Mira had joined Rey. They took a trip by car to Rey’s home so she could get changed, but it didn’t take long. Although Nieve was missing, Mira wasn’t pushing to hurry so they might find her. She was being patient.
Also, rather curious. She’d followed Rey into the bedroom ostensibly to help Rey find something to wear. The Library wasn’t a safe place and getting there wasn’t necessarily simple, either. Luckily, being connected to the Sage Gate gave Rey and anyone she chose to take with her, the quickest and safest possible route. Thus this was an opportunity that Mira didn’t usually have.
“I’d wear the leather,” Mira suggested. She pointed at a short leather skirt and leather bikini top that were not actually a good choice for the Library trip at all. But then, the nymph didn’t usually depend on clothes protecting or even surviving very long on her. She literally *would* wear the leather because it was sexy and for no other reason. “But maybe the jeans and that sweatshirt for you today?”
Rey stopped next to the bed and pulled her dress over her head. Her back was to Mira, and the nymph could see Rey’s undergarments could generously be described as a couple tiny scraps of cloth and strings. Mira could also see some faint bruising at Rey’s hips (which Mira easily recognized as caused by a pair of very strong hands), and what looked like the last traces of a bite mark on her friend’s left butt cheek. Definitely not vampire, and it didn’t break the skin, but it was hard enough to leave a mark.
“Mm,” Rey heard behind her. “Yummy. I bet those felt nice, when they happened,” Mira said. Rey felt a light touch on the bruises.
“It was more what was going on at the time that was the turn on,” Rey replied. “The bruises were incidental, and Chase kissed them all better.” And oh, what kisses they were. Her body tingled at the memory of what his hands were doing while he “apologized” for the marks.
“It’s nicest when they do that,” Mira agreed. Her touch drifted to the sensitive crease where thigh became abdomen and hip before her hand moved away. “Did he kiss here, too? It’s one of the best places.”
“It can be,” Rey agreed, but thought that when she was in the early stages of arousal, when Chase’s wolf was interested but not pushing, his mouth on his Mark was better. There was something about his touch on her there that boosted her libido and made her lose control that much faster, and she knew how much he liked it when she couldn’t think anymore, and could only respond. “But why do you ask?”
Mira smiled. “Why not ask? Lately it seems you two have been especially passionate toward one another. Has your relationship changed?”
“Not really,” Rey said. “Getting his mark has reduced a lot of the stresses we had before. Plus, Chase has moved in, which means more time for us together, and no need to rush the time we have together.” She smiled. “And having a fireplace in the bedroom does help with the mood.” Rey chuckled softly.
“I can imagine,” Mira said. “Can I ask you something else.” She was going to anyway, so she continued. “Do you wear these undergarments for you, or for him?”
“For both of us,” Rey replied without hesitation. “I love how I look and feel in them. He loves seeing me in them, imagining me in them, and then taking them off me.” She laughs. “I think the places I buy them think I’m a stripper or something, because I go through so many of them. Sometimes I think my lingerie budget needs to be larger than my food budget.”
Mira looked thoughtful, wondering if Remy might like such things. “Are they comfortable? They seem kind of like… racing stripes. Sexy but not functional.”
“Racing stripes,” Rey repeated with a chuckle. “Given how fast they move, that’d be a good description. Comfortable? I find they are, but it took a while to find things that did. If you’re only putting them on to have them taken off in an hour or so, you could probably wear just about anything. But all day comfort, that’s something else.”
Although Mira was certain Remy didn’t really care one way or another about lingerie, she remained interested in anything that might turn a man on. She filed away what Rey said. She might find a good use for that one day. “I distracted you from changing clothes. Sorry,” Mira said with a smile.
“I have a pair of leather pants,” Rey said. “But I think I’ll leave those for riding Chase’s Harley. Jeans, my leather jacket and new steel toed boots, and a t-shirt.” She walked across the room to her wardrobe and dresser, and pulled out the clothes she was going to wear. With the ease of being used to nudity, she quickly got dressed, and grabbed a pair of leather gloves.
Mira was wearing a white summer dress with a print that had flowers outlined in black and colored in pink and yellow. Because it was still spring and not very warm yet, her choice was a little overly optimistic. But it was what she’d chosen to wear to meet Less and Rey and she didn’t appear to have any concerns over wearing it to the Library.
“All set?” Mira asked.
“You sure you want to wear that?” Rey asked. “It’s going to get ruined in the Library, even if by the dirt and god knows what else we’ll have to deal with.”
Mira looked down at her dress. “I’m… open to suggestions?”
“Jeans and a t-shirt,” Rey says. “Something that covers you up a bit more, not for modesty’s sake, but for basic protection. And cleanliness. The Library’s janitorial staff are things that crawl through the stacks and eat any corpses or people who had the bad luck to fall asleep or didn’t set the appropriate wards and alarms.”
“Ew,” Mira made a face. “Um. May I borrow some?”
“Sure,” Rey says. “They’re in the blue room.” She led Mira out of the master bedroom and down the hall to one of the bedrooms on the other side of the house. It wasn’t a guest bedroom in that there was a bed, but it was used far more for storage. Rey’s habit of keeping extra clothes, both for herself and the pack, had led to quite a collection needing a room of its own.
She opened a couple of drawers and took out some thing that would fit Mira, including a pair of panties. “Here you go,” she said, offering it to her friend.
Mira pulled off her dress. Surprise surprise, she was actually already wearing panties — nothing particularly interesting about them, though she hadn’t worn a bra. As she pulled on jeans and started buttoning up a red and black flannel shirt, she remarked, “That’s a nice — stamp? — you have.” She referred to Rey’s Mark, seen when Rey was changing.
“Not a stamp,” Rey replied. “It’s Chase’s Mark.”
“Yes, sorry. I knew it was something like that. Anyway, it’s cool. Like a tattoo only more… organic. Like something made from a very talented artist. I thought it suited you,” Mira said.
“I think so too,” Rey said.
She transferred the phone and a plastic card from her little purse to the back pocket of the jeans. “All set, though I think I better make a quick phone call if you don’t mind.”
After she received a nod from Rey, Mira pulled out her phone and paced to the window. She peered out to the front yard below while she dialed.
“Hi Freddie, it’s me. Hey, is Nieve home?” She paused to listen to Freddie’s response. “Not since yesterday? Okay. Please tell the master at first opportunity that she’s AWOL. No, against her will. I’m going to be temporarily out of contact looking into it.” She paused again and Rey thought she heard the female voice on the other end of the line ask when Mira thought she’d be back. “I don’t know but if I think it will be a while, I’ll check in later tonight.” When she got affirmation from the other end, Mira concluded, “Okay, bye.”
Mira stuffed the phone back into her back pocket and turned back to Rey. She was ready to go.
After they returned to the car, it wasn’t a long ride to find their way to Rey’s Gate. Like most such permanent gates, it was off the beaten track, hidden, and well protected. But as the living connection to the Sage Gate, the defenses and the Gate itself responded to her will. It took only moments from their arrival to stepping through into darkness.
Out of habit, Rey looked back over her shoulder at the Gate. It was a massive thing, like gates to a medieval castle. Both on this side and the Mainland, it was covered with vines; when she’d take control of the gate, the vines had grown vicious barbed thorns and little bluish green pods. The skin of the pods was so delicate that just a light brush against them caused them to burst, covering the offender with an acidic sap that clung like tar. As the Lady Sage, the liquid just rolled off her like water, and just as harmless.
The frame of the gate was covered with heavy carvings of books and creatures Rey had yet to identify. She’d found images of them all over the Library, and once she thought she saw an ancient skeleton of one, but she’d yet to find any information in the Library about them.
Rey called on a small amount of her power and created a small globe of light so they could see. It wasn’t very large, or very bright, but enough so they could see their surroundings, yet not be visible from too far away. She glanced around, orienting herself, because while the gate was anchored in spot, sometimes the shelves shifted.
The Lady Sage smiled. It was pattern number three. “This way,” she said to Mira, adjusting her backpack. In it she carried a few things – a first aid kit, notepads and pencils, a couple bottles of water and some of those meal replacement bars. While she herself might not need them, they could be valuable trade items to those lost in the Library’s stacks.
As they walked through the dark rows of shelves, Rey said “I didn’t want to ask in front of Less, but you said Nieve can’t be brainwashed or otherwise co-opted by the Black Thorn. Why is that?”
Mira couldn’t meet Rey’s eyes when she answered. “It’s… it’s not something I can talk about.” And Rey knew it was the literal truth.
Yet Mira knew very well if Rey didn’t understand, they might never be able to stop what was going to happen to the fae of Mythic. Promises made twisted in her soul. “There are things out there that do not bind with promises. They do not bind with words. Understand?”
She waited until she saw in Rey’s eyes she did understand. “A taste is all it requires for such bindings to take root. A taste thrice seals it. Things unchanging cannot escape such a binding. Things as changeable as mortality can, in time.” She waited again for Rey to understand.
“This then is the acceptance of one master, for all time, as strong as owing a Sidhe Lord. Death is the only answer, but even then the taste, inescapable, remains. Until that death happens, there is nothing that can shake the devotion built of that one-way, binding taste. Not even the promises or bindings of another being of power. Do you understand?”
Rey figured it out. Mira was saying that you can’t be addicted to the same thing to two different masters. It is all-consuming. The blood of vampires, once tasted thrice from the same vampire lord, would rule that person.
Rey looked aghast at her friend. “Mira! You… and Remy–”
Mira interrupted, “Creatures capable of commanding others through this… facility… control the nature of the… relationship. As a Sidhe Lord who had his hooks in you would, the creature then dictates the nature of the relationship at the time it is formed. The more valuable the relationship, the more the master will put into it. Make the… thrall more or less emotionally dependent as they please. Whoever commands the Black Thorn’s people here will have a great deal of leeway, be favored of the Black Thorn, because an emotionally and psychologically broken person is mere fodder. Assuming the Black Thorn is not here personally.”
Rey heard what Mira was saying. They had to root out the Black Thorn by taking out the most powerful and devoted of its lieutenants, if not the master itself. And between the lines, Rey knew there was but one way for Mira to know all this. Mira was herself a servant of a vampire lord and Nieve? What Mira had done to her was the same as what the Black Thorn, as a whole, was doing to the entire fae community. But how “broken” was she? How much the slave was she?
Looking into Mira’s eyes, Rey knew. A mere slave wouldn’t understand the truth of all this. Mira knew she was bound to Remy and was acutely aware of what it meant. She retained some of her independence, though her allegiance and devotion to Remy were absolute.
“What happens to you, if Remy dies?” Rey couldn’t help but ask.
Mira shook her head quietly but with finality.
Rey continued to walk silently, the little globe of light letting them see. A few times, the two fae heard… things, scrabbling in the dark, and a short shriek of pain. Once, there was a pair of bright but baleful eye, staring at them from the shadows, but when Rey fixed her attention it, it backed off and turned away.
Finally, Rey came to a stop, and set her backpack on the ground at her feet. “Here,” she said. “This is the section we need, and don’t stray from the circle of light without telling me first. They’ll only try to take you if you’re in the dark.”
Mira nodded and looked around warily, in case anything grew bold enough to try to attack them from ambush. “What are those things out there?” she asked quietly.
“Depends,” Rey says. “I’ll tell you what I call them, as some of them gain power in the Library when you say their actual names. The smallest of them are Skitterlings. Individually, they are relatively harmless, and about the size of house mice. But they like to hunt in packs, usually in groups of 10 or 12, but I’ve seen swarms upward of 100. Then there are the Bookleeches. They can mimic piles of books, like those.” She points at a small pile of moldering books on the other side of the aisle, and just outside the circle of light. “Their actual appearance is like six foot long leeches with mouths the size of your hand. And they don’t blood. They suck out all your internal organs, and your magic. I saved a hob from one a couple of months ago. There are about a dozen or more other creatures that call the Library home, or simply come hunting here. The most dangerous of them all, is the one that came to say hello.”
Rey gestures toward the spot Mira had seen the eyes glowing in the dark. “They are the stack ghouls. The top predator in the Library. Think of them as a cross between Gollum and Smaug, with the ravenous hunger of a ghoul.” She looks out into the darkness, and Mira knew she wasn’t looking for a thing, but into some memories that lived in the shadows.
“One of the first things I had to do, once I became the Lady Sage, was establish my dominance here,” she said. “Or I’d have ended up as part of the food chain. It took me four days, maxing out my healing abilities, to recover from that fight and not end up with any new scars.” After a moment, she shrugged. “Anyway, the ghouls will leave you alone, as long as you’re with me. Most of the things that are truly dangerous here don’t have the sense to stay away, even after being shown the dangers of testing me. Driven by hunger, for the most part, and in the darkness, they think we make tasty meals. The light usually keeps them away, but sometimes, it doesn’t.”
“Yikes,” Mira said, surprised the Library was so dangerous. “Do they damage the books? What keeps the knowledge here safe?”
“The Library has a magic of its own that protects the books,” Rey replied, and that was all she was willing to say on that subject. “But the things that hunt in the Library tend to deal with most of the troublemakers.” She stroked her fingers down the spine of one of the books, and Mira somehow got the feeling the Library… liked it. “I can’t help but think the Library of Alexandria became part of this one, before it was burned, or that this Library was the inspiration for that one.”
“Like an echo of the mortal realm,” Mira supplied, rolling the idea around in her mind a bit. “Are the books here always true? Or is there fiction?”
After Rey answered each question, she only seemed to have more questions. Eventually, Rey shushed her so she could get to work to find the information they needed. After all, the library was vast, time was short, and there was no guarantee they’d be able to find anything relevant at all. Mira subsided so that Rey could work.