by A. J. Aalto
I thought it would make a grand point, so I disrobed in one swoop, letting the hospital gown flutter to my ankles, displaying ugly twisted stitches, the wounds still an angry red, the dressings around my middle crusted with blood and yellowing ooze. I laid one arm across my bare breasts and glared at them. I should have been embarrassed standing in my underwear before them, but the flinch around their eyes was worth it. The wide, wrapped wound in my gut was impossible to ignore. Chapel's attention didn't stray very far from the bandages. Batten's eyes settled for some reason on the incidental rug burn on my knees. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.
“This is what happens when a DaySitter loses their companion. Do you see what she's been reduced to? What would I do, if I lost Harry? How would I lash out? What kind of maniac would I become?”
“Marnie, that wouldn't happen to you,” Chapel assured me.
“Are you kidding?” I shouted, forgetting about covering my boobs and flailing my arms at them. “I'm half-cracked on my best days, and that's with Harry. Can you imagine what life would be like for me if…” I felt my spine crawl and turned on my heel to look at Batten head-on. I just stood there for a minute, covering my chest, digesting my thought before voicing it. “You're hoping they will stake him.”
His face was blank, unreadable, but his voice was stiff with anger. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Did you tell them it has to be rowan wood? Or did you have something worse in mind for Harry. Fire, perhaps? Tub full of holy water? Did you leave your kit behind for them? You have a nice alibi, here with me while they do your dirty work.”
“You know that's not true.”
“I don't know. Not when it comes to you, Mark.” I felt close to tears and chose anger instead, turning my back on them to struggle into a bra. My hands quivered as I jammed my legs into a pair of jeans. “You're blank. You're an empty elevator shaft. I can't go up, I can't go down, I'm just stuck alone in the middle. I don't know what you think or feel about anything.”
“Well, I'm telling you. I don't wish Harry dead. You'll either believe that or you won't.”
“I don't.” I glanced at Chapel. “And what about you? You want Harry dead?”
“Of course not,” he said quickly, his calm façade fading briefly. “Lord Dreppenstedt has been… he's been…” He was watching me try to button my pants near the bandages, his face pinched, pained. “Let me help you, Marnie. Settle down. Can we just…”
I was pulling a long-sleeved t-shirt over my head, impossible to do without tenderness in back and pain in front, tugging at stitches here and there, and I growled my frustration at them, an enraged monster trapped in a t-shirt, face pressing cotton. Hands drifted to help me and I slapped them away.
“Try being sane and civil for one goddamned minute,” Batten suggested, easily dodging blows.
“That won't make you go away!” I cried, muffled by cotton.
“The vampire can—”
“Revenant!” I shouted.
“Call that thing whatever the fuck you want, it can take care of itself,” he assured me when my face reappeared.
“If he could, would he need me?” I tapped my temple meaningfully. “What do you think a DaySitter is for?”
“Fuck buddy?” Batten suggested.
I ignored that; none of his business that it was untrue. “Why do you think the old ones have this complicated ritual Bond in place? What if the debt vulture or the beetles…” I floundered, tears returning. I felt weak, and that tightened my lips in near-fury.
Batten strained to follow. “What the fuck's a debt vulture?”
I pressed a finger to my twitching eyelid. “Oh my God, noob. Seriously? Why do I even talk to you? I have no patience for either of you. I'm calling a fucking cab.”
Chapel said quietly, “That's not necessary, Marnie. I promise you, Harry is perfectly fine.”
“If he's not…” I wasn't dumb enough to threaten federal agents with a fate worse than death, especially since there was no way I could deliver on it, so I fixed them both with my best glare, the one my baby brother Wesley always said could melt icebergs. Then I remembered Harry's words: he trusted Chapel with his life. And so should I. “Get me home to him, Gary.”
Batten shoveled my things back into my bag and followed at a run. He tried to take my elbow and I wrested it away from him. He was lucky not to get it in the balls.
“Slowly, Marnie,” Chapel urged as I propelled down the hall ahead of them, clutching my stomach in one hand. The pain was better than expected, seemingly whisked away by magic just after it reared its tugging, biting head. Chapel fell behind, struggling with a limp of his own. I wondered fleetingly how he'd hurt himself, wondered if Harry was responsible.
“You don't know,” I snarled over my shoulder at them. “You don't know all the trouble that could happen. Even if they didn't mean to hurt him. One of them could innocently open a blind and the sun…” The lobby doors slid open loudly and a dark miserable snowstorm blasted across our path. Okay, no sun. “Something could go wrong.”
“Take it easy,” Batten ordered. “I don't think either of them is going to forget they're in the company of a vampire.”
His stubborn use of the V-word nearly made me lose it, but I didn't think my gut could take another strenuous shout. “They could.”
“Won't happen,” Batten insisted, punctuated by a harsh laugh. “You know what it's like being near that thing. And you're accustomed to it, they're not.”
“Him, not it, not thing,” I corrected through my teeth.
“This is Hood and Dunnachie's first vamp. Trust me, that thing is making quite an impression.” He jabbed a thick finger in my face. “Stay.”
“Arf,” I replied sourly.
I waited at the wide curb beside Chapel. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of Chapel's long arms hovered too close to me, inching to support me somehow. I shot him a look. He dropped it.
Batten hurried through the snow towards their rental car. There was barely ten running strides of visibility, then we lost him in the white blur. The snow was tiny grits whipping horizontal with the wind, straight into our faces. It was like going into warp speed on the Starship Enterprise, with the gusts pushing the storm under the hospital's overhang. Chapel and I had to squint against it.
“What did Batten mean by that?” I raised my voice to be heard over the wind and traffic. “That Harry's making an impression?”
Chapel ducked his face nearer to my ear. “Seems Harry wasn't in the mood to pussyfoot around with the are-you-or-aren't-you routine. He answered the door full-on changed, eyes, fangs, vocal tricks, everything.”
I choked back a startled laugh. “He mindfucked cops?” I blinked in disbelief. “In front of FBI agents? In our own home?” I wasn't sure which part bothered me the most.
“Briefly,” Chapel said; it came out oddly defensive. That struck me as even funnier. I laughed and then winced, wishing I hadn't. Chapel put his briefcase up to block the snow from our faces, though he had to duck a full foot and a half to place his face near to mine. “Somehow he knew two hardcore doubters were at the front step.”
“Doubt's an emotion,” I reminded. Harry would have picked it up immediately. If Harry was human, they'd call him a true Groper-Feeler, but you didn't use human psychic terms for revenants. Revs are just plain revs.
“He turned to me with his hand on the doorknob and said, ‘how absolutely maddening this part is,’ in that way that he has.”
I didn't have to ask. I could imagine all too well Harry's stiff London accent saturated with vexation. He liked to pretend it was a tiresome chore to prove his nature over and over, when in fact it tickled him to make an impression.
Chapel continued, “So he extended his fangs, brightened his irises to…” Gary floundered for a descriptor and settled on “inhuman, and whipped open the front door. He invited Rob and his chief deputy Neil in for tea and scones in this bizarre voice that sounded like a harmony. They almost didn't com
e in.”
The humor made Chapel's eyes intense in a way I'd never seen before. Maybe part of Agent Chapel had loosened up with the removal of his tie. His top button was still firmly fastened, but baby steps, right? Already I trusted him less to fix my computer.
Chapel continued, “When they remembered how to walk, they stumbled into the hallway, at which point Harry did this thing with his hand, like a walking-pull? I've never seen anything like it. The shadows in the house solidified and fell in a blurry wake behind him, seemed to cover his stride. Then in a blink, he was five steps ahead of where he should have been.”
“Shadow stepping,” I said, not bothering now to hide my smile. Harry was really enjoying himself today. “A trick of the older ones. You should see him do it in the forest at night. Gave me nightmares for weeks after he showed me. It's pretty fucked up.”
Agent Chapel's face paled for a moment and then went pink in the neck. Surely not because of me dropping the f-bomb. I couldn't imagine why else my comment would embarrass him; the effect faded quickly.
“Hood and Dunnachie didn't question Harry's nature for a second after that,” he added, his humor gone. He inspected the parking lot through narrowed eyes that missed nothing. I thought it an excuse to look away, rather than a scanning-for-bad-guys.
The SUV pulled up and the heavy back end slid in the slush into the curb. I felt better. The image of Harry dialing-to-monster on Hood and his deputy was satisfying. At least they'd know for certain who and what they were dealing with. It would make them vigilant if not respectful.
After all that, Sheriff Hood still volunteered to be alone in Harry's company? Point: Hood. The “I'm-not-afraid-of-the-big-bad-wolf” act, or maybe even genuine bravery. Bravery in the face of the undead and unknown. Had to respect that in a guy. Hood was more than just a pretty face. I might have to put him on my People I Don't Entirely Hate list.
Chapel sounded like he was thinking out loud. “I shudder to think what Harry would have done if they'd asked him for further proof.”
“Well it's a good thing they didn't.” I paused with the passenger side door open, looking over the hood at him pointedly. “He hasn't had me in five long days. He's bound to be famished by now.”
His hazel eyes fell away from mine. Shame. A throat-full of it nearly choked me from his side of the car as the Blue Sense tore into being like an avalanche down a ski hill. I had to grip the dashboard as I ducked into the passenger seat, bewildered by Chapel's rush of feeling. Was he embarrassed by the idea of me feeding Harry? This wasn't news to him, but maybe he was only now realizing what that really meant: that I really did let Harry drink from my veins. Perhaps that shook Chapel up. Maybe it had kept him awake and nervous, while I was away? Maybe watching Harry drink glass after glass of microwaved blood brought the issue home to Chapel in full, stunning color. Whatever it was, again it was blessedly brief. Unflappable Chapel was nothing if not a master of self-control. By the time I tipped the passenger sun shade down to use the mirror to apply lip gloss, I saw he had his calmly reassuring mask back up. A quick probe of the SUV's emotional atmosphere revealed tight control; any apprehension was dialed-down to nil.
“How much do you know about Hood and Dunnachie? How do you know they're not, you know, like you?” I eyeballed Batten, specifically the part of his shirt that hid the kill-notch tats. They might be sort of sexy if they didn't indicate wasted immortals, not that I'd ever admit that aloud.
He checked the rear view mirror for Chapel's level of attention and then said more quietly, “I'm not all bad, am I?”
The tone of his voice hinted at scandalous pleasures, private naked escapades behind closed doors, or in our case, up against them. I fought down the instant responding wave of warmth in my groin that indicated my body was an idiot.
“You're an oversized ass-hat. You hate my housemate. You won't respect that I'm retired. You push me; I don't try to improve you.”
“Nothin’ to improve.”
“I don't ask for anything you're not able to give.”
“Maybe you should,” he suggested; the intimacy I heard had to be my lurid imagination.
“Your FBI shield didn't change the fact that at your core, you're a rule-bending carnage machine. If there weren't revenants to dust, you'd be making a living killing something else.”
His jaw ground, a single ripple. “I've never hurt an innocent person.”
“Depends on your definition of innocent and person, I suppose,” I drew a deep chest full of air then winced as a stitch pulled low in my back. I heard a sharp inhalation from the back seat, like Chapel had suddenly pulled a muscle. A glance in the make-up mirror showed him staring out the window, lips pinched in a rigid line, brow rutted.
I told Batten quietly, “I don't trust you for a second not to hurt Harry. That's enough of a reason to dislike you.”
“Didn't touch a hair on his head,” he assured me, his voice still gruffly intimate in the front seat. “Could have. He gave me plenty of opportunity.”
My breath caught in my throat. I wasn't remotely convinced by Gary Chapel's new show of focus on his Blackberry, so I lowered my voice. “You snuck into Harry's room?”
“Invited,” he replied.
“Big veep hunter accepted an invitation down into an immortal's private lair? Aren't you brave.” I shifted to get more comfortable.
There was a heartbeat of quiet, during which I figured he was searching for a non-jerky thing to say. Finally, he offered: “It has a real theatrical flair for decorating.”
I felt my lips tug up reluctantly. “His nod to Poe and Wilde.”
“Hence the two-faced portrait of perfect Harry and rotten Harry above the fake fireplace? The bust of Pallas above the door? The stuffed raven?” When I nodded he mirrored it. “I dig the bumper stickers inside the lid of its coffin, especially: What happens in the casket stays in the casket.”
“You weren't in there when Harry was resting, though. Right?”
“We took turns every afternoon, watching it.”
“Watching.” My head was starting to throb. Since I couldn't go back in time and make sure they didn't do it, I could only make sure it didn't happen again. “You do know that ‘watching’ isn't a literal requirement? You can watch him just fine from upstairs. It's mostly just making sure critters don't get at him. Or hunters.”
A slow smile began to spread over his lips. I didn't get the joke. He shook his head with a surprised chuckle. “Harry said flat-out it was our job to sit in the chair by the casket, like bodyguards. ‘Sentinels’ was his word.”
I was about to scoff but then thought it sounded like classic Harry manipulation. What else had he done to amuse himself in my absence?
“So you sat there.”
“I sat there.”
“For hours. Literally watching him.”
“Figured if I didn't do a good job, you'd get pissy.”
“Since when do you care how I feel?” He didn't answer. “You weren't tempted to drive a stake between his ribs?” No reply. “You just sat there.”
“I drank beer and played its video games. Old school Mario.”
I tried to get a mental picture of Batten sitting in Harry's black leather video game chair, not ten feet from an immortal lying prone and vulnerable in his casket, and Batten just…being there. If body snatchers hadn't replaced the real Mark with an alien duplicate, I had no other explanation.
“I don't know what to say,” I told him, meaning it. I wasn't used to feeling gratitude toward the hunter. I glanced in the makeup mirror. Chapel was still pretending not to listen to us. “Thank you, Mark.”
“You're welcome, Marnie,” he said easily.
“Now if only we could stop you calling him an it.”
“Never gonna happen.”
We drove on in silence, Batten pushing the car with his usual heavy-footed management but taking the corners with far more prudence than I'd witnessed him use in the past. The bridge at Lambert's Crossing was a death trap. Only wide eno
ugh for one-way traffic, in the best of times it was tricky to stop on the downward curve or take turns when the road before and following it was glittery with black ice. When we whipped past Askant Mill on Catawampus Creek, the traffic thinned considerably and the incline of the road made the car struggle between gears. Batten gunned it through Ten Springs while I stared at the dashboard, avoiding the bright lights outside the Ten Springs Motor Inn. A flash of flapping yellow in my peripheral told me the police tape was still up around Room 4. Batten's eyes slid sideways past me, and his jaw did that clenchy thing before his gaze returned grimly to the road.
Close to an hour later we were slowing to round the curve at Shaw's Fist, a mountain lake so small it looked like the Green Man had hocked a loogie. The lake was ringed by a huddling cluster of eighteen summer cottages, most of which were closed up until spring. Since I bought the cabin from my sister Carrie in October, I hadn't had a chance to meet the couple of neighbors who had winterized their cabins to live there year-round. I wasn't sure I needed to. Maybe my life would be a whole lot easier if it didn't have any people in it. Maybe Harry and I should just get forty-five cats and call it a day.
My phone went off in the trunk, muffled. I had finally changed it from Harry's idea of a joke; it now played the Inspector Gadget theme song.
Agent Chapel's Blackberry summoned almost simultaneously. I checked the state of my lip gloss in the make-up mirror so I could see him glance at the text display. His mouth fell open ever so slightly and his professional calm faltered. Seconds later, Batten's went off. He slipped it off his waistband and glanced down at it, then hurriedly shoved it in his pocket. The car lurched forward down the last few miles of road, plunging off the paved section and onto snow-packed grit and gravel.
Uncertainty stole my words. Instead of asking, I ate at the inside of my cheeks. (“You and me. We finish it. Together.”) Probably they had to drop me off and rush to some far-off emergency. Right?