by AJ Larrieu
“You all right?”
“Fine. Come on.” I pulled him into the kitchen before he could ask me again.
Bruce’s rags were soaked with blood and Ian’s face was expressionless, the bloodless white of skim milk. Lionel held a bandage to the wound, and there was a pile of long, striated brown feathers on the table. Ian was usually hard to read, but his thoughts were coming through loud and clear this time. —fuck me, that hurt—
“Bunny’s on her way,” Shane said, and Lionel blew out a breath in relief.
“Good thing,” he said. “Don’t know what they’d do with you at the hospital, son.”
Ian smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Bruce wrung out a handful of rags in the sink while Lionel kept pressure on the wound. Ian glanced at the liquor cabinet on the opposite wall, closed his eyes and turned away.
“Have you ever come across someone like that before?” I asked him. “I mean—what is she?” I’d never seen anyone with that kind of strength, and the power she’d put over my mind was like nothing I’d ever encountered.
“Some shadowminds can do that,” Lionel said, frowning as he picked up what had happened. “It’s not common, though. Strange.”
“I felt her in your head,” Shane said. “She didn’t feel like a telepath.”
“And she can’t just be a converter—that doesn’t explain how strong she is.”
“All I know is she put a hole in my wing,” Ian said.
It didn’t take much longer for Bunny to arrive. She didn’t knock, just came through the back door into the kitchen. She looked as immaculate as always, as though we hadn’t just woken her from a dead sleep. Her steel-gray, rod-straight hair was neat and perfect in its usual bob, and she was wearing freshly pressed dress slacks and a crisp white shirt. She took one look at Ian and froze.
“Baton Rouge,” I said, hoping that was enough.
“I wondered.” She came forward cautiously. Ian watched her skeptically, but didn’t move when she stood by the table he was sitting on. “Is this a knife wound? Or did you have an argument with a barbed wire fence?”
Ian extended his right wing, forcing Lionel to drop his hand. The wound was still seeping blood. Ian’s feathers had been pulled out around it, and he looked weirdly vulnerable with even that small patch of skin bare. Bunny leaned close to look at the wound.
“So, you anchored to Baton Rouge,” she said.
Ian made a sound that might have meant yeah.
Bunny held her palm over his wing and closed her eyes. “How long ago?”
“Few days.”
“You’re new to be this far from your anchor point.” She pressed two fingers to the skin above the wound, bloodying them.
Ian gritted his teeth. “I’m dealing with it.”
“Mmm.”
Bunny wasn’t a doctor. She had a rare talent—healing. She was the only shadowmind I’d ever met with the gift. I didn’t understand how it worked, except that she could heal injuries that should leave a person dead. The wound on Ian’s wing was probably child’s play to her. I was on the other side of the room, but I could still see the way the gaping flesh closed and went smooth. Ian barely moved, but I could sense his pain abating.
“And your healer?” Bunny asked.
“Don’t have one.”
“It seems that we complement each other well, then.” She didn’t smile. She’d once told me, when I’d decided to embrace my gift instead of returning to San Francisco, “We don’t have a guardian of our own. What we have is you.”
I had no idea why New Orleans lacked a guardian, but at the moment, I was feeling like a pretty poor substitute.
“It gets easier,” Bunny said. Ian gave another grunt, this one marginally more interested. “In a decade or two you’ll have a great deal more range. And you’ll be able to keep that glamour up. This might be tad unpleasant, darling.”
Bunny pressed her whole palm to his wing, right above the bare spot. Ian’s brow furrowed, and he nearly twitched back. Nothing happened for a moment, but then new feathers poked through the bare skin and grew, lengthening into damp spines and unfurling. Even Ian looked impressed.
“Now the other,” Bunny said.
Ian lifted his broken left wing anemically, and Bunny cocked her head at it. She didn’t even have to touch him. She held her hand over the crest and the wing slowly straightened, unfurling until it took up half the room. Ian flared it, the feathers opening like a hand for a catch.
“Good as new,” Bunny said.
“Thank you,” he said. It was the first time I’d heard him use those words.
“Anyone else?” Bunny asked.
I shook my head even though Shane frowned at me. “I’m fine.”
Bunny gave me a once-over—visual and mental; I could feel her powers sweep me—but she let it stand. “Well, then. Call if you need me.” She showed herself out.
* * *
Lionel sent Shane and me up to bed with some kind of admonishment to rest. I wasn’t really listening. I wasn’t even slightly tired.
The pull had combined with the adrenaline rush of being dangled six stories above the ground, and there was no way I was going to calm down. Even my skin felt charged. When Shane and I got to the privacy of his old room, I pressed him into the closed door, dug my fingers into his hips and kissed him.
He wasn’t shocked, I could tell. The rush of panic had affected him as much as the pull had affected me. I picked up the lust wrapped around him as clearly as I could feel the humid night air on my skin. He was already hard. I pulled off my shirt and rocked my hips against him.
“Bed,” I said in his ear. “Now.”
He backed me to the bed, holding my gaze. When my knees hit the mattress I sat, and my mouth was level with his belt buckle. I pulled off his belt and undid his fly, reaching for him, but he stilled my hands.
He gave my shoulders a light shove to knock me back onto the bed, then he ranged over me and laid open-mouthed kisses down my neck. I clenched the sheets and arched my back and groaned at the ceiling while Shane ran his warm tongue flat over my belly. My skin was on fire.
“Easy, easy.” He slipped two fingers under my waistband and tugged off my jeans.
I grabbed his undershirt and ripped it in two, pulled him down and fastened my mouth to the dip between his pecs, dug my fingers into his back.
“Please,” I said, my voice susurrating through the small space between my lips and his skin. “Please fuck me.”
“Jesus Christ.” He struggled out of his shoes and jeans and rolled us both over, putting me on top. He threaded his fingers in my hair and steadied me, twined his legs around mine to still me. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
Shane slid his hands to my waist and shifted my hips up. It was all he needed to slide his erection to my center, and slowly, slowly, he seated himself inside me. I threw my head back and moaned, tumbling into his head as he entered me. The hot pleasure of it—his, mine—was enough to make my rational mind go blank.
I was already so close to the edge when he started to rock his hips, I knew I didn’t have long. I spread my legs and took him in deeper, clenching my inner muscles around him, and that was it. I was done. The climax took me like the wild thing it was. Shane gripped my hips and levered me up, just enough to give himself room to move, and the half-dozen thrusts it took for him to follow me made my whole body go limp.
I collapsed onto his chest, panting.
Shane threaded his fingers through my hair. “Cassie.”
“Mmm.” The power had bled away, thank God. I felt almost normal again.
“Are you all right?”
I levered myself up to look at him. “I’m fine. Why?”
“You were a little...”
“What?” I sat all the way up.
&nbs
p; “Hey.” Shane pulled me back down onto his chest. “You seemed upset, that’s all.”
The problem with living with a telepath was that you couldn’t lie. If I told him nothing was wrong, he’d know I was hiding something. With a lot of concentration, I could conceal what I was thinking, but it would take even more to stop him from picking up on my emotions. There was no way I’d be able to keep him from feeling how much the pull had scared me.
And no way I could keep him from seeing that I’d loved it.
“It didn’t hurt him,” I said. “It just kept coming.” The rush of power came back to me and he saw the way I’d felt. Just the memory of Ian’s energy sizzling in my veins was enough to make me want it again.
Shane stroked my back. “I’m sure it’s normal to feel that way.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t want to admit it.
“Cassie. Talk to me.” He tugged on my ponytail until I lifted my head and met his eyes.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
I could hear him deciding what to say next, considering whether it was better to push me to talk now, or wait. He considered, going back and forth, and finally he nodded. “We should get some rest.”
“Yeah.” I’d wake up and feel normal again. I had to.
* * *
It was always the same dream.
I was on a plane, heading over an ocean. I don’t know which one, or where to. The engines failed, and the pilot came on and told us we were going down. The shriek of wind over the wings drowned out every other sound, like static. People screamed, ran for the useless emergency exits. I felt their fear everywhere. It was like smoke.
I knew I could stop it. I was calm. I stood up, a rock in a froth of panic, and reached out with my power for the weight of the plane. Ice formed on the wings. The ruined engines went cold, but we slowed down. The people closest to me stopped screaming and looked out their tiny porthole windows. The surface of the water was so close we could make out dark rain falling into choppy waves. The plane hovered motionless over the ocean, and then people started to drop dead.
I woke up shaking. I could hear Shane’s heartbeat, his steady breath. The pull during the fall came back to me, and Ian’s sleeping mind felt like a siren in an empty street. I wanted it. A claw of desire pricked the skin of my chest. Any minute it would go deeper. I pushed it away, trembling.
Shane stirred beside me, half asleep. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me back down against him. His chest was warm and broad.
“S’okay, baby. Just a dream.” He settled me against him and nestled his face against the back of my neck.
For the first time in months, I wanted my pills. Longed for them, for the way they’d suppressed my powers. Breaking an addiction to sedatives wasn’t as bad for a shadowmind as it was for a normal, but I knew better than to go back.
I just needed time. The feeling would fade.
I curled into the hard curve of Shane’s body. The sheets were warm and smelled of him—soap and shaving cream and a hint of motor oil. Calm settled over me, and I felt sleep slowly reassert itself.
A jolt went through me, a buzz of power like a pull, but sharper. Shane sat bolt upright, instantly alert.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.” This time it wasn’t me—I was sure. I climbed out of bed and pulled on a guest robe. Shane was right behind me. It was on this floor, whatever it was, and that left only one possibility.
“Diana,” I said, and we both took off at a run.
She was in the Robicheau Room on the opposite side of the house, overlooking the courtyard. The power had the feel of panic to it, and I didn’t bother knocking. If it was just a nightmare, we could have a nice laugh over Lionel’s hot chocolate. The door wasn’t locked. I shoved it open.
Diana was curled in a ball in the middle of the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, her head buried. She was muttering to herself, but I couldn’t make out the words. I was afraid to speak. The power was coming from her, no question. Another jolt hit me, and Diana rocked back and forth, her muttering growing louder.
“What the hell—” Shane was frozen in the door behind me. I could only shake my head.
Her head snapped up, and she opened her eyes. I took a step back. They’d gone almost totally black, the pupils nearly obscuring the whites. She looked past me without seeing me, still muttering.
I took a careful step into the room. I wanted to go to her, but something about the power around her held me back, as though I’d get an electric shock if I touched her. I inched closer, testing. She didn’t react, then her eyes cleared, normalized, refocused. She looked right at me.
“What kind of light bulbs do you have in this room? Regular? Fluorescent?” She stood up and looked at the light fixture. “Take it down.”
Shane and I looked at each other. “Uh, sorry?” I said.
“Take down the light bulbs. Let me see them.”
I looked up at the fixture. It was an old-fashioned one, a mosaic of clear glass with lead piping. I used telekinesis to loosen one of the bulbs and brought it floating into my hand. It was one of the fluorescent kind, a spiral tube. Diana snatched it, examined it, and thrust it back at me.
“Good. You’ll want to keep those on. Do you have more?”
I stopped worrying whether she was all right and started worrying whether she was sane. I tried, very carefully, to slip into her head, but she had those shields up again, nothing there but a blank wall. I couldn’t even pick up her emotions.
“Is that...important?” I asked.
“Only if you want to live.” She turned to Shane. “She’s going to rip your throat out.”
The words weren’t a threat. They were a fact. She spoke them like you would tell someone he was dying of an inoperable brain tumor.
I sat back on my heels. “Well, that’s detailed.”
“It’s how she usually kills people. She’s a vampire.”
Chapter Ten
I exchanged a look with Shane.
“Is she insane? I mean, actually insane?”
“She’s definitely something.”
“A vampire?” I kept my voice neutral. I didn’t want to challenge her delusion, not right now. Whatever state she’d just come out of, she might be fragile, and I didn’t want to push her over the edge.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.”
“We’ve, uh, just never met one before,” Shane added.
I decided to focus on the less radical statement. “Why would Annette want to kill Shane?” After all, I was the one who’d just kidnapped her prize mind-reader, and she’d very recently dangled me over the side of a building.
“She’ll kill you, too, if you get in the way.”
Shane actually laughed. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”
Diana looked grim. “I don’t. You’re—” She cut off with a gagging sound and doubled forward, retching.
“Diana!” I ran forward, but she waved me off.
“No—can’t—don’t ask—”
“What is it? Let me help you.” Her whole body shook with effort, and she’d broken out in a cold sweat. She curled up in a ball and went still. Shane and I stared at each other, not sure what to do.
“She stops me,” she said after a long moment. “She won’t let me tell anyone. She stops me.”
I remembered the strange compulsion I’d felt behind the garden shed. Was it possible she was telling the truth?
“Is that one of her vampire powers?” I asked, and worried I’d slipped one step closer to crazy.
Diana sighed. “You’re converters, right? Telepaths too?”
“Yeah...”
“Here.” She held out a hand to each of us.
“It’ll be faster this way. Just look.”
Shane pressed his lips together, but when I covered Diana’s hand with my own, he followed suit. Diana closed her eyes, and the massive shields around her mind went down. I took the invitation and slipped into the memory she offered us.
When telepaths shared memories, we usually led our viewers through the story of what happened in pieces, splicing important parts together and leaving out the stuff in between. Depending on how disciplined someone’s mind was, the story was smoothly edited or choppy, all in the right order or shuffled. Shane had a lot of control and discipline, but his memories still had a fluid, organic feel to them, pulling in fragments of related emotions and images. Shane’s sister Mina was much more linear when she shared memories, careful and ordered. Everyone had their own style.
Diana’s style was absolute precision. She wasn’t a telepath, so she couldn’t project her thoughts, only offer them, and I didn’t expect her to have the kind of control it took to lay out a memory like a storyboard. But being in her head was like watching Oscar-worthy editing. No other memories crowded in. No stray thoughts clouded the narrative. She was a master.
In her memory, we were back in the parlor where I’d waited for Annette, the same low light, the same oddities on the side tables. Annette sat on the edge of a fancy couch. From the perspective, Diana must have been standing behind her. The older woman looked up and put her hand over Diana’s on the back of the couch.
“I know it’s difficult to understand.”
“Not, it’s just—”
“You don’t have to explain.” Annette squeezed Diana’s hand, gently, like a mother reassuring an anxious child. “You’ll see the way it is.”
From the pitch of Diana’s voice, this must have been years ago. She sounded as though she was barely out of childhood. Her memory was colored only with the emotions she’d felt at the time, and that past Diana was nervous, doubting, full of a young woman’s awe. There was a knock at the parlor door, and it opened a crack.
“Come in.” Annette’s voice was pitched to carry across the room.