The Mary Sue Virus: Beyond Death
Oct. 14th, 2018 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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marysuevirusTitle: The Mary Sue Virus: Beyond Death
Chapter Seventy Eight: The Power is Mine
Fandom: Anita Blake universe
Rating: 18 and up
Warnings: graphic sex and violence, language, anything else i can toss in.
Disclaimer: the recognizable characters and places contained herein are the property of LKH. i'm merely borrowing for the sake of entertainment. no money is being made from this venture. the Sues are the sole property of their originators, Ginevra, Dazzledfirestar, Nanaea, SilverFoxChan and ladydeathfaerie. the concept and title of The Mary Sue Virus are used with permission from Dazzledfirestar.
Author's Notes: so much plot. we're drowning in it. all the damn plot. some of it not even planned!
The Mary Sue Virus: Beyond Death - Index Link
"You should have stayed in New Mexico. Gone to see a doctor, then gone home to Donna," Janika said softly, eyes locked on his face. He could imagine just how bad he looked. He hadn't had time to find a mirror and check for himself. And maybe he should have. It wasn't every day that he had preternaturals smacking him around, despite his line of work. A sensible man would have done just what she'd said. Seen a doctor then gone home and forgotten about the whole fucking mess. But Edward frowned and shook his head, then shot a look toward the seat Aedan occupied.
His cousin. It was still a little strange to think that. He'd spent way too long thinking of her as another tool. Another human being with skills, someone he could rely on to do a job. Someone disposable. Except some where along the line, some way or another, she'd become family for him. To him. In every sense of the word. Which was why he'd told her to leave him. Because there had been other worries for her to deal with. But, of course, she'd stubbornly ignored him. And now the idiot was staring out the small, oval window pensively. Lost in her own thoughts and feelings. He was only going to guess at what was on her mind because he was fairly certain he didn't want to know what she was thinking.
"I'm fine. There's no way I was going to let her go running off alone into a situation that will get her killed. Not a second time."
Janika stared at him searchingly a moment, then frowned and lowered her voice. "If you don't think she can beat the big bad, what makes you think you can?"
Edward gave her a look for a few seconds before turning his attention back to where Aedan sat. She was still staring out the window. And he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something very off with her. He'd felt that way since he'd come around in the cave with her kneeling in front of him. He just couldn't put his finger on what that something was. He finally turned back to Janika and shrugged. "She's blood. And I'd be a shitty cousin if I didn't try to keep her stupid ass alive. Since I obviously can't talk any sense into her. I told her not to come. She shouldn't have come."
Janika must have heard the self-deprecation in his words. She reached out and laid a hand on his knee. It was a tentative touch, as he was sure she didn't know if he'd welcome it or not. "I'm going to just toss your words back in your face. More or less. You can be mad at her all you want for not listening. But that doesn't negate that she wanted to come. You're family. She might be mad at you, but she wasn't going to let them kill you. She loves you."
"She's got a weird way of showing it," Edward remarked. His mind took him back to the cave and the corpses he'd seen strewn across the floor. Throughout the entire cave system. Some had been shot. Or stabbed. Had suffered major blood loss leading to death. But others had looked old. Like desiccated husks. As if they'd been dead for decades. And he knew, without a doubt, that that had been Aedan's work. He wasn't sure he wanted to know how she'd done it.
He watched as Janika's gaze slid Aedan's way. He didn't have to read minds to know she was as concerned about the other woman as he was. "It feels like she's spiraling again. The woman who went into those caves... I don't know her." Janika turned back to him with a frown on her face, forehead creased where her brows had pulled together. "The things she did to those people. Should she be able to do them?"
He considered it a moment, considered everything he'd seen when she and Janika had helped him from the caves. There had been so many corpses. And, really, only a few of them had died from gunshot wounds or even being stabbed. A lot of them had simply been husks. He knew she was capable of drawing someone's energy from their body, capable of using it to help heal someone else. But did that ability go this far? Was she capable of draining someone of their energy to the point of death? To the point of decay? To be perfectly honest, he wasn't sure. "I don't know, Janika. She shouldn't be able to do half the things she does. But she can. Because she got Anita's ability to defy the odds. If we're being honest, I don't really understand what happened down there."
It was obviously not an answer Janika liked. He watched her shoulders slump in defeat. "I never should have let her go off on her own. I'm sure that something happened while she was gone. But I didn't even know she'd left until after the fact. Which is probably what she'd planned to have happen."
Her words saw his gaze sharpening. Of course Aedan had gone off on her own. Of fucking course. Because she was determined to get herself killed when there was no one around to keep her alive. "She went somewhere without you? When?"
"Um..." Janika said, obviously thinking about it. And probably trying to figure out if she could get away with not telling him. Edward just gave her a look.
"You know what? Go back to the beginning. To the moments after I spoke to her on the phone and told her not to come. Start there," he instructed. Janika blinked at him, obviously certain he'd lost his mind, but she nodded and heaved a sigh.
"I caught her on her way to the door. I don't know how long it was after you'd spoken to her that this was, but she had her bags packed and she was going for a car. I caught her in the living area. And when I saw her face, when I heard that you'd been taken, I told her I was coming with. So she waited for me while I packed, then we headed to the airport."
He didn't believe for a minute that Aedan waited patiently for Janika to pack. It was more than likely that Janika hadn't been about to let Aedan go off on her own and had made Aedan wait. He didn't say anything about it, though. And he'd have to remember to thank her for that later, when this was all over. "Where did you land? When?"
"Albuquerque. Around... ten-ish?," she told him. Albuquerque. Shit. That did not bode well. He could remember what happened that time he'd asked Anita to come to New Mexico to help him with a job. Janika didn't notice his unhappiness and continued on. "When we landed, we each rented a car and headed to the location that Aedan had chosen to meet the big bad's people at. A pair of shifters showed up at the bowling alley and I thought Aedan was going to get into a brawl with them in the bar. She was so antagonistic."
Edward nodded his head. "For good reason. She no doubt had to establish herself as bigger and badder than they were. With a lot of the really shitty people we end up dealing with, that's just about the only way to keep from getting killed in the first five minutes."
Janika stared at him a moment, then nodded slowly. As if only just realizing that this was a thing. "Anyway. The two shifters showed up, Aedan had a pissing match with them, then they delivered the message your kidnapper wanted them to deliver. They left. I left. Aedan left. We got rooms at a really shitty motel."
"I distinctly remember him telling her that she wasn't supposed to bring any cops with. How'd you two manage that?"
"I have recently learned some things about my mother that I never knew before. Things that made it easier for me to blend in with my surroundings," she told him. Edward almost narrowed his eyes at that. It was a very polite code for saying that there was something in her past she didn't want him to know. No matter. He'd find out what it was. "I went incognito and sat at the bar with a drink, feigning interest in my phone. I had a bluetooth in, my phone was on mute, and Aedan had hers in her pocket. I was listening in to their conversation without them knowing about it."
"Smart," he acknowledged.
"We got two rooms at the motel. Purely by luck, we were on different floors and on different sides of the motel. Hopefully, if anyone was watching, they didn't think we were there together," Janika shrugged. "Anyway, after a nap and a shower, I decided I was hungry. And I figured Aedan had to be hungry, too. So I called her cell. No answer. I called her room's phone. No answer. I went to her room. She wasn't there. That's when I noticed that her rental was gone."
"When was this?" he questioned.
"The sun was just setting because I remember thinking that the sunset looked amazing as it sank below the horizon," Janika told him. She paused a moment, obviously considering something. "It was a couple hours before she got back. And when she did return, there was something odd about her. She looked pale. And she was acting different. She felt... I don't know. Almost like she was strung out or something."
"Shit," Edward muttered. "Obsidian Butterfly."
His words brought a frown to Janika's face. Obviously she had no clue what he was talking about. Edward glanced at his watch. Their flight would be coming in to St. Louis soon. When it did, there would be no time for any kind of chatter. He had no doubt that Aedan would go into 'kill anything that looked at her funny' mode the moment they hit the tarmac. And that she'd stay that way until the current crisis was over. It was fortunate that he had a friend with a Cessna Citation X who had been more than willing to fly them to St. Louis at the drop of a hat without explanation. They were alone on the plane, other than the pilots and one flight attendant, which meant no one was going to be witness to anything odd. But it also meant that he didn't have much time to confront Aedan. Their flight was almost over. If he was going to have answers to the rest of his questions, it was going to have to be now. "Itzpapalotl."
That single word saw Aedan's head turn away from the darkened circle of the window. She shifted around until she was facing him and he saw the answer in her eyes. In her black eyes. "You stupid girl. You went to Itzpapalotl."
He saw Janika stir in her seat, shifting uncomfortably as Aedan's gaze focused on them unerringly even though she didn't appear to actually be looking at them. "What the fuck?" Janika asked.
"I had to. It was the only way," she told him. There was a touch of power in her voice that made goose flesh rise on his arms.
"She could have eaten you," he commented.
"She didn't."
He resisted the urge to strangle her. How the hell could he be related to someone so goddamn stupid? "Aedan... Jesus Christ, what were you thinking? She's a thousand years old. She could have steam rolled right over you. And you just... went to her for help. Like it was no big deal."
"I did what I had to do. I needed power. She has it in spades. We came to an arrangement that allowed me to rescue you. I don't see why its such a big deal." From the tone of her voice, she believed it. She believed it wasn't a big deal. She was such a reckless fool.
"You have Anita's memories. You know why its a big deal!"
"I do have Anita's memories. And I know exactly why everyone is so afraid of Obsidian Butterfly. I was terrified that she'd eat me. But I had to help you. And if I was going to do that, as well as go up against all of the head vampire's people, I needed help. I wasn't going to be able to take them all on my own." She made it sound so reasonable, as if risking her life was something that just happened and they should all be okay with it. He wasn't okay with it. He was furious with it. And with her. He'd lost Anita. He hadn't been there to protect her and she'd died because of that. He'd then had to watch Aedan, his own flesh and blood, die once. They were lucky he'd been able to keep her alive until the EMTs had arrived. He didn't really want to live through that nightmare again.
"You should have left me there," he shot back.
"And let them kill you? I don't think so."
Edward took a breath. Then another. And then a third for good measure. Aedan was headstrong enough to try the patience of a saint. "They weren't going to kill me. They wanted you to think that so you'd come after me and leave Jean Claude defenseless."
She shook her head at him. "First, Jean Claude isn't defenseless. Second, you and I both know that they'd have killed you. Just because you're Death. The fact that you're tied to me only sweetened the deal for them. You would have died if I hadn't come out to save you. You don't get to sit there and lecture me about letting you die when you told me not that long ago that you weren't going to let me die." Her eyes darkened, which shouldn't have been fucking possible because they were already black as pitch, and she frowned at him. "You're my family. The only blood family I have left. I was not leaving you to die by a vampire's hands. Not like that. Anything I had to sacrifice to keep you alive was well worth it."
"You..." he started, but faltered. How did he argue with that bit of logic? How did he argue with any of it, really. It was pointless to try and make her see what she'd done was seriously dangerous because she wasn't going to listen to him. Not in the slightest. "Do me a favor and promise me you'll never do anything so fucking stupid again."
"Sorry. No can do, buddy. You knew what I was like a long time ago. This--" Aedan's words trailed off and a soft gasp slipped out. He didn't know how it was possible, but her face got paler than it had been and she almost toppled out of her chair. Janika was up and out of her seat before he could even think to undo his seat belt, a move that wasn't strictly human, and kneeling before the other woman a second later.
"Aedan? What is it?"
"They have Jean Claude," she whispered, voice tight with pain. Edward frowned. He knew that the other man never left the safety of his lair without the Wicked Truth at his side. And he also knew that the brothers were as deadly as they came. Jean Claude should have been safe. How had they gotten to him?
"Tell me," Edward ordered, falling into the tone of voice he knew she responded to without question. He pushed himself from his seat, doing his best to stifle the moans and groans that came from muscles that had been immobile too long. That had taken too much abuse in a short amount of time. Janika looked up at him as he limped his way over to where they were. He couldn't hold back the sigh of relief when he settled into the seat next to Aedan and wished, for a moment or two, that he'd taken Aedan's advice and stayed in Santa Fe. "Chastity. Tell me."
"He's got me blocked off. To spare me, I think. But I can feel his pain. And his fear." She whispered the last. She turned her gaze his way, letting him see the darkness up close and personal. It was bottomless, and it could suck a soul in without even trying. More than that, he swore he could feel the power riding her. Power that she'd gotten from a most unlikely, and dangerous, ally. Maybe it was going to be to their advantage in this mess.
"They probably told him you're dead. And with you cutting yourself off from him, he can't tell if its true or not. Open the link. Give him a reason to fight." Aedan blinked at him, as if she didn't believe he was telling her this. Then she nodded and her eyes took on a far away look. Edward spared a glance at Janika, who was watching her friend intently, before returning his attention to Aedan's face. It was several moments before her expression cleared and the vacant look left her eyes. When she focused on Edward, he could see the tears gathering. And the rage that built behind them.
"He's okay. For now. I told him we're coming to get him. He doesn't know where he is. But that doesn't matter. I can find him. As soon as we're on the ground, I'll find him."
"Asher wants to know what you need him to do," Janika said softly.
"Tell him nothing. Tell him I appreciate it, but I won't put him in harm's way. Nor anyone else. This is my war. It started because Anita passed her powers on to me. I'm going to end it." The tone in Aedan's voice said she wasn't going to be swayed. Edward wanted to argue with her, tell her that she couldn't take on the entire world by herself. But he kept silent. Because he knew it would do no good. Janika, on the other hand, wasn't about to let that go.
"Aedan, he's willing to help. He's willing to gather together a group of vampires and lycanthropes to pit against this asshole and his people. You should let him help."
"What happens if he gets hurt? What happens to you? What happens to Jean Claude? What happens if someone else gets hurt? I know you all think I'm reckless and stupid. That I needlessly put myself at risk. But what happens to me if you get hurt? What happens to me if I lose one of you? I've only just found my family. I am not ready to lose it. Not yet," Aedan said, tone gentle. She let her gaze shift to Edward. "I cannot lose any of you. Not now. Not when I finally have a family that I can call my own. So we do this my way. The three of us. Or I render you both unconscious and go alone. You know I'll do it."
"What's the plan?" Edward asked, not bothering to hide his sigh.
"The same as its always been," she returned. The softness was gone, and the darkness of her eyes was absolute. The look she gave them was grim. "Find them. Kill them. Kill them all."
"Fuckin' A," Edward said.
~*~*~*~*~
Aedan's nerves were strung tight by the time the jet had landed and the hatch had been opened to let them out. She could feel Jean Claude at the back of her brain, distant and almost not there. It worried her, because she had no clue what it meant. She had no idea what was going on. She had no clue what they were doing to him. She had no clue where it was taking place. She had no idea how many people she was up against. And she had no idea how she was going to keep Edward and Janika from following her into what was bound to be certain death. She wished like hell Death had taken a stay-cation.
It didn't help that she was still high as shit from the power Itzpapalotl had gifted her with. It rode her like a second skin, coloring everything she felt and saw and touched. It was enough to drive her insane and she could absolutely understand, after having that power run under her skin as it had for the past few hours, why Itzpapalotl would call herself a goddess. The kind of power she carried was unlike anything Aedan had ever felt in her life.
"What do we do now?" Edward asked. Aedan turned to look at him and saw him visibly recoil from her stare. He didn't like that she was jacked up on Obsidian Butterfly's power. It unnerved him every time she looked at him. He'd have to live with it for a while longer.
"We find a car," Aedan told him. If there was a touch of disbelief that he'd had to ask something so obvious, he said nothing about it. She had no doubt he made note of it. But he said nothing. Instead, he gave her a grim look that meant nothing but trouble later. If there was a later.
"And after we have a car?" he asked, a touch of annoyance in his voice.
"We find them," she replied. She watched the frown come and had to bite back the urge to grin at him. No doubt it would look unsettling with her eyes the way they were.
"So you have no idea where they are?"
"Not yet. I can find them, though," she promised. Edward eyed her skeptically.
"If you can find them, why didn't you do so before we landed?"
"I'm not a GPS unit, Edward," she admonished lightly. "You can't just ask me to map out the easiest route. I have to have a few moments to shift my powers around in order to play magical blood hound. And that works better on the ground than in mid-air."
"Distance and proximity," he said almost absently. Aedan ignored him and brushed a hand against the comforting bulk of her weapon, tucked under her arm. She didn't think she'd get a chance to actually use it. But it was good to know it was right there, in an easy to reach place if she needed it.
"Asher wants to know where to meet us," Janika broke the silence. Aedan held on to her sigh and took a moment to center herself. She was afraid something like this would happen once they hit the ground in St. Louis. "He says he's got a small army together to help take Jean Claude back."
Aedan searched for the words needed to explain it without pissing people off. She didn't know if there really were any. No matter what she did, she'd be wrong. Someone would accuse her of not trusting anyone enough. To some extent, they were right. But not in the way they wanted to believe. Aedan absolutely trusted Asher to have her back. She trusted Jean Claude in that regard, too. Micah and Minette and Isis and Rhia and Janika and everyone in the family she'd made for herself was included. But this was still her fight. This whole mess had started because of her. Because Anita had passed powers to her that she hadn't fully understood. Because the woman had passed on responsibilities that Aedan hadn't fully understood. And she should have declined. All of it. Now, because of that one action, they wanted her dead. Let them try. But she wasn't going to willingly give them anyone else to fuel their bid.
Hell, she didn't even know yet how she was going to handle this. She couldn't very well take anyone else into that kind of shit storm. Could she? It was bad enough that Edward and Janika were with her.
She watched as understanding dawned in Edward's eyes, as he grasped exactly what was going on. "Tell Asher that she won't accept his help," he told Janika for her.
"What?" Janika asked, letting her gaze slide between Edward and herself. Aedan tried not to give anything away but it was so damn hard because she could absolutely understand what Janika had to be thinking. "What do you mean? Why?"
"She isn't going to bring anyone else into this," Edward said. Again, Janika's gaze slid between Edward and Aedan as she puzzled out what he was saying.
"Why not?"
"There's too much at risk without giving them any other lives to try and bargain with. I won't put any one else in harm's way. Especially not when that harm is meant for me," Aedan told her.
Janika stared at her a moment or two, then her lips flattened and her eyes got dark. "You are not going to do the lone ranger crap again. You cannot keep shutting us out when something bad happens. We can help. Talk to her, Edward. Make her understand that this isn't the way to go."
"As it happens, I think she's right. Its what I would do," Edward responded quietly. Janika glared at him. He held up a hand, bringing any tirade she might make to a halt. "That doesn't mean I agree with her decision to handle this on her own."
"Jesus Christ. You're both insane," Janika snarled, glaring in equal measures at them. Aedan only smiled and gave the other woman a look.
"I love you. A lot. You and Asher. And everyone else. Until I met you guys, I didn't think I could love someone the way I do. I didn't think I'd ever have a family to call my own. And now... Now, I would do anything I had to in order to protect that family and keep it safe. I know you think I'm selfish and stupid. But that's the truth. The people who want me dead almost saw my actual blood family killed. And now you're both here, in the middle of it. I will not put anyone else in my family at risk. Hate me for that if you will. But that's how its going to be."
Janika stared at her a moment, then frowned. She pointed one finger at Aedan for a second before shifting it Edward's way. "Neither one of you idiots are going anywhere without me. So just suck it up and fucking deal."
Aedan glanced at Edward, who merely met her look with an amused one of his own. She wasn't going to find any help in that corner. Which meant she didn't have much choice. Sighing, Aedan turned back to Janika. "Fine. But you will do what I say. This is still my gig. And I don't need you getting in my way when I lay waste to these fuckers."
Janika stared several seconds longer before giving a brief nod. "Okay." She made a point of checking her weapon, which basically told Aedan she had no plans on listening. "At least one of you idiots has some sense. Let's go."
~*~
"How do we find them?" Janika asked as the car headed away from the private airport where the jet had landed. Aedan frowned and shot the woman a glare.
"We don't, if you won't be quiet," Aedan replied, once more trying to center herself. It was hard to do in a moving car, especially when she had to worry whether or not the driver was going to keel over at any given moment because of the abuse he'd suffered. "I need to be able to concentrate and stretch my senses. Easier to do when I'm standing in the middle of a cemetery or an open field. Not so easy to do while riding in a goddamn car."
"Wow. Someone's cranky," Janika muttered, relaxing back into the seat. She had no idea. The feel of Obsidian Butterfly's power crawling under her skin had her nerves on edge. She needed to be rid of it soon, or she was going to go mad.
Edward pulled off the road and into the parking lot of an all night eatery. Aedan shot him a brief look, closed her eyes, and pulled a deep breath into her lungs. It made finding her center easier. Once she was as calm as could be, she let her senses stretch and sought out all of the undead in the city.
The magic flowed out of her, tinted black by Itzpapalotl's power so that it looked like a river of darkness flooding the world in Aedan's mind. She watched it go, followed it as it spread out in every direction. It touched on every undead creature it found, tasting them and marking them. Feeding her information. She felt it to her core when that magic touched on the Circus, when it slid over the vampires living under the big monstrosity. Some of them even took note when she touched them, their power answering her call without hesitation. She knew when she found the Church of Eternal Life. Malcolm's words faltered a moment when she touched him and she felt his eyes widen. Young vampires stopped in their tracks to look around them, seeking out the source of the power. It touched every vampire it came across, letting her feel power and age, and still it kept going.
Finally, after what seemed like ages, she felt it come to rest on a large mass of undead power. She knew Jean Claude, despite the fact that his power felt weak. Her heart tried to speed up in her chest, tried to urge her to move, but she forced it to slow. Forced it to let her think and feel. She felt it the moment he knew what was touching him, knew who was touching him. She saw him in her mind's eye, his brilliant blue eyes staring at her in shock and fear. And then... Then that power touched on a vampire the likes of which she'd never felt before. Stronger than any she'd come across. Older than any, too. And that vampire knew the moment her power touched them. Knew, and smiled in invitation.
Aedan turned her head until she was sure she was looking in the direction the power had gone, opened her eyes and pointed. Her arm was level with Edward's face as she pointed out his window. "That way. They're that way."
"You're sure?" Edward asked, already putting the car into gear.
"Yes."
The vehicle pulled out onto the road and Edward soon had them going in the direction Aedan had pointed. She kept her eyes on the windshield, watching the scenery as it moved toward them without actually seeing it. She still wasn't sure what she was going to do when they got there. The vampire she'd felt... She didn't know if she could take it. It was older than anything she'd felt before. And if that vampire had gotten past the Wicked Truth... What hope did she, a lowly mortal, have of defeating it?
"What's the plan?" Edward asked, voice cutting across her thoughts. Aedan knew she could point out that they'd already had this discussion and he knew what the plans were as well as she did. But he was asking for a more specific plan. She shifted things around in her mind, put the feel of Jean Claude and the other vampires on the back burner so she could deal with Edward's question. The taste of their power would change if they drifted too far to the left or the right.
"They know I'm coming," she admitted. It would be stupid not to prepare them. "They don't know you're with. Not yet. I imagine the leader has an idea, since the death of all those people in New Mexico is probably something they didn't miss. But its only an idea. Not a hard fact. We can use that to our advantage."
"How?"
Aedan closed her eyes again and let the power spread, let it flood the area toward which they were heading. She could feel the lycanthropes waiting, their frantic energy vibrating along the connection she'd established with the location. "There are shifters there. And probably humans. You and Janika can deal with them. Let me deal with the big bad on my own."
"You don't even know if you can handle the big bad on your own. Why should I let you go off and face them all alone?" Edward asked, voice tight with emotion. Aedan smiled at him. It was nice to know he cared.
"Because I don't want to see you end up in harm's way for me a second time. Because Donna would kill me if you didn't get home to her in one piece," Aedan told him, then frowned. "Did you even call her? She needs to know you're okay."
"I'll call her when this is all over," he promised. She shook her head at him.
"You might be Death, but I'm the one carrying Itzpapalotl's power," she replied. She still didn't know what she was going to do with it. She honestly hadn't thought that far ahead. She just knew she had to do whatever it took to ensure that Jean Claude got back to his people safe and sound. She felt the power tug at her and shifted her attention to the road. "Turn there."
Edward turned the car wordlessly, letting his gaze slide her way a moment or two before returning it to the road. "Aedan. You're the only blood family I have left, too. I would be a poor cousin if I let you blindly walk into a situation that meant your death. You have friends and loved ones that would be devastated if you died. And we don't even know what would happen to anyone if you did."
She turned to look at him, made sure he could feel the weight of her stare against his skin. "They're vampires, Edward. I'm damn good with vampires."
"So am I. I've killed my fair share," he reminded her.
"Yes. You have. But I have something going for me that you don't," she returned.
"What's that?"
"My winning personality." There was silence a moment as he considered her words. Then he broke out into laughter, easing some of the tension in the car. She only hoped he was laughing later, when this was all said and done.
~*~
It took them a full half hour before they found the area where all of that power was gathered together. Each mile closer and closer saw Aedan's skin tightening as power washed over her. Both the deep, cold power of the undead and the stinging, warm power of the lycanthropes. It was hard to shut it off, now that she'd found it, and it combined with Obsidian Butterfly's power in an attempt to drive her insane. By the time they arrived, she felt like she was crawling out of her own skin.
They found themselves parking in a field in the middle of nowhere. There was a small area where the grass had been trampled down to the soil. But only a small area. All around them was grass that had been left to grow so high that the car would have been swallowed up by it. As it was, it was a trap for them, because there were any number of preternatural beings hiding in it. Aedan turned in her seat, let her gaze take in both Edward and Janika.
"We'll split up. I'll go up the middle. One of you goes right. One of you goes left," she told them.
"No," Janika shook her head. "We stay together."
"We'll be easy pickings if we do," Edward said. His tone suggested he didn't like the idea. But he didn't argue with her. "Aedan's right. If we split up, we stand a better chance of reaching Jean Claude. But do not let your guard down. Not for a second. Weapons up and at the ready." He gave Aedan a meaningful stare, prompting her to pull the Glock from under her arm. Seeing the gun in her hand only relaxed him slightly.
"This is insane," Janika hissed, drawing her own gun. "We're all going to get ourselves killed."
"No. Just me," Aedan told them, then opened the door and climbed from the car. It was done so quickly and so smoothly that she was lost in the high grass before Janika and Edward could get their doors open. She let the power pull her forward, let it be her guide toward her ultimate goal. In only moments, she heard gunshots echoing on her left and her right. Heard screams of pain and rage. She put them from her mind, refusing to dwell on who might have made them. If she lost focus, she would be dead before she even reached Jean Claude.
Anything that came at her in the tall grass got a bullet to the heart. She didn't even think about it, simply performed the action of pointing and pulling the trigger on autopilot. And, as she passed the dying by, she took their energy until she felt as if she would burst from all of it. Still she kept pulling it in. Holding on to it. Waiting.
She finally broke into a clearing where there was no grass. The ground beneath her feet was broken concrete, letting her know that a building had stood in this spot at one time. Trees lined the sides, illuminated by the flickering light of the two bonfires lit in pits that had been chiseled out of the concrete slab closest to where she stood. Her gaze slid over the scene, taking everything in.
There were thirteen vampires standing across the concrete slab, at just about the middle mark. Aedan let her senses slide over them, testing strength and age. Not a one of them was less than three hundred. Every one of them was a master. There were twelve forming a half circle, eyes locked on her but not quite seeing her, with the thirteenth standing front and center before them. He watched her, his eyes burning with the desire for her blood and her death. She could feel his power against her skin, heavy and forceful as it tried to crush her under its weight. And he was old. So, so old. Older than any vampire she'd ever met before in her life. Granted, that list was still fairly short, but she was pretty sure she'd never meet another vampire this old or strong ever again.
Standing on either side of him were the two shifters from the bowling alley bar in Albuquerque. They were smirking at her, as if they knew something she didn't. It was likely they did. Not that it mattered. She was going to kill them. Both of them. Slowly, if possible. Just for staring at her like she was a snack.
Thirteen vampires and two lycanthropes. Take the shifters out of the equation, which she absolutely planned on doing, and she was left with thirteen. The number of a coven of witches. The implications were not lost on her.
It was the sight of the coffin that froze her blood in her veins. A plain wooden coffin, something that looked like it had come straight from a seventeenth century pauper's cemetery, bound with chains that glittered silver in the flames. She didn't have to use her powers to know that Jean Claude was in that box. Jean Claude, can you hear me?
"You should not have come, ma mie. They will kill you." His voice sounded faint. And she heard pain in it.
They'll try. Hang on. I'm going to get you out of there. She closed the connection before he could try to take her to task for going against his express wishes and spend what little energy he had left. Hadn't he realized yet that she wasn't going to let them kill him. Not if she could stop it. Because if they did kill him, she'd die with him. As would too many other people. "I believe you have someone that belongs to me. I'd like him back." Aedan made sure there was a healthy dose of courage in her voice. There was no way she was going to let them see her cower in fear.
"But you have already taken him back," the leader said with a smile that told her she wasn't fooling anyone. She stared at him, looking for something that would help her take him down. Anything. It was hard to find past the power that radiated off him. "You have your cousin. And he is even alive."
"You put Jean Claude in a box. You will let him out right now. Or I promise you, regret will be the last thing you feel before I cut your fucking head off," she informed him, careful to keep the anger to herself.
"What can you do to me, necromancer? No doubt you have figured out that I am far older and stronger than your precious master." One pale hand touched the coffin, careful to place his fingers between the silver-coated chains. Something tickled at the back of her brain, tried to catch her attention. Aedan gave it free reign while keeping her attention focused on the leader.
"And no doubt you've figured out that I am much more than I seem," she replied, calculating odds. They could hear gunfire still sounding in the distance, accompanied by animalistic screams and yells of rage. "My friends will be here soon. Any of you that I don't take down will be fair game for them. Death likes to be creative. Janika... She prefers to just straight up kill you. Though its possible she might develop a flair for the painful. But before I deal with your sorry ass, I have a score to settle with the Tweedle twins."
"Aw, you remembered us. I'm touched," the speaker said. She heard the growl in his voice that told her he was going to shift. Let him. Let him come at her. She had a surprise or two up her sleeve.
"You will be. Unless you let him go right now." She motioned with one hand toward the coffin.
"I am afraid I cannot do that. His imprisonment means your cooperation," the leader intoned.
"This is boring," Aedan said, making sure she sounded extremely bored. "You must like hearing yourself speak. I guess I was mistaken in thinking you were a man of action." She intentionally shifted her attention to the second shifter, Dane. "Hey, Fido. Want a bone? Do you? Do you want a bone? Here, boy! C'mere!"
Dane growled and might have taken a step forward, but the alpha of the pair put a hand on the man's chest. "Stop. She's trying to goad you into being stupid. She's got no plan. She's stalling so that the others can come rescue her sorry ass."
Aedan chuffed a laugh. "You think I need the others to rescue me? Is that really what you think?" she asked. "Buddy, have I got news for you."
Right. There was no time like the present. Aedan pointed her gun, an action so quick and so smooth that there was barely time for anyone to react. She sighted in the blink of an eye, pulled the trigger. Watched as Dane went down in a tangle of lifeless limbs. Several of the vampires behind him jolted in surprise when brain matter splattered their faces and clothing. She watched as the alpha turned to stare at the corpse on the ground beside him. "You bitch!" he snarled, a growl in his words.
"I told you I'd kill Dane first. Now its your turn," she replied.
"Dane was my brother," he shot back, then he was in motion, loping toward her even as the change took him. His transition was smooth, going from flesh and two legs to fur and four legs in between one step and the next. Even before she could sight on him, the pony-sized wolf sent her to the ground. The concrete was hard against the back of her skull and she saw stars a moment before long, sharp teeth grabbed hold of her arm.
"Say hello to Dane when you get to hell, mutt!" she snarled at him, bringing her gun up so that it was buried in the underside of his throat. Her finger tapped the trigger three times, sending three silver-coated rounds through his skull and spraying blood, bone shards, and brain matter everywhere.
The corpse tumbled off her when she gave a good push, allowing her to stagger to her feet. Blood trickled down her arm to her fingertips, dropped to the concrete. She stared across the distance at the leader and gave him a grimacing smile. "You should have killed me first, bitch. You made me mad when you took Death. Now you've pissed me off. I am going to love destroying you."
"You are a pathetic, weak mortal," he said in return. Aedan paused. Did that mean he was unaware of Itzpapalotl's power riding her? Could he not sense the touch of another vampire upon her? Or was he so certain of his win that he was completely disregarding the magic she carried with her? There was only one way to find out.
Silence settled around them, telling her Edward and Janika had cleared out the rest of the rabble. She was sure they'd succeeded because there was no lifting cry of victory from the shifters she knew had been in the field. That meant they'd be there soon. If she was going to do anything, it was now or never. Because the minute they got there, all hell would break lose and she'd lose her shot at the leader. "I've survived three of your assassination attempts. Or was it four? They were so middle of the road, hum drum boring that I lost count. That's what you get for sending incompetents to do your job. You want me dead, fuck face, you better do it yourself."
He studied her across the distance, as if trying to figure out if he was serious or not. Aedan put the safety on her gun and dropped it to the ground, lifted her arms up so that they were out at her sides. A silent invitation. "What's the matter, dickhead? Afraid to take on a pathetic, weak mortal all by yourself? You were such a big man, you sent a small army to wipe out Anita Blake. I wonder why that is?"
At the mention of the other woman's name, two things happened. First, the face of Anita's killer shifted into a snarl. All of his rage and hatred showed in the look he gave her. Second, a door at the back of Aedan's mind blew open and memories poured forth in a torrent that left her gasping for breath.
Of course that was when the asshole made his move.
Aedan felt his hands on her arms, using them to pull her into his body. Then his arms were coiling around her, pinning her arms at her side, and his breath plumed hot and fetid against her throat. He was going to drain her dry, then he was going to kill Jean Claude. She was caught in his embrace, helpless. The perfect victim. And still the memories poured over her.
She'd always heard the stories about one's life flashing before their eyes at the moment of their death. But that wasn't what she saw. Even as she felt his fangs find purchase in her throat, she found herself caught up in the memories of another woman's life. Faces passed before her eyes, people she'd known. People who had died because of her. People she'd killed. Mortal, lycanthrope, and vampire alike. They paraded across her brain in a flurry of images that left her head spinning. Left her breathless.
Because now she knew. Who he was. How to kill him. She knew everything. She saw that night again, out on the road with a dozen or more souls surrounding a damaged car and a single woman who stood between them and the people in the car. She felt the knowledge that Anita had had, the acceptance. And she felt the determination. You can defeat him, Aedan. Our power ensures that. Do what I couldn't accomplish that night. And give me peace.
Pain brought her out of the memories, showed her a ring of vampires watching her without blinking or moving. Showed her the coffin, with its incapacitated inhabitant. Showed her Edward and Janika as they moved up on either side of the concrete slab. Aedan called upon the power she'd been born with. The power she'd inherited from Anita. The power she'd borrowed from Obsidian Butterfly. And she formed it into one single thought. One single idea.
She shoved that power at the vampire behind her, shoved it into him so hard that his head jerked back, tearing his fangs from her throat. She felt the blood spill but paid it no mind. "Vittorio," she said, and she heard the power fill her voice. She turned so that she faced him, so that she could look him directly in the eye. "You made a mistake that night on the road, Vittorio. You should have killed us both. Not just Anita Blake. You should have left my corpse next to hers. You won't get to make that same mistake twice."
"What are you?" Vittorio demanded, taking a step back from Aedan even as she wrapped the threads of her power that coiled around him tighter and tighter.
"Your death," she promised on a whisper. "For the crime of kidnapping of a federal agent, I sentence you to death. For the crime of attempted murder of a federal agent, I sentence you to death. For the crime of murder of a federal agent, I sentence you to death. To be carried out now. Here. Immediately."
Aedan tightened the magic down even further, until Vittorio reached up and clawed at his throat. As if she had chains wrapped around it. She pushed and she pushed and she pushed, until the magic climbed into his veins and surged through every inch of his body. Until she felt the fight go out of him and he stood stock still, watching her with wide eyes. Aedan stared at him, let the power Itzpapalotl gifted her with take over until her eyes were blacker than the sky above them. "You're mine now, Vittorio. Mine to control. Mine to do with as I wish. Mine to let live. Or die. Beg me to let you live. Beg me to spare your life."
He fought it. She felt him try to throw her magic off, try to shove the power back at her. But her hold was absolute. She owned him now, and she was going to make him understand that before she stole the life from him. Permanently. In the end, he couldn't break free of her control and the words came from his throat, harsh and shredded, as if they'd been torn out violently. "Please."
"Please, what?" Aedan demanded, pushing more power at him until he dropped to his knees. She heard his knee caps shatter when they hit the concrete. She was light-headed from blood loss, but she was going to make him understand his mistake before she crushed the life out of him.
"Spare me," he growled, again fighting against saying it.
"Spare me, what?"
"Spare me, spiteful mortal!" he snapped.
"Wrong answer, Vittorio," she whispered and bore down on the magic with all her strength. He howled in rage even as he went to his hands and knees. His head hung between his arms and she heard him gasping for breath. "Spare me, what?"
"Spare me, mistress!" he hissed, lifting eyes filled with absolute hatred her way.
"Go fuck yourself!" she spat and ripped her power from him. Ripped his power and his energy from him. She watched as horror filled his eyes, watched as his skin charred and blackened as if from fire. Watched as he turned to ash before her very eyes. Power slammed into her, the likes of which she'd never felt before. With his death, the vampires behind her were released from their stupor and she heard one rush toward her. Aedan turned, let her eyes come to rest on him, and shoved power at him. The vampire stopped in his tracks, blinked, then threw himself into the flames.
Screams rolled up his throat as he staggered out of the bonfire, straight at his fellow conspirators. Terror rose up within them as they tried to flee. Power lashed out, caught them all and forced them to stop in their tracks. She watched as the burning vamp stumbled into each and every one of them. Their screams filled the night air, a cacophony of death and pain that Aedan barely heard. Her attention was focused solely on the coffin and its silver chains as Edward and Janika sought a way to release Jean Claude.
It didn't take long for the vampires to become ash. In those few short moments, Aedan merely stood and watched, as if from a distance, as they died. Her concern was for the soul trapped inside the coffin.
"Aedan, we need to find a way to get the locks off," Edward was saying, his voice filled with consternation. She blinked and the distance was gone. Pain radiated from her neck where Vittorio's fangs had torn her skin. And she could barely feel Jean Claude, making her wonder if he was hurt worse than she'd originally thought. "Aedan, are you listening to me?"
"Locks. We have to find the key," she replied softly, then turned to where Vittorio had last been. There was a pile of ash occupying his place. She went down on her knees and sifted her hands through the ashes, hoping that he'd had the key on him. When she didn't feel the hard bite of metal against her fingertips, panic struck her. How was she supposed to get Jean Claude out of there without a key?
"I can't find a key, Edward. I don't know what to do!" she exclaimed, unable to keep the terror out of her voice. A pale hand appeared before her face.
"Perhaps we can be of help?" The question saw her lifting her eyes until they locked with arctic blue ones. Relief swept through her and she slid her hand into the one before her. Asher looked... displeased.
"Read me the riot act later," she said. She watched as his gaze slid to her throat, then he was helping her up. She turned to look at the coffin, wobbling on her feet as she did so. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "The chains are silver. If any of you touches them, you'll get burned."
"A risk worth taking, Aedan," Asher assured her. He directed his attention to the group standing behind him. "Get him out. Now."
Several people passed them on their way to the coffin. Everyone of them was a shifter of some sort, and everyone of them reached for the chains. Aedan frowned. She didn't want anyone else to get hurt. There had to be another way. But she just couldn't think. Her brain was fuzzy from the swirl of energy and power and blood loss.
"Here," Janika said, offering her coat. "Wrap it around the chains and see if you can pull them off the end. If that works, then you can smash the wood and pull him out." Aedan could feel the small army that stood behind her and Asher and she frowned.
"You and I are having a chat, Janika," Aedan told the other woman. Someone hadn't been listening.
"Bite me," Janika retorted as she came over to stand at Asher's side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders in order to pull her closer. The other hand remained resting lightly on Aedan's shoulder, though she was sure if she tried to move, the touch would intensify. So she stayed where she was and watched as Bobby Lee and Merle wrapped the jacket around the length of chain at the head of the coffin. They both took hold of it and, on the count of three, tugged. The chain slid across the lid of the coffin, scraping the wood as it did so, until they managed to get it off to the side. She wasn't anyone to judge, but it looked as if it took them more work than they were willing to admit. Finally, once the end panel had been cleared of silver, Merle grabbed the edge and pulled.
Nails screamed in protest as he ripped the rectangle of wood from the rest of the coffin. Then he and Bobby Lee were reaching inside the wooden box, their actions a little too quick to just be casual. Jean Claude came out a moment later, limbs limp and skin paler than usual. Even his curls were wilted, making her wonder how long he'd been in there. When Bobby Lee and Merle had him propped up between them, Aedan got a clear view as to why. Vittorio had left several puncture wounds in Jean Claude's flesh, as well as a bite mark at his throat. Blood loss and silver had taken their toll on him. Anger boiled under her skin, churning along side the power that filled her. She blinked at the reminder she carried all that power and energy within her, then pulled away from Asher.
"Hold him," she ordered softly as she crossed the distance between the two of them. Her hands reached up to cup his face. Jean Claude barely stirred, bringing forth a shaft of fear. She was not going to lose him. Not now. Not when they'd been through so much. She was going to heal him.
Aedan concentrated on their bond, used it to pour energy into him. Her palms grew warm where they touched his face and she didn't know if it was because of the power she was giving him or if it was his flesh warming as his body used that power to heal itself. It didn't matter. All that mattered was making sure he survived. In moments, her palms felt like they were burning. But she didn't stop. She just kept feeding power and energy into him until golden specks danced before her eyes.
The next thing she knew, she was hanging limp in Edward's hold, vision fuzzy and chest tight with pain. Pain that made her forget her throat. Jean Claude's hands were cupping her cheeks to hold her head up, eyes bright with worry and fear as he stared down into her face. "Aedan, ma mie."
It took her a moment to realize that he looked fine. Other than the bloody stains on his shirt, he didn't look any worse for the wear. A touch of color edged his cheeks and even his hair was back to being a riot of curls. She swallowed, unable to figure out why her throat was dry, and searched for her voice. It took far too long to find it.
"Hey, sexy," she smiled at him. At least she thought she did. She wasn't so sure when his gaze shifted to Edward's face for a moment, then it came back to her. She took the opportunity to simply stare at him and marvel in his beauty and perfection. Her brain let her know that her attempt at healing him had been a rousing success. The puncture wounds were completely gone. As was the bite mark at his throat. That knowledge widened her smile further. "You look good. Can we go home now? I think I need a nap."
"Of course, ma mie," he assured her with a soft smile. He took her from Edward's hold and swung her up into his arms. It felt good there. Safe. She snuggled close, not bothering to complain when it felt like he clutched her to him just a little tighter than was comfortable. "My friends. Thank you. I have no other words. So thank you."
"Anything for family," Edward answered. She thought she heard something in his voice, but she was too fuzzy to tell. Or to care. She just wanted to sleep "We've got a car this way. Though I suspect that small plot of land is crowded now. Let's get everyone back to safety before the sun comes up. I need to make a phone call then chew some ass."
"Fuck you, Edward. I came and got your ass out of a mess.," Aedan got out through a yawn, eyes heavy with exhaustion and more.
"You went to Itzpapalotl," he retorted. She felt Jean Claude's hold on her tighten briefly. No fair. He'd been unconscious and hadn't been aware of the fact. Edward had just gotten her in trouble by spilling secrets. "You get an ass chewing for that alone. Plus what you pulled here. You could have been killed."
"I wasn't. So suck it," Aedan told him. There was very little heat or force in her voice. Just a lot of exhaustion.
"I will chew some ass once Edward has had his chance," Jean Claude told her. Aedan pried an eye open to look up at him. She could see anger darkening his eyes, lingering at the back of his gaze. She swore she could feel it burning against her skin. "What were you thinking?"
She rolled her eyes. The histrionics were getting old. "I was thinking I'd get Edward back and end the life of everyone involved in kidnapping him. And killing Anita. And look. I did it."
"You went to Itzpapalotl. She is a thousand years old and she does not suffer other vampires or their servants to live when they enter her territory. You are lucky she did not harm you. And Vittorio is twice her age." Jean Claude admonished. He sounded like he was even less impressed with her actions than Edward was.
"Was," she corrected. "He's dead now, thank you very much."
That statement brought Jean Claude's steps to a halt and he stared down at her. "You killed him? How?"
Aedan frowned up at him and pondered the merits of trying to wiggle her way out of his hold. The lack of confidence in her abilities was amazing. She wasn't sure her efforts would get her anywhere because she was running on fumes and he was at full strength. Or mostly full strength. "Don't sound so surprised. Jesus Christ. You'll give me a complex." She politely ignored Edward's snort at that statement. "I made him my bitch. I used the gifts Anita gave me. I took hold of him and bent him to my will."
"You rolled his mind?" Asher asked, drawing her attention his way. She'd honestly forgotten he was there.
Aedan frowned and considered it. "I don't think so? I mean, I used my magic and Anita's magic and Obsidian Butterfly's power and forced him to do as I told him. He fought me, but he still had to do it. Then I took every last bit of his energy and let him turn to dust."
"You should not have come for me. You should have listened when I told you to stay away. He wanted you dead." Jean Claude's tone brought her focus back to him. She sighed and shook her head. That turned out to be a mistake because her head started pounding with the action. He was as bad as Edward. What was it with men and their egos? Talk about annoying.
"Yeah. I distinctly recall someone else telling me the same thing. Its a crock of shit. You're my family, Jean Claude. He would have killed you. He wanted us both dead. Not just me. Both of us. He probably figured he'd kill you when he killed Anita on the road that night. But she beat him at his own game. And, in doing so, she gave me the tools I needed to take him out."
"Aedan... If he had killed you, I would not have been able to live with it," he said softly.
She gave him a smile that missed its mark, if the look he gave her in return was anything to go by. "That's good to know, gorgeous. And, much as I would love to carry on this conversation, I think its safe to say that I'm going to drop off here at any moment. Its been a long twenty four hours and I haven't had any sleep. Plus there's the blood loss and the massive use of magic. I'll just lose consciousness now, shall I?"
~*~*~*~*~
Jean Claude watched as Aedan did exactly what she'd said she would. She went limp in his hold, losing her grip on consciousness as the events of the past day caught up with her. He shared a look with Edward and Asher, then shook his head. Some days, she made it very hard to stay mad at her. But that didn't mean he was ready to let her off the hook for her latest bout of foolishness. How could she make light of the fact that she could have died any number of times over the course of the night? He would never, no matter how long he lived, understand what made Aedan tick.
The field of overgrown grass wasn't as big as he'd expected it to be. It was, however, peppered with corpses. Even now, there was a team of shapeshifters silently removing the bodies so as not to leave anything for the police to find. He had no doubt someone would stumble upon them, no matter how remote the location seemed to be. He wondered for a moment if he should have someone come deal with the tall grass, as it was no doubt soaked in blood in certain places. But that thought was brushed aside when they made a small clearing that was cluttered with cars. As Edward had guessed, there were more vehicles than there was room and it was going to take a while to get all of the cars out of there.
Edward motioned him toward one of the vehicles with a nod of his head. Jean Claude went without a word, taking care when he put Aedan in the backseat. He felt it when Asher joined him. After ensuring that Aedan was settled upon the back seat, he turned to face his oldest friend. "Wicked and Truth?" he asked softly. Despite the energy and the power that Aedan had poured into him not that long ago, he was in desperate need of a feeding and rest.
"They are safe at home," Asher assured him. "They have fed and regained their strength. They are extremely upset that someone was able to get past them and take you unchallenged. I do not know if the knowledge that Vittorio was responsible will soothe their battered pride at all."
Jean Claude inclined his head. "I am sure they will recover. Eventually. Thank you for coming to offer your assistance."
"Jean Claude, mon ami, you are my oldest friend. My oldest family. I would give my life for you." Asher punctuated his admission by pulling Jean Claude into his arms for a hug. Joy filled him as he clung to Asher. It felt good to know he had such loyal friends. Such loving family. But he would not have anyone sacrificing themselves for him. No matter who it was. He drew back and gave Asher a serious look.
"I want no one to give their life for me. Not Death. Not Aedan. And most certainly not you," he admonished.
Janika laughed. "Get used to it, buddy. That's what family does for one another. And I can guarantee you that Aedan is not going to give you up without a fight. She's head over heels in love with you. And she will destroy anyone who dares get between the two of you." She shook her head, then turned to stare at the woman sprawled across the bench seat in the car beside them. "Go easy on her. Just a little bit. Chewing her ass off won't stop her from doing something like this again. We should just count ourselves lucky to have her on our side."
"She's the one who should count herself lucky," Edward said as he joined them. The look on his face suggested he was not going to let this act of foolishness go without comment. He climbed into the front seat behind the steering wheel, then looked up at Jean Claude. "Let's get moving so I can get you home. I'd rather not listen to her bitch at me that I had you out past curfew. You have no idea just how bitchy she can be."
Jean Claude couldn't help the smile. There was a story there, one he was sure Edward would never tell. That wasn't going to stop Jean Claude from needling the man about it when he felt it was safe to do so. Nodding, he climbed into the backseat and pulled the door shut. Edward put the car into gear and pulled from the cramped lot without a word. Jean Claude settled Aedan's head on his thigh so that he could stroke a hand through her hair.
Home. That sounded like a wonderful idea.
Chapter Seventy Eight: The Power is Mine
Fandom: Anita Blake universe
Rating: 18 and up
Warnings: graphic sex and violence, language, anything else i can toss in.
Disclaimer: the recognizable characters and places contained herein are the property of LKH. i'm merely borrowing for the sake of entertainment. no money is being made from this venture. the Sues are the sole property of their originators, Ginevra, Dazzledfirestar, Nanaea, SilverFoxChan and ladydeathfaerie. the concept and title of The Mary Sue Virus are used with permission from Dazzledfirestar.
Author's Notes: so much plot. we're drowning in it. all the damn plot. some of it not even planned!
The Mary Sue Virus: Beyond Death - Index Link
"You should have stayed in New Mexico. Gone to see a doctor, then gone home to Donna," Janika said softly, eyes locked on his face. He could imagine just how bad he looked. He hadn't had time to find a mirror and check for himself. And maybe he should have. It wasn't every day that he had preternaturals smacking him around, despite his line of work. A sensible man would have done just what she'd said. Seen a doctor then gone home and forgotten about the whole fucking mess. But Edward frowned and shook his head, then shot a look toward the seat Aedan occupied.
His cousin. It was still a little strange to think that. He'd spent way too long thinking of her as another tool. Another human being with skills, someone he could rely on to do a job. Someone disposable. Except some where along the line, some way or another, she'd become family for him. To him. In every sense of the word. Which was why he'd told her to leave him. Because there had been other worries for her to deal with. But, of course, she'd stubbornly ignored him. And now the idiot was staring out the small, oval window pensively. Lost in her own thoughts and feelings. He was only going to guess at what was on her mind because he was fairly certain he didn't want to know what she was thinking.
"I'm fine. There's no way I was going to let her go running off alone into a situation that will get her killed. Not a second time."
Janika stared at him searchingly a moment, then frowned and lowered her voice. "If you don't think she can beat the big bad, what makes you think you can?"
Edward gave her a look for a few seconds before turning his attention back to where Aedan sat. She was still staring out the window. And he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something very off with her. He'd felt that way since he'd come around in the cave with her kneeling in front of him. He just couldn't put his finger on what that something was. He finally turned back to Janika and shrugged. "She's blood. And I'd be a shitty cousin if I didn't try to keep her stupid ass alive. Since I obviously can't talk any sense into her. I told her not to come. She shouldn't have come."
Janika must have heard the self-deprecation in his words. She reached out and laid a hand on his knee. It was a tentative touch, as he was sure she didn't know if he'd welcome it or not. "I'm going to just toss your words back in your face. More or less. You can be mad at her all you want for not listening. But that doesn't negate that she wanted to come. You're family. She might be mad at you, but she wasn't going to let them kill you. She loves you."
"She's got a weird way of showing it," Edward remarked. His mind took him back to the cave and the corpses he'd seen strewn across the floor. Throughout the entire cave system. Some had been shot. Or stabbed. Had suffered major blood loss leading to death. But others had looked old. Like desiccated husks. As if they'd been dead for decades. And he knew, without a doubt, that that had been Aedan's work. He wasn't sure he wanted to know how she'd done it.
He watched as Janika's gaze slid Aedan's way. He didn't have to read minds to know she was as concerned about the other woman as he was. "It feels like she's spiraling again. The woman who went into those caves... I don't know her." Janika turned back to him with a frown on her face, forehead creased where her brows had pulled together. "The things she did to those people. Should she be able to do them?"
He considered it a moment, considered everything he'd seen when she and Janika had helped him from the caves. There had been so many corpses. And, really, only a few of them had died from gunshot wounds or even being stabbed. A lot of them had simply been husks. He knew she was capable of drawing someone's energy from their body, capable of using it to help heal someone else. But did that ability go this far? Was she capable of draining someone of their energy to the point of death? To the point of decay? To be perfectly honest, he wasn't sure. "I don't know, Janika. She shouldn't be able to do half the things she does. But she can. Because she got Anita's ability to defy the odds. If we're being honest, I don't really understand what happened down there."
It was obviously not an answer Janika liked. He watched her shoulders slump in defeat. "I never should have let her go off on her own. I'm sure that something happened while she was gone. But I didn't even know she'd left until after the fact. Which is probably what she'd planned to have happen."
Her words saw his gaze sharpening. Of course Aedan had gone off on her own. Of fucking course. Because she was determined to get herself killed when there was no one around to keep her alive. "She went somewhere without you? When?"
"Um..." Janika said, obviously thinking about it. And probably trying to figure out if she could get away with not telling him. Edward just gave her a look.
"You know what? Go back to the beginning. To the moments after I spoke to her on the phone and told her not to come. Start there," he instructed. Janika blinked at him, obviously certain he'd lost his mind, but she nodded and heaved a sigh.
"I caught her on her way to the door. I don't know how long it was after you'd spoken to her that this was, but she had her bags packed and she was going for a car. I caught her in the living area. And when I saw her face, when I heard that you'd been taken, I told her I was coming with. So she waited for me while I packed, then we headed to the airport."
He didn't believe for a minute that Aedan waited patiently for Janika to pack. It was more than likely that Janika hadn't been about to let Aedan go off on her own and had made Aedan wait. He didn't say anything about it, though. And he'd have to remember to thank her for that later, when this was all over. "Where did you land? When?"
"Albuquerque. Around... ten-ish?," she told him. Albuquerque. Shit. That did not bode well. He could remember what happened that time he'd asked Anita to come to New Mexico to help him with a job. Janika didn't notice his unhappiness and continued on. "When we landed, we each rented a car and headed to the location that Aedan had chosen to meet the big bad's people at. A pair of shifters showed up at the bowling alley and I thought Aedan was going to get into a brawl with them in the bar. She was so antagonistic."
Edward nodded his head. "For good reason. She no doubt had to establish herself as bigger and badder than they were. With a lot of the really shitty people we end up dealing with, that's just about the only way to keep from getting killed in the first five minutes."
Janika stared at him a moment, then nodded slowly. As if only just realizing that this was a thing. "Anyway. The two shifters showed up, Aedan had a pissing match with them, then they delivered the message your kidnapper wanted them to deliver. They left. I left. Aedan left. We got rooms at a really shitty motel."
"I distinctly remember him telling her that she wasn't supposed to bring any cops with. How'd you two manage that?"
"I have recently learned some things about my mother that I never knew before. Things that made it easier for me to blend in with my surroundings," she told him. Edward almost narrowed his eyes at that. It was a very polite code for saying that there was something in her past she didn't want him to know. No matter. He'd find out what it was. "I went incognito and sat at the bar with a drink, feigning interest in my phone. I had a bluetooth in, my phone was on mute, and Aedan had hers in her pocket. I was listening in to their conversation without them knowing about it."
"Smart," he acknowledged.
"We got two rooms at the motel. Purely by luck, we were on different floors and on different sides of the motel. Hopefully, if anyone was watching, they didn't think we were there together," Janika shrugged. "Anyway, after a nap and a shower, I decided I was hungry. And I figured Aedan had to be hungry, too. So I called her cell. No answer. I called her room's phone. No answer. I went to her room. She wasn't there. That's when I noticed that her rental was gone."
"When was this?" he questioned.
"The sun was just setting because I remember thinking that the sunset looked amazing as it sank below the horizon," Janika told him. She paused a moment, obviously considering something. "It was a couple hours before she got back. And when she did return, there was something odd about her. She looked pale. And she was acting different. She felt... I don't know. Almost like she was strung out or something."
"Shit," Edward muttered. "Obsidian Butterfly."
His words brought a frown to Janika's face. Obviously she had no clue what he was talking about. Edward glanced at his watch. Their flight would be coming in to St. Louis soon. When it did, there would be no time for any kind of chatter. He had no doubt that Aedan would go into 'kill anything that looked at her funny' mode the moment they hit the tarmac. And that she'd stay that way until the current crisis was over. It was fortunate that he had a friend with a Cessna Citation X who had been more than willing to fly them to St. Louis at the drop of a hat without explanation. They were alone on the plane, other than the pilots and one flight attendant, which meant no one was going to be witness to anything odd. But it also meant that he didn't have much time to confront Aedan. Their flight was almost over. If he was going to have answers to the rest of his questions, it was going to have to be now. "Itzpapalotl."
That single word saw Aedan's head turn away from the darkened circle of the window. She shifted around until she was facing him and he saw the answer in her eyes. In her black eyes. "You stupid girl. You went to Itzpapalotl."
He saw Janika stir in her seat, shifting uncomfortably as Aedan's gaze focused on them unerringly even though she didn't appear to actually be looking at them. "What the fuck?" Janika asked.
"I had to. It was the only way," she told him. There was a touch of power in her voice that made goose flesh rise on his arms.
"She could have eaten you," he commented.
"She didn't."
He resisted the urge to strangle her. How the hell could he be related to someone so goddamn stupid? "Aedan... Jesus Christ, what were you thinking? She's a thousand years old. She could have steam rolled right over you. And you just... went to her for help. Like it was no big deal."
"I did what I had to do. I needed power. She has it in spades. We came to an arrangement that allowed me to rescue you. I don't see why its such a big deal." From the tone of her voice, she believed it. She believed it wasn't a big deal. She was such a reckless fool.
"You have Anita's memories. You know why its a big deal!"
"I do have Anita's memories. And I know exactly why everyone is so afraid of Obsidian Butterfly. I was terrified that she'd eat me. But I had to help you. And if I was going to do that, as well as go up against all of the head vampire's people, I needed help. I wasn't going to be able to take them all on my own." She made it sound so reasonable, as if risking her life was something that just happened and they should all be okay with it. He wasn't okay with it. He was furious with it. And with her. He'd lost Anita. He hadn't been there to protect her and she'd died because of that. He'd then had to watch Aedan, his own flesh and blood, die once. They were lucky he'd been able to keep her alive until the EMTs had arrived. He didn't really want to live through that nightmare again.
"You should have left me there," he shot back.
"And let them kill you? I don't think so."
Edward took a breath. Then another. And then a third for good measure. Aedan was headstrong enough to try the patience of a saint. "They weren't going to kill me. They wanted you to think that so you'd come after me and leave Jean Claude defenseless."
She shook her head at him. "First, Jean Claude isn't defenseless. Second, you and I both know that they'd have killed you. Just because you're Death. The fact that you're tied to me only sweetened the deal for them. You would have died if I hadn't come out to save you. You don't get to sit there and lecture me about letting you die when you told me not that long ago that you weren't going to let me die." Her eyes darkened, which shouldn't have been fucking possible because they were already black as pitch, and she frowned at him. "You're my family. The only blood family I have left. I was not leaving you to die by a vampire's hands. Not like that. Anything I had to sacrifice to keep you alive was well worth it."
"You..." he started, but faltered. How did he argue with that bit of logic? How did he argue with any of it, really. It was pointless to try and make her see what she'd done was seriously dangerous because she wasn't going to listen to him. Not in the slightest. "Do me a favor and promise me you'll never do anything so fucking stupid again."
"Sorry. No can do, buddy. You knew what I was like a long time ago. This--" Aedan's words trailed off and a soft gasp slipped out. He didn't know how it was possible, but her face got paler than it had been and she almost toppled out of her chair. Janika was up and out of her seat before he could even think to undo his seat belt, a move that wasn't strictly human, and kneeling before the other woman a second later.
"Aedan? What is it?"
"They have Jean Claude," she whispered, voice tight with pain. Edward frowned. He knew that the other man never left the safety of his lair without the Wicked Truth at his side. And he also knew that the brothers were as deadly as they came. Jean Claude should have been safe. How had they gotten to him?
"Tell me," Edward ordered, falling into the tone of voice he knew she responded to without question. He pushed himself from his seat, doing his best to stifle the moans and groans that came from muscles that had been immobile too long. That had taken too much abuse in a short amount of time. Janika looked up at him as he limped his way over to where they were. He couldn't hold back the sigh of relief when he settled into the seat next to Aedan and wished, for a moment or two, that he'd taken Aedan's advice and stayed in Santa Fe. "Chastity. Tell me."
"He's got me blocked off. To spare me, I think. But I can feel his pain. And his fear." She whispered the last. She turned her gaze his way, letting him see the darkness up close and personal. It was bottomless, and it could suck a soul in without even trying. More than that, he swore he could feel the power riding her. Power that she'd gotten from a most unlikely, and dangerous, ally. Maybe it was going to be to their advantage in this mess.
"They probably told him you're dead. And with you cutting yourself off from him, he can't tell if its true or not. Open the link. Give him a reason to fight." Aedan blinked at him, as if she didn't believe he was telling her this. Then she nodded and her eyes took on a far away look. Edward spared a glance at Janika, who was watching her friend intently, before returning his attention to Aedan's face. It was several moments before her expression cleared and the vacant look left her eyes. When she focused on Edward, he could see the tears gathering. And the rage that built behind them.
"He's okay. For now. I told him we're coming to get him. He doesn't know where he is. But that doesn't matter. I can find him. As soon as we're on the ground, I'll find him."
"Asher wants to know what you need him to do," Janika said softly.
"Tell him nothing. Tell him I appreciate it, but I won't put him in harm's way. Nor anyone else. This is my war. It started because Anita passed her powers on to me. I'm going to end it." The tone in Aedan's voice said she wasn't going to be swayed. Edward wanted to argue with her, tell her that she couldn't take on the entire world by herself. But he kept silent. Because he knew it would do no good. Janika, on the other hand, wasn't about to let that go.
"Aedan, he's willing to help. He's willing to gather together a group of vampires and lycanthropes to pit against this asshole and his people. You should let him help."
"What happens if he gets hurt? What happens to you? What happens to Jean Claude? What happens if someone else gets hurt? I know you all think I'm reckless and stupid. That I needlessly put myself at risk. But what happens to me if you get hurt? What happens to me if I lose one of you? I've only just found my family. I am not ready to lose it. Not yet," Aedan said, tone gentle. She let her gaze shift to Edward. "I cannot lose any of you. Not now. Not when I finally have a family that I can call my own. So we do this my way. The three of us. Or I render you both unconscious and go alone. You know I'll do it."
"What's the plan?" Edward asked, not bothering to hide his sigh.
"The same as its always been," she returned. The softness was gone, and the darkness of her eyes was absolute. The look she gave them was grim. "Find them. Kill them. Kill them all."
"Fuckin' A," Edward said.
~*~*~*~*~
Aedan's nerves were strung tight by the time the jet had landed and the hatch had been opened to let them out. She could feel Jean Claude at the back of her brain, distant and almost not there. It worried her, because she had no clue what it meant. She had no idea what was going on. She had no clue what they were doing to him. She had no clue where it was taking place. She had no idea how many people she was up against. And she had no idea how she was going to keep Edward and Janika from following her into what was bound to be certain death. She wished like hell Death had taken a stay-cation.
It didn't help that she was still high as shit from the power Itzpapalotl had gifted her with. It rode her like a second skin, coloring everything she felt and saw and touched. It was enough to drive her insane and she could absolutely understand, after having that power run under her skin as it had for the past few hours, why Itzpapalotl would call herself a goddess. The kind of power she carried was unlike anything Aedan had ever felt in her life.
"What do we do now?" Edward asked. Aedan turned to look at him and saw him visibly recoil from her stare. He didn't like that she was jacked up on Obsidian Butterfly's power. It unnerved him every time she looked at him. He'd have to live with it for a while longer.
"We find a car," Aedan told him. If there was a touch of disbelief that he'd had to ask something so obvious, he said nothing about it. She had no doubt he made note of it. But he said nothing. Instead, he gave her a grim look that meant nothing but trouble later. If there was a later.
"And after we have a car?" he asked, a touch of annoyance in his voice.
"We find them," she replied. She watched the frown come and had to bite back the urge to grin at him. No doubt it would look unsettling with her eyes the way they were.
"So you have no idea where they are?"
"Not yet. I can find them, though," she promised. Edward eyed her skeptically.
"If you can find them, why didn't you do so before we landed?"
"I'm not a GPS unit, Edward," she admonished lightly. "You can't just ask me to map out the easiest route. I have to have a few moments to shift my powers around in order to play magical blood hound. And that works better on the ground than in mid-air."
"Distance and proximity," he said almost absently. Aedan ignored him and brushed a hand against the comforting bulk of her weapon, tucked under her arm. She didn't think she'd get a chance to actually use it. But it was good to know it was right there, in an easy to reach place if she needed it.
"Asher wants to know where to meet us," Janika broke the silence. Aedan held on to her sigh and took a moment to center herself. She was afraid something like this would happen once they hit the ground in St. Louis. "He says he's got a small army together to help take Jean Claude back."
Aedan searched for the words needed to explain it without pissing people off. She didn't know if there really were any. No matter what she did, she'd be wrong. Someone would accuse her of not trusting anyone enough. To some extent, they were right. But not in the way they wanted to believe. Aedan absolutely trusted Asher to have her back. She trusted Jean Claude in that regard, too. Micah and Minette and Isis and Rhia and Janika and everyone in the family she'd made for herself was included. But this was still her fight. This whole mess had started because of her. Because Anita had passed powers to her that she hadn't fully understood. Because the woman had passed on responsibilities that Aedan hadn't fully understood. And she should have declined. All of it. Now, because of that one action, they wanted her dead. Let them try. But she wasn't going to willingly give them anyone else to fuel their bid.
Hell, she didn't even know yet how she was going to handle this. She couldn't very well take anyone else into that kind of shit storm. Could she? It was bad enough that Edward and Janika were with her.
She watched as understanding dawned in Edward's eyes, as he grasped exactly what was going on. "Tell Asher that she won't accept his help," he told Janika for her.
"What?" Janika asked, letting her gaze slide between Edward and herself. Aedan tried not to give anything away but it was so damn hard because she could absolutely understand what Janika had to be thinking. "What do you mean? Why?"
"She isn't going to bring anyone else into this," Edward said. Again, Janika's gaze slid between Edward and Aedan as she puzzled out what he was saying.
"Why not?"
"There's too much at risk without giving them any other lives to try and bargain with. I won't put any one else in harm's way. Especially not when that harm is meant for me," Aedan told her.
Janika stared at her a moment or two, then her lips flattened and her eyes got dark. "You are not going to do the lone ranger crap again. You cannot keep shutting us out when something bad happens. We can help. Talk to her, Edward. Make her understand that this isn't the way to go."
"As it happens, I think she's right. Its what I would do," Edward responded quietly. Janika glared at him. He held up a hand, bringing any tirade she might make to a halt. "That doesn't mean I agree with her decision to handle this on her own."
"Jesus Christ. You're both insane," Janika snarled, glaring in equal measures at them. Aedan only smiled and gave the other woman a look.
"I love you. A lot. You and Asher. And everyone else. Until I met you guys, I didn't think I could love someone the way I do. I didn't think I'd ever have a family to call my own. And now... Now, I would do anything I had to in order to protect that family and keep it safe. I know you think I'm selfish and stupid. But that's the truth. The people who want me dead almost saw my actual blood family killed. And now you're both here, in the middle of it. I will not put anyone else in my family at risk. Hate me for that if you will. But that's how its going to be."
Janika stared at her a moment, then frowned. She pointed one finger at Aedan for a second before shifting it Edward's way. "Neither one of you idiots are going anywhere without me. So just suck it up and fucking deal."
Aedan glanced at Edward, who merely met her look with an amused one of his own. She wasn't going to find any help in that corner. Which meant she didn't have much choice. Sighing, Aedan turned back to Janika. "Fine. But you will do what I say. This is still my gig. And I don't need you getting in my way when I lay waste to these fuckers."
Janika stared several seconds longer before giving a brief nod. "Okay." She made a point of checking her weapon, which basically told Aedan she had no plans on listening. "At least one of you idiots has some sense. Let's go."
~*~
"How do we find them?" Janika asked as the car headed away from the private airport where the jet had landed. Aedan frowned and shot the woman a glare.
"We don't, if you won't be quiet," Aedan replied, once more trying to center herself. It was hard to do in a moving car, especially when she had to worry whether or not the driver was going to keel over at any given moment because of the abuse he'd suffered. "I need to be able to concentrate and stretch my senses. Easier to do when I'm standing in the middle of a cemetery or an open field. Not so easy to do while riding in a goddamn car."
"Wow. Someone's cranky," Janika muttered, relaxing back into the seat. She had no idea. The feel of Obsidian Butterfly's power crawling under her skin had her nerves on edge. She needed to be rid of it soon, or she was going to go mad.
Edward pulled off the road and into the parking lot of an all night eatery. Aedan shot him a brief look, closed her eyes, and pulled a deep breath into her lungs. It made finding her center easier. Once she was as calm as could be, she let her senses stretch and sought out all of the undead in the city.
The magic flowed out of her, tinted black by Itzpapalotl's power so that it looked like a river of darkness flooding the world in Aedan's mind. She watched it go, followed it as it spread out in every direction. It touched on every undead creature it found, tasting them and marking them. Feeding her information. She felt it to her core when that magic touched on the Circus, when it slid over the vampires living under the big monstrosity. Some of them even took note when she touched them, their power answering her call without hesitation. She knew when she found the Church of Eternal Life. Malcolm's words faltered a moment when she touched him and she felt his eyes widen. Young vampires stopped in their tracks to look around them, seeking out the source of the power. It touched every vampire it came across, letting her feel power and age, and still it kept going.
Finally, after what seemed like ages, she felt it come to rest on a large mass of undead power. She knew Jean Claude, despite the fact that his power felt weak. Her heart tried to speed up in her chest, tried to urge her to move, but she forced it to slow. Forced it to let her think and feel. She felt it the moment he knew what was touching him, knew who was touching him. She saw him in her mind's eye, his brilliant blue eyes staring at her in shock and fear. And then... Then that power touched on a vampire the likes of which she'd never felt before. Stronger than any she'd come across. Older than any, too. And that vampire knew the moment her power touched them. Knew, and smiled in invitation.
Aedan turned her head until she was sure she was looking in the direction the power had gone, opened her eyes and pointed. Her arm was level with Edward's face as she pointed out his window. "That way. They're that way."
"You're sure?" Edward asked, already putting the car into gear.
"Yes."
The vehicle pulled out onto the road and Edward soon had them going in the direction Aedan had pointed. She kept her eyes on the windshield, watching the scenery as it moved toward them without actually seeing it. She still wasn't sure what she was going to do when they got there. The vampire she'd felt... She didn't know if she could take it. It was older than anything she'd felt before. And if that vampire had gotten past the Wicked Truth... What hope did she, a lowly mortal, have of defeating it?
"What's the plan?" Edward asked, voice cutting across her thoughts. Aedan knew she could point out that they'd already had this discussion and he knew what the plans were as well as she did. But he was asking for a more specific plan. She shifted things around in her mind, put the feel of Jean Claude and the other vampires on the back burner so she could deal with Edward's question. The taste of their power would change if they drifted too far to the left or the right.
"They know I'm coming," she admitted. It would be stupid not to prepare them. "They don't know you're with. Not yet. I imagine the leader has an idea, since the death of all those people in New Mexico is probably something they didn't miss. But its only an idea. Not a hard fact. We can use that to our advantage."
"How?"
Aedan closed her eyes again and let the power spread, let it flood the area toward which they were heading. She could feel the lycanthropes waiting, their frantic energy vibrating along the connection she'd established with the location. "There are shifters there. And probably humans. You and Janika can deal with them. Let me deal with the big bad on my own."
"You don't even know if you can handle the big bad on your own. Why should I let you go off and face them all alone?" Edward asked, voice tight with emotion. Aedan smiled at him. It was nice to know he cared.
"Because I don't want to see you end up in harm's way for me a second time. Because Donna would kill me if you didn't get home to her in one piece," Aedan told him, then frowned. "Did you even call her? She needs to know you're okay."
"I'll call her when this is all over," he promised. She shook her head at him.
"You might be Death, but I'm the one carrying Itzpapalotl's power," she replied. She still didn't know what she was going to do with it. She honestly hadn't thought that far ahead. She just knew she had to do whatever it took to ensure that Jean Claude got back to his people safe and sound. She felt the power tug at her and shifted her attention to the road. "Turn there."
Edward turned the car wordlessly, letting his gaze slide her way a moment or two before returning it to the road. "Aedan. You're the only blood family I have left, too. I would be a poor cousin if I let you blindly walk into a situation that meant your death. You have friends and loved ones that would be devastated if you died. And we don't even know what would happen to anyone if you did."
She turned to look at him, made sure he could feel the weight of her stare against his skin. "They're vampires, Edward. I'm damn good with vampires."
"So am I. I've killed my fair share," he reminded her.
"Yes. You have. But I have something going for me that you don't," she returned.
"What's that?"
"My winning personality." There was silence a moment as he considered her words. Then he broke out into laughter, easing some of the tension in the car. She only hoped he was laughing later, when this was all said and done.
~*~
It took them a full half hour before they found the area where all of that power was gathered together. Each mile closer and closer saw Aedan's skin tightening as power washed over her. Both the deep, cold power of the undead and the stinging, warm power of the lycanthropes. It was hard to shut it off, now that she'd found it, and it combined with Obsidian Butterfly's power in an attempt to drive her insane. By the time they arrived, she felt like she was crawling out of her own skin.
They found themselves parking in a field in the middle of nowhere. There was a small area where the grass had been trampled down to the soil. But only a small area. All around them was grass that had been left to grow so high that the car would have been swallowed up by it. As it was, it was a trap for them, because there were any number of preternatural beings hiding in it. Aedan turned in her seat, let her gaze take in both Edward and Janika.
"We'll split up. I'll go up the middle. One of you goes right. One of you goes left," she told them.
"No," Janika shook her head. "We stay together."
"We'll be easy pickings if we do," Edward said. His tone suggested he didn't like the idea. But he didn't argue with her. "Aedan's right. If we split up, we stand a better chance of reaching Jean Claude. But do not let your guard down. Not for a second. Weapons up and at the ready." He gave Aedan a meaningful stare, prompting her to pull the Glock from under her arm. Seeing the gun in her hand only relaxed him slightly.
"This is insane," Janika hissed, drawing her own gun. "We're all going to get ourselves killed."
"No. Just me," Aedan told them, then opened the door and climbed from the car. It was done so quickly and so smoothly that she was lost in the high grass before Janika and Edward could get their doors open. She let the power pull her forward, let it be her guide toward her ultimate goal. In only moments, she heard gunshots echoing on her left and her right. Heard screams of pain and rage. She put them from her mind, refusing to dwell on who might have made them. If she lost focus, she would be dead before she even reached Jean Claude.
Anything that came at her in the tall grass got a bullet to the heart. She didn't even think about it, simply performed the action of pointing and pulling the trigger on autopilot. And, as she passed the dying by, she took their energy until she felt as if she would burst from all of it. Still she kept pulling it in. Holding on to it. Waiting.
She finally broke into a clearing where there was no grass. The ground beneath her feet was broken concrete, letting her know that a building had stood in this spot at one time. Trees lined the sides, illuminated by the flickering light of the two bonfires lit in pits that had been chiseled out of the concrete slab closest to where she stood. Her gaze slid over the scene, taking everything in.
There were thirteen vampires standing across the concrete slab, at just about the middle mark. Aedan let her senses slide over them, testing strength and age. Not a one of them was less than three hundred. Every one of them was a master. There were twelve forming a half circle, eyes locked on her but not quite seeing her, with the thirteenth standing front and center before them. He watched her, his eyes burning with the desire for her blood and her death. She could feel his power against her skin, heavy and forceful as it tried to crush her under its weight. And he was old. So, so old. Older than any vampire she'd ever met before in her life. Granted, that list was still fairly short, but she was pretty sure she'd never meet another vampire this old or strong ever again.
Standing on either side of him were the two shifters from the bowling alley bar in Albuquerque. They were smirking at her, as if they knew something she didn't. It was likely they did. Not that it mattered. She was going to kill them. Both of them. Slowly, if possible. Just for staring at her like she was a snack.
Thirteen vampires and two lycanthropes. Take the shifters out of the equation, which she absolutely planned on doing, and she was left with thirteen. The number of a coven of witches. The implications were not lost on her.
It was the sight of the coffin that froze her blood in her veins. A plain wooden coffin, something that looked like it had come straight from a seventeenth century pauper's cemetery, bound with chains that glittered silver in the flames. She didn't have to use her powers to know that Jean Claude was in that box. Jean Claude, can you hear me?
"You should not have come, ma mie. They will kill you." His voice sounded faint. And she heard pain in it.
They'll try. Hang on. I'm going to get you out of there. She closed the connection before he could try to take her to task for going against his express wishes and spend what little energy he had left. Hadn't he realized yet that she wasn't going to let them kill him. Not if she could stop it. Because if they did kill him, she'd die with him. As would too many other people. "I believe you have someone that belongs to me. I'd like him back." Aedan made sure there was a healthy dose of courage in her voice. There was no way she was going to let them see her cower in fear.
"But you have already taken him back," the leader said with a smile that told her she wasn't fooling anyone. She stared at him, looking for something that would help her take him down. Anything. It was hard to find past the power that radiated off him. "You have your cousin. And he is even alive."
"You put Jean Claude in a box. You will let him out right now. Or I promise you, regret will be the last thing you feel before I cut your fucking head off," she informed him, careful to keep the anger to herself.
"What can you do to me, necromancer? No doubt you have figured out that I am far older and stronger than your precious master." One pale hand touched the coffin, careful to place his fingers between the silver-coated chains. Something tickled at the back of her brain, tried to catch her attention. Aedan gave it free reign while keeping her attention focused on the leader.
"And no doubt you've figured out that I am much more than I seem," she replied, calculating odds. They could hear gunfire still sounding in the distance, accompanied by animalistic screams and yells of rage. "My friends will be here soon. Any of you that I don't take down will be fair game for them. Death likes to be creative. Janika... She prefers to just straight up kill you. Though its possible she might develop a flair for the painful. But before I deal with your sorry ass, I have a score to settle with the Tweedle twins."
"Aw, you remembered us. I'm touched," the speaker said. She heard the growl in his voice that told her he was going to shift. Let him. Let him come at her. She had a surprise or two up her sleeve.
"You will be. Unless you let him go right now." She motioned with one hand toward the coffin.
"I am afraid I cannot do that. His imprisonment means your cooperation," the leader intoned.
"This is boring," Aedan said, making sure she sounded extremely bored. "You must like hearing yourself speak. I guess I was mistaken in thinking you were a man of action." She intentionally shifted her attention to the second shifter, Dane. "Hey, Fido. Want a bone? Do you? Do you want a bone? Here, boy! C'mere!"
Dane growled and might have taken a step forward, but the alpha of the pair put a hand on the man's chest. "Stop. She's trying to goad you into being stupid. She's got no plan. She's stalling so that the others can come rescue her sorry ass."
Aedan chuffed a laugh. "You think I need the others to rescue me? Is that really what you think?" she asked. "Buddy, have I got news for you."
Right. There was no time like the present. Aedan pointed her gun, an action so quick and so smooth that there was barely time for anyone to react. She sighted in the blink of an eye, pulled the trigger. Watched as Dane went down in a tangle of lifeless limbs. Several of the vampires behind him jolted in surprise when brain matter splattered their faces and clothing. She watched as the alpha turned to stare at the corpse on the ground beside him. "You bitch!" he snarled, a growl in his words.
"I told you I'd kill Dane first. Now its your turn," she replied.
"Dane was my brother," he shot back, then he was in motion, loping toward her even as the change took him. His transition was smooth, going from flesh and two legs to fur and four legs in between one step and the next. Even before she could sight on him, the pony-sized wolf sent her to the ground. The concrete was hard against the back of her skull and she saw stars a moment before long, sharp teeth grabbed hold of her arm.
"Say hello to Dane when you get to hell, mutt!" she snarled at him, bringing her gun up so that it was buried in the underside of his throat. Her finger tapped the trigger three times, sending three silver-coated rounds through his skull and spraying blood, bone shards, and brain matter everywhere.
The corpse tumbled off her when she gave a good push, allowing her to stagger to her feet. Blood trickled down her arm to her fingertips, dropped to the concrete. She stared across the distance at the leader and gave him a grimacing smile. "You should have killed me first, bitch. You made me mad when you took Death. Now you've pissed me off. I am going to love destroying you."
"You are a pathetic, weak mortal," he said in return. Aedan paused. Did that mean he was unaware of Itzpapalotl's power riding her? Could he not sense the touch of another vampire upon her? Or was he so certain of his win that he was completely disregarding the magic she carried with her? There was only one way to find out.
Silence settled around them, telling her Edward and Janika had cleared out the rest of the rabble. She was sure they'd succeeded because there was no lifting cry of victory from the shifters she knew had been in the field. That meant they'd be there soon. If she was going to do anything, it was now or never. Because the minute they got there, all hell would break lose and she'd lose her shot at the leader. "I've survived three of your assassination attempts. Or was it four? They were so middle of the road, hum drum boring that I lost count. That's what you get for sending incompetents to do your job. You want me dead, fuck face, you better do it yourself."
He studied her across the distance, as if trying to figure out if he was serious or not. Aedan put the safety on her gun and dropped it to the ground, lifted her arms up so that they were out at her sides. A silent invitation. "What's the matter, dickhead? Afraid to take on a pathetic, weak mortal all by yourself? You were such a big man, you sent a small army to wipe out Anita Blake. I wonder why that is?"
At the mention of the other woman's name, two things happened. First, the face of Anita's killer shifted into a snarl. All of his rage and hatred showed in the look he gave her. Second, a door at the back of Aedan's mind blew open and memories poured forth in a torrent that left her gasping for breath.
Of course that was when the asshole made his move.
Aedan felt his hands on her arms, using them to pull her into his body. Then his arms were coiling around her, pinning her arms at her side, and his breath plumed hot and fetid against her throat. He was going to drain her dry, then he was going to kill Jean Claude. She was caught in his embrace, helpless. The perfect victim. And still the memories poured over her.
She'd always heard the stories about one's life flashing before their eyes at the moment of their death. But that wasn't what she saw. Even as she felt his fangs find purchase in her throat, she found herself caught up in the memories of another woman's life. Faces passed before her eyes, people she'd known. People who had died because of her. People she'd killed. Mortal, lycanthrope, and vampire alike. They paraded across her brain in a flurry of images that left her head spinning. Left her breathless.
Because now she knew. Who he was. How to kill him. She knew everything. She saw that night again, out on the road with a dozen or more souls surrounding a damaged car and a single woman who stood between them and the people in the car. She felt the knowledge that Anita had had, the acceptance. And she felt the determination. You can defeat him, Aedan. Our power ensures that. Do what I couldn't accomplish that night. And give me peace.
Pain brought her out of the memories, showed her a ring of vampires watching her without blinking or moving. Showed her the coffin, with its incapacitated inhabitant. Showed her Edward and Janika as they moved up on either side of the concrete slab. Aedan called upon the power she'd been born with. The power she'd inherited from Anita. The power she'd borrowed from Obsidian Butterfly. And she formed it into one single thought. One single idea.
She shoved that power at the vampire behind her, shoved it into him so hard that his head jerked back, tearing his fangs from her throat. She felt the blood spill but paid it no mind. "Vittorio," she said, and she heard the power fill her voice. She turned so that she faced him, so that she could look him directly in the eye. "You made a mistake that night on the road, Vittorio. You should have killed us both. Not just Anita Blake. You should have left my corpse next to hers. You won't get to make that same mistake twice."
"What are you?" Vittorio demanded, taking a step back from Aedan even as she wrapped the threads of her power that coiled around him tighter and tighter.
"Your death," she promised on a whisper. "For the crime of kidnapping of a federal agent, I sentence you to death. For the crime of attempted murder of a federal agent, I sentence you to death. For the crime of murder of a federal agent, I sentence you to death. To be carried out now. Here. Immediately."
Aedan tightened the magic down even further, until Vittorio reached up and clawed at his throat. As if she had chains wrapped around it. She pushed and she pushed and she pushed, until the magic climbed into his veins and surged through every inch of his body. Until she felt the fight go out of him and he stood stock still, watching her with wide eyes. Aedan stared at him, let the power Itzpapalotl gifted her with take over until her eyes were blacker than the sky above them. "You're mine now, Vittorio. Mine to control. Mine to do with as I wish. Mine to let live. Or die. Beg me to let you live. Beg me to spare your life."
He fought it. She felt him try to throw her magic off, try to shove the power back at her. But her hold was absolute. She owned him now, and she was going to make him understand that before she stole the life from him. Permanently. In the end, he couldn't break free of her control and the words came from his throat, harsh and shredded, as if they'd been torn out violently. "Please."
"Please, what?" Aedan demanded, pushing more power at him until he dropped to his knees. She heard his knee caps shatter when they hit the concrete. She was light-headed from blood loss, but she was going to make him understand his mistake before she crushed the life out of him.
"Spare me," he growled, again fighting against saying it.
"Spare me, what?"
"Spare me, spiteful mortal!" he snapped.
"Wrong answer, Vittorio," she whispered and bore down on the magic with all her strength. He howled in rage even as he went to his hands and knees. His head hung between his arms and she heard him gasping for breath. "Spare me, what?"
"Spare me, mistress!" he hissed, lifting eyes filled with absolute hatred her way.
"Go fuck yourself!" she spat and ripped her power from him. Ripped his power and his energy from him. She watched as horror filled his eyes, watched as his skin charred and blackened as if from fire. Watched as he turned to ash before her very eyes. Power slammed into her, the likes of which she'd never felt before. With his death, the vampires behind her were released from their stupor and she heard one rush toward her. Aedan turned, let her eyes come to rest on him, and shoved power at him. The vampire stopped in his tracks, blinked, then threw himself into the flames.
Screams rolled up his throat as he staggered out of the bonfire, straight at his fellow conspirators. Terror rose up within them as they tried to flee. Power lashed out, caught them all and forced them to stop in their tracks. She watched as the burning vamp stumbled into each and every one of them. Their screams filled the night air, a cacophony of death and pain that Aedan barely heard. Her attention was focused solely on the coffin and its silver chains as Edward and Janika sought a way to release Jean Claude.
It didn't take long for the vampires to become ash. In those few short moments, Aedan merely stood and watched, as if from a distance, as they died. Her concern was for the soul trapped inside the coffin.
"Aedan, we need to find a way to get the locks off," Edward was saying, his voice filled with consternation. She blinked and the distance was gone. Pain radiated from her neck where Vittorio's fangs had torn her skin. And she could barely feel Jean Claude, making her wonder if he was hurt worse than she'd originally thought. "Aedan, are you listening to me?"
"Locks. We have to find the key," she replied softly, then turned to where Vittorio had last been. There was a pile of ash occupying his place. She went down on her knees and sifted her hands through the ashes, hoping that he'd had the key on him. When she didn't feel the hard bite of metal against her fingertips, panic struck her. How was she supposed to get Jean Claude out of there without a key?
"I can't find a key, Edward. I don't know what to do!" she exclaimed, unable to keep the terror out of her voice. A pale hand appeared before her face.
"Perhaps we can be of help?" The question saw her lifting her eyes until they locked with arctic blue ones. Relief swept through her and she slid her hand into the one before her. Asher looked... displeased.
"Read me the riot act later," she said. She watched as his gaze slid to her throat, then he was helping her up. She turned to look at the coffin, wobbling on her feet as she did so. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "The chains are silver. If any of you touches them, you'll get burned."
"A risk worth taking, Aedan," Asher assured her. He directed his attention to the group standing behind him. "Get him out. Now."
Several people passed them on their way to the coffin. Everyone of them was a shifter of some sort, and everyone of them reached for the chains. Aedan frowned. She didn't want anyone else to get hurt. There had to be another way. But she just couldn't think. Her brain was fuzzy from the swirl of energy and power and blood loss.
"Here," Janika said, offering her coat. "Wrap it around the chains and see if you can pull them off the end. If that works, then you can smash the wood and pull him out." Aedan could feel the small army that stood behind her and Asher and she frowned.
"You and I are having a chat, Janika," Aedan told the other woman. Someone hadn't been listening.
"Bite me," Janika retorted as she came over to stand at Asher's side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders in order to pull her closer. The other hand remained resting lightly on Aedan's shoulder, though she was sure if she tried to move, the touch would intensify. So she stayed where she was and watched as Bobby Lee and Merle wrapped the jacket around the length of chain at the head of the coffin. They both took hold of it and, on the count of three, tugged. The chain slid across the lid of the coffin, scraping the wood as it did so, until they managed to get it off to the side. She wasn't anyone to judge, but it looked as if it took them more work than they were willing to admit. Finally, once the end panel had been cleared of silver, Merle grabbed the edge and pulled.
Nails screamed in protest as he ripped the rectangle of wood from the rest of the coffin. Then he and Bobby Lee were reaching inside the wooden box, their actions a little too quick to just be casual. Jean Claude came out a moment later, limbs limp and skin paler than usual. Even his curls were wilted, making her wonder how long he'd been in there. When Bobby Lee and Merle had him propped up between them, Aedan got a clear view as to why. Vittorio had left several puncture wounds in Jean Claude's flesh, as well as a bite mark at his throat. Blood loss and silver had taken their toll on him. Anger boiled under her skin, churning along side the power that filled her. She blinked at the reminder she carried all that power and energy within her, then pulled away from Asher.
"Hold him," she ordered softly as she crossed the distance between the two of them. Her hands reached up to cup his face. Jean Claude barely stirred, bringing forth a shaft of fear. She was not going to lose him. Not now. Not when they'd been through so much. She was going to heal him.
Aedan concentrated on their bond, used it to pour energy into him. Her palms grew warm where they touched his face and she didn't know if it was because of the power she was giving him or if it was his flesh warming as his body used that power to heal itself. It didn't matter. All that mattered was making sure he survived. In moments, her palms felt like they were burning. But she didn't stop. She just kept feeding power and energy into him until golden specks danced before her eyes.
The next thing she knew, she was hanging limp in Edward's hold, vision fuzzy and chest tight with pain. Pain that made her forget her throat. Jean Claude's hands were cupping her cheeks to hold her head up, eyes bright with worry and fear as he stared down into her face. "Aedan, ma mie."
It took her a moment to realize that he looked fine. Other than the bloody stains on his shirt, he didn't look any worse for the wear. A touch of color edged his cheeks and even his hair was back to being a riot of curls. She swallowed, unable to figure out why her throat was dry, and searched for her voice. It took far too long to find it.
"Hey, sexy," she smiled at him. At least she thought she did. She wasn't so sure when his gaze shifted to Edward's face for a moment, then it came back to her. She took the opportunity to simply stare at him and marvel in his beauty and perfection. Her brain let her know that her attempt at healing him had been a rousing success. The puncture wounds were completely gone. As was the bite mark at his throat. That knowledge widened her smile further. "You look good. Can we go home now? I think I need a nap."
"Of course, ma mie," he assured her with a soft smile. He took her from Edward's hold and swung her up into his arms. It felt good there. Safe. She snuggled close, not bothering to complain when it felt like he clutched her to him just a little tighter than was comfortable. "My friends. Thank you. I have no other words. So thank you."
"Anything for family," Edward answered. She thought she heard something in his voice, but she was too fuzzy to tell. Or to care. She just wanted to sleep "We've got a car this way. Though I suspect that small plot of land is crowded now. Let's get everyone back to safety before the sun comes up. I need to make a phone call then chew some ass."
"Fuck you, Edward. I came and got your ass out of a mess.," Aedan got out through a yawn, eyes heavy with exhaustion and more.
"You went to Itzpapalotl," he retorted. She felt Jean Claude's hold on her tighten briefly. No fair. He'd been unconscious and hadn't been aware of the fact. Edward had just gotten her in trouble by spilling secrets. "You get an ass chewing for that alone. Plus what you pulled here. You could have been killed."
"I wasn't. So suck it," Aedan told him. There was very little heat or force in her voice. Just a lot of exhaustion.
"I will chew some ass once Edward has had his chance," Jean Claude told her. Aedan pried an eye open to look up at him. She could see anger darkening his eyes, lingering at the back of his gaze. She swore she could feel it burning against her skin. "What were you thinking?"
She rolled her eyes. The histrionics were getting old. "I was thinking I'd get Edward back and end the life of everyone involved in kidnapping him. And killing Anita. And look. I did it."
"You went to Itzpapalotl. She is a thousand years old and she does not suffer other vampires or their servants to live when they enter her territory. You are lucky she did not harm you. And Vittorio is twice her age." Jean Claude admonished. He sounded like he was even less impressed with her actions than Edward was.
"Was," she corrected. "He's dead now, thank you very much."
That statement brought Jean Claude's steps to a halt and he stared down at her. "You killed him? How?"
Aedan frowned up at him and pondered the merits of trying to wiggle her way out of his hold. The lack of confidence in her abilities was amazing. She wasn't sure her efforts would get her anywhere because she was running on fumes and he was at full strength. Or mostly full strength. "Don't sound so surprised. Jesus Christ. You'll give me a complex." She politely ignored Edward's snort at that statement. "I made him my bitch. I used the gifts Anita gave me. I took hold of him and bent him to my will."
"You rolled his mind?" Asher asked, drawing her attention his way. She'd honestly forgotten he was there.
Aedan frowned and considered it. "I don't think so? I mean, I used my magic and Anita's magic and Obsidian Butterfly's power and forced him to do as I told him. He fought me, but he still had to do it. Then I took every last bit of his energy and let him turn to dust."
"You should not have come for me. You should have listened when I told you to stay away. He wanted you dead." Jean Claude's tone brought her focus back to him. She sighed and shook her head. That turned out to be a mistake because her head started pounding with the action. He was as bad as Edward. What was it with men and their egos? Talk about annoying.
"Yeah. I distinctly recall someone else telling me the same thing. Its a crock of shit. You're my family, Jean Claude. He would have killed you. He wanted us both dead. Not just me. Both of us. He probably figured he'd kill you when he killed Anita on the road that night. But she beat him at his own game. And, in doing so, she gave me the tools I needed to take him out."
"Aedan... If he had killed you, I would not have been able to live with it," he said softly.
She gave him a smile that missed its mark, if the look he gave her in return was anything to go by. "That's good to know, gorgeous. And, much as I would love to carry on this conversation, I think its safe to say that I'm going to drop off here at any moment. Its been a long twenty four hours and I haven't had any sleep. Plus there's the blood loss and the massive use of magic. I'll just lose consciousness now, shall I?"
~*~*~*~*~
Jean Claude watched as Aedan did exactly what she'd said she would. She went limp in his hold, losing her grip on consciousness as the events of the past day caught up with her. He shared a look with Edward and Asher, then shook his head. Some days, she made it very hard to stay mad at her. But that didn't mean he was ready to let her off the hook for her latest bout of foolishness. How could she make light of the fact that she could have died any number of times over the course of the night? He would never, no matter how long he lived, understand what made Aedan tick.
The field of overgrown grass wasn't as big as he'd expected it to be. It was, however, peppered with corpses. Even now, there was a team of shapeshifters silently removing the bodies so as not to leave anything for the police to find. He had no doubt someone would stumble upon them, no matter how remote the location seemed to be. He wondered for a moment if he should have someone come deal with the tall grass, as it was no doubt soaked in blood in certain places. But that thought was brushed aside when they made a small clearing that was cluttered with cars. As Edward had guessed, there were more vehicles than there was room and it was going to take a while to get all of the cars out of there.
Edward motioned him toward one of the vehicles with a nod of his head. Jean Claude went without a word, taking care when he put Aedan in the backseat. He felt it when Asher joined him. After ensuring that Aedan was settled upon the back seat, he turned to face his oldest friend. "Wicked and Truth?" he asked softly. Despite the energy and the power that Aedan had poured into him not that long ago, he was in desperate need of a feeding and rest.
"They are safe at home," Asher assured him. "They have fed and regained their strength. They are extremely upset that someone was able to get past them and take you unchallenged. I do not know if the knowledge that Vittorio was responsible will soothe their battered pride at all."
Jean Claude inclined his head. "I am sure they will recover. Eventually. Thank you for coming to offer your assistance."
"Jean Claude, mon ami, you are my oldest friend. My oldest family. I would give my life for you." Asher punctuated his admission by pulling Jean Claude into his arms for a hug. Joy filled him as he clung to Asher. It felt good to know he had such loyal friends. Such loving family. But he would not have anyone sacrificing themselves for him. No matter who it was. He drew back and gave Asher a serious look.
"I want no one to give their life for me. Not Death. Not Aedan. And most certainly not you," he admonished.
Janika laughed. "Get used to it, buddy. That's what family does for one another. And I can guarantee you that Aedan is not going to give you up without a fight. She's head over heels in love with you. And she will destroy anyone who dares get between the two of you." She shook her head, then turned to stare at the woman sprawled across the bench seat in the car beside them. "Go easy on her. Just a little bit. Chewing her ass off won't stop her from doing something like this again. We should just count ourselves lucky to have her on our side."
"She's the one who should count herself lucky," Edward said as he joined them. The look on his face suggested he was not going to let this act of foolishness go without comment. He climbed into the front seat behind the steering wheel, then looked up at Jean Claude. "Let's get moving so I can get you home. I'd rather not listen to her bitch at me that I had you out past curfew. You have no idea just how bitchy she can be."
Jean Claude couldn't help the smile. There was a story there, one he was sure Edward would never tell. That wasn't going to stop Jean Claude from needling the man about it when he felt it was safe to do so. Nodding, he climbed into the backseat and pulled the door shut. Edward put the car into gear and pulled from the cramped lot without a word. Jean Claude settled Aedan's head on his thigh so that he could stroke a hand through her hair.
Home. That sounded like a wonderful idea.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 05:12 am (UTC)Do I have nails left? Do I have skin left? Do I have FINGERS left? Okay...check, check, and check. We're okay. *takes a deep breath*
LOVE it in sooooooooo many ways. ("How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...")
Aedan and Edward...oh my god...could those two BE any more alike? LOL I adore their repartee soo much! Including his admission that what she planned was what he would do...sealed the deal, that did! :)
I know you told me once you thought you sucked at writing actiony stuff, but trust me, you don't! Not at all! You seem to have a particular adeptness at writing capture/rescue stuff. Hmm, makes me wonder about you sometimes...;-)
Seriously though sweetie, another excellent job in an excellent tale that I don't wanna see end...as excellent as that ending will be, I'm sure. ;) xxooo!!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 12:12 pm (UTC)you love it? really? i would never have guessed.
when i started this, i had no intentions of Aedan and Edward to end up being so alike. and yet... here we are. i really do enjoy the way they react to one another. Aedan apparently likes to push buttons. Edward tries hard not to strangle her. its a close thing some days. really.
i do not feel that this was really all that action-y? i mean, for me, action-y is sword fights and fist fights and things like that. not... trucking through tall grass and shooting people as they come at you. maybe i'm just weird that way. and you only wonder about me sometimes? i must be falling down on the job.
glad you liked it, bb.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-12 01:19 am (UTC)Also, Vittorio. Father of Day to Marmee Noir's Mother of All Darkness. Wow. Just wow. I should have guessed. But why did my brain go to Anne Rice first? *sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-12 03:07 am (UTC)yeah. Vittorio. i do not know how long ago i figured out he was the one who was responsible for the whole mess. but there you have it. and i have no idea why you went to Anne Rice?
i hope your head feels better tomorrow. .:smoochies:.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-12 05:45 pm (UTC)Not really. I would have forgotten too much of what I wanted to say.
Anne Rice because of the book Vittorio the Vampire, obvi - just not sure why I forgot about the Day Father altogether in favor of a different vamp from a different author. I guess I'll blame it on the headache. *sigh*
Better today, yes. Thanks, hon. *smoochies*