by Trisha Telep
He was moved. And he had hope.
He led her into the room and pointed to the jackets.
“These are from my allies. I want you to rest here. Stay warm. I’m going to explore a little.”
“Don’t leave me,” she begged, reaching out a hand.
“I’ll be back soon,” he promised, squeezing it. If you have to burn the jackets to do it, do it.”
She licked her lips, nodded, watching him as he went back to the tunnel proper and re-examined the door.
There was something in his head whispering, No.
“What?” he asked aloud, turning half around. “Claire?”
But he knew she hadn’t called him.
He put his hand on the door. The barriers on the other side of the door tingled against his palm.
Go back to her. Be with her.
He jerked his hand away and took a step backwards. What the hell was going on?
Frowning, he whispered, “Who are you? Where are you?”
It had to be her gifted housemates. It had to be help on the way.
There was no answer. He stood still, cocking his head, listening. Nothing more came to him.
He crouched down and pressed along the bottom edge of the door. His fingers stung.
“Claire, I heard something. Someone,” he called to her. “A voice inside my head.”
He walked back into the little room to find her on her feet. The torches were propped against the wall, and she was unzipping her jeans. Her face was serious, the colour in her cheeks high. His gaze dropped to the roundness of her hips, the tiny square of fabric covering her sex, as she pushed her jeans over her hips, down to her knees.
Her eyes were shiny with emotion as she slipped his jacket off her shoulders and allowed it to gently fall to the ground. She gazed at him steadily and gathered up the edge of her red turtleneck sweater.
“Maybe it’s the same voice I heard, telling me to make love to you,” she whispered. And then she took off her sweater.
“No, it’s too cold,” he said, rushing to her. He meant to embrace her, warm her, but his mouth came down on hers. His fangs were much smaller than any other vampire he had ever known; carefully, he slipped his tongue into her mouth and found the sweet taste of her there. Slowly they sank to the floor, on the pile of jackets left by his comrades. He kissed her hungrily, splaying his hands over her back as she reached to the front of her bra and unhooked it, drawing it away from her breasts.
Then he knew with every fibre of his being that they were meant to make love now, that it was the best thing they could do to save themselves.
To say goodbye, said the voice.
“No,” he rasped under his breath.
She moaned as his right hand cupped her breast and he ran his thumb over one taut nipple and then the other. Her jeans were down around her knees. He moved swiftly to her wispy thong, and moved it aside, pleasuring her sex, his finger over her clitoris, the shell-lip, glistening pink.
He slipped his finger inside her, feeling the wetness, the warmth. Wanting to be there.
Then his need shifted and he felt himself hungering for her as only a vampire could; hungering for human blood. He panicked, drawing away, but she held him tightly as his finger stayed inside her. His body was reacting, hard and thrusting; so, too, were his fangs, aching to bury themselves in her veins. She was in terrible danger.
Part of his mind registered that she was unzipping his trousers and moving her hand inside. Her fingers grazed his sex, then wrapped around it. He reared, engorged. He groaned like an animal; he hissed and writhed.
“Get away from me,” he pleaded. “Claire, run.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. She moved her hand up and down, kissing his mouth, the sides of his mouth, the hollow of his cheek.
“Holy Mary, leave me,” he begged again, as his mouth crashed over hers. He pulled her up in his arms, as she madly pushed her own jeans further down, and then his.
“Do it,” she urged him.
“Lass, lass,” he groaned, his Irish brogue thickening. He felt years fall away from him. He was so young again. Ireland was there, shamrock green and purple, and the sea and seabirds calling him to go afar. Take your loved ones and go. You’ll be back someday.
But they had never gone back. They were dead.
But Claire is alive. Keep her alive.
Then they were joined, one to one, and the sensation that roared through him blazed a white-hot heat from the base of his spine to his sex and into his chest, where his heart did not beat. Where his heart . . .
Then he saw her: his ancestress, walking in the heather. Old Maggie Cadogan, the witch, bending beside the cairn on the hill, her lips moving. And then Maggie at the stake, the fire rising, smoke filling her lungs. He heard her words: “Such as mine will carry my blood until the dark days; and it will boil in their veins and give them powers such as you have never seen –”
It was her voice inside his head.
Liam’s blood was boiling now, steaming away the Change until he felt a terrible thumping in the cage of his ribs, in the veins that were as cold and empty as the tunnels. His lungs filled with air for the first time in over one hundred years.
“Oh, God, oh my God,” Claire whispered. “Your skin . . . it’s warm. And your heart . . .” She flattened her left hand against his chest. “It’s beating, Liam, it’s beating.”
He wanted to tell her, to speak to her. But the flames inside him were rising higher. He was a man, and not just a man but a man of witch-blood born. He was deep inside Claire and he pushed her backwards onto the jackets and took her, hard. More energy surged through him and more heat. Blurry kaleidoscopes of colours, sounds and smells rushed through him. He could no longer see, or smell, or taste; he could only feel. He was rocketing through the sky. He was a comet, on fire.
“Sex magic,” she whispered. “The Gifted –”
He was Gifted. He hadn’t known it: no one had. He’d been Changed and now changed again. He took her hard, allowing ecstasy to mount within him. He felt her constricting around him, weeping with excitement and wonder. Her smooth, heated core; his woman, his living woman, his darling . . .
Oh, my God, I’m not alone any more, he thought, as tears streamed down his face for his lost loved ones, for all the hopes dashed and the anger and hatred that had consumed him.
Like a windstorm, his body gathered its forces, and hovered for one last moment before he poured his joy and his life into her. He climaxed in a river of energy, of magic. He was soaring and floating; he was loved and he was new.
“Liam, Liam,” she cried. She was with him, riding the throes of her own passion as she clung to his shoulders. For a moment he thought they were flying, floating in delirious joy.
Back down to earth, back down inside the tunnel, they rested in each other’s arms, silent and weeping, both of them. He had no words; he clung to her, gasping, feeling his body live.
“What . . . how,” she began, and then fell silent as she covered his face with soft kisses. And then more kisses.
She was dazed. He dressed her quickly, like a little child, and put Sanguine’s jacket and then his own on her, for warmth. He put on another leather jacket – it belonged to Jack – and picked her up in his arms.
He didn’t know what was going to happen, but he could save her now. He knew it. He would take on all comers, battle all monsters and men and vampires. He would have Andrew’s head on a pike before dawn if it came to that.
But he would not lose another beloved woman.
Moira, he thought. Seamus, Saraid, Emilie, his children. And then, Maggie Cadogan, help me. He strode back to the metal door and willed it to open. And it would open. He could see it in his head as he prepared himself for the holy water and crosses on the other side. Instead, the door immediately collapsed in a heap of rust.
On the other side was a meadow, covered with heather. Beyond, a hill, rolling with shamrocks, and above the blue sky, banked with clean, fluffy clouds and a golde
n sun.
Ireland.
He turned back to face the tunnel. It was gone. Instead, the grey and green glistened and rolled, cresting with foam, and a single little seal, riding the swells. Seabirds wheeled above. He blinked, then gazed down at Claire in his arms, and kissed her like a man who had not seen the sky in 100 years and more, like a man who had nearly lost his soul.
And she kissed him back, like a woman whose every dream had been answered. Warm lips, hands, skin; eyelashes, soft tendrils of hair.
“Sex magic,” she whispered against his temple. “The strongest kind there is among the Gifted – among your people. It brought us here.”
He nuzzled her cheek, her neck. His fangs were gone. His heart was beating like the crashing of the waves. “Nay, Claire, love brought us here.”
A seabird cawed as Liam lifted his head and saw an old grey-haired woman dressed in an old-fashioned kirtle and a grey woollen shawl standing at the top of the hill. There was a pile of stones beside her – the cairn of his vision. She raised a hand in greeting and leaned against the rocks with a self-satisfied air.
“Sonas ort,” he called to her. Thank you.
She gestured for him to come closer. As he began to walk towards her, small sod houses appeared in the meadow. Smoke came from holes in the roofs. Pipes played over the rush of a breeze.
Children Laughed.
Children, Maggie Cadogan whispered in Liam’s ear.
Secure in his arms, blessedly safe, Claire gazed around in wonder and awe. “To be gone from that hell . . .” Her voice caught, and she gazed up at him again. “Liam, will love keep us here?”
He lowered his head over hers and kissed her like her man. Like her protector.
Like her husband.
“Aye,” he promised. “It will.”
A Stand-up Dame
Lilith Saintcrow
When a man wakes up in his own grave, he sometimes reconsiders his choice of jobs.
If he’s smart, that is. Me, I’m as dumb as a box of rocks and my skull felt like a cannonade was going off inside. The agony in my head was rivalled only by the thirst. Aching thirst in every nerve and vein, my throat scorched and my eyes hot marbles. It was raining, but the water from the sky falling into my open mouth did nothing for the dry nails twisting in my larynx. I struggled up out of clods of rain-churned clay mud, slick and dirty as a newborn pig. My clothes were ruined and the monster in my head roared.
I fell backwards, still trapped to my knees in wet earth, padded hammers of rain smashed along the length of my body, and screamed. The spasm passed, leaving only the parched desert plains inside every inch of me.
A few moments of effort got me kicking free, the last of the wet clay collapsing in a body-shaped hole now that the body was above ground. I opened my mouth, rain beating my dirty face, and got only a mouthful of muck.
Coughing, gagging, I made it to hands and knees. My head was a swollen pumpkin balanced on a thin aching stick, and the headache receded between waves of scorching, unbearable, agonizing thirst.
There were pines all around me, singing and sighing as the sodden wind slapped them around. It took me two tries to stand up, and another two tries before I remembered my name.
Jack. Jack Becker. That’s me. That’s who I am.
And I’ve got to find the dame in the green dress.
Outside the city limits and I’m a duck out of water. The mud wouldn’t dry, not in this downpour; it just kept smearing over the ruin of my shirt and suit pants. Even Chin Yun’s laundry wouldn’t be able to get out the worst. Slogging and slipping, I made it down a hill the size of the Chrysler Building and found the dirt road, turned off the highway, and there was a mile marker right there.
Twelve miles to the city. Cramps screamed from empty belly. Maybe getting shot in the head works up a man’s appetite. Every time I reached up to touch my noggin it was tender, a puckered hole above my right eye full of even more mud.
I wasn’t going to get very far. The idea of stumbling off the side of the road and drowning in a ditch was appealing – except for the dame in the green dress.
Think about that, Jack. One thing at a time.
Thunder rumbled somewhere far away. Miss Dale would be at home, probably talking to her cat or making a nice hot cup of tea. The thought made my insides clench like they were going to turn into a meat grinder, and my breath made a funny whistling sound through my mouth. My nose was plugged and, in any case, I was gasping for air. Sometimes it rains hard enough to drown you out here.
That was when I saw the light.
It was beautiful, it was golden, it was a diner. Not just any diner, but the Dentons’ Dandy Diner, eleven miles from the city limits. I couldn’t go in there looking like this. It took me a while to fumble for my wallet and I nearly ended up in the ditch anyway, my feet tangled together.
The wallet – last year’s Christmas present from Miss Dale – was still in my pocket and held all the usual, plus nineteen dollars and twenty cents. They hadn’t taken any money. Interesting.
Think about that later, Jack.
My shirt was wet enough to shed the mud, my suit jacket nowhere in evidence. Stinging pellets warned me the rain was turning to ice.
But the crazy thing was, I wasn’t cold. Just as thirsty as hell. Maybe the idea of the dame in the green dress was warming me up.
Neon blinked in the diner’s windows. It was closed, goddammit, and just when I could have used a phone. I could even see the phone box, smearing my muddy mitts on the window and blinking every time the COLD DRINKS sign blinked as well. The phone was at the end of the all, right near the crapper.
My legs nearly gave out.
This is turning out to be a bad night, Jackie boy.
I found a rock I could lift without busting myself and heaved it. The glass on the door went to pieces, and I carefully unlocked it. The long slug trail of mud I left going towards the phone might have been funny if I’d been in a grinning mood.
A man like me knows his secretary’s home number. Any dame dumb enough to work for a case like me probably wouldn’t be out dancing at a nightclub. Dale didn’t have any suitors – not that she talked, of course. She was a tall thin number with interesting eyes, but that was as far as it went.
Not like the dame in green, no sir.
I hung on to the phone box with fingers that looked swollen and bruised. Dirt still slimed my palms. Under it I was fish-belly white, almost glowing in the dim lighting. The Dentons were going to find their diner not quite so dandy in the cold light of dawn, and I was sorry about that.
“Hello?” she repeated herself, because I was trying to make my mouth work. “Hello?”
“Dale,” I managed through the obstruction in my mouth. Sounded like they’d broken my jaw, or like I was sucking on candy.
“Mr Becker?” A note of alarm, now. “Jack?”
“You got to come and pick me up, doll-face.” I sounded drunk.
“Where have you –? Oh, never mind. Where are you?” I could almost see her perched on her settee, that cup of tea steaming gently on an end table, and her ever-present steno pad appearing. “Jack? Where are you right now?”
“Denton,” I managed. “Dandy Diner, about eleven miles out of the city. You got the keys to my Studebaker?”
“Your car is impounded, Mr Becker.” Now she sounded like the Miss Dale I knew. Cool, calm, efficient. Over the phone she sounded smoky and sinful, just like Bacall. I might have hired her just for that phone voice alone, but she turned out to be damned efficient and not likely to yammer her yap off all the time, which meant I paid her even when I couldn’t eat.
You don’t find secretaries like that every day, after all.
“Never mind, I’ll bring my car. Denton’s Dandy, hm? That’s west out of town, right?”
“Sure it is.” My legs bucked again, I hung on to the box for all I was worth. “I’ll be waiting out front.”
“I’m on my way.” And she hung up, just like that.
Wha
t a gal.
The pain in my gut crested as Miss Dale peered over the seat. I’d barely managed to get the door open, and as soon as I was in the car she took off; I wrestled the door shut and the windshield wipers made their idiot sound for about half a mile as I lay gasping in the back seat.
The car smelled like Chanel no. 5 and Chesterfields. And it smelled of Miss Dale, of hairspray and powder and a thousand other feminine things you usually have to get real close to a dame to get a whiff of. It also smelled like something else.
Something warm, and coppery, and salty, and so good. The windshield wipers went ka-thump, and her Ford must’ve had something going on with the engine, because there was another regular thumping, high and hard and fast. My mouth wouldn’t close all the way. I kept making that wheezing sound, and she finally risked another look over the seat at me.
“I’m taking you to Samaritan General,” she said, and I stared at the sheen of her dark hair. “You sound terrible.”
“No.” Thank God, it was one word I could say without whatever was wrong with my mouth interfering. “No hospital.” The slurring was back, like my jaw was broken but I wasn’t feeling any pain. As a matter of fact, now that the headache was gone, the only thing bothering me was how thirsty I was.
Another mile squished under the tyres. She turned the defroster up, and that regular thumping sounded like her car was about to explode, it was going so fast. “Mr Becker, you are beginning to worry me.” She lit a Chesterfield, keeping her eyes on the road, and, when she opened the window to blow the smoke out, the smell of the rain came through and I realized what that thumping was.
It was Miss Dale’s pulse. I was hearing her heartbeat. And the tyres touching the road. And each raindrop smacking the hardtop. The hiss of flame as she lit the cigarette showed the fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and I realized Miss Dale was nervous.
“Don’t worry, doll-face. Everything’s fine. Take me . . .”
