Pomegranates full and fine (28 page)

“I’ve never seen you tinkering with any machines.” Tango couldn’t hold back a short, barking laugh. No, control didn’t come back so easily. “Well, nature isn’t everything, is it?”
Does that answer your question
? she thought.
Does that satisfy you?
She watched Miranda turn back to the dance floor. The vampire was silent. So was Tango. She had emptied most of the second glass

of beer before either of them spoke again.

“Tango,” Miranda asked suddenly, “Sin said that he might be able to work an ‘epiphany’ out of his date. What’s an epiphany?”

Tango stared into the last of her beer. “Kithain need something we call ‘Glamour’ in order to keep our faerie half alive. One way to get Glamour is from mortals. Sometimes they generate it when they create or imagine something. When a Kithain absorbs that Glamour, it’s called an epiphany. It’s like...” she shrugged. “It’s like you’re one with the universe. It’s like an orgasm that just goes on and on. It’s transcendent.”

“Sort of the way feeding feels to a vampire??” Miranda sounded distant.

“I guess so. Why?” Tango glanced up and followed Miranda’s gaze toward the dance floor. The vampire didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to.

Sin and his date were dancing. Or rather, Sin’s date was dancing. Sin was practically standing still on the dance floor, just watching her move to the music. There was an expression of rapture on the woman’s face. She wasn’t just dancing
to
the music, she was dancing
with
the music. A few people on the dance floor were looking at her, but she wasn’t looking at them. If she was dancing for anyone, it might have been for Sin. Mostly, however, she was dancing for herself. The music, the act of dancing, had carried her away, transporting her to some other state of being. Glamour shone inside her and Sin was basking in its glow, his face alight, lost in wonder. Miranda couldn’t see the Glamour, of course, but she must have been able to see the bliss in the faces of both Sin and the dancing woman.

Tango’s stomach twisted. “That’s an epiphany,” she confirmed, and turned away.

“Then it is like feeding. Like feeding slowly from a willing partner. Both the vampire and the vessel enjoy it.” Miranda seemed almost as caught in the magic of the Glamour as Sin or his date.

“Maybe. I wouldn’t know.” Miranda glanced at her questioningly. Tango stood. “Can we go now?”

“Is something wrong?”

Tango didn’t answer, but just walked out of the club. It was raining lightly, thin drops falling out of the darkness. Miranda caught her just outside. “Tell me what’s wrong. Is it something to do with Riley?”

“No.” Tango began to walk toward the lot where they had left Miranda’s car. “Not really.”

“Is it something to do with me?”

Miranda sounded frightened. Tango laughed, the harsh sound horrible and alien. “No.”

“Is it... is it something to do with Sin? With his epiphany? Tell me.” Miranda’s hand came down on Tango’s shoulder.

The changeling froze instantly. Her knife was in her hand before she thought about it. Slowly, the blade came up to rest gently against Miranda’s hand. “Didn’t I tell you not to touch me? Didn’t you ever learn not to put your hand on the stove to see if it was hot?” The vampire didn’t move. Tango looked up at the dead void of the cloud-covered sky. She sighed. “Oh, Miranda. Do you really want to know?”

Miranda hesitated. “Yes,” she said finally.

“All right.” Tango banished her knife and turned to look up at the vampire. They were standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Behind them was the darkened front of a restaurant. Across the street was a firehall. The music from Club Haze whispered like a lonely phantom. “In the early seventies, Kithain fought what we call the Accordance War. Centuries ago, Arcadia

— the home of the Kithain — was cut off from Earth. Most of the world’s Glamour was cut off with it. Noble fae, like the sidhe, were mostly able to escape to Arcadia. Common fae, nockers, pookas, boggans and the rest, were trapped on Earth. To survive, we merged with humans and became changelings. Our society and traditions changed. All of the nonsense about kings and dukes and courts fell away, because everybody was just too busy trying to survive. Then something changed. Faeries from Arcadia started coming to Earth again. The sidhe came back.” Her eyes were hard. “They saw us as peasants. Thralls. Servants. Nothing but commoners. They wanted us to bow down to them because their ancestors had ruled ours centuries ago.”

“Like ancient vampires waking?”

Tango nodded sharply. “A little bit, yes. The commoners resisted the sidhe. The sidhe killed our leaders in a massacre we call the Night of Iron Knives. The struggle turned into the Accordance War.”

“Who won?”

“Nobody. The sidhe learned to respect the commoners and the commoners learned to respect the sidhe. More or less.” Tango took a deep breath. “I fought in the War. My name was still Shiv then. I took what I learned from Jubilee and I fought the sidhe.” She spread her hands. “I don’t have much magic, Miranda. I don’t have the nocker talent for working with machines. I don’t even have the nocker dourness: I like being around people. What magic I have is in my strength and my speed. But I’m good with what I’ve got, and I was then, too. And I
hated
the sidhe. I managed to get myself assigned to an elite unit — of assassins.”

She waited for some reaction from Miranda, just as the vampire had earlier tried to prompt a reaction from her. And as before, nothing happened. The vampire was silent, looking down at her with dark eyes. Tango nodded again. “Killing probably doesn’t bother you at all, does it? It didn’t bother me either. Not then. I was still young. The War was like a kind of game and I got lost in it. That’s why Jubilee was afraid of me. I was vicious, unstoppable. I even scared redcaps. Do you know why?”

Miranda shook her head slowly. Tango grinned at her. “Because it became my epiphany.”

The words came out as a horrible whisper. Sibilant, frightening. Mad. They echoed up out of a deep abyss, dark and terrible. There were three ways in which a Kithain could gather Glamour. Ravaging was the rape of a human’s creative imagination, wrenching Glamour from them. The Reverie was what Sin had done tonight, guiding and inspiring a human to create, then reaping the Glamour that flowed from her. But the third means of gathering Glamour, Rapture, came out of a Kithain herself, out of the creativity of her own human aspect. Some Kithain could never do it. Some found it simple. Tango had been one of the latter. She had found Rapture in the art of death. She could still remember what it was like: the plotting, the stalking, the final rush, the plunge of the knife....

“Tango?”

Tango snarled, dragging herself away from the temptation of that abyss. She wasn’t that person anymore. “Take me home, Miranda.” She turned and began walking toward the parking lot again.

“But what happened?” Miranda walked beside her

— but more than an arm’s length away.

“I gave it up. I stopped.”

“Why?”

Tango had to laugh. This time, it almost felt good. “Only a vampire could ask that question.” They turned into the parking lot. “Because not long before the end of the War, we found out that young sidhe were being hidden in upstate New York. My unit was sent to kill them.”

Miranda froze. “And you refused?”

“I accepted. I killed five sidhe on that mission.”

* * *

Tango’s voice was'flat. Not casual, but not repentant either. It was simply flat. Miranda stared at the changeling, shocked by her uncaring tone. Tango glanced back at her. She must have guessed at her thoughts. “I cried the tears a long time ago, Miranda. There’s nothing left now.” The changeling was beside the car, waiting for her. Miranda fumbled with the keys, too stunned to say anything.

Tango was more like her than she had realized. Than she could have guessed. A killer. Miranda’s hands were shaking as she tried to fit the key into the lock on the car door. All of this time she had been trying to conceal her evil from Tango, trying to live up to the changeling’s model. Only to discover that Tango was as evil as she was — or at least had been as evil. It frightened her, frightened her and made her feel cold.

Tango had hidden her evil, but she was no better than any vampire that Miranda had known.

The revelation left her with a terrible feeling inside, as if she were suddenly falling through darkness without any point of reference. She got the door open and slid into the car, reaching across to unlock and open the other door for Tango. “What happened?” she asked thickly as Tango got in.

Tango stared straight ahead through the windshield. “Our real targets — the children — had escaped. But 1 killed three sidhe knights and two old women who had been willing to sacrifice themselves to get the children away from us. When 1 came out of the epiphany, the rest of my unit was still stalking through the sidhe freehold. There was blood on my hands. I had chased one of the knights out into the garden. I had wounded her badly, and I thought she was trying to get away. She wasn’t.” Tango closed her eyes for a moment. “I found out later that she practiced Rapture, too, but her art was growing things. The gardens of the freehold belonged to her. She wanted to die there.” The changeling opened her eyes again. They were as flat and empty as her voice. “She didn’t. I brought her down and stabbed her in the back just before she reached them. Then I looked up and saw the gardens.” She glanced at Miranda. “Drive,” she suggested.

Miranda nodded and started the car. When they left the parking lot, she turned toward Jarvis Street and Riley’s apartment. It seemed as appropriate a place to go as any. They could have just driven around, but suddenly Miranda wanted... no, needed a destination.

Tango kept talking. “There was a full moon that night. The gardens were beautiful. More beautiful than anything I’d ever seen before or have ever seen since. The flowers were bursting with Glamour. There was wonder in the air and magic in the dew on the ground. The gardens drew me in. I just wandered in them for hours. Everything was fresh, everything was alive — everything except the sidhe who had created the gardens. She was dead, and her blood was mixing with the other blood under my fingernails. And the gardens were starting to die as well. No one else could have done with them what she had. The plants might live, but the Glamour would slowly fade away. I started to wonder about the other sidhe I had killed. What had I taken out of the world?” She leaned back against the headrest. “Just before dawn I picked a rosebud. It smelled so sweet, and the Glamour in it... that’s when I cried, Miranda. I walked away from that garden and my unit. I left behind Shiv’s life. I swore that 1 would never kill again. Nobody ever knew what happened to the assassin that even the redcaps were afraid of. Everything was in chaos because of the War, so it was easy to reintroduce myself. 1 created a new identity. I tried to be like I was before the War, before I had met Jubilee. Just another young Kithain enjoying the world.”

She laughed bitterly and Miranda glanced at her. She was looking out the window at a group of young people coming out of a club, happy and clowning around. “It didn’t work. I had done too much. I couldn’t go back. All of the skills, all of the rage, all of those moments of epiphany. The Rapture of death. I had to fight them. Every moment of life with the Kithain became a hell. When the others wanted to play a prank on a bunch of humans, I thought twice about it. What would it be like for the humans? Any epiphany brought back memories of Rapture.” Tango touched her chest. “I couldn’t get rid of it all, so I buried it. Buried it under layers of control, and promised myself that I would never touch it again. I tried to play the games of the Kithain for as long as I could, trying to forget. But it wouldn’t go away. So I did. I left the Kithain behind, except for a few special friends like Riley that I saw from time to time. I kept the darkness under control. Sometimes I did even manage to forget about it. I could be strong when I had to be, and violent, but it was always on my terms.”

“Until now,” Miranda murmured.

“Until now. I might have been all right being around Kithain again if Riley had been here. I might have been all right trying to find Riley if the other Kithain weren’t around. But together — and with Jubilee involved — it’s too much. It’s all coming back. Everything is eating away at my control, and I know that I’m going to lose it. I’m afraid of what might happen when I do.” She sighed. “You know, the sidhe still hunt for Shiv. I’m still wanted. And there are commoner extremists who idolize me.”

Miranda turned onto Jarvis. This sounded like the Tango she was familiar with, the one whom she wanted as her friend. But underneath was Shiv. Dark, cruel, reveling in her evil. Too much like Miranda herself. “Why are you telling me this, Tango?” she breathed.

“Because you wanted to know.” They came to a stop in front of Riley’s apartment and Tango turned to look at her. “And because I had to tell someone.” She smiled, weak and weary, but triumphant. Like a warrior who had fought the battle of a lifetime and survived. “I’ve never told anyone this before, Miranda. Not even Riley.”

Except you had to tell me, didn’t you?
Miranda’s guts felt like they had been turned inside out.
Oh, Tango.
She felt like stepping into the shadows and disappearing. But Tango was watching her, and she knew that the changeling was waiting for a reaction, the same sort of reaction that Miranda had sought from her earlier. Acceptance of what she was. Hesitantly, she patted Tango’s shoulder comfortingly. “It’s okay, Tango.” She wiped a finger across her own lips. “It’s a secret.” The changeling smiled. She put her hand over Miranda’s. “I knew I could trust you, Miranda.”

Miranda wasn’t sure what triggered the sudden plummet of her heart down into her belly: the terrible irony of Tango’s words or the sudden, startling appearance of Tolly as he swarmed over the hood of the car and plastered his face against the glass of the windshield. Tango shouted and brought her knife into her hand. Miranda almost screamed herself.

Matt opened the door beside her and leaned down to leer in her face. “Hellloooo, baby.”