Rampant, Volume 1 Page 5

  Bracken!

  And I was unleashed, loosed, out of control, unable to contain my passion, my power, my anger, my grief, and it was spilling, streaming, destroying, sizzling over the ground, over the doomed, over my lovers I hadn’t had yet, and I could do nothing but open my mouth and shriek destruction over everything until the ground below my feet melted and I plunged to hell gurgling in my own limitless hate….

  I was suddenly conscious, sweating, managing—this time—to keep my whimpers to myself, and still partially immersed in the dream. I forced my subconscious to remember the real ending of that moment, to dream what was real, so I wouldn’t keep seeing Bracken’s dead, blistering, cooked face in the wake of my rampant murder.

  Green’s arms yanked me, ripped me out of my scream, tumbled me over a hill of razored rocks, shrieked in my ear to stop, stop stop stop Please, beloved, for the sake of the Goddess, STOP!

  Now I was wide-awake in the small hours of the night, instantly aware that sleep was irrevocably behind me. I reached out and touched Bracken’s face, peaceful in the near-absolute darkness of our room. He sighed and rolled into my hand, and I stroked a high, pretty cheekbone with my thumb. Bracken. I couldn’t make myself touch his hair, which had been down to the backs of his knees until that dreadful night, and I was tired of burdening him and Green with the aftermath of this dream.

  Some demons couldn’t be kissed away. Some of them had the right to ride you, to rend the skin of your wellness with ragged, dirty nails.

  I decided to go bleed somewhere else.

  With a sigh, I carefully wiggled out of the überlarge bed and slid on a pair of pajama bottoms under Bracken’s T-shirt. I had to tie the T-shirt in the back or the neck would gape open and flash my minuscule boobs. It had taken me a year to figure that out—I have no idea why all the men thought I had a brain.

  Silently, I grabbed my knitting bag and the new sock yarn I’d picked out earlier and slunk out into the living room to think—or rather to not think. The thing worrying insistently at my chest wasn’t ready to be let out yet, and I didn’t want to force it.

  The living room was a mess of pinks and daffodils draped, wadded, and scattered limply over the floor, couch, and various appliances. The pixies, nixies, sprites, brownies, and general smaller fey who would ordinarily be cleaning them up were lying drunkenly among them, stoned on the scent of flowers, beer (elven magic), and sex that permeated the hill. It was like fey confetti on a grand scale, and after I moved a gently breathing heap of them to the long wooden coffee table and brushed the flowers off the couch, I could look around appreciatively and laugh softly to myself.

  Green’s hill hadn’t been this messy since The Honeymoon—which most of us referred to in capital letters, since the power slips that had kept rolling from my body that week not only redecorated the paneling but spawned a secondary baby boom among the same group of people currently littered around the floors in wanton abandon.

  Damn. For all the bad shit I could do with my power, it was nice to know I had enough good in me to make the fairies drunk.

  One of the ones I had just moved suddenly sat up and yawned. She was a sprite with vaguely mouselike features and a dress of transparent pink silk over her little gray furry body, and I smiled at her, enchanted as always by Green’s tiniest kingdom. She smiled at me and stood with dignity. Out of nowhere, she opened her little mouth again and start singing “She Moved through the Fair” with such sweetness and purity that the shattering of my heart could probably be heard throughout the hill. The song came to a pause, where normally a Gaelic chant would fill the empty space, and the tiny creature crossed her eyes at me imperiously.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her courteously, “I don’t know the words.” I knew what they sounded like, actually, but I didn’t know what they meant or even how they divided up into phonemes.

  That apparently was not good enough, because she glared from her six-inch height and stomped her tiny foot.

  I shrugged and started to chant something that sounded like “chessa-ma-boomb-bot-te-hey-yay-yay,” and it must have been close because she closed her eyes and started to sing again, using my chanted refrain as a background. We continued to a conclusion, my part extending to her last sustained note, and then she bowed and collapsed, leaving me bemused in the now silent room, ready to start my knitting.

  I cast on, and had worked a couple of rows of ribbing when I became aware of the wolf-shadow in human clothing in the dark of the hallway.

  I looked up and caught Teague as he decided to slink into the kitchen. He flushed and turned around as though to leave me alone, so I smiled at him and tried to be natural. It was, after all, his home too, since the garage outside the hill proper was still being remodeled for the trio—and it was his wedding night. He ducked his head and looked up longingly at the plate of cookies on the counter, and I suppressed a sigh.

  Classic Teague. He was an alpha on the battlefield, a born leader in a fight. If it came to defending the hill or acting as my bodyguard, I wouldn’t have anyone else at my back. But in the realm of personal interaction? He was still an abused child waiting for the next blow. Today’s ceremony was a step in the healing that would fix that, maybe—but just one.

  “Take them, sweetie,” I urged quietly, not missing the way he jumped. “They’re white-chocolate macadamia nut. I think Grace made them specifically for you. She even stocked up on the chocolate milk.”

  I could see his flush from across the room, and he grabbed a handful of the cookies almost furtively and then a bottle of chocolate milk from the fridge. He took two steps, then almost as though remembering he was human, stopped and asked, “Want some?” from a full mouth.

  Well—since he asked. “I’d love some,” I told him, making to stand, “but don’t let me keep you.”

  He shook his head and waved me off, grabbing the whole plate and another bottle of milk. Somehow he managed to juggle the works over to where I sat, and I anticipated the plate by gently moving more of those delicate slumbering bodies from the coffee table.

  “I heard you singing,” he said on a swallow. Then he crushed another cookie in his mouth, as though for cover. “You sound really good when you’re not singing headbanger shit.”

  My turn to blush. The men were always trying to get me to sing in public. It had been touch-and-go as to whether or not I’d sing at the wedding tonight, but I’d managed to duck out. I hadn’t wanted anything to distract from the people we were there for.

  “Thank you,” I demurred, taking a cookie. “But I think most of the credit goes to the sprite.”

  Teague’s dark hazel eyes were suddenly very perceptively reading my expression. “Yes, Lady Cory, but your voice was pretty too.”

  I smiled and met his eyes, inclining my head and feeling dumb. “Again, thank you.”

  A silence fell over the wasted living room then, and I knit a few stitches, feeling surprisingly relaxed. Teague’s head nodded, and for a moment I thought he was going to fall asleep on me.

  “Teague, sweetheart,” I prompted with a smile, “why don’t you go to bed?”

  His eyes fluttered, and he cast a look that was almost hunted over his shoulder toward the room the three of them shared when they were staying with the family. “I’ll keep you company for a bit,” he said gruffly. “Here—let me go get a chess set.”

  Bracken had given Adrian many chess sets—really cool ones, with different characters or special gemstone men and shit—every year for Christmas for fifty-five years running. Since Adrian’s death, Green, Grace, and Arturo had continued the tradition by giving sets to Bracken. Fortunately, after the first year when he got three sets, they had all started going in on them together, or we’d have been up to our eyeballs in pawns in another year or two. Kyle, who had inherited Adrian’s room, understood that the price of not having a roommate was that we had the right to run into his room and grab a set at will. Since Kyle was still mourning his beloved, there was little likelihood we’d see anything we’d rat
her not, but I suddenly wondered if we didn’t need to make some shelves for the front room. I’d ask Green in the morning.

  Now I looked longingly at my knitting. Teague obviously had something he needed to pitch off his chest, and as lady of the house, I was the one with his emotional catcher’s mitt—I had been since the night I’d seen him in this very room, praying that Green would be able to save Jack’s life after an op gone horribly wrong.

  Green had saved his life—and the healing had been the catalyst needed to finally get Teague to make his move on Jack, after what I took to be the most frustrating year and a half two sexually functional men had ever endured.

  It had also put Jack, Teague, and Katy in our care—and Katy, who had known Teague since childhood, in Teague’s orbit. During a turbulent time filled with rogue werewolves and epic battles, we’d all gotten to watch Teague become a leader in the hill and a lover who mattered to the people he loved.

  Not a comfortable transition, any of it. The rogue werewolves were still out there, still plotting against us, and Teague?

  Teague still needed healing.

  “Sure, Teague,” I said softly. “Get the Harry Potter one….” Teague winced. “Or whatever one strikes your fancy,” I added, rolling my eyes. Teague had a very finite list of pop-culture items that didn’t offend his manhood. Apparently Harry Potter wasn’t on it.

  He was back in a moment. I pulled out my basic patterned socks to work on while I was waiting for his move, and he set up while I knit. It didn’t matter whether I knit or actually paid attention. I really sucked at chess, but so did Teague, so it was going to be a pretty fucked-up game.

  “Why didn’t you sing?” he asked, just as I was making my first move.

  I practically pushed over my pawn in surprise at the sound. I had been wondering where the vampires were, and that had led inevitably to a glimpse of a giant room and an impossibly big bed crawling with naked bodies and bared fangs. The heart of the darkling—I had never seen it myself, and the vampires were very careful to never talk about it in front of me. I didn’t even know if they could all fit in the damned bed. My face heated anyway both because of what I had seen in my head through the vampire’s eyes and because the clattering of the pawn was absurdly loud.

  “Why didn’t I sing?” I repeated blankly. Hadn’t I just been singing?

  “At the wedding,” Teague enunciated, moving his pawn in response. “Why didn’t you sing? Katy would have been honored.”

  Well hell. I hadn’t known that. “I didn’t want to make it all about me,” I mumbled, embarrassed that I even had to say a thing like that.

  But if anyone understood self-effacement, it was Teague Sullivan. He grunted understanding and indicated the board for my move.

  We played in silence for a moment, meaning we both advanced our pawns in an even line and tried to figure out some other way of fighting a battle besides straight on. It didn’t come naturally to either of us.

  Finally I did something funky with my knight—I admired that bizarre combination of moves that a knight was allowed to make—and Teague was forced to contemplate his next move. I knitted for a moment, watched him fight between boredom and sleep for a moment, and then jumped into the breech.

  “Why don’t you want to go back into your room, Teague?”

  He grunted, moved a pawn right into the way of my rook, and looked at me to move.

  I took the pawn and prompted, “Teague? Neither of us really likes chess.”

  “It hurt,” he said.

  “What did?” But I had the feeling I knew—and he wasn’t talking about the tattoo.

  “I was watching them sleep in the starlight, and….” He shook his head and put his face in his hands. “I don’t deserve them. Oh, Goddess, Lady Cory, the things I’ve done….”

  His thoughts so closely paralleled my own that I wondered at the fates that had made him one of ours. “You were trying to be good, Teague,” I told him, not wanting to get into my own personal shit when he so obviously needed me. Teague had been abused—and lied to by his abuser. Told that he was evil, told that the Goddess’s creatures were evil too. Teague’s only chance to be a good man was to kill those things worse than he was.

  If Teague’s father hadn’t driven his car off a cliff years ago, that was one murder that wouldn’t have haunted me in my sleep.

  “I’ve told you that, Green told you that. You had a shit life, and your shitty father told you the Goddess’s people were dangerous monsters, and you thought you were being as noble as God allowed you to be….”

  “I killed innocent people!” Teague looked up at me in terror, as though all of the other times he’d told me this I had simply not heard him and now, suddenly, I would recoil in disgust.

  “Jesus, Teague, do you think you’re the only one?” I asked, my own anxiety making my voice sharp enough to snap him out of it.

  “It’s not like you’re a serial killer!” he snapped back in complete surprise—and I, who had been raised an only child, suddenly realized that this was how siblings fought.

  “More like Columbine than Ted Bundy,” I said, wondering if my voice was as cold as my face, “but yes, Teague, I’ve killed indiscriminately.”

  Teague dropped the piece he was moving.

  “Jesus—you’re just a kid,” he said in wonder, and now I was the one wondering if he would ever look at me with that same worship in his eyes. Well, I thought in embarrassment and irritation and sorrow, better he know me. He was the alpha of the werewolves, one of the people who sat the leader’s table during banquet—better he know me for the flawed, mortal, dumbshit kid I really was.

  I shrugged and tried to look like this wasn’t the reason I had awakened in my lover’s arms, terrified and soaked in fear-stink. “Hey, at least I can buy beer now,” I said, but the joke fell flat. He regarded me soberly, those dark hazel eyes boring into me expectantly.

  “This was supposed to be about you!” I protested. I could count on three fingers the number of times I’d been forced to tell this story. Even Hallow, for all his formidable patience, was only rarely able to lure me into this discussion.

  “And you told me you were a mass murderer to make me feel better,” he returned with disturbing insight. “It’s not going to make me feel better if you don’t tell me the whole story.”

  “You’re pretty fucking smart when it’s someone else’s emotions, aren’t you?” I asked sourly, and Teague grinned, tossing the dropped chess piece back and forth between his hands. I hadn’t seen his grin much, and it took me by surprise. It was probably this expression alone that had Jack and Katy chasing his poor puzzled heart all over creation, because that fuck-me grin was sooooo worth it.

  “I’m not feeling sorry for myself right now, if that’s what you mean,” he returned.

  I shot him the bird and found I felt good enough to continue.

  “Did you like the flowers?” I asked him, moving a piece on the board that I didn’t particularly care about.

  “Are we changing the subject?” he asked, frowning at the board. One of us was in a position to kick major ass, but we were both so damned bad at the game that we couldn’t figure out who.

  “I’m making an elegant lead-in,” I told him with dignity. “You’ve only seen the good shit I do with my power, you know? The flowers. The pretty walls. The pregnant sprites. The tattoo on your wrist—it’s all good shit.”

  He laughed a little, for reasons I didn’t know. “Yeah, it is.”

  A sudden onslaught of the bad things I’d done with my power assaulted the back of my eyeballs like the slideshow of the damned. My body grew still, my heart grew still, and I was pretty sure the blood drained from my face again, leaving my chest and cheeks icy. “Not all of it is good shit,” I confessed, looking down at the chess piece in my hands.

  “What did you do, Lady Cory?” There was a throbbing, a need to hear it, etched in Teague’s voice, and I couldn’t avoid it. Green had told me bad things about himself, and Adrian too—but I h
ad never truly appreciated my mortality until this moment, when I realized that I would have only a finite number of years to live with this memory, as they did not. Even Adrian, who had died too young for a vampire, had carried a burden like this one in his heart for one hundred and fifty years.

  “The night Adrian died…,” I began, and suddenly I was lost in the tale.

  “He flew into a silver net, wired for magic and sound, and simply exploded, leaving Green and me coated in his blood like a warm rain.” I could see it on the skin of my arm when I closed my eyes. The gentle thick wet of it, the dislocation as I realized that the blood on my skin was all… was all…. And then he blew through my soul like summer wind through a cotton dress… and….

  “I breathed in….” Like a baby after a bad fall… just breathing and breathing and breathing… “And Green killed the bad guys….” And I was breathing and breathing and breathing… “And then Green screamed at our people to move….” breathing and breathing and breathing… “And then I screamed.” The surprised faces looking at foes who were no longer there, turning slowly, bemusedly, toward me on the crest of the quarry, Green behind me, holding my arms, aiming me like a sexually powered atomic laser cannon gone mad… “And as I screamed, I let loose all this power… this grief and this power in my chest….”

  “And everybody in the way…,” Teague prodded softly.

  “Was vaporized.” I nodded, relieved a little. I was getting better at the shortened version of the story, the clinical version. The agonizing poetry of it was closer to being locked in my own heart so that only I could see.

  “So you see,” I spoke into the lonely silence of the room, “it could be worse. You at least thought you were doing good things, right? I was just….”

  “Overwhelmed,” Teague said softly, the compassion in his eyes hard to see.

  “Out of control. A raging adolescent bitch with a humongulous rage-powered gun. A deranged fucking time bomb with acne scars and a foul mouth.”

  “A grieving woman wearing her lover’s blood like her own skin,” said Green from the hallway, and I couldn’t hardly look at him.