“Me too, but we have a problem. Olivia is here; Ristan made us bring her with us. I need to know what she did that made him hate her.”
“She gave me up,” he admitted. “She surprised me, and found me with the Demon. I didn’t think she suspected him to be anything other than Human since he was wearing glamour of a Guild Warlock and was inside the wards. She came to my office with a bottle of wine and wanted me to help her celebrate the completion of another section of catalogued archives. She’d been completing a lot more of them lately, and I should have wondered why one was more important than any of the others. I was going to send her away, but Ristan said he would love to help her celebrate, and I had no reason to mistrust her. I should have known something was off; we both should have. She had never talked to me that much, not in all the time I’ve known her. I wanted to trust her, and I think Ristan did too; he’d been obsessed about that girl, and watching her like a hawk since he met her a few months ago, and I’d noticed it. I just thought what harm, ya know?” He sighed deeply, and then continued. “I think Ristan had more wine than I did. Anyhow, my head started to swim right away and I noticed Olivia trying to come on to Ristan, funniest damn thing I ever saw. Right up until she climbed into his lap and I think she touched his cheek or neck, next thing I know, he dropped like a millstone. And then I woke up, tied to a table, and the Mages were there with a few Warlocks I used to call friends. I heard one of the say they got wine and whatever the hell they used to take the Demon down, from that scary-ass thing.”
“Olivia said she did what she had to,” I admitted, hoping he could shed some light on it.
“She had to have been watching me, or watching us. Ristan said he didn’t trust her, but that you’d told him she was just a mouse. I helped raise that girl, but if she gave us up, kid, she’s beyond our help. That wine had one hell of a punch though. Hell, when they started to torture me, I didn’t even feel it. I laughed, which had to be from the drugs. I watched them break my legs, and it didn’t start hurting until the drugs from the wine started to wear off.”
I hated that time moved differently here. Days had passed, and I hadn’t seen Ristan in that time, but then he’d been gone a lot trying to protect Alden from the Mages, and discovered trying to find more clues that would lead to relics. They’d been tortured for days, and we hadn’t even known.
“The Guild is going to want answers,” I continued.
“I bet, but I’m not sure which ones are under Mage influence anymore. I’ve been running ours under the assumption that they all are.”
“Then that’s how we will play it as well,” I said as I lifted my head as the Demon growled, and then screamed as Eliran reset bones that were healing incorrectly.
“They got him good, kid. They worked him over hoping he’d reach out to his King and brothers. That monster they work for knew things about him, and how he worked. They used it, and I watched as he did things I can never un-see again. He’s a better man than I, because not once did he cave. Not even when they used me against him. That’s why you found me on the upper level. They wanted the Demon to think I was dead and that it was his fault so they moved me figuring it wouldn’t take much more time before I died anyway.”
I swallowed the bile as I considered just how much had been done to poor Ristan. He hadn’t deserved it, and he’d done it to protect us. He’d been tortured brutally, and over a period of time which we’d been spending with our children, unaware that anything was amiss. We’d let him down, and that was my fault. He’d never let me down, and even when the others had suspected my Guild for bombing Ryder’s club, Ristan had believed in me.
“He’s immortal,” I whispered breathlessly. I was thankful for that more than anything else right now
“It’s a good thing too, kid. They took his body apart. That monster, he enjoyed it. Kept saying things about Danu, and Ristan refused to give an inch, which only made it worse,” he whispered and I turned to find Ryder watching me.
“Ristan’s been given a sedative,” he said quietly when I continued to watch him.
“Alden needs rest, and we will take him to the Seattle Guild when he’s better, and not before,” I warned as I leveled a don’t-argue-with-me look at Alden. “You can’t just run in and explain that a God who wanders between our worlds is assisting evil Mages who are using the Guild as cover, because chances are you’ll be telling evil Mages that you know they exist and what their own evil plan is. For now you stay here. Last time you refused to listen to reason and at that time I understood those reasons. That reason is now gone, and you’re my family, Alden. I protect my family, even when they are stubborn as you. Ryder, make it known that if anyone is approached and asked for a ride out of Faery, that the gates are closed and whoever tries to assist him will suffer for it.”