," the girl hissed under her breath. "About the same fat chance as for you to have liked the king who robbed you of the love of your life."