Deadhead (A Marnie Baranuik Between the Files Story)

by A. J. Aalto

  The two immortals sped ahead of me to cut me off, pouncing and leaping like wild things in the moonlight. Their speed was breathtaking, no matter how many times I saw it. Harry was in front of me in a flash, stopping suddenly, a wall of immortal clout. I dodged him, but his arm shot out and collected me in one smooth motion that mocked my efforts. A low growl was my only warning before he sank fang.

  Without the Bond’s tempering and warming and transmuting the act into one of lust, trust, and affection, the raw pain was astonishing. Harry let me, made me feel it. The shock rocked my body into an arch, and my arms flailed helplessly at the air. I opened my eyes to see Wes’s hand coming at my face. It closed over my nose and mouth while I wriggled in a vain attempt to throw off the revenant—Vampire! Vampire!—latched onto my jugular. Harry dug in further, pressing painfully deep, as he’d never done before. A cry leaked out of my throat against Wes’s insistent palm. I inhaled, thrashing crazily against the both of them, and the last of the powdered herbs blasted up my nostrils.

  The next round of sneezing caused so much pain around the fangs buried in my flesh that I nearly passed out. I shook uncontrollably until one last jolt raked the spriggan free; she fled in a small desperate swan dive, a green arch in the air that tumbled pitifully to the grass.

  Harry released his titan grip but loosely held me as he settled me to the ground beside my little ward. “Now,” he said, “let us give her a reason to stay out.”

  I belly-crawled to my spriggan; part of me felt empty and naked without her, and my head swirled and pounded to match the throb in my neck. I pressed one gloved hand to my wound. As my brother shapeshifted into his slipper-humping bat form with audible pops and snaps and squeaking noises, I averted my eyes and instead watched my spriggan quake like an injured mouse. Mina, I thought. That’s her name. Mina. She remembers a greener place.

  “Mina,” I said softly.

  “Trouble,” Batten said. “That’s her name.”

  “Good heavens,” Harry murmured. “Then won’t she fit in perfectly here?”

  “She didn’t mean harm,” I said, scooting across the grass toward the tiny, limp figure. My temple throbbed with what promised to become a whopping post-adventure headache. “She was doing her best to survive and spread. That’s her job.”

  The spriggan’s small, yellow eyes fluttered open but rolled back in her head.

  “Thing’s dangerous,” Batten muttered. “Reconsider this bush transfer. Should squish it while it’s neutralized.”

  I felt a nurturing, mother-bear urge to hide the spriggan away and then punt Batten through a wall for suggesting such a thing, but I knew that was because I was still sharing a link with the creature; she had been in my brain, in my body, in my very self.

  “No,” I said softly, gazing over to the honeysuckle now wedged next to the wide swath of forested land at the west of the property. Protected forest. “She’s not a danger. She wants a cozy place to live and spread, to ramble and roll.”

  Roots. Permanence. Safety. Shelter. But there was the other craving. A new wonder, painted with wide strokes across her tiny, green heart. The flutter of wings. The lift off. Soaring on a draft. Flight. Freedom. Not being shoved from one pot to another, and crammed into place by grubby hands that would never understand her needs and wants. I felt myself nodding. Flight and freedom, to return to a place of safety. Mina’s chest rose and fell rapidly, and though her lashes fluttered, her eyes remained closed.

  Wes’s bat body quivered next to her, and the subtle cupping of wind under membranous wings stirred the spriggan. Mina floundered in the stiff stalks of grass, which were up to her chin; she flailed, swimming through it, hesitating between the inviting security of my face and the temptation to crawl onto the bat and take flight.

  I lowered my face close to her and whispered, “You coulda just asked, you know.” Then I set her on the back of my gloved hand; both she and the glove were a deep shade of green, and she blended in but for her wild eyes. My right hand I turned palm down, spreading my fingers. I focused on the yellow candle’s flame still wiggling behind us in what was now full night, drawing the warmth in visible ripples as psi trembled around the heat. Now that I was alone in my head, the Blue Sense rebounded without difficulty. I dropped my hand next to Bat-Wes and wriggled it a bit to encourage her to hop on.

  Wes flapped his wings and made as if to take off, and it jolted her into a last minute decision. She flung her tiny, stick-thin body onto the damp, matted fur on his back, slick with the effort of his transformation. He hunched as he became accustomed to her tiny weight clinging to him, then took four clumsy steps and lifted off.

  Harry dodged as the bat fluttered directly at his top hat, and removed it to swing chidingly at Wes. He made a haughty noise of disapproval and aimed his very best frown at them as they swung into the shelter of the dark forest, flitting from tree to tree, stirring moths into flight and fluttering every leaf in his wake.

  I felt Batten crouch at my side. “You all right?”

  I touched my wound once more and looked at my glove as it came away dark with blood. I turned the stained fingertips up at Harry, who sucked his teeth unhappily. Mostly unhappily, I noted through the Bond. There was a current of something decidedly molten that he was damping down but unable to entirely extinguish, and, remembering other nights of pursuit through these same woods, ending with his fangs buried joyously, riotously, unabashedly in my far more than willing flesh, I could hardly blame him. I caught his eye to let him know exactly what I thought of that. Yes, please.

  “Oh, I do apologize, my pet. How perfectly thoughtless and inconsiderate of me,” he said, motioning for me to shift closer to him. I leaned against his kneeling form and waved a hand at Batten to turn around and not watch as Harry softly and modestly tended my wound. He spared an extra kiss for my forehead too, and expressed wordlessly through the Bond how much he regretted having to hurt me. I smiled up at him and nodded; no explanations were needed. It worked. I was free. And, having warmed slightly from his feed, Harry also had a bit more flush than usual, and something I wanted to free. But definitely not with Batten standing around.

  The odd couple returned through the dark, a black patch fluttering against the star-pricked sky. When her ride landed, Mina rolled agilely off Wes-bat’s back like a tiny green gymnast and marched through the jungle of the lawn to face me. She cocked her wee head to one side and considered me for a long moment. She seemed to come to some decision. Reaching one thin hand out, she patted the tip of my shoe as if to comfort me, gave her tushie two meaningful slaps that none of us understood, then turned towards her honeysuckle and darted into the foliage.

  I said, “I’m going to assume two butt-slaps is spriggan sign language for thank you.”

  Wesley took a few awkward steps and abandoned us to flight. He’d stay that way for the rest of the night, likely sulking about having been made to play dude-witch and taxi; transforming back to his revenant form would offer a bit more healing to his scars, so that was a bonus.

  Harry dusted off the front of his shirt with a fine, pale hand. “Ripping good stuff. Very nicely done, my darling minion, if one ignores the unwarranted nasal invasion, failed magic, unwanted landscaping, and... oh, never mind all that. Come inside and I shall make for you a victor’s feast of meat and wine and of course the scones.”

  “You’re fattening me up because you haven’t fully fed this evening,” I accused tiredly.

  Harry just smiled.

  Batten and I watched Harry shadow-step with satisfaction to the front porch. He did not look back to see if I would join him, but as he disappeared inside, he said over one shoulder, “Do see that your hunter pays for your services promptly, and in full, Dearheart. I trust you charge extra for hazardous work?”

  Batten gave me a long, unblinking look. He pointed at me with a thick finger then switched to offering me a hand up. “Next time, I hire the dude from Mumbai.”

  I snort-laughed and used his hand to get to my feet. “Next
time, I let you.” I watched his butt until he was in his SUV, waved as he pulled out of the driveway, and then slogged into my cabin, where I could already hear Harry’s pots and pans rattling on the stove and his contented humming filling the kitchen.

  ***

  The next day, Batten added to the TRESPASSERS WILL BE EATEN sign out in front of my cabin with a BEWARE OF SPRIGGANS, REVENANTS, and other Ridiculous MONSTERS placard. He scribbled a little frog on it, gave it fangs, wiggled a cheeky finger wave at my office window, and drove away. He left a check in the mailbox.

  The son of a bitch had deducted his mileage for hauling the shrubbery from his place to mine, and he’d written For sexual favors and weed on the memo line, but I couldn't complain too much: I got my hazard pay multiplier.

  Maybe I'd blow it on a really nice trellis for my new honeysuckle bush. In the morning sunshine, it was already flowering.

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