Forever

by Pati Nagle

  Lomen shifted on the couch, and I saw his brow tighten in a frown.

  “But the first two alben who came here were looking for Madóran,” Caeran added.

  “Madóran?” Lomen had mentioned that name earlier.

  “A friend of ours. We came here seeking him ourselves.”

  I glanced at Lomen. “Popular guy. You think these new alben are looking for him, too?”

  “We have no way of knowing.”

  Caeran’s attention shifted to the TV, which had just flashed a “breaking news” slide. He turned on the volume.

  Video of yellow tape, on campus, surprised me. My gut tightened. There was nothing to see—a few police standing around—and apparently not much to tell. The voiceover gave the brief details I’d already heard from Amanda and Caeran, without mentioning the knife work.

  The news shifted to another story. Caeran muted the TV.

  I shook my head. “I don’t see how we’re going to find them. There are almost a million people in Albuquerque.”

  “A million humans,” Caeran said.

  “So? Except for the white hair, an alben looks a lot like a human, and the hair can be changed.”

  “But their khi marks them as different.”

  Khi again. Energy, Lomen had said.

  “You mean chi?” I asked, avoiding the hissing consonant of the ælven word.

  “The concept of chi is based on khi, yes,” Caeran said. “Ælven khi is distinct from that of humans, and alben khi differs from ælven.”

  “What are you going to do? Walk around campus looking at everyone’s khi?”

  A brief look of impatience crossed Caeran’s face. “The alben will not return to the campus until they hunger again. Meanwhile we will search the places where they are likely to seek shelter. Unless they are unusually integrated with human culture, they will be limited by lack of identification. They are unlikely to have funds other than cash. This narrows our field.”

  “Well, I’ll help however I can, but it sounds like more than a handful of us can do.”

  Everyone was silent. I had said something wrong.

  “You cannot help us, Steven,” Lomen said quietly.

  “Sure I can.”

  “No,” Amanda said. Her voice sounded choked.

  Caeran turned to me. “I am sorry, Steven. You are too vulnerable to assist us in this—search, and far too valuable to be risked. We must ask you to remain here.”

  “Look, I’m no prize fighter but I’m not a wimp either.”

  “It is not a question of your strength,” Caeran said.

  “No human can resist an alben,” Amanda said flatly.

  I turned to her, surprised. “What are they, supermen?”

  “Compared to us, yeah. They can control us with a thought.” She drew her knees up and hugged them. “The freeze. You don’t even have time to yell for help, usually. There’s no way for us to fight it. They’re too powerful. They can even control ælven, sometimes.”

  “That depends on the relative strength of the individuals,” Caeran said.

  I looked at Lomen.

  “Yes,” he said, looking unhappy. “They use khi to control their human prey. It is against the ælven creed to do so, but most alben do not honor the creed.”

  I remembered Kimberly, lying in her own blood. No sign of struggle, except the broken glasses, but that could have happened when she hit the ground.

  A door in the south wall opened and Len came in, carrying car keys and her pack. Caeran got up to greet her, then turned to me. “This has reminded me that we should allow Steven to bring some clothing and whatever else he needs to the house. It’s best to go get these things before dark. I can drive you now,” he said.

  “Uh...I’m OK at my place, really.”

  Caeran shook his head. “I am sorry, but until we locate the alben you will be safer here. Amanda, you will stay as well.”

  “Yeah, I brought a bag over.”

  “Excellent.” Caeran looked at Len, who handed him her keys.

  I was thinking about refusing. These people had turned my life upside-down already; now they wanted me to move in with them?

  Please go with Caeran, Steven. He wants to talk to you.

  I looked at Lomen. His face didn’t show much, but his eyes were pinched with concern. I would do pretty much anything to wipe away that anxiety.

  I got up and followed Caeran through the door Len had come in, which led to a garage. We got into a Lexus sedan and the garage door rolled up. Caeran seemed at ease, and I wondered how long he’d been driving.

  Strange, because he looked so similar to Lomen that they could pass for twins, but I wasn’t attracted to Caeran at all. I wasn’t repulsed by him either, mind. Ælven are easy on the eyes. But sitting in a car with Caeran just made me miss Lomen.

  The sun was still up but it was definitely slanting. The breeze had grown stronger, tossing stray leaves around in the gutters.

  “You may be wondering who elected me president,” Caeran said as he drove toward my apartment. His voice was a little lower and throatier than Lomen’s, I noticed. “I was the one who chose to act, is all. When we first arrived here, one of our clan was ill. I knew that Madóran, who is a healer, might be living north of this city. Indeed, we decided to come to New Mexico because Madóran had done so, centuries earlier.”

  Centuries. They tossed that word around pretty casually.

  “So I went to the library at UNM to look for information that would help us find him.”

  “And met Len.”

  Caeran nodded, and a smile softened his face. He was silent as he concentrated on turning right onto a busy one-way street.

  “She helped us find Madóran. He lives well to the north, past Mora. Do you know where that is?”

  “Not really. I’m a Cruces kid.”

  He accepted that without comment, and I wondered if he knew what it meant. My home town, Las Cruces, is in southern New Mexico.

  “Sadly, we were not the only ones seeking Madóran,” he continued. “A former lover of his, one who had become alben, also came here looking for him.”

  “The first campus killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one who attacked Len.”

  Caeran inhaled deeply. “Yes. And others, including Madóran.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Him.” Caeran pulled up to the curb outside my apartment, turned off the engine, then turned to face me. “We killed him.”

  Holy crap.

  “We do not kill lightly. The burden of taking an ælven life, or a human life, weighs heavily on us. Gehmanin left us no choice.”

  “What about the second one?” I asked, my voice rough.

  “Kanna. She followed Gehmanin here. Their relationshp was...complicated. Kanna fixed upon Amanda shortly after she arrived.” He ran a hand over his face. “That was our doing, I fear. Len and I convinced Amanda to join us in donating blood. Kanna spotted her as she was leaving the donation center. The scent of fresh blood was on her, and Kanna was hunting.”

  “Bad timing,” I said. “Not your fault.”

  He shook his head. “It began that way, but Kanna soon learned that we were involved in Gehmanin’s death. She decided to kill Amanda in order to hurt us.”

  “So you killed her, too?”

  “Savhoran killed her. She was hunting him and Amanda. It was self-defense.”

  A gust of wind buffeted the car. “What about these new ones? Are they looking for Mad—Mad—”

  “Madóran. I hope not. We won’t know until we learn who they are.”

  “Are you going to kill them?”

  He hesitated, but didn’t deny it. “Only if we have no other choice. We will first try to convince them to hunt elsewhere.”

  Hunt elsewhere? Where? How far away was far enough? Santa Fe? Denver? They would still be killing humans.

  “But before we can do that we must find them.” Caeran looked at his hands, lying in his lap. “I know it is annoying
for you to be asked to leave your home. I promise you it will be temporary. Your safety is our main concern.”

  “Honestly, I don’t see how your house is safer than mine. You’ll be out hunting these alben.”

  “No. I will stay to watch over you and Len and Amanda while the others hunt.”

  My first thought was why couldn’t Lomen stay, but that was selfish. Len and Caeren were an established couple. And it was their house.

  “We should go in,” Caeran said. “If you have more questions, I will answer them while you pack.”

  I opened my door and got out, looking around for any lurking homicidal alben. The wind was getting stronger, and the sky had clouded over. The air smelled like rain—life-giving rain, always welcome in the desert. I sucked a deep breath, then led Caeran up to my door.

  My neighbor, a freshman with freckles and a Marilyn Monroe figure, came up the path at the same time. She welcomed me with a big “I like you” smile, then stopped in her tracks when she saw Caeran, eyes wide and her mouth making that classic “O” shape that drives straight guys crazy. I gave her a non-committal wave and unlocked the door.

  Inside, I stood looking around for a minute, wondering what to take. I picked up my phone from the coffee table. The futon’s cushions were rumpled, reminding me of what had happened there earlier. I clamped a white light lid on that memory and headed for my bedroom.

  Caeran followed me and watched while I pulled a gym bag out of my closet and stuffed some random clothes into it. Clean underwear, socks, t-shirts. Extra pair of jeans.

  How do you pack for going into a bomb shelter?

  I fetched a plastic grocery bag from the kitchen and filled it with toiletries. No telling when I’d be back so I took shampoo and shaving stuff. Added that to the gym bag and pulled a pillow out of my bed.

  Entertainment. I carried the bag and pillow out to the living room and collected my laptop. “You have wireless?” I asked Caeran.

  He nodded. So books and movies would be available. I went to the shelf that held my textbooks.

  “We’ll fall behind in classes.”

  “No, you can keep going to class. Alben shelter during the day. It is only at night that you are vulnerable.”

  I met Caeran’s gaze. “So that part of the myth is true? Sunlight kills them?”

  His mouth twisted. “It hurts them. I think they’d have to be restrained and exposed for a long while to suffer fatal damage.”

  He looked as though the idea bothered him. For a killer, he didn’t seem so ruthless.

  I piled my textbooks next to the laptop and stared at the heap, wondering what I was forgetting.

  “You might check your refrigerator for food that could spoil,” Caeran said gently.

  I went into the kitchen, annoyed that he’d read my thoughts. I practiced white-lighting while I filled another grocery bag with fruit, salad stuff, yogurt, and a quart jug of milk that was mostly full. I brought this out to the living room and added it to the pile.

  “I’d like to take my bike. Your place is farther from campus.”

  Caeran glanced toward the window. “We’ll come back for it, if that’s all right.”

  The darkness outside was mostly from the gathering storm, but it made me nervous and obviously bothered Caeran as well. Those alben probably loved stormy weather.

  Caeran helped me carry my stuff to the Lexus. We piled it all in the back seat, went back to lock the door of my apartment, then ducked into the car just as the rain broke. Caeran drove back to his house with the wipers on high. I was grateful that the house had a garage that wasn’t full of junk, and therefore actually had room for the car.

  The smell of dinner set my mouth to watering the minute I stepped in the house. Lomen met me with a smile and took my laptop and pillow from my arms.

  “I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

  He led me down the hall and into a bedroom. At first I thought it was a guest room, then I noticed some personal touches on the nightstand: a small deer carved out of wood, a candle in a pottery holder, a deck of playing cards.

  “This is my room,” Lomen said.

  A tingle went down my arms. “Shouldn’t I let Amanda have it?”

  “I offered it to her first. It was her room when she lived here, but she insists she prefers the couch.”

  Caeran brought in my textbooks and put them on a small desk in one corner of the room. Lomen set my laptop beside them.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Caeran said.

  I left my bag and pillow on the bed and followed them to the little dining nook off the living room. The table there had been set with five places, a cozy fit for a table more suited for four. Caeran and Len brought out dishes of food and put them on the sideboard. The heavenly smell was coming from a roast chicken. There were roasted potatoes and carrots, fresh green beans, and a big bowl of salad.

  At Len’s invitation I grabbed a plate—stoneware, looked hand-made—and filled it, then took one of two chairs sharing a side of the table. Lomen took the other. No one said anything. Not so much as a raised eyebrow.

  “Savhoran called,” Amanda said. “He’s heading out to find Pirian.”

  Caeran frowned. “The sun hasn’t set.”

  “He said it’s worth the risk.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

  “We saw the weather forecast while you were gone,” Len said. “This is a big storm and it’s moving slowly. He should be all right.”

  “Is he on the bike?” Caeran asked.

  Amanda stabbed a carrot. “Yeah.”

  Motorcycle, I assumed. Dangerous on wet pavement.

  I didn’t comment. I was too busy eating. Everything was fantastic, and not just because I was hungry.

  I chewed a mouthful of green beans with butter and almond slivers, thinking. All these people had just been acquaintances of mine two days ago. Now here I was, committed to a business contract and spending the night in one of their homes. How had it happened so fast?

  I had followed my instinct. I’d learned to trust it years ago. Lomen was a big part of why I’d agreed, but if there had been any warning bells, I’d have walked.

  I poured more lemony gravy over my chicken and poured some white light through my brain, then asked myself if vampires with a taste for knives did not constitute a warning bell.

  Apparently not.

  I would spend some time sorting out my feelings later, I decided. For now, I was reveling in the sensory pleasures of a really good meal that I hadn’t had to cook or pay for, and the tantalizing buzz of sitting next to Lomen. Now and then I caught a tiny hint of his sandalwood soap.

  “Can you tell me about Madóran?” I said to the table in general.

  Caeran looked at me. “He is a very old soul. Older than any of us.”

  “You said he was a healer.”

  “He’s an amazing healer,” Amanda said. “A curandero, too. Len’s studying with him.”

  “I’m learning ælven healing techniques more than herbalism, but yeah. He’s phenomenal at both.” Len smiled at me. “You’ll meet him in a couple of weeks. He’s coming down for Evennight.”

  “Unless we haven’t found the alben by then,” Caeran said. “He should not come near the city while they are here.”

  “You’re pretty protective of him,” I said.

  “He has had grief enough in the past year.”

  “They’re protective of the whole clan,” Amanda said. “You’ll get used to it.”

  I was still stuck on Evennight. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t dredge up a reference.

  We talked about safe subjects until we’d all eaten our fill. I wanted to go back for seconds, but my stomach said no.

  Caeran got up and started taking leftover food to the kitchen. I stood and collected Lomen’s and my plates while Amanda took the rest. When we’d cleared the table I started organizing the sink.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Len said.

  “Least I can do. That was a great meal.”
r />   “Caeran cooked it. He’s good with roasting.”

  I was good with a can opener, but couldn’t claim much more. “These are beautiful dishes,” I remarked, pausing to admire the leaves twining along the edge of a plate.

  “Thanks,” Len said. “Madóran made them. Now, shoo. I’ll make coffee.”

  I wandered into the living room. Caeran was in what I gathered was his chair. Lomen was on the couch. I joined him.

  “You mentioned a couple of others were coming,” I said to Caeran.

  He nodded. “Bironan and Faranin.”

  “They here in town?”

  “No, they live on Madóran’s land. They will not arrive until tomorrow, most likely.”

  I looked at Lomen. I didn’t like the idea of him going out alone tonight, looking for these alben.

  Savhoran will be hunting them as well. And probably Pirian.

  Dammit. Do I have to constantly do the white-light thing?

  You’ll get used to it.

  The mental contact increased my physical awareness of him. I took a deep breath and thought through the steps of shielding again.

  Good.

  But it didn’t work. You can still hear me.

  While I maintain contact, yes. You are shielded from Caeran, though.

  Caeran picked up the remote and turned on the TV, then muted it and started changing channels.

  How can you tell?

  You have shifted your khi.

  Oh, yeah?

  A smile curved Lomen’s lips, though his gaze was on the TV.

  You are learning very quickly. I look forward to teaching you more.

  My throat went dry. Feeling paranoid, I shielded yet again.

  Tonight?

  I doubt it. I will probably be out all night.

  Do you have classes tomorrow?

  One.

  When are you going to sleep?

  His lips twitched again. Looked like he was trying not to laugh. I realized I was staring at him and shifted my gaze to the TV. Kids in bright-colored clothes; a commercial for some kind of snack food.

  We do not sleep, Steven. We rest—rather like your meditation—but we don’t need to sleep.

  Damn. Why couldn’t I have been born one of you?

  I felt an echo of sadness, then it was gone like a stray scent.