by Amy Lane
Terry looked away to her son in his tank top and khakis, and I could almost feel her eyes fall on his arm tattoo—green lime leaves and dark green oak leaves in a diamond surrounding Nicky as a bird. Somewhen in time—I didn’t even remember—a little bit of Bracken’s trademark blood had started falling from the leaves.
On the peak of the diamond there was a coyote that he’d had specially done for Eric. I remembered when he’d asked to go do that—I thought it was lovely.
But most parents aren’t fond of tattoos, and her eyes narrowed unappreciatively.
“I see you’ve found a way to mark everyone who comes under your ‘protection,’” she said with an edge to her voice.
“Do you think I don’t have a mark on my body for him?” I asked, but I was damned if I was taking off my T-shirt in that tiny bikini to show her my back.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Do you? You won’t even wear his ring. He’s wearing yours.”
Nicky had shown me the ring—one plain band of white gold and one of silver, twisted solidly together—that his grandfather had given to his grandmother moons and moons ago. Nicky had inherited it and was supposed to give it to the love of his life. He’d shown it to me right before he’d caught a flight to Austin.
“Eric’s wearing that ring,” I said. “These rings,” I flashed the one on my finger that couched the symbols of all of us—lime tree, oak tree, sword, blood, stone, rose, and bird—even as I spoke. “These rings are important. They mean something different.”
She didn’t hear me. “What do you mean, ‘Eric’s wearing that ring’—that ring was meant for his wife!”
Oh, shit. Another can of fucking worms. They were lying around our conversation like land mines.
“Eric’s his boyfriend,” I said mildly. “It meant a lot to all of us that Nicky gave him that ring.”
“Aren’t you even a little bit jealous?” she asked, appalled. “Doesn’t it bother you at all that my son doesn’t really love you? That you are so wrong for him that he’d rather sleep with another man?”
Ouch. Just fucking ouch. My face flattened, and my stitches grew tight and angry. “Your son loves me enough to die for me,” I said quietly. “And if I were you, I’d be more bothered by the fact that you don’t know Nicky at all.”
Very carefully I put my knitting back in the little bag, cinched it tight, and fixed it around my wrist again, then pulled up on my knees to lean over the railing and look woefully at the water. I’d jump out, I thought mournfully, I’d jump out and into that big puddle of unfathomable fear, if I thought for a moment it would get me on that other boat.
There was a rustle next to me, and Annette—tan and resplendent in a peach-colored bikini top and bottle-cap shorts—came to lean over the railing next to me. I didn’t even look up at her. I was hoping that by acting alone, I might actually get left alone.
“My, you do just keep on making friends and influencing people, don’t you?” she asked snidely, and my lips came back from my teeth in a snarl she couldn’t see.
“Better than pissing off strangers and alienating entire countries,” I returned mildly, and I heard her process that for a minute. Literally—I could swear there were gears turning. It was painful.
“What country?” she finally asked.
“Mine.”
“Oh, that’s just silly. We’re all Americans here.”
“Not me,” I returned, caught up in some sort of dreamy, sleep-deprived fugue. “I belong to the Preternatural Sub-States of Northern California.”
She didn’t really know what to do with that, so she resorted to mockery. It could be the one thing we would ever have in common. “Well, your country has crappy taste in color.”
I wrinkled my nose, still staring at that peaceful refraction of sun off water. “You wanted a demo.”
She sniffed. “How do I know you all didn’t just….”
I laughed and closed my eyes, hypnotized by the feel of sun on the back of my neck and that unfathomable water. “Drop our vacation plans and paint the cabins while you were sleeping just to fuck with you? Sorry, Annette, you’re not that important to us.”
“Well, then, how did you do it?” The question was reluctant. She truly didn’t want to believe that there was anything different about us. Her hands—perfectly manicured and tipped with peach nail polish—slid into my peripheral vision, and the seat cushion next to me shifted under her weight.
I laughed a little. “That’s what happens with really good sex,” I said with an almost friendly smile. “Or at least it does when you’re us.”
The hands disappeared from my view, and the physical space between us widened considerably. “That’s just nasty.” Her voice dripped contempt, and I had a sudden wish for Green. Sex was never nasty around Green.
“It’s too bad you think that way. Maybe you haven’t found the right person.” I was bored with this conversation, somnolent, my lack of sleep the night before and the heat of the midmorning sun catching up that way.
“I,” she sniffed with complete disdain, “am a virgin.”
I eyed her with only a little surprise. “I doubt that,” I said thoughtfully. “The vampires would have told me.”
Her expression was almost worth enduring her presence. She started to sputter, and before she could give voice to the thought of “How in the hell would they know that?” I put her out of her misery.
“Smell and power,” I said, holding up a forestalling hand. “There’s power released in the first fluids shed in human sexual maturity. It has its own smell.” I shrugged. The vampires hadn’t known I’d been a virgin—or Adrian hadn’t. Adrian, Goddess love him, hadn’t been the most responsible vampire in the universe either. By all accounts, our first lovemaking—in the hill, without Green’s presence—had been terrifying to all parties involved.
Except me. I’d thought it was lovely.
Anyway, our vampires—all of our vampires—had been schooled since that night. If she’d smelled of any sort of power, they would have known. No matter how repulsive someone is personalitywise, vampires are always evaluating a food source.
“My hymen is intact,” Annette was saying now. I rolled my eyes.
“That doesn’t mean you’ve never come in your pants,” I said crudely, “or that a man’s never scratched your back while you were giving him a blow job. Sex means an awful lot to our people—it’s not just confined to the one thing that can get you pregnant.”
Her mouth opened and closed fruitlessly, and I shrugged, realizing that I might not have been as politic as the situation called for. Maybe I should have apologized—maybe I should have given her a way to save face. But she was dealing with forces that took this sort of thing very seriously, and she was using a child’s ignorance in place of innocence: I may have seen a penis, I may have touched a penis, I may even have achieved orgasm, but because these things didn’t happen in a specific order, I still have no actual knowledge of a penis. When you lived with the Goddess’s people, that was the kind of thinking that could get you killed.
“You’re disgusting!” she finally burst out, and I was surprised at the force with which I wanted Green.
“And you’re a lousy ambassador for the human race,” I retorted. Then I turned my back on her.
I felt a shift of weight on my other side and could smell the sun-warmed vanilla-and-animal that was Nicky. I closed my eyes and sat up on my knees, tilting my face under my visor up to meet the sun. Nicky’s hand came up to massage my neck while he leaned over and whispered, “How much would you pay me to let you go play on the other boat?”
“I’m out of currency,” I told him, loving that hand on the back of my neck. “I’m already making you socks for life.”
“My mother’s hella jealous about that, you know.”
I looked sideways at him and enjoyed his immature smirk. “That’s good to know,” I said quietly. Then I looked at him really, and realized the smirk was hiding white lines of stress around shiny brown eyes.
> I took his hand—the one rubbing my neck—and kissed it. “What’s up?”
He shook his head and leaned in so he could talk softly into my ear. “I just came out to my parents. Again.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw his mother wiping her face again, the back of her hand black with mascara. His father was staring straight and morbidly ahead, all attention on the boat’s meandering course around the inlets of the little amoeba lake. The same compressed lines of grief Nicky had were lining his mouth and his fine brown eyes.
I kissed him gently on the mouth. “Looks rough,” I said, rubbing his cheek with mine, and he nodded.
“Can I stay here with you for a minute and stare at the lake?” he asked sincerely, and I grunted yes. Distraction now, help Nicky cope when we were in private.
“Come here,” I said, leaning over the rail far enough for things to get dangerous. “I think if you look close enough, you can see fish.”
Nicky let out an honest chuckle. “You can’t see fish in the lakes at home….”
“Yes you can!”
“Not from a boat! What makes you think you can see them now?” He spoke lightly, but he punctuated the question with another of those tender touches at the small of my back through my T-shirt.
I looked at him and grinned, so very glad when he grinned back. “Force of my formidable will!” I intoned dramatically, and I was rewarded by his laugh.
Together we dangled our torsos over the rail, holding our free hands out and reaching for the peace and coolness in the center of that dark lake. We also ignored—and had been ignoring—Annette’s ostracized presence on my other side.
We shouldn’t have.
I had antagonized an enemy, showed her disrespect, disdained the things she held sacred. In retrospect I had it coming, but at the time I felt nothing but contentment as my accidental lover and I leaned over the railing to find the relative peace and safety in the lake that we were looking for in our own hearts.
The two hands on my ass, lifting me up and shoving me hard, were a complete surprise, and that was nothing to the shock of the green-black snow-fed water as it closed over my head.
Nicky: Life as Bird Boy
YOU KNOW how some people hate the kids’ table at Thanksgiving? I had loved it. Me and my cousins getting together, cutting up, throwing mashed potatoes, telling embarrassing stories about our parents—good times.
Getting to sit with the adults had been overrated.
I could hear the boat with our people on it—they were laughing. I had never realized how much we all laughed together until now, fending off my mother, dealing with my father, and watching the dejected slump of Cory’s shoulders as she leaned over the side of the boat and wished she was anywhere but here.
“She doesn’t have anything better to do with her time than knit?” My mother’s voice was suspiciously shrill. She’d tried crafting, I remembered. She’d never been able to sit with one project long enough to finish it. We had an entire closet full of yarn, paper, scrapbooking punchers, funky scissors, modeling clay, beads, and quilting fabric—and not one single scarf, scrapbook, necklace, or blanket to show for it.
“She has lots of shit to do with her time, Mom”—work, go to school, study the Goddess folk, go out and kick ass—“but knitting is what she gets to do in between.”
Maybe because I had grown up assuming I’d live a mortal lifetime, I understood the drive to create something that might be around for a year or two. Bracken and Green thought the knitting was magical. I thought it was mortal. All of us respected the hell out of it.
“Like a minivacation in a plastic bag? Isn’t that a little common for the queen of Green’s hill?” Mom’s lips were drawn back from her teeth, and since we were in the prow of a boat and the wind was pretty fierce, it was just luck that she didn’t catch a bug.
I winced anyway. I’d been the one to give Mom that title. It was the closest I could get to who Cory was to us.
“She hates it when we call her that,” I said, wishing I didn’t have to shout it and shifting in my seat so the wind didn’t hit my eyes quite so brutally. They were tearing up. “She hates it when we call her Lady, she hates all of it—but when shit goes down, she’s the first one out there, you know?”
Mom shook her head and looked at Dad, who was stoically steering the boat. Dad didn’t talk much, but he tended to see things nobody else did—like last night, apparently, when he’d noticed the vampire marks. Great timing, that. I had to wonder if he’d waited until I walked away to say anything.
“Okay, fine.” Mom was still talking. “I get it. Best president you ever had—great. But why live there? You don’t have to. She’s already made it very clear you only need to visit….” Mom blushed and lifted her hands to refasten the clip holding her hair. Good. It was an unworthy thought—Cory and Green as life-force booty call?
“I dare you to finish that sentence,” I said quietly and with so much force that Mom jerked back in her seat.
“Dominic, honey,” she said, placating me, “I just want you to be happy. I’d like to know my grandchildren, you know?” I was reminded again that I was an only child. I looked up and saw Annette approaching Cory, and I sighed. I’d tried to tell them this before, but maybe they would hear it now while we were face to face.
“Cory’s your only chance for a grandkid, Mom,” I said. I was kind of glad I had to talk above the engine noise now, because it meant I couldn’t mumble—I had to say it loud and proud. “She’s the only girl I’d ever want to sleep with. If it wasn’t for her, I’d like men exclusively. I’m gay, Mom.” It was a confining word—but humans didn’t have a better one, so it was the one I went with. “She’s the best thing to ever happen to me. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have met Green, and I never would have been able to love Eric. I will never love Annette, or anyone like her. You shouldn’t have brought her—it was cruel to everybody.”
There was a hiccup in the engine, and I realized that Dad’s hand had choked on the throttle and then put the pressure back on. I looked at him, trying to look past the sunglasses and the bird’s-nest gray hair. Please, Daddy… please look at me? Please?
Then I looked at Mom, and she was crying. Fucking wonderful.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not actually feeling sorry—maybe there was just enough asshole in me to not care that this hurt them. “I didn’t mean to upset you, but you’re not getting the message.”
Mom nodded and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her makeup washed away, and although she didn’t look old, she looked vulnerable, so I stood up, keeping my balance on the shifting floor of the flatboat, and moved in to kiss her cheek. She nodded and gave me a game smile. Suddenly I could feel the sun a little, and I realized how cold I’d been. Yeah, it’s easy to talk big, but everyone wants his mommy to keep loving him, right?
I took another step back, and Dad said, “Son?”
I turned to him hopefully, but the sunglasses and the habitual squint against the wind weren’t giving me anything in terms of expression.
“I know you have to keep visiting for the bonding, but… but children. Does it really have to be her?”
Oh, Jesus. Ouch. Just fucking ouch. “Why don’t you like her?”
“I like her fine,” Dad said, actually looking at me. “I’m not lying. I see what you see, son. She’s strong, and I can tell you’ve got something together, and I’m damned grateful she didn’t let you die. But… she’s dangerous. That job you’re going to do tonight—you make it sound like nothing, but I know better. It’s got vampires in it, and there’s a reason you brought all those people—and it sure as shit wasn’t to meet your folks.”
Dad took off his sunglasses and met my eyes. “I could give a crap if you’re queer, Nicky. I just want you to live.”
Easiest answer I’d had to give them yet. “I’d rather die by her side, fighting for Green’s hill, than live in peace, sleeping next to Eric forever.”
After that, even her smell was comfort
ing. Her kisses on the cheek, the mouth, the way she leaned her cheek on my shoulder—it all helped to ease the ache in my chest left by that fractured conversation.
We spoke distractedly, and when she turned the full force of her smile on me, I felt deep in my soul the rightness of my world.
I didn’t notice Annette at all. I had forgotten her completely. She even spoke once or twice—a shrill attempt to get my attention—but all I wanted was to touch Cory and be soothed.
I was so shocked at the violence in her, the sudden force from behind, and Cory’s pissed-off shriek as she hit the water, that for a moment all I could do was stare at Annette in a dreamy sort of surprise.
Her mouth was drawn back in a snarl, those carefully pretty features twisted beyond human, her breathless cackle shrill and chilling.
Then the dreamy moment was over and I was a bird, the wind from the boat catching under my wings as I used my bird’s sight—specifically designed by God to find things in a big fucking lake—to find our girl.
I didn’t see her for a moment, but I did see Bracken’s clean dive from fifty yards away as he swam with preternatural speed to where he’d seen her disappear.
And then she was feet from smacking into me, screeching with a warrior’s yell on the crest of a waterspout she had obviously created with her furious, panicked power when she’d found herself in the cold darkness. I saw her face as the spout crested, and in spite of the reflexive scream, she was a study in self-control. The moment her self-awareness conquered her fear and she let herself fall back into the water before she attracted any more attention was painful—and beautiful. Her jaw was clenched in absolute determination to keep herself together, and her lips were drawn back in a snarl of retribution. She controlled her fall, held her arms at her sides, closed her eyes in sheer concentration, and let herself plunge again into this thing that suddenly scared her.