Tommy
“All of that fanfare for a damn woman?” My sergeant at arms growled from his place on one of the sofas. There was a woman sprawled across his lap. One of the club girls. The only one left in the room. I had been clear on the fact that this was meant to be a meeting for my inner circle only. I would call church when I knew more.
I wanted to get everything clear in my head first. Like why the hell Leviathan was sending us to save a random human woman. And I couldn't concentrate with the damn scantily dressed woman pawing over the man who was there to work.
I had been the one to push Blade into the role of sergeant at arms. It had been mine for a long time. I had thought he was the perfect replacement, but I was beginning to regret it. The young shifter was a horn dog. More interested in getting his dick wet than doing his job. Not that he had ever let us down when it mattered. Blade got shit done. He just took his sweet time about it.
Raising my eyebrow at him, I glanced down at the picture still clutched in my hands.
“What makes her so special?” he asked.
“I was hoping you could tell us that.” I had scanned the file a dozen times, and there was nothing extraordinary about her that I could see.
Late twenties, a teacher of all things, no illicit past, no enemies. She was as normal as they came. Nothing in that file told me why she had been taken. Or why Leviathan wanted her back so badly that he would send us in to get her.
Everyone knew he had a bit of a soft spot for people in need, the only soft spot in his impenetrable black and red-scaled body. But there were hundreds if not thousands of people in danger in this state alone.
What made this woman more important than the others?
“There’s nothing. She’s the eldest child out of three. Supports her low life father and two younger brothers. She’s a good girl from everything I can find. Not even a parking ticket.” Blade glanced down at his phone. “She works, volunteers at a local hospital.” He chuckled sarcastically. “Reads to sick children of all things.”
He said it like it was something to be ashamed of, but I found it kind of endearing. People were always so self-absorbed. It was nice to hear about one that actually gave a shit about others.
“That’s it?”
He nodded. “That’s it.” He ran his hand through his shaggy dark hair, making it stick up on end. “She doesn’t party like other women her age. She’s…” he frowned as he struggled to find the right word, “boring.”
“Boyfriends?”
Blade’s chuckle became a belly laugh. “Why are you interested?”
I didn’t answer him, the scowl on my face making the smile slide from his.
“None that I can see. She had one in college but nothing serious that I can find now. So you can rule out that.”
For all his faults, Blade was good at his job. It had been my first thought that maybe she had gotten herself involved with a paranormal without realising.
Glancing down at the picture again, I frowned. It felt like she was staring straight into my soul. Her eyes were full of tenderness, even in the grainy black and white photo. Part of me desperately wanted to know what colour her eyes were. Her hair was light, I could already tell that. Blonde, maybe red. In the photo it was pulled back from her face severely, but it did nothing to hide the softness in her face.
She looked nice.
Briella.
Her name was Briella. I couldn’t keep thinking about her as an object. She was a person. A person I was tasked with rescuing.
Something Blade had said was bugging me. “Did you say she was the eldest child?”
He nodded. “Yeah, why is that important?” Blade didn’t try to keep the curiosity out of his voice. Even Raze leant forward.
“It could be...” I was pretty sure it was. “The fae always prefer firstborns. It’s how they used to make deals back a couple of hundred years ago. There used to be whispers about it.”
“You don’t know for sure?” Raze queried.
“I didn’t know anyone else like me except for my brother, and we kept ourselves to ourselves.” There was so much I didn’t know about my own kind. The dark fae, the monsters of folklore, goblins, hobgoblins and the like.
“I know a Bogget,” the woman on Blade’s lap said suddenly and all eyes turned towards her.
“What?” Raze spoke first.
