Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Having someone make dinner for you didn’t quite wipe the slate clean of all the gone-befores. But it did make you more charitably inclined toward them. Wren’s stomach let out a distinctly ungraceful noise, and she giggled into her pillow.

  “You’re such a delicate creature,” Sergei said, heavy on the irony.

  She turned her face to the side in order to speak. “I never claimed to be delicate. Or demure. Or any of the words that describe women who don’t eat, or at least don’t have audible digestive systems. Besides, mister, I seem to remember someone emitting a stench that could send skunks into raptures not so many months ago, after indulging in a huuuge damn plate of ziti Alfredo I warned you about.”

  It was silly, but silly was what she needed, right now.

  Sergei clearly felt the same way. “Hey. The honeymoon phase is now officially over, if we’re making fun of each other’s bodily functions.”

  “You started it! Anyway, I’ve never been much for pretending they don’t exist. Seems silly.”

  In addition to the forgiveness thing, there was something about having someone else cook a meal that just guaranteed she’d end up in bed. Not that Sergei had to worry on that account, mostly; she was pretty willing to drag him off—or be dragged off—on the slightest pretext, these days. And it was only just sex—good sex, fabulous sex, but no current use—abuse—no anything she had to feel guilty about. Feel-good sex, physically and mentally.

  If she could, she would have stayed there, physically and emotionally, the rest of her life; or at least a month. But there was still work to deal with. The plus was that now they could do it naked and postcoital sweaty, too.

  The dark green-and-gold quilt was thrown over them, in addition to a blanket she had pulled out of storage when winter started; it had gotten kicked to the bottom of the bed at one point, but she had reached down to pull it back once the sweat started to cool. The room was filled with night-shadows, but they had an odd sheen to them, as though dawn was trying to seep through the walls, and the blackout curtain in the window. “Time’s it?” she asked.

  Sergei twisted to look at the clock on her nightstand, and she ran one cold finger along the exposed length of torso as he did so, just to see his skin shudder under her touch.

  “Three-thirty. Damn it, woman, you have the fingers of a corpse. Give me those and let me warm them up before you touch me again.”

  He grabbed her fingers and held them under his chin, folding them in his larger hands. “How can someone with so much current be so cold?”

  “Dunno. Nobody’s ever done a study of the effects of current on circulatory systems. I don’t think they have, anyway. Nobody asked me to participate, if they did.”

  It was too early to even think about getting up, too late to expect much in the way of sleep. Wren was trying to remember if she had any of that high-test coffee still in the freezer, the stuff that made her hair curl.

  “You guys should have your own wing at St. Vincent’s,” Sergei said. “And a research facility at…”

  “You think we don’t?”

  That gave him pause for about half a second. “No, because if you did, it would be funded with Council money, and none of you would trust it enough to go there, anyway.”

  That made her laugh, mainly because it was true.

  “I wish you did have doctors, though. You don’t, do you?”

  “Not many.” She let her hands rest under his, enjoying the contact as much as the warmth, lying there in the late-night darkness of her bedroom. They were talking now. That was good. “You can survive the training, maybe, but working in a hospital…too much stress, too many things that can go pfffft, too many people going to get hurt when the wrong thing goes pffft. So Talent with the healing itch tend to go for traditional healer routes and nontraditional certification. Mostly, we self-heal, best we can—” he had seen her do that, with minor external injuries, and she’d tried it a time or three on others with worse damage inside, with mixed results. “—and there are only a couple-five doctors I know of, total, who’re familiar with the stuffing of your average lonejack enough not to be freaked by it.”

  “Is it that dissimilar?”

  Wren felt the comfort level shift, tense up. He knew that they could handle levels of electricity that would kill a Null, knew it firsthand, but she’d never given him the details. Never saw the need, before. Enough that he knew he didn’t have it. Not that those particular facts seem to stick with him. He was treading dangerous ground, here; she wondered if he knew it.

  She hesitated, thinking about moving the conversation onto another topic, then answered him. “According to Bonnie, our internal organs are lined with something that insulates us. It’s icky and mucus-y and I really don’t like to think about it, thanks. Evolutionary whatchamacallit, keeps us from dying before we can reproduce.”

  “Nice.” He bent forward to kiss the top of her head. “Pity it can’t be harvested and sold…” He stopped, clearly considering the actual probable market for such a thing, and they both shuddered at the same moment. “Right. Forget I ever thought of that.”

  “Totally forgotten.”

  “Anyway—” and she stretched out along his body intending to make him lose track of what she was saying “—I’m less worried about my medical situation and more worried about yours. Thought about it a lot, while you were out of town.”

  “Did you now.” He was totally focused on her words. Damn. So much for distracting tactics. But it had to be said, before she lost the nerve.

  “Yeah.” She rolled onto her side, facing him, but hiding her face under her hair, which was a bad combination of winter-dry and sweat-damp. He brushed it away to see her face. She let him, which would have been a warning sign, if he’d been paying attention to the right things. Wren never let him fuss with her hair like that unless she was either injured, or trying to avoid a fight.

  He was going to expect her to bring up the current-sex. Which is why she wasn’t going to.

  “This…don’t take this the wrong way, which you’re going to, because I know you, but angeli are tough to kill and someone’s managed it twice already, and that Kirin, did you hear about the Kirin? They didn’t even take the horn, just left it there to decay. Abandoned a thousand-dollar profit because they didn’t know, or didn’t care, or were making a point…and I want you to get out of town. Take another business trip. Visit your relatives. Something. Just until…” She didn’t know until what. The storm was building, and she didn’t want him here when it broke.

  He was clearly taken aback. “It’s all been fatae, Wren. No humans. Not even Talents. Not in singled-out attacks like that.”

  She went still in his arms. “That’s going to change.”

  “You know that for a fact?” He wasn’t doubting her, just questioning the certainty of her tone.

  “If you ever trusted my instincts, Sergei. If ever you trusted me, now’s the time. Yes, it’s going to change. And I don’t want you anywhere near their sights. It’s not enough that my mom be out of range, I—”

  She ran out of words, or hit a brick wall, or something that made her just stop.

  He tried to keep his tone mild, even as she could feel him tense up. “We’ve had this…discussion, before. In all the years you’ve known me, you never once even implied that I was a liability to you, that I could not keep my side up in a fight. Now, suddenly…at the risk of sounding like the girl in this, why does sex suddenly give you any right to say what I can and can’t do?”

  She pushed against him, just enough to create a small space between them. “It doesn’t, and that’s not…it gives me the right to worry out loud, rather than biting it back because I didn’t have the right. Except I always did because you’re my partner, damn it, and if I know something’s coming that’s meaner and nastier than you are, and fights with things other than fists and guns, I have to say so.”

  “Except they do fight with fists and guns,” he pointed out. “And baseball bats and knives. All things
I have more experience with than you do.”

  “Stop being logical! This isn’t about logic, damn it!” she cried out, frustrated, and then collapsed against him, shaking.

  He knew her well enough to know, instantly, that the shakes were from giggles, not tears. Slightly hysterical, perhaps, but her innate sense of the absurd was reasserting itself, rather than letting drama take over.

  “You’re an idiot,” he said.

  “So’re you.” The words were muffled, but understandable.

  He smiled into the sweaty tangle of her hair. “So let’s be idiots together, as the saying goes.”

  That, apparently, was the right thing to say. Her hands weren’t cold anymore, he discovered, as she reached down his torso, this time raising shivers of an entirely different sort. Faint flickers of current trailed in her wake, dancing on the surface of his skin, carefully not sinking into the flesh. He could only imagine the concentration it took, to keep control of the current even after it left her, while still focusing on other parts of his body. Or was she even aware of it? He wondered, sometimes, how clear the delineation was between Wren and the current she carried within her.

  Then she shifted, and took him into her mouth, and he didn’t much care how she did it, or why, only that she kept on exactly whatever it was she was doing. He didn’t know which felt better, the current on his belly, or her tongue flicking at the head of his cock, or when she slid…all right, he thought, definitely, that feels best of all.

  She played him like that, back and forth, shifting him through the sensations magical and merely physical, until he felt like a twist-tied rubber band in dire need of release. He would have agreed to anything she asked of him, at that point, and loved her all the more for knowing that—and not asking anything of him at all.

  And even so, something inside, some devil of the purely human sort, niggled at his brain and twitched his nerve endings.

  Don’t do it.

  Angeli were bastards. You could ignore what the angel on your shoulder warned. Right?

  You’re an idiot.

  It wasn’t idiocy. It was okay. She had been grounding in him for a decade, and he was a little battered, but okay. And she grounded in P.B., when the Toscanni creature was trying to eat him, during the summer, and P.B. was okay….

  He didn’t like the thought of her grounding in P.B., not even to save his, Sergei’s life and soul, and so pushed that thought down quickly.

  No, this was between the two of them. She needed to use current; it was what she did. What she was. It was part of her. And he wanted to know that part, know everything. Just a little bit more of her, just a bit…she was in control. He trusted her to keep control. He just wanted…a little bit more….

  Idiot, and then the angel was gone.

  “Wrenlet…more. Let go just a little more….”

  She tensed, and his fingers dug into her shoulders, massaging the knot forming there, encouraging her to go on. Letting her know that it was okay, he was okay.

  She said she trusted him. He trusted her. It was all about the trust, wasn’t it? He could take anything she gave. He wanted it. He was her partner, not that half-sized fur-toy. Something so much a part of Wren, so essential…he would be the one to ground her, not him.

  You’re an idiot, even the devil said, then faded, as well, as his vocal cords took over.

  “Wren. Please. Just a little more, you’re making me crazy, finish me off…”

  At any other moment, under other conditions, he would never have asked. Under other conditions, she would have—and had—read him the riot act just for asking.

  He knew his partner. Knew that, once committed, she didn’t back down. Not during a Retrieval, not during…anything.

  “Wren, please…”

  She heard him, he knew she did. The pressure of her hands on his thighs lessened, then increased again, her efforts redoubled in order to drive the thought out of his larger head.

  “Ah, Wrenlet, you’re killing me….”

  The wrong thing to say. Completely the wrong thing to say. Her fingers dug into his flesh in response, nails probably leaving nasty little marks. But even as he realized it, and backtracked mentally if not verbally, the current dancing on his skin sizzled and sank into his flesh, shocking his nerve endings in a way that was almost enough. Then her mouth covered him one last time, and everything from his toes to his heart clenched, as though he had been gut-punched, only in a good way. Sergei wasn’t one for talking when he came, but he let out a heavy, labored sigh that could have been her name, could have been a swearword, but probably wasn’t any language at all except satisfaction.

  And then his entire body went cold as she was out of bed, a pale white blur in the darkness, backing away from him with the uncertain steps of someone reeling from a deathblow.

  “Wren?”

  “You…I didn’t mean to do that.”

  He started to tell her that it was okay, that he was okay, when what she was saying clarified in his head. Her letting go of the current, allowing it to go beyond the borders of his skin, hadn’t been a result of his somewhat incoherent pleas, or even an instinctive response to what he needed.

  She had done the one thing she—and every lonejack—feared the most. She had lost control.

  “Wren…”

  But she was gone, a sudden, totally unexpected zap of current taking her elsewhere, and leaving everything in the room—including himself—quivering in the aftermath.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  seventeen

  In retrospect, P.B. thought later, it was probably a good thing he had decided to put off clipping his nails until another, even more boring evening. Otherwise, when the naked human female appeared in his living area, he might have lost a toe. And even for demon, toes were tough to regrow.

  “Hemeltjelief!” A beat, then: “Jesus—Valere!” Something Didier had said once, tugged at the back of P.B.’s head. He remembered it the same instant that the woman fell forward onto her hands and knees, and began puking all over his rug.

  She’s not very good at Translocating. Screws her system up seven ways from Sunday.

  He grabbed the blanket off the back of the sofa he’d been sitting on, and threw it over her shoulders. Not so much to cover her nudity—it didn’t do anything for him, and he was pretty sure Wren wasn’t much on modesty—but because it was brass-nuts cold outside, and not much warmer in the apartment. When you have fur, you tend not to worry so much about if the furnace is working or not.

  “Okay, okay, it’s okay.” She kept retching, so it wasn’t okay, but he didn’t know what else you said to naked lonejacks who appeared and then poured their dinner out over your floor. It wasn’t covered in anything Emily Post had ever written.

  “Oh God.”

  “No, just me.” It was a feeble joke, but all he had at the moment. “Come on, come on, Valere, come with me.” He led her, like a child, into the bathroom. She stood there in the middle of the dingy white tiles while he pushed aside the shower curtain and turned the water on, as hot as he could make it. He remembered that, from taking care of her after the Frants case: she liked her showers hot.

  “Get in.”

  She stood there, still huddled in the blanket, but at least not throwing up anymore.

  “Valere. Tub. In. Get.”

  Her shoulders hunched, she swallowed once, hard, but otherwise might as well have been made out of mannequin-plastic, she was so unresponsive. He finally gave in and hauled her, unresisting, into the tub. The twelve inches or so difference in their height made it awkward, but he only looked cute and cuddly—demon were, by design, solid muscle and bone.

  The blanket came off a second too late, and landed, already waterlogged, in the tub.

  “Needed to wash that, anyway,” he said, then drew the curtain and sat down on the toilet seat to wait. He’d give her privacy to recover from whatever it was that sent her here—there was no blood, no damage that he could see, so he wasn’t going to freak out just yet—but sh
e was clearly in some kind of shock, so he wasn’t going to be more than a paw’s grab away. Just in case.

  He’d told her once that she could always count on him, that she could ground in him; that was what he’d been made for.

  Looked like part of her, at least, had heard and believed him. And remembered, when she needed to remember.

  Wren didn’t remember anything. Her first, last, and only memory was standing under a heavy fall of hot rain, surrounded by the smell of something musky, and…baby shampoo?

  “No More Tears?” she guessed, her voice, to her ears, too high-pitched and squeaky to actually be hers.

  “I get tangles, all right?” P.B.’s voice was reassuringly grumpy, from the other side of the waterfall.

  She opened her eyes, and saw white tile, and a green-and-black striped shower curtain. At her feet, tangled, was the waterlogged weight of a blanket of some sort, now totally ruined.

  “Where am I?”

  “My apartment. Specifically, my shower.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Damned good question, Valere.”

  And then she remembered…

  “Don’t you dare throw up again!” P.B. warned, when she made a noise somewhere between a choke and a scream, caught midpoint in her throat.

  Translocating made her toss her guts. Always and every time, whether someone else sent her, or she went under her own dubious power.

  She had done this to herself; Wren was pretty sure about that. There was comfort, and afterglow, then the sickening thud of realizing something—Sergei! I hurt Sergei!—followed hard on the heels by a memory of him lying there, looking at her, all right, unhurt, at least as far as she could tell.

  “I lost control. I said I would control it, and I didn’t.” But she said it quietly, letting the water keep the admission to itself, not letting the demon on the other side hear her secret.

  “Everybody loses control, Valere.”

  Damn demon hearing. She kept forgetting that, because he was so good about—usually—not hearing what he wasn’t meant to hear. She tried to work up the energy to get mad, then supposed, considering the circumstances, she’d waived the right to privacy.