Once Lost Lords (Royal Scales, Book 1) Read online

  I slept. Upon my return to awareness, things were vastly improved. I didn’t hurt. The wounds on my legs were inspected first. They seemed to have completely vanished. Maybe I had exaggerated the damage.

  My phone painted a different story. According to the date display, I had lost another five days in hibernation. This time, the news came from a digital piece of junk rather than a friend. The hard part was figuring out how much of that had been the latest nap, or how much had been after Kahina carried me home.

  I took a long steamy shower before daring to risk the journey upstairs. It helped me survive the brunt of seeing my front room. It was a wreck, looking like a miniature hurricane had come through while I was asleep. My weight bench was thrown into the kitchen counter creating a work of art that would eat my entire deposit. The couch was broken in half and the windows facing the back were shattered.

  Had Kahina done this? Had someone else broken in? I tried to remember the noises from my half-awareness. It seemed likely that Kahina had been mad at being unable to get downstairs. The passageway down was filled with things designed to drive people off and the floor had its own surprises.

  I carefully passed all the mess and went outside while there was still daylight. Cleaning could be left for tonight when a readily available shelter was needed. I wasn’t even going to contemplate what Julianne would do when she noticed. The fact that my windows being shattered hadn’t garnered complaints was beyond me.

  Slow cognitive function and wanderings had me halfway down the street. Restless wasn’t quite the word for it but after being nearly comatose I needed to get out. Everything nearby needed to be checked for possible changes. There wasn’t any good reason for it, really I should be leaving a message for Kahina, talking to Julianne, or seeing how Daniel was doing. A few hours to myself would be nice. Just a few moments of peace to help me survive the return to reality’s nonsense.

  In recent days, the park and I had become fairly familiar with each other. It was a plot of land that had been adopted by an elven clan. They took pride in remaining true to the original plant life by keeping anything not native weeded out. Part of Western Sector’s grants went to them as funding for their care-taking efforts. As a result, they were legally required to open their parks to the public.

  It was a half win for both sides. Humans and other races got a beautiful place to get away to. Elves got to live in a city yet keep alive a lot of their older traditions. They replaced arrows through the eyeball with heavy fines upon littering visitors. Most elves felt that was even better than outright murder.

  I hiked through with no particular goal aside from passing the time. There were others here, people out with dogs, strollers, mothers jogging along. The elves had painstakingly made a path that normal people could follow. For extra, anyone could pay for an elven guide, there were normally a few near the entrances in the larger parks. They showed all the unseen paths and great views.

  My body was still shaky, but the outdoor air helped distract me. It was a welcome retreat. I hoped to see Candy somewhere in here. This park was near her clan. She didn’t seem like the manual labor type. Not outdoors anyway. That series of thoughts lasted far too long. Especially considering everything Kahina had just done for me.

  The sun was still fairly high. There were more hours to burn before the cleaning started. Now was a good time to ask Julianne about how much a repair to the apartment kitchen might cost. Frame damage was cheaper than pipework, and my home hadn’t flooded. There was hope I might get off cheap. I walked back towards home only to find that Julianne wasn’t at the bar. One of the waitresses saw me and passed me a message. The same one that I could never remember the name of. Her jet black hair had a feather woven into it.

  “She said to come by her house when you woke up.” The waitress was smirking like I won some sort of favor. From Julianne? Yeah, that sort of favor was unlikely. She seemed dead set on me and Kahina as a couple.

  “Did she give you an address?” I asked.

  “You don’t know it?”

  “No, never asked.” Another question I should have asked in a long string of them.

  “Hold on, I’ll write it down.” The waitress said. Me and a slip of paper, with extremely messy handwriting, headed out on a short trip.

  Julianne’s house wasn’t what I expected. Her home was a two bedroom postage stamp property that didn’t stand out from its neighbors. At least she had a sizable yard. Being a corner property helped, and it looked like her fencing extended into a second lot. She must pay someone to mow the lawn.

  I double checked the address in my hands a few times, then knocked on the door.

  “Come on in, Jay,” Julianne called out from the depths of the little house.

  The inside of the house was more along the lines of what I expected. She had a row of dolls strewn along the wall. No two were alike. I was willing to bet they hadn’t come out of the box like that. Each one had extra piercings, dyed hair and what looked to be handmade clothes. She had managed to create her own line of punk dolls out of young girl’s comfort toys. Morbidly funny.

  The rest of the house followed the same pattern. Uneven color schemes mixed with lava lamps or electrostatic balls and felt posters. Clearly she did a lot more with her personal space than I did.

  “Back here. We’ve got a present for you.” Julianne seemed happy. She also wasn’t alone. It was daylight so it wasn’t Kahina and Julianne. Not that I objected, there were certain fantasies that had crossed my mind over the years.

  “Alright.” I followed the line of dolls to the hallway. Their staring eyes were getting creepier. They had slowly shifted to head level and the designs got more intense the closer to her bedroom I walked.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Second door on the left. If you go to the third one I’ll have to kill you.” Her bedroom must be the third one.

  “No worries, I value my life.”

  Inside the room wasn’t just one female, but two. Neither dressed in the manner a fantasy of mine might dictate. From the distance between Julianne and the mystery woman, there was a chance they were together in more ways than one. I looked at the second female. A quick glance noted a long skirt, drab colors, and dyed black hair. Any evaluations I made would be kept quietly to myself. Her relationships weren’t my business.

  “Where’s my surprise?” I raised an eyebrow and tried not to seem creepy to this new girl.

  “Right over there.” Julianne pointed across the room to the side I hadn’t paid attention to.

  One blond elf was bound in a chair and looked absolutely miserable. His clothes were in tatters and probably unwashed. Clumps of dirty hair clung to his face looking like the veins on a leaf. Julianne demonstrated a lot of self-control by letting this mess into her house. I turned back to the two ladies.

  “Is this?” I started.

  “Evan? Yes. Took a week of solid hunting, but they found him. Guess how pissed my grandfather was.” Julianne said.

  “A little?” I ventured.

  “A little in the same way that Mount Vesuvius only kind of buried Pompeii,” She responded.

  “What?” I completely missed her reference. It sounded bad, though.

  “Never mind.” Julianne glanced at her friend and rolled her eyes, all but spelling out what she thought of my intelligence level.

  “How’d they track him?”

  “We were catching some scents before it vanished. Finally, the boys staked out the area and waited.” The second girl said. This other girl struck me as overly mousy for Julianne. The only thing not brown on her was the hair.

  “There were some ruins out there. Sure enough, a few days later Evan showed himself along with some second elf. Pack captured Evan and dragged him back, right out from under his friend’s nose.” Julianne finished the story.

  “Have you told Daniel yet?” I asked.

  “Not yet. We’ve been hoping you’d wake up before Daniel’s mess of paperwork started getting on nerves.” Julianne
said.

  “Why?”

  “One of the last things he said was that he was avoiding his Lord that had been tracking him.” The short Indian woman crossed her arms. The other female seemed to shift with unease. “I only know of one tracker anywhere near this part of the Sector.”

  I frowned. The whole Lord thing seemed bad to spread around. Especially after Candy told me they killed all their Lords.

  “Lord? I’m good, but not royalty.” I tried to twist the conversation into self-ridicule instead of something worth consideration.

  “No, you’re not. That’s why I figured you’d want him before we hand ’em over to Daniel.”

  “Thanks. Mind stepping out while I sort this out? I wouldn’t want ladies to see anything unwelcome.” Not that I had much to work with. Evan had been silent this entire time.

  “Big bad man going to torture the elf?” The mousy girl spoke up again. It came out with more than a little anger.

  “No. I’m going to ask polite questions, and get answers,” I said. She glared at me and Julianne stepped closer. Between the two there was an obvious height difference. Not as intense as between Julianne and anyone else, but noticeable.

  “Come on, Stacy, Jay gets paid for this sort of thing. We’ll go wait outside.” Julianne pushed at Stacy and mouthed at me rather intensely behind her back. The words were easy enough to make out so I nodded. No blood, I was in Julianne’s house and getting anything on the carpet would be unwelcome.

  I constantly wanted to ask how Julianne got into the loans and gambling business. Her attitude, friendliness, and dislike for violence all seemed to go against it. Either way, she understood what might happen with Evan and set limits.

  Evan was firmly attached to the chair with a few loops of metal on him. The chains around his legs looked like they might be rust rather than actual iron. I bent both knees and squatted down to get eye level.

  “Evan, is it?” His ratty hair looked even worse than last time I had seen him. At least this time his pointed ears were obvious.

  “I’ve got some questions for you, Evan. Easy stuff, and if you answer them then we can both go our separate ways.” I took the gag out and gave him a moment to find his voice.

  He didn’t respond. I took my fingers and pried open his eyelids, checking for dilation. His orbs lacked any comprehension. One hand pressed to his face, and the other smacked the opposite cheek. He didn’t flinch or scream. Clearly the hope that this was all an act was unreasonable.

  Maybe Julianne had used too much iron? Unlikely. Elves could be bound in iron for weeks. They would be miserable and willing to stab anyone. Not comatose. Their addictions not being met was another matter.

  “What is it, Evan?” I shook him back and forth some more. There was no response.

  “You, addicted to chocolate ice cream with marshmallows eaten using chopsticks? Watching the news at exactly three AM for only seven minutes and twelve seconds?” In disgust, the elf was pushed back into his corner of the room. I stomped around trying not to get upset. This was close to answers, but at the same time it was so far away.

  “A line of crack off a hooker’s breasts, that you paid in two dollar bills?” Random ideas came out my mouth. Given the few addictions I had observed these actually seemed plausible.

  “Come on, Evan, work with me.” I came back over and patted both sides of his face. His head lolled to the side and sat there.

  “Fucking hell.” The gag was shoved back in his mouth harder than needed. A moment later and I was down the hall and in the front room. “He’s completely out of it, when’s the last time he had a fix?”

  “Not sure. He never asked for anything, so we figured he was one of those once a year elves.” Elves occasionally had extraordinarily complex addictions. Highly complicated ones were able to stretch further between fixes. “He was eating.”

  “Guy’s got no response. Completely gone.” I said. Julianne and Stacy shared a worried glance with each other from their side of the couch. We all knew that elven addictions became more twisted the longer they went without satisfaction.

  “Shit, he was okay yesterday, tired, but okay,” Julianne said. “We can’t turn him over to Daniel if he’s not working. That’ll make him mad.” Stacy, the other girl, seemed to mimic the bartender’s worry.

  They weren’t the only ones upset. Daniel was slow to anger. Once he finally did explode the results were titanic. One such event involved him demolishing a vampire cartel in the space of two nights. Western Sector strike squads were called in like accurate lightning strikes. He managed to hit the places that no one should have known about. Then the reports and all associated loose lips were shoved into a dark hole.

  “We need to find an elf who works with addictions,” I said.

  “I might know one.” Julianne had a person in mind. I looked at her for a moment then sighed.

  “Candy?” I threw the name out there.

  “Who?”

  “Blonde, tattooed eyes, dark sunglasses, shepherds Umbrella Beer?” I only listed the safe characteristics.

  “Yeah.” Julianne nodded. “That elf was always hovering around the other guy the first few times.”

  “That’s Candy, why do you think she might know something?” I said.

  “If anyone has an answer it would be her. He deferred to her. Candy’s either a leader or some sort of guide.” The bartender angrily glared at me about the whole subject. Once again Stacy mimicked the motions with a tilt of hips and one fist on her side.

  “I guess I could ask her.” I ran my hand over shortened hair and tried to figure out what was next. There was no point in asking Julianne to do it or Stacy. They had already tracked Evan down and given me the first crack.

  “You need to solve this quick. You clearly know this, Candy, elf, and Evan was looking for you.” Julianne had her hands on the back of her couch. They were curling and gripping the upholstery.

  “I barely know her.” I corrected the shorter woman.

  “Sounds like you know her overly well.”

  “I did what you suggested. I had a question, and she had an answer I needed.” One hand raised with the palm facing upwards. Why is it that my choices always seemed to result in problems? Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.

  “Yeah? What question was that?” Julianne asked. I stared at her and got two equally annoyed stares in return.

  “A separate problem.” Was my relenting comment. Not that they were separate problems at all. They were directly linked. This ‘Lord’ thing was my problem to sort through and not anyone else’s.

  “Kahina doesn’t know that you’re stalking elven whores?” Julianne asked. She lifted a cushion on the couch in agitation and set it right back down.

  “I haven’t told her, no.” My eyelids fluttered and neck bunched up. This was getting beyond annoying. I didn’t come here to be berated for trying to solve problems.

  “Jay…” Her voice turned low and warning. My hands went into the air with a shout.

  “What Julianne? You want me to patch up my relationship with Kahina like nothing happened, just a bump in the road, forgive and forget?” I shouted. There wasn’t enough room in this house to truly get angry.

  She grew quiet.

  “Good, because that whole night pretty much screwed over everything I had going for me,” I said, satisfied that this argument was in my favor.

  “Shut your trap.” Stacy nearly snarled at me.

  “Fuck you. You have no idea what happened…” I shouted. My mind was glazing over all the warning signs of impending doom. “and no right.”

  My ears started ringing and vision took a sudden turn to the left. Stacy had slapped me, hard. With the kind of strength that didn’t come from a human. Wolf. Julianne was hanging out with a female wolf. I yelled again, only this sounded off, different than normal, and shoved the wolf backward into a wall.

  Julianne let out a cry and ran to her friend’s side, or whatever they were. I didn’t care. This was too much. My breath
was ragged from that brief bout. Julianne’s house was confining me. I made it out the door and stomped across her front yard. There was an itch on my arm and the sound of drumbeats in my ear. Worse still, I wanted Stacy to come out here and continue our fight.

  Hell. Why couldn’t I ever leave someplace in a peaceful manner? Leaving Kahina the first time four years ago was bad. My first visit to Evan involved rudely carving off his hair and throwing a knife into the wall. Then there was the forest I was recently evicted from. All my life I had been burning bridges.

  Hell. What was wrong with me?

  After a few hours of walking, I was still angry. Angry at everyone else for telling me what to think about Kahina. Angry at myself for not having a good answer. Angry at Daniel and his missing person case. Then Evan for jerking me around with the ‘Lord’ comment.

  I proceeded home. My modified knuckles went into a pocket and an iron chain was threaded through belt loops. Next I stopped at the bar, more out of habit than need. No one here knew me. No one besides Julianne and I had screwed that up. At the far end of the bar was a pile of coins and a puddle of spilled liquid. The arrogant elf had come in for another fix. I was back out the door before anyone felt the need to greet me. Hopefully I could get to Candy’s before nightfall. After that, avoiding Kahina would be a matter of timing.

  Soon I stood across the street from Candy’s bedroom window. Two elves watched me from up high, perched on walls, strange bows strapped across their back. My head was pounding out its displeasure. Everything conspired to drive me bonkers.

  Countless people passed while I stalked up and down the sidewalk. Cars came and went. Humans bartered for organic crops. Kids on their way home from school used the elven sidewalk for added safety.

  My eyes slid down and I tried to calm myself. The same senses I used to defend my home from Kahina’s two hired goons were still rusty. That mental switch was getting easier to flip. Brief flashes of insight to the world about me flooded in. It felt like the ground beneath my feet was boiling with heat. A glance upward confirmed that both sentries above had their bows in hand, an arrow notched but not drawn.