Chapter 26 – Forward Motion
"You've lost the plot, Dr. Lewis."
Lauren fidgeted in her chair, opposite Val Santiago, the Ash. "What do you mean?"
Val frowned. "It's been two weeks since you returned from your vacation, and since your return your work output has dropped, precipitously." Val consulted her notes. "I see several ongoing projects and experiments that appear to have been abandoned. I still don't have a cause of death on Arthur Naia. Remember him? Burned to a crisp at the ball, in my home? And one week ago, I asked you to research the Three Fabled Stones – the Orsedd, the Llangareth and the Siancyn, and it does not appear that you've even begun aside from," Val checked her notes again, "one Google search performed on your laboratory computer, four days ago. Tell me, did you find anything about three enigmatic Fae amulets of immense power on a human search engine?"
"No," Lauren admitted, her face turning red with shame.
"As I said. You've lost the plot. You've forgotten what is important. Lauren, you know I like you, and you know I'm not going to toss you in the dungeon like Lachlan. I don't see you as a slave, I see you as an employee. Having said that, I need tangible results if I'm going to keep paying the rent on your enormous apartment, and importing that chervona ruta hair conditioner from Lithuania that you like so much."
Lauren ran a hand absentmindedly through her blonde locks. "It makes it silky smooth."
"Agreed. You have gorgeous hair, and it would be a real shame to rid the world of the greatness that is Dr. Lauren Lewis hair porn. But Fae cosmetics and beauty products are expensive. And I have a assemblage of elders to answer to for every cent I spend. It was hard enough to get them to agree to a monthly stipend for you – and that was before you started stealing artifacts from them."
Lauren froze. "You…you know about that?"
"Please. Hale can't hide anything from me. I'm the Ash. I tolerate your little group of moonlighting thieves because I find your antics amusing, and because I may have use for you myself someday in the near future. Especially since the formerly unaligned Succubus is playing for your team now." Val winked at the double entendre.
Lauren furrowed her brow. "You know about Bo, too." It was a statement, not a question.
"Lauren, I applaud your ambition – it isn't easy, roping a Succubus into a commitment of any kind. It's difficult simply getting them to spend more than one night in the same bed. Good for you. Fuck long, fuck hard, fuck often. Girl power. But don't let that overshadow your work here."
"Right. Sorry. The plot. I haven't forgotten. I know how important my work is, and I haven't abandoned any of it, but…"
"Your mind has been elsewhere. It seems to have taken up residence in the general vicinity of your crotch." Val teased.
Lauren cleared her throat. "I am sorry. I'll get back to work right away."
"Good," Val nodded. She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. "This is a dangerous time to be a Fae, Light or Dark. By extension, it is a dangerous time to be a human working for the Fae. I need you with your head in the game, not motorboating between Bo's…"
"Okay." Lauren stood up, and tightened her lab coat around her waist. "Message received. Thank you for your time."
Val grinned at the retreating figure of her very embarrassed, very flustered human doctor. She'd had a certain fondness for Lauren, ever since the doctor had helped Val clear up a rather embarrassing breakout of adult body acne a few years ago. It had turned out her hormones were all out of whack, due to the family gardener planting a single lochrituvalis hercendium in the herb garden. Only Lauren would have noticed something so seemingly innocuous.
Val's smile slipped into a frown. If she lost her most valuable team member to some horny bitch in black leather, there would be serious hell to pay.
"Y'all know what you need up in here? A Brownie." Hale put his legs up on the coffee table at the Crack Shack. "You got the Leaning Tower of Pizza Boxes over there in the corner, I saw three pairs of underwear hanging from doorknobs upstairs – not that I'm complaining – and I don't even wanna know what that smell is coming from the basement…"
"They're patchouli candles," Bo replied, defensively. "I use them for meditation."
"Tantric meditation." Kenzi grinned. "One of these days she's gonna figure out the secret Doc, and when she does…you better clear your schedule cause you are gonna get rocked."
Lauren frowned, and turned a page in her ancient tome. It was later in the evening, and she was seated on the couch next to Bo and Hale. Kenzi sat on the floor across from them. A huge pile of books were stacked on the coffee table, along with a plate of cookies that Lauren had brought as a thank you for helping her with her research. The cookies were almost gone, but Lauren seemed to be the only one actually looking through the books.
"First of all, I am sick of other people commenting on my sex life. Second of all, I asked you to help me look up Fire Fae, not eat my cookies…"
Kenzi, wisely, kept the joke inside.
"Third of all," she turned to Bo, "patchouli candles?"
"What's wrong with that?" Bo asked, absentmindedly running her hand across Lauren's arm.
"Patchouli is often associated with the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s. It was used to cover the scent of drugs on clothing, and some might argue to cover the scent of unwashed, unbathed, sweaty skin. Is there something…untoward that you are trying to hide in the basement?"
"Damn it, we've been made!" Kenzi jumped up. "She's discovered our underground hippie fight club! Pack up the hemp necklaces and weed pipes and let's beat it!" Kenzi sprinted toward the basement, and disappeared through the door while the others stared wordlessly.
Lauren looked at the stack of books. "She did that to get out of helping, didn't she?"
"Almost definitely." Bo grinned and kissed Lauren on the cheek. "Don't take it personally."
Hale leaned back and stretched. "I don't even know why we're here, to be honest. Doc, you know more about Fae than any Fae I've ever met, how the hell are we supposed to help you?"
"I've been over my notes a hundred times now, I thought maybe a fresh pair of eyes might notice something I've missed." Lauren rubbed her forehead in frustration. "There are no documented Fae that cause the type of burn scar I observed on Arthur Naia's body. But something attacked him, and stole the stone…something which managed to slip by the Boraro's security barrier. Hale, you and Dyson interviewed all the guests, and no one saw anyone suspicious on the premises. Whatever it is, it's powerful, dangerous, and very good at disguising itself."
"And likes making crispy bacon out of balding arseholes." Ciara walked into the room, and set her Prada purse down on the table. She collapsed into the lounge chair, and covered her eyes.
"Welcome home, honey. How was work?" Hale teased.
"Terrible. I spent all day dealing with human nonsense. No offense," she said to Lauren. "The board of directors act like a pack of greedy, rabid dogs. Or garuda, more like."
"What's a garuda?" Bo asked.
"What?" Hale turned to the Succubus. "You mean your mom never told you stories about the garuda to get you to eat your vegetables? I used to have nightmares about those things."
"I was raised by humans, remember? I was scared of the Boogie Man, not the garuda."
Lauren closed the book she was leafing through, and sat it on top of the stack. It was obvious that this wasn't working. She took a deep breath. "The garuda are a legendary race of eagle-like creatures that appear in Hindu and Buddhist tradition. Legend tells that they feed on the discord between the Fae, specifically the Light and the Dark. As such, they have been blamed for much of the historic strife between the two sides. They're like the Boogie Men of the Fae world."
"And they're real?"
"Used to be," Hale replied. "They all died out centuries ago."
"It's too bad," Lauren muttered, lost in her own world. "Garuda expectorate fire. If a garuda were still alive, it's possible that he or she could have killed Naia."
"If the garuda were still alive, we'd have a shitload of problems on our hands. And they'd be a lot more serious than some dude getting charbroiled," Hale said.
"Yes, but it would provide me with the necessary information to keep your sister from slashing my budget," Lauren joked. "Now, help me find a Fire Fae." She handed everyone a heavy, leather bound book. The room was quiet, but for the flip of turning pages and the echo of Kenzi in the basement, singing 'Purple Haze' at the top of her lungs.
Fitzpatrick McCorrigan, better known to countless Dal Riata patrons as the bartender "Trick", was spending his evening in similar fashion to the Doc Squad – with two notable differences. The first – he was snacking on Doritos, not cookies. The second – he was poring over books about the Three Stones, not Fire Fae. He scratched his beard, frustration hitting him so hard that his fingernails dug into the skin.
"Ouch," he muttered, pulling his hand away. He noticed a small drop of blood on his index finger, and sighed. Oh how easy it would be, to get out his tools and write himself a solution to the problem of the Orsedd, Llangareth and Siancyn stones. Of course if he did so, there was always the likelihood of something terrible happening. The Earth reversing polarity. A meteor striking Australia. The cancellation of The Big Bang Theory. Universal erectile dysfunction. All possible consequences of a blood sage using his powers.
Trick shuddered. No – using his powers was not an option. He pulled another ancient book from the bottom shelf, resigned to just one more in a long line of nights filled by mind numbing, old fashioned research. He plunked the heavy tome down onto his work desk. When he opened it, book dust flew up into his face, making him cough and causing his eyes to water. His vision was so poor in that moment that he nearly missed the small annotation, handwritten in the corner of a page depicting the location of prehistoric temples of the Congo jungles.
"Of course…" he whispered, shocked that the answer to the mystery of the Siancyn location was suddenly right there, right in front of his face. "Of course that's where it would be! Why didn't I think of that before?" He picked up his antique, rotary phone, and digit by agonizing digit he dialed the Ash's private office line.
"Hello?"
"Ash. It's Trick. I've found it."
Serena was having a terrible day. She had been unceremoniously fired as the Ash's head of security, in favor of some punk ass Wood Elf who was a longtime friend of the Santiago family. She'd known this was coming, but that didn't make it sting any less.
It's why, when she had been approached by her boss about helping him retrieve the stones, she agreed to take the job. A woman had to think about her own future, after all. And her boss was about to become a very powerful man. Any Fae who held the key to turning other Fae human was one to be feared and, therefore, honored – w th devotion, reverence, and gifts of cash. Hopefully, some of the cash would trickle down to her.
Serena often daydreamed about herself, on the beach, with a pina colada in each hand and a hot piece of man candy massaging her feet. Today, her daydreams were a bit more violent. As soon as they found the Siancyn, the first Fae she wanted to go after would be Val Santiago. She could just picture Val's powers being sucked out of her, leaving her an empty, rail-thin husk of skin stretched tight on the bone. Serena smiled to herself.
It was worth it, to have to deal with Vex and the Pain Eater, if it meant she could watch the Ash suffer.
"Damn it, man!" Vex shouted, stomping into the living room with toothbrush in hand. "How many times do I have to tell you, squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. The bottom, you unspeakably ugly wanker!"
"Kissss my assss, Vexxx." The Pain Eater lay in the leather chair, reclined all the way back, callused feet sticking up for the whole world to see. "And ssstop leaving your filthy magazinesss all over the houssse, you perverted freak monkey."
"You're calling me a freak? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently?"
"Pot, meet kettle. I've ssseen better looking facesss on a sssqueezed tea bag…"
"Oh really? Well this face will be the last thing you ever see!" Vex raised his hand and flicked his wrist, causing the pain eater to poke himself in both eyes.
"Damn you! Damn you!" He screeched, at just the right pitch that the glass on the plasma TV screen exploded.
"Oh, now look what you've done!" Vex shouted. "I'm stuck in this house with the two of you, and now I can't even watch Days of our Lives."
"A tragedy of epic proportions." Serena rolled her eyes.
"Oh, stop acting all superior. We're in the same boat now, love. The same sinking ship. Dumped by our respective political leaders, cast out to fend for ourselves in this crazy, mixed up world, with only our wits and our balls to keep us afloat…"
"If that was the case, you would have drowned weeks ago."
"Oh sssssnap!" The pain eater laughed. At least, Serena thought it was a laugh. It was hard to tell – he sounded like a cawing crow.
"I was not aware that I had hired the Three Stooges for this assignment." A booming voice rang out through the room, and the three Fae jumped to their feet, saluting the unseen spectre. None of them had ever actually seen their employer, not even when they'd snuck him into the Zamora ball. To them, he was nothing but a disembodied voice who could roast them alive.
"Apologies your greatness, we were just having a bit of a laugh." Vex bowed deeply. "To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?"
"Pack your bags. My spies tell me that the bartender has learned the location of the Siancyn Stone. Our time has finally arrived. Don't fuck it up."