by Holley Trent
“Does my son know?” Uncle set down his knife and picked up a small hunk of cheese. He studied it briefly before tossing the cube into his open mouth. Closing his eyes and rolling the creamy square around his mouth, he let out a quiet moan. Like Ma, Uncle had never been able to say no to good food. The people who’d worshipped them had begged for, amongst other things, fertile fields and wombs.
“Yeah,” Tito said. “He knows. I guess you know he got out of hell, then.”
Uncle grunted and turned to the counter behind him. He picked up an open bottle of wine with no label and grabbed a few mismatched glasses by their stems. “I sensed him when he reentered the realm. The bit of psychic connection I have with him had suddenly reestablished, and so I knew. Is he bothering you?”
“That’s a mild way of putting it.”
Uncle splashed a few fingers of wine into each glass and pushed two toward the edge across from him.
December looked up at Tito, wearing an expression that was probably as close to anger as she was capable of showing.
He squeezed her shoulder and stepped forward to take the wine.
She probably wondered why Tito didn’t just say what he needed to say so they could go home, but dealing with the old ones required patience, otherwise they’d return to Maria having received a quick, adamant no rather than a soft yes they could firm up over time.
He handed one glass to December and got her moving to the little table near the window.
She sat when he pulled the chair out for her. She wasn’t arguing, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have an argument in store for him.
“So, this is what you do now?” Tito asked, turning a second chair to face the island. “Hide out in the countryside and grow grapes?”
“It was a good spot. I’m invisible to most people who’d still know to look for a being like me.”
“Including your son and Los Impostores?”
Uncle stared down into his wine glass and tapped his short nails along the sides. “Maybe them especially. I don’t have to tell you what went wrong. Your mother probably already told you.”
“Actually, she didn’t.” Tito leaned forward to accept the cutting board Uncle held out and then set it on the table between him and December. “She did her best not to mention you at all.”
Uncle grimaced. “She’s always been good at making clean cuts.” He sat on the spindly stool at the end of the island and brought his wine to his lips. His gaze took on a faraway focus that indicated he wasn’t looking at any particular thing, but probably thinking about far too many.
Tito stole that moment to check in with December, whose expression had gone from slight annoyance to outright impatience.
He pantomimed sipping.
She huffed and picked up her glass.
Tito took a small sip of his wine. He wasn’t a fan of wine in general, but he also wasn’t a huge fan of bad manners. He figured that for a little while, he could play along. He wasn’t going to fix a six-hundred-year-old problem in a minute.
December took a sip, too, and made a high-pitched little “huh” of approval.
“She ever tell you who his mother was?” Uncle’s gaze was still fixed a thousand yards away, but he’d picked up the small paring knife and was balancing the point atop the counter.
“No, and I was never curious enough to ask. I figured I didn’t know her, anyway.”
“Probably not. She knew of you, though. I think she was jealous.”
“The rumor was that you were the jealous one. Not of me, but of what Ma made with the Cougars.”
He grunted, set down the knife again, and took a draw of wine. “I’ll concede that. I was always jealous of her creativity. She’s a problem-solver, and she used to have this way of connecting with humans I just couldn’t understand.”
“What do you mean?” December asked with the tiniest bit of slur.
Somehow, her wine was all gone.
Tito snorted.
Uncle pushed up both eyebrows. “Have you met her?” he asked December.
“Yes. My daughter is with her right now.”
Tito cleared his throat. “Our.”
“Force of habit.”
“Daughter?” Uncle asked. “You have a little girl?”
“Mm-hmm,” December said.
“That’s not good.”
“Pardon me?”
Uncle closed his eyes and shook his head. “I talk out of order. I was telling you of my son, and as always, I got distracted by something my sister has.” He poured a little more wine in his glass and December’s. “I knew Nec’s name would be a curse as soon as his mother gave it to him, but she always had a way of overruling me. She thought calling him Necalli would make him strong, but I think the name just made him belligerent.”
“What does it mean?”
Uncle huffed. “Battle. He grew up to be a man who would make one if he couldn’t find one. All those sacrifices—those hearts cut, still beating, out of warriors’ chests? So many of those men were his captives taken during war. If he couldn’t be a full god, he wanted to be celebrated, anyway. He pranced around Tenochtitlan in his warrior’s finery, bragging about his victories and collecting wives, and nobody knew how much harder he was to kill than his brethren. They thought he was just a very lucky man and a very skilled warrior.”
“You watched him?” December asked.
Uncle swirled his wine. “When I knew I couldn’t be seen. For the longest time, I denied I was part of the blame. I didn’t raise him, after all. I didn’t make Nec or Los Impostores what they were. I only put the power behind the magic that started the process.”
He strode over to the table and poured a little more wine into December’s glass, which she promptly brought to her lips.
“What are you talking about?” Tito asked. “I’d always thought they were your creation.”
“They were a whim, Yaotl. Pillow talk I never thought to see in the flesh. Shifters who could be whatever a situation required?” He shook his head as if the idea was simply inconceivable. “I’d imagined they’d be creatures the people would revere and call on for aid since there were too few gods able to respond anymore.”
“But?” December asked.
“I didn’t learn from my sister’s troubles from taking a lover amongst the humans. Yaotl turned out well enough in spite of his father’s corrupt nature, but I should have learned not to fall the same way. I watched her. I always watched her, and I saw when she punished scores of men because of the one man who shamed her. There would be no Cougars now if it weren’t for her anger then.”
“Something good came out of it at least.”
Uncle shrugged. “Still, as a witness, I should have known not to answer the call of any woman who would tempt me to a similar fate, but I did, because she was lovely and she was looked upon by so many powerful men. She was a witch and was appealing to them, and I suppose to me, as well. We were like magnets drawn to her, and I thought I’d done something special when I won out over all of them.”
“She convinced you to create Los Impostores?”
“Like I said, pillow talk. All I can say for myself now is that Necalli was conceived at the same time as the rest of those … ” He made a moue of disgust. “Demons. Los Impostores. That’s what they’re like, yes? Demons born out of a lie.”
Demons. Tito kept hoping that December didn’t press him on whether or not Tarik had learned anything. So much had happened since that conference on the porch, and she’d have to wait a little longer to hear about her family. Distractions were dangerous when dealing with supernaturals, and he wanted her to keep her mind clear … or as clear as possible, considering her fondness of Uncle’s wine.
“They’re immortal?” December asked, cutting Tito a sour look. “Like Tito? Like my baby?”
You could be, too.
Tito ground his teeth. He wasn’t going to lure her with that temptation before she really had a chance to see what came with it.
“No,” Uncl
e said. “Just Nec. The rest die like anyone else, but when they take mates and have children, the children are always male. Her magic did that. My power simply pushed its range, and I took credit. Or the blame, rather. Sixteen or seventeen years after Necalli was born, I saw what I’d done when all those boys started to converge. They’d all been changed in the womb by the magic that touched them, and wired to seek each other out. They were terrible even then. A gang of bullies who took what they wanted, whether or not their victims had it to give.”
“And you did nothing,” Tito said.
“How could I? How could I tell people that I hadn’t acted with intent? Or that Necalli was a mistake born of my lust and gullibility? Of course I know now that she picked me because I made the easiest target. Yes, I went away. What else could I do? I’d done a shameful thing.”
“And his mother?” December asked.
“Long dead, much to her surprise, I imagine.”
“Death is one of the few certainties in life, isn’t it?”
Tito pointed a warning glare at his uncle, but he wasn’t looking. He was pulling grapes off the bunch and making a tidy pile.
“You understand that mates of immortals become immortal, yes?”
Tito could feel the heat of December’s stare on the side of his face. He knew better than to look, but he did anyway.
If her eyes could have held fire, he would have been a charbroiled demigod.
Uncle didn’t seem to notice the sudden uptick of enmity in the room. He kept right on talking. “But simply having my son didn’t make her my mate,” he said. “She didn’t understand how unlikely it would be for me to have one. Gods and goddesses rarely do. Having a mate is about more than securing a legacy. It’s about companionship. Most of us abstain from procreating. As you can see, the products of conception are often unpredictable to an extreme.”
December dropped her chin toward her chest and stared up at him through angrily narrowed eyes.
“Dee—”
“I always thought field trips were super-educational, and this one’s sure shaping up to be.”
“You gotta understand why I didn’t say anything. Immortality is kinda a big deal for some people.”
She guffawed. He’d never heard her make that sound before, but somehow, it seemed appropriate.
“Still gonna tell me you want to talk about this later?” she asked in an undertone.
“Did I bring up something I shouldn’t have?” Uncle asked.
December drummed her fingertips rapidly against the countertop.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Tito said. “What could I say? That I didn’t want to tell you that you could end up infatuated with me, even if you decided you didn’t want this kind of life? I didn’t think that would go over too well. When guys like me stumble upon our true mates, we’re done. We don’t want anyone else. I wanted you to have options, though. I knew when I left you that there was a chance you could fall in love with someone else. I figured that’d be safest for you. Obviously, if I’d known about Cruz … ”
“But I didn’t want anyone else. I didn’t, probably, from the first time I poured you coffee. If you’d talked to me about how you’d felt—hell, about anything—you would have known that, but nooo. Don’t tell the wimpy human anything, right?” She flicked a piece of salami at him. Should have been funny, but the face she made was one of hurt, and again, he’d done that.
“Look, I did what I had to. If you’d gone through what I had, and witnessed the shit I have—”
“Anyhow,” she interrupted, and turned her back to him as much as she could from her close position. To Uncle, she said, “So, like, does your son have vendettas against anyone else that should be worried right now?”
“Oh, despite the way things may appear, Necalli makes targets out of many of his cousins who seek out lovers from the human gene pool, not that he has many cousins anymore. I imagine that right now, Tito, and you and your child by extension, are simply the most accessible of his enemies.”
“Why?”
“Tito is fairly young still. Power concentrates as we age, and Tito’s other cousins are much, much older. We season as we grow older.” Uncle held up his wine glass and gave a mock toast as if to demonstrate his point.
“So, what, when Tito’s a thousand, Necalli would be less likely to bother Cruz because her daddy would be too strong to mess with?”
“Maybe not so many as a thousand.”
“But he could live that long, right?”
Uncle turned his hands over. “Easily. He’s already passed seven hundred.”
Growling, December flicked another piece of salami at Tito. “Are you kidding me?”
“Dee, don’t let the number fool you. I’m just like a normal guy for the most part.”
“Bull! You said yourself that you tried to be normal, but aren’t.”
“Okay, maybe I exaggerate a little, but if I were ever going to be as powerful as all that, he wouldn’t come near me and he most certainly wouldn’t be pulling Ma’s figurative pigtails.”
“We will discuss this later.”
“Shit. This … isn’t how I expected you to react. I’m not seeing enough terror from you.”
“Too mad for it,” she said through clenched teeth. “Wait an hour and maybe I’ll fall apart for you, okay?”
“I don’t actually want that.”
“Well, what the hell do you want?”
“You, obviously.”
“Are you sure? Because I don’t think you’re sure. I’ve got the past six years as evidence.” She stuffed cheese into her mouth, and turned to Uncle. “Do you have anything for headaches? I think the teleporting bruised my brain.”
“Just this.” He poured her a little more wine.
Tito grimaced.
“How do we call him off?” she asked, sipping. “How do we get rid of him and his bratty little friends?”
“There’s no easy answer to that. So much depends on how many they are and whether or not the pack would still exist without Necalli. I’ve never known him to work completely solo.”
“Unless he’s harassing me.” Tito scrubbed his hand over the scruff of his beard and stacked a few pieces of meat atop the board. “Without him, they may split up, but they’ve always been good at that divide and conquer shit. Best thing to do is round them all up and deal with Nec at the same time.”
“And what? Send them back into the hole? That didn’t work the first time. They’ll find a way out of any trap you lay for them. They are too motivated. Too dogged. And if you miss one, they’ll free the rest. There’s no way of knowing who or where they all are.”
“But you made their race,” December said. “If you leave this place, wouldn’t you be able to find them all?”
Uncle twined his fingers and was quiet for too damned long. Tito hated when the old ones were quiet. He usually didn’t like what they had to say at the end of their silences.
“Leaving is not a good option,” Uncle said, and mashed a cork into the nearly empty wine bottle.
“You’ve got to do something,” she said. “I’m not going to have my daughter spending her life shut up in a house she’s afraid to leave because some guy who’s supposed to be a cousin wants to kill her. Hell no. If you’re not going to help”— she pushed back her chair and stormed across the kitchen toward the living room —“I’ll find someone who will.”
Tito stood, too, and kicked up a bit of supernatural speed to get ahead of her.
She crashed into him in the doorway and let out a yelp of fright. “Tito!”
He put a hand on either side of the doorframe and let out a breath. “Uncle?”
“I can’t be what you want me to be, Yaotl, but I can help a little. Give me some time. Hannah will come to you when she knows.”
“Hannah?”
“Your Avenger.”
Tito put his head back and grunted. “Right. Forgot. Been so long since the glaring has had one.”
Hannah, being natural
ly precognitive, had dreams and visions pertaining to the safety of the Cougars. Although she belonged to Ma, she also carried a bit of Uncle’s magic thanks to a long-ago peace offering after an earlier episode of Los Impostores assaulting Ma’s Cougars.
“When?” December asked Uncle.
He turned his hands over again. “As soon as I’ve done the work. These things take time, and I can only visit Hannah’s dreams at night. I not only have to spin magic to determine how many Impostores there are, but also to learn which god or gods Nec is trying to align himself with now. There has to be someone. I don’t believe he would be threatening your dear ones without a goal in mind.”
“So, hours? Days?”
Uncle shrugged one bony shoulder. “Days, most likely.”
December nodded and turned again. She gave Tito’s chest a little push, but she couldn’t move him unless he wanted to move. He didn’t want to move yet. He needed her to tell him that she wasn’t pissed at him. He couldn’t stand for her to be so close yet so angry.
“Move,” she said. “I want to go home. Cruz must be worried sick.”
“We’re goin’.”
“Get walking, then.”
“Sure you don’t want another glass of wine?”
“There’s plenty,” Uncle said. “Entire cellar full. Pick a few, if you’d like. The wine from five years ago is particularly decadent. I’m very proud of it.”
“No, thank you,” she said to Uncle. “I need to have a clear head, and I get the feeling I’m gonna have a long night ahead of me.”
Tito got the feeling the long night would be full of yelling at him.
“Take some with you, then? I would like to know what my sister thinks. I want her to know I made something on my own. Hold on.” He hurried with renewed enthusiasm to the narrow wooden door beside the counter, and then his footsteps sounded down the stairs.
December drummed her fingertips on the sides of her arms, chewed on the inside of her cheek, and looked around at anything—seemingly—except Tito.
“Dee.”
She shook her head. “Nuh-uh. I don’t want to talk to you right now. You had almost six years to talk to me and you chose not to, so you’re gonna give me at least six minutes of quiet. Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it right now.”