Blood from Stone

by Laura Anne Gilman

  The demon shrugged, as sheepish as she could imagine him looking, even with his eyes covered. “I kinda hit him with part of the chair, is the worst of the damage. And he wouldn’t even have gotten bruised if he hadn’t charged in like some kind of unhorsed knight to defend the honor of…I’m not sure whose honor he was racing in to save, honestly,” the demon complained. “I was doing fine. I feel better than you look, anyway. Does he freak out that much when you don’t answer the phone?”

  “What?” She was totally confused now. Once the initial adrenaline rush had subsided, again, she could see that the bruises and scrapes were just that, and even the black eye was more of a brownish bruise than anything else. She was just so used to thinking of P.B. as invulnerable; the shock was always intense when he got banged up.

  “They went after you?” That she remembered, when she had tapped him for a current discharge. Him, and Sergei, in the middle of a brawl…

  The entire thing seemed as though it had happened a week ago, not…she tried to puzzle out what time it was, and realized that she didn’t even know what day it was, at that point.

  “Yeah. Wanted me to take a little trip with them, like you suspected. I declined, on account of my luggage not being packed and my passport gone missing.”

  That explained why Sergei hadn’t been there when she hit street level. Wasn’t that just like a guy, skip out on a date to get into a fight.

  Then what the demon was saying sank in. Sergei had gone to P.B.’s aid. Unrequested, it sounded like. She felt her face twitch into a smile, and repressed it. Her partner, who had once referred to the Fatae as “bad special effects looking for a free handout,” had abandoned her to go to the aid of a demon. She didn’t think she wanted to know what had caused this about-face, she was just glad it had happened. But why wasn’t Sergei here? What wasn’t P.B. telling her?

  “How long…” she started to ask.

  “You’ve been sleeping around the clock. It’s almost dawn. Sergei figured you’d be waking up soon, went out to get the newspapers.”

  Oh. The panic level dropped another few notches. Her partner had a thing about keeping up with a range of newspapers, and was accustomed to reading them online. Not an option in this apartment. Wren had a computer, reasonably fast and surge-protected to within an inch of her life, but she had been uncomfortable using it since she had wizzed. There were things on that hard drive she wanted to keep, not crisp out of existence with a badly timed sneeze. She missed instant messenger, and her mailing lists. Time to do something about banging together a new surge-proof system, if they could.

  “You think he’ll bring back bagels?” Now that she knew everyone was in one piece, more or less, she was hungry. No, she was starving. God knew how much energy she had burned during the Retrieval—the Retrieval!

  “Oh, my God, I swear, my brain leaked out with the first zombie hit,” she muttered in annoyance, heading for the hallway, and the closet.

  It took P.B. a moment to catch up with her. “Zombie? What zombie? Valere, there’s no such thing as zombies! Is there?”

  She was already at the closet, rooting through the debris of out-of-season coats, tote bags, broken umbrellas, and an old breakfast-in-bed tray someone had given her that she had never used. The hotstick Bonnie had loaned her was there, too, the current-weapon painted black and pink, and looking harmless for something so nasty. Wren was lethal enough, now, without amplification. She should give it back to Bonnie, who might need it someday on the job.

  “Valere?”

  “Hah. There it is.” She reached in, relieved that the entire episode hadn’t been some kind of particularly bizarre fever dream, and laid fingers on the tube of papers. The small notebook followed, being laid out on the carpet behind her, as the demon fell silent. She had to get on her knees to reach in and pull out the larger hardback book. It felt heavier than it had the day before, the leather of the cover less smooth, but she added it to the pile and then sat back, turning to see the demon’s reaction.

  He was sitting on his haunches across the narrow hallway, his back up against the wall, his dark red eyes very dark and wide.

  “P.B.?” She looked from him to the pile of papers on the carpet. “I got them. I finished the job.” She wasn’t looking for an attagirl, exactly, but some sort of acknowledgement, more than that blank stare, would be nice, considering what she had to go through to get them—and for no pay, she could but wouldn’t add.

  “You got them.”

  She started to say, “well, duh,” but the look on his face stopped her. He looked…not scared, no, but…awed.

  It floored her, unexpectedly. She had been so focused, she and Sergei, on the mechanics of the job, the details of outwitting the others and getting in and getting the job done, they had forgotten—or never really stopped to think—about what the job was.

  These weren’t journals, or blueprints, or scientific documents. They were origin stories. Birth certificates. Holy documents, if you were of that bent, proving the intentional creation of a sentient species.

  In all the concern over what other people might do with the information in them, she had never stopped to wonder what they meant to P.B.

  All that research, everything that must have gone into creating and perfecting the demon, to creating her friend…And she had been treating it like a liability, something to be destroyed, without even pausing to consider their real beauty, their real value.

  “They’re yours,” she said gently.

  “What?”

  “Yours. Take them. Do whatever you want with them.”

  He held the book in his huge flat paws, and she could almost see the desire in him to stroke the leather, like a human might a holy text, or a childhood diary.

  “You think I should destroy them.”

  She did, actually. She had seen the black sludge that was in her system, knew firsthand what she was capable of if she thought it was the right thing, the necessary thing. She had killed—thou shalt not kill—and she had tampered with a Null’s brain—for the good of a Talented child—and she had done it again to protect herself from that security guard. She hadn’t gone too far—not like those mages had, to destroy a man for their own use, but…But she could still fall into that dark abyss. She could still go mad, if their connection, human and demon, ever failed.

  If it did, would she want to create a new one? Would she be driven to, in order to survive? Would she do it, to save herself…Or someone she loved?

  If it was now, if Neezer were still salvageable, would she…

  It doesn’t have to be this way. Her own voice, pleading with a madman for a second chance.

  Better never to know. Better never to understand that much about what she was capable of.

  Let the Cosa never know, either. Let them heal, and survive as they always had, and have illusions about their innate strength, and good intentions.

  “Let them be myth,” she said, not answering him directly. “Humans have no need to know. The Fatae have no need to know. Demon…someday, you may want offspring. Or you may not. But that’s only for you to decide. Let demon determine your own species’ future.”

  It was a speech, for her, and she didn’t feel comfortable even as the words were coming out of her mouth, but some of the tension seeped out of P.B.’s body as she spoke.

  “They’re yours,” she said again. It was all she could say, really.

  “Aren’t you…” His dark red eyes met hers in an unflinching gaze. “This could answer all the things you’ve been wondering about. The stuff you haven’t been talking about.”

  He knew her too well. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad or just…maybe it just was. All the things she’d been wondering about, yeah. Genetics, and inheritance, and what causes Talent, what the “goo” really was, and how it could be manipulated, rechanneled, reinforced.

  None of that really mattered, sitting on the floor in her apartment, her demon safe and her partner bringing back bagels, and the smell of coffee comin
g from the kitchen.

  “I never wondered about the science,” she said, smiling at him, feeling tension leave her own body with the truth of it. “Just the reasons. The causes. That’s different. The reasons aren’t in those papers. His reasons, his causes…aren’t mine.”

  “No,” her demon agreed. “They’re not.”

  She left him there on the floor, staring at the pile, and went into the kitchen. As expected, the fridge was barren, with only a half-empty carton of orange juice, two bottles of her Diet Sprite, and half a carton of eggs. The coffee was too old, and after a sniff at it she dumped the pot and started another round, then ran water into the kettle and set it to boil.

  A minute later, the coffee began to perk, and the front door opened.

  “Hey,” she said, sticking her head out of the kitchenette, even though she knew damn well who it was.

  P.B. had definitely gotten the worst of their half of the brawl. Her partner had a bad bruise on his temple—courtesy of the chair?—and his left hand had a soft cast on two of the fingers, but otherwise he looked unharmed, the newspapers tucked under his injured arm, a bag of what smelled like fresh bagels held in his right.

  “Do I want to know what the other guys look like?”

  “Chang can probably get you access to their mug shots,” he said with satisfaction. “Our boys missed their flight home, I’m sorry to say.” He followed her into the kitchen, dropping the newspapers on the counter, the bagels going next to the toaster. “The Federal government apparently had some questions about the validity of their visas, especially when one of them was discovered breaking and entering a residence apartment in Manhattan for allegedly unlawful purposes.”

  “Aww. That’s no way for tourists to behave. They should leave that to the locals.” A pity there was no way to add unlawful control of a human to the charges. Or was there? That was something to ask Bonnie about, later. That was the sort of thing the PUPIs had been set up to deal with, after all—paranormal crimes, the kind of stuff the NYPD didn’t have a clue on. In the meanwhile, she’d have to trust that Chang would do what she could. By the time it was straightened out, the papers would have disappeared again, this time for good. She found things, and P.B. could make them disappear. Not her problem anymore. Not her responsibility.

  That felt good. For once, it felt good to let it go, and not worry.

  She let Sergei come up behind her, and leaned back against his broad chest, listening to the healthy thumping of his heart against her ear. If she touched him with current—lightly, so lightly—she could feel the electrical impulses of his entire body working the muscles throughout. That felt good, too.

  One deeper touch so, and his heart would stop. But humans could and had damaged hearts without current, and healed them the same way.

  They still could do damage to each other. Bad, nasty damage. That was the risk you took, when you loved someone.

  But you could also save someone the very same way.

  “I love you,” she said, and felt his arms come up around her, his lips pressed to the top of her head.

  “Love you, too, Wrenlet.”

  Talent was more than genetics, more than goo. She might never know who her father was. It wasn’t okay, it wasn’t nothing, it would probably come back to snipe at her for the rest of her life, but she had lived this long without knowing, and she could live the rest of her life without knowing.

  And in that realization, surrounded by her family, she was almost able to accept that she had to let Neezer go, as well. He had reached out to her in her darkest hour, had offered her the only advice his maddened brain could. Wrenlet, no. He had kept her from a reaction-killing, kept her from taking a—not an innocent life, no, but one she had no right to take. He hadn’t forgotten her…and she had not recognized him in her own madness, had turned to others instead, to the bonds she had with Sergei and P.B.

  That was as it should be. Mentors, like parents, were there to help you grow, to become self-aware. After that, you had to be on your own.

  Neezer knew that, once. But his wizzed brain…she understood now, suddenly. He had never been able to let go, had still thought of her as his mentee, his to protect. That turning away had stung, been something worse. When she had rejected him, moved on without him, without even knowing it, he had been angry. That was why The Alchemist had been scared, caught between Neezer’s anger and love for her, and not knowing which would win, if his old friend would let go…or strike out, and in killing her, kill the last bit of himself, too.

  She didn’t know what impulse would have won, either. What impulse would win. Max had been right. She needed to stay away from Neezer. Forever. For both their sakes. They were in different places now. Different worlds.

  She wasn’t a student anymore. She was on her own.

  “Are you okay?” Sergei asked, his arms still wrapped around her, and she knew what he really meant was “are we okay?”

  “Sometimes you get answers,” she said in response to both questions. “And sometimes you just have to hope that it’s all going to work out. But…yeah. I think I’m okay.”

  She thought about Neezer, and Max, and the little towheaded kid, then rested her head against her partner’s chest, and looked up. “Do you think…maybe next time you go see Doc…I could come, too?”

  Sometimes you were on your own. Nothing said you had to do it alone.

  BLOOD FROM STONE

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4777-6

  Copyright © 2009 by Laura Anne Gilman

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Worldwide Library, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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