Moon Child Read online

  More, actually, Tristan thought. “‘Scuse me?” That monster, she took Ash? Damn.

  The elf came up to him, glass held out in offering. He didn’t need to smell the alcohol to know what it was. Damn he wanted to take that glass from the guy… who was taller than him. Christ, the guy was nearly seven feet tall, maybe over. And he smelled like musk. Tristan curled his nose in disgust, ignoring the elf, but focusing his aim on the guy.

  “Genovasco is an interesting creature.” Chrysanthe sat on the sofa. “Born as a hermaphrodite, the poor soul has the external genitalia of both sexes and perhaps even some internal parts as well. It was a sad fate that if he weren’t born royalty, would have meant immediate death back in his time. As it was, he lived well into his late teens and even hit the ripe age of twenty before Innokentiy sought to “fix” the poor sod.” She sighed and looked over to her shoulder to smile brightly up at him. “The MPD didn’t help the situation for either of them at all.”

  “MPD… what, like multiple personality?” he asked, eyeing Silas again who was still trying to offer him that damn drink. Tristan sighed and motioned towards the end table next to the sofa with his gun. Silas didn’t even bat an eye behind his dark glasses and placed the drink down.

  “Exactly right—sit.”

  Tristan refused to sit. “Okay, and why are you so sure this Genovasco won’t kill Ash?” He shouldn’t have been dicking around here with these two like this. Daylight gave him a precious advantage to finding them. Not that he had any idea of where to start, save Ash’s old home.

  “She goes by Ash now, then, does she? I like it.” She looked up to the ceiling. “Genoveva is unstable, mad and ruthless. But Vasco loves Asta—sorry, Ash, and will do anything to see her safe. Genoveva is the stronger personality but Vasco will fight to the death for those he loves.” She rotated on the sofa to face Tristan head on. “And that brings us to you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Oh dear,” Chrysanthe sighed. “You are the key.”

  “To…?”

  “To helping one another, of course.”

  Tristan stared at the pair for a moment and let out a little laugh, lowering his gun. “It always starts like a bad joke, doesn’t it?”

  “Uh…?”

  “A pythia, an elf and an Uruwashi mutt walk into a bar…” It was once “a human, a jikininki and a vampire walk into a club…”

  The elf raised a sculpted fuchsia colored eyebrow from his place standing sentinel at the far end of the sofa.

  “Oh dear, Uruwashi mutt?” Chrysanthe asked. “A mutt, really?”

  Tristan’s jaw flexed but he said nothing. Already said too much.

  “No no, dear, not a mutt. A great—” She stopped, tilted her head. “You really don’t know what you are, do you?”

  “Do you?”

  She stared at him a moment, deep frown pulling all of her round features downward. “Please, come sit with me. I may be used to great towering men to look up at but it doesn’t make it any less of a pain in the neck.”

  Tristan shot Silas a look but the elf didn’t respond. Keeping an eye on the man, Tristan inched around to the sofa. His feet hurt and moving any faster just wasn’t going to happen. He frowned at his wrist as he sat as far away from the couple as he could.

  “Oh dear,” the pythia said. “Does it still hurt? I can give you another potion to help with that—”

  “No thanks,” he said a little too quickly. He’d rather deal with the pain than the up and down rollercoaster that the pythia pain potions offered.

  She frowned, but nodded, accepting his decision. “Silas set your wrist and I did my own magic on it. Should be good to use in a few hours. Just don’t overexert yourself with it.” She made a rather lewd gesture with her hand that made Silas blush, clearing his throat as he shifted uncomfortably.

  “Hours?”

  She smiled big. “Pythia magic is strong.” She got this semi-serious look on her face and put on a deep voice, “The force is strong with this one… teehee.”

  He just blinked at her. Silas sighed, shaking his head, but there was a tiny smile in that dismay.

  “Er, right then.” She dug in the folds of cloth that made up her skirt and withdrew a fold of paper. “I need you to help me find someone. Oh yes and this was left for you while you were sleeping—don’t worry I didn’t read it.” She held out both hands, the folded paper in one, an envelope with the hotel’s name printed on the front of the other.

  Tristan looked at the paper held between her fingers and then snatched the envelope away. She huffed, dropping her hand into her lap again as he opened the note. “I’m not a P.I.,” he muttered as he unfolded it and then groaned to himself. Apparently Yuki had finally caught up with him, had something she needed help with, probably another bullshit hunt. He rolled his eyes and ripped the note in half to toss over his shoulder. Fuck Yuki and her “help”. Speaking of fucking off… “Find someone else.”

  “Oh dear, there is no one else. You may be fresh to the job, but you are a hunter.”

  He frowned at her, eyes flicking to the drink whispering at him to have a taste and then back to her again. “What do you know about me?”

  “As much as Lilith has shared.”

  This perked him right up, made him forget that damned drink taunting him for a moment. “You know Lilith?”

  “Of course. All pythia know each other. Doesn’t mean we have to like one another…” Silas went to her and put a hand on her shoulder, having to lean down to do so. “Please, I need to find this man.” She waved the paper at Tristan again.

  He sighed and took it, opened it. “Uh… not exactly a Rembrandt, is it?” It looked like a child drew it. It was in red colored pencil.

  “I’m an artist with plants, not pens and paper. Silas helped.”

  The elf made another uncomfortable noise before sitting on the sofa, placing himself between the other two.

  “Who is he?” The crude drawing had the basics but lacked the finesse of a professional forensic sketch artist. The eyes and lips said Asian, but other than that, it was just a flat face with no character. How could anyone ID from something like this?

  “Don’t rightly know.”

  He huffed. “Name?”

  “No clue.”

  “The hell?” He threw the paper aside and picked up the glass without thinking. “How the fuck am I supposed to find someone that you know nothing about?”

  “I found you.”

  “Yeah, but you just said you knew me.” He took a drink, eyes shutting for a moment to savor the warm burn slithering down his throat. Holy. Christ. That’s some good shit right there. His eyes popped open when he heard movement and found Silas had moved back to the bar.

  “Of you.” She smiled big. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Uh…” He blinked at her. She’d found him, saved him, fixed him up and brought him back to his room and didn’t even know his name. Then again, she had a big helping hand in the “finding” part.

  “I could of course just call you Uruwashi but I find that so impersonal, like calling someone by their last name.”

  The last thing he needed was someone else calling him by his last name—like his landlady back in Japan. It was always Broom-san this and Broom-san that. No matter how hard she tried the poor woman couldn’t pronounce the “L” clearly enough to get out a smooth “bloom”.

  “Tristan Blum.”

  “Very nice to have finally met you, Tristan Blum, the last of the Uruwashi.”

  Christ, she really did know a lot of him. “Why do you want this guy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked her straight in the eye. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh dear.” She lifted her shoulders and dropped them with a tiny huff. “I only saw him in a vision. I don’t know what any of it meant but that I have to find him. It’s important to find him before… I just don’t know.”

  Unbelievable. “Are all pythia visions so ridiculously vague?”
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br />   She only smiled, showing pretty white teeth. He looked away, out the large sliding door that lead to a private patio with a dining set. It was sunny now, but everything was wet from the early morning downpour. The temperature dropped too with the quick cold front, making the day feel like the fall days he was used to at home. Real home in Maryland, not Japan. He may have been part Japanese but that place would never be his home.

  “Say I help you find this impossible-to-find person.” He tossed back the rest of the drink and Silas walked towards him with the bottle and a full glass. The glass went to Chrysanthe in passing. The elf stopped in front of Tristan and offered to pour from the bottle. He considered the elf a moment and then took the bottle to pour himself. “What’s in it for me?” he asked when the guy was out of his line of view with the pythia.

  “We help you find Ash. Alive.”

  Tristan put down the bottle and narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s an awfully big promise for someone who doesn’t seem to know a whole lot.”

  The pythia straightened her back, shoulders rolling back. “I have full confidence.”

  “Mhm,” he hummed, wondering how much he should be drinking and then decided it didn’t really matter. He was a world champion drinker. He knew now that it had to do with his vampiric genetics, whatever they were.

  “What makes you think I’m the one to help you?”

  The pythia pointed at him. “You bare those and yet, you won. Or I’m assuming you won since you’re still here.” She turned to look at the other man. “Oh dear, this isn’t a dream, is it, Silas? Not sure I’m up to banishing a shinigami…”

  The man only gave her a little grunt, might have been a laugh.

  Tristan looked down to his bare stomach. There was a great big circle of scar tissue where a vampire had tried to dig right through him. His legs were speckled with a few places where jikininki bit him and his right forearm had a long, thick scar under a tattoo where he was opened up nearly to the bone not that long ago. Sure, he’d survived those, but only just and at great peril. Since then, he’d had training and while he was still very green and fresh to it all, he was a natural fighter with good instincts. Armed or not, he felt confident going head to head with a vampire and coming out mostly alive. Mostly alive was what counted right?

  Tristan looked up, took another drink and then, staring right into Chrysanthe’s eyes said, “Then that means time is of the essence.”

  She cracked a tiny smile. “Absolutely.”

  He pursed his lips, staring down at his drink for moment and then sighed, shutting his eyes and muttered, “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.” He opened them again and met the petite woman’s excited gaze. “Where do we start?”

  TRISTAN?” It was barely a whisper. There was a panic in her that couldn’t be expressed, not when she felt so weak, but it didn’t diminish that fear any less. Calling upon her higher seikonō powers when she was still trying to heal from her ordeal with Lucien was a damn stupid call, one that might have gotten Tristan killed.

  Ash felt the presence of another, but couldn’t focus clearly enough to identify them. They hadn’t noticed Ash’s arousal as they continued to pace bare feet over hard earth. Her eyes hurt to open. Her head hurt in a way that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. And inside her, she could feel the weight of the earth all around her, could taste it in her sinuses. She was underground, but more than that, she couldn’t say just yet. “Wh—where is this?”

  The one who’d been pacing stopped. “Asta!”

  She let out a sigh of relief and slowly forced her eyes open. “Vasco.” But for how long?

  “Meu estrella!” He cried out again and ran to her. Ash smiled at the nickname he’d given her so long ago, my star, as he took her into his arms and gave her a big squeeze. She winced, trying not to. Even with her healing powers, she was feeling a little haggard. Genoveva had a wild time beating on her after she surrendered. She hated to leave Tristan behind but it was to save his life… from her. Then again, that was assuming her rashly stupid need to pull a seikonō hadn’t gotten him killed with falling rock. Damn, she never should have left his fate up to Genoveva.

  “I—I don’t know what happened,” Vasco said. “I was sitting at an outdoor café trying to have a light meal while I waited for the opera to open and then, I was just here.”

  “Oh Vasco…” She’d tried many times in the past to explain to him what he was, but the dear man was confused as ever. He had no idea he was a vampire that shared his body with another, vicious, personality that very much liked being a killer.

  “We—we’re underground?” the frightened man said, hugging himself, looking up. His Catalan accent was so thick he was almost hard to understand. The cavern they were in was dark but there was a hint of light coming from the right. Long stalactites hung from the ceiling, some long enough to nearly touch—perhaps if one were a bit taller, like Tristan.

  Ash’s jaw tightened as the sudden swell of pressure behind her eyes threatened to make her lose her composure. “It seems so.”

  She was starting to have an idea of where, but couldn’t be sure since it’d been decades since she’d last explored her homelands. One thing was for sure, they had to find a safe place to hide within the next fifteen minutes or risk a very dangerous situation when a tour inevitably came through during the long daylight hours. But that led to another problem. Ash had to get as far away from Vasco as possible before Genoveva came out again and took over. She had to make sure Tristan was safe and get herself armed. She was too weak to face such and adversary head-on in her current condition.

  “But how? I was… this isn’t France.”

  Ash frowned. “France?”

  “Yes I—I was in Tokyo. No, more south, Akita? Maybe—”

  Ash stiffened. He’d been in Akita? So close to her and Tristan, and she had no idea. Damn that Yukihime for not warning them, for surely the old bat knew of everyone who was in her territory.

  “I was admiring the old architecture and wildlife when quite suddenly I had this overwhelming urge to see the opera. What better place than Palais Garnier? So I went to Paris and I was sitting outside waiting for the show time to come up and… I… I looked up and saw a face in the crowd.” He looked Ash in the eyes. “It was you. And you weren’t alone, two men with dark hair, one very tall, the other short. And then… I was here?”

  Still looking around, trying to gather her bearings, she frowned, realizing what’d happened. Genoveva pushed Vasco into going into Japan, the subtle subconscious hints. The sudden urge to see the opera was Genoveva again, her malevolent will leaking on his to follow the couple to France. And when Vasco looked up and saw Ash in the flesh, Genoveva took over in full once again.

  “Alepotrypa,” she whispered and then said louder, “No, Vlichada. We’re in a cave in Dirou.” The smell, the very feel of the earth, its life, she had no doubt. The room she shared with Tristan in Karavostasi was less than four miles north on the coast, nine by car. If she could just get away from this place she could be holding her katana in mere minutes. Better yet, she could be holding Tristan.

  “Oh good, you know where we are.”

  “Yes but…” Daylight wasn’t far off. She’d had to explain to Vasco many times in the past, gently as if speaking to a child, that the sun was harmful and would force him to sleep and if he was in it, die. But not really understanding his hungers and needs, Vasco was hard to make understand anything that had to do with his higher nature. And at the moment, he was volatile—more than usual. At any moment Genoveva might return and subdue Ash again. She hated to abandon Vasco to the depths of Hades, as the cave had been fabled to be, but it was too risky to stay with him right then. She loved him dearly, as a close friend. But what was more important to her right then, her loyalty or her life? Hell, her life meant nothing anymore if Tristan was dead. She had to get out of here, now.

  “Meu estrella?” he said gently, moving closer to her, trying to understand her expression.

  H
e was still wearing Tristan’s blood, a splash of it across his forehead where he’d gone after the unconscious Uruwashi before Ash had managed to convince Genoveva to leave him alive. She just hoped the treacherous woman actually agreed to the deal. Her life for his. The older vampire was mad but could think with a frightening clarity at times.

  Ash shut her eyes, lamenting her choices and the inevitable decision. It was just as well that Vasco couldn’t hear her thoughts as he should have—perhaps something in him just shut all his higher functions down, leaving him a mere human. As her elder and of her very bloodline, the vampire should have had immense control over Ash’s telepathic abilities to the point of nearly controlling her very will as Malik could. Vasco had no idea this was even a possibility and Genoveva was too erratic with her seikonō to gather the focus for such a thing. Didn’t mean the older vampire, nearly six hundred years her senior, wasn’t powerful in her own right. The fact that Genoveva managed to mask her presence from both her and Tristan was hugely telling in a depressing, worrisome way. The ancient vampire was troubling in many ways.

  Knowing what she must do, Ash opened her eyes again. “I’m so very sorry, my dear friend.”

  “Meu estrella?” he asked, looking alarmed at the sudden malevolent intentions he was feeling from Ash.

  “Please forgive me,” she whispered before she lunged for him.

  3: Schism

  SURE, he’d agreed to help but his number one priority was to find Ash. That didn’t seem to jell with Ms. Hoity Toity Accent and her mute elf companion.

  “Oh dear, Tristan, you really must keep up—you’re making us late!”

  “Just keep your panties on, lady, god.”

  Chrysanthe stopped and spun to face him, the higher ground giving her the illusion of being taller despite being nearly two feet shorter than him. She put her hands on her hips and gave a sassy little huff to go with the sassy little pose. “I don’t wear knickers.”