Part Two

The voices cutting into Yared’s mind faded away as he slept. He felt them leaving him like ghosts slipping into safer shadows when the sunlight poured onto his face and in their wake was a silence too sweet to break. He basked in the scent of honey carried to him on a warm breeze.

Then, from very far away, he caught a voice.

Her voice.

Yared opened his eyes.

Her voice vanished.

He was wrapped in blankets, swaddled like the Baby Jesus in a nest of silks and cottons and feather stuffings. He could hear Scotch speaking, a sound like an old song coming back to him, and a heart beating furiously a foot or two away. His chest hurt and when he turned his head to look around the room his neck cracked like a stick snapped in half.

In his mind, he heard Kiria’s neck snap the same way.

He couldn’t get away from the memory, it clung to him as he tried to climb up from the lake of swarming minds where he had been floundering for so long. He felt like he was still swimming, still looking for a place to rest.

His gaze met hers.

She had the largest blue-green eyes he had ever seen. The ocean was churning inside them, sometimes hidden by the thick clumps of black hair that fell over her forehead. She didn’t like for people to look her in the eye, he knew.

That was why he did it.

She quickly looked away. She was dressed like a sophisticated hooker in a black skirt and a dark red top that showed the white skin of her shoulders starkly against the black shawl of her hair. A diamond solitaire hung from a delicate chain around her throat, and two more sparkled in her ears.

Looking at her hurt.

"Scotch," Yared said, turning away from her and trying to lift his head. It was unbelievably heavy.

Scotch scrambled up from the futon chair where he had been sitting. They appeared to be in a cluttered bedroom, maybe some

kind of attic hideout, judging by the ramshackle décor and abundance of mismatched furniture.

"Yared?" Scotch asked, climbing over a coffee table to Yared’s side. Behind him, a door on the far side of the room opened and a human girl with her arm bound to her side walked in with a jug of milk in her free hand and a package of Oreos wedged into her bandages.

Scotch looked just the same as Yared remember him. No reason why he wouldn’t, but it was still comforting. "How do you feel?" he asked.

Yared swallowed on his sore throat and began trying to worm one arm out from under the blankets. His muscles had toughened like cooling caramel.

"No peaches," he admitted. "No cream."

Scotch broke into a smile. The human behind him smiled, too, as she set the milk and cookies down on the coffee table.

"Who’s that?" Yared asked. He couldn’t help sniffing the air, gathering up her scent like berries tucked into a basket.

She and Scotch exchanged glances. Scotch touched her ankle, where he didn’t think Yared could see. "This is Coalise, she’s on our side."

For an instant Yared thought he recognized her. Without the arm brace, without the bruises still healing on her cheeks like evil blushes.

"Did we…" he began, and couldn’t finish.

"This is my house," she offered. Her voice had a funny, rough, very human quality. Each syllable was chopped up like the notes of a bird call. "You’re safe here."

She smiled tentatively and the memory came back full-force. "I hit you," Yared said suddenly. "We were out in the woods and I hit you in the head."

Her face filled with surprise. "You did?" she asked.

"Yeah, it was…"

Right after Kiria died.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shrink back a little. He turned just enough in her direction to make her twist away. "That’s-" Scotch began, and Yared cut him off.

"I know who she is. Help me sit up."

"But how?" Scotch slid an arm beneath Yared’s chest, fighting off blankets, and eased him into a sitting position.

Yared was distracted from answering when he realized that the person asleep next to him wasn’t Thursy, as he had assumed.

"Who is that?" he asked.

The man appeared five or six years older than Yared, and he had no identifiable scent, which was unnerving.

"That’s Osprey," Coalise told him. "He’s also on our side. There’s only one bed in here, so we had to stick you guys in together."

"And it’s not even my birthday," Yared remarked distantly, still looking at Osprey. This face, too, he recognized, and the aura of

loneliness that hung around him even when he was tucked in bed with someone else.

Coalise was chuckling and pouring glasses of milk when he turned back to the room. "I’ve got a pot roast for you downstairs," she told him. "Maple said you would be hungry when you woke up."

She fiddled with the package of Oreos, trying to use her one good hand and her teeth in tandum to tear it open, until Scotch reached out and took it from her. He ripped the end open and put the cookies on the coffee table. She smiled. He smiled back.

Yared realized something was wrong.

"Where’s Thursy?" he asked, and Scotch and Coalise’s expressions both filled with guilt.

She shut her eyes.

Yared racked his brain until the pictures began fitting together. A few moments of…not clarity, but reassurance. Thursy had been with him, taking care of him, and then someone else—Osprey, with his strength and his fear, helping him stand, and…

The events of the last three days poured over him like a bucket of water dumped over his head.

"Do you remember anything?" Scotch asked.

He remembered everything. The thoughts of everyone around him had coming stampeding into his head and he had heard everything – Thursy’s execution, Scotch’s disappearance, Kiria’s murder – and worse – Galdwyn’s scheming, Gedmark’s agonizing, Simone’s growing distrust.

Every chime that rang in the minds of those around him had come clear, even the unimportant and unrelated. He hadn’t wanted to know that Narsa drank more booze than she did blood, or that Lauky shaved his chest, or that Tish had once killed a bus-full of handicapped human kids at Galdwyn’s urging.

For a few days, he had been thinking for thirty-five people. Now his mind’s solo was pricelessly weak.

Yared nodded, slowly, as if afraid that moving his head would wake all the memories inside it. "We left Thursy at the village," he said, answering his own question. "Galdwyn and Tish were holding her down, and Lauky was coming with his chainsaw."

"They can’t kill her," Scotch put in quickly. "No matter what they do to her, we can put her back together and she’ll be all right. I just couldn’t try to get her when I had you and Osprey to haul back to the car. I thought we could go back in a few days, when you’re stronger-"

"We’re going back today," Osprey said, startling everyone.

He sat up slowly in bed. His eyes were shockingly black and his voice ran smooth as wine. The white dress shirt he was wearing was a mess with dried brown blood and his rumpled hair made him look like a flustered raven.

"We’re going back today," he repeated. "I need a phone."

Coalise dropped her Oreo into her milk glass and grabbed a cordless from off the desk. Osprey dialed as he climbed out of bed

and stood up on the floor. One pant leg had been ripped from the knee down and burrs clung to his socks.

Yared was still trying to clarify everything that had happened. Galdwyn’s thoughts were mixed with Tish’s – which were more like bloody ink-blots than words – and he couldn’t seem to disentangle them. So many of the things he had heard from other people were emotional bombshells with little actual information. "Galdwyn is trying to hurt Thursy?" he asked.

"Because of the vote."

"Right," Yared muttered. "The blasted vote."

"Elomi," Osprey said into the phone. "I lost her, I fucking lost her…"

Coalise peered into the surface of her milk, which was now covered in floating chocolate chunks, and pushed the glass aside. "Are we really going today?"

"You’re not going anywhere," Scotch told her, and Yared saw it again. The way his eyes lingered on her, the way she softened when he spoke.

He felt his mouth go dry.

"All right," Coalise agreed. "When are you going?"

"-and then we’re flying out," Osprey was telling the person on the other end of the phone line. "I don’t know where, South America, China, someplace no one will think to look. I’ll call you when we get there…Yes, I know what I’m doing. I don’t care if she hates me afterward, I’m getting her the hell of out here."

He hung up. "Where are my shoes?" he demanded.

"Foot of the bed," Scotch said. "Look, if you’re going after Thursy, I’m coming with you."

"So am I," Yared added. He wasn’t even entirely sure what was going on yet, but Thursy was Thursy, and she was his sister, his pack-mate, his litter-mate, his twin.

"You’re exhausted," Scotch said.

"Fuck it, I’m coming."

Scotch sighed at the same time Osprey said, "Fine. I have to call the pilot and see how quickly he can get us out once we have Thursy."

Then she said, "I’m coming, too."

"What?" Scotch asked.

Maple’s blue-green eyes met Yared’s with a combination of defiance and begging. "I can help," she began, and then Yared was out of bed and hauling her out of the chair by her arm. He wouldn’t have thought he had the strength, but she lit something up inside him.

His hand touched the bare skin of her arm.

-hit me he really is going to-

Yared let go as quickly as he could.

Maple moved as if to reach for him and then stopped. She jerked her head quickly and her dark hair fell over her face.

"We have to talk," Yared said and then, seeing Scotch, Coalise, and Osprey, added, "privately."

"My family is wandering around the house," Coalise said. She pointed to another door. "They think you’re a bunch of Canadian exchange students whose host family bailed on them. That’s the bathroom, if you want to go in there."

Yared didn’t reply, only opened the door. Maple walked through it without protest and he followed.

The bathroom looked like a sitting room. It had thick carpet and warm lighting and a pile of blankets on the floor by the tub. The toilet lid even had a cushion, which Maple made use of when she sat down on it and folded her legs carefully.

Yared shut the door behind them and suddenly he had no idea what to say.

Two moments was all it had taken. He remembered them perfectly.

In the clearing, he and Galdwyn had leapt onto each other as if they were cats and not humans, digging their nails and opening their mouths wide in preparation for the kill. They’d landed hard on the ground, Yared beneath. A root or a rock had been digging into his shoulder and he hit Galdwyn hard in the face, feeling his potbelly jiggle and knowing this would be an easy fight.

And then she had grabbed his arm and sunk a needle into it.

Time stopped. The moment expanded.

He saw her standing on the corner of a busy street, wearing black slacks and a sleeveless green shirt, gripping a pay phone in one hand trying to dial with the other.

He knew there was no one for her to call. Her fingers shook over numbers that would connect her with no one.

Then she let go of him and he smelled Galdwyn’s stale coffee-breath beating down on him, and Maple was stumbling away. But

he could still hear her, and then Galdwyn’s raking mental cackle, and then Kiria’s expressive sighs, and finally the rattle and monkey-hoots that made up Tish’s thoughts. The combination quickly became paralyzing.

The second moment. He wasn’t sure what was happening except that Kiria was gone, he couldn’t hear Kiria and in the split instants of quiet between barrages his own mind told him that this was very bad.

Maple put her hand to his cheek and he could feel his body again, could focus on it. The other voices receded until they were as far away as the next room and then she said, Oh, shit, I didn’t think- and pulled away.

Standing in the bathroom, he didn’t need to touch her to know what she was thinking.

"If you think that I’m going to ignore the part you’ve played in all this and what you did to Kiria just because," he said, and broke off. "Just because you and I have some-"

"Eternal Divine connection on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level?" she put in.

Yared glared at her. She was so utterly remorseless. Even now she wouldn’t admit that it was her fault things were as they were.

"I’ll see you in Hell before I see you in Reno," he told her, "so don’t go pulling that soulmate crap on me. I don’t know what you’re doing here, or what you think you’re going to get from me, but don’t expect me to cut you any slack just because-"

Dammit, he couldn’t say the word.

Maple lifted an eyebrow at him. Her mouth formed a tight smile and she let the silence mock him for a few seconds before saying, "I’m just here to help Thursy."

"Why?"

She shrugged, sending a ripple down her curling black hair. "Galdwyn and I have had a falling out and I’m in the mood to piss on his boots. Besides, I know all his tricks. I can help you."

Yared knew a fair number of Galdwyn’s tricks himself, after spending two days with the man’s rabbit-hyper thoughts swarming in his head. But he was also exhausted – he couldn’t stand up straight without feeling one of his ribs biting into his chest – and Maple was strong and vicious.

"Fine," he said. "But if you get into trouble, you’re the one who’ll have to get yourself out."

She looked down at the floor and said with less bite, "Fair enough."

He turned and opened the door.

"Wait, Yared?" she said.

It was the first time he heard her speak his name. He couldn’t suppress a shudder that she had gotten so close.

"What?" he asked darkly.

Her voice was suddenly rough. "Don’t even think about touching me."

He almost turned back and smacked her across the face. The nerve she had…

"I’d rather die," he told her, and slammed the door shut behind himself.