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uncertain so I found myself nodding.
"Yeah. Yeah, Nicky she's okay& it's just& we weren't there. She woke up and we
weren't there, we just left her at the hill&
"She wasn't at the hill," Marcus murmured, and then did one of those blank
faced things that I'd learned long since was a blooded vampire talking to his
kiss-mate. "Grace says they were at the parking lot at Denny's, sorting out
Renny's love life& " Grace was in another car. As soon as Cory's power faded,
every vampire and Avian with keys in their pockets had flown off for the aerie
where everyone was parked. They'd been back in minutes to pick us up, but we
hadn't loaded into the cars with any sort of order.
"Why would she leave the hill!" Nicky burst out. "The whole reason we left her
there was so she'd be safe and strong what in the blue fuck was she thinking?
Marcus laughed a little, and shook his head in the rearview mirror. "I bet she
was thinking just like the two of you that her presence was needed to make
things right. In any case she just saved your asses, so I wouldn't get on her
back about it right now, you think?
"She's weak," Nicky repeated, looking at me with distress. "We can both feel
it. She needs us.
"We'll be there, I said, and pulled Nicky into my arms, where we shivered
together for the rest of the interminable journey.
Nicky and I practically ran out of the Lexus while it was still moving and
pounded up the outside steps into the living room, where a room full of tense
elves looked at us in relief. My mother was suddenly hovering around me, her
feet three feet off the ground, her wings invisible because she was buzzing so
fast, brushing my face and my back and my chest with a thousand maternal
touches. I finally managed to grab her hands and calm her down and give her to
my father who gathered her in to his rock-quarry embrace and whispered
reassurances to her. "I'm fine," I told them quietly. "I really am fine." I
looked around the gathered crowd and didn't see the one face I wanted
desperately to see.
"She's in the grove," Arturo said in response to my unasked question, and I
had just enough energy to blur up the adamant granite stairs, so I was moving
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with some serious velocity when I hit the trap door only to have it freeze on
me, sending me hurtling back down the stairs, almost into a bewildered Nicky
who had the presence of mind to change form as I blew by him. I landed,
winded, on my back in the hall, staring up the stairs wondering what in the
blue fuck had just happened.
"Uhm, I said, staring up at the ceiling, and Nicky shrieked in alarm. With
some deliberation I picked myself up and walked back up the stairs. I grabbed
the granite handle, and put my shoulder against the door that was never
locked, and pushed, then harder, then frantically as I realized it wasn't
going to give.
"Cory?" I called. "Cory, are you all right?
"She's fine, fuckhead!" said a voice on the other side of the door, and I
froze.
In a surprised ruffle of feathers Nicky was standing right next to me. "Was
that who I think it was? he asked, and I had to open and close my mouth a
couple of times to dredge up an answer.
"No one," I said, my mouth dry and my gut clenching, "It was nobody." Oh
Goddess& not now& do we really have to do this now?
"No one? Fuck you, mate I was your brother your lover your friend for your
whole goddamned life, and now I'm no one?" If I didn't know that it couldn't
exist, I would have said the owner of that voice was hurt and enjoying getting
a little back. I swallowed against the anger and betrayal that thought brought
on, and tried appealing to reason.
"Cory& Cory could you let me in?" I begged, and was relieved to hear her
strained and muffled voice from somewhere above me.
"I'd love to, Bracken," she called, weakly, "but it's not my call.
I hit the door with my shoulder again, and pain shivered down to my neck and
elbow because, dammit, the door was made of granite. "Fuck it all, open the
door!
"I'm not holding it closed, Brack& " She sounded distressed, and I hit the door
again, feeling my flesh give and my shoulder creak.
"Then who is!" Damn, that last charge would have shattered me if I were human,
and I felt a sense of urgency grip me. She was up there and she was weak and
he& it& something wasn't letting me in.
I am!
"You don't exist!" I shouted childishly, but I couldn't help it and I charged
the door again.
"Bracken you're hurting yourself! she said, and there were the tears in her
voice and I started pounding the door frantically even as the voice said,
"He's hurting us all! Damned stubborn rock pile of a brain, I don't exist, do
I?
"You didn't love us enough to stay!" I shouted, and lost all track of the pain
in my shoulder and the pain in my chest and I charged the door until my bones
shattered and re-knit and blood started pouring down from the round of my
shoulder where my flesh split but still I hit that damned granite door again
and again and again, calling to Cory, and to the Goddess, and to everyone but
the owner of that voice, that Goddess-blighted, smug and sorrowful voice on
the other side of the door, until the skin of my arm and my collarbone ran
warm with blood for the second time that night, and my neck and collar snapped
in protest and I was forced to my knees in pain and despair for a moment to
let it heal. She needed me. She needed me and I wasn't there and he wasn't
either, not really, not the way she needed us and how dare he keep me from her
when he couldn't be there the way I could, how dare he be there when he'd left
us, left me, and I'd had to live with that hole in my heart for months and
pretend it didn't exist so that I could love her with a heart that felt whole.
"Please& " I begged again, feeling my pride seep out of me with my sweat.
"Please don't lock me out.
"You started it, jackass!" And that snapped my temper and melted my resistance
because fuck it all, it wasn't true.
"The hell I did!" I shouted, pounding the door futilely with my fist until it
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too ran dark and crimson not caring that half the hill, Chloe and Max and my
parents included, was gathered at the foot of the staircase, listening to me
talking to someone who shouldn't exist. "You DIED, asshole do you remember
that? You left ME! My whole damn life I was terrified of leaving you behind
and then you go and leave me? How dare you? How dare you come back here and
listen to her and comfort her when the one thing that kept me whole this last
year is that at least we didn't make her choose& " I was sobbing. The kind of
sobs that men, even sidhe, don't like to admit they have, when their chests
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