Chapter 9

After washing suntan lotion, as well as Mandy’s salty sweat and sweet juices, from my frame, I was working in my front office. At the sound of a roar racing past my house, I looked up to watch her speeding away, eyes fixed straight ahead. As I shrugged, about to turn from the window, I caught a lithe, little figure materialize and flit along the hedge. After going to the door, I yanked it open just as Mi stepped out onto my stoop. Clad in the same red-sequined, painted-on micro dress, she flung her long blonde tresses back over her shoulder and flashed me a broad smile.

“A bit overdressed aren’t we?” As I gestured at my own shorts and t-shirt, I forced a grin. Well, Gary had warned me, but she had discovered me awfully quickly.

As her smile widened, her attire morphed into a bubble-gum pink, cut-off t-shirt. Hanging from their sharp points, it was not long enough to cover the entirety of her pert boobs. My eyebrows raised. With her little frame vibrating under my gaze, she glided her hands down her trim flanks. My eyes followed them until I settled below her bare midriff, where darker pink booty shorts wrapped tight to her slim pelvis. To finish the image, when I looked up, her lengthy hair now wafted around her, suspended from twin pigtails, high on each side of her skull.

“Okay. Nice trick.” As she swept loose strands from her face, I cocked my head, adding. “What do you want?”

“May I come in?” Without waiting, she moved forward.

“No.” I flung my arm out to bar her.

Mi thrust out a hip and pouted ... actually pouted, as long, glittery pink-nailed fingers twirled in a swirling pigtail. “Please, Iakovos.”

Her use of my true name startled me at first, but I pursed my lips and tilted my head the other way as she stared up at me. The woman ... Fae, was even smaller than Mandy, but her lively roiling irises, with the constant color-switching, were alluring. A tantalizing perfume puffed from her. It was no mere chemical concoction; its intensely flowered scent hinted of much more. Her nipples lengthened. Yeh, that last was a bit much.

“On one condition.”

Just as her mouth opened to ask what that might be, I flashed my hand under her ridiculous “top” to clasp one of her sturdy stems in my fingertips. When I twisted, her eyes flew wide, and she lurched into my grasp, thrusting her warm cone into my palm. Her now pink glossy lips parted to release a hungry low moan.

“If I detect the tiniest flicker of magic. One single trick. You are out on your pretty little ass, and we are done.”

After yanking my hand from her, she stumbled forward, bobbing her chin while gulping air. The glamour no longer present, she had settled on brilliant blue eyes. Fitting. With a smile, I stepped aside and swept my arm inward to welcome her. Still shaking, she click-clacked into my house–she’d kept the shiny, red strapped heels. They enhanced her already perfect little legs and, as I shut the door behind her, I inspected her tight, petite frame.

Impressive little creature.

“Who are you? What are you really?” she said, after catching my neutral look when they finally returned to hers.

“You know my name?” Before I answered any questions of hers, I wanted her to admit how she knew it.

“Your men—”

Yep. I figured. With a snarl on my lip, I cut her off with a sharp gesture and a sharper tone. “The ones you fucked?”

“Yes.” Her eyes glistened and her lower lip trembled as she replied. Contrite? Really? “One of them told me that much.” Twirling her hair, she paused and tentatively skimmed her tongue over her shaking lip. “But nothing more.”

With a forced grin and a hissed sigh, I ushered her across the foyer and into my main room, nodding to the couch as I stepped to the sidebar.

“Would you like a drink?” When I turned, she was staring at the battered blade over the fireplace as she walked.

“Yes, please.” She muttered over her shoulder as she whirled, taking in my oh, so humble home.

Lined with bookshelves crammed with mementos from the more recent past and many books, the long, broad area also held older-style, over-stuffed chairs centered on a fireplace. The couch to which she was headed and another pair of armchairs faced my wide-screen TV. The pointed toes and heels of her small stilettos sank and dragged in the thick carpeting.

While trying to keep my heartbeat as normal as possible, I poured two tall whiskeys and turned just as she settled her side against the couch’s back cushions. Shoes abandoned on the carpet; her legs were now curled beneath her. As she took the glass from my hand, she remained silent, her eyes locked on mine. After the merest hesitation, she lifted it to her lips.

With a sigh, I sat across from her and took a lengthy gulp before beginning. It was a story I hadn’t been able to tell in a very long time. As the first words slid from me, my heart hammered

“At his request, I had followed Clearchus into exile to Thrace and we fought. We pushed them back and then he got hired by Cyrus. So we followed. But ... long story short, they murdered Clearchus. He had been a good general and a hard-hearted fighter, and they killed him for it. Along with the other generals. Well, we had little choice. We picked new leaders and began hacking our way home.” I lifted my eyes from my drink and looked at her. “That was a long ass time ago. Nowadays, they ... the humans ... call it 400 BC.”

“And that’s all we were trying to do ... get home. Me and some others were scouting out ahead of the column, across a white stony, scrub-brush covered ridge in the Armenian hills. With not a single cloud in the bright blue sky, the sun was full up, beating down relentlessly as we trudged along an ancient hard-scrabble lined goat path.

“It was so hot. We had left our heavy cuirasses behind to move quicker. With our helmets in the wagons as well, we should have been able to see and hear better, but it made no difference. They knew the terrain, and we were just passing interlopers. So...”

After a pause, I took a slow drink and then rolled my lips, gazing, not at Mi, but through her. Once more under the beating sun, I found myself slapping at hordes of biting flies while sweat dripped beneath my filthy gray tunic.

“We still got ambushed. Overwhelmed in seconds. Before I had a chance to do more than cry in alarm and draw my sword...” When her eyes flicked to the one over the mantlepiece, I chuckled. “No, that I carried much more recently. My sword back then—long gone.”

After one more slow draft, draining my glass, I stood to refill it as Mi sipped hers; her gaze never left me as I shambled to the bar before returning to the chair.

“There was a thud. A hammer struck me, hard, and I stared at the sun as the world drifted upwards. I had taken a spear to the chest.” At her gasp, I paused and gulped another swig. It was good whiskey ... strong.

“When I awoke to a rough-hewn wooden shaft wavering over me, I scrabbled at it with my grimy fingers as the chilly evening breeze blew dirt and dust over me. All I could manage to do, since luckily it had a flimsy haft, was snap that free, leaving the narrow head inside. It took a while ... a long while, but I was able to roll and then stagger to my feet. Along those shattered shale mountainsides, I wandered for hours in dim starlight until I stumbled across a tiny village.”

When Mi leaned forward, her eyes widening, a taut grin slipped onto my face. She was like a child at story time. My heart slowed, and I swirled the golden fluid in my glass, foregoing a sip before continuing.

“An elderly crone caught sight of me as she returned from ... relieving herself. At first terrified, she started to dash away, but noticed the broken shaft protruding from my chest; my tunic was sticky with dried and drying blood. Well, she decided I was no more threat than any other ghost and shuffled me into her tiny hut.

“They said I was out of it for almost a week. All I can recall, especially after all these years, is foreign whispers, blurry half-dreams, chanting and the ever-present aroma of potent incense.”

With a soft chuckle, I finally relented and took a swig, letting it swish in my mouth before gulping it down. Glinting blue eyes even wider, Mi’s lips were parted, and she almost missed them when she raised her glass.

“Well, when I finally awoke, the spear point was gone. But she and the others were wary as I regained my strength. That blade, they showed it to me with some reluctance. But it had pierced my heart. Gone straight through it before poking from my back between two ribs. I should have been dead.”

As I remembered the villagers’ gaunt faces, the fear in their eyes, I let out a long sigh and then forced a tight smile at Mi. Her lower lip quivered, and her pink fingernails tapped on her glass.

“But I became stronger each day. And I learned their language. And I worked ... hard. While they never understood ... Hell, to this day, I also have no idea what happened. Or why.”

Even as the room blurred with the tears in my eyes, air hissed between my teeth and I managed another slow sip. With the dusty memories racing into me, bubbling up from the dark corners of my mind, I halted and stared out the rear doors, across the pool and towards the swaying trees.

After regaining my composure, I added in a softer voice. “As I helped in their fields, up in the scrabbled goat pastures, and around the village, they began to trust me. Then like me and...” As I choked back a sob, my glass shook. I couldn’t even remember her name anymore. Fuck. She had been so beautiful. So alive.

“And they loved me. At last, they loved me.” I had to pause when tears trickled down my cheek at her memory. My first real love. Then added in a colder tone. “And then they died. She died. They all fucking died. And yet I lived. Their children ... my children ... grew up around me. When they began to die, I left. I ran.”

At that, my heart was hammering so fast, I couldn’t lift my glass anymore. As a sob slipped from me, I slammed it on the table and let the tears flow. My hands shook as I stared at Mi through blurry eyes, blinking as warm trails slithered down to drip from my chin.

“And I kept fucking running. One town after another. I raged. I was fury unleashed. And I fell back on what I knew best. I fought. I killed. I led men into war. For any reason. Any reason at all. All the while fuming. Why had this happened to me? Everyone I knew disintegrated to ash around me and still I lived on. And I was...”

As I pounded my thighs with my fists, I glared at the ceiling and shook as I spat out more words. “Merciless. I collected people. Used them. Cast them away before they died on me. Accumulated riches. Before losing even more. All the while, I lost the struggle to grasp a shred of my humanity.”

When I lowered my head to gaze at her, her jaw had dropped and tremors raced through her; all the blood in her face had faded.

“I was a beast. Wilder than the doggies. Worse than the bloodsuckers. Because I knew what I was doing. They are turned, but I was only changed ... physically. And I chose to be a beast. And Gods above, was I ever. A force of fucking nature, striding around, taking what...” As I wandered her quivering frame, memories flew back into me and I murmured. “And who I wanted.”

Mi’s tongue flicked around her lips as she pulled her arms tight around herself; her glass shook in her fingers.

“Until I had my own little fucking kingdom. A grand picture of the most vile and decadent debauchery your pretty little mind can conjure. Vast riches. Vaster amounts of slaves. Pretty slaves.”

When I smiled, it must have been eviler than I intended as Mi started back and curled tighter. After lifting my shaking glass to my lips to sip, I peered over the rim at her and let the anger drain from me. The poor thing, troublemaker as she was ... she didn’t deserve my wrath. Of all the creatures in the world right now, Mi definitely did not deserve that.