To Mate an Assassin: The Lost Alphars Series, Book 1 (17 page)

Chapter Eleven

Cimby drove up to the small cabin she currently called home. The small space was made in the traditional wooden style but modernized for her convenience. It had all the comforts of a present-day home with internet and satellite capabilities, top-of-the-line technology, only the best for the Incendiary. The cabin was a one story with one bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and of course a fully equipped weapons safe. Actually, it was more like a walk-in closet arsenal. In addition to weapons, the closet held a large collection of magic cure-alls and potions for the really hard-to-heal-without-going-to-a-hospital-type injuries. It was without a doubt her favorite room in the small house, even though it wasn’t technically a room.

The cabin sat in the middle of a grassy clearing, surrounded by trees amongst a wooded area a little ways outside of Greenville, South Carolina. She’d driven forty-five hours straight to get home from California, stopping only for bathroom breaks and food. She was tired, cranky and a little bit proud and yet annoyed that Kerrick hadn’t even asked where she was going. After forty-five hours of driving with just her thoughts to keep her company, she’d come to the conclusion that mating was confusing.

Unfairly, she did want Kerrick to come after her, no matter how contrary that made her seem, but he was the Alphar and Vryks had just set an open claim of war on his doorstep. He had his own trouble to take care of and had shown great restraint and trust in her by letting her go, believing that she would come back. So Cymbeline would overcome the fucking pity party she seemed to be having and accomplish what she came back here to do. Kerrick had his responsibilities and it was time for Cymbeline to step up to the plate and take complete ownership of hers. The emotional turmoil she felt because of Kerrick acted as cathartic cleansing, clearing away the haze and denial she had where Irisi was concerned. Irisi wasn’t just some kid who happened to hang around every now and then, she was a part of her life, and Cimby wanted to make that happen in a more permanent way.

Cimby made the final turn onto the dirt path that led to her place, the boundary of the property magically concealed by a ward. She grumbled as she saw the little figure sitting on her porch, practicing the banjo and trying to read sheet music spread out in the grass held down by rocks.

“Iri! Irisi!” Cimby called, shutting off the car and grabbing her duffel off the passenger seat as she emerged. “Irisi, what have I told you time and time again? You make me say it one more time and your ass is toast.”

The little girl looked up, a pout on her face that had been waking the dull emotions in Cimby’s heart since she’d moved to that cabin. Hell, Irisi was most likely the main reason Cymbeline had any emotions left.

“‘When you come to my place, stay inside,’” Irisi quoted with a lot more sarcasm than Cimby thought necessary. “Wolfy, please.”

“I hate it when you call me that, little girl.” Irisi just brought out Cimby’s fading Southern twang. She couldn’t help it.

Irisi gathered her banjo and grudgingly trudged inside the cabin. “I’ve been letting the air in every day, like you asked. Fed that stupid stray that comes here every now and then, like you asked. You’re welcome, by the way. Ya know, most people get paid for house-sitting.”

“Most people aren’t scamps who hang around shifty characters, like some young ladies I know.” She threw her duffle on the table, weapons and boots thunking together in the bag. “Well?” she asked, holding her arms out and waiting.

Irisi ran at her and Cimby caught the small girl mid jump, wrapping her arms around her tightly. According to Irisi, she was ten years old and skinny for her age, too skinny. Her beautifully long and thick red hair had recently been shaved, a punishment a la
Jane Eyre
by her fanatically religious father. She’d been completely bald when it first happened a month before. The bastard made her go to a salon to do it, in front of so many people. It wasn’t just Mages, Weres and Vryks who were the monsters in the world. Humans held their own just fine.

“How’s it been, kid?”

“Bad.” She sniffled, burying her head in Cimby’s shoulder. “I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.”

“I’m sorry I was gone so long this time. How much did you come here?” The small girl didn’t answer. “Iri?”

Irisi pulled away and Cimby let her down. “I’ve been here since the day you left.”

“What did he do?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Didn’t you promise never to lie to me?”

Irisi sighed and turned around to lift the shirt from her back. The first thing Cimby saw were her bones sticking out through her skin, something that never changed no matter how much Cimby fed her, like she was permanently malnourished. Then her eyes found the welts. Long, red and black, thick welts made by some magical belt or stick. Cimby leaned in to sniff the healing wounds, searching for infection or residual magic meant to cause further pain after healing. Luckily there wasn’t any magic in the wounds. The weapon had probably been spelled to cause more pain. But the wounds themselves were odd, healing differently than a normal lash would.

“I’m going to touch them, Iri.”

“It’s okay, they don’t hurt anymore.”

She would kill the fucker, Cymbeline thought as she placed her hand along the welts, spreading the little healing magic she knew to speed up the process. But the welts didn’t fade, in fact the more she pushed for healing the darker they became. The weapon must have been spelled to leave a permanent mark, a reminder of whatever the son of a bitch had punished her for. She would end the bastard who did this in such a painful way he would beg for death.

“I was playing with some kids from the church and one of them said I pushed him and Father said I had to learn what that felt like.” She wiped away her angry tears as Cimby pulled the shirt back in place then turned around to face Cimby head held high. “Like I didn’t already know what being pushed around felt like with the way the kids have been pickin’ on me for my hair.” Irisi smiled then, rubbing the last of her tears away from her eyes.

“You hungry?” Cimby asked, knowing if she pressed for more information the kid would clam up, go on the defensive.

“Always,” Irisi replied through a watery smile. Cimby nodded and pulled out some meat from the giant freezer.

“Go out and set up the grill, Iri.” The girl skipped out of the cabin, excited by the prospect of real food, no doubt. She’d probably survived on frozen meals and canned food the past few days. But her smile after one of these incidents always amazed Cimby. She had an astounding gift for bouncing back after trauma, and she’d suffered a hell of a lot of trauma throughout her short life.

Irisi was a shifter who’d been adopted by humans unable to have their own kids. A rare Raccoon shifter who had a tendency to get into trouble. She’d met Irisi officially five years ago sorting through her garbage, though Cimby had spotted her roaming the woods about a year before that. Cimby remembered telling the little fluff ball she knew she was a shifter, but Irisi wouldn’t shift for her until Cimby showed her pointy teeth and threatened to eat her. The little scamp had followed her around ever since.

It didn’t take long for Cimby to discover Irisi’s parents had no clue she was a shifter, and after meeting them, Cimby made sure it stayed that way. They didn’t understand what she needed to thrive and grow as a shifter, so Cymbeline had unofficially taken that job on herself whenever she could. After Irisi’s adopted mother died, her father turned to religion for solace. He replaced emotions with repenting of sins and strict rules.

Strictly speaking, Cimby wasn’t allowed to kill humans, so going after Irisi’s father was against the rules. She wouldn’t want Irisi to see her mutilate the man who raised her since he hadn’t always been a monster. But she sure as hell could scare him in front of her. After that though, she wasn’t letting him keep the girl. Irisi shouldn’t stay with Cimby either, her life was too unstable to raise a girl on the cusp of adolescence. But she now knew a place that was safe for shifters. Where she would have a good childhood, at least what was left of it. Decision made, she would take Irisi to Kerrick and then she would come back one more time, and kill her father. The dangerous soul Cimby was born with smiled in its dark hiding spot, excited for the prospect of a kill without boundaries.

“Well, looks like I’ll be returning to Kerrick sooner than I thought,” she said to herself, cutting up the meat. “Kinda wanted to make him sweat and wait for me a while.”

Later, after the meat was cooked, properly smothered in a spiced rub and barbeque sauce, they sat in the grass and enjoyed an impromptu picnic as the sun set. Cimby decided it was time to broach the subject.

“Iri…what your father did, I will not let him do it again, understand?” Irisi nodded, wiping BBQ sauce off her messy face. “I want to take you out of that place. I am going to have a chat with your father and then you will—”

“Come live with you here?” Irisi squealed, a brilliant smile on her face.

“No,” Cimby said, putting her plate on the ground. “No, I told you, you can’t live with me here. It’s too dangerous for you.”

“I’ll stay out of your way,” the girl pleaded.

“That’s not the point, Iri. You need a safe environment to grow up in.”

“You give that to me.”

“Yes, but what about when I have to leave again?” Cimby stood, gathering the garbage, needing something to do as she let the girl down. “It would be irresponsible of me to just leave a ten-year-old here unprotected on a regular basis. It is bad enough I let you stay here by yourself when I am gone.”

“I’m more responsible than the average ten-year-old and you’re usually not gone so long. What happened this time, by the way?” Irisi stood, helping Cimby clean up.

“I was waylaid at the Were mansion.” Well, that was one way to put it.

“The Mansion? Where the Alphar lives?” Irisi asked, her green and yellow eyes wide with excitement. She often asked Cimby questions about other shifters and how they lived, the girl’s fascination with her own species a sad reminder of how her life had been so disconnected from the preternatural world.

“Yes, that’s where I’m going to take you. You’ll be safe there. They can find you a new family who will love and appreciate you. You’re a shifter, you belong with other shifters.”

“I already have a family,” Irisi argued stubbornly. “I haven’t turned out terribly hanging around you.”

“I’m not fit to care for you,” Cimby said, kneeling and taking Irisi’s hands in hers. “But I’m not letting you stay here either.”

“Why? It’s not so bad.” Irisi, in her own right, was a warrior. The girl had endured more ridicule from her peers and later on, her own family to create a lifetime of resentful cynicism. But she kept on hoping and smiling, finding the small things in life to keep her going. Sure, she had her surly adolescent moments, but what young woman didn’t?

“Listen to me, Iri. We are going to stop by your place tonight, get your stuff and then we are driving to California.” Cimby cupped Irisi’s delicate face, wiping a stray tear forming at the corner of her eye. “There is nothing to be frightened of.”

“You’re just gonna leave me at The Mansion though, right? You’re gonna come back here once you drop me off like I never existed?” Cimby huffed at the girl’s whines and pulled her into a hug, she could feel the raised welt marks on her back underneath the thin T-shirt. She was the only person on the planet, before Kerrick at least, that she ever showed easy affection. The girl had an impossible hold on Cimby’s heart.

“Stop that, I could never forget you and I won’t. No, I won’t stay here after we leave. I’m not attached to the place.” Cimby pulled back to look Irisi in the eyes. “You were the only reason I stayed here as long as I did.” Cimby wondered how much she should tell the young girl of what waited for them back at The Mansion.

“Okay.” Irisi nodded, that familiar determination lighting her face. “Let’s go get my stuff. Do you think the shifters at The Mansion will laugh at my hair?”

“What hair? There’s no hair to laugh at.”

“Ha-ha, wolfy. Very funny.” Irisi rolled her eyes and punched Cimby in the shoulder in good fun.

“I think it’s safe for you to call me Cimby, now.” She’d always asked Irisi to call her something other than her name in case her identity had been compromised. Cimby didn’t want the girl placed in harm’s way because of what she did for a living. Of course, Irisi was a snot and called her anything but actual people names just to piss her off.

“Cimby?”

“Short for Cymbeline.”

Irisi stopped, looking somewhat stunned. “You really are taking me away, aren’t you? All these years and you never let me call you by your name.”

“It was for your protection. I’m sorry though, Iri.” Cimby rubbed her fingers through the red bristles on Irisi’s head. “I should have taken you away from him long ago.”

“It wasn’t always like this.” Irisi shrugged, taking Cimby’s hand and leading her into the cabin. “When Mom died he got worse.”

Cimby pulled Irisi into another hug, giving the girl a kiss on the forehead, marveling at her strength. “Help me pack my stuff into the car and then we’ll head out.”

“We’re packing all your weapons?” Irisi cried, looking as though she were being sentenced to a fate worse than death. “You have a friggin’ arsenal in here!”

“No, I’ll need a U-Haul for all that, maybe some armored trucks. For now we’ll just take the handhelds.”

“Oh, well, at least that’s something.”

Chapter Twelve

“You have the duffel bag ready?” Cimby asked as she put the car in park and checked to see if there were any neighbors out and about in Irisi’s quaint, Southern residential neighborhood.

“Yup,” Irisi said from the passenger side of the car.

“You know
exactly
what you are going to take?” A nebulous essence tickled the edge of Cimby’s senses. She turned to look behind the car but the street was deserted. She rolled the window down to scent the air, searching for a reason to convince Irisi to abandon her material possessions and just let Cimby drive straight to The Mansion. But all seemed normal. The street was just a run-of-the-mill street lined with identical houses. Even her Wolf was quiet, unable to sense any sort of nefarious presence. Still, Cimby couldn’t shake the instinctual revulsion she felt staring at Irisi’s house, like slime trickling up her spine and tugging on the hairs at the back of her neck. It was a gut feeling. She hated gut feelings of any kind, as they were usually bad and almost always right.

“Yup,” Irisi said again, oblivious to Cimby’s distress. “Just the essentials.”

Cimby wanted to leave, but it was necessary to talk to Irisi’s father before stealing her away. She didn’t need to hear there was a police-run manhunt searching for the girl. “Anything else you think of along the way, we can buy you when we arrive at the compound.”

“Okay,” Irisi said, not taking her eyes off the house. The glow of a flickering television illuminated the window, the only light coming from the small structure. Irisi’s knuckles were white from squeezing the straps of the duffel so hard. It struck Cymbeline like a battering ram. The girl was terrified to be back in this hellhole. The home should be a place of refuge for a child or adolescent, not the other way around. Irisi was a stark reminder of why Cimby accepted her lot in life so easily. She did her work to protect the innocents from ever experiencing what Irisi had gone through, keeping the monsters at bay. Cimby placed her hand over Irisi’s and began to massage the tension out of her hands.

“Don’t be afraid,” Cimby said, giving Irisi a steady gaze of reassurance.

“I’m not afraid.”

Cimby stroked Irisi’s head, the short bristles making it feel like her scalp was covered in peach fuzz. “I’m not going to let him hurt you ever again, do you understand?”

Irisi courageously looked over at Cimby, her voice finally sounding confident. “Yes.”

“Good. Remember what I told you?”

“Stay in the car until you give the signal.”

“Good.” Cimby emerged from the car, keeping it running in case Irisi needed to make a quick getaway, and strolled up the well-kept walkway. It was a fairly new colonial. No chipped paint, the yard perfectly trimmed. A stranger passing by would never guess it was the home of an abusive monster. Wasn’t that the way these things usually went though, monsters hiding in plain sight? Cimby had seen humans glancing warily at shifters and other preternaturals, afraid of what they didn’t understand. When really those creatures were just trying to live a normal life, and wouldn’t have given those humans a second glance if they hadn’t pointed and whispered in fear. It was that fear that created the hate and loathing, the building blocks of a true monster.

Cymbeline reached the door and inhaled, testing the air for odd scents or matter that didn’t fit. It wasn’t just the unsettling feeling of the house keeping her on edge, she’d had a bad feeling about this situation since they’d left the cabin, the roiling in her gut and the unusual silence of her Wolf warning of a presence just out of her sight, beyond even her heightened senses. Something wasn’t right. Standing on the porch, she could finally feel a tinge of residual magic in the air. It wasn’t as dense a fog that could remain after freshly used magic, the sensation like plastic wrapping around one’s skin. It may not have been recent, but the pressure was still there and it was vast, a large amount of magic used to have dissipated this slowly. Just that fact should have warned Cymbeline to take Irisi and go, but she couldn’t quell the need she had to see inside this house. The man was human—she shouldn’t have felt any sort of power in the first place.

Cymbeline rang the bell and no more than ten seconds later the door flew open. A tall, skinny man with gray hair and hollow cheeks stared back at her. He knew who she was. She’d made herself known in Irisi’s life one time before, when she’d first met him and his wife after getting to know Irisi. She knew at the time she saw at least affection for the girl, but that all disappeared with his wife’s death. It was clear as day now that any love he felt were for his Gods alone and she would need to leave a more lasting impression than a simple warning to curb his abusive habits. But that would come later, when Irisi was safe with Kerrick at The Mansion.

“I’m taking Iri away from here,” she said bluntly, staring him down. “You are going to go for a two-hour walk. I’m going to get her things and you will never see her again.”

The man took a brave step forward and Cimby nearly gagged at the scent of the sickness in his soul. There was no goodness left in him. “You have no right!”

She let her eyes go black, a precursor to shifting that humans were rather wary of. “I know you have no love for her. So I will say this once more. Leave, don’t come back for two hours, and you will never see either of us again.” She couldn’t promise not to kill him, no matter how many rules she’d be breaking if she did. An Incendiary wasn’t allowed to kill discriminately, only those they were ordered to hunt.

“She is my daughter. She may be a demon bitch like you, but she is still mine.” That was enough. Cymbeline grabbed the fool by the throat and pushed him into the house, lifting him off his feet and squeezing down on his air pipe. She let her Wolf seep into her being. Teeth elongated and claws sharpened.

“You’re the bitch here, daddy dear.” She growled, giving him a sharp-toothed grin, and concealing her surprise that he knew what Irisi was.

The man tried to sputter a curse at her and she compressed his airway tighter.

“Your mind has sickened since the moment your wife died. I’m sorry for your loss, but it’s no excuse to take your grief out on an innocent child.”

“Not—not a child,” he rasped as she let up on his air a bit.

“Yes. I know what she is,” Cymbeline hissed. “I know how old she
actually
is. I know it must be something you did to her to make her stop growing. And if I find out you did have something to do with it…” She lowered him back to the floor, bringing her teeth down to his neck and biting hard enough to make him bleed. “I’ll come back for you. Now go take a walk while we get her things.”

He stared at her as she released him, terror in his eyes and the stench of fear-induced piss infusing the air as it leaked onto the floor. He grabbed his keys and ran down the steps. Cimby watched the man glare at Irisi in the car as he walked past, waiting for him to try something. But he obeyed with a final sneer at his adopted daughter and kept on walking. Once he turned the corner, Cimby waited a moment, listening to the sounds of his footsteps fading into the quiet night before waving for Irisi to shut the car off and come join her on the stoop.

For the next half hour they moved efficiently through the house, grabbing the items Irisi had described to Cymbeline earlier in the day. They were random things: a picture, a jewelry box, some clothes, an iPod—sentimental items a girl facing a major upheaval in her life would want to keep. Irisi kept moving but that bad feeling continued to ride the edge of Cimby’s senses. She wanted to get them out of there as fast as possible.

“You done, kid?” she asked after a thorough combing through the small but clean house. No wonder not a soul had ever made a complaint after inquiring after Irisi’s wellbeing. If they had, all they would have seen was a pleasant-looking home with all the comforts and modern conveniences any other normal residence would have. If Cymbeline had not been trained to detect lingering traces of emotions, she would never have recognized the stench of fear and magic that had been infused into the furniture, coating the home with a dark and forbidding aura. She was amazed, yet again, that Irisi had retained her strength of character while living in this weary home.

Along with that pride compounded regret that she had not stolen the girl away from this man earlier in her life. It wasn’t only for Irisi’s safety Cymbeline had denied Irisi’s request to come with her. Cymbeline had been so convinced her mere association with the child would have affected her performance as the Incendiary, her trainers’ voices a relentless chorus in her mind instructing her what she could and could not do. At some point, she would have to stop judging herself through the eyes of men and women who no longer controlled her life. Yes, she had a job to do, an important job, but that did not mean she was not allowed to develop a personality or step away from the bounds of what was required of her. Her main purpose as Incendiary was to protect the innocents. Irisi helped her see she could do this in more ways than just being an emotionless assassin.

“There’s one more thing on my list, I can’t find it though,” Irisi said, face red from stress and turning in a circle, casting her gaze about frantically as if she’d spot the final item lying at her feet.

“What is the item?” Cymbeline asked, placing her hands on the girl’s shoulders to keep her from spinning in place and passing out.

“It’s a necklace.”

Cymbeline opened her mouth to reply when a sliver of awareness trickled down her back, putting her on alert. She peeked through the curtain covering the window overlooking the front lawn to see if the man had come back. Nothing was out there, all was quiet but the magic in the air felt even heavier than it had earlier. The sooner they got out of there the better. “Do you really need it?”

“It was my mom’s…my
real
mom’s. I usually keep it in my jewelry box but it’s not there. I do need it. Please help me find it.” Irisi’s bottom lip began to quiver but instead of giving into hysteria, she bit her lip and fisted her hands, taking deep breaths to work through the panic. This necklace was important to the girl. They could stay a few more minutes.

“Okay, kid. We will find it but we need to hurry.” They searched Irisi’s room and bathroom first, but Cimby knew if this was something Irisi had considered important they would most likely have to go into her father’s room to find it. Irisi hated the room, said it had too many creepy religious relics and symbols. Cymbeline volunteered to give it a cursory glance first, not even sparing a thought on letting Irisi enter.

They came up to the dark wooden door at the end of the hall. It was bathed in an ominous shadow that seemed to reflect the very nature of the man who slept in the room beyond it. Cymbeline placed her hand on the wood to feel for magic, but the thing was inert. She slowly pushed the door open, listening beyond the creak of the hinges, when the oddest sensation rushed over her body. The dark room was a magical vacuum that nothing of power could penetrate. She couldn’t smell a thing, which was bizarre as Irisi often complained about the incense he frequently burned in the room. Irisi stuck her head around the doorframe, peeking in to look around the murky room without stepping inside.

The shadows in the room were dark, even for Cymbeline’s preternatural eyesight, and the rest of her senses were all but cut off due to the magical black hole. Thinking back on it, she would scold herself that she should have seen him coming, should have noticed the instant he stepped back into the house and activated whatever was blocking her senses. She’d been too focused on Irisi, trying to get out of the damned house as fast as possible to really notice what was happening around them. A magical blocker—and since her senses as a shifter came from the magic within her Wolf spirit, they were all but rendered useless by it.

Cymbeline pulled Irisi out of the open doorway, shoving the small girl behind her with such force she could hear her slam against the floor. Something clear and liquid flashed in the remaining light from the hallway. Cymbeline smelled the acrid scent before it hit her face, burning and peeling her flesh away in rapid agony. The excruciating pain encompassed the left side of her face. The liquid fire marked and scorched her skin like lava and she could hear her flesh crackling like burning firewood. She screamed.

Cymbeline lost herself. Her precious control and the cage she kept her rage and fury in snapped with all the resistance of a twig. Her fangs descended and she attacked the old man without a second thought, reveling in the taste of his blood and the smell of his fear. This time it wasn’t just the Wolf inside who loved the way skin popped every time her fangs ripped him open. It wasn’t just her shifter nature that thought the exhale of his dying breath sweeter than any symphony she had ever heard. This was who she was deep down. This was why she hid from the world. This was what the Weres chose to train to protect their innocents. A beast who craved the taste of blood and sounds of screams.

A high-pitched sound to her right made her pull back from the decimated corpse and train her heightened focus on the doorway. Her claws, protruding from human fingers as she had surprisingly remained in her human form, were soaked with blood. She could sense the magic blocker attempting to dampen her senses but there were few magics that could tamper with her maddening rage. She inhaled another sweet scent. It was lighter than the flesh she’d just feasted on but still tainted by fear…and sickness. Sickness. She knew that scent. Irisi. Irisi. Iri was in the doorway and had watched as Cimby ate her adopted father.

The horrifying thought snapped her awareness back into a human state, retracting her claws and fangs until all that was left was her human shell. She’d been so close to leaping out that door and attacking Irisi. But she’d kept it together. She wasn’t gone yet. Her trainers had warned her if she allowed the berserker form to emerge often, it would become harder and harder to rein it back in.

Cymbeline inhaled and almost gagged at the overwhelming smell of blood on her breath. It was all over her and, Gods, her face throbbed. She whimpered. The salt of her rage-filled tears crawling down her face stung like knife wounds.