Blood Kin (11 page)

Niko’s eyes widened and he stumbled back a step, visibly disturbed. “How … no, I was human,” he said. “You know my past. Do … do not ask about them.” I
stared at him, all his confidence stripped away, his eyes wide in terror.

“The music,” I exclaimed. “The music disappeared when Daffyd did. You, just now, Niko, you felt like …
of
the music. You feel—there’s a vibration, almost a melody in your energy. Before, when you lived, were you fey?”

“What frightens you,
cariad
?” Tucker murmured as he wrapped his arms around Niko, who was visibly trembling. “Please, tell me.”

“I don’t want to remember,” he whispered. “Do not make me—”

Oh bloody hell, what the … what on earth scared a man … a vampire whose very existence was the stuff children read about in delicious horror?

“They came when I was a child,” Niko said, words broken with emotion, his hands clutching at Tucker’s shirt, voice nearly muffled as he buried his face in my brother’s shoulder. “I saw them.”

My brother’s hand cupped the back of Niko’s head. “Hush,
cariad
, you’re safe here.” Tucker looked around and, noticing a bench, motioned for us to move there. “Come, let’s sit,” he said to Niko. The three of us sat, Niko in the center, still shaking.

“Once … it was before I was a nobleman’s pet. I was a young child kept with other boys, with other orphans. One of my mates was taken one moonless night. He disappeared from his pallet, as if he’d never existed—in the dead of night, they came and took him. One of them saw me watching. He said nothing, but I’ll never forget his eyes shining in the dark. In the morning, when they came to wake us, I saw what they’d done. In place of my mate, they’d left a twisted dead thing, a changeling, dark of countenance and sickly. It lived only a few hours. I saw
it and noticed, but no one else did. The nurse, the adults, all thought it was the same boy, only suddenly taken ill. Orphans get sick, they die. They never knew. And I could do nothing. I couldn’t help him, my friend.”

Niko buried his face in his hands. “I’d forgotten,” he said, his voice muffled. “I buried this memory. Forced it away. You made me remember—when you touched me …” He looked up at me, his voice accusing. “I never even discussed this with Adam … and he knows
everything
else about me, from the pleasures to the tortures I endured as the plaything of a rich lord of Elizabeth’s court. I had to forget. I shut it away and closed that lock long ago. It was as if it had never existed.” Niko’s eyes looked haunted as he remembered his pain.

“When Adam first came, when I woke up after he rescued me, I … I thought he was one of them. One of the shining ones come to take me below, Underhill. I was so frightened. But then he showed me, explained how I’d been dying and he’d saved me by turning me. I wept for days with relief. I only ever told him that it was a frightening dream I’d had. He never knew it was truth. He told me that I’d be safe from Faery, as long as I was his.”

“Shhh,
cariad
,” whispered Tucker, bending over Niko, enfolding him in an embrace. “You are safe with me.”

I stood and paced several steps away from the pair, shaking with the revelation that Niko, Adam’s so-strong second-in-command, a vampire, could be brought to this—shivering like a frightened child, nearly choking trying to explain his fear to us. He’d regressed into a child’s memory—something he’d long suppressed. Damn my mother’s kin for this. They’d not only scarred me, but so many others. Sure, the Seelie court never admitted to stealing human children and leaving changelings in their
places. That was the purview of the Unseelie—so they said. When I’d left—been rescued—I never looked back. Until now. Until my cousin, Daffyd ap Geraint—son to the Sidhe relative who told my mother I’d have been better off left out in the world above to die of exposure—had entered my life.

Had Daffyd tricked me? Could all Sidhe disappear like that? Teleport, disapparate—whatever the hell you wanted to call it. I’d never seen evidence of it, but I spent so much of my time hiding away from everyone Underhill that, for all I knew, they were shapeshifters, too. I knew there were lesser fey folk who had non-human shapes, but although they’d shared space at court, they weren’t Sidhe, just other fey, other denizens of Faery. Some of them could flit about at will, but those were the wee folk, so far from human they never ventured Above anymore.

I stared across the quiet street at the silent concrete and glass retail-cum-office building. No one else was around but us at this time of night. Downtown Vancouver pretty much rolled up the sidewalks as soon as the offices that fed it closed for the evening. Stores and cafés both followed the standard office hour schedules, with the exception of the Tim Hortons restaurants spotting the landscape. We were still a few blocks from the more tourist-type areas, with late-opening restaurants and more people.

Niko’s voice came from behind me. He’d stepped close, all signs of his emotional outburst now gone. “First he was there, then he wasn’t. No sound, only displaced air and the lack of pressure on the side of my arm where he’d been seated.” He came up beside me. “I apologize for—”

“No, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I know what they’re like.”

He nodded. “Tucker doesn’t.”

“No,” I agreed. Tucker stood next to Niko, still hovering, concerned, but keeping silent.

“Daffyd being around us never set you off?”

“No,” Niko replied. “He kept to himself during the flight. Then we were only in the taxi for a short time. He shielded well.”

The three of us studied the street, staring at the storefront across from us as if it held answers. The only answer it could provide, though, was that Montblanc pens were on sale through Friday.

“Seriously, what the fuck?” I finally said. “What in all the thousand levels of all the hells is going on here?”

Both men regarded me in silence.

“I only wish I knew, sis,” Tucker finally said. “I think we should ditch our dinner plans and go directly to the condo. We can always call for pizza or something. I’m sure there’s got to be some liquor stocked there. Wouldn’t be a Kelly house otherwise.”

“No doubt,” I said and inclined my head toward the right.

I had no fucking clue what was happening, where Daffyd vanished to or where he could possibly be now. But standing around with our heads up our collective behinds would accomplish absolutely nada. Time to regroup.

Tucker hailed another cab. This one was no bigger than the last, but there were only three of us to fit into it this time.

T
HE RIDE TO
the condo was fairly short and very silent. The building was located in a cul-de-sac off Cordova, its approach via a private drive. No gate was needed, as the latest security devices were employed to keep the unwanted out. Sometimes I’d felt that the unwanted person was me. Luckily, the last couple of times I’d come here to visit, I hadn’t had to deal with anyone other than a brother or two.

The driver dropped us off at the turnoff for the private drive.

The condo was a twelve-story glass and steel tower on the water. Its glass shone dark, a reflective coating hiding the interior from passersby.

We approached the building’s entry and Tucker dug into a pocket and pulled out a plastic card key. He waved it in front of the sensor, then, more slowly, placed his open palm on the reader for a few seconds. A red light turned to green, then to yellow and remained flashing. Tucker scowled and tried the card swipe and palm placement again. Same result.

“I don’t know why … Keira, you try.” He handed me the card. I wiped it on my jeans, then repeated Tucker’s actions. The moment my palm touched the sensor pad, a green light flashed, a click sounded and one of the double doors swung open in silent welcome.

“Guess you’ve got the touch, sis,” Tucker said.

“Nice.” Niko nodded at the door with an approving look. “Biometrics?”

“More like bio-magick,” I said as I stepped through the door. On passing the threshold, I felt the whisper touch of energy shimmy through me as if I’d stepped through an invisible barrier—which I had, but the last time I’d done this, I hadn’t felt a thing. The wards weren’t meant to be felt. I hesitated a moment, then kept going. Someone must have boosted the energy recently or something. Either that or I was more sensitive now.

“Damnation,” Niko exclaimed as he followed directly behind me. “Magick, indeed,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as he shivered. Tucker followed him and the smoked-glass front door shut behind him.

Niko stopped walking and was looking around the place. There wasn’t much to see, but what there was, was pretty impressive. The building’s lobby was large, simply decorated in that understated yet extremely expensive way that fairly screamed loads of money. Simple leather-topped benches sat on either side of a bubbling stream, which was fed by a waterfall pouring from the rock wall. Tasteful plants lined the stream and the small pool.

A curved dark marble reception desk sat to our right, empty of staff, its brownish gold accents subtly reflecting the subdued recessed lighting. No clutter, nothing showy, only simple clean lines and emptiness as if the entire lobby was nothing more than a film set, a museum diorama waiting for its mannequins.

“Your family warded a private building?” Niko asked. “How’s that work exactly? I would have supposed the building employed security guards and the usual keycard access or digital code. How do the other tenants get in?”

“We own the place,” I said. “It’s definitely warded nine ways to the next millennium and keyed only to family.”

Niko stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around to stare at Tucker and me. “I thought you owned a condo,” he said. “That’s what you both kept calling it: condo, as in singular.”

“We do.” Tucker grinned. “One condo—and all the others, too. Mostly, when we refer to the condo specifically, we’re talking about the penthouse. That’s reserved for immediate family to use whenever—me, Keira, our brothers, Dad. The rest of the condos in the building are sometimes occupied by family or guests. I don’t keep track since I’m no longer in town.”

I strode over to the elevator and pushed the access button. “No one ever staffs the desk,” I said, “because there doesn’t need to be anyone there. No one outside of Kellys or our guests ever get issued keycards or access codes.” I gestured with my hand. “As for preventing break-ins or vandalism? No need for security guards when the best in the business set those wards.”

“Fairly strong wards—impressive,” Niko said. “I haven’t felt a barrier like that in a long time.”

“You felt it?” Tucker asked. “That’s odd.”

“Odd how?” I scowled at him. “I felt it, too. I thought someone had upped the mojo or maybe I’m more sensitive now.”

“I’d buy you being more sensitive,” Tucker said. “But Niko? I don’t think so.” He frowned and looked back at the entrance. Two tinted glass doors, nothing special and certainly no visible sign of the magick that warded them. “I didn’t feel a thing, as per usual.”

The elevator doors swooshed open and we piled inside. I stabbed the top button. “Huh,” I said. “Wonder what it
means?” The doors closed silently and we began our ascent to the penthouse.

I PALMED the sensor at the entrance to the penthouse, a few steps from the elevator. The door opened to a scene right out of some home decorating show on HGTV Canada.

“What the bloody blazes are
you
doing here?” I demanded as Tucker, Niko and I walked into the wide entryway.

My brother Rhys stood on a small stepladder, hanging a black drape in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the outside wall of the main living area. He’d obviously been at this a while, as the rest of the windows were already draped. Liz, seemingly perfectly at home, stood next to him, another drape over her arm and holding up a hook in her right hand.

“Making the place lightproof,” Rhys said, mumbling around a couple more hooks he held in his mouth. “Just a sec.” He took the hook from Liz’s hand, hung another section and then quickly finished the last panel. Hopping down to the floor, he gestured toward his handiwork. “Ta da! What do you think?”

I shook my head and went to the couch to sit down. This was more than I could handle in one day. “I wasn’t talking to you, Rhys,” I said. “Though, I wasn’t expecting you here, either, but obviously, you being here is a heck of a lot more expected than you.” I pointed to Liz, who plopped down on a nearby leather chair. “Didn’t you go home?”

“I was on my way here to drop off the luggage and got a call from this one.” She nodded towards Rhys. “He asked if we’d landed yet.”

Rhys shrugged. “I needed help and figured if you all were heading this way, I’d wait until you showed up.”

Made sense, I thought.

“I told him you were going to dinner, so I’d stay and help.” Liz leaned back in the chair and stretched out her legs. “So where’d you go eat?” She looked us over and did a double take. “Hey, come to think on it, where’s Daffyd?”

“Yeah, well … that’s a bit of a story.” I sat down on one of the low modern couches artfully arranged in a conversation pit. Niko sat down across from me, on another couch that was catty-corner to Liz’s chair. Rhys kept fiddling with the curtains, like some sort of demented Welsh Martha Stewart.

“Daffyd kind of vanished,” I said and explained what had happened, including the music I’d heard. I left out Niko’s story. That was for him to share.

Liz blinked a few times then reached over to the small end table next to her, where an open bottle of Gastown Amber Ale sat on a stone coaster. She picked it up, took a long swig and regarded the three of us. “That’s one hell of a story,” she finally said. “What now?”

“If we weren’t in the middle of Vancouver, I’d suggest my brothers shift into wolves and try to find him.” If I weren’t so damned new at it, I suppose I could shift myself.

“You mean to get his scent and track him?” Rhys asked as he gathered another curtain and tied it back. The view from these windows was beyond spectacular. The building overlooked the water and in the short distance, we could see the lights on the mountains. “Hold that, will you?” Rhys handed Tucker another curtain tie. Tucker complied, more patient than I would have been. “That’s impossible, you know,” Rhys continued.