It took a minute, and another ring of the doorbell, but someone finally came to the door. When the door opened there was no one there…above four and a half feet. Looking down they discovered a tiny old woman, so small she hardly looked more real than the garden gnomes at the end of the drive. She wore a blue and white gingham dress, a string of pearls, a pair of reading glasses on her nose, and a garish red lipstick on her lips. In one aspect it was exactly what he would have expected to find behind the door of a house that looked like this. On the other hand…no one could possibly predict anything in this world he was flailing to tread water in. He refused to be taken in by innocent sheep’s clothing ever again. He had turned his back on Chatha because of his Down syndrome appearance, and it had cost him dearly. It was a mistake he would never make again.
“Yes?” she asked, her voice sounding disused and gentle. “May I help you?”
Leo didn’t know what to do next, a feeling he was becoming increasingly familiar with. Something inside of him remembered his mother smacking him in the back of the head for mouthing off to old Mrs. Wheederman down the street, but it was severely contrasting with a long adulthood of knowing anyone could be the next threat.
“Where is he?” Faith asked.
The question was flat and cold, brooking no nonsense, and for once he was grateful to have someone else take the lead. Which was funny because one of the problems he’d had when he’d been an Army Ranger had been the chain of command. A total moron who had somehow put in enough tenure to become a major was giving orders, often with bullying connotations, just so he could feel like his erection was the biggest one in town? Yeah. Not Leo’s idea of a good time and certainly not his idea of how to take care of business.
“Who do you mean, dear? There’s no one here but me.”
Leo could read people really well, and he’d have been tempted to believe her, but that was his mother and that sting on the back of his head talking.
“Let’s not play games. I really don’t have the time,” Faith said, her hand coming to rest on the door. She leaned her weight into it pushing the woman back a few inches.
“You better back off, missy,” she said sharply to Faith, “or I’ll be calling the authorities!”
“I said—!”
“That’s a pretty shade of lipstick you’re wearing.”
Faith’s head veered around and the look she gave him was stupefied, pure and simple.
“Really? You like it?” The old woman preened. Literally preened. Then a rattling sort of chuckle erupted out of her. “It’s called Hussy Red!”
“It goes well with your dress and your…” He paused when he realized she was wearing red shoes. Ruby slippers, to be exact. “…shoes. My friend didn’t mean to be rude,” he continued, “but we are in…someone’s in trouble and we were told we could find some help here.”
“Well, I could call the authorities,” she said helpfully, but she stepped back and let the door open wider. “That’s about all I can do for you. Can I get you something? Some sweet tea maybe?”
“That sounds lovely,” Leo said, but he was talking to her back and they were stepping into the foyer. A quick look around showed a home exactly like one he would have pictured for a sweet little old lady. A little china tea set on a low table. TV dinner trays…one with medications lined up neatly on it. A recliner that clearly got a lot of use with a doily on its back. There was a fat gray cat snoozing on top of the doily.
“What are you—?”
“Shh,” he said softly, reaching to squeeze Faith’s hand in a gentle signal that she should trust him. He realized what he was doing an instant later and after a startled look into her slightly widening eyes, he drew back from her. Strangely enough, her warmth didn’t disappear from its place against his fingertips as quickly as it should have. He found himself wiping his palm surreptitiously down over the thigh of his jeans.
“Here you go. Some sweet tea,” she said, a glass for each of them in her hands.
“Thank you,” they said in unison as they reached for the glasses.
Sweet tea.
“Is that a touch of the South I hear in your voice, ma’am?” he asked her. Of course, he didn’t hear anything of the kind, but sweet tea was the knee-jerk drink of choice in the South and he suspected there was some import to her offering it, even if he didn’t exactly know what he was dealing with. But this was clearly a series of hoops they were meant to leap through, and he was willing to play the game for the moment. And this hoop, it seemed, was based strongly in their politeness to this old woman.
“Why yes, yes it is!” she said, a southern drawl magically appearing in her tone. “Now what is it you nice people want from me? Shall I call the authorities?”
Not police. Authorities.
“Would you do that for us? Call the authorities?”
“Why yes. Of course. Let me get my phone. Now you drink up!”
“Don’t drink it,” they whispered in unison to each other once she’d left the room. Leo met her eyes with surprise, finding her just as astonished as he was by the way they seem to be hitting the same notes together.
Leo looked over his shoulder for the fifth time since entering the house, the crawl of nervousness over the back of his scalp a constant sensation it seemed. He had learned the hard way not to turn his back on anyone, and ever since then it had been a constant thing for him, this hyper vigilance. He wanted to see it as a good thing, an added awareness that would keep him from ending up…
Leo pushed the thought away before it was birthed. Now was not the time for self-reflection. There was a great deal of danger in what he was doing. He had no idea why he was here, why he was risking his neck for…for what? For whom? Did he even know? Did he really know if the man he had left in that bed was the friend he had known since boyhood? Or was he just holding on to something that was already gone?
“There. The authorities are on the way,” the old woman said. “You haven’t drunk your tea,” she noted with a frown.
“I’m not thirsty, thank you,” Faith said, leaning to place the glass on a nearby table.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Faith froze as the threat in her words and tone came through loud and clear.
“I beg your pardon,” Faith said just as sharply.
“I’ve had about enough of you, missy,” the old woman said with obvious agitation. “You’re rude and ungrateful, that’s what you are.”
“We’re sorry,” Leo jumped in. “We’re just very worried about our friend.”
“Now that’s not entirely true, is it?”
This time it was Leo’s turn to still. He narrowed his attention on her, the feel of his gun itching against his spine. It was an instinct, a reaction he had always trusted.
“You’re not even sure you want to be here. Not sure you would even call him a friend.”
Leo swallowed. The anxiousness that crawled up his chest was painful and once again he felt the need to look to his back.
“That may be true,” he said, his words a little forceful as he made them leave his mouth, “but it doesn’t follow that he doesn’t deserve to be saved.”
“Interesting. Now, why don’t you drink up,” she suggested again. “I doubt you’ll find what you’re looking for otherwise.”
Leo looked to Faith and hoped she could see the word that indicated his feelings of the moment. Capitulation. Alice, he realized, would not have gone on her adventure if she’d never given in to the request of a simple bottle. However, as he raised his glass to his lips, he could not make himself drink. He broke out in a cold sweat, his breath suddenly hard to catch.
“Fuck,” he said in a wild burst. He was about to slam the glass down and walk out, but Faith reached out to him, touched his wrist, met his eyes. He didn’t know why it should matter, didn’t know why it should make him feel a sense of calm, make his heart slow, his breathing even out, but it did. She did. Something in that simple touch and the look of understanding in her eyes made him relax in a way he had not been able to since this whole fucked-up journey into the paranormal had begun.
He watched her lift her glass to her lips, and barely take a sip before she suddenly dissolved away from before his eyes.
And, still not knowing why, he followed suit.
Faith felt like she was falling. A dizzy, sickening feeling. Falling slowly at first, then more quickly, gaining speed. Like Alice and her rabbit hole, potentially the truth to the myth of that story. Maybe Lewis Carroll had fallen down a similar rabbit hole and it had been an experience retold in a child’s tale. But this time she was the one falling, falling into the past where so much had shaped her through the years, and then falling into the future. A future of laughter and pain. Of delight and desire. A future of infinite possibilities.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Faith awoke in bed next to her lover, feeling his heat along the length of her body, his na**d skin smooth and warm in places, hot and furred with crisp hairs in others. The hair on his body surprised her every single time she saw it. Every time she felt it. Before him she had known only Night Angel lovers, and Night Angels were free of body hair. She reached out and touched his chest, touched the springy curls.
“You’re obsessing about my hair again,” he said with a sleepy smile, making her laugh because he knew her so well. He reached for her, drawing the full length of her tighter to his body. Her skin was instantly seared with his heat. Night Angel lovers were so much cooler to the touch, or so it seemed in her retrograde memory. Maybe it was just the way she burned so hot for him, the way just the anticipation of him made her soft and wet.
“Leo,” she breathed as his mouth brushed over hers. How was it that every time felt like the first time? How was it that she felt that curl of anxiety and anticipation every single time he was going to kiss her, wondering if he would, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t change his mind. It didn’t matter that he was only human. It never had. Not for her. And though, in the beginning, he had mistrusted her and her innate power, that was long past them now.
“Faith, give me your mouth, I find I’m famished for it this morning.” He suddenly rolled over her, sliding her beneath him, placing himself right between her thighs as she braced her feet against the mattress. He was hard and hot against her, cradling himself into everything that was wet and warm that she had to offer him. Her hands ran down his sides, the play of the muscles under his skin breathtakingly powerful. He was no Nightwalker, but he was a prime physical specimen of his own species and that was more than enough for her.
Then, finally, he kissed her. The long, sweet, toe-curling kind of kiss that could bring tears to a woman’s eyes, because she knew that it meant he loved her with every fiber of his being. The kind of kiss that erased all doubt, if there ever was any, and solidified confidence. He was hers and he wanted no one else but her.
Then she was gasping for breath as he lifted away from her, cradled her face between his hands and looked at her in the way that told her he was just as floored sometimes by his feelings for her as she was for him.
“I think you’re going to have to let me marry you,” he said, the thought obviously surprising him as well. “I never thought I’d see the day I’d say that, never thought I’d trust anyone enough or find anyone who could understand a bitter, worn-out mercenary like me, but from the moment I met you you’ve been putting me in my place and proving me wrong. So…I think I’m going to have to make you marry me. And I may even want kids,” he said with wonder. “Holy hell.”
“You always said…but…” Faith was utterly floored by his declaration, “you always said you never wanted to be that close to anyone…to put anyone in the line of fire that could be used against you.” And to venture into the possibility of a child? She hardly knew where to start when it came to a suggestion like that. There would be a lot of bravery required on both their parts in order for that discussion to take place.
“Faith, if there’s anything I’ve learned, anything I’ve come to understand, it’s that you would give anyone who threatened your loved ones a ferocious fight. You’re not human. You’re not under threat by humans. You face much worse than that every day from other species. What I mean is, I can’t spend my freedom in a cage of fear. You’ve taught me that. Everything I fight for, the code I live by, it means nothing if I can’t reap what I sow.”
Faith couldn’t help herself. Tears entered her eyes. He’d finally realized that he had to let someone, anyone, close to him or nothing would be worthwhile. He’d had that once. With Jackson and Docia. But that had all changed when they became Bodywalkers and he had felt that he had to keep a cautious distance from them. That had cost them all very dearly, and now there was no way of going back and fixing it. But he could move on into a new future. Maybe now he would stop hurting himself with his cautious aloofness and finally let others in. Let the need to trust come back to life within him.
“Yes?” she asked, her voice sounding disused and gentle. “May I help you?”
Leo didn’t know what to do next, a feeling he was becoming increasingly familiar with. Something inside of him remembered his mother smacking him in the back of the head for mouthing off to old Mrs. Wheederman down the street, but it was severely contrasting with a long adulthood of knowing anyone could be the next threat.
“Where is he?” Faith asked.
The question was flat and cold, brooking no nonsense, and for once he was grateful to have someone else take the lead. Which was funny because one of the problems he’d had when he’d been an Army Ranger had been the chain of command. A total moron who had somehow put in enough tenure to become a major was giving orders, often with bullying connotations, just so he could feel like his erection was the biggest one in town? Yeah. Not Leo’s idea of a good time and certainly not his idea of how to take care of business.
“Who do you mean, dear? There’s no one here but me.”
Leo could read people really well, and he’d have been tempted to believe her, but that was his mother and that sting on the back of his head talking.
“Let’s not play games. I really don’t have the time,” Faith said, her hand coming to rest on the door. She leaned her weight into it pushing the woman back a few inches.
“You better back off, missy,” she said sharply to Faith, “or I’ll be calling the authorities!”
“I said—!”
“That’s a pretty shade of lipstick you’re wearing.”
Faith’s head veered around and the look she gave him was stupefied, pure and simple.
“Really? You like it?” The old woman preened. Literally preened. Then a rattling sort of chuckle erupted out of her. “It’s called Hussy Red!”
“It goes well with your dress and your…” He paused when he realized she was wearing red shoes. Ruby slippers, to be exact. “…shoes. My friend didn’t mean to be rude,” he continued, “but we are in…someone’s in trouble and we were told we could find some help here.”
“Well, I could call the authorities,” she said helpfully, but she stepped back and let the door open wider. “That’s about all I can do for you. Can I get you something? Some sweet tea maybe?”
“That sounds lovely,” Leo said, but he was talking to her back and they were stepping into the foyer. A quick look around showed a home exactly like one he would have pictured for a sweet little old lady. A little china tea set on a low table. TV dinner trays…one with medications lined up neatly on it. A recliner that clearly got a lot of use with a doily on its back. There was a fat gray cat snoozing on top of the doily.
“What are you—?”
“Shh,” he said softly, reaching to squeeze Faith’s hand in a gentle signal that she should trust him. He realized what he was doing an instant later and after a startled look into her slightly widening eyes, he drew back from her. Strangely enough, her warmth didn’t disappear from its place against his fingertips as quickly as it should have. He found himself wiping his palm surreptitiously down over the thigh of his jeans.
“Here you go. Some sweet tea,” she said, a glass for each of them in her hands.
“Thank you,” they said in unison as they reached for the glasses.
Sweet tea.
“Is that a touch of the South I hear in your voice, ma’am?” he asked her. Of course, he didn’t hear anything of the kind, but sweet tea was the knee-jerk drink of choice in the South and he suspected there was some import to her offering it, even if he didn’t exactly know what he was dealing with. But this was clearly a series of hoops they were meant to leap through, and he was willing to play the game for the moment. And this hoop, it seemed, was based strongly in their politeness to this old woman.
“Why yes, yes it is!” she said, a southern drawl magically appearing in her tone. “Now what is it you nice people want from me? Shall I call the authorities?”
Not police. Authorities.
“Would you do that for us? Call the authorities?”
“Why yes. Of course. Let me get my phone. Now you drink up!”
“Don’t drink it,” they whispered in unison to each other once she’d left the room. Leo met her eyes with surprise, finding her just as astonished as he was by the way they seem to be hitting the same notes together.
Leo looked over his shoulder for the fifth time since entering the house, the crawl of nervousness over the back of his scalp a constant sensation it seemed. He had learned the hard way not to turn his back on anyone, and ever since then it had been a constant thing for him, this hyper vigilance. He wanted to see it as a good thing, an added awareness that would keep him from ending up…
Leo pushed the thought away before it was birthed. Now was not the time for self-reflection. There was a great deal of danger in what he was doing. He had no idea why he was here, why he was risking his neck for…for what? For whom? Did he even know? Did he really know if the man he had left in that bed was the friend he had known since boyhood? Or was he just holding on to something that was already gone?
“There. The authorities are on the way,” the old woman said. “You haven’t drunk your tea,” she noted with a frown.
“I’m not thirsty, thank you,” Faith said, leaning to place the glass on a nearby table.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Faith froze as the threat in her words and tone came through loud and clear.
“I beg your pardon,” Faith said just as sharply.
“I’ve had about enough of you, missy,” the old woman said with obvious agitation. “You’re rude and ungrateful, that’s what you are.”
“We’re sorry,” Leo jumped in. “We’re just very worried about our friend.”
“Now that’s not entirely true, is it?”
This time it was Leo’s turn to still. He narrowed his attention on her, the feel of his gun itching against his spine. It was an instinct, a reaction he had always trusted.
“You’re not even sure you want to be here. Not sure you would even call him a friend.”
Leo swallowed. The anxiousness that crawled up his chest was painful and once again he felt the need to look to his back.
“That may be true,” he said, his words a little forceful as he made them leave his mouth, “but it doesn’t follow that he doesn’t deserve to be saved.”
“Interesting. Now, why don’t you drink up,” she suggested again. “I doubt you’ll find what you’re looking for otherwise.”
Leo looked to Faith and hoped she could see the word that indicated his feelings of the moment. Capitulation. Alice, he realized, would not have gone on her adventure if she’d never given in to the request of a simple bottle. However, as he raised his glass to his lips, he could not make himself drink. He broke out in a cold sweat, his breath suddenly hard to catch.
“Fuck,” he said in a wild burst. He was about to slam the glass down and walk out, but Faith reached out to him, touched his wrist, met his eyes. He didn’t know why it should matter, didn’t know why it should make him feel a sense of calm, make his heart slow, his breathing even out, but it did. She did. Something in that simple touch and the look of understanding in her eyes made him relax in a way he had not been able to since this whole fucked-up journey into the paranormal had begun.
He watched her lift her glass to her lips, and barely take a sip before she suddenly dissolved away from before his eyes.
And, still not knowing why, he followed suit.
Faith felt like she was falling. A dizzy, sickening feeling. Falling slowly at first, then more quickly, gaining speed. Like Alice and her rabbit hole, potentially the truth to the myth of that story. Maybe Lewis Carroll had fallen down a similar rabbit hole and it had been an experience retold in a child’s tale. But this time she was the one falling, falling into the past where so much had shaped her through the years, and then falling into the future. A future of laughter and pain. Of delight and desire. A future of infinite possibilities.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Faith awoke in bed next to her lover, feeling his heat along the length of her body, his na**d skin smooth and warm in places, hot and furred with crisp hairs in others. The hair on his body surprised her every single time she saw it. Every time she felt it. Before him she had known only Night Angel lovers, and Night Angels were free of body hair. She reached out and touched his chest, touched the springy curls.
“You’re obsessing about my hair again,” he said with a sleepy smile, making her laugh because he knew her so well. He reached for her, drawing the full length of her tighter to his body. Her skin was instantly seared with his heat. Night Angel lovers were so much cooler to the touch, or so it seemed in her retrograde memory. Maybe it was just the way she burned so hot for him, the way just the anticipation of him made her soft and wet.
“Leo,” she breathed as his mouth brushed over hers. How was it that every time felt like the first time? How was it that she felt that curl of anxiety and anticipation every single time he was going to kiss her, wondering if he would, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t change his mind. It didn’t matter that he was only human. It never had. Not for her. And though, in the beginning, he had mistrusted her and her innate power, that was long past them now.
“Faith, give me your mouth, I find I’m famished for it this morning.” He suddenly rolled over her, sliding her beneath him, placing himself right between her thighs as she braced her feet against the mattress. He was hard and hot against her, cradling himself into everything that was wet and warm that she had to offer him. Her hands ran down his sides, the play of the muscles under his skin breathtakingly powerful. He was no Nightwalker, but he was a prime physical specimen of his own species and that was more than enough for her.
Then, finally, he kissed her. The long, sweet, toe-curling kind of kiss that could bring tears to a woman’s eyes, because she knew that it meant he loved her with every fiber of his being. The kind of kiss that erased all doubt, if there ever was any, and solidified confidence. He was hers and he wanted no one else but her.
Then she was gasping for breath as he lifted away from her, cradled her face between his hands and looked at her in the way that told her he was just as floored sometimes by his feelings for her as she was for him.
“I think you’re going to have to let me marry you,” he said, the thought obviously surprising him as well. “I never thought I’d see the day I’d say that, never thought I’d trust anyone enough or find anyone who could understand a bitter, worn-out mercenary like me, but from the moment I met you you’ve been putting me in my place and proving me wrong. So…I think I’m going to have to make you marry me. And I may even want kids,” he said with wonder. “Holy hell.”
“You always said…but…” Faith was utterly floored by his declaration, “you always said you never wanted to be that close to anyone…to put anyone in the line of fire that could be used against you.” And to venture into the possibility of a child? She hardly knew where to start when it came to a suggestion like that. There would be a lot of bravery required on both their parts in order for that discussion to take place.
“Faith, if there’s anything I’ve learned, anything I’ve come to understand, it’s that you would give anyone who threatened your loved ones a ferocious fight. You’re not human. You’re not under threat by humans. You face much worse than that every day from other species. What I mean is, I can’t spend my freedom in a cage of fear. You’ve taught me that. Everything I fight for, the code I live by, it means nothing if I can’t reap what I sow.”
Faith couldn’t help herself. Tears entered her eyes. He’d finally realized that he had to let someone, anyone, close to him or nothing would be worthwhile. He’d had that once. With Jackson and Docia. But that had all changed when they became Bodywalkers and he had felt that he had to keep a cautious distance from them. That had cost them all very dearly, and now there was no way of going back and fixing it. But he could move on into a new future. Maybe now he would stop hurting himself with his cautious aloofness and finally let others in. Let the need to trust come back to life within him.
