Free Fall

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And yet, the sense of current running through the walls and floors remained, and the thought of moving elsewhere gave her physical pain. So she stayed, barren walls and all, and only occasionally—like now—wondered why.

This time, she asked it out loud.

“It’s like a fortress,” Bonnie said in response. Her legs were curled up under her as she sat on the sofa chewing on a brownie, the half-empty pan on the coffee table between them. How had they eaten so much, so fast? “Even as empty as your place is. The building’s soaked up so much current over the years, it’s in the building now. That’s why we both just had to live here. Probably why P.B. spends so much time here, too. I can barely get the guys to go home, some mornings.”

Wren didn’t want the details. Bonnie was cheerfully if discriminatingly polyamorous, and while Wren had no problems with that, she was going through a self-imposed dry spell, and didn’t need the reminder of what she was missing.

“I bet that’s why that psi-bomb didn’t do any damage,” Bonnie went on, thinking the problem out logically the way the PUPIs—the forensic scientists of the Cosa, for lack of a better term—were trained to do. “The building practically deflected it, the way treated glass does UV rays…”

The bomb had been planted by the Council—suspected, not proven—back when they were trying to scare the lonejacks into signing on to the Council’s agenda. A classic tactic that had backfired because the Council forgot one basic lesson when dealing with lonejacks: when pushed, they get ornery. And even more stubborn.

Wren had heard, and seen, stranger things. “Or maybe it’s just a really well-built building.”

“Yah, maybe. Got no complaints about the soundproofing, that’s for sure.”

“Oversharing…” Wren murmured.

“Speaking of which.” Bonnie could switch topics without warning, giving you mental whiplash. “What the hell bit your tail? And don’t tell me nothing. You never eat four brownies in one sitting like that, so I know you’re seriously wiped out. You were on a job this morning, weren’t you?”

Wren didn’t talk to Bonnie—or anyone—about her jobs. Part of the service she provided was privacy and confidentiality about the details of what she did. But the actual nature of her work wasn’t exactly a secret any more, not among the Cosa. And certainly not to the PUPIs, damn them.

“Yeah. It was a setup. Someone played me, lured me out there, and jumped me.”

“What?” Bonnie’s normally half-asleep expression woke up suddenly, and she leaned forward, peering again at Wren. “You’re okay. They’re not, I take it.”

“They’re not,” Wren agreed.

“You need to…” Her voice trailed off. The PUPI were formed with the single goal of bringing justice to the Cosa, finding the truth behind things the Null justice system couldn’t or wouldn’t handle. But Bonnie was clearly having difficulty determining how they would be able to help Wren, in this instance.

“I know who they were.” Underneath the fog, a cold clarity had settled over her on the trip home, and the warmth of the shower, and the gooey sugar of the brownie hadn’t broken it even slightly. Now, when she needed it, it rose to the fore. “I know who sent them. And I know what to do about them.”

“Who, and what?” Bonnie sounded like she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but couldn’t stop herself from asking.

Wren stared at the ceiling, then got up to go into the kitchen.

“Valere!”

Wren poured herself a mug of coffee and came back into the main room where Bonnie was sitting.

“I’m going to take them down,” she said, simply.

“The Silence.” It was a logical conclusion, and for all her perky-goth casualness, Bonnie was bone-deep logical.

“Yeah.” Wren drank her coffee, and watched Bonnie mull over what little she knew, fitting the pieces together with recent history.

“You’re serious about this?”

“I’m serious.”

“Why now? I mean, no offense, Valere, but you were offered leadership shit back when this all started, back when it was just a bunch of random vigilantes and their pit bulls.” It had been mastiffs, actually, the ones Wren had seen, but she didn’t correct her. “And it’s not like you didn’t know how serious it was, that they wanted us all dead and gone and never-existed.”

“I couldn’t do it then,” was all Wren said, but after a minute, Bonnie seemed to get it. You could know something in your head, and in your heart, but that wasn’t the same as knowing it in your gut. Down where you can actually do something about it.

“So…how? You alone? Or you knock on my door and say ‘It’s time to do this’ and I’m supposed to fall in lockstep behind you? All of us are? On your say-so, you whose partner is part of the problem?”

“No.” Wren knew that Bonnie was just being devil’s advocate, and didn’t take offense. “Exactly the opposite.” She was still trying to work it out herself, so she was choosing her words carefully, trying not to get tangled up in her own thoughts. What had been so white-hot and clear walking out of the theater cooled slightly under rational considerations, but Wren knew she had been right, in that heat.

“We went about it the wrong way, before. We tried to organize, to become an army. A solid force of opposition.”

“And that’s not going to work?” Bonnie asked. “Then what the hell is?”

“You study any history when you were in school?” Wren asked.

“American history, I mean.”

“A little, I guess,” Bonnie said dismissively. “I wasn’t much for classes back then.”

“Me, neither. But I liked the textbooks. And some stuff stuck, even when I didn’t know it was sticking.” Never any of Neezer’s classes—she’d had no head for biology, and Neezer kept her away from any of the expensive microscopes, since her control back then had been for shit. But history had intrigued her.

“Back in the American Revolution, the British sent their troops in. They marched like they’d marched in Europe—straight lines and squared off formations, and bright red uniforms. Soldiers.”

“Yeah, so?” Bonnie wasn’t following, for once.

“The rebels were frontiersmen,” another, deeper voice said.

Both women jumped: they hadn’t heard P.B. come in. Wren had been expecting the usual tap on the window, forgetting that he now had his own key, now that he was staying with her on an official basis.

“They wore brown, to blend in with the forest and the crops. They shot from behind trees, lying behind rocks. They were snipers, not soldiers.” The demon paused, sounding as though he were lacking only elbow patches and a classroom to go into academia. “A lot of that’s historical legend, actually. But there’s truth in it, too. You thinking of turning us into snipers from behind mailboxes and fire hydrants, Valere?” Then he saw the bruises on her face and his oddly flattened, bearlike face went from amused to furious. “What happened?”

She had almost forgotten how bad she looked, even with the blood washed off. “Welcome home. I got jumped. Down in the theater district. Someone used the job as a chance to get me alone.”

“He dead?”

“All three of them are.”

“Good.” The thing about demon: they didn’t much give a damn about violence. Wren didn’t know much about the breed, and she knew more than almost anyone, from what P.B. had told her over the years. But the one thing everyone knew: the reason they made such good couriers for top-priority or dangerous packages was that a demon would kill you if he felt threatened, and feel no guilt about it. They didn’t have guilt.

“Silence?” Danny had come in behind P.B., taking the time to remove his coat and hang it up in the closet. He was dressed in his usual jeans and cowboy boots, with a baseball cap over his curly brown hair to cover the small, curved horns peeking out.

“From what they said, I suspect so. The plan was to take me out, and then come get P.B.”

Bonnie hadn’t known about that. Wren had almost forgotten, herself.

“And you killed them first. I never get to have any fun.” P.B. was being jovial, but his jawline gave it away, if you knew what to look for. Black gum showed against his white fur, like a dog preparing to snarl, emphasizing the polar bear–like appearance that gave him his nickname. He might be causal about killing, but he knew—they all knew—that Wren wasn’t. So there was more to the story that she wasn’t telling.

She twisted her mouth into an almost-smile, wincing when it hurt her face. “You’re still pissed off because I stopped you from interfering in an attack, last winter.”

“I remember.” He was looking at her, and she held his red gaze steady, until he was the one who looked away. But he didn’t seem displeased by what he saw, despite that. In fact, she almost thought that he looked…smug? “You said to hold off, because the Patrol was coming. You were right. Bart agreed, and it all came out right. Patrol power. Yay.” They had argued about that, at the time, and afterward. Clearly he still thought he had been right.

“The Patrols are still going on,” Bonnie said, starting to recover and regroup. “Not organized as such, but if there’s a problem—” a nice way of saying “if someone was attacked” “—they have help nearby, ready to come. Did you call?”

Wren nodded, remembering the voice that had pinged her when she called out. They hadn’t asked “what” but only “where.” A willingness to help. But it was after the fact. Too late. They were moving too slow, too late. They needed to move fast, like lightning. Like current.

“Fatae and lonejacks, yeah. Council has totally skedaddled.” Danny was dismissive the way only a Fatae could be about the Council. Neither group had much use for the other, even at the height of the Truce.

“It’s something,” Bonnie said, defensive. She was a member of the Patrol: all of the PUPI were, by order of their bosses. On-the-job training, if they were at the scene of a crime before anyone else. Before the evidence could be trampled by clueless Cosa who weren’t used to thinking beyond “fight or flight.”

“No more Council. No more lonejack.” Wren wasn’t looking at anyone when she said it, staring at something only she could see, off somewhere else. “No more Fatae.”

“Excuse me?” Danny looked at her, then looked at Bonnie, as though asking if the bruises on her face and arms were matched by a crack in the Retrievers’ skull. Bonnie shrugged, as at a loss as the faun.

“No more Cosa?” P.B. asked softly. She looked at him, and saw by his face that he understood. He knew the coldness in her core, the sludge in her veins. And he approved.

“More Cosa,” she corrected him. “Real Cosa. One family. Get us thinking like one beast, not three. Or we might as well just roll over and die now.” She finished her coffee, and stared down into the mug. It was easier to say than she thought it might be. “You were right, P.B., and I was wrong. We’ve been treating this—all of this, from the very beginning—like a personal attack, at worst like a hate crime. A private dispute that could be mediated, discussed. Like something that we could deal with like reasonable beings, patrol and protect and wait it out, and get away without getting our hands too dirty.”

“We can’t?” Bonnie was listening intently now, as was Danny. Wren turned to P.B., her eyes asking him a wordless question.

“You can’t deal with someone who doesn’t believe you have the right to exist,” P.B. said, answering her question from the depths of his own experience, a voice filled with conviction. “You have to eradicate them. Before they eradicate you.”

“We tried that,” Danny said. “The patrols, the Battle…”

The Battle had been intended to be a demonstration, bait to lure out the leaders, the shadow-figures behind the hatred. As such, it had failed.

“No, we didn’t,” P.B. disagreed. “We fought the foot soldiers. And then we tried to draw out the leaders, yeah. Each time, we dealt them an injury. But it was half-measures and preventatives, aimed at figuring out what was wrong and how to fix it. All that did was buy us time.

“Only it bought them time, too. It showed them what we are, where we are, and what we can—and can’t do. We showed them our entire hand.”

“No. They only think we did.” Wren put her mug on the floor and stood up, pacing. She had learned over the years that it was easier to keep people focused on her if she was moving. It also helped her concentrate. “But the truth is that they don’t know half of what we are. Because we don’t know half of what we are.”

“Okay, huh?” Bonnie cocked her head and scrunched her face up in exaggerated puzzlement. Sometimes Wren forgot how much younger the other woman was. Ten years wasn’t much between her and Sergei—they both had the mileage to make up for it. But Bonnie’s life had been a gentler one, and even now she worked in the scale of evidence and evaluation, not experience.

“We’ve gotten civilized. We’re modern. We use current, and distance ourselves from the old ways, as much as the Silence is trying to.”

“Old magic was inconsistent and less effective,” Bonnie said, parroting the accepted line.

“True. And it had a higher cost,” Wren said. “A cost we don’t have to pay any more, thanks to Old Ben and his magic kite. We’ve come a long way. It’s been a good thing. But that doesn’t mean the past isn’t as much in us as the present.” She couldn’t believe she was saying that. She had always considered herself totally modern, knowing only as much about the old magic and the past ways as Neezer had insisted she learn.

She still was. She still preferred to take her strength from current—it was cleaner, more secure, and less prone to backfiring on a user. Old magics had to be coaxed, bribed to hand, and if anyone could use them, nobody could guarantee results. And you paid for it, oh how you paid.

But it was the same stuff. She knew that now, with what she had done, that dark current that Neezer had always warned her away from, still heavy like sludge in her core. Old magic. Emotionally charged. Unpredictable. She might have refused to see it, refused to use it in the past…but it slithered in there with the neon brights, just the same.

You were what was inside you. You were what formed you. Love, hope…anger, hatred. Fear.

The sludge, the tar, it wasn’t something that came from outside. It was in you, all the time. Waiting for something to trigger it. The fear. The anger. The hatred. The cold stillness she could feel inside, now.

It wasn’t more powerful than external current. It wasn’t easier. It fed off of her in a way that current never did, and made her weak, in the end. But when it heated, it heated faster and hotter than any modern current ever could.

That was the danger, the risk. Old magic consumed the user. Old magic ate you whole.

But oh, the things it could let you do, in that heat. No control needed at all. That was the lure. That was the danger. D’anger. The anger. The wordplay almost made her laugh. Almost.

“I never wanted to kill anyone,” she said quietly. “I never wanted to fight when I could run, and I never wanted to run when I could just stay out of sight. I’m not a troublemaker or a troubleshooter. But we need to survive. We need to do more than survive. And we can’t do that if there are people out there who aren’t even willing to give us the respect of being people, in their eyes. And we can’t change their minds, that’s been proven already.”

P.B. shifted uncomfortably, causing the other three in the room to look at him. He glared back at them, then looked at the Retriever.

“That’s the one thing you never wanted to hear, Valere. You know it now. There is such a thing as justifiable violence. There is such a thing as a just war—or at least a necessary one. Necessary death. Necessary killing. There comes a time when you can’t run any more, because you’ve been running so long you’ve run out of anywhere to run to.”

Wren wanted to deny it. But the sludge stirred in her, and she felt the tarry sweetness on her tongue, and was stilled.

“And you know this because…?” Bonnie challenged him.

“Because I’ve been there, puppy. I’ve been there over and over again.”

Wren had asked P.B. how old he was, once. He had slid around answering her directly, but the implication had been that he was older than the normal human lifespan. She wondered, suddenly, how many times older.

“You?” Danny scoffed; the Fatae as a rule were less accepting of demon than Talent were, because the demon were a created species, their origins never spoken of except in speculative whispers. They didn’t have a clan or tribe or herd, they didn’t gather together—in fact, they seemed to dislike being in each others’ company—and not one of them looked like the other, except for the eyes all being that exact same shade of dark dried-blood-red. Danny didn’t mean to be insulting, Wren thought. It was just that the Fatae were used to thinking of demon as second-class members, without a history or tradition of their own.

“Me, faun. When you were still wobbling around on your hooves, trying to figure out what your tail was for.”

A faun’s tail was a sensitive subject, and Danny flushed under the baseball cap, but held his tongue.

“I’m not trying to be rude here,” Bonnie said, “but I’m going to be anyway, so what the hell. You’ve been in the thick of things since all this started. You’re the one who got Wren involved, stirred up the Fatae, got the word out. Got everyone sharing information. And you’re a demon—you’ve never avoided violence in your entire life. So what the hell do you know from running?”

Wren closed her eyes and counted to five. When she opened them again, nobody had moved, and P.B. was watching her.

“I am demon,” he said, finally. “What that means…The Fatae never wanted to know. The mages have forgotten.” Mages—the old term, the one only the Council used any more, and then only formally. The word sounded strangely right on the demon’s tongue. “For generations, we were content that way. It was better to be forgotten. Safer. No one could use us, then.”

You can ground in me. P.B.’s voice, offering her sanctuary, protection from overrush. It’s what I was created for.

Never without your permission, she had replied.

Her eyes were too dry to tear up in realization. Once, clearly, permission had not been sought. Or granted.

“But I am older than all of you put together. And I didn’t get that way by throwing myself under every passing trauma-train. When I hear marching boots, the sound of rifles, the screams of a mob…I run. I ran. From old Amsterdam. South Africa. From Germany. Over and over again. I ran.” His eyes couldn’t really have darkened; it had to be a trick of the light. “And people died, who might have lived, if I had taken a stand.

“But I lived. Lived, and came here. And if I had any brains left I would have run again.” He sounded so disgusted with himself, so totally P.B., that the spell he had been weaving with his words was broken, slightly, and Wren found that she could breathe again.