Cursed

Part Two

"He's awake," Avi said, his low voice causing Mitch and all the others to jump. The vampire may have had the best hearing, but anyone under this roof would have been able to hear the change in the human boy's heartbeat as he began to climb out of unconsciousness, even from down the hall.

Mitch heard the buzz of tiny wings and felt their wind on his neck as Kirstin woke from where she'd curled on his shoulder. In her faerie form, she was just shy of six inches tall, but the next thing he knew, she was materializing as a fully sized human woman beside him on the couch. Well, nearly full sized. Mitch always found it humorous that she could magically alter anything at all about her appearance and yet chose to be so short. Now wasn't the time to ask though, so he just watched her give a delicate stretch and pull her cotton candy pink hair back from her face.

Faeries weren't typically nocturnal, but it had been a weird night. The other three Elders thrived at night, and shunned the daylight, but it was noon and no one seemed to know what end was up. Kirstin asked what she'd missed during her brief nap on Mitch's shoulder, and he did his best to fill her in while Kevin and Avi spoke in low voices about who should speak to the human first.

"You'll scare him," Kevin said kindly. "Mitch should do it. Or I could."

"I'm not scary!" Avi insisted, looking offended.

"You were drooling all over his throat less than twelve hours ago. And you've been clocking his heartbeat all day," Kevin accused.

"He's not exactly human anymore. I'm not that thirsty," Avi said haughtily, but he swept out of the room in the opposite direction of the guest quarters, hopefully to rest while the sun was at its highest and he was at his grumpiest.

Mitch sighed. "I should be the one speak to him." He ran a hand over the coarse stubble on the top of his head, matching the line of a beard coming through on his chin. He too had been listening to the human's heartbeat all night, and he felt like he'd somehow matched his own to it. He wanted to see that boy again more than anything. And yet he was afraid of him. Fear was not a common emotion for Mitch. He may have been elected to his position, but he'd had to fight often to keep it. In a world of monsters, he wasn't scared of much.

But Scott Hoying the maybe-wolf, maybe-vamp terrified him. All those long limbs and those beautiful blue eyes. He had all the potential to be something special, and all the potential in the world to break his heart.

He's not Alex, Mitch reminded himself for the millionth time and looked up to see Kevin staring at him as though waiting for an answer.

"What?"

"I said that I would take him a breakfast tray, and you can join us later," Kevin said warily. He held his big hands out, showing dark runes tattooed into the skin of his palms. They flashed, reminding Mitch of lava showing through the cracks of a volcano. A moment later, a tray laden with fruit and toast and juice appeared out of thin air. The warlock's gift was always impressive. Mitch found himself nodding as Kevin took the tray down the hall.

"Everything okay with you?" Kirstin asked, nudging him. Her wings were still out, glittering in a dozen colors, and the concern in her eyes was overshadowed by the fantastical perkiness of her appearance. It was the burden of the Cursed. You never saw a happy vampire or a sad faerie. Warlocks were usually quite serious, but Kevin did a good job at overcoming that tendency. Mitch was sure there were plenty of lycan stereotypes he was either embracing or challenging, but he had too much on his plate to worry about that. Being the first leopard General carried a massive weight of responsibility. He was just beginning to feel like he had a handle on it, and then this.

"I'm fine," Mitch said, rubbing at his eyes, which were surely shadowed. "Just tired. Hard to sleep with a snoring pixie on your shoulder." He smiled at his friend's indignant reaction. "I'm kidding."