Quickening, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  “What about it?”

  “Ssss not poison,” Cowslip reassured me, weaving her elongated neck in sinuous patterns. Oh, Goddess, let her not tie it in knots like a cherry stem. “Isss… blood.”

  I startled. “Blood?”

  “Yessss… goblin children outssside the hill? Yessss?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “They frolic in the water… izzz sprinklerzzzz, yesss?”

  “Yes.” Oh, yes—most of our fey had originated in a cooler country, and the goblins respected no territorial boundaries. You could gaze out at anyone’s lawn between midnight and three and see goblin children playing—but only if you were looking.

  “Ssssay water? Isss… blood. Enough for spell, perhaps? Not enough for poison….” For the first time, Cowslip’s dreamy undulations grew jerky as she searched for human words. “Touch, bloooooooodd and sonnnggg, Brine Granite op Crocken—enough for blooddddd….”

  She was growing upset. Goblins are shy creatures sometimes, and she must have been forced to come talk to me because of her information. I glanced around and saw a small furry man, his arm wrapped around her willowy waist, giving her support.

  I nodded at him and he squeezed Cowslip reassuringly.

  “This is good information to have,” I said firmly, so she’d know this effort wasn’t wasted. “I shall tell my due’ane, and we shall make use of this, yes?”

  Cowslip bobbed and weaved some more. “Sheee issss quickennninggg…. You will protect?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Onnnly sidhe in eighty yearsssss…,” she said with a happy smile, and her spiderlike hand danced across my cheek. “Yooouuu weeeerrre looovvvelllllyy, Brine Granite. Lovely, loooovvvvvelllly rock and stone.”

  And with that she made her dreamy way into the shadows, her mate at her side.

  Nicky was regarding me with large eyes. “I am never getting used to the lower fey,” he said. “Did they really spell the local water with blood?”

  I looked to where Cory and Green were exchanging glances, then down the table to where Dylan, Connor, and Cami sat, huddling together and looking at the array of creatures at the formal dinner as though we were the terrifying villains in every horror movie they had ever seen.

  “I think it’s a piece to the puzzle,” I said grimly. “And we’re going to have to put the rest of the puzzle together.”

  “Ugh.” Nicky shuddered. “Why can’t we just have a simple target to kill so we can get on with our lives?”

  Teague grinned wolfishly. “Where’s the fun in hunting targets?” he asked, then held up his fist.

  I took the bump. “No fun at all,” I told him. Then I sobered. “I just wish the targets weren’t always so excited about hunting us.”

  “I’m saying.” Nicky shook his head and the three of us looked to the end of the table where Cory sat, eyes wide, taking a report from eight or ten sprites. I was pretty sure she couldn’t hear a thing they were saying, because Green was focusing sharply on the tiny ones as though listening for the important matter.

  Of course they’d deliver their report to Cory. They adored her. But they were exhausting, and we needed to get this show on the road.

  Finally they left, and we all turned our chairs inward and hunched toward the center. Platters of cookies—chocolate chip—just appeared in front of us. Cory snagged three and stacked them on a napkin. Big glasses of milk also appeared, and she made a happy little humming sound.

  I glowered. She didn’t need so much sugar—or she shouldn’t, as a human. Sidhe blood was mostly sugar, though, so I wondered if that was going to throw off her eating habits until she gave birth.

  She looked up from dunking one of her cookies to catch Max’s eye as he sat in the middle of the shape-shifter table, Renny at his side. Every now and then, Renny would cast a forlorn look at Cory, and this time Cory waved back animatedly.

  I did not understand women, but I did understand getting left behind, and I feared for the two of them. Cory loved with her whole heart—but she was not easy on the people she loved.

  “Both of you,” she said, nodding her head. She’d learned by now that very few people on the hill didn’t have exaggerated senses. She wiggled her fingers in the “come here, stupid!” tradition, and both of them stood and moved up to the main table.

  The new recruits had been sitting next to them, their body posture stiff and uncomfortable. Connor had turned werewolf the night before and run with his new pack mates. I wasn’t sure how that had gone, but I was sure it would come up.

  Max and Renny pulled up chairs and snagged their own cookies, and Green started the meeting.

  “First of all, how are our lost children?” he asked. Renny and Max looked at each other, but Teague was the one who spoke up.

  “That Connor kid is a pain in the ass,” he said, his voice low and mean. “He hangs by himself in the pack, which I can understand, but he snaps—and he means business—if you get too close to him. I had to take him down, mouth to throat, last night.” Teague shook his head. “Ugly. And his boyfriend is not happy about the bite thing.”

  Green pinched the bridge of his nose. “I tried to explain,” he said almost to himself. “Biting Dylan could be a horrible idea. I mean, it’s possible it would be great—no bothers, no pain, but….”

  We all looked around grimly. No bothers, no pain? Never happen.

  “And Cami?” Cory asked. “Renny, puss, she’s going to need some self-defense training, and some talk about how to go out on a run with us. I mean, we don’t have a manual, but we’ve all got a lot of experience in having me and Green boss people around. Did you get the feeling she’d let you do that?”

  Renny looked over to the table, then shrugged when Cami wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I don’t know. Cory, they lived on the street. I mean, it was bad—they were turning tricks to eat. That poker game Dylan got turned on to, that was supposed to be their way out. She’s got a big brick of bitchiness just trying to block me.”

  “Fucking awesome,” Cory grunted. “I’m going to have to talk to her, and it’s got to be tomorrow, because Monday there’s school.” She frowned. “Green, you’re keeping the car going to the Tuesday-Thursday classes even if I’m not in it, right?”

  “Oh, yes,” Green said. He nodded to the people down at our end of the table. “Teague, I know Jack has classes then. Renny, you were planning to go—”

  “Can we sneak Cami into the system?” Cory asked. “Not on Monday-Wednesday-Fridays, because the car’s too crowded and she’ll feel like she’s sort of stuffed in there against her will. But if we offer her a couple of Tuesday-Thursday classes, she’ll have a way—”

  “Out of that relationship,” Renny said, nodding. “Yeah. I think that’s good. I’ll talk to her tonight.”

  Cory smiled and winked. “Thanks, puss. That could help them all out a whole lot.”

  The whole table took a big collective breath, and Green signaled to Arturo and Grace that they should leave the fey table where they’d been sitting since dessert had been served and come join them. They came and sat, and using a subtle bit of magic, Green managed to detach the part of the table we were sitting at and leave room for the two of them. Just like Camelot, our head table had respect for everyone asked to sit.

  “Right, my darlings,” Green said, his mouth falling into a grim line. “Let’s hear what we’re up against.”

  Max went first, and you’d think things would get better after that. They so didn’t.

  According to our resident cop, our jailbreak had started a kind of redneck war—Cory’s phrase for it—between the survivalists who’d been growing in numbers in Tahoe National Forest and every law enforcement agency Placer County and South Placer County had to offer. In the days since the break, the FBI had gotten involved, as had Homeland Security. The good news, of sorts, was that nobody had been killed during the break, and Max was quick to praise Cory for that.

  “For someone who can’t remember the difference between a sh
eriff and local police, you sure did memorize the crap out of that schematic I drew you,” he said with admiration.

  Cory shook her head grimly. “Thanks, Max—but honestly, it was really a lucky guess and a fuckton of panic, you know?”

  Max disagreed. “No, I don’t. I didn’t give a shit how many people you killed, as long as you got us out. You managed to do it with no bodies. Well done, Cory—but dammit, stop taking risks like that. Especially now.”

  She nodded, then gestured for him to keep talking.

  “Anyway, we didn’t kill anybody, but at least ten people escaped in the chaos. There’s no way of knowing if they were the funky werewolves or not, but given that I think all of the other prisoners were still in their cells, it’s a safe bet.”

  “Oh Lord,” Grace said. “I’ll go have our boys check the hospitals for any dog bites coming in. Especially with the full moon the night after.”

  “Mother of fuck!” Everyone turned to look at me. I wished I had a worse swear word than that. “The goblins think there’s trace amounts of sidhe blood in the water—not enough to make people sick, but just enough to make them….” I waved my hands, seeing how this could go.

  “Susceptible,” Arturo realized. “Just enough to make people more susceptible to magic. So the blood from the touch, blood, and song is already there. All you really need is a handshake and a spoken word, and a human who doesn’t know what’s happening is going to be totally open to suggestions from the scumbags who’ve been trying to move in on us since last year. Oh Goddess, this is bad.”

  “So, not the well water from the hill?” Cory asked, clarifying.

  I nodded. “No—our water is perfectly safe.”

  “Awesome,” she said. “Grace? I need you to give the checking of hospitals to Marcus and Kyle. You need to make sure we have enough drinking water. There’s caseloads of it in the garage and in the cars. That needs to be passed around right now. And I’ll ask the vampires to talk individually to every shape-shifter on the hill and make sure nobody’s mind has been dicked with. It could have already happened.”

  Green shook his head. “No—no, beloved. Remember those shields you put up at the beginning of the summer? The—what did you call it?”

  “The emergency preternatural warning system,” Nicky supplied.

  Green managed a moment away from the seriousness of the situation to spare Nicky a smile. “Of course,” he said with a wink before turning back to us. “If one of us had brought in a spell or a mind-wipe or someone else’s blood that was attempting to bind them, one of two things would have happened.”

  “Please tell me they wouldn’t have self-combusted in a giant towering conflagration of flame and flesh that would have ignited the hill,” Nicky said, aghast.

  Cory let out a guffaw of laughter and socked him in the arm. “No, you dork—they would have had a supernatural orgasm and turned purple. Jesus, let the man finish!”

  Nicky grinned at her and winked. “That’s my job!”

  “You know, if you’re trying to convince us you never get laid, it’s not working,” Renny snarked. “Now let Green speak!”

  “Green is speaking,” Green intoned, smiling with the grim humor of the moment. I had a moment to think that he fit right in with the sort of combat banter we had developed. I hadn’t been happy when he’d put himself in danger either, but if it gave him a chance to be a part of us like this—warm and intimate, the blood brother we knew him to be—then perhaps, just perhaps, had the operation been less risky, it might have been worth it.

  “Cory is listening,” Cory responded, balancing her chin on her fist and looking at him with a precious expression. “Go ahead.”

  “We have Cory’s warning system at work, and we also have my mark. Now, I know the funky werewolves”—he grimaced. Everybody had picked up the term—“have a similar marking, but theirs is etched into their skin. I saw it, and Teague described it in Monterey. It is our mark, but it’s cutting into their skin like wire. If they came into this hill to harm us, they’d have to be under compulsion, and their wounds would bleed.”

  Teague snorted, and we all looked at him. He shook his head as though he’d thought of a joke and was too embarrassed to share. His eyes sought out Jack across the tables, and I had a sudden memory of that spring when I’d unfortunately gotten to see more of Jack than I’d ever wanted. His tattoo was very high up on his upper thigh.

  “If we see Jack walking funny, should we assume that he just had a good night?” I asked blandly. Teague lost the battle against the smirk on his face.

  “I’ll let you know if that’s not it,” he snickered, and that got us back to the task on hand.

  “So, good,” Green nodded. “That’s one good thing. We know to avoid the water, and we know that if our people are coerced, we’ve got two systems in place to warn us if someone here is up to no good. So what else?”

  Then Nicky told us that we were down four of the nonwolf shifters, and we all looked to Teague.

  “I’ll set Jacky and Katy on it,” he said decisively. “We need to find them.”

  “Lambent?” Cory asked. “I know it’s not your usual thing, but if they’ve been bespelled, we want someone who can sense it and maybe… I don’t know, purge it out of their system, okay?”

  Lambent nodded. “We’ll start doing the phone thing after this little confab, lovey. I’ll check their rooms for any hints of where they’ve gone—”

  “I can send you their phone bills,” Arturo supplied. It figured, since he and Green did accounts together. “If they’ve been contacting anybody, we’ll know.”

  “Appreciated,” Lambent said, nodding. Teague echoed him.

  And then it was Cory’s turn to go.

  “The vampires have been doing flybys of the area over the last three nights,” she said, tapping her head to indicate that she’d been having conversations in there to let her know how the surveillance was going. “And they say they’ve spotted three survivalist camps between here and French Meadows. But here’s the thing….”

  We looked at her expectantly.

  “Only two of them are human.”

  “Way to bury the lead, luv,” Green admonished gently.

  Cory shook her head, her mouth pursed in a grim line. “No—see, that would be the lead if they weren’t moving already. Apparently when we broke the jail, they decided to up and scatter. Kyle offered to go down and work some mojo on a straggler, but he said he could smell the stench from the air.”

  There was a universal recoil and an “Ugh!” from those of us with enhanced senses. Cory looked a little nauseated herself, and I wished I’d thought to check her plate. Odds were good she hadn’t eaten enough protein.

  “So we’ve got Kyle and Ellis tracking them right now, hoping to find out where the snake’s head is—”

  “The Avians could track them in the daytime,” Nicky said ingenuously, and Cory grimaced.

  “The vampires are in plenty of danger as it is,” she said, worrying her lip and looking at Green. “But birds in the daytime are going to get shot at, especially if they stray over the other survivalist camps. And even though they can carry their clothes in the oil on their feathers, they can’t carry water. If our bad guys start to bleed into the lakes, Avians are fucked.”

  “Won’t work in the lakes,” Green said, surprising us all.

  “You’re sure about that?” Cory asked, responding to the abruptness.

  Green nodded, steepling his fingers thoughtfully. “I think… well, the natural world is full of enough magic, luv. I think a man-made poison might work in a lake, but elf blood….” He grimaced, as though he knew he was stating this wrong. “I think elf blood in a lake will simply become part of the ecosystem. I think that’s why the goblins only tasted it in city water. It’s contained in the pipes and the cisterns. Won’t biodegrade so quickly.”

  Cory frowned. “So water’s not a problem—”

  “Please?” Nicky said unexpectedly. “Cory—LaMark and Mario are so d
epressed about missing out on Monterey. And the whole Avian enclave over at Camp Far West really does miss out on being part of the group here, you know?” He smiled at her winningly. When she looked like she was about to say no, he drooped his hands at the wrists and put on a comic expression of begging.

  Cory laughed. “Not the face! Not the puppy-dog eyes!”

  “Puhleeeze, Cory!” he begged. “Please please please let us see some action!”

  She flicked him on the ear, still cracking up. “Dork! Yeah, fine, your people can fly into mortal danger for us. Call them up tonight and have them drive over tomorrow. Teague, can we put wolves on the ground for them? I’m not sure if you want to be in human form or wolf, but it’s hazardous. I need good people down there.”

  We all caught the subtle warning. Teague had tried to let his husband come to a few operations—and with the exception of Monterey, Jack had always been more detriment than asset.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Jacky isn’t doing that anymore. Tough on my heart, right?”

  We all nodded. Oh Christ, yes.

  “Okay,” Green said, taking over for Cory. “I think everybody has an assignment, and we’re still gathering intel and battening down the hatches.” It was a smooth transition. Maybe I was the only one who could see that she had suddenly gotten tired and that she was hunting on the table for more to eat. I caught Green’s eye, and he nodded. A plate of apples and peanut butter appeared out of nowhere, and Cory smiled delightedly. She took one of the apples and dipped it in the peanut butter, then munched quietly while Green continued to speak. “We’ll continue to send people out, and make sure you keep in contact with your particular people. If you hear something out of place, let us know.” He made a circling motion with his finger. “We all know this place operates on gossip. Try to make sure the people at this table know first before the rest of the hill. We still don’t know who the leader is, and we still don’t know the endgame—although I’m going to take a wild guess and say taking over this place has something to do with it. I know we were trying to do a good deed by breaking Dylan and Connor out of jail, but I’m thinking they may very well have saved us from a sneak attack. For once it’s good to be on the right side of things, yes?”