by Amy Lane
Bracken eyed the guns and the knives and smiled with teeth that looked suddenly pointed in the dim light. “We’ll be looking forward to it,” he said. All of the werewolves flinched, and Jack hoped he remembered how to fight.
Cory
Being the ‘Little Woman’
Mario and I were supposed to be playing chess in the garden—but what I was doing was shoving little bits of hand-crafted gemstone around on a marble board and reliving my last few moments kissing Bracken goodbye.
We were in the garden in the waning light. Green was at my back, as though he planned to force me to be the little grown-up and part on a good note. I suppose part of me should have been insulted at that—hadn’t I learned enough to be trusted to always say “I love you,” when I said goodbye?
Because the honest to Goddess fact was that you just never knew for sure if was really the last time you’d see your beloved on earth. We all knew that on a painful, personal level, now didn’t we?
Bracken hadn’t looked in pain, or like he expected this to be the last time we’d touch. He’d looked… empathetic and understanding. These two emotions were so far out of his ken, I’m surprised they didn’t break his handsome, overbearing face. He’d cupped my cheek and smiled sweetly—that smile that appeared sometimes and reminded me that his mother still thought he was her only child, the apple of her eye.
“We haven’t made up,” he murmured into my temple. I thrust my nose into the hollow of his neck and breathed in, trying to force his smell past my anxiety, past my resentment, past my resistance. The unthinkable was always right there, on the periphery of our mental vision, and if it happened, I wanted to remember this moment as lovely.
“We’re not done fighting,” I told him, but my face was soft and the touch of his skin on mine was… breathtaking.
“When will we be done fighting?”
I stood on tiptoe and tasted the salty skin at the back of his jaw. Elfin sweat tasted different—sweeter—than Nicky’s sweat.
“When you come back to me whole.”
“Cory, you’ve been in checkmate for the last three moves.”
I blinked at Mario hard, trying to clear the taste of Bracken’s parting kiss from my mind, and then looked at the board, trying hard to figure out what in the hell he was talking about. Oh… oh there… I saw it.
“I hate this fucking game,” I muttered.
“Me too, oh mighty leader. Why are we out here, freezing our asses off, playing it?”
“Because she’s hoping Adrian will show up,” Green said smoothly, emerging from the trap door like he was walking down a carpeted hallway to a ballroom.
“Was not,” I lied without compunction.
“That’s not attractive,” Mario murmured. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“He won’t,” I said with certainty. Less than a week before, Adrian had kept Bracken, Green and I company until dawn. However the vampire’s ghost energy exchanged translated into the real world, it had taxed him or pissed someone off or whatever. I was hoping I might get a glimpse of him before school started up again in three days… but although that might be the limit of my hope, it was not the limit of my admitted delusion. It sure would be nice to have Adrian here to kick my ass about the time I’d almost joined him.
“Well then, why can’t we go inside and watch a movie for Chrissakes!” Mario complained, and I looked at him in amused sympathy.
“All you had to do was say so, idiot! You know very well you’re getting coddled tonight… you can boss me around at will!”
Mario hadn’t seemed to want to acknowledge that he was putting an end to his first year of grieving—and I didn’t blame him. Bracken, Green and I had each other this past June, when we’d sat together in the darkness and mourned Adrian. Mario’s wife’s family lived in Ohio—and they refused to speak to him before their daughter had died. We were Mario’s family, and while I don’t think he wanted to be alone tonight, he certainly didn’t want to spend any more time than mental health demanded brooding over the loss of the woman he’d loved since her childhood.
“Fine. Lady Cory, Lord Green, accompany my sorry ass downstairs and watch a mindless action flick with me please.” He was putting chess pieces away as he spoke, and I figured he was serious. I stood from my place on the bench and gathered our blankets (because, hello, it was late November, and pretty damned cold!) and made to go in. Green reached across the bench to rub my cheek with his thumb—to make sure I was all good—when the Marcus-and-Phillip show was suddenly playing in my head, featuring panic in Technicolor and surround sound.
I saw through their eyes for a moment, as a group of young male werewolves in gang-style brown and green muscled their way into the SUV by subtly brandishing knives and guns. Marcus looked in the rearview mirror for me, and I saw two carloads of the same guys pull up just as Marcus pulled away from the curb. Phillip looked to his right, and I saw a group of similarly dressed men coming out with Jack, while La Mark, stood innocuously at the curb.
I didn’t even have time to say Fuck before the cell phone in my pocket rang. I pulled it out and Bracken said, “Guess what?”
“You’re clusterfucked,” I snapped. “When they get in the car, pretend to hang up and keep your cell phone open—as soon as you stop and the vampires are clear, they’re up in the air with the birds, and you guys can open fire on these fuckers at will. Hang on, I’m coming.”
“Love you.”
“You too.” You dumb, arrogant asshole who thought bad shit only happened to me and all the karma-bitches on the planet would leave us alone as long as I was home.
The vampires were giving me directions, and I put them on hold in my head while I handed the phone to Mario.
“They need me,” I said briefly. “You in?”
A sort of fierce joy lit up Mario’s face. “Fuck yes.”
“Listen and give us the info when we need it. Keep our end muted—they think he’s rung off.”
I hauled down the stairs like a wind of vengeance, with Green at my heels.
“Max, Kyle, Arturo… get in the SUV, they fucking need us fucking now!” In my head I was giving the all-call to every available vampire—I knew there were ten at the very least, zooming on their way from places closer to the airport than we were. Good. The heartbeat thumping in my ears wasn’t singing a song of mercy, that was for goddamned fucking sure.
Max ran out of the room he shared with Renny buttoning his jeans commando style. (Three guesses as to what he was doing with his night off!) “My car, Cory—I’ve got the cherry light!”
God bless the South Placer county police force and their old-fashioned cherry lights. Max had smuggled one from work, and worked off a police band.
“Great,” I snarled. “I drive.”
I practically ran over Lambent on my way down the hall. He’d disdained taking the vampire bite, so I’d kept him home—and I hadn’t called his name on my way down the stairs, either.
But now, the snide, mocking lines of his mouth and forehead were gone, and he was all seriousness and business.
“I’m a healer if you need me, sweets. Please…” Was that contrition? His throat worked, and his grim blue eyes met mine. “Please don’t leave me here while our people are up against it.”
“Right,” I said sharply. “You’ll take Arturo’s place since he doesn’t heal. Sit in the back, don’t bitch about the driving and if I say ‘jump’ you ask ‘how high’ on your way up.”
“Fucking peachy.” He saluted me briskly and trotted down the hallway after Max and Mario.
I took a quick left turn—Max kept his weapons in the trunk of the car, I kept mine in my yarn bag, surrounded by crappy acrylic yarn I wouldn’t use to stuff a pillow. Besides, I’d been barefoot, even in the cold of the garden. When I came out, hopping on one foot and lacing a tennis shoe, I ran into Green. He was looking at me with a grim apology.
“Don’t,” I murmured. “Just… don’t.”
“I kept you here,” he said bleakly
.
“I agreed to stay.” And then, because I had no words—none at all—I kissed him, hard and truly. I would not leave on recrimination. I would not leave on blame. There was only one way we would ever leave each other, for this world or the next.
“I love you,” I said roughly.
“Be safe,” he murmured, but I was already running down the hall, my laces done double and my yarn bag hitting me in the thigh.
Max knew the back ways to the damned airport and after flying down Forresthill road to Hwy 193 like a vampire running from the sun, he gave me quick, terse instructions down Nicklaus and towards I-5. That area had become developed in recent years, but beyond the strip malls, beyond the close, rich suburbs that had been all in demand before the financial crash, there were still-open acres, miles of farmland, a flat horizon where the lights of civilization bubbled over into the night sky like oxygen in deep water.
It was one of these big, blank properties of chest-high weeds that the vampires had been forced onto, using a slim, star thistle clogged service road. I’d had to bail out of their heads as soon as they got there—they were fighting and I was driving, and, dammit, I didn’t want to kill us all before I got a chance to kill some of those ambushing, betraying, dead motherfuckers.
The directions Mario was getting via Brack’s cell phone confirmed my vampire sight, and Max killed the cherry lights and screamer a mile before the turnout. I don’t know why he did that. I didn’t try to hide our arrival by any stretch of the imagination—mostly because I knew what waited for us as we fishtailed to a stop next to the four empty SUVs—with the pile of dead werewolves next to them.
Marcus and Phillip landed next to me as we bailed out of the car, and I was aware of other vampires up above. Every now and then a spatter of shots rang out, but semi-automatics were not accurate on their best days—I was betting these guys were amateurs. The vampires seemed to be dodging the gunfire neatly, and I watched as the thick-shouldered, thick-browed Kyle swooped down and came up with a big ugly puppy in its arms. There was a bite, and then a yelp, and then the puppy dropped limply to the ground—effective, non-lethal, but hardly permanent, and it took a hell of a lot longer than killing the damned dog dead.
“Where’s Bracken’s car—where’s Nicky!” I asked, trying to keep the purely personal panic from my voice.
“Nicky’s with Bracken and so’s La Mark,” Marcus told me gently. “They got here first, so they’re deeper into the center of the field after I got us lost.” I’d been in his head to see that—it had been sheer genius, pretending not to see the tiny side road and shooting half-a-mile clear of it. I’d praise him later—now, things were urgent.
“I don’t know what happened with the rest of the car, Cory. Teague had the guns… I don’t know what happened. They’re using the SUV for cover and in the thick of it.” He gestured towards the circling vampires with his chin. “They’re keeping the wolves from moving in—all of them have silver knives and our guys are in the center of a brawl.”
“No guns?”
“A couple of people—some have silver,” Phillip said with military efficiency. “They’re doing a good job of keeping the vampires away, but we managed to scatter them pretty quickly. Most of them have wounds—they’ve seen what Bracken can do, even from a distance, and they’re afraid of firing the gun because they can’t see well enough not to hit their own people.”
Marcus laughed, low and evil. “Yeah. That was pretty fucking awesome, wasn’t it?”
I nodded my head, catching the visual in the back of my head in a casual way as I scoped out the situation. Standing on tiptoes, I got a partial view of the top of the SUV about a hundred yards away.
Everyone else was covered by the damned weeds—I got flashes of movement, but about all I could really see was Bracken’s head and shoulders—sort of—as he shielded behind the SUV door. It was dark, with only the full moon and the ambient light from the nearest strip mall to illuminate him, but I got the impression that he was wounded.
Fuck. Bracken… Bracken couldn’t get too wounded. Unlike other sidhe who would heal most major wounds, Bracken would just bleed out. I pulled my nice little 9mms out of my bag and as many extra silver clips as I could shove into the pockets of my hooded sweatshirt and jeans.
I projected my next order to all of the circling vampires as I belted it out to the people listening.
“Vamps, avoid the fucking light. When I get to the center either drop flat to the ground, get above us, or stay behind me. I’m getting to the middle of this clusterfuck, aiming out, and killing anything that fucking moves.”
And then I charged my anger and my love and my fury in my chest, held out my hands and opened up a path of light through that chest high field of weeds. There were two abrupt yelps as werewolves got caught in the shield I shot out, but I could give a shit. As I jogged forward, I could finally see them—Bracken, Nicky, and La Mark, all crouching back to back in the center of the field by the SUV. Bracken’s arm and shoulder were bleeding, and he was holding a silver knife that looked like Teague’s, and Nicky was aiming a gun that was definitely Teague’s away from us. La Mark was screaming something at a bristling mass of blond fur and teeth that was in the thick of the mother of all wolf-fights with what looked to be half the surviving werewolves.
Jacky lay at La Mark’s feet, naked like he’d changed and been injured. He was not moving at all.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…
With a scream I threw a shield around the lot of them and parted the sea of weeds and enemies with my fucking anger as I ran to save their lives.
Bracken
The Righteous Ass-Kicking Vengeance of the Little Woman
It should have been over with. Goddammit, it should have been over with about five seconds after we stepped out of the car and the first two werewolves near me dropped dead from blood loss.
I’d been subtle—the one next to me kept asking what was wet on the seat, his voice getting more and more woozy as the ride went on. By the time the car stopped, he had just enough strength to slide out of the car, leaving a painless trail of liquefied intestine in his wake. He stood up, dropped dead, and I brushed neck of the fucker who bent down to check on him. His carotid burst into my hand and he dropped too.
Teague had his guns clear of his holster before the first guy dropped, and he fired a point-blank silver round into the bad-guy nearest him, then I’d grabbed hold of the last remaining bad guy and shoved him, throat first, against the SUV.
“How many?” I growled.
“Man…you just dropped those guys…” He was a young man, Hispanic and by far the smallest of the four men. I smelled urine, and wondered how he’d managed to be dragged into this little adventure. Oddly enough, I didn’t care. Motives were for Cory and Green. Killing the fuckers with the motives—I was good at that.
“How many?” I repeated.
The kid swallowed. “Twenty. Four with you, four in the other car, and two SUV’s full of guys.”
Teague was suddenly in the kid’s face. “What in the fuck was your plan? Take us out and… what?”
The kid blinked. “Well… you know. Take you out and take over. You got a sweet setup, Mr. Green…”
I laughed. “My name, dumbshit, is Bracken Brine Granite op Crocken Green. You never would have gotten within twenty miles of Green. As it is, if we don’t kill you in the next five minutes, my beloved will when she arrives. You and your friends? You just became a domestic dispute of cosmic proportions—and that alone is a reason to kill you.”
“But my peeps…man, my people are com…”
At that moment, a car zoomed by the tiny entrance to this open space in the Bumfuck dimension and the kid watched it pass with sort of a last desperate hope in his eye.
As we were watching that, two other cars—not as nice as Green’s—pulled into the field and unloaded more young men in brown and green.
“Did you think the uniforms would impress us?” Teague asked, and Jack sn
arked behind us. I didn’t even want to look at Jack. Teague would have disarmed three of these guys before they even got into the car—we could have arrived here ready to lie in wait and kick ass.
But Teague was exceptional—and he hadn’t said a word of reproof to Jack during the entire journey. I figured we could wait until this thing played out before we laid out some blame. I figured this mostly because I would be ducking a lot of it from Cory, who was probably breaking every traffic law known to her race in order to get to me.
“Man… we just thought we’d get the fuck out of L.A.,” the guy whimpered, looking at the bodies of his friends and turning a sickly, clammy color. I found I didn’t have the heart to kill him anymore.
“Get in the car,” I grunted, frisking him. I took his two big knives (silver coated—they had expected all their opponents to be were-creatures, thank Goddess) and I had Teague remove the cannon stuffed behind his pants. “Maybe you’ll live.”
“But that’s… that’s like being a sitting…”
He didn’t get a chance to finish—I shoved him in the SUV clicked the alarm.
The influx of new enemies had finally spotted us, and started running, some as werewolves and some as armed humans.
And vampires came swooping out of the sky to harry them. A handful—three or four—seemed to be dodging the aerial attack. Judging from the way the weeds seemed to be rolling towards us in the frosted dark, this would be our lot to fight. Teague readied himself with the gun, as cool as any mercenary, his eyes flat and happy for battle.
“Get behind me, Jacky,” he said softly, and Jack snorted.
“I brought my gun, Teague!”
Teague grunted. “Did you let me load it with silvershot, sweetheart? I’d hate for you to poke a hornet’s nest with a little girl’s baton!”
Jack’s muttered “Fuck!” told us all we needed to know. Without another word he started stripping in the cold and when Teague turned his attention from the wolves—who were getting very close now, Jack was almost naked.