We sat down in a booth near the door, the exhausted looking waitress quickly filling our requests—coffee for Ren and a coke for me. "I'll give you two a couple minutes," she said, nodding at the grease-stained paper menus resting on a clean table in front of us before spinning around and tackling another set of customers in a nearby booth.
Ren glanced at the menu as he grabbed the white caddy and started pulling out the packets of sugar. "Awesome. They're serving breakfast." He ripped a packet open and dumped the sugar in his coffee. "I could go for some grits. What about you?"
"Breakfast does sound good," I said, and watched as he emptied a second packet into the coffee. "I guess I could eat some gravy and biscuits. And bacon."
"Extra crispy bacon." A third packet went into the coffee. "Bacon tastes different here than in Colorado. That might sound stupid, but it's true."
"No, you're right. It does. I guess it's just the way they fry it."
He glanced up, and even in the horrible fluorescent lights, his skin still looked golden, as if it were kissed by the sun. I hated to even think about what I looked like or what color of red my hair was in this lighting. "So, you're not from here?"
I shook my head as I picked at the edges of the menu and he moved on to the fourth packet of sugar. "I'm from Virginia."
"That's where you were born?"
"Yeah. You born and raised in Colorado?" I asked.
"Just outside of Denver." He emptied the fifth packet into his coffee.
Sitting back, I arched a brow as he picked up the sixth packet of sugar. "Do you want some extra coffee with your sugar?"
He gave me a quick grin. "I like things sweet."
"I can tell," I murmured, and I glanced up as the waitress reappeared. She took our orders then rushed off like the devil was snapping at her heels. "So, you going to tell me about this thing called the Elite?"
"I just need my first gulp of caffeine." He lifted the cup and took a hefty swallow. The sound he made afterwards actually made the muscles in my lower body tense. It was such a deep, throaty groan that warmth crept into my cheeks. "Ah, that is so much better," he said.
Then he winked.
"You are…" I shook my head. There were no words. I kept my voice low so we weren't overheard. "Tell me about the Elite."
He took another sip and thankfully didn't sound like he was having an orgasm afterward. "The Elite have existed since the beginning of the Order, and they've handled different things throughout history. Remember the Knights Templar? They branched off from the Elite"
"You're joking."
"When I joke, I'm usually funnier than that. But back to the point of this, the Elite has been in operation for a long ass time, and just like the Order, the members of the Elite are generational. It runs in the family."
I glanced over as the door opened and two college-aged girls stumbled in, looking like New Orleans chewed them up and spit them out. "Okay. Let's say, hypothetically, I believe you. The Elite hunt ancients?"
"We hunt the fae like everyone else, but we are trained to handle the ancients," he explained, cradling his hands around his cup of coffee. He had nice fingers, long and elegant. I could picture him strumming a guitar. I had no idea why I was thinking of his fingers. "Did you manage to stab that fae?" he asked quietly.
My stomach flopped at the memory. "I did, but it didn't do anything to him. He pulled it out and tossed it aside. I told David, but he . . ."
"He probably said he'd contact the other sects, right? I'm not talking shit about David. He seems like a good guy, but most of the Order is unaware of the ancients still being here. He probably thinks you didn't stab him."
"If people in the Order—people like you—know that they are, why wouldn't it be common knowledge? Not knowing is dangerous. Obviously." I gestured to myself. "We need to know what we're dealing with, and not having that knowledge has us at a disadvantage."
And it also made other Order members think I was crazy.
"I get what you're saying." He leaned forward. "But the ancients are rare, Ivy. The fact you ran into one is damn near unbelievable. They don't engage the Order. They stay hidden and surrounded by their own kind. When I say we hunt them, we literally have to hunt them down. There's no reason to have people panic when the likelihood of them ever running into one is nearly nonexistent."
I didn't agree, because obviously I proved someone could just stumble across an ancient, but I wasn't going to spend the entire time arguing with him. "How can you kill one?"
"Iron doesn't work."
My jaw dropped. "What?"
"Iron doesn't work," he repeated, then leaned back as the waitress delivered our food. Gravy steamed off my plate, and the scent was downright enticing, but my appetite had taken a big hit.
Ren grabbed the remaining packets of sugar and dumped them in his pile of lumpy looking grits. "There's no sending them back to the Otherworld. The only thing you can do is kill them, and there's one thing that will do that. A stake fashioned from a thorn tree that grows in the Otherworld is virtually a bullet to the brain."
"From a tree that grows . . . in the Otherworld?"
He nodded as he scooped up a mouthful of grits. "Yeah, so you can imagine getting that shit isn't easy. The weapons one can use against the ancients are limited, but the thorn stake works just like iron does. But as you know, ancients are far more dangerous and skilled."
I picked up a piece of bacon. "They can conjure things."
"Yes. As long as they have touched something, they can pretty much recreate it. They can also invade people's dreams, and they can move things around just like normal fae can. They're powerful, Ivy, and you're damn lucky that you got away from one of them with just a flesh wound."
I didn't need him to tell me I was lucky. Facing down an ancient, a fae, or even a human with a gun usually didn't end well, no matter how awesome you thought you were. "And you have one of these weapons?"
"Of course." He ate politely and cleanly, despite the fact I'd only eaten two slices of bacon and almost all of his grits were gone. "And before you ask, yes I've killed ancients before. Four of them, and no, it was not easy. I have the scars to prove that, and yes, if you ask nicely, I might be convinced to show them to you later." He glanced up through thick lashes. "You going to eat? Your food is getting cold."
I looked down at my biscuits and gravy and absently picked up a fork. "Why do you think the ancient is here?"
"It's always been here. That's the thing. There aren't many, but there are enough ancients that were in this realm when the doors were sealed. The right question is why was it engaging with you? Like I said, ancients are like . . . mob bosses. Fucking dangerous, but they don't get involved unless they have to. The fact this one was out on the street and hunted you down means something."
The savory gravy turned to sawdust in my mouth. "Hunted me down?"
"That's the only plausible explanation. No one in the Elite—no one, Ivy—has heard of an ancient seeking out a member of the Order. Hell, can you think of a time when a fae has hunted down an Order member?"
Yes, I could think of a time when a fae had hunted down members. It rarely happened, but it had. Three years ago.
"This is a big deal." Pushing his empty bowl aside, he attacked his plate of bacon. "The question is why?"
Only half of my biscuit was gone, but I was done. My thoughts spun with what Ren had told me. He could be lying—could be completely delusional, but I know what I saw. That wasn't a normal fae, and David had even confirmed that ancients had those abilities. Deep down, my instinct told me Ren wasn't lying. Just like it had told me that Tink was harmless.
And my instincts had told me not to meet Shaun that night, but I hadn't listened to them then.
Something occurred to me. "Maybe it wasn't just hunting me. Maybe it was hunting Order members in general. We've lost three of them since May. That's not entirely abnormal—the deaths, but these were good and skilled members."
"If they're hunting members, we need to know why."