by Amy Lane
And that was it—an outburst of pure energy, unbearable heat, terrible light. It stopped cleanly at the beginning of the hall, and then it was gone, even the heat dissipating with the flame, so not even the cool of the dank corridor was disturbed. When I felt the elf draw near us again, I opened my eyes, my vision going trippy in the dark. I could barely make out the black iron bars, gleaming red with heat, and even the bones and animal corpses and the dirt on the sides of the rock walls had been burned into nothing.
“Thank you,” I told him weakly. Then my vision went completely dark.
The hallway was too narrow for Bracken to scoop me up like a blushing bride, so when I came to, he was holding me five-year-old style, with my arms around his neck, my legs wrapped around his waist, and his hands linked underneath my bottom.
“Sorry,” I grumbled. “You’re still mad at me.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Still mad. I might be less mad after you eat and can stand up again, but we’ll see.”
“I couldn’t let him die, beloved.” He had crusted blood all over his chest, and the thought of eating when we both looked like escapees from a charnel house turned my stomach. “And I want a shower.”
“The shower,” he said with emphasis, “is the best idea you’ve had all night.”
“I don’t know,” I retorted, sparking out of weakness for a moment. “I thought drawing everybody’s fire while our guys picked them off around the shield bubble worked well.”
“That wasn’t an idea, that was bloody damned good luck.” He grunted, hoisting me higher as my limp body tried to slide down.
“So was coming back to you when I had Adrian in my arms.” My voice was dreamy, quiet. My teeth were chattering as I tried to speak, and I thought I was passing out again, but Bracken stopped so short I heard another grunt and a curse as Lambent ran right up his ass.
“In your arms?” he echoed blankly, his voice a little broken. “What did he say?”
“Same thing I told him.” I kissed Bracken’s neck in spite of the nastiness on his skin. Underneath it was Bracken, my stone-and-shadow lover, the rock who anchored me to the earth.
“What was that?” Bracken asked, his voice finally gentle, his footsteps pattering lightly again in the long, dank, winding black corridor.
“I couldn’t leave you and Green.” My eyes were closed because my body was shivering so violently that my vision wouldn’t stay still. “I knew that, you know. I never planned to leave you. I just needed to step up, that’s all.”
“Fuck, Cory,” he grated. “You’re going to kill me slowly, you know that?”
I whimpered against his chest and shivered some more, but it was not quite as bad. I’d been thinking about being violently sick, but that managed to recede. I was glad. Bracken’s anger—which usually burned quick and hot, just like Lambent’s fire—was all flamed out anyway. It might not stay that way if I barfed all over him.
Bracken: Forgiving the Queen
BY THE time I got her into the tiny cubicle shower in the club’s back room, Cory’s tremors were so bad they were nearly convulsions—and I was so irritated, I thought the heat of my ire alone would warm her.
She’d almost died. And not for us, her lovers. For a friend—for a soldier—one who expected a certain amount of risk when he went into the field. Goddess damn her and her nobility and her inability to draw the line where she should stop caring for others and start caring for herself, and for us.
My anger might have whipped itself up to a fury all over again, but it was quiet in the little white cubicle, and when her slick, bare skin touched mine, my power wrapped her up and spoke to her blood. While she clung to me, her body stopped rejecting mine and her breathing evened out, and she relaxed.
“Better?” I asked after a moment, and she made an affirmative noise against my chest.
“Are we going home now?” I asked wistfully, and she turned water-spiked lashes and a game smile up to me.
“Oh Goddess, yes. But we need to leave the vampires here.” Her attention wandered a little, and then she shook herself and looked at me again.
“And I think we should send Nicky to Austin for a week.”
I blinked and used both hands to scoop her hair back from her face. There was a bottle of shampoo on the floor, and with a little maneuvering, I picked it up and started to soap her hair and back and shoulders, turning her around so she could lean back on me as I did it.
“Why?” I asked when my task was done and she was facing me again. It took her so long to answer that the water had run cold when I turned it off and held her again and asked one more time.
“Why are we sending Nicky away?”
She dragged her palm across her cheek and tried hard not to look at me. “Because I’m going home to do something really awful, Bracken Brine. And then you and Green are going to have to put me back together again. And I don’t want him to have to see it. He can take it—I know he can. But this week has sucked for him, so totally and completely that I don’t even think there’s a word for it. I want him to have someone to put him back together again. I don’t want him to be worried about me.”
I grunted and wrapped my arms around her body. The shivers had started again, and they still had nothing to do with the tepid air that surrounded us. Her face was still turned away, as though I would be repelled by her weakness, and true forgiveness flooded my chest. I tilted her head up and kissed her, tasting the salt that had mingled with the water from the shower.
Her body—slick skin, bony hips, and all—convulsed against mine, and I realized that I was flooding her with my blood call and it was finally, finally working.
The kiss went on. She started to return it with interest, with passion, even, and then I broke it off and leaned my forehead against hers.
“We’ll never get back before dawn at this rate,” I panted, wanting her badly.
She swallowed and nodded. There would be a time for this—a time when it was as necessary to her as breathing—but we had less than four hours to get back home, with a stop in-between included, and a quickie in the shower would have to wait.
“It’s never quick with us,” she said, and I found myself laughing softly in agreement. Quietly we dressed and went out to face the others.
“Okay,” she said briskly as we came out into the club proper, and the others gathered around us. “Uhm. Kyle, Marcus, Phillip—you’re staying here tonight, coming back tomorrow. Max, Renny, Nicky—you’re with us. That leaves Mario and LaMark in the other SUV—which is fair enough, because that means you guys can go straight to the Aerie, if you like.”
“We want to come to the hill, if you don’t mind,” Mario said softly. “I have some things I want to ask Green.”
She had a secret smile on her lips as she nodded yes to that. Then Phillip, working on delayed shock, said, “Wait a minute. Cory, we can make it back tonight. There’s no reason for us to stay.”
“There’s two,” she lied. I looked at her, trying to figure out why. “We need you guys to watch over the kiss, help Rafael out, and protect Andres.”
Andres and Orson snorted next to me, and I met Andres’s eyes. He shrugged, his lips quirking up. I’d seen him—seen them both—in the fight, and as mild as he appeared, he was as fierce in battle as he was in bed. That thought shocked a little heat between us, and his smile turned smug and knowing. I turned back to my beloved.
“Many thanks, little Goddess,” Rafael said smoothly. Apparently he knew what this was about, but Phillip, Marcus, and Kyle were still in the dark.
“What’s the other reason?” Kyle demanded without preamble. “Because I’ll tell you right now, I’m not staying.”
Cory blinked. “Changed your mind about that?”
Kyle rolled his eyes, and I wondered at Cory’s ability to make friends with taciturn assholes. “I like my room,” he said with dignity. “I’m getting better at chess.”
She laughed a little. “Makes one of us. Okay, that reason’s shot to shit, but you guys ar
e still staying.”
It may have been the emphasis on “that,” but the lightbulb went on over Phillip’s head.
His face grew carefully blank, neutral like white paper, and he said, “I’ll do it,” without really meeting her eyes.
“No, you won’t,” she told him smartly. Marcus put his hand on the back of his beloved’s neck and met Cory’s eyes, and suddenly things clicked into place for me.
I’m going home to do something really awful, Bracken Brine.
The connection of the blood bond weakened with distance. It never truly disappeared, but Cory had only been able to communicate with the vampires she’d blooded in Redding while she’d been in Redding. It would make a difference—a big difference—in how much pain Phillip would endure when dawn came.
“It’s not your job,” Phillip said now, that careful, blank look still there.
“The hell it isn’t,” she told him back, searching for his eyes. She found Marcus’s eyes instead.
“Thank you,” Marcus said with the calm of the grave. “We’d love to stay here for another night.”
“Marcus!” Phillip showed his first trace of emotion, and it cut deep, but his lover shook his head almost angrily.
“Take what she’s offering, beloved. Take it and be grateful, and know that it wouldn’t help and would only hurt you worse if it was you.”
Phillip glared at Cory, and she returned the glare mutinously—but her hand was locked in mine, and she was drawing strength from me as sure as we were both standing.
“One condition,” he snapped crisply. She gave him a look that said Thrill me with your condition! And he replied to that look, “Don’t blood her.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Cory answered innocently. But I could tell by the very tone of her voice that she’d been thinking about it, and she practically doubled over with the force of her convulsion. “Goddammit Bracken Brine, I said I wasn’t going to do it!”
I glared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re mad at me. That’s why your blood is screwing with me so badly—it won’t settle down in my skin unless you just calm the fuck down!” She raised a shaking hand to my face, trying to soothe, and I realized that she was right. Then all my anger turned inward, and her knees went slack and I had to hold her up.
“This isn’t an improvement,” she growled, thumping me on the shoulder, but I didn’t know what she wanted me to do about it so I just rolled my eyes at her.
“You were thinking about it,” I snarled, and she rolled her eyes back.
“Of course I was. Do you think I want Phillip to suffer if I can take that away?”
“You can’t, little Goddess,” Andres said gently, and she smiled at him with weary gratitude.
“I know.” A sad little shrug, an apologetic glance at Phillip. “And if I can’t make you feel better, Phillip, it’s just martyrdom, and that’s stupid. Don’t worry”—and now her attention was wholly on her friend, her lieutenant, the imposing, severe-looking vampire who was stoically refusing to cry in his lover’s embrace—“I won’t make this any harder than it has to be. You have to share headspace with me too. How awful would that be, if it was bouncing around both our heads like a rubber ball on hormones?”
“Yeah,” Phillip’s voice grated. “That would be pretty awful.”
She smiled, and the expression was beyond tired. “So now that that’s out in the open and messy, I really think we should go home.”
And that was it. She gave Rafael a bow and shook his hand, and then went to do the same to Andres. Andres smiled evilly at her, his handsome, Latin features heating as his teeth glinted, and with a wink at me he kissed her, hard and passionately, on the mouth. She retreated from the kiss heated and flushed, and looked at me reprovingly.
“Until next time, little Goddess,” Andres said smoothly, and my beloved blushed again.
“Of course, Lord Vampire,” she said with dignity. Nicky guffawed, and she glared at him. “You all think entirely too much of yourselves,” she sniffed, but the moment had… promise… for others like the one on the boat in the dark of that country night.
But not now. Now we were headed home, and there was grim work to be done.
Nicky: Off The Board
BRACKEN MUST have forgiven Cory, because somewhere after Anderson and before Wheatland, she fell asleep.
Max was driving with Renny next to him, and I was in the middle row. I looked over the seat to Bracken in the back and nodded at Cory. “Will she be okay?”
“No,” Brack replied distantly. “Not even close.”
I let out a shocked laugh. “Bracken!”
“You know what she’s going to have to do, right?”
I did know. I knew, and frankly the idea made me queasy. I couldn’t do it—not cold-bloodedly, not when we’d known the little bloodsucking grade-school psychopath and tried to make her one of our own.
“Yeah,” I said gruffly, looking away.
“You don’t need to be there,” he said softly and without judgment. I looked at him in the dark, but his face was set in that beautiful, remote expression that said he was done confiding in me. Bracken had a big heart—it was just good to remember that most of it was filled with our wife.
“It will be good to be home,” I said for the sake of some way to respond.
“Wouldn’t you like to see Eric instead?” he asked, and I blinked.
“Well, yeah.” Even I was not prepared for the break in my voice, and I stopped speaking for a moment to get myself under control. I wanted so badly to pour my heart out to my lover—so many things I needed to tell him, so many observations, emotions, stupid jokes had been burning in my chest. I couldn’t say these things to Cory, to Bracken, or even to Green. I understood them. Even Cory’s little stunt—saving Teague, risking herself—I got that. I was pissed at her, same as everyone else, but I got it. You just didn’t take the sort of faithfulness people showed her for granted, or at least Cory never did. And you certainly didn’t let it fall out of the sky at your feet if you could do something to stop it, even if you had to take a chance with your own life.
Cory never really understood that she was bigger and more to us than a little college student with a smart mouth, but she did understand that the things we were willing to do for her were sacred. Sometimes sacred things must be paid for in blood—anyone who’s ever been to Sunday school knows that.
But now Bracken had asked me a question, and I needed to try to answer it again without sounding like a total pussy. “Yeah,” I said casually. “I’d love to see Eric. You know that. But we weren’t planning on it until next month.”
“Mmmm…,” he said while keeping his eyes on the stars outside, which stayed still in the sky even as we traveled the road beneath them.
So I should have seen it coming when we took the off-ramp to the airport to let Max and Renny out at the bright purple car with olive trim and yellow stars, but I didn’t. Cory had awakened by that time, and she hopped into the passenger seat as Bracken sat down to drive, but instead of taking the loop back to the freeway, he took us to the terminal instead.
Cory jumped out, opened my door, and pulled me out, then went to the back and got my bags.
“You have your iPod in your pocket, right? And that book you were reading?”
I nodded dumbly, completely gobsmacked. Then I took my suitcase from her because it was bigger than she was, and she started giving me instructions before I could even figure out what I was doing.
“And if you go to the computer sign-in desk and give them your ID and credit card, they should have your tickets. They’re open-ended round-trip, so come home anytime, and give Eric our love—”
“Wait a minute!” I barked. She turned to me, her expression mild and hopeful. “You’re sending me away?” Oh Goddess. A sudden hole opened up where I’d thought my heart was. Then her blank, mild expression melted, replaced by something old and sorrowful and tired.
This was how a queen looked, I realiz
ed with shock. This was the face she had been showing to Bracken in the back of the car while I’d sat by myself and listened to music and thought about how unconcerned I was that my old girlfriend had gotten her head ripped off and what assholes my parents were.
“You….” She smiled again, but the expression did nothing to lighten the mood. “I love you so much, Nicky. I love you exactly as a friend should love a friend, or a wife should love a husband. I’m so proud of you, and I’m so grateful. The way you stood up for me—and kept standing up for me—damn, honey. I felt like the queen of Redding, you know?”
I knew where this was going, and it hurt, but… but the next week was going to be hard. It was going to be horrible and rough, and she and Bracken and Green would be at odds and fighting and making up and making love, and the whole thing would be painful and emotional and—well, I’d already figured I wasn’t good at making the hard decisions. Or facing the hard emotions.
This, I thought hazily, was why Eric and I got to sit at the kid’s table. We were willing to let our leaders do the hard living for us. Sitting out the pain suited us, and we suited each other.
I took her hand in mine and kissed it tenderly. “I do know,” I said softly, and she gave me a blinding smile.
“You deserve to be the only bucket of angst in the room, Nicky. This week has sucked for you, and I want you to have someone who will cater exclusively to making you feel better. Eric will do that. Bracken, Green, and I… we’ve got….”
“Issues,” I supplied, and she launched herself at me and hugged me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Goddess, I love you, husband,” she said. I kissed her on the mouth, hard and passionate and heated, but I backed off before it got too close. Because that’s where we were—we loved each other, but we would never be emotionally raw together. Not like her and Bracken. Not like her and Green. These were truths I’d known for a year and a half—but now, looking at the weight that seemed to make her smaller, for the first time I was grateful for them.
