Harvest of Holidays (2 page)

“It’s been at least three days since they’ve eaten,” Tally murmured, frowning, and handed Carson a plate of the eggs and salsa.

“Hey, no shop talk while we’re eating,” Carson complained.

Damian grinned.

“I would kill for coffee,” Donna said, in her husky, too-many-cigarettes voice. “I don’t suppose…?” She looked hopefully at Damian.

He shook his head. “Not yet.” He held another loaded plate out to Jimmy, who shook his head and held up the bottle instead.

A slender hand tapped on Damian’s ankle and he bent over and held the plate out. The hand took it and drew the plate back under the table.

Tally held out a second plate down by her shin and another, bigger, hand took it and drew it back under the table.

Knocking on the door made everyone turn their heads. They looked at each other.

“Nick would use the back door,” Damian pointed out softly.

“It’s Oscar!” came the call faintly through the door. “I have coffee!”

“My hero!” Donna cried and scrambled to her feet. She threw the door open, and her arms around the blond man on the step as he held his arms up out of the way.

“Wooah, careful!” he told her. “I figured you’d need the jolt.” He lifted the cardboard carton. “Fresh and hot from the deli on Fifth.”

Donna stepped out of the way and Oscar moved into the room.

Tally shut the front door, taking the dazzle away and letting Carson eat. “I’ll get cups,” Tally said.

Damian caught her wrist. “You sit down and eat,” he said flatly. “I’ll get the cups.” He slid a plate of eggs in front of her.

Meekly, she pulled one of the steel-framed chairs up to the table, and picked up the fork.

Carson watched the little byplay, his attention pricking. He hadn’t heard Damian use that “I’m older than you, I know better,” tone with Tally for years and years. There had been a few break-outs of the parent syndrome in him just after Carson had married her. He and Nick had virtually raised her, after all, so Carson had expected the holier than thou attitude in the beginning. He had patiently worked to earn their trust. Tally loved them like big brothers and parents rolled into one, and he didn’t want to strain that relationship in any way. Slowly, the pair of them had tapered off their custodian attitudes. Carson had always figured that was because Damian had learned Carson could take care of her and had relaxed. Nick was never going to like him, but Carson was content to have earned the taller vampire’s respect.

Now Damian was playing the grown-up card once more. Curious.

The eggs were good enough to pull Carson’s attention back to the plate and he finished them off in three big scoops and manfully held back the belch that wanted to escape. “For a vampire, you’re an amazing cook,” he told Damian when the vampire returned from the kitchen with coffee mugs in his arms and hanging from his fingers.

Oscar put the carton of coffee on the table with the spout hanging over the edge, grabbed a mug and poured. He handed Donna the first cup and kissed her cheek.

“What would I do without you?” she told him and sipped, then sighed.

There was a scrabbling sound from under the table and the two women emerged, crawling on their hands and knees between the ankles of everyone sitting or standing there. Joy, with the neon red hair, stood up and stretched, her hands in the small of her back. “Any green tea?” she asked Damian. Next to him, she stood shorter than his shoulders.

“In the pantry,” Tally told her.

“Cool.” She headed for the kitchen.

Connie put the two empty plates on the table and lined the forks and knives up together on top, then smiled broadly at Oscar as he handed her a cup of coffee. “You are a champion among men.”

“Like you’d know,” Jimmy teased her.

She stuck her tongue out at him and drank.

“The kids okay?” Donna asked Oscar, her hand on his shoulder.

“Juanita is watching them. They were in the pool when I left,” Oscar told her.

“You’re wearing a suit,” she pointed out.

The suit was a spiffy, wide-lapelled pinstripe and the pink shirt beneath had that expensive dull gleam that Carson knew would be silk or something like that. “He brought the coffee over as an apology,” he said. “He’s going into work.”

“No!” Donna said, dismayed.

Oscar shrugged. “Sorry, but one of my big clients called in a panic. He’s due in court after the holidays. I just have to go hold his hand for a while. Talk him through it.” He brushed curls away from Donna’s forehead. “Didn’t want to ruin your celebration last night.”

“God, I don’t deserve you,” Donna said, her voice throatier than usual.

“No, you don’t, but I happen to like a woman that shoots from the hip.” He looked around. “I’m going to take Donna home so she can be with the kids for the day.” Then he frowned. “Where’s Miguel?”

“He cut out early,” Connie said. “He scored an eight hour shift at McDonald’s, and it’s double-time today. He couldn’t turn it down. His landlord is an unforgiving bastard.” She tossed her black hair over her shoulder. It was stippled and striped with light grey, almost white streaks, but her face was a thirty-year-old woman’s. She had told Carson once, when she was a long way from sober, that she had noticed the first streak in her hair not long after her first successful kill and every hunt after that added more. “But if I’m still around when it goes completely grey, it’ll be a miracle, so what the fuck, huh?” she had added with a disdainful shrug and knocked back more of the sour cider she had been drinking. “It’s not like I’m ever going to be a mother, like Donna, and have to worry about staying around long enough for them to get their driver’s licenses.”

Jimmy nudged Carson in the ribs and held out a well-rolled joint. “Hair of the dog that bit you,” he said.

“Never did understand that one,” Carson murmured. He eyed the joint, still thinking about Connie’s live-fast philosophy. “Why not?” he decided, feeling some of the same recklessness, and reached for the joint.

Damian emerged from the kitchen once more as Carson was drawing the thick, musky smoke into his lungs. He put another coffee cup in front of Tally, who was still eating in slow, delicate mouthfuls. She looked up at him, a brow lifted.

“It’s herbal,” he told her.

“Thank you.”

Carson coughed as facts coupled up and pointed to an incredible, mind-blowing conclusion. He coughed harder as the remainder of the pot smoke got into his eyes and up into his nose and Jimmy took the joint from him. It took a good minute for Carson to get his lungs clear as he coughed and spluttered and tried to open his eyes and really
look
at his wife. All the while his heart skidded and bumped about in his chest.

Finally, with his eyes streaming and his throat raw from the hacking, Carson got to his feet. Everyone was watching him, alarmed or amused. He ignored them. Instead, he lowered himself to his knees next to Tally’s chair and pressed his hands around her waist. She was watching him with a touch of wariness.

“You’re pregnant?” he whispered.

Tally bit her lip. Then she nodded. It was a tiny movement. And abruptly, her crystal green eyes filled with tears and they cascaded down her cheeks.

Carson shook his head. “Don’t,” he whispered. He wiped her cheeks. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Tally threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his shoulder. She was crying fully now, shaking with the force of it. He held her and rubbed her back and let her know silently that everything would be okay.

Everyone, he realized, had fallen silent around them. He glanced around. None of them looked happy and a baby was supposed to be happy news. For normal people it would be.

But they weren’t normal.

He closed his eyes. “Everything is going to be just
fine
,” he said, but it sounded weak, even to him.

Andurag

“You have to understand,” Oscar said gently, turning his coffee mug with his long fingers, “that yours is a high risk business. The chances of you being hurt are one hundred percent. Sooner or later, you
will
be injured. Quite apart from the fact that what you do is so secret, not even members of your family get to find out what you do. The CIA are allowed to tell their spouses who they work for and everyone knows who the CIA are fighting.”

Tally bit her lip. “We know all this, Oscar. No insurance. Never. Except what a day job might offer. That doesn’t solve the problem.” She rubbed her belly as the baby kicked and wished that she could kick out like that, too. This had been a long, trying afternoon.

“I
still
don’t see what the problem is,” Nick said shortly.

“Me, either,” Damian added. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon, Tally. If something happens to you or Carson, we’ll be here.”

Carson shut the front door and put the bowl of Hershey’s Kisses back on top of the record player. “It’s 1983, guys. You acting in
loco parentis
wouldn’t work now.”

“Why not?” Nick asked, his tone even sharper. “Tally turned out just fine.”

“And I agree one hundred percent,” Carson said, picking up her hand and holding it. “You did a fantastic job raising her
and
training her, and whatever the flavor she’s got inside her now, the sprout has two demon hunters for parents, so the chances are he – she –
they
will be hunters, too, and will need your expertise. Poor kid,” he added with a sigh.

Tally squeezed his hand and looked at Nick, who was having the most trouble over this. Damian just looked thoughtful. “Nick, it’s not like in the sixties. Raising kids is much more formal and controlled these days.”

“You’re trying to explain cultural shifting to me?” he asked, sounding both pissed and amused.

“No, she’s trying to be nice about it,” Oscar said. “So let me put it in legal terms. You two don’t have a single legitimate identity between you. You’ve been moving through time using bluff and the worst fake IDs I’ve ever seen. That’s not going to work much longer. Fingerprinting is hugely sophisticated now, then they’re starting to talk about DNA testing – have you heard about that?”

Nick frowned. “It’s not a legal form of ID,” he said.

“It’s moving through the court system now,” Oscar replied. “It will pass in the next year or so. But that’s not the point. The point is, neither of you could prove in a legally acceptable way that you’re really who you say you are. You don’t exist in legal terms and so far you’ve dodged complications because you don’t impact the system. So long as you don’t line up for social security, or apply for a government job, you’ll go unnoticed. For now.”

“We’ve gone unnoticed for a very long time,” Damian said quietly.

Oscar nodded. “But now computers are going to screw that up for you.”

“Computers?” Carson repeated. “You mean that Atari thing the kids use?
That’s
a threat?”

Oscar shook his head again.

There was another knock on the door. “Trick or treeeeaaat!”

Carson flexed up onto his feet and grabbed the bowl. “Computers are so freaking expensive, they’re never going to catch on.” He opened the door and doled out candy to the costumed kids outside and shut the door once more and sat down with the bowl in front of him.

“They will,” Oscar said firmly. “Especially for processing mega amounts of data, and the government is already using them for just that. They’re going to cross-reference everything you do and irregularities will pop up just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Damian sighed and glanced at Nick. “They would never let us take care of the child.” His voice was soft.

“Exactly,” Oscar said. “Because legally, you don’t exist and you don’t have a prior familial or moral claim on the child.”

“He’s a descendent of mine,” Damian pointed out.

“You can’t prove it,” Oscar shot back. “You guys need to shift with the coming times. I know you’ve been doing that all along, but you need to pick up speed, because change is going to pick up speed. There’s a book that came out a few years ago, by a guy called Toffler—”

“
Future Shock
,” Carson added. Then he shrugged as everyone looked at him. “I read.”

Oscar nodded again. “That’s the one. Even normal humans have trouble keeping up with the rate of change and it’s only going to get worse. You have to make a real effort, you two, if you want to stay covert.”

Nick sat back and crossed his arms. “Embrace technology,” he summarized flatly.

“Yes,” Oscar said. “Use it to your advantage instead of being screwed by it.”

Tally watched Damian and Nick exchange glances and knew they were having one of those perfectly in-sync moments where they knew exactly what the other was thinking, and agreed with him.

Then Damian nodded. “We’ll work on that. Thank you.”

Oscar leaned forward. “Do it fast and do it soon. This will catch you by surprise if you don’t.”

Something shifted in Nick’s expression and his jaw rippled.

Tally touched Oscar’s arm. “When they say they’ll do it, they will, Oscar. You’ve sold them on it. Leave it alone.”

Oscar scooped up a Kiss and unwrapped it. “’kay,” he said stiffly. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask me? I gotta go take the girls out around the neighborhood before it gets dark. Donna’s out catching that…whatever it was.”

“A revenant,” Tally told him. “It’s been feeding on children that use the shortcut through the river valley.”

Oscar nodded. “Suburbia,” he said with a small sigh. “It’s supposed to be bucolic and peaceful, but I think we’ve spent more time dealing with demons and crap since we moved from Manhattan than we ever hunted before the girls came along.” Then he grinned. “By ‘we’ I’m speaking collectively, of course. I don’t envy you guys in the slightest. I like my job.” He stood up. “I like the money, too.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Carson threw another Kiss at him. “Go home and kiss your kids.”

Oscar glanced at Tally. “If you’re up to it, would you step out to the car with me?”

“Of course I’m up to it,” Tally replied instantly. “I’m only seven months pregnant, not disabled.” But she got up carefully. Lately she seemed to be knocking her belly into everything. It was wider than she was, now.