Quickening, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  Cory’s second day of school, I sat quietly on the bleachers near the towels, watching from under my brows as the women pulled out of the pool and migrated to their little spot of property in the pool house.

  I liked the women in aqua class. Some of them were very large and were exercising in the water to stay healthy because losing weight on land was so very difficult. Some of them had joint problems or chronic pain, and some of them just enjoyed the freedom of the water coupled with the hard workout of water resistance. These women were funny and fit—and the minute Cory arrived, they fussed over her in a way that would have done my mother proud.

  Cory, usually exhausted, swollen, disheartened, and in pain, brightened as soon as she put a bloated foot in the water. She didn’t work out with any less heart than I’d seen her run, but in the water, her pregnancy weight was supported and her blood pressure stayed steady, and she was much healthier for it.

  And I could tell from across the pool that it felt so very good to use her body.

  This second day of her workout, I was already planning to ask Green if we could make arrangements with the kelpie to build a pool nearby. If we left his pond alone, the pool could be fed by the springs Green had first called to the hill when he was building. The water could be recycled through a filter, and it could be kept fresh through a combination of baking soda and fey magic if only we could convince the niskies to….

  My mind wandered off into the land of invention that had been my gift from Cory’s education, and for a moment I neglected my duties as watcher.

  Then I took a deep breath, having figured out how to sanitize the water without hurting either human or fey, and broke into excited coughs.

  She was right there—I could smell her—oh my God! I automatically looked up to check on Cory and instead met the surprised brown eyes of a woman with dusky skin and riotously curly hair.

  She gasped, taking two steps backward, and I stood up.

  “Wait,” I said, looking frantically for Cory. “Wait, we don’t want to—”

  The frightened werewolf turned and darted for the exit, and I kicked off my shoes and darted after her.

  We were fortunate that during my woolgathering everybody had left besides myself, Renny, and Cory—and our werewolf. I do not “dart” gracefully, and there was so much equipment around the edge of the pool that every time I tried to use hyperspeed, I tripped over lane lines or buoys or, Goddess help me, the big bucket of foam-rubber belts that bore people up in the water.

  As the belts scattered across the pool’s surface, Cory came to the edge with the stairs, calling “Bracken! Brack, what’s wrong? Dammit, Bracken, stop chasing her, you’re freaking her out!”

  Renny, seeing what was happening, made a feral growl, and for a moment the strange werewolf and I stared at her in shock as she changed right there in the pool and began to swim toward the stairs herself, a pissed-off cat in a one-piece bathing suit, spitting mad.

  “Goddess,” I breathed. I looked with panicked eyes at our poor werewolf. “She’s gonna be pissed when she gets—”

  Renny emerged from the water spitting and half-drowned—the brown one-piece hanging from her feline body in twisted, uncomfortable ways—and bounded toward me and our werewolf, lips pulled back from her teeth and claws exposed. I saw her pull a paw back to bat the werewolf, and in the next moment, the poor woman had changed into a big, handsome wolf with dark cocoa fur and a slightly darker ruff. She growled, snarled, and launched herself at Renny in a preemptive move, her bright red bathing suit binding her body like a rope.

  A true cat/dog brawl is fearsome to behold, lightning quick, and full of sharp claws and wicked teeth. I did what any sane man would do and vaulted to the top of the lifeguard platform, looking down at the frothing mass of teeth and claws in horror.

  Cory had pulled herself up to the second stair, right where the water started to drop from her hips, and was looking at the mess with the same helplessness I was.

  “Is she friendly?” Cory called over the noise.

  “I think so—she’s not tainted.”

  “Fucking awesome. Get down from there and push them in the pool.”

  I stayed exactly where I was. “A power bubble would do the same thing,” I said, liking my skin where it was better than scattered throughout the pool house.

  Cory let out a shocked laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, it would. Sorry!” And with that, she held out her hands and surrounded the two fighting animals with a shield. They were too locked in trying to kill each other to notice when the floor under their feet became power and then shifted. Cory kept them in a levitating cage-match over the deep end of the pool while she pulled herself out. Then, as soon as she got to the top step, I put my bare feet in, scooped her up, and walked to the far corner of the pool room. It would be best to have an escape plan in case this whole thing backfired and those two pissed-off wild animals decided to eat us both.

  “Ready?” I asked her.

  She nodded and let go of the bubble.

  Renny and the werewolf crashed into the water from about ten feet up. They surfaced in their human forms, sputtering and trying desperately to fix their suits over exposed patches of flesh.

  Cory and I burst into laughter, and I settled us down on the bleachers where we could listen to them swear.

  At that moment, the instructor—a nice woman in her forties who believed in what she was doing—came striding out of the locker room.

  “What in the holy hell—”

  “They were racing,” Cory said, throwing some power into her voice. “We were cheering them on. Sorry we were so loud!”

  The woman nodded and simply ceased to see the two women struggling to stand up and fix their clothes and not kill each other while she was there.

  “That’s okay. Glad to see your friends having some fun. Who won?”

  “It was a total tie,” Cory said blandly, looking out at both of them. “Wasn’t it, Renny? Cerise?”

  Renny glowered at Cory, then smiled and nodded at the instructor. Cerise, as her name apparently was, looked at me distrustfully but nodded too.

  “Excellent! You ladies should get into the locker room quickly, though, because I’m going to have to lock up in twenty minutes.”

  Oh, hells. Cory had to get changed. It was cold outside, and it was bad enough that she wasn’t going to have time to dry her hair.

  “We’ll lock up,” I said, and the poor woman blinked and gave me the keys. I made a mental note to have them returned to her before the end of the hour. I looked to the pool where Renny and Cerise were pulling themselves out, the glares between them icy enough to freeze the pool over. “Right, ladies? We will all leave together.”

  Some of the fight drained out of Cerise’s spine. “I was going to have to talk to you all anyway,” she conceded.

  “I’m going into the changing room,” I said quietly to Cory. “I don’t care what you have to do to make me invisible, but I’m not leaving you in there with her until we have this out.”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” Cory agreed, sagging on my lap in what was probably exhaustion. She would get home tonight and sleep for a good ten hours, only getting up to pee and snack on saltines, and I didn’t know how to make it better. Every discussion we’d ever had about this semester had boiled down to “Yes, I know it will be difficult, but I will overcome.”

  She would not overcome without our help.

  Without asking, I stood up, taking her with me. I told the obliging professor that she could go now and we’d get her keys back to her later. She nodded, eyes unfocused, and turned toward the exit. In my head I told the sprites that followed us invisibly to make sure the woman didn’t get hurt, and then I led the way to the locker room.

  Forty minutes later I bore Cory out of the locker room, wishing I’d had a chance to call Teague.

  “What do you mean, protect me?” Cerise asked plaintively, and I didn’t blame her. “Look, like I told you, I went to a party with a guy and….”

  “Things
got out of hand,” Cory said from my arms. “You drank drugged water and participated in an orgy, but then, during the real climax, where you were expected to do something totally heinous, you woke up and didn’t do the big heinous thing. But you did get bitten by a fucking wolf, and that’s still your problem. Have I covered everything?”

  She sounded sharp—but then, we all had places to go.

  “Yeah,” Cerise said, disheartened. “I… it was right before Christmas, and… I mean, I lost my job because I couldn’t control it a couple of weeks ago—”

  “The week of the full moon,” Renny said patiently. Apparently beating the hell out of each other in their alternative forms qualified them for sisterhood now. “I know, it’s horrible. It’s so hard to control it—it’s like trying not to take a poop when you’ve got the runs. Been there.”

  Cerise whimpered as we walked out of the pool house, and I turned behind me and locked the outer door. With a thought the sprites appeared before me, tiny humanoids lit from within and sporting all sorts of animal and insect variations between them. The three who had been following me since birth were all female, all combinations of human and field mouse, and all very obliging. They landed in my hand, chattered briefly, and then took the keys and disappeared.

  I looked up to see Cerise holding her hand to her mouth.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said, her big velvet eyes meeting mine without a trace of suspicion or anger.

  “They are,” I said, smiling a bit, then adjusted Cory so I had a better grip on her. She was heavier, it was true, but I could still carry her easily if I could balance her first.

  “If I let you help me out,” she said after a couple of footsteps, during which the extent of her despair seeped in, “what will you make me do?”

  Cerise had gone to a party with her boyfriend and woken up to a nightmare. She’d managed to take off, but her boyfriend had disappeared. She’d been stuck alone for the holidays, enduring the change alone, with nobody to explain it, and she’d lost her job as a result.

  She’d come to school because it was paid for, and because when nothing else made sense, she understood how school worked, until she looked up from her PE class and saw me.

  “Nothing,” Cory said. “We would like some information—that shit you saw the night you were changed has to be stopped. But other than that? Help out when you can. Teague’s your pack leader. He’ll be happy to show you the ropes. But right now…. Here, Brack, put me down.”

  “No,” I said, not sorry even a little. “Continue on.”

  Cory sighed and didn’t fight. That was the biggest reason I didn’t think I should set her down. “Okay, fine. You need protection, Cerise. If she finds out about you, she’ll come after you—and she doesn’t care if she has to convert you or kill you. She’s easy that way.”

  As we walked across the campus, Mario, Nicky, and LaMark came trotting up to meet us. LaMark had a travel mug of hot chocolate for Cory, and Nicky and Mario had sandwiches for the rest of us. Renny took hers—mostly roast beef and pickles—and gave half to Cerise.

  Who ate it no questions asked, as though she hadn’t had a full stomach for a week or so.

  “Mario?” I asked, knowing I had to take Cory to the library to nap soon. “We need you and LaMark to brief her. And someone needs to call Teague. He can come down and talk to her and, I don’t know, escort her up the hill, or—”

  “On it, chief,” Mario said smartly. LaMark nodded a little too, mostly in Cerise’s direction.

  “We’ll take care of you,” he said quietly. “We probably don’t need Teague down here right now. Can you follow us home?”

  Cerise nodded through her sandwich. “I’ve sorta been living in my car,” she said. “No job, no rent, no nothing.”

  “Goddess,” Cory swore. “So vulnerable. Look, we’ll take care of you. Place to stay, way to get your shit together, whole nine yards. But you need to stay with these guys until we get you home, okay?”

  Cerise nodded, shoving the last of the sandwich in her mouth. “I… I kept driving,” she said softly. “Do you guys live up near Auburn?”

  We all grunted an affirmative, and she went on.

  “I felt something up there. The other night, right before I ran out of gas, I saw this glow, but I ran out of gas and had to coast back down the hill.” She wiped her eyes. “Thanks for not killing me when you could have.”

  “Not a problem,” Cory said genially.

  As Nicky and Renny followed us to the library, I heard them talking.

  “Did you see?” Nicky asked quietly.

  “I’m not saying anything,” Renny said stubbornly.

  “But… but they’re planning on….”

  I turned around and pinned them with a glare. “They’re planning on what?” I asked, suddenly very wary.

  Nicky shook his head. “Nothing. You know, just the standard recruiting thing. Nothing wrong. Just, you know, let’s get Cory to the library, okay?”

  I should have known better.

  But Cory was so weak, so tired, and the excitement with the fight and the shield had only made it worse.

  But I should have known—Nicky was lying to me, and Renny was hiding, and Teague had gotten a taste of what it was like to have the power to protect what he loved. However it all fell out, I had some blame because I turned away from that feeling in my gut that they were holding out on me and turned my attention inward to my wife and children. I have thought since that this is how the world has fallen to hell when it is mostly populated by good men.

  Good men are forced to make their worlds small in order to protect their families.

  Bad men and women have no qualms about reaping destruction from the inattention of good men.

  Green: Afar

  NICKY’S EX-LOVER looked sad and distraught, and Green could find no way to make that better.

  Green and Eric both owned properties in a coalition of small oil companies that employed earth-friendly practices. They had to attend a board meeting at the beginning of every year to check in on the state of their holdings, and in the past, meeting up like this had proved both profitable and pleasurable for both of them.

  Two years ago, when Nicky had been at his lowest and most depressed from having his life so rudely rearranged by magic mating practices and having his sexuality thrown into some harsh light as well, Green had brought Eric home—and Nicky had discovered that, apart from Green and Cory, he had a sex life and an appeal all his own.

  Green and Cory had encouraged the relationship, but long-distance lovers are difficult at best. And when one of the lovers is involved in a ménage on the other end of the jetway, well, that made things even more difficult.

  As the rest of the businessmen filed out of a conference room with a stellar view of the Austin, Texas skyline, Green touched Eric’s elbow and pulled him aside.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said without preamble. “We had no idea Nicky was going to call it quits until….”

  Eric shook his head, waving away Green’s apologies with grace. “No. No, I… I mean, we had a great couple of weeks in the summer, but I guess when he got home, everything had fallen apart, and suddenly… suddenly I realized, you know?”

  “What?” Green asked, knowing the answer but hoping it would do Eric good to say it.

  “He’s yours,” Eric said, twitching his mouth into a sad little smile. “He’s always been yours and Cory’s, but… but he’s Bracken’s too, and… just, I thought he could be mine, but he couldn’t.”

  Eric looked so dejected.

  Green had been training journeyman elves to take some of his duties in healing and solace. Being away from his family had seemed especially hard during Cory’s gestation—he’d wanted to be the one close to her, but more often than not, Bracken or even Nicky had needed to bear the weight.

  But here, with an old friend looking heartbroken, Green felt his sexual vocation pulling at him again—not as an onerous duty, but as a calling and a joy.

  “Eric
?” Green said, looping an arm around the young werecoyote’s shoulders.

  “Green?” Eric asked hopefully, his narrow, boyish face appealingly alight.

  “Would you like some comfort tonight?”

  A couple of years ago, that was how one of the most remarkable nights of Green’s life had started. This night wouldn’t even come close, not in sexuality or wonder, but Green was fine with that.

  This would be the night he’d apologize for stealing Nicky from the world, and the night his body would reward him with joy in his calling once again.

  LATER—AFTER dinner and conversation, flirting and innuendo, and finally, at Eric’s lovely condo, consummation—Green lay with Eric’s head pillowed on his chest and called home.

  Bracken answered, and because he was Bracken and spoke with more passion than linearity, the entire werewolf debacle fell into Green’s lap without a “Hi” or “how are you.”

  By the time he was done, Green didn’t need a “Hi” or “how are you.”

  He sat up in bed, pulling Eric’s lean and wiry body with him because he enjoyed the touch of those tight male muscles under his hand. Eric lay still, taking in Green’s terse replies with wide gray eyes, and Green was grateful. He would talk to Arturo after Bracken, but having Eric there—someone who was naturally submissive but enjoyed establishing a safe territory—gave him a way to ground his panicked thoughts.

  Cory was the last voice on the phone, and she sounded drifty and close to sleep.

  “So how’s the new recruit doing?” he asked, hoping she could reassure him.

  “Fine, I guess,” Cory said softly. “Teague’s been talking to her most of the afternoon, along with the younger shape-shifters and Marcus and Phillip. I mean, I told them not to inundate her—she’s pretty shaken up—but Grace found her a room and stuff, and….” Cory yawned. “She had most of her clothes with her. She’s moved in, right?”