Karhi Emelyn

Karhi couldn’t stop thinking about the time that Sloane and Ilona had first met. Thoughts of it consumed him as he showered.

Carrick had called Karhi, and the call was much like his summons to come to Phoenix. Short and curt with very little information. Ilona was staying in Eden Prairie and wanted to meet Sloane.

The mansion Ilona had chosen in Eden Prairie was smaller than the one in Phoenix, but not by much. It was three stories high with Corinthian columns from floor to roof. The windows spanned two stories at a time and security lights flooded the front yard. They cast menacing shadows on topiaries cut into fantastic shapes along the driveway.

As they drove up, Karhi saw and felt Sloane getting more and more stiff in the passenger seat. She stared out the front windshield, expression impassable. The shadows created by the floodlights made her pale skin even paler—an alabaster statue.

She had been quiet ever since he told her they needed to go see Ilona. He had never really said much about her, but Sloane seemed to have a healthy fear of meeting her. She had probably felt his own anxiety at the thought of Ilona and learned from that.

At least, that’s what he thought at the time. In retrospect, he had been very wrong.

She didn’t seem to notice when he pulled to a stop just past the house, next to another car.

He got out and walked around, opening her door for her. She looked up, startled. He held out his arm to her, silently challenging her to avoid it. He knew she could feel the challenge.

After a moment, she took it and allowed him to help her out.

He had been pleasantly surprised by her choice of clothes when she had come out of her room before they left. She wore a black, high-necked cocktail dress with a pencil skirt that ended just past her knees. It flowed over her slender form and emphasized her long legs, made longer by black sandals with two-inch heels. She had put her long dark brown hair up in a tight bun.

Karhi had bought the dress and shoes for her ages ago when he knew that she would probably have to meet Ilona one day. Ilona always expected fledglings to be well-dressed and well-groomed. Sloane had managed both despite that she usually only wore T-shirts and jeans. She looked like a paralegal.

“Do not say anything rude or belligerent,” he murmured as they walked up to the front door.

He was surprised when she didn’t respond with any sort of smartass comment. She just nodded. He really should have seen earlier that she wasn’t new to the Underground.

A slender blonde man with black rectangular glasses opened the door. He had a long face with a sharp cut jaw, his eyes a bright, disconcerting blue that felt like lasers as he looked from Karhi to Sloane.

“Karhi,” he said. He looked down at Sloane, and Karhi felt her tense against him as they locked eyes. “And the new fledgling. Sloane Briallen. I am Carrick.” He bowed his head deeply, and Karhi had to do everything in his power not to drop his jaw. Carrick never bowed to any of them. And a nod like that was close enough.

“Come this way,” he said.

They passed through the threshold with nothing more than a buzzing of magic flowing over them. This house had no threshold much like Casa Vampiria. No one actually lived here, it was just owned by the vampire courts, allowed for use when requested.

They followed Carrick through the house until they entered a large room filled with leather furniture. Windows twice Karhi’s height revealed dark sprawling grounds behind the mansion.

There was large gas fireplace with fake wood inside. Mounted on the wall above the mantle was a picture of a fire burning in a fireplace. It took Karhi a moment to realize it was a picture of what a wood fire would look like burning in the gas fireplace below it. Why?

Three sofas encircled an ebony table in the centre of the room. There was a silver tray on the table with crystal glasses filled with blood.

Carrick left.

Carry and Onyx sat on one sofa together, while Zeren sat on a separate couch.

Zeren stood up when they walked in, smiling. “Sloane.”

Sloane had met Zeren a few times in the past five months since she had been turned. He lived in Washington, but he frequently came to visit his sister. He had the power to soothe or stoke emotions and was the only one of Karhi’s siblings that Sloane seemed to like.

He came forward and hugged Sloane.

“Hey, Zere,” she said, hugging him back loosely.

He took her hand and led her to sit next to him. Karhi sat on the remaining couch.

They felt Ilona’s cold power long before she entered but it enveloped them like frost when she finally came through the door.

She wore a Catholic priest’s black robes, and Karhi resisted the urge to grimace. That couldn’t mean anything good.

Karhi saw Sloane sit up straight, a look of nausea passing across her face. It was one he was familiar with, having felt the same sensation many times over the years. Her shoulders were tense and her hand in Zeren’s tightened.

“Hello, my children,” she purred, looking between the five of them. “It has been so long. I missed all of you. You have been bad, misbehaved children for not visiting me.”

Karhi felt the push of her power, her attempt at submitting them. But it quickly disappeared when her eyes fell on Sloane. A light danced in them that made Karhi nervous.

“Oh . . . but it seems we have a new child here tonight.” She slinked over to Sloane and murmured, “Well, hello, hello. Who are you, you scrumptious little nugget?”

“Well, for one, I am not a nugget.”

Karhi inhaled sharply, his nerves knotting together.

Ilona’s eyes iced over, and her smile became a strained grimace. “Then what are you?”

“A vampire.”

Her smile fell. She spoke again, and it sent Karhi’s stomach roiling. “What is your name, fledgling?” she asked.

“Sloane.”

She grabbed Sloane’s face. “Your full name, child,” she growled.

“Sloane Briallen,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Her eyes were wide; Karhi could feel her fear.

The fear seemed to assuage Ilona, and her smile returned. She let go of Sloane’s face as she turned away. “And you are my Karhi’s new chew toy.”

Karhi saw Sloane open her mouth, but Zeren squeezed her hand. She spoke anyway. “I am no one’s chew toy.” She did an impressive job of keeping her terror off her face and out of her tone.

“Oh no?” Ilona asked. The smile on her face had too much teeth.

“That would imply Karhi is a dog,” she said. Karhi could feel her kicking herself, and he wanted to join in. Why. Why was she doing this.

Ilona tilted her head to the side. Then she surprised them all by letting out a laugh that sounded like clinking glasses. “Ah yes, I am sorry. I did not mean to insult my Karhi like that.”

He didn’t like how she kept saying, “my Karhi”.

“What would you call yourself?” she asked.

“I am Karhi’s fledgling,” Sloane answered carefully.

“Much like yours before you,” she said, turning to look at Karhi.

If Karhi had thought he was stiff before, it got even worse when Ilona locked eyes on him. He knew exactly what she was going to say. And he hadn’t figured out a way to bring it up with Sloane yet. This was not the forum where he wanted Sloane to find out that he had been with her grandmother.

“What?” Sloane said, confusion muddling her face.

Ilona kept her eyes on Karhi. “Did he not tell you?”

He clenched his teeth. He hadn’t realized when he first turned Sloane that she was Elizabeth’s granddaughter. And he knew how incredibly inappropriate it was that he had turned her when she was Elizabeth’s granddaughter. He hadn’t found the time to bring it up with her. In fact, he had been secretly hoping that the real time was “never”, and he could kick her out when she was a year old and never have to discuss it.

“Tell me what?” Sloane asked. Her voice sounded weak, as if she was straining against Ilona like the rest of them. She probably was.

“Yes,” Ilona said, looking at Karhi with her sugary, venomous grin. “What, Karhi?”

Karhi could feel a tendon in his neck jumping from the strain.

“Karhi, why don’t you tell her all about how she’s not the first of her kind?” Ilona asked.

Zeren, Carry, and Onyx knew what was going on. He had told Carry when he first found out and it had gotten to the other two quickly. They were looking back and forth between Ilona, Karhi, and Sloane.

“That your grandmo—”

The door flew open, cutting her off. Carrick sprinted in and went to Ilona.

“What?” Ilona snapped at him. He just barely avoided a slap to the face.

“I’m sorry, my love,” he murmured, “but there . . . has been an escape.”

She paused. “An escape?”

“I detained him, but I believed you would want to deal with him.”

Light illuminated her green eyes again, and the tension eased in Karhi’s shoulders. The pressure of her focus on them was fading with the distraction. “Give me ten minutes, my children. Don’t leave.”

Karhi saw Sloane wilt when Ilona was far away enough that her influence had quieted. With the tension gone and Ilona away, anger bubbled into Karhi’s throat. He stood up. “Sloane, I told you to keep. Your mouth. Shut. I explicitly said—”

Sloane stood up, grabbing the lapels on his suit jacket. “Karhi,” she begged. “Please.” She stepped so close to him that her chest touched his. “Please get me out of here. Please.”

The anger disappeared, replaced with surprise. “Sloane, I told you—”

She raked her nails down his jacket. “Karhi, she is too old. I feel so sick that I wish I could vomit. I cannot stay here. Get me out of here, or I am going to bolt.”

Karhi was at a loss for how to respond. Sloane’s eyes were glossy, threatening tears. And he could feel her fear and her anxiety and her desire to disappear from here. She was afraid of Ilona and what Ilona might do to her.

“Please, Karhi. If you do nothing else for me ever again, please get me out of here. I am going to suffocate. I cannot stay here.”

He searched her face—for what, he didn’t know. Deception? Manipulation? But there wasn’t any ounce of anything like that in here. Finally, he said, “Okay.”

“Thank you.”

He took a deep breath and addressed Zeren. “Take her home.”

Zeren paused for a moment, glancing at Sloane. “Alright,” Zeren said. He stood up, taking Sloane’s hand. There was a look of helpless confusion on her face, as her eyes darted between Karhi and Zeren. She had thought Karhi would be the one to take her home.

But he couldn’t. He had to smooth Ilona over and take her wrath.

“Go,” he said.

Sloane and Zeren left.

“I know you’ve been lost in thought this whole time, but I also think you’re just plain lost. You put the wrong address into the GPS,” Lunette said, looking around.

She wasn’t wrong. The neighbourhood they were in—“poor” couldn’t even describe it. Desolate, maybe.

The GPS had led them from downtown into middle class neighbourhoods and then, finally, into this area. The house they sat in front of was the nicest one in the neighbourhood, at least as far as Karhi had seen. It was on a double lot and painted a rusty colour. A jump rope and children’s toys scattered in the front yard made him check the address again.

He took a breath. Well, if it turned out he was wrong, then he would have just wasted some time and could finally go to bed. He could blame Carrick.

Karhi was halfway up the front walkway when he caught the scent of shifter—dog. At least two different ones.

“Shifters?” Lunette murmured. “I guess at least that points more to us being in the right place.”

“Yeah.”

He reached the front door. There were four heartbeats in the house. Three were fast, typical of shapeshifters, and the remaining was the steady pace of a human.

“I’m not sure what you were expecting,” he heard from inside. The voice was female. “You disappeared without a trace and didn’t tell her a thing.”

Karhi knocked on the door and the voice stopped. There was a pause and then he heard footsteps. A second later the front door opened.

The human who stood before Karhi was over a head shorter than him. She was solidly built with a shock of fruit punch red hair on her head.

“What?” Lunette said, staring at her. That one word was filled with so much confusion and disbelief that Karhi had to nudge her with his elbow.

“Good afternoon,” he said to the woman, smiling at her in a way he thought was disarming. “I’m afraid I have the wrong address. I—”

She gestured to herself. “Right here.”

His brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”

“White Psychic. Right here. You’re looking for me. Well, you were. Now you’re not.”

Karhi didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I get that a lot.”

That was when it hit Karhi that she was actively listening to his thoughts, parsing them, and responding. He hadn’t met a neuropath who could do that who wasn’t at least a couple centuries old.

And he couldn’t even feel her in his head.

She glanced a Lunette. “I do enjoy unnerving people, yeah.”

Karhi glanced at Lunette, who looked annoyed.

Finally, he said, “I’m Karhi Emelyn, and this is Lunette Emelyn. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting . . .”

“A woman?” she asked. “Someone so young? Someone living in this neighbourhood? Really, you can say anything. I’m used to it.”

She wasn’t wrong with her guesses. Though, he had known she was a woman.

“So,” she said. “Karhi and Lunette Emelyn.” There was a strange look on her face. “The irony.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” she said. “My name is Mira. Call me Mira. What can I do for Dusky’s children?”

Karhi should have expected she would know who he was. But she was so young . . . it was hard for him to process.

“I’m under contract with Queen Hazel,” Mira said. “Why wouldn’t I know who you are? Also, I’m pretty sure you’re just as famous as me.”

Annoyance was beginning to froth over inside of him. “Could you please refrain from reading my mind?” he asked, fighting to keep his tone from sounding angry. It only came out clipped.

“Sorry,” she said without any real feeling. “I don’t trust vampires as a general rule. And before you say it, Hazel is an entirely different case. That’s why I said the rule was general.”

Karhi didn’t have anything to say against that. Hazel was indeed a special case.

“You still haven’t told me what I can do for you.”

Behind her, he saw two men appear from a door in the hallway. They were heavily muscled, definitely shapeshifters. When they saw Karhi and Lunette, they gave them dirty looks.

Mira looked back at the two shapeshifters. They were werewolves, Karhi thought. “Get,” she ordered. “You’re barely any more welcome than they are. Go back to the kitchen.”

The werewolves shuffled uncomfortably, the scowls disappearing, but they disappeared back into the house.

Mira looked back at Karhi. “Sorry about them. Shifters are so hard to get in line. And I’m asking for the third and final time—”

“My apologies,” he said. “We come on behalf of Ilona Emelyn, as an envoy to pay her respects.”

She eyed them for a moment before nodding. “I appreciate the respects.” She smiled, and it was actually a genuine one, he was surprised to find. “I don’t ever want an Emelyn on my property uninvited again.”

His brow furrowed. He didn’t understand . . .

“This way you don’t ever get turned into a pawn on my behalf again,” she said, winking at him. “Go back to your hotel and go to sleep. You seem like you need it.”

He found he couldn’t keep a smile off his face. He hadn’t expected such a measure of kindness like this in such an unexpected place.

But it was nice.

He bowed a shallow bow. “Thank you.”

She winked. “See you later.”

She closed the door and Karhi looked at Lunette curiously, still smiling. Lunette looked just as surprised as he did.

“Annoying . . . but I do appreciate the gesture,” Lunette finally said.

“Yeah.”

They went back to their hotel. Karhi was finally going to get a chance to actually sleep. Exhaustion was heavy in his bones, and he could barely focus on the road. After the second near miss with oncoming traffic, Lunette made him switch with her at a light.

“Jesus,” Lunette said as they entered the lobby from the garage. “Go get some fucking sleep.”

“I’ve been trying but I keep getting interrupted,” he growled without much heat. He was too tired to get angry at her.

“Yeah, well . . .” Lunette trailed off, stopping with her gaze straight in front of them.

The moment Lunette stopped, Karhi felt it. The pulsing, gyrating lullaby in the back of his mind that meant that Ilona was nearby.

He looked up to see she was sitting on a couch in the lobby, drinking a glass of white wine. There was a table next to her with an empty wine glass. How long had she been there?

She was people watching, but he knew that she knew they were there. She was waiting to be acknowledged.

“She doesn’t want me here,” Lunette said.

He could feel that, too.

He approached Ilona alone. Lunette stayed behind. Ilona looked up just as he stopped, smiling humourlessly. `

He bowed to her. “Hello, Ilona.”

“Hello, my child.” Her voice was cold but there was a gleeful menace in her eyes. “Did you visit the White Psychic?”

“Yes. We paid our respects.”

“Excellent. What did she say?”

Karhi found himself not wanting to answer. The emotions he felt from her were menacing—a combination of triumph and spite. What could make her feel like that?

Finally, he said, knowing she would just pull the information from his head if he didn’t, “She told us that she never wanted another Emelyn to step on her property uninvited again.”

He could feel the heat of triumph inside of her cool down, but only a fraction. Whatever she was so excited about could not be squelched by the power play.

“Well, considering she contracted with Hazel, I’m sure she has some terrible thoughts on you and anyone I’ve sired, so I’m not surprised.” There was only a hint of malice in her words. He noticed how she refused to say that she was the problem, instead foisting the distaste on anyone associated except herself.

Karhi didn’t comment. It wasn’t anything new.

“No matter. You must be bursting with curiosity as to why I have come to visit you here.”

“I am,” he said. Though he doubted that whatever she told him would be good.

She crooked her finger, beckoning him.

He bent over until their faces were almost touching. She pulled him closer by the collar of his button-up shirt.

“Sloane is in Phoenix,” she whispered in his ear.

He froze. “What?” He barely heard himself above the sudden pounding in his ears.

“And since I know I can’t trust you to bring her to me, I will find her myself.”

She let go of him. He straightened up, eyes never moving from her face.

Sloane was in Phoenix? How? Why? And how had Ilona found out?

Ilona’s grin was threatening as she stood up. She barely even looked human, stepping past him. His horror and fear warred against her triumph and satisfaction. She was playing with him, tormenting him with the idea of Sloane going through what he had gone through.

“It’s only a matter of time,” Ilona murmured. “And you’ll bear witness.”

He stared after her as she left the lobby, leaving the wine glass on the table next to the empty one, half full.

“Karhi?” Lunette asked, stepping to his side as soon as Ilona was gone. “Are you okay?”

As the feeling of Ilona disappeared, he felt jittery. The anxiety and pressure Ilona brought into every room disappeared, leaving him weak with the adrenaline rush.

“I’m fine, Luna,” he said. He looked at her, numbness setting into his muscles. “I’m going to sleep.”

Lunette followed him to his room and left him there when she saw that he was truly going to his room. She didn’t try to push him for more information. She knew what the aftereffects of Ilona felt like.

Inside, he went for where his briefcase rested against the wall by the TV. He set it on the table, flipped open the latches, and opened the case to show a little over thirty grand. He had borrowed cash from Onyx and Carry after he had discovered Sloane’s theft.

He pulled out three stacks before finding a white envelope beneath all the cash.

Right. The mystery envelope he had found outside of his door just before everything had fallen apart. He had stuck it in the briefcase before he left Minnesota, meaning to check out what it was when he had a second. Everything had been moving so fast, he had forgotten about it.

It wasn’t a typically sized envelope, more like what you would see when you got a greeting card. It was thick and firm, indicating there was indeed some sort of cardstock inside.

He pulled out a card with a sad blue teddy bear holding a balloon and looking up at the sky.

He opened the card and black-and-white Polaroid pictures fell out onto the table beneath him. Inside the card it said, “My condolences for your loss.”

He picked up the pictures and his mouth dropped.

The photos were all of a boy. He sat against a wall, the floor below him made of wood. His eyes were covered by a black blindfold and his hands were tied behind him. He had dark matted hair.

Each photo introduced different angles of him from above, below, and the side. They showed cuts and ugly, deep grey bruises from different angles. The pieces of his face Karhi could see that weren’t hidden by the hair and blindfold were deformed and almost inhuman. He had been beaten, maybe even tortured.

Karhi dropped the photos, his hands shaking.

He needed to get the fuck out of here.