by Amy Lane
He wanted it so badly his lungs labored under it. So badly his stomach cramped.
They had two more things to get, but first it was time to go home.
ACCORDING TO Suriel’s prediction, Harry woke up in a few hours, ate all the granola bars, apologized profusely for getting shot, and agreed that while peaceful, wherever they were was creepy as hell, and he was more than ready to go back.
Which meant he was feeling well enough to boomerang them back to the minivan, still parked on the savannah.
It was infested with lions. They’d eaten most of the upholstery—but they’d left Edward’s carry-case of spell articles alone.
The five of them stood, staring at the beleaguered automobile, heads cocked. Suriel supported Harry with an arm about his waist, because the boomerang had taken it out of him after a trying day, and as Harry made helpless gestures toward their one method of transportation, Suriel kissed him on the temple.
“We need to get that carry case,” Edward said rather grimly. “We can’t go through all that again.”
“Wait,” Harry muttered, holding up a finger. “I’ve got a plan.”
“Against lions? What are you going to do, catapult them to where the snakes went?”
Harry squinted at Edward and Edward squinted back. “No, idiot. I’m going to boomerang the damned case. It’s got your blood, sweat, and tears in it—literally.”
“Francis made it—use his. I did not cry over the damned case.” Oh, but he had.
“Bullshit.” Harry let out a sigh and dragged his hand through his hair, sending it flurrying in every direction. “Look, Edward, we’re worried too. We were careless with that last run. It’s why we got caught flat-footed. I’m sorry we had to take a detour to big-corn-land, but trust me. And come here and spit in a bottle.”
“Nice.” But Edward got it. Harry was going to boomerang something dear to Edward—so he was going to use a little essence-o-Edward to start the spell.
“Shut up, pull out a few hairs, spit, and if you can shed a tear or two—or even some blood, that would be helpful too.”
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the baby food jars they’d all started carrying around just in case. You never knew when you were going to step over a white snail with seven chambers to its shell, did you? Or see a green ladybug. You never knew what part of the spell was just going to be there, looking you in the eye, so you had a sample bottle there—they all did.
Looking half-asleep, he opened the jar and grimaced.
“Ugh,” Edward agreed, taking the jar from his bloodied hand. Yes, the wound had closed—but all that blood he’d lost had dripped right down his arm. Edward put his own samples in the jar, and Harry reached into his other pocket and pulled out the keys to the car.
“Let’s just see if this still works here,” he hazarded, and with a little click, the back hatch opened slowly, as one of the puzzled male lions stuck his head out. Harry stared at the case, which sat under the totaled ice chest, and closed his eyes. Suriel wrapped both arms around his shoulders, obviously sustaining him in the most basic way possible, and after a moment or two, Harry took a few steps away.
“Here goes nothing,” he said. Then he stopped himself. “We only need the two things in addition to what we retrieved today—”
“I need to talk to you about those….” Edward grimaced, and Harry rolled his eyes.
“Later?” He showed his teeth.
Of course. “Yes, later. And yes, the snakeskin and the rhino horn are the last two things we can get now, and Francis and Beltane have them.”
“Well, then—let’s send the case back to Emma and Leonard, and then we can trudge down the road until we find a place to sleep, and when we wake up, the rest of us can join it.”
Harry’s face was white and sweating, and Edward realized what a cost this was to his brother. For the umpteenth time, he got angry at whoever had fucked with their list and sent them off on a wild goose chase to the African savannah.
“Fair deal,” Edward said. He frowned. “Does anybody have charge in their phone?”
“I do,” Beltane said smugly. “Because I brought a battery.”
Edward rolled his eyes, unimpressed. “Because you are 200 pounds of mostly muscle, Bel. A battery doesn’t make a dent in your trousers. If any of us tried to carry that thing about, it would drag our pants to our knees.”
Bel grinned. “I have my uses.”
Edward smiled weakly back. Beltane—the three familiars had loved him from the moment he was born. It was hard to stay irritated, even if irritation was what was keeping you upright when you’d had a hell of a day.
“Okay,” Harry said, sounding resolved. “Gonna do this, then gonna run like hell. We all ready?”
“Ready, Harry,” Bel said.
“Ready, Harry.” Francis was human—which said he was as serious as the rest of them.
“Good luck, brother,” Edward told him, and Suriel trailed worried fingers over the nape of his neck.
Harry closed his eyes, mumbled his spell and….
Disappeared.
Or not disappeared per se—more like he got dragged by an unseen hand, past the brothers, out of Suriel’s arms, and straight for the minivan full of lions. He hit the trunk at full speed, and nobody was more surprised than Edward when he had the presence of mind to grab the case by the strap before he blurred out of sight again, disappearing before he hit the horizon.
Ping.
No more Harry.
No more case.
Gone.
The lions roared experimentally, obviously as surprised as the humans, but then they went back to gnawing on the headrests and the lid to the ice chest, because flying humans were just too much of a bother.
“The actual fuck,” Edward swore, his voice cracking sharply. His brother and all their hard work—just gone?
“He must have gotten some blood in the jar,” Suriel said practically. Then, “Oh, sweet heavens… Harry!”
At that point Bel—who was standing, jaw as dropped as the rest of them—reached into his pocket looking bemused.
“Mum?” He paused. “He’s okay, right?” Bel grimaced and held the phone away from his ear. “He showed up home,” he said over his mother’s screeching.
“Great,” Edward said, meaning it. “And the case?”
Bel stuck his tongue out at Edward and then pulled the phone to his ear. “Uhm, Mum, was he carrying anything when he showed up on death’s door?”
More screeching, but Beltane brightened as he held the phone away from his ear. “Yes—totally intact,” he said happily.
“Great!” Edward felt the tension dissolve from his body so fast, he actually sagged against Suriel. “He’s okay,” he said to nobody in particular. “Does she say anything about—”
At that moment they all felt the stomach-lurching displacement of a boomerang done by a truly irritated witch, and the savannah fell away.
When the world stopped spinning beneath their feet, they all collapsed to their knees in the front room of what had been their home for the past 140 years.
Emma stood in front of them in a bathrobe, hair crackling about her head and escaping from its customary braid, and Leonard stood next to her.
“Who shot Harry?” she demanded. “That’s all I want to know. Who shot him, and are they dead?”
“Oh, Mum,” Bel said, sounding beleaguered. “That was three crises ago. For all we know they were eaten by snakes. Speaking of which, is there anything to eat around here?” He scrambled to his feet. “We’ve been living off PowerBars for the last three days. I’m famished.”
She glared at her youngest, the child she and Leonard had given a great deal of their power and some of their immortality to bear. “There’s leftovers in the fridge,” she said, voice cold but civil. “So you didn’t kill the person who shot him?” She glared at Suriel. “Seriously?”
“We were surprised,” Suriel said simply. “Harry pulled us out of the ambush. Can I see h
im? Where is he?”
“The bathroom,” she said with a huff. “Where all of you are going, I hope. Dear Hecate—the stench coming off the five of you could crumble this house to its foundations. When was the last time you even—”
“Hawaii,” Francis said, standing up with Bel’s helping hand. “We all swam in the ocean. It was lovely. Then we almost fell in a volcano. Edward saved us. That was scary. I mean, I can fly, but I would have fallen in if everybody else was going to. Fish? Do you have tuna?”
“Always, Francis,” Emma said absently. “Did he say he could fly?”
“Don’t ask us,” Edward told her bluntly. “He just started flying on the first day. It’s come in handy more than once but….” He grimaced. “Emma, Leonard, we have a lot to talk about—”
“Like what in the holy hell you were doing on the savannah!” Leonard burst out. “I don’t remember anything there being on the list!”
Edward and Suriel met eyes. “Like that. Look—can we just… just….” He felt the mirror in his pocket grow warm. “Can we get some food, shower—”
“Burn those clothes,” Emma said direly.
“Do that,” Edward agreed. “And even nap. And then meet back here tomorrow morning?”
It was the sort of thing Harry would have done—and it took a bigger act of will than Edward knew he had.
But Leonard and Emma responded surprisingly well. “Fine, son,” Leonard told him, nodding. “Suriel, you may need to go help Harry in the shower. We’ll bring a tray of food to Harry’s room for when you’re done. You too, Edward.” There were four bathrooms in the house in Mendocino now, when there used to be one room and an outhouse. “Bel and Francis are apparently going to eat the refrigerator before they bathe, but yes. That’s a plan.” Leonard met Edward’s eyes then. “I’ll speak to you when you’re done with your shower.”
“And Francis,” Emma cautioned, “you and I need to have a little talk.”
Francis rolled his eyes, and Emma held up her hand.
“And if you think you’re getting out of it by turning cat, remember, I can put a stop to that.”
Francis glowered. Emma had only done it once, but she could pull Francis’s familiar powers. Francis could be incredibly intractable about facing things as a human being.
“Fine,” he said shortly, shoving a forkful of tuna into his mouth. “After food and bath.”
“Agreed,” she said. “Bel, you need to be elsewhere when we have this conversation.”
“Whatever,” Beltane grunted. He’d apparently found steak, and nothing was going to turn him from his purpose.
“Edward, you’re standing there stenching up my nice living room. It was a great plan. Make it so.”
Edward nodded meekly and trudged off toward the guest bathroom, Suriel at his heels. Suriel split off at the hallway to the bath that adjoined Harry’s and Edward’s rooms, and he paused in the hallway.
“What?” Edward asked, weary to his bones.
“It’s good to come back home from something like that,” he said, sounding contemplative. “All those years, I wondered how you boys left home to go on your adventures. I had no idea that it was the coming back home that gave you your strength.”
Edward smiled faintly. “I want Mullins to come back to this someday,” he said, and then hated himself because the tears spilled over.
“He will,” Suriel told him soberly. “Believe it.”
AFTER THE shower, Edward curled up on his bed with one of several ham sandwiches and a giant glass of milk that had been waiting for him when he was done. While he was eating, he checked his mirror. Scrawled across the front was Please tell me you’re okay.
We’re fine. We’re home. Harry got shot again, but we hope he’ll be okay after some food and a good night’s rest. We have all the ingredients. We just have to figure out who dicked with the list.
It was a lot to fit onto the mirror. Edward looked into the glass and said, “I miss you, beloved,” and then folded up the battered compact and put it on the table.
He felt weariness in every bone, every sinew, every corpuscle. He must have dozed off, because when he startled, Leonard was in his room, sitting by his bed.
“Sorry,” Edward yawned, and Leonard gestured to the half-finished sandwich on his plate.
“Don’t be sorry. Eat. Be full.”
Edward sat up and picked up the sandwich. “Harry?”
Leonard gave a resigned shrug. “We will always worry about Harry. Apparently he got a few flakes of blood into the sample jar, so when he cast a spell asking for blood sweat and tears to be taken to safety….”
Edward snorted. “Oh, heavens. That’s… that’s….” He couldn’t help it. “Poor Harry!”
Leonard chuckled softly. “Well, yes. He did some very creative swearing when he landed here. And some bleeding. The trip was rough.”
Edward groaned. “This was supposed to be my quest!”
“You would deprive your brothers of all the fun?” Leonard asked, laughing. “Seriously, Edward—Emma and I are just so pleased the four of you enjoy doing things together still.” He sobered. “We… for those first years, we couldn’t even hope you’d all stay with us. I’d been alone in hell, Mullins and I, clinging to each other’s hands, you understand? So afraid of betrayal on every side. So many years. And then I had a family. The way you and your brothers looked to us—”
“We were terrible!” Edward remembered every petty rebellion, every resentment to the two people trying to raise them when he and Harry had been making a living on their knees for years. He’d complained bitterly to Harry at every turn about how Emma and Leonard kept giving them orders, and why did they need to clean their rooms anyway?
“You were boys,” Leonard said kindly. “And you were ours. And we would go to sleep at night praying that you’d let us parent you just one more day, because you needed us. And every day you woke up and you did. Emma and I used to rack our brains coming up with spellwork that you’d enjoy—that wasn’t dangerous—to make it worth your time to stay. So desperate. And then you brought that girl home. We had a mission—and a worthy one. It’s still worthy. But you all forged yourself into our family.” Leonard reached out and ruffled Edward’s hair—a rare physical gesture from a man who had learned restraint in the bowels of hell. “And now I can’t imagine our lives any differently.”
Edward smiled a little, warmed. “I’ve really only followed Harry’s lead,” he confessed sadly. His brother had worked so hard. It hadn’t been until he’d stood to cast that final boomerang that Edward had realized what a toll the past two weeks had taken on him. He remembered those dark days when they’d feared that Harry would lose himself, die pining for Suriel, whom he’d been sure he could never be with. He’d thought his brother was the most self-centered asshole on the planet then, but that hadn’t been it at all.
Harry had taught him, with everything in his fighting heart, what it was to love someone more than yourself. He’d loved Suriel more than his own life. He’d loved his brothers more than his pain.
When he’d thrown himself into Edward’s quest, Edward’s secret relief, his joy at working with his brothers for the duration, had been a palpable thing.
It had been the thing that gave him the courage to kiss Mullins, to launch into their quest with hope.
Leonard snorted. “Oh, that’s a load of crap and you know it. Boy, I’m not sure which two boys you’ve been watching for over a century, but you and Harry function very well as a team. Yes, Harry always has the first plan of attack, but you’ve often got the one that saves everybody’s ass. You want to know what my happiest moment in the last year was?”
“When Suriel came back and they got to be together?” Because Mullins was still just a hope, and Edward’s relief that his brother’s lover would be with their family had been acute.
“Besides that,” Leonard conceded. “It’s been a big year. But no—when you asked if you could build your cabin on the property too. Because that meant that
our family would get bigger, and it would change—but it wouldn’t disappear.”
Edward nodded. That thought had occurred to him too. “Who knew you were never too old to need your parents,” he said with a smile.
“Mm.” Leonard nodded, and his expression grew stern. “So, were you and Harry ever going to tell us about Bel and Francis?”
Edward and Harry had learned how to lie fluently in their childhood at the Golden Child. It had been their only way to survive. “What about them?” he said, making his green eyes big and smiling prettily.
Leonard cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “That was amazing. Try again.”
Edward let out a sigh. “Suriel saw it first,” he said. “He didn’t seem… concerned. Harry and I lost our shit all over each other, of course, but… but they’re… you know. Them. They’ve been inseparable since Bel’s birth, you know? This just seems like they’ve… grown into it, I guess.”
“Mm.” Leonard pursed his lips. “Your brother….” He caught himself with a twist of his lips. “Francis,” he elaborated, “has never taken a lover. Did you know that?”
Edward nodded, biting his lip. “Over two human lifetimes. It’s a long time.”
“Yes—yes it is. And we… I guess maybe it was inevitable. I guess we just thought they’d… you know. Learn what the rest of the world had to offer. You did. Harry did. Even if he never settled on a mortal lover, he knew what he was walking away from.” He sounded resigned.
“I guess our fear is that if it didn’t work out, we’d never see Francis again,” Edward said, and it felt good to say it. “He’d turn into a cat for eternity, which is great to keep down the vermin, but sometimes it’s nice when he’s our brother.”
Leonard let out a laugh. “Your mother would not allow that,” he said soberly. “Five years, maximum, before we took away his cat power and made him be human for a while. But you’re right. He’s… peculiar, your little brother. He doesn’t react to emotions in a predictable human way.”
