Six rules undying book 2, p.23
Six (Rules Undying Book 2), page 23
She pulled off her shoes and let her claws scrape along the unyielding concrete.
“Leave nothing to chance, huh?” she muttered as she slowly walked through the gate. She smiled at the pile of sheepskins and fluffy pillows on the bed. A faint, familiar scent of Lorcan remained on one of the pillows. She grabbed that one tight and fell asleep almost instantly.
She woke up to a hand caressing her cheek. She fluttered her eyes open to see Lorcan lying next to her. “Hey,” she said sleepily. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
She could smell embers in the air again. The room had grown so dark that she could no longer see the cage—only Lorcan’s face.
“It’s complicated,” Lorcan said. “We’re both farther apart and closer than we’ve ever been, a rún.”
“Everything with you is complicated, Lorcan,” she sighed.
“I’m not really Lorcan, a rún. I’m just a fragment, hiding in your cerebral-spinal fluids, slowly working my way into the gaps in your brain.”
“What?”
“I’m here to protect you, Paige, and to find out what sort of monsters are trying to hurt me and my family,” he said.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m one of the more ruthless pieces, so you should probably address me as Mordred.”
“Mordred.”
The image of Lorcan smiled. “Indeed. The rest of me wisely hid certain parts of our past. He gave you the part of himself most in tune with the wild berserker. I am now your guardian devil, a rún, so you best get used to me.”
Paige lurched awake, sweat dripping from her forehead. She heard terrible snoring coming from the floor next to her, as Kyle had finally passed out on the concrete, using only a single pillow and a bathrobe to make himself comfy. Paige’s stomach growled so loudly that it actually awoke the sleeping dragon on the floor as well.
“What?” the redhead said sleepily as he curled to his feet and staggered toward the bathroom.
By the time Paige made her own pit stop and lumbered into the living room, Kyle triumphantly held up his phone showing an order confirmation. “We have like eight pizzas heading our way,” he said between yawns.
“I kinda love you right now,” she moaned as she flopped on the other end of the sofa.
“Our bloodwork is so fu—err, messed up,” he moaned. “We’ve been drugged.”
“What?” Paige mumbled as she scooched up into a sitting position again. “How were we drugged?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. It’s some form of GNrH
mixed with mild sedatives and dopamine enhancers,” Kyle muttered.
“It’s like a turbocharged horniness cocktail cooked up just for creatures like us. I didn’t think such a chemical was even possible. I mean, it’s not like there are massive pharmaceutical companies out there looking to get werewolves laid. I’ve got one of Sis’s sniffer programs looking through the data Grandpa has stored up over the centuries, but this is weird.”
“How would we both—” Paige trailed away as she saw the plastic bag still on the kitchen counter. “Kyle!”
“What?” he said, a little more awake. She pointed to the bag.
“You had dinner at your mother’s with Lorcan—”
“They were the leftovers from the same batch of spaghetti,”
Paige said, staring in horror. “No, my mom . . . she wouldn’t, she couldn’t—”
“Is your mom perchance a moonlighter pharmaceutical engineer with a specialization in canine-human hybrid neuroreceptors?” Kyle asked as he grabbed the container.
“Well, no.”
“Then I don’t think she designed this. You do, however, have a great-grandfather who is a rival vampire. If he somehow found out about Grandpa’s little werewolf operation . . . I don’t know. I’m still missing a lot of variables. I mean, he could have just been trying to kill Lorcan. If you didn’t know that he was resistant to the virus, it would be a rather clever way to kill a vampire—”
“You mean, make me a weapon?”
“Think about it this way. You have an enemy vampire, but if you kill him, all the other vampires will hunt you down for breaking their number one law. However, if you create a highly unstable, adorable little vampire slayer who looks like she couldn’t hurt a fly and douse her up with enough hormones to make her all but irresistible—”
“He bites me—”
“Or gets exposed to enough of your other bodily fluids—”
“And he gets sick and dies, and it looks like it’s some rogue berserker that they missed when they thought they killed them all,”
Paige said as she slumped back down in horror.
“It’s not easy to get a berserker nowadays. You’d need someone who’s never been vaccinated and has never had the
chicken pox—”
“You mean like a conspiracy-theorist’s daughter who spent the first eight years of her education being homeschooled?”
“Yeah, someone just like that—someone that you happen to be related to and have access to their only close relative.”
“My mom had dates with some guy she couldn’t really remember—”
Kyle buried his face in his hands. “We have so many problems right now,” he muttered. “You’re not dead, Grandpa’s not dead, and any half-decent, vengeance-obsessed vampire is going to try and figure out why his plan failed. We’ve also got two completely unknown werewolves running free to do god knows what.”
“Hey, can I use your phone?” Paige asked. He handed it over, and she pulled up WWII-Stories.com. “At least we know who our number one enemy is, right?”
Kyle scrolled down the page and stopped at a picture of a smirking, Italian-American boy posing in his uniform.
“Steven DeMarco, my evil great-grandfather,” Paige said as she pointed right at his mop of curly, dark hair. “At least we know what he looks like, and I’m pretty sure my dad found out about a bunch of his associates. It’s like all the haze in the back of my head is starting to clear and I’m starting to remember names and faces.”
“We also have a rare and unusual drug to trace,” Kyle murmured as he rubbed his fuzzy chin. “We are gonna go totally CSI on this shit, aren’t we?”
“Amen,” Paige said as she gave him a high-five. “Now we have to figure out just where to start.”
- 17 -
“So according to legend, King Arthur was tricked by his sister and had a son named Mordred, who pretty much destroyed the kingdom
—fact or crap?” Paige asked as they swayed in the back of an L-train.
“Crap with some fact,” Kyle said between bites of his massive chicken shawarma. “There wasn’t any trickery; Arthur and his sister, Morgana, had a plan all along to create a pure-blooded strain of Pendragon.”
“So your family tree—”
“I’m descended from English nobility. It’s practically a straight line,” Kyle muttered. He eyed the yogurt sauce welling up just on the edge of Paige’s wrap, as well as his helpless tablet in the line of fire on her lap.
“But the fact?”
“Mordred was an evil traitor who destroyed the kingdom, killed his father, and nearly prevented my beautiful face from ever existing.”
Paige looked over at the window. In the reflection she could see the faint image of Mordred holding a finger to his lips. She blinked and turned back to her Wikipedia article.
“There’s no mention of a Lorcan though,” she said as she scrolled through a bunch of text.
“Grandpa is not one for a lot of attention. When Mina started her spin on the stories, he made certain that he wasn’t in them. Um, napkin?”
She wiped the dribble off the corner of the screen. “Sorry,” she said before wolfing down her last few bites of chicken, onions, and bread. “Arthur married Guinevere—”
“And Mordred accused her of having an affair with the king’s bestie, Lancelot. Yeah, that is a really sore subject at family gatherings, let me tell you. I once heard that my great-times-eight uncle, Geoffrey, threw T. H. White out a plate glass window. I think that might have led to some revisions in The Once and Future King, but I’m not sure.”
“It’s weird though. Grandpa will talk about most of them, even Mordred, but you never mention the ‘L’ word to him.”
“Lancelot?” Paige said. As the words escaped her lips, she winced and grabbed her head.
Kyle eyed the subway map. “I’m out of here next stop. You have your map?” he asked.
Paige nodded and rubbed her temple again. She looked in the glass, but there was no figure to taunt her this time.
Kyle leaned in as he took his tablet. “Be careful, OK?”
“I got this,” Paige said as she grabbed her gym bag.
“Meet you back at the apartment around eight,” he said as the train squealed to a halt.
Paige continued a few stops deeper into downtown Chicago and started her long day of following up on addresses scrawled on the back of the pizza receipt. Her first stop was a bodybuilder supply and nutrition center.
She brushed past a man who was nearly as wide as he was tall to shimmy into a crowded aisle stuffed with whey protein and nutrition bars. The huge balding man at the counter didn’t bother looking away from his phone as dinky little Paige approached.
“Need something for your boyfriend?” he asked as he swiped away a row of candy on his game.
Paige smiled blandly. “Actually, I was looking for someone. You know a guy named Irvine Wolfe?”
“Never heard the name. You gonna buy something?”
She grabbed a stack of almond butter bars from the counter.
“Blond guy, kinda hard to miss—?”
“That will be eighteen-forty-five.”
This scene repeated itself at every local gym, fitness store, and supplement outlet. By the time she reached her final stop back at the end of Michigan Avenue, her arms were laden with calories and vitamins, and her prepaid Visa card was all but out of balance.
“Maybe this was a dumb idea,” she muttered as she wandered into the Shredded Zone. Once more she ducked past meathead after meathead and more images of glistening chests than the romance aisle of any bookstore. This time she was surprised with a real, live woman behind the counter, a very tall, tanned bottle blonde who thought a hot pink sports bra was work attire. The gal at the counter smiled as she saw the mountain of previous purchases.
“Well, hello. Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.
“A really hot blond guy,” Paige sighed.
“Aren’t we all?” the woman said with a laugh.
Paige took a few minutes to wander down the aisles, making sure to check if they had any flyers or message boards that might lead to more prospects. As Paige approached a pyramid of vanilla protein powder, a heavy, musky scent tickled her nose. She started to blush as she approached the gap where one of the large tubs was clearly missing.
She looked around before bending over and taking a deep, long sniff. She shuddered.
“Can I help you?” the cashier asked.
Paige grabbed the faintly stinky plastic container and hustled to the counter. The cashier gave Paige a hearty thumbs-up. “Is this any good?” Paige asked as she set down “Hyper-Bulk Alpha” on the counter.
“Sweetie, this is the best. This is our own proprietary blend of fully organic, non-GMO certified—” Paige tuned out the rest of the five-minute spiel extolling every virtue of their completely in-house blend made by their company founder all the way back in 2008.
“Can you only get this here?” Paige asked.
“Only in this very place or on our website,” the cashier said as she popped a card in the bag. “Once you use this, you will never go back to the processed, sugar-laden crap other stores try to sell you.
Oh, you mentioned hot blonds, right? I know for a fact that we have a regular stud who swears by this,” she said with a little wink.
Paige said a silent prayer as she saw the fifty-plus-dollar price tag, but mercifully an approved message came through.
The girl at the counter asked, “Did you want to join our mailing list?”
“Um, not today, but can I sign up online?”
“It’s on the card. Hey, let me know how that works out for you.
I’m telling you, everyone gets hooked, and with arms like yours, I’m sure you like to work out a lot.”
“Oh, I’ll be back, I’m sure.”
Paige skipped down the street, even with all her bags and walking that day. She sniffed the bag one more time, just to make sure that she really did pick up that distinctive werewolf funk on the plastic. She hunted for her new prepaid phone and dialed the only number in the contacts.
“Guess what I found,” she said as soon as Kyle picked up.
“An angry blond with a fitness fetish?” he asked.
“Well, I think I found his favorite protein powder at least, and in even better news, it’s only available one place.”
“Kick ass,” Kyle said. “Let’s meet back at the ranch; I’ve got news too.”
Paige began her triumphant walk home down Michigan Avenue.
As she passed a majestic building with two lion statues out front, her feet simply stopped. A pack of girls walking behind her gave her a nasty look as they had to stumble around the young woman transfixed by the Chicago Art Institute. She turned and walked up the steps, her eyes glazed over, and ended up infuriating the coat-check desk as she had to deposit a dozen plastic bags before they would let her farther inside the lobby.
She walked right up to information and said, “I’m here to see Mr.
Merriweather,” without missing a beat.
The stern-looking older lady at the counter stared witheringly over her glasses. “And who should I say is inquiring about Dr.
Merriweather?” she asked.
“I’m a friend of Lorcan Darcy’s,” Paige said ever so sweetly.
“One moment,” she said before picking up the phone on the desk.
The woman at the counter paled visibly as she muttered to someone at the other end. The older lady nodded quickly and made several affirmative noises. She looked back to Paige apologetically.
“Dr. Merriweather will be right with you, dear.”
Paige looked around, confused, as people trickled in and out of the turnstiles. A rather small man with long birdlike features, horn-rimmed glasses, and a slightly too big navy suit hurried toward the blank-faced girl in a T-shirt and cargo pants.
He looked her up and down in confusion. “I’m sorry, but you are
—?”
“Paige DeMarco,” she said without thinking. “My dear friend Mr.
Darcy said that I simply had to come here and see the tapestries and that only you could help me, Mr. Merriweather.”
“Why, yes, of course. Please follow me, Miss DeMarco.” He waved a badge and grabbed her a pass so that they could wander unfettered through one of the largest collections of art in North America. Instead of stopping at the classical wing, the modern art collection, or the Impressionists gallery, Paige found herself led straight to an unassuming door labeled “Janitor.”
Sure enough, as Merriweather unlocked and opened the door, Paige found herself face-to-face with mops, buckets, and shelves full of cleaners and paper products. The professor type gave her a small salute before shutting her in the closet. “Buzz me when you are done,” she heard through the door.
“What the heck?” Paige asked as she noticed the distinct lack of knob or lever on the inside of the door. She searched desperately for any sort of keypad or button around the door frame. Soon she felt a terrible sensation of being watched. Something was barely visible behind a row of paper towels. She pulled away the rolls to reveal a terrible velvet painting of dogs playing poker tacked to the walls of this hallowed institution. “Some tapestry,” she muttered.
She grabbed her temple again with her right hand. Her left paw, however, developed a mind of its own and slid around the cheap fabric. Sure enough, there was a tiny switch hidden behind the
border collie on the left. The wall creaked open to reveal a set of stairs leading down.
“Why are you doing this, Paige?” she asked herself as she walked ever so cautiously down the narrow set of steps. A few dim lights ran along the risers and there was a faint hum of a transformer somewhere, but otherwise it was just a deep, dark passageway into the unknown.
Another door greeted Paige at the base of the stairs—this one solid steel, with a keypad next to it. Once more her left hand slid over and typed while her neck turned away so she couldn’t see.
“If you ever do this to me again, Mordred—” Paige hissed. The door made a terrifically loud clunk to interrupt her. She pulled it open to reveal a beautifully lit, climate-controlled vault. Her jaw dropped at a very large slab of stone in the dead center of the gallery. An aged, sliver, ornately-etched sword stabbed right through the heart of the rock, with no perceivable gap between the metal and its lithic sheath.
“Holy—”
“Language, please, Paige,” a very British voice said behind her.
She whirled around to see Lorcan in black leather armor. “After all, we are in the gallery of my esteemed ancestors.”
“Are you—?”
“A hallucination?” this Lorcan asked. “Why, yes. It’s safe here, so you can call me by my real name.”
“I’m going crazy,” Paige said, rubbing her eyes. “You’re Mordred, then?”
The hallucination gave a little bow. “Sorry to use your body for a while, but I had to make certain that my family’s greatest treasures were safe. You know, everyone thinks we keep them all in the homeland, but I believe in diversification.”
“So that is—” Paige asked, wide-eyed. She stepped cautiously toward the sword rammed into the stone.
“The one and only Excalibur,” Mordred sighed. “My other body carries around Caliburn, my old sword—supposedly as a reminder to never behave like that traitor Mordred. Oh, we vampires love our irony, don’t we?”
“It’s really a sword in a stone,” Paige cried as she walked around it. She started to reach a hand out but jerked it back. Her hallucination laughed.
