by Debra Dunbar
Dare’s fangs have descended and they refuse to retreat.
Penny pulls out of the parking lot without a word, as though he had compelled her to silence, but he hasn’t. In the distant the horizon, the sun is rising. “Your arm is bleeding; it might need stitches,” he says, his voice thick from his fangs.
She doesn’t even look down.
“I can fix it for you,” he offers.
“Sure,” she says, eyes straight on the road.
He is surprised she’s taken him up on the offer. But then he is surprised by how little she cares that her kind is having their blood systematically harvested. Reaching over, he lets his thumb hover over the cut, closes his eyes, imagines the healing layers of dermis, presses down, and feels her flesh mend together.
“Thanks,” she says as he pulls away. He presses his thumb to his lips without thinking, and then can’t stop himself from licking the pad clean, looking guiltily at her as he does. She doesn’t look up.
Penny breaks her silence in a rush of words so fast, Dare isn’t sure he catches them all.
“Most Night Elves aren’t strong and can’t open doors or compel people to forget them, or make them shoot themselves, or drop trees on them … ” She glances at her arm. “ … Or fix them … are they?”
“Most can’t do those things.”
“Aurel?”
“He is one of the more powerful Night Elves.” She doesn’t ask if he is more powerful than Aurel.
“Are most Night Elves …” She licks her lips. “Like vampires … like … Aurel?”
“No, they aren’t.”
Penny shifts her hands on the steering wheel. “Are you going to take care of Aurel … and the rest of them?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Penny says.
He holds his breath, waiting for her to ask the question he really expects, but it doesn’t come.
“It’s getting close to dawn,” Penny says. “I think we should go home and get cleaned up before we get stopped by the cops or …” Her brow furrows. “I guess it doesn’t matter. You could just … ”
Outside, the blocks of scattered buildings are starting to give way to trees.
“We should return to your home,” Dare says, because the sun is coming up, and because he can’t ask Odin to let him stay. It won’t be good for either of them—but he doesn’t want to leave, either.
Penny doesn’t ask him questions.
It’s a very quiet morning when they reach her home. They take turns cleaning up and Penny ushers Dare into a spare room with a bed slightly larger than the couch. He pretends to sleep.
Sometime after dawn Penny surprises him, coming in and offering him her wrist.
“I don’t need this,” he whispers.
“But I need to sleep!” Penny half-cries.
Blood bonds might lie, but nothing could keep him from pulling her into his arms at that moment. When he wakes up, him beneath a sheet, her on top, she surprises him again.
Chapter 6
Penny feels Dare wake up, he moves beside her, and she feels the musty mattress that has probably not been used since Emma and Todd’s kids slept in it shift. Before he can get up, she throws a hand over his arm that’s around her waist.
“You should take the horchata machine blood with you … back to Alfheim.”
“What?” he asks, sleepily, warm breath on her neck.
She doesn’t look at him; she just keeps her eyes focused on the window where early afternoon light is seeping in. She has a feeling that if she looks at him, she’ll see that look, that I-am-going-to-kiss-you look. A part of her is curious. She’s never had sex before, but she’d thought at some point she might “find some asshole to do the deed” just to say she’s done it, but Dare is no asshole. She really likes him … but just likes him. Even she can admit he’s beautiful, but it would just be a curiosity thing for her. She’s heard that guys don’t mind that sort of thing, but she would mind if their situations were reversed, and she can’t do it. Curled in a ball, still not looking at him, she says, “I mean the blood machine, mixers...they must be oxygenating it and circulating it in a way that keeps it fresh. You should take it with you.”
She swears she can hear his ears twitching and his teeth grinding. She remembers him saying, “Without the blood bond the power differential would be too great.” She has a horrible suspicion she knows what the blood bond is, but is afraid to ask. Taking his hand, threading their fingers together, she whispers, “If other Night Elves are lawful good like you, but weaker, you have to take it.”
He goes too still. In a chiding voice he asks, “Lawful good?”
… and Penny finds herself explaining Dungeons & Dragons and ethical and moral alignment.
Dare sighs. “Lawful good … well, I do like to think of myself as a defender of the dark, but I don’t know if it is possible for anyone to always be good. There’s a bit of brightness in us all.”
It takes Penny a moment to realizes that to a Night Elf, “dark” might be “good” and “brightness” might be “evil.” But ... “I think you’re trying to distract me. Dare, if human technology can help you save your people, you have to use it … and we don’t mind giving blood, we give to each other!”
“But without the bond, my species could treat yours like sheep,” Dare whispers.
“No,” Penny says. “Because you didn’t. When we were in prison, you didn’t try to bite me.” She swallows. “Dare … Aurel may be bad, but the technology he’s created might be good. Like … like … Hitler cracking down on smoking … or something. You have to use it. Sometimes good ideas come from bad people.”
“Loki … Human technology …” Dare whispers, and his body gets very still. “New ideas …”
Penny rolls over. He’s staring off into space, but then his eyes snap to hers. “I need your cheaters … also is your sunscreen really waterproof?”
“Yes … but what are cheaters?”
“The dark glasses?” Dare says, miming putting them on.
“Sunglasses,” Penny says. “Sure.” She doesn’t move, and Dare doesn’t move either. He’s staring at her far too intently. She really likes him and doesn’t want to say goodbye, but the way he’s looking at her … he’s going to kiss her and …
Sighing, Dare leans forward. He does kiss her, but only on her forehead. It’s kind of perfect.
Pulling away, he says, “If I’m going to take on Aurel and make it look like an accident, I need to get going. Early to bed and early to rise, and all that.”
Penny squints at the clock. For a Night Elf “early to rise” is apparently 4 p.m..
It’s only when they’re in the car, zipping down the highway, that Penny asks him, “So what are you going to do, exactly?”
When he tells her, she doesn’t even pull over, she just stops in the middle of the highway. Granted, it’s in the middle of nowhere and there are no other cars.
“You’re going to what?!” she shouts.
Chapter 7
Penny drives the car up the access alley to The Cove so Dare can “back slang it”.
“Did you use compulsion to make me do this?” she asks, disturbed that she’s letting him do this.
“No, I did not use compulsion,” Dare says, his voice defensive. “I’ve only ever used compulsion in your presence when I thought you were in danger. It was instinctual and—”
“I’m kidding.”
He meets her gaze—or she thinks he does. He’s wearing her “cheaters.” Nodding, he puts his hand on the door handle.
“I’m just worried about you,” she says.
He smiles like he’s really incredibly pleased she said that. It makes her heart hurt a little.
“Don’t be,” he says.
“You never know,” she says. “They might have spiders.”
Dare chuckles. “Would you believe, they’ve never discovered my one true weakness?”
Penny knows that isn’t his only weakness.
With that, he walks
to the backdoor of the club, his shoulders slouching a little more with each step. When he reaches the door, he looks in her direction, and she remembers his one order to her. “Don’t be seen. Wait for me out of sight.”
Penny nods, drives over to the pawn and gun shop across the street, parks, and lets the engine idle. She can’t see Dare, but she imagines the plan unfolding exactly as he’d told her.
“I’ll walk up to the door, knock, and surrender.”
“They’ll let you in?” Penny had asked incredulously. “Won’t they think it’s a trick?”
“It doesn’t matter if they do,” Dare says. “You may have noticed, Penny, that my brethren don’t think highly of me. My most dangerous talent is that I am … well, rather non-threatening.”
And that was so true, but … “Will it be enough?” Penny had demanded.
“I have no idea if it would be, normally, but you see I also have something else going for me. I have their prejudice working in my favor. A count is not an inherited title; it is bestowed.”
“But they gave you the title, so obviously you must have done something that earned their respect!” Penny had protested.
“They didn’t bestow the title on me willingly,” Dare responded.
“Well, who did bestow your title?” Penny asked.
“Well, if it isn’t Odin’s lackey,” Aurel says.
“Ah, well, hello, Prince Aurel, we meet again, Your Highness,” Dare says, holding his hands above his head, not feigning the dread in his voice. Normally, with most Night Elves on Earth, it is a case of a Night Elf bonding, and merely wanting to remain with his or her lover; they can be reasoned with. Sometimes, accommodations can even be made.
“Nothing else in his boots,” someone says. Dare had stuffed Nor’s pistol in it—a ridiculous thing to do in normal circumstances—but he wanted to be sure his boots were off for this—it puts his skin closer to contact with the magical wiring. Also, he didn’t want what he’s sure is an unregistered weapon found on Penny.
“So, Rayne got your burn patched up,” Prince Aurel hisses. “That traitor.”
Shrugging, Dare hangs his head. He’s found he often doesn’t have to make excuses for the “accidents” that he triggers. His enemies make up explanations for themselves.
“And the idiot came back,” Desmelda says. She is the Night Elf that Penny described in the most detail—and Dare had recognized her from that description alone. Dare had met her when he’d been called to the Night Court after his sojourn on Earth in the forties. Desmelda, young by Night Elf standards, had listened with rapt attention as he had described human technology and quizzed him beyond his capability to respond on everything from biology to physics and air-conditioning to atom bombs. Low-born, she’d only been a handmaiden of a lesser lady at the time. He can see how she’d be tempted to serve Aurel.
Dare shrugs again. “I have to do my job.”
“No, you don’t,” Aurel says. “You can join us. You can be strong and unbonded. You can live forever as is your birthright!”
“You’ve been killing humans,” Dare says, and he hears a few of the Night Elves shift on their feet. They’re uncomfortable with that … the dead were probably like Chantilly, accidentally bonded. Aurel could not abide by blood bonds; they would be threats to his control.
“They were only humans,” says Aurel.
“But we don’t have to keep killing!” someone says. “They give willingly at—”
“Silence,” says Aurel.
Dare sighs at the almost-mention of the blood bank. It had disgusted him, but he had envisioned something even more sinister than what they found at LifeBlood. Historically, to avoid bonding, a group of Night Elves would feast simultaneously on hosts. Dare has never been sure if it is a matter of quantity of blood consumed that prevented the bond, or if there was some other biological process at work. It might be, as Gretta had hypothesized, purely psychological. She’d likened the mass feedings to gang rapes that stripped love from an otherwise intimate act.
“Humans have died,” Dare says, not lifting his head. “They are sentient humanoids and deserve to be treated as such.”
He hears some laughs around the room, but also some intakes of breath. Some feel guilty; some know what they did is wrong.
“Rubbish,” says Aurel, and Dare can hear the laughter in his voice.
Dare’s ears tremble with rage, but he tells himself it is good if Aurel is amused—he’ll let Dare keep talking.
Dare takes a deep breath, and when he speaks, his voice quavers. “Even if you can not bring yourselves to respect humans, you must know that there are too few of us to battle the All Father’s forces.”
“He’s too busy with the unrest in Svartalfheim to care, Dare,” says Aurel, his voice still bemused.
Still holding his hands above his head, Dare’s fingers bite into his palms. Aurel is right. Odin’s people are overwhelmed, and probably can’t come … or at least not until other humans die. That makes his choice here more stark.
He tries to reach them once more. “Even if he is, there are over seven billion humans.” Penny had given him the number when he’d run his plan by her. He can hardly believe it himself. “If we abuse their goodwill, they’ll destroy us.”
Aurel laughs. “They’re malleable! A few words here and there—”
Dare lifts his eyes to Desmelda. “Desmelda, I know that you created the blood horchata machines and are using computers.” He knows because Prince Aurel is powerful, but too inflexible, impatient, and arrogant to stoop to learning the intricacies of human technology. Desmelda is low-born, young, and her magic is but a flicker, but she is smart and curious.
“Blood horchata machines?” Aurel says with a laugh. “What are you talking about?”
Desmelda understands; he can see it in how she takes a step back. Dare presses her. “You know you cannot continue this way. You wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to safely harvest blood if you knew that killing would lead to our destruction.”
“This isn’t fun to me anymore,” Aurel exclaims. “I think it’s time to come up with an entertaining way to kill you, Dare. Maybe we should drain him like we did the humans?”
Dare feels cold fear grip his heart. “Surrender to me, face Odin’s judgment, and you may live.”
Aurel breaks out into cackles. “Oh, this is getting entertaining again.”
Dare meets the eyes of the others. He recognizes them, even if he doesn’t know their names. “Please,” he says. Some shake their heads—they’re afraid to stand against Aurel. None are powerful enough to use compulsion to make a security guard forget about them, or convince a police officer that a scrap of paper is a valid source of identification, or maybe they’re afraid to lose access to blood while they await the results of Dare’s petition to Odin. But others just laugh.
The cold grip of fear turns to terror, and Dare begs them, “Do it because it is the right thing! Do it because there are so few of us!”
“You’ve let Odin’s appointment of your Countship go to your head,” Aurel exclaims, stepping closer to Dare. “Draining will be such a good way to kill you, and so fitting since you identify so much with the humans.” He reaches out toward Dare’s chin, and Dare takes a step back in dread.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Aurel says.
Dare feels his stomach constrict … he’s being left no choice.
From behind Dare comes the sound of footsteps, and the four guards from below enter the office. “We cleared the human stragglers from below, Prince Aurel.”
The prince turns away. “What?”
“On your orders, Your Highness,” the leader of the guard says.
“I didn’t order that!” cries Aurel.
“Prince Aurel!” Desmelda exclaims.
Dare spins toward her. Her eyes are wide and on him. “It’s Dare,” she whispers. “Dare compelled the guard.”
And it’s too late. What he feared most now must happen. If they realize how threatening he is, t
heir guard will rise, and he’ll be doomed. They’ll kill him, probably Penny next, Todd and Emma for good measure, and even his family spread through the realms will not be safe. Flexing his toes in the thick carpeting, Dare feels the magic flowing through the building flowing into him. What he has to do he wouldn’t normally be able to manage, but the magic in the prince’s lair and Penny’s blood give him power. Dare imagines the molecules in the metal of the sprinklers starting to dance.
“Nonsense,” says Aurel. “Dare is weak, he has no aura—”
The sprinklers cut on, showering cold water through the room, soaking everyone except Dare instantly, and then they just keep spraying.
“What is this?” Aurel exclaims.
“He did it,” Desmelda shrieks, stepping back. “I know it … I know it!”
Dare’s aura is invisible. Dare closes his eyesand imagines the water molecules splitting. He feels a sort of snap within him as the molecules break apart, and then he sets the hydrogen and oxygen atoms spilling into the room on fire.
Engine running, Penny fights the urge to drive over to The Cove as the fire engines pull up.
“If I set the building on fire, Penny, those loyal to Prince Aurel will believe it was faulty wiring that killed his followers.” Dare had frowned. “And I can destroy all of them at once without any more humans dying.”
She swallows. She doesn’t see anyone exiting the building. Dare had said it was better to attack during daylight.
“I’m sure they have discovered the magic of sunscreen, but I’m also sure they won’t have slept with it on. If they leave the building without me, they’ll burn.”
The lock on the passenger side door pops up. Dare is suddenly just there in the seat beside her, shutting the door, eyes glazed and unfocused.
He’s alone, and despite herself she feels terrible for him.