Authors: Heart of Briar
There were no streetlights or buildings to lend illumination: Jan couldn’t remember the last time she had been anywhere so dark. The only lights came from the half-dozen campfires scattered around the glade and the stars overhead.
The campfires were relatively isolated, each large enough for a group, but the other...people, she supposed, at the Center did not huddle around them, but rather moved from one to the other, sometimes dancing or capering, sometimes striding gracefully—some of them moving in ways that Jan couldn’t quite name, that made her uneasy to watch. None of them came to the fire where Martin, she and AJ now sat, blankets draped against thick logs to make seats, the fire not so much for light or warmth, as comfort.
“It was the turncoats.” She wasn’t asking a question: she had seen the thing—the things?—that had attacked Toba, recognized the coloration but more than that she had recognized the
feeling
she got when they were nearby. “You called them gnomes?”
“Gēnomos,”
AJ said. “Earth-movers. Metal, rock...they manipulate it, shape it.”
“How did they find me? And how did they get up five stories? They shaped the bricks of my building? And what was that noise? The thing that sounded like machinery?”
“I don’t know.” Martin looked distinctly worried. “I’d never heard it before; it was like a dragon, except nobody’s heard or seen a dragon since...since forever.”
“It sounded like a machine to me.”
“No,” Martin said, “definitely alive.”
“What, a dragon?” She wasn’t rejecting the idea—well, not entirely. “You said they were all dead.”
“No, I said nobody’s seen them in forever. That’s not dead. But there’s no reason for them to be helping gnomes.”
“Someone’s looking into it,” AJ said, and that seemed to put an end to the discussion, at least for Martin. Jan, on the other hand, still had one horribly important question.
“How did they find me?” she asked again.
AJ tossed another stick into the fire. “We don’t know.”
He wouldn’t look at her. She stared at the profile of his face in the firelight, the stubby lines of his muzzle, the way he’d used a headband to pull the shaggy hair off his face, and thought about what he’d said and what he hadn’t said.
“You think someone told them.”
“I don’t know. It’s a possibility. The preters love to use peoples’ greed against themselves, and humans...aren’t universally adored, even among the gentler races. Someone could have been turned...but I don’t know who.”
“But...why?” From everything she had seen, everything she had been told, the preters would make this world horrible. Then again, she reminded herself, a cold clench in her brain, she’d only been told, and shown, what AJ wanted her to see.
No. Jan reined in the paranoia. She had to pick a side, she had to believe in something. She chose to believe that...all right, not AJ, maybe, but that Martin would not lie to her. That Toba had not been lying to her.
Martin picked up a stick from the pile but, rather than adding it to the flame, instead poked at it. “None of this is new. Gnomes...it wasn’t a surprise that their entire race went turncoat, not in retrospect. They’re full of what-should-be, never satisfied with what is or was, always looking for the chance to better themselves, even if they have no idea what that thing might be. It’s their nature to be contrary, to be unwise. Preters have always been able to use that—in humans and our kind, too. They coax and then they twist and then.... You do things you would never have thought to do, alone.”
“The devil made me do it,” Jan murmured.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“So not just the gnomes who turned their coats? And not just maybe one or two among your volunteers, either?”
AJ growled, but Jan knew it wasn’t directed at her, only at what she said.
“Some of the races, the ones we warned you about. The isolationists. With this incursion, they see a chance, too. They ignore history, and pretend that they can control things they cannot....”
“You never mentioned this before,” Martin said.
“To what purpose? Would it change anything we’re doing here? Some supers don’t like the way humans treat the world, and think they can do better. They tell themselves that the preters are more like us, that they will share the world, let it go back to the mythical Way It Was.”
Martin snorted, a wet and distinctly disgusted noise. “I like the world the way it is.”
“That’s the joke, Martin. There never was a way it was. It’s always sucked.”
Another time, another place, Jan would have argued with him over that. Not here, not now.
“So it was someone...here?” She managed not to look around, but the back of her neck prickled. “Or at the warehouse?”
“The Center is safe. And the warehouse...I trust everyone there implicitly. But they have friends, family. All it would take is one mistake—there was a saying you humans used when I was a pup: loose lips sink ships. Or kill humans. Either way, we need to get you away—cut any possible connection, any link that might be used against us, to betray you, even unknowingly.”
“But I thought you said it was safer where you already had protections?” Not that the ones they had set up around her apartment had done any good. She remembered the noise, the sight of Toba being taken down by those things, the gnomes, and blanched.
“We’re supernaturals, not superheroes. A glamour can only distract the eye, cozen it into believing something more palatable. Once someone is convinced they know where you are, and want to get at you—it fades like mist. The turncoats went to your home, the places where you were known. Glamour cannot stand against knowledge.”
The guilt came back, a sticky, bitter coating on her tongue, but AJ was still talking, still making plans.
“We need time, time for you to catch us a preter. Time to unravel how they’re controlling the portals. So we need to put you somewhere they do not know, and then create the illusion that you are somewhere else, to draw them away. And then the
bansidhe—
and others—will be waiting for them, when you find out
their
weak spot”
It was sneaky. It was supernaturally sneaky, and Jan wasn’t sure if she should be impressed or terrified. So instead she asked the question she didn’t want to ask, because she had to know.
“Did the gnomes...do you think they bothered any of my neighbors?” And by bothered, she meant “ate.”
“No,” Martin said, beating the
lupin
to the punch. “Not unless anyone came out to see what was going on.”
“They wouldn’t.” It was a nice building, well-maintained and safe, but not the kind of place where people investigated, not unless it knocked on their own doors.
“Then they probably slunk away, once we were gone. Same as they did on the bus. They have no interest in others—and no interest in getting human attention. The desire to be left alone is a survival instinct.”
“But—” Jan started to say, when AJ interrupted her. No, he didn’t interrupt: he overrode her, as though she hadn’t been speaking at all.
“You can’t worry about them now. Martin, you need to take her away. Disappear. You’re the only one I can trust to make sure that she does what she needs to do.”
“Me?” His dark eyes went wide, and he shook his head, a shank of hair falling into his face before he roughly shoved the offending lock away. “You want me to take her? Alone?” The stick he’d been using to poke at the fire was still in his hand, the ember-lit end pointing at the ground, and it rose now, sweeping up to point at Jan. “Alone?”
The tone in his voice she’d thought was surprise, wasn’t. It was fear.
“There’s nobody else. We didn’t get that many volunteers to begin with, and.... You know what the preters are, what they’ll do, given a chance. That’s motivation enough for you to protect her, until she’s done. After that....” AJ looked away from the fire, his face shadowed, the muzzle made more prominent. “After that, it’s up to you what you need to do.”
Martin looked at AJ, then let the point of the stick drop again, and went back to staring into the crackling yellow flames of the fire. “All right.”
Something had gone on just then that Jan didn’t understand. But in the past—twenty-four, thirty-six hours?—there had been so much she hadn’t understood, it was too much to question. Easier to just let it go—for now. Her brain hurt, her head hurt, and dear god, her body hurt.
“I need something to eat, and I need to sleep,” she said, instead of asking them what the hell was going on and getting more answers that would explain nothing. “Anything else—everything else—is going to have to wait until morning.”
* * *
AJ disappeared for a while, then came back with her meal: a small round piece of tender meat she rather thought was rabbit, but ate, anyway, and a makeshift, dry salad of field greens. It did not replace the abandoned pizza, but she ate it greedily, wiping her fingers clean on the grass when she was done. The plate was a dull gray metal, like pewter, she thought, but when she flicked her finger against it, a sweet, singing tone rang out, like crystal. She wondered if it was dishwasher safe and where she could put hands on a full set. Did fairy-made goods last longer, or change into, what, straw, in the morning? That would solve the problem about the dishwasher, but what would she do with the straw afterward?
Martin had gone somewhere else while she ate, muttering about the need to stretch his legs, and she had appropriated the blanket he had been sitting on, wrapping it over her shoulders as the night got chillier. He didn’t come back, even as the other bonfires quieted down, their residents settling in for the night. AJ banked the fire, hemming it in until it seemed as safe and steady as a candle.
“Do you really think we can find them, catch a preter, make them give up? Do you think we can really stop them?” Her voice carried all her doubt, her exhaustion, until she didn’t recognize herself in it.
“No.” The
lupin
face didn’t really lend itself to being read, at least not by her, and his voice was flat. “But the only other option is to just sit here and let it happen.” In the darkness, his eyes reflected a more vivid red from the remaining fire. “I’m not the kind to lie down and let someone else determine my fate. Are you?”
Jan thought about all the things she’d put up with her entire life, the things she’d accepted as the-way-it-is, because she couldn’t imagine her voice would change anything. Small things and large. Important, and petty.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I am.”
He looked at her, those eyes glittering in the firelight. “Then why are you here?”
“Because...” Because they hadn’t given her a choice. Had kept her so off-balance and confused, she hadn’t had a chance to stop and be scared. “Because Tyler needs me. Because...” Jan sighed, annoyed at herself for not being able to come up with some noble, heroic response. “Because I can’t exactly go home now, can I?”
AJ let out a barking sort of laugh. “Good enough.” He stood up, his legs unfolding in a weirdly backward, graceful way that reminded her, again, that he wasn’t human. “You’ll do. Now go to bed.”
It hadn’t been a suggestion. Jan, following long-ago memories of Girl Scout camping, made sure that her socks and shoes were off the ground so nothing could crawl into them overnight, and then lay on the fire-warmed ground with her blanket underneath and Martin’s blanket around her, her arm crooked under her head for a pillow. She didn’t think she could sleep, so she stared up at the sky and tried to count the stars.
She fell asleep before she realized that she couldn’t recognize any of the constellations.
Chapter 7
“J
an. Janny.” There was a soft, featherlight touch on her cheek, warm breath on her neck. “Janny, wake up.” The touch deepened, stroking down to her collarbone, over her shoulder, a seductive shiver, and Jan stretched into it, luxuriating in the feel of skin-to-skin. It had been too long, almost a week since she and Tyler had last—
Tyler never called her Janny. Ever.
She sat up so fast, her head clunked against Martin’s, sending him back on his ass in the grass.
“Ow,” he said, glaring at her. “You don’t wake up pretty, do you?”
Her skin still tingled from his touch, the feelings it had brought up making her angrier than she would have been normally in the situation. “Do you always wake people up like that?”
“Yes.”
His response was so matter-of-fact, almost surprised that she was asking, that all the air left her, as if it had been a physical punch.
“Of course you do,” she said. She’d been warned, hadn’t she? Toba and AJ both had told her, if not in so many words. She’d let down her guard, thinking of them as allies, people to be trusted. But they weren’t. Allies, yes, but not people. And not to be trusted.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “Especially not like that.”
His eyes, chocolate-brown and seemingly guileless, reflected surprise, and then he nodded, as though it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. “All right.”
Awake now, she rubbed her eyes and looked around. The clearing was empty; all the others camping there overnight had gone before she’d woken up, not even a trace of the campfires left behind. Just an expanse of grassy meadow hedged in by trees, and a pale blue sky overhead.
AJ was nowhere to be seen, either. Just her and Martin. Great. Their fire had died down to coals overnight, and she shivered, even though the air was relatively mild. She’d thought to grab her bag when they’d escaped the apartment, but not a jacket, and the clothing she’d put on the day before, thinking they’d be hanging around her place, didn’t do much against morning chills.
“Next time, I’m going to have a go-bag ready. Change of clothes, extra meds, passport...and a toothbrush. God, I’d kill for a toothbrush.” Her mouth was dry, and she ran her tongue over her teeth and grimaced, rubbing the back of her hand against her face and wondering if she looked as grimy as she felt.
“There’s a shower over there,” Martin said, pointing across the clearing. “If you want.”
She wanted, badly.
The walk across the clearing in her bare feet was surprisingly pleasant—none of the rocks or twigs she’d expected—as though someone—or something—groomed the area regularly. The grass tickled the soles of her feet, and dew left them damp.
“Forget about carjacking; they should hire out as gardeners.”
Maybe they did. For all that she’d learned in the past few days, she didn’t know bug-all. There could be thousands of them; there could be millions. Or, there might only be a few more than she had already seen. And they could make their livings a hundred different ways.
“When this is over...”
She stopped, both verbally and physically, standing at the edge of the tree line, the words echoing in the silence. The comment about the go-bag, and then this...when this was over...what? She would hang out with Martin over pizza once a week? She would do an in-depth study of the supernatural aspects of the natural world? Or she’d pretend that none of it had ever happened, that the entire episode had been some kind of weird bad mental breakdown and she was all better now?
“Worry about it when it
is
over,” she said finally. She carefully did not consider option four—that she wouldn’t make it to the end.
They were protecting her now, because she was useful. But she didn’t know how far that went, or for how long.
The shower turned out to be a large bag suspended from a tree limb about ten feet off the ground, with a simple rope pull next to it. On a stump next to the shower-tree, there was a stack of coarse towels, folded neatly, and a clay pot of some white substance that felt and smelt like soap.
“Great.” Jan wasn’t the outdoorsy type—she’d hoped for at least some kind of shelter. But the grimy feeling of her skin and scalp didn’t leave much room for debate.
Taking off her clothes, she folded them neatly and placed them on a flat rock that, from its shape and distance from the water-bag, had probably been put there for exactly that purpose. She hesitated, then slipped off the silver bracelet, too, and reached up for her earrings, only to discover that, at some point between yesterday morning and now, they had disappeared.
“Damn it, I liked those. They were expensive.”
She didn’t have the urge to stand around and mourn, though: The air was a lot colder, without her jeans and sweater, and her skin pimpled with goose bumps.
Standing naked underneath the bag, Jan scooped some of the soap up with her fingers and lathered her skin with it. It spread easily, clearly meant to be used on dry skin, and the smell was pleasant, like bright flowers and sunshine. She scrubbed it into her hair, too.
“Two days without conditioner, and my hair is going to look like hay,” she muttered, but short of a CVS appearing in the clearing, there wasn’t much she could do about that.
Lathered up and shivering, goose bumps running along her arms and legs, Jan took a deep breath to brace herself, reached out, and pulled the cord.
The water that rushed over her, contrary to expectation, wasn’t cold. It wasn’t hot, either, but warm enough that she wanted it to go on and on forever.
It didn’t. She waited a minute, in case the bag needed time to refill, then pulled the cord again. Another gush of water rushed over her, and this time she remembered to rinse out her hair before the waterfall ended.
“Here.”
She took the towel being offered and then yelped. “Damn it, Martin!”
He stepped back, looking down at his boots. “Sorry. I just...” He looked up again, and the bastard was smiling. “You’re good to look at.”
Just that. No apology, no stuttering excuses, just that statement.
She swallowed down her outrage, aware that it was just the two of them there—unless there were others, hiding? Invisible? The thought gave Jan the skeeves even more than being alone, and she shoved it away, wrapping the towel around herself as a protection.
“It’s generally polite to wait for an invite before you look,” she said, tartly.
“All right.”
He stood there, waiting, and Jan—despite herself, despite everything—laughed. He had no shame at all, none. “Go
away,
Martin.”
He heaved a sigh, and ostentatiously turned his back and walked away. Jan didn’t trust him not to change his mind, though, and so made quick work of drying off and getting back into her clothing. She considered going commando rather than putting her underwear back on, then wrinkled her face and wore them, anyway. The jeans had dirt on them, and the shirt was sweat-grubby, but they were decent enough for now. Her apartment was out of reach—she didn’t want to think about her apartment, or the damage that must have happened during the attack—and god alone knew when she’d see another department store.... She could rinse them out when they got to wherever they were going.
Where the hell
were
they going?
“Don’t,” she told herself, feeling the sense of being punched threatening to strike again, the past few days jumbling together into one massive panic attack that she couldn’t afford without her asthma meds. “Don’t... Just keep moving. Think about what it all means after you survive. Otherwise you’re going to curl up and not move again, and that’s not going to solve anything, and it sure as hell isn’t going to bring Tyler home.”
As pep talks went, it sucked, but her breathing evened out again, and she could walk back to the Center without feeling the sky falling in on her or her insides spilling out. Right then, she’d take that as a win.
When Jan reached the remains of their campfire, the blankets she’d slept on were rolled up, the fire pit itself cooled, and the grass already starting to regrow in the charred soil.
“No magic. Right.” No wonder the other campfires had disappeared by morning. The National Parks department would love to learn how to do that. And they’d save a fortune reseeding the baseball fields every year....
She realized then that Martin was nowhere to be seen. Jan scanned the clearing, frowning, and then saw him. Or she assumed it was him, anyway, since there hadn’t been any horses in the Center when she’d woken up. He turned and trotted toward her, a smooth gait that was eerily reminiscent of the way he walked. At a distance, less stunned than she had been the first time he’d transformed, she could see where he was different from a real horse: his neck was longer, his body more compact, and his legs looked as though they were hinged differently. But the main difference was in the eyes: as he came up to her, she could see that they were still Martin’s eyes.
It was creepy as hell, a reminder that she was alone with something not-human. That she was up to her ears with things not-human.
As though sensing her discomfort, he stopped a pace or two away, and lowered his head to crop at the grass, casual-like.
“Toba died to save you,” she whispered, reminding herself. “The
bansidhe
carried you to safety. AJ rescued you, fed you. Martin’s here to help you. You can’t trust him...but he won’t hurt you.”
It wasn’t enough, but it gave her the strength to walk up to Martin, who was still nibbling at the grass, and cough slightly to get his attention. He lifted his head and looked at her, then dipped his head at the piece of black fabric on the ground near the folded-up blankets.
“If you’re so magic, how come you have to use soap and campsite showers?” she wondered, not expecting an answer. If he could talk in this form...that would be too freaky, she decided. There had to be limits.
Martin snorted, an impatient sound, and indicated the fabric on the ground again. She bent down and picked it up, letting the narrow strip run through her fingers. It was soft, some kind of cotton, maybe, a hand span wide and about the length of her arm. “What is it?”
He snorted again.
“That’s not much help.” She looked at it more carefully and sighed. “A blindfold?”
Apparently, yes. She was supposed to blindfold herself before they did anything else.
“What, because there’s something that’s going to freak me out, now? Seriously?”
Martin just waited.
“I am so very much not liking this. I just want that said.” But she tied the fabric around her eyes, anyway, and waited.
A warm body brushed against her, and she reached out instinctively, her hand coming to rest on what had to be Martin’s shoulder. Haunch. Whatever it was called in this form. Once her hand landed, he pushed against her again, not quite knocking her off her feet.
Clearly, even without words, she understood: he wanted her to get on his back.
Jan hesitated, remembering the warning from AJ. She wasn’t supposed to do that, not get on his back. That was the one thing that had been made clear: it was dangerous. Dangerous enough, out of all this, to get specific mention.
Martin made a noise that rang out, a descending nicker of impatience, and gave her another push.
“All right. Fine. But if you throw me, or anything, I swear, I’ll make a coat out of your hide.”
Another push, this one gentler, and her fingers were clenching in his short, coarse mane, his body somehow encouraging her up, even as her arms pulled and her legs swung. And then—like magic—she was on his back, legs dangling to either side.
She’d never had more experience on horseback than the occasional pony ride as a kid, but she didn’t think it was supposed to feel like this, as though the inside of her knees had melded with his sides. As though someone else was posing her, her body canted forward, her arms angled and her hands buried themselves in his mane, the longer strands wrapping around her wrists.
Unlike those pony rides, there was a sense that she wouldn’t fall, that she
couldn’t
fall. Martin would hold on to her.
And then he moved forward, not a walk or a trot but a jolting run, and Jan leaned forward against his neck and tried not to think about how fast they might be going—or where. Riding blind—literally—was not an experience she had ever wanted, and she wasn’t enjoying it now.
Where were they going? Into the trees? Jan flinched in anticipation of branches hitting her or running into a tree, or...
Martin’s body flexed underneath her, his hide rough and warm under her cheek, the muscles in her legs and arms aching with the unfamiliar exertion. He took another stride, and she took a breath, the stride lasting the length of a heartbeat, then another, and another, until she wasn’t sure if it was her heart or his hooves making the beat. Blind, she had no option but to trust him.
And then he leaped, her heart leaping with him, a sense of weightlessness unlike anything else, even the moment of takeoff in a plane, even being carried by the
bansidhe.
But before Jan could decide if she enjoyed it or not, they were coming down again, landing with a hard splash.
Jan had barely enough time to realize they were underwater—where the hell had there been water that deep?—before water filled her nose and ears, forced its way into her lungs, and she blacked out.
* * *
She came to again with a start, coughing even though her lungs were clear of liquid. Jan drew in a cautious breath, half expecting an asthma attack to hit her, but everything was working properly, no coughing or wheezing. Slowly, without moving again, she tried to take stock. Alive, check. She was on her back, staring at a popcorn-textured ceiling that had seen better years. Her fingers ached, and when she lifted them to look, the knuckles were red-swollen with coarse strands of black hair caught under her nails and still wrapped around her fingers.
Martin’s mane.
“Ow.” She flexed her fingers carefully, wincing, and the strands fell onto the sheet covering her, dark against the over-washed cotton.
She sat up gingerly, feeling her back and shoulders protest, too, and looked around. She was alone in the room. Naked. Naked, damp-haired, and alone in a small room that held only the narrow bed, a single straight-back chair and her.