by Amy Lane
“Hush, I smell his need,” I shushed, not mindful of the absurdity. Salt air, but not much… car exhaust, an endless wall of it, a hole in the city where his scent could sneak through…. “Follow me… down Brannan… I’m not sure how far…,” I gasped. Nicky relayed my fractured directions to Green as I spoke.
“He’s on his way,” Nicky called, but I was already off, running hell for leather down the Embarcadero with Nicky hard on my heels.
He caught me after a block and slowed me down to wait for Green, which meant his brain was working better than mine was. We waited for him on the corner of Brannan and the Embarcadero, near a gnarly gas station that you couldn’t pay me enough to use as a pit stop. I looked at it in disgust—it was a tiny old building, with wooden sides painted a peeling white and trash gathered in the gutters. It was one of those places built pre-soda fountain, and I wished desperately that they had one—that they had anything. I was starving again, and when the cab pulled up to the curb, I almost fell into Green’s lap when I put out my hand to pull him out—I was that dizzy with fatigue.
We huddled there for a few moments until another cab pulled up and Max popped out as though he couldn’t move fast enough, and Renny followed a bit more slowly, thoroughly enjoying herself. I realized that since she had chosen Max as her favorite plaything, although her eyes would always be sad, that the lost, miserable look had left her face. Did Bracken do the same thing for me? I didn’t have time to wonder. As Green outlined a new search grid, I realized that I could see the sun, which meant it was westering on the horizon and peeping out underneath the fog, its light divoted by the skyline of the city itself. It was four in the afternoon, two weeks before the winter solstice. We had less than half an hour to go, and a lot of ground to cover.
Green finished the search grid—again, so easy. Nicky and I would take Brannan, Max and Renny would take Townsend, and Green would walk the perilous, exit-ridden Bryant. The neighborhoods weren’t great—but hey, Max was the least dangerous among us, and he was a cop.
“Right,” I said tightly, “I’ve got a feeling of big hollow space—concentrate on the buildings or warehouses that are empty. What?” I asked, because they were all looking at me soberly.
“You look like shit, Cory,” Renny said gently. I didn’t want to think about how right she was. My hands were shaking, I was still sweating in spite of the chilly air, and my breath was coming in short pants. But all I could hear was Bracken’s matter-of-fact voice breaking up on the phone, and I remembered the kiss he’d given me as he left. Had it once occurred to me to tell him I loved him? Would it if I found him?
“Let’s find them,” I said, not answering her. “Can we all feel them now?” Renny and Green nodded.
“You’re right about them being in something vast and empty,” Green said. “I can feel that. Remember that the vampires have survived—look for places with basements and sealed windows.”
Renny and Max nodded, and Green nodded them away, but they cast anxious glances at me over their shoulders. Nicky stood back then, giving Green and me some space, and Green bent over me, holding my face in his hands. I felt healing wash over me, but gentle, and not enough. I looked at Green, at the weariness in his eyes, and realized that not only had grief—mine and his—weakened him, but that he’d just spent a lot of himself chasing Mist and Morana out of our apartment and, I imagined, spreading his power over the city to find Grace and Bracken.
I smiled at him, because I knew sure as I was breathing that Green would never let me down. Wearily I leaned in to kiss him, to reassure him, and the kiss flared and grew deeper, and as so often happens when you show someone faith, your faith is justified and their strength grows. Green’s healing washed over me for real, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, we’d both have the strength to save our people.
We pulled away from each other, touched hands to faces. “I love you,” I said simply, because I didn’t want to wonder as I left when the last time I’d said it had been.
“I love you,” he replied, with that smile as though we both knew this, and saying it made it more than true. Without another word, we turned and parted.
The walking was worse now, and the frustration was worse than the walking. I could smell Bracken. I could feel the vampires. They were here, dammit—they were here…! I ran among the vast warehouses like a rabbit running around tomato trucks—everything I wanted was inside, but I couldn’t figure out how to get in. I brushed against every pedestrian I could without attracting attention, hoping for an added scent, a stray vibration, but there was none. I touched every door with my bare hand, hauled Nicky from side entrance to side entrance, until finally I smelled something besides Bracken.
“Oh, Goddess,” Nicky breathed, trying not to retch.
“Sweet bleeding Jesus.” I coughed. “Where is that coming from?” I asked, and a man wearing a threadbare coat and a tattered watch cap stared at me and looked away as he passed, as though the stench of death weren’t rolling through our nostrils, our clothes, our hair, clawing its way into our lungs.
“A couple of dogs got hit by a car—over there—” Watch Cap pointed down an alley across the street. “They’re in that dumpster over there.” And with that he wandered off, looking back at us over his shoulder as though he couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong with us.
Nicky and I squinted at him, but I pulled Nicky away because I could smell the magic here as well as the death, like incense and rubbing alcohol. Anyone who could smell the magic would know what we did—that it wasn’t just dogs, and it wasn’t just a couple.
When we got to the dumpster and took a good look inside, there were five bodies, some more dead than others, piled haphazardly on top of each other. They looked as though they had been disemboweled by razors, and they were naked.
“Orson’s werewolves,” I said, knowing that if my stomach hadn’t been so empty right then, everything I’d eaten would have come right back up. Nicky wasn’t as lucky with the empty stomach—he knelt in front of the dumpster and lost his last two hotdogs, then squatted with his head between his knees, breathing hard through his nose. I sympathized—I’d lost a lot of lunches this summer while Bracken held my head. I swallowed hard, squared my shoulders, and closed my eyes.
The bodies themselves had nothing—they were inert matter, the souls that drove them departed for better realms, I hoped. But there was a sheen of light around them—queasy, baby-shit yellow-colored light meant to deflect the natural processes of decay and surrender, meant to mask them in triviality. When I opened my eyes, the bodies shifted, and for a moment I saw two largish dogs, pitiful, with bony rib cages and matted hair, mouths gaped in death. I wanted to rip that sheen of deception from them and let them be recovered and mourned over, but I couldn’t. For one thing, as soon as the bodies could be seen for what they were, there would be a thousand people in the area, and I knew firsthand that crime scenes were no place for the Goddess’s children. For another, I was running on Green’s borrowed strength, and underneath the stench of death was a weaker, sweeter smell—copper-brine, musty like stolen breath and borrowed blood—vampires. And underneath that was garlic and cream pie—our mama vampire, asleep with her brethren. And then the smell that had traveled across the car exhaust, the concrete and steel, and even over death—rock, sun, and foothills bracken. My Bracken.
I wanted him back.
“The bodies are coated in magic,” I told Nicky, who was wiping his mouth and trying to look cool. I could have told him there was no way to look cool after tossing your cookies like that, but he needed all of the self-confidence he could get. “They’re coated in magic to keep the smell from spreading—but Bracken’s been… thinking about us. It worked.”
I pulled out my cell phone and looked anxiously west, where I could see the sun just hitting the water on the horizon. “Max? Put Renny on,” I said. Nicky looked at me, surprised, but I couldn’t explain. If I called Green, he’d beg me to wait and there was no time to wait, but I couldn’t say no to Green, and t
hen if anything bad happened, I’d hate us both. “Renny? Can you smell death?”
I heard her, snuffling like a cat in girl form, which was even odder over the phone, and then I heard the snarl when she caught scent of the dumpster in front of us.
“Got it,” she said exultantly. “Where are you?”
“Follow that smell and call Green,” I said succinctly. “Tell him to call Orson—there are dead werewolves near the warehouse. We’re going in.” I snapped the phone shut, ignoring Nicky’s startled squawk, then moved to the door a few feet beyond the dumpster. It was unlocked—Nicky was surprised, but I wasn’t. The wall of magic on the inside was horrific in its intensity—I was betting that the minute we entered it would snap shut behind us like a fucking rattrap.
We opened the door, and the smell of vampire temporarily overpowered the smell of death. I stood at the doorway and looked around. Like Green had said, the windows had been sealed—but even though our doorway was on the east side of the warehouse, there was just enough foggy light left outside to give us a sense of what was inside. The warehouse itself was almost empty. Pallets were scattered here and there, the occasional one still holding a stack of wooden crates with what looked like cheap dishware in them, but for the most part the floor was thick with dust and old canvas bags and pieces of wood. I knew as soon as the door closed behind us the darkness would be stygian, so I lingered there in the doorway, scoping out the territory by the weak daylight before I committed Nicky and myself to what would happen when the magic wall closed.
On the far side of the warehouse, to our right, nearly twenty vampires lay in the various poses of vampire death. For some reason, it was impossible for them to die unattractively. Their heads were tilted back, their lips parted, their eyes closed gently, their arms stretched languidly above them or even against a cheek. I guess if you don’t breathe, then you don’t snore, drool, or squash your face against the pillow, and you get to look glorious as you sleep. These vampires looked hollow cheeked and shadowed, even in sleep, and I felt a little shudder. They would not be happy when they woke up.
But I’d seen vampires in day-death before—even hungry ones. My eyes were searching that darkness frantically for something else, and there, up against the wall, crouched on a raised pallet of dusty tarps, I saw what I was looking for.
Grace was asleep in day-death, collapsed in front of the pallets. She had died threatening the starving kiss. I could tell because her fangs remained extended even in sleep. She had fallen, not lain—her fingers were very nearly still cramped in their threatening, claw-extended pose, and her arms were bent at the front. Her knees were also bent, as though she’d been caught in a crouch by daylight and had simply toppled sideways. Bracken was behind her, glowing faintly with his own elven luminescence, a huddled figure with his arms wrapped around his knees. He saw us and sat blinking from his now shaggy bangs as though we were both his last best hope and the rock at the bottom of the pit of despair. With a yank on Nicky’s hand, I started trotting across the warehouse, relief giving me strength I hadn’t known I had.
“Dammit, Cory, don’t come in. It’s a….” And at that moment, the magic wall crashed behind Nicky, throwing both of us forward on our faces in a cloud of dust and grime.
“Trap,” I said, picking myself up shakily and dusting off my jeans to cover for my trembling hands. “I know.” I paused then, words shivering on my lips—apologies, declarations, I wasn’t sure which—and then our gazes locked in mute exchange, in appeal, and in honest longing. That’s when I saw the blood welling through a vicious wound down the back of his shoulder. He was clutching it, and his hand was coated in his own blood. He was bleeding. He was hurt. Suddenly I was furious.
I strode across the warehouse, fumbling under my coat and sweatshirt for the T-shirt underneath. The ripping sound echoed in the vast, musty, dark space, even more than my furious footsteps. “You got hurt,” I hissed, tripping over a pile of wood that I couldn’t see. I put out a hand to still my fall and cut my palm on a nail, but it hardly slowed me down. His night vision was better than mine, so he saw me biff myself in the dark, and my anger was so unexpected he almost smirked in surprise.
“Well, excuse me,” he replied, our words at odds with the anguish in our eyes. “I assumed you’d be bringing along someone who could help with this.”
“He’s on his way,” I snapped. “I thought it would be more important to get a little backup your way, and I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to get hurt.”
“Jeez, Cory, harsh,” Nicky said from behind me as I neared Bracken. He was pale. Of course he was pale, dammit—he’d been sitting there bleeding all day as I wandered around the fucking city so desperate to know he was alive I could smell him over a cartload of death and an acre of water. Bracken could heal most wounds, so for the wound to not be finished bleeding yet, it must have been deep—down to the bone and beyond, deep enough to tap into Bracken’s heartblood, where his own power would keep it from healing.
“Harsh?” My voice was shrill but I didn’t care. “Harsh? Harsh is a broken promise, Nicky.” I was ripping my T-shirt into strips as I spoke. “Harsh is someone who tells you he’ll be there, and you see forever in his eyes, and he goes out and gets himself shredded by a fucking velociraptor, or blown into summer drizzle.”
“Cory…,” Bracken protested, and I could hear the heartbreak in his voice but I couldn’t, couldn’t stop to listen. I was busy. I was tying those strips around his arm, trying to make a pad of them on his shoulder. I was trying to stop his goddammed bleeding.
“Harsh is when you think that nothing can take love away from you, and you find out that people are plotting to steal it, and that they’ve reached into your brain and scraped it out with a fucking ice-cream scoop.” It was bleeding. He was a redcap and things bled around him and I couldn’t stop it because he’d been bleeding all night and blood was who he was. Goddamn it. Goddess blight it all. “Harsh is when Bracken’s own talent is ripping the fucking life force out of him as we speak, goddammit all—” I grabbed Nicky’s wrist with my right hand as I said it, working on instinct and anger and grief, enough to add some oomph to the swing of my left hand as I smacked it against Bracken’s wounded shoulder. “Heal, dammit—HEAL.”
And with that there was a buzz of blue light under my hands and Bracken said, “Ouch, fuck Cory, what in the hell are you trying to….”
And I let go of Nicky and fell to my knees.
“Do,” Bracken trailed off. “You did it,” he said, straightening, feeling his whole shoulder underneath the sticky bandage of my T-shirt. Then he turned and saw me, crouched and shivering on the concrete. “Goddess fuck it,” he snapped and knelt next to me, looping an arm around me and rocking me toward him. I made a reluctant, keening sound but remained crouched, trying to resist his comfort.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised soberly.
“Pretty words,” I replied without heat. I felt empty, shaken, aimless.
“They’re all I have,” he said quietly, making a hash of my resistance with a kiss in my hair.
“I made sure Green will call Orson,” I said, a little more briskly so I didn’t fall apart, and tried to stand up. My knees shook, though, and I fell gracelessly on my ass.
“Moron,” Bracken muttered, and bent down to pull me up. I leaned against him for a second, a sweet second, and I heard him suck in his breath.
“I’m a moron because I called in an inexhaustible food supply?” I asked mildly, because that had been my intention when I’d had Renny call Green—we would have to break out of this prison, I knew, and if the vampires were to live, we would have to do it after the sun went down or risk exposing them to the light. And if we were to live, we’d have to do it mighty fast, or we would be hot lunch on the hoof. And if the vampires were to eat and not commit mass murder, there had better be reinforcements ready.
“You’re a moron because you’ve exhausted yourself,” he said harshly, ignoring the brilliance of my strategy.
“Because you think life comes with guarantees,” he went on, picking me up and moving to sit us both on the stack of pallets I’d found him on. “Because you think Adrian’s death means you’ll lose everybody. I can’t figure out which one makes you more stupid.”
“Like you’re any smarter,” I snapped back, sitting up irritably. “You got caught, dipshit, or hadn’t you noticed? You told me to worry about you and then you went and made me fucking frantic all goddamned day, and you think I’m not going to be tired?” I sighed and blew out a breath. “Fucking asshole.”
“Ah, Green’s children—always such a joy,” said a voice from across the dankness. I let out a little yelp and would have been embarrassed, but Nicky screamed like a girl, so I felt better.
“You know who we are?” I asked, standing up and trying to sound as tough as I’d sounded with Brack.
“I can smell Green’s children from across the city,” the voice said gently, with humor. “They smell like wet hay in the springtime, clean meadows, wildflowers, and lovers rolling around in those meadows and wildflowers. I can smell your sex from here, Green’s children, and I could hear your foreplay when I woke up, but I’d say you have more pressing concerns now, don’t you?”
“Andres,” Bracken whooshed out in a gust of relief. His vision really was better than mine—I could barely see him, and we were sitting so close as to be touching. “Brother, I didn’t see you this morning. It all happened so fast.”
“Yes, you found us right at sunrise,” said the voice, and the person attached to it was staggering, it sounded like, this way. “Which is good—because Green’s children or no, I don’t think I could have kept my people from ripping you apart.”
“You’re up early,” I said flatly, hoping it was true.
“Yes.” And I could see him now that he was only a few feet away from us. He was smaller than I had imagined, and his voice was courtly, pleasantly accented Latino that matched the dark curly hair, sloe eyes, and precise Latin features. On any given day, I would have said he was pretty yummy looking, and the irony didn’t escape me. “When I realized that the two people who had stumbled in here last night and then fled across the room were Green’s people, I made it a point to rise early. Some of us older vampires can do that, providing it’s safe enough,” he finished and drew closer, giving an elegant if shaky bow. Bracken hopped off the table and extended a hand, but Andres put his own hand up and demurred.