Andre caught her easily before she could hurt herself further, lifting her in his arms as if she weighed no more than a kitten. “Mon pauvre petite,” he murmured, heading back towards the car at a swift but silent run, “It is the hospital for you, I think—”
“Saint—Francis—” she gasped, every step jarring her hand and bringing tears of pain to her eyes, “One of us—is on the night-staff—Dr. Crane—”
“Bien,” he replied. “Now be silent—”
“But—how are you—”
“In your car, foolish one. I have the keys you left in it.”
“But—”
“I can drive.”
“But—”
“And I have a license. Will you be silent?”
“How?” she said, disobeying him.
“Night school,” he replied succinctly, reaching the car, putting her briefly on her feet to unlock the passenger-side door, then lifting her into it. “You are not the only one who knows of urban camouflage.”
This time she did not reply—mostly because she had fainted from pain.
The emergency room was empty—for which Andre was very grateful. His invocation of Dr. Crane brought a thin, bearded young man around to the tiny examining cubicle in record time.
“Good godalmighty! What did you tangle with, a bus?” he exclaimed, when stripping the sweatsuit jacket and pants revealed that there was little of Diana that was not battered and black-and-blue.
Andre wrinkled his nose at the acrid antiseptic odors around them, and replied shortly. “No. Your ‘Ripper.’ ”
The startled gaze the doctor fastened on him revealed that Andre had scored. “Who—won?” he asked at last.
“We did. I do not think he will prey upon anyone again.”
The doctor’s eyes closed briefly; Andre read prayerful thankfulness on his face as he sighed with relief. Then he returned to business. “You must be Andre, right? Anything I can supply?”
Andre laughed at the hesitation in his voice. “Fear not, your blood supply is quite safe, and I am unharmed. It is Diana who needs you.”
The relief on the doctor’s face made Andre laugh again.
Dr. Crane ignored him. “Right,” he said, turning to the work he knew best.
She was lightheaded and groggy with the Demerol Dr. Crane had given her as Andre deftly stripped her and tucked her into her bed; she’d dozed all the way home in the car.
“I just wish I knew what that thing was—” she said inconsequentially, as he arranged her arm in its light Fiberglas cast a little more comfortably. “—I won’t be happy until I know—”
“Then you are about to be happy, cherie, for I have had the brainstorm—” Andre ducked into the livingroom and emerged with a dusty leather-bound book. “Remember I said there was something familiar about it? Now I think I know what it was.” He consulted the index, and turned pages rapidly—found the place he sought, and read for a few moments. “As I thought—listen. ‘The gaki—also known as the Japanese vampire—also takes its nourishment only from the living. There are many kinds of gaki, extracting their sustenance from a wide variety of sources. The most harmless are the “perfume” and “music” gaki—and they are by far the most common. Far deadlier are those that require blood, flesh—or souls.’ ”
“Souls?”
“Just so. ‘To feed, or when at rest, they take their normal form of a dense cloud of dark smoke. At other times, like the kitsune, they take on the form of a human being. Unlike the kitsune, however, there is no way to distinguish them in this form from any other human. In the smoke form, they are invulnerable—in the human form, however, they can be killed; but to permanently destroy them, the body must be burned—preferably in conjunction with or solely by Power.’ I said there was something familiar about it—it seems to have been a kind of distant cousin.” Andre’s mouth smiled, but his eyes reflected only a long-abiding bitterness.
“There is no way you have any relationship with that—thing!” she said forcefully. “It had no more honor, heart or soul than a rabid beast!”
“I—I thank you, cherie,” he said, slowly, the warmth returning to his eyes. “There are not many who would think as you do.”
“Their own closed-minded stupidity.”
“To change the subject—what was it made you burn it as you did? I would have abandoned it. It seemed dead enough.”
“I don’t know—it just seemed the thing to do,” she yawned. “Sometimes my instincts just work . . . right. . . .”
Suddenly her eyes seemed too leaden to keep open.
“Like they did with you. . . .” She fought against exhaustion and the drug, trying to keep both at bay.
But without success. Sleep claimed her for its own.
He watched her for the rest of the night, until the leaden lethargy of his own limbs told him dawn was near. He had already decided not to share her bed, lest any movement on his part cause her pain—instead, he made up a pallet on the floor beside her.
He stood over her broodingly while he in his turn fought slumber, and touched her face gently. “Well—” he whispered, holding off torpor far deeper and heavier than hers could ever be—while she was mortal. “You are not aware to hear, so I may say what I will and you cannot forbid. Dream; sleep and dream—I shall see you safe—my only love.”
And he took his place beside her, to lie motionless until night should come again.
Wet Wings
This was originally for a Susan Shwartz anthology, Sisters of Fantasy 2.
Katherine watched avidly, chin cradled in her old, arthritic hands, as the chrysalis heaved, and writhed, and finally split up the back. The crinkled, sodden wings of the butterfly emerged first, followed by the bloated body. She breathed a sigh of wonder, as she always did, and the butterfly tried to flap its useless wings in alarm as it caught her movement.
“Silly thing,” she chided it affectionately. “You know you can’t fly with wet wings!” Then she exerted a little of her magic; just a little, brushing the butterfly with a spark of calm that jumped from her trembling index finger to its quivering antenna.
The butterfly, soothed, went back to its real job, pumping the fluid from its body into the veins of its wings, unfurling them into their full glory. It was not a particularly rare butterfly, certainly not an endangered one; nothing but a common Buckeye, a butterfly so ordinary that no one even commented on seeing them when she was a child. But Katherine had always found the markings exquisite, and she had used this species and the Sulfurs more often than any other to carry her magic.
Magic. That was a word hard to find written anymore. No one approved of magic these days. Strange that in a country that gave the Church of Gaia equal rights with the Catholic Church, that no one believed in magic.
But magic was not “correct.” It was not given equally to all, nor could it be given equally to all. And that which could not be made equal, must be destroyed. . . .