by Tiger Gray
Coren wore jeans and a t-shirt emblazoned with a logo Ashrinn couldn't quite decipher. Ashrinn noted that his son wore a pair of his old combat boots, the lacings uneven. Ashrinn winced, suppressing the automatic reprimand. Coren had a composition book tucked under one long arm. Ashrinn choked up; he hadn't known about Coren's creative efforts. The awareness of how much he'd missed stung.
"Come on, Dad," Coren chided him, wriggling out of his hold, "you're not going to be all weird and emo now, are you?"
"All what?" Ashrinn asked, baffled.
"You haven't forgotten me, have you?"
Ashrinn looked over at his wife while Coren busied himself with tugging at the luggage. Ashrinn grinned, feeling about fifteen himself, as she closed the distance between them. She brushed a skein of sun-colored hair out of her face, violet eyes all the more striking when juxtaposed against her pale features. Her simple outfit --- dark coat, sea foam green blouse, designer jeans --- wasn't revealing, but Kiriana managed to be as provocative in it as a woman wearing nothing. She slunk towards him and he reached for her, quite aware that he'd been in the desert without a certain kind of company for longer than was healthy.
She wound her arms around his neck, and he embraced her with such powerful, desperate affection that he came close to lifting off her feet. What had he been so worried about? He had a difficult time remembering, now.
"Ashrinn!" She giggled, more like an infatuated girl than a woman in her early forties. "Put me down!"
Instead, he lifted her off of her feet for real and kissed her. He obeyed quickly thereafter, though; the knee wouldn't put up with more. Kir laughed and tossed her hair, blushing. Ashrinn pulled away from his wife and turned to Coren, whose face was scrunched up in an expression of disgust.
"Are you two done being gross?" Coren bent and hefted the duffel bag only to put it straight back down again. "Geez Dad. Got enough stuff?"
Ashrinn grinned and lifted the bag without effort. He slung the strap over his shoulder, swallowing a gasp of pain as his knee did its best to twist out from under him. He didn't call any extra attention to it, and he hoped his family wouldn't either. He did not meet Coren's concerned gaze, and the boy let the issue drop along with the look.
He followed Kir through SeaTac and to the parking garage, scanning every person they passed out of habit. He forgot to for a moment, though, when they came to Kir's vehicle. He could tell a top end Jag when he saw one.
How many of my bonuses went into that thing?
Well, if she spent some of his money on fine things, he couldn't blame her. The burden of raising Coren had fallen on her more often than not; she deserved a toy or two.
He deposited his bag in the trunk and folded himself into the passenger's seat with as much grace as he could, though he had to wrap his hands around his bad leg and lift it into the car. It had become less of a limb and more a piece of baggage to cart around, though the pain and stiffness that had settled into the joint reminded him it was in fact still attached.
Coren bounced in the backseat like an eager puppy. Ashrinn had expected the boy to be angry at him for his absences. He caught his breath as he realized he was going to a home he'd never seen before.
Ahura Mazda, bright and fragrant, Ashrinn cursed, I am a stranger to these people.
"How is school, Coren?" he asked in an attempt at breaking the awkward silence. He caught a flicker of something, magic maybe. Had it been real, that mad dream? His heart clenched and he suppressed a surge of useless combat instincts; he couldn't solve this problem with tactics or gunfire. The otherworldly energy reminded him of the trees filing past the passenger side window, fire-bright leaves a brief but vibrant impression in his peripheral vision.
There. Again. He turned to look at Kir, and with hesitant fingertips he pried at the lid of his proverbial third eye. It didn't want to open, as though someone had put a lock on it, but he got enough to perceive an aura of crackling flame around his wife. He avoided panic only through finely honed will.
Kir glanced at him and smiled, though this time the expression made him shiver. He couldn't put his finger on why. He turned and looked out the window, a thousand shades of gray flung like a ragged quilt over the fat, pallid body of the November sun.
"I like going to school with Liucy," Coren's words took a while to make sense, but Ashrinn collected the fragments of his scattered mind with deft mental hands and listened. "She's weird, but nice."
Kir wrinkled her nose in distaste. Ashrinn and Mal had planned, some years ago, for their children to end up in the same schools. Kir had wanted to get out of Washington D.C. and, even though he did not want to leave his parents behind, he'd agreed. The Unit wanted him in Ft. Bragg anyway, and he'd leapt on the chance to have his family near Mal's. He hadn't realized before now that Kir didn't think much of the Tielhart kids.
"Is she your girlfriend?"
"Dad," Coren protested, sheepish, "she's just my friend."
"I wonder if they made Malkai leader of the squad after all," Ashrinn said, "I didn't get much chance to say goodbye to the team."
They'd all stopped in to see him, certainly. Masters's Jesus Christ. That was an honest to God miracle! closely followed by Chavez's si, ambia. Thought you were fucked for sure. Mal's haunted stare. But the war didn't end just because a single soldier got himself injured, and what remained of the team had plenty to do.
"I can ask Liucy for you!" Coren said, jumping on the chance to please. "I think she likes me."
He closed himself off from whatever lingering supernatural forces --- Starting to believe in your hallucinations? You are crazy --- might be present, and settled into his seat. It was hard to get comfortable in a sports car when one was over six feet tall. "Certainly, Coren," he said. "Read me some of that poetry you've got there, yes?"
"How did you know?"
"You have Persian blood. You're destined to be a poet." Ashrinn told him, only half jesting.
"If you really want to hear one, Dad."
"Of course I do." Ashrinn settled in to his seat and, calmed by the amateur cadence of his son's words, let Kiriana take him to a home he had never set foot in before.
* * *
The dream man called himself Randolph del Sar.
Ashrinn stood in the living room of the Belltown condo Kir had bought them staring at his cellphone long after the call itself had ended. He felt the kind of tension he felt when he thought he'd been found out by the enemy. The man knowing his phone number made the counter terrorism specialist aspect of his personality come to the fore. One again he debated ignoring the attempts at communication. He wanted to dismiss it all as a nightmare figment, a trick of his imagination with as much substance as the shadows thrown by crackling flames.
"Who was it?" Kir asked him. He started; he'd forgotten she was there. She stood at the point where the gleaming kitchen flowed into the space he stood in. He felt like an escaped zoo animal, especially since everything in the living room gave off the aura of being too expensive and very breakable. He, with his boots still sand-stained, did not belong. The message came through as clear as the midday light through the picture window behind him.
That smile again. He realized what bothered him about it; it was all teeth and didn't reach her eyes. The sense of power around her remained, though it was nothing like what he had perceived around Randolph's apparition. There was nothing of the divine in it, though he admitted to being an unskilled and cynical assessor.
He turned and looked out at the day so he wouldn't have to look at his wife. The sculpture garden's fixtures eight floors below hunched like fantastical beasts, half visible in the grey-white drizzle. She'd chosen the rich half of the neighborhood. Just a few streets away, safely hidden from view so the well-to-do wouldn't have to see it, the sidewalks were cracked and the buildings tagged with graffiti.
He admonished himself for thinking such unflattering thoughts about Kiriana even as he lied to her. "Wrong number."
Unsettled by the impuls
e to tell untruths, he busied himself with choosing one of the leather seats nearby. He'd known part of why Coren had been so happy to see him the instant he'd stepped inside his unfamiliar home. This tiny apartment, filled with untouchable pieces of art --- some of them the work of Kir's own hand --- was no place for a teenage boy. Maybe Coren hoped his father would stand up for him and tell Kir that they would move to somewhere more suitable.
That would cost him.
Coren emerged from his bedroom and stood at the kitchen sink, gulping a cup of coffee. Ashrinn watched him as the boy finished, turned around, and looked as if he was about to speak. but Kir shushed her son before he could get the words out.
"Coren, why don't you go find your friends? Get some coffee somewhere."
"But Mom, I just had --- "
"Go on. It's my turn for some time with your father."
"He just got back! I --- "
"Just do as she says, Coren," Ashrinn found himself saying without thinking, "I'm not going anywhere, after all."
Coren turned miserable, hurt eyes on him, as though the words had been a betrayal.
Ashrinn opened his mouth to correct himself, tell his son that of course he could stay, but he glanced at Kiriana and chose silence.
Coren shifted it with bad grace, ducked into his room to retrieve his zippered sweatshirt, and disappeared out the door. Ashrinn watched as Kiriana took the seat across from him, and handed him his own cup of coffee. She waggled her fingers at Coren without looking.
"So," Kir said once the door had clicked shut, "you're back for good." She arranged herself to accentuate the line of her lithe body as she spoke, moving with enviable grace. Cunning underscored the way she showed him little glimpses of skin, leaned towards him slightly both to emphasize her low cut top and to appear focused on what he had to say. He knew the teasing was deliberate, but knowing her game made it no less effective.
He stared into the depths of his still full coffee cup rather than allowing himself to be bewitched any further. Bewitched? Maybe that was more accurate than he'd previously thought, given the magic he'd sensed.
"We have so much to catch up on," she told him. He looked up at her, almost against his will. Her regard was unwavering, her gaze as bright and flat as the amethyst it resembled. Desire and dread uncoiled in his belly like entwined serpents. He shuddered, though he endeavored to hide it.
"We certainly have plenty of time."
He wondered what his team had done without him. He couldn't stop dreaming of the desert, as though his mind were a rotten melon and the memories of war the worms wriggling in its soft center.
"I am so happy to have you home. Even happier that you are now one of us."
He came very close to dropping his coffee. "I don't know what you're --- "
"Don't worry, darling. It only means I can show you so much more than I was allowed to before. Even if someone else has put his mark on you.""
He recoiled; he could feel her touch on his soul, pulling at the lock Randolph had apparently put there to protect him until they could meet again. Already he could see that the two signatures were different, the power of the dream man's wards repelling whatever magic his wife wielded. Her expression darkened. Creeping terror wound around his throat and choked the voice from him.
He glared at her but she only tossed her head and laughed. Ever since they'd gotten married he'd been unable to truly affect her moods. Maybe that was part of why he was so devoted to her, the wish to please. The hope that one day he'd be able to fulfill all her wants and needs.
He often tried to do just that until he was incapable of giving more.
"Kir," he managed, "you know we're going to have to move. There's not enough space for the boy here." He tried to divert the current conversation, even though the topic he'd chosen could hardly be described as safe. He found he wasn't surprised by his wife's status as some kind of magical being. Had she been influencing him this whole time? Could she do that? He didn't know the rules.
"I have no interest in leaving. I already moved to this miserable rainy city for you. You can't just come back after two years and reorder everything to your liking."
Her voice had a petulant quality that plucked at Ashrinn's nerves. She didn't like that he'd wanted to stay near Mal, even after Ft. Bragg. He clenched his teeth until they creaked. "When do I ever reorder things to my liking?"
Just like that, her stormy mood broke and she smiled an indulgent smile. The relief was nigh-tangible, enfolding Ashrinn in warm arms. Maybe he'd placated her enough to avoid further conflict. Maybe she'd make good on the promise suggested by her pose.
"What's the benefit to me?" she said, looking him over without shame. There was a seductive purr to her tone, and Ashrinn swallowed hard, steeled himself to offer her what he knew she wanted.
"Just think, love. If we had a proper house we'd have more space for ourselves, too. Privacy."
She pretended to consider the subtle emphasis in his words. He knew he'd played to her wants again. No matter, he could handle it. He got what he wanted too, in the end.
"I'll think about it," she said, "let's not worry about it yet. You've just come back, after all. I did miss you."
He unbent at the affection in her tone. He really was a mess, suspecting her of all sorts of things that he had no evidence for. "I missed you, too." He settled back into his chair and watched her, entranced by her smallest gesture. "I'm afraid I've forgotten how to be a civilian."
She crossed the space between them and rested her cool fingertips on his temple. She stroked his hair, longer now than it had been in twenty years. He looked up at her like a supplicant, her touch both soothing and arousing.
"You remember how to be my husband, don't you?"
"I've never forgotten that," he said, reaching out for her, "how could I?"
Her fingers tightened in his hair for a fleeting instant. She took his hand, urged him to his feet. "I can make you forget everything else," she promised, and he followed her down the hall without thinking, "I can make you forget everything you were before."
He slipped into the bedroom as though pulled by an invisible lead, her aura burning itself into his mind.
CHAPTER FOUR
A crisp wind picked at the end of Ashrinn's silver-grey scarf and tugged at his braided hair with mischievous fingers. The teases became a slap as he opened the door to the coffee house, and he entered with the cold chasing itself around his ankles.
The interior felt blazing hot by contrast. He grumbled, uncomfortable in his woolen pea coat where a moment before he'd been cursing it as inadequate. The desert had such contrasts, but not so quickly as this.
The neighborhood wasn't far from where he lived, but the general attitude had changed somewhere back down the hill around Broadway. He felt like everyone was a good ten years younger than him. The people here tended to have money too, if the apartment buildings and restaurants lining the street were any indicator, but liked to pretend they didn't.
He realized too late that he was standing in the way of the line snaking to the counter. A woman with dreadlocks and bare forearms covered in tattoos pushed past him and he all but stumbled backward, confused. Anxiety began to creep up his spine, vines choking a rose bush. He could talk an angry native with an assault rifle out of a tree, but he couldn't figure out how to order coffee?
He shrugged out of his coat and folded it over his arm as his soldier mind took over. He assessed the place for weaknesses, imagined half a dozen ways he would use it to his advantage if a conflict broke out. A large space separated by a pair of couches directly ahead and a partition to his right. A counter a few paces forward and to his left. Most people sat rapt at their laptops. Couples, still wrapped in knitted scarves and arm warmers, leaned in close together to have whispered conversations through the steam drifting from their tea mugs.
He wondered why so many of these people had affected a shabby look, layers of frayed clothing and mismatched accessories, but then again he
'd done the same thing back in his early teens despite his parents being quite well to do.
A chalkboard menu hung above the counter person's head. There was a drawing of a victrola player done in a whimsical freehand, the daily offerings written as though they were emanating from it like music. How there could be so many variations on coffee, he had no idea.
He joined the line properly this time. He admonished himself for standing at attention and did his best to relax. Why couldn't he think of this like a Unit mission, where he'd often had to blend into crowds not so different from this one? Perhaps some of his worry was because of how ridiculous this errand was. Have coffee with a figment of his imagination?
"Sir? What would you like?"
It took him a moment to register the voice. He'd been so caught up in the memory of Randolph's phone call that he'd ended up at the counter without realizing it. He really was a piece of work. The counter minder, a pale, long-limbed girl with blue hair, smiled a tolerant smile. She leaned towards him, elbows on the glass pastry case in front of her.
"Coffee," he told her, studying the stacks of colorful cakes underneath her arms.
"Sumatran Mandheling or Nigusie Lemma?"
He made a face. "Black."
A cupcake crowned with rows and rows of piped pink frosting caught his eye. He brightened. Even the girl giggling at his awkwardness couldn't spoil his sudden good mood.
"You look like a Sumatran type," she told him. He could only hope that was a good thing. "Anything else?"
He pointed at the cupcake. It brought back memories of his boyhood with surprising force. His lapsed Catholic father occasionally gave in to guilt and dragged him along to church. The elder Pinecroft always tried to salve his boredom with goodies afterwards.
Mother never did approve, he thought, memories of her ranting about inferior English puddings as vibrant as if it hadn't been thirty odd years since. He grinned as the woman handed him his cupcake and cup of coffee. Her eyes lit up and she mirrored his expression. Horror of horrors, had he actually managed to charm someone? Well, maybe he wasn't as bad as he thought.
