by Beth Dranoff
“Which time?”
“Either,” said Anshell, his mind still chasing down Sam’s new theory. “They talked about spilling your blood, correct?”
“Yeah.” I was trying to process all of this. “But—portals?”
“You work at the Swan.” Ivy Vine Girl. Anika. At least she was dressed this time—baggy grey open-necked T-shirt, black yoga pants, deep purple hoodie. Easier to focus when I wasn’t trying to not stare at her nakedness. Or Sam’s arm draped around her. “You must get visitors from dimensions there.”
“And?”
“Ever ask how?” Proving Anika was not as familiar with our clientele as she thought.
“That’s not happening,” I replied. “Don’t last long at the Swan by asking questions.”
“What about the Agency?” I’d forgotten Lynna was there. “Could you ask them?”
I shook my head. “The less the Agency remembers me, the better,” I said. “Plus Ezra is still with them. I think. Anything he knows, there’s a good chance they do too.”
“If Dana’s father’s theory was accurate, and her blood is an amplifier, maybe we’ve been looking at this all wrong,” Sam said. “What if they don’t need her to open the portal at all? What if they need her as some kind of living, breathing doorstop to hold this inter-dimensional gate ajar while the baddie’s friends come over to play?”
“In which case,” said Anika, “isn’t it possible her blood could be used to close it as well? Assuming what her father wrote her was true.”
“Stuart was telling the truth,” said Mum. Guess she’d changed her mind about staying quiet after all. “My daughter’s blood is an amplifier, and whoever keeps coming after her must have figured it out.”
* * *
Together, we came up with a plan.
* * *
“Bait,” I said. To Sam’s crossed arms, my mother’s tightly pressed lips, and Lynna’s pile of shredded paper towel. Anika gave me the nod, though. “Come on,” I continued, turning to Anshell now. “It worked before. You know, that time you didn’t tell me what you were doing.” Sam flinched. “You know it makes sense. It’s the best way to find out what’s going on, draw them out. They want my blood? Let them come and get it.”
“It’s a risk,” Anshell replied.
“And not a good one,” said Sam.
“No,” said my mum. “I can’t lose you too.”
“Look,” I said, gentling my tone. “I’m a target anyway. They’re coming for me. Isn’t it better for me to face them with backup? Instead of alone at 3:00 a.m. in a dark alley or parking lot or my own bed?”
“Does that mean you’re committing to the pack? Even before your full shift?” Anshell’s questions were a formality—we all knew it. It’s not like I had a choice. Not anymore.
“Yes,” I said, and kept the rest of it to myself. “Can I, though? Without the full shift?”
“It’s unusual,” Anshell acknowledged, exchanging a glance with Sam. As though my capacity to change relative to pack status was another in an ongoing series of arguments both for and against my membership. I wondered which side Sam came down on. “Your partial shift takes more power than a full shift. In theory, at least.” He shrugged. “But tonight would be your last chance this moon cycle. We’d be gambling that you can do it.”
“Are we talking calculated risk or long shot?” Always good to know one’s odds going in.
“You would have the pack,” Anshell said. “And your vampire friend Jon as well, if he is willing. In case.” Anshell didn’t say in case of what. I didn’t push it.
“So, what, your brilliant plan is to use my daughter to draw out these evil creatures?” My mother, ladies and gentlemen. “And then?”
“The bad guys come out to play,” said Anika. “And our Alpha and his second come up with a ritual to slam that portal door in their demon-ass faces.” She turned to Anshell. “Am I right?”
Anshell nodded.
“And what if...” Lynna trailed off, shook her head and started again. “What happens if the plan fails and the bad guys capture Dana? Use her blood to keep that portal open? What then?”
“Then we have a larger problem,” Anshell said. “Let’s do what we can to avoid that.”
* * *
Anshell and Sam drifted off to get ready, leaving Mum and me alone. I reached out and touched her hand. There was a lighter area on her ring finger where her wedding band, stubbornly lodged all these years since Dad’s death, was now gone.
Huh. She was mad.
“You were a baby,” she said. It felt as though the words were being scraped up and out from deep within my mother’s chest, the weight of the guilt and sorrow and time compacting her shame. “I was tired and I had a migraine and you were being fussy. I thought Stuart was being helpful, offering to miss an afternoon of work to take you to your doctor’s appointment. It was supposed to be a routine checkup.”
“What happened?” I tried to squeeze mom’s hand for support but she gently withdrew it. Pulling into herself.
“I don’t know exactly,” she replied. “I assumed you’d been to the doctor and everything was fine. You were asleep when I got up, and your father didn’t say anything.
“It wasn’t until I was giving you your bath that night that I noticed the spots. I’m not religious, you know that, and I had no idea what the pattern represented. Until now. But I did ask. Your father was distracted, as always, and said something about allergy tests. That the marks would probably fade over time.”
“But they didn’t.”
“No,” she said, “they did not. Your father mentioned something about a reaction to the needles, the possibility of allergies. I was stupid enough,” bitterly this time, “to believe him.”
I reached over to take hold of her hand. She was so hard on herself, always. How could I blame her for loving and trusting her husband? Why would she not have?
“I don’t blame you,” I said. She sniffed and blinked back moisture but didn’t reply. “I get the feeling Dad had a lot of secrets.”
“And they killed him,” Mum said, as though finishing what she assumed to be my dangling, unsaid thought.
“Maybe,” I said. Did she need to know Dad might still be alive but wearing the skin of my former academic advisor? It was still only the beginnings of a theory, and I had no real proof. Given how disturbing the possibility was to me, on so many levels, I definitely didn’t want to inflict that emotional spectrum on my mother until I was certain. Maybe ignorance didn’t equal bliss, but I doubted this knowledge would bring any joy either.
* * *
I needed a break from all of the emotional drama, so of course I went to check in on Sandor. No danger of drama there. Nope.
He was napping lightly when I arrived, his snores filling the small, antiseptic room.
I eased myself into the squeaky orange-circa-1973-pleather-slash-vinyl chair. Just me and my hot, decaffeinated rooibos chai tea. Pulled off my hat and gloves, undid the buttons on my coat, and stomped snow and damp off my boots before swinging them up and onto the window ledge.
“Want some?” I knew Sandor was faking me out with that whole snuffle-plus-snore-interruptus combination. Hell, he’d taught me the routine.
“C’mon, Sandor,” I said, as he continued the sleep charade. “Enough. We both know you’re awake. Be my friend. Stop pretending and talk to me.”
Sandor didn’t respond immediately. Instead, his third eye—the wart-encrusted crown embedded in the blue-and-green-edged folds of his forehead skin—darted, twitching, feigning REM sleep.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m not in any rush. It’s only coming down to the third night of the full moon. No big. I’d rather sit here and drink my tea, play games on my phone. It’s not like I have some place to be.”
Still nothing
. Although Sandor did make a teensy tiny snort out of his right nostril and only his right nostril. Don’t ask me how he pulled that one off.
“Yup, that’s me,” I continued, settling in and leaning my head back on the padded headrest.
Gods, I was so tired. I leaned back even farther and shut my eyes. Just for a moment. There might even have been snoring. Maybe.
“Probably should have made that tea a caffeinated one,” Sandor’s voice, ever wry, cut into my impromptu nap time.
“Indeed,” I acknowledged without opening my eyes. “Feeling better?”
“Right as acid rain,” he said. I felt a light chill on my cheek, even at this distance, a breath of air expelled with his words.
“Excellent.” I opened my eyes to look into his. At least that stayed the same—an eye for an eye, even if the surrounding skin glowed a different shade than the one I expected. “How long have you known?”
“Known what?” Sandor snorted, a nasal orifice-sized bubble of cerulean twinkling snot expanding and contracting from his snout. Nifty. “Girl, I knew you were special when you walked into the joint some three-ish years ago. Just didn’t realize why, or that everyone and their butler’s ass-wiper would be gunning for you. Keeping you safe wasn’t easy, no matter how smooth I made it look.”
I stared at my boss. Mouth hanging open. “You...what?”
“Kept. You. Safe.” Sandor enunciated each word as clearly as he could through sausage-warted lips swollen from the medication or IV drip or whatever. Who knows—maybe that was his real mouth? I certainly hadn’t been seeing the real Sandor.
And, apparently, he’d been keeping some pertinent Dana facts from me as well. Sweet.
“Do you know why I’m suddenly so fascinating to such a wide array of interested parties?” Regardless of Sandor’s answer, the question had to be asked.
He shrugged noncommittally. At least I think it was a shrug—it was a little harder to tell than usual under all that new skin and a hospital gown.
I thought back to the day I’d walked into the Swan Song looking for a job. Fresh from my discharge. Sandor had checked me out, up and down—not in a lascivious, lip-smacking, needing a shower plus hand sanitizer kind of way but more of an are-you-sure-you-can-handle-this-job thing. I’d held his gaze, no problem. After the lives I’d seen and the things I’d done? No way a tusky, warty demon guy was going to scare me off from a good job with off-the-grid income.
But that was then. And since then, no trouble—not from the patrons and not from my former employers either. I should have been curious. I should have wondered why.
Stupid Dana.
And then I started to remember.
The three-headed banana demons with conical skulls that made strange whirring sounds who’d been giving me a hard time about their order, complaining edging towards ugly and a probable lack of tip. And then, something more—that intangible tang of sulfuric danger. I’d smelled it before. And yet... I turned my back on them. Should have known better. When I turned to look again they were gone, steam still rising from the seats they’d embedded their exterior bits into just moments before. And they’d left a tip after all—a nice one.
Coincidence?
That time I’d thought I was being followed from the Swan. I could feel the malevolent presence so close, my hand was reaching for a weapon I’d stopped carrying months earlier. And then. A whistling. A screech. Silence. I ran for my truck and took off so fast I was lucky I hadn’t blown out a tire or flipped my vehicle on the icy gravel. I never went completely unarmed again after that.
So many times, so many dangers; so many neck-prickling moments made right again. I still knew how to fight, how to defend myself, but I hadn’t had to use those skills as often as I’d thought I would have. Or probably should have.
Sandor watched as realization after realization shutter-clicked its clarity across my face. Until, finally, I closed my eyes against all the things I’d allowed myself not to see.
Sandor sat up and reached out to take my hand. Squeezed it. Patted it. Made a few harrumphs and there there noises. “Doesn’t make you any less of a tough girl,” he said.
“Um, thanks?” I didn’t know what else to say. Thank you for watching my back against threats I’d been too dangerously oblivious to notice? Thank you for protecting me against entities and elements I might have been safer off knowing about so I could at least have maybe been more cautious?
“What kind of life would that have been for you,” Sandor said. “Looking over your shoulder all the time. Running. Hiding. Scared. I was afraid it would kill that spark that made you you—the ballsy girl in combat boots who didn’t take shit from anyone.”
“I’m still her,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Now. But you had to get there, and I had to make sure that happened. There are too many ways to kill a human soul—or somewhat human, I guess, in your case, eh?” A brief chuckle before he remembered the situational seriousness. “I couldn’t let that happen to you,” he said.
I realized I could choose to be pissed. My friend, my boss, had neglected to tell me how much danger I was in because of who I was and what I’d done. Would I have figured it out sooner if he hadn’t? Maybe. But somehow I knew everything Sandor had done had been with the best of intentions.
Probably why they say hell is paved with them.
“So tell me,” I said. Figured if we were going for the big reveal, we might as well dig in with a spoon and a shovel and maybe even a red-painted tin metal bucket. “Why does your brother Gus—pardon me, Gustav—want me dead?”
“He’s not my brother,” Sandor said, looking away.
Was he embarrassed?
“He’s my half-brother by my father. Charming guy, my dad.” Sandor’s tone implied otherwise. “My mother looked like the me you’re used to seeing. Since I can swing both ways, I figured it would be in my best interests to look different from Gus, seeing as we have different interests as well.”
“Like not killing me,” I said. Best to confirm that one.
“For instance.” Sandor nodded to emphasize his point. “You know, he’s not a bad guy.”
Trying to convince me, or himself?
“The thing about Gus is he only cares about family, himself and money—and not necessarily in that order. Someone offered him a lot of money to get you, and profit outranked family this time around.”
I leaned forward and my elbows dug into my thighs.
“Why me?”
Sandor shrugged, a remarkably fluid motion for his bulk and temporary infirmity.
“Been trying to figure that out as well,” he admitted. “From what I can tell, someone told the big bad wolf you’re special. Not riding at the front of the bus ‘special’ but the kind of special that makes you a key ingredient in certain rituals. You’ve never smelled precisely right. Human, but not exactly human.”
I digested that a moment.
“Makes sense,” I said.
Sandor raised a tufty green and yellow eyebrow at me. The one in the middle of his forehead, of course. The other two were busy looking around at anywhere but me.
“Everyone is interested in me—or almost everyone. It feels like I’m the Holy Grail, a catnip-filled sock toy and an ice cream sundae rolled into one big Dana package. There’s always someone or something sniffing at my ass these days.”
“Not always a bad thing,” commented Sandor.
“Granted,” I acknowledged with a head tilt. “Still, it would be nice to get a break from it all. Maybe catch some sleep.”
“You can sleep when you’re dead,” Sandor said. “A state of things I’m hoping you don’t have to worry about for a long, long time, if I have any say in it. And,” he looked at me pointedly, underlining his words with a big thick Sharpie marker, “I plan to. So don’t you go taking on any B
ig Bads, using up any more of your nine lives, without bringing backup. You read me? Am I being squeaky clean and clear here, girl?”
“Um, yeah.”
Sandor reached over and grabbed my hand. Spikes of diamond-dust-blue hairs tickled at my wrist.
“You’re the one they need,” he said. “You can block passage or blow it wide open. You don’t even need to bleed out to do it. It’s all in those markings on your back.”
“Does everyone know about my tats?” I muttered under my breath.
Sandor continued as though he hadn’t heard me, although of course he had—I’d seen his ear tufts twitch.
“Girl,” he said, “you’re marked for greatness or for infamy. It’s up to you which way you swing.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Back at the house, I knew the final arrangements were falling into place but I wasn’t ready to go back yet. Restless. I still had two more hours to kill until the moon rose in the sky to exactly that spot. The one that would unlock whatever needed unlocking.
Currently it was that space between my shoulder blades at the base of my skull.
Sure, taking a nap would be the wise thing to do. But I couldn’t just lie down and do nothing, and my mind wouldn’t shut up.
I craved the familiar, separate from the pack and the blood and the Feed. Tired of making decisions. I wanted control without control, relative trust without strings and responsibilities and mornings after where I had to be part of something that was else. Even though there were always complications. Even if nothing was simple.
* * *
There was a hand-printed sign on the door saying “Closed for private function. Please leave all deliveries at the back door.” I ran my fingers around the edges.
A tall silhouette in shadow on the other side of the barrier; I heard the deadbolt click, saw the door swing inward. Hesitated only briefly before I crossed the threshold into the dusky sanctuary of the gallery.
