Quickening, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  Max grunted. “Amen.”

  “What do you mean?” Lambent asked, as alert as they’d ever seen him.

  “Don’t you get it?” Max asked, bitterness sounding right at home in his crisp, no-bullshit voice. “All those battles, you guys soaring over the fucking hill, why do you think we haven’t been sending shape-shifters on the ground?”

  Lambent let out a grunt. “Because we don’t want them to bite you. We don’t know what’ll happen. I thought even you two would have picked that up.”

  “Yeah, well, if they had risked a few of us, we might have been able to figure out where she’s holing up,” Teague supplied. “Because it can’t be too fucking far. It’s got to be a big house, probably about ten miles from us, which would make it one of those cabin-in-the-woods places, like here, but hella smaller. Big enough to house her lieutenants, but not her whole military, because she seems to draft whoever wants to get laid. It’s not something someone can find from the air—but I know it’s fucking there.”

  “Makes sense,” Max said slowly. “She’s setting herself up to be Green—she’s going to want a base of operations nearby.”

  “Right?” Teague slid into the jumpsuit just because he thought better when he was tinkering with a car. “Give me the gap measure, Max. I’ll gap ’em, you get ’em out of the fucking block.”

  Max did, and Teague measured the gaps in the clean plugs and set aside the ones that needed replacing, all while they talked.

  “It’s just… you know. The elves and the vampires are all flying, and we could sense her on the ground, but everyone’s afraid they’re gonna have to—”

  “Pull a Teague?” Lambent supplied and then laughed uproariously at his own joke.

  Teague regarded him with flat, unfriendly eyes. “That’s actually a great idea, smartass. We do it at night. She never attacks at night anymore—I think the vampires freak her out.”

  “They would,” Max said thoughtfully, pausing in the middle of wrenching on a stripped plug. “I was there, remember? I met the elves from the old country who were trying to take over. They really loathed the vampires or shape-shifters—in fact, they considered them less important than cattle, really. They….” He suddenly looked really sad. “I mean, it’s how I felt about them, actually, and then I just saw… it was just so fucking ugly, you know? And I didn’t want to be like that.”

  Teague grunted. “You think I wasn’t one of the bad guys too? No worries, Max.”

  Max shrugged, and they worked in silence for a moment. “It’s just that Mist and Morgana’s people, they would have thrown werewolves to die against our shields the way the elf queen has. They would have kept the elf lieutenants close by and protected. They would have avoided the vampires, especially after they turned the tide of a battle, because they want to pretend they don’t exist.”

  “Wait,” Lambent said, curling his lip at the obvious. “If this woman thinks she’s going to run Green’s hill, what does she think is going to happen to the vampires and shape-shifters who live here?”

  They all contemplated for a moment and then had one of those collective orgasmic shivers that people do when they all run into the same dreadful conclusion.

  “Over my dead fucking corpse,” Lambent snarled. Then he brightened. “Or my live body while I’m fucking my corpse—that would be fun too.”

  “Jesus!” and “God in Heaven!” Teague and Max groaned, but Teague recovered enough to gap the next plug Max handed him.

  Oh, it was good to have someone who got swearing, too.

  “So we need to stop her,” Teague said. “That’s… I mean, we need to fucking stop her. And we need to change tactics. And maybe do the same thing we’re doing tonight.”

  “Sneak out of the house without telling Mom?” Max asked, throwing some bright yellow sarcasm into it.

  “Dad can know,” Teague replied evenly. “Two of the dads can maybe go with us. I’m just saying that after we take out the doctor tonight—”

  “Wait—you’re going to kill him?” Lambent asked, horrified. “I thought that was the whole reason you didn’t invite me!”

  “We’re gonna brain-fuck him,” Max said in disgust. “And that is the whole reason we didn’t invite you.”

  “But I’m great at the mind-fuck!” Lambent said delightedly. “Finesse work—you all know I can do it!”

  Teague grunted meaningfully and looked at his shoulder. The charred handprint in his new shirt was right under the brown fabric of the jump suit.

  Lambent grimaced. “Well, not my finest hour, but you’re bringing Hallow and not me?”

  “You could always ask Hallow if he wants to change places,” Teague suggested, looking at Max.

  Max pursed his lips. “Yeah, but….”

  They looked at him.

  “Last time…. Lambent, you were there, right? Hallow did that… that thing where the guy looked inside himself and it melted his brain?”

  Teague swallowed. “Ew.”

  Lambent’s and Max’s eyes met.

  “Blood ran out his ears and mouth,” Max said flatly. “You have no idea how much ew. Could have lived my whole life without seeing that, and I’ve seen some heinous shit. But….”

  “You’re thinking, set that power on nonlethal?” Lambent asked, uncertain.

  Max shook his head and leaned on the car, and Teague took advantage of the break to reach inside the front passenger seat for the gallon of milk while it was still cold.

  He tilted it up and started drinking as Max spoke.

  “Not so much nonlethal as… karmically nonlethal,” Max said. Teague stopped gulping and looked at him, sticking his tongue out to capture the milk running down his chin.

  “I’m fuzzy on this karma shit,” Teague said into the considering silence. “Maybe clarify?” He tilted the jug back again and gulped some more, expecting Max to talk into the pause. Max did not. When he was done, he wiped off his mouth with his arm and looked up to see Max and Lambent staring at him. “What?” He held out the remaining quarter of a gallon. “You all wanted some?”

  Lambent shook himself all over. “Not the milk, wolfman. Glory, how you make that look sexy….”

  Max’s mouth hung open. He closed it with a snap. “God, this cat thing is fucking with my head. I’m straight, and I still want to lick milk from his chin.”

  Lambent nodded, and both of them exchanged horrified glances.

  “I am not that attractive,” Teague told them. “Get over it.”

  Lambent sniffed the air for a moment, then grinned. “Oh no, gents. That’s not our werewolf here, although having him bond was a loss to us all. That was the smell of happy leader sex. It’s permeating the hill—can you smell it?”

  In spite of the fact that they’d been down in the garage for half an hour, Teague looked instinctively to his own Mustang, terror pounding in his heart.

  Oh, good. Red, as it was meant to be.

  Lambent grunted. “No, idiot, nothing changed color, because she didn’t come.” He looked honestly glum for their little sorceress. “She probably can’t—not on bedrest. But everyone else did, and they all did it together, and we should be bloody well happy about it.”

  Teague nodded. “Yeah. We’re stronger when they’re happy. We know that. That’s why we’ve got to do that…. Wait, Max, what did you mean by karmically… whatever?”

  Max was still looking at him funny. “Maybe it’s the milk,” he pondered. Then he shook himself. “Okay, the thing is, you know how Cory put that thing in the air that had people who meant us harm falling asleep?”

  They both nodded. Genius, that. Teague was the first to admit it blew him away that she could do that with sex. He always thought he was lucky if he just got the other two people with him to come.

  “Well,” Max continued, “what if we could do that brain melting thing, but only if he deserved it?”

  Lambent sucked Oreo off his teeth and reached for another one. Teague had put the package on the roof of the car, and he helped ou
t by pushing it across the hood a little closer.

  “Sure you don’t want milk?”

  Lambent’s eyes narrowed. “Sure you don’t want to watch me yank my sausage in the middle of a car park?”

  Teague actually felt his throat close in horror. “Oh dear Lord….”

  “Well, then stop yanking around my libido, wolfman. Just because your interest has closed up shop doesn’t mean the rest of us haven’t had our fantasies.”

  “Weird,” Teague pronounced. “So can you do it?”

  Lambent munched, still thinking. “Yes, yes I can, but I don’t think I should,” he said carefully.

  “Why not?” Max had apparently given up on the car, because he carefully wiped off his hands and moved around to Lambent’s side to take a cookie out of the carton. “I mean, it’s… you know, poetic and shit. The guy’s a shitball, his brains explode and he dies. He’s not a shitball, and he just forgets he ever saw Cory, game over.”

  Lambent shook his head. “You don’t get it, mate. There’s shitballs, and then there’s fanatics.”

  Teague squinted. “He’s a survivalist?” he asked dubiously. “Like, one of those hosers in the hills with a semiautomatic shooting the fuck out of deer?”

  Lambent rolled his eyes. “So cute and yet so bloody dumb. No, asshole, like you and Max before you got all hairy and nocturnal. Are you feeling me?”

  All of a sudden, Teague did. “Oh. Oh. Oh shit, yeah, Max, bad idea.”

  Max’s blue eyes were truly crossing with the effort of thinking about it. “But I don’t see—”

  “’Cause you weren’t a bad guy!” Teague said, wishing Max was Jacky so he could smack him upside the head. From the corner of his eye he saw a shadow flit down the stairs and then around some of the SUVs. Awesome.

  “Well, no. I was… you know. Misguided. Ignorant—”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t bad.” Teague actually got this—oh dear Goddess, it was something Green had been trying to tell him since he’d arrived at the hill. “This guy, he looks inside his head, he’s not gonna see greed or sloth or… you know. Any of those other vices. He’s gonna see… I don’t know. Scientific curiosity, or even a desire to help pregnant women. He’s gonna see… whatever is driving him, he’s gonna see it without the twist. I mean that’s what makes people like… you know, Trump, or Hitler, or Republicans, so fucking terrifying. They look in the mirror and they don’t see evil. They don’t see the twist in themselves. They see that….” He grabbed two cookies and flailed crumbs all over the vast garage. “They see the purity of their vision, or whatever. They don’t see what it’s doing to decent people.”

  Max stared at him, openmouthed. There was a glob of green Oreo frosting on the front of his teeth.

  “So,” he said after a moment, sucking his teeth as he spoke, “that wouldn’t work at all.”

  “No, boyo. In fact, that might make him even more fanatical than he already is.”

  Teague felt the thrill of discovery leave him, and he deflated slightly. “It was a good idea, Max. Just… you know. We can try the mind-fuck this one time. Maybe split off, have two teams. One goes with the mind-fuckers to the guy’s house at o-dark-thirty, and the other goes to the hospital with a mind-fucker of his own and takes out the computer system.”

  Max nodded his head enthusiastically. “That’s a great idea! Yeah—okay, let’s do that, and I’ll take the….”

  “You should take the clinic,” Teague said decidedly. “You’d know how to deal with a break-in as a cop, so you’d be the best guy to cover the tracks. I’ll take dealing with the guy at his house. That way I can take Lambent and Kyle, and you can take Hallow, Marcus, and Phillip—”

  “Grace and Arturo want to come too,” Max said. Teague rolled his eyes.

  “No. Just no. All this ‘But the shape-shifters are gonna be infected and shit!’ blah blah blah—no. Those two go, the hill stops running. I would like Mario with me—”

  “And I wouldn’t mind Nicky or Bracken—”

  “You’re gonna get your wife and be happy about it,” Teague said grimly. “She’s been listening to most of the discussion anyway.”

  Max gaped, another glob of green cookie on his teeth. “She’s been—”

  Lambent cackled. “Oh, glory—like you’d have a chance of getting the daddies out on the field right now anyway. No, gents, it’s time for the kings and the queen to retire, and the bishops with them. Up to the rooks and the knights, yeah?”

  Renny appeared and rubbed herself along Max’s legs. He hmphed and scratched the ruff behind her ears. “You don’t strike me as a rook or a knight, darlin’. What are you in this little game?”

  She shifted—slight, willowy, feral—and licked his ear. “Wild card,” she purred, then slid right back into her cat form and slipped beyond the cars to the spring-loaded shape-shifter’s entrance toward the side of the hill. One shove and she was out scaring whatever was flying in the gardens. Teague would have supposed it was for mice, but he’d seen niskies, now that he knew what they were, running in flower-colored droves taunting her, and he assumed it was an old game.

  “I adore her,” he said, quite sincerely. “She’s funny.”

  Max snorted. “You know what’s funny?”

  “That you drive this thing when you can’t even finish gapping the fucking spark plugs?” Because they’d only gotten through about four of them. Teague was going to have to go back and redo the whole thing so Max’s beloved car could run the way he needed it to.

  “No, genius. What’s funny is that Green told me I was in charge of the op, and you just planned the whole damned thing.”

  Teague stared at him blankly. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I swear I didn’t.”

  Lambent smacked him upside the head. “You so did. Doesn’t matter. I’ll follow either of you. We’ve all been learning from Her Nibs—you’ll do fine.”

  Teague grunted and sagged against the Mustang. “So, we do fine with this one, you know what that means, right?”

  They were all quiet for a moment.

  “Means we need to go do that other thing,” Max said.

  Teague met his eyes square on. “And we’ve got to enlist help.”

  “So, does this mean we can’t ask Green? Don’t you think he’d let us—?”

  “He’d tell her first,” Teague said, then stopped. Green had become more and more protective, the further along Cory had gotten. Must be like a spider on a web in a hurricane, trying not to put her in a glass jar on general principle but keeping her safe from herself and half the supernatural world. “Well, maybe he wouldn’t. But he could also tell us no.”

  Max whistled low from between his slightly gapped teeth. “Yeah. That would be bad.”

  “Yes, it would be,” Teague said, nodding.

  They both looked at Lambent, all of them in accord. No, they could not go against Green’s orders. All of them owed their lives—their souls, when it came to that—to their leader, who had proved again and again that they were all valuable and loved.

  But they could, maybe, make plans of their own. Green tended to want his people independent, right?

  And under no circumstances, none at all, would they breathe a word to Lady Cory.

  LATER THAT night Teague, Kyle, Lambent, and Mario sat in one of the SUVs in the dark of a frost-lit suburb in Grass Valley. The trees provided the shadows, and their extra senses gave them an advantage in the silver light of the moon. About two feet of snow had fallen since solstice, and Teague had been grateful for the SUV’s extra-deep snow tires as Mario had given them directions via Google Maps.

  “That’s it, huh?” Teague asked, looking at the nice house with the brick edging and manicured lawn.

  “What it says—Dr. Roger Nieman.” Mario wrinkled his nose. “He lives with a wife, both kids in college. She’s with her parents in Aspen for the holidays with the kids. Sounds like a warm family.”

  “He got any hookers in there?�
� Teague asked with curiosity. “Any side pieces? Poker games? Half a key of blow he’s gonna shove up his nose while he’s got the house to himself?”

  They all stared at the house, trying to impart a glamour to it that the plain, well-heeled residence simply did not possess. White house, brick trim, no topiaries, no prize-winning flower beds, no dog.

  “You are giving this man credit for sexiness that he quite simply does not possess,” Mario told him bluntly. “Some people, they’re all work. This one, he’s all work. No play, no sex, just a bottle of bourbon and his medical records is all he needs.”

  Teague turned his head away from the house to regard Mario thoughtfully. The bird shifter’s eyes glowed faintly gold in the dark, but otherwise he was the same plainspoken, stocky, quite frankly beautiful Latino man who accompanied Cory and the others to school.

  And the past summer he had harried an actual vampire bear from the air while Teague had run for his life to get away from the damned thing.

  Teague would trust Mario in any matter, but—“How do you know about the bourbon?”

  Mario’s teeth glinted. “Anyone want action on that?” he asked wickedly.

  “I’ll take it,” Lambent said. “Five dollars says birdman here is right. Kyle?”

  For a moment Teague was afraid he wouldn’t respond. Lambent held himself apart, body quivering slightly, as though expecting his lover to reject human companionship altogether.

  But Kyle surprised them all. He turned his attention to the people inside the car, rather than what was going on across the street or in the shadows beyond, and flashed a smile. “Twenty dollars says there’s at least two bottles in the trash,” he challenged, and even though Teague thought all of them were right, he was heartened to see the young vampire taking any sort of interest in his surroundings.

  “Deal. You go check, and while you’re at it, let us know if this neighborhood is as dog free as it sounds.”

  He was not necessarily talking about the regular loud yappy Chihuahua, and they all knew it.