*If the only option you give your enemy is Death, they will choose your Death*
(This story is sex-lite; be warned)
***
For Salvador the day had started to fall apart shortly after ten in the morning. He'd spent the better part of fifty years ferretting out Marissa's secret caches of goodies and he was pretty sure he had gotten them all but one. Shortly after ten the human had walked into the bank holding one of those hidden treasure troves and brazenly grabbed up the stash. He had even convinced the bank staff that he'd brought Tegus's sword to store there; that is how he got it in.
Needless to say, he'd changed his mind about the sword. Salvador had dispatched two ogres to grab the human; they were to be discreet but forceful. They never stood a chance. The human charged down the stairs, brandishing the blade and buried the sword through the heart of the lead ogre. He grabbed that ogre's gun out of its holster and turned the second ogre's head into so much modern art before that creature could decide what to do ... and then he was gone - vanished.
Worse, the gunman had disappeared from Salvador's vision and hit four more institutions in the financial district before dropping out of sight, leaving a grand total of six Night Siders dead in the process. Divining his location was also daunting; it was more than mere street magic, fey glamour, or simple blood magic that stymied him. There was a true craftsman of the Art out there keeping him at bay.
Locally, there were about two dozen witches , half as many warlocks and sorcerers but out of that group only six bothered him in the slightest and none of them had ever appeared to be allies of Marissa and certainly not tied to her enough to risk certain death by opposing Armand at this juncture. He was missing something and he didn't know where to start looking.
The other trouble was that the NYC police had half-dozen dead bodies in the most secure part of town -- all armed and with little or no background stories. It was small consolation that he contacts in the police had given him a name -- Tessio Nerospina. It seemed the man was a professional assassin who worked for the Mafia; of all the eighteen million people in the greater Metropolitan area, Marissa had stumbled upon a trained killer -- how utterly unfair.
His opposition was Marissa, who grew this city up around her, Night Side and Daylight both, Tessio Nerospina, hitman extraordinaire, and some unknown yet powerful practitioner of the Art. He would need more tools for this job. Armand was a fool; as much a liability as an asset. He would need some foot soldiers, an Artificer, or two, and two Practitioners to build a hunting team.
Despite his bribes and betrayals he'd failed to kill her, then he had failed to find her, and now he'd gambled he could use her trinkets to draw her out but the killer had taken the trinkets and raised the visibility of the Night Siders in the process. Compounding the problem was that the FBI: Special Investigative Division was on the way, forcing him to make all the dead Night Siders' bodies vanish in a rather obvious fashion; damn all humans and their meddling.
He had a feeling this was going to be horrible, messy and brutal before this was over and a lot of people were going to die. His Masters had told him to do whatever it took to end Marissa and either locate her vault and deliver the contents, or make sure the vault was never found again. When they approved of his plan and his call for reinforcements he began to worry. For the first time he began to wonder what the hell was going on.
***
For an instant Marissa felt the lips of Tessio on her throat, kissing her as his hand brushed against her stomach on the way down ... and then she smelled Hexane's hair, not her killer's.
"What are you doing?" Marissa said quietly and a bit cross.
"I have decided on one of the prices I want for aiding you," Hexane purred.
"What is that?" Marissa said cautiously.
"I want Tessio," she informed the vampire.
"He's not mine to give and besides, what do you want with him?" Marissa grumbled.
"If he's not yours then stay out of my way, and as for 'why', do we have to go into that man's training and genetics? I want him to father my children," Hexane told her.
"Father your children? Are you serious?" Marissa scoffed.
"Witches are weird; are family dynamics very convoluted and bizarre. It isn't like most men want to hang around, so almost all of us are raised by our mothers. Trust me, that isn't as good as it sounds. Witches are Practioners first and women second. With a mate like Tessio I wouldn't have to worry about my child being alone or abandoned."
"Well, why haven't you ensnared him before now?" Marissa countered.
"How? His will is anything but weak so short of reducing him to a drooling idiot, I'm not going to force him to fall in love with me. Marissa, witches are one night stand material. Most guys get what they want and move on. Tessio stood guard over one of us for five days; he never left her side and he never touched her sexually."
"We don't find men like that very often. In over a century of living I've never found someone like him at all. All our weirdness doesn't affect him. I'm sure you've noticed that by now," Hexane related. Marissa knew that to be true. Tessio had calmly blown a werewolf away when the average man would have freaked out and fled in terror.
"He is not mine to give, Hexane," Marissa evaded.
"He turned you down, didn't he?" Hexane countered. Marissa knew lying to the witch was dangerous and the truth would not help her cause. "He threw your brand of immortality in your face," Hexane chuckled.
"So what if he did? I'm not going to offer it to him a second time," Marissa snapped.
"You agree to give him to me then?" Hexane challenged her.
"No. I agree that we will be leaving when he returns; where is he by the way?" Marissa asked.
"He went to retrieve your goodies. To avoid detection I showed him how to get back by using the Parade of Fools," Hexane smiled.
The Parade of Fools was a favored marketplace for Night Siders trading in Daylight goods. A human would not be totally out of place there. It was still the Night Side thought with all of its dangers.
"You sent Tessio into the Night Side unescorted!" Marissa gasped, pushed herself up and searched for her clothes.
"It is the last thing they would expect and they'd lose any specific tracking spells if he crossed over -- for a time anyway," Hexane pointed out.
"It is too risky. I'm going to get him," Marissa insisted.
