Rampant, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  She walked up to my side and took my hand gently, leading me back away from the… the… thing that had wrought so much chaos from the force of her petty human malice alone.

  “Bracken would have died!” Cory cried through gritted teeth, her hand clutching mine and her carefully constructed warrior’s face crumbling beneath what we all knew to be her greatest fear. “Bracken would have died, and the entire power structure that keeps this part of the world from falling into chaos would have fucking disintegrated—and all because you wanted to get laid!”

  “I’b sorry…,” Annette moaned through her broken nose, and it wasn’t until Cory started patting my arm rhythmically that I realized I was shaking. “I’b thorry… pwease don’ let him kill me….”

  Cory shook her head, then wiped her bloody face with the back of her hand. “You almost made me kill a friend, you rabid bitch. Phillip is going to kill you for threatening his beloved.”

  Annette looked up, all of her beauty destroyed by blood and purpling skin. “Pweeeaazz…,” she moaned, but Cory shook her head again. Behind us, I could hear Marcus and Phillip sloshing their way to shore. I risked a glance back—Phillip was still checking his lover’s body for damage, and Marcus was still touching Phillip’s face in apology and reassurance. They hadn’t looked up here yet, and Marcus hadn’t explained what had happened—hell, even I didn’t have the whole story, although I had a pretty goddamned good idea—but it was coming. And Cory was right. Phillip was coming. He’d been living with a diseased mind for four months, and the only thing holding him together was the man Annette had almost made Cory kill. He’d be a rampaging thunderstrike of bloody retribution, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.

  “I can’t stop him,” Cory told her, echoing my own thoughts. “I mean, I could. I’m his leader, and he’d listen….”

  “Den whhyyyyyyy….”

  Cory shrugged, but it wasn’t nearly as casual as she’d like us to believe. “I passed a binding, remember? I could break my own binding, but it would make me weak—and you know something, sweetheart? We’re going to take out a bad guy—a real bad guy. A motherfucker who’s so hellifically evil he makes you look like a cuddly bunny who shits rainbows out your ass. He’s a real goddamned monster. And the fact is”—I clutched her hand because now she was the one shaking—“I can’t protect you and also kill him. I can’t do both. And when it comes right down to it, your life isn’t worth it.”

  “I’b thorrrrrryyyy…,” the thing on the ground wailed, and Cory looked at us all sadly.

  “I really wish I could be,” she told us softly. But she wasn’t—and I, for one, was gloriously proud.

  “What’ll we tell her parents?” Terry Kestrel asked at last, her voice small and miserable. Annette heard the note of defeat in it, and buried her face in her hands.

  “Tell them you took her to the bus station,” Cory said simply, tugging my arm and making a larger opening in the circle for Phillip to speed through. “We don’t know what happened after that.”

  Behind us, Phillip let out a roar that echoed off the hills and lake and prompted a few ribald hollers from the handful of lone campfires that dotted the surrounding trees. Before the echoes of the roar had faded, all of us in the circle felt the howling whoosh of Phillip’s passage, but he was moving so quickly we could only see a dark blur as it charged the mewling victim on the ground.

  Annette didn’t even have time to scream as the fury that was Marcus’s lover ripped off her head with a sound like shattered wood. Then Phillip stood in front of us, her head under his arm like a football while he slurped on the spinal fluid spilling from the gleaming white fascia at the base of what had once been a human being’s neck. We all flinched. I hadn’t known that was a vampire delicacy, but I guess now we all did.

  When he was done, he raised his blood drenched face to the heavens, his black widow’s peak smeared by gore, and roared again and again and again until the werecreatures shrieked in sympathy, human forms or not, and Kyle practically levitated with the force of his hissing.

  In the midst of this, Marcus came trudging wearily up the hill and passed through the same place Phillip had. Even as Phillip howled, Marcus tugged gently at the head of our enemy and let it fall to the ground, then enfolded his tall cold lover in his arms and started whispering to him gently until Phillip broke and wept. Silence descended, and the two of them made their way back through the circle—presumably starting back toward the lake to get rid of their bloodied clothes.

  As they passed us, Marcus pulled at Phillip’s hand until they were both facing Cory. Together they bowed formally.

  “Thanks for not killing me,” Marcus apologized, shaking his head and avoiding our eyes.

  “Brother,” she said, moving forward and catching his chin—a curiously adult gesture from a woman who was probably forty years the vampire’s junior, and several inches shorter. “I think we have enough problems without panicking and killing our friends, you think?”

  Marcus met her eyes and managed a shaky smile. “Damned straight.” His smile grew stronger, and she dropped her hand and moved back against me. “Besides, we’ve got a whole new chapter to add. I mean, hell, we finally know about the sons of chaos and man, now don’t we?”

  Cory’s grin grew a little wider, and she turned to Phillip—I think to apologize, which would have choked us all. Fortunately, Phillip beat her to it.

  “Thank you, my lady,” he said formally.

  None of us had to ask for what. “It was only right you should get to do it,” she said, and Phillip bowed again. The two of them started off toward the lake again, and she called out, “Not too long!” Then she looked back at the circle. “That goes for all of us. We’ve got just enough time to clean up from this goatfuck, and then we’ve got things to do. Battle stations, people—Rafael and Andres are waiting on us!”

  She’d told us that just as the vampires had awakened, but it was good that she reminded us now. A collective awareness shuddered through our little circle, and then all of us—me included—bowed low to her, and she forced herself to accept it with a little nod. Everybody started moving away, but she called one person back.

  “Lambent?”

  The tall fire elf turned toward her, his orange eyebrows raised. “I thought this was your clambake, luv. You want me in on this?” He jerked his head at the human remains lying discarded on the driveway gravel.

  “You’ve got the control, brother,” she told him frankly. “It needs to burn hot and clean, and not even the blood can remain. Turn it to obsidian if you have to, but do your damnedest not to burn down Lake Shasta, right?”

  Lambent smiled slightly. “A job with some finesse—right after my own heart, lovey. My pleasure, but first….” He held his hands palms up, asking for permission to touch her. She squinted at him, and he rolled his eyes.

  “I’m going to heal your boo-boos, lovey—with that bloke on your arm, you’re turning into vampire bait.”

  “D’oh!” Cory smacked her forehead with her palm, then winced as she hit maybe the largest cut on her forehead. “It hadn’t really registered. Jesus, Bracken.” She looked up at me, the blood running into her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I grunted. “You were busy.”

  Lambent clucked impatiently, and I took a step back from her while he touched her face gently and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Her cuts closed immediately—no scarring whatsoever—and my estimation of the fire elf rose up a notch. She wouldn’t have complained even a little, but I knew scars would have bothered her.

  “Thank you, Lambent,” she said softly as he wiped the remaining blood off her face with the towel draped over his bare shoulders. “That’s nice of you.”

  Lambent grimaced. “I’m never nice, lovey,” he said with a roll of the eyes, and then he made shooing motions. “Now scoot—it’s going to make a right stink here, and we’ve got enough to do.”

  So we did. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into me a
nd let out tiny tremors of adrenaline and sorrow that only I could feel. Together we walked back to deal with our real business, Mr. and Mrs. Kestrel’s error in judgment burning clean and hot into ashes behind us.

  Cory: Queen’s Legion

  WE GAVE Nicky’s parents a few terse instructions about dropping the car off in long-term parking and then calling Arturo so he could give them their reservation number for the tickets on hold at the counter.

  “We’ll pick up the car on the way home,” I said with a sideways look at Nicky. He seemed okay. Fine, in fact. He hadn’t been lying when he said he had no love for Annette—I had known that from the beginning, but still. It’s hard to know, sometimes, how much you care about someone until you see her headless and writhing in front of you.

  “That’s fine,” said Jonathan quietly, looking at his son standing at my elbow. “We appreciate the plane tickets and the new car.”

  Terry gave an angry sniff next to him, and I glared at her. “Do you have something to add to that, Mrs. Kestrel?”

  “We would have appreciated it if you hadn’t killed Annette!”

  “And I would have appreciated it if you’d believed me when I said she was a danger to herself and others. I’m not going to risk an all-out war and the escape of a rampant pedophile for a dumbassed woman who pissed off the wrong vampire while trying to kill me! You want to blame someone? Blame Annette. If you find that distasteful, blame yourself. But I’m done with it—I have no remorse for someone who destroys herself with her own evil!”

  “Listen to you! Who talks like that?” She was openly crying, but I had no pity left.

  “I do!” I snarled. “I’m the queen of my people, and that means being who they need me to be. Right now, they need me to be a goddamned silver-tongued diplomat, and in about an hour, they’re going to need me to be a bloodless fucking killing machine. And the people who love me—who really love me—they just need me to be me.”

  “And my son?” she asked fiercely. “What does he need you to be?”

  I stopped myself with a furious shiver, feeling Bracken’s heat seeping through my shoulder. Then I looked at Nicky. I let my face relax, and a smile tightened across my cheeks. “Kindness,” I said softly. “Nicky needs kindness.” He smiled at me, sincerely and loyally, and I grinned back. “And a plane ticket to see Eric just as soon as possible.”

  He nodded with enthusiasm, then leaned in and kissed me softly—kindly—on the lips. I turned to his parents, pretty sure that I would have to be content with Nicky’s good opinion.

  I was surprised when his father spoke up. “Thank you, Lady, for caring for him.”

  “Jonathan!” Terry protested, but he ignored her.

  “My son could have had a horrible—and short—life. You and Green, you’ve made it comfortable and happy, and something to be proud of. Thank you.” He bowed low, and I returned the bow with a little nod of my own and ignored Nicky’s mother with her jaw swinging like a baby seat from a tree.

  “But,” he added. I was all attention. It was the closest thing I’d ever gotten to acceptance, and I wasn’t going to shit on it.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Jonathan Kestrel looked at his son with worry. “Keep him alive, if you can? You’re off to do something dangerous—don’t think I don’t know that. Please… just try not to get him killed.”

  My face tightened another notch, and I nodded soberly. “It’s an absolute fucking priority, Mr. Kestrel. Please believe that’s true.”

  They left, Nicky giving them both brief hugs before coming to help us finish cleaning up. The vampires managed to throw a quick patch on the roof so the room wouldn’t fill with dust while Tanya was scaring up a contractor, and in a very quick moment, we were ready to go.

  I took a moment to say good-bye to the sylph. She’d been a real part of our family for this last week, and I would miss her.

  “Damn, girl, it’s going to be dull around here without you!” Her tongue flickered out, tongue stud and all, and she cast a surreptitious look behind me at Mario. They’d become good friends, and I’d wondered—okay, actually I’d hoped like a yenta—but I knew better than to meddle.

  “Well, you’re welcome at Green’s anytime, and for as long as you like. You know that, right?” She actually looked pleased. Hell, she even flushed. Wow. I had Renny and Katy, and I was apparently a sylph away from a slumber party at the tender age of twenty-two. Would wonders never cease?

  “I may take you up on that,” she said softly. “I just need to find a replacement.”

  I grinned. “I’ll tell Green. He might even have someone in mind.”

  She sobered then. “I wish I could go with you. I’m pretty handy with a knife.”

  I just bet she was. “I’d rather you be here, waiting for our call. You’re sure we got someone nearby for serious shit?”

  Tanya nodded and gave me her cell number and the number of a local shape-shifter—one of Green’s—who had access to a medevac copter and an ambulance. Usually Green handled our medical emergencies, and Lambent wasn’t bad in a pinch, but with all the shape-shifters, the odds of a nonfatal debilitating wound were significantly raised. And I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if I got hurt—so mostly, I just didn’t. Anyway, it was good to have someone standing by.

  “So,” she said awkwardly when the business was done, “uhm, Mario. You, uhm, think he’ll be happy to see me again if I come out?”

  I looked at her levelly. “You’ll have to ask him. You know his wife died a year and a half ago. He, uhm, waited a long time for her.” Seventy years, Nicky had told me once. But Mario had been flirting pretty hard, and he wasn’t the kind of guy who did anything he didn’t mean. “But, you know, you’ve got his cell number and he’s got yours—you can learn a lot about someone by how often they call.” When I’d been away at school, Green had called me once a day, and we’d talked for half an hour or more. But then, I’d already known I’d love him forever.

  We hugged, and I went out to the cars where my people were waiting for me.

  “We know the game plan?” I said needlessly as I walked out, and to a one they smiled.

  “We park out of sight,” Nicky told me grimly, and I nodded.

  “Avians high and outside,” LaMark said smartly.

  “Vampires fanned out behind you all imposing-like,” Kyle supplied next, winking at Phillip and Marcus.

  “Me, Max, and Teague at your back,” Lambent said next, looking pleased.

  “And the little women skulking in the shadows to kill fleeing rats.” But Jacky was laughing grimly as he said it.

  I laughed a little too, feeling as good about this run as I was going to get, and slanted a glance at my beloved. “And you?” I said with a smile.

  “Is there any other place for me to be?” Bracken asked mildly, and I took his hand and kissed his knuckles.

  “At my side it is,” I told him softly. Then I looked out at our people. “All right, brothers and sisters.” I looked at Teague and Marcus, who would be driving. “You guys tired of that set yet?”

  They shook their heads adamantly. “Bleed it out, Lady Cory,” Teague said. Marcus echoed with “Bleed it out.”

  And away we rode.

  My body was still flooded with adrenaline from my little dip in the lake, and I was on edge. Bracken kept his large, warm hand on the back of my neck like he was anchoring me to my seat.

  “Calm down,” he whispered into my ear, and dammit all, he knew that made me horny—which was the last thing I needed right now. But I had to admit that it made a pleasant distraction from the horrible claustrophobic feeling of being pressed in by water on all sides with a corpse clutching me to its chest.

  I shuddered. It would have been one thing if Marcus had been conscious, but his whole brain had been one dead blank of reboot until Phillip had grabbed him around the waist. Bracken knew I’d been terrified—the farthest he’d gotten from me in the last hour was waiting outside of the manager’s hut while I said bye to
Tanya. When I was speaking to Nicky’s parents, his arm bumping my shoulder had been the only thing to keep me from screaming.

  “All this prep,” I said, almost to myself, “and one selfish, spoiled bitch-whore human could have fucked it all to hell.”

  I felt Bracken shiver. “You’ve always known,” he said, wrapping his arm securely around my waist. “You’ve always known that chaos can fuck us more than any force on the planet. You fighting the water all week, that was order. It was hard, and miserable, and it hurt me to watch—but it was order. What we’re doing here, it’s keeping order. We’re the good guys, beloved. You have to believe that.”

  Linkin Park was playing again—“What I’ve Done.” How appropriate—but then, music had always been our friend.

  “I was so scared,” I confessed quietly. Goddess knew, and maybe Bracken and Green too, how hard that was for me to say.

  I leaned back into the warm security that was my beloved, and Green’s comforting scent blanketed me, and Bracken held me tight.

  “You were right, beloved,” Green said in my head. “All you have to be for us is who you are.”

  “You were there?” I hadn’t felt him. I knew he lurked, and I knew it was hard for him, energy he didn’t have, but I never knew what he heard or didn’t.

  “I was trying not to freak the hell out.” I could hear his laughter as he imitated me.

  “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to….”

  “All you have to be for me is who you are.”

  Oh Goddess. Such simple words, such terrible faith.

  “I only want to be my best for you.”

  “And this, beloved, is who you are.”

  I could smell him—wildflowers, earth, sunlight, sex, Green. Bracken was behind me, my foundation, my rock. I had fought the water and won. I had resisted being the worst version of myself in the face of the worst version of my kind.