Tiff in Time (The Fae Killers Book 1) Read online

  Tiff in Time

  A Fae Killers Novel

  Jaxon Reed

  -+-

  Tiff in Time: A Fae Killers Novel

  Copyright (c) 2017 by Jaxon Reed

  Formatting and editing provided by edbok.com

  Cover art by Jacqueline Sweet

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Historical figures are used in fictional settings and dialogues, within a fictitious alternate universe. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Prologue

  The Walker strolled through a medieval seaside village. Death and destruction stretched all around. Most of the huts in the small settlement still smoked, recently destroyed by fire. All that remained smoldered in ashes and embers. The stench of burnt wood and cloth and flesh drifted through the air.

  The tall, blond-haired man stepped over bodies, blood and entrails spread on the ground. Carrion circled the village, attracted to the scent of death on the wind.

  He glanced at the sea, and noted Norse sails dipping below the horizon.

  “Where are we, Cait?”

  A female voice responded in his head.

  “Northumbria circa A.D. 793, depending on the calendar. This alternate has a 98.8 percent resemblance to O-Earth.”

  He nodded, and continued plodding forward, heading deeper into the destroyed village. He stopped when he heard a little girl crying.

  The Walker altered course and approached the remains of a nearby home. A man and woman lay gutted on the ground near what had been the front door. Faces pale from lack of blood, their listless eyes stared into eternity.

  A little girl, about two years old, sat between them crying. Her long golden hair fluttered softly in the gentle breeze, and her sparkling blue eyes were filled with tears. Her simple white dress showed dark red stains from her mother’s blood, where she had hugged the corpse.

  His heart melted.

  He kneeled down and pulled the girl close to his chest in a warm embrace. She buried her head in his tunic, sobbing uncontrollably.

  She seemed so little, and frail.

  “What’s her name, Cait?”

  “Her parents named her Tyfainne. No connection to royalty. Her line will probably assume a geographic location for surname purposes.”

  “Does she have any relatives? Anybody who can take her in?”

  “Her father’s family lives in a village nearby. But, by the standards you have programmed into me, they are not ‘good people.’”

  He nodded, letting the information sink in as the little girl finally stopped crying. She shuddered, wiped her face, and looked up at him with those incredible eyes.

  He gave a mental command, and the pocket on the side of his tunic filled with sugar cubes. He reached in and grabbed several, then held his hand near the girl, palm up and full of treats.

  She tentatively reached out and grabbed one, looking up to see if her actions would be acceptable. He smiled at her warmly, and she popped a sugar cube in her mouth. Her eyes grew big in wonder at the taste. She grabbed the rest of them, shoving them in quickly, one by one.

  “Okay, I think we’ll take this one. Leaving her here would condemn her to a miserable fate.”

  The Computerized Artificial Intelligence Terminal neither agreed nor disagreed.

  “Open a door, Cait. Let’s go home.”

  1

  A vertical slit appeared in the air, shimmering neon green and blue. A simple straight line at first, it became wider, and brighter, bluer, until finally it grew big enough to resemble a narrow doorway.

  A woman’s leg came through, clad in a black leather, thigh-high boot. Two hands appeared, nails painted red, gripping the edge of the temporal gateway, then the rest of her pulled through.

  She glanced around the fenced back yard with curious eyes, a startling shade of bright blue that seemed to capture the light and reflect it back refracted, like diamonds. Thick, long blonde hair fell in waves down to the small of her back.

  She wore a skin-tight black leather miniskirt, and a black tube top leaving her arms, shoulders, and slender belly bare.

  She licked her lips (painted in bright red lipstick called “Lusciously Lewd”), and sniffed the air tentatively with a small, pointy nose that turned upward ever so slightly.

  “Okay, Cait, where am I?”

  Cait replied through her neural implant. She could hear the computer’s voice as if it spoke in her mind. Which, in fact, it did.

  “You are in Hearne, Texas, Tiff. It rhymes with ‘urn’ but has an ‘e’ on the end. The date on this alternate is October 23rd, 1927.”

  “I see. Okay, dress me appropriately and I’ll be on my way.”

  Instantly the tube top, miniskirt and thigh high boots popped out of existence, replaced with a long-sleeved white blouse, a sensibly hemmed gray skirt falling to her shins, and shiny black Mary Jane flats. A black knit sweater appeared, open at the front, followed by a period-appropriate small black leather purse hanging off her shoulder.

  Tiff could dress herself, but often relied on Cait to take care of things in a new alternate. Cait would know all the pertinent details, making sure she went appropriately attired no matter the time or place.

  “Thank God. The current styles on that last world were a bit too . . . revealing for my taste.”

  Cait didn’t respond. She often didn’t respond to small talk. Tiff didn’t mind. She planned on continuing to talk, regardless. At least, she told herself, it helped keep her sane. And occasionally Cait would pipe up with something useful.

  Now properly attired, Tiff looked around for a gate. Finding one, she opened it and stepped out on the side of the house. She made her way to the front yard, then the sidewalk, and looked both ways up and down the street.

  She touched her hair, self-consciously, and realized Cait had bobbed it short, in the style of the Roaring Twenties.

  She sighed, preferring longer hair. But the computer always knew best about local styles and customs.

  “Alright, Cait. Where am I going? What am I doing?”

  “Walk to the local movie theater. It is two blocks to your right. Once there, you are to intercept a man named Mario Cesario Lucado.”

  Tiff turned to her right and walked down the sidewalk. Long practiced in making jumps to different alternates, she made herself appear to belong.

  A Model T automobile turned onto the street, and passed her heading in the opposite direction. The driver took no notice of her.

  “Okay, so who is this man? Why is he important? What has he done?”

  “Mr. Lucado is a member of Al Capone’s ‘Outfit’ in Chicago.”

  Tiff waited patiently to see if Cait would volunteer more information. Sometimes talking to the computer could prove frustrating.

  “So, what is a member of Al Capone’s gang doing in Cattle-gap, Texas? And why do we care? Give me the full scoop, Cait. Don’t hold back.”

  “This alternate is fairly similar to O-Earth in a macro sense, but with some serious historical deviations. It currently ranks 95.07 percent on the similarity scale, and will continue showing deviation as time progresses.

  “As on O-Earth, the largest concentration of I
talian immigrants in Texas settled in and near Bryan in the late 1800s. They maintain strong ties with family members throughout the country, including those in Chicago. When a gangster up north needs to leave town for a while, he can stay on a farm with relatives down here in ‘Cattle-gap, Texas,’ and the FBI has no way of finding him.

  “Mr. Lucado is wanted for the murders of several rivals to Al Capone back in Chicago, as well as three policemen and two innocent men who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has been hiding out on one of the farms between Bryan and Hearne. My intelligence indicates he will make a trip into town with his cousins tonight to see a movie.”

  “Okay. Anything else I need to know?”

  “On this alternate, the FBI was formed sooner than on O-Earth. Prohibition did not pass. Alcohol is not forbidden by Constitutional amendment. Consequently, Eliot Ness works for the FBI rather than the Prohibition Bureau. He recently started in a prominent position at the Chicago office. His team is in charge of the investigation into Mr. Capone and, subsequently, Mr. Lucado. The mob on this alternate is involved in other activities besides bootlegging, and has grabbed the government’s attention even without Prohibition.”

  Tiff nodded, soaking in the information. She walked past several houses that seemed empty before spotting a woman plucking weeds from a flower garden in one of them.

  The plants were either dead or dormant this time of year, Tiff suspected. Possibly a frost had already come through. But it felt warm enough today. She guessed the ambient temperature hovered in the mid-60s, Fahrenheit.

  Tiff preferred the old British and American systems of measurement. She despised the metric system, especially after a particularly bad experience during the French Revolution on her first alternate.

  “So, what does this have to do with us? Gangsters kill people across all the alternates. Practically.”

  She added the qualifier quickly, because Cait would likely have corrected her otherwise. The computer had no comprehension of hyperbole. Or sarcasm, or several other human characteristics of conversation.

  “My local sensors, what few are in place, indicate that Mr. Lucado has employed an object of fae origin in nature. This object has assisted his murders and subsequent rise in Mr. Capone’s organization. You are to intercept Mr. Lucado, retrieve the object, and bring it back to Headquarters so we can determine if additional interventions are required on this alternate.”

  Tiff nodded in understanding.

  “Seems simple enough. But this is my fifth jump in a row without a break. I’ll be ready to go home afterwards.”

  She reached the end of the block and found herself at the intersection of a main thoroughfare. Looking both directions, she spied the flashing marquee of a local cinema about fifty yards away.

  The sun settled lower in the sky, and the temperature dropped a couple more degrees. Several people strolled down the sidewalk, passing her in both directions now. Tiff wrapped her sweater tightly around her, and hurried toward the cinema.

  A typical small town movie theater, it advertised one show on its one screen out front on the marquee. The title of the current selection was a movie called, “Wings.”

  Evidently the first showing was about to start. A queue formed at the ticket window. Several cars were parked up and down the street, and Tiff noted quite a few people heading toward the entrance.

  She spoke in her mental voice now, so those nearby wouldn’t think she was talking to herself.

  “Where is he, Cait?”

  “He is leaving a vehicle ahead of you, with two women. They are his cousins.”

  “I see him.”

  Tiff walked past the ticket window, keeping eyes on a new Ford Model A pulling into a space on the street nearby. A tall, handsome young man, with slicked-back black hair and brown eyes, opened the driver’s door to get out. He held it open for two young women who slid across the front seat and exited on his side.

  They laughed, and walked toward the theater together. Tiff noted Lucado wore a new overcoat. His shiny patent-leather shoes reflected light from the theater’s billboard.

  “Now is the time to make your move.”

  “I know that, Cait. Shut up.”

  The trio seemed in good spirits, laughing and joking with one another. One of the women appeared short, and seriously overweight. The other stood almost as tall as Lucado, her bobbed dark hair glistening in the light. Tiff noted briefly the way Lucado looked at her, and that he ignored the other one.

  “He’s attracted to his cousin,” she thought.

  “Distant familial relations are actually quite common. She is his cousin by marriage and—”

  “Cait?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t care.”

  As they approached her position, Tiff straightened and intercepted their path. Lucado noticed her first, then the women. She ignored them, keeping her eyes on the man.

  “Mario?”

  His brows furrowed in confusion. The reactions of his cousins were more pronounced, their body language instantly turning hostile. The fat one crossed her arms while the tall, attractive one placed her fists on her hips.

  Lucado seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “Do I . . . do I know you?”

  “Mario, don’t you remember me?”

  Tiff paused and let an awkward silence settle while others walked past them on the sidewalk to join the line at the ticket window.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I know you, Miss . . . ?”

  Tiff’s face fell. Her lower lip quivered. She generated a tear, which slowly slid down her cheek.

  She remembered something the Walker told her when she was only eight years old: “Half of fitting in, in whatever alternate you find yourself, is acting the part. You have to become an actress, Tiff.”

  She had years of experience acting. Centuries. By any objective measure, she was quite good at it.

  “Oh, Mario! I have to talk to you in private!”

  She glanced at his two cousins who were now staring daggers at her, then back at Lucado. This time she forced a haunted look into her eyes.

  “It’s about . . . it’s about our baby!”

  Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Tiff laughed at the ridiculousness of this scenario. Who would buy such dramatic schlock? Surely, she thought, no man would be so stupid as to . . .

  Lucado turned and glanced at his cousins with a guilty look on his face.

  “Hey, go on and get in line. I don’t know what the deal is here, but let me talk to her for a minute and I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  The two girls nodded, reluctantly, and moved forward to join the line in front of the ticket office.

  Tiff spoke to Cait in her mind and said, “I need someplace private.”

  “Go about thirty feet past his car and turn into an alley between two buildings. No one is there, no one is watching.”

  Tiff grabbed Lucado’s arm and pulled him away from the theater. They reached the alley, and he surreptitiously moved her hand down so he could grasp it with his own.

  She led him several feet away from the sidewalk, and turned to look at him.

  He looked back, and she felt the lust in his eyes.

  He said, “Who are you? I know I would have recognized a pretty face like yours. What’s this about a baby?”

  She spoke in her mind, focusing on the neural interface.

  “Where is it Cait? What is he wearing that’s fae-related?”

  “I am unsure. My sensors have only been able to discern an object on his person. It may be an amulet of some sort. Perhaps a pendant, or a bracelet.”

  She looked up into Lucado’s dark brown eyes. Absently, in a far corner of her mind, she noted how good he smelled. Whatever cologne he wore seemed divine.

  Improvising, she formed a plan on the spot.

  “I can’t believe you don’t recognize me, Mario. Maybe this will help.”

  She ripped her blouse open, buttons popping off like ricocheted bullets.
Lucado’s head tilted down toward her chest.

  She looked down herself and noticed her breasts were clad in thick, white cloth. She felt a wide band reaching around her back, and guessed at the presence of heavy clasps behind her.

  “What the heck is this, Cait?”

  “A brassiere, circa 1927. All clothing must be place and period accurate, including undergarments. After so many jumps, you should know by now—”

  Lucado reached down and grasped the top edges of the heavy bra. He pulled, but only revealed an inch or two of her flesh.

  She could feel his frustration grow as he pulled down harder. She put her palms over his chest to make him stop.

  “Mario. Take yours off, first.”

  He glanced up with a questioning look. She smiled seductively.

  He stood up straight and doffed his overcoat. It fell to the ground. Then he unbuttoned his Oxford and pulled it off, revealing a wife-beater undershirt. He pulled it over his head and stood before her bare-chested.

  She glanced down at his left arm, noting the heavy golden wristlet around it. She recognized it instantly as a fae artifact. Stubby spikes faced up and outward, curving slightly toward the hand to focus its power wherever he pointed.

  “What is this?”

  She reached down to touch it. He jerked his wrist away.

  “Leave it alone, bitch!”

  The look in his eyes changed instantly from lust to anger.

  “Mario? What’s the matter?”

  Tiff changed her expression to one of hurt and anguish. To one that implied he would not get lucky so long as her emotions remained in turmoil. She crossed her arms over her chest, as if suddenly realizing her vulnerability.

  He cooled down immediately.

  “I’m sorry, doll. It’s just that this bracelet is very special to me.”