All Hail the Shifter King
Title: Lords of Kensington, Part 19
World Count: 1875
Warning: very casual discussion of suicide that might offend some readers)
Notes: More dialogue and standing around but at least I shoved the story in a direction?
"So, let me get this straight," Azrin said, his mouth half-full of a rather crumbly scone. "We just drove you across the whole freakin' city so you could buy something that'll kill you?"
"Something like that, yep," Katrina said, sipping her tea and peering into the wrinkled paper bag that sat on the seat beside her. The thick sprigs of dried root were twisted and black, with a faint smell very similar to cinnamon.
"Are you planning on offing yourself or something?" he asked, wiping his hand on the sleeve of Benjamin's shirt - the latter, who was driving, shot him a steely glare and reached across his chest to scrub the crumbs from his clothing. "Because that's not cool, I mean we're doing all this work to take care of you and -"
"She's not going to kill herself," Benjamin scoffed, rolling his eyes as he hung a right turn.
"Oh, you're the expert in Kat-brain now?"
"Kat-brain?" Katrina asked, smirking.
"If she was going to do it, she wouldn't pick abaris root," Benjamin commented, pulling up to the curb in front of Katrina's building. "I think being skinned alive and devoured by fire ants would be a less painful way to go." She couldn't help but smile at him when she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror.
"I didn't know you were familiar with it," she mentioned.
"The hell is abaris root?" Azrin asked.
"Herbal remedy from Rion Fell," Benjamin explained. "Lethal to humans, near-lethal to kin."
"So it's a remedy for... living? That doesn't sound very -"
"It's an amplifier and accelerant for their magics. Just as effective as our healers, am I correct?" he asked Katrina - she shrugged at this as she gathered her purse and the paper bag.
"I'm not sure it's better than a healer," she said, "but it sure works in a pinch when you don't have one."
"Okay, I know I'm not exactly an expert on this sort of thing," Azrin said as he climbed out of the passenger seat and brushed a ridiculous amount of crumbs from his clothing to the sidewalk, "but don't you guys think it's a little odd that you can literally walk into a flower shop and buy, like, poison? I mean it's essentially poison, right?"
"They're a friend of a friend," Katrina told him.
"Your friend's a serial poisoner?" He paused, tapped his fingers against his chin. "Poisoner? Serial... poison-person... killer? Serial killer?"
"She's a shaman, Az."
"Okay, and Benny's a priest, but that doesn't mean he won't choke a bitch if -"
"You're a priest?" Katrina asked, shocked. Benjamin smiled a little and ducked his head as they headed into the building.
"I was," he said. "It was the vocation of choice when I was growing up."
"When was 'growing up'?" She swiped her card for the front door, holding it open with her foot as the two men entered behind her, Azrin walking backward and watching the street as they headed toward the elevators.
"Hey, Benny?" he asked, pausing in the middle of the lobby.
"About six centuries ago," Benjamin said in response to Katrina's question, ignoring Azrin as he thumbed the car call button. "I grew up in the interior settlements. Good people. God-fearing to a fault but -"
"Benny?" Azrin repeated, this time louder. Katrina leaned against the wall, smiling faintly.
"You're the first kin I've met that's older than Ryder," she mused as the elevator chimed and the doors open. "I don't know why that's strange to me, it just -"
"Benny!" Azrin snapped. "Quit ignoring me for a goddamn second and look!"
It took her a moment to spot what had caught Azrin's attention, the three women standing on the opposite side of the road in long wool jackets, staring through the lobby windows at them. It wasn't until she looked closer that she realized their jackets were dripping long strings of filth to the ground, staining the snow around their feet. She moved forward, trying to get a better look, and was stopped by Benjamin as he stepped ahead of her and held out an arm to stop her, his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed.
"They're Kaius' folks, right?" Azrin asked quietly when Benjamin joined him. As if hearing him - and Katrina wondered, for a moment, if perhaps they did - the three women swayed in perfect unison, like reeds in the wind. Even with the bulk of the jackets, or whatever it was covering them, they were absurdly skinny, their faces sunken and their legs bone-thin. The lobby lights flickered and dimmed slightly in time with the movement of their bodies before brightening again as they returned to their original position, standing stone-still on the sidewalk.
"They won't come in here, will they?" Katrina asked quietly. The woman in the middle shuddered violently and the long dragonfly wings pulled from her back, stringing black ooze with them like taffy. It seemed to be the same question on Azrin's mind - they both watched Benjamin nervously until he finally shook his head.
"No," he said. "They're just scouts. They wouldn't pick a fight like that."
"But if they bring someone else?" she asked.
"Then possibly, yes."
"Shit," Azrin muttered. "Shit, shit, shit. We can't take a bunch of enforcers, can we? Even with Mac here, I mean, that's a fucking hell of a fight, and they love that close confines shit, and -"
"Let's go upstairs," Benjamin suggested, as another of the women sprouted wings and the three of them continued to stare intently at the lobby, studying Katrina and her companions through the thick glass. "We'll ask Atticus what he wants to do about this."
Mackenzie opened the door before they even reached it, leaning out into the hallway and catching Benjamin's eye immediately.
"You saw them too?" she asked.
"We did," he confirmed, brushing past her and into the apartment. Katrina did a double-take at the girl, shocked at how different she looked from the corset-clad salesgirl they'd met in the mall. "Have they been here long?"
"About twenty minutes. They wandered into the park for a bit and came back." Mackenzie pushed the door closed and quickly flipped the deadbolt. "I don't know how much longer it'll be safe to stay here."
"Where's Ryder?" Katrina asked, setting her package on the kitchen counter and glaring heavily at Thaddeus and Crispin as they immediately threw themselves at Benjamin, falling over each other in their attempts to gain his attention.
"He's sleeping," Mackenzie told them, which drew a laugh from Azrin as he collapsed on the couch.
"Tired him out, didja?" he teased.
"For your information, all that happened while you were gone was a little conversation," she snapped, picking up a throw cushion from the armchair and winging it at him. Behind them, Benjamin tapped his cellphone and opened the sliding doors to the balcony, slipping outside and closing the door behind him.
"You must be so disappointed," Katrina said stiffly, digging out a pair of rubber gloves and a grater.
"To say the least," Mackenzie huffed, dropping into the armchair and retrieving her tablet from the coffee table. "I bet he's great for a romp, isn't he?"
"I wouldn't know." The words hissed out through her clenched teeth as Katrina took a knife and chopped the end off a piece of root - then, holding it in her gloved hand, extended it toward Mackenzie. "Taste this for me?" she asked. The girl looked at it, sniffed, and sneezed.
"Isn't that abaris root?" she asked, confused. In the background, the two keesin sat at the balcony doors and whined miserably as they watched Benjamin pace on the other side of the glass.
"Is it? Oh. Sorry. My mistake."
"Wait, wait, wait," Azrin piped up, finally looking up from the horticulture magazine he was leafing through. "You two are a thing and you've never... um... like you've never..." He withered under Katrina's glare, shrinking into the couch cushions. "Umm, okay, yeah, sorry I almost asked."
"I'd really like it if the state of our relationship wasn't a topic of conversation right now," Katrina said, glaring down at the abaris root as she gouged it across the grater. "Or ever. You two good with that?" Mackenzie and Azrin meeped their agreements - she missed the confused looks they shot each other before they both made a show of occupying themselves with something Mackenzie pulled up on her tablet. Katrina continued scrubbing the root across the grater, sniffing as the pungent stink made her eyes water and her nose run, and after she'd finish off half of one of the pieces she tossed the remainder back in the bag, washed off her gloves, and put on a kettle of water. As the water heated, she sprinkled sugar across the surface of the grated mess of fibre, watching the surface bubble before she pushed and shaped it into a small patty, pressing it flat with her gloves and kneading it like she would dough. The water came to a boil and the kettle clicked off as she worked, and she paused in her kneading to dig out a large plastic water bottle. Dropping the pancake of root fibres into the bottom, she poured the boiling water over top - the water immediately turned a swirling blood red, almost like paint. She had just capped the bottle and stuck it in the fridge, and was starting the process of washing everything down when Benjamin opened the door and came back into the apartment.
"I just talked to Atticus," he said, causing Azrin and Mackenzie to look up expectantly. "He wants us to report to the Clayton Crossing pack hall." He looked up at Katrina. "All of us."
"You're kidding," Katrina said, even though she knew full-well he wasn't. "No, this is ridiculous, I'm not just going to up and run off to a safe house every time -"
"If it was a coincidental sighting, I wouldn't be concerned, and neither would Atticus. But it's obvious they know who you are. They targeted your vehicle, they know where you live. And Azrin is correct, even with Mackenzie here we can't take a pack of his soldiers if they show up." He rubbed his hand across Thaddeus' head - the keesin sighed heavily, obviously in bliss. "This isn't about inconveniencing you, Katrina. It's about protecting everyone involved to the extent possible. This way we..." He paused as Ryder emerged from the bedroom and leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets as he casually scanned the room. Katrina just had to take a quick look at him to know he hadn't been sleeping - avoiding company, perhaps, but definitely not sleeping. "Ryder," Benjamin said, as if deciding it better to appeal to him instead of Katrina, "there's been -"
"I heard you," Ryder said evenly.
"Then I'm sure you appreciate -"
"You don't need to sell me, Benjamin." He looked over to Katrina, and she stared back at him with her jaw set and her blood boiling, not even entirely sure why she was so angry at him and not really caring to find a legitimate reason. "Pack up," he told her. "We're leaving."
World Count: 1875
Warning: very casual discussion of suicide that might offend some readers)
Notes: More dialogue and standing around but at least I shoved the story in a direction?
"So, let me get this straight," Azrin said, his mouth half-full of a rather crumbly scone. "We just drove you across the whole freakin' city so you could buy something that'll kill you?"
"Something like that, yep," Katrina said, sipping her tea and peering into the wrinkled paper bag that sat on the seat beside her. The thick sprigs of dried root were twisted and black, with a faint smell very similar to cinnamon.
"Are you planning on offing yourself or something?" he asked, wiping his hand on the sleeve of Benjamin's shirt - the latter, who was driving, shot him a steely glare and reached across his chest to scrub the crumbs from his clothing. "Because that's not cool, I mean we're doing all this work to take care of you and -"
"She's not going to kill herself," Benjamin scoffed, rolling his eyes as he hung a right turn.
"Oh, you're the expert in Kat-brain now?"
"Kat-brain?" Katrina asked, smirking.
"If she was going to do it, she wouldn't pick abaris root," Benjamin commented, pulling up to the curb in front of Katrina's building. "I think being skinned alive and devoured by fire ants would be a less painful way to go." She couldn't help but smile at him when she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror.
"I didn't know you were familiar with it," she mentioned.
"The hell is abaris root?" Azrin asked.
"Herbal remedy from Rion Fell," Benjamin explained. "Lethal to humans, near-lethal to kin."
"So it's a remedy for... living? That doesn't sound very -"
"It's an amplifier and accelerant for their magics. Just as effective as our healers, am I correct?" he asked Katrina - she shrugged at this as she gathered her purse and the paper bag.
"I'm not sure it's better than a healer," she said, "but it sure works in a pinch when you don't have one."
"Okay, I know I'm not exactly an expert on this sort of thing," Azrin said as he climbed out of the passenger seat and brushed a ridiculous amount of crumbs from his clothing to the sidewalk, "but don't you guys think it's a little odd that you can literally walk into a flower shop and buy, like, poison? I mean it's essentially poison, right?"
"They're a friend of a friend," Katrina told him.
"Your friend's a serial poisoner?" He paused, tapped his fingers against his chin. "Poisoner? Serial... poison-person... killer? Serial killer?"
"She's a shaman, Az."
"Okay, and Benny's a priest, but that doesn't mean he won't choke a bitch if -"
"You're a priest?" Katrina asked, shocked. Benjamin smiled a little and ducked his head as they headed into the building.
"I was," he said. "It was the vocation of choice when I was growing up."
"When was 'growing up'?" She swiped her card for the front door, holding it open with her foot as the two men entered behind her, Azrin walking backward and watching the street as they headed toward the elevators.
"Hey, Benny?" he asked, pausing in the middle of the lobby.
"About six centuries ago," Benjamin said in response to Katrina's question, ignoring Azrin as he thumbed the car call button. "I grew up in the interior settlements. Good people. God-fearing to a fault but -"
"Benny?" Azrin repeated, this time louder. Katrina leaned against the wall, smiling faintly.
"You're the first kin I've met that's older than Ryder," she mused as the elevator chimed and the doors open. "I don't know why that's strange to me, it just -"
"Benny!" Azrin snapped. "Quit ignoring me for a goddamn second and look!"
It took her a moment to spot what had caught Azrin's attention, the three women standing on the opposite side of the road in long wool jackets, staring through the lobby windows at them. It wasn't until she looked closer that she realized their jackets were dripping long strings of filth to the ground, staining the snow around their feet. She moved forward, trying to get a better look, and was stopped by Benjamin as he stepped ahead of her and held out an arm to stop her, his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed.
"They're Kaius' folks, right?" Azrin asked quietly when Benjamin joined him. As if hearing him - and Katrina wondered, for a moment, if perhaps they did - the three women swayed in perfect unison, like reeds in the wind. Even with the bulk of the jackets, or whatever it was covering them, they were absurdly skinny, their faces sunken and their legs bone-thin. The lobby lights flickered and dimmed slightly in time with the movement of their bodies before brightening again as they returned to their original position, standing stone-still on the sidewalk.
"They won't come in here, will they?" Katrina asked quietly. The woman in the middle shuddered violently and the long dragonfly wings pulled from her back, stringing black ooze with them like taffy. It seemed to be the same question on Azrin's mind - they both watched Benjamin nervously until he finally shook his head.
"No," he said. "They're just scouts. They wouldn't pick a fight like that."
"But if they bring someone else?" she asked.
"Then possibly, yes."
"Shit," Azrin muttered. "Shit, shit, shit. We can't take a bunch of enforcers, can we? Even with Mac here, I mean, that's a fucking hell of a fight, and they love that close confines shit, and -"
"Let's go upstairs," Benjamin suggested, as another of the women sprouted wings and the three of them continued to stare intently at the lobby, studying Katrina and her companions through the thick glass. "We'll ask Atticus what he wants to do about this."
Mackenzie opened the door before they even reached it, leaning out into the hallway and catching Benjamin's eye immediately.
"You saw them too?" she asked.
"We did," he confirmed, brushing past her and into the apartment. Katrina did a double-take at the girl, shocked at how different she looked from the corset-clad salesgirl they'd met in the mall. "Have they been here long?"
"About twenty minutes. They wandered into the park for a bit and came back." Mackenzie pushed the door closed and quickly flipped the deadbolt. "I don't know how much longer it'll be safe to stay here."
"Where's Ryder?" Katrina asked, setting her package on the kitchen counter and glaring heavily at Thaddeus and Crispin as they immediately threw themselves at Benjamin, falling over each other in their attempts to gain his attention.
"He's sleeping," Mackenzie told them, which drew a laugh from Azrin as he collapsed on the couch.
"Tired him out, didja?" he teased.
"For your information, all that happened while you were gone was a little conversation," she snapped, picking up a throw cushion from the armchair and winging it at him. Behind them, Benjamin tapped his cellphone and opened the sliding doors to the balcony, slipping outside and closing the door behind him.
"You must be so disappointed," Katrina said stiffly, digging out a pair of rubber gloves and a grater.
"To say the least," Mackenzie huffed, dropping into the armchair and retrieving her tablet from the coffee table. "I bet he's great for a romp, isn't he?"
"I wouldn't know." The words hissed out through her clenched teeth as Katrina took a knife and chopped the end off a piece of root - then, holding it in her gloved hand, extended it toward Mackenzie. "Taste this for me?" she asked. The girl looked at it, sniffed, and sneezed.
"Isn't that abaris root?" she asked, confused. In the background, the two keesin sat at the balcony doors and whined miserably as they watched Benjamin pace on the other side of the glass.
"Is it? Oh. Sorry. My mistake."
"Wait, wait, wait," Azrin piped up, finally looking up from the horticulture magazine he was leafing through. "You two are a thing and you've never... um... like you've never..." He withered under Katrina's glare, shrinking into the couch cushions. "Umm, okay, yeah, sorry I almost asked."
"I'd really like it if the state of our relationship wasn't a topic of conversation right now," Katrina said, glaring down at the abaris root as she gouged it across the grater. "Or ever. You two good with that?" Mackenzie and Azrin meeped their agreements - she missed the confused looks they shot each other before they both made a show of occupying themselves with something Mackenzie pulled up on her tablet. Katrina continued scrubbing the root across the grater, sniffing as the pungent stink made her eyes water and her nose run, and after she'd finish off half of one of the pieces she tossed the remainder back in the bag, washed off her gloves, and put on a kettle of water. As the water heated, she sprinkled sugar across the surface of the grated mess of fibre, watching the surface bubble before she pushed and shaped it into a small patty, pressing it flat with her gloves and kneading it like she would dough. The water came to a boil and the kettle clicked off as she worked, and she paused in her kneading to dig out a large plastic water bottle. Dropping the pancake of root fibres into the bottom, she poured the boiling water over top - the water immediately turned a swirling blood red, almost like paint. She had just capped the bottle and stuck it in the fridge, and was starting the process of washing everything down when Benjamin opened the door and came back into the apartment.
"I just talked to Atticus," he said, causing Azrin and Mackenzie to look up expectantly. "He wants us to report to the Clayton Crossing pack hall." He looked up at Katrina. "All of us."
"You're kidding," Katrina said, even though she knew full-well he wasn't. "No, this is ridiculous, I'm not just going to up and run off to a safe house every time -"
"If it was a coincidental sighting, I wouldn't be concerned, and neither would Atticus. But it's obvious they know who you are. They targeted your vehicle, they know where you live. And Azrin is correct, even with Mackenzie here we can't take a pack of his soldiers if they show up." He rubbed his hand across Thaddeus' head - the keesin sighed heavily, obviously in bliss. "This isn't about inconveniencing you, Katrina. It's about protecting everyone involved to the extent possible. This way we..." He paused as Ryder emerged from the bedroom and leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets as he casually scanned the room. Katrina just had to take a quick look at him to know he hadn't been sleeping - avoiding company, perhaps, but definitely not sleeping. "Ryder," Benjamin said, as if deciding it better to appeal to him instead of Katrina, "there's been -"
"I heard you," Ryder said evenly.
"Then I'm sure you appreciate -"
"You don't need to sell me, Benjamin." He looked over to Katrina, and she stared back at him with her jaw set and her blood boiling, not even entirely sure why she was so angry at him and not really caring to find a legitimate reason. "Pack up," he told her. "We're leaving."