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That last scares me. I never want to see her again, even if I do pity what was done to her. It’s difficult to forgive someone who tries to kill you, and not out of any sort of revenge but rather out of her own brand of simple, malicious hunger.
Next morning, however, I steel myself and go looking for Deirdre first. This time when I walk in, she’s standing, her fists clenched, poised for a fight. “I told you not to come back until Keearh was free. He is not.”
I search for the unnatural calm of last night’s fog and can’t find it. I swallow hard and try to sound cool as I say, “I have a message for you. From Taine. And from me.”
Her eyes slide warily to the side, not meeting my gaze. “If you’re lying, you’ll be dead. And I’ll know if you lie.”
I stare into her eyes and muster all my courage, and smile. “That’s a good reason for me not to lie, then, isn’t it?”
She narrows her eyes and stares at me for several moments. “Whatever you have to say, say it. I don’t want you here.”
“Taine told me to tell you that… ‘fire only burns if you give it fuel.’”
She blinks, her eyes widening oh so slightly before a studiedly bored expression settles on her face. “He did, did he?”
I don’t ask what it means. “And I came to talk to you about plans for getting out of here.”
She doesn’t mask her surprise as she stares at me incredulously. “You’re jesting,” she says in a very unamused voice. I shake my head.
“I’m afraid not. I must be insane, but…better insane at home than insane in an army encampment.” She narrows her eyes suspiciously.
“Why would a human help us escape? You loathe everything we are.”
It’s the same question Taine asked, and I don’t really have a good answer. I give her the same I gave him. “You may be monsters, but at least you’re honest about it. The monsters here are the ones pretending to be human and better.” I don’t add that I’ve begun to suspect that pre-Fall, human ruled Earth wouldn’t be much different than the one we live in now.
She scrutinizes me for several more moments. Then she sits down on the bed and tilts her head to examine me. “So what are your plans, then?”
I shrug, sort of. “I was hoping the legendary cleverness of your kind could help me out with that. You know more than I do about some things.”
She leans back, looks up at the ceiling. “We’ll need Keearh. And Viviane,” she adds, wrinkling her nose a little. “Aliah isn’t a fighter. Taine’ll be in pretty bad shape when he gets out of his cage – they have to be using silver, nothing else would hold him, and that’ll make him deadly sick for nearly a day. We’ll have to allow time for that. So that means only me, Keearh, and…her…who are in any shape to fight, and I’m going to be busy with my own plans.” She glances at me. “Are there other…others, down there?”
“Yes. I’m planning to get them out.”
She nods thoughtfully. “Good. That’ll help, even if they’re weak.” She looks at me again, sharply. “I’ll take care of getting Keearh back. But you and Taine are going to have to work on Viviane. I can’t bring myself to talk to her. Vampires and werewolves may hate each other – and kill each other, if they can – but they know nearly everything about each other, and they understand each other more than other…others do.”
“Tsarri?” I supply the word.
She stares at me. “Taine told you that.”
I nod, not quite understanding her reaction. I can see her rearranging pieces of her knowledge about me. “Fine. But Taine…” She hesistates for a moment. “How are you planning to get him out, anyway? I should think he’s in pretty bad shape right now. Not good enough shape to get out of a silver cage, anyway.”
I look down. She seizes my hand, her fingers cold, and turns it over, exposing my wrist. She brushes her fingertips over the two puncture marks and looks back at me, smiles coldly. “You’re a braver woman than I am, human. I wouldn’t offer my blood to a vampire. Not even to invoke a blood debt. It’s not worth the risk.”
I stare at her, feeling suddenly chilled. “What risk?”
She releases my arm, pulls away. “The risk of getting addicted.” I stare at her. She looks back at me, shakes her head.
“Either very brave, or very stupid.”
I hesitate. “Deirdre? Do you know where I can find Aliah?”
She eyes me for a moment. “Yes. But you won’t do her any good. She’s dying slowly. Even if we get her out – which may be hard in her current state – she’ll die within a week if we can’t find a Selkie, and if she hasn’t sensed one yet, she’s not likely to.” She stares at me, her eyes hardening. “There’s a young one in there, isn’t there? No others. Just a young one. So they can study her, but too young to be able to mindspeak, to have connected with a Pod, so she can’t warn others who come near.” I nod slowly. She snarls, her fingernails digging into the arms of the chair. A few wood shavings drift down to the floor, and mutters something under her breath. I flinch a little, but stand my ground. I can’t afford to look afraid.
After a few moments, she seems to remember that I’m there. “She’s in the inner sanctum,” she says. “Follow the smell of incense to the temple. Go through and into the narrow hallway. Hers is the second door on the right. The only people who might challenge you are the guards at the temple. Just say ‘I serve’ and they won’t ask you any more. The security on her, at least, isn’t very high. She’s not dangerous to them.” She gives a grim smile.
I nod. “I’d better go. If someone finds me here…” She’s already forgotten me as she nods. I venture one last question. “How are you going to reach Keearh? If he didn’t respond to Taine…” Her chilling smile stops me.
“ ‘Fire only burns if you give it fuel.’ I know how to make this fire burn. Trust me.” It’s hard to trust someone with a smile that cold, but I nod. She turns away again. “Get out,” she says absently. “You’ll want to get moving. Find Viviane first. Or ask Taine, next time…you see him. He’ll know how to draw her out again. Maybe just seeing you will do it, though.” She gives me another of those cold smiles. “You might want to stay far away while you’re talking to her.”
I can’t stay there. I flee. In my apartment, I try to understand what I find so frightening about talking to her, even when she’s being perfectly reasonable. Maybe it’s just the Otherness in her eyes, the almost human and not at all human quality about her movement. Maybe it’s just a gut feeling that she wishes me as dead as everyone else here does. Perhaps it was just what she said about vampires. An…addiction. I wrack my brains, trying to remember if anyone else had ever mentioned such a thing to me, but I can’t think of anything. I’m exhausted, right now, and when I get back to my barracks I collapse into bed and am asleep before I hit the pillow. By the morning, I’ve forgotten what I was worried about.
The next afternoon I awake with a strange sense of dread. I remember that I was going to go talk to Viviane today, and cringe. Like the coward I am, I wait for nightfall, hoping for a chance to talk to Taine, and to bring the child out. If I can do both, maybe I won’t have enough time to see Viviane. Maybe it’ll be too close to morning, I’ll have to go, won’t be able to do it until tomorrow.
I smile wryly at my reflection and turn around, pushing that thought away. One thing at a time. And first I need to get down to Taine. Again, it’s pathetically easy to get in. No one’s noticed anything. I put my hand over the flashlight this time when I turn it on, so while there are still a few soft cries, I have enough light to see by without waking the majority of the cages. This time, it’s easy to find my way to Taine’s cage, even without much light. As I draw near, his green eyes snap open and he rises with a panther’s grace.
I feel a little ill this time as I offer my wrist. He takes my arm, but he examines my face and smiles slowly. “Ah,” he says softly. In another moment, I am suddenly overwhelmed by waves of sudden and euphoric pleasure beyond anything I could have dreamed of, washing over and through me, drowning me in the sensations of sex and something else, skin on skin and invisible fingers caressing and pressing and teasing until I’m sure that I’m going to drown in feeling, and then it ends and I glide slowly down back into the real world, into my sweating, trembling body, hot and needy. The feeling subsides gradually as I gasp the cold air, breathless, and finally absorb the sound of soft laughter.
I look up into the mocking eyes of Taine as he releases my wrist, the new puncture wounds bleeding sluggishly. “Not exactly relaxing, I know,” he says softly, dryly. “But…one can’t be too picky. And judging by your reaction, it was quite enough.”
“What…was that?” I gasp, still panting for air.
His smile is a little cold. His face isn’t swollen at all anymore. His face has lost the sallow, sickly appearance of before. “A venom, of sorts,” he says. “Last time I just used something to numb the pain – and your mind, to some extent. You looked nervous. I thought you needed something else.” I try to glare at him, but I’m too frightened. He laughs softly.
“What can you tell me about Viviane?” I blurt out. He narrows his eyes and stops laughing, but seeming more thoughtful than angry.
“You want to know how to…unbreak her, I suppose the word is. I don’t even know if that’s possible. But at least, you can make her angry enough…possibly…to get her to take action. I don’t know if she’ll listen to you, but…” He hesitates. “She’ll listen to me. Tell her…tell her that she owes me a sunny life in Hell.” He offers a wry smile. “She’ll recognize that, I hope. And if you need to get her attention…the best way would be to insult her. Any werewolf will respond to insults to her Pack, even if not to insults to herself. Improvise. But do it from a safe distance. Your blood will do me no good if you’re dead.”
I blink and give an involuntary little shiver. “What am I supposed to say?”
He gives another little wry smile. “Throw my name in there a few times, if you can. That’ll get her blood running.” He laughs, shortly, then glances at me. “So. You talked to Deirdre?”
“She says she knows what to do.”
Taine nods, thoughtfully. “I thought she would. And…?”
I almost mention what she said about addiction, but I don’t. I’m not sure I want to know. I’m in too far now. I have to keep going, wherever it leads. “Nothing.” His eyes glint suspiciously, but he doesn’t question my answer.
“And are you going to take the young one?”
“Won’t they notice?” I ask with a little squirm of fear.
“No. And if they do, they’ll just think one of the others took her out.” He narrows his eyes. “As for those outside…” He shrugs out of his jacket and offers it carefully, not touching the bars. But I notice that he’s a little less curled away from them now, seeming a little more confident and regaining some of his old grace. I take it. “She’s small enough to fit under that, and she doesn’t move these days. Just carry her in the coat. No one will look twice at you – they don’t, anyway, do they?” I shake my head, but he doesn’t really seem to care about my answer. His head swivels around quickly and he seems to be listening. “They’re coming this way. Two of them. Slowly. They smell of drink, so I can distract them for a while, but you’d better get out now.” I nod. “Good luck,” he murmurs, surprisingly, and then he vanishes into the dark as I back away, searching for the Selkie’s cage.
She’s pitifully thin, wraith like. The cage is a simple deadbolt – like Deirdre said, they’re not worried about her getting out or hurting someone. I reach in and withdraw her carefully. She doesn’t open her eyes as I wrap the coat carefully but quickly around her, and doesn’t move either. I tuck her in securely and hug the bundle to my chest, quickly closing and locking the cage again. I hurry to the door and slip out just as I begin to hear the echo of approaching footsteps.
Following Deirdre’s directions is easy, and the security is as lax as she says it is. It amazes me how they succeeded with such a relaxed atmosphere, but then I realize that they have nothing to fear, not on this continent. They’ve killed or caged everything that’s not human, and some that are. I find the temple by following the stink of the incense and nod briefly at the guards, who, indeed, don’t glance at me even once, let alone twice.
I reach Aliah’s room and open the door, half-afraid of what I’ll find.
At first, I don’t even see her. Then I realize that she’s folded on the floor beside the window, her head resting against the wall, making soft keening noises. I feel an ache as she turns around and I look into her eyes and suddenly feel as if I’ve never known fear or despair or loneliness, that only she knows the meaning of those words, what they really signify, what they really are, and aches with that knowledge. She barely seems to register who I am as she automatically assumes a genuflecting position, forehead to the floor.
“Aliah,” I say, trying to get through the soft fog in her eyes. “Aliah, it’s me, Anna.”
She looks up at me, her eyes terribly blank, and I shiver. It’s like talking to someone who is already dead. In some ways, she already is. She’s decided to die, and nothing that anyone can say will stop her now.
But I don’t have to say anything. I set down my bundle and unwrap the coat. The fragile thing is shivering madly, her eyes wide. For several moments, there is no sound as I step back. Then the child seems to register another presence. Her head lifts and her eyes lock on Aliah, who is staring blankly at the wall. She makes a small mewling sound, then the same sound twice at different pitches, louder.
I’m watching Aliah’s eyes. I see memory stir, then fear, and a moment later her head twitches around. Her eyes find the child and she hesitates, then hums. The child imitates her, then responds with a little piping tune of three notes. Aliah’s eyes light up and she crawls forward with the pained gait of a wounded animal. I can feel the Selkie child reaching for a connection, fumbling at me and then stretching out to Aliah, and I feel the click as they link and a moment later Aliah has her arms wrapped close around the child and is rocking her back and forth as they both cry. I back out slowly and find my way to the kitchen. They both need food. I bring back water and some bread and cheese, unsure what they eat. I look but can’t find any fish other than some canned tuna, so I bring that, and some cream, just in case.
Aliah still hasn’t let go of the Selkie child when I get back, but they’re not crying anymore, and she looks up at me blankly for a few moments before she registers the food and snatches it hungrily. I am briefly afraid that she’s going to take all of it, but a moment later she is sorting through it and parceling out some bread, a small bit of cheese, tuna and some cream to the young one, who at first turns her nose up at it, looking disgusted, but at a scolding note from Aliah, eats at first warily, then desperately, as if afraid that someone will take it from her. When she’s wolfed all of it down, she looks at Aliah expectantly, who offers her a little more bread and tuna before taking her share. Then she looks at me as the child settles back on her lap and seems to be struggling to remember something.
“Thank…you…” she says slowly, at last, and I flinch at the hoarse note in her voice. How long has it been since she talked, to anyone?
I look down, unsure how she would take the pity in my eyes. “You’re welcome.” I pause. “They won’t want you to have her with you.” She clutches the child so tightly that she squirms and makes a small noise of protest. I hasten to reassure her. “Not at first. But I don’t think anyone will object, because they’ll see that both she and you are recovering, and I don’t think they’ll let her die if they have a choice.”
Her naked relief wrenches at my heart. I sit down and try to catch her eyes. “Aliah. We’re getting out of here.”
She shakes her head. “Can’t,” she says weakly.
“Yes, we can. Taine has a plan and I’m going to help.” I pause, daring her to question my motives as the others have done. She says nothing. I press on. “You need to be ready. I don’t know what Viviane and Keearh will do when they’re freed, but I doubt much of this place will be left standing. You’ll need to be ready to run.”
A shadow of a wry smile. “Always.”
I frown just slightly. “We’ll have a signal, something that only you would understand. Though I don’t think it’ll be easy to miss. I have to go talk to Viviane, but I’ll try to come back.” She nods. I get up and move toward the door, then pause. “Keep her safe.”
The smile this time is bitter. “Of course. She is all I have.”
I can’t meet her eyes. Nothing to say, I leave.