(12.3) Revelations

Chapter 12, Part 3

“What does that matter?” I asked. “It’s just a job.”

“You work for the Winter Queen James. There’s no such thing as ‘just a job’ when it comes to dealing with the Unseelie.”

“Look, I don’t know what your beef with her is, but so far she’s been pretty good to me. She’s given me more money than I’d seen since I was turned. She’s usually pretty nice about it too. Hell, nine times out of ten, I don’t even get direct communication from her.”

“That doesn’t matter.” She retorted. “You’re doing dirty work for a fey. That sort of thing doesn’t come without consequences. Fuck James, do you have any idea what this means?”

“Besides the fact that you’re jumping to conclusions about someone you haven’t met?”

“No James.” She sighed then, rubbing the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Okay, listen to me when I say this, and listen carefully. Department 7 is an organization created to protect humanity. More specifically, to protect them from the Unseelie. Because of that fact, I could have been killed the moment that I set foot back there. They know about me, but for whatever reason they decided to just keep me out of the field. don’t ask why, because I don’t know.

“My point,” she continued. “Is that to them, vampires fall into the category of ‘Unseelie’. Which means that now, you’re a triple threat. You’re a powerful mage, you’re nearly impossible to kill and to top it all off the fucking Queen of Air and Darkness has you whipped.”

Her tirade had me taken aback, making my response take a moment. ”Okay first off, I’m not whipped. Secondly, I’m just as easily killed as any other vampire.”

“James, you survived a 16 story drop and being riddled with a mag of ammunition.”

“Wait, what? I only got hit once.”

“Yeah, until Dmitri got downstairs and emptied into you.”

“Huh,” I said, thinking back. “That’s where those holes came from. You know what? It doesn’t really matter. If you went through my file and didn’t know about it, then that means that they don’t know about it either. And even if they did, big deal, it’s not like I’ve never been hunted before.”

“It doesn’t mean they won’t find out. I’m still pretty new to the whole psychic thing, but they have people that have been ‘retrieving’ information like that for decades. What if one of them gets wind of what I am to you?”

I shrugged. “They’d probably kill you after sucking every bit of information about me out of your head.”

Her jaw dropped for a moment before setting into the tell-tale thin line that said “I’m going to leave before I hurt you.”

“Hey,” I started as she furiously gathered her things. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t care if they did it. But anyway that’s just one more reason for you to practice building your walls.”

She was out the door before I could finish my sentence, leaving me alone to sit and think about what I was going to do next. I decided on sleep, taking my shirt off and collapsing onto the bed.

It came as quite a shock when my back started to sizzle.

Screaming, I jumped out of bed to see what had burned me. The culprit lay on the sheets. The burn it left me told me it was silver, while etching on it said it was Angel’s Department 7 badge. None of that was what really caused my jaw to drop.

The badge itself was a symbol that I had worn before I was turned. A seven pointed silver star, lacquered red.

The symbol of The Brotherhood