He didn’t hear the rest of it because he was too busy checking out who was there. No one else was wearing Aquascutum like he was, and they were all humans. Each one of them. Age range was early twenties to late forties, maybe because the time of day was convenient for folks who worked or went to school.
Staring at the faces, he tried to figure out what each one had done to end up here, in this coconut-smelling, stark basement with their butts planted on black plastic.
He didn’t belong here. These were not his people, and not just because none of them had fangs and a problem with sunlight.
He stayed anyway, because he had nowhere else to go, and he wondered whether that could be true for some of them as well.
“This is a speaker group,” the woman said, “and tonight Jonathon is going to talk.”
Jonathon stood up. His hands were still working the remnants of the paper towel, rubbing back and forth over what was now an impacted Bounty cigar.
“Hi, my name is Jonathon.” A pattering of hellos bounced around the room. “And I’m a drug addict. I… I, ah, I used cocaine for about a decade and lost just about everything. I’ve been to jail twice. I’ve had to declare bankruptcy. I lost my house. My wife… she, ah, she divorced me and moved out of state with my daughter. Right after that, I lost my job as a physics teacher because I just was going from bender to bender.
“I’ve been clean since, yeah, last August. But… I still think about using. I live in transitional housing right now because I got through rehab and I have a new job. Started two weeks ago. I’m teaching in a prison, actually. The prison I was an inmate in. Math, it’s math.” Jonathon cleared his throat. “Yeah… so, ah, one year ago tonight… one year ago tonight I was in an alley downtown. I was making a buy from a dealer and we got caught. Not by the cops. By the guy whose territory we were in. I got shot in the side and the thigh. I…”
Jonathan cleared his throat again. “As I lay there bleeding, I felt my arms get moved around. The shooter took my coat and my wallet and my watch, then he pistol-whipped me in the head. I really… I really shouldn’t be here right now.” There were a lot of uh-huhs murmured. “I started coming to meetings like this because I had nowhere else to go. Now I choose to come here because I want to be where I am tonight more than I want the high. Sometimes, sometimes that’s only by a slim margin, so I don’t look into the future any further than next Tuesday at nine o’clock. When I come here again. So, yeah, that’s where I’ve been and where I am.”
Jonathon sat back down.
Phury waited for people to pile on with the questions and the comments. Instead, someone else stood up. “Hi, my name is Ellis…”
And that was it. Person after person testifying about their addiction.
When it was nine fifty-three, according to the clock on the wall, the black-haired woman stood up. “And now for the Serenity Prayer.”
Phury rose to his feet with the rest of them and was shocked when someone reached for his hand.
His palm wasn’t wet anymore, though.
He didn’t know whether he was going to make it long-haul. The wizard had been with him a lot of years and knew him like a brother. The one thing he did know was that next Tuesday at nine p.m. he was going to be here again.
He left with the others, and as the night air hit him, he nearly doubled over from the need to light up.
As everyone else scattered to their cars and engines started and headlights came on, he sat on one of the swings with his hands on his knees and his feet planted on the patch of raw earth.
For a second, he thought he was being watched-although maybe paranoia was an offshoot of recovery, who the hell knew.
After about ten minutes, he found a dark shadow and dematerialized upstate to Rehv’s place.
As he took form behind the Adirondack-style great camp, the first thing he saw was a figure at the sliding glass doors of the den.
Cormia was waiting for him.
Slipping outside, she quietly closed the slider and crossed her arms for warmth. The bulky Irish knit sweater she had on was his, and the leggings had been borrowed from Bella. Her hair was long and loose, down to her hips, and the lights from the house’s diamond-pane windows made it glow like gold.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
He came forward, moving up the lawn and onto the stone terrace. “You cold?”
“A little.”
“Good, that means I can warm you.” He opened his arms, and she stepped into them. Even through the sweater’s thick heft, he felt her body against his. “Thank you for not asking how it went. I’m still trying… I don’t know what to say, really.”
Her hands went from his waist up to his shoulders. “You’ll tell me if and when you’re ready.”
“I’m going back again.”
“Good.”
They stood one to the other in the cool night, and they were warm, very warm.
He shifted his lips to her ear and breathed, “I want to be in you.”
“Yes…” she replied, drawing out the word.
They would not be alone inside, but they were alone here in the quiet, dark lee of the house. Moving her backward, even deeper into the shadows, he slipped his palms under the lip of his sweater and onto the skin of his shellan. Smooth, warm, vital, she arched under his touch.
“I’ll let you keep your top on,” he said. “But those tights are going down.”
Hooking his thumbs into the waistband, he took them to her ankles and slipped them off her feet.
“You’re not cold, are you?” he asked, even though he could feel and catch the scent of the answer.
“Not at all.”
The side of the house was stone, but he knew that heavy Irish knit would mattress her shoulders. “Lean back for me.”
As she did, he put his arm around her waist to give her more cushioning, and found her breast with his free hand. He kissed her deep and long and slow, and her mouth moved under his in ways that were both familiar and mysterious-but, then, that was making love with her, wasn’t it. By now, he was well acquainted with her from the inside out-there was nothing of his that hadn’t been inside her in one form or another. And yet being with her was as wondrous as the first time.
She was the same, yet she was always new.
And she was aware what this was about. She knew he needed to be in control of them right now, knew he needed to be the driver. At this moment, he wanted to do something that was right and beautiful and do it well, because after that meeting all he could think about was how much ugliness he’d done to himself and to others, and, nearly, to her.
He took his time, with his tongue dipping in and out of her mouth and his hand caressing her breast, and the investments had a dividend that left his erection nearly punching the way out of his pants: Cormia melted in his hold, getting fluid and hot.
His hand drifted downward. “I think I should make sure you’re not catching a draft.”
“Please… do,” she groaned, her head falling to the side.
He wasn’t sure whether she exposed her throat on purpose, but his fangs didn’t care. They instantly readied for penetration, dropping down from his upper jaw, sharp and hungry.
His hand went between her thighs, and the welling heat he found buckled his knees. He’d meant to keep going slowly, but there would be no more of that.
“Oh, Cormia,” he moaned, slipping both his hands around the contours of her hips and picking her up. His body split her thighs wide open. “Undo my pants… Let me out…”
As his bonding scent roared, she released his arousal and linked them up in a glide that was at once effortless and full of power.
Her head fell back as he held her up and worked her body on and off of his. He took her vein as well in a feat of coordination that was easy as pie.
Just as his fangs breached the sweet skin of her neck, her arms tightened on his shoulders, her fists balling up his shirt.