Mercy’s dark red hair bobbed behind her in a ponytail, and her small white tennis shoes easily found purchase as she matched his pace to run up alongside him. “You looked like you were bent on destruction. Thought you might need backup.”
He didn’t want to smile. He didn’t want to feel any amusement, but a slight amount slid through him anyway. The idea that the small stockbroker could back him up was cute; it warmed something inside him. “You’re the younger sister I never, ever ever ever, wanted.”
She grinned, her one blue eye and one green eye lighting up. “I get that a lot.”
He took in her stride to make sure he wasn’t overtaxing her; if anything, she looked fine. Fairies must be good runners. Figured. They probably had to run away from blown-up buildings often. “You okay?” he asked.
“No, but I don’t want to discuss it yet. Not until Logan has a spare moment to talk,” she murmured. “What’s up with you?”
“I think I just scared Promise,” he admitted, jumping over a pothole.
Mercy nodded. “Did ya get all grrrr?”
Ivar’s eyebrows lifted. “Huh?”
Mercy ran around a downed batch of pine tree branches and returned to his side. “You know. I’m all immortal and fanged and dominant. Grrrr. I will take you back to my cave and have my way with you. Grrrr. This is how I kiss when I really want to.”
“Grrrr?” Ivar asked.
“Yep.” Mercy spit out a piece of a leaf.
His shoulders hunched, slowing his pace. So he straightened them. “Yes. I believe that’s an accurate description.”
“Oh, don’t go back to being a tightass,” she muttered, plucking a pine needle out of her hair. “You’re a vampire-demon hybrid who has survived torture most of us can’t even imagine. To survive, you sucked deep for that animal that lives in all of you, and he isn’t going anywhere now. Either she gets it or she doesn’t. You can’t think of mating her unless she can accept and deal with all of you.” Mercy rubbed her nose. “And you shouldn’t have to hold yourself back and be somebody you’re not. Even if the real you isn’t exactly politically correct. Or at all.”
Ivar increased his pace, not surprised when the fairy easily did the same. Her legs had to move twice as fast as his to keep up, but pleasure bloomed across her pixie-like face. “Where’s your mate, anyway?” he asked.
“He and Garrett are teleconferencing with the Realm,” she said, her arms pumping. “Bo—ring.”
Ivar smiled. “No kidding.” He used to enjoy that kind of work, but now he’d rather run or hit something.
She gracefully jumped over a mudpuddle. “Has your lady figured anything out yet? About dimensions?”
“Yes.” Well, maybe. Ivar told Mercy about Promise’s theory concerning the brain and teleporting abilities. Since he’d noticed Faith slipping into the research room right after he’d left, no doubt they were coming up with a plan for MRIs at the moment. “It’s an exciting theory.”
Mercy was quiet for about a mile, her mind obviously working through the issue. “If Promise is correct, and demons and the Fae actually draw on different talents to do something similar, you know what we could really use?”
“A demon-fairy hybrid,” Ivar joked. The fairies only numbered about sixty, and twenty of those had been created in test tubes a quarter of a century ago, with Mercy being one of them. “Can you imagine?”
She stumbled and quickly righted herself, splashing mud on his boots.
Everything inside him stilled, even as he kept pace. “Mercy?”
She lowered her head and started to run faster.
He quickened his strides, his mind rioting. Wait a minute. No way in hell. “Mercy?”
She slowed to a stop, her chest panting, her head down. “All right. So this just happened, and I’m a little torn. Your lady found paintings on the internet by somebody who has seen what I’ve seen somehow—while moving through dimensions. Except this artist also drew, or rather painted, what looks like a demon mind attack. Well, it’s an attack from the brain, and that wouldn’t have freaked me out so much, except this terrain around the brain is a place I’ve actually teleported to a few times. A place nowhere near the earth.”
Ivar ran through the entire monologue. “Then it’s probably just a painting from a fairy who’s been to that place.” The entire immortal world knew about demon mind attacks, so maybe the artist was just playing around.