Quickening, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  “He can smell them—I can tell that much, but he’s not sure if it’s there already or coming from the RVs.”

  “He can’t take a guess?”

  “Not if he doesn’t want to get eaten!”

  Marcus sounded exasperated, so I cleared out for a moment, trying to picture our people covering five parcels of land spiking out from Green’s hill like petals on a giant flower.

  In a complicated dance inside my head, I pieced together a picture of our aerial surveillance superimposed upon Lambent’s map. Okay, good. Phillip and Marcus were layered, with Phillip farther up, Marcus closer to the ground. Underneath Marcus I could see Max and Renny flowing through the woods, tawny shadows in a stretching, freeing run. They were facing north, and to their left I could see the winding mountain road that divided the territory that group was supposed to cover. The caravan of RVs on the way up was moving at a conservative pace—the drivers obviously knew the roads, but nobody was being reckless. There was something… united about the way they moved. Nobody was trying to pass anyone else, nobody was jockeying for position. RV drivers could be terrifyingly confident and seemingly unaware that their six tons of steel and aluminum didn’t stop on a dime and turn on a hairpin, but nobody in this sinuous body even thought to outstrip the person in front.

  “That looks like a group,” I stated, hoping it was just me.

  “Oh, yes it does,” Marcus agreed. “There was a turnout a while back, and nobody took out the leader.”

  “Shit. Teague says he smells funkiness on the other side of the road.”

  “There it is.” I heard the anticipation in Marcus’s voice and followed his gaze. “Can you see that?”

  I could see it—a clearing, not too big, with a tributary nearby. We’d had a little bit of rain at the beginning of the month, and the grass was still greenish, but there were no puddles or standing water, and the place was open to what would be a full moon tomorrow.

  It was perfect.

  “Yeah. That’s where they’re heading.”

  “So what do we do? Wait!” Marcus shifted higher, pulling up and scanning farther along the horizon. I heard babble in his head, and then, “I need to hear from Nicky. Is there a canyon over by his quadrant? I think there is—I think they’re hugging the mountain with a rail to their right. We could take them out.”

  Mind racing, I relayed the info to Green. A woman’s soft hand wrapped my fingers around a mug of hot chocolate, and I focused enough to see that Katy and Jack were guarding us and caring for our mortal shells. I murmured thank you, and she kissed my cheek as I did a quick check-in with Grace to steer her toward Marcus’s quarter to check on Teague and Mario, who was a good friend to the werewolf trio.

  “They’re fine,” Grace reassured me. “They’re gonna fucking puke from the smell, Mario included, but they’re fine. I fed from everybody—I’ll steer them your way.”

  “They’re fine,” I said for Katy just as Green said, “Nicky says he sees the canyon, and Lambent’s crew is closer. He says if Kyle and Ellis turn west, they’ll see it.”

  Oh, fuck. Time for a decision. I couldn’t just order the deaths of all those people in the RVs on a guess and a direction and a general smell. I mean, we thought it was them, but even if it was, it couldn’t be the whole party. Connor had described two hundred people, and this was a group of thirty or forty, maybe. These were the bait, the werewolves who would be doing the biting. Not the big fish, not if she was running things like we were. She’d send out forerunners. But we couldn’t take them out, not on so little information.

  Fuck.

  I put my thoughts on broadcast, honing in specifically on every vampire up there. Some of the others—Nicky, Teague, Lambent, Arturo—whom I knew well or who had worked with me often would hear me, but the vampires could relay to the people I wasn’t close to, and Green would pick up the slack.

  “Okay, everybody. We need to know for sure. I’m not committing wholesale slaughter on random strangers. If we let them get to the clearing, it’s going to be a bloodbath. If we can figure out a way to know for certain—Holy Fucking Crapballs!”

  Teague had heard me.

  He’d been running balls out toward the road, and while I’d been talking to Green, he’d swung wide and then run parallel. Grace had been watching him, and when I’d broadcasted she’d startled and watched as Teague sighted a curve in the road slightly below the window level of the caravan itself.

  And he’d launched himself into the air, perpendicular to the speeding RVs, and burst in through a fucking passenger window.

  I broadcasted the image as it happened, and Green passed it on. For one heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats we stared at the swerving RV, wondering what in the fuck we should do, wondering if there was anything we could do.

  Grace and I had the thought simultaneously—“Go in after him!” As she swooped in to do that, one of the back quarter windows exploded outward and Teague launched himself at the rise on the side of the road.

  He didn’t have as much momentum as he’d had going in, and he scrabbled, a wolf clinging impossibly to the rocks and loose soil that made up the rise. For a moment my heart stalled, and then Grace, moving at stunning speed, hefted him up in the air with her arms tight around his middle.

  For a moment even I caught his fear. He’d done this before, hovered in a vampire’s clasp and flown. It hadn’t ended well.

  But Grace’s grasp around his ribs was mama-bear tight, and as Marcus and Phillip flew harder and faster toward the caravan, I changed my focus to the RV.

  Which now had werewolves leaping out the back window following Teague.

  Oh, fuck.

  “Take the RVs out. Funky werewolves on the ground. Vampires, use the cliff. Avians, direct battle. Mammals, don’t get bit!”

  Marcus and Phillip got there first.

  They were cool—damned cool headed—and I’d forgotten that about the two of them since Phillip had felt the little girl die. They loved being in the fight—most vampires relished the chance to unleash their bloodlust without conscience or shame. These guys, they sighted the lead RV and flew wide alongside the drop-off under the sightline of anyone on the road. After they’d outstripped the RVs, they waited until a curve of the road obscured them and then flew up, hovering above any oncoming traffic and biding their time.

  When the first RV in the caravan turned that corner, I got a clear vision through Marcus’s eyes of one lone driver struggling to maintain human form and a roil of starveling werewolves behind him staring out the windows, biting each other’s flesh in their fever to get out and join their brothers in the fight. Then the RV was passing in front of Marcus and Phillip, and as one unit they slammed into the side, pushing it through the guardrail and into the canyon.

  There was no guarantee the werewolves would die there.

  “Green, tell Lambent to get down there and incinerate the dead and surviving.”

  “On it.”

  I barely saw the flash of Lambent as he sped down the hill, but somebody must have, because the clear report of a shotgun issued from one of the RVs bringing up the rear.

  Oh fuck.

  “They’re armed!”

  The resulting babble had one clear focus, and Marcus pinpointed it. “What kind of shot?”

  Oh, hell. I had no idea—silver, and the vamps and weres were in trouble, steel, and Lambent and Arturo needed to step the fuck back.

  “Silver!” Green said loudly, at the same time Kyle and Ellis both said, “Silver!” in my head.

  I relayed the information just as Phillip and Marcus collided with the next RV, silver shot whizzing by their heads.

  Oh, fuck no!

  “Get above their sightlines,” I ordered. “They can’t aim up well. Get up there and—“

  “We’ll lose them!”

  “Phillip, can you be my focus?”

  We’d done this before, and more than once. It was risky as fuck, because my power came from sex and sunshine. The focus had to use
Green’s help to wield the power and shield himself from the sunshine. Phillip had loved it—had gotten drunk off the high of raw, unfiltered power thrumming through his Goddess-animated body.

  But that had been before.

  The passion in his voice now surprised me.

  “Goddess, yes. Oh please, my lady.”

  He’d been longing for it—it was why he’d agreed to come.

  I didn’t have time to debate being the opiate for Phillip’s pain. Ellis was flying in fast, getting ready to take out the next RV. He completely ignored the shotguns sounding like the “Anvil Chorus” and Kyle’s frantic shouts, both audible and telepathic, begging him to get the fuck out of the line of fire.

  Phillip and Marcus knew the drill. They clasped hands and rose up in the air, over the RVs for the moment, moving at speed with them and facing the canyon on the other side. Grace joined them, then Angela, and then the others, seven in all—not including Ellis, who was still blindly slamming into the lead RV. Eight was a small number compared to what we’d done before, but it would have to do. First we had to get Ellis’s attention, but he was ignoring the calls of everybody there.

  “Ellis!” I commanded. “Get your ass up there, they need—”

  I was looking through Phillip’s eyes as Ellis’s head exploded into mist and his body fell to the road to be smashed under the wheels of the caravan.

  Bracken and Green grabbed my hands just in time to shield the searing sunshine of my rage from Phillip’s body as I sent it and the combined power of the vampires slamming through space, cooking the next RV in line before sending it over the cliff.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  Phillip’s nerves were fraying, rubbed raw by the incompatibility of our power base, and his pain was starting to spill into my senses. I made the power stream smaller, just enough to send the RVs off the hill but not enough to ignite them, and assessed the situation.

  Two more RVs to go, but the one at the rear had some time. The one in front was slowing down, trying desperately to back up and execute a three-point turn on a two-lane road. Suddenly Grace shouted in my mind, and I looked to her left.

  Oh fuck. There was another car coming—and that RV was still firing silver shot, in spite of the fact that the vampire focus was vaporizing the shot before it drew near.

  “Grace! Angela! Pull a Teague!”

  In a week every vampire in the hill would be giving me shit about that, because I’d just invented a new maneuver. And Goddess bless us, my girls didn’t need any more prompting before they did exactly what I wanted and split off from the main group to hover, one woman on either side of the car.

  I couldn’t watch—but I still saw it from Grace’s mind as they skimmed the ground for a hundred yards. After shouting a count out loud, they reached under the car and heaved, vampire superstrength hauling the car up in the air, its wheels spinning, and lifting it clear of the entire meshugaas of vampires, recreational vehicles, and giant sunshine explosions.

  Seen, marveled at, dismissed.

  Phillip was screaming and laughing at the same time, and Marcus was begging me to stop the power flow, so I did, like a spigot. I ordered the others to push the wallowing RV off the road. It went slowly, a wreck of momentum and exhausted vampire sailing clumsily off the side of the road and dropping sharply to the tree line, crashing through and tumbling like a weighted teddy bear through a lumberyard.

  The RV at the end had stopped completely by the time our people got there, and it was empty.

  Fuck.

  “Green,” I said, dizzy and shaking from the power expenditure, “warn our people on the ground. I’ll have the vampires pull a Teague with them and feed from them in the air.”

  “Will do,” he affirmed. I relayed that message to the exhausted vampires.

  “Phillip, Marcus, you okay?”

  Phillip’s reply was a sort of drunken mental belch, which was fucking awesome. I stuck to Marcus’s mind.

  “Can you get him home?”

  “Yes, Lady Cory. We’ll feed on the way.”

  “Good. Kyle, will he—”

  Lambent’s voice, crisp, clear, and deadly sharp, broke into my mind.

  “I’ll get him home, my Lady.”

  Oh Goddess.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

  “Did you think we didn’t know the risks?”

  “I’m sorry. We were trying to—”

  My mental voice was fracturing. Back on the granite bench, my mortal body was shaking, holding in the horror and sadness and remorse—and here, flying a hundred feet above a battlefield, I was having trouble keeping it all together. But this wasn’t about me. It was about the vampire I’d known for two years, the one I’d walked through blood and power exchanges, the one who had pulled Kyle out of melancholy and who had apparently kept Lambent from being too lonely.

  The stringy, jumpy kid I’d just seen destroyed in front of me.

  “You fought like a champion, my Lady. Kyle and me, we know loss. We’ll find our way home.”

  “Please don’t be late.” I’d wait out on the bench until they got home, and he heard that in my voice.

  “I promise. I’ll get him home.”

  It was all I had. I could fly on a good day, but I couldn’t now.

  I pulled out of his mind, checked on the Dodge Caravan making its uncertain way down the hill after it had been set down and cleared, and saw that they were doing okay. Nicky and the other Avians had changed, and they were busy setting the RV up to shove it off the cliff. I had a moment to wish we’d captured one of the rogue wolves before Nicky took ten years off my life. First he tore the door off the RV and threw it over the cliff, and then, instead of letting everybody shove the damned thing over the edge, he drove it over the edge. Right when my heart stopped, he launched himself out of the falling vehicle and changed into a bird, flying clear of the plunging aluminum-and-steel disaster. It hit bottom, and I saw the explosion from the corner of my eye as I was making sure that Nicky was still aloft, silhouetted against the night sky. I assumed Lambent was in charge of setting things on fire, and I didn’t fucking blame him. God, he’d been so weary, and so had Kyle.

  What world were we creating, that they knew loss so intimately they knew how to greet it like an old friend?

  “I’ll get him for that,” Bracken snapped, and I wondered whose eyes he’d been watching Nicky’s little stunt from. Then he said, “The little shit delayed the change just to freak me out.”

  Abruptly I was back on the bench. “You told him to do that?” I demanded, and his arm around my shoulders offered more comfort than I should have let him give me.

  “He was breaking too,” Bracken said softly in my ear. “He needed the rush, or he would have lost it before he got home.”

  “Oh,” I said in a small voice. “I should—”

  “Don’t,” Green said next to me, sounding as weary as I felt. “They’re all okay, Teague included. Ellis was our only casualty.”

  “Oh, no,” Katy said beside me.

  I blinked at her. “I’m sorry,” I said, my throat raw. I wondered if I’d been screaming while Phillip had wielded my power, because it certainly felt that way. “Was he a friend?”

  “He stayed in Monterey with us,” Katy said, patting my hand. “I’m so sorry, my lady.”

  “I’m sorrier,” I said. Why wasn’t anybody yelling at me? I’d lost one of ours—I’d been in charge of an op and I’d let him get—

  The image of his head exploding on his shoulders—blood, gray matter, skull spattering across the side of the RV, in the air, splatting on the road—rocked me again, and I caught my breath.

  “We’re all clear?” I asked Green, making sure. If I was needed, I could hold it together. If I was needed, I could be what was necessary.

  “Yes, beloved. You can come undone now.”

  His permission was all I needed to do what was necessary for me.

  They held me, rocked me, eased me, kissed my temp
le, smoothed my hair back from my face, whispered nonsense words against my ear, my cheek, my neck. But they didn’t try to tell me that it was all okay, because I’d lived through that from Kyle and Lambent’s side—we all had, and we knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay. Those plunging RVs had held the remnants of people! Had they had children? Parents? Wives or husbands? How had they come to be starveling blind followers, preparing to jerk the others into their den?

  We’d hurt them—we’d taken out their followers, wrecked their ritual. They couldn’t replenish the numbers they’d lost in Monterey, and they’d lost more. From a strict military point of view, it was a success. But it didn’t feel like one. Ellis was an open wound in our hearts, and we knew, we all knew, we’d only hacked the snake in half. It would grow back again, because we’d only separated the head from part of the body.

  We needed to find the head.

  But first I needed to calm down, and I couldn’t do that until we’d all wept for our loss.

  Eventually I quieted, and Katy disappeared, then came back with a mirror and brush and a damp cloth. I looked at the little kit, surprised, and she said, “They’ll be here in a minute, Lady. They need to see you’re okay.”

  I swallowed. Wonderful. Without a word, Green picked up the cloth and Bracken the brush, and I allowed myself to be groomed and washed. I didn’t look at the mirror when they were done. I assumed it was as good as it could get.

  Arturo and Mario were back first, then Grace, bearing a disgruntled Teague. Jack, all lanky six foot four of him, ran solidly into his lover and clasped him tight. Then they both opened their arms to Katy, who got in on the love.

  Teague met my eyes over Katy’s head. For a moment I read sympathy, enough of it to almost destroy me all over again.

  Then he grimaced.

  “Pulling a Teague?” he growled. “Pulling a Teague?”

  I tried a broken grin. “So shall it be,” I pronounced, because it was better than sobbing again.

  He shook his head. “Holy fucking Jesus. Pulling a Teague. It’s gonna catch on, you know. Every werewolf in the fucking kingdom is going to know that being picked up by the middle and hauled the fuck away is ‘pulling a Teague.’ Dumbass.”