The Outlaw Demon Wails

Twenty-one

My lower back hurt, and my arms. They were crossed to serve as a pillow as I lay slumped forward in my chair with my upper body draped on Quen's bed. I was just resting my eyes while Quen had another span of time where he could breathe without my encouragement. It was late, and so very, very quiet.

Quiet? Adrenaline pulsed through me and I jerked upright. I'd fallen asleep. Damn it! I thought in panic, my gaze going to Quen. His horrible tearing breaths had ceased, and guilt twisted in me as I thought he had died while I slept—until I realized he didn't have the waxy hue of the dead, but a soft color.

He's still alive, I thought with relief, reaching to shake him back into breathing as I had numerous times that night. The cessation of his labored breathing must have woken me.

But my outstretched hand stopped and tears threatened when I saw his chest rise and fall in an easy motion. Slumping back into the leather wing-back chair, I sent my attention to the wide sliding door that led to the patio. The moss and stones, hazy with the reflected sunlight, grew blurry. It was morning, and damn it all to hell, he was going to make it. Eleven percent chance my ass. He had done it. If he had crossed the eleven percent barrier, fifty was nothing.

Sniffing, I wiped my eyes. There was the softest rattle in Quen's breathing, and his sheets were sweat soaked. His black hair was stuck to his skull and he looked dehydrated despite the IV, wan with stress wrinkles, making him appear old. But he was alive.

"I hope it was worth it, Quen," I whispered, still not knowing what he had done to himself or why Trent blamed me. I fumbled in my bag for a tissue, forced to use a nasty one with lint all over it. Jenks hadn't shown up, and I hoped he was okay. There was absolutely no sound anywhere. The thump of the music was gone, and I could feel the peace that had settled over Trent's compound. By the light coming from the patio, it looked a shade after sunrise. I had to stop waking up at this hour. It was just insane.

Dropping the tissue in the trash, I carefully scooted my chair from Quen's bed. The soft sound of the legs bumping against my discarded shoes seemed loud, but Quen remained unmoving. His night had been an ugly, painful ordeal.

I was cold, and with my arms wrapped about myself, I tottered out of the sunken pit and headed for the light. The outside pulled at me. I took a last look at Quen to assure myself that he was breathing and then carefully unlocked the patio door and pushed it aside with a swoosh of sound.

Birdsong filtered in, and the cold sharpness of frost. The clean scent filled my lungs to instantly wash out the warmth and darkness of the room behind me. A second look back, and I stepped outside only to jerk to a surprised halt when I ran into the spider-web touch of sticky silk. Disgusted, I waved my arms to clear the doorway of the delicate but effective pixy and fairy deterrent.

"Sticky silk," I muttered as I brushed it from my hair. I thought Trent should get over his pixy paranoia and admit he had an eerie attraction to them, like every other pure-blood elf I'd met. So he liked pixies. I liked double-crunch ice cream, but you didn't see me avoiding it in the grocery store. My thoughts drifted to Bis in the belfry and being able to hear and feel the city's ley lines when he touched me. No, that wasn't the same at all.

Arms wrapped about me in the chill, I watched the steam from my breath catch the sun. The light felt thin and the sky looked transparent. I could smell coffee somewhere, and I gingerly rubbed the soft beginnings of scarring on my neck. My hand dropping, I breathed deep and pressed my feet into the rough stone the patio was tiled with. Dampness soaked my socks, but I didn't care. Last night had been awful. The stuff of nightmares and torture.

I honestly hadn't expected Quen to survive. I still didn't believe he had. After the third time Dr. Anders had stuck her long nose in, I had escorted her out with a twisted arm, telling her if she came back, I was going to break her toes off and jam them up her ass. Quen had gotten a kick out of that. It had kept him fighting for about a half hour. After that, it got really bad.

My eyes closed, and I felt a prickling in my nose from the hint of tears. He had suffered longer and harder than anyone I'd ever seen, endured more than I'd thought possible. He hadn't wanted to give in, but the pain and fatigue had been so great…I shamed him into taking just one more breath, bullied him, coaxed him. Anything to keep him alive and tortured though his muscles ached and each breath tore my soul as it tore his body. I reminded him to breathe when he forgot or pretended to forget, disgracing his honor until he took one more. Then another, and another—enduring the torment and shunning the peace that death offered.

My stomach hurt, and my eyes opened. Quen would hate me. The things I said…Hatred had kept him alive. No wonder he hadn't wanted Trent in the room. Quen could hate me if he wanted, but somehow…I didn't think he would. He wasn't stupid. If I had truly hated him and meant what I'd said, I could have walked out of the room and let him die.

Focus blurry, I stared at the canopy of bare branches above me to the pale blue of an autumn morning. Though Quen had suffered and won, I was still feeling an inner pain, made worse by my utter exhaustion, both physical and mental. My dad had died the same way when I had been thirteen, and I recognized an ugly ember of anger growing in me that my dad had given up while Quen hadn't. But then the anger shifted to guilt. I had tried to keep my dad alive and failed; what kind of a daughter can keep a stranger alive and not be able to save her own dad?

Watching Quen struggle had brought back every little detail of holding my dad's hand as he died. The same pain, the same labored breathing…the same everything.

I blinked, and my focus on the trees cleared in a sudden crystalline thought. My dad had died exactly the same way. I was there. I saw it.

Socks catching on the rough stone, I turned to the dark room past the open door. Quen had said it didn't matter if he lived or died, but to find the truth, I had to see him through it. He wouldn't break his word by telling me why my dad had died, but he had showed me the connection by forcing me to endure his struggle with him.

The blood drained from my face, and I went colder still. Dr. Anders hadn't concocted whatever Quen had taken, but I'd be willing to wager she'd been modifying it so it would work better. And my dad had died from an earlier version of it.

As if in a dream, I walked from the luminous morning and slipped back into the cocooning warmth of shadow. I left the door open so Quen's unconscious would hear the birds and know he was alive. He didn't need me anymore, and he had shown me what he intended to. What Trent had forbade him to say.

"Thank you, Quen," I whispered as I passed the bed, my pace never slowing. Trent. Where was Trent? He had to know. Trent's father had died first, so whatever had killed my dad, it had been Trent who made the decision to administer it.

Tense, I opened the door and heard the murmur of distant voices. The common area was empty but for the intern on the couch, his mouth hanging open as he snored. Silent in my socks, I went to the walkway and looked down on the great room.

The comforting sound of conversation and sporadic clinks drew my attention to the stage. It was empty but for the band roadies packing up, doing more talking than anything else. The morning sun lit the aftermath of the party with its scattered glasses, crumb-smeared plates, crumpled cocktail napkins, and decorations in orange and red. The ward on the window was back up, shimmering faintly, and in the far corner by the window, I found Trent.

He was sitting in silent vigil, still wearing the baggy clothes he'd had on last night. I remembered that the big leather chair and small round table beside it was his spot, near the huge fireplace and set where he could see the waterfall that burbled down the cliffs and encircled his backyard pool and deck. Though the rest of the room was a mess, the five-by-eight area he was in was clean and vacuumed. A cup of something steamed beside him.

My chest clenched. Grip loose on the rail, I took the stairs fast in my socks, bent on finding out what he had given my dad that killed him—and why.

"Trent."

The man jerked, pulling his attention from where he had been watching the water ripple on his pool. I wove through the couches and chairs, ignoring the smell of spilled alcohol and hors d'oeuvres crushed into the carpet. Alarm cascaded over Trent as he straightened. Fear almost. But he wasn't afraid of me. He was afraid of what I would say.

Breathless, I came to a stop before him. His face showed no emotion, but his eyes were haunted with a horrible question. Pulse fast, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and took my hand off my hip. "What did you give my dad?" I said, hearing my voice as if from outside my head. "What did he die from?"

"Excuse me?"

Anger burst from nowhere. I'd suffered last night, reliving my dad's death and helping Quen survive. "What did my dad die from!" I shouted, and the soft conversation at the stage hesitated. "My dad died from the same thing Quen suffered from, and don't you expect me to believe that they aren't connected. What did you give him?"

Trent's eyes closed, his lashes fluttering against skin that was suddenly very white. He slowly leaned back in his chair, placing his hands carefully on his knees. The sun turned his hair translucent, and I could see the ambient heat making it float. I was so frustrated and full of conflicting emotions, I wanted to shake him.

I took a step forward, and his eyes flashed open to take in my clenched jaw and disheveled appearance. His face was empty of emotion, almost scaring me. He gestured for me to take the seat across from him, but I folded my arms over my chest and waited.

"Quen took an experimental genetic treatment to block the vampire virus," he said, his voice flat, its usual grace and subtle flavors lost in the tight grip he had on his emotions. "It makes it permanently dormant." His gaze met mine. "We've tried several ways to mask the virus's expression," he added tiredly, "and though they work, the body violently rejects them. It's the secondary treatment to trick the body into accepting the original modification that your father died from."

I softly bit the scar inside my lip, feeling anew the fear of being bound. I had those same vampire compounds sunk deep into my tissue. Ivy protected me from casual predation. Quen's scar had been tuned to Piscary, and since poaching would lead to a nasty second death simply on principle, Quen had been safe from all but the master vampire. Piscary's death effectively turned Quen's bound scar into an unclaimed scar that any vampire, dead or undead, could play upon with impunity. The risk must have become intolerable for him. He could no longer protect Trent in anything but an administrative way. Quen took the eleven percent chance, preferring that to a desk job that would slowly kill him. And since Quen had been bitten while saving my butt, Trent blamed me.

I sank to sit on the edge of the seat as the lack of food hit me. "You can get rid of the vampire virus?" I said, hope striking me, quickly followed by alarm. Ivy was looking for this. She might risk an eleven percent chance to be free of it. Not her. I can't do this with her. I know I couldn't survive it again. Not after watching Quen suffer.

Trent's lips pressed together. It was the first show of emotion he'd let slip through. "I never said it got rid of the virus. I said it masks its expression. Makes it dormant. And it works only in still-living tissue. Once you're dead, it doesn't work anymore."

So even if Ivy took it, it wouldn't eliminate the virus and she would become an undead upon dying. It wasn't a cure for Ivy, and a knot of worry eased. But still…Why had my dad risked it?

The leather chair was cold, and I couldn't seem to think, my brain fuzzy from the early hour and too little sleep. My dad had been bitten by Piscary. Was that it?

My head came back up to find Trent staring at nothing, his hands clenched with a white-knuckled strength. "Piscary bound him? My dad?"

"The records don't say," he said softly, not paying attention.

"You don't know?" I exclaimed, and his focus sharpened on me, almost as if he was irritated. "You were there!"

"It wasn't an issue at the time," he said, angry.

Why the blue blazes wouldn't it be an issue?

Pursing my lips, I felt my own anger tighten until I thought I would scream. "Then why did he do it?" I said from between clenched teeth. "Why did he risk it? Even if he had been bound to Piscary, he could have just quit the I.S.," I said, gesturing at nothing. "Or been transferred to another part of the country." People were occasionally bound by accident, and when the cover-up failed, there were ways to avoid being sued. It happened to I.S. employees just like everyone else, and there were options involving large sums of money and generous moving packages.

Trent wasn't saying anything. This was like playing twenty questions with a dog. "He knew the risk, and he took it anyway?" I prompted, and Trent sighed.

His hands unclenched, and he flexed them, gazing at the stark white pressure points standing in contrast to the red. "My father risked immediate treatment because being bound to Piscary compromised his position as…" He hesitated, his angular face twisting in an old anger. "It compromised his political power. Your father begged me to let him do the same, not for power but for you, your brother, and your mother."

I stared at Trent as his words and face became harsh.

"My father risked his life to maintain power," he said bitterly. "Your dad did it for love."

It still didn't explain why, though. The jealousy in Trent's gaze gave me pause, and I watched him stare into the garden his parents had created, lost in memory. "At least your father waited until he knew there was no other option," he said. "Waited until he was sure."

His voice was breathy, trailing off into nothing. Tense, I asked, "Sure of what?"

In a soft rustling of silk and linen, Trent turned. His youthful face was hard with hatred. Both our dads had died, but he was clearly jealous that mine had risked death for love. His jaw clenched, and apparently intending to hurt me, he said, "He waited until he was sure that Piscary had infected him with enough virus to turn him."

I took a breath and held it. Confusion blanked my thoughts. "But witches can't be turned," I said, nauseated. "Just like elves."

Trent sneered at me, acting for once as he wanted instead of hiding behind the facade he comforted himself with. "No," he said nastily. "They can't."

"But…" My knees went watery, and I couldn't seem to get enough air. My mind shot back to my mother's old complaint of no more children between her and my dad. I had thought she had meant because of my discovered genetic blood disease, but now…And her free-thinking advice about marrying for love and having children with the right man. Had she meant marrying whom you loved and having children with someone else? The age-old practice of witches borrowing their best friend's brother or husband for a night to engender a child when they married outside their species? And what of the lovingly retold story of her invoking all my dad's charms for him in college in exchange for him working all her circles. Witches couldn't be turned. That meant…

I reached for the arm of the chair, my head spinning as I forgot to breathe. My dad wasn't a witch? Just who had my mother been sleeping with?

My head came up, and I saw Trent's bitter satisfaction that my world was going to be rearranged—and I probably wasn't going to like it.

"He wasn't my dad?" I squeaked, not needing to see his nod. "But he worked at the I.S.!" I exclaimed, scrambling for a way out. He was lying. Trent had to be lying. Jerking me around to see how screwed up he could make me.

"The I.S. was fairly new when your father joined," he said, clearly getting a lot of satisfaction out of this. "They didn't have good records. Your mother?" he said mockingly. "She's an excellent earth witch. She could have taught at the university—gone on to be one of the leading spell developers for the nation—if she hadn't been saddled with children so soon."

My mouth was dry, and I flushed when I remembered her slipping Minias a charm to hide his demon scent. And catching her this week reeking of heavy spell casting, only to have it muted a few hours later. Hell, it had even fooled Jenks.

"You get your earth magic from your mother," Trent said, his words seeming to echo in my head, "your ley line skill from your real father, and your blood disease from them both."

I couldn't move, shaking inside. "The man who raised me was my real dad," I said in a surge of loyalty. "Who…," I began, having to know. "You know who my birth father is. You have to. It's in your records somewhere. Who is he?"

Smiling nastily, Trent eased back into his chair, crossing his knees and setting his hands gracefully in his lap.

Son of a bitch…

"Who is my father, you freaking bastard!" I shouted, and the roadies at the far end of the room stopped what they were doing to watch.

"I don't want you to endanger the poor man," he said caustically. "You put everyone around you in jeopardy. And how vain of you to assume he wants you to come looking for him. Some things are forgotten for good reason. Shame, guilt…embarrassment."

Infuriated, I stood, not believing this. This was a power play for him. A damned power play and nothing more. He knew I wanted to know, so he wouldn't tell me.

My fingertips were tingling, and unable to stop myself, I reached for him.

Trent moved, scrambling up and behind his chair so fast I almost didn't see. "Touch me," he said grimly, the chair between us, "and I'll have you in an I.S. cell before your head stops spinning."

"Rachel," came a raspy voice from the upper level, and both Trent and I turned.

It was Quen, wrapped in a blanket as if it was a death shroud, the black-haired intern at his side, supporting him. His hair was plastered to his skull with sweat, and I could see him wavering as he stood there. "Don't touch Trenton," he said, his gravelly voice clear in the hush, "or I'm going to have to come down there…and smack you around." He was smiling at me, but his face lost its pleasure and gratitude as he turned to Trent. "This is petty of you, Sa'han. Far…beneath your dignity…and standing," he finished breathily.

I reached out as his knees buckled and the intern sagged under the sudden deadweight.

"My God, Quen," Trent whispered. Shock on his face, he looked at me. "You let me think he was dead!"

My mouth dropped open, and I took a step back. "I, uh…I'm sorry," I finally managed, chagrin warming my face. "I never said he was dead. I forgot to tell you he was alive is all. You assumed he was dead."

Trent turned his back on me and started for the stairs. "Jon!" he shouted, taking them two at a time. "He made it! Jon, get out here!"

I stood alone in the middle of the floor; Trent's voice echoed against the silent walls with hope and joy, making me feel like an outsider. A door down the hall thumped open and Jon ran down the open walkway to where the intern was lowering Quen—out cold again—to the floor. Trent had already reached him, and the excitement and caring flowing from them hit me deep.

Not even aware I was there, they carried him back to his room and the comfort they shared. I was alone.

I had to get out of here.

My pulse quickened, and I scanned the room, the dregs of the party seeming to soak into me like a stain. I had to leave. I had to talk to my mom.

With single-minded intent, I headed for the kitchen. My car was in the garage, and though my shoulder bag and wallet were upstairs, my keys were likely in the ignition where I'd left them. There was no way I was going up into that room where they were suffused with joy. Not now. Not when I was like this: numb, confused, and mentally slapped by Trent, scorned for not having realized the truth before now. I felt stupid. It had been in front of me all the time, and I hadn't realized it.

The kitchen was a blur, the lights dim and the ovens cold. I hit the heavy service entrance at a run, and the metal door crashed into the wall. Two big guys in tuxes jumped up from the curb at my sudden appearance. Ignoring them, I jogged into the underground lot in search of my car. The cold pavement soaked into me through my socks.

"Miss!" one shouted. "Miss, hold up a moment. I need to talk to you."

"Like hell you do," I muttered, then spotted Trent's car. Mine was nowhere I could see. I didn't have time for this. I'd take his. Angling to it, I broke into a run.

"Ma'am!" he tried again, his voice dropping in pitch. "I need to know who you are and your clearance. Turn around!"

Clearance? I didn't need no lousy clearance. I jerked the handle up, and the cheerful dinging told me the keys were in the ignition.

"Ma'am!" came an aggressive shout. "I can't let you leave without knowing who you are!"

"That's what I'm trying to find out!" I shouted, cursing myself when I realized I was crying. Damn it, what was wrong with me? Distressed beyond all belief, I slid into the supple leather seat. The engine turned over with a low rumble that spoke of a slumbering power: gas and pistons, a perfect machine. Slamming the door, I put it into drive and floored it. The tires squealed as I jerked forward and took the turn too fast. A square of light beckoned. If they wanted to know who I was, they could ask Trent.

Sniffing, I looked behind me. The big guy had his gun out, but it was aimed at the pavement as the second officer on the two-way relayed orders to him. Either Trent had told them to let me go, or they were going to stop me at the front gate.

I hit the ramp fast, and the undercarriage scraped as I bounced out into the sun. My breath caught in a sob as I wiped my cheeks. I didn't make the next turn properly, and I felt a moment of panic when I drove off the pavement and blasted the DO NOT ENTER sign.

But I was out. I had to talk to my mom, and it was going to take more than two security guards in tuxes to stop me. Why hadn't she told me? I thought, my palms sweating and my stomach clenched. Why hadn't my crazy, loony mother told me?

The tires squealed as I took the turns, and once on the three-mile drive out of here, I started to get scared. Was the reason she hadn't told me because she was a little nuts, or was she a little nuts because she was too afraid to tell me?