(Quick note. This is a lightly edited—very lightly edited—version of the rough draft. There will be errors and changes will be made between now and publication. This is also subject to all applicable copyright protections.—ASG)
One
Living up to my name, heaven help me.
I hate Mondays almost as much as I hate mornings. Monday mornings top the list of times to be avoided, especially in my line of work—both of them. Mondays are when the idiots who acted without thinking—and often after ingesting too much booze or pills or other pharmacological concoctions—over the weekend realize they have a mess that needs to be cleaned up yesterday. When that happens, too many of them become even more foolish and act without thinking. Their panic compounds the problem, crossing the line that brings them to the attention of my bosses and, therefore, to me.
My name’s Ellen Ripley Walker, Ripley or Rip to my friends. Yes, my parents were big science fiction fans. For some reason I’ll never understand, they thought it would be a good thing to name me after one of the most kick-ass heroines in the genre. The fact I was born the same year the world turned upside down and inside out only confirmed—to them, at least—that they made the right decision.
For me, well, that’s a different story. They family legacy weighed heavily enough on my shoulders. Add in the name and, well, there were times I wanted nothing more than to disappear and become Mary Sue Jones, worried only about than watering my plants and feeding my cat.
But that’s all a dream and a far cry from my reality.
Welcome to my world. A world where, when I’m not tending bar, I work for the North American Paranormals Council. You might say I’m following in my parents’ footsteps. You see, the Council is responsible for keeping the paranormal community in line. It monitors the various packs, prides, pards, covens, clans, nests and all the other various groupings of paranormals in the United States and Canada. The Council enacts laws and hands down punishment the human courts, for whatever reason, can’t. After all, the last thing we need is for some moon sick shifter or a magicker whose talents have gone wild to attack a human.
When that happens and, unfortunately, it happens all too often for my liking, the Council calls in one of its Marshals. If a situation arises in this part of the country, that usually means me. Like my parents and grandparents before me, I serve the Council as what might best be described as its fixer.
In other words, when the Council calls in one of its Marshals, we become judge, jury, and executioner. We report directly to the Council and when a para breaks Council law, our authority takes precedence over local and federal law enforcement. It’s not something we advertise to the world-at-large, but it is something every para is taught from an early age—or at least they should be. My parents taught me as a child this was necessary to help keep the peace between our kind and the normals. We might not live in the shadows any longer, but there are still too many who fear or envy us simply because we’re different.
Marshals like me are why the paras and humans can co-exist without war breaking out. The truth is most paras are no more dangerous than the average human. We even tend to have stronger moral and ethical codes than most because we had to hide who and what we are for most of human history. But, as with humans, there are those who think the rules don’t apply to them, those who are evil, and those who just don’t give a fuck. It’s our job to keep them under control or make sure they are located someplace they can’t cause anyone else any harm.
The Upheaval might have revealed our existence to the rest of the world, but that doesn’t mean all paras stepped out of the shadows. Far from it. And that’s just fine with me. Hollywood and the bestsellers lists made vampires and werewolves sexy and, well, normal. At least as normal as anyone with a thirst for blood or the ability to shapechange without donning a costume can be. But there are other paras who truly are the things of nightmares. Whether it’s because they know they are at the top of the food chain and the rest of us are just a snack waiting to be taken or because of how they look unless they use magic to hide their true appearance, those paras chose to remain hidden. But they aren’t the only ones. Some of the smaller—and I do mean smaller—members of the paranormal community hide as well. Not that I blame them. If I was only the size of a hummingbird, I’d hide as well.
The Council lets them stay in the shadows, knowing there’s a very real possibility that panic would run rife among the “normals” if they knew just how many different species of paranormals exited. It wouldn’t matter the normals outnumber us by a magnitude in the hundreds, if not thousands. All they’d see were the monsters from their nightmares, waiting to steal their children and murder the rest of them in their sleep.
The fragile peace between our kinds would shatter into a million pieces. The inevitable result would be bloodshed and death. Neither side would emerge unscathed.
That’s why the Council laid down strict laws forbidding interaction between certain para species and the humans. It’s also why they created safe zones near the magical rifts that now dot the Earth’s surface. These rifts tore away the veil hiding our kind from the normal world. These safe zones became home for those who either couldn’t or didn’t want to live near the normals. The Zones are the only places where humans risk more than their lives if they stay too long. Doing so risks their humanity because we still don’t know what exposure to a rift’s energies for more than a few hours would do to them.
I pushed open the front door of the converted warehouse, shoving all thoughts of the Council and the Upheaval from my mind. The smells of stale coffee, sweat and microwave popcorn assaulted my nose as I stepped inside. It was a direct contrast to the almost spartan look of the waiting room. Alyce Hampton, hedge witch and the current receptionist, looked up from her laptop and nodded toward the door behind her, the message clear. He was waiting and I needed to get my ass in gear.
I blew out a breath and stepped forward. Even though Alyce would announce me, I knocked once and opened the door, stepping inside.
“You’re late.”
I closed the door and closed my eyes, blowing out a long breath. I didn’t need to look up to know the gruff voice matched the gruff expression on my foster father’s face. Of course, it was near impossible for him not to look that way. Part troll, part dwarf, and part who knew what, Redmond Oakley ran what he euphemistically called a reclamation agency. Most of his employees focused on finding paras who went missing. Sometimes they disappeared of their own accord and sometimes because they crossed the wrong person and sometimes—fortunately not too often—because someone abducted them to find out what made them what they were.
But all that was a front for the actual work done here. Just as the bar Red owned was a front. Here, Red and “the team” did research and trained. It’s where clients came to discuss their cases. It’s where Red ran interference with—and sometimes for—the Council. At the bar, we gathered information and monitored those paras who loved their drink and drugs and couldn’t hold their tongues if their lives depended on it.
Yes, we. Because I spent most evenings and all too many weekends slinging drinks behind the bar at The Red Dragon Brew Company. It might not be the sort of job most parents want for their kids, but it fit my needs and, well, my folks weren’t around any longer to approve or not. I owed Red for taking me in and this was one way of repaying him.
“Well? Anything to say for yourself, girl?”
I glanced at my watch and rolled my eyes.
“Late? Really?” I crossed the office and dropped onto one of the two chairs in front of Red’s battered desk. As I did, I considered reaching out with one booted foot and nudging the corner of the desk to see if any of the stacks of files and loose paper would topple over. In the five years I’d worked for him, the stacks had grown and multiplied until there wasn’t a bit of the desktop visible. “It’s barely noon and I’m not scheduled to go on shift at the bar until six.”
“Then why’re you here, Walker? I’m not gonna pay you overtime.” His almost black eyes glittered, and one corner of his mouth lifted in what someone might generously say was a smile.
I barked out a laugh and crossed my legs. “When have you ever paid overtime, Red? You’re a stingy bastard, but we love you anyway.”
I grinned as he growled. But the sparkle in his eyes gave him away. I might frustrate the hell out of him at the best of times, but he liked me. More than that, he liked the bounties I brought in when he managed to get me to agree to take the job. Besides, I always got my paperwork in on time and did my best to make sure the other Marshals did as well. That meant money in my pocket and his, something he appreciated more than just about anything else.
“Yeah, you say that to every guy who signs your paychecks.” His voice rumbled deep in his barrel chest.
“You haven’t signed a check in years, Red. Everything’s digital now.”
“You’re such a bitch, Walker.”
“No argument there, Red.”
Survival in this world meant being able to take care of yourself. Doing what I did, you’d better be a ball-buster who wasn’t afraid to draw blood if you wanted to live to see the next day. That was the first lesson my mama taught me when she sat me down at the ripe old age of ten and told me this was my legacy. She’d been a Marshal until she disappeared on a job for the Council. My dad had been one until a feral wyvern killed him protecting its nest.
I’d been nine when Dad died and almost thirteen when Mom didn’t come home. Red took me in and put me to work. First, I helped out around the office, sweeping the floors, running errands, that sort of thing. Oh, he made sure I finished school, but he also saw to it that I got the training I needed to carry on the family legacy. When I asked him about it a couple of years ago, all he said was he promised my parents and he always kept his promises.
“As long as you remember you’re my bitch.” He grinned and cracked his large, hairy knuckles.
I arched one brow. Nothing else. I didn’t need to do or say anything, not when he paled and swallowed hard, realizing how badly he stepped in it.
He licked his lips once. “You know what I mean, Ripley.”
I waited, watching as sweat pricked out on his forehead. Then I grinned. I didn’t mind letting him sweat, but I did know what he meant.
“No worries, Red. Just don’t say something like that in front of anyone else.” That was all the warning he’d get. “Now, why did I need to drag my tired ass out of bed before my alarm went off? I assume this warm greeting is your way of saying a job’s come across your desk and it’s not something you want one of the others to deal with.”
He nodded and reached for one of the files. Then he stopped and dropped that hand back into his lap. Surprised, I waited, wondering what was going on.
“Red?”
“Something’s going on, Ripley.” He lifted a hand when I opened my mouth to say something. “I don’t know what or I’d tell you. Gemma called me a couple of hours ago. She’s worried.” Another pause and this time he frowned. “She wouldn’t admit it, but she’s scared. Said she Saw something. It’s bad, and it’s coming this way. She asked—asked, Ripley—if I’d send you out to see her.”
My mouth fell open, and I did an imitation of a fish out of water. At the same time, my blood ran cold. As far as most people were concerned, Gemma Blackrock is a Native American witch with a touch of foresight. I knew better, as did Red. Gemma was a Seer, one of the most reliable I’d ever known. If she said trouble was coming, I believed her. What worried me is that she didn’t say more.
At least I assumed she hadn’t since Red kept quiet.
“She asked for me specifically?”
It probably said a lot that the request scared the shit out of me. Hell, who was I kidding? Gemma might look like someone’s sweet old grandma, but I knew better. Behind that innocent-looking exterior lay one of the most powerful witches and Seers around. The only other time she asked Red to have me deal with something, I’d come damned close to losing my life.
“She did. Said for you to come soonest.”
He didn’t look any happier about it than I felt. This was so not good.
“I want double my usual rates and hazard pay as well as use of the armory and anything else I might need. And, Red, that’s just to go out to see her.” We’d argue about additional contract terms later, after I found out why she wanted to see me and decided just how involved I wanted to be.
“Agreed.” He levered his bulk out of his chair and moved around the desk. “Sign and add your thumbprint.”
I took the tablet from him and scanned the contract. I trusted Red, but I also knew he was a shrewd businessman. That meant making sure I knew what I was signing. This time, at least, I saw nothing I needed to clarify. The terms were simple. He’d pay what I asked, and, in return, I would meet with Gemma as she requested. I was not obligated to do anything else, and he would contact her once I signed to let her know when to expect me and to make sure she knew I was not obligated to do anything more than hear her out and then return to him to report in.
Simple enough. So why did I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that it would come back to bite me on the ass?
With my luck, it would not only bite me there but take out a big chunk and I really liked my ass, especially the way my jeans hugged it this morning.
I signed and added my thumbprint before handing the tablet back to him. He took it with a single nod.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Ripley. Gear up, including weapons and coms, before you head out. Take one of the trucks instead of your car. Remember to keep your head on a swivel. If Gemma’s worried, you know it’s not good.”
“Understood.” I stood and thought for a moment. “I’m going to stop by Razor’s first. If I’m heading out to Gemma’s, I want all the mundane and arcane protections I can get.”
“Go. Once you get there, tag me and tell me how long you’ll be. I’ll let Gemma know your ETA then.”
“Thanks.” Seeing the worry lurking in his dark eyes, I smiled in reassurance. “Don’t worry, Red. I won’t take any unnecessary chances.”
With that, I turned on my heel and left his office. If I stayed any longer, I’d start second-guessing my decision to go see Gemma. Tempting as it was to suddenly come down with a case of the “I don’ wannas”, I couldn’t do that. Not to Red, and not to Gemma. Hell, I couldn’t do it to the rest of us.
After all, I was a Council Marshal. That meant it was my job to deal with problems like the one it seemed was about to land in my lap.
Welcome to my world and when can I get off?
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"Welcome to my world and when can I get off?" Oh, honey, don't we all wish that at one point or another....
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You know how to pull a "helpless" reader into your stories. [Crazy Grin]