by Amy Lane
It was Arturo. Green had been found. The minute I heard the news, the pain receded—Green’s pain—telling me my world wouldn’t end, my heart would still beat in my chest, the sun wouldn’t implode into a blood-ravaged quantum singularity, and that every vampire in Redding might not after all have to die with their spines ripped through their throats and my sunshine ripping the viscera from every orifice in their bodies.
As my temple stopped throbbing, I became aware of my own whimpers and then of Bracken’s arms, strong and secure, keeping me anchored to the world. If anyone could make me feel safe right now, it was the rough, steady half to my heart.
I fell apart then, in the back of the SUV, as I had not allowed myself to come apart in quite some time. Green was fine. My Green was fine. Bracken rocked me and crooned, his voice lovely and passionate—a thing about him that seemed to surprise other people, but not me. Never me. I might have bawled for the entire trip back home, but after my ripping sobs had been reduced to keening wails, I felt Bracken’s whisper-soft touch on my mind, begging me to let him put me under.
I did, trusting him with all of my soul, and I didn’t wake up until I felt the tingle of my own magic on the perimeter of home. Bracken was still singing softly to me, and my head didn’t hurt one little teeny bit, not even at all.
I skidded out of the car while it was still moving, fell to my knees, and heard Max swear as he slammed on the brakes. Bracken was right behind me, hauling me up by the elbow, and we ran across the yard.
Green was there, naked and covered in a cotton throw, stretched out where his body could touch the earth of his hill to heal. He was in a puddle of light streaming from the front window, and surrounded by a circle of sidhe. His brethren had parted, though, to let in the vampires and weres who wanted to touch him, to give him aid in his healing. Some brought a cloth to clean his blood, some brought pillows or blankets or talismans—there was a teddy bear from Leah, a werepuma, and a Saint Christopher’s medal from Ellis, one of the young vampires, and a hundred of other small, precious things, all within easy touch.
This is our love, Green, this is everything you’ve given us. Take it, heal, it’s yours.
Someone—probably Grace—had brought out the first sweater I’d made him, the one that had been unraveled to save my life and knitted up again. His head rested on it, the fractures in his skull obvious by the swelling and discoloration, and he was stroking his cheek against my sweater like a child.
I don’t even remember running to his side.
I just knelt for a moment, stroking his chest, and at the first contact of our skin, his eyes flew open and his breaths grew deeper. I felt the draw from my body—like a vampire taking blood, except more vital than that—and I opened my heart and my mind and I gave.
His head wounds eased, the lumps going down and the skin returning to its usual pale ivory-green, and his eyes sharpened in their clarity. I realized his pupils had been small, in spite of the darkness, and thought with a shudder how close his body had probably been to being irreparably damaged. The thought almost stopped my breath—almost stopped the flood of my power and life force—and his hand came out to grasp my own.
“I’m fine, beloved,” he murmured. “I’ll live.”
I bent over him and rubbed his cheek with mine. “That’s a promise, dammit. I’ll hold you to it.”
He laughed a little, and his arms—snapping back into place in a crunch of healing bones even as we spoke—wrapped around me and pulled me to him until I sprawled over him, feeling his ribs knitting beneath my breasts.
“Oh Goddess,” I groaned, allowing relief to shudder through me, allowing the last barrier between Green and all the healing power of my heart to dissolve. “Beloved, you can’t scare me like that. You can’t. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t….”
I couldn’t speak anymore. I could just lie there in his arms and joyfully let him bleed out all of my strength and all of my power—because without my healing, sunshine, daylight lover, I would have no strength, I would have no power, and the heart I used to sustain Bracken, to hold on to Nicky, to lead our people, would be nothing but blackened dust.
When he finally spoke, the myriad people who had surrounded us had drifted away. He was going to be all right. They could see it, they could feel it, and although there were probably dozens of eyes watching us from the wraparound window, they loved him enough to give us our privacy.
So only Bracken remained, sitting quietly cross-legged near the willow tree that marked the tiny Goddess grove—it had been the hill’s place of worship even before Green and Adrian and I had turned sex into song. And Bracken, being Bracken, let out a hearty laugh at Green’s next words.
“Not so much fun when it’s someone else doing the dying, now is it!”
“You bastard,” I said, since I was safe in his arms and he was well. “You’re strong enough to play this part. I’m not.”
“Shh, shh, shh….” Because my voice had cracked, and he was now comforting me instead of the other way around. Bracken came over, slid down next to him, and put his hand on my back, soothing me too, and I felt weak with relief and strong with it at the same time.
There was nothing else to say for a while after that. We simply lay there under the stars, under a wide, smiling, waning moon, and listened to Green’s steady breathing.
My human needs started to weigh on me. It was almost as hot here, without Green’s power to keep the hill cool, as it was in Redding, and we were starting to sweat enough to stick to each other. And I might have clenched my bladder one too many times, because Green laughed and shifted, and I rolled off of him and into Bracken’s body. As Green rolled away and stood up, naked under the starlight, he was no longer drawing from my strength, and I realized how woozy I was. Bracken helped me stand up, and I wiggled under Green’s arm while Bracken took his other side. We hadn’t taken more than three steps before Arturo was there—big, sturdy Arturo, who hadn’t been feeding Green his strength because his bond with Green didn’t work that way—and he swept my beloved into his arms and carried him up the steps to the house the way most of the men usually carried me.
For once, I wished I was the one being carried—it was so much easier to be strong and brave when it was only your own health and well-being at stake. Beside me Bracken wavered for a moment, and I realized that Bracken had been shoring me up as I’d been feeding Green. Green’s closeness to death assailed me all over again, and I wrapped my arm harder around Bracken’s waist and fought the urge to break down like I had in the back of the car. Then I listened to Green whining about being well enough to walk on his own, and some of my weakness bled away too.
It was good to know he was almost as shitty a patient as I was.
“Honestly, Arturo,” he grumbled, “you’d think I was a child….”
“You’re not a child,” Arturo growled. “You’re recovering. Let us take care of you.”
Green was actually taller than Arturo. If it hadn’t been for the preternatural strength, it would have been ludicrous for the smaller sidhe to even try what he was doing, but the set of his shoulders and the grim purpose of his stride told us that for once, Arturo was going to get his way.
“I was not as close to death’s door as everyone seems to think,” Green said mildly. Arturo’s reply was thick with emotion.
“Any vicinity is too close, leader. You… you are not allowed in the same room with that door, ever again. Are we understood?” Arturo—steady, dependable Arturo—stilled the cracking in his own voice, and I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other. Oh Goddess, he was so much to so many of us. Arturo wouldn’t have made it, I thought in pained wonder, if Green had died.
I had Arturo put him in the shower, and after a quick phone call to Nicky, because we couldn’t just leave him hanging, Bracken and I undressed and joined Green. We cleansed the blood from his healed skin, and the blood-covered gravel that stuck to his back and hip even though it had been pushed out of his flesh. My hands were shaking a
nd my breath was harsh, but I made myself be strong for him. All those times he had been strong for me, and now it was my turn to pony up, and I’d be fucked three times sideways if I let him down.
Eventually we all slid into bed, Bracken on one side and me on the other, feeding Green strength with our bare flesh and the power of our love. I sang softly, without being asked, because I knew Green loved my voice, and I would do anything, anything, to add something pleasant to this horrible, terrifying night. As Bracken sang a lovely counterpoint, we all drifted to sleep.
When I woke up, Green was sleeping peacefully, looking as radiant and whole as he had in my vision the morning before. Bracken was gone somewhere, and I was starving.
I was also damned if I’d leave Green alone.
I sat up in bed and dragged the sheet over my breasts, because I was alone and there was nobody to chide me for being human and young and a little bit shy, and I pushed my hair back, trying to decide what to do next.
“I won’t melt, thaw, and resolve myself into a dew if you go use the bathroom and get a T-shirt, beloved.” Green’s voice was sleepy and satisfied, and I frowned at him to see that one clear emerald eye was regarding me with some amusement.
“You’re quoting Shakespeare, you must be better,” I snarked back, so relieved I almost took him up on the going-to-the-bathroom part a little early. I made it to the potty, though, and came out of the bathroom with clean teeth, an empty bladder, and wearing one of his oversized T-shirts.
Bracken opened the door as I was crawling back into bed. He had a ginormous tray of food, piled with everything from spiced oatmeal to toast to really big cookies. There was even a banana cream pie—Green’s favorite.
I blinked. “Seven guesses on how Grace worked out her anxiety before dawn.”
Green smiled a little and sat up, letting Bracken place the tray over his legs. “That’s okay, luv, I only need one.” He patted the bed next to him, and I had a sudden vision of him as he had looked the night before. Black nausea swept me, and I sat down a little too quickly.
“I’ll keep you company,” I said, but all my hunger had fled.
“You’ll eat,” Bracken said shortly, his tone so autocratic that I raised my eyebrows at him. He glared right back and continued to dish food—oatmeal, which he was mixing with cinnamon, sugar, and walnuts.
“We all need to eat,” he continued, shoving the bowl at me. “You know that—power requires energy. You need to keep yours up.”
Old argument, and he always won. I rolled my eyes, took a bite of my oatmeal, and felt much better. We ate in silence for a moment, and then Arturo knocked on the door and peeked his head in.
“We all good in here? Nobody throwing up or dying?” He tried to keep his voice light, but it was clear that last night had shaken even solid Arturo’s foundations.
“We’re good, brother,” Green told him with a wink. “Come in and have something to eat.”
Arturo’s best smile split his face, showing off his silver-capped teeth and notching up the sun just a little. I suddenly wondered how many breakfasts he and Green had eaten together—I’d seen them, sometimes, when I was home in the mornings, and it had seemed a comfortable ritual. Funny, how much small things can mean to us, especially when something threatens to take them away.
So Arturo joined us, and we ate in what felt like companionable silence until the strain of not talking shop wore on Green’s last nerves.
“Okay, spit it out. What are you all thinking?” He had just swallowed what he thought was his last bit of toast until I buttered another piece and spread it thick with blackberry jam for him. He looked at the toast mildly, and I shrugged.
“Don’t look at me like that—I learned how to nursemaid from Bracken.”
Bracken managed a smug glare, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“That’s not what you were thinking,” Green reproved. I would have rolled my eyes, but he’d asked twice so I was sort of obliged to answer.
“Okay. Fine. I was thinking that I know what she looks like. The vampire who attacked you. I know what she looks like, I know where she lives, and that tonight, I probably need to go rip out her heart and set it on fire.” It sounded horrible—bloodthirsty, political, bitchy, and not in keeping with healing Green at all. But I’d forgotten what so many people tend to forget about Green.
He was not above revenge, and anything that threatened him threatened me.
He grinned with a touch of evil in it and chucked me under the chin. “Now what makes you think that’s not suitable meal conversation?” he asked drolly, and Bracken interrupted what might have been a sweet little moment between us.
“And what makes you think you can yank her heart out of her chest?” he asked with a growl, and I stopped. He was right—I could move shit and push myself off the ground and do force fields and lasers and shit, but ripping hearts out of bodies was right out of my skill set. Bracken replied to my grimace of disappointment with a smile of carnivorous joy. “I’ll rip her heart out, beloved. You can set it on fire.”
I perked up immediately. “Oh baby, you do give me the best shit to do!”
Arturo listened to the byplay and nodded in satisfaction. “You two should have breakfast with us more often—this beats going over accounts any day.”
We could have chatted like that for hours. I know I could have, I was just so happy to be home, to be in Green’s bed, to know he was okay. But he yawned—once, twice—and before I could even wipe his mouth, Arturo and Bracken had cleaned up breakfast and left the room. Bracken took time to put on some jeans, not that anybody but me was relieved.
Once the door had closed behind them, Green rolled to his side and propped his head up in his hand, grinning at me slyly and tracing the outline of my breast through my T-shirt.
“I thought they’d never leave,” he said, flicking my nipple through the fabric until I yelped and moaned.
“I thought you were supposed to be recovering,” I told him breathlessly. I was rolling over on my back as I said it, the better to give him access to both breasts.
He lowered his head, suckled my nipple through the fabric, and then raised up to kiss me—deeply, thoroughly, and with so much passion I might never doubt that he was here with me and not helplessly, hopelessly vanished from my life forever.
He pulled back, that lovely, wicked grin spreading warmth and anticipation through me. “I’m a sexual creature, luv. This is recovery….”
I chuckled lowly. Then I gasped, and then I moaned, and then I screamed… and then we slept.
WE SPENT most of the day like that—sleeping, making love, eating—always touching each other, by turns tender, voracious, and teasing.
I snuck away for a few moments to check on Bracken—who was sleeping in our room, in our bed, as though not having to worry about his feet sticking over the edge made him very happy—and to grab a snack.
Arturo caught me standing in front of the refrigerator in my T-shirt with my mouth full of chocolate cream pie.
“Cory?” he said hesitantly. I turned, sheepishly, holding the tin and a fork, and with no dignity whatsoever.
“Wha’ canh ah….” (chew, swallow) “do for you, Arturo?”
He smiled, looking suddenly weary, and gestured to the table. “Sit down and finish, for one.”
I grinned at him, and he reached out and thumbed some whipped cream off my nose, and we both laughed. Uncle Arturo—I missed him too. I made myself comfortable and dug into the pie in earnest.
“It’s about that Nolan fucker, isn’t it?” I asked between bites, and he nodded.
“Hallow says he’s got the story ready to publish. He’s apparently fanatical about keeping as much to himself as possible until he’s good to go, which works in our favor. He’ll gather everything, write it all up, add the pictures he wants, and put it in his master file with all of the extra notes, but he’ll have made backups—computer files, e-mails to himself, to his editor. We’ll need to get ahold of his computer and magnetize
the drive, then get into his e-mail….”
“We’ve got people who can hack,” I said, thinking about Jack and LaMark. “As long as we catch him before his editor sends it in.”
Arturo nodded. “Five days. His deadline’s in five days.”
I thought carefully, and sighed. “Well, I promised Rafael until tomorrow—but we need to go in and take care of the”—I struggled to find a word—“twatwaffle tonight. There is no waiting on that. So after that, Rafael has his time again. I’m trying to avoid an all-out war and Rafael needs time to get his house in order, so we need to be consistent. Rafael gets two more nights—so that’s three days. I’ll be back in four. Then we can run in, shake him by the scruff of the neck, and run out.”
Arturo nodded. “You know, little Goddess, you don’t have to do all of these things yourself. You put a team together, and I’ll take care of it.” Arturo grinned savagely. “In fact, I’d sort of enjoy it.”
I grinned at him. “Me too,” I told him mildly. “But I get you. You’re right. I don’t need my finger in every—” I laughed and took a final swipe at the tin with my finger to get every last bit of decadent chocolate cream goodness. “—pie.”
Arturo laughed too, went to the refrigerator, and pulled out another one. “Yes, Corinne Carol-Anne, but this one has caramel in it. Are you sure you don’t want a bite?”
Well, hell yeah! We shared some more pie and some more planning, until the ache in my chest told me I’d been away from Green too long and I pattered back down the hall.
BRACKEN SLID into bed toward the late afternoon, more to hold me and reestablish our normalcy than anything else—and also to charge me up, feed me power, for what we were going to have to do when we got back to Redding.
But going back to Redding meant I had to leave Green.
How could I leave Green? He’d almost… he’d almost… oh Goddess! As he bent his head to mine in front of the SUV, the image of how we’d found him the night before drifted constantly behind my eyes.