Hey y'all!
Here's a (FREE) fun Sunday treat .... the first chapter of my
Jack-n-the-Beanstalk re-telling,
Simmering Deception, is below. Keep reading!
A Jack and the Beanstalk Fairytale
re-telling
(Urban Fantasy with a hint of Paranormal
romance)
Written by Kish Knight
Edited by Cheryl Parsons
SIMMERING DECEPTION
A retired Giant-Hunter.
A magical
statue.
A deal with the Fae Court thugs.
Jack has spent years developing his
reputation as a renowned Giant-Hunter: the best, the fastest, the strongest.
After a near fatal mission, he decides to retire from the game and move back in
with his mother. But there, he’s forced to face a harsh truth: they are deeply
in debt to the deadly Fae Court. In a city where humans pay under the table to
use dark magic, not paying often equals death. Their only option is to pawn the
tairah, the magical statue responsible for
Jack’s abilities. But after a bad trade, Jack is forced back into the violent
world of hunting giant fae.
And something… rather someone… has put him
right in the crosshairs of danger: an intriguingly beautiful woman who seems to
be in the exact same trouble as him.
“Boy,
you better wake your butt up. Now!”
The
first rays of sunlight slid through Jack’s vision as he opened one eye
cautiously.
“Yeah,
Ma?”
“Jack! You need to get up. There’s no time for you to waste the day in
bed.”
Groaning,
he shut his eyes again and wondered why the hell he’d ever decided to come back
to live with his mother after giving up his life as a Giant-Hunter.
He’d
been lost in another nightmare, same as the last one: awful memories of the
giant that had almost ripped his arm off.
Sure, he’d ending up killing the big bastard in a blaze of fire, but the
memories still plagued him. This
morning, though, the only person facing him was his mother and her scowl, which
deepened as she watched him open the other eye slowly. Then he remembered that he hadn’t been alone
when he’d gone to sleep.
‘Dammit!’
Immediately,
he touched the other side of the bed, and was instantly relieved to find it empty. The sexy fae that he’d brought home the night
before must have slipped out during the night, or she’d gone to the bathroom
for a morning pee. Either way, his ass
was lucky that she wasn’t there in the bed with him when his mother had burst
into the room.
“I’m
up, I’m up,” he muttered, finally pushing the sheet down over his body. He shook his head, because he could put money
on the fact that his mother needed him to do something. Why else would she be waking him up this
early?
But
today his mother looked upset, and he was certain that he saw tears in her
eyes. As he stared at her, he could see
that at least a few of the tears had been shed, their tracks glistening along
her cinnamon-toned skin.
“Ma? What’s wrong?”
Even
as difficult as his mom could be, he didn’t allow anyone to mess with her. If something was wrong, there’d be hell to
pay.
The
bed dipped as his mother perched on the edge.
“We’re broke, Jack. Rent
is due again next week, and we need to do something ASAP for money. And….it’s not just the rent, it’s other
things.”
The
weight in her voice alone when she said ‘other things’ made Jack’s heart
thud. He knew exactly what she
meant. Things like the bribe money they
paid in order to stay in the magic game.
Humans, like he and his mother, didn’t have any magic of their own, and
were banned from practicing or using magic, period. That was the how the government kept the
majority of the population from finding out about the existence of supernatural
creatures. Jack had only ever met fae,
though, like the hulking giants that he murdered for paychecks, or the impish
swindlers hanging on every street corner, or the business-like thugs from the
Fae Court that his mother was currently afraid of.
Now
Jack was wide awake. Sitting up straight,
he fought away the yawn that tried to force its way in. At the moment, his finances were real bad, so
he couldn’t even offer to help his mother.
True, he had gotten a big payout from the last job he’d pulled, but most
of the cash had gone to his medical bills.
So he was currently as broke as a joke.
Maybe retiring in his twenties had been a dumbass move after all.
‘Dammit,’ he thought again. Aloud, he asked his mother, “How about
this? Let me go and talk to the
landlord…and the fae court… right now.
They’ll get their money in a couple of weeks. We’re good for it. Don’t worry, Ma. I’ll handle it.”
His
mother was shaking her head. “No, you
don’t understand. It’s not just this
month’s rent that’s behind. I’m behind
on three months’ rent, so this is the last chance.” A long sigh slipped her lips. “And you know how it is.”
Yeah,
he did.
If a
human wanted to work in the magic trade, they needed to do it in secret, and
they would end up paying the Unseelie fae bastards to keep it quiet. If you didn’t pay, the punishments would be
bad. The government would just jail the
law-breaker; the fucking fae would do worse, death or other.
Jack
didn’t know what their version of ‘other’ meant, but he’d heard stories and he
had some ideas.
Unlike
the Seelie Court, the more civil of the fairy-folk, the Unseelie Court was
downright terrifying. Seelie fae
actually made connections with and helped humans if they saw fit to do so. But
not the Unseelie Court; they just hosted dark and dangerous fairy-folk, period.
“I
hate to do this, but-,”
As
Jack watched, his mother slid the tairah out of its velvet
case. The black marble-patterned statue
gleamed as it was revealed. Lifting it
up to the light, his mother handled it gingerly and with care. Now, in spite of his hangover, Jack was wide
awake. Personally, he hated the damned
thing, and usually avoided touching it if he had to. He knew what it felt like, though: warm and
flexible, almost like skin. The statue
wasn’t made of any normal material that he knew of. ‘Probably some weird fae
material,’ he thought now.
The tairah wasn’t something to be taken lightly. It possessed the ability to fix magic, and
though neither Jack nor his mother had any magic of their own, the tairah
allowed Jack’s mother to work as a fixer.
That meant that she made her money by bending magical spells, and
altering others’ magic just slightly to get the results wanted. It wasn’t really legal, but it paid the
bills. Just not recently, apparently.
The tairah,
a small cow-shaped statue, was also responsible for Jack’s ability to hunt down
giants ten times his size.
The
fact that his mother was now giving it away spoke volumes.
“I
need you to go down to the pawn shop and see what you can get for this.”
In
spite of his shock, the yawn forced its way out and split his lips.
His
mother scowled. “This is serious,
Jack. I do not want to end up on the
street. It’s too dangerous out there. You know that we have nowhere else to
go. For heaven’s sake, winter is coming
soon. If we end up out there, the cold
will definitely kill us both. And if it
doesn’t, the fae will.”
“How
much time did they give us?”
“Until
tomorrow evening to get the money.”
‘Damn.’ Immediately, Jack was on his feet. “A’right, Ma.
Imma handle it, all right? Let me
get dressed and I’ll head out. A’right?”
As
soon as his mother finally left his room, Jack heard the toilet flush in the
adjoining bathroom and turned to see the bathroom door swinging open.
In
the doorway, wrapped in a sheet, stood the girl he’d brought home the night
before. She leaned against the frame
with every inch of the well-bred Seelie Court in her posture. “So,” she said, a little smile on her face,
“I thought that your mother would never leave.”
Sashaying
over to where he still stood by the bed, she brushed against him and lifted one
slim hand to play with the shoulder-length dreadlocks he liked to wear. “Good morning,” she said softly.
Though Jack’s own lean frame stood just over
six feet, she was tall enough to look him in the eyes expectantly.
‘Shit! Completely forgot that she was here.’ Keeping his expression neutral to mask his
surprise, Jack only nodded. The problem
with picking up women for a quickie wham-Bam, was that in the morning, he still
had to get them to leave.
“Uh-,”
The
girl shook her head. A look of
disappointment flashed in her eyes.
Instantly, her tone changed from seductive to annoyed. “I know, you forgot my name, right?” She crossed into the room and began fumbling
under the pillows until she pulled out a T-shirt and a lacy panty. In spite of his apprehension, Jack enjoyed
the view for a second. She was gorgeous,
after all, and he was a man.
“It’s Ciara,”
she added, as she found her bra below the bed.
That’s when she turned to face him, letting the sheet drop.
‘Good
Lord.’
There
was a bottle beside the bed, and Jack quickly swallowed the contents, letting
the gin slide like sandpaper down his throat.
He didn’t need to be distracted any more than he already was.
“Um,
Ciara, no I didn’t forget….well, not really…,” his voice trailed off, as her
gaze pinned his, daring him to lie one more time. “Look, good morning, how’s that?”
She
only cut her eyes at him. “Uh huh,” she
replied coolly. “It would have been nice
if you were a gentleman this morning, and invited me to breakfast, but clearly
you’ve got other things going on. I’ll
just leave.”
He
ran one hand through his locks, weighing his options. “Look, Ciara, I know we just met, but you
seem like a cool girl. How about we set
a date to do something another time?
Maybe we can get to know each other better?”
He
could almost feel the anger in the air as he finished his sentence. Ciara shot him a poisoned-filled glare.
“This
is the second time that we’ve hooked up, Jack.
Trust me though,” she gave him another scathing look, “it’s going to be
the last.”
With
that, she dressed swiftly as Jack still searched for the words that wouldn’t
make him seem like a complete jerk. But
he hadn’t come up with anything to say before Ciara was fully dressed and ready
to go.
“Want
me to walk you out?” he asked, knowing it was a thin offer. That was the problem he had when he trolled
the Seelie fae clubs for women; all the women looked the same, light and
fine-boned. He’d honestly had no clue
that he had history with this particular female. ‘Not a good look, Jack,’ he told
himself.
She
waved him away with one hand, already at his bedroom door, shoes in the other
hand. “Don’t bother. But Jack-,” she paused to look at him, “one
day, you’ll meet a woman that you won’t treat like she’s disposable.” And with that, she was gone.
Jack
didn’t like using women, not at all. It
was just that with his hectic lifestyle, relationships, or hell, even one-night stands, didn’t really
stand a chance. Plus, he was still
looking for the woman that would blow his socks off. He just hadn’t found her yet.
“Yeah,
anyway, time to get this show on the road.”
Pushing
his heavy locks back off his shoulders, he snatched up his usual leather hair
tie and tied them back quickly. His
trademark brown leather jacket hung from the back of his desk chair, and he
shrugged it on before heading to the door.
-END OF CHAPTER 1-
Copyright © 2020 by: Kish Knight
Story Graphics by: Kish Knight
Thanks for reading!
Ta-ta,
Kish
