I took Kathan by the sides of his face and pulled him up to my lips.
The kiss surprised him. He pulled back, his black, black eyes staring down into mine.
For a second, I thought he was going to ask me why.
For a second, I thought I was going to beg him to stop now, to be satisfied with me and the kingdom he’d made for himself here in Halo. Don’t take the chance. Don’t go marching off to war, Johnny.
The second passed with only the sound of our hearts and breath.
I know every part of you and yet you continually surprise me, Kathan said. Where did you ever hear that piece of music?
I don’t remember.
When his lips came down on mine again, they burned.
I have to, he told me. The words were almost an apology.
Then make love to me for real. Make love to my body. I can be the same as Desty again. You can make me the same. You were thinking about it before. I heard you.
Again time passed without speaking. Only Kathan’s eyes, boring down into my soul, searching for something.
You aren’t sure whether you can kill the baby, I told him. You don’t know if you have the time to find a poison that will work. You don’t know if Desty and I will even be identical enough once it’s dead for the enthrallment to work on her. But if you make love to me, if I conceive…
He tucked my hair behind my ear, and I felt the sickness inside his soul reaching out to me as if I could heal it.
How is it that you can’t see how good you are, Temperance? He kissed my cheek. How faithful? How willing to protect the ones you love?
Tears slipped down my cheeks. Please don’t say things like that.
I just need you to know that I can see it, he said.
We made love. Apologetic, determined, broken love.
Desty
Blood. Rivers of blood. Deep, velvety reds swirling across my field of vision. Except this time I didn’t feel any panic. Just a sense of weightlessness. Instead of being dragged down, the blood held me suspended. Warm and thick, it caressed my skin, pressing in on me just enough that I felt protected, not trapped or confined. Usually the blood dream sent me into a panic attack. This time, I just felt peace.
I’d never had the blood dream without having had some sort of chemical depressant before falling asleep—cough medicine or alcohol or bite sedative from a vampire. If I thought hard about it, I could remember the foot soldiers who were in charge of…of hurting me had injected me with a few different things. Maybe one of those had caused the blood dream. When I woke up, I could see whether I felt hungover or strange.
“That’s probably it,” I said. My voice sounded flat, echo-less and strange, as if I was underwater, listening to someone on the surface talk.
I’d never been able to speak before in the blood dream. Whenever I had opened my mouth to scream or beg for help in the past, the blood filled my throat and lungs, choking me.
I took a deep breath in, then let it out. Still no drowning. The reds in front of my nose and mouth swirled and shifted on my exhale.
I reached out. My fingers bumped smooth padding. The lunatic cell’s wall. Or floor. Probably wall. The darkness was disorienting, but I doubted that I could be on my hands and knees without realizing I was.
Then I could see it—all of it. There wasn’t a flash from blood to darkness, not like waking from a dream and suddenly being in the real world. They existed at the same time without contradicting one another. I could see both the darkness and the blood at the same time. Black, red, peace, comfort, safety, warmth.
“I’m not asleep,” I said. “Maybe I’m hallucinating.”
But I didn’t think I was. I could feel the blood. I could hear it, filling my ears and dampening every sound. I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue. I could taste it—salty, hot, thick. A little metallic.
What was this?
Did it matter? The blood and darkness were safety. I could rest and recuperate for however much time I had before the foot soldiers came back. I should just enjoy the peace while it lasted and stop ruining everything by questioning it.
I shut my eyes. The river of blood washed my pain away.
Tough
“How many warm bodies do we have?” Clarion asked. “Seventy-nine coyotes if the last two packs show.”
“However many crows,” Lonely said.
The coyote turned toward the crow so he could see him out of his good eye. “You don’t even know how many members are in your murder?”
Lonely gave a shuddering shrug. “Between seventeen and forty, depending.”
“And about sixty humans so far,” Scout said, heading off another argument. “Probably more by tonight. I know some people have been trying to reach their family from out of town.” She looked at me. “And you know Tawny and Beth Ann Hicks’s uncle started that Human Rights gang down in Cape Girardeau, so they’ve got some connections if they can get ahold of them.”
Clarion’s lips twisted down at that. “Hicks? The guy who got thrown in jail for lynching that coyote pup?”
“Bad time to get picky about allies,” Lonely said.
No shit, I thought. Jake Bones’s pack from over in North Fork had screwed us on an ammo deal back when Ryder was still alive and almost killed all three of us, but you didn’t hear me bitching about having to work with coyotes again.
“I’m not picky,” Clarion said. “I don’t have to like who I work with, I just want to be able to trust them
