by Amy Lane
“Will do. Can I have Mario to spot me from above?”
“Done. Good hunting.”
“Roger that.”
Kyle had begged nicely and managed to get a sip from Green before feeding from Teague’s wrist before they left. Green hadn’t seemed suspicious, and the double feeding not only made their bond tighter, it gave them limited telepathy, same as feeding from Cory the night of the flaming RVs. If something went wrong, Teague would at least know that and have Kyle’s back.
Mario stepped outside and flapped away almost instantly, but Kyle settled for walking across the road with no stealth at all.
“Smart,” Teague approved. “If he’d looked around, it would have seemed like he was hiding something.”
“Yeah, the boy did good. He came up with the old vampire kiss in Folsom, before Her Nibs killed them all off.”
Teague wasn’t surprised often. “Really? I had no idea.”
“Yeah.” Lambent sighed and looked out into the night. “And then his girlfriend—human—got to know Her Nibs through school. Didn’t turn out so well for the girl. Not Cory’s fault, though. Poor boy. He’s… he’s got a good heart.”
“You don’t have to defend him to me,” Teague said. As far as he knew, it was the first time Lambent had actually spoken of the relationship with the young vampire. “Have you met Jacky?”
Lambent let loose a breath and tilted his head back. “I am… I am unused to being attached,” he said, almost to himself. “Started out as fun, right?”
“Hurts,” Teague said, remembering moments when he’d thought Jack had been dead. “No fun then.”
“No fun,” Lambent sighed. “But necessary. He is becoming very, very necessary.”
“One of you having babies?” Teague asked, just to lighten the load.
Lambent cackled—score one for Teague. “Nope. How ’bout you, mate? You and Cop-Fuck gonna be our next couple of daddies?”
All the gears in Teague’s brain fused together as though they’d been dipped in water and frozen solid. “Hrk….”
Lambent cackled some more and was still cackling when Kyle returned, with Mario landing just as he opened the door. They hopped in together, bringing a blast of arctic wind with them, which allowed Teague to shake the vision of Katy, baby in her belly, doing something fancy with the embroidery floss and tiny needles.
“What’s up, gents?” Lambent asked, voice still ringing with the knowledge that he’d completely fucked Teague up.
“We all win. Somebody owes us money,” Kyle said. “He’s got two empty bourbon bottles in the trash—top-shelf stuff, but that’s his one vice. I say we wait until about two minutes after the light goes out and knock on his door.”
Teague grunted. “Genius. What’re we gonna say, ‘Pardon me, sir, we’re just poor lost circus performers’?”
Lambent’s cackle could really get on a guy’s nerves. “No, ducks,” Lambent said with confidence. “Leave that to me and Kyle, here. We’ll go deal with him. You and Mario get in the house through the back and look for files, right?”
Well, that had mostly been Teague’s plan, outlined as they’d driven in.
“Right,” Teague agreed. “Break.”
They hopped out of the car the way Kyle had crossed the street—as though they had all the time and right in the world to be there.
Teague sort of regretted being the guy going behind the house, because he didn’t get a chance to see how the brain-fuck went. He and Mario slid open the guy’s back lock as soon as they heard him answer the door, and thank God the alarm was disabled as soon as he did.
They slid silently and more than silently into the back of what looked like a very nice house decorated by someone who lived at Better Homes and Gardens. Cherry hardwood floors and carpet runners made with high-quality wool greeted the two of them as they ghosted through the house, their heightened senses making the break-in as easy as blinking and breathing.
The hallways were marked by silver photo frames like milestones—here is the happy family twenty years ago, eighteen years ago, fifteen years ago. Teague watched Nieman’s hairline go from thick and full to widow’s peak to nonexistent, and he watched Mrs. Nieman’s physical distance from him widen as their kids got bigger and her teeth got pointier.
The house was ranch style, one story, and all the furniture was that same incriminatingly pricey cherry wood—so damned expensive. And the place was big enough for Teague and Mario to take turns walking down the hallway checking the rooms.
Young woman’s room, yes, complete with Stanford banner on the wall. Young man’s room, check, complete with USC banner on the wall. Parents’ room, check, complete with two queen beds like a hotel room. Ouch. How do they explain that to the kids?
Teague was going to turn around and go check out the living room, which would have been dangerous—but he could hear Lambent and Kyle having an animated discussion in the front room. Something about how the two men were lost and looking for their friend, young woman, pregnant, had a gigantic husband, what was her name?
From what Teague could gather, the problem was exactly what Teague had said it would be. The guy wasn’t evil, just misguided.
Teague looked over his shoulder toward the living room, then back into that sterile bedroom with the white hotel comforters. And that’s when he realized that there was a large bathroom to the left, and two doors to the right. If one of them was a walk-in closet, and he had no doubt it was, then the other one would be….
“C’mon,” he whispered. “I think there’s a study next to the bedroom.”
Together they ghosted through the darkened room, noting that one of the beds had been barely slept in before Kyle and Lambent had started their lost tourist routine. Around the beds, past the dresser, and hey, hello, here you go, a tiny study that….
“Holy God,” Teague said just as Mario whispered, “Merciful Goddess.”
Oh hell, no.
“Where did he get those pictures?” Mario demanded. Teague looked at them and shuddered.
“Got no idea, but this shit goes now!”
The room looked like a stalker’s wet dream, and the man had… how had he done that? There were pictures of Cory from first grade up, school pictures showing her progression from a plain, sturdy, freckled five-year-old with a big smile to a surly, black-haired goth chick with a terrifying snarl.
He had pictures from what must have been junior college, the DMV, and even her application for a gun permit, all of which were blown up and thumbtacked to a big corkboard behind the desk.
Post-its littered the little shrine, with big red writing on them. “Goes Armed,” “Was so confident in my office,” and, most alarmingly, “Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick… what? There’s another name there besides Green, but I can’t read it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Teague breathed. “Whatever happened in this guy’s office, he’s fucking obsessed.”
The crown jewel of Dr. Nieman’s little shrine to the patient who got away sat dead center in the middle of all the pictures of Cory: in black and white, three stills of young fetuses—with oversized heads, elongated bodies, and very pronounced tails. In one picture they were just hanging out, doing what babies do, swimming in peace. One of them was sucking a tiny thumb. In another one, both little faces seemed to be pointed toward the camera, and the inhuman placement of the eyes and ears and cheekbones was unmistakable.
And then that third picture, where the very forms of the babies were blurred and their features distorted, the only thing clear—and clear to Teague, who knew babies for shit—was the oddly large, misshapen heart in each tiny chest.
Teague and Mario looked at each other. “This shit has to go,” Teague said decisively. He and Mario started ripping out thumbtacks and collecting incriminating, invasive pictures as quickly as they could.
“He doesn’t have any from the campus now, at least,” Mario noted.
“Hard to stalk someone when you have a day job,” Teague muttered back. He found a big mani
la envelope on the doctor’s desk and started stuffing it full of evidence.
Mario grabbed another one, and between the two of them, they cleared the board and were left with nothing but the doctor’s small laptop on the desk.
They looked at each other.
“He’s probably got the info somewhere else,” Mario said.
Their dilemma was obvious—the man was a doctor, and that was information on other patients. Destroying that computer….
Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick… Green. He was a Bracken and a Nicky away from figuring it out.
Teague shook his head at his moment of indecision, closed the laptop screen, and cracked the whole thing in two over his knee. He gave Mario a half, and they both cracked their smaller halves in two, then put the remains on the floor and started stomping on them. Yeah, he might have had backups online, but they’d have to hack the system later. For now, if they were going to brain-wipe him, the less visual evidence, the better.
“What was that? You two gentlemen need to leave. I don’t disclose patient information about anybody, do you hear me?”
The doctor’s voice, raised in irritation, was punctuated by the slamming of a door.
“Fuck!” Teague could hear Kyle in his head, and he sent a firm thought of “Got it all nailed down” to calm the young vampire.
“What do you need?” Lambent said in his head.
“When you hear the ruckus, open the back door.”
Teague reached into his back pockets, pulled out his wallet and cell phone, and gave them both to Mario. “You can get them to the car, right?” he asked, pretty sure the Avian’s ability to hold things as he shifted went that far. Mario shoved them in his jacket pocket. “No promises. I lose the jacket in trans, and they’re molecules,” he whispered. They could both hear the doctor stalking back through the house.
And they could hear his side trip to the kitchen for what they assumed was a shot of bourbon. Well, that helped.
Teague stripped off his denim jacket with a sigh, and the shirt as well, and then slipped his key lanyard over his head. There was no way for them to get down the hall without being seen—not if Nieman had gone into the kitchen.
Well, let’s make sure he has nothing to see.
Teague continued to strip all the way down, stowing his clothes and boots behind the desk.
“Won’t the cops find that?” Mario whispered urgently, tugging on his shoulder.
“What’s he going to report? Someone stole his murder board and got naked?”
Teague stacked the two envelopes neatly and then shoved them in his mouth.
Mario opened the door, and they both changed.
Mario almost flew straight into Nieman, and Teague let out a growl as the intrepid doctor raised his hands over his head and gave a shout. With a leap Teague jumped on top of the man, knocking him to the floor and thumping him solidly on the chest. Mario continued to flap, a giant bird in a slightly smaller house, and Teague yipped three times.
The back door banged open hard enough to crack the plaster with the doorknob, and Mario flew out with Teague hugging his wingspan. Lambent reached back and grabbed the knob, hauling it shut and cracking the doorframe. As a unit, the three of them blurred back to the car. Lambent opened the car using the keys hanging from Teague’s neck, and Teague jumped in, turned human, and slammed the door.
Lambent didn’t even smile as he slid out of his jacket and threw it over Teague’s shoulders. “Here, brother.”
Teague turned the ignition and looked urgently around for Kyle. “What the fuck is he do—Oh.”
He felt the feeding link snap into place and heard Kyle, loud and clear, telling the doctor to forget Connie Lynn Fitzpatrick and her husband, Bart.
The good doctor fought him—hard—and Teague could feel that too, but that wasn’t what was important.
As Kyle flew toward the SUV, barely a foot off the ground, and through the door that Lambent held open, Teague gave thanks for smart vampires and smarter elves.
“Good what you did with the name there,” he said, so fucking grateful.
“What’d he do?” Mario asked.
“Fed him the wrong one. It’s close—damned close. But the doc won’t be able to get a handle on it. You know, you get someone’s name wrong once, and—”
“You can never get it right,” Mario agreed.
Teague put the car in gear, thinking that his ass and his tackle were both freezing on the seat. He drove silently down the street without lights for a good mile, the Christmas lights on the more active houses plenty of luminescence to guide the way.
They turned on 49 and headed for home.
“Augh!” Lambent let out, when they were sure they weren’t followed. “That was a clusterfuck. We’re fucking doomed!”
“Oh my God,” Teague added. “You assholes don’t even know!”
Mario turned around with the saved envelopes, and Lambent and Kyle both took a look at what was inside.
“Teague?” Lambent said weakly as Teague took the left down Bell Road.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you should have torn the guy’s throat out. Good intentions or not, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Teague grunted. “Next time,” he promised. “Maybe when I go back to get my clothes.”
Max actually went back later to get Teague’s clothes, as a cop, under the pretense of checking out the crime scene. The guy had reported it after all—but he left out the part about stalking his patient because of his obsession with her children. But before Max grabbed Teague’s clothes—Teague liked those boots and jeans, so he was grateful—they had a little confab where they reported to Arturo.
The results shook them all up, more than a little.
“He had the same thing set up in the clinic,” Max said. “It was fucking freaky.”
“Did you take it down?” Arturo asked. Oh, how they’d wanted his input, since the news was so very bad.
“I already told you, we burned the whole place down,” Max told him. He looked at Teague and grimaced. “No casualties, but Hallow asks if next time maybe Lambent couldn’t get pyromania duty.”
Teague grunted. “I’ll try to arrange it.”
They both looked at Arturo, who nodded.
“The clinic will put him off his stride for a bit,” Arturo said. “But yes—if the good doctor asks Cory’s mother again, there will be a next time.”
He got up to leave the living room then, presumably to report to Green, but he turned back to Max and Teague before he left.
“By the way, you two, well done. Green couldn’t have left this in more capable hands.”
Teague smiled tiredly at the praise, aware that it never got old. “Thank you,” he said.
“But next time, assholes, don’t leave me home like an irritating old relative. Do you think you’re the only ones who get bored?”
With that he stalked away, the folders held tightly in his hand, and Max and Teague caught each other’s eyes.
“Yeah, fine,” Max conceded. “When we do the other thing, we’ll let him in on it.”
“Good,” Teague said, grateful. “I was afraid you were gonna bail on that.”
Max smiled, the bloodthirsty smile of a feline, and Teague remembered his story of Renny running—naked—from room to room spraying gasoline all over the clinic in psychotic glee.
“Are you kidding?” Max asked, keeping his voice down under most creatures’ hearing. “This pregnant-queen shit is just getting fun!”
Cory: Sidelined Goddammit
KARMA’S A bitch when she bites you in the ass.
Especially because she’s a sneaky bitch. There you are, thinking you’re having a decent moment, and then you realize that somehow you have lost complete control—not only of your own wayward body, but also of your entire fucking life, household, and kingdom.
And you can’t get it back. Maybe not for a couple of months. Or years.
Or ever.
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To start with, I didn’t hear the vampires’ need of me until two nights after Christmas. Bracken had me lying on my side after a snack, the better to feel the tap-dancing babies.
He had Flogging Molly playing from the computer, and in the middle of “Float,” the sugar from the milk and apple kicked in and the kids started really going at it. Brack had pulled my T-shirt up just under my breasts and rolled my pants down under my belly, and I watched in fascination as the skin of my stomach jumped in time to the music. (Yes. In time. I assume it had something to do with being elvish, because those people love their music.)
Bracken had rubbed cocoa butter on me, because the stretching itched something awful, and there was something hypnotic about watching the taut, shiny skin of my stomach undulate as though it was animated.
And maybe because my mind was engaged in nothing more than music, the muted purple light of our darkened room, and what was going on inside my head, I heard them.
The vampires. They needed me.
It was a quiet hum of neglect, a sadness none of them wanted to voice. I used to spend a night a week in the darkling, sharing blood with whomever was needy. Nobody had taken advantage, and if they did, Bracken dealt with them quietly and effectively. (Maybe it was his blood power, but he scared the fuck out of most of them. Go figure.)
I hadn’t been down in the darkling since Iris had detonated.
I made a sound of discomfort, sorrowful beyond belief, and linked my mind with Grace, Phillip, and Marcus.
“You three. Five more. Choose carefully.”
“Cory?” Bracken looked at me curiously, and I reached out and brushed his hair back from his eyes. He forgot to cut it—most of his life he hadn’t needed to, because it had swirled past the back of his knees. In the past months it had grown shaggy and wild, and some days he just grabbed one of my elastics to pull it off his high forehead.
“There are vampires coming,” I said softly. “A small number. Don’t turn them away. They need me.”
Bracken grunted. “They haven’t said anything,” he said sullenly, but I could tell by his tone that he’d guessed.