Nos Faux Ratu

This story is a bit wordy and fairly long, so if you are looking for immediate gratification, you might want to look elsewhere.

The following story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these character and events and any real person or events is strictly coincidental . . . and pretty darn impressive seeing as it is a science fiction story. Do not reproduce or copy this story without the consent of the author.

In my magical, mixed-up world, characters don't worry about STDs or unwanted pregnancies except occasionally as a plot device. The author encourages the practice of safe (and hopefully satisfying) sex.

While this is a science-fiction story, it may at different points contain sexual behavior that might fall into other categories. You can rest assured however that there will be NO depictions of Non-Consent, Mind Control, or Incest for any purpose other than as plot devices, and certainly not for sexual arousal. Anything else is fair game.

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For Nigel "Death" Edmundson, it was turning out to be an awkward and tedious day. The demons were sitting to one side, conversing with Avery and some of the other locals and mourning the loss of their friend. Nigel was surprised that a couple of seven foot tall, red-skinned, and overly muscled demons could actually have emotions, but he had been surprised many times in the last few weeks.

As it was, his close friend and former colleague was lying deep beneath the earth, and she was dead. This was to be a temporary condition. Jenna had been faced with three choices: die, turn into a werewolf and potentially fall under the control of her enemy, or be turned into a vampire. So when the sun set, she would rise from the dead.

'I wonder if I'll even recognize her,' he wondered. Glancing around, he saw the remaining renegade Nightwalkers, bioengineered super soldiers made to look and act like vampires, intermingling with lycanthropes, demons, and other creatures that they had never known existed. Some were on another floor, receiving medical treatment after the previous nights scuffle and preparing to change into werewolves. It had been discovered that the medicines that normally fought off lycanthropy actually caused harm to the Nightwalkers, meaning that they were faced with the same options as Jenna, except vampirism was not available to them.

Nessa could only turn one person every few years, and she had chosen to save Jenna. Jenna was the one that the Fool wanted anyway. The other Nightwalkers facing the change would be protected until their new werewolf status could be controlled.

Then he saw Caitlin, also known as the High Priestess, sitting alone, her back against a wall and her gaze drawn to the window that overlooked the club floor. He wandered over and stood next to her.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"Got change?"

Nigel smiled. "How are you holding up?"

She sighed. "I'm way out of my league," she said humbly.

"I wouldn't say that. You're still alive, still fighting the good fight."

"I wasn't talking about that," she muttered. "I was talking about Jenna." She met his gaze. "I've seen Nessa. Hell, I've had her teeth in my neck. I can't compete with that. Nigel, I've never felt so hopelessly outclassed in my life." She frowned. "Are you laughing at me?"

"I just am amazed that a woman with your beauty, brains, education, and physical abilities is actually suffering from insecurities." He slid down the wall until he was seated next to her. "And I completely disagree with your assessment of the situation."

"How so?"

"Because Nessa isn't right for Jenna. Don't get me wrong, she was exactly what Jenna needed, but as a savior rather than a girlfriend or even a long-term lover."

"She seems to be a pretty good lover from what I hear."

"Probably, but being good at sex is one thing, while Jenna needs someone who is good at a lot of things. I know from the tales of

your

exploits that you are no slouch in bed --"

"True, true."

"-- but you could also give her a little bit of stability. Sanity. Nessa lives a life where she burns the candle at both ends. I think Jenna needs someone with a little more patience. Someone who still remembers what being human is like, because she has forgotten that. She likes you, I'm willing to say that she's attracted to you, even surrounded by all of these strange, magical creatures, and she has trusted you with information that very few know. Nessa and Avery uncovered Jenna's secret, but I was the only one she actually willing told before you."

"But she doesn't trust me completely, does she? She mentioned that she would never get to see 'him' again, but she wouldn't tell me who. No one will."

"That secret is known to even fewer people than know about what happened between her and the Messenger. And there is a reason. Would you have ME tell you?"

Caitlin growled. "No. I want her to tell me."

"Then when she . . . emerges? Wakes up? I'm not sure what to call it. Anyway, when she comes around this evening, ask her again. You know, when she's not on the verge of dying and/or having an emotional breakdown."

"Nigel --"

"Caitlin," he said, his voice mocking Caitlin's whine, "I know that you're not going to give up, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and just be . . . well, you. And

you

are capable of competing WITH any woman FOR any woman."

"You know, I see why April likes you so much. You've got a future in motivational speaking."

"I thought it was my mysterious good looks."

"I'd stick with the talking."

"I am so under-appreciated in my time," he muttered. Then his phone began to buzz.

"I thought that they had signal blockers," Caitlin said, almost petulantly.

"They gave me the bypass code. Hello, Ms. April. How are --" Nigel said, then quickly shut up. His face grew concerned, then grim. "Thanks for calling. No, you did the right thing." He flipped his communicator down, then stood up. "Avery?" he said loudly, waving for the man to join him.

"What's up? Is April in trouble?" Caitlin asked.

Nigel glanced at her and looked conflicted.

"Dammit Nigel, I'm trying to --"

"I know, I know. You're trying to help. Remember all that stuff I just told you about 'asking Jenna' and that I should just keep my mouth shut?"

"Yeah?"

"Ignore that." He led her to the lift area and, once Avery had joined them, closed the door.

"What's going on?"

"April called. She said that there were a couple of 'unusual characters' hanging around the school asking for students that fit a certain description."

Caitlin's eyes shot open. "You think the Fool is going after April to get to you? Knowing who her father is?"

"No, I think April's got nothing to do with it," Nigel replied, holding up a hand to fend of Avery's objection. "I just asked her to keep an eye out for unusual characters. SHE thinks that she might be watched, but the Fool would never move against the daughter of a general, no matter how insane. It would be a matter of loyalty for him."

"Wait, this has something to do with Jenna, doesn't it?"

Avery and Nigel exchanged a glance, then Avery sighed and gave Nigel a chance to speak.

"It's about Jenna's son. The one she had as a result of what happened fifteen-plus years ago. I just found out about him a week ago."

Caitlin clamped her hand over her mouth, stifling a gasp. "Oh my --"

"When we realized that the Fool might try to hunt down people from her past to bring her back into the fold, she almost went nuclear on him. Her exact words were that she would 'burn the world' before she let him hurt the boy."

"Does he --"

"He has no idea that she is alive, much less who she is. She's been looking in on him for about thirteen years or so. And if something happens to him, well, I'm not sure what she'll do, but there will a trail of bodies and blood involved. And it will hurt her more than almost anything, which alone is reason enough to get involved."

"So what's the plan?" Caitlin asked, her mind still reeling. Everyone had assumed that the Empress was made of ice. It turned out that she had more going on in her heart than anyone could have guessed. "We could take out whoever the Fool sent looking for the kid, but he'd just send more."

"Which means," Avery said, "we need to get the young man somewhere safe, and somehow be able to explain his whereabouts to his parents."

"Which could be tricky," Nigel said. "We'll discuss it on the way over. I think we three should handle this. The fewer people who know about Jenna's son, the better. At least for now."

Avery let the demons know that he would be out for a bit, then he, Nigel, and Caitlin headed down to the garage. They hopped into a nondescript hover-car and headed toward the school.

"How about a bomb scare?" Nigel asked. "It would get everyone out of the school, and there's no way anyone would be able to find one kid in that chaos."

"Including us," Avery pointed out. "And it would only be a temporary fix."

"Why don't we just grab him and hide him somewhere?" Caitlin asked.

"And how would we keep him for an untold amount of time without alarming his parents?"

Caitlin nodded, sighed, the scrunched her eyebrows. "Then let's alarm them."

Nigel looked over at her. "What are you thinking?"

"Simple. Honesty is the best policy. We kidnap him, take him somewhere safe, call his parents to tell them we have him and to be expecting our demands. We have Jenna's son, we can take care of him better than anyone else, and his parents will be surrounded by police until the whole thing is over, just in case the Fool decides to use them as leverage."

Avery glanced at her through the rear view mirror. "Not a bad plan. Elegant in its simplicity. Only two problems that I see."

"Which are?"

"First, Jenna will kill you very, very dead. Then me, and then Nigel."

"At least I'm last," Death said.

"That's just because she's known you longer."

"What was the second thing?" Caitlin asked.

"What do we tell the boy?"

"Nothing. Keep him somewhere away from all the weird creatures and let him think that he's been kidnapped. Then give him the opportunity to escape once this is all over."

Avery thought it over. It would work. "As long as we can do it without hurting the boy. Maybe we could just not tell Jenna --"

"You mean withholding information from her about what we've done with her son?" Nigel said. "Remember option one where she spent time killing us?"

"Good point."

They pulled up to the school. "So we still haven't figured out how we're extracting the target," Caitlin said. "And neither of you have even told me what he looks like."

"You'll know him when you see him," Nigel explained. "Imagine a fifteen-year-old male version of Jenna."

"He's that pretty?" Caitlin asked, then fought a little bit of a blush. "That didn't come out right."

Nigel grinned. His friend was positively infatuated. "I think we find the mysterious characters that April told me about and keep an eye on them. Then we just wait for school to let out. I know the route he takes to get home."

"How do you know that?"

He smiled. "Because of coffee dates. Years and years of coffee dates." Despite Caitlin's inquisitive look, he left it at that.

Finding the men that April had mentioned was not all that tricky. The transport's windows were tinted, so they could see out while no one else could see in. And since the Fool's men were not expecting interference, they were not trying to hide.

"Crap," Caitlin said. "Over there, leaning against the building. It's Star and Moon. He sent two Major Arcana to kidnap a teenager?"

"Why not? We have," Nigel pointed out.

Caitlin had to admit that Nigel had her there. She would have problems with Star or Moon by herself, but she knew Death could handle them. "We want to take them out?"

"I'd rather not start a fight in broad daylight."

"Well, class lets out in thirty minutes, and we don't want them grabbing Jenna's boy before we do." Caitlin looked at Avery. "I don't think either of them know who you are," she muttered, then began to smirk. "Pull over at that shop down the street. I've got an idea."

Star and Moon were getting irritable. They had been standing outside that damn school for hours, ever since the principal and that annoying teacher had asked them to leave. But since they were under strict orders not to make a scene, they had left. They could have taken their quarry and been gone by now, but they found themselves standing in stifling heat while wearing suits.

"Finally," Star growled when the school's bell went off, indicating that the day was over for the students. He took another look at the picture. 'Damn, he looks just like her,' he thought.

"Excuse me sirs, but could you help me --"

The two Nightwalkers turned to find a man in a Hawaiian shirt holding a smart phone displaying a map. "Sorry, but we're kind of busy."

"I was just wondering if you could tell me how to find the theater on Roswell Rd. I've been up and down this street, and I don't see it."

Realizing it would be faster to point the guy in another direction than to keep trying to put him off, Star chose to talk. "Which theater, and which Roswell Rd.?"

"There's more than one?"

Moon snorted. "There's a dozen Roswell Roads, and most of 'em have theaters on them."

The man looked confused. "Why is there more than one Roswell Rd? And . . . hey, those friends of yours?"

Star and Moon actually smelled a couple of familiar scents, and they turned to look back down the alley they were standing near. They both began growling as they saw Death and the High Priestess sneaking down the alley –

'Wait a minute,' Star thought. 'They would never be this clumsy. What the –'

His thought was cut off as both he and Moon were hit in the back of the neck with industrial strength stun guns. Being werewolf hybrid commandos or not, no one was standing upright after getting hit with that much juice.

"You owe me," Avery muttered, putting his smart phone away. "I hate these shirts."

"It's a good color for you," Caitlin told him. "It compliments the scowl on your face." The three of them moved the two unconscious Nightwalkers back into the alley, then hurried out to the street. Kids were beginning to come out the front gate.

"This is so odd," Nigel said. "I sat at that Starbucks every weekday for years, and never even saw him. I never got it. I even asked Jenna why we had to come to this place. She just smiled. It was one of only times she ever did. Now --"

"Now what?" Caitlin asked.

"Now I don't see how I missed it." He was staring across the street, his eyes locked on a particular face in the crowd.

"My God," Caitlin murmured. The slim, athletic build, the pale blond hair, the light blue eyes . . . how could Nigel NOT have seen it? The differences only became evident when the young man turned to a female walking next to him, flashed a cocky grin, then said something that had them both laughing. Jenna never laughed like that, or at least not that Caitlin had ever seen. But then he began walking, and the easy grace of his movements brought back pictures of his mother to Caitlin's mind.

"Uhm, should we be following him now?" Avery asked as the boy rounded a corner.

The three of them hurried back into the parked hover and pulled into traffic. They passed the boy and set up an ambush a few blocks from his parents home.

"This is so weird," Caitlin muttered. "We're about to kidnap the Empress's son. For his own good. So my ex boss can't kidnap said child in hope of coaxing said Empress back for the purposes of mating. And she's probably going to kill us for this. I should've just fled to the Bahamas."

"But you would have missed the summer movie and wine festival at the Fox," Nigel replied.

She looked at him, then tilted her head and shrugged. He had a point. "So how to we grab him?"

Avery looked over Caitlin, and it was his turn to grin. "Remember how it was your idea for me to wear that horrible shirt?"

The High Priestess was getting a bad feeling about this.

A few minutes later, William Monroe came wander around to find himself face-to-face with almost every teenage boy's wet dream. Well, face-to-butt might be more appropriate. There was a shiny red hover settled on the curb, and a rockin' set of legs and nicely rounded tush were sticking out from under the hood. Very few people knew how to change the coils on their own hover, much less look so good doing it. And when the woman came out from under the hood, with nothing covering her sizable boobage except for a thin undershirt, he thought he had hit the jackpot.

"Hey, you any good with hovers?" the woman asked, flashing him a grin. "I can never remember which connection is positive and which one is negative."

THAT was a question that he could actually answer! "Sure," he said, answering her smile with a shit-eater of his own. He put a little swagger in his step, his brain already skipping ahead to the part that he would tell his friends on the internet. That would be the part where he helped out the hot older woman, though hardly

old

old, and then she saw past his young yet exceedingly handsome exterior to the mature soul inside.

'Piece of cake,' he thought. He looked under the hood, his eyes drawn to that ample set of tits that leaned in at the same time he did. "Okay, well here . . . actually, they're both connected in the right places."

"Really? Well, what's that wire?"

William leaned over a little more to see what she was talking about. He felt the hover shift a bit, like someone was getting out. "Hey, you gotta WHAT THE --" he started to shout, then found a hand over his mouth. The woman had wrapped one arm around him, trapping one of his arms and pulling her tight against that curvy body, while her other hand kept him from shouting. She spun, easily woman-handling him towards the back door where a very dangerous looking –

'Wait a minute!' he thought. 'That's Ms. Levenson's boyfriend.' Whoever he was, he was holding the door open and looking around. 'Holy shit! I'm being kidnapped!'

"Get him in

oof

," Nigel started to say, then got kicked in the stomach. It did not actually hurt, but rather just took him by surprise. "That will be quite enough of that young man." His hands shot out and grabbed the boy's ankle as he tried kicking again, then grabbed the other ankle when the young man instinctively tried to kick his way free of Death's grip.

"Okay," Caitlin said, trying to keep the young man from gouging her eyes out with her free hand. "Now what?"

Avery looked over from the driver's seat. "Are you two going to get him in the car sometime soon? We're bound to have someone come by soon."

Nigel started to back into the vehicle with William's feet, but the boy's thrashing was making things difficult. "I guess we could just stun-gun him," he said calmly. William's eyes shot open. "Got your attention boy?" Nigel wished he had not said that last part. The "boy" apparently objected to being patronized, and started to struggle again.

"You asked for it," Caitlin muttered, then shifted her arms so that William had both hands free, but now one of her arms was wrapped around his neck and he slowly began to lose consciousness. He went limp for a moment. "Nice try," Caitlin told him. "I know that it takes longer than that to go out." She felt his muscles surge, but he was going nowhere. "Now that we've got that out of your system, we're going to take you somewhere. This will be much simpler if you stop struggling."

A muffled "Screw you" attempted to creep out from between her fingers.

Nigel was able to get his feet inside the back of the transport, then Caitlin moved forward. He was mostly passed out, so she let go of her sleeper hold and shoved him in, then climbed in behind him.