Only Human (Kirsten O'Shea Book 1) Read online

  Nathan gave a pissed-off cat grumble, and Aaron looked at him a few seconds before shifting his gaze back at me. “I’ll try to get information from them, but the odds are we’ll need to hand this off to someone else. This isn’t my forte.”

  I looked at the goatman and noted a change in his entire demeanor. He was hurting, but he was getting off on it now. I looked to his groin and saw his erect penis poking up through his fur.

  Aaron might be right, but I wasn’t ready to toss in the towel just yet, so I told him, “If you’ll bind this one so I can play with him without needing the lion to hold him in place, then maybe you can take the more human of the two and let me have a go at this one?” Nathan wouldn’t want us to name him to enemies while he was in lion form, so we didn’t.

  Aaron realized I had a better chance of getting somewhere with the half-demon who was sexualizing pain, so he nodded.

  Three minutes later the grotesque goatman was strung with silver-laced rope between two trees, his erection still peeking out of his long fur, and the smell of burning goat-meat permeating the air.

  I pulled my knife from my pocket and grabbed his cock, but instead of fear I heard a guttural moan of pleasure. I needed to see what I was working with, so I did a rough job of shaving around his cock and over his balls before I grabbed his nuts and squeezed.

  I’m a masochist and a sexual submissive, but I’ve seen enough Dommes work over their male submissives to know a thing or two about how to torture a man’s genitals. I squeezed until the sounds of pleasure turned to screams of pain, and then held it for a count of fifteen. When I let go, it was only to let him get two breaths before I squeezed again.

  Nathan walked up behind me and startled me again, and I turned to see him in human form and fully dressed. He handed my gun over, and I let go of the goatman’s nuts long enough to holster my firearm and magazines before I returned my attention to the prisoner. I’m not a sadist or a Dom, but I found I wasn’t disgusted by hurting this man. He had something to do with the women who’d been abducted, and I needed to know where they were and how to get them back.

  “I’ve only just begun,” I told him as I held his creepy-as-shit gaze. “I can hurt you in ways you can’t turn into pleasure.” I methodically unwrapped the twine from his cock and then his balls, and didn’t slow my progress when I saw it was stuck to his skin and I was pulling flesh away with the twine.

  He was going soft, which was what I wanted, so I quickly unwound the rest of the rope, and let it fall to the ground. I grabbed the foreskin, gathered it in my fist, and settled my knife in position to give him the beginnings of a very rough circumcision. I let the knife slide into his skin about a quarter inch and looked into his disturbing eyes, my face an emotionless mask. “Where are the women?”

  “Gone,” he said, his voice even. I’d scared him into talking, but he wasn’t going to give me the pleasure of seeing his fear. “The cave is a gateway for us, but will just be a cave for you. The women are beyond your reach.” Ah, so it did no harm to tell me. He was only verifying what we’d already guessed.

  Or, maybe it could mean something to us, if I knew the right questions to ask.

  I considered what I knew and asked, “You have to take them in some sort of cart, to get them through the gateway?”

  He nodded, but Nathan said, “Don’t even think about it. It’s a gateway to hell, which is another realm, just as Faerie is another realm.” He looked to Aaron and then back to me. “It’s different, though. Where the Summerlands are mostly neutral and appear to only be concerned with what is fair, the land in Hades is hateful, as are the residents. There is no good there, Kirsten. We aren’t going.” I’d been into The Summerlands once, for about five minutes, and would be thrilled to never go back. If Hades was evil where Faerie was supposedly just a bunch of Fae having a good time doing things humans considered socially unacceptable, I’d do everything in my power to stay away.

  Still, I couldn’t just walk away from this, knowing over a dozen women who’d gone missing had likely been taken there. “Then how will we rescue the women?” I asked, not ready to give up.

  “We’ll hand the problem over to someone better qualified,” Aaron told me as he walked to us. He nodded to my prisoner and added, “You’ve done an impressive job with this one, but since we know we can’t mount a rescue today, we need to move before something else comes out of the cave and tries to rescue them.”

  I saw the wisdom in his statement, and as much as it pained me to not find the cart and charge off on a rescue mission, I knew I’d do the women no favors by getting myself caught right alongside them.

  I looked at the prisoners and then to Aaron. “We’re done with them, then?”

  He shook his head. “We’re about a mile from a road outside the park. Someone will meet us there and take them off our hands, and one of our lookouts is moving our vehicle down there. Nathan and I will carry the prisoners to the rendezvous, and then you and I can return to headquarters while Nathan waits for our contact to arrive and collect them.”

  So many questions, but I’d learned from experience Aaron would only tell me what he intended me to know, so it would likely be a waste of time to ask who was going to come get the prisoners, and what qualified him to hunt half-demons.

  Aaron had contacts all over the world, from the highest levels of the U.S. Defense Department, to royalty living in palaces around the planet. The politicians in Washington hired Drake Security to do the things they couldn’t legally ask our military to do, and Aaron held a top level clearance, which was super impressive for a man with fake birth and school records. However, I had a feeling this time he’d called in some high level supernatural Aaron would just as soon keep me in the dark about.

  I sighed. “This is another of those cases where there are supernaturals I don’t know about, and you figure I’m safer if we keep it that way, right?”

  Chapter Two

  Two nights later, I unlocked my office, turned the lights on, and set out bottled water for my new patients. The husband had insisted the couple needed an evening appointment, and had offered to pay five times my normal rate if I would agree to see them at nine o’clock in the evening.

  It wasn’t the money so much as...something I couldn’t put a finger on. However, I’d gone to school to be a therapist so I could help people, and I had a feeling I was capable of helping this couple.

  Also, I was curious as to why they’d wanted me and no one else. I’ve acquired the unadvertised reputation for helping people in the BDSM lifestyle without getting hung up on their kink, but this gentleman had said nothing to make me think he and his wife were a part of the lifestyle. Still, I had the impression this would be an interesting session.

  My office looked different at night, and my normal lighting wasn’t enough without the sunlight spilling in from the windows. I lease space in one of those towers that invariably get built near hospitals, and I’m on the fifth floor so no one can look in the windows and invade my patients’ privacy. It isn’t a huge suite of offices — just the lobby where my assistant Eileen sits, my office, a bathroom, and a tiny break room. The waiting area is typical with chairs and a fish tank, but I’ve worked to decorate my inner office more like a home, as I want to put people at ease.

  Kieran and Gwen Dixon arrived about five minutes early. They were both stunningly beautiful, and dressed well enough to have just come from a magazine photo shoot. They fit well in proportion to each other, but as they approached me I realized they were both short. I’m five foot two inches tall, and Gwen was a few inches shorter than me. Kieran was perhaps four inches taller than me, but next to other men he’d be quite short. Maybe it was the cut of the clothes, but I only noted their height in relation to me and hadn’t noticed it until they were close enough to shake hands.

  I welcomed them in and offered them a seat. I’d situated two of the chairs together, with a small table between. Close enough they could hold hands if they wanted, but far enough away to give distance.


  I once again regretted the need for the harsh overhead lighting. During the day, with sunlight spilling in, a few table lamps gave enough additional light. Without daylight, I’d been forced to use the overhead fluorescents, and they interfered with the cozy, warm atmosphere I’d worked so hard to achieve.

  “Did you bring the questionnaire I emailed?” I asked them.

  “Apologies,” Kieran said, “but we seem to have walked out and forgotten it.”

  This was unfortunate, as it meant I’d have to spend five to ten minutes asking questions instead of thirty seconds skimming the answers.

  As I turned to walk to my chair, Kieran reached for my hand, looked into my eyes, and said, “My Lady, you will not take notes during the session, and you will accept what is said as fact without wondering how it can be true.”

  I felt something attempting to poke through my shields as he spoke, as if he were trying to get to the place my thoughts originate.

  Someone coming through my shields could only be seen as an attack, but I was in therapist mode, where I’m focused on my patients and not myself, so I held my temper.

  I removed my hand from his and lowered my voice to slowly say, “Mr. Dixon, I am not your lady, I will take any notes I wish, and I will decide what to accept as fact and what not to accept as fact. This is what you’re paying me for. Please trust me to do my job.”

  His face was one of surprise. Shock. And Gwen’s face matched his — as if they’d suddenly discovered I was from the planet Jupiter and had rings circling my head. After spending five seconds staring at me, they looked at each other, and Gwen told him, “Let me make an attempt, with your help,” as she reached for his hand.

  Gwen spoke in an odd voice and looked at me with piercing eyes. “Miss O’Shea, while we are here you will not take any notes and you will accept the things we say without surprise and without question.”

  The two stood as one, as if they were part of the same aura, and whatever was trying to get through my shields made it into my brain, this time. Their combined energies were trying to override my will and seemed to be trying to place a marker.

  When I edit a home video and wish to put in a special effect, I mark the beginning and end, and then tell the program what effect to use on that section of video. Somehow, Kieran and Gwen had combined their power in an attempt to put some sort of double whammy on me, as if to mark a section of memory yet to be written. It didn’t work, but it was very impressive.

  Most of humanity would have no idea the couple had done anything, and likely would’ve fallen for the suggestion. Thoughts come into people’s head and they assume they thought it, having no idea other people and beings could put thoughts into their heads.

  While I analyzed what they’d tried to do and made sure they hadn’t actually managed to do something, they visibly relaxed, as they apparently thought their little mind trick had worked this time. I debated with myself and decided I probably had a much better chance of figuring out what was going on if I played along, so I said, “Of course,” and turned around to walk to my chair.

  How did I know they were trying to poke around in my head? I spent a good part of my mid-twenties sitting in Native American sweat lodges, and my late twenties meditating on a Chinese mountain with monks. I took the phrase “finding myself” to a whole new level. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to shield myself physically and psychically, and even more time learning which thoughts are my own and which thoughts were being placed into my head by others. These abilities saved me from their little trick.

  “Here is the questionnaire you asked us to fill out,” Kieran said as he offered it to me. “Please look it over and return it to us.”

  Hmmm. Interesting. They did fill it out, but I couldn’t very well ask why they’d lied — not without letting them know their little trick hadn’t worked.

  Uneasy, I nonchalantly moved from my comfy chair to my desk so I’d be able to draw my gun without them seeing. I need to draw in a good bit of energy to use my metaphysical weapons, and if they could mess with someone’s mind, it seemed a good guess they could sense someone loading up on energy. A gun seemed simpler at the moment.

  I accepted the paper from Kieran on my way to the desk, and looked it over. They’d been married three hundred and fifty four years, they had a good sex life (the choices were unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good, great). Before the current issues came up they fought less than once a month, and... what? They’d been married three hundred and fifty four years? Alrighty then. Things were certainly getting interesting.

  My friend Aaron was thousands of years old, and Nathan was around eight hundred years old, so I didn’t immediately assume this couple couldn’t be the age they claimed.

  I’d been around not only those two shapeshifters, but also a number of werewolves, and in my experience the shifters had a specific kind of energy — one I’d learned to pick up on when I met someone, and neither Kieran nor Gwen had come across with the spicy, hot, volatile energy of the shifters.

  I glanced through the rest of the form and looked up, meeting Kieran’s gaze, then Gwen’s. “Okay, so what brings you to see me?”

  Kieran reached over and took Gwen’s hand as she said, “Kieran and I are having jealousy issues and would like help working through them.”

  Kieran blanched a bit at her words, but didn’t argue with his wife.

  I was still thrown off by the amount of time they’d been married, and needed to verify it wasn’t a mistake. Instead of asking a neutral question, I commented, “You’d think that after more than three centuries together you’d have figured out you love each other and are there for each other. Is this some sort of special circumstance?”

  Gwen blushed, and for the first time I noticed how pale she and her husband were. “Yes, in a manner of speaking, but first we need to explain some things. You see, we are vampires and we need to feed on human blood. Kieran and I have both had human companions over the years who acted as a food source.” She glanced at her husband as she said, “Humans who we cared about and who cared about us, whom we fed from in a mutually beneficial relationship.” Her eyes tracked back to me. “This was considered necessary, and we both treated each other’s humans with respect.”

  She spat the final word out, and I guessed this was probably at least part of the problem. But, I kept listening.

  “In recent decades we’ve had access to bagged blood from the blood bank, and as a result we’ve spent a long while without human companions. However, I don’t find bagged blood as fulfilling as lifeblood direct from the source, and I’ve taken on another human companion.” She looked at her husband again as she added, “For the first time ever, Kieran is jealous of my human.”

  Acting lessons. I needed acting lessons. My sixteen year old daughter is currently playing the lead in a local production of Cats and is practicing for the production of Alice Through the Looking Glass, which starts next month. I fell back on some of the things I’ve heard her acting coach say about how to keep her face composed for a certain emotion, and I worked hard to appear professionally detached. If I pulled this off I should try out for something myself.

  I looked at Kieran and asked, “Do you agree with her explanation, or would you like to give me more information?”

  “She has her facts correct, but neglected to mention she is in love with her human companion.”

  Indignant, Gwen practically spat, “Of course I love him! But only as a companion, the same as you’ve loved your past humans! I don’t love him as I love you!”

  I put my hands into the ‘time out’ sign and said, “So I can better understand the dynamics, I’m going to make a few statements and I’d like you to both nod yes or no, without looking at each other, as I make the statements. Okay?”

  They both nodded yes.

  “In the past,” I said, “you’ve both had human companions at the same time, never one person with a companion and the other without one.”

  They both shook their he
ad no.

  “Okay, Kieran, can you explain how it worked in the past, then, when only one of you had a companion.”

  His speech was precise and proper, and sounded like a mix of accents. Sometimes there was a touch of Ireland, but then a few words would have more of a British feel to them, and every once in a while something sounded almost French. Mostly it was just pompous American, though, as he said, “In the past, we usually each had a companion. However, there were times when one had left us, and Gwen or I were searching for another. During those periods only one of us enjoyed a companion.”

  “So, even though one of you was without, you were still actively looking for a companion of your own, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you’re currently not interested in your own companion?”

  He shook his head, his lips tight and his eyes shooting daggers.

  “Okay, another question for both of you, again please either nod yes or no without looking at each other: Do you have sex with your companions?” They both nodded yes.

  “Kieran, why are you not interested, when you have been in the past?”

  “Because it is enough for me to drink bagged blood. I enjoy not having to be tied to a human. I appreciate the freedom it allows me. Companions were once necessary, but it took a lot of time and energy to keep them fulfilled, so they would stay and be happy.”

  I felt my eyebrows raise, but refrained from asking the question on the tip of my tongue, unsure how much Gwen’s suggestion should keep me from asking.

  Thankfully, Gwen answered my unasked question. “If a human companion is not happy in their role then they leave. In this age and place they are not our hostages, they come to us of their own free will.”