Drynn

by Steve Vera

  He saw her try to squelch her disapproval, but she failed. Some people weren’t meant to hide their feelings.

  “And her?” Cirena asked, dropping the landmine in her most neutral voice.

  Gavin nodded. There it was. The purpose of this visit. “I wanted to marry her, have a family, grow old together,” he said. “I wanted to be normal.”

  “Well, you aren’t normal,” Cirena said, one notch down from a snap. She realized this and softened immediately; she hadn’t come for a fight. “You’re so different from Lucien,” she murmured.

  What he wanted to say and what he did say were solar systems apart. “So I’m told.”

  “What do you like about…her?”

  He appreciated her leaving Amanda in the present. “Do you really want to have this conversation?”

  “Yes.” She lowered her eyes.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Cirena licked her lips. “I do.” Her husky voice brimmed with emotion. “How about a glass of wine to loosen up that tongue of yours?”

  “It’s not my tongue I’m worried about.”

  Cirena leaned in. “I’ll be good,” she whispered.

  Oh, this could be so bad.

  “One glass.” She beckoned him with a pale and slender nail-polished finger.

  Refusing right now would be cataclysmic.

  She took his hand. He didn’t resist. But he knew better than to drink with her here in his home.

  Sometimes, old friends were a little too convenient.

  Especially if they were friends like Cirena.

  *

  Well now, that’s not your woman. Donovan smiled as he observed Gavin Blackburn leave his house in the cover of darkness with some female other than his fiancée.

  The threads of silver glimmering around the man’s core colors had called to Donovan like a light at the bottom of the other side of the pool. A beacon. Donovan had not only leapfrogged off the creature’s focus via the visions and homed in on the unique color signature of the knight from a vision, but he’d actually set a course ahead of the monster himself.

  That’s how good Donovan was.

  As for his query, there he was in the flesh. A simple license plate check had revealed the owner of the Audi at 8921 Mountain Road, West Hartford, Connecticut as one Gavin Blackburn.

  The man’s colors were blinding, Donovan had to dim them immediately so that he could see the man himself. Gavin wore no armor, had doubled in age—early thirties now, but his bearing was unmistakable, even from a vision. And his colors were strong.

  The creature would be coming.

  Just as bright were the colors of the woman beside him, who also had a silver nimbus, aside from the vibrant colors of her soul.

  Donovan fought the urge to walk up and elicit his answers at the end of the barrels of his pistols. That would have been convenient, but he sensed that there were more pieces to this enigma. Part of being a predator was stalking, measuring his prey, and these people were…unusual. Different. He would watch. He would learn. And then he would move in and ascertain the information he desired.

  With or without their consent.

  The metal in his chest began to ring as they approached, slight at first but more loudly as they neared, as if some cosmic hand had just flicked a crystal glass.

  They stopped.

  They sense me, he realized with surprise, sliding deeper into his seat. His stomach turned uneasily. Donovan was not used to surprises. He exhaled slowly, closing his eyes while dimming his colors. He had thought it would be enough to park his Challenger at the end of the street, out of immediate proximity.

  They’d sensed him anyway.

  Just who were these people?

  *

  Cirena stopped, sniffed and cocked her head. So did Gavin. They looked at each other and scanned the night, bodies coiled to spring.

  “What is it?” Cirena whispered, her eyebrows converging over the bridge of her nose.

  Gavin sniffed again, but it wasn’t a smell he registered; it was…a feeling. A tingle, as if he’d walked through a spiderweb, only on the inside of his skin.

  “Could He be here already?” Cirena asked.

  “Anything’s possible.” Gavin’s eyes searched the night sky, focusing on the treetops. Asmodeous loved trees. “I wouldn’t know how, though.”

  He could hear the din of traffic from the avenue a half mile up, the papery rustle of leaves deserting his red maple in favor of his lawn, the honk of a solitary Canadian goose flying overhead—all normal sounds. There were a few cars parked on the street, nothing unusual, and the sound of Gavin’s television (on too loud) from behind them.

  It was a wonder Jack had any hearing left.

  “I don’t think it’s him. I’d smell him. This is something different,” Gavin said.

  Cirena agreed with a nod. “Are you armed?” she asked.

  Gavin made a fist with his right hand and then with his left. “Of course. You?”

  She actually smiled. “I’m always armed,” she said in a throaty growl, and that much he knew was true.

  “Then, shall we have our last glass of wine on Earth?” he asked. He’d meant it to be lighthearted, and it was, but it struck a poignant chord.

  “Let’s,” she said and took his elbow.

  Way up the street he noticed a parked black Challenger. Beautiful lines. Gavin loved both the new and the classic. But he didn’t like this car. Something seemed off about it.

  Gavin opened his front door and breathed in to yell.

  “No, wait—” Cirena grabbed his arm.

  “Yo, Tarsy! Come out here. We need your nose!”

  Cirena’s shoulders slumped. He might escape catastrophe yet.

  Tarsidion’s enormous frame filled the doorway, eyes flashing green alert. “What’s up?”

  Gavin motioned his head to the night.

  Tarsidion took his cue and sniffed, nostrils working as he glared at the night. When his attention fell on the Challenger, he stared at it for a long time, eyes narrowed. “Nerves,” he finally rumbled. He refocused on the two of them. “Where you off to?”

  “Glass of wine in the Center,” he said with a shrug.

  Tarsidion looked at both of them, eyes dimming as they lingered on Cirena. “I see.”

  “Would you like to join us?” she asked quietly.

  “No.” Tarsidion’s upper lip twitched. “I have no interest in being gawked at by snobs.”

  Gavin raised his eyebrows. His old comrade, sulking? “Hey, now, I like it here,” he said. He chose to tread lightly. “And you’re coming anyway. You and Mr. Remote-hog inside leave ten minutes after we do.” Gavin gave the night another anxious scan. “I want to know if we we’re being followed.”

  Tarsidion regarded them solemnly, his sable hair spilling down to his shoulders. “Any guesses?”

  “Yes. The unaccounted. We still don’t know how the Grave was opened.”

  Tarsidion interlaced his fingers behind his head with a loud series of cracks, rapping his skull against the top of Gavin’s doorframe. “Very well. Ten minutes—on one condition.” He looked down at Gavin’s naked hips in blatant disapproval. “Get a gun.”

  *

  It had to be the amulet. Some sort of reaction between it and the silver in their auras. This made Donovan uneasy. He’d dimmed his colors to the point of near extinguishment and only just avoided detection.

  Perceptive fuckers.

  He slid the key into the ignition and started his Challenger. A direct confrontation with them was undesirable right now. Donovan had a better idea.

  He’d start with Gav
in’s woman. Work his way in.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When the knock came, Skip was waiting patiently in his easy chair, staring thoughtfully into the flames of his fireplace. Ahanatou had cleared both mugs to the sink before leaving, but a pair of matching coffee rings remained to verify his visit.

  One visitor down, one to go.

  He’d been still for some hours and his body was thankful, but the warmth and the strong drugs made him sleepy. He might have dosed off, he wasn’t sure, but he jumped painfully at her knock. Awake now. He hobbled over and opened the door.

  Noah stood silently on his porch, her brown ponytail trussed and windblown, cheeks flushed with the night. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asked, tipping her head.

  Slung from her right shoulder was a plain brown rucksack with straps that had begun to fray. Nondescript it may appear, it seemed to Skip that there was something deliberate about its unassuming nature, like a musician trying to disguise a precious instrument.

  “Something tells me I’m going to regret this,” he said and stepped to the side.

  “‘A man who does not trust his instincts is a fool,’” Noah said as she breezed past him into his living room.

  “‘And yet if we value the pursuit of knowledge,’” Skip quoted, shutting the door behind her, “‘we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us.’” He grinned, pain momentarily forgotten.

  Noah cocked an eyebrow, smiling. “A man with a mind. How novel.”

  “You just caught me on a bad day.” He held out his hand to take her coat—a tweed, thigh-length, button tie-around, and slung it across a chair.

  Noah noticed the fire crackling in the fireplace and walked to it, warming her hands at the flames that licked the air. She breathed in the smoke. “You are a remarkable man, Everett.”

  “Oh yeah? Why’s that?” he asked, letting the “Everett” slide for once. He wanted to hear what this little Buddha had to say.

  “Because I know what you saw in those trees.”

  It wasn’t so much her words as the way she said them—low and thrumming with resonance.

  He studied her carefully. Though she was lithe and petite, her body looked firm, thighs both shapely and strong. “What makes you so sure I saw anything?”

  She turned. Her eyes seemed to have grown in her face, two tunnels leading to outer space. “Because we put it there.”

  “You did?”

  “And my brethren.”

  Skip breathed out, forgetting (again) what air refills cost him. “Brethren? Now there’s a fancy word you don’t hear every day. How many brethren do you have?”

  Noah wrinkled her slightly upturned nose. “There are few traits I detest more than sarcasm, Everett.”

  “Then maybe you should just level with me. And stop calling me Everett.”

  Noah studied him by the firelight with the type of eyes that saw. That knew things. Skip didn’t back down, though; he fended off her fathomless, penetrating and somehow alluring gaze just like anybody else’s. Finally, her shoulders dropped in defeat. With a long, resigned sigh, she unfastened her knapsack, unzipped it and slid her hand inside. When it emerged she clutched something that looked more like it belonged in a museum rather than a backpack. A book. She set it down carefully on his coffee table, almost with reverence, and then sat down on his loveseat.

  “What have we here?” Skip asked, leaning closer. Curiosity wriggled into his mind.

  “Come sit with me.” She patted the cushion beside her.

  Again, something about the way she spoke…Skip was too tired to be cautious. Besides, she was hot. He sat.

  Once he was seated, Noah set her hand atop the book as if she were about to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Instead she traced the outline of what looked like glyphs. “Are you a man of your word, Everett?” Her left brow arched slightly.

  “I am,” he answered, wondering where she was going with this.

  “Swear to me that you will never speak of what I am about to show you. Ever.”

  Today must be his day for information off the record. “Sure,” he answered.

  “Not good enough.”

  “You want me to swear on your book?” he asked. He found that he wanted to hold it.

  “I want you to give me your word.”

  Both brows shot up. Little Buddha means business. “All right, I give you my word. Whatever you show me doesn’t leave this room.”

  She stared at him a long time, searching for loopholes in his promise, but then her head dipped and she gave a slight nod. “Very well,” she said and handed him the book.

  He took it greedily, eager to touch it.

  Inlaid in the dark green leather were elaborate silver runes that decorated the front, back and spine. In fact, hadn’t he seen something similar before, carved into the trees around the Blackburn cemetery?

  The book was beautiful, yes, but there was something ominous about the twin metal bands that sealed the book shut like metal claws, as if to say…I bite. In the middle of the cover was an ovular metal plate with an imprint of a tree.

  “Help me with this?”

  Skip was jerked back to the loveseat and was presented with the bare skin of her delicately freckled neck. She had lifted her ponytail with one hand, exposing a silver clasp, and was waiting patiently for him to unclasp it. He chuckled inside his head. Ah, you’re good, you, trying get me all seduced.

  Another internal little chuckle. It was working, which was saying a lot, considering his present condition.

  He leaned forward and unclasped the strap with a nimble flick of his fingers, appreciating the curve of her shoulder and the two freckles that had claimed it.

  And then he saw what it was she was unclasping. He forgot about the freckles.

  What she pulled out might as well have been the Maltese Falcon. Made of a bluish, silvery metal, the necklace scintillated as if made with diamond dust. At the end was a lustrous circular ring the size of a small plum, and within that ring, an intricately carved willow tree.

  She faced him, dangling it in front of her. Her gray eyes whispered secrets.

  The trunk was pale blue, as were the sweeping little branches, but sprinkled over it like crushed rubies and fire opals were hundreds of tiny gemstones encrusted on the branches no bigger than fine sand. They gave the illusion the tree was in flames.

  “Why do I feel like I’m in a dream?” he asked slowly, enchanted by her, by her necklace.

  “If it were only that simple.” She sighed and inserted the willow tree into the metal plate in the center of the book. It clicked. She smiled. The metal bands separated like the rings of a binder. With a gentle turn of her wrist, Noah opened the book. The scent of sweet herbs and leather wafted up from the pages, charged with ozone and lightning.

  Skip watched in silence.

  “This—” she said, flipping through the parchment-like pages, “—is what you saw.” The fragrance of sweet herbs became more pungent.

  Skip leaned closer and then grabbed the open book, his mouth unhinged. “That’s him!”

  Cool fingers clamped down on his wrists. “Release the book,” Noah said between gritted teeth.

  He pulled his stare away long enough to see her gray eyes protruding. “Uh, sorry,” he said, unhanding the book. His ribs informed him now that they were displeased.

  “This is what you saw, then?”

  “Yep. That’s him.”

  The creature from the trees glared right back at him, painted with such artistic vividness he felt as if a spirit had
just walked through him.

  “What the hell is it?” he managed.

  “One of two gargoyles left on this world. Or it was.”

  “Two?” he asked, though his eyes did not leave the page.

  “You should be dead Mr….Skip.”

  “I like that. Mr. Skip.” He nodded. Yeah, put a little age gap in there. He carefully massaged his ribcage. “You know, I don’t see a single brushstroke. How did they…”

  She snapped the book shut and showed her teeth in a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Your turn.”

  Though she appeared calm, her body was tight and coiled, ready to spring like a jack-in-the-box, no matter what how much Zen she exuded. She wanted this information. “Who else was at that cemetery, Mr. Skip?” she asked in the calmest and most sweetest of voices, as if inquiring about his favorite cookie.

  Skip felt a tug on his eyes. “Mr. Shades,” he answered with a shrug. “I was actually hoping you would know a little more about him.”

  Another tug. This one harder. Did the book want him to look? What the hell?

  The silvery glyphs engraved in the green cover seemed slightly out of focus. The more he stared, the more they seemed to crawl. The tentacles of a headache reached out from his brain.

  “Everett,” Noah’s voice broke in. “Don’t try to read that. You’ll scramble your brain forever.”

  He looked away to the coffee rings and then back into her face.

  Enough of this dancing.

  “I got an idea,” he said, tearing his eyes away. A flash of anger washed through his veins, dulling the sharp lines of pain. “How ’bout you start off by telling me exactly who you are? Let’s start there. And after that, I wanna know who your brethren are.” Skip even used finger-quotes. “And then we’re gonna do a little Q & A on ‘how do you know what it was I saw in those trees.’ But most of all—” Skip drew himself up, “—I want to know just what in the flying hell came out of that grave.”

  He studied her and listened to the little crackles of vexation spurting through the air; a lot could be learned from how a person dealt with agitation, and Skip was a professional agitator.