Page 33 of A Deeper Blue
“Mm,” was all she could say when he pulled back, and he looked like he knew exactly how much he’d just revved her motor.
“Come on, Lady Blue,” he said with a cocky grin and turned back toward the motorcycle. “Your steed awaits.”
Episode 16
Destiny
Rafe
The DeSandre pack lived on the outskirts of Portland on the edge of the Mt. Hood National Forest. Rafe had always considered it perfect for shifter wolves. Humanity was only a hop and a skip away, and the forest was on their back doorstep. Of course, humanity kept getting closer every year, but Albert had been active in the legal campaign to have Mt. Hood declared a National Forest. It was a move that had protected them through generations of humanity, and the pack had always been proud to have a leader who looked out for their best interests. Rafe remembered watching his father putting on his suit for the train ride to go testify. The black suit, with the dangling gold pocket watch, carefully tied cravat, frock coat, and top hat had been the height of fashion. Rafe still regretted that by the time he’d gotten around to being social enough to go anywhere that top hats had gone out of fashion.
From the 1890s, when the area was called the Bull Run Forest Reserve, to 1924, when it had been merged and expanded and finally declared a National Forest, Albert had been there. Albert had even pushed, in the 1940s, to have Mt. Hood moved from a National Forest to a National Park, which would have limited logging, but that effort had ultimately been unsuccessful. Considering that history, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Albert would eventually set his sights on something more significant like the Super PAC, but it still seemed incomprehensible to Rafe. Albert had always been focused on the pack, but after Rafe’s mother had gotten sick in the early 1960s, Albert had withdrawn entirely from the outside world.
His mother had died from extreme DDT poisoning. Back then, the odorless chemical had been commonly used as an insecticide, and by the time they had figured out that it had leached into their water supply, it had been too late to save her. In retrospect, Albert’s withdrawal from the world made total sense, but at the time, it had seemed reactionary and aimed explicitly at Rafe, who had always been the most friendly with humans. Rafe could acknowledge, with sixty years of hindsight, that part of his behavior at the time had been a result of grief and the gnawing feeling that Albert was blaming him for her death. Rafe knew that Albert had also been under incredible stress and grief of his own, but that didn’t do much to ease the ache of losing both parents in one year.
This summit and Super PAC, or whatever Azure called it, seemed bigger than the pack, and Rafe wasn’t sure what to make of it. Azure seemed confident that Albert was the driving force behind the idea, but Rafe had his doubts.
Rafe looked over his shoulder at Azure, sleeping next to the bike, curled up in his sleeping bag. They’d stopped to get a few hours of rest, but Rafe hadn’t been able to settle down. Just looking at her made him feel as if his heart was expanding to fill up his chest. The swirl of those emotions kept him from sleep, and eventually, he’d gotten up so he wouldn’t wake Azure.
He held the sword across his knees and examined it, letting his fingers trace the groove known as the fuller that ran down the blade. Antiquarians called them blood grooves, but their true purpose was to lighten the blade. The Lady’s sword had been forged for a smaller individual. It was a one-handed, single-bladed weapon that stopped just short of being a curved sabre. It was a little short if he wanted to use it while standing, but it was a perfect length for use on the bike. It was an odd weapon for a Lady of the Lake who he’d always seen pictured with a two-handed broadsword. This sword was a cavalry weapon. It was as if she’d picked a weapon that would work for him. He sighed at his slow thinking. She saw the future, so of course, she had picked it out for him.
With one look, the Lady of the Lake had told him what his destiny was—protect Azure. In a heartbeat, he’d gone from a lone wolf to someone who was anchored to the future. Rafe was suddenly in a pack, albeit a very small one, and he was finding the experience like sitting on a new bike for the first time. He knew where everything was, but he wasn’t sure how it would perform out on the street. He had zero doubt that this was the right path for him, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do. And all of it was oddly tied up in his old pack and his father’s newfound desire to be political.
He raised his head and smelled the breeze. It would be dawn soon, and they would go to meet their future. A future where he was going to need a sword. He looked at Azure again. Without him in the sleeping bag, she had curled up into a ball. She looked sweet and fragile. Which made him laugh. Anybody thinking that about Azure was probably in for a swift kick in the nuts.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked, her voice a whisper in the dark.
“How do you deal with only knowing half of what’s coming for you?” he asked.
“I make plans,” she said. “I keep saying it—you can’t count on magic to make everything work out.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding.
She chuckled. “I feel like you argued with me last time we had this conversation.”
“I did. And I stand by my argument,” Rafe said. “But I didn’t fully realize the position you were coming from before.”
“It’s early,” said Azure. “Or late. One of the two. Remind me of your argument again?”
“I don’t rely on magic.”
“No, that’s my argument,” said Azure sleepily. “You can’t have mine.”
“But it is also mine,” he said. “I don’t rely on magic. It’s just a tool. I rely on myself. And now I rely on you.”
Azure was silent, and he began to worry that what he was feeling wasn’t what she was feeling.
“I should probably mention that the reason I’m going to the summit is because I lied to Scarlet. I wanted her to come to a protest where I knew that her presence would make the future work out the way I wanted it to. I knew she would be in danger if she came, but I didn’t tell her that part because I thought I could protect her. When we were kids after our Mom left and before Grandma found us, I… Well, I didn’t tell her and Ochre about lots of stuff. There are a lot of dangerous things out there, and I just wanted them to feel safe. If I had to deal with some… bad things, well, that was fine. I’m older, so it was my job to deal with things for the family. And even though she’s grown up now, I guess I got used to not telling her or asking about my plans for the family. Only I really, really should have.”
He ached for the world of unspoken pain behind Azure’s words, and he wanted to go over and scoop her up and hug away everything, but he could see in the way that she turned her back to him, curling up tighter in the sleeping bag, that she didn’t want that.
“Azure…” He hesitated. No matter how he formulated the question, it sounded rude, but he needed to know. “What are you?”
Azure was silent for a moment.
“We’re Fae,” she said, at last. “My family tree contains several different Fae species. My father is elven, so probably we’re that the most, but… usually, we just say Fae. Most of my ancestors left in the Great Migration, but my family intermarried with humans a lot, and they didn’t want to leave all their human kin. So we’ve stuck around. Our human blood makes us more likely to produce children. And even to this day, we’ve been known to receive visitors who… come a-courting, as Grandma says. That’s what happened to Mom. Our father wanted her to come with him. She didn’t want to go, but he’d come back every few years, and after a while, she just couldn’t take humanity anymore, so she left with him.” Azure sighed heavily. “Maybe she should have taken us with her, but I don’t know… Ochre and Scarlet didn’t want to go, and I could feel that bigger things were waiting for us here. Maybe, at the time, if some Lady of the Lake had popped out and told me what that would mean, I would have gone with Mom, but what does anyone know when they’re fourteen? But anyway,” her voice strengthened as if she was fighting to not sound sad about her past, “after Mom left with our father, I just got used to making decisions for everyone.”
Rafe breathed out a long sigh at his stupidity. Of course, she was Fae. It made things make so much more sense. It explained why a family of wood nymphs, who also fell under the family of Fae, would instantly trust Azure. Her strange method of traveling through a mystical wood. The way his powers resonated with her magic. The Great Leaving of the Fae was felt to this day. Rafe remembered reading the old pack histories. The Fae had sent out messages telling the Supernaturals they were leaving and that if they wished to learn anything or make copies of the Fae histories, they should come and do so. Most of the Supernaturals had ignored the messages. After all, where was there for the Fae to go? And then they had gone—no one knew where—but their absence still hurt the Supernaturals, and the Supernaturals were known to hold grudges. He could see why Azure hadn’t wanted to volunteer that information about herself.
