Chapter 8
Tamsin re-did her hair, slicking the tousled blonde locks in place and straightened her jacket. She didn't feel quite right coming in to see her King straight after a session of heated banging on the desk but the matter was urgent.
She entered the low-ceilinged room with the usual barely suppressed shiver of awe that the royal fae managed to evoke in the millennia-old fearless and pretty much shameless valkyrie. The man, diminutive in stature but regal in bearing, tore his eyes off a thick tome he had been perusing and focused on the woman with deceptive mildness.
"Glad to see you, Tamsin. Any news on my old friend? Was he captured?" he asked with genuine concern as he picked himself up and approached to greet his guest.
"He was but now he's back, relatively unharmed and un-enthralled," the valkyrie duly reported, pitching her voice respectfully low and related the edited version of the events she had got from Dyson.
"Clever wolf!" the Blood King nodded his approval, "I was sure he would find a way not to become a traitor."
"And he was confident that I'd ensure your safety in any case," Tamsin remarked drily.
"That's what makes you two such a great team," the older fae smiled thinly, "And not just the occasional romp you're having in the storage room."
Tamsin couldn't help lowering her gaze for a second, like a child scolded by a well-meaning uncle.
"We're enjoying what we can and while we can," she muttered trying not to sound apologetic.
"No judging here," the Blood King spread his arms with the same avuncular smile but with a warning in his deep brown eyes, "As long as it isn't in the way off our cause."
"I can assure you it's not," the valkyrie said heatedly, "There are no feelings or commitments or any strings or rosy-tinted dreams. Just a couple of hours ago I left him behind to sure death or capture that may be worse than death – all because I knew I couldn't afford to risk my life and mind. I was ready to sacrifice my lover and my partner." A note of astonishment crept into her otherwise level tone as the realization of how true the words were sank in.
"I am not a heartless monster, I am the last hope of the fae," the valkyrie breathed out and saw the understanding and a certain empathy in the Blood King's eyes.
"It is a burden, Tamsin," he stated softly, "And I admire you for taking it onto your shoulders. I once had one of my own and I lost everyone I loved in the process. I wish I could tell you it won't happen to you but I can't."
"I'll do what I have to do," the woman jerked her chin up, "It's the matter of our race's survival."
"Then come and sit here, child," the ancient fae lowered himself back onto his favorite couch and patted the space next to him, "I think I finally found what we have been looking for."
"An antidote?" Tamsin flopped down next to him and peered onto the open page of the book with a squiggly lines of an unknown language and a picture of a plant, "Then we could protect all the yet un-enthralled!"
"Yes, an antidote," the Blood King nodded solemnly but his face did not reflect the woman's momentary joy, "I found a tip or two in my late wife's diaries, you know she was a succubus like Bo. And this unique encyclopedia of fae plants provided me with a final component. But as we both know nothing is as simple, there is a catch…"
Tamsin sighed, sagging against the cushion, "I knew there would be a catch. What is it? Side effects include severe nausea and a heightened libido for females and severe impotence for males?"
The old fae gave her a reproachful look and Tamsin's expression of levity morphed into a suitably concerned mien.
"I wish we could simply storm the castle and kill the evil bitch," she sighed again.
"Her army is greater than ours and hers are ready to fight for her till the last drop of their infected blood," the man remarked sadly, "And even if we manage to kill her, who knows what will happen to all the thralls. The thrall made of magic and science is unprecedented and unpredictable. They might die or commit suicide, samurai-style, on her grave …"
"I like 'her' and 'grave' in one sentence," the valkyrie interjected.
"I am not yet ready to burden my conscience with hundreds of fae lives, not again, and I don't wish that decision on you either," the Blood King went on not thrown off his train of thought, "We must first explore all the other avenues. The antidote I was talking about is quite possible but it can only be made from a finite resource. Which means we can only have just about one dose of it and it's up to us to use it wisely."
The next morning saw Dyson still beaten and exhausted and again in the immediate vicinity of the majestic and solemn residence of the Queen – the very place he had made such a hurried escape from mere 18 hours earlier. He had parked his car a block away and had reconnoitered the neighborhood and found a nice vantage point in a boarded-up ex-pharmacy diagonally across the street from what was to be the heavily guarded main entrance.
"You're crazy, old wolf!" he whispered to himself as he made full use of his sharp vision and a pair of military-issue binoculars to peer at the gates and straining to see beyond them, "Of course, no one in their right mind would expect me to turn up here after last night's events and, hence, I am relatively safe from discovery."
He wasn't exactly as articulate in trying to explain to himself the motivation behind coming to the viper's nest again, though, and the best he managed to come up with was a mixture of curiosity and a vague sense of a debt unpaid. Once he braced up to be completely honest with himself, another hour of observation later, he had to admit that he simply couldn't resist the urge to see the intriguing girl from last night again, to find out how and why she had saved him.
The hours were ticking by and the stake-out was not fruitful beyond a sighting of Vex the Mesmer hurrying out of the residence in grotesquely high heels and a sleeveless mesh T-shirt. For a considerable while the wolf entertained himself with theories on what kind of important and politically sensitive mission the Queen could have sent her lieutenant attired like that. But boredom hit him fast after he had exhausted his gutter mind on that and Dyson had to accept defeat.
"Let's face it, I am crouching on a garbage-strewn floor of a condemned property with binoculars tucked between the boards on the window, I am eating snack bars that are so not meat, I am peeing in a bottle and generally wasting my time, which could be better spend with Tamsin, on an assignment, looking for uninfected fae brave enough to join our cause …," he morosely informed a spider who had been his only company for the last couple of hours, "At worst, I could be recuperating, soaking my beaten bones in a hot bath. Instead I am talking to a spider."
"I'll give it another thirty minutes and then I am off and I swear never to tell anyone of this shameful misadventure," Dyson murmured, raised the binoculars to his eyes dispiritedly and startled leaned forward to re-adjust his line of vision.
What he saw through the lens was a car, a top-of-the-range nice little Volvo, girly by look and girly by driver as the long-haired person in the driving seat, the head barely touching the headrest was definitely a woman. The Volvo crawled through the opening gates and onto the street, heading Dyson's way. The binoculars, no longer required, hit the dusty floorboards as his enhanced eyes identified the girl in the driving seat, memory adding details to the blurred image. The wolf sprang to his feet, knees creaking in protest after a prolonged squat, rushed to the door and sprinted to his own car, easily beating the recent short-distance running record.
Years of police service had equipped him with a unique knowledge of the city layout and he intercepted the car where he knew he would and fell into an inconspicuous low-speed progress a couple of cars behind the Volvo. Keeping his pursuit unobtrusive became more difficult as the girl turned into a quieter part of the city and the shifter had to widen the gap between them not to be spotted and hope that she would return to a more populated district that would allow for more cover.
However, the Volvo soon pulled over to the curb and the girl got out, a bunch of what looked like yellow field flowers clutched in her hand. She made her way across the road, past the rusty metal fence and onto a plot of land marked with old trees, tombstones and grave plaques, her step without a spring to it and heavy – too heavy for such a slight creature – and chillingly confident, as if she knew her way around the cemetery all too well.