Healer's Heart
Section 6
by
Ann Marie Olson
Story © 2002 Ann
Marie Olson
Chapter 28
Danyel zlinned Dimitri's descent into need with a sort of wary fascination. He sure hoped he didn't turn into such an idiot every month. "Hold still." Dimitri growled, waving a straight razor far too near Danyel's nose for his peace of mind.
Dimitri's hands no longer shook, as they had during turnover or the hectic night following it, but that didn't mean he was at all stable emotionally. Danyel was pretty much certain Dimitri never was stable emotionally. Danyel held still. This was probably the better part of wisdom.
With an ease any paid barber would envy, Dimitri whisked away lather and whiskers. He then leaned over Danyel's shoulder and did his own face. Danyel'd become used to Dimitri's utter disregard for anything even vaguely resembling privacy. He did wish, however, he could have kept at least his bathroom for himself, if only for a few moments a day. This morning had been a prime example.
They'd both been up very late last night dealing with an awkward change over case at the center. The child's parents had dumped him on the steps of the center with chains binding his wrists and ankles. With Dimitri's help, they'd managed to heal him enough to get first transfer into him, but he'd been unstable all night until Danyel could get a second transfer into him.
When they'd gotten home, Danyel'd poured Dimitri into bed, as usual. However, this time, Dimitri's instant sleep as his head had hit the pillow had dragged Danyel down with him. Together with Mitka and all their clothes, that was. Dimitri was still bone tired, from the aches showing in his tensed field.
"You should go back to bed." Danyel said, giving in to having Dimitri so near and hugging him tightly for a moment. Smelling of shaving lather and musk, he hugged back. Dimitri's skin was still cool, but Danyel could feel it heat slowly, with each passing day until he knew it would be as warm as his own, promising him new life out of his own need.
"Uncle Sevrin said he had a message for us." Dimitri glanced down at him. Danyel slipped the razor from his grasp and tidied up the spot on his chin he'd missed. "Don't do that." Dimitri's lips twisted, as if he couldn't decided whether to frown or to smile. Danyel grinned.
"You would have been patchy." He tugged a hot towel out of the steamer and wiped Dimitri's jaw clean with it, then his own. Danyel's tiny house had changed in ways he never could have imagined. Dimitri'd descended upon it in a storm of redecorating Danyel could have never imagined before meeting him.
"Breakfast should be ready by the time we're done here." Dimitri leaned toward the mirror. Danyel winced as he tugged a hair from his brows. "I can't be sloppy." This seemed to be one of his favorite lines. Danyel flinched again at a second tug. This one didn't come so easily and left a tiny blood spot behind. Dimitri grimaced and dabbed at it with a styptic pencil. "Easier than healing it."
"Why do you do all of this?" Danyel asked, leaning against the sink.
"Which?" Dimitri shuffled through the medicine cabinet, showing none of the skill he'd use with a deck of cards. Although the fact Mitka had the sense around here this morning and was still sound asleep on the bed, might have something to do with it. He dabbed some stuff around his eyes and rubbed it in. Out of another little bottle he smoothed something into his cheeks. A third was some sort of rock he wet and then rubbed under his arms. "I have to shave again." He stared at the hair.
"Why?" Danyel shoved himself upright. Normally he didn't sleep much at all in need. Around Dimitri, he slept at least four hours, which was how long Dimitri slept. It should have been longer for him. Danyel shoved one of Mitka's feet out of the way and sat on the edge of the bed. His shoes were across the room, lined up neatly with Dimitri's. He didn't want to get up and fetch them. He yawned, wanting very much to go back to sleep. Who was the Sime around here anyway?
"Because its unGeninine." Dimitri sniffed, as if this answered everything. "You don't want some coarse, hairy barbarian in your bed." Danyel blinked at each of this descriptors, wincing inside as they each rather held true to himself. His own hairy, bony ankles stuck out beneath his pants legs, tied to rather long, awkward looking feet. "You're Sime, that's different." This seemed to end all arguments for Dimitri.
But all his arguments and opinions could have been turned ninety degrees to gender. A bell pinged in the kitchen and Dimitri flounced off. It was very strange to see over two hundred pounds of indisputably male Gen, 'flounce'. Danyel'd seen male donors who swished, flounced, pranced, lisped and otherwise acted like very foolish girls. They slept with other male donors, for the most part. Dimitri'd been sleeping with him, although since his turnover, it had been like sleeping with a chilled cat.
Not that Dimitri was physically cold, even if he was cooler, literally, than Danyel. No, more that he acted like a cat that had been left out in the cold all night long and had just been let into the house. He found the warmest spot, Danyel, and flattened himself to it. Danyel was not complaining, usually. Sometimes it was awkward, such as first thing in the morning when he really had to get to the bathroom. Dimitri's 'Haris' jokes didn't help any in that regard.
"Good, grief, Dimitri," Danyel shook his head, smiling none the less. Dimitri had a huge tray, with fried eggs, boiled eggs, both cold and hot, breads, rolls, soft cheeses, preserved fruit, fresh fruit, juice, milk and what smelled like coffee.
"I'm hungry." He yawned, then grinned at Danyel from under lowered lashes. "You make us feel good." He set the food down on the table. Mitka sniffed and then crammed his head under his wing. "Come on, it'll get cold otherwise."
Danyel padded over to the table Dimitri'd moved into the bedroom. It made the tiny place seem even smaller, but it was very nice to not have to go out onto the tiled floor in bare feet. "I'm getting some rags from a thrift store near here in a day or two. I'll be making at least one, maybe two, rugs for the front room." Dimitri sat, politely, looking at the food. Danyel bowed his head, then glanced at Dimitri from under his lashes. He had to be waiting for something.
Trying not to wince at his own clumsiness, he poured both coffee and some of the orange juice he knew Dimitri adored. Dimitri grinned and finally began serving himself. Danyel poured a cup of coffee, added cream and sugar, then sipped at it. Before he knew it, someone, who could only have been Dimitri, had managed to slide under his nose, two fried eggs, bread, toast, one of the bagel things Dimitri was so fond of with a soft, creamy cheese on it and cherry preserves, and a whole glass of orange juice.
Dimitri whistled a song Danyel knew quite well. Sevrin had taught it to him when he'd first come to Kaon and had been painfully lost. The song, "The Invisible Ren.", was subversive as shen by the standards Danyel knew for Russian culture. It was about a renSime who could become invisible at will and went around stripping renGens in the sharm. The premise would never work here in the West, since no standard donor, not even a GN1 could so easily satisfy a renSime's need, but in Russia, well, things were different.
Danyel leaned back in his chair, put up his feet, and sipped at his coffee. It was rich, strong, and woke him up as well as Sevrin ever had. "Do you like getting up early in the morning?" Danyel tried to figure out how the weather was going to turn out. He couldn't tell. It was still gray and foggy with morning. He yawned, feeling every gram of fat and protein Dimitri'd crammed into him while he wasn't zlinning.
"I hate it." He gave Danyel one of those crooked grins. Quickly, he cleaned up all the dishes. They zlinned to have vanished, although Dimitri returned far too quickly to have washed them all. "If I never saw another dawn in my life, I'd be thrilled." Danyel flinched at first, then he thought about it. "Oh," he grinned. "They aren't so bad from the other side."
"So you say." Dimitri yawned, covering his mouth with his coffee cup. "My uncle calls," he upended the remaining coffee into his mouth and set down the cup. It was already stained dark with the countless cups he drank every day, black.
"I remember hearing Vayer say something about your not liking coffee." Danyel wished he could clean the last bit of grunge from his mouth. The coffee wasn't quite doing its job. He yawned again, then finished his own. It would be the best he could do.
"I didn't." Dimitri snorted. When Danyel stood, so did he.
"You don't have to keep up your elegant party manners around me, Dimitri." Danyel'd finally had it with the little dance they'd been performing the last week. "Sit, stand, eat, drink, whatever you wish." He waved his hand at the table, nearly knocking over the carafe still sitting there. "This is as much your place as it is mine, now."
"I'm not paying you rent."
"Oh, shen, Dimitri!" He snapped. "Get it through your thick skull. You don't owe me a shenned thing." Dimitri paled with each repetition of the word 'shen'. Danyel wanted to make his point. "Shen and shidoni, Dimitri, there's no language police here, no nager police, no laws or even traditions making you cater to my every whim. Stand on your own two feet. Just because you don't have tentacles doesn't mean you have to follow me around every moment of the day!" Danyel grabbed his shoes and socks. The cold floor was a shock to his bony feet, as it had been every day since he'd moved in here. Why had he never thought to get or make rugs?
Danyel snapped a shoelace as he tied the first one and cursed, even more vulgarly, most likely, in Dimitri's opinion. Danyel didn't much care.
"No, Danyel," Dimitri appeared, as if by magic, holding a needle and thread. In moments, he'd repaired the shoelace and tied it neatly in an elegant, tasteful bow.
"Would you stop that?" Danyel untied it. When he retied it, the bow was uneven. Danyel snorted. "I can tie my own shoes."
"Oh?" Dimitri asked, glancing up. "Don't spread your toes." He brushed the base of Danyel's foot with his knuckles. Of course Danyel flexed his foot. Before he knew it, Dimitri's slipped his sock on, shoe as well, and was tying his other shoelace. Danyel bent over, in preparation to swat Dimitri away. "You're in need." He murmured, rubbing at Danyel's calves. This was cheating. Danyel melted.
He sighed, leaning back against the cushions, his eyes blurring. He didn't care though, all he cared about was Dimitri's hands on his legs. "We come back this afternoon and you let me rub your feet again?"
"Sure," Danyel answered, not thinking about it. "What about work?"
"We're off today." Dimitri loosened the knotted muscles of Danyel's calves. It was hopeless. Danyel was utterly lost. He couldn't remember anything but how good this felt.
"You're a witch, Dimitri. A witch here to tempt me out of my soul." He murmured, looking down his body at the younger man, cocking his head to the side.
"I do not ride around in a flying mortar nor do I have a hut that dances on chicken legs." Dimitri snorted. "Nor, I hope, am I an old crone."
"Neither old nor a crone." Danyel relented. "You're beautiful, Dimitri." All the play had gone out of his voice. With each day that passed, Danyel's desire for Dimitri's selyn, his life, multiplied, or was that exponentiated? Danyel'd never been at all good at math, except for probability. "I want thee." He added in Russian.
Dimitri rested his head against Danyel's shins for a brief moment. "I want thee." He looked up. "Is that so wrong?"
"No," Danyel shook his head. "There's nothing wrong with desire."
Dimitri knew Danyel wasn't going to vanish on him. If nothing else because separating Mitka from him would have taken three crowbars, six augmenting lords, eighteen months worth of selyn and a signed letter from Allah. They were beautiful together. Dimitri leaned back against the seat. He had no desire, whatsoever, to learn how to drive one of these automobile things.
Danyel did it very well. It wasn't the speed that bothered Dimitri. In his otherworldly memories he remembered traveling far faster with the power of thought. No, it was the lack of elegance inherent in the little plastic and metal boxes. They had no grace of workmanship or style of handling, for they were mass produced and required no training.
Although he did have to admit he liked being driven and cared for. Danyel helped him out of the car as if he'd been helping Sharm Lords from their conveyances all his adult life. Probably Sevrin had taught him for those times Vanesa had not been available. "Who taught you your exquisite manners?" Sevrin had come out to greet them. Dimitri wanted to give Danyel a chance to shine.
"Mitka and I discussed it. He said to treat you like a lady." Danyel's voice was low, but his nager twinkled brightly over his growing need. The mirth it in was unmistakable, as was probably Dimitri's unease.
"I'm not a woman." Dimitri drew himself up to his full height and had to arch his neck to look down on Danyel.
"Oh?" Danyel ticked off points on his tentacles. "You cook as well as any professional, you clean everything in sight, you wear makeup more often than not, you shave not only your face but under your arms,"
"I trim." He glanced up and caught Sevrin's wince.
"You pluck your eyebrows, Dimitri. What am I supposed to think?" Danyel's lips twisted. "You act like a girl!"
Dimitri was mortified. From his extremely awkward cough, so was Sevrin. Danyel spun around and then, of course, backed into Dimitri. Danyel didn't even think of him as Gen. "I'm not a girl." Dimitri growled, his voice cracking for the first time in months. Danyel looked up at him.
"Is it really so horrible?" He didn't turn, just pulled Dimitri's arms around his shoulders. His entire attention, from his nager, was on Sevrin. Mitka was draped over Danyel's shoulders, but from the little snores, Mitka was sound asleep. No, Danyel hadn't meant to dismiss him, he trusted Dimitri to guard his back.
"I'm male, Danyel." Dimitri pulled Danyel close. His voice had dropped as low as it went, vibrating deep in his chest, beneath the core of his selyn production. "Never forget that."
"Now?" He asked, pressing his hips back against Dimitri's. There was the faintest shiver through him, as if his memories were eating at his soul.
"Well," Dimitri relented, leaned down, and nuzzled Danyel's other ear, the one without Mitka draped over it. "I'm Gen, too." He murmured, unable to stop his grin from tickling his lips. "At the moment, very Gen and getting more so." Dimitri could nearly taste the cool darkness forming beneath Danyel's skin with the growth of his need.
"What's wrong with Mitka?" Sevrin asked. They both jumped in place. Dimitri'd forgotten everything but Danyel.
"He's asleep." Dimitri checked again. Mitka'd wedged himself into the crevice at the top of Danyel's ear and locked his talons around the curve of it. He really did look like a bizarre piece of jewelry. "Can't you hear him snoring?"
"I can." Danyel muttered, settling himself more firmly against Dimitri's front, this time without the quiver of unease. "No, I don't suppose at the moment I really think of you as anything other than Gen."
"Then we can work on the male/female thing?" Dimitri chuckled, not really caring as much now as he had earlier. Danyel's warmth all along his front was more than enough to still his trepidations.
Danyel glanced down, even as his tentacles twined with Dimitri's fingers. The touch of them was enough to make Dimitri's mouth water to overflowing. Danyel chuckled. "I don't think I'd notice if you drooled on me, too."
"Its sticky." He muttered, trying to catch all of it. A tiny drop tangled in Danyel's black curls. Dimitri rubbed it in, smelling the roniplin and dark musk of Danyel's body. His forearms burned with need. "You're teasing me again."
"I know." He rubbed his face against Dimitri's jaw.
"Quit flirting in the courtyard." Sevrin growled. Dimitri held Danyel even closer, protecting his Sime from the interloper.
"You're making it hard for me to breathe." Danyel muttered.
"Sorry," he let go a bit, skin tingling in the first flush of embarrassment. Vayer had never let him be quite so intimate, having kept his distance from Dimitri, if not Mitka, at all times in public. Danyel never complained, so Dimitri had assumed he didn't mind.
"You don't have to go too far." Danyel leaned back, away from Sevrin. Dimitri's head spun. Never before had he caressed a Sime so openly before another Sharm Lord. Danyel was his, heart, soul and nager. Or at least nager. He lipped Danyel's ear, wanting to taste his skin again, to know more of him than normal touch could ever transmit.
"Dimitri!" Sevrin snapped. In the last week, Dimitri'd become very protective of Danyel. He was very fragile, particularly without Mitka's active defense. He slapped away Sevrin's offhand attack. Visible sparks rained down on the flagstones. Dimitri blinked at them. In broad daylight, for them to have shown, Sevrin must have tried to hit him hard. Dimitri struck back, annoyed at his Uncle's incredibly rude gesture.
Sevrin flinched back, his own field shying away from the blow. "Why did you do that?"
"You would have murdered him." Dimitri said, with no exaggeration. Even Vayer would have felt a strike like that one.
"Who? Danyel?"
"Yes," Dimitri didn't want to release Danyel. He never did, even for moments at a time. He'd spent so many long, lonely days without Sime or friend. He cherished every single moment he had with Danyel as if it were the last of his entire life. Danyel's tentacles were still twined with his fingers, holding him close.
"I'd meant to speak with you alone, Sharm Lord Dimitri." Sevrin's reminder of his loss hurt. He'd so desperately wanted to be part of Sergei. "This is no business for an outsider."
"Danyel gave me back my bracelets." Dimitri defended him with all his will. If Sevrin truly were angered, he could go through Dimitri's protection of Danyel as if it were paper. "We are bonded." Arkay had taught him the basics of nageric combat, but not enough to withstand his Uncle. As far as Dimitri knew, no one could. He'd certainly been unable to except when Sevrin was so post he could hardly sense fields at all.
"For this month, at least." Sevrin's scowl grew.
Danyel glanced up at him in question. "This month?" He asked silently, a shiver running through his whole body, from head to toe. Dimitri knew Danyel'd only offered the chance, but he couldn't let this last dream go. Not now. Not in need.
"Later," he mouthed and tried to put the lightest possible kiss on Danyel's lips, just to show Uncle Sevrin he was serious. Danyel's mouth opened to his, hot, very wet and holding only the thinnest veil over the ice black need he sensed behind the heat of Danyel's body. Dimitri wanted him with all his heart. Wanted to taste more than Danyel's mouth, he wanted Danyel's need opened beneath him as he'd only dreamed of. A knot behind his chest warned him of his forbidden longing. "I want thee." If he could have cried, he would have. As it was, even his near vision blurred, despite the glasses Danyel'd taken to reminding him to wear.
"Thank you," Danyel reached up and pushed said glasses back up onto Dimitri's nose. "I think they look quite fine."
"I look like a half blind lord." He demurred, even as Danyel's flattery soothed the rough ache left by the truth.
"You look like Dimitri." Danyel never used Dimitri's patronymic. Sometimes it hurt. Today it was wonderful.
"Inside you two." Sevrin swatted them with his field again, this time for show, but again deadly dangerous to Danyel. "Oh, he's so well wrapped in your field even Tzer's lightning couldn't touch him." Sevrin gave them both a wink. "I am worried about you though." He spoke under his breath as they reached the landing.
Dimitri reached out to take his hand, but found Danyel's had gotten there first. Mitka stirred, at last, his breath hissing between his teeth.
"Not when he's in need, Danyel." Sevrin said, as if training a young lord. Dimitri would never talk down to Danyel so blatantly. It was rude. "Oh, Danyel knows about my ability to offend anyone."
"I do." Danyel's nager lightened. His hand flicked back. Mitka was leaning over his shoulder now, staring at their hands. Selyn dripped down Danyel's shirt, forming a long damp trail. "And I'm not." He jabbed Sevrin in the ribs. Sevrin's field flailed about, not striking, but certainly putting on a good show for any outside observer. "Vanesa told him he'd be skinned alive if he hurt me." Danyel winked at Dimitri.
Dimitri dared a soft chuckle he didn't really feel and helped Sevrin with the steps. Alone, he could often find them well enough with his own field, but others created interference patterns in the ambient he couldn't sense through clearly enough to find the risers.
"I can see through Mitka's eyes." Sevrin tried to pull his hand away.
"You idiot." Danyel recaptured it. This time Mitka was annoyed beyond control. He crammed his nose between them, forcibly separating their hands. "Mitka." For the first time Danyel sounded truly annoyed with Dimitri's nager, even though his field was still warm with an odd pleasure. "There's no way I could take Vanesa's place."
"Too true," Sevrin opened a door. The tiny room was not as Dimitri'd left it, even as it was the same one he'd lived in when he'd first come to Kaon. Torn between wanting to stay with Danyel and straighten up the horrible mess left behind, he quivered in place.
Sevrin chuckled at him, throwing himself backwards into an huge, overstuffed armchair. "Oh, I love being able to do this, even if it gives me a headache."
"Sitting in a chair?" Mitka snorted.
"Being able to see." Sevrin's eyes still didn't meet theirs, but his attention was nearly palpable. "Why'd you leave this place such a mess?"
"I didn't." Danyel said, glancing around. "Someone else has been here since I packed Dimitri's things."
"Who?" Sevrin straightened instantly, his nager hardening to diamond. "I don't have the key anymore." Dimitri blinked and reviewed his memories. The door had been locked. Sevrin had unlocked it by telekinesis, not a key. "I rarely use them, actually. I look like an idiot fumbling with the things."
"Don't move." Dimitri said, leaving Danyel in Mitka's protection. He went to the door and studied the lock for a moment. He got out his precious pocket light and flashed it into the lock. There were no scratches on the tumblers, or at least no recent ones, he grinned and raised an eyebrow. At one time, this lock had gotten picked repeatedly. "Well, this thing hasn't been picked since I left here." He nodded as Danyel pulled out the key he still wore around his neck.
"You didn't have to be so careful with it." Sevrin held out his hand to toward Danyel. Everyone, including Mitka, stared at it. Well, Mitka glared at it as if Sevrin had claws like his own.
"Its all I have." He said, holding it in his hand.
"Hush," Dimitri looked again. No, Danyel didn't have any earrings. The chain really was the only piece of jewelry he owned, or at least wore. This was a travesty. Dimitri remembered a small box with a few things in it, bits and pieces really, nothing wearable.
Sevrin reached up toward his ear.
"No," Dimitri shook his head, trying to think. "I want something from me." He licked his lips, trying to think. Danyel looked at him, one dark eyebrow arched. It would have been two on anyone else.
"Arkay is always leaving stuff lying around. I'm sure some of its Sergei." Sevrin waved at him. "You have a right to at least some of old Vanya's jewelry."
"Are you sure?" Dimitri'd never really had cause to rifle through the Sergei jewels. Because Diomid had not formally received Sergei from his father and Vayer's regency had been so awkward, until Dimitri'd established, no one but the Veiled had been able to get into the old safe in his grandfather's rooms. "I wish I had the vault now."
"Ask the Veiled." Sevrin waved a hand at him. "They could bring it to you."
"I don't want them going through it." Dimitri, even though he knew they could at whim, just didn't like the idea.
"No one else will ever be able to get into the vault." Sevrin looked him in the eyes this time, even though they remained unfocused. "Miran can't do it and Kirin hasn't established yet."
Dimitri grabbed the back of Danyel's chair in both hands. "So my sire has an heir?"
"No," Sevrin said. "Go get a ring for your partner." He waved a braceleted arm toward the door. "I want peace and quiet out of you while we talk about this."
"I don't have to get an earring for that." He tightened his lips. Normally his Uncle was voluble to a fault. This secrecy was not at all like him.
"Yes you do because otherwise you'll be fretting the whole time." Sevrin snorted. "Go on with you. I won't bite him." He flicked his hand noisily at Mitka. "I don't want to be bitten. If you want, look through my collection as well. Master Tzakiran sent a few pieces to me after his death."
"And you haven't given them to Vanesa?" Dimitri's fingers itched. The Veiled often had ancient pieces and Tzakiran was the last in a long, unbroken line of Fatima Sharm Lords.
"They're too heavy." Sevrin piqued his interest further. "Go look, silly. I think the only ones Arkay left are brass. Besides, I know he didn't leave a needle."
"I didn't bring my bag." Dimitri realized, only now glancing down.
"You were too busy holding onto me to grab it." Danyel teased. Dimitri drooled, not wanting to leave him at all. Mitka glanced at him, placing himself squarely between Danyel and Sevrin.
"Go," Sevrin waved at him. "The sooner you do it the sooner you'll be done. Now get out of here."
"All right," he made sure Mitka wasn't going anywhere. Mitka nodded, rasing his wings to hide even more of Danyel from Sevrin.
Dimitri closed the door behind himself, not locking it in case he had to get in quickly. He really didn't trust his Uncle around any Sime in need. Someone had tried to cause problems for either him or Danyel. As it looked like the Veiled, he'd much rather have them come after him. Danyel couldn't even protect himself from a Veiled renSime, without Mitka that was.
He took the steps three at a time. The wonderful new shoes Danyel'd given him made it so easy. He'd only been running ten klicks a day and he felt the strain in his thighs by the time he reached the top. "I'm going to have to get more exercise." He leaned down and rubbed at his shin. It still ached, getting worse with each day that passed toward transfer.
"Oh, I didn't know you were here." Dimitri tried to back out the door.
"Come in, silly." Vanesa waved him in. Kolya looked out the window. He squirmed, reaching for something outside. Dimitri could clearly smell the problem.
"Let me." He stepped forward. Kolya's eyes widened as he turned his attention to Dimitri. "Hey lad." He tickled the youngster under the chin.
"I'm not a baby." He wrinkled up his nose. "Wanna go out."
"You will." Vanesa brushed a strand of dark hair from her brow.
"Wanna go out now!" He nearly got loose. Dimitri captured him and set him on the changing table with a wet plop. Kolya decided it was time to play eel. Dimitri tickled him, earning an ear splitting squeal. Giggling and laughing, Kolya finally submitted with marginal grace.
"You do that so easily." Vanesa snorted, pointing under the table to the bucket. "Mornings are the worst."
"Sevrin vanished on you?" Dimitri finished up and tossed the lad in the air. This time his squeal of joy echoed. He wuffled Kolya's belly, laughing himself.
"Scratchy," Kolya squirmed.
"Yeah!" Dimitri did it again, this time with an even louder blatting sound. It had been a while since he'd gotten to play with a toddler. He tickled Kolya's pits.
"No, no!" He laughed, struggling to get loose.
"I'm gonna get you!" Dimitri let him go then chased him around the room. Kolya was a little terror. He dove under the bed. Dimitri really wished he had Mitka here, not that Kolya'd be able to see him, but Mitka could point out the little imp. Dimitri fished for him. There were no dust kitties here to make him sneeze.
Finally he grabbed a sheet and netted him up just like a fish. Dimitri bundled him up and wuffled his back.
"Enough horseplay," Vanesa laughed. Her nager was so bright it outshone the sun, even so close to turnover. Oh, Sevrin would have faced a challenge from Dimitri if he though he had even half a chance of winning Vanesa's affections. Her eyes twinkled as he deposited her son back in her arms, still wrapped up like a parcel.
"I don't wanna go to work." Kolya's face fell. "Boooooring." He whined.
"We all have to go to work, sweetie." Dimitri told him, tickling him under the chin again and untangling him from the blanket at the same time. He was so big Vanesa could hardly hold him. "Why doesn't Sevrin take care of him?"
"He's going to be in the clean room most of today." Vanesa frowned. "I know, you think he should be taking care of Kolya all the time. But I want some time with him too. Viasha and Sivaya are both already in lessons." Her frown deepened. "I miss them, Dimitri."
"I know its different here." He managed to filch Kolya back for a moment. Kolya stood on his hands and put his little arms around Dimitri's neck.
"I love you." He left a big, wet, noisy kiss on Dimitri's ear.
"And you're great!" He freed a hand and held the child to him. The youngster's soft hair tickled his nose. "Just like your papa." As soon as he said it, Dimitri knew he'd goofed.
"Where's papa?" Kolya said instantly.
"He's doing some delicate work today." Dimitri had no idea what a clean room was, but clean and young children didn't go together.
"I wanna be with you!" He bounced on Dimitri's hand. "Let me go with Uncle Didi! Please? Please, please?" Kolya looked at his mother. Dimitri wasn't sure if she was trying not to laugh or cry.
"You're stealing all my boys." She said, frown winning for an instant. "Don't keep him, Dimitri."
"I won't." He put the lad up on his shoulders after dressing him quickly in a red jumpsuit. Dimitri remembered his fathers carrying him like this so many times. Before she changed her mind, Dimitri prepared a bag with diapers, clothes, snacks, a big scarf and a few little carved wood toys, probably made by Sevrin. They held no resemblance at all to anything. "Although I came up here to find a ring for Danyel." Dimitri didn't know why he was blushing.
"Get on with you then." She waved him to their rooms.
"I don't get to come in here anymore." Kolya told him, in all seriousness. He was actually a fairly quiet, reserved child, only noisy when Dimitri egged him on.
"You can go anywhere with me." He said, careful of his little rider as he ducked through the doorway.
"That's fun!" Kolya's hands grabbed his ears. Best purchase, probably. Dimitri didn't have enough hair for him to hang onto.
"Here, m'lad," he tugged out the scarf and made a more secure seat for him.
"I like this." He giggled, leaning back. "This is fun. I like being so tall."
"So do I." Dimitri laughed with him.
"How long did it take you?" He was already starting to go limp now that the excitement of having a new caretaker began to wear off.
"Seventeen years." He stroked one of Kolya's little feet. Dimitri finally found Sevrin's jewelry box. It was filled with baubles and bright glittery things. Most of it was pure junk, like a magpie's nest. Glass and paste 'gems' were set in cheap bronze and verdigried copper.
Dimitri picked through the top layer, not finding anything at all acceptable. He knew Danyel had allergy problems, although not as bad as most of the channels here, as his anti-kill wasn't effective. Dimitri actually despised anti-kill conditioning. He'd seen too much of the damage it did to the nervous and immune systems.
One of his memories was of reading about the decision to bar anti-kill conditioning in Russia. At one time, many lesser lords had been subjected to it. The practice had been stopped when more lords were dying because of the conditioning than Gens because of accidental kills.
A black velvet box caught his eye. Most people put their good jewelry aside in such things. The nap of the velvet was worn shiny with age on the corners. It opened with a click. Inside was more flash. Dimitri started to close the box. It was too heavy.
He examined it closer.
"Somethin wrong?" Kolya asked, from his convenient perch.
"Its too heavy." He said.
"Whatcha lookin for?"
"I want a ring for Danyel." He dug through the tangle of cheap chains. Many of them had already been kinked and badly damaged. Half of this stuff should be sold for scrap.
"Papa likes the sound." Kolya told him.
"Ahhhh," Dimitri breathed his understanding of the magpie nest. "And some of these feel really good." He pulled out a huge paste diamond. The slippery surface was interesting. Kolya's hand shot out past his ear.
Dimitri handed it to him. "Don't put it in your mouth." He said, knowing quite well the futility of mentioning it.
"Mrmph mot?" He said around the diamond.
"Because some things will make you sick." Dimitri closed the box and turned it upside down. There was a second, tiny catch beneath the first. He flipped this one and opened the second compartment.
"You wouldn't give me a bad thing." Kolya handed him the very sticky, wet 'diamond'. Dimitri cleaned it on a scrap of cloth set aside for the purpose, possibly, in the box. He had no idea with Sevrin. The soft chamois might be as interesting to him as the polished metal and glass. "I trust you."
"I'm glad." He tickled the bottom of Kolya's foot. Kolya giggled.
"Can I have that?" He pointed with his toes.
"What?" Dimitri finally got to see inside the box he'd opened. This was another tangle, but this time of a fortune in precious stones and metal. It was a Sharm Lord's stash, probably a dozen generation's worth. Real diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and opals winked at him amid settings of platinum and gold.
"Maybe someday," Dimitri tried to remember to breathe. Finally he found what he was looking for. Someone, probably in the far, far east had carved a black pearl into the arch of a dragon diving into water. The dragon was grabbing an opal fish beneath the platinum waves. From a distance, it would look like a simple half ring. "This looks just like my dragon."
A bit concerned about its age and fragility, Dimitri examined it closely. The whole thing had been artfully reinforced with diamond! This had been someone's lifetime masterpiece. Nothing short of a sledgehammer would damage it.
"Does your dragon like to fish?" Kolya asked.
"He likes to try." Dimitri chuckled. "He's not very good at it."
"Why not?" Kolya asked. His hand was out again.
"Because he can't tell the difference between looking at things in air and looking at them in water." Dimitri didn't want to close the box. He wanted to take it with him. Kolya's hand brushed his cheek. No, this was for Kolya, when he grew up and was looking for a partner. Dimitri wasn't going to cheat him of his future. "These are for you when you grow up."
"Oh," Kolya whispered, his hand turning to find Dimitri's mouth. Dimitri kissed the soft, slightly sticky fingers. "When I'm big like you?"
"Yup," he said, putting the box back. "You saw how I opened it?"
"Uh-huh," he nodded, patting Dimitri on the cheek. "Will you remind me how to open it?"
"Yes," he promised. At one time he wouldn't have, before he'd met Danyel. Now, even if they never did share transfer, Dimitri knew it was possible for someone to want him. He'd live, and he wouldn't be alone forever. Although tomorrow might be a different matter, on both accounts.
Only when the door clicked shut did Danyel realize, truly, he was alone with Sevrin. Yeah, sure, they'd worked together with no one else around, but this was different.
"Don't tell Dimitri anything about this little conference." Sevrin pointed at Mitka. Danyel'd never seen him make any sort of gesture like that.
Mitka sniffed at the finger. He bared his teeth, threatening to bite.
"I'm over here, you're over there. You're going to have to leave Danyel to bite me, idiot." Sevrin leaned back, rolling his eyes. His hand held the arm of the chair, fingers sliding over the worn cloth as they always did. "I'm glad you have good taste in clothes, my friend."
"Oh?" The complete non-sequitur tripped Danyel for a moment. "I'm glad you like." He warmed under Sevrin's approval. Mitka's claws dug into the back of Danyel's hand. Danyel leaned back, not quite trusting this now.
Sevrin nodded, for the first time his incredible indigo eyes lighting with the gesture. As each moment passed, his reactions grew more and more true. "I could tell they felt good, but not the colors."
"I tend to select a lot of blues and greens for you, which makes Vanesa furious." Danyel grinned, stroking Mitka's back in reassurance. He narrowed his eyes at Sevrin. "Although I'm not so sure she'd like you flirting with me."
"Oh?" Sevrin cocked his head. "What about Dimitri?"
"He knows I won't betray him." Danyel met Sevrin's eyes. They didn't quite perfectly focus, but he knew Sevrin could sense the attention. "I wouldn't."
"What about when he kills you?" Sevrin's field was set. Danyel couldn't back away. Not on this topic.
"I won't let him." Danyel continued to stroke Mitka. He'd never zlinned a single dynopter of cruelty or kill lust from him. He'd zlinned it in Cami, even Vanesa once or twice for a moment when Sevrin'd done something truly spectacular to irritate her. His tentacles came out and slipped around Mitka's ribs, beneath his arms. Mitka melted all over his lap, purring. "No, he's not harmless, but neither am I."
Danyel'd never been able to forget attacking Dimitri for the kill in the dream. He'd heard rumors of kill mode transfers for technically junct channels. If it was anything at all like what he'd experienced, even in the faintest echo of anticipation, Danyel knew he'd never want to go back to bland, safe, normal transfers. The way Dimitri'd responded to his touch, with no hesitation or reserve, only made Danyel want to know more. He wanted to know all of it.
"I want him, Sevrin." He said, trying to frame his thoughts into words. "I do."
"I know." Sevrin's mouth tightened into a hard line. "I wish I could have stopped you two."
"I don't." He glanced down. "Mitka is fascinating."
"He's dangerous."
"So am I." Danyel flicked out the knife he always wore, around Dimitri, at the back of his neck. Dimitri had a habit of holding Danyel around the waist. He trimmed a snag off one nail with it.
"I mean Mitka." Sevrin pointed out, quite unnecessarily.
Danyel lowered the blade so Mitka could see himself in the reflection. Sevrin grunted. "Good steel."
"I like it." Selyn glittered against the hardened metal. "Few channels can stand to be around anything sharper than a butter knife." He blooded and sheathed the blade, daring Sevrin to make the comparison.
Sevrin laughed, nager bright with good humor.
Dimitri came back in at last, stepping around the edge of the door and still scanning everything. "They weren't after anything in particular, were they?" He ran his hand over the thin layer of dust on the dresser. He started to reach in up under one of the opened drawers. The outfits Nashen'd bought from Karin gleamed on hangers in the open closet. Danyel'd deliberately left them behind, thinking they'd be safer here. They'd been moved, but he couldn't zlin any damage to them.
"Don't," Sevrin stood. "Let me." He put his hand on Dimitri's shoulder.
"I don't know if I want you riding me after you spent nearly an hour flirting with Danyel." He glanced at him, as if asking something. Mitka's tail coiled firmly around his wrist. Dimitri grinned slightly.
"What's he doing here?" Kolya's voice came from the odd bundle on Dimitri's back. "You said he didn't work here now. I want Uncle Danyel!" Little baby arms waved on either side of Dimitri's face.
"Hold on." He untied the brightly colored scarf and swung Kolya up in a hug arc.
"Gimme!" Kolya nearly fell out of Dimitri's grasp.
"Catch," he grinned, tossing the lad. Danyel's heart was in his throat. Mitka'd pinned one of his hands and the other held his knife! But before he could panic, Mitka vanished and he could slip his knife in its sheath before he plucked Kolya out of the air.
"Now you can see if there are any traps." Sevrin snorted. "Throwing my son around indeed, with live steel nearby on top of it." He glared at his nephew.
"I trust Danyel." He said.
Kolya's bright blue eyes were little tiny slits he was laughing so hard. Danyel didn't dare toss him around the way Dimitri did, but he did laugh along with Kolya's infectious joy. Even need paled before it.
Dimitri removed all the drawers completely, looking under each one as he did so. "It does." Dimitri said softly, then knelt and looked inside the dresser. When he was done, he brushed off the knees of his pants and replaced the drawers. "Any idea what I'm looking for?"
"No," Sevrin sighed. "Needle trap maybe, if they want you dead."
"Who?" Danyel's heart had still been racing after his earlier scare. Now it pounded. "Someone is trying to murder you?"
"Or capture," Sevrin glanced at him. Kolya'd climbed up on his lap and he was reaching over Danyel's shoulder.
"No you don't, m'lad." Danyel managed to keep the hilt of his knife from Kolya's grabby little fingers. "Don't want you hurting yourself."
"He's not going to be a Donor." Sevrin glared at Danyel this time. Mitka's protection still guarded him from Sevrin's smack, but he did feel a bit singed around the edges.
"He's still a baby." Danyel cuddled him, as he'd wanted to be held. Of course Kolya didn't think much of this and tried another grab for his knife.
"Show it to him." Sevrin's words were irresistible. He was moving before he could stop himself.
"No," Dimitri stepped between them. Free of the compulsion, Danyel trembled all over.
"Sick?" Kolya asked, after having jerked back. His brows drew down and he sniffled.
"No," Dimitri reassured him. "I'm fine."
"You just have southerner's."
"What's that?" Kolya asked, of course. He was more curious than an whole litter of kittens.
"Actually, I'd like to hear your answer too." He managed to get Kolya's attention on his family. Kolya sorta collapsed to a sitting position. Danyel bounced him a couple of times to resettle his weight. He was getting big, fast. Nikolai was going to be at least as big as his father, which was good sized, even next to Dimitri.
"Well," Dimitri knelt at Danyel's feet. Normally he insisted their positions were reversed. The change in perspective was startling, even if Dimitri was talking with Kolya.
"Southerner's syndrome is a genetic problem. Do you know what that is?"
"No," Kolya fussed, trying to turn around again.
"He got it from his mama or his papa."
"Oh," Kolya managed to turn around this time. He frowned, pursing his lips. "Is that why you're so funny looking?" Dimitri's pained grimace might have been funny in another place and time.
Danyel opened and closed his mouth a few times before anything came out. What did was a bit choked, but hopefully intelligible. "More or less."
"He's not funny looking." Dimitri's eyes blazed, making Danyel's breath catch. Danyel'd seen a Sime hunt. Shen, he'd seen and zlinned Simes attack Dimitri, including himself. But the heat in Dimitri's eyes had nothing to do with the cold starving death of need, but was rather its mirror image, the hot, self-charring fiery need of too much life. Danyel had to swallow. Kolya stiffened in his arms.
Danyel looked down and realized his tentacles had come out, all of them. He yanked his laterals back in and blushed, for the first time in his life realizing they might not be something for a child to be staring at. Some of it might have been from Dimitri. Danyel knew he often enough picked up attitudes and even mannerisms from Donors, but some of it was purely himself. After all the attention Mitka and Dimitri gave his arms, they seemed to be somehow special now.
"Yes he is funny looking." Kolya tried to grab one of his handling tentacles. This was a lot safer. He twined them, rubbing Kolya's hands off one to another each time he grabbed. Kolya giggled and relented, even though he still held one. It went in his mouth, of course.
"You're teaching him bad habits." Sevrin both growled and grinned. Kolya sucked on it, as he would a nipple. A bit of drool ran down toward his arm. Danyel was used to that now after having played with Mitka so much, although this was a lot stickier.
Kolya cocked his head, staring. "What papa say?"
Danyel revised the conversation. Sevrin's single comment had been in Simelan, whereas the rest had been in Russian. He was loosing track of which language was which. He was startled Kolya didn't understand Simelan. Danyel tried to remember if he'd spoken it with the child. Sevrin shook his head, putting a finger to his lips for silence.
He wanted to protest, but Kolya was not his child. Much of Simelan was nearly impossible for a child to learn, and at one time, he'd have said a Gen. Both Sevrin and Dimitri had no Gen accent in the language at all, and when Dimitri wanted to, he sounded like a Kaon native.
"He said you probably shouldn't be chewing on my tentacle." Danyel kissed the child's soft hair, slipping his very soggy tentacle back into its sheath. There were times, like right now, he really did wish he dared have children. Dimitri gave him a soft smile. Kolya grabbed his toes and tried to put those in his mouth instead. Danyel gave up and let Kolya have the tentacle back.
Dimitri chuckled. "Southerner's syndrome is called that because as far as we know, it came from a place we call the South. Its a dry place, with sand and camels and horses."
"Does it have guns?" Kolya was so surprised he forgot all about Danyel's tentacle, although he still had it captured in one chubby fist.
"Yes, and they shoot them from horseback." Dimitri tickled one of Kolya's feet. "Maybe someday your papa will take you there."
"Only if I have a Sime who knows Jaffa to help me."
"I could learn." Danyel found this absolutely fascinating.
"No," Sevrin said. "You'd be as restricted as I would. They'd give you two choices, become a hermit or die."
"What?" Danyel didn't mean to shout. Kolya jumped a bit, then turned to stare at him.
"That would be bad." Kolya said, drawing out the bad to at least three syllables, maybe four.
"Very," Danyel nodded. "How do they get," he paused, looking down at Kolya. "This is silly. How do they get transfer?"
"What's transfer?" Kolya, of course, latched onto the one concept Danyel wished he would have let slide by. Sevrin winced.
"Its one of those adult things. Part of how you came to be here." He bent down and tickled Kolya's belly through the jumpsuit. The red really didn't suit him, but Vanesa was very fond of the color. Kolya giggled and swatted at his father's hand.
"OK, then tell me more about him." Kolya's jab in Danyel's direction landed right at his throat. He coughed a bit and cleared it. Rescuing his Adam's apple from further harm in the process, he kissed Kolya's hand and put it in his lap. It didn't stay there for long, but this time Danyel distracted him with a tentacle first. That worked.
Dimitri chuckled, resting his cheek on Danyel's knee. His field was softer even than normal, almost adoring. "I do adore thee." He murmured in Simelan, the word making absolutely no change to his field, only strengthening it. "Have you ever seen mama get excited about things you can't see or hear?"
"All the time." Kolya's grin spilled over on all of them. Mitka finally made a reappearance. He sniffed at Kolya and went back in Danyel's pocket. It seemed not everyone here liked children. Or at least not right now. "She, um, when papa, those." He pointed at Danyel's lateral sheathes.
It was Sevrin's turn to blush.
"Those are called laterals. When you're older, papa will tell you all about them." Dimitri jabbed his Uncle with his field so hard Sevrin grunted out loud. "I did that with something you can't see yet. That something is called a nageric field, or field for short.
"The problem Danyel has is that he's very vulnerable to those fields. He can't protect himself like normal people can." Dimitri's mouth tightened to a harsh line and his chin quivered a fraction. "I have a very good friend, the best in the world after your Uncle Danyel," Mitka snorted, getting Danyel's shirt wet. His pants were probably going to be a lost cause here soon. They'd been talking for a while and Kolya only had the foggiest notion of toilet training yet, he was a little slow in that department. "His name is Mitka."
"Like yours!" Kolya pointed, almost catching Dimitri in the eye.
Dimitri grinned and caught the errant finger "Yes, just like mine. Mitka is protecting him, so he won't be hurt. He's the dragon I talked about."
"What would happen without Mitka?" Kolya went completely still, an event of monumental significance when he wasn't asleep.
"He would have had an accident."
"I have those all the time." Kolya giggled, although he was not yet moving around again. "You don't mean like I do."
"No," Dimitri shook his head. "He'd be dead."
"No!" Kolya wailed, turning and wrapping his arms around Danyel. "I don't want you dead. You're my Uncle Dan'el. I love you!" He babbled on and on. At first all Danyel could think of was how could any child so young know what dead meant, but realized how agricultural Kaon still was, in some ways. There was no way Vanesa or Sevrin would hide such a thing from their children.
"I love thee, little Kolya." He hugged the child back. "I'm here, your Uncle Didi is keeping me safe. Don't be afraid. I'm not." He rocked Kolya slowly until the worst of his sobbing slowed. "I'm not going anywhere."
"You're not?" He rubbed away tears with a little fist. Danyel did him one better, using his tentacles. Of course he didn't have a handkerchief. He rarely carried one after turnover. Dimitri handed him a square of silk.
Danyel wouldn't have used silk to clean a child's face, but it was what he had.
"Pretty," Kolya looked at it. Marbled in blues and greens, Danyel couldn't deny Kolya's comment. "Can I have it?"
"May I?" Dimitri corrected gently.
"May I?" He ducked his head. "Promise me you won't go like old Whiskers?"
"I won't go." He promised, holding Kolya's hand. Dimitri reached up and Danyel took his with his other hand. "I won't leave you." He promised them both.
"Can I hurt you?" Kolya said very slowly, his big blue eyes wide.
"Not yet. At least not in that way." He stroked the back of Kolya's head, amazed as always at such brilliance in such a tiny package.
"When?" His face hardened. "I'm getting to be a big boy."
"When you establish and start producing selyn."
"Then I won't." He stomped one foot, thankfully unshod. "I won't, I won't." He bawled, screaming his rejection to the world at large. Danyel waited again for him to settle.
"You will establish, just like your brothers will." Sevrin's grin was more than a bit smug.
"Have you caught Vanesa again?" Dimitri got what Danyel thought of as his vacant look. He winced and glanced out the window.
"No," Sevrin's lips tightened for a moment. "But I will." His impish sense of humor came back so quickly Danyel wondered for a moment if he'd just imagined the interlude. Dimitri shook his head no.
Oh, shen, Danyel thought. He knew Sevrin and Vanesa had been trying for another child for a few months now. It would have been obvious to anyone at Kaon who spent much time with them. Normally Sevrin was very watchful of Vanesa around transfer, but now it was worth your life to come anywhere near her if you were Gen and vice versa for him.
"Maybe this month." His hand descended on Dimitri's shoulder. Mitka peered out of his pocket again, having been sorta squished out by Kolya's enthusiasms.
One of Dimitri's dimples returned. He didn't look up at Sevrin, he didn't even nod, but it was obvious he knew something the rest of them didn't. Sevrin squeezed his shoulder.
"Come on youngster, lets take you back to mama for the day." He made a grab for Kolya.
"No," Dimitri was faster. Kolya chirped in glee, distress completely forgotten in the excitement of having so much attention, which was as it should be. Danyel thought about it, looking at Dimitri's impish grin and kept Kolya to himself.
Danyel put his arms around Kolya and carried him off. He hunched his shoulders and made a huge show of hiding Kolya against his chest. "I won't let them have you. You're mine, you're mine!" He cackled.
Very, very sharp claws digging in all the way, Mitka scaled Danyel's shoulder. "They're getting close!"
Danyel whooped with glee. He'd never played like this, always being afraid someone would get carried away with their nager. The door was opened a crack. He bolted for it, augmenting. Kolya shrieked so loudly Danyel paused a moment to check on him. Then he yelled, "Go, go, go!"
"Get a move on, Sime!" Mitka added. Danyel didn't require any more prodding, although he seriously wished he were wearing running shoes, not dress shoes.
"I'll get 'em." Mitka slithered down his leg.
"What are you doing?" Danyel muttered. He'd hid around a corner and was doing his best to hide his field. Although both Dimitri and Sevrin were visually handicapped now. Dimitri'd taken off his glasses again.
"There," Mitka flitted back to his shoulder. Danyel chuckled. He flicked off his shoes and since he had time, socks as well. Barefoot, he could run far faster, a trick he'd learned back at school.
Now silent, he danced across the yard and jumped the hay bales set up to corral the kids. Kolya snickered softly, shoulders shaking with the effort he was putting out not to laugh. Then Dimitri hit him one. Danyel himself went blind. He blinked, trying to see anything but white.
"I'm here." Mitka said, nudging Danyel's face. "Go there." He said.
Danyel followed his directions, still trying to blink the film from his vision.
"This is a scary game." Kolya said. "Watch out!"
Danyel jumped six feet straight up in the air.
"In front of you." Mitka prodded.
With his free hand, Danyel reached out and grabbed the pole. Recognizing it, he dropped his grip to the line for the flag and let the cord carry him to the open window. He swung inside and thank goodness landed on his feet. In the darkened room, he regained some of his vision.
"Its like snow blindness, but instead its selyn blindness."
"They genslammed me?"
"Sorta," Mitka murmured, wings trembling. "It was a lot more specific. I could have stopped a Genslam."
"I don't like it here, Uncle." Kolya said. "They know where we are."
"You still want to play?"
"Yeah," he leaned forward, looking all over. "I can help you see, just like Dimitri's friend. He won't tell on us?"
"No," Danyel said before Mitka had a chance to respond. Mitka purred, rubbing up against Danyel's chest, right above Kolya. "Come on." Now Danyel had to zlin and hear. The former was fuzzy, as if he had caught the edges of a Genslam, but at least his ears had stopped ringing.
The hallway was deserted. Good. Hajene Ferris didn't want to be caught barefoot trying to steal Sectuib Kaon's only son. Danyel stopped in at the room they'd just left. The big scarf was right where Dimitri'd left it. Danyel managed a sling and Kolya perched on the edge.
He'd heard of opossums, although he'd never seen one. They had a pretty good idea. Now he could really run. Danyel heard Sevrin's and Dimitri's voices, then silence. Sevrin's nager, however, spilled up the stairway long before him. He always forget about Danyel's sensitivity.
Danyel chuckled to himself and pointed. "There," he crouched, holding Kolya still. The lad trembled, so excited he couldn't hold still. Dimitri's short hair peeked over the top step.
"Hi there!" He chirped, straightening up. Dimitri growled, lunging forward, Sevrin hardly a tentacle width behind. For a second, shock froze his feet to the floor.
"Move your skinny butt, Gen!" Mitka clawed him, again. Danyel nearly ran right into their arms.
"Other way, other way!" Kolya yelled, bouncing up and down. Danyel really hoped he'd made good knots.
One hand on Kolya, the other on Mitka, he turned and bolted for the attic.
"That's a dead end." Mitka bit his ear.
"No its not." Danyel rescued what was left of his earlobe. A bit of dampness hit his front of course. He shook his head and ran. It wasn't worth bothering with.
The darkened attic held countless generations of dust and cobwebs.
"Oooh, scary," Kolya became a bit damper. Danyel sighed, although he really didn't care. At the far end of the attic was a grimy window. He didn't wipe clean a spot, just opened it. As quietly and quickly as he could, he stepped out onto the ledge. The old Kaon household had been build for defense. All the ledges had been designed to hold a Sime's weight, so defenders could get from one side of the household to the other quickly if they had to.
Danyel shut the window behind them and then realized he couldn't see his landing.
"Three, um," Mitka peered. This was not reassuring. "Fourteen feet, six inches, up two feet."
"That's huge!" Danyel'd known Simes could cross the household by the rooftops, doing it seemed to be another matter.
"A foot's like a cent, right?"
"No," Danyel shook his head, "or at least I don't think so." What had he gotten himself into? Mitka muttered something unintelligible.
"Um, your height plus, um, a hand, and up again maybe a hand and a half."
"Gotcha." Danyel jumped. The air whistled past his ears, but the next ledge was exactly where he'd expected it. He slithered in the window just as the two Gens were opening the first.
"Don't go out on the ledge. You're too heavy." He crowed, taking Kolya with him. Kolya cheered, laughing and well, being too excited. Mitka went 'pbtpbtpbtpbt' very enthusiastically at the two Gens. Danyel was now soaked, front and back.
Chapter 29
Dimitri remembered doing this very recently. "Hold still." It was pointless, but he had to try anyway. Kolya nearly squirmed off the table. Dimitri pinned him with a glare and a threatened poke with a pin. Kolya giggled, pointing at him. He knew Dimitri'd never poke him, but at least he stayed still long enough to get the sodden diaper off the little worm.
Kolya bit at his lower lip, flipped over and headed for the door, through meters of thin air. Danyel caught him, in his shirt. He tied the little beast into it, laughing. Kolya wiggled even more, dripping a bit. Dimitri sighed, tossing a diaper under him. It didn't help much.
"How much does this child urinate, anyways?"
Kolya just giggled at him, looking around for something else to get into.
"A lot," Sevrin sighed, capturing his son and flattening him slightly on his belly. Kolya tried to crab out of this, his father's hand and Danyel's shirt notwithstanding. "Vanesa thinks we should try stocks."
"She might be right." Dimitri folded a clean diaper, two of them for good measure, and then used his big hands to hold Mitka to the table. He was laughing like mad, the little imp. "You're holding it." He tickled. Dimitri was right.
Danyel was even laughing, despite need and his own clothing issues. It was a beautiful day out, although Dimitri could well understand not wanting to run around with no shirt. He hadn't done so since he was close to Kolya's age. Although he'd always known he'd turn out Gen. For Danyel it might be different.
Dimitri cleaned up this new mess and managed to get his nephew into a clean, dry diaper. The carnage had been four wet for one dry on the child. He wasn't doing very well on the odds today. "Let me get a few more before we take this problem child home."
"Kolya's coming home with us?" Danyel blinked, staring at him as if he'd grown tentacles.
"Why not?" Dimitri knew they hadn't had any plans for this afternoon. Kolya'd be going down for his nap soon enough and he was no trouble at all. He collected enough diapers this time to fill the bag and a plastic throw for the bed. There were somethings he really liked occult materials for. Plastic pants were equally good in his opinion, although why Vanesa hadn't used them was beyond him.
"He's had a few problems with rashes." Sevrin told him.
"Oh," Dimitri, "OK then." He put them back. Mitka was sound asleep again.
"How did he know what you were doing?"
"Sound." Dimitri said.
"I can hear his mind." Sevrin said. Dimitri stared at him. It probably didn't do any good at all.
"Oh?" Danyel cocked a hip, and an eyebrow. "You've never been quite this up front about it before."
"You're family." He grinned, taking Kolya and putting him up to his shoulder. In moments, Kolya'd passed out, as limp as a dishrag. A very well used one. "You usually hand them back before you get messy." Sevrin's field, however, was pointing straight at Danyel's ear.
Dimitri washed his hands again, this time scrubbing them as completely as he would for surgery. Healthy people almost never got infections now, but some did, and Danyel's immune system was not as healthy as it could be. "Could you light the candle for me?"
"What is he going to do?" Danyel's voice was steady, low and very wary.
"Give you an earring." Sevrin was moving slowly, but Dimitri figured that was as well with fire. Dimitri closed his eyes and cleared his mind. He'd never placed an earring before. It wouldn't have been appropriate with Vayer, and, well, he hadn't had the nerve with Karola. Valtanir had just been too skittish, like a high strung horse and Lexi'd placed the hole for him.
"Then why are you lighting a candle?" Danyel's voice stayed low, but tension latched down on it like a Sime's handling tentacles.
"To sterilize the needle." Sevrin's answer lacked a certain degree of tact, not that this was anything at all unusual for his Uncle. Dimitri may well have fainted if he'd been tactful.
"He's going to put one of those things through my flesh?"
"Don't worry about it." Sevrin struck the flint and quickly had the candle lit. Dimitri held his hands out, letting them, and the needle, dry a bit. Most people didn't go to this much bother, but he wanted to make sure Danyel's first earring was perfect.
When he went back out into the other room, Danyel had turned gray.
"I'm not going to hurt you." He didn't understand why he was so nervous. Danyel pointed at the needle with a shaking tentacle.
"Its the needle." Dimitri still didn't understand. "Did you think I'd not block the pain?"
"Dimitri," Sevrin chided him.
"OK, its traditional to not painblock an ear piercing for any kind of binding, even one a private one of tentacles alone. But I know you probably don't deal well with pain and don't understand the symbolism." His chest ached with the rejection, no matter how inadvertent.
"Dimitri, yes," he said, pushing his hair back.
"You won't feel a thing." He promised, dipping the needle in pure alcohol and lighting it.
"No," his neck corded. "I want it done right."
"It does sting." Dimitri's heart pounded. Kolya squirmed, turning around on his father's shoulder.
"What are they going to do?" He said in a whisper loud enough to be heard in the courtyard.
"Danyel gave Dimitri back his bracelets and placed the one on Dimitri's right, which means he asked for Dimitri's selyn. Now Dimitri is going to pierce Danyel's ear and put an earring in the hole so Danyel will always have something of Dimitri's as well as his selyn."
"Won't all of Dimitri's selyn be gone some time?"
"No," Sevrin smiled. "That's one of the beautiful things about selyn, it never all vanishes, little bits are left over when a Sime gets more, so eventually they have a tiny, tiny bit from every person who's ever given them selyn."
"That's neat!" Kolya caroled. "I wanna be a Sime."
"I know sweetie, but you're going to be a Gen like Dimitri."
"Really?" Now he sounded interested. "Then I can give selyn to a Sime."
"That's right." Sevrin chuckled softly. "Its a great thing."
"OK, then, I'll be Gen." He giggled. "When?"
Dimitri knew and gave a prayer to Allah for the knowledge that the lad would at least grow strong and straight so far. He winked at Sevrin though, saying nothing and keeping the knowledge to himself. Although he might end up getting beaten for the information, as he would establish very late, even for a Tegue. Sevrin narrowed his eyes, hammering at Dimitri for the information.
"No," he raised his hand, the Fellowship of the Veiled coming into his mind for the briefest moment. With the touch of the Fellowship, however, he found out his intruder had not been one of them. "What the ...?" He couldn't swear in front of a child, but he sure wanted to.
Danyel didn't know what to think. Kolya was wide eyed, tears beginning to form in them.
"You're going to grow up to be a healthy Sharm Lord." Dimitri smiled, at least his face did. "I thought you'd like to know."
"Thank you," Kolya said, slowly. "Who are you?"
"What you heard was a group of people, all acting as one. We call it the Fellowship of the Veiled."
"Big words," Kolya glanced around. "Are you still going to do it?"
"Yes," Dimitri's smile reached his eyes this time. Danyel wished he dared ask questions the way Kolya did. Actually he wished he could recover the way Kolya did. "Do you want me to?" There was a shadow behind his eyes, as if Danyel'd refuse him now. "You're afraid of me."
"No," he smiled, knowing the truth as he said it. "Although your hand is shaking."
"So it is." He glanced at it. Instantly it stilled, but Dimitri's whole body was so tense he looked as if he'd grown another two sizes from muscle.
"What has you so shaken?" He looked into Dimitri's storm gray eyes, trusting him completely despite the fact he zlinned as if he were ready to kill anyone who dared so much as sneeze.
"I'd thought the Veiled had searched this room looking for treason on my part because when I left, the note I left, well ..." he glanced down, dimples appearing shyly.
"I know." Danyel grinned. "No one other than me saw that note."
"Oh," Dimitri's field regained its cheer. Mitka'd slept through the whole exercise, of course. He was sleeping a lot lately, as if there were still something wrong with him. Although Danyel had no idea what his normal sleep patterns were like. "Is Mitka all right?" He stroked Mitka's scales, reveling in the selyn he could zlin so near the surface of his hide, yet again.
"He sleeps a lot before transfer, when he trusts his partner." Dimitri's addition brought Danyel's head up. "He trusted Vayer?"
"Yes, eventually," Dimitri nodded. "Lets finish this so I can pet him too. Although you might want to wake him before I do this."
"You're right, he wouldn't want to miss it." Danyel tickled Mitka gently under the chin. His jaws were broadening and deepening as the month went by. Mitka moaned, a sound hardly louder than the sigh of wind amid leaves.
"I wish I could see Mitka." Kolya sniffed.
"You will." Dimitri said.
"How can you be sure?"
"Yeah!" Kolya seconded him. "How?"
"Remember what I said about Danyel getting things from his parents?"
"Yeah," Danyel said in chorus with Kolya. He giggled, still hugging his dad's neck. They were adorable together. Both with blue eyes and blond hair, although Kolya's skin was paler than his dad's, more like his mom's and his eyes were closer to truly being blue rather than the darker violet-indigo of his dad's, but even so, there was no chance Kolya would ever be mistaken for someone else's child.
It had been a lot of fun running around Kaon with Kolya. They'd made a good team. He missed having the youngster in his arms. Instead he cuddled Mitka.
"Why is he holding his shirt like that?"
Danyel blinked, glancing down with his eyes alone. "Mitka," he winced, knowing full well where that shirt had been. It was still quite damp and unfortunately fragrant, although not as bad as it could have been, he supposed.
"It was all I could think of." He glanced up, then yawned, wincing. "I don't feel good."
"What's wrong?" Danyel bit at his lower lip. Mitka stared. So did Dimitri and Sevrin. Kolya tried the same stare. It didn't quite work. He was a little young. Mitka glanced up at Kolya without turning his head, as if Kolya could see or hear him.
"Need," he put his face back down then jerked it up. "Ow." Mitka worked his jaws, four very sharp fangs flashing into view for a moment. "What's going on?"
"Dimitri's going to stick that big needle through my ear." Danyel still wasn't too sure about this idea. It had sounded good at one point, but he really didn't like needles.
"Won't that hurt?" Mitka asked.
"Yes," Danyel tensed, thinking of all the times he'd accidentally cut himself in the kitchen. Then he thought of the blood and his stomach churned.
"You don't feel well either." Mitka put his chin back down on Danyel's lap, gingerly.
"It will be over soon." He nodded to Dimitri. "I trust you." He moved his hair back again.
"This is scary, too." Kolya said.
"Yes, it is." Sevrin told his son. "That's why we treat it with such respect. All pain is scary. If we weren't afraid of pain, we'd be very sick and have to go to a healer."
"Oh," Kolya bit at his lower lip, tiny baby teeth making a deep impression. "Its very important to be able to do this?"
"Yes," Sevrin nodded.
Danyel couldn't keep from staring at the bright metal in Dimitri's hand as it came towards his face. Dimitri did something with his hand and it vanished. "Better," he murmured. Without the sight of it, his heartbeat slowed a fraction. He could deal with pain. He'd suffered quite a bit of it in his life. "Needles bother me."
"Oh," Dimitri's dimples reappeared for a moment. "Thank you for telling me." His forearm brushed against Danyel's hand. His tentacles came out and grabbed it. "I have to be able to move that."
"Oh," Danyel grinned at him, forcing them to relax a bit. They didn't want to. He wanted to keep that sharp thing as far away from his hide as possible. Mitka was staring up at Dimitri. There was no reflection of the real world in Mitka's eyes, only shimmering lights reflecting the ambient. Dimitri held Danyel's ear tight, pinching it hard. His tentacles locked down again, but Dimitri didn't say anything.
"Now," a sharp stab seemed to go through his entire body, then the aching burn of a small cut radiated out from the hole. Dimitri's finger slid behind where he'd placed the needle and Danyel could feel it prick his skin as well. "From my heart to thine, for thy need to mine."
A wash of shimmering heat filled the ambient, calling on his own need to take. Danyel gasped. Then the sensation faded, as did the last echoes of pain. Dimitri slid the needle back out, painlessly. "I, well you, healed it already." He held out a tiny half ring of shimmering black-green and gold. Danyel looked at it closely.
It was incredible. A tiny dragon had caught a fish beneath silvery waves. Oh, the dragon didn't quite look like Mitka, but it was close. "That's beautiful, just like Mitka."
"I thought so." Dimitri handed it to him. Of course Danyel had to show it to Mitka.
"That's neat." Mitka beamed. "But I didn't like it when you hurt him."
"I know." Dimitri said.
"I don't know how to do this." Danyel admitted after a long moment with everyone staring at him.
"Like this." Dimitri worked a tiny clasp at the back, untwisting it half a turn and then pulling it off. The post was massive, nearly as large as the tail of the dragon. "It won't come off by accident."
"It looks fragile." Danyel set it to his ear. Unable to see, he couldn't figure out how to make it work, then he could, through Mitka's eyes. The area around the new hole was hot to Mitka's sight and bright red with the remaining flush of selyn from being healed so quickly. It felt very, very strange to push something solid through his body and he shuddered all over. Dimitri did have to help him with the clasp.
"There," Dimitri stroked his hair back. Through Mitka's eyes, he could see the tiny reflection of Mitka himself diving into the waves. "And don't worry about it particularly. Its not fragile. Its been treated. It was meant to be worn, not sitting in a display case."
"I'm honored and flattered." Danyel was full of too many emotions to name them all. He'd felt pain, knowing it was coming, and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as he'd feared.
"As am I." Dimitri said. "Although I'd like my hand back."
"Oh," Danyel let him go. Dimitri rubbed at his wrist, reddened lines of bruises already forming. "I didn't mean to grab you so hard."
"I know." Dimitri's grin was a bit lopsided. "I'd like to think of it as a reminder of what I have to look forward to."
"You want me to mark you?" Danyel winced. Dimitri's hand slid along the curve of his newly pierced ear. The attention of his touch sent a shiver through his body. For a moment, everything dissolved into selyn and light. He wanted and needed the core of that light as he'd never desired anything else.
"Not in front of Kolya." Sevrin's voice broke the spell. Dimitri stiffened, for a moment eyes blazing black with fury and need denied. He caught his breath, looking straight into his eyes. Danyel saw his reflection, equally as aroused. This wasn't intil. That was a cold, clinical term. This was desire of a sort he'd never known, not even at first transfer.
"No, indeed," Dimitri chuckled softly, then added for Danyel's ears alone. "He's going to be taking a nap and we'll be uninterrupted for hours."
Danyel winked. "I think I'm going to want to go home and take a nap myself." He grinned at Kolya.
"I'm not tired." His eyes kept drooping shut, even though he would force them back open with his fingers. Finally he yawned and collapsed again with a thud.
"Let's go." Danyel, of course, got to carry all the bags and Kolya's seat for the car. Maybe things were a bit better when Gens did the work. But then Dimitri winced, sniffing the air pointedly. Maybe not.
Chapter 30
Dimitri wondered for a long moment if maybe he might be better off asleep with little Kolya. Danyel yawned in his ear suggestively.
"No," Dimitri swayed, wondering why he felt as if he'd been pressed flat below the great stone monstrosity of Kirov's.
"I don't feel so lively myself, even though it isn't sleepy." Danyel's nager blurred and frayed on the edges. Or maybe that was his own vision. He could hardly see more than a meter in front of his nose. He rubbed between his eyes and found his glasses.
"Ugh," he slipped them off and blinked. It didn't help. Dimitri set them on the bedside table with a delicate click. Before he could move, Danyel'd slid around and was tugging at his shoes. "You don't have to do that."
"I want to." Danyel's warm hands rubbed the soles of his feet. When he started using his knuckles, driving into Dimitri's feet with nearly augmented strength he moaned. He'd never thought of himself as particularly fascinated by ... "Oh, yes," he sighed, grasping at the blankets and wanting to arch up off the bed. Danyel's tentacles slid between his toes, rubbing the sensitive skin with just the perfect amount of pressure. Then he tugged at them, one by one.
With each pop, the skin on Dimitri's hands and wrists tightened down until every hair was standing on end and quivering. Danyel slid up his body and looked into his eyes. There was still a flicker of hesitation back there, as if he weren't sure he should be doing this. Dimitri found the strength to slide Danyel around.
"A moment," he padded off to the bathroom on his now tingling feet. He brought back a basin of hot water, a rough cloth, a soft one and a good sized quantity of the cleaner used on sheathes. Dimitri'd always wondered if this would work. He wet the rough cloth and quickly but still gently cleaned the worst of the dirt from Danyel's feet. He obviously didn't go barefoot enough. Dimitri felt the hot spots on the sole where Danyel'd cut them on sharp stones or thorns. He cooled them with a thought, breathing on the warm water to finish the sensation.
Danyel sighed, leaning his head back. "You do know how to seduce me."
"I've just started." He slipped his hands up Danyel's slender calves for a moment, letting the coarse wiry hair tickle his sensitive fingers. They often tingled after turnover, and Danyel's warm skin only made his mouth water and his whole body vibrate. "This can't be comfortable." Dimitri reached up and unbuttoned Danyel's pants, watching his face very carefully.
Danyel's eyes widened a hair, but he didn't stop Dimitri. His attention flicked to Kolya for an instant, blissfully sprawled in the nest Dimitri'd made for him. "Even if he wakes, he won't know or care. Its not quite as obvious to the little ones as sexual intercourse." Saying the actual words made Dimitri's whole jaw feel tight. He swallowed heavily, watching the expressions cross Danyel's face one by one. "I should know."
"What?" Danyel slid up a bit.
Dimitri chuckled. "I remember watching my parents making love. I was even younger than little Kolya there. It didn't hurt me."
"And Sevrin is like you." Danyel said slowly. "I've never done this."
"Neither have I." Dimitri knew his eyes were bright and glassy. He was so excited his heart was racing and every nerve was alive. Mitka shuffled his wings and legs, not really wanting to wake up. He opened one eye a bare slit and then shut it. "I want thee." He breathed, tugging at Danyel's buttons, then stopped in a fit of mortal embarrassment. What if Danyel slapped him? What if he kicked Dimitri out and told him to never come back?
"Oh, hush," Danyel sat up the rest of the way. He scooted to the edge of the bed.
"Let me." Dimitri breathed.
"We've been sleeping together naked for weeks now." Danyel made it sound utterly foolish.
"I never undressed you." He said. "Its different. Skin is just skin. This time I'm looking and you know it." Dimitri'd lost every bit of whatever glib tongue he might have gotten from his sire. "I want to see you in the light of day and touch you and make love with you."
"We can't have sex."
"But we have selyn." Dimitri took a deep breath. He ran his fingertips up Danyel's spine, from bottom to top. Danyel arched his back, his shoulders, then his neck, giving to and then following Dimitri's fingers. His breath hissed between his teeth and he gasped when Dimitri tugged so very lightly on the tiny short hairs at the base of Danyel's skull.
"Oh my," he breathed. Or at least tried to. His whole upper body had tightened, and all twelve tentacles were showing. "You want my pants off?" Danyel stood, eyes traveling around the room, as if he were shy of Dimitri!
"I do." Dimitri finished what he'd started and slipped them over Danyel's slender hips. He was so Sime. Not over delicate like Khristov or massive like Vayer or his brother, Valtanir. Dimitri hadn't thought of that before. He winced.
"You don't like?"
"Oh, relative problems."
"Hmmm?" He gestured for Dimitri to stand. His knees were knocking.
"I just realized why I had such a difficult time with one of my transfer partners." He glanced at Kolya, who would have been snoring if he'd been older. "He was my father's baby brother."
"Oh," Danyel applauded this lacking witticism by chuckling. Now there was fascination, someone who'd laugh at even your worst jokes in need. "I don't suppose that would be conductive to romance."
"No," he said quickly. "Or the fact he has a dozen years on me as a nagerically active adult. I hardly have six months, even over a year past establishment and all of that with relatives."
"You sound like you've been dealing with shuven since you established." Danyel snorted and shook his head.
"Yeah, pretty much." He admitted, glancing down at the older man. "But you have never had a great love."
"More or less." His hands, with tentacles, unbuttoned the top button on his shirt. Dimitri got to practice his deep breathing exercises. It made it possible to brush his skin against Danyel's quivering fingers.
"I won't hurt you." He ducked his head as Danyel slipped his shirt off, never getting to the bottom buttons. Dimitri never did. Although he did intercept Danyel's toss, then tossed the clothes himself in a pile. Danyel laughed, his nager loosing its horrible rigidity.
When Danyel reached for the button to Dimitri pants, however, it was different. He'd felt Danyel's zlinning hundreds of times. He knew Danyel watched him traipse in and out of the bathroom every morning. He even had turned off the light on Dimitri's reading a few times just so he could cuddle more. They'd slept intertwined like puppies in a basket. Why was he so nervous? Danyel's eyes asked him the same thing.
"I'm nervous because before, it was a dream, a hope, a prayer, a fantasy. Now," he reached up and touched the fantastic earring. "Now its real." His voice cracked. "I don't know what's going to happen."
"I thought you did?" Danyel's hands stopped.
"Not with you." He caressed Danyel's flank, just wanting to feel the warmth of him, nothing more. Simple human touch. "Not since we took our first ride in the car."
"What happened?"
"I lost my healer's heart." He let his hand slip down Danyel's side to his thigh. He bit at his lips, more afraid in this moment than even when he'd faced the Lords of the Demense for his freedom. "I can't heal those I love."
"That isn't true." Danyel slipped Dimitri's pants off as if he'd done it hundreds of times. "I've done a lot of medical prep."
Dimitri gave a soft chuckle, wishing Danyel'd taken more time.
"You've healed me."
Dimitri shook his head slowly. "I can't cure you, Danyel. Its too deep, in your blood, your bones, your very genes. No Sergei, no one ever living, could cure you."
"What of someone who'd never lived before now?" Danyel's words came out as harsh and strained. "Has there ever been anyone like Mitka?" The reference to Mitka as a person, as an 'anyone', took Dimitri's breath away. "I've never been so free in my life, Dimitri, as bound to him." He opened his mouth and then closed it without a word. "I love him as I love thee." Danyel's use of the informal, for the first time so naturally and easily, stunned him.
"But I've lost my ability to care." Sevrin's harsh words still burned his heart like acid. The shame of his shortcomings being so coldly exposed before Danyel and Vanesa made sweat spring out on his brow.
"No," Danyel helped Dimitri step out of his pants. "Someone is lying to us. I don't think its Sevrin."
"Who?" Dimitri didn't know anyone who could or would care.
"What about your Uncle Cadek?"
"He's part of the Fellowship." Dimitri dismissed him instantly. "He can't live without them, not for more than a few minutes at a time. He lives only because of the Fellowship."
"And they protected you when Sevrin attacked."
"Yes," he nodded, then added, "and none of them were involved in what had been done to the rooms in Kaon."
"Who else could get into a locked room without picking the lock."
"You did." Dimitri pointed. "Still mostly blind, too, with my little cousin in a sling on your chest."
"Mitka told me how far I had to jump."
Dimitri felt himself start to pale at the idea of trusting Mitka like that, then flushed with shame. Of course Danyel had to trust him, otherwise he'd be dead this time next week. The lines of fate trembled beneath his feet, as he'd only felt one time before in his life
"Get the Shen out!" Dimitri screamed. He grabbed Kolya. Kolya shrieked. Danyel could only pray Danyel'd listen. He ducked his head. The window gave before popping. Something dark and heavy landed on him with a thud. Two, three, four heartbeats went by. Kolya wailed his upset and fear. Had Dimitri guessed wrong?
The fireball was worse than he could have imagined. Heat like the open door of a blast furnace washed over them. Danyel covered them, protecting Dimitri and little Kolya. Dimitri led both of them through the cinders. Danyel yelped in pain and Dimitri's whole body tightened. He couldn't protect Danyel. He could hardly protect a child. Turning, he saw Danyel's beautiful little house awash with flames. Mitka arrowed out of the inferno, reflecting the orange and red flames on his black hide.
"What's that?" Kolya pointed. Dimitri blinked and realized the ash formed a perfect outline of Mitka.
"That's Mitka." He explained, not wanting to deal with the terror and despair threatening his very life. "He's my second best friend in the whole world." Mitka's tail lashed. "Right after the man who saved our lives, your Uncle Danyel."
Danyel glared at him for an instant. Dimitri felt another chill run down his back. "You were the one who warned me."
"Great lot of good that did." All those beautiful things, those clothes, those books! "The books!" He cried out, holding Kolya in his arms.
"We're safe." Danyel put his arm around Dimitri's shoulders. "Although if you can tell me why the shidoni some lorsh is trying to kill us, you, me, I don't care who, I'd like to know."
"Don't you want to know who is doing this?" Dimitri shook his head as he watched Danyel's beautiful little house burn to the ground. The fire crew had arrived, at last, and were soaking down the neighboring houses with the help of their owners. There was nothing to be done for Danyel's.
"If we can figure out why, or even what, we'd be ahead of the game."
"What?" Dimitri obviously hadn't read as many mysteries as Danyel. There'd been a whole row of them on his bookshelf, now all gone! He'd only gotten to read two of them.
"We don't even know if this is an escalation or an accident or if it had anything to do with us. We'd probably have been out of the house if you hadn't volunteered to take care of Kolya this afternoon." Danyel snuggled him in close. He kissed Dimitri's shoulder. Lousy aim, but Kolya was a bit in the way. Now that he was alive, healthy and generally safe, he wanted Danyel's touch in the worst way.
Danyel clucked his tongue, glancing down. "Dimitri, I didn't think that was possible."
"I'm seventeen." He muttered, trying to ignore the problem. "OK, so, life threatening situations get me excited, haven't you heard of that before." He got out all in one breath. Kolya giggled.
"Yeah," he shifted his weight, as if to pull away.
"No," Dimitri just slid behind Danyel. "I don't want Kolya's skin to get dried out." Kolya stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. Well, another second head.
"You seem to have a problem Mister, um," he didn't even glance at Dimitri or Kolya, which was probably for the best. Dimitri's knees were shaking. They'd all come far too close to death. If Danyel'd balked for any reason, they'd be dead right now, since Dimitri'd have gone back in after him.
"Hajene Ferris, Danyel Ferris. That was my house." Danyel's slick good humor came through need, nakedness and his enormous loss. "Not even a penny of equity yet, really."
"I'm sorry to hear that Hajene Ferris. Now houses don't normally blow up like that, nor do naked people stand around in the front yard." He waved a tentacled arm. Dimitri wouldn't have ever gone near a fire with bare arms, of any kind. "Whatcha lookin at?"
"Oh, trying to figure your life expectancy." Almost fell out of his mouth. He was loosing touch with the ambient and reality. "I think I'm about to faint, officer." The world swayed around him, true, but more he really didn't want to be dealing with this shit right now.
"Dimitri," Danyel breathed, entirely the rescuing Sime. He couldn't have worked it better if he'd staged it in a play. "Oh, what can I do for you Sosu?" Although Danyel was badly overacting.
"Get me some clothes." Dimitri did not like being naked in front of all these Simes, particularly not when his body had decided it was party time since it'd managed to survive. Danyel came back with the nice officer's coat. It was a lot better than nothing and it also gave him a safe place to keep Kolya. The lad was shocky and very unhappy still.
"I wanna go home." He said at last, lips tight and eyes tense. "I'm scared."
"You should be, young man." The officer boomed.
"Get us the shen out of here right now, Danyel." Dimitri commanded in Russian.
"At your will, Sharm Lord." Fell out in all one word. Danyel helped Dimitri into the back seat of his car. The door slamming shocked the tears loose from poor little Kolya.
"I love you so much, Kolya." He told the lad, rocking him gently.
"I'm scared, Un'ca!"
"We're safe and you'll soon be back with your parents."
"Want you." He grinned through his tears. "You, you," Kolya sniffed. "I remember you jumping through the window and, um, rolling all around me on the grass. It was fun."
"I honestly didn't remember you'd opened the window." He looked up into Danyel's shocked expression. "I ended up going a lot further than I'd planned."
"And your glasses were next to the bed."
"Afraid so." He admitted, grinning a bit. They'd sounded like a good idea at the time, although he'd found he couldn't stand them. "They made me look like a Sime."
"Nothing could ever make you zlin like one." Danyel snorted. It was a snort worthy of Mitka, including in dampness. Danyel rubbed his own nose. "I'd never owned a house before, even with the bank."
"If nothing else, whoever did this is going to pay." Dimitri promised. Danyel looked up into the mirror. At first, doubt made the ambient icy. Dimitri held Danyel's gaze. Danyel nodded. Yeah, the son of a syphilitic whore was going to pay for this.
"This report is pure shen." Danyel slammed it back down on the desk. "My partner clearly remembers turning off the gas before we left the house."
"How many people can remember a detail like that? Something they do every day?" The Sime's attitude was how many 'Gens' could remember.
"I do." Dimitri said, snapping out the words. In his dark, harsh voice and even harsher field they had a nearly physical impact on the renSime. Mitka was nowhere to be seen, but Danyel could feel his spirit reinforce Dimitri's growing field to near normal levels, for a second order Donor, that was. "You aren't going to call me a fool because of my larity, now are you? That would be discrimination which is illegal in Gulf Territory." His fist came down on the desk so hard the surface laminate cracked.
Dimitri spread his hands quickly, the gesture of a killer Sime dropping a corpse or grabbing a Gen. Danyel wanted to back up a step. "It was no accident."
"We don't know that." Danyel tugged on Dimitri's sleeve. He'd insisted on wearing sleeves, for the first time since Danyel'd met him. As exotic and alien as a creature from outer space, his presence as well as his height towered over everyone in the room.
"I do."
"You're too close." He reminded.
Dimitri sighed, closed his eyes and glanced away. "You're right." He turned those sights back on the police officer. "But if I hear one more discriminatory or defamatory remark, Officer Kerts, I'm gonna rip your laterals out by the roots." Officer Kerts looked like she was going to faint. "Believe me." He stormed from the room. Danyel watched his arms move for far too few seconds before he realized he had another problem on his hands.
"If you don't tell Sosu big shirt over there to tone it down, he's gonna get arrested for public indecency and nageric hooliganism."
"Do you really think anyone here has the lats to arrest him?" Danyel tried Dimitri's tactic. It felt pretty good, actually. At least he got some revenge.
"Uh, no," she packed the report into a binder and shoved it in an overstuffed desk drawer. "Good bye," her nageric shove would have been far more effective if she'd been anything but a renSime. Danyel, however, was not going to quibble. He wanted out of here too.
"Let me guess, she threatened me with endangering the pubic welfare and incitement to intil."
"Close, indecency and hooliganism," Danyel tossed the package on filing a counter report in the back. Dimitri'd taken to riding up front, at Danyel's side. Mitka's attention never stopped flicking from side to side, examining everyone they met with this dancing will 'o wisp of light glimmering in the ambient.
Only Vanesa, of all the channels Danyel'd been able to mention it too had zlinned it, but so far they'd caught eight petty thieves, two murderers, one semi-junct living off junkies like the pawn shop owner, which was actually where they'd found the bitch through a contact Cami'd left behind, three wife beaters and one child abuser. The last they'd not turned in. He'd already murdered his seven year old son, after wrecking his mind. Mister Volen was now at the bottom of the river.
"I could get used to this lifestyle." Danyel glanced in the mirror.
"Down!" Dimitri slammed his head beneath the level of the seats. Glass shattered over their heads. Danyel swore, loudly and creatively. He slammed the car into max. Driving by nager, he slipped through the next intersection before glancing up.
In the mirror, he saw someone dressed in black on a motorcycle. A large truck came between them and the figure was gone. One of the veiled? Danyel hadn't been able to see the figure's face, it had been covered with a helmet.
"Pay attention!" Dimitri yanked on the wheel. The tires squealed. Something slammed into the rear end of the car.
"Oh shen," Danyel could zlin the selyn leaking from the secondary storage battery. If that stuff, already volatized, hit the condenser the car would blow sky high, just like his house.
"Shen you to hell!" Danyel screamed at the top of his lungs as he dragged Dimitri with him out of the car. This time he cried. Transfer was supposed to be tomorrow and he cried. His car was the last thing he'd owned, and he'd paid it off years ago.
The click of a gun being cocked brought him out of his sorrow in pure fury. Who ever'd done this was going to die. Snarling in hate, he hunted. The world dissolved into light and dark. Dimitri's field cast shadows so harsh they should have burned permanently into the earth.
"No!" Dimitri's rejection of his fury was too much. Danyel turned on him. He never felt the blow. The lights just went out.
Chapter 31
"We found this at the bottom of the river, Sosu Sergei." Officer Kerts tossed a picture of a very badly decomposed Mister 'child killer' Volen.
"Looks like a corpse." He lit a cigarette. Dimitri was not in the mood for any of this nonsense. Danyel was still unconscious, knocked out by the combination selyn explosion and death shock of his prey. What hurt worse was his betrayal. He'd trusted Danyel to come to him for selyn. "A badly decomposed one. You want me to do the autopsy."
"If you would, Sosu Sergei." He handed Dimitri his own 'bread knife'.
"What the fuck do you mean by this?" Dimitri reversed the forty cent long blade, turning it into an unmistakably lethal weapon. "This is mine."
"It is, Sergei." She sat on the edge of the desk. "You're lying to me. Even Hajene Ferris couldn't lie to me."
Dimitri flipped the knife back the right way. He could have murdered the woman in a heartbeat, but she knew something. He looked up at her through the slowly rising blue smoke. "I'd rather do it now than later."
"It isn't going to make a whole lot of difference in smell."
"Today I can't smell a thing." He snorted. Poor Mitka didn't know what to do. He'd taken to curling up with Kolya for a lack of anything better. In hard need and alone, Dimitri couldn't smell a thing. Officer Kerts narrowed her eyes.
"Then how do you know you turned off the gas?"
"Because I know, Officer." He stood and put out the cigarette. Dimitri glanced down at the image of the harsh, buzzing lights in the knife. Were they any less painful in that other world? "I don't forget things."
"Then why don't you remember Mister Volen?"
Dimitri cocked his head, waiting for an answer. "That sounds like a rhetorical question, Officer. Am I supposed to answer it?"
"Yes, shen you." She snapped. Dimitri raised the blade. The thought reminded him of Danyel.
Dimitri said nothing. "Yeah, Danyel and I met him. He crossed the street in front of us. He tripped and dropped three oranges, a bundle of celery, a bag of carrots, four large potatoes, a pound of salted butter and half a pint of what passes for heavy cream here. The container of cream split open, spilling forty-three percent in the original impact and the remainder before Mister Volen could right it."
"Shen and Shidoni," Officer Kerts reached for something beneath her desk. Dimitri stopped her with his knife. He'd never really been taught to fight with a knife, but he'd have had to be oblivious as a child not to have seen it done. Vayer and Nashen were constantly sparring, and now Vayer and Tzer, although Tzer didn't have his father's flair.
Drawing on all his memories of Nashen's incredible sense of style, he brought the knife up to Officer Kerts' throat.
"This blade is sharp enough to cut half way through a human body in one stroke."
"Get it away from me." Her eyes kept flicking down. "We need the autopsy done, unless you can deduct cause of death from the photo."
"Why me?" Dimitri asked. "I'm about to go into seclusion."
"Sectuib Kaon said you were the only one who might be able to determine if the cause of death was selyn failure or a kill."
"Why me? Don't you have real people, Simes, to do this sort of work?" He glared at her. Dimitri didn't want to be here. He wanted to be at home, back with Danyel, with Kolya, napping together on the huge bed, waiting for transfer.
"Because she said it might not be a Sime kill."
"Don't tell me you believe all those stories about Giant Killer Gens." He exaggerated the capitals for effect, not incidentally letting the knife slip away from her neck. "Come now?"
"Sectuib Kaon seems to think so. She had another of her people do the autopsy on Hajene Cami."
"Who?"
"I don't know." She snorted, looking him up and down. "What difference does it make to you?"
"Someone's trying to murder me."
"Get used to it." Her eyes met his, daring him to lie in her nager.
"Never," he scowled, "Where are the rest?"
"We found them in the vault. The evidence vault." She said. "Someone wants you scared, Sosu Sergei."
"Who, how many, why?" He braced himself. "Lets do it."
Officer Kerts led him to the autopsy room.
Dimitri always used a chain glove on his off hand. Few prosectors did anymore, but the old renSime he'd learned from had always used one, so Dimitri did as well. If nothing else it had saved him from a couple of scars. Dimitri set the light higher.
He nodded to the deener, no one had any idea why they were called that, or even if it had any relevance at all by this point, but it was traditional. Again he gave many thanks for occult materials.
"The trough is that way." Dimitri hit the water flow. He unzipped the bag. Sure enough, the renSime barely managed to turn around before he threw up. He did get vomit all over the front of his nice white coat. Dimitri snorted in bemusement. He couldn't really feel a whole lot more.
This was going to be really interesting. Officer Kerts was after something. She knew he'd had something to do with Volen's death, not that he really cared. But if Danyel recovered, he'd have to be cleared of all complicity. What in hell had happened?
Dimitri turned all such thoughts from his mind, the last being the image of the black pearl dragon Danyel still wore in his ear.
"Let me up." Danyel didn't dare yank on the restraints, they were right over his laterals. Need clutched at his gut. "Where is he?"
"I'm right here, Hajene." A slick, professional, Techton nager crawled up next to his and died there. Dimitri swallowed back nausea, leaning as far away as he could. "This month you don't have to worry about a thing."
"Get the shen out of here and get me Dimitri." Danyel didn't shout, didn't growl. "I'm not touching anyone but Dimitri."
"You will." He said, in that same, calm, professional tone.
"What are you doing here?" Sevrin's entrance was like being smacked in the face with a bucket of boiling water after having been soaking in ice for days. Danyel screamed, unable to get away. He yanked back against the restraints, heedless of the damage he did to himself.
Someone hit the releases. Danyel crashed against the wall. The shenned Donor lay sprawled on the floor. He hadn't released Danyel. He was flopping on the floor like a landed fish. Sevrin's attention washed over him again. He whimpered, fear, pain, terror, loss all ripping him up inside. None of these things were his. Danyel struggled to master them.
"Get out here." Sevrin backed, tripping over the table and nearly falling himself. Danyel augmented wildly out of the room. The slick floor left him bouncing off the walls. His wrists burned with abuse. He pounded down the hallway, desperate for any way out.
A nurse shouted, "He went that way." Danyel dove back under his nose as fast as he could augment and zlinned for a window. They were all barred. There was one door he hadn't tried yet, so he tried it.
As soon as he slipped inside, he knew he'd made a mistake. His breath steamed in front of his face. Dark rubber bags hid mostly human shaped figures. Danyel didn't want to think about the more oddly shaped ones. They all had names, dates, places and other information on the outside.
A loud thump interrupted Danyel's ruminations. The faintest crack of light warned him. He skittered beneath the nearest rack. On hands and feet, he stayed out of the light, holding his nager as tight to his body as he could. What had happened to his knife? The shock of it nearly gave him away.
"There he is!" The really awful Donor shouted. How'd he found his own wrists? Danyel zlinned a gaping black hole. He'd learned prayer from Dimitri. Danyel prayed it wasn't the incinerator and jumped.
"Shen!" He bit off the rest of his curses. Chest deep in sub freezing something and standing on more of those bags it felt like, Danyel wished he could panic. But it wasn't in him to panic. Dimitri had a really good thing going with his 'fainting'.
Danyel caught the flash of selyn before the channel zlinned down the chute. Danyel held his breath and dove. Why he even bothered when the first thing he did on going under was scream, Danyel had no idea. The thick, viscous, syrupy fluid clung to his whole body, trying to invade his tentacle sheaths which should have frozen shut by this point. One point in his favor was he couldn't zlin through the stuff. He could hardly see through it. Danyel clutched at one of the bags. This one didn't feel like it had a body in it. It was all random lumps and curves, with a few sharp edged places.
Then, out of sheer Ferris curiosity, he zlinned through the bag, inch by inch. It was a body. It was a body that had been crushed and burned! He jumped out of the fluid and scrabbled at the wall. Again and again, no longer caring at all if anyone found him.
Burning hot tears streamed down his face. But even so he examined his entire surroundings. Another of those horrid bags joined him, splashing the freezing goo all over the place. If Danyel didn't get out of here soon, he'd die of cold, not need!
Danyel looked up. He reached in between the bags with his feet. Even in the deepest part of the pool, where they should have been the fewest bodies between him and the bottom, he couldn't touch anything but more bodies. What in the name of shen was going on in this madhouse?
Hospitals were supposed to be places where people talked to those who didn't quite have a solid grip on reality and Channels came in to assist when there was something more physical wrong. They didn't have body storage rooms! Was he going mad? Where was he? Was this an old kill depository? Where juncts had dumped their kills to be collected for 'recycling'? Danyel gagged at the thought, even though it was probably the right one.
"None of it will matter if you don't get out of here, Ferris." Talking to himself seemed to help keep his jaws from freezing shut. That would be a real disaster. Working as fast as he could without augmenting too much, he piled all the bodies he could reach on one side.
They were slippery and awkward. Often enough, the cause of death was painfully apparent to a casual zlin. Actually, almost all of these bodies had been accident victims of one sort or another. Usually crushing or other mangling sorts of things. Danyel swallowed down his queasy stomach again. He'd never look at another dead body the same way again. All the ones he'd seen had been fairly neat. A few bruises, maybe a burn mark or two.
The body bag Danyel'd grabbed broke in two, spilling its contents all over him. Danyel lost it. He doubled over, retching and gagging. The cold air choked him as much as his own bile. Danyel glared up at the opening far overhead, the one on the far side of the room from where he'd come in.
"Why didn't you just jump across, you moron?" Danyel glanced at the two. Then he hoped he hadn't gotten them confused.
"Get out of here and then worry about it." He scrabbled to the top of his pile. Slick with condensation ice, they began returning to the pool from whence they came. Danyel ran. At least they didn't smell.
His pile was melting beneath his feet, or at least sliding away. Danyel ran faster, augmenting frantically. Long before he reached the top, he started falling behind. He leaped, praying he could at least win out on momentum. His fingertips screeched against the steel. He slid down the slick surface, frantic for any purchase. Then his feet hit empty air. He'd over jumped.
"Shen!" Danyel scrabbled harder. Leverage was not on his side from here! As his feet went in, his butt stuck out. And worse of all, the bottom of the tunnel was further out than the top. Probably good design to keep anything from going the wrong way, like say Danyel, but it didn't help!
Something tugged at his foot when it slipped on the edge. Visions of living dead, getting revenge on Danyel for having disturbed their frigid rest, ran through his mind at augmented speed.
"Its me, Mitka, idiot." His unique, hissing voice brought Danyel out of his stupor.
"How's Dimitri? Is he all right? Did the explosion get him? What's going on?"
"You're delirious." Mitka's tugs weren't much, but they gave Danyel the momentum he needed to get his weight over the lip of the tunnel. He collapsed on his knees, panting.
"You stink." Mitka wrinkled his nose. "But not like Dimitri?"
"What?"
"Come on," Mitka rolled his eyes. Danyel followed him. Before long there was a small drain and then Danyel had to crawl through a lot of things he never wanted to think about again. Fortunately he was empty or he'd have thrown up again. Although it didn't seem to help someone up ahead any. The awful sound of dry heaves was nearly contagious.
"Get me some real help?" Dimitri's voice, harsh but completely unmistakable caught Danyel's undivided attention. He reached out to the sound, unable to even extend his tentacles for cold.
"Help me."
"Why did you abandon us?" Mitka asked, even though Danyel could zlin his eyes loose their icy sheen.
"I never did."
"You went after that Sime."
"What Sime?" Danyel asked. "I was furious. That car was the last thing I owned." He turned away. "He hates me now." Danyel shivered, clutching at himself, trying not to freeze solid.
"Yes," Mitka hadn't had to confirm it. Danyel glanced through the grate.
"I have to talk with him." With warmth, of any amount, life was coming back to him. "I can't leave him like this."
Mitka glanced around.
"Get this puker out of here." There was a loud thump as if Dimitri'd actually kicked the poor man who'd been so sick.
"What's wrong with him?" Danyel asked.
"Wrong?" Mitka snorted. "You abandoned us, like all the rest. You gave up on him."
"Like shen I did. I was going to kill the bastard who wrecked my life and then ... I wake up in the mad house up stairs. I've spent the last half hour in the company of a countless pile of mangled corpses and now you're telling me I gave up. I nearly died up there Mitka. I," Danyel bit at his lower lip, regardless of the taste. "I love thee."
"If you'd killed that hit man."
"Hit man?" Danyel asked.
"Yeah, someone paid him. He was working with the people who got Cami's dealer hooked." Mitka spoke as if these were things everyone knew. "They just wanted to make you pay for killing their best source of horse. It wasn't personal."
"Shen," Danyel slammed his fist into the wall, leaving four deep dents.
"What was that?" Dimitri growled. Then Danyel heard a sucking sound. Could he be smoking while ... what was he doing? Danyel didn't want to think about it.
"Sometimes the hospital sends down a stiff one and they resettle." Officer Kerts' voice called out. "Oh, shen, Dimitri," feet pattered across the floor. Dimitri whistled.
"I wish I could get some decent help."
"Your wish is my command." Danyel said. "Take me to him."
Chapter 32
Dimitri took another drag off his cigarette. The coal would burn away anything Mister Volen had been carrying around, although from Officer Kerts' run for the bathroom it had been sucking on a smoke half soaked with rotten blood. Not that he could taste much of it, mostly he was smoking for show and the nicotine hit. He'd have much rather had hashish or marijuana even.
His first, actually not incompetent, but unfortunately easy to intimidate deener had long since vanished. Dimitri had nearly given up on having assistance with the replacement of various parts when his new assistant showed up. He also did not want to have to clean out the alimentary tract if he could get someone else to do it.
"You'll have to tell me what to do." Danyel's midnight dark eyes met his over a half mask. Dimitri straightened, taking a last drag off his cigarette and throwing it at the drain. He had blood up to his elbows.
"Want one?" He let one flick to the edge of the pack.
"Thanks," he took it. Dimitri tossed him the lighter. It was his place to light his own smokes. Dimitri knew his skin crawled when he touched the filthy thing. Ins'Allah how he hated working on drowning victims, especially went the obvious cause of death wasn't drowning.
"You can take notes." Dimitri'd always cursed trying to write with sticky gloves.
"Heart abnormal," he went through all the symptoms of a major heart attack, without giving it a specific name, of course. Then he looked more closely, buoyed by Danyel's presence. "Scratch that." He held his knife back against his wrist and opened the heart completely. He'd not studied it, knowing what he'd find. "You sick bastard." He touched the bad valve. "You fucking sick son of a bitch."
"What?" Dimitri'd never heard Dimitri swear like that. Actually, Dimitri'd rarely heard himself swear like that. He held up the heart. A simple heart attack would have been painfully difficult to fake in such a way as a second autopsy wouldn't spot the fake instantly. This was so much better. Besides, the signs were all there, enlarged atria, hypertrophied musculature, and his son would have lived if this defect had been one tiny bit worse.
"A lesson for the new deener. There are four valves in the human heart. A number of congenital birth defects have to do with these valves, the way they open and close, and whether they do so correctly or not." Dimitri forced himself to lecture, calming himself even as he wanted kill the bastard again, which was how he'd died, after all.
Dimitri grabbed a piece of chalk and sketched the trifold design of a normal valve. "These flaps meet and seal. Its a one way valve. Blood goes from here, through the lungs, back to the heart and out to the body."
"What does that have to do with our Mister Volen?"
"I thought you'd never ask." Dimitri's eyes blazed. He knew it. He was so high on finally getting to work, he'd have stood here until he collapsed of attrition. Mitka appeared, curled around Danyel's shoulders.
Dimitri nodded, unable to believe at first Mitka'd forgiven Danyel. Mitka just shrugged, not meeting Dimitri's eyes at all. Danyel took a drag off his cigarette, then looked at the bit of blood he'd gotten on it. He winced and took another drag.
"You don't have to finish it."
"I do." He flicked it away when he was done. "About these valves?"
"Yeah, well, in some children, there's a hole between the two halves of the heart that doesn't go away and the valves don't quite seat right." Dimitri ran his fingers across the central divide of Mister Volen's heart. It was so thin, Dimitri could clearly feel the tiny wrinkles in his gloves on the other side. "See this thin scar tissue?"
"Yeah," Danyel's nager was dubious.
"With this disorder, the victim can die at any time up until their late thirties." Dimitri well knew the son of a whore was thirty-two. "No warning, the separation fails and they just fall over." He slipped his finger through the delicate barrier and wiggled the tip at Danyel.
Danyel blinked, his whole posture being someone who was trying not to flinch or cry. "And if he'd had the habit of walking over the mainstreet bridge at all hours of the night." Looking for little boys, although Danyel didn't say as much, Dimitri still heard it. The painfully bright lights put both of their faces in shadow, although Danyel's was because he hadn't shaved in days, since they'd last been together, it looked like.
"Then he could well have collapsed and fallen in."
"More likely been pushed, after they grabbed his wallet." Dimitri tried to remember where he'd stashed it. In the destroyed car, of course, taped under the seat. Shen! He'd not been entirely thrilled with his life up until a week ago, but it had been considerably less exciting. "Can I go back to boring?"
"No me?" Danyel winked, eyes brightening deep in their network of need created lines. "You want me out?"
"By the way, I require you to run the gut." Dimitri said, watching Danyel's nager.
"What's that?" Danyel asked. Dimitri described the smelly, messy, disgusting process.
"Fuck you," he rolled his eyes, hauled the mesentery out of the cadaver and began. "Why are we doing this? We already know how he died."
"Revenge." It was better than nothing.
Danyel had managed to get through the autopsy without fainting or throwing up. Probably because he was so cold and tired, nothing really affected him much beyond the blaze of Dimitri's field. Mitka crooned in his ear and licked it, rocking his earring.
"Do you want this back?" He pushed his hair back.
Dimitri's eyes were hidden in a sharp edged darkness. "We have to sew him back up." His field was as flat as ice, and nearly as warm.
"Give me the needle." He held out his hand.
Dimitri's scorn was as sharp as the huge knife he'd wielded. Danyel'd seen the thing go through skin, muscle and tendon with equal ease. He'd come in too late to see him use any kind of bone cutter, although an odd saw and some sort of shears were lying in a tray at his elbow. There was a harsh, dry smell in the air, worse than even the fecal and vomit smell he'd run into cleaning out the gut. "I can do it. Put it all back." He waved a hand at the tray of body parts.
Danyel was not squeamish, or at least he'd thought not at one time. Touching something that had once been alive horrified most Simes to the point of sickness. He'd learned to cope early in life, having had far too many people he'd known die. When he'd changed over, the memories hadn't left him. He could still cope. Dimitri wet the end of the cord in his mouth. Danyel's knees gave way. It was too much. He grabbed the edge of the slab with both hands to stay upright.
Dimitri snorted, although his field softened the slightest bit. "Stay put." He jabbed the horrid needle, it looked big enough for a sliderail spike, into the heavy muscle of the thigh. Danyel knew better than to close his eyes. He swallowed back bile and tried not to let the tight feeling in his scalp crawl over his whole body.
His hands were white with pressure beneath his blood streaked gloves, but they were far better to look at than the corpse. He actually looked a bit better eviscerated, less like a real animal. Danyel's nose itched. Mitka scratched it with the end of his tail. "Thank you." He managed a couple of twitches toward a smile. He'd have been more talkative if his stomach had been less upset. Mitka stroked his throat with his head, downward, bless him. Danyel sighed and looked up to see Dimitri dump a double armful of slimy, half rotten organs back into the corpse.
"You've done very well." He spread them around, evening out the lumps and squished the front part of the ribcage on top of the resulting mess. Danyel wanted to close his eyes so badly. "Particularly for a Sime." He flipped down the skin from where he'd placed it over Volen's face. The wet smack echoed off the tiles. Danyel's ears were ringing. He glanced at the face and had to turn away. "Go sit."
Danyel looked at the floor. "There's almost no blood on the floor."
"He'd pretty much been exsanguinated in the river." The popping, sucking sounds of what had to be the needle passing through flesh and muscle couldn't be avoided. Danyel looked up. The mirror over the huge sink showed Dimitri's face, still with concentration. His work had been very professional, actually, other than some of his nageric jibes as Danyel'd screwed things up. "There was little left to land on the floor." He snipped something then held up the needle again. He opened his mouth and wet another thread.
"Don't do that." Danyel begged, unable to deal with that one thing.
Dimitri cocked his head.
"Please," he said, blinking the sweat from his eyes. It stung. "Anything but that."
"OK," he jabbed the needle into the corpse's thigh again. Danyel winced, but kept his gaze on Dimitri's face. It was no longer dull. Life had returned to him. Bone scraped on bone as Dimitri reset the top half of the skull in place and this time Danyel was ready for the sucking sound of the flesh being moved back. "He's not going to have an open casket funeral, but even Mister Volen should be treated with some respect."
Danyel managed to turn back around. Dimitri nodded, pointing to the scalp. "If you could keep it from slipping."
"Certainly." He held the two flaps of skin together. Dimitri took neat, even stitches to close up the gaping hole. Volen's eyes were blackened pits, both of them gone to crayfish, Danyel guessed. His nose had been eaten off and part of his cheek.
"Someone once suffered for him." Dimitri took a length of gauze and wrapped it around over the eyes, closing them. "He had a mother, a father, maybe siblings." He looked up into Danyel's eyes.
"And he fucked and killed little boys." Danyel reminded him, instantly going back to the scene by the bridge.
"We don't have to do this." Danyel pulled on Dimitri's shirt. Dimitri turned to him, field blazing. Danyel didn't know which of them was supposed to be the predator anymore. "We can go back to the center and ..."
"And work?" Dimitri jerked his chin up.
"Yeah," Danyel studied the bit of grass that had sprung up alongside the gutter. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I'm furious, Danyel." He slammed his fist into the wall. Dust showered down on both of them. "I want revenge."
"I once wanted that." Danyel closed his eyes and sighed. "Rik's dead, Dimitri."
"You remember him." Dimitri turned. "There he is." His attention focused on a tall man, dressed in well fitting clothes, a bit too well made for this area. A buyer, not a seller.
"There's no law, Dimitri." Danyel put his hand on Dimitri's arm
"There is now." He did something, slumped his shoulders, made himself somehow shorter. Dimitri glanced back at him.
"That isn't going to work." Danyel ran his hand through his hair. "He's not going to believe you're a child for a moment."
"I was afraid of that."
Dimitri's attention snapped back around. His whole attitude was one of a predator, like a huge cat. On equally silent feet he slid into the shadows. Danyel zlinned what he'd seen and tried to follow him. Dimitri's field waved him back.
"No," he hissed.
"I'm coming with you." Danyel insisted.
"Then keep your field under control." Dimitri vanished. Oh, he didn't really, only all sense of his field. Danyel tried to mimic him. "Very good." His praise warmed Danyel all over. He forgot need, the chill night, everything but Dimitri's nearness for a moment. Dimitri kissed him so quickly he could have imagined it.
"Stop," Mitka hissed in his ear. Dimitri's whole body was arched to spring, although none of his field showed. To zlinning, he might have well been a statue. Although Danyel couldn't think of anyone who could carve half so well. Dimitri waved him forward.
"I thought you were going to get me a young one." The man's eyes narrowed. Danyel thought he might remember him from somewhere, but he saw so many people every day at work, it was hard to keep track. Particularly those who simply accepted whatever channel was on duty.
"I bumped into him earlier." Dimitri's voice seemed to come from inside his head. Danyel's heart pounded. "Keep it quiet."
"I'm trying." Danyel only thought the words, but Dimitri sniffed anyway, as if he'd heard them.
"He's young." A well dressed man, better than the first, nudged a little boy in the back. The youngster had blond hair just like Kolya's. Danyel had to force himself still.
"Not like Bri." The man Dimitri said he knew glanced down.
"I don't know him." Dimitri's growl was probably loud enough to be heard. Danyel zlinned, quickly, and found large metallic objects under both men's coats, probably guns.
"Oh, shen," he muttered, not liking this at all.
"Bri was his son." Dimitri said, jaw tight.
"I want something better. I'm paying you enough."
"You're not paying anyone enough." He looked down at the young man, for actually he was, almost at maturity. In a few more years he'd probably be putting away his toys and moving out on his own. Both he and the man with him looked well enough off to be anywhere other than here.
The lad rubbed at his eyes and bit at his lower lip.
"Give him to me." The buyer held out his hand.
There was the flash of streetlight on blued metal in the father's hand.
"Go!" Dimitri's shove nearly drove Danyel to his knees. He rolled with it and grabbed the youngster. The muzzle flare of a gun blinded him.
Remembering Mitka's lesson, Danyel shouted. "I can't see." He wasn't going to zlin around Dimitri in his current mood, not that Danyel blamed him. The lad whimpered, the horrible beaten sound Danyel remembered from his own past.
Then the world around them shifted. Danyel saw the muzzle of a gun swing to point at both of them. He kicked. The shot went wild. It thudded into the pavement. He was pinned by the child.
"No!" The man screamed, a high pitched, inhuman, shrill sound. "He's my son!"
"Not any more." Dimitri's low voice was the snarl of a hungry leopard. He reached out with a hooking gesture. "You nearly shot him." Dimitri spoke as if he were at a dinner party, while Mitka grew to tower over all of them. "Run, coward."
"I can't." He reached for the lad.
"Papa!" The child cried. "Oh, papa, I tried." He sobbed. "I was so scared." His father broke down in tears, while to Danyel's eyes he was in hard need. There was nothing more genuine than tears in need. Danyel released the boy.
"No," he turned away. "Take him. Keep him safe." His tentacles came out as if to grab the child, then knotted around his own fingers. "Oh, what did I almost do?" He turned gray. "Please."
Danyel didn't know what he was asking for.
"Oh, shen, I can't."
"Do him." Dimitri ordered, Mitka's tail flicking at Danyel's back. "Give him the selyn he needs."
"I can't pay my taxes. The Techton already took everything. We have nothing. Take him and keep him safe. Next month, no, please, don't do this to my son." His field crashed, voiding selyn into the ambient. "I can't do it."
Mitka struck. Fangs longer than Danyel's hand sank into the man's chest. He arched back. His shriek echoed across the now empty street. Then he collapsed, as boneless as if dead. Danyel zlinned. He wasn't dead. He was post as shen. Moaning, he writhed on the ground.
"I didn't know he could do that." Dimitri muttered, blinking at all of them. Then his captive reached for his gun. Danyel couldn't leave the boy.
"Stop that." There was a loud crack and the sickening sensation of breaking bone. Another scream filled the night air. It was a good thing this was a place where people ran from screams. Then man Dimitri held, the buyer, convulsed. Pain turned the ambient a muddy red. Danyel was disgusted and pulled the boy closer to him.
"Is my papa going to be alright?" He whispered. His tear streaked face reminded Danyel of all those he couldn't afford to help. Danyel brushed the last of them away with his tentacles. "I like tentacles." The faintest hint of a smile exposed two missing teeth, right in front.
"I'm glad." He tousled the boy's hair, as soft and perfect as any child's.
Dimitri caught his eye and nodded at the boy. Danyel didn't know what Dimitri planned, but gave the lad a hug, not incidentally hiding everything Dimitri did from him. Dimitri nodded again in approval.
His lips tightened. "You, Mister Volen."
"How do you know my name?"
"Shut up." Dimitri shook him. More pain burned at Danyel's arms. He knew Simes were supposed to be tempted to the kill by pain. It didn't work for him. He was sickened by it, no matter if it came from Sime, Gen or child. "You raped and murdered your own son. Your flesh and blood."
"He was a leech. Always wining. Finally got some good from him." The perfect caricature of an abuser stung Danyel, as it always did, no matter how many times he heard it. They always said the same things, did the same things, made the same excuses. He bowed his head over the lad's, unable to look or zlin.
The boy's father managed to sit half way up. He put his hand on his chest, wincing. "It feels like someone kicked me across the room."
"Other than that, how are you feeing?" Danyel asked, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.
"Reprieved, for another month," his look of longing at his son was unmistakable. "Take him, Hajene. I can't."
"Wait," he glanced up at Dimitri. He'd put his hand on Volen's face.
"Tell me." He said, field harder than stone.
"Let me kill him." Mitka swayed over both of them.
"Wait," he fished around in the man's pants. "Oh, perfect," he flipped through the wallet. "Identification, money, credit chips, everything." Dimitri flipped it shut and put it in his own pants.
"You won't be able to use any of it." Volen sneered.
"I don't see why not." Dimitri twisted the man's broken arm. Sweat beaded on his forehead and stained his shirt. Danyel couldn't help but zlin the torment of the broken bone scraping over the selyn transport nerves. "Since you're going to give it to me." He seemed to almost lift Volen by his broken arm.
"Oh, anything, anything," his nager flicked toward the other man.
"I think not." Dimitri grabbed his other arm. "I could do this one too and leave you to die of attrition."
"Stupid Gen, I'll heal long before that ever happens." He sneered. "I'm not in need."
"Yet," the was another crack. Danyel looked into the lad's father's face.
"My name is Lukus, his is Kreg, after ..."
"After Sectuib Risa's brother?"
"Yes," he admitted, looking away. Danyel saw the white line where once he'd worn a householder's ring. Kreg had put his arms around Danyel's neck, trusting him as no adult ever had but Dimitri. Danyel patted his back, knowing he was far too old for such cossetting, but wanting it for himself. Kreg sobbed a couple of times and hugged him back. He didn't mind. Lukus never looked away from them, even when Volen shrieked again.
"Stop," Danyel pleaded. "Please."
"As you wish." Dimitri said. He yanked one last time. Searing pain filled the ambient as Mitka struck again. This time it didn't stop. Dimitri's lips were against Volen's, silencing him. Even still, the pain seemed to shriek on its own. Danyel'd never zlinned a true kill. This was torture. Finally it snapped, Volen's nerves overloaded with agony. Dimitri dropped him.
Volen still breathed.
"Oh, my," Danyel's jaw dropped. He couldn't come up with any valid expletive. Dimitri straightened both of Volen's arms with a single tug. Volen's field crashed, the bones knitting with inhuman speed.
"I'm glad I can't zlin." Lukus shook his head. "I can't believe this."
"Believe it." Dimitri said, running his hands over Volen's whole body, a few patches of healing following them. He glanced over the railing. "Give me his gun." He pointed to Lukus'.
It was a cheap piece, hardly more likely to fire than blow up. Danyel stripped the rounds out of it and handed the thing to Dimitri.
"Take this too." He pulled off the shield. "I won't require it again."
"No, you won't." Danyel didn't want to think of what Dimitri was planning. He pulled out Volen's gun. Danyel ducked, drawing Lukus and Kreg down with him. "Watch it!"
"Oh, sorry," he looked down. "What did you do?"
"Hand it to me." Danyel yelled. "Not like that!" There were few things he hated more than looking down the muzzle of a gun.
"I don't have my finger on the go thing." He blinked.
"Don't," Danyel shook his head. "Just put it down. No, don't mess with it. Put it down on the ground."
"You don't have to get so excited." He blinked. "Its just a gun."
"And you were waiving it around like a flag." Danyel managed to reach the thing with his foot. "Wow," he blinked, looking it over. Silky smooth action and beautiful balance. He sighted on a light. "What the shen?" He pulled the trigger. The familiar pain, as if he'd grabbed a battery backwards laced up his arm, but not too badly. The light went out. Target trigger. "I'm keeping this." He cleared the chamber and flicked on the safety.
"Oh," Dimitri pursed his lips. "I have to get some more weight." He looked around. "Well, hopefully he'll stay down long enough." He picked up Mister Volen and threw him over the railing. It was a long time before he splashed.
"You already killed him." Danyel didn't want to think of exactly how. It had looked like a transfer, but horribly distorted. One of the places Dimitri'd healed had been Volen's wrists, the extensor nodes to be exact. His own tingled, irritating his already swollen roniplin glands.
"He was still breathing." Dimitri held out his hand to Lukus. Then he pulled out Volen's wallet. "Take this." He handed the man a thick wad of cash. "Get yourself and the lad safe."
"I don't know if I'll be able to pay my taxes." His eyes never left Kreg. "I love him."
"Why did you do it?" Dimitri asked.
"He said he had a place for Kreg." The shame in Lukus' field was unmistakable. "I didn't ask too many questions. My friends, well, our ex-friends, they weren't very helpful."
"You used to be Kaon."
"My wife." Tight lines formed between his mouth and nose. "She was ambrov Kaon."
"What happened to her?" Dimitri asked, the suspicion returning to his nager.
"Just like all the rest. Blaming me without even asking. Thinking I did it to her." Tears streamed down his face. Confusion, guilt, sorrow and gaping loss twisted the ambient worst than Dimitri's earlier excesses.
"Where's mama?" Kreg asked. "You said she was gone. She's been gone before."
"Oh, shen, help me." He pleaded.
"Let's go feed everyone." Dimitri held out his hand to Danyel. Danyel took it, without thinking about it. He looked down. There was another ring on Dimitri's hand. A Kaon ring. He glanced up, nearly panicked. Dimitri had no right to a Kaon ring. Dimitri turned it so only the band showed. "We can talk about what to do over food."
"Don't tell me you're hungry?" Danyel was still shaking so badly inside he was amazed he could stand. Kreg reached for his father. When Lukus held his arms to himself, Danyel gave him Kreg. They grasped each other as if they'd never let go. There was none of the twisted darkness to Lukus' field he'd sensed in all abusers when they were this post. It wasn't something they could hide from Danyel.
Lukus cried in Kreg's hair, holding him tight and rocking him as if he were a baby, not a well grown lad on the brink of adolescence. "I love you." His voice cracked. "I didn't mean it."
"Lets go talk." He put his hand on Lukus' shoulder. Dimitri glanced at Danyel. Mitka was a lot more open in his support. He stroked Lukus' other shoulder, then rested his chin on it, staring straight at Dimitri. "Indeed. I think you require help."
"You believe me?" He paled again. His emotional swings showed even more clearly than his nager of his being post. He pulled away from both Danyel and Mitka to throw himself in Dimitri's arms, with Kreg.
"You believe my papa!" He shouted, loudly enough to be heard by someone at the bottom of the river. Danyel winced at the thought. He'd never seen anyone killed so cruelly. Even where he'd grown up, there hadn't been that sort of deliberate torture. Dimitri looked away. A slight red sheened over his field. "You got rid of the bad man. Oh, thank you, thank you. I didn't want to do it, but papa said it would be alright. I trust him."
"Even still?" Lukus' voice cracked again. Kreg slid out from between the two men. Lukus wrapped his arms around Dimitri and sobbed. "Oh, how can I ever repay you?"
"Come talk with us." Dimitri didn't let Lukus go. Danyel's skin prickled all over. His tentacles lashed out. Sweet, roniplin laden saliva filled his mouth.
"Let him go, Dimitri." Danyel could hear the growl in his voice, even as he tried to stop it. He thought about mentioning the possibility of hurting the renSime and realized it was probably a bit too late.
"I think I'd better listen to my partner." Dimitri stepped back.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Sosu, Hajene." He stepped back, stumbling on a crack. Shen he was post. Danyel caught him. Lukus rubbed at his face. "I know a little tea room."
Dimitri blinked and glanced at Kreg. Danyel was glad he was in need or he'd have blushed. "The Copper Kettle, where they have those amazing chocolate and almond cookies?"
"Yeah," Lukus nodded, glancing between them. "You aren't Techton, are you?"
"No," Dimitri rubbed at one foot with the toe of his other. "I'm not."
"But he is?" Lukus glanced, blinking as if trying to zlin. "You look Ferris."
"I am." Danyel sighed, pointing out the black trim on his belt and collar. Well, they were a charcoal gray, really.
"Are you ...?"
"No," he said before Lukus could finish the question. Lukus' face fell for a moment. "You wouldn't want to pledge Zaor, trust me."
"I'd regain my place at Kaon." He babbled on. They were still standing in the middle of the broad sidewalk, right under the lights. Danyel's eyes were starting to hurt. He thought about shooting out another one. Volen'd had have good taste in firearms. Danyel finally gathered his wits enough to steer their little party toward the tea room.
After they were seated and everyone had gotten their choice of poison, Dimitri had coffee, of course, "Why do you even bother?" Danyel watched him pour half the tiny pitcher of cream into it, then add three lumps of dark crystallized sugar. With each day toward their upcoming transfer, Dimitri'd added more and more stuff to his coffee.
"Caffeine," he sipped. It was probably cool enough to drink. His spoon clicked on the saucer. Kreg looked at it. Dimitri offered the mug to him. In Dimitri's hands, it had been tiny, in Kreg's it was huge. He was small for his size. He sipped gingerly at the stuff and wrinkled up his face. Dimitri chuckled and accepted it back.
"My opinion exactly." Danyel added a dollop of honey to his own tea, only drinking coffee first thing in the morning. He rarely used honey as a sweetener off Kaon grounds anymore, as he'd gotten very used to the fragrant, often slightly tangy honey the Russians brought with them every winter. Sometimes it even lasted until the middle of the summer. Then he tried to sniff at it again, failing as usual in need. He took a sip. Someone had managed to get a cask of honey from Kaon.
Dimitri grinned and raised his hand.
"What is your wish, Sharm Lord Sergei?" The renSime was tense. She also spoke Russian without an accent.
"Could you give us some privacy?" He waved his hand, his bracelet flashing in the light. Lukus focused on it for the first time, leaning away.
"At your will, m'Lord." She backed away and pulled a screen over the alcove.
"I wonder how she got here." Dimitri's grin broadened for a moment. "Now, you were saying, Lukus, is it?"
"Yes," he nodded, his long fingered hands wrapping around the glass. "My wife had been a member of Kaon. Ambrav Kaon for five generations, as a matter of fact." The candle on the table cast flickering shadows over his drawn face. It had relaxed with transfer, but there were still hurts buried beyond the help of selyn. "Her family did not approve of her marrying a tradesman." He shifted uneasily in his seat. From the overtones of his field, she'd not only been Gen, but a Donor.
Danyel'd zlinned his attempt at discretion. His wife's family didn't approve of her marrying a renSime. Danyel would have been tempted if he'd been a Donor. Married to a renSime who had to work for a living, he'd have never been relocated against his will. Quite a benefit, to his way of thinking, ultimately. Particularly as then, when he wanted to move, all he had to do was get his partner to approve. Although thinking about it, now, he wouldn't want a renSime as a partner if he were a Donor. To have to give, to feel Gen need, and to never be able to fulfill it with his partner would drive him crazy.
"What did you do?" Dimitri set down his mug and broke off a bit of his own sweet. "Here, I think you'll like this better than the coffee." He handed it to Kreg.
Kreg licked it at first. "Oh, this is good." He nibbled around the edge, slowly, as if to savor it. Danyel slid his chair back a fraction. Dimitri shook his head. Soon the renSime glanced around the screen again.
"May we have a tray of these, and perhaps a glass of milk?"
"I should have thought of that. Right away, Sharm Lord; at your will." She ducked back out. A napkin fluttered off the table in her wake.
"Impressive service," Dimitri smiled, leaning back in his chair with a loud creak. He winced, glancing back at it.
"I don't zlin its going to fall apart." Danyel checked again.
"I'm not used to it." He resettled his weight. "I've gained, oh, you'd call it about sixty pounds in the last year alone."
"I didn't think you were so young." Lukus said, then put his hand over his mouth.
"You're post. Its fine." Dimitri chuckled softly. "I won't hold it against you."
"Do as you like." Lukus leaned back, his field uncramping at last. The renSime returned, with a tray piled high with sweets, fruit and even some bread pudding.
"I love bread pudding." Danyel snagged some.
Dimitri went into a strange mixture of what sounded like someone speaking Simelan while choking on a cat. The renSime nodded, hurrying out again. "Low Simelan," he murmured, probably to Danyel's quizzical glance. "You are our guest, Lukus. Feel free to have anything you wish. We'll provide you with a place to stay tonight, if you don't have one, and more substantial food for the morning."
"Dimitri, we're broke." Danyel muttered. "Or at least I am."
"I have money." Lukus tried to give Dimitri back the money he'd taken from Volen.
Dimitri folded it back into his hands. "This is business. You said you were in a trade, Lukus?"
"Yes," he nodded. "I started out as a carpenter, but I ended up owning my own contracting company. Well, I owned twenty percent, my wife twenty-nine and her family fifty-one. I was about to buy out two percent from them to give to my wife when things started to go wrong. Afterward, well, I didn't have the money anymore."
"Who owns the business now?"
"Her parents, I suppose." He blinked. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I want to give you a second chance, Lukus." Dimitri leaned forward in his chair. "You were willing to give up your son."
"Yeah, to a pervert." He looked away. Dimitri's hand snaked out and forced his face back up.
"No, you made a mistake." Dimitri shook Lukus' chin. "You want the best for your son. Where's his mother?"
"She's in Hillview." He said, jaw muscle twitching. "I sent her there."
Dimitri asked the impossible question of Danyel with his eyes.
"Why did you send your wife to a home for the insane?" Danyel asked. Kreg was completely absorbed with the sweets. Although he only nibbled at them slowly, as if mature enough to know he'd end up with a bellyache if he ate too much, unlike Danyel. He cleaned his plate and eyed one of the chocolate macaroons. Danyel adored chocolate. Dimitri picked out an odd confection, some sort of dried fruit shiny with honey. He didn't eat it but put it to Danyel's lips.
Danyel wanted to squirm at being fed by another in front of strangers, or at all really, but he took a tiny nibble, not wanting to refuse. A rush of pleasure nearly washed Danyel's mind from its props. He opened his mouth, begging for more.
Dimitri chuckled, a soft sound, deep in his throat. "Dates, why is it Simes so love dates?"
"They're good." Danyel soon had four very sticky tentacles. Kreg licked at his fingers then glanced around the table. Danyel licked at one of his own tentacles. Mitka drooled down his front. Dimitri's hot stare at Danyel's tentacles brought him back to himself. Lukus' lips were twitching wildly. His eyes crinkled up at the corners.
Danyel stared at Dimitri and stuck one tentacle in his mouth, licking it clean. Dimitri sighed. Mitka however, moaned so loudly Danyel's bones vibrated. It felt good.
"So, you know how to run a business?" Dimitri's voice was breathy, as if he'd been running recently. He sipped at his coffee. His arms were reddened from wrist to elbow. Dimitri set down his mug and ran his hands over his arms, as if to smooth the hair.
"We were making enough to be able to pay off our debts by the end of our third year in business and were saving up for Kreg's education as well as buying out Tami's parent's share." He took another sip of his tea.
"Hajene Ferris, I didn't want to send Tami to Hillview. I had to. She was uncontrollable. She threatened to send Kreg to a boarding school in Nivet. We would fight. Oh, not like normal couples, but horribly. She'd accuse me of trying to hide away huge amounts of money. Money I'd never zlinned." His tentacles twined with the glass holder. "I couldn't trust her with Kreg anymore." He snorted, tea sloshing in the half full glass.
"Now look at us." He glanced away. The amber lights reflected in his blue eyes, turning them nearly black. "Dependant on charity, alone. Although its a far sight better than earlier today. I should have turned the gun on myself. At least then Kreg'd have a chance." He put his arm around his son's shoulders. Kreg leaned against him, looking up at his father with the adoration all healthy children used with equally healthy parents. The trust and affection Kreg gave his father was impossible to fake.
Kreg yawned. He pulled his knees up under his chin. His eyelids drooped.
"We'll be going home soon." Lukus promised, his nager burning with shame.
"Home?" Kreg's plaintive cry echoed in Danyel's heart. He'd had a home only once in his life, and it was gone now.
"I know what its like to not have a home." Danyel admitted, lowering his voice to lure Kreg into sleep.
"You have one now, right?" His innocent question could not have hurt more.
"No," he said. "Someone took it away from me."
"We'll help you get it back. Where did they take it?" Kreg's eyes lit with the fervor of the converted.
"Its gone." Danyel clenched his jaws till his teeth ached.
"Someone blew it up." Dimitri said. He had hardly eaten anything, although Danyel knew he too loved chocolate. "We lost everything."
"Not everything." Lukus looked back and forth between them. "You still have your family."
Dimitri's bitter chuckle was stronger than his coffee. "No," he grimaced. "I don't." Lukus winced, then looked at Danyel, eyes widening in a flare of hope. Danyel shook his head.
"I don't know what to say." He tucked Kreg against his side. "I know I'm lucky to have my family."
"No, I do have a family." Danyel took Dimitri's hand under the table. His tentacles came out and bound them together. It spooked a dimple out. "Dimitri is my family. Dimitri and Kaon."
"Are you Ambrov Kaon?" Lukus asked.
"I've been asked." Danyel admitted.
"You refused?" Lukus' eyes widened.
"I never answered." He rubbed his free hand over his face. Dimitri pressed the Kaon ring into his hand.
"I want you to give this to Vanesa in the morning." He gave the ring to Lukus.
"This never belonged to a ren." Lukus examined it. "This is old." He turned it over in his hands then studied the inside. "It might well have been made by Sergi himself. Its too valuable, I can't take it."
"Stop trying to give us back things." Danyel folded Lukus' hand over the ring. "Save it for Kreg if you don't wish to wear it."
"I don't know if he's going to be Sime or Gen."
"Tami was Gen?"
"Yes, Donor," his nostrils flared for a moment. "Another issue between me and her parents."
"What did she think of her parents?" Dimitri was being awfully rough with Lukus.
Sitting straighter, he nodded. He clicked his tongue against his teeth, looking at each of them in turn. Glancing down, he smiled at his son, now sound asleep. "She bought the gun. She didn't want to fall into their hands if she got sick. Her brother had been 'cured' by the Channels at Farsie."
"Where is he now?" Danyel's skin froze over at the mention of Farsie. He'd nearly ended up there.
"He's still at Farsie." Lukus' lips tightened. "In their graveyard. Her parents wouldn't let him be buried at Kaon since he'd 'abandoned' them."
"You know jewelry?" Dimitri asked.
"Tami does." He grimaced. "I should say did. I build houses. Houses for spoiled, rich children of the old householding elites. Houses with no privacy, no reminder of 'killrooms', no grace. They want huge open boxes painted red, blue, green or purple."
"Hush," Dimitri took Lukus' hands in his. "We happen to rather be lacking a house."
"I can't pay for it." Danyel muttered quickly in Russian, kicking Dimitri under the table.
"I couldn't charge you." Lukus shook his head.
"Is that any way for a businessman to talk?" Dimitri snorted. Mitka drooled on Danyel some more. This got him excited? Danyel looked back over his shoulder right into Mitka's scaly muzzle. He licked Danyel from chin to hairline, of course.
"I'm going to go up to Hillview after transfer." Danyel shook Lukus' hands. "I'm not going to let anyone associated with Kaon get away with this sort of abuse of power."
"I don't have anyone who owes me money." He glanced down.
"No, your wife's parents simply took the business you made, slandered you when you didn't do as they wished and nearly caused the death of your son." Dimitri's voice was steady, the anger burning deep inside his field. "Are they still running the business?"
Lukus' chuckle was nearly as dark as Danyel's growing need. "They've already lost half my suppliers. They aren't willing to compromise with them, saying it would compromise quality. They're fools, Dimitri. Anson Construction will be bankrupt within three months, two if they can't figure out the books, which they hadn't when they kicked Kreg and I out of what they call their house. Great unheated, ill-designed barn!"
"You're an architect as well?"
"Unlicensed." The tips of his ears turned bright pink.
"I don't care." Dimitri said, shrugging. "I'd like to see some of your plans."
Danyel said. "Actually, let me see them." There was something rattling around in the back of his mind about Sevrin's bizarre idea of space and the way Lukus was describing the sorts of houses these rich householders preferred. Maybe seeing the plans would let him get a tentacle in the idea.
"They're all back in the offices." He spread his hands on the table, tentacles out. "We have nothing but what's on our backs."
"That can be fixed." Dimitri buffed his nails. The light had returned to his eyes. This time it had nothing to do with death and killing. Danyel wanted to cheer.
Chapter 33
"Your knife is gone." Dimitri couldn't help but sense Danyel's need. It was the only thing that had kept him on his feet through the long autopsy. Without an assistant, even one as simple as this one had been, it could have taken all day. "Its early afternoon. You want something to eat?" He was actually a bit hungry, he always was afterwards.
Dimitri stripped off his gloves and threw the rubber ones into the bin. It was so nice not to have to clean them and reuse them. He flexed his hands, again marveling at how wonderfully they worked, at least for what he'd been trained to do.
"You're hungry?" Danyel's question could have been a bucket of cold water. Dimitri turned from the sink. Danyel's field trembled, what there was of it.
"How long?" He asked, knowing he'd been dropped a bit by the lesser transfers he'd given this month.
"For?" His knuckles whitened as he grabbed the counter. Shoulders bowed, he grayed further.
"Hard need?" Dimitri's mouth watered.
Danyel just shook his head. "I caught a chill. Down in the pit."
"Someone threw you in with the bodies?" Dimitri'd been shown the chilled well where all the obvious death cases were stored. It was not the best arrangement, but he figured with how squeamish these people were, they didn't want to cremate or bury the bodies. It was short sighted and foolish, but this was not his place.
Danyel nodded, another shudder passing through his body. "I climbed out, with Mitka's help. I escaped."
"Escaped from where?" Dimitri's own body was responding to the need it sensed. Selyn burned in his veins. His own jaws ached in response to Mitka's.
"I'd been locked up. Your Uncle released me." Danyel's teeth chattered. He still had on his gloves, rolled over his tentacle sheathes to prevent bodily fluids from seeping inside them. Dimitri could see where they'd bitten into the red, swollen roniplin glands.
"Hold up your hands." He said, holding out his own. "You'll feel better once you have your gloves off."
"I'll fall." Danyel said, swallowing heavily. He'd not thrown up once. Dimitri'd never seen anything like it. Even experienced Gens often vomited the first time they smelled a waterlogged corpse. "They'd set me up with a Donor."
"Why didn't you have transfer?" Dimitri dropped his hands. "You wanted that Gen before."
"What Gen?" Danyel blinked. He bit his lip. "I don't know how long I can stand here."
"How deep into need are you?" Through Mitka's eyes, all he could see was a black vortex of cold and selyn hunger without the slightest trace of desire.
"Past need." Danyel said. He closed his eyes, then shuddered all over. "Attrition, twenty-three minutes."
"What are you doing standing there?" Dimitri was horrified.
"Talking with you." He looked up, eyes sunk into holes as dark as his need. "I don't want anyone else."
"You did." Dimitri grabbed a pair of pick-ups. "Hold on." He clamped them to cuffs on Danyel's gloves.
"Never," Danyel growled, his voice echoing off the tiles.
"I saw you." Dimitri ground his teeth. "You went after that Gen who got blown up."
"I was furious." Danyel turned to him completely. "I'd lost everything but Mitka."
"You sent him away."
"He came back." Danyel closed his eyes then looked away. "Don't bother with the gloves if you wont have me."
"You'll die." Dimitri reset the right clamp, it wasn't quite set right. "This is going to hurt. You should have unrolled them all the way up to your elbow."
"I'd never worn them." He said. "Do you still want me?"
"I watched you handle almost a hundred Gens with bare arms. I watched you put your tentacles on them and take their selyn. I watched you touch their lips with yours, as if you were going to kiss them." Need barred him from feeling the humiliation of having seen those things, but nothing could wipe clean his memory of them.
"I zlinned you kill two Simes and give transfer to a third." Danyel straightened, eyes blazing with his last traces of selyn. "Lukus was so post he could barely control himself and you talk to me about taking donations?"
"You're right." Dimitri looked down at the pick-ups. "This will be faster if you relax your hands."
"Will you have me?"
"Yes," Dimitri yanked. Danyel's scream should have woken every corpse in the morgue. Dimitri caught him before he could hit the floor.
"I ran from my assigned Donor." He whispered. "Sevrin hit the releases and I ran."
"For me?" Dimitri ran his hand through Danyel's sweat dampened hair. He was shocky, but recovering faster than Dimitri could have dreamed.
"For you," he breathed, sitting up on his own. "That did not feel good." When he stood, he swayed. Dimitri would have sworn he'd be unable to stand at all. Danyel put his hands in the sink and pressed the cold water lever with his foot. His second scream was harsher, but this time the sensation knifed Dimitri's arms to the bone. He doubled over, clutching at his now cramped gut.
"That hurt!" He panted, still bent over his knees.
"It did." Danyel's voice was still harsh, but fairly normal for all of that.
"What are you?" Dimitri would have been flat on his back by this point.
"Ferris." Danyel straightened. "Amazing, isn't it." He held out his arms. His roniplin glands were swollen and an angry red, but that was it. He wiped off his forearms with one of the horrible rough paper cloths. Dimitri couldn't even stand those things on his own arms. "Let me help you up."
"I'll faint." He admitted.
Danyel snorted, half mirth and half something Dimitri couldn't identify. "I doubt if you want our transfer here."
"Do you think they'll grab you if I take you to the center?" Dimitri managed to make it to his knees. Well, knees and one hand. A cold sweat broke out all over his body. Danyel's trick with the water had taken the last of Dimitri's resistance to need.
"Probably," he offered Dimitri a hand. He took it. Danyel yanked, pulling Dimitri to his feet in a burst of augmented strength, with minimal sliding.
"Don't augment." Dimitri's vision went completely black for a moment. He clutched at the edge of the sink. "You wrote down all the final notes?"
"Yes," he nodded.
"Good." Dimitri tried to think. It wasn't working. He stared at Danyel's hands, utterly fascinated by the tendons fanned across the backs, crossed by veins and more than a couple fine scars of his own. "Help." He whispered, fighting off the darkness.
"What's wrong?" Danyel's question made no sense.
"Get me out of here." He managed. The world dissolved into shadows, the core of which was Danyel's field. A few furtive flickers of selyn crossed that black abyss, nothing more. Danyel should be comatose.
"Where?"
"I don't care." He pushed himself upright. "Take my arm and take me home." Dimitri flinched, nearly falling with the gesture. Danyel would not like to be reminded of how Dimitri'd gotten his last blown up.
"I don't care now." He took Dimitri's arm. "I can think of a place we can hole up for a day."
"Two," Dimitri breathed, otherwise concentrating on his feet. He was slowly regaining feeling in them. He wasn't truly so far into attrition he was ready to pass out, but Danyel's need was drawing his into itself with irresistible force. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Danyel grab his bag. Ins'Allah, what kind of stamina did this lord have?
"Two," Danyel's chuckle was no louder than dried grass, but it was amazing none the less. "You're going to have to talk with Officer Kerts."
"Shen," Dimitri breathed, forcing himself to see again. The room swayed beneath his feet.
"I never thought I'd zlin you again." She blocked their way to the door. Dimitri could see the amber sunlight of his last day as a completely uninitiated Sharm Lord. He prayed like he'd never prayed before to never see another dawn virgin in any way. All he could think of was transfer.
"The records are all stacked in the out bin." Danyel'd changed his voice, rasing it half an octave. Dimitri glanced at him. He'd changed radically, nager glittering as if strewn with stars and far higher than it really was. With the heavy growth of beard and cheeks hollowed with need, he probably looked and zlinned nothing like the tailored and tidy Hajene Ferris.
Although when Danyel reached over and filched the cigarettes out of Dimitri's pocket, he almost gave himself away. He leaned against a desk and lit it, as if expecting to stay for a while. Mitka was draped all over him, nearly covering his whole body.
"What's your decision?"
"Congenital heart failure." He said. "Instant death."
"Not a kill?"
"No," Dimitri snorted. "Do you really think a Gen can kill a Sime?"
"Of course not." She snorted. "But we have a lot of strangers in town."
"I'm one of them." Dimitri stiffened.
"We'll be in touch."
"I'll be out of contact for a couple of days. Going on a little vacation." He couldn't keep his field from Danyel's. Dimitri tried to yank it back. Mitka caressed the side of Danyel's face with his tongue.
"You do that." She said. "I want the chance to talk with some of your friends, Sosu Sergei, no Techton records."
"I thought the police and the Techton were separate organizations." He wished the bitch would shut up.
"We are." Her tentacles twined. "Get out."
"No reward for hard work?"
"Yeah," she pulled out a wad of cash. "We'll find you."
"Not where we're going."
"You're going to be alone with that Sime high field?"
"We're friends." Dimitri stood. He hadn't realized he'd been leaning on the desk.
"We'll know if you're a killer then." She said behind their backs. "You forgot this, Hajene."
Danyel's hands were full. Dimitri caught the knife.
"Very impressive," Kerts' field and voice were flat. "But you can't catch bullets that way."
Dimitri got the hint. The police weren't going to give him a second chance. He got caught once. he was going to catch a bullet, probably right between his shoulderblades, where he now itched from Kerts' zlinning, if he shenned up again.
Danyel didn't feel well. He could admit as much to himself. If he thought about more, he'd collapse. "Eighty-fifth and Cee." There was a cheap hotel there.
"I don't think so." Vanesa's sweet voice came from under what had to be five layers of makeup. "You gave us a scare, Danyel."
"Don't you mean me?" Dimitri'd fallen back against the seat. He rolled his head to the side and gave Danyel what zlinned to be an attempt at a grin. It didn't work, whatever it was.
"You can take care of yourself."
"Bullshit," he muttered. "Danyel had to get me out of there and he's already in attrition. I have three days to go to hard need."
"Why didn't you say something?" Vanesa reached forward and hit a switch. Danyel zlinned the strobing taillights warning of an official car.
"Not Kaon," Dimitri sat up. Sweat streamed down his face. Spots of bright red shone above his cheekbones, as if he were running an extreme fever. Danyel reached over and brushed his hand over Dimitri's forehead.
"I know about your house." She glanced in the mirror.
"I don't know any place that's truly safe."
"I do." She slipped the car between two others. Danyel braced himself. Dimitri sagged against him. He was hot even to Danyel's touch.
"He's going to melt." Danyel pulled Dimitri's heavy overshirt off. He began unbuttoning Dimitri's undershirt.
"No," Dimitri protested. "You touch me anymore and I'll take you in the car."
"How hot is he?" Vanesa asked. The car lurched forward even faster.
"Oh, two or three degrees higher than me."
Vanesa tossed a water bottle at him. He caught it and wet a napkin. "Just squirt it on him."
"You sound like you've done this before." He did so. Dimitri tipped his head back, letting the water run over his face.
"That feels so good." He moaned.
"I have." Vanesa snorted. "Sevrin was a mess before and after Kolya's birth. Sharm Lords in hard need, even when its caused by what we'd call intil, have to be cooled down. They'll damage their governors if you don't."
Danyel didn't catch half of this. "I'm sorry, I'm not zlinning very clearly right now."
She blinked at him, then paled. "You shidoni fool." Acceleration slammed him back in the seat this time. Danyel held Dimitri safe as Vanesa imitated her mad courier Iter. "Ice bath, stat." She spoke into the radio. "Then clear."
"Who's hot?" The voice on the other end of the line was familiar, but Danyel couldn't place it right now.
"Dimitri's burning hot, but Danyel's fifty-eight minutes past."
Whoever it was could swear. Danyel blinked. He'd rarely heard anything quite so vile as the expletives used by the stranger. Although whoever was swearing, was also Russian.
"Sevrin bought a townhouse." Vanesa gave him one of those exasperated spouse looks. Danyel didn't smile. "He didn't use his name."
Danyel sighed. "How much money does he have?" Sevrin was always buying things, from politicians to poultry. It was as if he'd set out to try to buy up the whole world.
"He makes more than Kaon some days, I think." She turned off the flashers. A few miles later she slipped down a narrow path. Even Danyel'd hardly seen it before they were on it. Gravel crunched beneath the tires. The car hissed to a stop.
"Give him to me." Vanesa'd augmented out and was holding her hands toward Dimitri.
"No," Danyel wasn't going to let him go. He trickled a bit more water over Dimitri's flushed skin. "We're here." He managed to get both of them out of the car.
"This is ridiculous, Danyel." Her field, what was left of it, blazed. "Let me help you."
"Where are we?" Dimitri's eyes were unfocused. "Oh, I know physically, but ... " he waved one hand around. "I don't know."
"Rooms," Danyel said. Dimitri's weight was growing by the minute.
"Follow me." An elegant young woman with the look of the Sergei clan stopped Dimitri in his tracks. Danyel struggled to stay upright.
"Illyana?" He breathed, lifting some of his weight from Danyel.
Danyel dared zlin a fraction. The brilliance of her nager hurt so badly he hid his arms behind Mitka's wings. Mitka clutched at him, protecting him from her overwhelming presence. "I won't do that again." He murmured to Mitka.
Mitka hissed in his ear. "Hurry, Danyel, I can't wait much longer."
"Neither can I." He'd not been thinking about it. Not thinking about need helped. A violent cramp tried to drag him to his knees.
"He's not going to make the ice." Illyana grumbled, her nager as well, zlinning like huge boulders threatening to flatten him.
"Then you got practice." Vanesa opened another door. "In you go." She pointed to the key. "I have the other one. There's a bellpull, oh, Dimitri knows how everything works, including the dumbwaiter." She waved. "Have fun." The door snicked shut on Danyel's questions. Did Vanesa really think this was going to work?
Dimitri pulled himself upright. "Actually, I do want some of that ice." He slipped out of Danyel's grasp. When he came back, he held a large glass full of ice water and a cloth. "Here," he held it out to Danyel. "For Mitka."
Danyel held it up. Mitka rubbed his own jaws over the cloth. Danyel staggered slightly. "Oh, much better." He sighed, caressing Danyel now rather than trying to crush him.
"I wish we had more time." Dimitri was breathing hard, but seemed to have recovered some. "Oh, I stuck my hands in the ice water. I'll be fine now." True, he was still pale, but the horrible burning fever spots were gone.
"Why don't we?" Danyel blinked, trying to stay duoconcious.
"Because I want to savor your need, draw it out, and you're already half dead." He'd started seductive and stung Danyel's wrists by the end.
"I came to you as soon as I could." Danyel let himself descend into the cold, icy depths of need at last. "You never tried to find me."
"You wanted someone else." Dimitri glanced away. "This isn't the time or place for this fight."
"We'll have it later?" Danyel sat before he fell. He put his head in his hands. Danyel wasn't up for fighting. Now, deeper into any need he'd ever felt, even his anti-kill, he couldn't stand and think at the same time.
"I don't want to fight with you, Danyel." Dimitri sat across the little table from him. "I want to make love with you, but I can't do that without trusting you."
"I trust you with my life, Dimitri." He put his hands flat on the table. "I won't leave this building without your selyn."
Dimitri snorted, glancing away. "Take the key and go to my aunt." He pushed it toward Danyel's hands. "I won't rape you. It would be rape if you had no choice."
"I want you." Danyel captured Dimitri's hands. They were cool, although the heat of selyn beneath the skin seared his nerves like the open mouth of a blast furnace. "I'm going to have to take you down first."
"Do it now, then you'll know if you can tolerate Mitka's touch." Dimitri's hands shook.
"I adore his touch." Danyel leaned forward. When he examined himself, he cringed back. "This is going to be difficult."
"I've never seen you err in nageric work." Dimitri's eyes were gray, echoing the darkness of need in Danyel's body. "No matter how impossible."
Danyel warmed beneath the praise. He'd always been called an cheap knock-off of a real Ferris. A Zaor First Order Ferris. "Thank you." He pressed his lips to Dimitri's.
Danyel's first contact with Dimitri's field didn't prepare him for this inferno of selyn. He felt his body gasp for life under the onslaught. Danyel set the markers for how far to drain Dimitri's field. For an instant he thought it couldn't be done.
Searing pain shattered his hold on the fields. Plasma seared the ambient. Danyel ducked. Molten selyn fountained out of the earth beneath his feet. A pleasure greater than any he'd ever known washed away the last nagging sting. All around him great sheets of flames rose to an amber sky, to his command. Remembering his mark, he pulled off a third of the fuel, damping the fires some, but holding the pressure with the force of his will.
Danyel opened his eyes. He was staring at Dimitri while still touching his lips. "You're ready."
"Ins'Allah." He breathed against Danyel lips. "What have you done?"
"Dropped your excess into my secondary and held the pressure." Danyel's own fields were stabilizing, holding the awkward pattern without more thought. "Better," he leaned back. Mitka quivered all over, a long, very long, sinuous gesture.
"I don't feel any different." Mitka coiled around and looked Danyel in the face, so close Danyel's eyes crossed.
"Then I did my job right." He licked Mitka's muzzle. Mitka's eyes flashed red, the red of the fire at his heart.
"You're an artist, Danyel." Dimitri stretched. Massive muscle and tendon slid easily over bone, outlining the remaining brilliance of his field.
"I can zlin the difference." As a matter of fact the imbalance in his own fields was beginning to make itself felt. Danyel's body ached with it, as his ears would ache with an imbalance in pressure. "How long do we have until we go out of sync again?"
"At least an hour, I hope." Dimitri held out his hand. "Although I can well understand if you wish to go faster."
"You're the artist here." Danyel took it. "I planned for thirty-eight minutes."
Dimitri snorted, shaking his head. "You're a wizard, Danyel Ferris. I can't sense minutes."
"I'm just Ferris." He moved around the table. Dimitri's hands slid up his arms and to the front of his shirt. Dimitri's gaze asked him if this was what he wanted.
Danyel nodded. "Yes." With the word, he dropped his defenses, giving his life into Dimitri's hands.
Chapter 34
Dimitri felt Danyel release his own field, long before he'd planned on transfer. Mitka thrummed, shimmering with selyn and transposing himself with Danyel's physical body. Dimitri'd never seen anything so fantastic.
He knew his eyes had rolled up in his head and his body was screaming for transfer. "Thirty-five minutes." He promised it. A whistling chuckle came from Mitka/Danyel.
"We want to wait." They spoke, one mouth, two voices, like the Fellowship. "We want to know."
Dimitri unbuttoned Danyel's shirt and slid it from his body. Danyel's skin seemed to be half scales. Dimitri closed his eyes and slid his hands over what touch told him was all human. "Does this feel good?" He slid his hands up Danyel's ribs, cupping them strongly with his palms.
The only answer was a purr, physical and nageric. His fingertips dug in beneath Danyel's shoulderblades. Danyel arched his back, shimmering with light over his ever deepening need. Dimitri'd never seen anyone so far into need surviving, much less holding back. When he'd see people go well into attrition, their state of actual need had been put off by reflexive slowing of selyn consumption. Danyel was burning away selyn he didn't have, stripping it ruthlessly from his nerves to maintain his life.
Dimitri thought about taking him now.
Danyel's eyes opened, with sense in them. He'd not gone into the world of selyn! "Ins'Allah," Dimitri breathed, brushing his hand over Danyel's temple.
"You'll have to explain that someday." His midnight black eyes twinkled. "Not right now."
"I'm amazed you can talk." Dimitri's hands met at the back of Danyel's neck. He reached for the nerve node at the base of the skull. Danyel shivered, tensing all over and arching his neck like a horse giving to the bit. "I can only barely." His heart was pounding so fast felt as if it would burst. He'd always wanted to be here, every moment in need since he'd established.
"I don't know what to do." His fingertips slid into Dimitri's shirt. He'd borrowed it from his Uncle's cook of all people. Then Danyel completed the circle of touch. Dimitri gasped, clutching at reality with the last of his will.
"I don't know if I can wait." He said. The sound of buttons sliding through their holes drowned out even his own panting. "Danyel." He couldn't see. All he knew was light and shadow twining inseparable beneath his hands.
"Dimitri?" Danyel's fingers slipped the shirt off his shoulders. As it caught on his bracelets, he flinched, shocked at the bite of metal on selyn. "Are you going to want more?"
"Yes," he admitted, glad the break had allowed him to see again. Dimitri loved touching and seeing Danyel. There was always something new, something surprising.
"Then let us finish what we've started." Danyel's fingers fumbled with Dimitri's belt.
"I can't manage well in need either." He sucked in his middle, helping, he hoped. This time it worked. Through the open window, cool, soft air caressed his body as lightly as Danyel's tentacles, though not half so sweet. Dimitri returned the favor, running his fingers through Danyel's curls, loving the rough texture of his rich black hair over his silky skin. Concentrating on the physical drew him back from the darkness he longed to fill with all his soul.
"You're afraid." He pulled back further, breaking the contact between them.
"No," Danyel lied. Sweat turned his shivering body colder. Dimitri could feel his skin chill from just being so near him. "Yes," he then admitted. "What if I do it wrong? This means so much to you. To us."
"Then take an impersonal and do a shunt." Dimitri's voice shattered into a croak. He backed up a step into the table. "Do it now, Danyel."
Danyel rose with all the impossible grace of a hunting Sime. Dimitri slid around the table, drawing him on. He wanted this, all of it, so badly. Dimitri bit his lip. The metallic taste of blood in his mouth overrode the sweetness of selyn. Mitka burst out of Danyel's body, hissing in absolute fury.
"I will not be denied!" He hissed around fangs long enough to rip apart any Sime. "I will have him!"
"You will not!" Dimitri fought him. He'd fought Mitka before and lost ... twice. Karola survived. She was strong. Khristov had lived, but had been crippled for life. "You will obey me!"
Danyel turned to Mitka, spreading his hands wide. His back was to Dimitri.
"NO!" He screamed, clutching his arms to his gut and going to his knees. Mitka's shriek knifed through his skull. The pain of shen arched his back in an impossible bow. "MITKA!"
Mitka's coils slammed into him, knocking him back. "You can't do this." He struggled to get up. His arms didn't work. His legs were numb to the hip.
"Dimitri," Danyel's feet tapped on the floor, the light staccato of a Sime in hardest need. Dimitri tried to scrabble away from him. There was too much at stake here.
"I don't want you to do this. I don't want you to be like Khristov." He bowed his head. "I don't want you to be like Salkov."
"I won't be." His arms came around Dimitri. "There, we have time now."
"What did you do?" Dimitri didn't dare struggle.
"I did a partial shunt." His voice was empty. "It wasn't worth it."
"Shen, Danyel, I ..." Dimitri was at a loss for words. "I didn't want it to be like this."
"Neither did I." His voice trembled. He set Dimitri down on the bed. "Let me find your Aunt. She knows what to do."
"I don't want you to go." He wrapped his arms around his knees. This wasn't how it was all supposed to work. He wasn't supposed to drive Danyel away.
"I don't want to go." Danyel's hand burned on his brow again, the heat of a Sime, true, but with little of the icy depth that had called so strongly to Dimitri's need.
"Besides, I don't think she's good enough for you." Dimitri didn't want to think about how he'd just failed Danyel. He'd do anything to keep him at his side.
"I'm just a Second." Fine, white lines appeared at Danyel's mouth.
"Not just," he touched those expressive lips with one fingertip. "Never just."
"Oh yeah, and I'm Ferris. I have this disorder." His lashes threw darker shadows across his cheekbones. "I'm not good enough for you, Dimitri."
"Bullshit," Dimitri grabbed his shoulders. "You've done things today I'd have sworn no Sime could ever do." He dug his fingers into the muscle. Then traced the scar Danyel'd gotten the first time they'd been together. "All I've done is screw up your life."
"You've shown me what it is to live." Danyel slid his knee around to face Dimitri completely. "I never knew what it was to be with a Donor."
"Like I'm a good example?" He glanced down at Danyel's calf, darkened with hair and slender as only a Sime could be. Dimitri slid his hands down Danyel's sides, then caressed one thigh all the way down to his foot. He went back up, reveling in the smooth, warm skin inside the other thigh, then traced his slender, muscular flank. "Where's Mitka?"
"You banished him." Danyel said.
Dimitri slumped in on himself. He'd never meant to hurt either of them. Why did he keep doing it? What was the point of caring for people he could only hurt, never help?
"I'm here." His voice was hollow, as was the ghostly image he formed behind Danyel. His jaws wept blackened selyn to trickle down both sides of his neck. Danyel whirled. His nager froze.
"I want you, Mitka." He held out his hands. Again he had his back to Dimitri. Unable to contain himself, he rose up onto his knees and kissed Danyel's spine. "I want you to take me."
"He said no." Mitka's voice held no more intonation than one of the Techton machines. It was as if he'd died inside, not just outside. "I won't do it again."
"You will to live." Dimitri told him.
"Then I won't." His image wavered, as a heat shimmer would over black tiles. "I won't strike again."
"You struck Lukus. He lived. He liked it even." Danyel's posture straightened. "I want to know what he felt when you sank your fangs into his chest. I want to know the passion of your touch. I want to know you, Mitka." With each sentence, he dropped another layer of seeming. The midnight black need had grown to fantastic proportions. "I lied, Dimitri. I did no shunt."
"What are you doing?" Dimitri backed up, shocked at the change in him. "You can't do this."
"Do you still want me?"
"With all my selyn." Dimitri answered, without thinking about it. His mouth watered. The bond between them finally stabilized. "Oh, Gods, Danyel," he purred, giving in to Danyel's attention burning his skin like dry ice, but softer than any sable.
"You really do like this?" Danyel's voice had gone breathy.
"Yes," he wiped a bit of saliva from his chin. Dimitri was drooling the way Mitka usually did.
Danyel's chuckle rumbled deep in his chest. He held out a silk cloth, but instead of letting Dimitri take it, he wiped the corner of Dimitri's mouth. The sensation sent a shiver of pure desire up his arms. His skin tingled all over. "This is like foreplay."
"This is foreplay." Dimitri panted. "What else would you call it?"
"Intil," he continued caressing Dimitri's oversensitive skin with the cloth.
"Never," he returned the favor, but with his hands alone. The tiny hairless patches on Danyel's shoulders fascinated him utterly. He caressed the soft skin, marveling at how very fine and thin it was, with such incredible richness so near the surface. "Its called desire."
"I know that now." Danyel's eyes were as black as his hair. "I've never had such time to learn of another's nager."
"Then know mine and hold it in thy laterals." Dimitri tugged Danyel a bit closer. "I am yours, Danyel. No one else's."
"You are Mitka's."
"We are together." He replied, capturing Danyel's legs between his own. Dimitri knew he'd come out of transfer hard and fast. Neither was suitable for a virgin. "Touch me."
Danyel's nageric touch rocked Dimitri's spirit to the foundations. It was as if Danyel'd made the polar opposite of plasma into a caress. The heat within him shattered under the touch. He begged for more, abasing himself before the creature of night in his vision.
"Hurt?" The question came out of nothingness.
"No!" He gasped, frantically searching for more.
"Do that again." Mitka's voice rang.
Danyel's soft chuckle came across as another of those amazing caresses, this time from Dimitri's scalp to the base of his spine. He shivered all over, reliving ice crackling across his overheated nerves. "This is fun."
"You're turning me into a frantic mess." Dimitri muttered, blinking away the aftereffects.
"Do you mind?" His wicked look caught Dimitri. He trembled, arching his back and offering his wrists. They burned with need and desire. A flash of ice blacker than any night stroked them. Dimitri tensed, giving into the frantic pleasure working its way though his body.
"I wish I could return the favor." He managed to get out. Another shudder of pleasure so sharp he could hardly tell it from pain brought out another involuntary gasp.
"You are." He purred, voice dropping lower. "Oh, you are." This time Danyel's hand traced his hairline. Each cent Danyel touched tingled with the delicacy and passion of Danyel's need. "This is worth any hardship." He leaned forward.
Dimitri gave to him, tipping his head to meet Danyel's caress. Danyel's fingers cupped his head, holding him upright. "Like this?" He murmured against Dimitri's lips, then opened to him. They'd never been alone together, long enough, without interruptions, without knowing they'd have to stop, to ever really kiss. Dimitri flicked his tongue against Danyel's.
Danyel snorted a bit, pulling back and blinking. "You kiss like Mitka."
"You expected anything else?" Dimitri grabbed him. This time Danyel's mouth softened to his, opening to him and caressing his so very sensitive lips with featherweight caresses of ice and sweet roniplin. The heat in his body gathered to cool itself as Dimitri's mind rang with sensations he'd hardly ever known. "Oh, this is so incredible."
Danyel chuckled softly. "I know what you mean." His tentacles caressed Dimitri's side. "How could I have lived without this? It hurts, but it feels so good, too."
"I don't know." Dimitri ran his hands down to Danyel's backside. This was a good spot. With no leverage, just pure muscle, he lifted all of Danyel's weight.
"Oh my," Danyel's eyes widened. The faintest hint of a grin touched his features.
"I want a different position." Dimitri rocked them both back until he had Danyel right where he wanted him. "I like this." He had his hands free now to explore all of Danyel's body. His backside, his shoulders, his neck, his arms.
Danyel's tentacles flicked amid Dimitri's fingers, teasing at him till he thought he'd go mad. "I have you where I want you."
"But do you have me where you need me?" Dimitri asked, looking into Danyel's eyes. They flashed to black. Steel strong tentacles wrapped around his wrists. Mitka towered over both of them.
"I can zlin you." He stared into Dimitri's eyes. "I can see your reflection."
"What are you waiting for?" Mitka hissed, voice distorted to near unitelligability by his fully extended fangs. Although from the selyn streaming from them, there was little doubt he was frantic. He swayed back and forth, body vibrating with tension. He licked his lips, flinging more selyn all over the place. It seeped between their bodies and covered them both.
Dimitri moaned, sliding against Danyel for all he was worth. He wanted to touch him everywhere, inside and out. Mitka's selyn turned every cent of his skin sensitive. He felt as if he were inside Danyel's need, sharing it with his own need to give.
His fingers caressed the delicate lines of Danyel's sheathes. They twined among the sharply defined lines of his forearms, gracing them rather than dominating them. "So very beautiful." His fingers slipped over the heat of Danyel's swollen glands.
Danyel sighed. The soft sound was more arousing than any cry of passion. He'd been so quiet so far. Dimitri caressed the taut skin. It throbbed beneath his fingertips and roniplin spilled out over his hands. The slippery stuff was sweeter than anything he'd ever scented. Dimitri brought Danyel's wrists to his mouth. He licked greedily at the dampness, reveling in the taste of it on his tongue.
He'd never had much of a sense of taste near transfer, but this wasn't taste alone, it was pure bliss. Danyel gasped. His tentacles came out and bound their hands.
"I want this." Dimitri twined his fingers with Danyel's. There wrists were joined between their chests. Danyel's mouth captured his. Dimitri groaned, giving everything he had to the sensations coursing through his body. The fire in his body consumed his mind, as Danyel's touch took over his body.
United in one need, Mitka struck. This time Dimitri felt the surge of power. Pleasure beyond words scoured the fire from his veins. Desire beyond will coursed through his nerves. Without control, without thought, Dimitri gave over his self to the void, filling it with his own life and calling out his passion.
Danyel closed his eyes, reliving the best transfer of his entire life, bar none. "I will always remember this." He murmured.
Dimitri nuzzled his neck, whisker roughened cheek biting into the soft skin. "As will I." His lips caressed the sensitized skin. "You taste so good." He purred, hips flexing. Danyel's heart raced. He'd been here before.
He pushed back. "I have to get a moment to think." His head was still spinning with the spectacular transfer. Vayer had been right. All he'd had to do was duck Mitka's first strike and the rest had been incredible. Danyel'd never had the services of a Donor therapist. "I never want to go back."
"What?" Dimitri panted. His eyes were black with what had to be pure lust. He gulped, chest heaving. "I want you so badly." The muscles of his neck corded.
"I want you, always, Dimitri." Danyel said slowly. "I've never had a transfer like that."
"Neither have I." Dimitri's hands clutched at his. Danyel'd never been so close to his partners in transfer. Their bodies were touching all along their lengths. He could feel every shift in Dimitri's weight, every muscle tense and release beneath his skin. "It was incredible." Dimitri's words had a breathy cast. "Oh, Danyel," his hips flexed again, driving his rock hard erection into Danyel's thigh.
"And now you want me in another way." Danyel struggled with the images of Rik's stinking mouth on his. The broken bird's feathers still fluttered in his mind's eye. Muscles deep in his body cramped, making the breath hiss out of him. "Dimitri!"
"Hush," he purred. Still pressing at him, but his hands softened, caressing Danyel's fingers. "I can't do more than look and feel, but I can tell you're terrified. Don't be."
"I want you." He leaned back, looking into Dimitri's eyes. Dimitri shook his head.
"I wish you did." He sighed. His throat moved. "Danyel, heaven help me, I want you so badly I hurt."
"I can feel it." Danyel forced his body to respond, opening his legs to Dimitri's prodding even as some part of him screamed in horror.
"No," Dimitri pulled away. "I won't rape."
"I'm willing." Danyel's heart pounded in his ears.
"Your mind is." Dimitri rolled out from under him. He pounded his fist into a pillow.
"Hush," Danyel captured it. "I do want you."
"Part way." He shook his head. "No, forgive my loose tongue. I didn't mean it that way." Dimitri curled up into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest. "When you're ready."
"I won't know if I don't try." He stroked Dimitri's side with his hand. "It took you far, far longer to be ready for transfer than me. Maybe it will just take me a while for the other." The idea of holding Dimitri so close made him ache inside with longing, the feel of his body, the scent of him. But part of him screamed in horror at the pain he'd suffer. Oh, he knew it wouldn't hurt, or would it? "I'm scared, Dimitri."
"I know." He rolled back over. There were tears in his eyes. "Take what I say with a minute of selyn." Dimitri brushed a bit of Mitka's on the tip of Danyel's nose. "I want you. I want to roll you on your back and fill you. I don't want to hurt you."
"I know." He ran his hand alongside Dimitri's neck. He tensed, arching against the tentative touch.
"Touch me, just touch me." Dimitri put his hands by his side. Then he put them behind his back. "Do whatever you like."
"Where did Mitka go?" Danyel glanced around. "Oh, that was a dumb question."
"Not really." Dimitri grinned, the joy coming back into his eyes. "He vanishes for quite a while after transfer."
"Always?" Danyel tried putting his hand on Dimitri's broad chest. Dimitri's eyes closed for a moment, but that was the only sign Danyel'd affected him.
"When its good." Dimitri grinned, turning his head to face Danyel full on. "He'll probably follow you around like a lost puppy for a few days. I think he gets a bit confused and thinks he should be with his selyn, not with me."
Danyel flushed a bit. "He was sure following me around last week."
"Yeah," Dimitri grinned. "It means he really does accept you, not just lust after you. He never stayed with Khristov or Valtanir."
"He didn't like them?" Danyel's hand wandered from Dimitri's chest to his side. The silky soft feel of him tempted him to do more. He scooted over and Dimitri held out his arm. Feeling very self conscious, he slid into the space and rested his head on Dimitri's shoulder.
"He liked Val well enough." Dimitri shrugged. "I don't think he was ever comfortable with Khristov. But then Khristov never really liked Mitka."
"How could he not?" Danyel blinked. "I miss him already."
"He'll be back." Dimitri did nothing more than hug him a bit. Danyel glanced down. He was still as hard as stone, moving slightly with each breath. "As far as I can tell, he enjoyed it as much as we did, maybe more."
"You don't know?" Danyel chuckled softly. His hand slid down. Dimitri trembled, but didn't move more than the tensing of his muscles. A single drop of clear fluid shimmered in the light.
"Not for certain." He shrugged, then resettled his weight. The slight movement made Danyel's heart skip a beat, but when nothing more happened, he relaxed again against Dimitri's side. "He can be a bit contrary."
"What nager can't?" Danyel's hand continued exploring Dimitri's skin. There was so much of it. The light dusting of hair on his chest seemed to fascinate his tentacles. They came out and brushed over the golden strands. Dimitri's chest rose with an even deeper breath. "Do you like?"
"Very much." He found himself settling his weight more against Dimitri's side.
"I'm glad." Dimitri purred. "Although there may come a time when I'll want to be alone for a bit."
"Why?" Danyel knew the question was stupid the instant he asked. "Nevermind." He muttered, clenching his hand.
"Oh," Dimitri gasped, tensing all over. A crimson flush traced from his collarbones downward. "Don't think I don't want you."
"I can see you do." He dared brush his hand all the way down Dimitri's front. Dimitri gasped, arching off the bed. Danyel grasped his thigh in hand and tentacles both. Dimitri's muscles flexed as if they'd break bone with tension alone. "You think I don't want ..." Danyel didn't know quite what he wanted. The sharpness of Dimitri's responses all reminded Danyel of his own shameful fumblings.
"Don't be afraid of me. I won't do anything but what you ask for." His voice was so low it buzzed in Danyel's ear. "No matter how much I might want you."
"Tell me what you want." Danyel bit at his lower lip.
Dimitri chuckled, a slow, lazy sound of desire and pleasure. "I want to touch you, Danyel. I want to caress your arms, your chest, your back, your legs, your feet with my hands and tongue. I want to feel you harden to my touch, stiffen against my palm and fill it with your life. I want to caress your warmth in my body, holding you so close there's no breath of air between us. I want you, Danyel. I want to know you in all ways. To fulfill the incredible act of lovemaking we've begun."
Danyel's jaw dropped. His mind was a blank whirl. With Dimitri's words, he realized his own desires had risen with the sounds Dimitri'd made. Danyel breathed deeply of the scent of Dimitri's body. It was sweet and beautiful, without the rank stink of unwashed skin and sickness. "So, how do I do this?"
Dimitri blew out his breath. "Show me." He said, rolling over onto his side, still cradling Danyel on his arm. This time, however, he put his thigh over Danyel's. "We've been here before." His blue eyes stared into Danyel's. "Your body knows what it wants. Your need did."
He stroked Dimitri's side, gradually ending up at his hip, and then around behind him. Solid muscle tensed for a moment then softened beneath his tentacle tips.
"Yes, I want you." Dimitri breathed deeply, eyes closing for a brief moment. When they opened again, they were as black as the night sky. "Yes." He reached over Danyel's shoulder and ended up pressing all of his weight against him. Danyel gave to the pressure and landed on his back.
Dimitri blinked at him. "Oh?" He cocked his head. "Something you want?" His impish grin didn't fade as he straddled Danyel's hips.
The sight of him, so heavy and so very obviously Gen called to something in Danyel he'd never really known. His hips rocked against Dimitri.
"I think there is." The brilliance in his eyes was stunning. There was such joy to him, Danyel grinned back, easing into the new sensations teasing at him. "A moment," he reached down and held Danyel as intimately as possible. Danyel arched into the touch, stroking himself against Dimitri's cool fingers. They played on his skin as he'd play the tines on a shiltpron. "I love this." His fingers curled around Danyel's growing length. Dimitri then did a classic double take. "Goodness! Look what I found!" He glanced away. "It big!" He pursed his lips a moment.
Danyel glanced down too. It was the same size it'd always been. "Um." He felt his own eyes widen in surprise. This was not something he'd ever thought of a witty comeback line for. "I've had no complaints."
"I'd hope not." Dimitri blinked again. "You feel wonderful." His hand continued stroking Danyel's shaft. He leaned forward, licking at Danyel's neck. "I don't know if I can take you." His cheek burned against Danyel's.
"Oh," Danyel blushed this time. "Some practice?" He reached around and stroked Dimitri's tailbone, as he'd done once before. He fumbled around in a bedside table and pulled out a bottle of oil. Someone knew what was going to happen here.
"I think so." Dimitri chuckled softly. "Actually this is sort of fun." He ended up pouring a great deal of oil on both of them. Dimitri rolled him over, so he was on top.
Danyel laughed, sliding against Dimitri's front and reveling in the silky smooth sensations of skin on skin. There was nothing to remind him here of Rik's brutality. No one was going to force him again. Dimitri's dimples flashed in his cheeks. He took Danyel's face in his hands and kissed his lips. It was a soft kiss, just lips, a touch between Sime and Gen, nothing more.
He sighed, giving to Dimitri his growing desires. His own hips rocked over Dimitri's.
"Yes, my beautiful one." Dimitri held him close, but his touch was as light as the breeze. Dimitri moved beneath him, accepting his touch and amplifying it with his own easy motions. "I like this." He sighed, wrapping his legs around Danyel's.
"It isn't real sex." Danyel knew he could enjoy this and never want more.
"Who says?" Dimitri grinned. Then he swatted Danyel on the butt. Danyel yelped, pulling it away from the stinging, warm, handprint. "I'm having a great time." Dimitri's hand rubbed at the mark he'd made. Danyel groaned, melting on Dimitri's broad chest.
"It feels so good." Danyel matched his moves to Dimitri's, riding him as he would a woman he dared not get pregnant.
"Then do it." Dimitri rose up to meet him, stroke for stroke. "Make love with me, Danyel. Share with me your love and your life."
Danyel reached down and grasped Dimitri's hips, pulling him up harder.
"Oh yes," Dimitri's head fell back. Danyel bent down and nipped at his neck. "Oh, give me more, please." He writhed beneath Danyel's body, stroking himself against Danyel's own harness. "Don't stop."
"I don't plan on it." Danyel licked his way down Dimitri's chest. "Are you sure this is enough?" He blew on the dampness he'd left behind.
"I am." Dimitri growled. He captured one of Danyel's hands and put it between them. "Now do you know?" His wicked grin only added to the pressure building in Danyel's body. Then he felt the huge pool of dampness, not half of it from Dimitri's liberal application of lubricant. Then Dimitri grasped him in echo of Danyel's hold.
Danyel gasped, arching into the touch, wanting so much more. "Although I think you do." He purred. With his enormous strength, he lifted Danyel back just by sitting. Danyel fell back onto his heels, loosing his grip on Dimitri. "I'm fine." He purred, wiggling his hips. "I've seen this done." He licked his lips, staring straight at Danyel's straining dick.
"You've never done this?" Danyel tried to say when Dimitri took him in his mouth. It came out as, "Oh, you don't have to learn more." He twined tentacles and fingers through Dimitri's hair. "Oh, yes," he hissed, tensing all over and trying not to explode at once. No Sime ever had this delicacy of touch, or deftness. "Oh, please," he begged with heart, tongue and hips. Danyel didn't want to push, but Dimitri's mouth felt so good.
Danyel panted, trying not to give in too soon. Then Dimitri's free hand reached behind him. His palm covered Danyel's lower back. "Yes!" He howled, driving himself deep into Dimitri's throat as his desire flared over into white heat.
Chapter 35
"Oh, don't do that." Dimitri twitched away from Danyel's questing tentacle.
"You're still hard." Danyel's gaze never wavered, even though his whole body was swaying.
"I'm not that old." Dimitri wrinkled his nose. "Its lying."
Danyel chuckled, a soft, lazy, relaxed sound. It was nearly as beautiful as his cries when he'd come into Dimitri's mouth. Although he could have well done without that last bit of enthusiasm. Dimitri rubbed at his slightly sore jaws. "I'll probably get better with practice."
"I hope I do."
"I'll faint." Dimitri tugged him into a prone position. The featherbed whuffed, except where it squished. Dimitri scooted them over to a dryer spot. Or at least tried to. There really wasn't one. Danyel yawned, showing quite a fine set of molars.
"I was abysmal, Dimitri." Danyel snorted, returning to what Dimitri though of as his place. Often enough, in his sleep, Danyel would migrate to Dimitri's shoulder. "I'm surprised you don't want to throw me back."
"No," he kissed Danyel's brow. It was still damp with sweat, and probably other things. Neither of them had much cared what went where earlier. "I had a wonderful time."
"Are you sure?" Danyel's half grin brought out his wonderful dark eyes. For the first time since he'd met Danyel, his face was relaxed. Probably because he still couldn't zlin.
"Very," Dimitri reassured him. "I had a wonderful time."
"At least you came." Danyel snorted.
"Three times," he grinned, tongue touching his teeth. "I rode yours with you."
"Oh, to be young again." Danyel laughed.
"You aren't old." He gave Danyel a gentle hug. He weighed nothing.
"Older than you are." He sighed, falling into the gentle melancholy of being sated.
Dimitri followed him, reveling in his whole body going limp with reaction. Well, most of it. He glared at his own penis. "You can shut up now."
Danyel chuckled and brushed it with his hand. Dimitri squeaked. "Don't do that!" He batted at Danyel's hand. Danyel laughed, threatening another touch. Dimitri pinned him on his back. His black eyes were laughing still. "I love thee." He kissed him, not with lust, but just to taste the sweetness of his wonderful mouth.
Humming, Danyel softened to the touch, then opened to him. "Are you really sure you're satisfied?"
"Very," he gathered Danyel into his arms again. "My very own Sime."
"I'm not property." He nudged Dimitri in the ribs. Dimitri grunted and rearranged a fold of the sheet under his behind.
"Not anymore." He rubbed his whiskered cheek through Danyel's hair. The sweet musk of his sweat and spending was wonderful. How had Dimitri ever lived without this? Badly, that was how.
"Anymore?" Danyel nearly teleported out of his grasp.
Dimitri shrugged, looking away. "I can understand my ancestors chaining yours. I do admit to wanting to keep you for all my carnal desires."
Danyel just blinked at him, gape mouthed.
"Get back over here." Dimitri shivered. He wasn't cold, but it got him what he wanted. Danyel's warm, lithe body returned to Dimitri's side. He tucked Danyel's chin under his own. "You're so little."
"Not compared to most people." Danyel slid one leg over Dimitri's. This was heaven. There had to be a God. Dimitri encouraged Danyel's behind in closer. "You're just a big lunk of a Gen."
"A Giant Killer Gen?" Dimitri asked, only half facetiously.
"Yup," Danyel played with the three hairs on Dimitri's chest.
"Careful, I don't have any spares." He rested his hand on Danyel's slender hip. "At least not yet."
"They show up, eventually." Danyel didn't sound thrilled about this.
"I like your fur." He stroked the soft, silky hair at the top of Danyel's thigh. It tickled the sensitive palms of his hands, although not like the mad rush he'd gotten before transfer. "My mother shaves."
"I'd wondered." Danyel ran his hand down Dimitri's sticky body. He wanted a shower. He lifted his head and realized he wasn't going to get one. His head fell back with a thud.
"Do you think I should?" Dimitri wasn't really thrilled with his own hair. It was really sparse and fine. More like an afterthought than anything else.
"You?" Danyel blinked up at him. He looked like a dark forest owl.
"Yes, me," he blinked right back. "I'm sort of scraggly looking."
"Give it some time." Danyel snorted then nestled his head back against Dimitri's chest. This was where it belonged. "You'll get there."
"Yeah, but there's nothing wrong with a Gen shaving." He thought about it. "Although I don't know if I could stand the stubble if I ever decided to let it grow out."
"Don't do it, Dimitri." Danyel put his arm over Dimitri's chest. "I'm so sleepy."
"Then sleep, my little Sime."
Danyel chuckled. He sighed once, relaxing completely, then dozed off. Dimitri lay there in awe of what had just happened. He'd made love with a Sime. In all ways. Yeah, he'd done so with Karola, but with Danyel it was so much more immediate, more real. They were truly peers, not teacher and student. He lipped Danyel's hair, wondering anew at the texture and life in it.
Dimitri yawned. He tugged a light blanket over both of them. It would probably be night when they woke. At least if Dimitri's body had anything to say about it. He was exhausted. Danyel'd probably been worse off.
He'd been so far into attrition, it was amazing he'd survived. Attrition wasn't just a matter of minutes on the clock. A large part of it was personal resistance to need, the ability of the body to slow down or nearly stop its own selyn consumption. Danyel's body had almost no ability to defer need. Instead he'd driven it to autolyze selyn out of his own cells.
Now they were recovering. With Dimitri's extra selyn in his public field, Danyel could well afford the selyn to heal the injuries he'd caused himself. Dimitri gave his body an extra nudge, or at least tried to.
His head spun with the attempt. Dimitri was doing nothing about anything right now. He curled Danyel up in his arms, sighed, then collapsed himself into the dark well of sleep.
Sevrin pulled out the gun. Before he knew what was going on, Danyel'd grabbed it out of his hand. Astonished, he froze. Mitka chuckled, twining in Danyel's hair like some kind of bizarre ornament. Oh, Sevrin couldn't see Mitka, but he could tell what his borrowed body was doing.
"Lessons," Danyel tensed beneath Mitka's coils. He cocked his head. The change in the man was tremendous. Even more than Dimitri, who was currently lolling about in a hammock. Dimitri took a sip of his drink and then lay back with a sigh.
"You made someone very happy." Sevrin grinned, seeing his own image through Mitka's eyes. It was very strange to be able to see again, much less to not have control over what he saw. Mitka's attention rarely stayed on anything for long, particularly anything inanimate. He stared at the gun for a long moment. "Did I do something wrong with it?" He shook out his bruised hand.
"OK, both of you, lesson time." Danyel's field, however stern his voice, bubbled like champagne. It was amazing he could even stand up.
"Awwwww," Dimitri rolled out of the hammock. He didn't land on his ass. Probably because he's spent more time in the salle than men twice his age. Probably. As it was, he dusted himself and swaggered over to them. He put his arm over Danyel's shoulders with an utterly proprietary air. Then he nuzzled Danyel's ear, displacing Mitka, who squawked in complaint.
"You had him last." Mitka pouted, shoving his nose against Dimitri's arm. "Its my turn."
"You don't have the equipment now." Dimitri tickled Mitka under the chin. Sevrin jerked back and shook his head. He scratched, trying to fix the itch that wasn't really there. Mitka did better, rubbing his jaw on Danyel's scalp. His thick hair felt wonderful.
"Hold on." Sevrin held up his hands. "Can you three stop flirting long enough for me to ...
"Stick your dick in?" Dimitri's conclusion to his sentence stopped Sevrin cold. "I don't think it will fit."
"Dimitri!" Sevrin blushed, for the first time in years. He'd never thought of Danyel as anything other than a subordinate, a very good one, but badly flawed, physically. Dimitri's crude comment brought his awareness of Danyel to the fore. "I'm not post." Far from it, actually.
"You're a good pair." He caroled, dancing away. Sevrin would have swatted him, hard. He certainly wouldn't have said such a thing to anyone holding a gun.
Danyel stared down at himself, then at Sevrin's crotch. The gesture was so blatant he could feel it on his skin. Sevrin's skin itched with Danyel's curiosity. "What does he mean?"
"Take off your pants." Dimitri grinned, tongue between his teeth. He looked absurdly young. "Go on. I want to show off."
"Dimitri!" It was Danyel's turn to yelp. He did something with the gun and put it in the waistband of his pants. "What are you talking about?"
"You." He wiggled his hips. "And that sausage between your legs."
"Stop it." Sevrin couldn't help but laugh. It was too silly. Dimitri grabbed the branch of an old oak and pulled himself up. He sat on it, legs swinging beneath him. "Quit teasing him."
"Why?" He cocked his head. "I'm not embarrassing you, am I?"
"You know quite well you are." Sevrin tried to scowl. Through Mitka's eyes, it was more of a smirk.
"You're proud of it, both of you." His bare feet were grass stained. He leaned back, then hanged upside down by his knees.
"You're going to fall." Danyel tensed. "I can't catch you."
"Nah," Dimitri gave a good swing and flipped onto his feet. Oh, to be so young and agile again. "I'm fine."
"You're post, Dimitri." Sevrin put his hands on his hips. "Wildly post."
"I sure hope so." He swaggered over to Danyel. Dimitri was so much bigger than the smaller Sime. "Are you?"
"Very," Danyel laughed. "Although I'd like you to explain someday what you mean."
"You're hung, Danyel. You have a big dick." He reached down and stroked him.
Danyel meeped. He turned his face to Sevrin. Sevrin couldn't see a thing. Mitka's face was buried in Danyel's hair.
It was Mitka's turn. "Dimitri!"
"Oh, its not something to brag about?" If Dimitri hadn't been so wildly post his nager would have been as bright as magnesium fire.
"Here, hold this." Danyel pressed the gun back into his hand. "Don't touch the trigger. Assume it will go off at any time. End lesson."
Assume it will go off at any time? What was he doing with a gun? He didn't even know where it was pointed. Mitka's perspective returned. The shenned thing was pointing at his foot. He got out of the way.
A loud thud echoed across the yard. Danyel had tackled Dimitri. Probably not the wisest thing to do. Danyel swung. A huge roundhouse. Of course it didn't connect. Dimitri followed it with a kiss.
"Now he'll really be able to tell." Dimitri purred, lust shimmering off him in waves.
"No he won't." Danyel growled. Dimitri whispered something in his ear. Danyel reached down and grabbed Dimitri's butt.
"Excuse me?" Sevrin walked over to them. Dimitri froze. Danyel looked back. Sevrin made sure his finger wasn't on the trigger of the gun.
Dimitri's eyes widened. He rolled them both away.
The gun bucked in Sevrin's hand, nearly deafening him. "Shen!" He pointed the thing as far away from everyone as he could. His whole arm ached from the recoil. The echoes rang in his ears.
Dimitri and Danyel scrabbled to each be in front. It would have been hysterically funny in other circumstances. Mitka swooped down, the earth panning beneath his eyes. He landed on Sevrin's shoulder. Through his sight, Sevrin could see down the barrel of the gun. It was pointed at the ground, three meters away from him and away from anyone else.
"I distinctly remember making sure my finger was no where near the trigger."
Danyel managed to slip past Dimitri and held out his hand. Sevrin shook his head, not wanting to move at all.
"I always knew you were smart." Danyel's nager had hardened, as if his association with Mitka'd given it a veneer of shielding. "Hold still." He ran his hand down Sevrin's arm.
"Do you have to feel me up?" Sevrin winced.
"Better than another so called, accident." Danyel took the gun from Sevrin's hand. "I'd cleared the chamber." He did some more arcane things. "Oh, shen," he held it up. Something popped out of the bottom. "Empty," he pulled back on the top. "And clear." He closed his eyes and sighed.
"You mean there wasn't a bullet in there."
"I can't tell if it weighed exactly the same this time as when I handed it to you." Danyel peered into it again. "I'd heard the saying about rounds magically teleporting into guns, but it was just that, a saying. A way to think of firearms safely, as if they could fire on their own. Now I don't know." He rubbed his face with his free hand.
"Did you leave it loaded the last time you saw it?" Dimitri asked, standing behind his lord and putting his hands on Danyel's shoulders. Sevrin'd never have guessed Dimitri'd want one of the childish Western channels. Maybe he needed someone inferior so he could grow up.
"Sevrin!" Dimitri flared his nostrils, as if he'd smelled something bad. The vision tipped. Mitka must have cocked his head. Pain seared his ear. He reached up to yank Mitka off it. Mitka bit down harder.
"Stop," he finally got his fingers in Mitka's mouth. This didn't feel any better. "Would you quit?"
"I'm not amused you think Danyel is some sort of inferior because he has southerner's." Dimitri scowled. Danyel paled, leaning back against Dimitri's chest. "We had a spectacular transfer yesterday, in all ways. I'm not going to let you or mystical bullets ruin it."
"Wait," Danyel said. He did a few more things to the gun and soon had it in three pieces. "Now it can't fire, no matter what."
He was silent for a long moment, then looked Sevrin straight in the eyes. "What was he thinking about me?"
Sevrin opened his mouth to protest and couldn't. His field reared back to strike down these children. He couldn't do it.
"My crazy family." Dimitri sighed. "He thinks I want you because you're inferior to him. He also thinks you're childish."
"What right do you have to meddle with my mind, Dimitri?" Sevrin's face burned with his blushes. He'd never meant for those things to be spoken. "Yes, I thought those things. I can change my mind, too."
"I want to hear it." Dimitri's hands caressed Danyel's shoulders. "Someone is trying to kill us. Someone very strong who knows exactly the limits of my power. Whoever it is has the resources of the Veiled at his command, or something very like it. You are the only person with those resources here in the West."
"That you know of." Sevrin stared at his nephew. "My private thoughts are not for public consumption."
"My partner asked." Dimitri's neck muscles corded for an instant. "I won't have you slander him."
"No one's thoughts are slander."
"I was condemned for my thoughts." Dimitri glanced away, turning his face to the side. "You condemned me for my attitude. My sire threw me away for my thinking."
"You abandoned Mitka. You drove him away."
"Come to me, come to us, my friend." Dimitri held out his hand. Danyel reached out as well, tentacles lacing Dimitri's forearm and holding him tight. Mitka flew to them, completing their bonding. "I love you."
For a moment, Sevrin's heart nearly stopped. He didn't know who to believe. Dimitri still called Danyel by the formal, after bedding him?
Mitka grew until he cupped both Dimitri and Danyel in great leathery wings. Then those wings contracted. "Yes, my beloved Mitka, behold our beloved."
Sevrin flushed, knowing his mistake at once. Dimitri loved both Danyel and Mitka.
"You're right." He shifted his weight from side to side. "I'm wrong."
Dimitri's nager flickered in disbelief.
"You're Sergei. You know when it is time to speak the truth and when to stay silent." He wished he could take back his thoughts.
"And I'm so post I don't know what I'm doing." Dimitri's field was so low it pulled the ambient into itself. "I can't keep from opening my mouth."
"I'd still like to know what you were talking about." Danyel's sparkled, in a way Sevrin'd never sensed from the Sime. Certainly he'd been around Danyel when he was post. Even when he'd managed to get laid. Neither had polished his nager until it gleamed with all colors of the rainbow.
Dimitri sighed. "Now I don't want to say it." He chuckled, a bit breathlessly. "You're considerably larger than most men. Karola's husband, Avilan is as well. I have seen it. Sevrin's built the same way."
"Oh," Danyel's blush burned Sevrin's nager half off. "Is that why you didn't take me?"
"I thought you two had sex." Sevrin could put his own arm in his mouth quite efficiently.
"We did." Dimitri said.
"We didn't, quite." Danyel said at the same time.
"I wasn't there." Mitka added.
Sevrin's head was spinning, not to mention splitting. He rubbed at his useless eyes, as if the gesture could make any difference. Sparkles of light flickered in preparation for Mitka opening to him again. "No, don't." He waved away Mitka's assistance. "Someone just tried to murder you." He didn't specify which you.
"Again," Danyel sighed. "Who is doing this? Even better, why?"
"I'd think Cadek if I didn't know it wasn't him." Dimitri ground his teeth so hard Sevrin could hear it. "I turned down his proposition, Uncle Sevrin."
"Oh," he said. "I have no idea who you're talking about."
"My sire's twin brother?" Dimitri's tone made it into a question.
"Diomid has a twin?" Sevrin searched back through his memories again.
"He officiated at my Claiming." Dimitri's leg ached, sending a sharp bite through Sevrin's own shin.
"I wasn't there." Sevrin let his own senses wander the densely wooded grounds of the estate. Other than Illyana, there was no one else here but the servants, all renSime. "Why do you think it could be him?"
"Can't deal with rejection?" Dimitri's field shimmered, a nageric shrug. "He's the only person I know who could touch fate like this."
"What about your sire?"
"He wouldn't attack a Sime." Dimitri's certainty turned his field to ice.
"Do you think he might be giving you enough warning to get Danyel safe? He has to know you'd protect Danyel at the cost of your own life." Sevrin didn't know enough of what had happened to even be able to make a start at assigning suspicions.
"He could." Dimitri held Danyel safe. "But he also has to know Danyel'd protect me if he could."
"I can." Danyel's field melded with Dimitri's in heart stopping beauty. They might be badly mismatched in days, but they'd bonded like natural mates.
"Diomid would not play cat and mouse with us." Mitka's hissing voice showed Sevrin his anger. "He would murder us and be done with it."
"What if he's doing this to make Dimitri afraid to ever return to Russia?"
"He's a fool if he thinks I'll never go back."
"I can't go with you." Danyel's field shattered into countless shards.
"With Mitka you can." Dimitri responded instantly. Sevrin's first thought was to protest. Mitka's attention stilled the words in his throat. "If you're both willing to stay together at all times."
"Oh break my nager, Dimitri." Danyel cooed, sounding about fifteen. Shen the man was post. How had they managed not to have intercourse?
"I'm willing." Mitka's scales hissed against each other. "More than willing." His attention turned back to Sevrin.
"Lets get the whole story in our hands." He braced himself. "Dimitri, Danyel, Mitka?"
"What about Miran?" Dimitri asked.
"What about him?" Sevrin leaned back.
"He has the Sergei gifts and plenty of reason to do away with me."
"He's your half-brother." Sevrin wrinkled his nose at the very idea of fratricide. Sure he'd wanted to kill his older brothers lots of times, but not literally.
"In this family we screw each other, why not kill each other?" Dimitri's bluntness hammered Sevrin's admittedly loose idea of propriety. "Besides, Miran and I've never gotten along."
"He stole your toy soldiers?" Sevrin snorted.
"Worse, my Sharm Lord dolls." Dimitri sniffed. "He used to tease me with them, saying I'd never amount to anything since I was a bastard while his parents were handfasted." He sobbed.
Sevrin winced. Wasn't this hurting Danyel? "Um, that sounds like normal childish squabbles to me." He took a deep breath. "You two should still be in seclusion."
"You interrupted us." Dimitri sniffled. Gods he sounded young.
"We can try this whole thing again?"
"Not all of it, unfortunately. Although we got the first half right."
Mitka chuckled as softly as the hiss of his scales sliding over each other. "Oh, we did." He purred, as if he were a cat who'd been locked in the buttery all night. "He's so good."
"I think so." Dimitri said.
"Get inside!" Sevrin pointed.
"That way's the river, Uncle Sevrin." Danyel startled him witless. "You're my Uncle now, right?"
"How do you figure that?" Sevrin wasn't used to be yanked around like this. Neither of them meant any harm, but they were both completely daft at the moment.
"I'm Dimitri's, we're partners, therefore my partner's Uncle is mine, right?" Sharp glittery bits of dark humor flickered in the heart of Danyel's field. Sevrin swatted at him without thinking. The blow never landed, instead he felt it right on his wrists.
"Ow," he shook his hands, resettling his bracelets. "Who figured out that stunt?"
"I did." Danyel's field shone brighter. "Like it?"
"Get inside you two."
"Who's going to keep us safe?" Dimitri grasped the point.
"I don't know." He said. "I can't see. There's no way around that. Any enemy you might have can walk right under my nose and unless they had very poor hygiene, I can't do a thing to stop them."
"And right now you probably can't smell a whole lot at all."
"No," he admitted, frowning at his own impotence. "Shen, I don't know what to do."
"Get Miran over here." Dimitri said, startling him half witless. "Give Cadek Sergei while Diomid and Kirina come here for Aliana's partuition."
"She can't do it here." Sevrin answered immediately. "If she needs a second, we don't have one."
"I'm a second." Danyel said.
"Wrong kind of second." Sevrin's attention flicked over him. "Why do you have so much selyn in your public field?"
"No place else to put it?" Danyel's shrug jarred the ambient into wild jitters for a moment.
"Obvious answer, Hajene Danyel."
"These two days, its lord Danyel, right?" His attention flicked to Mitka, caressing his scaly hide so intimately Sevrin didn't require Mitka's eyes to see the dragon.
"If you're not careful, you're going to try to ascend him, Dimitri."
"If it happens, I won't be heartbroken."
"Danyel will never be able to work here again." Sevrin warned.
"Do you think I want to?"
"What about the work you do?"
"Ask me these questions tomorrow." Danyel pleaded. Sevrin'd never thought to hear such sense from any Sime.
"Where are we going to go tonight? This place isn't safe." Dimitri's field stilled. "I don't want your house blown up."
"Has your attacker ever repeated an attempt?"
"Not in the same way, no." Dimitri paced until Mitka tangled his legs. His field flapped all over the place until Danyel's joined with it again.
"You're in no condition to go anywhere, Dimitri." Sevrin said. "Oh shen. So we know they aren't going to try to blow up the place, but what else?"
"Oh, they could burn it, break it, flood it ..."
"Shut up, Dimitri." Danyel sighed. From the muffled imprecations, Danyel's put something over or in Dimitri's mouth. A sudden flash of warmth told Sevrin it had been Danyel's palm. Sevrin snickered.
"Go inside, which ever way that is." He ran his hand over his hair. "I'll see if I can get a hold of Diomid. It has to be a Sergei, right?"
"Unless something new has come up." Dimitri managed to keep himself together long enough to answer a simple question, amazing. "You know the Veiled better than any of us."
"How do you know it was one of the Veiled?"
"By the same way I know it wasn't." Dimitri growled. "Only one of the Veiled could have teleported into the rooms I lived in when I first came to Kaon. But when I joined the Veiled this last time, the Fellowship didn't know about it."
"The Fellowship only knows about things its members do while they're part of it."
"Cadek can't live without constant support." Dimitri returned.
"He did with us." Danyel added.
"So he did." Dimitri glanced away. "I don't know. Are there other teleporters alive?"
"How do you know it was a tele... whatever?" Danyel pressed himself against Dimitri's side. "You wanna try that second half again?"
"I'm loosing you, Danyel." Sevrin grasped at straws.
"Oh yes," Dimitri's hand kneaded Danyel's backside. "They didn't pick the lock." He murmured somewhere other than in Sevrin's direction.
"On the door. Did you check the window?"
"Let me go back and look. Or even better, wait until tomorrow and come back yourself. What's the shortest time between attacks?"
"So far ... " his pause gave Sevrin hope. "they haven't." Sevrin's hopes were dashed.
"Even to you the timing is random, then."
"Yes," Dimitri sighed. "Uncle Sevrin?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Get out of here." His field batted at Sevrin's. "I'm not going to pass up getting well and truly laid because some idiot is trying to murder me. We'll be in the rooms Illyana set up for us." If Sevrin'd not been paying attention, he'd not have caught the flicker of deception from Dimitri. Danyel stiffened for an instant. He'd probably caught it too. Who else?
"The gate is three meters to your right and one ahead of you." Dimitri's voice rang. "We care for our own, Sevrin Azovich."
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