Rampant, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  “You wouldn’t let me serve you,” he said gently and then laughed at my tearstained outrage when I glared at him. “No, this isn’t your fault. I’m not saying that! It’s just….”

  “Just what, dammit?” I burst out, at a complete loss for words. “I might with bold-faced power sweep him from my sight!” I mangled, because when I was out of words, Shakespeare wasn’t, and it was what I’d wanted—and what Arturo and Bracken had wanted—to do with this guy from the first.

  “Macbeth was a coward, my lady,” Hallow corrected. “You and Green are anything but.”

  “Well, we’ve apparently let you do our dirty work for us, just like he did!” I accused, and then he did that thing. My professor, my shrink, this hundreds-year-old, graceful, poised, and self-controlled being did that thing—that dropping-to-one-knee-in-public-before-me thing—and I stared at him in horror and shock.

  “You haven’t asked, my lady,” said Hallow, very clearly, from his position of kneeling at my feet, “why I would choose to live off of Green’s hill when I spent so much time and energy to get here.”

  “Please tell me.” I was at a complete loss.

  “Atonement, Lady Cory. Please, I beg of you, allow me to earn my place.”

  “Green would never make you—”

  “Green has forgiven me—you know that. But I need to do this so I can forgive myself. Please, my lady?”

  Oh Goddess. “Yeah, fine.” Oh so less than graciously. “Okay, Professor—just please, get up. Please.” I looked over to where Bracken was walking up the slope of the bridge and thought yearningly of his arms and a quiet place to sob in them.

  It wasn’t going to happen, but I suddenly thought it would be worth bleeding out in the toilet one more time to hasten the moment when it could.

  Bracken: The Other Side of Helpless

  SHE CRIED most of the way home.

  I was not sure what happened between the time I left to give Hallow the privacy he so obviously wanted and the time I came back with the extra clothes, but by the time I walked up the bridge, she looked like hell.

  She tried to hide it—for all I know, Hallow may have been fooled that she was going to be fine. She saw me and turned to him, a note of pleading in her voice as she said, “What can I possibly say to make you not do this?”

  Hallow twisted his mouth. “You could always ‘with barefaced power sweep it from your sight.’”

  “Fuck you, Professor,” she said sourly, and in response he laughed—and then bowed.

  That was when the first tear slipped down her cheek.

  He stood and took her arm and walked her to me, so I could actually touch my wife, and I wrapped my arm all the way around her disconsolate shoulders.

  “What happened?” I whispered into her ear, heedless of the fact that Hallow could hear me. She shook her head and mouthed “later,” and still the silent tears.

  Hallow walked us to the SUV in the blessed coolness of the parking structure where the others were waiting, and assured us that the allergies wouldn’t trouble her anymore as long as she was on campus.

  She gave a very polite, very formal bow. “Thank you, Professor,” she said in her most remote “royal” voice. “We’re privileged to have you serve us.”

  Hallow gave a very low bow then, surprising those who hadn’t seen it on the bicycle bridge, and took her hand in his, kissing the ring that marked her bond with all three of her lovers.

  “If you believe nothing else, my lady, believe that the privilege is all mine.”

  She nodded and wiped her face with the back of her hand, beyond words. Nicky, who was neither blind nor stupid, met my eyes in surprise as she crawled into the back of the SUV and into his arms. I shrugged and looked unhappily at the man who had tried his very best to counsel all of us in our unusual situation.

  “I’ll give your regards to Green,” I said, trying to deal with my bafflement. Cory has frequently assured me that I don’t deal with it well. I am trying to improve.

  “Thank you, sir knight,” Hallow said with that little twisted smile, “but I would prefer if my lady does the honors.”

  I looked to Cory to see what she thought. She was looking away from all of us, out the window of the SUV, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Nicky and trying for all the world to behave as though Nicky wasn’t there.

  “Whatever you wish, Professor,” I said, and he bowed and left.

  The SUV was unusually quiet as I negotiated the ins and outs of Sacramento traffic. Usually there was chatter and pleasant cacophony—we were not a quiet bunch. I could see in the rearview that Nicky had coaxed her into his arms. She was nodding as he whispered things to her, and I could see her faint smile through the tears she pretended not to notice.

  Her eyes when they met mine in the rearview were bleak and troubled.

  We hit the I-80 Business merge, and I started to swear.

  “Motherfucking-son-of-a-whore-kissing-buggering-git-turd-cock-swilling-pig-sticking-crap-sucking—”

  “Bracken…,” she said, sitting up a little more and holding back laughter through her tears.

  “Cunt-poking-shit-slurping-manky-fuck-faced-bitch-humping—”

  “Bracken…,” she insisted. The others were looking at me with a combination of amusement and concern. Jack especially had raised his eyebrows to his hairline and widened his eyes as though taking disbelieving notes.

  “Corpse-rutting-cockroach-licking-crab-itching-ass-scratching—”

  “Bracken!”

  “Bastard-crack-of-a-sailor’s-ballsac!” I thundered at her through the car and the shocked laughter of our friends. “What in the blue fuck is wrong?”

  Now she giggled through her tears, and Nicky giggled with her. “Jesus, Bracken Brine,” she choked, “if you wanted me to choke on my snot, you could have just held me upside down!”

  I flushed but continued to flash glares at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?” I asked, still furious.

  She shook her head and wiped her face and then, less gracefully, turned her head to the side and wiped her nose on her T-shirt. It was all she had, since we’d left the Kleenex in the back compartment with the backpacks.

  “When we’re alone tomorrow,” she said softly, surprising me.

  “Why tomorrow?” I asked, all suspicion. Six weeks. Six weeks she had known about Green and Nolan Fields. Had she told me? Had she even tried to put a voice to the pain of that? I knew there were things she didn’t understand about the world of my kindred, but did she think I wouldn’t understand her pain at Green humbling himself? Green should never lower himself. Not our Green. Not the man who sheltered us all in the warmth of his clean and generous heart.

  “Because, idiot, I want you to hold me, and you can’t do that tonight.” Her brows drew together and her lip stuck out, and I could tell I’d irritated and charmed her at the same time—we do that for each other a lot.

  I shook my head and said something dire, and she giggled again, wearily, and went back to leaning into Nicky’s arms. Nicky caught my eyes in the rearview and shrugged a little, and I was both grateful for him and irritated that he got to hold her and I didn’t.

  I longed for something to pummel bloody—and everybody in the car knew it too. The quality of silence didn’t improve after that as I bullied my way through rush hour traffic, up the hill, and toward home.

  Right after we reached the Foresthill bridge she actually spoke, her voice clogged with tears, not allergies. She talked to Jack.

  “I’m sorry, Jack.” He was in the seat bank in the middle, and he got up on his knees and turned toward her. With the exception of Cory, none of us wore seat belts. The werecreatures could endure and reknit most any wound not made with power—and if power were a consideration, we’d have bigger things to worry about than seat belts.

  “’Bout what?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

  “I thank Teague all the time—he works really hard. He loves working for us
, you know?”

  Jack nodded, looking away. He did know, I thought. They’d been working together a year and a half before they’d been bitten—Teague hadn’t been doing it for the money, that was for damned sure.

  “I never thank you. I should.” Her eyes met mine in the rearview again, and they had darkened from hazel to an inscrutable brown. “His work is your sacrifice. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  Jack looked away. “I’m a passive-aggressive shit,” he said at last. “Our bullshit shouldn’t be your headache.”

  “You’re right there,” she said with a faint smile. “But I really value your beloveds. I… I’ve tolerated you for their sake. I should be more grateful to you for who you’ve given us.”

  Jacky turned around and faced forward, his face working for a moment, and I almost felt sorry for him. Leave it to my beloved to figure out why the pissy, whiny little bitch had sprung up in place of the pleasant young man who had first arrived at Green’s home.

  “I should work to be someone to be grateful for,” he said at last, graciously. “I just… I feel like I’m an intrusion—an imposition—because of who Teague is to you.”

  Nicky was the one who answered that—with a snort and a grim smile. “Hell, Jacky, we’re all accidental impositions. The trick is to make that work for you!”

  I’d never thought I’d be so grateful for Nicky, but watching her lean into his comfort as our whole college group just lightened the fuck up pretty much paid for his upkeep right there.

  So things were better just before we got home, but she still darted for Green’s room when we got upstairs, and her disappointment rolled through the hill when she found the door locked. She looked to the kitchen automatically, but the sun didn’t set for half an hour and Grace wasn’t there, and she almost stamped her foot.

  With an exasperated growl, she grabbed her backpack and the sweatshirt looped around it and announced to no one in particular, “I’m going to the fucking garden,” and then pounded the granite stairs behind the living room into the Goddess grove.

  Arturo watched her go with eyebrows raised, then looked at me and Nicky.

  “We don’t know,” I said shortly, watching as Jacky grabbed a couple of bottles of chocolate milk from the refrigerator and headed outside.

  Teague was home today, and Mario too, and we had seen them taking apart more of the old garage/barn that was still being renovated into Teague, Jack, and Katy’s off-campus home. Although most of Teague’s uneasiness at being surrounded by people had faded, much of his pride seemed to be tied up in creating a separate space for him and his family, and he worked at it with concentration and attention to detail. I enjoyed working with him on the house, and part of the reason I hadn’t actually killed Jack yet was that he was an entirely different, secure, funny person when he was in the company of his beloveds. When we were banging out drywall, I actually respected him.

  Of course, it’s hard to maintain a grudge against a man when you are sweating together in physical labor—a fact for which Cory had professed eternal gratitude.

  Right now, physical labor seemed like the best panacea for the ailment of the day.

  “I don’t know,” I repeated to Arturo. “She had a talk with Hallow, and it didn’t end well. She said she’d tell me when I could hold her.”

  Arturo winced, and I made an abrupt decision.

  “Hang on there, Jacky,” I called, stalling him at the door. “Let me change, and I’ll come out and help you!”

  Nicky met my eyes and then looked up the granite staircase. Then he looked at Green’s room, then out the window, where the last hour of daylight beckoned with a sweetness to the air that had been smogged out of the valley but hung thick and promising here in the hills.

  “Wait up!” he called, sounding almost desperate. “I’m coming with you!”

  We worked in relative silence for an hour, until the last of the daylight disappeared. Then we sent Jack and Nicky ahead to the house to shower and tell Katy, who had arrived as we’d worked, that we’d be eating in the weres’ common room tonight.

  I helped Teague and Mario put away tools. Teague looked at me, then looked at the direction Jack had gone.

  “He still giving you trouble?” he asked reluctantly. I shrugged. There had been an unspoken rule to not complain about Jack to Teague. Things were complicated enough without that, and we all loved Teague. We all loved Jack, for that matter—he just made things complicated sometimes.

  “He’d be more secure if you had bonded,” I said without thinking. Then I winced as Mario made a sound suspiciously like a chicken startled in her nest and Teague dropped a hammer on the wooden floor with a loud bang.

  We all stared at each other in surprised silence, and I wished desperately for Cory—who would probably slap me upside the head first, but would find a way to fix what I’d just done.

  “How’d you know that?” Teague asked, his green eyes wide and a fight/flight pulse throbbing in his temple.

  “The vampires at Sugar Pine,” I said numbly. Damn, damn, and damn. I was seventy-seven fucking years old, for sweet Goddess’s sake! “Cory was going to say something to you….”

  “Well, thank God you said it first!” he burst out. “It would be like talking to a little sister about jacking off!”

  I nodded at the analogy, although the incest taboo was a thing my people did not have. “I’m sorry. It’s just he’s all about you and Katy. All. If he’s uncertain about you, or worried, or he thinks we’re taking advantage of you, he’s a giant pain in the ass.”

  “I don’t know why I haven’t bonded,” Teague muttered. “It’s not like I don’t want to.”

  “Whatever reason you haven’t bonded,” Mario said with a sturdy roll of the eyes, “it ain’t ’cause you’re in love with anyone else either.”

  “It’s a power thing,” I said, surprising even myself. Something about the way Hallow had looked at Cory, his anger when he thought she was too proud to ask him for help. It wasn’t love—at least, not the kind I had for her—and it certainly wasn’t attraction.

  “You’re bonded in service to Green and Cory. You take that seriously. It’s probably… just stopping that werewolf thing from happening. You can’t bond with them because you have too many other directions to go.”

  They were both looking at me as though I were brilliant. Cory must be rubbing off. Thank the Goddess. If I kept blurting out shit like that, it would be good to have a follow-up game.

  “So,” Teague said slowly, “it has nothing to do with sex?”

  Mario shrugged. “Don’t think so, papi. Think it’s all power.”

  Teague nodded. “Excellent. I need a fucking beer.”

  And that was Teague.

  We all ended up eating in the were-folk common room. Cory was still up in the garden, and I could feel the tingling, right up under my heart, that told me that even if Green wasn’t done with his appointment until the morning, she was not alone.

  Good. If anyone could make her life simple, even for the span of a conversation, it would be Adrian.

  I liked the were-folk common room. It was built and decorated like a human bar—varnished wood tables, dark wood bar, brass fittings, hanging Tiffany lamps, the works. Jack and Teague looked very comfortable here—or they would, but something weird happened to their personal space the minute they crossed the threshold.

  I wasn’t sure if it was because Jack had showered and Teague had not, or because Katy was sitting between them, but suddenly Teague hunched over the table, shoulders forward and aggressive, and Jack leaned back, scooting his chair far enough out from the table that when he spoke—and he spoke softly, which was out of character—we could barely hear him.

  But their dialog was still the same.

  “Want more?” Teague asked, shoving his plate of potato skins toward Katy. In the banquet room, in the living room—hell, standing in the ruins of the place that was going to be their home—Teague would have been in the middle, and they both would have been s
houlder to shoulder with him, close enough for him to simply gesture. Katy rolled her eyes, ate her grilled chicken salad, and pushed the plate toward Jack.

  “Not hungry,” Jack said.

  “Eat.” It was an order, and Jack grunted and scooted forward just close enough to scoop the food off the plate.

  I looked at them curiously. Teague was drinking his beer with a reverence that Cory reserved for steak and steak alone, and Jack was looking at Teague sideways, as though he was something he yearned for, something long denied.

  “Stop that,” I commanded roughly, shoving a bite of Thai pasta into my mouth in irritation.

  The three werewolves looked up at me in surprise.

  “Stop what?” Teague said after a swallow of beer.

  I glared at him. “Stop acting like gay men in a straight bar,” I told them, shuddering with the horrors that humans inflicted on each other. “You can touch each other. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody gets hurt, nobody bleeds out. Just fucking stop it.”

  They all looked at me in surprise, and I felt, under the table, Nicky’s understanding hand on my thigh.

  “It’s their space, Brack,” he said softly. “Maybe we should let them be.”

  I nodded and swallowed. There was a noise from the doorway, and I looked up in time to see Leah, looking like tears and sex, come through and sit next to the other werepumas, who all moved around her in a commiserative pack. So Green was done, I thought vaguely. And still, that buzzing in my breastbone, that… feeling. Adrian was here, on the hill, and I was denied my family by stupid human things I had no control over.

  Looking at the three of them hurt, and suddenly I had to get out of there.

  I pushed my dinner aside and stood up, excusing myself gracelessly, and walked blindly to our room.

  I’d been sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs that were grouped around the table and lamp—our homework place, or dinner place if we didn’t feel like eating in one of the main rooms—for a couple of moments, looking at the essay question for our missed film class and wondering if anyone would mind if I went into the front room and watched that strange movie again. Then I saw Cory’s note in the margin of the prompt: