Flint Strike

Chapter Seven

"I just want to pound his face into the pavement!" Kenni hissed the words out as she paced back and forth in their motel room and Flint stared up at the ceiling from his place on the bed. He was staring intently at the dark stain, wondering if it was mold or water damage. The lighting was terrible and it made determining the source of the stain nearly impossible without getting closer to it. "He had the audacity to judge where you are in life after he kicked your ass out of your clan? Fuck him!" Flint could hear the agitation in her voice and he felt his mouth tug upwards. She always acted so tough and untouchable but Kenni had a very big heart. Which he knew that if he pointed it out she would snipe his balls off at five hundred feet and blame it on the wind.

"Ease off it, Kenni." Nalah's voice was calm and Flint turned his head to where she was sitting. She was curled up in the ugly motel chair, reading a large book that was well worn. He wasn't quite sure what genre the book was in, the cover didn't give anything away. It was a blue and grey colour scheme with a mountain on it and plain text for the title. Which told him literally nothing. She had a few books like that. Minimalist covers with plain text that didn't give any indication of the genre the books were in but she loved reading them. It honestly made the tracker in him all the more curious to figure it out.

"Mick said I could run interference between Flint and any trouble with his former clan." Kenni sounded decidedly petulant as she said it and Flint pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. As much as his run in with Clary and Brutus had rattled him, he wasn't feeling too off about it all. "This is definitely trouble with his former clan. It falls under my very direct order I got from boss Mick."

"Mick is not here right now and we have to keep a low profile. So ease off it." There was the sound of another page turning and Flint went back to staring at the mysterious stain on the ceiling. He was really curious as to what the cause of the stain was. The curse of being a tracker was his curiosity went through the roof whenever something piqued his interest.

"Just a little, Nalah. A single blanket party." And there was the begging.

Another page turned. "I said no."

"I'm going to tell Mick." Annnnnd back to the petulance.

The bathroom door opened and Lastor emerged. "You sound like a toddler, Kenni. Lay off it." There was a heavy reprimand to the other vampire's voice and Flint pursed his lips.

"Fuck you, Lastor!" And there was the agitated anger that Lastor was deliberately antagonizing. Flint understood why he was doing it. The only real way to get Kenni to stop focusing on a target of her ire was to give her a new target. Hell, Flint had done the exact same thing to her numerous times before as well. It was standard procedure at this point.

"Still, you're whining like a toddler The only person who has any say about this is Flint." At the Salus vampire's words, Flint tucked his arm under his head and then narrowed his eyes at the stain. "How are you holding up after all that at the bar?"

"Do you think that it was mold or water damage that caused that stain?" Flint pointed at the stain on the ceiling and his mouth twitched as he heard Lastor make an exasperated sound.

"Flint." The word was clipped with warning and Flint shrugged.

"I'm just asking." He glanced over at the vampire who had his arms crossed over his chest as he looked at him. He knew Lastor wasn't going to let it slide and he would answer him but currently the stain was a mystery worth solving.

"Let me see." Kenni clambered onto the bed before she stood up, studying the spot. "Ew, once you get this close, it's shaped like a hairy ballsack." At the words Flint laughed, unable to help himself. He grinned at Kenni as she glanced down at him.

"Don't encourage him." Lastor let out a low hiss with the words and Kenni shrugged.

"He won't open up until we eliminate his distraction." She picked at the stain before sniffing her finger. Without warning she dropped onto the bed. "It's water damage but the colouring is from old tobacco smoke. Now answer the question." She spread out across the bottom of the bed and Flint rolled his eyes and, as carefully as he felt like, kicked her off the end of the bed.

"Well?" Lastor ignored the yelp that escaped Kenni as well as the thump of her hitting the floor and Flint sighed.

"I'm not as bad off as I thought I would be. More shocked than anything, well and angry. Clary threw her family under the bus for a pairing that was never going to happen and Brutus let her. So seeing that I was right when I said they wouldn't get bonded, was enough to piss me off. She was a stupid little girl but she was still just a kid and what's done is done." Flint waved at the air above his face. It was the truth, what was done was done, they couldn't change it now. "I always wondered if Brutus regretted it. He has a family but after our mother died, it was just us two. We had cousins in the Maddock clan but it was the two of us against the world. Having him cut me off hurt, not going to lie about that." He wasn't. There was no point.

"And?" Lastor waved his hand slightly, gesturing for Flint to continue and Flint gave an exasperated sigh.

"And it hurt to see him again, to have him tell me I could come home as if the fifteen years and the banishment never happened. That hurts." His brother had acted like it could all be wiped away, as if it had been a tiny bump in the road.

"Like banishment hurt?" Kenni popped up from the foot of the bed and Flint grunted at her.

"Being banished from a clan feels like losing a limb, there are phantom pains from a limb you no longer have and you can't quite explain the empty aching you feel." Flint glanced at her as she flopped back onto the foot of the bed.

"Like a tearing, it's not smooth or sharp. It's like this vital thing has been ripped from you." Nalah said it softly and Flint moved his head on the pillow to look at her. "I chose that fate and even if you do, it still aches afterwards. Werewolves are meant to have a clan." Flint nodded at that, watching as she turned another page in her book. "However your brother treating your banishment as something easily overlooked and fixable is laughable at best and idiotic at worst. I wouldn't be happy in a clan that has that type of hilarious idiocy at the helm." She lifted the book before her eyes flicked to him and she smirked before she gave him a wink. Flint was slightly surprised at that but smirked back at her.

Lastor moved closer to the bed and Flint shifted over as the vampire sat down on the edge of the bed, swinging his legs to lay down on his side of the bed. They were used to sharing bed when on a mission. Fuck half the time they all collapsed into an exhausted pile while taking off gear and woke up in uncomfortable positions with someone's dirty boot in their face. Flint smirked at that slightly. "So where does that leave you mentally?" Lastor's question was asked low and Kenni snickered at it. Flint resisted the urge to kick her off the edge of the bed for it.

"Fine, no ticking time bombs here. Just a faint aching and anger but nothing that would compromise the mission." He had a pretty good handle on it and it wasn't like he was left with PTSD from being banished. "Old remnants of feelings that will fade with time." Echoes of what he used to feel basically.

"Oooooh Flint is waxing poetically about his feeeeelings!" Kenni said it mockingly and Flint didn't resist as he once again kicked her off the edge of the bed.

"Shut up, Kenni." He rolled his eyes before closing them. "Don't worry about me, Lastor. I'll be fine." He would be, he knew he would be. He had survived after the actual banishment, he would survive after this. This was minor at best. Inconsequential.

"See? He says he's fine." Kenni once again crawled onto the foot of the bed, flopping down. "You should be asking Nalah about the job rather than getting Flint to talk about his feelings." At the words Flint glanced down at here she was laying on her stomach, her face buried in her arms.

"I'm getting there." Lastor scoffed slightly and poked her with his foot. She swatted at him but didn't bring her head up from her arms.

"I'll brief you in the morning before we head out." Nalah said it evenly, lifting her book up a bit more as if to signal the end of the conversation. Flint didn't blame her, he was done talking too.