Otherworld Challenger. Jane Godman

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       Chapter 5

      Jethro leaned his forearms on the deck rail and looked out over the darkened water. The half-empty glass of Scotch whiskey in his hand was doing its job, as was the feeling of being home. Cal had asked him if he had to come back here. The answer was simple. Yes, he did. He had to remind himself every now and then that life wasn’t all about fighting monsters. That peace and beauty still existed. That his own little corner of tranquility was here any time he wanted it. And he had to check everything was right in his world. This time, of course, he had another reason to return. One he hadn’t divulged to Cal.

      Who are you, Jethro de Loix? He’d given Vashti his standard, flippant response. It was the answer he’d honed over the years. Because the truth was too difficult to contemplate explaining to another person. I don’t know who I am. How crazy does that make me sound?

      Most of the time it didn’t bother him. He didn’t think about it. Then there were times—like now—when Jethro was reminded of the kindly, elderly couple who had brought him up and the unanswered questions would buzz around inside his head like an annoying, trapped fly. He knew he had not come into their lives by any conventional means. The thought made him smile. His parents—Bertha and Gillespie de Loix—had been older than the grandparents of other boys his age...and they’d both looked younger than their actual years. There had been no baby pictures, no anecdotes about first steps or first words, and no family tree to help him establish his place in the world. Jethro had grown up knowing that, despite their wealth, he meant more to them than gold.

      Bertha and Gillespie had done their best to give him a conventional upbringing, yet they had been overawed as they’d watched him grow up to be stronger, faster and smarter than his peers. Gradually their pride had become tinged with fear when it became obvious he had other talents.

      How many other children who, having just learned to speak, spent hours sitting alone in the graveyard holding lengthy conversations with unseen companions? When Bertha’s aging tabby cat had been trampled by a horse, it should have been dead. It was dead, she’d insisted later to Gillespie. But after Jethro had whispered a few soothing words and laid his hands on the poor, broken creature, old Mitzi was like a kitten again.

      And they never mentioned—because it would really be too foolish to dwell on it—the woman Gillespie had seen in the woods here on their holiday home island. A woman with white hair and pale skin, dressed all in white. She’d reached out her hands to Jethro, beckoning him to her and, enthralled, Gillespie had begun to walk toward her, leading his son with him. It was only when they’d gotten close that her expression had become a mask of malevolent triumph. Too late, Gillespie had realized he was walking into a trap with no way of escaping. At the last minute Jethro had stepped between his father and the apparition and spoken in a language Gillespie hadn’t recognized. The woman froze. When Jethro spoke again—in a voice of command—she had simply vanished.

      “What did you say to her, son?” Gillespie had asked later, when he had recovered from the shock.

      “I told her to go away. Didn’t you hear me?” Jethro had regarded his father with mild surprise.

      Now Bertha and Gillespie were gone from this world, and the only identity Jethro had was his power as a sorcerer. The status conferred on him by his ability to control the dead defined him, and he loved and loathed it in equal measure. Unlike other necromancers, it had never been enough for him. He had always been searching for something more, but what that something might be he had yet to discover.

      For a long time he thought what he craved was danger. Money wasn’t important to Jethro, but his skills were highly prized in Otherworld. The more perilous the mission, the bigger the purse. He gained a name for himself as the mercenary who would take any necromancing job...for the right price. He knew other necromancers—purists like Cal and Lorcan—looked down on his lifestyle simply because they never understood why he was prepared to sell his skills for money. If they knew he was already a wealthy man, they would understand it even less. And Jethro, the most intensely private of a solitary group, wasn’t about to confide in them. That had been before the great battle for control of Otherworld, of course. Before he had put himself on their side in the attempt to topple Moncoya from his throne. That attempt had not been wholly successful. Moncoya had escaped from the battlefield. He was still the King of the Faeries. Just because he was in hiding didn’t mean he was any less of a threat. Still, I suppose we should thank the evil little shit for bringing us all together. Bonds deeper than friendship were forged that day.

      Lately, Jethro wasn’t so sure it was adventure he sought. The adrenaline rush of a new mission was still a high. Confronting and defeating a hostile undead being gave him a sense of a job well done. Even a day like today, one that brought an unexpected brush with death, was a white-knuckle ride he would miss if he gave it up. But that niggling sense of missing something fundamental was increasing...

      A sound behind him made him swing around. Vashti had finally emerged from the hot bath where she had been attempting to soak away the effects of the beating she had taken earlier. Her face was showing signs of bruising and she walked stiffly. Wrapped in one of Jethro’s robes, which looked ridiculously large on her, she appeared unbelievably fragile. Jethro felt his features soften into a sympathetic smile.

      “Better?”

      “I feel like I’ve been trampled by an elephant.”