Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel (17 page)

They were too focused on their prey and didn’t realize that we’d entered the alley. A second kobold darted forward to nip the woman again, but I was already moving, and moving faster than a human could’ve.

I got a hand on the back of the moving kobold’s neck, right at the scruff, and hauled it backward and away from its target. It snarled in surprise, but the forearms on a kobold were built like a hyena’s, not a person’s, and it didn’t have the joints or movement to bend its forearms up or around to get at me. It threw its heavy weight around desperately, but I dug my hand in harder and refused to let go. Months of working out, plus the onset of my transition, had given me enough arm muscles that it couldn’t break my grip and get away.

The kobold beside it gave a guttural cry that was somewhere on that midpoint between human and animal, and it charged me. I punted it hard in the chest with my foot, and it slammed backward and into the wall with a yelp of surprise and indignation. I looked around to see whether the third kobold was coming up behind me, but I didn’t need to worry. It was flat to the ground, with Suze’s knee keeping it pressed firmly in the position she wanted it, and it wasn’t making so much as a sound, given that she had her best switchblade fully extended and the point positioned less than an inch from one of the kobold’s large eyes.

“Not a cry, not a whimper,” Suze said to the kobold in a deliberate echo to what they had said to their victim. “Or you truly will never see another dawn.”

“Ma’am?” I called to the woman, who was still frozen in place against the wall. “Ma’am, are you hurt?”

She stared at me, her mouth an
o
of surprise, and her rheumy old eyes still blank with fear. Beside her I could see one of those sleeping bags that’s made from sewing layers of old blankets together, the kind that I had seen other homeless people on the streets of Providence wrap around themselves and sleep in. She didn’t say anything to me, and I wondered if she’d really heard me, or if she was even able to respond.

“Ma’am,” I said again, making my voice as gentle as I could. “Ma’am, it’s going to be very cold tonight. Is there a shelter that you can go to tonight? I promise you, ma’am, that these things aren’t real.” And I ground my fingers farther into the neck of the kobold I was holding, and gave it a shake that even I knew was vicious. “These things aren’t real,” I repeated, “but even if they were, you’d never have to worry about them again, because I won’t let them harm you.”

She nodded slowly, to what part of my statement I wasn’t sure, and then, holding my gaze, reached down with shaking hands to collect her sleeping bag and a grimy backpack. She pulled those things to her and stood up, then hurried away on shuffling feet, whispering to herself, “Not real, not real,” even as she stepped over the gray tail of the one that Suze kept pinned to the ground. We all listened as her footsteps in the snow moved farther away and finally were gone in the night.

The kobold that I had kicked kept its distance, but its gleaming dark eyes watched me. “Young prince,” it said, and its voice was a little girl’s, hurt and betrayed. “Why does the prince attack us?”

“You live in Madeline Scott’s territory,” I ground out, my temper spiking as the kobold tried to pretend innocence. “You live by Madeline Scott’s rules. And those rules are clear—you don’t hunt the humans.”

The kobold snickered, its black lips parting. “Just amusement,” it said. “Just a game with one whose mind is already lost. If we hunted in earnest, you would know.” The black lips widened farther, showing every sharp tooth.

“Or would he?” interjected the kobold that I still held by its scruff. It had gone limp when the first kobold spoke, and now it hung from my hand with every appearance of relaxation. Its voice was a young boy’s, the kind you’d hear from a five-year-old, and then it laughed, a high titter that raked against the ear. “So many secrets are known only to the queen. And when she fades to nothing, who is left to speak the secrets?”

A chill ran up my spine that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature. As hard as it was to imagine when you looked at them, the kobolds were where the myth of the sphinx had developed. They spoke in riddles and confusion, and there were those who believed that they also spoke prophesy.

The third kobold spoke then, another little girl, but this one was sly and gleeful, though still eyeing Suzume’s knife warily. “Perhaps then a value would be placed on those who give tongue to the dead.”

Suze’s lip curled. “Well, that’s an insight into the kobold dating scene that I didn’t need.”

The first kobold by the wall hissed in rage at Suze’s words, and the fur along the ridge of its back lifted. “The little fox laughs, but soon she’ll be in tears,” it snarled, that little girl voice raging. “The offspring of the White Fox harbor their own poison.” Then she turned coy, turning her head to one side and watching both of us from the corner of her eye. “Or don’t you wish to know what the future holds?”

Suze gave her own snarl, and in one quick movement had turned the knife in her hand away from the kobold’s eye to slice down against its leg, one fast cut into the flesh that for a second exposed the whiteness of bone before the blood began to flow. The sound the kobold made wasn’t an animal yelp, but a disturbing child’s scream of pain, and then Suze was off its back and had hurled it, one-handed, to where the first kobold stood. They went down in a pile of yelps, but when they came up neither made a move against her, just pressed backward. The wounded kobold leaned down to lick its leg, but the one that had spoken smiled tauntingly, proud that it had clearly struck a nerve.

I cut in, dropping the kobold that I’d been holding after one last brutal shake. “Save it for the tourists, guys. There’s no prophecy, just good background and guesses. Now keep your attention on stray animals, because you remember what happens when you break the rules, don’t you? My brother and I left your kind bleeding into the gutters last summer.” I looked at all of them, not hiding just how much I wanted to make them feel just a hint of the terror that they’d inflicted on that homeless woman, so breakable in her obvious madness.

“The prince denies prophesy, but we are the speakers of truth, the seers of hearts,” was the sibilant response hissed from the shadows. “And your own heart is so obvious, so soft.” A high laugh. “You hunger to break our bones, wreak your vengeance, though you might dress it up in the clothing of justice. But you fear to be like your sister, fear to glory in violence as she does, so you will let us go with no harm.”

I hated how right they were, but I looked at those too-intelligent, mocking eyes, and refused to be taunted into an action I’d already decided against. “You like talking about my sister’s violence,” I said coldly. “That’s good, because I’m going to be talking with my sister about what I saw tonight. She’ll probably want to have a chat with you guys. You remember Prudence’s chats, don’t you? The kind that end with her ripping out organs. She’s not like me—she won’t stick to the things that grow back.” I might disagree with almost everything that Prudence stood for and believed in, but when it came to the kobolds I had no problem with using her as the bogeyman to prevent the kind of behavior that I’d seen tonight.

The kobolds made shows of sneering and flicking their tails to show disdain, but the one that Suze had cut faded quickly away, followed by the second. The third also began to slink off, but stopped at the entrance of the alley to get one last taunt in. “And what will happen when the hand that holds the dog’s leash is gone, and the master’s voice is silenced?” it asked, with that lisp on its consonants that so many little children possess as they shape their soft palates around words made for adult mouths. “The dog will bite then, and no one can tell it not to.” Then it was gone in the night.

“I hate those creepy little bastards,” Suze bit out grimly. She hunkered down to wipe the blade of her knife clean on the snow, and shot me a sideways look. “We could’ve just killed all three, you know.”

I knew, of course. I was a Scott vampire, and no one liked the kobolds, even other kobolds. It was because I’d wanted to kill them so badly that I hadn’t. “I’ll talk with my mother about this. They were right—they hadn’t engaged in a real hunt, not the way they or my family would see it.”

“So, nothing?” Suze asked, her eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

“Definitely not nothing. I don’t think that was the first time they tormented someone like that—they were too quick with their defense, too sure that the woman was mentally ill.” My hands clenched again as the memory of the woman’s vulnerability flashed through my mind, overlaid with my own shame at the part of myself that had assessed and been fascinated by it. For the millionth time, I wished that I could’ve been born something other than what I was. I forced my mind to focus on an active solution to what was going on. “I’m going to call my brother tomorrow morning. Prudence is sitting on top of some major aggravation right now—if she agrees that they’re too far over the line of behavior, then I’m sure she’d love to make a trip to the city to reinforce some manners.”

“And if she agrees with the kobolds, or just doesn’t give a shit about the homeless?” Suze put her knife away and, linking her arm in mine, began the walk back to the car.

“Then tomorrow night you and I will go around and have some chats with kobold groups,” I said, deadly serious. I could avoid feeding my own violent urges when it was possible, but I wasn’t the guy I’d been a year ago. I couldn’t look away entirely from something when I had the means to correct it, even though that correction meant embracing the part of myself that terrified me.

We walked in silence for another few steps, our feet landing on a mixture of bare sidewalk, rock-salt-covered ice, and old snow. I felt Suze’s arm slide through mine, feeling utterly right and comfortable. “So,” she asked, watching me from the corner of her eye, “am I go for an overnight?”

I couldn’t help the smile that stretched across my face at her bluntness. No delicate hanging around in the living room for her, ticking down the hours until one could believably claim to be too tired to drive home. I snuggled our linked arms tighter and slipped my bare hand from my coat pocket to hers. There was a lot left unresolved, and as our first major fight in the relationship, it was still as open and delicate as the dog bite on my hand.

But the kobolds were liars and charlatans, and there was no such thing as fate.

“I’d like that,” I said, and even in a night so cold that the skin of my face was aching, the sight of her smile made me warm.

I’m not sure which of us started walking faster, or maybe we both did, but soon we were back in the car and making our way to my apartment at a good pace. After all, there was something to look forward to now.

“Succubi refugees, werebear attachés, and now kobold corralling,” Suze noted. “You have a few plates in the air, don’t you?”

“Yeah. And if they’d ever seen me wait tables, they’d know that I’m the last person in the world who should be trusted with delicate china.”

I woke up to
a jabbing in my side. The room was dark, illuminated slightly by the light from the streetlight seeping through my cheap curtains. I could feel the cold of the room on my face, but the rest of my body, tucked beneath flannel sheets, heavy comforter, and augmented by the toasty heat of the woman snuggled next to me, was warm. I was aware that my skin was damp with sweat, not just on what was beneath the covers, but also my face and head. My heart was racing so hard that I could almost imagine that I could feel it thudding against the inside of my chest. That, apart from the jabbing, was my first hint.

The jabbing, courtesy of a surprisingly bony kitsune elbow, stopped, and I felt her snuggle closer. “You were having a nightmare, Fort.”

I ran my hand over the back of my head, feeling that my hair was actually wet from the sweat. There was an almost metallic taste in my mouth. The cobwebby feeling finally left my brain, and I remembered my dream. It was an old one, mostly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Was I making noise?”

“A little. Mostly you kept tensing up, though. And when I tried to wake you up at first, you flinched so hard that you almost fell out of bed.” She paused, and then I felt her hand lightly touch my face. “Do you want to talk about it?” Suze was tentative, uncertain. It was oddly comforting to know that she trusted me enough to show that vulnerability—that she didn’t have all the answers, or all the know-how. Apparently even ass-kicking kitsune could be flummoxed about the protocol of dealing with the nightmares of a significant other.

“Not really,” I said honestly. And I didn’t. It was the old dream, more of a memory, really, of the day that my foster parents, Brian and Jill, had been murdered. My sister had painted the floors and walls with their blood because I’d told them the truth about what we were, and they’d believed me. They’d loved me, they’d believed me, and they’d died for it.

It was a dream that I’d had for almost two decades, but tonight’s rendition had been worse, and a recurring nightmare that had begun around the time that my transition started. The events of the dream were the same as ever, but this time my reaction had been different. I hadn’t cared when Brian came home to see Jill’s broken body, and I hadn’t even reacted when Prudence had torn open his throat. All I’d cared about was that arterial spray, and all the fear and terror and anger that had made his blood smell so good.

I really, really didn’t want to talk about that dream. Not even with Suze.

Her voice pulled me back to myself, and helped push the nightmare down. Not away—it could never really go away. But down was at least an improvement. “Do you need anything?” she asked.

“Just you.” I wrapped my arms around her, pressing my cheek against hers, smelling her hair, feeling her bare skin against mine. “Just stay with me.”

“Oh, that. That I’ve got covered. That I can
rock out with
.” Then her lips were pressing against mine, and I didn’t have to think at all.

*   *   *

The next time I woke up, the sun had risen and was shining through my wholly inadequate curtains. The woman I’d fallen asleep entwined with was gone, but there was a warm, fluffy lump between my knees. I pulled the covers up and peered down. A long, dark snout lifted up from where it was resting on my left thigh, and Suze gave me an annoyed glare and a small
grf
noise, though whether she was objecting to the influx of cold air from me lifting the covers or simply that I’d woken her up, I wasn’t sure.

I dropped the covers and began the task of awkwardly wiggling out of bed. Suze made no move to leave her warm little den, and I had to tug my legs out while trying not to accidentally knock her or squish one of her little limbs. One of my previous roommates had had an elderly Siamese cat named Rousseau. Among his many other accomplishments, Rousseau was able to use his long, monkeylike paws to open doors, and I’d woken up on a number of mornings to discover that Rousseau had entered my room and slid under the covers at some point in the night to snuggle himself comfortably right in the
v
of my crotch. Having an unexpected furry guest that close to my testicles was never a comfortable discovery, particularly given Rousseau’s notably cranky and volatile temperament. So my history with furry bodies under the covers was a decidedly mixed one. As I finally extricated myself from the bed and began pulling on an assortment of warm clothes, the cold air of the apartment hitting me like a full-body slap, I also couldn’t deny that it nudged against the sore spot of our fight. As much as Suze clearly didn’t see a problem with having sex with me in human form, then spending the night cuddled against me as a fox, it was doing a pretty good job of weirding me out. Going to sleep next to a woman, I expected to wake up beside her as well.

Standing under a stream of hot water in the shower, I acknowledged that this was probably going to have to require another relationship discussion.
Ugh
, was my immediate response. After the last two days, that was the last thing I wanted to do. I racked my brain for any way to avoid that particular branch of the decision tree. Maybe I could get her a little doggie bed for those times when she preferred being in fox form. I pondered that for barely half a second before shuddering. Somehow I’d managed to come up with a way to make the whole situation even weirder.

Suze was slowly emerging from the bed when I went back into the room. Still in fox form, she’d gotten out from under the covers and was stretched out lazily. At the sight of me she gave a large yawn, exposing her sharp white teeth, then thumped her tail enthusiastically. I’d brought underwear, jeans, and a long-sleeved tee into the bathroom with me, so as she bounced playfully around the room, stealing a pair of clean socks from me before I could put them on, making happy little fox noises, and generally acting in a way that would’ve guaranteed viral video success, I pulled on a heavy cable sweater and finished getting ready.

Wondering if she was just reluctant to make the shift to human form because it meant the loss of her fluffy winter coat, I collected her scattered clothing from around the room and put it in one convenient pile on the bed. She responded by rolling on her back and presenting her belly for rubs.

“C’mon, Suze,” I said, unable to fully keep the irritation out of my voice. “I’d like to be able to get a response in human words.”

She narrowed her eyes, and shifted. Between one moment and the next, the dark-furred fox was replaced by Suze, though the expression of annoyance in those eyes remained even as they changed from gold to dark brown.

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” she noted.

I bit my tongue to avoid mentioning which part of the bed she’d woken up in.

She continued looking at me steadily, tilting her head to one side as she assessed me.

“Want to go out for breakfast?” I asked, shaking off the creeping discomfort of being examined so closely. “You’d be able to get real bacon.”

“Is something bothering you?”

She wasn’t really psychic, I reminded myself. She just had the unfair advantage of having increased senses that probably could pick up on my increased heart rate and the prickling of sweat. “I didn’t sleep too well,” I said, which was actually at least halfway true.

After another assessing pause, she seemed to accept my justification, and nodded. She started getting dressed. “Hey, let’s go to that little diner we went to a while back. The one with the silver-dollar pancakes.”

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed. “Want me to check if Dan and Jaison want to come?”

Suze’s head popped out of the top of her turtleneck, and she made a face. “Are you sure we can’t just take Jaison and leave Dan behind?”

“Ha-ha.” I had started to head out the door when my phone rang. I took it out of the charger and checked the caller ID—Chivalry. I cursed a little, remembering that I’d forgotten to give him a call after the
metsän kunigas
ceremony. Between that, checking in to see if he’d changed his mind about the succubi situation, and needing to update him about what Suze and I had seen the kobolds doing last night, I definitely owed him more than a prebreakfast text.

“Go knock on Dan’s door,” I asked Suze as I hit the answer button. “Hey, Chivalry, listen—”

My brother cut me off, his voice low. “You need to come home,” he said softly, and something about the way he spoke made me freeze and listen, and even as I did I realized that I’d been waiting for this call for a while now, and that part of me had known that this moment was coming without even realizing it.

“It’s Mother,” I said—not asking, because I knew it wasn’t a question. I had a sense of unreality, of cliché. All of Madeline’s hundreds of years of life, and it came down to this—a call on a phone that interrupted plans for Saturday brunch. I was holding the phone with my right hand, but I was suddenly unsure about what to do with my left. If I reached up to touch my face, was I doing it because I needed to, or because I was acting out this moment? I shoved my free hand in my pocket.

“It’s Mother,” Chivalry agreed. He cleared his throat loudly, and seemed to force himself to speak more regularly. His voice came out clipped, strained. “She’s very weak today, Fort. Prudence.” He coughed, cleared his throat again. “Prudence thinks that it isn’t going to be much longer. You need to be here.”

“Should I—”

“Pack a bag.”

“Okay.” I accepted it, feeling the weight. I’d known yesterday that my mother was dying, but now it was different. I was a son whose mother was dying, and I needed to go home and wait until she was dead. I rubbed my hand hard against the back of my neck, and I realized that I didn’t even remember taking it out of my pocket. “Okay, I’ll be there soon.”

“Thank you.” We both paused; then Chivalry was the one who said, “Good-bye,” and hung up.

I just held the phone for a second, then put it back down beside its charger. I was going to pack that, I thought to myself. That was easier to think about. I’d have to call in to work, let Orlando know that I wouldn’t be coming in tomorrow, so that he’d have time to find someone else to fill in. I had to pack toothpaste and a toothbrush, or else I’d have to buy some down in Newport, at the grocery store. I knew that if I really wanted to I could just get in the car and drive down, and ask my mother’s staff to stock me with a complete wardrobe and toiletries set, but it felt better to be thinking about packing up my duffel and choosing what I’d need. It felt substantial, the only substantial thing in the world at this moment.

I didn’t want to look at Suzume, because I didn’t really want to say the words yet. But she was right there, sitting on my bed, and there was only so long that I could avoid looking at her.

She was looking at me, with that patience that she was wholly capable of but was always a surprise to be reminded about. It was the patience of a fox waiting for a mouse to move, to reveal its presence, and it was endless.

“Do you want me to drive you down?” she asked. Of course she would’ve heard the whole conversation—even in her human form her hearing was excellent. But there she sat on my bed, in a turtleneck and a pair of underpants, her legs and feet still bare in the morning cold. She hadn’t even combed her hair yet, and the midnight strands were fluffy and tangled on one side of her head and completely flat on the other. Her dark eyes were focused on me, and there was nothing but patience from her.

If I hadn’t loved her before that moment, I would’ve loved her then.

“No,” I said, focusing on those clear options in front of me, grateful for the choice she’d given me. I wouldn’t have to talk about feelings or the future yet, just the mechanics of what to pack, how to travel. “No, if you drove me down, then you’d have to get someone to pick you up. I can drive myself.”

After that, I just focused on getting out the door. My duffel bag came out from under the bed, and I stuffed it with clothes and toiletries. It was my family, so I stuffed in my Colt .45, along with some boxes of ammunition. I called Orlando to let him know that I wouldn’t be coming to work at Redbones, and I didn’t know for how long. I said that it was a family crisis, but didn’t bother to explain the details. I heard the irritation under his sympathy, and it didn’t really matter to me. He started to warn me not to stay away too long, or he might like the coverage person better than me, and I hung up.

Suze told Dan what was going on, and he put coffee in one of his travel mugs for me and made a grilled cheese sandwich so that I could eat while I drove. Jaison said something to me that I registered as being heartfelt and meaningful, but a second later I couldn’t remember what he’d said at all.

I got into the Scirocco, which Suze had started up while I was packing, so the air coming out of the vents was warm enough to dry out my eyes, and the steering wheel wasn’t so cold that I had to wrap my sleeve over my palm to touch it comfortably. Once I was in the driver’s seat, she leaned down to me.

“If you need some company, give me a call,” she said. I nodded, and she kissed me. Then she backed up so that I could close the car door, and we waved to each other. As I was pulling out of the apartment’s lot, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that she was still standing there, watching me as I went. I raised my hand to wave one last time, and she returned the gesture. Then I turned onto the road, and she was gone.

I drove almost in a fugue state, taking every turn by habit and memory, both thankfully distracted by the minutiae of driving and all too much in my own head. And then, almost too quickly, I was pulling into the driveway of my mother’s mansion, where my brother was standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

*   *   *

Days went by.

Madeline spent most of her time sleeping. We sat around her bed, talking quietly, or sometimes just reading. Chivalry’s new wife, Simone, was constantly at his side, and it was clear that he was leaning heavily on her. That left me and Prudence as a very uncomfortable pairing. When Madeline was awake, she would talk a little to us, but sometimes she was confused. She asked for people who had been dead for years, and then when she was reminded of that, she’d nod, then ask for them again. Other times she would wake up and be the same Madeline she’d been before her decline, but it was impossible to know when that would be the case, so we were always on edge when she first began talking, as we tried to figure out which Madeline we were speaking to. When she was fully cognizant, that tended to annoy her, and that tired her out faster, so even when we could really talk with her, it never lasted long.