Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…
At fist I didn’t understand why Moth thought it necessary to look, but then I noticed just how many guards there were – seemingly lounging at their ease, but actually in a high state of alertness. They were watching a group of about a dozen young human males who were horsing around, but creeping closer and closer to a family, whose teenage daughter was combing her hair dry while her parents dealt with the business of getting three young boys out of the water. They were weres – wolves would have been my guess – and if the young men got too close to the daughter of the family there was going to be trouble. Even as I thought that it kicked off. Two of the young men moved to flank the young girl. One grabbed his crotch and made what must have been a spectacularly crude suggestion, because the girl immediately started to cry.
Security grabbed the offenders and the girl’s mother leapt to pet and pacify the frightened teenager.
“Stupid youngsters.” Mandrake muttered. “But the trolls have them.” He must have had a thought, though, because he spoke to Moth. “Why is it important beloved fae?”
“Moth don’t know, is just feeling.”
They both looked at me.
“How about this? Those human males obviously thought themselves above common decency and in a position where they wouldn’t be challenged. We might want to put some effort into finding out why.”
“Indeed we might.” Mandrake snarled.
Moth just sighed, but I felt her contacting The Agency. “Is known, and being watched,” she said after a moment or two. Then she shivered.
Mandrake picked her up and shared warmth.
“Time to go home?”
We hustled a bit and were dry and dressed quite quickly. At the bottom of the stairs, the troll guard handed us our furs.
“If I was you,” he said conversationally, “I’d be cutting straight into the woodland. There might be unfriendly people on the road.”
At least Mandrake waited until we were outside the gate before he asked. “Unfriendly people?”
“Means Agency Deputies.” Moth explained. “Trolls don’t know we are agents.”
“So. Do we avoid them?”
“Fraggit yes. Some deputies are right pain in the arse. And if it’s the sort of ones they are likely to send to chastise badly behaved human adolescents, they’d probably find stopping us on the road highly amusing. Especially as we outrank them and they don’t much care for that.”
“In which case. Take me to the woods.”
There was an old loggers trail about a quarter of a mile from the hot springs and I put on all the speed I could find to get there. Even then we were only just out of sight when the sound of heavy engines split the air. I drew the quad to a halt and motioned for stillness and silence. The bikes that rolled along the road were as different from my quad as chalk is from cheese. They were big and loud and smelly, and were ridden by a group of big, loud Deputies, who were also probably smelly. This group is dangerous to cross swords with. It takes its culture from the human place although none of the members are actually human – and they don’t make any effort to appear human. They call themselves Hell’s Angels and they are an assortment of orcs, trolls and demons who are mostly the kind of assholes you never want to meet in a fight, or on a pub crawl. But on the other side of the coin they are brave, strong and utterly incorruptible.
When they had passed we went home. Quietly.
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