Folks Of Fury (#1; Tales Of Elysia [COMPLETED])

twelve.

I couldn't find anywhere else to stay other than at Ezra's wood house.
I think he didn't want it any other way.
And so he goaded my decision with sneak attack kisses, supplies of fresh fruit which I discovered he went out at dawn hunting for.
Wednesday evening, he had all but dragged me to a barbecue cookout at the Legion House with repetitive promises of it being fun.
It wasn't as if I didn't have many better things to do, like prove myself worthy of being one of Mab's Knights but Ezra was infuriatingly persistent.
Night at the home of the Legion, was even livelier than daytime. A large campfire bordered by bricks was lit, a few older men were thrumming on guitars and trumpets, providing live jazz.
Other chatted and laughed over swings or beer and bourbon and munches of grilled meat and greens.
It was still early though night had fallen so children ran across the yard, playing and laughing.
Women with wind trussed hair and denim skirts and jeans tended the barbecue grills lined up to the left, enticing wafts of brisket and grilled meat swarmed the cool evening air.
Ezra took me towards a huddle of boys and girls our age, most I recognized went to our school.
Micah lunged and grabbed me into a hug even as he smelled heavily of beer.
"Senoy, you're the bestest friend in the world. I passed that fucking Chemistry test...told Mr. Thompson to suck a dick." Micah slurred.
Ezra yanked the Heineken bottle from his friend's hand.
"Okay that's enough. The night's only just started and you're down?"
Ezra followed to introduce me to a few of his friends outside the Legion Four.
There was Dinah, a blonde vixen with piercing dark eyes and her girlfriend Emily.
Geoff who was one of his cousins from his aunt Lucie, the similarities between them stopped at their dark hazel eyes and muscular build. He kept asking if I could hook him up with a Fey chic.
Ezra must've said a lot of names to the bunch of faces lit by the distant roaring campfire, but I could only remember a few from all the nerves of being amongst them.
"Hungry?" Ezra asked as a bunch of fifteen year olds started to wrestle much to the amusement of the older ones.
I nodded. "Hey, keep it light on the red meat for me." He chuckled but nodded before walking towards the barbecue area.
He received a lot of 'hey, man', 'where have you been', and amorous glances from female Hounds as he passed.
Some even went up to steal too tight hugs and kisses on the cheeks.
Something boiled in my gut and I forced myself to look away.
"Oh I know that look. Don't worry, Ezra knows easy when he sees it."
I turned to see the hot in flannel red shirt barely buttoned over black bra and pale denim short shorts, Dinah.
"What...what are you talking about?"
She smirked and raised her can of beer to her lips.
"Words been going around that our boy's been hanging a lot around a St. Ours. The adults think it's that stuck up bitch witch so they don't see anything wrong with that. But we at school have seen him with you instead."
Dinah was intimidating as sometimes Margot was, with her beauty except Dinah was feral but humble.
She nudged me with her elbow. "Don't look like it's the end of the world. Some of us didn't even think he'd be with anyone else till he was married. Not since Celia."
Again with that name. "I don't think you say that we're together. Ezra and I are just...close."
"Hmm, is that why you looked like you were going to break the necks of those girls a minute ago?"
I stifled a laugh but she didn't. And I searched around for him, only to find him heading straight for us with a tray of food and a familiar dark haired boy riding his shoulders.
"You make the sexiest couple, it near turns me on. So be safe okay, Senoy and don't be a stranger." Dinah grinned as she kissed my cheek and walked off.
"Senoy!" the child was Joshua and he shrieked my name before hauling himself from his brother's shoulders and into the air for me.
Jesus, they're even crazier as kids.
My arms shot forward in panic to catch him before he fell to the ground.
I hugged the four year old to my chest, wide eyed much to Ezra's amusement.
"It's not funny. I nearly had a heart attack." I frowned at him and looked down to see Joshua giggling as well.
"I knew you'd catch me." He said, leaning in to me and sniffing. "Hey, Ephy was right, you do smell awesome."
I smiled. "Where's your brother?"
Joshua didn't even glance away to search for his twin, he pointed to my right.
On the only sofa, by the campfire, Eleazar Khan sat with his arm around Fiona and Ephraim sleeping on his lap.
"He's not been sleeping well. Says he has nightmares." Joshua looked utterly perturbed at his twin's sleeplessness.
"I'm sure he's just tired. You don't have to worry."
"I don't. I sleep in his bed with him and sing the Dog and the Moon song for him when he gets scared. Ezra taught it to us."
I glanced down at Ezra who winked at me and patted at the log of wood he was sitting against on the ground.
I joined him, steadily shifting the boy in my arms.
"You're a good brother, Joshua."
"Ephy is better." And he yawned but reached to eat a spoonful of baked beans offered by Ezra.
Ezra had made a plate of spicy briskets, beans and collard greens enough to feed five people.
But then he was a Hound and he had faster metabolism.
"What's the Dog and Moon song?" I asked, after a few hours of indulging in hilarious conversation and jokes from the bunch of Legion Boys who had surrounded us.
It was pleasant and all of them cordial and friendly which I hadn't expected.
I took the bottle of bourbon from him and swinging down a gulp. I was stuffed full of food but alcohol I could ingest like water. Only shoal and its wine could get me drunk anyway.
He lazily but affectionately parted the hair from the sleeping face of Joshua.
But it was Emily who answered me. "It's the first song our mothers sing to us as babies, to ward off nightmare demons."
I raised a brow at Ezra but he quirked his eyebrows with a slight smile.
"That and helps bade the Fair Folk who come to play with children in daytime, farewell in a polite manner." A tattooed dark skinned boy with an ebony pretty girl in his lap said.
"Well I've never heard of it. And I'm half Fey."
"Mind if we ask you to tell us any of the Fey tales? Anything of the Court is banned by Eleazar and then Ezra tells us you might have a few."
I glanced down at where he was at my feet, his dark eyes inflamed by dancing orange lights.
"I might have told the twins about how you got your sword. They're loudmouth." Ezra glowered at down at his now awake little brother.
I shook my head, aware that most of the almost a dozen teenage Hounds huddled with us were buzzing with eagerness for it.
"You don't have to, if you don't want."
"Oh shut up, Khan. Let him tell us." Someone called out and the others laughed but peered at me in wait.
I mentally did a rundown of all the stories I'd heard, both from the covens and from my time in the Moors.
I smiled to myself and took a deep breath before starting. "This one's a love story, hope you don't mind."
"Would've liked something gory but eh." Micah teased.
"There was a young prince who had the peculiar talent of music. It was peculiar because he could play a dirge and cause even the hardest to fall to his knees in tears, he could create love, happiness and sorrow from the notes he played. His parents weren't too excited when he decided to abandon his birthright and his throne to become a travelling minstrel. But he left with only his violin, he would play at weddings and funerals and parties to earn money. One night, the prince came to the ocean and sat by the jagged rocks at the shores to watch the tides and play his music."
"He played like he has never played before, because his heart was heavy and empty. He had thought being a minstrel would satisfy him but it hadn't. While he played with pain in his heart, a sidhe maid rose from the ocean to listen to him. She had been drawn to the surface by the heart wrenching and beautiful music he played. When the prince finally looked up, he saw the sidhe maid lying on the sands of the ocean and looking right at him. Stories of the Fair Folk were in abundance in his kingdom but he had never seen one before. And now he had brought one to him with his music and he felt his heart fill with wonder for the first time."
"You play such painful songs,"  She said as she watched the prince walk up in a trance to her. For he had never seen anything as beautiful as the maid. When he told her of his desire and love for her, the sidhe looked at him and said he could only choose one of two paths. He could pursue his feelings and try to catch her to win her hand and they'd live happily for a time but in the end he'd suffer immeasurably or he'd leave and she would place a blessing that would make him the greatest musician ever to live."
"But the prince knew he had found what he left his home for, he was enamored by this Fey's beauty so he chose the first and grabbed the sidhe maid by the arm. Her reaction was instant, she flung both him and herself into the ocean so as to shake him off and drown him. But the prince held on, even as she took the forms of various sea creatures- shark, sea lion, manatee and eel. But the prince couldn't be dissuaded from his heart's desire. So when they came back ashore, he had won himself the most beautiful bride. And while she slept in his arms, he took a knife and cut a lock of her black hair and hid it as far from the sea as possible so that she could never leave him."
"The sidhe was right, the prince returned home and they were happy and all the kingdom loved his beautiful bride. She gave him three children and all could see that they blessed with their mother's Fey charms. Years passed and the prince became king and his sidhe bride his Queen, but she began more agitated and had spite for her husband. Nothing he did would please her, she would take her children to the ocean in a bid to return to her true home but each time the ocean would refuse her because there was still a part of her remaining on land. So she asked her husband, she pled with him to release her but he loved her too much and refused. The sidhe started to wither and age rapidly because she was so far away from her kind and home, she would die soon with only a few short years of living with humans. And seeing that his imprisonment of her was killing her, the king brought her and their children to the shack where he had hidden the lock of hair and his violin."
"First he took his violin and began to play hoping that the magic of his music would save her. But then his youngest daughter screamed a hellish sound from hearing the music and threw herself from the rocks and fell to her death. But the king kept playing, even as the second oldest son followed his sister and plunged to his death from the rocks. The sidhe stopped him from playing on and causing the death of their firstborn and again she begged for release. She was barely a husk of a corpse now and so the king gave the violin to his eldest son and took the lock from where he had hidden it and carried his sidhe wife in his arms to the ocean. And he followed his love into the ocean and drowned like his children had while the sidhe rejuvenated and took her hair from his dead hands. She came to the surface only to see her only living son wail in grief. At last the sidhe endeared him into the ocean to comfort him and held him under till his sorrow was washed away and he died. Some say you can still hear the young prince's music, the one which had drawn his Fey bride to the shores, if you listened carefully into the wind by the sea. But it's better not to lest you suffer the same fate."
I exhaled a breath and blinked hard to look around me at the listeners who all had a pale horrified expression mixed with apt interest as I brought the story to an end.
"Holy fuck!"
"Jesus, and you said it was a love story?" Dinah puckered as she downed the last of her beer.
I looked down at Ezra but he didn't meet my eyes. His gaze was fixed into the flickering tongues of the campfire while Joshua slept.
I placed a hand on his shoulders which shook him out of his deep thoughts and wondered what they were.
But he shook off his blank reverie and took my hand in his but let go as he cradled his sleeping brother to his chest and rose to his feet.
"Let me put him in bed. I'll be right back." I nodded at him before I was taken into a discussion with Emily and a dark haired Hound who looked to be in college.
I decided to take a walk around the compound since I haven't been here often a dive been curious.
The Legion House was one of the older French structures outside New Orleans. Manor St. Ours was another, so it had been built in that pre-Revolution style and era.
I think I read somewhere that it had been built over a settlement of Creole natives. So it basically used to be coven property centuries ago.
I came to a flower garden with a wood built rotunda draped with stalks of roses and peonies. The garden led further into a private graveyard which I guessed was reserved for the Khan family.
"There you are. I thought someone had kidnapped you or something." I heard Ezra come up behind me.
"I make a dashing hostage, don't you think?"
He rolled his eyes and stood next to me, without saying anything but staring off.
"The gardens looks good. Some of these flowers I don't think grow around here."
"Yeah they don't but Eleanor was diligent and so is Fiona."
And he took my hand and veered me around and away from the garden, saying simply. "It's getting late. We should head back."
He sounded annoyed and hasty to leave. But I was having a fun time here with his family and friends that I was reluctant to go.
But then I let him be. If he wanted to talk, I'll always be here. And he knew that.