FicWad

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in the following fanfiction, except for Eddy. Pretty much it's all property of Laurell K. Hamilton and I am simply entertaining my own fantasies(in the mildest sense). I also apologize for any OOC's, for I am merely an LKH fan and not LKH herself.

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Chapter Four



Rhys was alone in the room, staring at the apparent vampire he had tied to a chair. She was slender, Merry's height, but her skin was had a dimmer quality. Her hair fell in thin black wisps around a pale, heart-shaped face that ended in a faintly clefted chin. A small, silver hoop pierced the middle of her plump bottom lip, and a stud glinted from the corner of her left eyebrow. Shadows clouded around her closed eyelids. Tattoos on her shoulders stood out like great, black crescent moons against a pearlescent night sky. She wore a black tank top, fingerless black gloves, and tight pleather pants with matching boots.

Her hands were tied behind her back with rope, and her head slumped to the side.

'So,' he thought.'This is a vampire.'

It wasn't as if Rhys had never seen a vampire, he just hadn't seen one for what felt like an eternity. He rarely dealt with the world outside of faerie, and the Undead were way outside of faerie. Things like her weren't considered Unseelie, or even human. They defied nature and death. They did not deserve immortality, their supernatural strength, or the extraordinary transformation abilities she proved to have last night. Vampires were considered perverse things to the world of the fae. They could, perhaps, at the very least, ride among the hordes of the Sluagh.

All right, so she was a vampire, but what was she doing here?

Rhys, once Cromm Cruach, the death deity, remembered his frustration with such creatures. 'They just wouldn't die,' he thought.

The only vampire he had ever seen since those days was Dracula.

He stood in front of her, seeing the two punctures in her neck that marked every stereotypical vampire. As if he still didn't believe it, he held her face gently in his hands and moved her top lip out of the way, showing off two very sharp fangs.

Her eyes began to flutter in the disturbance. He quickly let go, which sent her head flopping to the other side. She moved her head to look up, her eyes widening at the sight of Rhys. Her eyes were deep onyx, pupils that had completely dilated. But as soon as they were open, they were closed. Rhys thought he had heard a hiss escape her pierced lips.

He walked over to the night stand and switched out the light, then strode to the window and opened the curtains to at least let the moonlight in. When he turned, he saw she was staring right at him, her fangs protruding slightly.

She coughed."Where am I?"

"Maybe the right question is," he began to say, "What are you doing here?"

"Depends," she snarled. "Where am I?"

"Does it matter where you are, as long as you're with me?" he teased, flicking a finger daintily under that clefted chin. She snapped at his fingers.

"Whoops! You almost got me there," he sang, wagging a finger at her from a safe distance.

She growled, "I was gonna be nice, but it looks like you're gonna give me a hard time."

"I could give you a very hard time," he said, leaning casually against the wall in front of her."After all, you seemed to have brought harm to the future queen of the Unseelie. And I happen to be one of her royal guards."

The chair scraped noisily against the ground as she attempted to leap from it, still bound tightly by the ropes. She didn't get very far, so she lurched harder and ended up tipping over her chair. She landed on her side, yelling out in frustration and bearing her sharp canines at the sidhe.

Rhys stepped casually around her, grabbing the back of the chair and setting it right-side up. "Now, if you play nice, I might give you a cookie," he said.

"You can stick those cookies up your ass, sidhe," she snapped.

With a painful blow to her jaw, she was suddenly on the floor again, across the room. Pain throbbed from the edge of her cheek. She yelled out, more from anger rather than pain.

She looked up at Rhys, who hadn't pulled back his punch. He cracked his knuckles.

The glare that she cast at him turned into a smirk. "That was real fair, striking a lady when she's helpless."

She waited for him to respond, but the pain began to throb harder. She cried out again, now from the ache in her cheek. She had gotten more fatal wounds before, gunshot wounds that blasted her right through to the other side, and those had healed in an instant. Yet this was unimaginable. She screamed mindlessly, howling for it to stop.

The pain left as quick as it had come. She sucked in a breath of air that she didn't realize she had been holding. She glared up at him, wishing to wipe that satisfied grin off his face. Sighing inwardly, she closed her eyes and persuaded herself to calm down. She was nothing compared to the power of a sidhe, but she wasn't about to show it. When she opened her eyes again, he was kneeled down beside her, completely unafraid.

"Now," he said,"we can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

She looked at him, stared at the scars that maimed his face and the eye patch that covered god knows what. She was an assassin, an executioner, an artist of torture, and yet he was a warrior. He attacked head on while she killed in the cloak of night.

And yet, she could not surrender. She had been caught, and she would be put to death or confess the identity of her client and then put to death.

In her silence and deep thought, he lifted her right-side-up, still tied in the chair.

"I'm guessing you want it the easy way?" he said.

Her hair hung in front of her face, her eyes dark as if clouded with the intentions of amurderer. She said nothing, glaring at the floor with unwavering focus. He got to his feet and began to pace slowly around her chair.

"Let's start with, what exactly would something like you be lurking around this place for?" he said in a mock-curious voice.

She gritted her teeth and held her tongue.

"And what could you possibly want with the princess?" he continued.

His boots came down and stopped in front of her. He kneeled down once more, looking her in the eyes. He moved her chin so that she could gaze at him. He studied her for amoment in silence, trying to read her thoughts through the contact of their skin. She kept her mind painfully blank.

Her concentration on the floor wavered as her eyes flicked up to stare back at him. She breathed through her teeth like an angry muzzled dog.

She had rarely ever seen a sidhe this close before. Prince Cel was possibly the only one that ever spoke to her, and they only met when the sun was down and he was in disguise. But the sidhe that crouched down in front of her showed his face in the light. He was the one she had admired in the tabloid photo that was still on her desk back in New York, but the cheap ink had barely been accurate. In person, his smooth, moonlight skin gave off a faint shimmer, not like the dull off-white of the Undead-for he was very much alive. His face was round and childlike. His white hair was down in waves, glimmering and soft. She wanted to reach out and touch it. The eye that bore into her held three rings of colors that she hadn't recognized from adistance: the outer circle was a vivid blue, the one within that was the azure of sky, and the inner-most ring was the silvery grey of water reflecting aclouded sky. The other eye seemed to be missing, or simply hidden behind an eye patch the color of pearls. She watched the movement of his full lips as he spoke to her.

"What's your name?" he asked, moving his hands to touch either side of her face, holding her head to look at him.

She suddenly felt very calm, as if all the anger had drifted out of her. She was peaceful and comfortable, in spite of the ropes that tightly wove around her. She wanted nothing more than to answer his questions.

"My name is Edith," she said. "Edith Avalon."

"Edith," he whispered.

His breath brushed against her face pleasantly. She closed her eyes, smiling a little.

"No, no, you must keep your eyes on me," he coaxed. Her eyelids came up, seeing his smooth white face again.

Her vision became cloudy, as if intoxicated. She suddenly desired to curl up and go to sleep.

"Stay awake, Edith," he said quietly, holding her head in his strong hands. She liked it when he said her name. Hell, she liked him.

In fact, she concluded, she liked him very much. Her eyelids fell closed and she leaned forward until she felt his full, soft lips against hers. His hands fell from her face, but she grabbed onto his wrists, desperate to grasp the exquisite serenity that came from him. She felt herself slide off the chair to kneel on the floor with him. For an instant, he pressed his mouth against hers, shifting her lip piercing with each subtle movement of the lips.

Then, just as soon as it had happened, he pushed her from him, tearing away every happy and hopeful feeling he had filled her body with. She stared at his big blue eye for a moment, numbness engulfing her consciousness. That emptiness became filled in with the anger that he had previously fogged out with his powerful glamour. The loving gaze she cast at him turned into furrowed eyebrows and bared teeth. With her grip on his wrists, she threw him from her. He slid across the floor to the wall, but skidded to a stop before his head collided with the plaster.

"Excuse me, but you started it," he whined, getting to his feet and brushing himself off.

She stood up, breathing hard. She was about to strike but then stopped and noticed something peculiar. Turning around, she saw the dining chair that she had been tied to. The ropes hung limp from where they once bound her. She turned a smirk towards the sidhe, relishing in her freedom. The first thing she was gonna do was get him back for that bruise he had given her.

She felt her nails growing into hard talons. Baring her teeth and claws, she pounced at him, hoping to catch either one on his white flesh. She instead sunk her nails into the wall. Rhys had slinked out of the way.

"Come on, the kiss wasn't that bad!" he reasoned.

With a snarl she came after him again. Just when she thought she had him, he had moved.

"Okay, now you're just being unfair," he said from the other side of the room.

She turned to stare at him, waiting for the right moment to attack. "Why don't you be a good little sidhe and stay still?" she rasped. She leapt into the air, dissolving into a more aerodynamic form for an instant, then landing, pinning him against the wall. She held herself up with talons embedded in the wall and the soles of her boots pressed flatly against it. She grinned horridly, filling her nostrils with the tantalizing smell of his blood.

Rhys did the only thing he could think of.

He grabbed her face and kissed her again. He moved his mouth against her bloodthirsty lips, forcing glamour into her like he had before. Her muscles began to relax and she fell, sedated, from the wall. He took advantage of her off-guardedness and put her to sleep. She lay limp in his arms, knocked out by the mild touch of adeath god.

"That was close,"Rhys breathed in relief.

He looked up, seeing Merry, Doyle, Galen, and a few other guards peeking from behind their heads in the doorway. The ones in front of the line had their guns out. Kitto peered curiously around Meredith's legs.

Rhys chuckled nervously. "Hey guys," he said.