by 33 authors
“Are you sure?” Daniel asked before releasing her hand. “You’re young, healthy. Think hard about that one.”
Again, she could hear more than what he was actually saying. He’d only made the decision because he was dying, and it hadn’t turned out entirely as he had anticipated. She wondered if he’d choose the same way if he had to do it all over again. But for her, the choice was entirely different, and she wasn’t sure he understood that.
“I’m not doing this because I want to live forever,” she murmured, trusting he would still hear her despite the noise around them. “I’m doing it because of them. Because I want to be with them.”
She didn’t know how to explain it better. She already was with them, she supposed, fighting alongside them, sleeping in their bed, sharing their laughter and their pain. And still, a part of her felt apart from them. How could she not, when she had a heartbeat, when every day she grew a little older, when she walked into the sun, and they did not?
“Yes, I’m sure,” she finished with a slight smile, and was glad when Daniel didn’t press her any more.
She noticed that Simon, seated a little further down the table, was observing her with a slight frown. Had he been listening to them? She hadn’t told Simon the way she had Daniel, but she knew Blake had let it slip in front of him. He’d never talked to her about it, but for the rest of the meal she could feel his eyes on her every so often, and when she stood to take her tray to the washing station, he followed her.
“It’s not nice to eavesdrop,” she said preemptively as they set their trays on the rack.
Simon’s complexion took on a rosy tint, but there was no trace of apology in his words when he asked, “Did you get a mage to look at you? You look like you’re in pain.”
Kate rotated her shoulders a little, grimacing. “I’m just sore. I don’t need to be healed for that.”
With a little huff, Simon slipped his arm through hers. “You’re all the same,” he muttered as he dragged her to the elevators. “Fighters. Thinking you’re invincible or something.”
Amused, she let him take her up to the third floor. After all, that was where she’d been headed too.
“Or maybe we know what a real injury is,” she said. “Honestly, Simon. I’m fine. If you want to heal someone, I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities in the infirmary.”
But the mousy, scared-of-everything man she’d first met years ago was gone; this Simon didn’t let anyone or anything talk him off the paths he chose for himself.
“I’m not a healer,” he reminded her. They’d reached his room and he let go of her arm to open his door. “If you were actually hurt, I might be able to save you, but not much more than that. But soreness? I can help with that much. It’s no fun to spend hours in a car when you ache all over.”
Standing with her arms crossed and her shoulder to the doorjamb, Kate watched him fiddle with the array of vials and powders spread out on his desk. She was feeling a little bemused, not at the way he mixed a pinch of this and a drop of something else—she’d seen him prepare his spells before—but rather at how much he knew of what she was up to. What had Blake told him exactly? And why?
When he returned with a glass bowl half-filled with a mixture that had the color and consistency of mud, it was all she could do not to take a step back.
“If you think I’m going to drink that,” she started, raising both hands in front of her, but she never got to finish.
Without warning, Simon threw his muddy concoction straight at her face, muttering two unintelligible words under his breath. With a startled cry, Kate tried to duck, but it was too late. The impact she expected did not come, however, and rather than being doused in mud, she felt like she’d just splashed ice-cold water to her face. She felt it trickle on her cheeks, down her neck, her arms, her back, her legs… but when she touched her face, when she looked at herself, there was no trace of anything: not mud, not water, not a hint of what Simon might have just done.
He looked at her with an entirely too smug expression.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
Kate opened her mouth to ask what game he thought he was playing… and then she realized what he’d done. Her tired, achy muscles felt as rested as though she’d lounged in bed for a few days. Even that dull ache in her right leg which had been bothering her for three days since she’d tripped over a dead demon was gone. She looked at him, her eyes wide and incredulous.
“How on earth did you do that?”
He shrugged, then scratched his cheek with a finger. “It’s just a little something I’ve been playing with. Still working on it, but I thought I’d give you a taste of it. It doesn’t work on vampires, so… I figured it was now or never.”
“I’d tell you you’re brilliant, but that’s why you did it, huh?”
His grin widened. “No one has ever praised me quite like you do.”
Which wasn’t entirely the truth: as one of the few mages who could perform the breach-closing spell without a hitch, Simon had been on the receiving end of heaps of praises lately.
As his grin faltered, he added more quietly, “I’m gonna miss you.”
She shook her head and smiled. “You say that like I’m going away for good. I’ll be back soon. We’re just taking a small leave of absence.”
“I know, I know.” He returned to his desk and fiddled some more, trickling ingredients into a small clay pot. He continued without quite looking at her. “It’s just… I don’t know. We all started as humans, and then Daniel went and got himself vamped, and my best friend’s a vamp, and now you… Soon I’m going to be the last normal one.”
At that, Kate couldn’t help herself and burst out laughing. When he interrupted what he was doing to turn a frown at her, she managed to stifle her laugh and say, “You? Normal? Really?”
She gestured at his desk and the magic supplies there. After a second, Simon laughed with her.
“All right,” he conceded. “Maybe you have a point.”
He added two more pinches of some powder to the jar, then hurriedly sealed it with a cork stopper. Holding the jar with both hands, he came to the door and held it out to her.
“Blake asked for this. Can you give it to him for me, please?”
She didn’t ask what it was; she was sure she’d find out soon enough. She took the jar—and just missed dropping it when Simon threw his arms around her.
“Come back soon, okay?” he said as he hugged her.
She patted his back awkwardly with her free hand. “Of course. Like I said, we’ll be back in just a few days.”
And yet, as she walked away, she found herself oddly choked up. Simon and Daniel both seemed more affected by her decision than she had expected. More affected, maybe, than she was herself. What did it mean? Could she possibly be deluding herself by believing nothing much would change?
Her mind still troubled, she returned to the room she’d shared with Blake and Marc for the past few nights. She entered quietly so she wouldn’t wake them if they’d gone back to sleep, but even before she stepped into the room she knew they were awake. And with lust spreading through her once more, she knew exactly what they were doing. Quiet moans, grunts, and the faint squeaking of the bed made it all too obvious. The heavy, musky smell of sex also made it clear they’d been at it for a while.
With light steps and a pounding heart, she came in. Even before she made noise by setting the clay jar onto the desk a little too abruptly, both their gazes turned to her. They didn’t stop, Marc moving over Blake’s body and inside him with the same long, deep motions Kate knew so well, Blake holding him close with his legs locked around him, his hands playing over Marc’s arms, shoulders and back. The same invitation was shining in both sets of brown eyes locked on hers. Kate took a step closer, then another, until she was close enough to the bed to touch it. Then she stopped.
She'd watched them before, usually as a prelude to joining them. She rarely could resist their appeal for long. She hardly even remem
bered how, once, she'd felt so naughty just from being in love with two men, and how the thought of enjoying both their bodies at once had seemed like a forbidden act she'd never dare consider. Now, it was the most normal of things: they both loved her as well as each other, as she loved each as much as the other. Whom did it hurt that they shared their bodies as well as their hearts? Whom would it hurt when they soon shared blood?
Today, however, she felt oddly reluctant to join them. Why interrupt the beautiful symphony they created together and shared with her?
“I just wanna watch,” she murmured. “Can I?”
Twin grins were answer enough. Then their gazes found each other again, and their rhythm, which had slipped a little, strengthened again.
She went down to her knees at the foot of the bed, resting her arms along the edge of the mattress and her chin behind them. From this angle, she had a great view of both of them and of the joining of their bodies. She wasn’t hiding, not really, but she liked that she was out of the way, almost out of sight. She didn’t want them to perform for her; she’d much rather have them forget she was there.
And if at first one or the other glanced toward her every so often, soon they were lost in each other, the way she supposed they were when she wasn’t around, eyes locked together and their bodies following the same fluid rhythm.
If she let herself drift a little, she could all but hear the music on which they moved.
It had nothing to do with Blake's quiet moans, wordless sounds mixed with encouragements; strange how even when he said Marc, yes, faster, more, harder, there, all Kate could hear was, I love you.
It wasn't about Marc's more infrequent grunts either. He was rarely as vocal as Blake during sex, but it was the same pleasure, the same love that echoed in each sound that rose from his throat.
It wasn’t even about the slapping of their bodies coming together, flesh against flesh, and those little wet noises that were absolutely obscene—and absolutely breathtaking.
No, their music was much deeper than all those sounds: as deep as their silent heartbeats, as loud as their smiles when they shared harsh kisses, as meaningful as fingers entwining or stroking ever so tenderly.
A small, tiny part of her started to ache as she felt more alone than she had since Blake had been given back to them. She pushed back that feeling the same way she pushed back the need to join them. She wasn’t alone, wasn’t forgotten, not even now; and if she’d needed proof, she’d have received it when, poised on the edge of pleasure, Blake flung one hand out toward her. Without thinking, she gripped it in hers, and could have sworn she could feel his orgasm as he let go, his body arching into Marc’s last thrust, his cock spurting inside Marc’s fist.
She watched avidly, intent on capturing every second of beauty, silencing her own body as it ached for a touch, even from her own hand. When Marc collapsed, half on the bed, half across Blake’s body, she realized she’d been holding her breath and let out a shaky, needy sigh.
“Now will you join us?” Blake asked, his voice rough, his hand gently tugging at Kate’s. “You smell downright edible.”
That last part came out as a purr, and Kate didn’t know whether to laugh or be embarrassed. She knew they could smell her desire; after the past three years, she was pretty certain she knew all there was to know about vampires and their abilities. She knew, also, that they wouldn’t need more than a few minutes before they were ready for another round, and if she joined them now, one—or more than likely, both—would make sure she enjoyed those few minutes. They’d done it before, after all.
But while she squeezed Blake’s hand as she stood, she didn’t let him pull her onto the bed.
“Not now,” she said with a smile. “You two need to get ready, and I have a date with the sunset.”
She leaned down to brush a chaste kiss to his lips, then stretched a little more to reach Marc and offer him a kiss as well. Blake looked downright mutinous and wouldn’t let go of her hand, but Marc’s fingers entwined with both of theirs.
“Let her go,” he murmured, his lips pressing against Blake’s shoulder. “We’ll join her soon enough.”
With a sigh, Blake pulled both their hands to his lips and kissed them before letting go of Kate.
“I’ll be on the roof,” she said, and left the room after a last smile.
The way to the roof was familiar enough. She'd gone up there at nightfall a few times since coming to this town. They always needed a few nights of preparation and reconnaissance in a new town before they were ready to close the breach.
She came right to the edge of the roof, and sat on the low security wall, her legs dangling over the side of the building. From here, she could see the wall that surrounded the town. It would still be needed for a little while; there always seemed to be a few demons left even after a breach was closed, and the town's soldiers, helped by Daniel and his troops, would continue patrolling around town until they were all absolutely certain that no demon remained.
But soon, within a few weeks maybe, the wall would come down. The town would open up again, ready to grow, to sprawl, to live. The curfew would lift. Children would stop fearing demons and would learn how to smile again, and so would adults.
Maybe they were even learning already, she realized as she looked down to the foot of the walls. All around town, a hundred yards had been cleared between the foot of the walls and the closest buildings. The no man's land was intended to serve as buffer should the demons break through the walls. In Kate's experience, breakthroughs happened at least once and often much more than that in all fortified towns. Even the renowned town of Newhaven in the West, which had pioneered the construction of the medieval-style walls, had suffered its fair share of breakthroughs.
When she had come to the roof before, the no man's land had always been deserted. But today... The word that the breach had been closed must have spread already because people were down there. Some were enjoying what looked like an impromptu concert. A few were seated at tables that had clearly been pulled out of the mess hall. A few more were playing with a handful of children, a game that seemed like a cross between tag and hide-and-seek, and that left adults as well as children laughing aloud.
As she watched a little girl in a pink dress running around older children and laughing so much the sound reached the roof, Kate couldn’t help but smile. The child’s happiness was infectious. She didn’t remember being that small—or even being that happy. When she was growing up, laughter had been frowned upon as disrespectful for all those who had lost their lives to the demons. What would her life have been like if she’d grown up in a world free of demons, like that little girl would? What would she have become, if she hadn’t been a fighter?
She wouldn’t have lost so many friends, for one thing. She might still have a family. She’d have found a job, something constructive to do, although at that moment she couldn’t fathom what she might have done to earn a living. She’d have had a boyfriend, maybe even a husband. Children who might have laughed and played like that little girl down there. Grandchildren, too, when she’d grown old and tired.
What she wouldn’t have had was the chance to meet Marc and Blake, to learn to know them, and to fall in love with them—and accept that yes, she could be in love with two men; two vampires.
Shaking her head, she pushed those ‘what-ifs’ out of her mind. No one could change history. This was her life, and she was happy with what she had become. Happy, also, to soon become something else.
Down at the foot of the building, the children were being ushered away as night started to fall. The impromptu concert continued though. And so the sound of drums, violin and a couple of harmonicas accompanied the sun as it finished its journey toward the horizon. Colors flowed through the sky like a tide, spreading far and wide: oranges, reds, and purples that slowly turned into a deep, dark blue as the sun finally disappeared, far beyond the walls, beyond the countryside, beyond Kate’s reach forever more.
Quiet steps came up behi
nd her. She smiled though she didn't look back.
“Trying to get a suntan?” she asked. “The sun only went down seconds ago.”
Blake sat behind her, his legs on either side of hers, his arms encircling her to hold her close.
“I know. I felt it.”
“Oh, right.”
He'd mentioned this before. She should have remembered. She supposed that soon she'd know it intimately.
“So, how was it?” he asked, his lips brushing against her ear lobe. “Pretty?”
“Very pretty. I wish you could have seen it with me.”
The kiss to the back of her neck caused her to shudder.
“We'd have liked that too,” he murmured. “But we remember. Well, I suppose Marc does, but I definitely do. He sent me out, like he sent you. Said I needed to have that last memory. And he was right.”
“Isn't he always?” she teased, and received a light bite to her shoulder for her trouble. She laughed quietly before leaning her head back against his shoulder. “Where were you for your last sunset?”
“On the West Coast. I sat on the beach for a couple hours, my feet in the ocean—”
“And there was sand in my car for weeks after I got him home,” Marc said behind them. “This is much better.”
“Why do you care?” Blake shot back. “It's not even your car today. Speaking of, did your boy make trouble?”
Reaching behind her, Kate poked a finger at his ribs. There was teasing, and there was trying to annoy Marc. Blake wasn't always all that good in seeing the difference. Or maybe he simply didn't care.
“No trouble,” Marc said, leaning his back to the guardrail next to them and looking down at the two of them. “Daniel actually had a car ready for us. Although he did say he wants it returned when we're ready to come back to the fight. I think he's just trying to make sure we'll come home to the squad and not join the first group of fighters we run into.”
