Once Lost Lords (Royal Scales, Book 1) (15 page)

His addiction. In my hands. My hands, my seat, my fingers pressed
against the counter top. Mine. I could feel it. The connection slowly
spun together from the items and thoughts.

Thin, thready, loose, a terrible cord. Wouldn’t hold a newborn.
Might break if grasped too hard. Carefully. Tenderly. I follow it,
barely touching. Leads somewhere close.

Sweat dripped down my forehead. My fingers were shaking from the
effort of trying to force this tenuous connection. Success was
encouraging. I let my other thought patterns control the process,
relying on their instinctual nature.

A house. Clan. Takes up four city blocks. Three story in the center.
Trees even taller. Each one is vibrant. Spirits show intense care.
Not sparse like the forest trees.

My eyes had seen that house, that elven block they sat in like a
fortress inside of the city. Of course he wasn’t one of the sad
ones that permeated the poor parts of town, this fortress was well
kept. Likely the clan was somewhere in the middle rung of elven
society.

Cord still tender. Fades in and out. One eye watches. Follows
lead to building. I soar closer. Over wood spawned walls. Past
gatekeepers. Into a window. Limbs behind me. Slows descent. Catches
wind. Barely brushing frail cord.

I followed it in further, carefully controlling the possessive mind
set. My hands on his drink, my hands on the counter where he passed
through. My feet placed where his feet had been. His house on a
street my feet had walked through. The litany flowed in the
background on my thoughts. Each item that looked even remotely
familiar was jumbled in. A doorknob that looked like the one at my
house, a rug that looked like one I had rolled up downstairs.

They could very well be mine. Were mine. No, they are mine.

Air feels odd. Harder to move in. Thick. Swimming instead of
gliding. Struggle forward. Force the connection. House is protected
somehow. Still, I progress.

Bedroom. Grown rather than cut from meshed woods. Walls feel
alive. Warm. Inside is worse. Harsh colored threads against the
natural woodwork. Each feels foreign. Unwelcome. Some are better.
Share that same sense of life the walls do. Grown fabrics. Greens,
browns. Natural colors.

Clearly this was not his room. I laughed both in my mind and out loud
in the bar. My senses felt the pattern of sound and transferred it
over to something understandable. At least a little bit. A husky
voice of an excited female.

“You’d better last longer this time.” Soft tone.
Bouncy. The words cut through. Female. Try not to feel the locks of
hair. Clean. Well parted. Brushed carefully, constantly. Feels too
much of her. Invasive.

Tattooed Eyes the Blonde was completely naked in all her rail thin
glory. The chest barely a step beyond male, but her hips all woman.
Her body confirmed what I suspected, that the tattoos weren’t
limited to her eyes. Thin patterning spilled down her neck and
twisted over shoulders and down even further, ending on the edges of
her toes. Beneath her she managed to pin the elf I was tracking. He
looked beyond prissy without a stitch on. She was clearly enjoying
herself. Umbrella Beer looked like a little boy trying not to blow it
early.

Try not to laugh. Hang there. Ignore the couple. Awkward
knowing that I don’t see this. I feel too much. Almost break
frail link. Can’t. Need to understand here.

I didn’t build this thin link to mock him. It was certainly a
bonus, though. My mind fell back into default patterns. I looked
around the room searching for items of value. Or easy entrances,
exits, sharp edges, structural weaknesses. I wasn’t here to
mentally peek in on his sex life.

This was to find him, then find her, only I found both in the first
go. Still, there was something else worth testing. Next was checking
if either one could see me while projecting.

Move closer. Try not to pick a revealing angle. Long Ear boy on
sheets. Make face. No response. His eyes glazed over. Lost in the
moment. Female keeps moving. Feels desperate. Face annoyed. Cheek
pinches on one side. Back getting tense, not a build up. Stressed.
Her sharp ears twitch.

Words shouted. Feels like cool water slamming into me. Not
painful, quite surprising. Don’t understand. Thin link
unravels. Frail anyway. Retreat back to body.

It fell apart completely. Either because of something she had done or
because of my lack of concentration. It didn’t matter, I had
gotten the part I wanted. A location for someone that might be able
to help me answer a question.

And clearly.

She might be helpful. Umbrella Beer was useless to both of us. I
raised a mocking cheer to the elf I could no longer see. The man was
with a female he couldn’t figure out how to satisfy, which
screwed with any man’s ego, no matter the race. Of course his
poor choices extended to taste in drinks too. The sip I dared of his
concoction tasted revolting.

Now to get Tattooed Eyes’ attention. I would take Julianne’s
advice and ask outright, what is a Lord to the elven people? An hour
and a half later and I was in the area from my vision. I found a tree
that held a shared view of her little boudoir to park myself at.

It was stand here or barge in. History had shown a plethora of
examples where barging into a clan home without an invite was a
terrible, terrible idea. I didn't have the balls to try even with my
track record. Government officials didn’t want to cross into an
elven block without an invitation or the Council backing them up.
Even the youngest elf was outstanding with a bow. Western Sector laws
allowed them defense of their homesteads.

Time passed while I practiced my litany, turning it one way or the
other, changing the order of the words. My coat, my pants, my
footsteps, my hands, my eyes, my walkway. Mine. It was hard to
recreate a point of view that I never realized I had. Nothing felt
different, but then there was nothing driving a need to feel
different. No attacking vampires, no missing items to track down.

Mentally playing back the earlier portions of my life revealed a
constant change in perception. It had given me an edge, a tool, an
awareness that others couldn’t match, for reasons I didn’t
pretend to understand. It had to be vampirism. There was nothing
else, all the degrees and studies in the world hadn’t turned up
any other races since the Purge.

Why hadn’t I questioned it when I was younger? Then again, if
someone had told me that pissing out a third story window every day a
high noon gave me superpowers I wouldn’t ask why. If it worked,
anyway. This was almost the same.

My eyes flicked to the window again, canvassing for any sign of
either elf. The buildings that comprised this elven block were mostly
forest in color. The trees inside had started to shift into autumn’s
yellow and reds. Even elves let nature take its course. Separating
out the houses was difficult, but possible since they were in a
confined space.

The block itself was surrounded by an earthen wall. It looked like
someone had sheared off parts of a cliff face and put it between
houses and windows. The pathway channeled visitors through the main
entrances and exits. There were some windows that were right on the
streets, but those were for communication and trade between clans.

Elves were one of the few races that hadn’t fully migrated over
to a monetary system. Instead they based things on trade goods, each
block specializing in different items. Most of them typically owned a
store or two to sell their goods for real money along the main roads.

Once again I tried to shift my mind to the stream of focusing
comments. My hands, the path I had walked on, the tree I leaned
against, air that came in and out of my lungs, mine. It was all mine,
however briefly, however tentatively. Mine.

A movement at the window caught my eye. It looked female, right hair,
right eyes, a hint of green and purple tattoos. I stared for a minute
and tried not to smile like an idiot. How irritated would she be?
Hopefully not too annoyed to help out.

It wasn’t like I knew where else to go. My contacts were
scarce, my job typically made me unwelcome in most corners, and elves
were rarely in trouble. The choice was to wait or give up and leave,
and I wasn’t quite ready for that. A window closer to street
level opened and her head popped out.

“Come on, come on!” She waved me over. Moment of truth.
Maybe I should start by asking her name? Julianne said I should try
asking things.

“This may …” I tried to speak.

“Want to go to your place?” She cut me off. It didn’t
help that I could barely focus on her face. For once the woman wasn’t
wearing glasses, but it didn’t help because her shirt was
essentially see through.

“Uhhh…”

“First time’s free.” The elf said.

“First what?” I was more than a little lost.

“You didn’t come over here to ask me out?” She was
pouting now.

“Not really, I…”

She slammed the window shut.

“I wanted to ask a question…”

The window propped open again, this time she was wearing a less see
through shirt. It didn’t help me focus any because I had seen,
not once, but twice, what was under there.

“Mmmh, for you I’d say, yes.”

“Do elves have anyone they would call a Lord? Anyone who isn’t
an elf?” Just ask. Julianne had suggested I ask my question and
not wait for the answer to come to me. Out of all the things I had to
figure, why Evan had called me 'Lord' felt paramount.

There was a pause as she narrowed eyes in my direction. My confusion
must have been evident.

“First favor’s free, sure you want to blow it on this?
There are some things that are so much more fun than dusty, old
stories.” Then she smiled and leaned over a bit. A hand
stretched out in my direction, tantalizingly close. It had been a
while and here an elf was practically placing herself in my hands.
The choice took me longer to make than it should have.

“What’s the second one cost?”

“Is that your question?” She was completely chipper about
it.

“No, yes, damn it.” I tried to settle myself. The entire
litany was now shattered. “The first question please.”

“Awww…no. No, we don’t have Lords anymore. History
says we sacrificed them all to survive.” She sounded pleased
about it. Her eyes playful as she rolled over. Her body now draped
out with her arms reaching out. Just a few inches away and she might
be able to reach me. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

She wasn’t exactly pristine from what I could tell.

“Why?”

“Second question, there’s a priceee.” She smiled
and her voice got higher.

“What is it?”

“Can’t tell you. That’s part of the price. Agree or
don’t. Answer or not.”

“How about your name?”

“I’ll give you my name for free, but only if you remember
to call it out.” Her smile was infectious and nearly had me
going. If pissing off Kahina didn’t seem like such a bad idea I
might actually go for it. There weren’t any chains in her room
that I had seen.

“Can’t promise I’ll need to.” Hopefully, my
return grin was as convincing as hers was.

“Candy.” She said happily.

“Candy?” I echoed. It sounded like a bad stripper name.
Then again, the way she was draped out her window it fit better then
Carol, or Sharron.

“It’s actually Kanda’rila Ro’hal.”

“So Candy.” Both names were filed away.

“What’s your name?”

“Jeff.” I automatically gave my new name, the one that
served me since returning to town.

“Pleasure to finally put a name to the face, Jeff.” She
reached out a tiny hand, upside down, to shake. I took it carefully
and shook.

“Pleasure, Candy.” I responded.

“Now there’s an idea. I hope that’s a promise.”
She rolled back up again and stood, one hand on the window. “Any
other questions, big guy?”

“Not right now.”

“Alright…” Candy pouted in a way that made me want
to comfort her. Which would get me within arm’s reach. All
sorts of things might happen, the end result being either very good,
or train-wreck bad, or both.

I turned to leave.

“Oh, a word of advice.” Her voice shifted to something
less playful, more serious and demanding. Even the lilting tone was
gone. I slowly turned around to look at her with a puzzled look on my
face. “Be careful who you ask that question to. You do not want
other Speakers to find out you’re nosing into the histories.”

She sounded so different and serious that it was obvious this wasn’t
a joke. “I’ll be careful.”

“Good.” Her voice shifted again to the playful one.
“Because I can’t wait for you to say, my, name.”
She winked and let the shutter fall with a clank of hardwood.

I’ll give Julianne one thing, just asking got results. Lords
were a real thing. There were a ton more questions, and the price
attached was unknown. It looked like sex, but it was never that
simple with elves. The harder question was how much do I trust what
she said? Hell, being suspicious went contrary to my natural thought
process. Daniel, Kahina, Kanda. The names were too close and Candy
would be easier.

Sex with Candy didn’t seem to come with the terrible
possibility of being rent apart for blood. Yet one elf had called me
Lord more than once, and another told me they sacrificed all their
Lords. The possessive woman had proven dangerous. The playful one
might find a reason to kill me. I should just find a bitch.

Kahina. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the worst breakup
in the city. She’d been loyal, looked out for me, hell the
woman staked a man once, for me. That was a whirlwind of a night.
None of that meant Kahina was safe, rather that she was deadly.

For my next trick, I put some minutes on my cell phone and checked
the voicemail. The messages were few, mostly Daniel trying to get in
touch with me. Nothing recent, he knew as well as anyone else,
getting me by phone was unlikely. Daniel would have more luck looking
for me in random bars.