Page 6

Chapter 6

Cat Distribution System

Fenric

F enric yawned and rolled over in bed, trying not to fall off the mattress as he stretched. It was late morning, the sun shining into the room through the hotel room’s flimsy white curtains. He grumbled at being awake but loved the heat from the sun, wondering if it was worth the effort to transform into his furred self and laze in the sun all day.

Despite his laziness, he dragged himself out of bed and headed for the bathroom, determined to start his day. He had a lot ahead of him—responsibilities and errands…a full day of haunting the Salvatore estate and looking for assassins trying to kill the necromancer.

The Grand Master of the High Council of Sorcery was in hiding, as far as Fenric was able to determine. He went back to the place he first met the man, only to find it empty and the Council members gone, likely not long after Fenric left their ill-fated meeting. The Council was playing musical hotels, changing locations and hiding in the city and surrounding area. The Greater Boston area was huge, with plenty of places to hole up, and Fenric had no desire to search them all to find the Grand Master.

He was going to kill that man if he could find him.

Fenric was capable. He had little doubt of it, but his talents lay in ambushing and not in a full-frontal attack. De la Roche was dead if Fenric could seize the advantage and sneak up on him. A lot of his problems would disappear if the High Council was out of commission permanently.

Taking out the Grand Master and his cronies would cripple the Council. He hoped, at least. De la Roche took over as Grand Master after defeating the previous one in a duel not long before he set out for Boston to confront the necromancer. The Council was already reeling from that upheaval at the top of the hierarchy before the mess that was de la Roche’s attempt to kill the Necromancer of Boston—and from what he’d heard, several enforcers were allowed to surrender to Angel Salvatore and accepted exile from Boston instead of death. Enforcers leaving like that, in large numbers, was something Fenric had never heard of happening before. Not to say it never did—merely that even his sources were left stumped at the events unfolding in Boston and he was taking his time trying to figure things out.

Everything was chaotic, violence and destruction teeming under the surface calm that blanketed the city and surrounding areas. Boston was waiting for something to happen.

Fenric was waiting, too.

Fenric

Sitting on the rooftop across the street from the Beacon Hill townhouse should have been boring, but was in fact an unexpected delight. He was watching for assassins, or anything unusual that might mean the Council was making a move.

Tail flicking, Fenric listened for sounds that were out of the ordinary. Perhaps a delivery-person taking too long to deliver a suspicious package, or a neighbor pushing a stroller full of weapons instead of a baby.

His whiskers twitched in amusement at himself and his flights of fancy. Assassins were rarely so lazy, though the current group of killers who took the job weren’t the cream of the crop. It seemed anyone in the business with common sense abstained from taking this job. He wondered what that said about him, but at least he had ulterior motives, namely finding Cian.

The contract killer life was a hard one, especially for humans, though they had the benefit of blending in best in dense population centers—most assassins, the really successful ones, were supernatural in some way. They had gifts that gave them a lethal edge and let them successfully pull off tough assignments with little fuss or muss.

Not so this fellow.

Fenric curled up on the corner of the roof, getting comfortable, basking in the sun as a human man dressed as an air-con technician pretended to examine an air-conditioning unit on the roof of the townhouse next to Angel Salvatore’s home.

Salvatore’s townhouse was on the corner, leaving it free from neighbors on three sides, and on the townhouse adjacent, the fake technician took a look around, saw no one spying on him—Fenric apparently didn’t warrant any worry—and so the human walked toward the roof of the conjoined townhouse.

Fenric knew it was warded. Anyone with sense and a working brain knew it was warded.

The human walked into the ward, activated the shields, and bounced off them, falling backward on his ass.

Fenric twitched his tail, entertained.

His sensitive ears picked up sound from within the house. The wards hummed, illuminating themselves in hellfire green, visible to the naked eye where they had been invisible before the human touched them.

Fenric was only able to see the roof, the side of the house on the corner, and the front of the building—he knew there was a walled garden in the rear out of sight of his perch, and he guessed that was where the noise was coming from.

Even across the street and through the sounds of traffic and city life, he heard the necromancer.

“The wards went off on the roof,” Angel Salvatore said, accompanied by the sound of feet running up stairs.

Fenric sniffed in delight as he watched the human on the roof try and fail to bypass the wards, even going so far as to dig through the pocket of his likely stolen uniform and hold what Fenric assumed were charms to the shield, trying to get through when he really should be running.

He had considered interceding earlier, but he wanted to see what he was up against, and it was amateur hour. This human was about to be a pile of ash.

The roof of the Salvatore house was a finished space with a patio, awning, barbeque area, and was covered in stone, gravel, and large concrete planters with evergreen shrubs, adding a spot of color to the neighborhood.

Angel Salvatore burst out of the stairwell on the roof, immediately saw the man attempting to cross the wards, and spat out a word in Latin that was both swear word and actual curse.

The shields wavered, and when the assassin saw Angel, he drew a dagger from his boot even as he pressed the charm harder to the shield.

The shields moved like liquid, and Fenric watched in fascinated awe as black shadows crept across the surface of the shields, coalescing in front of the human trying to get through them— black, smokey ropes of darkness burst from the shield and shot outward, wrapping around the intruder. Muffled screams and thrashing came from the coiled shadows covering the man from head to toe, the dagger and charm falling to the ground with a clatter.

The man toppled to the ground as well, falling on his side, covered in darkness.

Fenric was delighted. How inventive. His whiskers twitched and he watched avidly, fascinated.

Angel strode across the roof, and leapt up onto the short brick wall that separated his property from the neighboring townhouse. He jumped down, crossing the shields with ease, gravel crunching under his boots.

Angel nudged the thrashing bundle of smoke snakes and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Hey, I caught an intruder. Huh? Oh yeah, he’s alive for now. I’m on the roof at my place—well, technically, I’m on the neighbor’s roof, but come up through my place.”

Angel hung up and he looked around, examining the man at his feet and the dropped items, taking his time looking around the rooftops.

He knew when Angel saw him. A large black cat with a single white spot on its chest, bright green eyes, long fluffy tail, and long white fangs he showed off in a wide yawn. He was a fair bit bigger than the average housecat—many people mistakenly assumed he was a Maine Coon cat in this form, and he rarely disabused them of that notion. If he were closer to Angel, the practitioner might notice he was more than double the size of the largest Maine Coon, easily eighty pounds of lean muscle and sharp claws.

Angel raised a hand against the sun, shielding his eyes, and Fenric decided to be a brat. It was his favorite pastime. He licked a paw and began to groom himself, unconcerned with Angel’s interest. A hint of necromantic magic slid over him, the practitioner testing him, trying to understand what he was, and Fenric neatly brushed off the probing magic and refused to let the magic inside his own shields. Let the necromancer be frustrated.

“Hello, kitty-cat,” Angel murmured, suspicious but not overly. More wary than anything. At this distance, even the most oblivious human would recognize that Fenric was something other than a normal house cat. Most would assume a shifter of some sort. “Are you friend or foe?”

Fenric licked his paw and cleaned his whiskers, pretending to ignore Angel. The probing magic withdrew, leaving behind a wary delight. Angel wasn’t assuming he was an enemy, and that was nice of him. Fenric continued to groom himself, no longer paying much attention to the drama across the street or the sound of approaching sirens.

Cian

A text made his phone vibrate, and Cian pulled it out and checked the message.

I’m bored. —Fenric

Cian smiled, shaking his head in amusement.

Would you like some tea? —Cian

Do you have a decent black leaf? —Fenric

Plenty. —Cian

OMW. —Fenric

“We’re to have a guest,” Cian announced, and Rory had the answer of who from his mind in a second, his twin smiling.

“How lovely,” Rory said, and promptly set about heating some water and retrieving a tea set from the massive trunk beside one of the many benches in the center of the Salvatore conservatory. The building was massive, a cavernous design of wrought iron, glass, and magic. And it was where Rory and Daniel lived most of the time, now that they were married and Daniel was sidhe. Daniel still had a room inside the Mansion, but they spent most nights curled up in Rory’s magical bed in the conservatory.

Cian slept in the temple. He had no desire to sleep in the Mansion. That place held grief and pain, and the specter of death hovered over the front parlor. Cian had never set foot in that room and had no plans to in the future. Cian might be closer in his aspects to death than Rory, but all sidhe were the embodiment of living nature, and so much death made Cian a bit agitated. It reminded him of battlefields strewn with the dead. He might enjoy bloodshed, but the dead were, well…dead.

Cian opened the Salvatore group chat that Daniel set up and sent a message to everyone that Fenric was stopping by for a cup of tea.

Angel’s name popped up, three blinking dots showing he was typing.

Inside the wards? —Angel

How else can I serve him tea? —Cian

A long pause, then Angel replied.

His behavior is on you. I don’t know him. —Angel

I can vouch for him. —Rory

Rory had his phone out while he set up the cast-iron tripod over the brazier, typing as he worked.

Have Daniel let him in the wards. —Angel

Cian smiled and typed out a reply before Rory could.

He is sidhe. No need. —Cian

Well, that’s great. —Angel

Cian felt the sarcasm in those three words and snorted out a soft laugh.

“You delight in poking at the young necromancer,” Rory chided him, even though he smiled and shook his head at Cian’s antics.

“All kings need someone to deflate their ego from time to time,” Cian replied easily.

“Are you the court jester, then?” Rory teased.

Cian narrowed his eyes at his brother and frowned sharply, and Rory laughed.

Cian

Cian met Fenric at the southern border of the garden, where the wards were closest to the garden wall of tumbled stone and the iron poles holding aloft old-fashioned lamps. The day was warm, the afternoon sun angled enough now that the trees had long, cool shadows. It was close to tea time, and Cian sensed Fenric approaching through the dunes.

A black, fluffy tail poked out a few inches over the hip-high blades of sea grass, curved into a question mark and flicking as Fenric slinked through the grass like a sea serpent through water. Elegant, beautiful, and mischievous, Fenric was exactly as Cian remembered.

They met on a ship at sea hundreds of years ago, and here they were lifetimes later, meeting again.

“Welcome, Fenric, to hearth and home,” Cian greeted the cat-sidhe as Fenric pranced from the darkness within the tall grass and wound around his legs, meowing plaintively. Fenric rubbed his chin along Cian’s thighs, purring hard enough for Cian to feel the vibrations with each rub and slinky glide along his legs.

“Greetings, Cian,” Fenric purred, voice a mixture of feline and man, a hint of a hiss in the ‘s.’ “Thank you for the warm welcome.”

Fenric then took one of Cian’s hands in his mouth, large white fangs gently holding his fingers, and held the faintest pressure as he twisted to himself and guided Cian’s hand to his body.

Cian acquiesced with a smile, kneeling beside Fenric, and he pet the cat-sidhe in long, firm strokes from the top of his head to the end of his impressive tail, Fenric’s eyes closed, skin twitching in reaction to each stroke along his back, purring with a loud rumble.

“Still spoiled, I see,” Cian murmured with a smile.

“Says the one doing the spoiling,” Fenric replied, purring louder, eyes narrowed to two slits of bright green.

“Hmm, that’s true. Shall I stop?” Cian teased, pretending to lean away, and a heavy paw caught him on the shoulder and tugged him back.

“More pets,” Fenric demanded.

“Yes, your majesty,” Cian said with a grin.

“Oh, I like that.”

Cian laughed quietly as he indulged the cat-sidhe for several minutes, until Fenric shook his coat out and yawned wide. Cian stood, and so did Fenric, transforming so swiftly to his bipedal humanoid form that Cian missed most of it in the blink of an eye.

Fenric was dressed in simple dark-gray jeans, a light gray t-shirt, and light leather boots meant more for walking in Downtown Boston than sand dunes at the beach. Luckily the sand was covered in grass this close to the garden wall.

“Come, Rory is brewing tea,” Cian invited, gesturing with a slight bow for Fenric to proceed toward the garden wall.

Instead, Fenric took his arm, threading their arms together like they were promenading in an old-fashioned film, and Cian let out a soft sigh, but allowed the familiarity. It was merely Fenric, after all, not some stranger.

Fenric gave him a brilliant and sharp smile, fangs on display, his cat eyes glittering in the sun. “Lead the way, good sir.”

Cian led Fenric across the wards which, as predicted, had no reaction to the cat-sidhe, Fenric stepping through with ease and nary a reaction from the wards.

The walk to the conservatory was a short one—the gardens were large, but not so large as to make the walk onerous. Fenric clung to his arm and exclaimed quietly over the flowers and blooming shrubs along the path, the conservatory looming from within its pine grove, glass catching the sun in golden flashes between the boughs.

The path split and turned to the right to the conservatory, but Fenric paused at the split, sniffing the air. Cian paused with him, and he ceased wondering what caught the cat-sidhe’s attention when Fenric looked to the side of the conservatory nearest the Mansion.

“Ah, you sense the shrine.” Cian said, and Fenric looked up at him curiously. “The previous servants of the estate had a shrine to Danu built. It awoke the morning after the hurricane swept through earlier this summer.”

“May I?” Fenric asked, eyes wide, lashes fluttering.

Cian tried not to smile but gave up when Fenric’s lip slipped out in a tiny pout. “Very well.”

Cian led Fenric up the main path a bit more, and then off the stone path onto a narrow trail beaten into the earth by the passage of many feet and years, the shrine neatly hidden within the pine trees that surrounded the conservatory. It wasn’t far from the conservatory wall or the fence at the top of the gardens, the servants’ homes visible to the left and the wall of the conservatory to the right.

The shrine hummed to Cian’s senses, three obelisks of stone carved in ancient runes with phrases written in an old dialect of Irish Gaelic. The center obelisk was taller than the other two, but not by much. Rory had cleared away the vines and plant growth that had encroached on the shrine in the years since the estate was shuttered after the Massacre. It was now waiting for the faithful to return and offer worship. Like most holy places in the world, it was charged by the energy of the faithful, those who made offerings and prayers.

Faith had its own kind of magic.

Fenric let go of his arm and went to the tallest obelisk, fingers trailing over the carvings in the stone.

“Those who saw the High Court Sidhe as gods worshiped here,” Fenric said, fingers tracing along the words dedicating the shrine to Danu.

“I am no god,” Cian said quietly, a common enough refrain that he said it out of ingrained habit. It was tiresome in many ways to always defend himself.

“Thankfully, your name isn’t scribbled in stone,” Fenric teased over his shoulder. “Not here, at least. And I dare you to say your mother isn’t a god. What a grounding that would be.”

Cian scowled at Fenric and crossed his arms, Fenric laughing softly.

Fenric lifted a hand and snapped his fingers, and a golden coin appeared between his fingers from the ether. Both the High Court and cait-sidhe used the ether, a form of energy that surrounded them at all times, as a means of limited storage for carrying items. Cian wondered what else Fenric carried with him if he had gold coins in his ethereal pockets.

Fenric knelt and placed the coin at the base of the center obelisk in the dark earth. He whispered quietly, and a ripple of energy went through the shrine, the air charging like it would in a storm before a lightning strike—and then the tension broke and bled out into nothing, though the shrine was awake, watching and listening.

Fenric stood and returned to Cian, taking his arm again and smiling up at him as if nothing happened. “Time for tea?”

Cian was going to ask what Fenric had whispered, but he decided he wanted tea more than to be nosey. Sometimes not knowing was more fun. “Time for tea.”

Fenric

Fenric breathed in the fresh air, delighting in the scents that came to him with each breath. Flowers and sun-warmed earth, hot sand and salty water from the ocean past the dunes.

The scents of cold stone, icy winds, ozone, and dark evergreens were at odds with their surroundings, but it was a combination that Fenric knew well—it came from Cian, his aspects as clear to Fenric as they would be to the senses of any sidhe. Cian’s eyes, when not hidden behind a glamour to make him appear to be his brother, were the mercurial eyes of a fae touched by storms.

Cian was the blizzard that raged at a mountain’s peak, lightning illuminating the darkness, the screaming winds that cut through to the bone.

And he was a great cuddler.

Fenric doubted Cian thought of himself as such, but when he took Cian’s arm again and let the sidhe guide him from the shrine’s tiny grove, Cian put his hand atop Fenric’s on his arm and held it there as they walked to the main entrance of the grand greenhouse. Cian was not afraid of casual touch, not with Fenric, and from the very beginning, all those years before, Cian had never shied away from touching Fenric, nor did he rebuff Fenric when he demanded in his own way to be held or petted.

He wasn’t sure that Cian was even aware that he allowed such familiarity with someone other than his family.

Cian guided him inside the greenhouse, always the gentleman, holding the door for him and ushering him inside.

The doors opened to a courtyard surrounded by greenery. It was warmer inside but not intolerable—there was a soft breeze that kept the humidity from being cloying, and the air in the courtyard was circulated by spells set in the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. If he tried harder to see them, the spells inlaid in the iron and glass building would be blinding to his senses. So much magic was used to preserve and operate the structure—mostly human, but Fenric saw and scented traces of sidhe magic as well.

Rory’s presence was everywhere, much like in the gardens outside. The other Brennan twin awaited them beside a large open-top brazier that burned merrily, and the heat from that was siphoned away to keep those seated in the courtyard from suffering in the summer. Rory came forward around the brazier and the benches pulled up around it in a circular seating arrangement, and Fenric darted forward, leaping into Rory’s open arms.

“It is so good to see you again, old friend,” Rory said softly, letting Fenric cling to him as was his wont, scenting his friend by rubbing his face along Rory’s shoulder. Rory held him a foot off the floor, and Fenric breathed in the scents of freshly tilled earth, flowers, and the heat of life in the height of summer.

The twins were so different from each other, a perfect balance.

And speaking of balance?—

“Who are you again?” Daniel Salvatore asked, arms crossed, and he glared at Fenric, who still held Rory in a tight embrace.

Fenric grinned, and Rory gently set him down on his feet again. Fenric stepped back from Rory with a wide grin and swept Daniel a fancy bow, black hair falling over his face in a dramatic sweep as Fenric dipped low. He straightened up, delighted to see Daniel’s cheeks flushed pink at the demonstration.

“I am Fenric Feralas, old friend to your new kin.” Fenric did not offer his hand, but instead reached out gently with his magic, as curious as a kitten and just as harmless, brushing his magic against the young sidhe’s.

Daniel jolted, eyes wide, as his new senses cataloged the information he received from Fenric’s brief connection, and Fenric saw when the suspicion and jealousy faded into a bashful welcome. He rarely had a chance to greet a new sidhe, a stranger to him, as he knew all of the High Court Sidhe in the world, all of his own people, plus many of the remaining Elder fae that were not sidhe.

It had been far too long since he offered a greeting in such a way to a newly awakened or born sidhe, and he fought back a surge of melancholy as distant memories threatened.

“What was that?” Daniel asked, approaching Fenric, stopping at arm’s length, his stormy eyes curious and wide. “I felt your magic.”

“A greeting usually given to newborn sidhe—either awakened, like you, or born, as the Brennan twins were. We are distant kin, you and I, all of us sidhe, though in different ways. I showed you my true intentions so you need not suffer under any human misconceptions you may still have.”

“I was jealous,” Daniel said ruefully. “I take it jealousy is mostly a human thing?”

“Jealousy is common amongst all peoples, but for different reasons. I wished to spare you the trouble of sorting out your feelings.”

“Sidhe, especially cait-sidhe, are very tactile people. We touch each other often, needing the connection.” That was Rory, who returned to his mate with a smile, drawing Daniel into his arms. “We as a people need touch just as humans do, though we have fewer hangups about touch between consenting adults and friends. Fenric was merely saying hello after centuries apart.”

“It’s been that long?” Daniel asked, surprised.

“I thought he was dead,” Fenric shared, shrugging one shoulder. Cian passed him with a tiny pat on his shoulder, and went to the tripod standing over the fire in the brazier, a large iron kettle steaming, hanging from a chain. “And Cian…”

“I was lost to everyone,” Cian said. He touched the kettle, testing the temperature, heedless of the hot metal. “I left immediately to search for a priest of our people to resurrect Rory. I was…not myself.”

“I’m impressed you made it,” Fenric murmured. He went to the nearest bench and sat, watching Cian fuss with a porcelain tea set on a large tray. “You lasted centuries before…”

He hadn’t known Cian was alive until the media carried news of a rare High Court Sidhe murdering people in Boston. Cian made the papers and the news for weeks—and Fenric waited, and watched, and hoped, though his heart broke again when Cian’s identity was released to the public.

When the leaked information about the glass coffin, the stasis spell, all of it, reached Fenric through his sources, he both rejoiced and mourned for what had happened to his friends. Rory locked in limbo, and Cian alive but cut off from everything that kept him whole and sane.

“I am sorry, my friends, that I was not there for you.” Fenric said with a faint grimace, watching Cian pour the hot water into the tea kettle.

Rory sat beside Daniel on a chaise across from Fenric. Rory took his mate’s hand and held it on his lap, Daniel blushing a soft pink on high cheeks.

“What happened?” Daniel asked, looking between Fenric and Cian, then turning to his husband. “Is this about the battle where you nearly died?”

“It was not your fault,” Rory told Fenric decisively.

“It feels like it was my fault.”