Bite Marks

The flame-framed door that would take Raoul and Cole back to the Eldhayr’s base stood just on the other side of the fence between it and a line of acacia, its center as black as a midnight sky. It would stay that way until Raoul chanted the right words; then it would clear, showing them their ultimate destination.

I described its location to the others. And I told Cole that if someone watched them walk through it, they’d think they were just wandering behind the nearest cover for a quick pee.

Raoul folded up his drawing and said, “We’ll be back as soon as—” He stopped when Bergman’s bug tracker lit up like the table-ready pager they give you at Red Lobster.

“What do I do?” I asked as I picked it up. Blue lights blinked in succession around the edge of the screen, which, itself, had offered me a menu of options and small boxes beside each one to check. “Oh, I see,” I said. I touched the square beside the words Initiate Audio Reception .

Ruvin’s voice, warped into the falsetto adopted by the Bee Gees for most of their disco career, screeched out of the box. “Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’, And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’

alive.”

As Ruvin grooved through the song, Cole jumped out of his seat and started dancing, his hip wiggle causing Cassandra to poke her pinkies into her lips for an ear-piercing wolf whistle.

I stared for a second before dropping my head into my arms. “We are all gonna die.” Vayl said, “He is actually quite good.”

I turned my cheek and laid it on my elbow. “You can’t be condoning this!” He shrugged. “This is why I relish rubbing shoulders with humans. You live. You do it well and thoroughly. Not all of you,” he said, his glance wandering to Bergman, who’d pulled the box from my hands and was poking it with multiple fingers like it had sprouted a keyboard. “But most of those who are loyal to you know how to squeeze every last drop from their experiences. I had nearly forgotten the intensity of emotion wound around that philosophy.”

“Were you that way? When you were human?”

He closed his eyes, trying to remember past the centuries of vampirism to a time when he’d been a husband. A dad. He opened his eyes. “Life was hard then. I remember happy times as a child. And again after Hanzi and Badu were born, when we felt sure they would not die as our other babes had. But I never managed that.”

He gestured to Cole, who’d grown a goofy smile that had lured Cassandra into his dance.

I sat up and reached for Vayl’s leg under the table, ignoring the itch that fired across my back as my hand smoothed up and down his thigh. “I’m kinda glad you never had that in common with Cole. He can be such a doof.”

“And that does not appeal to you?”

The blue in his eyes began to morph to aqua as his fingers trailed across the top of my hand, sending prickles of heat up my arm, my neck, to my cheeks. My reaction? I leaned forward and sawed at my back with fingernails that I wished were three inches longer.

“Allow me,” murmured Vayl, the amusement in his voice making my jaws clench. I let him scratch at the rash and decided this moment had to be the least romantic ever, anywhere. But, damn, it felt good!

All movement in the backyard stopped as Ruvin’s voice piped out of Bergman’s doohickey again.

“G’day, mates! Welcome to Canberra! Here, let me help with your baggage!” Sounds of a hatch rising, suitcases being flung, doors opening and closing. And, after a time, Ruvin starting his Jeep.

Raoul got up. “Cole, this is shaping up to be a long, boring eavesdrop. I think we have better things to do?”

Cole nodded. But then his attention whipped to the box as Ruvin said, “Bugger me, what a fright you gave me there! I thought you were sitting in the back with the rest of the blokes!” And the reply, quiet but firm, “The Ufranites have taken your family. If you want them back safe, get out of the car and go to the rear.”

“It’s our guy!” Cole said.

“Maybe,” I said. “Nothing says he can’t have accomplices on the team. Any group that put together one backup plan probably made room for a couple more. Still.”

I nodded to Bergman and he activated the bug, giving it the signal to transfer from Ruvin to the mysterious man who’d threatened him.

Vayl held up a hand. “They are moving.” Only he could’ve heard the slide of clothes on the Jeep’s leather interior as Ruvin exited the vehicle. But even the humans in the group couldn’t mistake the familiar grunt and smack of a body hitting the asphalt.

“Clumsy you, falling down on the job,” said the guy, the silky concern in his voice making me shiver with rising rage. “Here, let me help you up.” Another grunt and a moan as the guy yanked Ruvin to his feet.

I could hear tears in the little man’s voice as he said, “Wotthehell? I haven’t said I won’t cooperate!”

“You’d better, or the gnomes will boil your kids and have them for appetizers while your wife slowly roasts in a hole they’ve already dug for her.”

I swallowed, hoping Ruvin would realize the threat wasn’t all bluster. Gnomes didn’t regularly stoop to cannibalism. But on special occasions they’d been known to munch a little long pork, especially around planting and harvest time. They stayed away from humans, a move my old Underground Creatures professor had shrugged off to fear of our massive military might. Possibly. Or maybe the Whence delivered its own brand of justice, which tolerated the gnomes’ inclinations as long as they didn’t piss off the wrong people.

Ruvin began to breathe so heavily I wondered if he was going to hyperventilate. “Y-you! D-don’t hurt my family! I’ll do anything you want. Just leave them alone!” His tormenter laughed. “You’d better make good on that promise,” he said. “Because the gnomes have chosen you to be the midwife for their larvae’s birth. So you’re going into the Space Complex with me tomorrow. And after the larvae have arrived safely, your family will be released.” Ruvin moaned. Which told me he knew what many others didn’t. That gnome midwives weren’t the nominally respected birth-helpers Americans sometimes used in place of doctors. They were the death-row inmates who’d lost every last appeal. Because the larvae would burst from their carrier starving for living flesh. And unless someone saved him, Ruvin’s would be the sustaining meat that gave them the energy they needed to destroy Canberra Deep Space Complex.