Chapter 24
As they were following Taft's back into the little first-floor living room, Kenzi tried to get an elucidation from the shifter on the turn their negotiations with the doctor had just taken. When a speaking glance and a couple of eloquent elbow-nudges failed to work, she hissed a question right into what would have been Dyson ear had she been a foot taller, "What was that girlfriend talk about, poochie?"
The wolf slanted a twinkling eye at her and refused to be drawn, clearly enjoying his intelligence advantage over the girl.
"OK,Mr Squirrel-phobic," Kenzi grouched in a whisper as they stepped into a sun-lit room and were motioned to a couch by their host, "Keeping your cards close to your chest? Then I won't tell you what poetic rock-bottoms you recently hit in your feverish ramblings, offering to bite certain parts and lick certain parts of an unidentified raven-haired lass. So, this Tamsin chick is a brunette besides being a suspected poisoner?"
As far as revenge went, seeing Dyson blush into his beard soothed Kenzi's ruffled sense of partnership and she fell onto a cushion in significantly improved spirits.
After some half-hearted hostly niceties with coffee and tea offered around, Isaac Taft ran out of socially-accepted excuses to skirt the elephant in the room and had to face the two determined faces and their unspoken questions.
"You have to understand… I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and a couple platinum ones sticking from my ears – the only heir to a large fortune, blessed with the looks and with the brain, I was used to having my way and having anything and anyone I wanted," he started haltingly, his gaze catching Kenzi's and holding it, "But with Lauren none of it mattered. I met her at college and fell immediately and desperately in love with her. Her beauty, her brilliance, her quiet strength of character captured my heart but she chose another one, a girl, depriving me of any hope to ever win her heart. I was hurting badly– from the humiliation of the bruised ego as much as from a broken heart. But when I learnt that Nadia, my successful rival, got sick and was probably dying, I offered her all the resources I had, all the money I had to save the woman she loved. Don't get me wrong, I am not laying a claim to self-sacrificial nobility here, I just knew Nadia' dying wouldn't help my chances and I couldn't bear to see Lauren devastated. But she rejected me again. She said nothing in the human world could save her lover. And then she disappeared, together with Nadia."
Taft's voice quavered but he managed to get a grip and get back to his dispassionate story-telling tone, "But I never stopped looking for her, couldn't just accept her disappearance and I was lucky to find some encrypted files that she had left behind on her computer and spent months decoding them. When I did, I was rewarded with a whole new world, fascinating beyond belief, I found out what Lauren's secret research had been all this time. I found out about the fae and then I knew where she had gone to look for the cure for Nadia. I knew why she had abandoned me for the second time but it didn't quell the burning inside me. For years I was on the constant prowl for information, I bought the knowledge, caught all the stray bits and pieces, all the rumors, collected the strange reports and hushed-up police cases. I have amassed quite a dossier on the fae and one day I found Lauren, the human enslaved to the superior race that had been exploiting and humiliating her. I guess, deep down I hoped to be her knight in shining armor, to save her from that life, to return her to the ivory tower of human academia where one day she might fall into my arms. But when I finally managed to get closer, it was already late. Lauren had saved herself, at least from the fae."
He stopped as if catching his breath and Kenzi leapt in, "I am so not sure about falling-into-your-manly-arms part, with the emphasis on manly, hope you catch my drift. But you can still be her knight and save her."
"I don't know if I want to," the doctor's reply came slow and labored, "Right now all I can think of is saving Bo, getting her out of the danger I myself sent her to."
If that was a cartoon scene, a fine set of jaws would hit the floor with a comedic clatter as Kenzi's eyes bugged in surprise. "Bo? What does she have to do with it? Why does it always seem to be about Bo?"
"One of the fae subjects I bought my way into knowing about and tracking was a half-demented succubus who had been escaping both the Dark and the Light rulers' notice for quite a while. She went by Aofe and was blessed with royal beauty, an explosive temper and sociopathic proclivities," Taft picked up his long-winded explanation, "She had a daughter, who she had abandoned as a baby with a human family. I found out about the daughter when Aofe tried first to involve the young woman in her crazy fae-cidal schemes and then attempted to kill her by throwing her down a steep staircase. I was too late to stop it but I picked the young woman up and carried her away to safety before her mummy could have finished what she had started. I patched up her abrasions and set her dislocated shoulder and her fractured ankle. As soon as she could walk, she left but popped up on my radar again as soon as she was captured by the Ash of the Light and brought to Lauren's lab and since then I had been watching over both the women – the human I was in love with and the young succubus I had saved. One day on one of her AVOWs from the Light compound Bo bumped into me, or rather detected my surveillance and sussed it, and offered to thank me for rescuing her..."
"May I hazard a guess she needed a feed more than she needed to express her gratitude?" Kenzi spat out a little vitriol that started to brew inside her at so much highly pertinent information that had been withheld from her by so many people at the same time.
"And I told her the best thank you was to help me get Lauren out of the Light servitude," the doctor continued without missing a beat or as much as an emphatic look at the girl.
"And Bo agreed to your plan because by that time she was already head over heels in love with doctor Lewis," Dyson made his contribution to the story, "That was why she stayed put instead of sucking down half of the Ash's guards and breaking out of the compound. I always wondered why such a powerful and willful fae allowed herself to be contained."
"And you probably thought she was sticking around for your beautiful blue eyes and perfectly muscled body, succu-snack?" Kenzi hadn't still snapped out of her verbally combative mode.
"So, you've been checking me out? " the wolf returned unperturbed, "Sounds like you like what you see, babe."
"We thought we could orchestrate the girls' escape but Bo was afraid Lauren wouldn't be able to tough out a life on the run from the whole faedom," Isaac went on dejectedly, breaking up their exchange, "Then Lauren found some old books on the magical enslaving properties of succubus blood and started experimenting and Bo became her willing subject hoping it would facilitate their escape. Bo never gave up on Lauren – even when I did, appalled by what Lauren was turning into, even when Bo herself realized she had become the donor to a horrific project, the tool and the means to the human doctor's power grab. And now she's not picking up her phone, her secret phone that has been our only means of communication. Something is bound to have happened to her!"
"You mean Bo has never really been enthralled?" Kenzi piped up, her mind churning through the download of information.
"As it turned out you can't enthrall a succubus with her own blood," the doctor shook his head.
"Sis said she had tried to enthrall me and it failed to work. Can I also be part succubus?" the girl mused aloud.
"Not a chance, trust me to tell the difference between a succubus kiss and a human kiss," Dyson snorted and, getting serious, added in a grumble, "And I am growing fonder on your sister dearest the more I am finding out about her."
Taft looked at the girl with a spurt of curiosity, "An immunity to the thrall? Interesting. If I have your blood sample, I might be able to …"
"No way, doc," Kenzi tucked her hands deep into her armpits as if putting all the possible distant between the doctor and her precious veins, "We don't know each other well enough to trust you with any of my bodily fluids."
"That is not a priority right now," the wolf cut in, "Bo is. And an antidote to the thrall. You work on the latter, Kenzi will try to find out what happened to our succubus and I'll jump in as soon as I have an opening to jump in."
Several hours after leaving Taft's cottage they had a debriefing in the car, going through everything again and again, picking holes in the half-baked plans, searching for possible what-can-go-wrongs and finding plenty of those. Which was still outweighed by the staggering new possibilities and avenues to take. The serious mood lifted as they were slowing down the city streets.
"I honestly did let you do the talking and exercise your human touch. Though, you'll have to admit, the wolf touch was the game-changer on this one," Dyson teased her good-humoredly, his eyes raking the street for the parking space.
"You just eavesdropped on him talking over the phone," the girl huffed.
"Superior hearing," the fae laughed pointing at his ear, indelicately sticking out from under dirty-blond curls, "And some old-fashioned deduction work based on the few clues I managed to overhear."
"Ok, I admit it you saved the day," Kenzi relented.
"And while you're at it, admit it, you totally thought I was going to sink some claws into the good doctor," Dyson's grin was still in place as he maneuvered the car to the curb, "Despite the heart-felt human-loving talk I gave you on Taft's porch."
"When you're partnered up with a werewolf with a full set of deadly natural defenses and one hell of a temper, any sudden movement that is not in the script can make you jerky," Kenzi rolled her eyes.
"Like this?" the shifter's next sudden movement brought his face to within an inch from Kenzi's face and their lips connected for a delicious minute of silence.
"And I am not a were," he whispered as soon as they were breathing separately again, "Though we share a dislike for silver."
"I'll keep that in mind for when I choose my jewelry… or weaponry," Kenzi said, a small smile hovering over her just kissed lips.
"I should probably take you home straight away," Dyson made it sound like a question, his eyes glued to her stunning little face, for once a shade pinker than its usual porcelain pallor.
"So I can go back asap to the dreary old mansion full of guards and surveillance cameras to play my dangerous spy game or get a reprieve by kissing a smoking-hot wolf? Poor me. Stuck with a hard choice," she sighed and leaned forward, her lips pressing to his again.
"We are making good time," she informed him another minute later, their breaths still mingled, "Can afford another hour out of Lauren's sight."
"And quite coincidentally we are a few houses down from my digs," the shifter smirked, "Or are you scared of the big bad wolf, Little Red?"
"Depends on his intentions," Kenzi cocked an eyebrow, "And hate to be a broken record, but what about Tamsin?"
"I told you, not in the picture," came a hasty reply.
"And you really don't think the woman might have it in for you," the girl chided.
"We've never made any commitments apart from work," the wolf held her gaze firmly, "As she just recently reminded me quite emphatically of."
Then his eyes flicked to the entrance to the abandoned gym that had been his lodgings.
"That's your place? It's says Marco's gym," Kenzi followed the line of his gaze.
"You thought it would be Patsy's beauty parlor?" Dyson gave a low chortle, "But if you're in any esthetical or hygienic doubts …"
"No, I don't," the girl answered quickly and mentally kicked herself for sounding un-snarkily sincere.
"You probably should, might be a bit scruffy," the man admitted, suddenly uncomfortable as a person who knew he might have left a pair of dirty socks lying around.
"I am a bit too old to make out in the car, Dyson," the girl let out a laugh, "Your place is anyways a better option than mine."
A warm feeling fluttered in the wolf's stomach as he heard her call his name without recourse to a colorful dog-related epithet and any nagging feeling he might have been harboring on account of the general mess or undone laundry he had left behind at his place evaporated.
"Welcome to my humble abode, milady," he grinned leaning across the girl in the passenger seat and throwing open the door on her side of the car. A gust of street air entered the car and hit his nostrils, his gaze swept the quiet street through the slightly speckled wind-shield and with a growl Dyson slammed the door shut again.