by Amy Lane
Harry had just enough time to wonder—how could he have been afraid of this? Through two lifetimes, Cass had been the bogeyman of his dreams, but he was so small! He’d had the same two lifetimes Harry’d had, but all he’d learned was that death didn’t last.
Harry had figured that out his first night in the glade, when he’d been bathed in a shower of light and turned into a tomcat.
Just that much crossed Harry’s mind, nothing more, when Bel squeezed the trigger and Big Cass vaporized, flying apart in a rain of carnage.
The guards didn’t move, but even as Harry and the others watched, horrified, gobbets of flesh and slivers of bone that used to be Big Cass began to flow, migrate, crawl, and fly, coalescing in the center of the blood-spattered wall.
Harry wouldn’t get a better chance.
“Bel! Heel!” he called, and his little brother glared at him before morphing smoothly into the giant yellow Lab who had spent hours chasing rabbits among the ferns and redwoods of Mendocino.
And just like Mendocino, where the air smelled of salt spray and skunkweed, the fog began to roll in.
Edward—ever the boys’ public face—changed smoothly into a man again and urged the captives, “Drop to your hands and knees and head for the entrance. There’s a car toward the back—but move, move, move!”
And still, the fog kept rolling in.
By the time Big Cass had taken on a hulking, man-size silhouette against the back wall, most of the girls were at the halfway point across the warehouse floor.
And the fog was almost too thick to see anything, even his shadow.
Edward, Francis—make sure none of the girls fall behind.
What are you going to do? Edward’s voice had the ring of narrow-eyed suspicion in it, but Harry couldn’t help that.
Going to make sure he stays dead, Harry replied grimly. Now get Bel out of here!
Fine, but we’re coming back!
Whatever. Harry trotted, a solid, no-nonsense black cat, low against the floor while he listened to Cass reorient himself to a cloudy, uncertain world.
“Where’d you go, you bloody cowards! And….” A less than delicate sniffing followed. “Where did the fucking cats come from?”
Changing was risky—especially when Harry was still concentrating on the pen of fire in the back of his mind, writing about fog and little cat feet—but he did it anyway.
“Remember me?” he snarled.
Cass squinted through the quickly gathering mist.
“You?” he asked in disbelief. “You? I thought it was you—but you were such a sniveling little puke bucket. How in all hells did you make it this far?”
The fear threatened to overwhelm him, as it always had, but Harry made himself laugh anyway, driving it back.
“Don’t you get it? I made you!” he cried. “I feared you. And you came back, again and again, because of that fear!”
“Well, thank you.” Cass leered, taking a step forward. “Feel free to fear me some more!”
Harry’s stomach cramped, and he longed so hard for Suriel, he almost cried. “No,” he replied, voice choked. “You’re not real fear anymore. I know what it’s like to lose someone—to fear you’ll never see them again. Fearing you, when I can do something about you? It’s not worth my time.”
“It’s not worth your—”
Cass ran toward him, sputtering, and Harry regained his little cat feet again and allowed himself to become one with the fog.
On his fringes, he sensed that Bel and the others were close to the edge of the door, and he gathered, thick and soft, around the slumbering guards.
Cass was screaming now, inarticulate—terrified. “Boy! You buggering cunt—get back here! I’ll teach you to fear, you sniveling cockroach! I’ll rip yer prick off and shove it up yer nose!”
Harry ignored him, concentrating instead on the fine particles of mist his body had become, on the rolling waves of consciousness that held him together. He encircled Cass, thick, sentient tendrils of mist, liquid enough not to break as Cass thrashed against him, solid enough to bind him, hands to his sides, as helpless as Harry and Edward had been, as helpless as Francis had felt.
I have no fear of you, he thought, his mind slipping seamlessly into Big Cass’s. He saw nothing there—void and fury, inarticulate rage. Perhaps there was pain—the ripping, raping kind—with no kindness after to temper it, but it was so long buried under the pustulating crust of bloody violence that Harry could no longer separate the wound from the wounder—nor did he care to.
Big Cass had two lifetimes to heal his wounds, to learn from his mistakes, to find another path. He’d chosen instead to continue hurting as he’d been hurt, to traffic in human flesh, to violate, demean, to kill.
I have no fear of you, Harry repeated. You’re small. You’re an infection. You’re the tiniest, most bitter parts of the human heart.
I was your world! Big Cass howled. I was the monster that made you gnaw at your heart for years! I was so huge in your heart you resurrected me a hundred times, brought me back to life by your need for a bogeyman—how can I be nothing now?
I’ve been loved, Harry said simply. I’ve brothers who would die for me. I’ve parents who’ve given me nine lives. I have a lover…. For a moment the mist wavered, and Cass thrashed.
Suriel! Holding Harry tenderly as they slept. Face slack, ecstatic, as Harry thrust hard into his body. Regarding Harry through liquid brown eyes as Harry fed him a minnow.
Suriel. Begging Harry to live.
Harry’s soul drew a breath, and he remembered the one thing he absolutely could not do.
I have a lover, he said strongly, as the mist of his soul firmed up, became real. Such a lover—our hearts in the night make a thunder that can drown your pitiful screams any day. I can’t hear my fear over the sound of our lovemaking. There is no terror being held in his arms. I fear—oh yes, I fear. I fear never seeing him again. I fear losing him for the span of the world and heavens combined.
But you?
You’re a speck.
If you had me naked and howling under you one more time, you’d still be nothing more than a speck, a fucker, a rust spot, a bit of corruption on the skin of the planet.
I’ll never fear your like again.
Big Cass screamed, the sound muffled in Harry’s mist, and his body shook, shimmered, came apart—but not in gobbets of flesh, like before. He was, in fact, nothing more than Harry’s imagination, his fear, his terror at being helpless, at not having a place to run.
At having a black hole where his faith should be.
Those things paled in comparison to Harry’s fear of never seeing Suriel again.
They flickered.
Dissolved.
Rendered themselves unto mist.
Harry’s mist.
The ringing of Big Cass’s death scream wasn’t even loud enough to echo in the warehouse cavern. Harry rolled out of the dark, festering building, leaving behind six sleeping guards and a floor scoured clean of every memory of Bel, the girls, and Big Cass.
He became cat at the door and trotted off into the sunshine, where his parents were waiting, and his brothers, and twenty grateful women who hadn’t been victims in the warehouse—would never be victims again.
As soon as he cleared the doorway, he was forced to face Emma with her hands on her hips.
“You said we could fight,” she said plaintively.
Harry changed forms. “There are six sleeping guards and a still-functioning human trafficking ring,” he told her shortly. “Is that not enough fight for you?”
She scowled. “But Leonard and I were supposed to—”
Harry grimaced and tried not to be defensive. “He was my fear, Emma.”
“He’s not the only bad guy out there, Harry. From all accounts, he looked to somebody else.”
Crap. “Well, we can hunt down his boss—but Cass was mine. My fear. My bogeyman. I needed to dispel him or we’d be fighting him into the next century. The rest of it, you can h
elp with.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “We can help with that? Oh, that’s good of you. So kind.”
Harry regarded her levelly until her lips twisted and she patted his cheek.
“Who told you it was time to grow up?” she asked softly.
“It’s only been a hundred and forty years. Was about time, you think?” He sounded cocky, but he swallowed in sudden nervousness. Was this the moment—a hundred and forty years of being her boy—now that he’d conquered his fear, learned how to love, was this when he became too old to be her family?
She shook her head, her blonde hair falling forward into her face, reminding him of the young and desperate witch who’d summoned an angel and a demon in a clearing so long ago. Reminding him of a young, strong woman, in love.
“You still need raising yet,” she declared. “Don’t worry, Harry. I’m not going to kick you out of the house because you lost your fear.”
He allowed himself a rare smile. “Good—because that’s probably my biggest fear of all.”
“Really?” she asked, her gentleness almost his undoing.
He looked away. “I can’t talk about that yet,” he rasped. “Do you and Leonard want to debrief the guards?”
“In a moment. How did you get rid of Big Cass?”
Harry felt a cruel curl at his lips. “Melted him into fog,” he said with satisfaction.
Emma’s warrior expression was most impressive. “That’s my boy. Now, if you don’t mind, yes—yes, I do think I’ll have a go at the guards. We need the name of the leader here, because this thing they just did? With hunting down the ones that got away?” She bared her teeth, and if Harry hadn’t loved her for so long, he would have been terrified. “This cannot be allowed to happen again.”
Of course, she wanted revenge too—and Leonard did as well.
Edward and Harry both turned human and took turns giving the girls cell phones to call their families. Anya, in particular, wept on both of them.
“You guys—you have no idea. I just kept thinking about John and Krista, and how freaked-out they’d be.”
“They were,” Harry told her. It was important—John and Krista were found family, and Harry knew from experience sometimes you just needed reassurance. “They contacted us at our last drop-off. The family’s been looking for you for—”
“Six days,” Edward said softly.
Suriel had been dissolved before Harry’s eyes little more than a day ago.
“It probably feels like forever,” Harry told her with some passion in his voice.
“John talked to you?” she asked perceptively.
Harry looked away. “Yes—it’s been a while.”
“You broke his heart.”
Oh Lord. “I was in love with someone else,” Harry said, finally honest about it. “I couldn’t give him what he wanted, even for a short time, if I was in love with someone else.”
Anya’s mouth twisted, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. “He figured. I just mean… he talked to you. He went to visit you and the family. He really must have been worried.”
And this Harry could say without reservation. “More than you know. Krista is going out of her mind too. Your little family—it doesn’t work without you.”
The words mocked him. So easy for him to say to Anya, but his entire family had needed to intervene for him to understand them for himself.
“Remember when we did this four years ago?” Anya murmured. “I thought I had no one waiting. It’s amazing how less scared I am, now that I know someone’s out there who wants me too.”
Harry swallowed and nodded, longing for Suriel a knot in his throat. Edward was still passing around the cell phone, and Francis and Bel were under the car, grooming each other unmercifully. For a moment it was enough just to hug Anya and give thanks.
Empty Spaces
EVENTUALLY THEY chartered a bus and used it to get everybody to Vegas. From Vegas, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents—every girl had somebody worried about her who came to take her home.
Harry thought that if anything was a testament to the work his family did, that alone would be it. Every girl had family. Every girl was loved.
Bel and Francis never left each other’s sides—they practically sat on each other in the car—and Harry asked himself and Edward repeatedly, how could they have missed this?
Finally Edward burst out with, “I don’t know, Harry—maybe they were just born in love. You ever think about that?”
Harry blinked and tried to remember the first moment he’d known he was in love with Suriel.
And couldn’t.
“No,” he said, puzzled and wondering. “Is there such a thing?”
They stood outside on a balcony overlooking the strip in all its gaudy painted glory, and Edward sagged against the wrought iron, his own pain more than enough to destroy him.
“There must be,” he said after a fraught moment. “You and Suriel, me and Mullins, Francis and Bel—we had no more choice or chance with the men we loved than we had to resist Emma, you think?”
And for once, Harry’s reasonable, rational brother sounded young and lost. Harry rubbed a circle on his back. If they were cats he’d be grooming Edward’s ear. “I think you’re right,” he said with a crooked smile. “But if you like, don’t think of it as something we were powerless against. Maybe think of it as a gift. A reward, perhaps, for taking our lives and making good.”
Edward cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “That almost sounds like a man with faith.”
Harry’s comfort motions stilled. “I have to,” he told Edward in all honesty. “If I have no faith, I’m screaming in a corner.” He swallowed hard. “So I’ll have faith.”
Edward turned and caught his hand, lacing the fingers tight. “Then I will have faith with you, brother. Because screaming in the corner is no way to pass the time.”
They grinned tiredly at each other and then let go and turned back into the night.
Harry felt an insistent throb under his breastbone, like the pounding of surf.
Oh, how he longed to be home.
WHEN THEY finally pulled into the driveway of the big house, Harry and the others didn’t ask permission. They waited for Harry to open the door as the car rocked to a final stop and followed him out into the green meadow surrounding the house in their four-footed forms.
Emma and Leonard would probably go inside and shower—and hopefully make love—but the boys had their own way to recover from a long trip.
Usually they hunted for hours, stretching cramped muscles, letting their brains take a break from the constant pressure, the constant fear of letting down the people they’d sworn to protect. Harry pitied the poor mice, voles, and jackrabbits that got in their way then. Sometimes they were creatures of violent anger, anger much more suited to a hunting house cat than a full-sized man, and they all knew that.
But today Harry had eaten his fill of rage, was sick to death of violence. Today he wanted one thing and one thing only.
Without looking to see where his brothers had buggered off to, he went trotting toward the cabin, out of sight of the house proper, toward the swimming hole.
Memories assailed him with every step.
The wrongness of traveling this path without Suriel by his side almost stopped his heart, and he broke into a gallop to get to the cabin. What if Suriel had been returned? What if he was injured, bleeding? What if he needed his boy?
Harry turned human just long enough to burst through the door.
The cabin was dark, as it had been when they’d both awakened. Their dinner dishes still sat in the drying rack, and Harry imagined their leftovers—chicken and rice—would be still in the refrigerator. Hell, it was only three days ago—they’d probably still be good.
Like he and Suriel would be eating them for breakfast the next day.
He looked around, at a loss. He’d helped build this cabin—it was only half a mile from the house. Get caught out in the rain? Visit the cabin. Get tir
ed after fishing? Sleep there instead.
But now it was a different place. He walked to the bed, pulled the comforter to his face, and breathed deeply.
It smelled of eucalyptus and tea.
He sat down hard on the bed with a little moan and breathed Suriel in again and again, every lungful feeling like broken glass.
Every lungful like oxygen, necessary to live.
He hardly noticed when Emma and Leonard came in, sitting quietly on either side of him until Emma wrapped her arm around his shoulders and pulled him into her arms.
“He’ll come back,” she promised softly.
“Oh God,” Harry wept. “Oh, Emma… I need him here. I need him. I need him. I need him….” Harry’s breath caught in his throat, and he was sobbing, shaking with grief, and only Leonard’s weight at his back and Emma’s soft strength at his front kept him from flying apart like Big Cass, the ache of loss in his chest the biggest fear of them all.
HE FELL asleep between his parents, like a child. When he awoke, he was in his own bed in the house. Edward sat at the foot of the bed, a Kindle in front of him. Every now and then, he’d move his ginger paw, the Kindle would flash, and he’d turn the page.
Computers had made reading in cat form so much easier.
Harry pushed up to his elbow and frowned. “How long was I—”
“It’s the next morning,” Edward said, human now but not shifting position. He looked up from his book. “Emma is cooking enough food for a small nation. You’d better eat it.”
Harry racked his brains, trying to remember when they’d eaten last.
“The gas station outside of Vegas,” Edward said, like Harry had spoken out loud. “You ate then for fuel, and then let the girls eat the rest your food. Very noble, brother, but you’re looking peaked. It’s pissing me off.”
Harry smiled slightly. “You are perpetually pissed off. This doesn’t bother me.”