Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  And where will you wait? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. I already knew he wasn’t going to stay here. It wouldn’t be safe for him, long-term. It would be the first place anyone with any sense would look for him if the Sarokhanians suspected he hadn't been in that casket this morning. I hoped it was just a shitty waxwork, and not some John Doe. The bottle found my numb lips again, and I swallowed.

  I nearly choked on the booze and the thought that floated to the surface of my mind like a bloated corpse: What if they already had? Had Folkenflik been sent not to offer me care, but to snoop around for signs of Batten? Had Mitch Dunlop been hired to hunt his disappointing and disappearing ex-buddy? I didn’t know. But I did know one thing: Batten had to leave. Again. Now that I knew he wasn’t dead for realsies, I didn’t want him to go. But I’d have to let him, and I could never tell a soul he was alive. How would I hide it from Wesley? I couldn’t; I’d have to swear my telepathic brother to secrecy, and hope it didn't slip through his Bond to his elder, and from there, up through the revenant hierarchy. Less troublesome but no less annoying was how I would keep it off my face in front of Golden and de Cabrera? What about Chapel, or Hood? I frowned at the bottle and considered seeing how much I could down in a single, epic chug, and hope it'd keep me from remembering any of this, but I knew that was a cop-out and a lie, and gave up after only two burning gulps.

  Harry was watching my face carefully, and I felt the effortless weight of his control settle on my rapidly fraying nerves. The comfort of him blanketing my mind steadied me far more than my alcohol intake. I sighed and tried to relax.

  “We cannot ask you where you will do this waiting, lad,” Harry said, “but please know that we are both battling curiosity and concern. Despite my harridan’s sharp tongue, we both know, I think, that she wishes you well. I will not allow her to risk your safety by pestering you about your future plans.”

  I nodded, but then wondered if I’d been too quick to judge Mitch Dunlop harshly; he’d come to collect Batten’s vampire hunting kit. He hadn’t been looking for Batten. He showed up to reinforce the idea of Batten’s death, to repeat it, hoping we were buying it. Wherever Batten intended to hunker down, he would have a daytime guardian of sorts. Dunlop hadn’t been checking on me because of a call from Batten, he’d checked on me because Batten was here, undead, looking for his kit, and making sure we all bought the line he sold us.

  I didn’t want to consider the Dunlop-as-DaySitter question, or any other official DaySitter option; certainly, Batten was too early de la tomb to offer and secure the metaphysical Bond. Or was he? My traitorous mind piped up. He's Remy's, and she's in the express lane, so maybe Marky-Mark can do the funky bunch of revenant tricks even though he's a noob. I didn't have an answer for that, and wasn't about to go asking Her Bitchiness or The Overlord for their opinion, especially while I was half in the bag.

  But he would need to feed. I wondered how he’d been managing that so far, but a possible answer presented itself. Carole Jeanne had secreted Batten’s newly-undead body off the island of Svikheimslending aboard the Meita with Captain Rask’s help. When Batten had first risen, undead and ravenous and out of control, she would have been the most likely candidate to tame him, to feed and comfort and reassure him as he floundered without his mortal center, to nurture and bring him back to his senses, to teach him the first things he’d need to know as a brand new immortal. I could picture her compassionate gaze through her glasses, reminding him to be wary of the sun in that motherly voice, and letting the family Bond flow through her from Wilhelm to calm him in his turbulent moments as the cold, dark blanket of UnDeath fully claimed him. She'd stayed with her charge long enough to be sure he was safe and well – in Russia, if Harry’s texts from overseas were correct – then she would have returned to her master at Felstein.

  Wilhelm had taken care of Batten with his own DaySitter. I knew how rare a thing that was, what an intrusion into Wilhelm’s own private Bond this would have been, but once Batten was part of the Dreppenstedt bloodline, he offered it nonetheless to his queen’s Younger. Oddly, and against all my jealous tendencies, I was overwhelmed with appreciation toward the house, and, finally, to Remy, so much so that tears pricked in my eyes. My anger flipped into gratitude with the realization that this was a far better thing for Batten than true death. They had all worked together to assemble and coordinate the deep subterfuge that put Mark Batten in my kitchen, rather than a cemetery, and they'd done it on the fly.

  Harry’s cool hand settled on my knee, where he patted me soothingly, and after I took one more bracing swig from the bottle, he took it away and nudged the espresso cup closer to me with an encouraging nod of his head. At some point, while I was lost in my thoughts, Harry had removed the bullet I'd put in Batten's ass, and I hadn't so much as glanced at it. I took an obedient sip of espresso. After the searing astringency of guzzling the liquor, the coffee burned and sparkled and invaded my mouth the way I sometimes imagined my blood felt in Harry's during a feed. It wasn't nearly as sexy, but it certainly commanded my attention.

  Batten was watching me steadily, aware of shifting emotions. “I wouldn’t be here if I thought you were handling this better,” he confessed.

  “For the last time,” I ground out, “I’m handling it. I’ve got this.”

  Batten said, “I never planned on coming.”

  “It’s stupid for you to be here, especially on my account,” I said. “It isn’t safe.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you should go. I’m mostly fine,” I said, “and the places I’m not fine, you can’t fix.”

  He shook his head, and his voice warmed. “I can’t fix it tonight.”

  “Stop!” I warned him, holding up a hand. “Do not make promises for future repairs, jackass. That would be the worst thing you could do.”

  “I can’t stay,” Batten said, “and I can’t take you where I’m going. But--”

  “Don’t say ‘some day,’ Mark,” I cut him off, wary of Harry’s rising discomfort. “Don’t you get it? You’re a revenant. Undead. Immortal. You’re going to need a DaySitter sooner or later, and it won’t be me. It can’t be me. You can’t feel love anymore, so you won’t even want me to fill that role, if you ever did. What exactly do you think you could come back here for?” My Bond roared in my veins, and it was as much loyalty as logic pushing my words, now, saying the words Harry wanted said, clarifying so there was no doubt, no grey area, no room for insecurities in my Cold Company. In vodka veritas.

  “Do you really think Harry is going to share me with another revenant? When you were just a mortal meatbag, it needled him, but you weren't a threat, you weren't a rival. You were an indulgence, like dudes who go out to see strippers to get wound up before coming home to their wives for the main event. But thinking you can get a taste of my neck instead of a piece of my ass? It’s just not possible. You’re going to go. And you’re not going to come back. And that really sucks. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. But we’re going to let you go. I have to let you go. For good. You can’t come back here.”

  Batten dropped his head and his jaw did that clench-unclench dance, but he pulled it together too quickly for my Talents or the house Bond to pick up, and when he stood from the table, it was done with smooth control. He came around the table to stand in front of Harry, who also stood. The animosity that had always crackled between them seemed washed out by their shared bloodline, now; they’d had their little spat outside, a minor revenant scuffle compared to most, but Harry and Mark were linked irrevocably, eternally, by the house, and by the masters they served.

  Harry moved first, lifting one pale hand to place it on Batten’s shoulder in an almost fatherly motion. Harry was no longer the king, crowing over his superiority, but rather an elder concerned for the well-being of this young new immortal.

  “You will need funds,” Harry said at last, his voice thick with emotion, “and you shall have them.” He let his pale hand fall away from Batten’s shoulder and slipped it int
o his back pocket for a card. He pinched it between two fingers, held it before Batten’s face meaningfully then put it inside Batten’s jacket, securing it in the pocket with a fond pat. “Never go elsewhere or rely upon any other for such things, for you need only ask me. In passing your information, be perfectly subtle. When it comes time, do so only through the most trusted of channels, leaving no trace. I trust you can manage this undertaking with delicacy?”

  Batten didn’t seem to know what to say to that. He searched Harry’s face, no longer afraid to make eye contact, though certainly Harry could still have rampaged through his mind with ease. He wouldn’t; with Batten’s death, Harry’s urge to show off was gone. Batten paused by the front door before opening it, but didn’t seem to be able to find a snappy good-bye to offer, and stepped out into the night.

  ******

  There was a sensation of being watched from two separate, distinct sides when I stepped out the front door after Batten; though I could pin down the source of neither, I suspected one was my Fetch and the other might be Bat-Wes flitting around in the dark from tree to tree. I watched Batten’s broad shoulders and bent head as he left, drinking in what I was certain was my last sight of him, torn between being glad I got to say goodbye and wishing it could be otherwise.

  He was heading for a truck, and that’s the first time I noticed Dunlop’s silver Nissan sitting in the driveway, close to the road. Batten was walking away and out of my life. I felt sick.

  He paused, half-turned, and his uncertainty roared through the Bond. I felt Harry hanging back in the hall, mentally willing Batten to leave. Instead, Mark strode toward me, his speed picking up with determination as he closed in. My body reacted to his approach with soaring hope. I ached to touch him, to taste him, just one more time.

  He obliged eagerly, driven by his own need and sensing, with fresh preternatural acuity, my quickened heartbeat, my trembling belly, the sudden heat in my chest. He snatched me off my feet in his arms, enfolding me like I was his last taste of life itself, and capturing my mouth with his, greedily, hungrily. I whimpered against his mouth, and the tears that had been threatening spilled freely. If I could have disappeared inside his arms forever just to keep us together, I’d have done so in that moment. Welding myself against him, quivering, I slowed my kiss and deepened it, sinking into everything we were together, telling myself this was my chance to say good-bye to all our shallow moments and our secret, heated romps, and our passionate fights, and our rare tender moments.

  When he let go of me, he did so suddenly, like I’d become a hot barb in his chest; I stumbled back and he stepped away from me, panting, shaking his head. Then he blurted, “You’re wrong.”

  “About what?” I demanded, embarrassed about the wetness of my cheeks.

  “All of it,” he choked, his eyes spiraling again from his natural dark blue to unnatural Dreppenstedt grey-green steel. “I did love you. From the first fucking minute you spoke to me.” He laughed sadly. “Yelled at me. In Buffalo.”

  “You shut your mouth,” I whispered, secretly thrilled and at the same time horrified.

  He shook his head, scowling. “Goddammit, I do. I do love you. I still can. You’re wrong, Marnie. You’re both wrong. It’s possible because I do.”

  As if realizing what he’d said was crazy, he turned his back on me and stormed to the waiting truck. The headlights flashed as Dunlop started the engine. I felt my mouth work through a million rebuttals, retorts, questions, demands, excuses, suggestions; none of them felt right in the moment. My vision of him blurred through a fresh round of tears and Batten was swallowed by the other side of the truck until I lost him. I lost him. The truck pulled away and I lost him for good.

  Harry’s voice from the door was softer than I’d ever heard it, and hushed thickly through what I suspected were tears of his own.

  “Oh, my pet.” He needed a second, and tried again. “He should not have said such things to you. It was cruel.”

  “Harry?” I squeaked.

  “Yes, my precious one?”

  I blinked rapidly. “I’ve had one helluva rough fucking day.”

  Harry chuckled despite himself. “My Only One, you have had a most dreadful day indeed.”

  “I shot him.”

  “You did,” Harry said, “though part of me very much enjoyed that bit.”

  “He kissed me.” I stared down the driveway as though I’d never seen it before; it was no longer gravel under moonlight, but the place where Batten loved me for real and left me for good. “What a fucking Monday.”

  “I do think much of it was necessary, though I would spare you from the pain if I could,” Harry said. “What would you have me do? You have only to ask, and it will be done. I will break the world for you, if you wish it.”

  I turned to face him. The porch light cast him in a halo and threw his shadow across me. “He knows nothing about being a revenant. He said he loved me.” I tried to bring back the tough Marnie, the snarky Marnie, the defensive humor of my clan. I felt my brow lower and my upper lip curl. “Friggin’ noob. What the hell does he know, right?” When Harry’s own lips shrugged down and his eyes darted to the side, I prodded. “Right, Harry?”

  “Let’s get you inside where it’s warm, and pull out all your comforts, my troubled pet,” he suggested tenderly, “and your companion shall attempt to put your worries to an end. We’ll pop something jolly on the telly and have a touch more of that tasty vods you fancy.”

  Encouraging the vodka? Now I knew something was up. “Harry,” I said warningly, “if there’s something you need to say to me right now about the Big L, you better just fucking say it. You know I’m on the edge, here.”

  “Oh, on the edge is how you’d put it? I’d use different descriptors, I’m sure,” he noted. “Never doubt that I am at all times wholly and entirely aware of your state of mind, ducky.”

  “Don’t change the subject to how bonkers you think I am,” I said. “You have something to tell me.”

  He sighed forlornly. “My most treasured darling, it would be so terribly unwise of me to—”

  “I’m still armed, half drunk, and have three bullets left,” I snapped.

  “Will you please come inside before I lose my patience entirely?” he clipped back, setting his lips in an unhappy line. When he saw that I was helplessly rooted in place by uncertainty, his shoulders fell. “The Dread Lady of the Falskaar Vouras has powers unknown and perhaps even unlimited,” he admitted, and his hand shot up so that he could smooth his eyebrow twice and then swipe at the front of his shirt at unseen or non-existent bits of lint in an effort to soothe himself, a familiar Harry Ritual that tugged at my sympathies. “It is simply impossible to know whether or not her Young will share some or all of her potential and capabilities, and whether or not that would extend to the calling of storms, the summoning of ice wyrms, or indeed, even the mortal ability to love and feel loved.”

  I drew back in horror at the implication. Harry cleared his throat and his face went through a series of awkward twists and clenches and grimaces. Once his words came, they did so like Niagara Falls freed from its winter ice, spilling cold and brutal to my shocked ears. “It is whispered in the halls of Skulesdottir that the Unholy Queen has an enduring love for the man who turned her – my Master, Wilhelm. That a sort of eternal love, now soured to contain a healthy thread of betrayal and hatred, is a complex and undying battle within her. This may be a burden she passes to those she has turned.”

  I barely breathed, “What does that mean for Batten?”

  “It is not only possible that Our Mark loves you, but from what I Felt tonight, I believe that it is quite probable. By my troth, I cannot pretend I am not certain of it. I imagine that he has imprinted permanently upon the last mortal love that he knew, and that, for all time, he, with all the depth and passion only the Undying can know, will love only you for the rest of his long and miserable life. And it will be miserable, I assure you.” He shuddered then, like the idea of it rocked him to th
e core, and I felt a wash of horror through the Bond. “If this, in fact, is true, my angel, then Our Mark will suffer a fate far worse than my own heart has ever known in caring for you.”

  I said, on autopilot, “I feel like I should make a joke right now about my being hard to love, but I can’t access it at this time. Mind if I reserve the option to bring it up later if the joke pops to mind?”

  “As you wish, my dearest,” he obliged.

  “Oh good,” I said, stunned and more than a little numb. “I feel like it’s gonna be a fuckin’ humdinger when it comes to me. A real knee-slapper.”

  “You must understand, DaySitter,” Harry said, “I will not let him take you from me, my Own. I will not. He will never be strong enough to face me in such a contest, if he should dare consider it. I pray very much that I will not have to see that day, for if it comes, know that I will be forced to end him yet again, and this time, it will mean his true demise and the damnation of his soul. And mine.”

  I couldn’t breathe, and had to remind myself to draw air before I got dizzy. “I’m sorry I asked,” I whispered, truly and deeply regretting it. My hands were shaking and I balled them into fists. “I think I need to go for a run. A really long run. I need to run all night.”

  “Please don’t,” Harry said raggedly. “Please do not run from me right now, my pet. I need to be near you. Perhaps more than ever before, I need to have you close by. I confess, I am feeling quite insecure.”

  I nodded rapidly, and when he opened his arms, I went to him, letting the Bond reassure us both. This had been a grueling night for him, too. I hugged him extra hard and he pulled me inside the house, trying to walk with me attached to him like a zebra mussel on the hull of a ship. I didn’t impede him much — with his preternatural strength, Harry could walk easily with a tank roped to his waist — but after a few steps, he did find my clumsy clinging amusing, and the return of his humor relaxed me enough that I could let go and walk beside him.

  We didn't turn on the television, and he didn't ply me with pastries and espresso. We went downstairs, into his bedroom, and made the closest thing to love we could, and then we slept.