by Amy Lane
O shit, there he was. I felt him hit my shield—but my vision was blurring, going black, and it was hard to tell how black, because the sky was black, but I was slowing Teague down. I could see him now at the treetop level. Good, good, and dammit, he was still too high. The fall would still hurt, but I didn’t think it would be lethal, and I had to stay awake, and I was cold, honestly cold for the first time in a week and a….
I didn’t even feel my body hit the ground.
Bracken: Knight’s Gambit
HOLY GODDESS, that was her fucking signal?
The gun fired and she jerked through the damned knife, bleeding enough to make a vampire sick, and I did the only thing I could do—I blurred to them, reached through Soto’s spine, and tore his heart out before he could move again. Andres yelled, “Green’s people, down!” and I felt my power—fierce and already fed with our fury—answer my blood with a banshee scream as I aimed my hand at the chest of every enemy close enough to count and pulled the blood from their bodies. I was very careful not to aim anywhere near Cory, and fortunately Marcus, Phillip, and Kyle were in her space, with Lambent beside them, to keep her safe as she aimed her attention at the sky. We really had been winning before they scooped Teague up, and the few people still left to fight after I dropped the five or so backing Soto were now kneeling, their hands over their heads, begging for mercy.
I would have killed them just because, but I was too busy watching Cory wobble on her feet as she tried to catch a falling werewolf.
“She’s got him,” Jacky breathed, and that was true—his descent had slowed. But I could hear her heartbeat, and it was thready and uncertain as her blood pumped out, and goddammit, I couldn’t even move to catch her. In a blur of bloody feathers, Nicky was suddenly there behind her, and we all watched as Teague came down slowly… slowly…. He was maybe forty feet up—what was that, four stories? A werewolf could survive that, right? Without warning, my beloved simply crumpled to the ground, and Teague hit hard with a crackling shatter of bones a fraction of a second later.
Nicky and Andres were at her side and Lambent was at Teague’s before the dust even settled from their respective falls. I heard Lambent order Jack and Katy back, but that was from the dim place in my mind that gave a shit.
She was dying. Green had done his best, her wound was mostly closed but not enough, and she was still bleeding and dammit—
“She needs blood,” Green said in my head. I could hear his panic, and I shared it.
“Human blood….”
“Any blood!” he roared. “You’re a master of the stuff, Bracken Brine, make it fit!”
I was barely sane as I ran a finger over my wrist to break skin and vein, and even less sane as I ordered Andres and Nicky out of the way. Blood… her heartbeat was slowing. I needed to feed it to make it run.
“Bracken?” Nicky stammered, appalled. “Bracken—you’re not human—”
“Neither is she!” I snapped. With a scalpel will, I pumped the blood from my veins to hers through three feet of black space and that appalling wound in her neck, and I listened, I listened, listened, as her heartbeat stuttered… slowed… stalled… and….
and….
and….
and….
…started racing like a sprinter’s at the line.
Lambent said, “Mario, call Tanya, dammit. We need a cast to make this heal right.” And then my beloved sat up so abruptly she whacked Nicky’s chin with her head and knocked him unconscious, screaming like a horror-show heroine as she did.
Cory: Check Mate
ADRIAN WAS sooo pissed at me.
“I’m sorry, beloved,” I said sheepishly, reaching out to touch that fine white hair as it floated around his face.
He grabbed my hand, our touch real and human and warm. “You’re not supposed to be here!” he growled. “You can’t just go and leave them—you know that!”
“I had to,” I said softly, trying not to cry. Adrian never yelled at me. He looked so good here, wherever we were. It was dark, and we stood in a silver pool of light, and as angry as he was, his arms were wrapped around my hips and I leaned into him with something like hunger.
“Why, because he reminded you of me?” So much bitterness. I cupped his face in my hands and pulled his lips down on mine. Who knew how long this would last?
He tasted sweet, coppery… like blood and mint and bubblegum… and I wasn’t sure whose tears slicked across our skin as the kiss broke off.
“There’s more than that,” I whispered, now that I could remember the sweet instead of the bitter. He cupped my face in turn, and his thumbs stroked the tears away—I guess they were mine.
“We don’t have long,” he prompted, and a part of me was happy that I wasn’t dead for real.
I nodded. “I can’t leave them behind.”
“I know it.” His eyes were so blue. “Now tell me. Tell me, and I can make Green understand.”
“They just keep offering their lives for me, beloved.” I put my ear against his chest, heard his heart beat. It was stuttering, slowing, stalling….
“And?” I felt his lips brush my hair, and I shivered in his arms.
“And there’s not a damned reason for them to do it, unless I’m going to put it on the line for them.” The shivers got worse. The cold was starting to burn in my veins.
“And that’s what royalty’s for,” he counseled, putting me at arm’s length and stepping away. Please, beloved—please understand. Green and Bracken were born to royalty, they’re beautiful and gifted and proud. You would know… you were mortal once, and afraid of your power.
“But my….” Oh Goddess, it hurt, but I wanted to say this first. “But my loyalty to them—it keeps me sane, honest, in… in… in….” Oh Goddess. “In check.” Oh Goddess, it hurt. “Love you, A….” It burned. It froze. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit….
“Love you back.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck….
“Hwuuuuaaaaahhhhggggghhhhhhhh!” I didn’t even feel the impact of my skull on Nicky’s jaw. I was sitting up, trying to breathe, and Bracken was crouched down, his hands on my shoulders, calming me down.
“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts…. Fuck, it fucking hurts!” Every nerve, every capillary, every dendrite, every atom, every quantum particle in my body was being dragged across a molten cheese grater in an acid bath. I gasped for breath some more and finally heard Green—his voice, his smell, his presence soothing me enough to slow the adrenaline dump from the pain.
“It’s Bracken’s blood, beloved. You have to let him touch you….”
“Bracken’s blood? Why would I have Bracken’s blood in me?”
“Because you didn’t have enough of your own to power your own heart!” His thunder in my head made me whine and clap my hands over my ears.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry…” I was crying. Oh Goddess, I hated crying.
“Cory!” Bracken’s sharp voice cracked across my pain.
“Bracken, it hurts…,” I wept. He nodded and stood, holding my shoulders and pulling me with him, and then he…. He was using his power—I could feel it. It was zinging through my pores, soothing my nerve endings, aligning the shark-toothed ragged edges of whatever was pumping me full of pain.
My breathing slowed down, and the adrenaline dump eased back. I started to bounce on my feet, so hopped-up on elf blood that standing still wasn’t an option, as I tried to remember what in the fuck I was doing.
I was almost there when pain seared across my back. “Fuck…. The guns, oh goddammit, the guns….” Phillip’s touch was impersonal and cool, and the empty gun in the back of my jeans was gone in a moment—along with a nice layer of my skin. It was all I could do not to curl into a ball and snivel like an infant over the gun-shaped, second-degree burn on my back, but I had a feeling that the more fuss I made about my pain, the more my lovers would want to strangle me with their bare hands.
“How’s Teague?” I said after a m
oment, nodding my head to keep Bracken with me.
Brack shook his head and looked like he was a cat’s whisker from smacking me. “I don’t know,” he said, gritting his teeth. At our feet, Nicky groaned.
I bent down to help him up, saying, “Jesus, Nicky. What happened to you?”
Nicky rubbed his jaw and laughed. “You did, you dork. I survive a parking lot full of homicidal monsters, and then I get knocked out by my wife who was damned near dead!”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, not able to meet the eyes of either one. “Thanks, Bracken,” I said. My voice was shaky from pain, from adrenaline, from whatever hyper-elf steroid was thumping through my body in time with my heart—but I didn’t want to think about it, or it would get worse. I turned toward Teague before we could get all hot and emotional.
Bracken stopped me, his eyes finding mine in the dark, and I realized that, among other things, my night vision was significantly improved. Fucking groovy—where had that handy little gift been when I was peering into the dark to see if Teague was falling to his death?
“We’ll talk later,” he promised grimly, the hurt on his face making my blood shred my nervous system all over again.
“I know it,” I told him with a quiet smile. Then I moved to crouch by Teague.
The bones in his legs were broken through his flesh like white, glistening, blood-covered shrapnel—and every time one sucked back into his flesh to heal, his entire body clenched in pain.
“Oh, Jesus,” I breathed. “Teague, I’m so sorry. I should have held on longer. I’m so sorry….”
His snapped femur crack-squelched its way back into his body, and my entire nervous system sang in empathetic agony. When I opened my eyes, darkness swam in front of them, and Bracken’s hand came down on my shoulder to steady me.
“You saved his life,” Jack said, kneeling at his side. “You… you damned near killed yourself to save his life.”
“My job, goddammit,” Teague gritted. While Katy licked his face, I took his other hand and tried not to weep all over this nice man who didn’t need my bullshit right now.
“Yeah,” I told him gruffly. “But if I can’t put myself out for you, why would you want to throw yourself under my bus?” I didn’t let him answer—didn’t want to hear the answer. I looked up at Lambent, who was busy wrapping Teague’s legs in bandages made from what looked to be Jacky’s ripped jeans.
“Did you call Tanya?”
“Do I look helpless, lovey?” he asked sharply, and Teague’s eyes met mine in a moment of sympathy. “The chopper’s on its way. We might even have some knickers for our lanky friend here. But I think once we get his legs cased in some plaster, being a werewolf will take care of the rest.”
Teague groaned, and Jacky let out a bit of a sob. “Pain, Lambent?” I asked, and Teague shook his head no and Jacky barked out “Yes!”
Ah. I held his hand to my chest and tried to command him like a queen worth dying for. “Teague, your job is done here. You’ll only hurt them if you don’t let Lambent help you.”
“I… I don’t like being out of my mind, Lady Cory,” he begged. Of course he didn’t. His father had done some heinous fucking things to him when he was out of his mind, and Teague had had some bad experiences with his first werewolf changes.
“You won’t be out of it,” I said softly. “You’ll be safely inside it. Lambent will put you under until the pain doesn’t make your vision red, that’s all.” He groaned again, and Katy howled into the night.
“C’mon, Teague. For all of us, brother, you’ve got to let us take care of you.”
“I don’t want to be helpless for you…,” he grunted. I looked at his lovers, whimpering and miserable.
“Then be helpless for them,” I whispered. “Let us heal you, and then go someplace far away just with them. I know you can do that, right? Be helpless for them? Let them take care of you?”
“Where would I go?” he asked, and I heard another squelch-crackle and cringed.
“Where do you want to go? Green can set you up anywhere he’s got territory—you know that.”
Teague’s mind wandered—away from the bloody night, away from the pain. He was gazing wonderingly into Jacky’s face, seemingly mindless of the tears dropping onto his cheeks from his lover’s eyes.
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” he said weakly.
Green spoke up. “Monterey it is.” His thick anger coated my inner ear, and I tried not to wince.
“Then that’s where you’ll wake up,” I said to Teague, and I looked at Jacky to see if he’d heard. He was clutching Katy to his side and Teague’s hand to his face, but he caught my eyes and nodded.
“Please talk to Adrian, beloved.” I didn’t know how that worked—Adrian here for me, Adrian there for Green—it was, best I could tell, magic. But Adrian… he had understood. Please, Goddess, let one of them understand.
I looked at Lambent, and this time Teague put up no resistance when Lambent caught his eyes and put him gently under. When his eyes fluttered shut, Katy curled up near his head and Jack kissed his hand gratefully, their bodies relaxing as Teague’s pain went softly away. I leaned over and kissed his forehead, then patted Jacky’s hand before I stood reluctantly. The motion made my skin hurt all over again, and the urge to move, to fly through the bar in a rage was pushing at my chest.
“I don’t know about you all,” I said sourly, my voice pitched across the parking lot, “but I’ve about had enough of this shit. Anyone else want a fucking drink?”
There was a scatter of laughter from my people, but Nicky and Bracken were still looking at me like I’d kicked their puppies. I looked at them and tried to smile, but instead I shivered with the shock and power of the blood running through my veins.
“Come on, guys,” I said, “you can be mad at me later—let’s take care of this now.”
They stood, one on either side of me, and Bracken put his hand in the small of my back like a gentleman. I quivered and jerked under his touch—dammit, the burn from that gun still hurt—and then I looked down at Lambent.
“Lambent, after the copter gets here, you want to join us?” We could hear it in the distance, and I blessed Tanya and her contact twice and three times over.
“Nice of you to think of me, lovey. I wouldn’t miss it.”
I looked at him deliberately, thinking about missing children and the fierceness of Rafael’s family defending the man who had destroyed them so utterly. “Be sure that you don’t,” I cautioned. “I have a feeling we’ll need you.”
“You need me now,” he said, watching me try not to jerk away from Bracken’s touch. With a sigh he put his hand on my calf, and I could feel the healing travel to that burn, taking away the sting. I touched his shoulder and murmured a quiet thanks. Then I heard Max reload and Phillip doing the same using my gun. Renny trotted up to us from out of the shadows, her whiskers dripping in other people’s blood, and Mario and LaMark landed—shirtless and shoeless—soaked in blood themselves, but none of it was their own.
“Let’s get that drink,” I rallied, and they nodded with me. Canyagimmehallelujah, amen.
I could tell by the postures of everybody in the bar that until we walked in, saturated in blood and gore literally from our heads to our fingertips, no one had been sure who won.
There were very few enemies in the club, actually—six, maybe, with semiautomatics doubtless loaded with silver and bad-assed attitudes—and when we stalked in with Andres in our midst, the expressions on their faces were almost comical. But I was still in antsy elf-blood-meth-amped fucking pain, and it would have taken a real goddamned miracle to get me to laugh at anything.
“I’m gonna count to two,” I snapped. “At the end of two, any motherfucker with so much as a Swiss Army Knife is going down. One….”
Two guns turned my way and snicked.
It was a near fucking thing, actually. I was angry, and I was half out of my mind. I’d been so good—they’d made an attempt on Green, on my people, on m
e. For a split second, half a pumped-up heartbeat, I tasted how really goddamned easy it would be to take out this whole shithole and just start over. Everyone who wasn’t us. I could level them. I really could.
I settled for the people who’d just decided to fuck with me. I didn’t even have to hold out my hands—I simply looked out at the enemy and incinerated the two guys with the guns where they stood, the fire pulsing outward with my heartbeat, causing the people near them to flinch from the heat and the dying vampires to scream horribly.
“Two.” There was a clatter as the survivors’ guns hit the floor, safeties thankfully on.
Well, good. People would live tonight.
“Rafael?”
Rafael glared at the ashes of the vampire who had been holding a gun on him, then stood up and walked over. “Anything you wish, my lady.”
I nodded. “Could you show me who started this bullshit?”
“Goddamn you, Rafael!” I turned my head toward the scream and saw a vampire sitting with his hands dangling between his knees, the picture of defeat.
I didn’t even have to ask—that was our guy.
I walked right up to him and said, “You don’t look like a monster.”
He’d been in his thirties when he turned, with that prematurely silver hair that hits some men who were blond as children. It was longish and falling from his crown, and when he turned his miserable glare at me, I could see that his eyes were lightish blue. And his face? Long around the jaw, round around the brow, but nothing special. Ordinary. Average. On a good day, he was probably handsome—but not today. Today he was haggard, meek, and helpless.
Today he was defeated.
“I’m not a monster,” he said through those weak-colored eyes. “I’m a coward.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” I said with a bitter laugh. I reached out a gore-covered hand and wiped the front of it on his shirt, then the back of it on his sleeve—then the other hand, front and back, on his face, so viciously obsessed with my task that I didn’t even cringe when I touched his cold flesh.