by Beth Dranoff
Not easy through the humming of my blood and that buzzing in my ears. So familiar.
There were shadows around the floor, drapes of dark and folds of darker. I scanned the room for any sign of him. Until—there. Maybe six feet from Alina’s back.
Our eyes met.
Of course. Why else would Alina pick this exact spot to open up a gaping inter-dimensional rift? Toronto was not a tiny city. Maybe it wasn’t as big as New York or London or Shanghai, but that didn’t mean we lacked land mass potential for portal openings. What did we have that they didn’t? A bartender with the keys to a magical inter-dimensional map tattooed on her back.
Which meant Stuart Markovitz, a.k.a. Father of the Year, must have suggested it.
“Here kitty kitty kitty,” Alina purred. “Yes,” she said, “that’s right. I know what you are, little girl. We have much to discuss.”
“How?” Single words were the easiest.
“A jealous kitty told me,” she said. Sam’s grip tightened then, before loosening again. Someone from the Pack must have talked. Forgetting in the moment that my father was also a shifter. “Or maybe it was a frightened kitty. Y’all can be so twitchy.”
She was trying to distract me. Pushing the boundaries of her dimensional puddle out again.
How had Alina been able to open a portal without needing the literal skin off my back? And why did she keep trying to do it? If I was extraneous to this process, what benefit did my father get from bringing Alina here so that her existence and mine could physically intersect?
My father’s deal had been to deliver me—and here I was. Which meant something was supposed to have happened once she got that portal open. My guess? Phase two was the part I really wouldn’t have liked.
I grabbed at the wriggling colored strings once more. Blocking out the pain. Blocking out Alina. I plucked at the power, the combined forces of myself and Sam and Sandor making my fingers nimble, then gasped as the searing pain on my back intensified. I had to get that portal closed.
Probably shouldn’t let on that I didn’t actually know how to do it, right?
Fortunately my body seemed to get what my mind hadn’t yet processed. All I needed to do was get out of my own way.
No stopping me now. No room for doubts, or pain, or fear. Alina was on her own, and she’d expended a lot of her strength to force this dimension crossing open here. Maybe riding the orgiastic surge made it easier for her to do what she wanted without passing out from the effort. Assuming demons like her could go unconscious.
I did wonder why she’d bothered. There were minions. There was maybe Ezra and definitely my father who were willing to do what she wanted in order to get what they wanted. Deals made and trust betrayed.
Sam adjusted his hands and my mental traction wavered. Radiant heat where he touched although this contact didn’t hurt. There would be naked fun times if we survived this. When.
More pressure; a pulsating volleyball-sized orb that pushed against my palms. I squeezed and flexed, visualizing the mass shrinking even as I moved the space I couldn’t see with hands that could.
Frost and fire, pulled together and amplified exponentially by our shared touch. Enough to make that last surge count as I flattened and released the rubber band ball, its remnants dissipating into the air.
“No!” Alina screeched her frustration, pushing herself off her magic carpet ride seconds before it was swallowed up. Curious—she’d opened a portal between dimensions, but didn’t want to get stuck on the other side? She must still need something here, as much as or more than whatever she was trying to reach over there. At some point we were going to have to figure out what that was.
I hoped it had nothing to do with me.
And then she was launching herself at me, arms outstretched, foregoing the metaphysical torture in favor of something more direct. Was she planning to choke me? Was I screwed?
Seconds moving in slow motion. My muscles like Jell-O, after the boiling water but before full solidification kicked in. I wanted to defend myself. Even moving out of her direct path would be good. It wasn’t an enchantment planting roots that wrapped around my ankles this time though—it was exhaustion.
Sam pulled me to the side moments before impact. Realizing, I guess, that getting out of the way myself was more than I could manage.
There was a popping sound as Alina lunged towards me once more. And then she vanished, inches before making contact. It happened so fast that the sound of her voice still hung in lingering waves for several seconds past the point where I could see her.
Sandor moved his hand from my abdomen and stuck it in his pocket. So he was wearing pants.
“Good to know some of those wards actually work,” he said.
“All of a sudden?” I wasn’t convinced. “Without any help at all?”
“What, you think she’s actually gone?” Sandor reached out to pat me on the head, with a there there and a dear deluded girl. I batted his head away before it made contact because come on. “She found this place—she found you. She’ll be back.”
“A fair assessment of the current situation.”
The voice came from the shadows.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ezra.
Where the hell had he come from? How much had he seen?
“Stuart,” he said. “What do you think?”
My father melted out of the gloom to stand beside his friend. Apparently Dad hadn’t followed Alina wherever it was that she’d gone. He kept glancing down at his hands, turning them over, then touching himself on the jaw and the top of his head. I’d be wondering if this was real too if I was inside his head.
Wait. My father and Ezra. Inhabiting the same space at the same time, each one looking like themselves. Neither wearing the transporto-skin, since they each were themselves. I recognized my father even though it had been so many years, even though I’d only seen him in shadow up to now, a film image superimposed on the form of his old friend Ezra.
He’d aged. But then, so had we all.
High road. I could find it there somewhere.
“Sandor, I’d like you to meet my father, Stuart Markovitz. Sam, I believe you two have already met.”
They all nodded the tough-guy chin bob of cool but didn’t shake hands. Because let’s be serious—this wasn’t a hug it out, family reunion kind of moment here.
“Dad, Sandor and Sam.” I didn’t add the bit about them being my friends, or boyfriend and boss, or whatever. The less information my father and Ezra had about the relationships in my life, the better—what they didn’t know couldn’t be used against me later. “And of course this is Ezra Gerbrecht. I believe I’ve told you about him as well.”
Another set of nods without physical contact all around. My, but weren’t we being all civilized here.
It was almost as though there wasn’t the (literal) tail end of an orgy going on in the same room as us.
“I believe you have something for me,” said Ezra, once we had pleasantries in surrealism out of the way.
“Do you see a big, blue demon in here? Because I don’t.”
Ezra raised his eyebrows at my words, making a show of it.
“Exactly,” I said. “We have a deal and I’m honoring it. I’ve just been a bit busy since we talked earlier.” I paused and waved my hand across the mayhem that continued to consume the Swan. “As you can see.”
“Excuses.” Ezra made some kind of tutting noise.
“Whatever.” He could be as pompous as he wanted; I was still the closest thing Ezra had to what he needed. For whatever reason. Speaking of reasons...my father had been working to get the same demon droppings as Ezra. The key to my father’s ability to come back to this dimension and be here rather than there, or so he’d said.
So how did he come to be here now?
Didn’t my father make a deal with Alina to hand me over to save himself? What had their plan been for me once that portal was opened? Suddenly grateful that I was here, and even my father was here, but Alina was not.
“She does not let me go,” said my father, voice querulous; I could barely make out what he was saying over the moans. Distracting. Except now, beyond the thrall, I was actually feeling my inner prude and wishing everyone would just finish up, clean themselves off and leave. “If I am here and not there, it is at her pleasure and not mine. She will find a way to take it all from me again when it suits her best.”
“What you’re saying,” and I couldn’t believe I was saying this, “is that she never needed me to free you? That you gave me up for, what, a chance to stand close to the flame and hope it didn’t burn you?” Sam squeezed my shoulder, firm, reminding me that he was still there for me. Even if my father was a dick.
“I needed her.” Simple. Words unadorned. “Need her. She could never want the way I do; my flesh is ultimately mortal, and more life-endingly permeable than hers. But we both suffer from dimensional dementia to varying degrees. Me, more than her. That’s why you have to get me the biogenetic materials I seek. Why I hired the Cephalorite Order to encourage your assistance.”
“Because threats are so much more effective than, you know, asking.” I wasn’t bitter. Nope. I turned towards Ezra. “And what about you? I’m guessing you’ve been working with my father on this Alina deal all along, right?”
“Not exactly,” said Ezra. Touching my father’s shoulder; Ezra’s eyes rolling back in his head from contact with one half of my genetic precursive material. I wondered if everyone got a one-step-removed contact rush from Alina or whether Ezra and my dad were special.
Ezra shook it off first.
“I am curious about my old friend Stuart’s research outcomes, of course. Being able to cure inter-dimensional dementia, finding a way to prevent it from happening—that would be invaluable from a mission perspective.”
What wasn’t I seeing? It had to be something bigger than fixing portal-jumping damage. Something obvious, that Ezra could point to once I figured it out and say see? A teachable moment. Attainable by deductive logic. Which meant that somewhere I already had the answer—or a sizeable piece of it.
OK. What had my father and Ezra been working on in the lab before the accident that may or may not have been accidental? Something about DNA. Right. Identifying the differences and overlapping similarities between the DNA of shifters relative to norms. But it had been at least twenty years since then. Ezra could have continued the research on his own. Who knows what he’d found out by now? Or which branches of inquiry he may have pursued?
Both my father and Ezra were watching me. Waiting for me to figure it out.
“So what’s going on here? Ya’ll gonna introduce us to your friends?” Janey and Derek had wandered over, hand in hand, while we’d all been paying attention to anything but them. At least all their clothing bits were back where I remembered them being before forays into interactions I couldn’t un-see.
High road. I could go high.
“Janey, Derek—these are Ezra and Stuart.” No reason either Janey or Derek needed to know who these men were to me. And vice versa. First names only.
Janey nodded, and there were more chin bobs all around. I was starting to wonder if Chin Bobs 101 came standard in the testosterone starter kit. There were several long moments of awkward before Sandor stepped in and smoothed the way.
“Why don’t you see what you can do about clearing the place out,” Sandor said, nudging their attention towards the stragglers still refusing to give up on the dance floor partner pleasure principle. “It’s been fun, folks,” Sandor said, louder and aiming his voice towards the ones still left. “But time to wrap things up. Take it outside, call it a night—dealer’s choice. Just get yourself out of my bar for a bit so we can clean up and get ready to serve you again in a few hours. Thank you for your continued patronage,” he added, in case anyone was feeling his delivery was less than properly polite. After all, this was Canada.
Sandor looked over at me, then Sam. “You two got this?”
“Yeah.” I nodded for emphasis. “Thanks.”
“Mistress could be back for me at any moment.” My father interrupted the moment without moving. “Deliver the genetic materials to your Cephalopod faction contact. Whatever format you and my old friend Ezra agree on is fine with me.” The image of my pater famiglia went static grey at the edges before dissipating into a series of stacked lines—baby pinks and cornflower blues and ripe banana yellows—warping and dancing into an ever-diminishing dot before winking out, taking him with it.
A flash, light flickering, and I saw the place where I’d seen my father before. Where he’d been for the last however many years. And something new—a flat-screen monitor, maybe five by five feet, hoisted high against the flat surface I assumed was a wall. It took me a moment to focus my eyes in on what I was seeing. There were moans, not unlike what I’d been hearing around me maybe half an hour ago. Lights strobing as the camera panned across the floor to the bar, then along it. Wait. Was that—?
I recognized that look, the expression of intensity as Sam stared directly into the lens a moment without realizing he was doing it. A theory confirmed by his growl beside me. Sam’s hands were hidden from view, but I remembered where they’d been. And then, as I arched back before curling in towards him again. It was a bra-less moment, my back on full display to anyone who might be looking. An attempt at modesty that I now realized was planned.
I have no idea who was filming—maybe Sam would remember?—but whoever it was got that money shot: a close up of my back, well lit, with the scattershot of my tattooed dots on full display. Alina’s toe-curling laughter that even now stilled my breath and made places darker and lower clench in response.
And then the scene, along with both my father and Alina, were gone.
Don’t ask me to examine my feelings too closely on that one.
“Stay in touch,” Ezra said. Either he hadn’t noticed that Alina now had access to an image of the map on my back, or he didn’t care enough to comment. “I expect to see you by tomorrow with the package contents we agreed upon. I don’t need to threaten you with what happens if you don’t show up, correct?”
I nodded.
“If I guess right on what you’re up to, will you tell me?”
Ezra shook his head with a smile, not answering, and managed to stroll out the front door without touching any of the now-flaccid limbs entangled on the floor.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The sun was peeking up over the horizon and the gulls were making their hunger screes known by the time we were able to leave the Swan. Cleanup was hell, and I suspected a lot of the bio-matter we’d disposed of would be going to an incinerator somewhere instead of the landfill.
“Your place or mine?” I meant it as a joke, but it might have come out sharper than I’d intended because holy crap was I tired.
“Let’s get what you need from Gustav before he takes off again.” Sam leaned back against my truck, watching my face. Mentally noting the dark smudges underneath my eyes, the flakes on my lips, the way my makeup had wandered into the smile lines beside my eyes making the shadows more pronounced. The sway in my legs as I took my hand off the door handle for just a moment. “You sure you’re up to driving?”
“No,” I said shortly. “But I’ll manage. You’ll follow me?”
Sam nodded.
“Let’s do this.”
* * *
Amazingly, Gus was back on my couch and snoring in a power-drill staccato of congested sinuses. Maybe he suffered from allergies. The good news was that he was wearing sweats and a hoodie again, so there was no risk of me seeing his chaps-(sort of)-covered ass this time.
Small mercies.
> Sam went to the kitchen to put on coffee while I settled into the armchair opposite Gus Who Could Sleep Through Anything. Almost anything, I self-corrected, as I saw his nostrils flare and his right cheek start to twitch.
His snoring stopped, abrupt.
“Girl,” Gus said, without even cracking an eyelid. “There’s a hot shower with your name on it right over there. Nothing you want to say to me could possibly be more important than that. Trust.”
I did an experimental pit sniff and grimaced. He wasn’t wrong.
“What happened to your friend?” I was genuinely curious.
“He has work later,” said Gus. “One of those glass towers way downtown. Timmy, or Tommy, or whatever his name really was—”
“Troy?”
“Yeah. He’s some kind of senior-level muckity muck.”
“You’re telling me that guy works at a bank?”
“Senior VP of Investments or something like that,” Gus said, daring me to judge.
I shrugged and let it drop. Everyone needs to have fun sometimes, and I guess for Troy, this past weekend’s fun was Gus.
“Here.” Sam plunked three mugs of coffee down on the table, then went back to grab sugar, spoons and rice milk.
“Your friend there is comfortable in your kitchen.” Gus watched Sam with a smirk, his head angled so that all three of his eyes could get a better posterior view of the shifter. “Getting all chummy with your coffee and sweeteners and such. Something you want to share with the group?”
“No.” My voice was clipped. Embarrassed? “Not yet.”
“Not yet what?” Sam was back, and apparently had caught the last bit of our conversation. He looked from me to Gus and then back again, waiting to be filled in.
“Gus thinks we’re a thing because you know where I keep my coffee,” I blurted. Smooth, Dana. Really smooth.
“I see,” said Sam. Like we were discussing the weather. “Did you tell him what you negotiated on his behalf?”