by Amy Lane
“And you,” Grace told him gently.
“And me,” he agreed, touched. “But her first kiss, her first sex—Adrian.”
“Wait a minute.” Bracken looked at him, aghast. “She doesn’t remember creating the Goddess grove? The crown of the faerie hill—all of that… gone?”
“And her first kiss, Bracken. That’s not small!” Grace’s voice was like a smack on the back of the head, but Green held up a hand.
“No, Grace. He’s right. The loss of any memory of Adrian is devastating, of course—partly because there were so few of them for her to have. But the fact that she can’t remember summoning the power of the Goddess grove—that’s dangerous. That’s dangerous to all of us. If she doesn’t remember that she can do that, she might do it again, and there might not be a faerie hill there to terraform when she does.”
Grace nodded, agreeing. “I hear you,” she said. “But…. Jesus, Green, does she know? Has she realized yet what she’s lost?”
Green shook his head. “No—that’s partly what took so long today. She fought him, and fought well.” He smiled grimly at her memory of hurling the “little fucker,” as she thought of him, into a parked car.
“But?” Grace asked.
“But her mind was rolled by a professional. He didn’t want to do it—I think this Nicky Kestrel was under orders from his leader—but he was smooth. Took her to dinner, introduced her to the family. Then Papa Bird decided she wasn’t good enough for the family, and little Nicky did what he was told. Looked at her sadly, gave her time to accept the kiss, and then, as every memory of first kisses and first sex came rolling back to her, he stole them from her lips as she gave them breath. I think, if she hadn’t fought back, he would have stolen it all—every moment with Adrian, every moment with me, gone.”
They looked at each other then, cold and angry. Suddenly Renny burst into sobs, and Green almost smacked himself on the head. He should have sent her for ice cream, or Chinese food, or to make a phone call or catch a mouse, or done something, anything but let her hear the details of the one thing worse than losing your lover to a bloody, violent fate. Renny, who had been so lost without her Mitch that Green had sent her here to the city with Cory, in hopes that the two women who had suffered such loss would heal each other. Green opened his arms and she rushed into them, choking on sobs and ranting with the rusty voice of someone who rarely spoke. They all listened in the silent kitchen to make sense of what she was saying, and all they could make out, in the end, was “I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him, I’ll fucking kill him….”
Green clutched her to him and made eye contact with Grace and Brack, who looked grimly back. “You’ll have to get in line, lovey,” he said at last, and was relieved to hear her sobs shudder to a last hiccup as she calmed down. She looked at Green through reddened eyes and smiled a feral little smile that made Green realize how far away from the honors student who had fallen for Mitchell Hammond she had come.
“We knew him,” Renny said into the silence. “We had classes together, saw movies, he came visiting. He smelled like a shape-changer, and I thought… you know… he was one of us. It never occurred to me… I never even suspected….” For a moment they thought she was going to start crying again, but she didn’t. She just shook her head and leaned weakly against Green’s chest, like an infant.
“It’s not your fault,” Green said, angry. “It’s not. It should have been safe.” He rubbed his face with his hand. “Goddess—I made treaties, I forged alliances, I gave up a fucking gas station in Vacaville to keep you two safe here while you went to school. I met with high elves, shape-changers, and a freaking scary vampire who made Crispin look sane and Adrian look like a kitten, and not a one of them mentioned the Papa Bird I saw in Cory’s head.”
“Then who is he?” Bracken asked after a moment.
“Someone new,” Green decided. “Someone who needs to be kept secret. Nicky had two goals when he rolled Cory. The first was to hide Papa Bird from view, but Nicky didn’t get that done—he was too busy going for his second goal, which was, I suspect, to feed on her memories. Some fey species can feed on emotion like that, yes? It’s usually the bad shit, but not this one—he took the choicest stuff, the best things she had to offer. The stuff she’d miss the most.”
“Not the best stuff, Green,” Cory said from the doorway, and they all startled guiltily to see her there as they talked about her. Even Renny startled, then slithered in a silent rush of skin to fur, leaving her T-shirt puddled behind her as she jumped into Grace’s arms instead. Cory moved into the room on unsteady legs, Bracken’s XXL Kings sweatshirt brushing her knees as she took Renny’s place in Green’s lap. “Not all the best stuff. Not you. If he’d taken you, then I’d be lost.”
“Pretty words, lovey,” Green said softly, gathering her to him, holding her with strong hands and a quiet reserve to his muscles—a don’t drop her, don’t break her kind of holding—and Cory moved restlessly against him, demanding more. Grace, Brack, and Renny were all suddenly somewhere else, leaving Cory and Green in a quiet kitchen with a plate of food in front of Cory.
“He didn’t take our first,” she whispered against his chest. “All Adrian, because I was grieving for Adrian and it was all on top and ready to be taken, but not you. I kept you close inside, and I remember… I remember our first kiss, the time you watched me and Adrian together, our first time, just you and me….” She started to weep then—helpless, tired weeping—and he forgot that she was made out of glass and held her to him like she would shatter if he didn’t. “Adrian’s destined to be stolen from me, Green,” she sobbed. “I was so afraid he’d fade from my memory even before this, and now… just big holes where he should be. I’ll die before they take you too….”
Green’s blood ran cold, because he knew she was speaking the truth. He’d been so happy this past summer when he realized that she was not entirely mortal, that the power that built up in her with her mortal emotions of anger and lust altered the world in amazing ways. But humans could withstand heartbreak. Humans could have their spirits broken again and again, and still live, and still love, and still find small amounts of happiness. Cory, it seemed, had lost just enough of her humanity to make her fragile to the disease of heartbreak, which could kill the fey and sidhe quicker and less cleanly than any knife or bullet. She was straddling some sort of metaphysical fence, he discovered, and whichever side she was pulled down into, he wasn’t sure she could survive the fall.
But he didn’t have experience as a mortal, he thought, somewhat panicked. How did you heal a mortal of an immortal wound? All he knew was his calling—touch, blood, song, sex. It was all he could do—it was how he bound his people to him, and how they returned the energy. It was all he could offer her now. And still he was afraid, because although her cuts and bruises and even her concussion had been cured by their brief time in the hospital, she looked so thin now he was almost afraid that her mortality would crack and shatter and the small immortal part of her would be too small to save her. But, as she so often did, she saved him instead. Her body stopped heaving, and she gave one last snuffle on his shirt and then gave another, more predatory sniff.
“Did Grace cook?” she asked, sniffing some more. Then she gave a shiver that was almost sexual in its ecstasy. “Grace cooked!” She sat up in Green’s lap and twisted toward the table. “What did Grace cook? Hm…. Roast beef, garlic mashed potatoes, and broccoli with cheese.” She turned a smile to Green that almost blinded him with its brilliance. “Can I, Green?” And suddenly the world, and her predicament, seemed so much less dire.
“All yours, Cory luv,” he told her, even as she fell upon the plate in front of her with a hunger he hadn’t been sure she still possessed. He wrapped his arms around her middle and watched her eat, teasing her as he did so about the diets of starving students. She answered in kind, mostly with her mouth full, and by the time she was done with the first plate, the others had ventured back into the kitchen in time for Grace to dish her up a
second plate. Renny had returned to human form and took another plate from Grace, who, in addition to the roast beef (which she had made especially for the girls, since most elves are vegetarian by nature), also dished out a ration of shit for their poor eating habits.
“I’m so pissed at you my eyes glowed red when I was shopping. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain wearing sunglasses at night in a grocery store? And that Safeway was microscopic—I’ve seen Walgreens with more food. You had nothing but Top Ramen and Ritz crackers. There’s no rule that says you have to live on that, you know?”
“Yeah,” Cory said. “But who has the time?”
“You’re not working full-time now,” Bracken told her, getting a couple of sodas from the fridge and giving one to her and one to Renny. “What are you doing with your time?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m taking twenty-four units,” Cory said through a mouthful of food, and Green almost dropped her in surprise.
“What on earth possessed you to do that?” he asked, baffled and exasperated. “I thought fifteen was a full load.”
Cory shifted, uncomfortably but not unpleasantly, then turned and gave Green a weak grin. He grinned back and felt his heart turn over. She had clung to his first, she said, and something he had not known was broken in his heart fixed itself. He had never minded being second to Adrian, but Goddess, it was good to know he had a place other than as solace and healer.
“I wanted to keep busy,” she said evasively, and Green gave his knee a little jiggle, so she shrugged and talked into her roast beef. “And I wanted to justify your faith and your money,” she said, making eye contact with nobody. Green jiggled her again and dug his chin into her shoulder. She humphed and chewed through another piece of succulent roast beef, knowing the idea nauseated Green as much as tasting garlic on her breath had nauseated Adrian. Then she sighed and mumbled, “And I knew that the quicker I got my degree, the quicker I could come back and live with you.”
“I knew it,” Green said savagely. “I knew it was that….” He fought with some choice swearwords and settled for, “I was dying for you to come home, you lackwit—how come you didn’t ask?”
“Green…,” she whined, putting her fork down and wiping her mouth. “Do we have to talk about this now?”
“Please?” Renny echoed. “But first, what did you just call her?”
“Fuckwit,” Bracken supplied.
“No,” Cory corrected, with a ghost of a smile. “He calls me lackwit. Adrian was fuckwit.”
And before the table could make an awkward pause out of that, Green scooped her up in his arms and said, “We’re all fuckwits, keeping you up like this when you still need to heal.”
“I needed to eat,” she mumbled lazily, and they could look at her and see that she was falling asleep in his arms.
“Well, can I pack while you sleep?” Renny asked from the table, looking hopeful. She had gone to keep Cory company and to escape her own pain from losing Mitch, but Green imagined she missed wide fields to hunt and the solace of the place where she grew up.
“No!” Green and Cory said in tandem, and both sighed in sympathy when Renny’s face fell.
They all looked at Cory for explanation. “I want it back,” she said simply. “If he could take it, he can give it back.” Her pointed chin hardened, and her eyes became flat. “I’ll kill him before I let him keep any more of Adrian.” Her voice lowered. “There wasn’t enough of him as it was.”
Green kissed her hair tenderly and nodded. “We need to find who did this,” he agreed. “We want to find Nicky Kestrel, figure out who he was working for, and teach him that my people will be safe.”
CORY
Little Tiny Pieces
GREEN BROUGHT me back to my bed and tucked me in, then shucked to his skin and slid in next to me. This was the part I’d been waiting for since I’d awakened and heard them, hushed and awful, in the kitchen. They’d needed me, I thought. They needed me to be better, strong and okay. And so I had been. But now I was exhausted, and saddened to the bottom of my toes.
“When do I get to see it, Cory luv?” Green whispered in my ear as his arms, strong and solid, wrapped around me from behind.
“See what?” But I knew. I’d known I couldn’t fool Green.
“See past that bullshit you were trying to feed us tonight?” he murmured, and I would have fallen asleep, but he touched me in a nurturing way, and I felt myself feeding off of him in a way I hadn’t been able to do when I’d gone back home for those frantic weekend visits. It was like now I could allow myself to feed from him, I could allow myself to seek comfort from him, because I’d obviously been wounded. When I woke up, I’d find myself wondering how long I’d been selling myself the idea that I had to suck it up and heal without Green’s help. And then I’d find myself wondering if I hadn’t been draining Green to the bone because I hadn’t let him help me at all. But right now, I would just let him keep touching me like there was nothing in the touch but wonder and pleasure.
“You’ve seen it, Green,” I told him, cuddling into his hand around my stomach as he pulled me back against the hard line of his body. “It’s sad, and wounded, and needy, and right now it’s screaming in anger and pain.”
His hand tightened around my hip. “Then why aren’t you screaming?” he asked. “Why aren’t you yelling or stamping your foot or swearing or vowing to hunt down Nicky and threatening death?”
“I can always kill Nicky,” I said, a breath away from sleep, “but I can’t always be touched by you.”
I WOKE slowly, disoriented because it was still dark outside and I couldn’t figure out whether it was Sunday morning or Sunday night. I had been assaulted on the last day of November, I thought muzzily, so what day was this?
“I can hear the gears turning,” Green said softly from behind me, “but I can’t see where you’re headed.” Goddess, he was there, I thought. I had awakened at various times during my sleep to reach for him, and every time I touched his smoothly skinned body, a little part of me thawed and warmed.
“Small gears,” I mumbled. “I can’t even figure out what time it is.”
He folded me into him again. “Sunday morning,” he said. “Sleep.”
I turned and spread my hands over his chest. He had muscles everywhere, I thought happily. Smooth skin, alabaster in repose, peach-colored in passion, with the faintest green cast in the shadowy parts, like behind his ears or between his fingers. He had little body hair, and lots and lots of lean, long-boned muscles. If I had to share my lover, I was lucky that he was more than man enough to share. “Sunday morning,” I returned, licking a hard nipple, nursing from him until his body trembled. “Make love.”
“No,” he told me firmly, if breathlessly. “Make love Sunday night, sleep Sunday morning. Plan Sunday afternoon.”
“No,” I returned, moving down his stomach and breathing on his lovely male sex organ before licking the head. “Make love Sunday morning, sleep Sunday day, make plans Sunday night.” I punctuated each plan with a lick, or a nip, or a deep-throated suck before I spoke. After all these months of trying so hard not to take what Green had to offer and bleeding him dry, suddenly I wanted to give him comfort and pleasure more than anything in the world.
“Good plan…,” he breathed as I took him deep into my mouth again. Before I could even clench his buttocks and bring him to me, he rolled over and moved me up his body, sheathing himself inside me and making me moan. “I’ll try to remember it when I’m fucking you blind.”
Later—much later—he asked me why on Heaven’s earth and under the Goddess’s sky I couldn’t have accepted his healing in the long and dreadful months between July and December.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I mumbled against his chest. Elves have longer torsos and longer legs than humans. It makes their tummies nice and concave, and their fifteen ribs are very well muscled. It’s a good chest for cuddling into and asking for protection.
“You didn’t want to what?” he asked, i
ncredulous. And very hurt. Goddess, did I feel stupid.
“Everything inside me was weeping, Green.” Reaching up, I caressed the sensitive curve of his pointed ear. I don’t know what it did for him, but I never got tired of playing with that inhuman line of his body. “Everything. I didn’t think there was a force in the world that could swallow that much grief. But then… yesterday, I reached for you, and you…,” I choked here, because it still hurt, “you cringed… like I’d been stripping you bare.”
“Touching you hurt me,” he said, unhappy at the admission. “I’m a healing elf, Cory. You wouldn’t let me do my job….”
“I know…,” I said, and I couldn’t take his misery any longer. “Shhh… sh… I know…. I hurt you, and you couldn’t heal me because I hurt you, and then I saw that you were hurting so I pulled back more… and I never gave you a chance to grieve for him because you were….”
“Grieving for you,” he finished simply.
“I know.” I felt so awful. I had been selfish, trying to keep this big aching pain to myself and not letting Green help. He loved me. I knew he loved me. I was so stupid sometimes. “I wanted to comfort you this morning,” I tried to explain. “I wanted to please you. And in pleasing you….”
“You let me in to heal you,” he finished, laughing wryly but looking tired from my angle on his chest. He turned his face into the hand at his ear, and I stroked his cheek instead. So tired. When would we be able to grieve for the third lover in our bed without grieving for each other? “You know, Cory, luv, mortals live far too short a time to complicate their lives with that much bullshit,” he said honestly, but he was falling asleep when he said it, and so was I, so I couldn’t have argued if I’d tried.
WE REALLY did sleep a lot of Sunday day. Between that and making love and talking quietly, we weren’t ready to emerge from my bedroom until around two o’clock in the afternoon, and by then we were starving. Renny and Bracken had anticipated us, though, and there were two extra large pizzas from Cirro’s—one with full meat, and one with veggies only. We were sitting in the white-painted hardwood kitchen stuffing our faces when the bell rang. Green was buck naked, Bracken was wearing a pair of my old sweats—which fit him like a second skin—and Renny was wearing cat fur. I was wearing a pair of SpongeBob pajama pants and Bracken’s Kings T-shirt. I didn’t have a bra on, but that was okay, I guess, because I’d lost quite a bit of weight and my boobs had just up and disappeared. I mean, in July I’d had cleavage—handfuls of cleavage—and both Green and Adrian had assured me that handfuls of cleavage was a good thing. But when I emerged from the bedroom this afternoon, Bracken informed me that my chest looked like cherries tacked to a plywood wall and that if I didn’t eat something, even they’d fall off. I’d looked accusingly at Green, and he’d shrugged and said that at least they were ripe cherries. At the time, it meant I could smack him over the head with a pillow, but now, a quarter of the way through a very good pizza, it meant that I was the only one presentable enough to answer the door.