The Taken

muttered to herself, “Sharp and sour. Acidic and cold. No one told me.” Her eyes arrowed up, full of blame. “Now rejection has entered my emotional repertoire, too. And I can never unknow it.”

Grif winced, but still backed away. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s what men always say, isn’t it?” She laughed without humor, and licked the taste of him from her lips.

“I just… I can’t kiss another woman.”

A low chuckle rumbled in her chest, and Grif felt it echo in his shoulder blades. Shoulders bunched, she swiped her arm across her mouth. “Do you know what’s hilarious about this whole debacle? What’s so absurd?”

He shook his head, not daring to say a word.

“You, Griffin Shaw, are under the illusion that you’ve stopped living.” She bared her teeth, the smile gone macabre. “And Katherine Craig is under the illusion that she still is.”

Grif shook his head. No, that wasn’t right. There had to be a way. Kit was still breathing, they both were. Besides… “I wasn’t talking about Katherine Craig.”

“Oh, you meant Evelyn Shaw?” She bit her lip consideringly, accidentally drawing blood, and her eyes rolled again. Then his voice, the desperate nightmare voice, sprung from Anne’s throat. “Evie…”

Anne straightened, dispassionate again, and nodded once. “I see,” she said, in her own voice again. “You desire to know what happened to her, your old love. But do you want it more than anything?”

Grif wiped his mouth, but her taste, the ozone, the Everlast she’d buried inside of him pinballed through his core. “Yes.”

“I can give you that.”

He stilled and looked at her.

She smiled. “If you let Kit die.”

Grif closed his eyes, let his legs give, and slumped on the paint bucket he’d placed there minutes before. Picking up his hat from where it’d been knocked when Anne lunged, Grif settled it on his head, and buried his face in his hands. She learned quick, he thought wryly. He had to give her that.

“You look torn.” She knelt before him, then reached out and gently-but insistently-pulled his hands away. Tilting her head, she peered up into his face. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes,” he said tightly.

She leaned toward him. “Let me taste…”

Grif rocketed to his feet. “Don’t touch me!” he thundered, and there was power in his voice, there was pain. There was Everlast.

Anne heard it, and straightened with surprise. Was that concern furrowing her brow? Did she regret planting power inside of him? Maybe she only now realized that in trying to make him more alien, she’d actually made him stronger.

“Then choose,” she said, lifting her chin high. “Weigh your need to know what happened to your old love versus your need to save the new. Do you want that old knowledge, or do you want Kit?”

“She’s not a new love-”

“I tasted it on your kiss! It’s there, like a hint of Paradise!” she screamed, and the building behind him shook. “Why else would you still be here? Why would I? You love her, Griffin Shaw! You love her without willing it or wanting it, and that is the most exquisite pain of all.”

Do I? he wondered, wincing.

Anne crossed her arms. “Choose. Two loves, but you can only have one. Do you want to know what happened to Evie, where she is? Or do you want to stay here and try to save Katherine Craig?”

If he said his wife’s name, the mystery that’d haunted him through the last half century, and throughout the Everlast, would be solved. Who killed his Evie? Who killed Griffin Shaw?

Thinking of Evie, drawing the memory of the way she’d looked that last night-dazzling in blood-red-he rose unsteadily. I might even be able to find her in the Everlast. He’d apologize, they’d reunite. And they could remain together forever.

Standing, Grif swayed under the weight of the feathers buried beneath his flesh, and gave Anne a baffled half- smile. Tipping his hat, he backed away. “I need to find Kit.”

But when he turned, Anne was there, her face inches from his again, blank with shock. “But the knowledge is here! Right on the tip of my tongue.”

“The past is dead.” Evie was dead. But Kit, and yes, his sudden, unexpected, baffling love for her, was very much alive. Using free will, not power, Grif circumvented Anne, and kept walking.

“You can’t save her.”

But he would try.

“You can’t save her!” The Pure screeched again when he kept walking, her fury fully returned. Grif didn’t need to turn around to know her eyes were roiling. “Everyone around you is in danger! Kit is. Tony, too! You can’t even save yourself, Centurion!”

Grif halted at that. He waited for Anne to come to him, knowing she would, and tilted his head sideways when she did. “What did you say?”

“You’re a Centurion. Your job isn’t to save, but to Take.”

“Not that. You mentioned Tony.” He jerked his head. “That man you saved me from yesterday, Schmidt. How did he know where I was staying?”

Anne said nothing.

“I thought Paul told him.” He’d thought Paul had died because of it. “But it wasn’t him, was it?”

Anne watched him closely, studying his shifting expressions and emotions with bald hunger. But Kit had never told Paul where they were staying after her house had been broken into. As far as Grif knew, only one man alive knew they were at Tony’s. Grif looked at Anne. “Where is he?”

But the Pure had reverted back to her stoic, contained self. It was like her emotions were rubberized. They elongated, but always snapped back into their original form. “Just let her go. Then we may shed this flesh and go, too. No more pain. No more grief or guilt or anguish.”

Grif shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Incubation would wash away all my problems.”

“Yes.”

“No more worry over whodunit. Or anything at all.”

“That’s right.”

“But Anne?” He reached up suddenly, and slid his fingertips along her cheek and behind her neck. Anne, shocked by his touch, didn’t answer or move. “Anne,” he repeated, “if she dies there won’t be any more of this, either.”

And Grif kissed her this time, allowing the thought of Kit to coalesce in the front of his mind. He thought of her insistent smile and chatter and refusal to be cowed by life, and how it made him want to drink her in so that he might feel that hopefulness, too. He brought to mind their night together, how her body was white silk and hot curves and the only exhilaration he’d felt in half a century, and he poured that knowledge into the kiss. He let Anne in on the secret. He gifted her both with a vulnerability she’d never known and the only thing that would protect against it, which was one and the same. He let her feel love.

He let her know what she was missing, and this time he was prepared for the scream. But it wasn’t enough. Covering his ears, he cowered low and squeezed shut his eyes, feeling the cry thunder through his flesh. It pounded at him until he fell to the ground and sent his wingless back to throbbing all over again.

When the street was finally silent, when the aftershocks had faded and the car alarms were silenced, and when Grif was alone and finally able to pick himself up from off the ground, he hobbled down the alleyway and into the street, slamming his hand atop the first taxi he found. He had to get back to Tony’s home. He had to find Kit.

He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

Kit!” Grif bolted through Tony’s home, heart racing after finding the door unlocked, all alarms disengaged. Had he left it that way? Had she? “Kit!”

“She’s not here,” came Tony’s voice from the kitchen.

Relief whooshed from Grif in a gut-emptying sigh, and he strode across the living room where Tony already had a bottle of wine open and waiting. “Oh, Tony. Thank God. I thought…”