Quickening, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  Oh, of all the things his beloved usually was, sleepy and incurious were not among them.

  “How are you doing?” he asked. “Any bleeding?”

  “Bracken carried me around most of the day,” she protested, laughing. “I’m all fine, Green.” Her voice dropped. “Missing you. Remember the last time you and Eric were in bed and me and Bracken were—”

  Green laughed. “Yes, my love. Give my regards to Twilight, yes?”

  She chuckled lowly. Twilight, the dark-purple-skinned elf that Green had brought home after that adventure, had actually been cured as a result of Cory’s newfound power. It had been one of the first times she’d ever changed the shape of the world with sex, and for a moment he wondered how they could have ever taken that for granted.

  “I will,” she promised and then yawned. “Look,” she mumbled, “I have this feeling… you know, how Teague said he’d tell half of us about stuff?”

  Green grunted. “Oh yeah, I remember.”

  “I don’t think he’s telling half of us even half of what he’s doing.”

  Green’s eyes popped open. “Who is he telling?”

  “Mm….” For a moment he feared she’d fallen asleep. “Nicky. And Max. Jacky, of course. Lambent. Maybe Kyle.”

  “I need to talk to Arturo again,” Green said, feeling a little panicked. “I need—”

  “She’s asleep,” Arturo said darkly. “And I’ve had about enough of this school bullshit.”

  “You ask her,” Green said wretchedly. “You ask her if she’s willing to give up the one dream she had before Adrian—before any of us.”

  “But it’s not giving up, it’s postponing—”

  “Until when? Until she’s done breastfeeding? Until the babies are old enough to walk? They don’t go to human school—when does she leave them during the day? What if they’re freakishly powerful, Arturo, and she’s the only being on the hill who can calm a tantrum? What if we need her to actually leave the hill, because she knows things about business and law and history that even I’m fuzzy on at this point? The one thing she’s ever asked of us, ever, is that she finish her education. And she’s one lousy semester away.”

  The silence hung heavy between the two of them, and Arturo sighed first.

  “I hate to see her this miserable,” he confessed stonily.

  “Join the fuckin’ club,” Green snarled, prompting Eric to sit up and look at him curiously.

  “Yes, brother, but you’re not seeing her this way,” Arturo countered. “You’re off doing other things, and I get it, I do, but there is still a war on. We were damned lucky it was one escaped werewolf instead of twenty tainted ones.”

  Green took a deep breath and let spill the one business matter that had frightened him the most this trip.

  “Someone is trying to buy our land,” he said, hating himself for letting his voice fracture. It had been a low, persistent hum of annoyance for the past year, one he had let no one in on, one he’d only truly come to recognize recently himself.

  “Well, say no!” Arturo burst out, causing Green to roll his eyes.

  “Yes, Arturo, that idea completely escaped me. I shall just tell the United States Government that their attempts to procure my land to add to the national forest acreage are ill-advised.”

  “But the government can’t force you—”

  “They can if I don’t dot my fuckin’ i’s, now can’t they? And that’s not the worst part.”

  “Please. By all means, hit me with it,” Arturo said. Green could hear how stunned he was from two thousand miles away.

  “The worst part is it’s a cover. The senator writing me isn’t part of any committee related to buying land. Someone has the man in his pocket, and I suspect the land would be purchased and then sold at auction to our prince with the deep pockets, don’t you?”

  “Has this been happening around us?” Arturo asked, proving once again that he was both smart and canny.

  “No,” Green said with satisfaction. “No, because while everybody was playing up in Redding this summer, I was going personally to all of our neighbors and making them a better offer. Now Deep Pockets has to deal with me, and only me, and our land has expanded enough to take in all of the werewolves when this war is over.”

  “It’s like you knew this was coming,” Arturo said with admiration.

  “If I knew it was bloody coming, don’t you think I would have sent an assassin into this bitch’s bed a year and a fucking half ago?” Green snarled.

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, to his shock, Arturo laughed.

  “What?” Green pushed hair back from his face, feeling sullen.

  “Nothing, leader. Just… I forget. We’ve been so domestic and happy for the last couple of years. You forget that it’s always a fight, you know?”

  Green grunted. “I’m sort of with Cory. It would be lovely if we could at least bear our children in peace.”

  “Yeah,” Arturo sighed. “Was there anything else?”

  “Teague.”

  “He’s planning something.” Arturo sounded pleased, as though he’d been expecting this.

  “So….” Green flailed with is free hand. “Stop him!”

  The silence on the other end of the line sounded definitely puzzled. “I would do that why?” Arturo asked.

  Green met Eric’s eyes and shook his head. Holding his hand over the phone, he muttered, “You got off so easy. You could have been part of this madhouse, and you left just in time.”

  Eric stood up and stretched, tight and lithe as only a coyote could be. While Green still had the phone to his ear, Eric leaned over and stroked his cheek.

  “I’ll go get us a bottle of wine,” he whispered in Green’s free ear. “You and I can drink it while we plan to get you home early.”

  Green nodded at him with naked gratitude and talked into the phone. “Because he needs backup,” Green ground out. “Because launching an offensive is a major ordeal, and he’s going to need the vampires and the elves—”

  “He pretty much has everyone but me and Grace,” Arturo said, sounding disgruntled. “Apparently we’ve just aged out of the cool kids’ group.”

  Green grunted. “Remember last year—”

  “When he couldn’t grab his own damned box of Oreos? Yeah, Green, I remember. But he’s grown into his potential, and right now his potential is to go out and save our asses while we gather around our queen.”

  “I’ve played chess for over a thousand years,” Green snapped. “The knight’s gambit doesn’t always turn out so great for the knight—do you remember that, Arturo?”

  “Yeah, but it turns out absolutely awesome for the fucking queen, and right now she’s the one with the swollen ankles and the high blood pressure that she’s trying not to let anyone tell you about.”

  Bracken had already told him—and if Cory didn’t know that, she really was slipping. Green’s head hurt.

  “Don’t let him do anything until I get back,” he ordered, hoping he was being absolutely clear. He used to be able to handle autocracy better than this, he knew it.

  “I will ask him,” Arturo said, proving that Green was even worse than he thought. “But Green, if he’s got a way to end this war, I don’t want to stand in his way.”

  “End the war, wonderful,” Green snarled. “But we don’t sacrifice people unnecessarily, and we don’t leave our queen unguarded. She almost died keeping that stubborn Irish motherfucker alive this summer. We had better make sure he survives the next few months.”

  “Yes, leader,” Arturo said formally. Green was tempted to feel like shit for pushing the leadership thing, but then Arturo threw one more wrench into his night.

  “And Hallow says three.”

  Green crossed his eyes. “But the gestational period—”

  “Ten and a half months, yes. But they can survive early. Hallow says she can’t make it past nine and a half.”

  Green tried to keep his heart beating evenly in his chest. “W
hen I get home, I’ll talk to her about school,” he said, feeling defeated. “But no promises.”

  “But the children—”

  “Will come in their own time,” Green said. “If they need to come early, her body will make that happen. But we can’t force her to have them—I know they can in the human world, but those medicines will make her sick. You know what happens if she takes so much as a Tylenol, Arturo. And if it hurt the fetuses, she would never forgive herself.”

  He heard a gentle, repeated thunk.

  “Are you beating your head against the table?” Green asked, alarmed.

  “The wall.”

  Green pinched the bridge of his nose, then reached for the glass of wine Eric was offering. No, he didn’t enjoy the alcoholic effects the way humans did, but as Eric did, apparently, he found the taste soothing and… civilized.

  “Let me rework my schedule one more time,” he said, wondering how in heaven’s name he was going to appear in—where was it?—Colorado on one day and back in California the next. “I don’t like being away from home any more than you like having me gone.”

  The thunking noise stopped, and Nicky picked up.

  “Green?”

  “Yes, Nicky?”

  “You know, Renny and I are going to school too. Jacky too. You’ll have help—we just have to get through this first.”

  Green glanced at Eric, who was looking away. Yes, Eric could hear Nicky’s voice over the phone. Yes, it hurt.

  “So, you’re over there with Eric and he’s listening, right?” Nicky’s voice trembled for a moment, and for the first time Green got an inkling of what it might have cost him to give up a lover of his own.

  “Yes, Dominic,” Green said gently. “Yes, he is.”

  “How’s he look?”

  Green reached out and lifted Eric’s chin up with his forefinger. “He’s beautiful, as always,” he said. “But he’s still hurt.”

  Eric’s gray eyes shifted away. “Always, with you guys,” he said softly. “It’s always the truth.”

  “Well, you know. Me too,” Nicky said, his voice showing how much. Then he snapped right into the Nicky who had kept them all functioning for the past few months. “Tell him I miss him. And don’t worry too much about what Teague’s got planned. It’s just recon right now, no assault.”

  “Tell him not to move until I get back,” Green urged, but Nicky had already passed the phone to Bracken.

  “This was reassuring,” Green said acidly into the phone.

  “If you meant for us to blow sunshine up your ass, well, you took the funnel with you,” Bracken snapped. “Do your business, we know it’s important. Know we miss you, keep yourself safe.”

  “Talk to you tomorrow,” Green finished, and Bracken grunted good-bye before ending the call.

  Green downed the glass of wine in his hand as though he really could get drunk.

  Eric’s hand between his shoulder blades soothed him in ways he didn’t think possible. “Feel better?” he asked sweetly. “I’ve got more superexpensive wine, if that will help.”

  Green grinned at him and tapped his freckled nose. “I’ll just bet you do,” he said, trying to keep his humor. “But now for the hard part.”

  “How to get home early?” Eric asked. He reached behind him for the bottle and refilled both their glasses. “That’s easy. You let me attend those meetings in your stead. No voting power, but I can be your eyes and ears—your representation. We’ve done it before.”

  Green grunted. “Yes, before you had your own oil empire, Eric. Why would you want—”

  Eric sighed and rested his cheek against his knees. “My father died last year,” he said, out of the blue.

  Green regarded him, completely neutral. Eric’s father had been an oil magnate who’d disowned his only son for being gay. Green had found Eric, starved and half-dead of disease, and had linked him with the werecoyotes and given him an education and the backing to execute his revenge.

  Three years ago, he’d been able to buy his father out—and go visit his mother and his little sisters again.

  Green was not exactly sure how his father’s death would have affected the young man, not after so much bad blood.

  Eric laughed bitterly. “Look—I could be a bastard because my lover, who was yours to begin with and pretty much out on loan, decided that his real loyalty began and ended with family. Or I could remember that you’re my family too. You were my father more than my real father, Green. You were my mentor and my supporter and my cheerleader. Yeah, I miss Nicky, but he’s not dead.” Eric leaned his head against Green’s bare shoulder and swallowed. “You’re trying to be a dad, Green. Don’t you see? If anyone deserves children—flesh and blood children—it’s you and Cory and Bracken. Give us a day to prep for those meetings. Two. We’ll drink wine and order in, and I can have my very own healing elf to myself, as well as a damned fine business mind to learn from, and in two days you can go back to your loved ones and let me go to the meetings in your stead. Is that a deal?”

  Green leaned his temple against Eric’s.

  “That’s a deal,” he said, his eyes burning. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, hadn’t wanted anyone at home to see, but he’d been panicked too. So overwhelming—how was anyone to have the answers when the world had gone bloody mad? “You know that day I saw you in the square? Bought you a cup of coffee?”

  “Offered me a life?” Eric finished, smiling slightly.

  “So much bloody reward for one act of kindness, mate. I’m not sure I deserve it.”

  Eric pressed his mouth against Green’s, swept in his tongue, tasted the wine and the frustration, the fear and the relief.

  “I am,” Eric whispered. “Nicky is. It’s why he left. So he could be part of something bigger. This is my chance.”

  “It’s all yours,” Green whispered back.

  Eric deepened the kiss, and Green gave to him because Nicky couldn’t. For a moment he didn’t hear the clock ticking the seconds that would send him home.

  Teague: Tactical Error

  TEAGUE LOOKED at Cerise again and tried to determine what was off about her.

  He’d had the vampires blood her, more than one, and the consensus was that her blood really was untainted. He’d fed her angel blood and Lambent blood, and the results had been… well, she said her hair had grown three inches overnight, but he was going to take that at face value.

  He’d had Jacky and Nicky check into her story, and they’d found eviction notices and unpaid bills and even the record of her hiring and firing from the local chain restaurant.

  Teague even knew that she’d failed her English 120 B class once and had needed to take it again.

  But there was something… something not….

  “You smell funny,” he said, the third night he’d gone in to interview her. Unlike Iris, they hadn’t put her in the vampire vault—but Teague had asked Lambent to set fey guards on her, the tiny ones that Teague never knew were there.

  Cerise looked at him blankly. “Funny? Like… birthday cake or a clown party funny? Eau de chocolate ice cream?”

  Teague grimaced. The problem was, he liked Cerise. Maybe it was because she was Dominican, and her accent reminded him a little of Katy’s. Maybe it was because she seemed so much like Cory, so much like him and Katy—working hard for a better life, not assuming it would be given. She’d gotten a tough break and had lived in her car and kept going to school. He recognized that drive, not just in Cory but in his own husband.

  But just because he empathized with her didn’t mean he trusted her, or the information she seemed to have delivered right to their doorstep.

  Too neat, too pretty, too wrapped up in a bow.

  Too important to resist.

  “No,” Teague muttered, wishing Cory was there to help him deal with her. But the whole point of this moment was to leave Cory alone to gestate—to fucking sleep and rest her exhausted body.

  He’d seen her ankles after a few days of walking around at school;
they were really freaking him out.

  “Look,” he said after a moment of pacing Cerise’s room. She’d been driven to school for the last two days—she had four days of classes instead of just two—and Teague and Jacky had been her guard dogs for the off days. Connor, Cami, and Dylan also helped since they had M-W-F classes as well. He was getting damned good at drawing complicated schedules, when what he wanted to be was damned good at killing elf bitches who were fucking with his home.

  “Look, what?” she asked—not even trying to be a smartass, just honestly confused.

  “Look, I’ve got an idea!” he said, not sure where it had come from. “You’re Catholic, right?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “You ever prayed to a guardian angel?”

  She had naturally skeptical eyebrows. He liked that—if he hadn’t been bonded, she would have been just his type. As it was, he had hopes that one of the very few straight or bi guys who ended up at Green’s might actually have some mate potential here, because she was resourceful, funny, and tough.

  But first he had to make sure she wasn’t full of shit.

  She raised one of those naturally skeptical eyebrows, and Teague looked at Max, who was slouched in the far corner of the room.

  Max still hadn’t admitted there were actual angels living in the Goddess’s grove, so he looked blandly back. Teague didn’t see why that should be any different than pansy-shaped people who opened the trapdoor for him, so he nodded maniacally.

  “Yeah,” Cerise said slowly, crossing her arms in front of her. “I prayed to a guardian angel, why?”

  “How’d you like to meet one?”

  IT WAS February, so even though there was still snow on the ground in the Sierra Foothills, there was also a slightly warmer promise of spring. Teague stood in the climate-controlled Goddess grove, perfectly warm in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, and called to the angels in the treetops.

  “Shep? Jefi? You guys up there?”

  Those guys were always up there. Apparently they had waited four millennia to fall down to earth, live in Green’s treetops, and fuck like rabbits.