“This is one hell of a critter. It’s using your lymph channels as trails for sending out these filaments. A couple of them have punctured your jugular.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, and I glared at Ken.
“But it’s also sent a tangle of these threads into your left atrium.”
I stared at the image on the computer. There was my beating heart with what looked like roots growing inside one of the cavities. It was phantom pain, not real, but I pressed a hand hard against my chest, horrified by what I was seeing. “Wh…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “Why?” I managed to croak.
The three White Masons exchanged glances. “We think it’s a protective move on the part of the parasite,” the physician said.
“Meaning?” I asked.
“That if we try to surgically remove the creature from your chest it could throw you into refractory ventricular fibrillation. We might be able to do it if we had a heart to swap in for yours. And we’d have five minutes to do it if we want there to be a brain left,” Maness added.
I couldn’t sit still any longer. I slid off the table and paced the very small available space in the crowded room. The heart we had just been discussing was hammering against my ribs. I clenched and unclenched my fists and felt the nails biting into my palms. Need to get off the polish and cut them short if I’m stuck like this, I found myself thinking inanely.
I hate you, I directed to the creature.
Another thought. It saved your life.
No, it saved its own life. I was just along for the ride.
Everyone stayed silent, allowing me to process. I took a deep breath and looked around at all of them. “Well, that’s it then.” I started for the door, shoving Ken out of the way to get there.
Hettie spoke up. “Ken, what will likely happen to the parasite if a vampire does bite Linnet?”
The scientist frowned at the far wall. “Often the principal creature will die. It’s met its evolutionary imperative.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I gave her a suspicious look. “Why? Why ask that?”
“Just trying to get a better understanding.”
“Hettie, you rarely ask random questions,” Jolly said. “What are you thinking?”
“We’ll talk about it later, Jolly dear,” she said as she patted his cheek.
* * *
“Even though we have an agreement with the Convocation I’d feel better if you were in Fey and out of the reach of any disgruntled vampires or werewolves.”
I was sitting in darkness in the guest room at Jolly’s house, gazing out the window at moonlight washing across the barn and arenas. It was Jolly’s voice that emerged out of the gloom. I didn’t answer. “Just tell me how and we’ll leave a message for Parlan.”
“No. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see anyone I used to know.”
“We’ll find a solution.”
“You really believe that?” Silence. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Lynnie, we really are trying to help,” he said gently.
I closed my burning eyes and tried to release the inchoate rage that held me in its corrosive grip. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a … bitch.”
“It’s all right.”
“So what’s the plan with the Convocation? Are you going to turn them loose on the other group? And what do you want me to say?”
“Since Dr. Maness was unable to remove the creature we’ve decided it’s best you not attend. We wouldn’t want anything to … er … happen.”
“Yeah, guess it would kind of wreck the big powwow if werewolves and vampires started jumping on me.” Once again, bitterness infused the words.
“It can’t be denied you have a strong effect on Powers,” Jolly said.
“Except Hettie.”
“Yes, well, but Hettie is rather a unique case. Only female Power in the world, so far as we know.”
A thought as fragile as mist and as fleeting as a falling star flickered through my mind and was gone before I could grasp it. I tried in vain to pull it back but it was gone, having left only the faintest residue, like the aftermath of a camera flash on the retina of an eye.
“Jolly, do me a favor. Call Red and Meg. Tell them you’re a friend of mine, but please make sure that Parlan knows about … about John.”
“They’ll want to know about you,” he pointed out.
“Tell them I died too. It’s not all that far from the truth.”
The look he gave me was both sad and frustrated. I knew he wanted to help and that his frustration was directed at himself, at his inability to fix this, but there was nothing he or anyone could do. I had been brave and resourceful and, for the most part, I had controlled my emotions, but now I was tired and devastated. I had nothing left emotionally, which translated into a physical exhaustion so profound that all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.
“Do you want some dinner?” Jolly asked.
I shook my head. He turned his chair and left me alone in the bedroom. I vacillated between going to bed, walking over to the barn to see Vento, taking a bath, and reading a book. I decided to follow my first impulse. I shed Jolly’s borrowed clothes and burrowed under the down comforter. I didn’t so much fall asleep as plummet into a black abyss.
Unfortunately, there were monsters waiting there. I kept seeing John, but often he was covered with oozing blisters as he and David became entwined. Blood, like rising floodwaters, lapped about me. Hands gripped the back of my neck, trying to force my head below those sticky red waters.
A touch on my bare shoulder had me fighting the covers. I struck out with a fist, a panicked reaction, and had my hand gripped in an icy vise.
“Lynnie, Lynnie, calm down, it’s me.” It was Hettie. I sat up, gasping for air. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said
At the same time, I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you.” My little rider was quivering with excitement again. I sent hateful thoughts in its direction, to which it reacted not at all.
Her face was in shadow, but her smile was a flash of ivory in the moonlight. “Needless to say, you didn’t hurt me.” She swept my sweat-matted hair out of my eyes. “Bad dreams?” she asked.
I nodded. “Very bad dreams.”
The mattress sagged a bit as she sat down on the edge of the bed. I stuffed the pillow behind my back and leaned against the headboard. Frowning, I tried to read her expression, and finally gave up, leaned over, and snapped on the lamp on the bedside table. “You’ve got the look of a guilty puppy,” I said.
There was a flash of offended vampire and then she laughed. “Yes, I suppose I probably do. Linnet, I think there is a way to end this for you.” Suddenly breathless, I found myself cringing back against the pillow. She made an erasing gesture in the air between us. “No, wait, scratch that. That sounded ominous.”
“Yeah, it kinda did.”
“I mean, I think we can allow the predator to die so it can be safely removed. And I wonder, if it were no longer active in your body, if you wouldn’t default back to your normal form? What?” she asked in response to my expression.
“I want that almost more than anything, but I dread it and I’m scared. It hurt so bad when it did this to me. Going through it again…” I shivered, then squared my jaw and took a breath. “But I’d do it if I could be me again. So, what are you thinking?”
“That I bite you.” She held up a hand to forestall the reaction she saw coming. “I spent a few more hours with Ken and we looked over a lot of literature. I think this thing will die once it delivers its pathogen.”
“But. But then you’ll die!”
“Maybe, but maybe not. The fact I’m not being driven wild by you is interesting, and I’m a woman. These things have had several thousand years to adjust to only affecting males. It can only gestate in a female. What if it can only spread its DNA via males?”
“But we don’t know that. You’
re risking your life.”
“I’m very old, Linnet.” She forced air out of her lungs to form a sigh. “And rather tired. Oh, I put up a good front, but sometimes the years lay on me with the weight of mountains.”
“Hettie, I can’t be responsible for your death too. I’ve already cost John his life. Please, don’t—”
Her hands closed on my shoulders, pinning me against the headboard. I had as much chance of breaking free as a butterfly trying to escape a lepidopterist. I gasped as her fangs punctured the skin of my throat, then a warm lassitude washed through me and a sense of deep contentment. Her lips closed over the wounds and she sucked at the blood. She drank and I hovered on the edge of unconsciousness. Eventually, she released me and lowered me onto the bed. That sense of presence that had been with me for so many months began to fade. There was pain again. Not as severe as what I’d endured in that cellar, but significant. Hettie held my hand, stroked my sweat-slick forehead. Eventually, it passed. I lay panting on the bed with my eyes tightly closed. Slowly, I reached up and touched my chest. I had breasts again and my hips felt right.
“It put me back,” I said softly.
“I think it was forcibly holding you in that strange hermaphroditic state,” Hettie said.
I opened my eyes and looked up at her. “I still don’t feel one hundred percent like myself.”
The vampire smiled. “Probably not. You’re taller, Linnet. That didn’t change back. Probably a good thing. If the energy that creature stole to affect the change had been released we might have blown out the wall of Jolly’s house.”
“Not to mention it probably wouldn’t have been too good for us either.”
She forced air out and chuckled. “Probably not.”
“Speaking of … How do you feel?”
She cocked her head and smacked her lips. “Fine. Though I wouldn’t expect any symptoms yet. I have to become irresistible to vampires and werewolves first and get bitten numerous times before it kills me.” She gave me a smile. “We should get David over here and see if he finds me beguiling and tantalizing. Somehow I doubt that will happen.”
“You have a theory.”
“I think the creature will try to implant as if I’m a host rather than generate the killing pathogens. If it does, we can surgically remove it because it can do fuck all to my heart.”
I stood up. I was a bit shaky and Hettie grabbed me to keep me upright. I looked down the length of my restored body. “Well, I’ll be able to use my leg more effectively when I ride. That’s a win.” I paused. “On the sucky side—I have to buy a whole new wardrobe.”
Hettie laughed again. “Well, you’ll certainly need something to wear before we go to the Convocation. In Jolly’s hand-me-downs you look rather like Chaplin’s Little Tramp.”
25
“What have you done? Oh, Hettie, what have you done?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Jolyon, stop having a glamour fit. I returned our girl to normal,” she said proudly.
Jolly spun his chair to face me. “And you agreed to this?”
I opened my mouth, but Hettie ran over me. “Of course, she didn’t. She tried to argue so I just attacked her.”
Jolly moaned and dropped his face into his hands.
We were in the living room early the next morning. Jolly’s expression when I’d come in wrapped in a frothy, lacy dressing gown that belonged to Hettie was first delighted, then comically dismayed. That’s when he’d started yelling at Hettie.
“Linnet needs clothes so I’m going to go shopping and get her some.”
“Where’d she get that?” he asked, pointing at the dressing gown.
“It’s mine.”
“You don’t sleep.”
“What has that to do with anything? It’s pretty. And I’m still a girl.”
“You’re a nightmare is what you are,” he muttered.
She leaned down and patted his cheek. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
I finally managed to utter a few words. “Really, Hettie, you don’t have to shop for me—”
“This is the closest I will ever come to having a daughter,” she said. “So don’t argue.”
“Okay.” She started for the door. “Don’t forget shoes,” I called after her.
“As if I would. Shoes are what I live for—so to speak.” She gave us a jaunty wave and was gone.
I looked over at Jolly. “I’m sorry. If I could have stopped her, I would have. If it’s any comfort, she doesn’t think the parasite will … well … kill her.”
“But she might still be able to infect others. She should have waited for our ruling council to arrive before taking such an action,” he grumbled.
Hettie stuck her head back in the door. “Oh, forgot. I’m going to stop by IMG and see if anybody wants to bite me.”
“What!” Jolly shouted, but she was gone again. “Damn the woman! You can’t tell her a damn thing.”
“She’s four thousand years old, Jolly. Why would she listen to anything any of us tell her?”
He scratched his chin, where he was sporting a mix of silver and gold stubble, and gave me a rueful smile. “You’re right.” He paused and frowned at me. “You’re taller.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“How do you feel otherwise?”
I touched the place on my breast where the predator had lurked. “I don’t sense it any longer.”
“Well, that’s good. We’ll get you to Dr. Maness as soon as possible.”
“Good. I want this thing out of me.” A new thought intruded. “Uh, where’s my dad?”
“Being debriefed by our council.”
“Ah. Okay.” I tried to figure out how to phrase my question and finally gave up and decided to just say it. “Jolly, am I ever going to have my life back? A normal life? A boring life?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever had a normal life. Fostered by a vampire, Ivy League educated, your first job was in a world-class law firm, ruler of a principality in Fey.”
“How did you know about that?”
“Hettie told me.”
“When you woke up?”
“No, she told Vento while I was residing there.”
“I am never going to get used to that.”
The doorbell rang. I tensed. Jolly held up a hand. “Probably Parlan. We reached him late last night.”
He rolled out of the room, heading to the door. I wanted to rush to the door, but I also wanted to rush back to the bedroom and hide. I dreaded the coming meeting. At least I wouldn’t have to face it as the wrong gender. Male voices in the hallway and then the two men entered. Parlan looked drawn and tired, but his expression lightened when he saw me. He crossed in three long strides and hugged me tight.
“Thank the Phase you are all right. I should never have let you leave. And I intend to kill that miserable scientist.”
“Oh, please don’t lay this big testosterone act on me,” I said, more weary than angry. “Haven’t enough people died already as a result of this clusterfuck?”
“My brother is dead and you were taken. Can I just let that go?”
“Yes, because I’m asking you to. And if that’s not enough, I’ll tell you.” Parlan bowed his head in acquiescence.
“And we need Ken. If there are more of these creatures out there, we have to figure out how to neutralize them,” Jolly added.
“All right, all right. I’ll do as you wish, but I don’t have to like it,” Parlan said, then added, “Just don’t expect me to be polite to the bastard.”
“I can’t manage that either, so no problem,” I said. I took his hand and led him over to the battered couch. We sat down. “How did you find out what had happened? And were you there for Red and Meg?”
“Red contacted me. Left letters at the intersections. I was there for the funeral. Your Catholicism is rather beautiful, though I found the man nailed to a cross of wood to be rather disturbing. And I met my actual sister and brothers,” he said with some wonder. “They … welcomed m
e.”
“Of course they did. They’re Red and Margret O’Shea’s kids.”
“I’m beginning to understand what that means,” Parlan said. “I was raised to be heedless, proud, and self-indulgent. They all serve. And even while they grieved for John, their thoughts were on you. My father”—I realized that was the first time Parlan had ever called Red “father”—“called the Philly police and asked for help in searching for you.”
The thought of that action warmed me and gave me some small hope that Red and Meg didn’t hate me. I voiced that fear and Parlan shook his head. “No, they would never blame you. You were a victim too.”
“I need to tell them that John regained his humanity right at the end.”
“They’ll be glad to hear that, and I’m glad for you too. So what do we do now? As a faithful member of your Scooby Gang”—he stood and bowed—“I stand ready to serve.”
The juxtaposition of the formal Álfar presentation with mentions of Scooby-Doo had Jolly choking on a laugh. It made me smile too. “We find these Black Masons and put them out of business. First step, we enlist the aid of the Convocation that governs matters pertaining to werewolves and vampires.”
“Yes, she is a lawyer,” Jolly murmured.
“I will be at your side,” Parlan said.
“Actually, it’s just going to be Linnet, me, and the master of our order,” Jolly said.
Something about that hit me wrong, and then I realized what. I shook my head. “No, Jolly, if I’m really the bridge, as you claim, then we need to broaden the membership.” I stood up and began pacing excitedly. “We need David and Hettie and Parlan and Lucius and Ladlaw. Think about it, Jolly. It needs to be more than just three humans telling a council of Powers Hey trust us, we’ll take care of a human plot to kill you all.”
Parlan was grinning and Jolly just shook his head. “She’s quite correct,” Parlan said.
“Yes, damn it, she is.”
Parlan turned his smile on me. “By the way, you look quite fetching in that cloud of lace.” He then frowned and looked puzzled. “Though there is something … different … Have you changed your hair?”
Jolly and I exchanged glances and I laughed. It felt good. Despite all the loss, pain, and sorrow it was a promise that life did get better and that I would survive.
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