by Amy Lane
“I’m totally fucking grave and sober, here. What the fuck is that thing?”
Behind me I heard Teague and Mario still gasping for breath before they just plopped down in the grass, one of them on either side—my honor guard of exhausted werecreatures, still on alert.
“I have no idea, mija,” Mario said pragmatically, “but it is some serious fucking bad.”
Teague growled, a residual of his other form. “Smelled like bear,” he panted, tired from the adrenaline bleed. “Really fucking dead bear.”
I spared a grin for both of them—you gotta love two guys who show the same devotion to the f-word that Brack and I do. Beside me, Nicky groaned and struggled to sit up. His face was waxen, and I felt a terrible wave of guilt.
I reached out and threw a little will into my touch. “Sorry, Nick.” I’d totally drained him in my battle fury.
There was an azure spark between the skin of my hand and the skin of his elbow. Nicky made a sound like “oolf” and shot up at a ninety-degree angle to the ground. “Thanks! Wide-awake now! Better than coffee!”
I gave him a weary grin and turned my attention back to the fight. And blinked. And sat up straighter. And hopped to my feet. I was three steps into a full-out run toward the battle itself when Nicky, Teague, and Mario caught me around the waist and hauled me back up the rise—I was shrieking in outrage the entire time.
“No. No. No, you asshole, don’t you fucking dare!”
Bracken had entered the fray.
He was barefoot and bare-chested. His dark hair was a spiky mess over his head, and his spear was twice the height and heft of the other weapons in the fray. His brawny chest was pale and sculpted in the moonlight and, oh yeah, he was magnificent.
He threw his spear into the animal’s flank and then ran toward it, out of the way of razored claws as he put a foot on the spear’s haft and sprang to the animal’s back. With one hand in its ruff, he reached down and ripped the spear out, then raised it in both hands and heaved it down through the back of the thing’s neck.
The thing reared back as it howled and roared, obviously in agony—and obviously not going anywhere either.
“Oh, Goddess,” I moaned, trying to keep my insides from turning to water. The guys had thumped me down on my backside, and Nicky still had his arm firmly anchored around my shoulders. “Why didn’t you let me get him?”
“He’s a man,” Mario answered. “He may be your man, but you and I both know he wouldn’t feel like much of one if the rest of us got to party and he didn’t.”
I looked at Nicky—half-naked, bleeding and proud of it, and smiling softly from under the ends of his sweaty, rust-tipped hair. “Men are stupid,” I said to him specifically, and he grinned without remorse.
“We’re chromosomally brain-damaged,” he agreed. “But remember—if you women didn’t keep boinking us, we would have died out a long time ago.”
I gave a little whimper and settled down, resigned to watch Bracken risk his perfect sidhe body, and then something else added to my tension. The vampires, Avians, and fey who could fly had formed their own eclectically weird circle above the action, sort of a warped version of theater in the round, and they cheered or shrieked whenever a spear shot made it home or a swipe of turkey-platter sized paws missed its intended target. Just to make things even more interesting, Arturo fell out of that cheering circle of bloodlust and landed behind Bracken.
“Grace is seriously going to fuck that brother up,” Mario said behind me, and I nodded. Nicky echoed the movement. With a little sigh, he leaned his head against my shoulder, and I wrapped my arm around him. He scooted and half lay on me, comfortably, as we kept our eyes on the proceedings. There was a shout from the circle, and the thing tried to roll. I gave a little shriek, but then Arturo, Goddess love him, hoisted Bracken up under his arms and into the air. Oh God—Bracken could fly, but not well. We didn’t usually let him, because… because he was as fragile up there as me.
I needn’t have worried. About twelve feet up, Bracken swung, Arturo released, and Bracken did a couple of incredibly graceful rolls in the air before hitting the ground with his hands and collapsing into another roll, well outside the circle of death.
I gave another whimper and put my face in my hands. “I don’t think I can do this.” Nicky rubbed my thigh reassuringly.
Wildflowers, a green-and-yellow smell, surrounded me, and Green’s warm, long-fingered real hand rested on my shoulder.
“’Lo, luv,” he said, and I smiled a little grimly and leaned into his touch. I looked up to meet his eyes, and he gave a jerk of the head to the werewolves and Avians, all in various stages of undress around me on the hill. “I see you’re surrounded by naked men!”
“Lucky you!” I teased, but we both knew my eyes hadn’t left Bracken, shrieking and laughing like his father’s brethren and throwing himself against the creature with the blunt, wrinkled snout and the nine-inch razored canines.
“Mmm….” Green plopped next to me, and I leaned into him fully. He reached a hand in front of me and brushed back Nicky’s rust-colored hair. Nicky sighed, and I was pretty sure the wicked slash on his backside had knit together. Green moved again and wrapped his arm around my shoulders.
“I’m more interested in the woman in the sweats with blood crusting on her face.”
“Wha? Awww…,” I groaned. In the panic of the initial fight, I’d completely forgotten all of my hurts as I’d practically fallen off the hill to get to the meadow. Green turned my face reluctantly from Bracken and put both thumbs on either side of my nose. It was broken—I’d felt that nausea before—but not for long. I closed my eyes and felt the tingle of his healing. Then, completely disregarding the blood around my mouth, he lowered his face to kiss me, and I responded to it, absorbing his sweetness and turning it into strength.
“Where were you?” I asked when we surfaced, and I saw him grimace.
“Business,” he said, and he was obviously not lying, but there was something he wasn’t telling me. Time enough, I thought wistfully. There would be time enough, I prayed, to be with my Green. “Nice job here, luv.”
I nodded and turned unhappily back to the fight. The thing’s howls of frustration and pain kept ricocheting against the hills and back, along with the slightly insane laughter of the gleeful redcap army, and this as well as Bracken’s maniacal screams of triumph added to the general battle roar. My beloved had been riding the creature for a few minutes now, his arms locked around its neck as he turned the blunt, creased snout away from his brethren while allowing them to attack the invader that had gone after our own. The squat granite soldiers kept screaming oi’anga! with apparent worship, and I swallowed my terrible anxiety with a little more force.
“I don’t think he’s injured,” I asked, squinting in the dim light to see. I squinted some more, because the gray had just gotten a little lighter, and then I stood up cursing myself. I am not joking—how incredibly fucking stupid am I?
In my head I gave an urgent “all-call” to the hovering vampires. “Dawn’s a-coming, my children, time to get your asses inside!”
The general disappointment was obvious—they all wanted to see the end of this, and I couldn’t blame them. But I couldn’t let them conflagrate either, so I got my best “mom” voice going in my head until they reluctantly parted from the crowd of onlookers and flew efficiently—if dispiritedly—toward the house. Marcus, Phillip, and Grace came in for a landing in front of us before they left, and I stood to go take their report. Arturo came with them to make up with Grace.
“Seriously,” I said as I got near them, “what in the fuck is that thing?”
All three of them shook their heads.
“I’d swear it was a bear, if it wasn’t for the red eyes, Cory,” Grace said, gnawing on her lower lip with her unpointed teeth. It was one of the few gestures she had that was purely female, and Arturo dared her formidable wrath to come kiss the offended lip. She tried to glare at him, but he just kissed the fight right ou
t of her, and I looked miserably to where Bracken was, still riding the big hairy bad thing like a cowboy on a bronc.
“And if it wasn’t big and furry,” said Teague, coming up to meet us, “I’d swear it was a vampire.”
We all looked at him, and Mario came up to verify. Jack came up to wrap his arms around Teague and eye me and Mario distrustfully, and Katy came up to roll her eyes at him.
“It moved like a vampire,” Mario nodded, ignoring their byplay. “When he was chasing Teague, he moved like one of you, but… not comfortable with it. He overshot sometimes and took a tumble. Like his animal brain just went on overload when he was running balls-out.”
Teague nodded seriously. “It was the only reason the thing didn’t eat me—that and Mario here. Thanks again, brother. Jacky,” Teague added, turning in his lover’s grasp, “you’d best let me keep him, if you want me to keep breathing.”
Jack glared at Mario for a moment and then tightened convulsively around Teague as Katy moved up to add her two cents. Figuring the wolves were having a family moment, I turned toward the vampires and shooed them along.
“Bed, everybody. I’ll clue you in if anything happens before….” I stopped.
Oh, shit. I looked at Bracken, still sitting on top of that thing in the increasingly ashy light. The vampires ignored my abrupt elsewhere-ness and took off in hyperspeed, and my panic started to churn in my chest like a runaway Mack truck down an 8 percent grade.
“Beloved?” Green called, catching my fear.
I blinked. “Sunrise,” I said, looking at him with wide eyes. Together we looked at Bracken and said “Sunrise!” in panicked unison.
The hills behind us started to tinge gold, and blinding sunshine touched the trees and the hovering fey and Avians. I screamed “Bracken!” at the top of my lungs, while my power was doing something more useful.
My fear and my power and Green’s solid hand engulfing mine gave me the fuel to make a giant sunshine spatula, and I scraped Bracken off that thing from the crotch up like an egg from a pan. Bracken looked down at the widening gap between him and the dead thing, surprised and then pissed off, but before he could start hollering at me from across the meadow, Green screamed in a voice I’d only heard him use once before. “My people, move!”
The circle around the vampire bear immediately expanded like debris from a supernova as the first rays of dawn touched the coarse, matted, dead-thing fur.
And it burst into spectacular blue-white-orange flame, fueled by rancid fat around soulless bones, as the damned thing conflagrated with a roar that almost made the fey drop from the sky.
It took a second, maybe—a heartbeat, maybe two—and then there was nothing but a circle of burned black ash about fifteen feet in diameter where the battle used to be, and a whole lot of redcaps, fey, and werecreatures scratching their heads as the lightbulb went up over everyone’s head.
Oh yeah—maybe we really had been in danger.
I gasped out my last strength, dropped Bracken somewhat roughly about five feet from the edges of the big charred spot, and fell to the ground on general principle, flopping back into the frosty grass and shivering uncontrollably.
Green and Nicky were right with me.
“Nice catch, beloved,” Green said, holding both our hands.
“Holy fucking shit, Green,” I breathed, staring into the heartbreaking violet-blue of the spring morning. “That was close.”
“Uhm, Lady Cory?” I looked behind me and up a long set of hairy shins and then even farther up and then swore and closed my eyes. “Jesus, Jacky—would you put your shit away before you get that close? Personal boundaries, werewolf!”
Jack took a panicked step back and covered his crotch with his hand—which wasn’t big enough, lucky Teague and Katy—and turned red. Yes, even down to his hair-covered shins. “I just wanted to say I was sorry,” he said sheepishly. “You had Teague’s best interest at heart. I….”
“You didn’t trust us, Jacky,” I sighed, still flat on my back and intent on getting lost in that spring sky. “I know you’re mad because Teague left you behind on the run,” I said wearily, “but you’ve got to trust that we have your back.” I didn’t look at him again, and there was a quiet murmur as Teague and Katy ushered him away. We’d talk later, but right now there was only one person I wanted to talk to besides Green and Nicky, and in a moment he was at my side, peering down at me from an even more improbable height than Jacky’s.
At least he had jeans on.
“Thanks for that,” Bracken said with a grimace, and I scowled unhappily up at him.
“I like those bits, beloved,” I said, stroking the back of Green’s hand and thinking that Bracken looked glorious from his amazing height, his sidhe beauty and shadow-colored eyes framed by the rapidly lightening blue.
Brack hunkered down, shortening the distance between us, and took my other hand. I let go of Green’s hand, crooked my elbow and pulled, and he leveraged me up into his arms. “I’m rather fond of them myself,” he said into my hair, and I nodded against his lower chest because, like Green, he was pretty damned tall and I was pretty damned short.
“Well, you need to take better care of them,” I shuddered, just breathing in his smell. Sidhe sweat was better than Irish Spring and Old Spice, and it did something warm and fuzzy to my stomach, just smelling him.
Green stood behind us and wrapped his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my other shoulder. Then he opened an arm for Nicky to wiggle into, and we just stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms, awkward and comfortable at the same time, relieved to find everyone in our odd little family still alive and well.
“Tomorrow,” I said, muffled by all that love, “I’m going to rip you a new asshole and totally fuck you up.” All of their bodies, keeping me warm, reminded me that I’d been lying outside in frosted grass on the cold and unprotected portion of the hill during the dark, cold hours of the night, and a retroactive attack of the shivers hit me. The men tightened their ranks, and together we shuddered Bracken’s near miss into the new morning.
“Looking forward to it,” Bracken returned, and then there was a silence interrupted only by the pixies and their smaller kin, brownies, sprites, and tiny hobgoblins whistling as they wielded little spades and magic seeds, turning over and replanting the scorched earth the enemy had left in its wake.
Bracken: Other Things to Fear
CORY TOLD me once that she could tell how close someone had been to death the night before by whose bed she was in and how many people were with her when she woke up. That was early, when Adrian was in her bed at night and Green was in her bed in the day. She woke up one evening after we’d almost lost her—too, too many evenings like that!—and found she was tangled up between Green and me, with Adrian hovering over her anxiously, waiting for her to open those fathomless hazel eyes and reassure him that his undeath was worthwhile.
Even after more than a year of being married according to my people, nearly a year of being married according to her traditions, I hadn’t told her what an exquisite agony that moment had been. I wouldn’t move on Adrian’s girl, not then when he was hovering above us, watching us with love and trust I wouldn’t ever betray. But I’d loved her since my first sight of her glowering at the two of us from under too much makeup and ugly dyed hair. That moment in her bed was my first breathless moment with her, a moment rendered sunlight by the secret joy of touching her, of watching her sleep and knowing she would survive the attack from earlier that day.
Back when I thought Adrian would live forever, I thought it would be the most painful, lovely moment of my life.
This morning I awoke naked in a crowded bed with my beloved’s mouth on my cock. Lovely, yes, but there was nothing painful about it.
We both knew the moment I was awake fully—there was no denying my body or its reaction. I groaned, tilted my head back without opening my eyes, and allowed her to show me that she loved me.
She grunted around me, and the vibrations
of her throat made me groan again. I needed to touch her. I reached out and caressed her bottom, which was up near my chest, groaning again when I realized her sex was slick and warm and used. I took her shudder and whimper as leave to continue petting her, stroking her, playing with her intimately, inside her body and outside, and then move up her thigh, into the crease of her buttock, inside….
“Auuughhhh….” I popped out of her mouth with a wet plop, and she rested her head on my thigh. I was going to put my hand on the back of her head, remind her of what she had started, when I felt Green’s hands moving toward her waist. I moved, and he lifted her up—so easy, in spite of the reassuring weight she’d put on in the last year—and with minimal fuss or positioning, straddled her body over mine, grasped my manhood, and allowed her to slide over me.
Goddess…. It felt so good my back came off the bed and I sat up, clutching her against me, moving, thrusting, treasuring every moan she made against my chest.
Green was busy again, and I leaned back, bringing her with me. She was slick with his spend and loose from my fingers, and he slid into her backside with a satisfying push, his member thrusting against mine, separated by the thin, satiny membrane in her body. My eyes finally shot open and all of us groaned.
Her face was buried against my chest, but I could see Green, his brilliant butter-colored hair mussed and curtaining the three of us. A sunrise-peach flush of passion blotched along his fine neck and cheekbones. He was beautiful—as beautiful as Cory in my arms, if not quite such a dragon in my blood.
There was a movement above my head on the pillow. I moved my head to see Nicky, knees near my ear, waiting patiently for someone to notice him, to touch his pale, freckled skin, to love him in our rapture with each other.
