On the Prowl (Alpha & Omega 0.5)(36)

The Turning had proved that reality was far stranger and broader than they'd known. Other realms were real. So were adepts and unicorns and the creatures he called chameleons.

So was Nathan. Whatever he was.

They reached the parking area of their complex and turned in. "I have to go," he said. "I'm on duty."

"Okay." Which made it all the more strange that he'd hunted her up.

His official car was parked two slots down from her little Toyota. They stopped there. He wasn't breathing hard, but neither was she this time. The easy jog had cooled her down.

Nathan didn't get in his car right away, though. He did something shocking. He put his hands on her face, fingers spread, and ran his thumbs over her jaw. His eyes searched hers, their wintry color alive with something she'd never seen there before. "Why did you not need to ask before now?"

"You didn't want anyone to know, and I respected that." You would have gone away.

"But you need to know now?"

He was confusing her badly. "I... yes." You're leaving anyway.

"You felt it, too." He sounded deeply satisfied. "Things changed for us last night."

Okay, time to roll. She swallowed her fear and plunged ahead. "Are you from Faerie?"

"From one of the Faerie realms, yes. There are many."

That sent a jolt of surprise through her, but as distractions went it couldn't compete with the ripples created by his stroking thumbs. "You're a... an elf?"

"I am sidhe."

He said that the way Elizabeth the First might have said, "I am queen"  -  fact and power so entwined that one made no sense without the other. "Uh... doesn't 'sidhe' mean elves?"

"Sidhe means... there are many kinds, but we usually speak of three. The High Sidhe are true immortals. A few of them, not many, have an interest in ruling, so they do. The middle sidhe, those you call elfin or faerie lords, have more of a taste for power and caste. Low sidhe is a more fluid term, but is generally understood to mean the less powerful elfin folk, as well as fairies and others you wouldn't recognize. But some sidhe are nothing like humans or elves and live outside those hierarchies. I... eh, I'm not sure what I am now."

His hands dropped and he looked at one, turning it over as if veins, muscles, and knuckles scribed some obscure message in his flesh. "It has been so long... but whatever else I am or am not, I am of the wild sidhe."

Wild sidhe? She shook her head, not understanding.

This smile was old and sad. A parting smile. "A hellhound, Kai. I was born a hellhound."

Chapter 7

They called Midland the Tall City because of the downtown, where brick-and-steel stalagmites poked at the sky. The office buildings Nathan was headed toward weren't skyscrapers by any means, but in the middle of the flattest, most featureless land on the continent, they did stick out. To Nathan's mind the skyline looked like it was giving heaven the finger.

He kept that observation to himself. Religion turned some folks belligerent.

He was headed back to the sheriff's office, the hum in his blood clearer to him than the hum of his car's engine. His trip to the service station that morning had led to another lead, then another. Eventually he'd learned where Jimmy Shaw had spent his last night on Earth.

He'd been able to pursue those leads because Sheriff Browning had released him from desk duty for the duration of the investigation. That sort of pragmatic flexibility was one reason Nathan had lingered here longer than was probably wise. But only one.

Since his stranding, Nathan had been many things  -  mercenary, guard, rag man, monk, tinker, riverboat pilot, and more. So many more. In his last persona he'd been a private investigator, specializing in finding lost children.

He'd found them, of course. It was impossible to shift a hellhound from a trail he'd been set to  -  even, Nathan had discovered, when he'd been set to the trail by no one but himself. It had taken him a long time to learn how to put himself to the hunt when there was no true prey, but it had been worth the effort. Finding the children had been good. Satisfying. Even when they'd been brutalized, he'd been able to return them to people who loved them.

Sometimes there had been no living child to find, only a body  -  killed by exposure, by mischance, or by malice. All too often, by malice. When that happened, he'd hunted their killers.

Those had been true hunts.

Humans were peculiar. They were by turns squeamish and appallingly violent. Eventually Nathan had concluded it was their very bloodthirstiness that made them erect so many legal and social barriers against culling the vicious from their midst. They didn't trust themselves to stop with the obviously evil.

So he'd hunted the child killers in secret. Eventually he'd been caught  -  or as good as, since he'd had to abandon that persona. Eighteen years later, Colorado still had an outstanding warrant for Samuel Jager. The legal system might be ineffective, but it was tenacious.

It had taken time to build a new identity. The current age had much to recommend it  -  indoor plumbing, cell phones, various advances in medicine. He considered cars and television mixed blessings, and had grown to like computers, though airplanes were an obvious mistake. Humans were inexplicably fond of them, but Nathan had no intention of meeting death while strapped in a giant metal coffin hurtling through the air at the behest of some stranger.