Wounded, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  “I don’t understand what you two just agreed on,” Max was saying, “but I think you’re full of total and complete horseshit.”

  “Bully for you,” Bracken said with a decidedly unfriendly tilt to his head. “But until you can learn to keep your disrespect to yourself, you need to keep your distance from her.”

  “I wish we could do that,” Green said after a moment. “But I think we’re going to need him.”

  “Not until the two of you tell me what just happened in here,” Max interrupted, irritated at being talked about like a child.

  “Power,” Green said after a moment. “Cory channels power—the kind generated by emotions. You’ve had psych classes in that job of yours. What are your three major emotions?”

  Max thought for a minute. “Love, fear, and anger.”

  “There you go.” Green shrugged.

  “No—there you don’t go.” Max stood up angrily, knocking his chair over. “That still doesn’t explain what just happened. It’s not like I… it’s not like he….”

  “It’s not like I what?” Bracken demanded, suddenly nose-to-nose with the man. Max was a tall man at six foot two or so, but he wasn’t an elf. Bracken stared down at him from an extra four inches of height, his once knee-length black hair hanging over his shoulders like a shroud. He was wearing a pair of Cory’s sweats that hugged his hips like bike shorts, and nothing else—and the breadth of his chest alone was massive enough to make the smaller man choke off the air in his lungs.

  “It’s not like she’s anything to you,” Max said, trying hard to look away from Bracken and not finding anywhere to look that wasn’t filled with the warrior’s presence.

  “I love that mortal girl child,” Bracken said clearly. “Whatever kind of love she’ll give me, that’s what I’ll return.”

  “She’s a gas station clerk!” Max spat out. “Not Madonna!”

  And like that, Brack’s hand was around Max’s throat—not to choke, but to pin. Max tried to swallow and found that he couldn’t. Bracken snarled at him, an ugly warrior’s grimace. “I’m a redcap, cop,” he hissed into Max’s frightened eyes. “That means I can make blood dance. You’ve seen me do it. Can you hear your blood dance in your ears, little human? Can you hear it thundering past your eardrums, through your throat, down into your heart? I can. I can hear it…. I can hear your heart pump, and the sound of sweet, sweet blood whooshing through your veins, whooshing through your capillaries….” Brack stopped and smiled that warrior’s grin again, and it wasn’t pretty. “Ah-ah-ahhhh…. One’s weak… right there—right by your temple. A little dance, cop man, and it would break. It would break and bleed into your brain, and the only one who could save you would be Green, but he’d have to fuck you, and we all know you’d die before that ever happened.”

  The tension in the room massed, and it barely even quivered when Green asked, in a voice so dangerously soft that it barely stirred the air, “So, Officer Max, I guess what will save your skin here is an honest answer. You drove a hundred or so miles in the rain for someone who hasn’t worked in a gas station for more than six months. We love her. We’ll kill or die for her—as she will do for us. So, sir, what is she to you?”

  Max swallowed, looked up at Bracken, then past his shoulder to Green, and the denial in his eyes was painful to see. “She’s a regret,” he whispered at last. “I had my chance, I missed it, and she ended up with you people and your sexual menagerie. My fault. She’s my fault.”

  “She’s nobody’s fault,” Bracken argued. “She’s glorious.”

  “And you’re lying,” Green said pointedly to Max. “You’re lying to yourself, and you’re lying to us, and your lies are tailor-made to make Cory feel inferior and lowly to your high-and-mighty cop bullshit power trip. Now, you can tell yourself fairy stories until you think you’re the King of fucking Annuvin—but if your lies hurt Cory, undermine her confidence, make her feel bad about the things she has to do, they could get us all killed. Because whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, she wields a truckload of fucking power, and you just denied that you’re a part of it. So since you’re here, we’ll keep you. We’ll use you, even. But until you learn to tell the truth, you don’t get to touch her. You don’t get to talk to her alone. You don’t get to break bread at my table. You don’t get to sleep under my roof. So you can walk out of here and find yourself a cheap hotel and wait for our call like a despised prom date, or you can tell us one little tiny truth that will make me think that you’re worth treating like an ally.”

  There was a silence so complete that even Renny stopped growling. “I want her,” Max said brokenly. “I want her, and I hate myself for that.”

  The storm feeling in the room eased up, and Max started to breathe again. Green sighed, resisting the temptation to tell Bracken to kill Max just to satisfy Green’s own contempt. But Green had never killed lightly—especially not mortals, who were so very, very easy to kill. “And that, Max,” he said after a taut moment, “is why she vomited power into the sink. She just had one asshole fucking with her head, and there she is, being comforted by two men who want her. Except one of them—the one she’s the most afraid of—colors the whole thing with self-loathing. You do the math. You tainted her power, you tainted the feeling it gave her. You did the next best thing to mind-fucking her—you made her do it herself, with her own power. Congratulations, Officer Max. You’re the bad guy.”

  Max flinched and then went pale. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he said rawly.

  “Another lie,” Green said lightly, although his face remained grim. “Nevertheless, you told a truth, and that’s all I asked for. You can sleep on the couch, unless you want to sleep in the darkling with Grace.” No living person ever did. “Fair enough, cop?”

  Max nodded, weakly.

  “Good,” Green agreed. “Now—if we can sit down like sentient creatures, we need to discuss other things besides your shortcomings.”

  The men backed away from each other, and between them they managed to straighten up the kitchen. Green looked over at Renny, curled up in human form, and sighed.

  “Renny, luv, you need to remember who you are,” Green said gently. Renny eyed him doubtfully. “Please, lovey. We need your help for this, and you’re no good to us when you’re more kitty than girl.”

  “I control the bird population,” she said on a growl.

  “I imagine so,” he replied, smiling tenderly. “But I know you take classes and do homework and all those human things during the week, and I need that part of you with us now.” He opened his arms and gestured. “Come sit on my lap, yes?” She practically leapt there, curling up like a child—or a kitten—and Green rocked her softly for just a moment and whispered in her ear. “What’s your name, lovey?”

  “Renny,” she growled softly.

  “All of it,” he insisted.

  “Erin?” As though she wasn’t sure.

  “All of it,” he said again, persistently.

  “Erin…. Erin Alexis Joyce….” Her voice caught and quivered, and he held her tighter.

  “You’re not done yet,” he reminded her, compassion radiating from every line in his body.

  “Erin Alexis Joyce Hammond,” she said at last, her voice quivering but still strong on the last word.

  “Right, Erin Alexis Joyce Hammond,” he affirmed. “You are a human girl who can change her shape at will. Whose will?”

  “Mine,” she said, firmly this time.

  “Very good,” he finished. “Never forget that again.” He looked up at the other two men, who had sat patiently through the conversation. Even Max, he noted, looked softly at the slender child in his arms. “Okay,” Green said on a starting-over breath, “here’s the deal. Cory wants to go to school tomorrow, because she thinks she can catch this Nicky Kestrel. I want more than anything in the world to go with her.”

  “You can’t,” Bracken said immediately. “Green, you need to find out what happened in this city. There is something very hinky going o
n here. Besides the fact that pigeons are shitting everywhere, I could swear I saw a flock of starlings take out a house cat when I went out for the paper this morning.”

  Green shuddered. “Ouch! And you’re right—thanks mate—that’s exactly where I was going with this. I need the two of you on campus with the girls. For one thing, Cory’s not as healed as she thinks she is. If channeling power wipes her out like it did tonight, she has no defenses against this little fucker. Or anyone, for that matter.”

  Bracken grinned wolfishly. “Haul her to her classes and feed her cheeseburgers…. Haven’t I done this already?”

  Green grinned back. “You’d think we have these crises during finals weeks just to give her an extra challenge, wouldn’t you? But you’re right. Haul her to her classes, keep her healthy, keep her fed, and be ready to capture our precious little Nicky.” He turned to Max. “Are you understanding what we need, cop?”

  “Hang with Cory,” Max affirmed.

  “No, my friend, you hang with Renny.”

  Renny started to hiss, but Green jiggled her on his lap much as he’d jiggled Cory, and she cleared her throat and used her words. “Why me, Green? I’d just as soon rip out his soft, tender stomach and nibble on his liver,” she said succinctly.

  Max laughed shortly, then caught the feral gleam in her eyes and realized that, with her double nature, she might not be kidding. “What’d I ever do to you?” he asked, alarmed.

  Renny didn’t answer, but looked to Green instead.

  “Yes,” Green said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Yes—the two of you need to work together. Yes, I know you have a reason to hate him, but I need Bracken with Cory because he can actually carry her around the school, and I don’t want you alone, Renny. Bracken is right—there is something very odd going on here. This is an old city for this part of the country, and the preternatural community is fairly well established. And not a soul has contacted me to warn me off or threaten me, or even to greet me. I need to do the royalty thing and find out who this ‘Papa Bird’ is that I saw in Cory’s mind, and I need to see why he hasn’t introduced himself in a friendlier way.”

  “I have no idea what you just said,” Max said, at a loss. “Walking into your home at any given time is like walking into Oz.”

  “Well, cop,” Green said after a bemused moment, “why don’t you ask some respectful questions as you follow the yellow brick road, and you’ll feel better about being the cowardly lion, yes?”

  “Ain’t it the truth,” Brack muttered under his breath, and for a moment, there was an uneasy peace around Green’s table.

  CORY

  Beguiled

  I LOVE the campus at San Francisco State. It smells like eucalyptus, rain, and ocean, and there are more trees than you could imagine, especially back by the main tiered parking structure. True, the trees represent a safety hazard—anything could be hiding back there in the fog to jump out and grab you, even though there are those nice lamps with the round glass covers marking the way to the dorm structure. But less than 5 percent of the campus lives in the dorms, and everybody who’s had to walk to the parking structure at night has had a night shiver at least once, wondering what hid in the trees and the fog. Or at least every woman.

  Of course, on this particular day, Bracken’s body heat kept me warm in the chilly drizzle. This time there was something a little extra hot running under his skin, but I’d be damned if I could figure out what it was.

  It started even before he scooped me out of the car after driving us to the campus. He didn’t know the city very well, and the drive had been filled with terse, explosive questions—Are you sure this isn’t a one-way street? Why in the fuck can’t I turn left at nine o’clock in the goddamned morning? And my personal favorite, What do you mean Nineteenth Street is really Highway 1? Why don’t they just call it Highway 1 and not put a fucking school next to it? (To which I’d replied, Because, sweetie, the students are so busy fucking each other that the campus doesn’t get any action. He’d laughed then, looking at me sideways from his exotic dark eyes, and his foul monologue subsided.) Usually Renny and I caught the Muni about a block away from Green’s apartment building, and that took us straight down through Golden Gate Park to the school, but that opened us up to all sorts of problems—and way too many contacts with strangers—so the giant blue Chevy Suburban that Green had brought down with him was what we drove. In the apartment parking garage I had a nice little BMW SUV that Green had bought just for Renny and me, but Bracken’s legs were way too long to fit. Max and Renny had slid into the middle back seat of the Suburban without a word and eyed each other warily during the entire ride. When Bracken pulled to a stop, Max got out and opened up my door for me. And that’s when things got really strange, because Brack had… well….

  “What the hell was that sound out of your throat?” I asked, secure with my legs looped over one arm and his other arm around my back. My own arms were up around his neck, and I was conscious of glimpses of skin beneath my hands. For the barest of moments, I wanted to raise my hands to Bracken’s pointed, curved ears, the way I did with Green’s, and it took a moment for me to remind myself that this was a very different person before the urge died.

  “It was a sound,” he replied implacably. “Left, right, straight?” Besides carrying me in his arms, he had my backpack on his back as well, and it was a good thing he was an elf because I think he was planning on traveling like this the whole freaking day.

  “Straight—toward that ugly two-story building you can see from Nineteenth. Seriously—did you just growl at Officer Max? Isn’t he trying to, like, help us?”

  “He will not touch you again,” Brack stated, so autocratically that I almost let go of him and dumped myself ass-down on the ground.

  “Jesus, Bracken, who died and made you my father? ’Cause I could swear the man’s alive and well in Loomis, and wishing I’d visit more often.”

  He stopped short on the path, and people had to move around him. He pulled me up so that our noses were almost touching and said very seriously, “I’m not your father. I’m not your goddamned big brother. And I’m not going to let that asshole touch you again if I can help it.”

  And then, as though that made any sense at all, he kept walking. Speaking of assholes!

  “I should have kicked your balls harder when we met,” I said conversationally and was rewarded by a slight twist of his lips. So he remembered that—good. I might be exhausted and sore and weak, but he could still fear me. Swell. I sighed and decided to treat the whole thing lightly. “He’s Max,” I said dismissively. “I’m not going to break Green’s heart for Officer Max.”

  “It’s not Green’s heart I’m worried about,” he replied cryptically. Almost casually, he looked behind him to make sure Max and Renny had sheered off to take Renny to the science building where she had her 8:00 a.m. class. Their body language was both angry and intimate, to the extent that they looked like estranged family members, and I was beginning to know the feeling.

  “Oh, good, we’re being an enigmatic asshole today. Because the day isn’t going to be stressful or anything, you just need to dick with my head.”

  “I live for dicking with your head—what’s changed?” he asked bitterly.

  Good question. “A lot—but it happened last summer, and I thought we were over that whole ‘Why am I wasting my time with this skanky human’ thing,” I said, disgusted with the both of us.

  Bracken stopped abruptly again and almost did dump me on my ass, but what he did instead was loop the arm that was under my knees around my waist so that I slid down and against his body, clenched like a lover, except my feet didn’t touch the ground. We were face-to-face, and I thought he was going to be really pissed—but he looked kindly and old for a moment, and once again I was reminded that he was nearly the same species as Green.

  “I never thought you were a ‘skanky human,’” he said softly. “I thought you were Adrian’s girl.”

  I swallowed hard and wonde
red how many people walking by in the fog could hear my heart. “Now I’m Green’s girl,” I meant to say gently, but it came out as a question.

  He nodded seriously. “You will always be Green’s girl,” he agreed. “When Green chooses a mate, he’s there until the end.”

  “Even when I’m old and wrinkly?” I asked, trying to lighten the moment, but it stayed securely leaden.

  Brack shook his head. “Power does strange things,” he said after a moment. “Try not to get too attached to the idea of being old and wrinkly.”

  My eyes got really wide then, because Green had told me that immortality didn’t come automatically with power, and we had never mentioned it again. But Bracken was still holding me too close, almost intimately, and suddenly I had a giant lightbulb moment.

  “No,” I said abruptly and struggled to break free of him. But he was strong and big, and I’d had the shit kicked out of me both physically and metaphysically this weekend, so I ended up cradled in his arms like a baby again, with the harsh admonition that if I didn’t sit still he was going to sling me over his back like a sack of flour.

  “No,” I said again, when I was finally situated.