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Dax stopped by the front door, standing out of the line of sight of anyone outside. “I’m up front now.”
“Thanks, cher.”
“Thank you,” the creature said in English, his voice halting and a bit strained. “Your friend has a very…imposing presence.”
Delphine chuckled. “That he has. So why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself since you’re obviously not from around here.”
“You are correct. I am from…faerie.”
“And what brings you to our fair city?”
The fae laughed bitterly. “I do not mean to cause offense, but this city would not be considered fair to anyone. It has not been to me…and my companion.”
“Where is your companion?” Delphine asked.
The fae sighed. “That is, I’m afraid, how I came to be injured and in your shop.”
“Go on. My friend is here to help you if he can.”
“I’m not sure I can afford his kind of help. Do you not know what he is?” The second sentence was hissed lowly.
Delphine chuckled. “I know him well enough. He is a person of integrity. He has helped me and others in the past. If anyone can help you, he is one of the few in this unfair city you can trust.”
Dax’s eyebrows shot up. He didn’t realize Delphine held that strong of an opinion about him. They’d only just met, though she’d helped him several times and he’d paid the favor back by helping a terminally ill member of her community pass painlessly. Or she could be speaking thusly to get the story from the fae creature, though he suspected she did like him.
He hated that this city forced him to be jaded and suspicious of everyone, especially strangers. But there were good people, too. He’d been fortunate to meet Tomi and his mother Adele when he first arrived to begin his exile as a human. And they were the ones who introduced him to the voodoo priestess.
“You can try to look for someone else to help you, but your luck won’t be great. You’re right. This is a shithole of corruption and all that it breeds. Whatever threads woven through this city brought you here to me. I can offer help. Though if you don’t inform us what you need, then it can only be limited. I won’t endanger my community.”
The fae creature didn’t reply for a while, then sighed loudly. “You speak fairly. You may call me…Rory.”
“You may call me Delphine. My friend out there is called Dax.”
“I appreciate your aid, Delphine. I’m what is known to my people as a ranger. I came here with a fellow ranger to hunt a beast who’d found a crack in our realm and slipped through. We were following it in our realm and jumped though the crack before it could escape or the crack could shift to a new destination. We were lucky and landed where there was a trace of the beast, but the delay allowed the creature time to get a lead on us.”
“What kind of creature?” Delphine asked.
“I do not know what it might be called in your language or if there’s even a word for it. But it is not a cuddly beast. It’s a brutal hunter and eats the flesh of anything it captures, sentient or not.”
Delphine whistled. “That’s not good.”
“No, it is not. It doesn’t even wait until its victim is dead before it starts feeding.”
The manbo inhaled sharply. “That’s terrible.”
“Indeed. We tracked it and found evidence of its…feeding. This city is big, and there are too many places to hide. We tracked it down last night. Its presence was fresh and immediate. We thought we’d finally caught up to it, but when we saw a glimpse of it, my friend and I were ambushed.”
“Is it still free?” Delphine sounded deeply concerned.
“No. Whoever ambushed us had already caged the creature. I managed to fight off the men who’d jumped me, but my companion was captured along with the beast. I ran and hid, only emerging when I thought it was safe. I don’t know what brought me here, but whatever it was felt like I was being pulled along a thread.”
Dax’s eyes opened wide again. He’d thought he’d felt a vibration in the life threads intersecting with his own. And he’d been right. Dread flooded his gut as he thought of the other threads he had connections to…Minh.
“Delphine, ask him how many days ago they arrived.”
“I don’t know. Let me think,” the fae said, going silent for a few moments. “It was three nights ago.”
Chapter Three
