Quickening, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  Green’s mouth slowly fell open, and next to him he heard Nicky choke on a breath. Max clapped a hand over his eyes and said, “Oh dear God,” at the same time Bracken grunted, “Oh holy Goddess.”

  Their byplay went unnoticed by Cory, who continued to talk. Cami, on the other hand, looked up at Green and then took in the other men in the room with a start, as if they’d just appeared.

  “Ignore them,” Cory said dismissively. “I’m married to the three jokers in the middle of the room—I happen to know the two penises thing is not going on there. But my point is, you need to get past that. Get past equipment, get past fear. There’s something you’re not telling us about Dylan, and if we’re going to get him out of there, you need to spill it all.”

  Cami nodded. “Okay. So… he’s panicked, right? But not just for himself. He’s panicked for his cellmate. I think….” She blushed. “I think they’re sort of… you know.”

  “Having sex, or falling in love?” Cory asked, as though she was looking for clarification.

  Cami looked down at her hands. “Falling in love,” she whispered.

  Cory let out a long breath and then looked out the window past Green’s shoulder. “Oh, for fuck’s sake—it’s six o’clock. The vampires are never going to wake up at this rate.”

  Green figured that was his cue. He strode forward and put his hand on Cami’s shoulders. She’d long since finished her sandwich and was looking exhausted. She and Dylan might have a small, crappy apartment now, but they’d been on the road a long time before that. Green was pretty sure half her panic was the weariness of being at the end of her rope, without resources, for what felt like most of her life.

  “Luv,” Green said, rubbing her shoulders gently, “I’m going to send some people out to fetch your things and Dylan’s. Can we have the key, then? You brought a car, yes?”

  “Yeah.” She was relaxing, coming undone under his touch, but she managed to fumble her car keys out of the pocket of her jeans and press them into Green’s hand. He breathed a sigh of relief. Her panic and grief had been trying to push out into the rest of the hill since she’d arrived with a very put-upon shape-shifter in tow, screaming at the foot of the stairs that somebody needed to help her!

  “Good. You’re not obliged to stay here any longer than you want—but we have a room for you, and food, and you don’t have to worry about how you’re making your money while we take care of your friend. How’s that?”

  More than two years ago he’d given this talk to Cory—and she’d been furious.

  Camigwen Rogers was not Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick op Crocken Kestrel Green.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, relief making her even more pliant. “Whatever. I’ll….” She looked up at Green with naked fear. “I’ll do anything to get Dylan back. But….” And her face fell. “I guess you don’t need what I’m offering, do you?”

  He lowered his head so he could talk directly into her ear. “You have a lot more to offer than your body,” he whispered. “And I’ll teach you how to love your body too. Right now, give us your peace. Give us your rest. And we’ll give you your friend back in return.”

  “And… and his friend?” she asked, her voice growing softer.

  “If he’s willing to be saved, we’ll save him,” Green purred. Max made an unhappy sound next to them, but Green would deal with that later. Right now he was sending just enough power into the girl to let her relax, go boneless, and fall asleep in her chair. She slumped to the side, and he caught her just as he’d promised.

  While she’d been slipping into dreamland, Arturo had come in. Green lifted the girl up—as thin as his beloved, but more light-boned—and slid her into Arturo’s waiting arms.

  “In my bed for now,” Green told him. “But have a bed of her own made up as soon as possible. I don’t want her to think she’s trading favors for help—and she might, if we share flesh again.”

  Arturo nodded, looking grimly at his practically ethereal burden.

  “She smells fey,” Arturo mused. “It’s good she finally found us. I don’t know how long she could have survived like this with only the humans.”

  “I think she’s the strong one,” Green said softly, remembering what she hadn’t said about her friend/lover/brother-of-the-heart stuck in prison. “I think she might have made it—but I don’t think her mate would have.”

  Arturo’s sound of affirmation was lost as he bore the girl to Green’s room. Green swung around to his people. Bracken and Nicky took their places at the island, Nicky shouldering Bracken aside in an uncharacteristic bid of assertiveness so he could sit by Cory.

  “Little man, I can still squash you,” Bracken said, looking at Nicky in surprise.

  Nicky rolled his eyes and grinned, because they hadn’t really been at odds in over a year and a half. “Yeah, and I can set my boyfriend on you. Who would also be squashed, but you like Eric so you’d feel bad.” With that, he turned to Cory. “So, little mama, how you doin’?”

  Cory slugged him in the arm. “Oh now you mention it? Jesus, Nicky, I jumped out of a helicopter, and you knew, and you’re just mentioning it now.”

  Nicky rubbed his arm in embarrassment. “Hey—I take my cues from them. They seemed to think you were good to go. What I want to know is, are you going to name one of the goobers after me?”

  Green’s ou’e’eir, the composed queen who had soothed the frightened girl not much younger than herself, stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes.

  Nicky cracked up, and Cory flicked him on the ear.

  “Hell, no. I’ll save that for your kid, you demanding bastard. In the meantime, get ready to fetch me pie at any opportunity!”

  Green knew she was kidding, but obviously Bracken didn’t.

  “Pie is bad for you. Too many carbohydrates and not enough protein when you’re gestating can cause dangerous spikes in blood sugar, weight gain, edema—”

  Nicky rolled his eyes and waved off their husband with a flutter of his fingers. “Yeah, yeah, we get it. Pie no bueno, big man. Just remember, women pregnant with Avian babies have been known to have their mates fetch them mice, voles, and the occasional still-flopping fish, so be happy she wants pie.”

  Cory looked at him in horror, her hand over her mouth, and from her Green caught the sudden shaft of very real nausea that she couldn’t quite control. Well, leave it to Nicky to take things just a bit too far.

  “Jesus,” she muttered. “You couldn’t have told me that before I agreed to have your baby?”

  “Why?” Nicky asked, his voice softening as he bumped her shoulder reassuringly. “So you could save yourself for one of the pierced two-penised vagina’d people that we’re going to meet in Seattle?”

  She laughed and looked a little sheepish. “You guys, this is going to be hard. I mean… hard. I’ve got no idea what it’s going to take to get those guys out of jail—but if she’s right, we’ve got about three days before this whole thing goes to hell.”

  “Two,” Max said tersely. “Because if you’re going to want shape-shifters, we’re all going to be a lot harder to control in three nights, just when this kid is coming unglued.”

  “Yeah,” Cory breathed out. “Okay. Intel. Here’s what we need….” She looked around her for a minute, and Green—who was good at strategy but didn’t command the small “runs,” as Cory called them—ran to his computer table in the corner of the attached living room and grabbed a yellow legal pad and a felt-tip pen. Cory’s handwriting was notoriously bad, but writing in big bold strokes seemed to make it less labyrinthine.

  She looked up and smiled grimly at Green as she took the materials.

  “Right here is where I miss Teague,” she said, and Green nodded.

  “He’s not up to speed right now, anyway,” he said, but she already knew.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. But… the vampires. Grace will step right in—but Phillip….”

  There was a terrible silence around the table. Phillip had been the master of a child-vampire when s
he’d met the dawn. He hadn’t been at the hill when she’d died, but still, the cost to him… to his lover Marcus….

  They’d been Cory’s lieutenants and trusted assets when things got rough, and they’d be missed.

  “Wow.” Max let out a low whistle. “I… I mean, I knew that thing in Redding was bad, but until right now….”

  Green sighed. “You know, people, my folk aren’t entirely fuck-all hopeless when things get tight.”

  Cory grinned tiredly at him. “Well, I wasn’t planning to leave Bracken or Lambent at home.”

  Green set his mouth firmly. “I was also thinking Twilight, Whim, and Charlie, and Kyle and Ellis from the vampires. And Renny—”

  “Renny!” Max protested, only to be met by Green’s ironic stare.

  Nicky started to laugh. “Max, we’ve all seen her fight. She’s terrifying.”

  Max shuddered. “And unpredictable,” he proclaimed darkly.

  “I’ll deal with Renny,” Cory interjected, soothing feathers. “You don’t have to direct your wife on the field, okay?”

  Max grumbled but shut up about it.

  “And Whim, no,” she said softly, smiling in memory. “Green, he’s—”

  Green shook his head. “He’s really much more focused—” Because Whim had spent over a hundred years as a whirlwind flutterby, until Charlie had come along.

  “It’s not the focus,” Cory said. “It’s not even the power. Everybody said he summoned a wad of it when he cured Charlie.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Everybody turned to see Whim walking in from the hallway, Charlie at his heels in giant brown cat form. Green smiled benevolently on the second-youngest sidhe of the hill, thinking for the umpteenth time that Whim’s long elven features were extraordinarily pretty. His hip-length hair rippled a playful sky blue, which meant he wasn’t affronted in the least to hear himself talked about in this way.

  Cory looked at Whim with such a sweet smile that Green almost lost the gist of what she said next because his heart stuttered so hard.

  “Because battle hurts our hearts, Whim,” she said, still smiling that vaguely besotted smile. “I know you’ve fought before, but it hurt your heart. We need your heart unharmed so you can do things that delight us.”

  Whim nodded and blinked, his eyes so wide set that they almost closed independently of one another. “Yes,” he said seriously. “It takes great strength to make the tiny toys, and to remember to play with everyone.”

  Cory nodded sagely. “We need you,” she said, very sober. “I will have babies. When I think of a caretaker, I think of you, if you are not too busy crafting toys.”

  Whim’s face lit up in a sensuous smile, his entire body shivering in delight. “I love babies,” he said, and that joy brightened the room. “I’m so very glad you thought of me! Isn’t that wonderful, Charlie?”

  Charlie stuck out a spiky pink tongue and began to lick Whim’s hand, and something in Cory’s face changed.

  Whim tilted his head and looked at her shrewdly.

  “But you need my beloved for the battle, do you not?”

  Cory offered a grim smile. “Not so much for the breaking out, Whim, but for afterward. Charlie, you were a high school counselor, right?”

  In a moment a slight man, thirtyish, with brown hair, and an echo of Whim’s innocence in his brown eyes, appeared naked before them in place of the big brown tomcat.

  “Yes, my lady. Will you need me?”

  Cory nodded. “You can stay out of the fighting—and, yes, Whim, you may come with him and protect him—but if Cami is anything to judge by, we’re going to need a very human counselor as soon as possible. Someone who speaks the language of Green’s hill and American teenager, you know?”

  Charlie gave a self-deprecating shrug. “It’s been a year—”

  “Yeah, but NorCal slang stays around forever,” Max said in disgust. “You’ll be fine.”

  Charlie did a strange combination of smiling and turning so his ass wiggled, and Green realized that the same hierarchy among the werekitties held as with regular kitties. Yes, there might be an “alpha” cat, but the others would only obey him as long as it suited their purposes. Essentially Charlie’s body language simultaneously said “Thank you, my liege,” and “Fuck you!” in cat language.

  “You’re welcome,” Max said, sounding bored. All things considered, it was a good thing the young policeman had fallen in love with a werekitty and not a werewolf, because the cat thing suited him surprisingly well.

  “Okay,” Cory said, leaning her chin on her palm and frowning. “So add Lambent, Grace, maybe two of the younger vampires, and we’ve got our team. Now we need our plan….” Suddenly she sat up. “And I have to pee. Back in a flash.”

  They watched as she darted out of the room, and suddenly all eyes were on Green and Bracken.

  “You’re seriously going to let her do this?” Nicky said, voicing what Green assumed was the concern of everyone in the room.

  “Why, no. I’m going to put my foot down and lock her in her room. With you for company. Good for you, mate?”

  There was a moment of tension, followed by Nicky breaking into perfectly timed giggles.

  “Uhm, yeah. Never mind.”

  “Well, on the list of plans that might work,” Max said, as though his patience was stretching thin, “there’s always, you know, talking to her.”

  “About what?” Bracken asked grimly. “Because she came through in Monterey, nobody’s going to argue about that—”

  “My bowels might,” Nicky proclaimed. “Because I seriously crapped on a Dodge Caravan when you guys jumped out of that helicopter.”

  Whim let out a delighted trill of laughter. “How surprised they must have been,” he said, eyes wide and avid. “I’m so excited to be going this time! Charlie, are you excited?”

  Charlie turned to him with besotted eyes. “Yeah, Whim. Anywhere you are, right?”

  For a moment, all motion in the room stalled as the two of them gazed at each other. Bracken interrupted with a—for Bracken—tactful clearing of the throat.

  “Whim, brother?”

  Whim looked around in wonder. He had forgotten where he was. “Brack!” He smiled as though he hadn’t seen Bracken in years. “Was there something you needed?”

  Charlie’s bare shoulders shook. “Bracken, would you like us to go fetch Lambent for you?” he asked, turning away from his eye lock with his beloved. “I swear we’ll get there and back.”

  Brack’s expression was very carefully schooled. “Go tell him to join us here,” he said. “You and Whim may, uhm, detour on the way back.”

  Charlie’s boyish features split into a wide grin. “Yes, sir. I promise we’ll get the, uhm, detouring out of our system before we come back to the planning meeting.”

  With that, Charlie smoothly changed back into a large cat and bumped Whim’s hand with his head. Together they wandered out of the room.

  Nicky waited until they were way out of earshot before he said, “Do we have any nuts? Broiled chicken? Spinach? Tofu?”

  “God yes,” Max grated under his breath. “I need some frickin’ protein, they’re so damned sweet.”

  “I’m saying.” Nicky started to rifle through the refrigerator, starting with milk and some cuts of meat and adding a loaf of bread and some sliced vegetables. Grace kept the pantry very well stocked.

  “Make Cory another sandwich,” Bracken ordered. “Corned beef. No mustard, no mayo, lots of veggies.”

  “So,” Max said, pulling out the bread and setting up sandwiches for everyone, “are we going to talk about the whole ‘pregnant girl on point’ thing some more, or are we going to wait—”

  “She can still outrun you,” Green said, moving into the kitchen. He was feeling a mite peckish himself. “Set one up for Arturo too.”

  Arturo, 100 percent South American macho elf, had been leaning back in the corner of the living room while Whim and Charlie had made sweet eye love in front of everybody.
“Thank you,” he said formally. “Like Green’s—cheese and veggies only. And you’re right. She can still run, she can still fly, her magic isn’t shorting out on her—”

  “Can she still feel when Bracken’s pissed?” Nicky asked, popping a pickle slice in his mouth. “Because that’s going to make the whole world just rosy fucking peachy until she pops those babies out.”

  Bracken grunted. “Yes,” he grumbled. “I’m… meditating… a lot.”

  Nicky chortled. “You’d be happier if you were beating off, big man!”

  Green winced, and Arturo grimaced. Even Max closed his eyes in the face of Bracken’s scowl.

  “There’s no reason for me to beat off when I have you or Cory to do it for me,” he said, his voice deceptively mild. “You share our marriage bed too, little man. There’s no reason to get personal.”

  Nicky’s grin was downright flirtatious. “Oh, yes there is,” he purred. “I say you and me and Cory get personal tonight, you think?”

  “That will be up to Cory.” Green chuckled, liking their byplay very much. “For now, I think Cory would rather we talk about the task at hand.”

  “Which is not letting Bracken get me fat,” Cory said, walking into the room with a giant tawny tiger-striped tabby at her heels. “I just ate a sandwich. Are we doing second lunches now?”

  The tiger-striped cat became a naked girl between one step and the next. “Ooh, I’ll eat it,” Renny said, shaking her flyaway hair out of her eyes.

  Max cleared his throat. Renny looked at him and grinned. He cleared his throat again, and her grin turned playful, cajoling. He cleared his throat one more time, and Bracken couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Max. Everybody here is in jeans and no shirt, and you’re going to draw the line at her eating at the table naked?”

  Max glared at Cory, who glared back.