Allies in the Night
Allies in the Night:1947words
Update Time:2024-11-01 09:40:52
[Rhett] After I sent Rock and Carmen home, I made more food for Dolly and fed her. She promised to be good, and I agreed to release her from the hold of my darkness. It liked her even more after hearing her story from Carmen.Dolly slept fitfully through the night. I wandered the woods and kept an ear out for anything about either of us. Carmen knew I was serious, but I was concerned that Rock might go running to his queen about Dolly because she was a fae.There was nothing. I was relieved. It didn’t matter to me that she was half goblin. I hadn’t had a lot of experience with them, but I knew enough from my training in my youth. Goblins were well-known because, unlike other fae, they didn’t feel the need to hide themselves from the rest of the world.I could even understand Rock’s disdain for them. They never ate trolls, because they preferred more tender flesh, but they gave the more monster-like fae an even worse wrap.She wasn’t like them, though. Well, the tantrum and wild escape attempt was, but she was scared. It was strange to me that she calmed down so much after Carmen sat with her.Dolly never believed me when I tried to talk with her before, but something about Carmen made her more open to it. My darkness spread over every surface in the room. I didn’t want her to escape and get lost in my woods. She could get hurt.It would notify me if she left her bed, and I would go home if she needed me. It would have to be enough for now. I hoped to earn more of her trust.As I walked, I ended up at a small pool of water. An underground cold spring fed it. Sometimes, I would draw water from it and take it home. Tonight, I just sat and watched the reflection of the moon in it.I waved my hand over the pool, making the reflective surface into a viewing portal. Victor was talking with Trent and Maeve. It looked like Saleh would not come to this meeting. They were standing around a metal table that held the body of the vampire the bug had been stuck to. There was a table next to it where the bug was laid out.With another wave, I peeked in on Saleh. She was bіtching to her sister-in-law about how she was being left out of everything. Saleh's sister-in-law pointed out that Saleh had been invited, but declined, which made Saleh screech and storm away.Some people were born leaders. I saw that in Victor, Trent, and Maeve. Saleh was not one of them. She inherited the coven because of tradition. Even her father didn’t really want to give it to her, but there was pressure for him to retire. With luck, her daughter would be a better leader when she took over.I checked on Rock and Carmen. Of course, they were having ѕex. Now that they didn’t have roommates, there would never be a ‘safe’ time to check on them without them knowing. I would probably go back to seeing them having ѕex often.Ever since I started peeking in on werewolves, I had come to realize that they had a lot of ѕex. Honestly, I don’t know why hunters were so worried about them. If they weren’t eating, they were playing, working, or fuсking. They didn’t have time to be a menace to humans.Harmony and Cameron were watching a movie in their home with their hands on her stomach. I checked on Echo. She was playing a game with her other husband while Victor was meeting with the other leaders.Everything seemed to be in order. I leaned back, staring at the moon. It made me wish my darkness hadn’t made me quit smoking. A cigar right about now would be nice.‘Rhett.’I sighed. Trent’s voice cut through the peace of the night. I stood and straightened myself out before using shadows to move me to where they were. As usual, I arrived in an area where no one was looking. Before I drew their attention, I found a place and arranged myself properly.Leaning against a wall in a darkened corner, I crossed my arms and angled my head to give a playful yet mysterious vibe. They were muttering about where I could be. It was perfect timing.“I’m right here, of course. I was just waiting for you to call me. It’s very rude to exclude me until you need me, you know,” I chided with a smile.Victor turned to me, but I saw the other two tense at the sound of my voice before they turned. Victor was the only one who never seemed surprised when I appeared.“You should come in through a door. Appearing out of nowhere is rude. You shouldn’t try to frighten your allies,” Maeve scolded.“My dear, I knew you were here and I couldn’t simply wait outside for you. Next time, you should be the one to call me. I would love to hear your sweet voice calling out my name,” I replied as I slowly took in the form of the beautiful fae queen.She might be older than me, but that didn’t turn me off. Now she was single and I wouldn’t mind being the rebound that helped her move on from her mate’s betrayal. The way she sneered at me was quite enticing.“Rhett, could you please take this seriously?” Trent asked with a groan.“I can assure you, Alpha, I take this very seriously. No man has been more serious about bedding a fae queen since Nick Bottom. Sadly, I don’t have a magical serum to make her highness give me a chance, so I must wear her down with my charm,” I told him with a wink.For the briefest of moments, I thought I saw Victor’s lips tick up in a smile. I would tuck that away for later. It seemed the ever-serious master of the territory enjoyed my humor.“We need to talk to you about the creature you killed. We have verified that this is one of the vampires from the territory who we had thought disappeared. He was listed as being a resident in the territory, but I didn’t get a response from him when I did the census last year,” Victor said.I shrugged. “I don’t know him.”“According to Silence, he stopped seeing her about six or seven years ago. She thought he had gotten a human servant or a regular donor. We know he has been dead for at least a couple of months. Do you know anything else at all? Did you pick up on anything when you were fighting him? And where is his victim? We found evidence that someone was living in that hidden alley,” Victor pressed.“I know nothing about him. The beetle stood up to a shot from my gun, which can pierce almost anything, so I had to shoot it from the front where its exoskeleton was weaker. The victim is none of your concern at the moment. You’re taking care of the other victim. I will care for this one.”Maeve and Trent shared a meaningful look. It wasn’t as if they could get to my home. If I didn’t want anyone there, then they wouldn’t find it. As much as I couldn’t walk into the fae lands from the outside, no fae could see through my magic.“Rhett, can you tell us about the victim? Is there anything you need to help take care of them?” Trent asked.“She is fine. She is alive. I am taking care of her.”Maeve’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Perhaps it would be better if I took care of her, Rhett. You come on strongly to females. I’m sure you don’t mean to make them uncomfortable, but you do. She could come to my home and I would keep her safe. I would get healers to come see her. You don’t know what she might need.”“She needs rest and food. The creature didn’t feed on her. She has been on her own for a long time and she needs to recover from that. Contrary to popular belief, Queen Maeve, I am able to contain myself. I merely choose not to, in most cases,” I answered coolly.Victor nodded. Of course he understood me. In the past few months, I listened in on others’ conversations. I talked to people and erased their memories of it. I knew all about his history with Echo. He saved her from other vampires and the people who kidnapped her.Back then, he didn’t have any intention of bedding or marrying the girl. When it turned to more and she ended up being his Solus Amor, he was slightly resistant, but not a lot, because he ended up marrying her alongside the werewolf.That wasn’t going to happen with Dolly and me. If this vampire was the first one to feed on her, like Carmen said, then it meant she was likely between ten and thirteen, as I had thought. Carmen told me she was much smaller than the demon when it was weak and young. I thought that she might have been around three to six years old when that happened.“Is there anything at all that can help us? We know it attacked Spencer because he was a Templar. This was fairly close to a very active area of the city. The last time it did that was to hunt someone who was a threat to it. Is she a Templar as well? Is there something about her that could have harmed the creature?” Victor asked.I didn’t want to say anything, but I knew flat out denying she existed would have lost me a lot of the trust that I had worked to get from them. Sure, it wasn’t a lot, and I knew I did things to make them doubt me. I couldn’t have them depending on me in the future, but I also couldn’t lose what I had.If I told them she was a child, they might try harder to take her from me. If Maeve learned she was a goblin, she would try to take her because the child was a fae. They couldn’t have Dolly. I saved her. I took care of her. She was mine.The trio of leaders took a step back. I realized I was scowling at them and my darkness was dancing around me. I was no longer leaning against the wall, but was standing away from it with my hands on the guns at my hips. With a huff of contempt, I straightened out and covered the guns again.I hadn’t intended to do that. The idea of someone taking her from me made me angry. I hadn’t been truly angry in centuries. Certainly not ‘moving without thinking’ angry.“She was living in the place where the cult is located before they moved in. The leader forced her to be a slave. She escaped. That wasn’t her first run-in with the bug or the vampire it attached to. She isn’t a Templar. Once she is feeling better, I am planning to talk to her about the layout of the cave. She may know more about it than any of your spies could find out,” I told them as I pulled off my glasses and cleaned them.“And you think she’ll tell you all of this?” Maeve asked. “Even with how you can be?”“As I said, I am able to contain myself. She trusts me as the person who saved her and is sleeping in my bed as we speak. Did you need anything else from me, or are we just going to stand around chit-chatting in a morgue?”