Between Floors

by W. R. Gingell

  I might have snorted. I tried to turn it into a cough, but didn’t manage it in time. Since it was too late anyway, I said, “Yeah, I s’pose that’s why I had to come in and rescue you?”

  “What I mean, Pet,” Athelas said amusedly, “is that my body has already begun to heal itself, and now that I don’t have a constant stream of moonlight coursing through different parts of my body, I should at least be able to stand in a few minutes.”

  “Lucky you,” I said. “You don’t need vampire spit.”

  “Ah, so that’s what is so different about you. JinYeong bit you this time, I take it?”

  I stared at him. “Can you tell?”

  “Not precisely,” he said. “But it is why I sensed a Behindkind edge to you—and a great part of why I killed you so many times.”

  “That flamin’ vampire,” I said. I felt vindicated. “He’s always making stuff harder!”

  Athelas laughed once more, and this time there was no rattle, or wetness to the sound.

  “Hey!” I said in surprise. “You’re healing!”

  “There are certain benefits to being fae—and more so when one is fae born to service. We’re so very useful.”

  “You were born into service?”

  “No,” said Athelas, with decision. “We’ve been maudlin for quite long enough, I believe. I shall not regale you with stories of my childhood and exploits. Do you think you can resist being sarcastic for as long as it will take to help me to my feet?”

  “S’pose,” I said. “But that’s no fun.”

  I saw the creases beside his eyes as I leaned over to help him up. He said, “Perhaps you should remember that we are by no means out of danger at this point, Pet.”

  “Don’t think I’m ever out of danger,” I said, a bit dryly. “If it’s not JinYeong biting me, it’s you stabbing me. Oi.”

  “Yes, Pet?”

  “Did you apologise so you wouldn’t owe me anything?” I demanded. “’Cos I’m pretty sure that killing someone six times means you should be answering some questions and stuff later.”

  Athelas made a very strange sound, and I grabbed at his arm, but he was only laughing. He laughed until he was fairly crying with it, dropping back down on one knee and ignoring every attempt I made to help him back to his feet.

  After the first minute, I crouched back on my haunches, gloomily resigned to waiting until he was finished. Flamin’ fae. You couldn’t ever pick how they were going to react. At least JinYeong was pretty consistent—if he wasn’t annoyed by me, he was pouting at me.

  And as Athelas laughed, shadows gathered at the end of the hallway, in the main room. I didn’t worry too much about them until it occurred to me that we weren’t in the dream-hallway anymore, and that shadows in an actual hall probably heralded actual people or actual Behindkind.

  By the time I looked down properly at the shadows at the end of the hallway, they were attached to people. People, and a Behindkind or two to round out the ugly. The humans hadn’t been running to escape; they’d been running to get reinforcements. And now they had guns, which worried me because even if I could have accessed my knives, what good would they do against guns? The two Behindkind only had teeth, but somehow they were still more frightening than the humans. Maybe that’s because their teeth were each the length of my forearm, but still.

  I wished, very earnestly, that Zero and JinYeong were also here.

  Athelas, the laughter still on his lips, looked up with a wild, dark satisfaction in his eyes. “Fools,” he said. “They’ve opened the widdershins way again to bring in reinforcements.”

  “It’s open again? Zero can get to us?”

  “Ah, at last!” he sighed, more to himself than me. “Something I can really enjoy killing!”

  “There’s nothing here for me to fight with,” I said, shivering. I didn’t know if I was more afraid of the bunch at the end of the corridor with their guns, or Athelas and his laughing fury.

  “Oh, there’s no need for you to fight this time, Pet,” said Athelas. “I can take care of some humans and a stray Behindkind or two. Stay behind me, but not too close.”

  “That’s not very specific,” I said, shivering again. “Don’t—don’t enjoy yourself too much, Athelas.”

  “I am very much afraid,” said Athelas, “that that is not possible. Close your eyes.”

  “But—”

  “Pet,” said Athelas, rising to his feet with deadly grace, “I’ve already killed you six times. Close your eyes.”

  I wanted to protest, but there was nothing I could say that made sense, and he was already moving. I closed my eyes.

  For a moment there was only the softness of my own breath settling in the air around me. Then there was a delicate footstep, and another; footsteps that continued and fell closer and closer together as Athelas began to run.

  Gunshots, and the slither of steel; Athelas’ footsteps swift and brief across the hall. I dropped to the ground at the sound of gunfire, covering my head instinctively though it wouldn’t have done much good against bullets; and with a howl that made me cower even lower, the fight tore into being.

  I know it sounds stupid, with everything I’ve seen, but I didn’t dare to open my eyes. I didn’t want to see the Athelas that was beneath the smoothness; Athelas stripped down and bare by torture: Himself. I didn’t dare look.

  Instead, I crouched where I was, covering my ears against the sound but unable to stop the warm, salty smell from entering my nostrils. There was a dull roar that wasn’t gunshot all around me, and three or four times something swept past me, stirring the air. I was trying hard not to look, but I was pretty sure it was Athelas. And each time that something swept past, another something made a dull thud nearby and ceased to move.

  I don’t know when the movement stopped, or when the gunshots ceased. I don’t know when the fight moved past me and down the hall—or even which direction it took, widdershins or deiseil. Soon, my hands were aching too much to keep covering my ears, so I wrapped my arms around my legs instead, eyes still squeezed tightly shut.

  Some time after that happened, I heard someone say, “Pet.”

  It was Zero’s voice. I let out my breath in a dizzy rush, and as I opened my eyes to a haze of red, a cool, slender hand covered them again, blocking my sight before I could make sense of the jumbled scarlet.

  “Take the pet out,” said Zero’s voice. “I’ll go after Athelas. He’s gone deeper.”

  I didn’t have to ask who he was talking to; I could already smell JinYeong’s cologne. I let go of my legs and blindly started to stand up, but my legs were weaker than I thought they were and another hand grabbed the back of my collar just in time to stop me falling over.

  “Zero?” I said, uncertainly; but I could already feel that he’d gone. Now there was only a slight presence behind me—JinYeong and his cold hand that was edged with red.

  “Obseo,” said his voice. “Choshimhae, Petteu.”

  Not here. Be careful. The floor was slippery beneath my feet, and I didn’t want to think about that too much, so I asked JinYeong, “How’d you know where to find us?”

  And as first one foot and then the other moved across the slick floor, instead of listening to the Korean JinYeong spoke, I tried to listen for the meaning he spoke.

  “…left foot; a bit of a slip there…” The Korean made no sense, but JinYeong’s murmur was warm behind me like his presence, and it continued on with something like “suddenly opened…no sign there. Hyeong said we should try another level…”

  Right foot; something spongelike gave way beneath it.

  I stopped dead, shivering, and JinYeong walked into me.

  “Mwohji?” he said. “Caja, Petteu.”

  I couldn’t. I knew it was possible—I knew I could physically lift my foot again—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “Mwohji?” said JinYeong again, this time surprised, and I realised that I was crying. “Igae mwohya?”

  “Can’t,” I said, very tightly. I
f I tried to say anything else, I was pretty sure I would break down.

  JinYeong gave an experimental sort of push at the back of my neck, but I folded with it and dropped back to my haunches, wrapping my arms around my legs again. There was a nightmare hovering at the corners of my mind, and even though JinYeong’s hand was somehow still over my eyes, his warmth still behind me, the red that haloed it seemed to seep through the cracks in his fingers.

  There was a mutter behind me that could have said, “What’s wrong with it? Was worse than this before?” then the hand over my eyes went away, as did the warmth behind me.

  JinYeong said something in Korean that I was pretty sure was, “Stay, Pet,” and suddenly my arms were being separated and pulled forward until I fell onto the familiarly slender back in front of me.

  I locked my arms around his neck before he could change his mind, and JinYeong rose. There was no sense of slipperiness when he took a step forward—almost no sensation of movement at all—but I kept my eyes shut anyway. I felt the stairs as he walked down them, heard the swish of the electric door at the entrance of the station, but my eyes wouldn’t open. Even as I felt the world change around us from red to green, they stayed shut.

  Unease gripped me. Between. We were going Between again?

  I clung more tightly around JinYeong’s neck, and there was a low murmur of “Wae irae, Petteu?” from him. It was stupid to feel comforted because I could feel his voice vibrating against my ribs, but somehow I did feel comforted.

  “Where’s Zero?” I asked, because I didn’t want to be comforted by a vampire. I wanted Zero.

  JinYeong tsked gently and his words had the meaning of, “Patient, patient, Pet.”

  “I don’t want to be patient, I want Zero!”

  Surprisingly, JinYeong didn’t snarl at me; his voice continued to murmur in Korean with very little meaning but vibration and warmth until I felt the atmosphere change around us again and I smelled the smell of my own house.

  JinYeong put me down on the couch and took my sneakers away, and to my relief it became possible to open my eyes again. I was on my own favourite couch, with the house normal and tidy around me, and both JinYeong and my sneakers were gone.

  I saw the tips of my socked toes, and tucked my feet up beneath me on the couch. In the kitchen, the jug began to boil, so when I figured out that I wasn’t shivering any more, I put my feet down again and went there to make coffee. JinYeong came back while I was doing that; he had my sneakers in one hand, and they were somehow clean. He tossed them at me and sauntered off into the living room again.

  Over his shoulder, in Korean, he said, “Coffee, Petteu.”

  I could have stuck out my tongue at him, but somehow I didn’t feel like it. Instead, I brought two cups of coffee into the living room and plopped down next to him, slinging my sneakers next to the coffee table. I meant to drink coffee, and JinYeong must have drunk his, because I remember the repetitiveness of his mug rising to his lips and being put back on the coffee table, but I fell asleep instead.

  I woke a little when Zero and Athelas came home, filling the house with warmth and familiarity that seeped through into my sleeping mind, along with a murmured conversation. I didn’t wake up properly; just enough to wriggle a bit against the softness of an arm in a fine business shirt that moved to accommodate my wriggling by draping itself over me instead. There was a heavy silence all around me, but when I tucked myself under that arm and curled up again to sleep, Athelas’ voice floated gently through the fuzz.

  “A bold move,” it murmured. He gasped a little, and I saw a brief flutter of movement through my lashes as Zero lowered him into his chair. “If they had been giving her the dreams, they could have killed her for that.”

  There was a time of fuzzy sleep before JinYeong’s laugh sounded, bumping my head. “Ah, will you fight? What fun!”

  Between, I thought hazily. He wanted to be understood.

  “Not everyone fights at the drop of a hat,” said Athelas, but his voice was cold.

  Zero said, “If they had been giving her the dreams, it would have meant they knew about her and were actively seeking information about her. That information could potentially have come from you, as well as other information. The dangers were even.”

  “There was some interest in the Pet.” Athelas sounded more like himself again.

  “How much is some interest?”

  “Enough to use her face to attempt to trick information out of me about her. Most of the interest focused on you, but it could pay to be wary with the Pet.”

  “Perhaps you could suggest some ways of being wary,” said Zero’s voice, with an edge of frustration. “It keeps doing unexpected things. I never know what to guard against. And now that Upper Management knows about it, too—”

  “Hmm,” said Athelas, and there was some dark amusement in his voice. “At least there will be no need to worry about any information being lost from our friends at the police station.”

  Because he killed them all, said my thoughts, fuzzily.

  JinYeong’s voice buzzed against the ear that was pressed against his ribcage. “Did you get the others, hyeong?”

  “They were already gone by the time we got there,” said Zero. “It was to be expected. Upper Management will regroup, but I doubt they’ll try to use humans again.”

  “What of them?” asked JinYeong. “What did you discover there?”

  “Not as much as I should have liked,” said Athelas. “But enough to know they were behind the waystation we cleared out a little while ago. I thought it was a touch too well-organised to be a single cell operation.”

  “I see.” Zero’s voice could have chilled me properly awake if it wasn’t for the warmth of JinYeong against my cheek. “I would have moved a little more quickly if I’d known of that particular connection.”

  “And I was in no fit state to be useful in the chase,” Athelas’ voice said, with a deep regret. “Perhaps, had I been quicker—”

  I lost some time in sleep, and when I woke again, Zero’s voice said, “It’s no use repining, Athelas; your injuries were left for too long as it was. Upper Management will appear again, soon enough.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Ne,” said JinYeong, without hesitation. “Even if a starfish has many arms, it doesn’t like losing them.”

  “Starfish arms grow back,” I mumbled, before I was awake enough to keep pretending to be asleep.

  “Mwohya?” said JinYeong, lifting his arm again. “Kkaenae?”

  “I can still understand you,” I told him, sitting up, but it was more of a habitual dig than because I actually felt like irritating him. There was more warmth to the house now that my three psychos were back together, but my very clean sneakers were still sitting on the ground beside the coffee table, and there was also a kind of creeping discomfort to the reunion.

  Maybe I’d feel better when I had a full night’s sleep, I thought, but I reached automatically for my coffee, grimacing at the coldness of it when it touched my lips. Zero took it from me and went into the kitchen without a word, and I heard the sound of the microwave.

  “Where’d you go, anyway?” I asked Athelas, curling my toes into the carpet beside my sneakers. “You left me in a hall full of…of stuff.”

  “Ah,” said Athelas. “That was necessary.”

  “Yeah? How’s that?”

  There was a brief pause, and in the kitchen, the microwave dinged. As Zero came back into the room, Athelas said, “You were in the way. It was troublesome to fight around you, so I took the fight further away. When I did so, it became apparent that there was more cleaning necessary.”

  I took the newly hot mug that Zero gave me and clasped it between my two hands. “And when you say cleaning, you mean—”

  “Yes,” Athelas said, smiling faintly. “I was quite busy. There were some familiar faces that needed to be attended to, and I was…inspired.”

  “Well it wasn’t very flaming tidy!”

  “Go b
ack to sleep, Pet,” said Athelas. “Drink your coffee.”

  “Heck no,” I said. There was something about it—a weird smell, or feel. I put it down on the coffee table. “There’s something in it.”

  I turned accusingly toward JinYeong, and one of his brows went up in surprise at the look.

  “Did you put something in my coffee?”

  Athelas’ eyes flicked past me to Zero, who said, “Drink your coffee, Pet.”

  JinYeong, indignantly, said, “Na aniya!”

  “What, you’re offended?” I stared across at him. “You’re the one who stuffed spit down my throat! And you flamin’ kissed me! Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that.”

  “Keugae wanjon dala!”

  “How come?” I argued. I was in the mood for a good argument; maybe it would help fight off the feeling of horror that still somehow clung to my insides. “How is that totally different?”

  “Kunyang,” said JinYeong, after a brief pause.

  “Pet,” began Zero.

  I was afraid he was going to tell me to drink the coffee again, and now that I was sure there was something in it, I didn’t want to. I stood up, jostling the coffee table, and the cup tumbled to the floor in a shower of not-quite-coffee.

  Pity it didn’t splash JinYeong. To him, I said, “Just you wait. Got something nasty for you.”

  JinYeong’s other brow went up. Then, to my surprise, he grinned. “I’ll be waiting,” he said, in easy-to-understand Korean.

  Athelas sighed. “It was nothing more than an inducement to sleep, Pet.”

  “Don’t you know that Pets don’t like medicine in their food?” I told him. “Anyway, I already slept.”

  “Not,” said Athelas, his eyes studying my face, “for quite long enough, I believe.”

  Zero, leaning against the back of the couch, asked, “How did you know it was drugged?”

  “Perhaps know is a little too strong,” demurred Athelas. “After all, the Pet is human. Perhaps it would be more pertinent to ask what gave her the impression that you had er, added to her beverage.”

  I looked accusingly at Zero. “You did it? Don’t you know you’re not supposed to put stuff in people’s drinks? It’s flamin’ rude!”