by A. J. Aalto
Asmodeus lumbered one step closer, and I Felt a wash of infernal heat. My nostrils burned with the acid stink of Him. “I did you a favor,” He snarled. “Now I’m going to do you another.”
“You can go fuck yourself in a three-way.”
I heard Harry cry out sharply an instant before Asmodeus’s tail lashed around His back and struck my neck, boiling with intensity. I flinched, but I was slow with grief. The tail latched onto my neck and slapped me back down to the floor on hands and knees, forcing me to kneel before the Overlord. His skin singed mine, scorching as it sank into my neck and wrapped completely around my throat. He squeezed once, tentatively, and I felt my windpipe shrink to a mere straw. He gave another long squeeze to show me who was in control. I couldn’t breathe for real this time, and the pain was startling. I tried to shriek as the tail embedded itself in the flesh of my neck, burning into it, branding me, but all that came out was a horrified wheeze.
Asmodeus dragged me closer to His chicken knees, horrifyingly close to His leather skirt. I crammed my eyes closed, but He was no bad date; the demon king roared rancid breath into my face and demanded my attention. I opened my eyes, terrified by what awaited me.
His eerie yellow eyes boiled and sizzled directly before mine. “Sayomi-chan cannot have your soul, Toots. That belongs to me.” He slapped my chest with His bear claw, threw aside the scraps of Batten’s leather coat, and brought His dragon claw in front of my face, showing me each thick, curved black talon individually. “You are my thing. My favorite thing.”
Everything shrank into darkness, and everything that hurt — the hot-wire tail searing into my neck flesh, the claw that was now tapping me in the chest above my heart, the bruised ribs, the aching arm, all of it — was suddenly a blessing. Pain was the only thing keeping me sane.
Stay down. My prince’s voice pushed into my head with a hint of desperation, sensing my last ditch struggle with disobedience. Wilhelm’s will flooded my veins and his mind threatened to roll into mine like a swollen river threatening its banks. Stay down. My Delight, you must stay down.
The Overlord smirked. “You’ll thank the Raven of Night for that reminder, Toots.”
And then He was gone. The claws. The stinking breath of Hell. The warning, infernal ownership curling through my belly, the flaming tail around my throat. There was only Harry, rushing to my side with his undead heart pounding under the influence of Batten’s blood.
Carole Jeanne marched over and threw her beige wool coat around me, beginning a no-nonsense assessment of my wounds. The burns and blisters would need immediate attention, she was saying, but Harry was already biting his wrist to access the pale blue, watery ink blood of the revenant vein, dabbing it on the nape of my neck while Carole Jeanne twisted my unkempt ghost-blackened hair around her fist to hold it aside. I let their hands make quick work of me, but once the burn was covered in his salve, they didn’t seem to know what else to do for me. They stared at one another over my head.
I found myself unable to speak. Words wouldn’t come. I blinked rapidly at Harry, shaking my head.
Carole Jeanne rasped, “Take her away from this place, Guy.”
And he did.
Chapter 38
I’d been in this hospital before. North Suburban. Thornton. Stab wounds delivered by one Danika Sherlock. Back then, Harry had formed a metaphysical bond called the dhaugir between SSA Chapel and I, through which Gary would absorb my physical pain, without my knowledge. They were back at my bedside with the same offer, but my pain was emotional, and so was Gary’s, and no bond that I knew of could remove it; it was hollow and numbing and dizzying in its savagery. Chapel suggested reinstituting the dhaugir bond until the burns on my neck healed, or at least until the pain subsided. I said no. The physical pain was distracting me from everything else.
Gary left the room to take a call. As the door shifted closed, I could see Golden sitting in a chair with her chin low against her chest, her shoulders fallen low. I might have thought she was sleeping if the Blue Sense didn’t report a heavy waft of personal shame, self-blame, loss, and guilt, clear and sharp and very much keeping her awake. She hadn’t slept on the plane. She wouldn’t sleep here.
Harry slid a subtle block up to free me from Golden’s personal struggles as the door drifted shut and he patted the back of my hand. My gloves were on the tray table but I didn’t care about psychometric triggers at this point. “The doctor would like you to get up and walk a bit,” he said.
“I would like the doctor to hop up his own ass.” There was a Styrofoam cup of water on my little table, with a plastic lid and a straw. I stared at the pattern on the Styrofoam and wondered whose job it had been to design it.
“And your nurses,” Harry said. “They’ve asked me to encourage you to move around a bit.”
“I will when I feel up to it.” I was vaguely thirsty, but couldn’t for the life of me see the point of quenching it.
Harry took the cup and put it in my hand. I held it for a moment, took an obedient sip, and put it down. The nurses had run an early lycanthropy test and it had come back negative, but I’d need to be tested every three months for the next three years to be sure; the virus had a tendency to lurk, and I wasn’t close to being out of the woods yet.
“Are you getting your medications promptly?” Harry asked.
I showed him the morphine pump. I had pain, so I pressed the button.
Harry’s unhappy frustration and remorse and uncertainty were a thread of pure, bright pain through our Bond that he moved to squelch. His voice was a brush of fur on a cold night, and it made me flinch. “How might I help you, my dearest thing? You have only to ask and it shall be done.”
I thought about the torn, bloody FBI jacket on the marble floor in Skulesdottir. I remembered the way Wilhelm had dropped it without glancing down, as if the circumstances were not only unimportant but uninteresting. The revenants in that throne room had their smug moment of victory, the fight over in seconds, and they would move on and forget; it was something I couldn’t get out of my head. While Remy and I were playing out our troll theater, Batten had been...
I stopped that thought. I couldn’t think of a single thing Harry could do for me. That might have been a first. I shook my head.
“Our Gary will be checking the cabin tonight,” he said, “making sure everyone is still well.”
“Don’t start calling him that,” I said, ignoring a flush of anger.
Harry read the resentment through our Bond and his eyes widened slightly. Not usually one to hold his tongue, he demurred with a quiet nod.
Things hurt. “Never call anyone ‘ours’ again,” I said.
Everything hurt. Inside and out, it all hurt, and I’d have eagerly chewed off an arm if it would make the vacant ache in my chest go away.
Harry whispered, “As my lady commands, so shall it be done.”
I pressed the button. “Everyone is not ‘still well,’ Harry.”
“Of course not, my dove. I’m endlessly remorseful for my choice of words.” Harry studied me with his cashmere grey eyes gone sadly soft around the edges, and one pale hand hovered over mine before landing, as though he doubted the wisdom of touching his own pet. Having done so, he wrapped my bare hand in his, and gave it a squeeze of encouragement. His voice fell to a barely audible level. “You could not have saved him. Only, the carrion hunter made it impossible for you to even try.”
“I could have forced him to leave Norway. I could have saved his life.”
“We would only have been delaying the inevitable. Your dark knight was a vampire hunter to the core, as was his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before them. The Batten line extends to the late 1700s, when an unfortunate grave-robbing relative encountered something he did not expect, and became an unsuspecting hero out of necessity. Villagers made his exploits a noble legend, but Batten’s line is also rife with thieves, liars, and rogues.”
This saddened me more than it should have, cutting right through the numbn
ess of shock. Had Harry given Batten his Bugatti just to keep him close by and under watch, knowing full well that Batten would use me and fuck up eventually?
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, eh Harry? The vampire hunter picked his passion for an old dead guy over me!” I let out a bitter bark of a laugh, knowing my thoughts were tainted and unfair but unable to stop them. “Isn’t that the ultimate joke? Laugh riot, that.”
“We knew what he was,” Harry said.
“Why did you pick me, Harry?” I knew why. I needed the reminder.
Harry swam eagerly toward the comfort of our habits and routines, and reassurances like this were just one. “Perhaps, despite my better judgment, I could think of no one but you from the very moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Even you will replace me someday.”
Harry stroked my hair and gave a chiding cluck of his tongue. “Until your dying breath, I shall remain yours and yours alone. Perhaps I am a poor substitute for a mortal companion, my only one, but I will be the one to track your wild feet through time.” Always a master of reading human signals, he changed gears. “This is a discussion for another day. Dawn approaches. Agent Golden will be here when I cannot. Declan reports that Malas has granted him a leave to come and visit as soon as you would like the dhampir’s company. You will not be alone unless you wish it.”
But he was wrong. I felt more alone now than I ever had. For his part, Harry would try to help me to have whatever sort of life I could want. He would always be there, my dead shadow. What mortal man would tolerate the life I lived, the situation I’d placed myself in, the primary relationship that I would never leave? And how could I have ever imagined that the vampire hunter had? Ego and hope had blinded me to an obvious truth: love wasn’t for people like me.
But Batten’s fate was not Harry’s doing, my logic told me. Is it fair to blame him? Isn’t this Batten’s own fault? Was Harry right? Was there any way you could have stopped it and lived?
“The anticipation I feel for the blessing of your warm company is almost more than I can bear,” Harry said to bolster me, but through the Bond, he must have felt that I was numb inside. “Come back to me soonest, love.”
Everything still hurt.
Harry watched my thoughts cross my face, felt every dip in my mood, felt me settle in under the mud at the bottom of the well of depression. His sad eyes closed, and he tipped his face close until his forehead rested against mine.
I pressed the button.
I pressed the button.
Chapter 39
Home never looked so good and so bad at the same time; there were too many memories of Mark here, and they were all guaranteed to assault me. There, by the fence, was the spot where Batten had watched me barf after blowing up zombie Neil Dunnachie. Close to the porch, he’d determined with easy detective work that, despite Rob Hood’s suspicious comments, I was not sleeping with the sheriff of Lambert County. There, by the mailbox, he’d caught me after an undead head chomped and startled me. And over there, in the shade where he normally parked his Bugatti, Harry and Wes in a feral state had flipped an SUV with us in it. When I went inside the cabin, there would be Batten memories everywhere: my office, where we argued constantly; the kitchen, where Harry often fed him; the fridge would still have some of the local craft beers I kept chilled solely for him, unless someone had thoughtfully removed them prior to my returning home.
I opened the door to find my brother waiting right inside, holding Bob the Cat, who paddled his paws in midair at me. The cuteness factor did help for a moment. Wes put the cat in my arms and, after some suspicious sniffing an affronted Mrrrppp!, the purring began.
“Not going to comment on my bruised face, my burn marks, my limp, my battered gear?” I asked my brother.
Wes considered me for a moment, and with a burgeoning telepath’s wisdom, said, “I’ll save my sass up for a few weeks.”
Weeks? Is that how long it would take me to rebound? I doubted that very much. Harry came in a set our bags to one side.
Wes said, “You smell funny.”
“I’m wearing Jim Carrey’s new cologne, Rubberface,” I deadpanned.
Wes looked like he wasn’t sure he should smile at my joke. “Someone named Mr. Merritt called and asked if you needed North House prepared?”
Harry helped me off with Carole Jeanne’s beige wool coat, and after he had hung it and his battered pea coat on drying pegs in the mudroom, returned to the hall. “Thank you, lad, I shall ring him back in due time.”
“Also, Chapel left a message,” Wes said. “He may drop by tomorrow. He, uh, needs to know what happened, needs the details. For reports or something.”
I ignored a stab of agony; I couldn’t even imagine that conversation. Yes, Agent Chapel, I did allow Mark Batten, vampire hunter, to come to the revenant seat of power and attack the house that was responsible for seemingly murdering his grandfather. No, I didn’t think he’d actually do anything about it. Why yes, I am an idiot like that. And now he’s dead. Maybe I could write it down and pass a note to him across the desk.
Wesley was staring at Harry with a peculiar look on his face. “You’re going to have to talk about it,” he said, though to which of us he was talking was unclear.
“She must do no such thing,” Harry said. “I shall speak to our Agent Chapel.”
Wes frowned. “No, she really needs to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” I asked, wandering past him, staring out the kitchen window at nothing in the night.
“Bottling this will be unhealthy.” Wes scowled now, cocking his head as he seemed to read something on Harry’s face without being able to probe the older revenant’s thoughts. Finally, Wes asked him, “And what the fuck are you hiding from me? You’re completely blank.”
“Perhaps you ought to go home, my boy,” Harry’s London accent sharpened. “Southern Ontario is having a mild winter, I hear, and your mother makes those lovely pies.”
“Now?” Wes boggled. “You want me gone after this? Now I know you’re hiding something.”
Harry moved into the kitchen to snag his apron from the hook and slip it on, falling into familiar rhythms of home. “It’s past time you reconnected with your family.”
“Marnie is my family,” Wes said. “She needs me.”
“She has everything she needs in me,” Harry said softly, though his tone left no room for argument. “Can you doubt it, lad?”
Wes battled that for a moment, his mouth working around half-extended fangs that I wasn’t sure he knew he’d brought out. I Felt a rapid barrage of emotions from my baby brother, accepting them passively, not bothering to lift a barrier to any of it: confusion battled trust, experience warred with anxiety, suspicion danced through the minefield, but in the end, Wes returned to experience and trust, and acceptance ruled supreme. “I suppose a quick trip home would be okay. If you think…” he drifted off, helplessly.
“De Cabrera would tell me to look at the positives,” I said numbly, grasping at humor, my trusty defense mechanism and often my last resort. I thought of a hasty deal I had made the goddess a long time ago. “Now that Batten’s dead, I can eat cookies.”
They both stared at me without blinking for a long beat, and when no reply seemed appropriate, they returned to the marginally safer ground of their conversation.
“I’ll go, but under protest. You’re sheltering her, and you know it.” Wesley glared, and his good eye wilted to sickly violet. Frustration snagged in the back of his throat. “You can’t just sit here and bake her dozens of cookies and make like nothing has happened. If you’re going to do that, I’m staying. I’ll go if you promise you’re going to get her to talk. If not to you, then to someone.”
“Was I being groomed the whole time?” I asked anyone willing to listen.
Wesley rounded on me; he wasn’t going to keep quiet on this one. “Batten was obsessed with revenge. He never once tried to hide that. You saw the hash marks on his chest.”
&nb
sp; “So I was stupid?” I clarified. Good to know.
“Oh, ducky,” Harry said unhappily.
“I never said stupid,” Wes objected. “It wasn’t all false. His feelings for you, I mean.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, because I needed to hate Batten right now. I needed to hate everyone. My rage was a cauldron at hard boil. My gloved hands shook in my lap, tight fists. I feared if I relaxed them, I might completely fall apart. This was better. Where humor was failing, where comfort was lacking, wrath was picking up the pieces. An angry Marnie was a strong Marnie.
Wes’s shoulders fell and he backed down. “All right, all right. But when you’re ready to talk about this, we’re here for you.”
“Most of us will be here for you,” Harry corrected, physically maneuvering Wes toward the pantry with the idea that he go pack immediately. “Most of all, me. Your brother will be in Canada, reuniting with your parents. Run along and set your plans in motion, lad. I’ll ring for the plane to be refueled. In the event that you are not invited into your mother’s home, I shall have Mr. Merritt prepare North House.”
“Why don’t you go, too?” I said.
Both of the dead guys froze in the slight shadow of the pantry. Alarmed by the sudden shift in mood, Wes took his cue and fled down the creaking steps with less immortal grace than he usually showed.
Harry’s slow turn was purposefully dramatic, meant to display his incredulity and disappointment.
“I beg your pardon, my hummingbird? I’m certain I misheard you just now.”
“I want you to go, too.”
“And to where, exactly, would you prefer I travel, my pet?”
I raised my gaze from the kitchen table; my eyes felt sore and hot in my head, like balls of lava ready to burst and singe my cheeks. I saw Harry’s fangs sinking into Batten’s throat again and again in a merciless replay. “Do you want me to answer that honestly?”
“Why do I assume I should shudder to imagine your answer?”