“You took a mortgage out on the property in Lakeside and I’m going to have to pay it off,” I responded flatly. It would be just like Dempsey to saddle me with a debt I wouldn’t be able to carve down for years, even if I took every damned contract the Post threw up on the boards. “Because if you did, I’m just going to sell that fucking place to the chicken farmers down the road. That damned place was paid off—”
“Seriously, I miss the fucking days when all you did was grunt and bite people,” Dempsey shot back. He struggled to sit up more, but the pillows under his head kept him in place. “Help me here, then shut up. This is important.”
I got the pillows arranged around his head and shoulders, earning myself a slap across my head as thanks. Flopping back down in the chair, I waited, refusing to rub at the smarting sting on my temple and the tip of my ear. I had to sit through him slurping up more of the whiskey and coffee before he put the cup down on the bed, gripping it tightly as he wiggled back into the plumped pillows.
Dempsey rolled his lips and held them there for a long second. Then he finally said, “There wasn’t ever any poker game.”
My first thought was his mind was going and maybe giving him whiskey on top of the painkillers had been a terrible mistake, but he shook his head when I reached for the call button gizmo dangling from a cord at the side of the bed.
“Hear me out,” he continued. “I mean, that story I told you. Shit, the one I told everybody about winning you in that poker game? It wasn’t real. None of it. There wasn’t any guard who’d taken you out. I didn’t palm any cards to cheat at the hand. It was all made up. Every single last bit of it.
“And before you start in on me, I’m going to tell you the truth and why I lied,” Dempsey cut me off before I even said a word. “See, you were a contract. A big one. I didn’t know when I took it that it was… you. It didn’t come through the Post, and that was fine by me because the percentage they would have cut out of my take would have been huge, and, well, the Post would have asked too many questions. Questions no one at the other end of that contract wanted answered.”
The slurping began again, and his hand trembled when he lifted the cup to his mouth. I reached for it before his fingers gave out and caught it before the dregs could spill onto the bed. I was trying to process what he was saying, but none of it made sense. Sliding the cup over onto the side table next to the bed, I asked, “I don’t understand. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I was hired on a shadow-market contract to get a chimera out of Tanic’s workroom. It lined up right for me. I was in Belfast and the Unsidhe Court wasn’t much more than three days from where I’d been staying. Ireland’s all Underhill now, but it was a good risk. The money was… I wouldn’t have had to work another day in my life. All I had to do was get the chimera to Elfhaine and I’d be set forever.” Dempsey shook his head, doing another lip roll. “The contact I had was a go-between, but he said the monster was small. About the size of a kid. What I didn’t expect was for it to be an actual fucking kid.”
His words eventually worked their way in, and I was left with a gaping hole in my being. Everything I’d known about how Dempsey found me, cheated at cards for me, was as solid as the clouds sweeping over the seas. The world was crashing around me, but I couldn’t find anything to hold on to. There wasn’t a single thing to grab at to steady myself—nothing but the old man dying in front of me.
“See, I brought a kennel with me, one of those folding ones to shove this creature into, and by the time I could get it hidden nearby, Tanic himself walked through the hallway and into that damned workroom. That’s when I heard him call you Ciméara. Shit, that’s when I finally figured out you were there, tucked into a cage beneath one of the worktables, matted hair, covered in fleas, and rebar sticking out of your back.” Dempsey looked away, his attention fixed on the city outside the wall of windows behind me. “All I could do not to throw up, watching him do things to you, waiting for him to finish so I could hit my contract and get paid. It took him hours. I don’t even know how long it was, but I can tell you I swallowed more vomit than air that night, and by the time he left, you weren’t nothing more than a bag of flesh, whimpering when I got near.”
“When did you decide you weren’t going to fill the contract?” My murmur seemed to startle him, maybe because I knew him all too well, and he smiled at my question.
“Takes a long time to travel across oceans and continents now. And it wasn’t like I could take you on a train. You were wild and injured, crazed out of your mind. By the time I got to Canada and bought that old truck of mine, you’d bitten me at least six times already. Almost lost a finger when I tried to feed you that first time. Stunk so much the boat captain thought I was smuggling ambergris into the States.” He chuckled as if my childhood was a romp I’d skipped through and not the stuff nightmares were scared of. “Drove the first two days toward the border with you in the back of the truck. Had a cage big enough, and, well, a tarp covered most of it. Figured the rain would at least wash off some of the stink, but then it began to snow.”
I didn’t remember any of what Dempsey was telling me, but then again, my memory of that time was spotty. Tanic used me for his blood magics, stripping away pieces of my skin and flesh to power his spells and craft the ainmhi dubh he hunted with. I needed to throw up, to rid myself of the bitterness pooling in my stomach, but I couldn’t find my legs, or at least that’s what it felt like.
“Pulled up into one of those roadside motels with bungalows. I needed to get you inside because I knew jack shit about elfin, and for all I knew, you could freeze to death. Figured I’d take a stab at bathing you at least, because I swear I could smell you through the glass….” Dempsey swallowed, his Adam’s apple working up and down his throat. “I got you in the bathroom and got my first good look at you. Then you kicked the shit out of me before I could even get you in the tub. You were ready to do anything you could to give as good as you got. You had balls. More than I gave you credit for. No way I was going to turn you over to those cat bastards in Elfhaine.
“You had too much fight, too much will to live. I sat and watched everything that fucking bastard did to you, and Pele knows how many of those times you’d already lived through, and you came out of the other side of it, bleeding and broken but ready to claw your way through whoever touched you,” he said, his voice thickening with emotion. “He made you. Or at least that’s what I understood. I was told you weren’t anything more than a golem, like one of his blasted black dogs, and with about as much intelligence as a sea cucumber, but that’s not what I saw. Not then. Not now. You were clever. Under all that hair, behind all of those fangs, you were going to survive, and if you got the chance, you’d kill whoever hurt you. That’s when I knew.”
“And not like the Post could ding you for not doing the contract,” I said through the waves of numbness hitting me.
“Nope, not a fucking thing they could do.” He nodded. “Thing was, I was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. Couldn’t go back to Ireland, not with the Wild Hunt Master looking for his pet chimera, so I headed back to SoCal, figuring I could keep you away from the elfin. Not like they left their sparkling white mountain. Scraped the blood and dirt off of you and taught you how to be a Stalker. Only thing I knew. Only thing I figured would keep you alive.”