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with a sharp chin and a sharp nose and cheekbones that cast shadows on his
cheeks, are now drawn tight almost to the point of his feeding face. "You
people& I am not your one and only, Bracken. If you move on to another girl or
another bloke and& never visit my room again to play chess or listen to music
with me or haul me off on another goddamned quest for something stupid like
moonlight for the lower fey bathroom or something& " He looks up at me and I am
amazed and devastated at the trickle of crimson that is running down the side
of his nose. "It would kill me, mate. It would downright destroy me. You've
got to promise me that when you or I move on that we will still be brothers.
I take a step inside his room, and I can hear my heart pounding in my throat
as I reach behind me and close the door. Another step, and I am there, in
front of him and I reach over to his face and trace the trickle of a tear with
my finger and bring it to my lips. I am a red-cap blood is my calling and my
passion and his tears are as sweet as nectar and honey. I reach out again, and
this time I cup his slender, cool cheek in my large palm and now I am his
protector and the world has flip-flopped on its axis.
In a skin tingling rush, I understand what Green was trying to tell me after I
brought his beloved home, covered in a tarp and wooden crates of peaches.
Suddenly, I understand truly, in my core and my body and soul, Green's frantic
need to protect Adrian from himself. Suddenly, I feel, with a pressure that
makes my lungs expand tight in my chest, Adrian's desperate, painful,
devouring need to be needed. My mentor, my brother, my hero, Oh, Goddess,
Adrian, you never knew how badly we needed you. You never understood how
desperately you were loved.
"You couldn't get rid of me, brother," I say gently in my dream, and the
relief shining from his eyes makes me want to wrap my arms around him and
protect him from anything that might ever hurt him. Oh Adrian, my brother, my
lover, my hero how could I leave you behind?
I'm awake suddenly, just as, in the dream, our mouths met and tangled in a
kiss of such sweetness that I have never been able to give it a name. I
realize first that Adrian has left me behind instead and second, that I hear
his voice and Cory's down the granite staircase. Cory has gone to the garden
for a visit, and has left the trap door open. I am suddenly filled with anger
and fear and a denial so sharp its bitterness cancels out the sweetness of the
remembered kiss. Adrian is dead, I tell myself. His voice is an illusion,
forced on me by my memories and my grief. Then who is Cory talking to? I ask.
And then I refuse to answer.
The granite staircase to the top of Green's hill starts in the hallway from
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the main sitting room to the darkling. By a trick of sound, voices up in the
garden seem to resound in Cory's room and in Green's room and nowhere else in
the vast house or at least that's what I told myself. I was on the verge of
charging up the staircase to get Cory out of the cold when I hear her voice,
and I find myself arrested on the first step, waiting to see what upset her so
badly that she couldn't even talk to Green about it.
She laughed, a tired, gentle sound in the night. And then a question, in that
other voice, the one that can't possibly be. "No it doesn't make me sad," she
protests. "It's just that& you, Bracken, Green it was like a big secret club
and I can't believe you all let me in." Her voice dropped. "It's an honor that
I dream not of," she quoted, and I can see in my mind that little half smile
that she usually gives when she uses poetry, hers or someone else's.
A question. My question. And because it is mine, I actually hear his voice in
my head. "So, luv, what really brings you up here tonight? Isn't it date
night?
"Oh gees, Adrian, not you too& does everybody know about date night?
"Think of it like high school, luv. They all know about date night. They all
know when you and Bracken are fighting. They all know when you and Green are
making love. I'm pretty sure that by tomorrow, everyone will know you had to
come up to the garden to talk to a ghost in the moonlight." The voice dropped
with conspiracy and compassion. "But only you and I will know why.
"I miss you, beloved, she murmured. "Isn't that a good enough reason?
"No," came the honest answer. "I know you miss me, but you're here now because
you don't want to talk to the people who are there for you in ways I can't
be." I felt a moment of stark compassion. How hard to be forced to be an
observer in the life you had once vibrantly participated in. She's not talking
to anybody.
"Bracken and Green are too good for me," Cory all but whispered, and I wanted
to rocket up the staircase and take her in my arms and make her take that
back.
"Bullshit," came the stark reply. Goddess bless& nobody. "That's the sort of
crap you believed about yourself when I first met you& you remember that? It
took me four months to convince you I was serious& that's four months&
Her voice broke as she finished the sentence for him. "That we could have had
together and didn't." A deep, shuddery breath. "And that's a cruel truth,
beloved.
"Not any more cruel than what you are doing to yourself now." Adri& the answer
came softly, and until I had to silence my own breath I didn't realize that I
was weeping. "Corinne Carol Anne Kirkpatrick op Crocken Green, even a
vampire's ghost must be gone by dawn& what is eating a hole in your heart? Was
date night so bad, was it so horrible to suffer his touch&
"No." She swallowed. Even down the staircase I could picture her face, the
tight jaw, the determination not to cry. "It was great. It was fun, and when
he touched me it was&
"Nice?
"Wonderful, she murmured, and a horrible rock settled in my stomach.
"And that's bad?" I wanted to ask the question myself, I thought irritably,
and be the bigger man about her binding to Nicky Kestrel.
"The touching felt good& and& I& I& " Goddess. I could even hear her blush. "You
know, A' that thing you're supposed to do when you're& doing the thing we were
supposed to be doing.
"Where I come from we call that a climax." I found myself breathing through my
nose, and suppressed the laughter. If he couldn't be there in the garden, he
certainly couldn't have that same inflection, that same sense of goddamned
humor&
"That's funny, we American's call it an orgasm," Cory retorted archly. "And
yes, I had one. And it felt great. But it didn't feel right. You, Green,
Bracken I know what making love feels like& there's a sacredness& a holy dark,
moving through your body, and everything, your skin, the sky, your lover's
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