Quickening, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  “There is nothing hanging off your cliff,” Green said gently, and I saw the pucker between my brows get deeper as I contemplated my plainness through his eyes.

  “I’m not sure how you can stand to look at me,” I said, unable to get the image of my face out of my mind.

  “That’s because this is an exercise in telepathy, not a heart transplant,” Green said gently, and we both closed my eyes as he kissed me.

  He pulled back and looked out the front of the SUV again. “Okay, beloved, can you see what I see?”

  “Yes, and if we do this any longer, we’re going to need to pull over or I’m going to barf on Nicky.”

  I barely felt him pull out. His mind in mine was like a paper-thin scalpel slipped into flesh—I didn’t feel it until it was gone, and then it only ached vaguely.

  “I’ll be able to see and hear what’s going on then?” I asked, just to make sure.

  “Yes,” Green said, looking at me soberly. “But I can’t tell you what I think. So my eyes and ears, your judgment. Can you do that?”

  “Walk in the park,” I said brightly, letting out a breath.

  My hands were shaking.

  “Don’t worry,” Green said, that half smile gracing his perfect soft pink mouth. “I’m not blazing into battle, which you’ve done many times.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice gruff. “But when I do that, at least I’ve got a weapon.”

  His lips on my forehead felt like they were pouring an elixir of strength right into my body from my head, and I let him do that.

  “I’ve got a weapon,” he reminded me. “I’ve got you. And you’re perfectly capable of directing yourself where you need to be.”

  The SUV came to a halt as Bracken and Marcus parked next to each other, because two big black Navigators side-by-side in a vacant parking lot by a jail weren’t suspicious at all. Bracken, Arturo, and I got out, and Max slid from the passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat. Renny slithered out of the other car, and I kissed Green and Nicky one more time.

  “Max, you’re sure nobody is going to question Grace coming with you?” I asked, nervous because Grace didn’t usually work the field either. We’d decided at the last minute to send her in with the others instead of Renny because she looked like she could be a professional woman and so the vampires would have some backup. Renny was going to run around outside and do lookout for Bracken as he magicked the cameras.

  “No.” Max shook his head and looked at Grace through the rearview mirror. “You look great, sweetheart,” he said reassuringly. Grace shook her head in disgust. She was wearing black slacks, a white shell, and a short-sleeved black linen jacket, all of which was tailored to fit her perfectly but looked incredibly out of place on a woman who could probably wear stretch capris and tank tops all year and not bat an eyelash at fashion.

  “I look like a pink-collar drone,” Grace said. “As long as Green has an ID for me, that’s all they need. Now Cory needs to stop necking and let us go.”

  One more kiss for Green and a pat on the knee for Nicky, and I was sticking my head in the other SUV.

  “Okay, guys. Whim, Charlie, the vampires are going to park the car and leave it running.” Environmentally sound? No. But it was still ninety degrees outside, and Whim wasn’t made to sit inside a sweltering car. None of the elves were great in the heat, but there was something vulnerable about Whim. “Charlie, you can drive it if things get dire, okay?”

  Charlie—for once dressed casually in cargo shorts and a Features T-shirt—nodded. “I hear you, my lady. You want us to hold tight and take the newbies.”

  “We’re just going to sit here?” Cami complained from the back.

  “No, darling,” I said sweetly. “You’re going to sit here.”

  “I’ve lived on the streets for two years,” Cami snapped. “I’m not made of glass!”

  I sighed, because she was a lot like me, and I didn’t have time for a younger me right now. The older me had too much to do.

  “Cami, sweetheart?”

  “I’m not your sweetheart,” she snapped.

  “Fair enough. Cami, present pain in my ass, could you do me a favor?”

  “What-the-fuck-ever.”

  “If I promise to have Renny train you up, show you how to use a gun, some basic self-defense maneuvers, that sort of thing, so you can come with us and be badass sometime, could you promise me, right now, to do what I say? It feels like I spent all fucking summer doing this shit, and I’m not in the mood to go chasing after someone who thinks we can just wave our fingers and make all her dreams come true.”

  Oh, Goddess. Me and motherhood—so not a match made in heaven.

  “You’ll train me?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure, or have someone else do it. Just, you know, not in the field.”

  “You’ll get them out okay?”

  “Yeah. Hon, we are risking my boys for this. Everyone is taking this seriously. We just need you here to settle them down when we spring them, okay?”

  Cami nodded reluctantly, and Lambent and all the vampires pulled out of the car.

  “Guys, you may want to fly home tonight, if you’re up to it,” I told them. “That car conversation is going to be really fucking intense, especially when we get the boys.”

  “Oh, God—Roger that,” Kyle agreed. “Marcus?”

  Marcus closed his eyes and smiled. “Phillip’s gonna fly with me,” he said happily, and I was glad.

  “Good. Now, guys, I’ll be sharing brainwaves with Green. If you want my attention, think hard at me, and I’ll be there. Otherwise I’m assuming you’re talking to yourself or Grace. And if Grace sees something that Green isn’t feeding me, or looks dire, get my attention in a hurry. This isn’t infallible, and we need all eyes and ears open. You good with that?”

  Everybody nodded and, after looking around to make sure no cars were coming, bent their legs and launched into the air.

  I watched them lift themselves into the balmy August air like improbably graceful, impossibly large bats. Watching vampires fly never got old. Then I turned my attention to Bracken and the others, and we all sauntered casually behind the strip mall… because there was a good reason for the five of us to be wandering behind a deserted strip mall next to a county jail at nine thirty at night, right? Hey, if the supernatural-operation gods had wanted us to look smooth, they needed to give us more than twenty-four hours to come up with a plan when I wasn’t down two of my best men—that is all I’m saying.

  Once we got behind the mall, I looked at Brack. From what we could see, the junction boxes for the jail were enclosed in one of those mini power stations and surrounded by hurricane fence. Green had taught me once how to use my power like a laser pointer, and that was my plan. With Bracken hovering over my shoulder, I held the giant padlock that bound the chain and laser-pointed into the tumbler. Then I let go, because the metal was starting to heat.

  Bracken looked at me and grinned.

  “Shut up.” I sank to a squat, where I tried to do the same thing without touching the lock.

  The smell of ozone in a crucible assaulted my senses and singed my nose hairs, and I barely evaded a big drop of dripping steel as it plopped out of the now fused lock.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Lambent swore over my shoulder. With a quick burst of energy from his open hand, the chain holding the gate shut fell apart.

  So did the gate.

  With a muffled clang, I might add.

  Bracken, Renny, Arturo, and I all glared at the flame-haired elf, and he shrugged irritably.

  “Oh, like they’re not going to notice when we take two people out of the fucking jail!” he snapped. “They’ll assume it’s a blow torch or something. Now let techno-geek there do his new trick, and I’ll meander around the trees and try to remember it’s fire season.”

  “If you do start a fire, I could always put it out with your blood,” Bracken said sweetly. Lambent’s magic snort of irritation would have singed his eyebrows, but I intervened w
ith a quick shield.

  “Lambent, wander behind the building with Renny and Arturo and check out their external security. It doesn’t look like a POW camp, but they might have a guard station outside the building and people on the ground.” Max had been pretty sure they didn’t—but then, he mostly just took people to the station, and if they were charged, they got transported by someone else. I’d looked at him oddly when he told me this—it seemed awfully hands-off.

  “So, after you put a person in jail, the next time you see him is at the trial, if there is one?” I’d asked.

  Max shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, Cory, I just follow them.”

  I grunted. “Honestly, I really like our system better,” I told him, trying to be polite.

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “That’s because you make the rules, you bossy little shit. I’m not surprised.”

  I grinned at him. “Yeah, well, that’s so cop-fucks don’t step in and ruin my life anymore, right?”

  I could see the fumes starting to rise from the top of his head then, and I’d left off teasing. Well, what could I say? We loved him now, and we’d mostly forgiven him for being a complete asshole, but sometimes teasing the guy was fun.

  Now I sort of wished we’d had time for him to investigate further, because running into a security detail on the ground was a very real possibility.

  “Go do your thing, Brack,” I said, then watched as he strode purposefully to exactly wherever he needed to go. I looked at Arturo. “You and Renny just sort of wander, okay?” Arturo was dressed casually in jeans and a bronze T-shirt to highlight his copper-colored skin. “If anyone asks—”

  Arturo rolled his copper-lightning eyes. “Please.” He turned away, shaking his head, and I stuck my tongue out at him. Yes, he’d been wiping minds and altering memories since… well, before Aztec civilization, actually. But when I was giving orders, I sort of just hopped on that horse and rode it until it died.

  And then everything around me went away.

  “So, Mr. Green, sign here, and here, and here. Now your assistants need to sign, and here, and here, and… done.”

  I could see a plain-faced, fortysomething guard with not much hair left talking, gazing directly into my/Green’s eyes. He was saying the right words and nodding in the right places, but Green’s hand wasn’t moving. Well done, Green. That was one signature they’d never get on file.

  Green looked around slowly, and I got an image of an aging government building—square, blocky, unlovely, with white tile and white walls. A guard sat in a control room looking carefully at what was probably a flickering array of screens, and Max followed the first guard at a polite distance while the others brought up the rear. Green’s slow pan of his surroundings started to quicken, the movements becoming more and more alert.

  “You smell that?” Grace whispered to Nicky, and Green’s gaze flickered to them. He made a sound in his throat, and they both looked at him and nodded.

  Uh-oh.

  Max turned and looked at Green, his lip curled in a distinctly feline look of distaste.

  “So,” Max said, “the prisoners we need to talk to—”

  The guard turned around and nodded vacantly. “Already there, per their lawyer’s request. Dylan Cormier and Connor Lutz. They didn’t seem to know they had a lawyer, but Cormier said his girlfriend must have gotten them one. Lutz didn’t look too thrilled about that. Be careful with that one—he likes to bite.”

  Max cocked his head and looked at Green meaningfully. Green shook his head.

  I couldn’t hear his thoughts, but I could feel his breathing—and he was breathing lightly, through his nose, his mouth open as though to taste.

  He was smelling something—they all were—and they didn’t like it at all.

  Nicky sent a furtive glance at Green and nodded. “Grace, you ever been to Monterey?” he asked, seemingly at random.

  But the good and the bad thing about the hill was that we all knew each other’s fucking business.

  “Didn’t you just go a few weeks ago?”

  “Yeah, man, I love the smell of the sea. It’s totally different from the mountains, you know?”

  “Definitely different from Foresthill,” Green said, his voice weighted with meaning.

  “Marcus, Kyle—what do you guys got?”

  “Werewolves,” Marcus said in my mind. “The guards are going under, but every fifth cell has two werewolves in it. We can smell them, and they can smell us, and they’re starting to change.”

  Oh. Oh fuck. Werewolves? Not our werewolves. And Nicky had said Monterey. Lucky for me and my confusion, Nicky wasn’t the only one of the little party who had gone to Monterey.

  “My lady, it’s that smell.” Kyle broke in, confirming my worst fears. “That sick smell of the other wolves. And the guard behind the counter—the one controlling the automatic locks—he’s one of them. What do you want us to do?”

  My chest heaved in response to the sudden slam of fear.

  “Follow the others up the elevator and into the conference room. It’s on the second floor. Mind-wipe the guard if you have to. Tell everyone to gather together in the….” Oh fuck. Choose a goddamned side, right? “West side. The west side.”

  Marcus’s suspicion sounded in my head. “You don’t know which side is west, do you?”

  “No, but Green and Arturo do.” Because elves knew the shape of the world. They always did. I had no doubts.

  “Fair enough,” I heard in stereo. Then I went back to join Green.

  Green and the others had just entered the conference room, Marcus and Kyle behind them. Two boys sat handcuffed to a table—and they really were boys. Eighteen, nineteen. The one on the right had a solid, granite face with a lowered brow, dark eyes, a square jaw, and blond/brown hair. The smaller, thinner boy on the left was dark-haired, with a narrow face and extraordinary green eyes—wide set and rimmed with dark lashes, sparkling and ageless.

  Oh yes—this boy was part sidhe.

  Green waited for the guard to lock the door behind them before he said, “Dear man, would you mind crouching in the corner over there? Yes. Like that. Hands over your head. Good man.” The man complied, and then Green turned to the rest of them. “Right then, my darlings, let’s hear the bad news.”

  And that’s when Max started to undress and Nicky took off his shoelaces.

  I pulled out of Green’s mind with a lot less finesse than he’d used on me. I talked to him instead. “Pull everyone to the west corner, and pull the tables over your heads. It’s gonna get messy.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Vampires’ll tell you you’re ass-full of funky-smelling werewolves. Same shit we ran into in Monterey—I don’t know how they all got there, but we need to assume you guys were made the minute you walked in.”

  “We shall have to speak to our two young men at length.” Green’s mildly assessing tone was just the same in his head as it was in real life. “I hope our dear Camigwen isn’t thinking of a passionate reunion.”

  Even in the midst of the panic, I had a moment to assess the human situation of our inhuman beings. “Judging by the way they were looking at each other and sitting so carefully, I would imagine that’s a no.”

  Green’s dry chuckle was just the same in his head too. “That too will need sorting out. We’re crouching in the corner—”

  “Vampires on top.”

  “Beloved—”

  “Don’t dick with them, Green. They’ll protect you. I got used to it, you need to. Now, is everything a go?”

  “Is it with you?”

  “Give me two minutes to explain to the guys.”

  I yanked out of his head and looked at my people, who looked grimly back.

  “They’re okay,” I said, brushing Bracken’s hand. “But half the jail is werewolves—not ours. They’ve got the same funky smell that the wolves had in Monterey.”

  Bracken and I were the only ones in the outside party here who’d been there. We remembered the s
mell—and the crazy, self-destructive madness that had gone with it.

  “Holy mother of fuck,” Brack swore.

  “Is that new?” I asked him, hoping to calm us both down.

  “Since people have been fucking for years, I’m thinking not,” Bracken shot back, squeezing my hand as he said it.

  “Awesome. So we’ve got old fuckery going on—I’m a fan.”

  “What’s our plan, princess?” Lambent asked, on full alert. Yeah, the guy could be a nasty, gaping asshole 90 percent of the time, but when shit got bad, he was all business. And he seemed to like following me, and I knew not all the elves could be bothered.

  “So, we’re going to fake an explosion,” I said, looking at them seriously. “Lambent, listen carefully. Brack and I are gonna….”

  I explained the plan, and bless them, not one of them laughed at me. Arturo glared and shook his head, Renny smirked as though I’d told the most outrageous joke, and Bracken took the name of Fuck in vain again.

  Lambent let a truly evil smile cross his face.

  But none of them laughed.

  When I was done explaining, and I was pretty sure they were ready to go, I got back into Green’s head.

  “Ready for us, beloved?”

  “I’m not even going to ask if you know what you’re doing.”

  “Never. I never fucking know what I’m doing.”

  “Good. It’s how I got to be leader of the preternatural world. We’re well matched, then.”

  “Be prepared. The force is going to come first, and if I let any werewolves out, they’re going for your elf blood immediately.” And then, because it occurred to me, “And fuck me, could you tell Whim we’re flying in?”

  “Done.” Something violent interrupted his thought—a noise, a force—and in the pause that followed, I stopped being the field commander I’d worked at becoming for the last two years, and I was suddenly the terrified teenager who’d lost her first lover and didn’t want to lose anyone else ever again.

  I started to shake, and I must have made a sound, because Bracken’s hand closed over mine. But Bracken, bless him, knew when to leave a communicating woman alone.

  “Beloved, you need to hurry. The wolves have been let out of their cages, and they’re on the hunt.”