Starbleached (13 page)

She shrugged. The numbness inside was like Novocain. Fear
for herself just didn’t exist. “Where are we going?” She strapped down the last
lid.

“Blue Dragon. Chinese held, a little more friendly towards
the enemy than I’d like, but they’re willing to test the drug. You’ll go in,
show them how to use it, and be back in time for celebratory dinner tomorrow.”

Was anything since Holton worth celebrating? “I’ll see you
soon, then.” She got into the transport, finding her crash couch half buried in
a wall of yellow boxes.

Shawn put a hand on the rear hatch. “Godspeed, Adrienne
Parker. And good luck.” He closed the door.

Bob swiveled his chair around to face the viewport.
Sunlight, rich and heady with atmosphere, seemed to turn the world dazzling
bright. “Good to have you for this trip, Doc.”

She smiled, wistfully. “It’s for Bryan, you know.”

“Yeah. I do.” He took a deep breath, like he were shrugging
off a wound. “Lift off in three, two, one, Doc. Brace yourself.”

She did, and the first gust of g-force pushed her into the
crash couch. It only lasted a few seconds. Then internal compensators kicked
on, manufacturing earth-scale gravity where there was none. The transport moved
with the stately grace of a swan. She had to admit, Bob Harris was pretty damn
good.

She touched the nearest box. These stacks almost cradled
her, a shield against the world. Bryan’s life work. His dream. His epitaph. “We
did it,” she whispered. “We leveled the playing field, Bry. You and me. You did
good.”

“Yes he did,” Bob said.

The shuttle passed through atmosphere, blue fading to black,
yellow sun turning to hot white star. Emptiness surrounded them as the light
tone changed. She closed her eyes and let the color bleach away.

Starlight without atmosphere was cold.

*****

Chelsea Gaither reads, writes and rocks out in Corpus
Christi, Texas. For news on upcoming projects, general ramblings on life, and
other interesting topics, visit her blog at
http://creativedoubledipper.blogspot.com

Connect with her on twitter: @CWGaither

Connect with her on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/christwriter

Hang on! Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next Exiles
story,
Blue Ghosts,
due out in October 2012.

It isn’t every day you have dinner with an Elf,
 
Casey Winter thought. She straightened the skirt on her very best dress, which
was about six hundred dollars too cheap for her surroundings. Corpus Christi,
Texas, isn’t the biggest or most cultured city in the state, but it had several
very nice restaurants. Marco Creed, the elf in question, had invited her to the
nicest.

She stood before the hostess station of the Republic of
Texas. Dark wood and burgundy trim glowed under expensive lighting. Lush
greenery curled around brass fixtures, and the wait staff moved with the
collective grace of cranes—though the expression on their faces was more akin
to hawks spying out small mice in the grass. Empty water glasses wordlessly
filled, plates whisked away as soon as knife and fork hit four o’clock. Some
complicated communication between the social elite and the staff kept questions
to a minimum. Casey told the hostess she was here for Marco Creed’s table. The
blond girl smiled, apologized that the table wasn’t quite ready yet, and
provided her with a glass of champagne.
Expensive
champagne.

What am I getting into?
She wondered. A whole bottle
of the stuff probably cost her next royalty check.

She wasn’t waiting long. A throat cleared behind her, and
when she turned her nerves—well, they definitely didn’t settle.

Elves are handsome. Marco Creed was
hot
. Every time
she met his eyes she thought about Chippendale dancers and underwear models.
His skin was peach, his eyes an almost luminescent blue. His long gold hair was
tied back and braided, and it went off about as well as stuffing a lion into a
tutu. And—this made her feel so much better—his well muscled chest was hidden
by a suit about fifty bucks cheaper than her dress.

He reached out, took her hand and ran his thumb across her
knuckles. She shivered. “Ms. Winter.” He leaned in and kissed the back of her
hand. Then he turned to the amused hostess. “Table for Creed, two.”

“Right this way.” She said, and carried two menus towards a
small table near a window. Marco pulled the chair out for her as the girl made
tracks back to her stand. Casey’s cheeks felt hotter than the pavement outside
as he took his own seat.

The Republic of Texas sat on top of the Omni Hotel.
Waterfront beaches sprawled beneath them, glittering under the moonlight. The
tallest buildings in the city sat to their right. Peregrine hawks nested in the
building’s sides, and spotlights traced their flight patterns. An oil tanker
slowly crawled beneath the Harbor Bridge. The light show on its framework
slowly shifted from hot pink to cerulean blue.

“I like the LED display.” Casey said.

“Lots of people don’t.” A waiter arrived with the bottle of
champagne. Marco thanked him, then checked the label. His eyebrows rose.

“Pricy?” Casey whispered.

“Yep. Thank God, I’m not paying the tab.”

“You’re not?” Casey was perpetually broke, so she wasn’t
sure if she were relieved Marco wasn’t blowing hard earned cash on her, or
disappointed.

“I intended to,” he said, quickly. “But I told Razeilara
about our plans, and she called the manager and had them bill her. A reward,
she said.”

“Uh huh. You don’t sound happy.” Casey picked up the menu.
She’d only eaten here once before, for her fifth wedding anniversary over ten
years ago. They still had the orange roasted quail. Marco waved her off. His
hand passed near his ears, drawing her attention to something that should have
been there, and wasn’t. “Your ears,” She said. The points had figured pretty
prominently in her memory of the last few days.

“I’m splurging.” His eyes flicked up from the menu, and
after a couple heartbeats a shy sheepishness spread across his features.
“Magically, I mean. Glamour isn’t all that expensive, but it’s easy enough for
me to pass. The others, not so much. Razielara and I wind up lending a lot of
magic to the others so they can have
something
like a normal life.”

“It takes so much that you can’t hide your ears all the
time?” She asked. The waiter returned. She ordered the quail. Marco ordered
steak and lobster, and waited for the waiter to retreat before he answered.

“Well, if all we had to do was keep the Merrow and Phooka
supplied with glamour, it’d be easy enough. But…” he sighed. “Magic on Earth is
limited. Back in Ambercross, you could draw power from the trees, from the sky,
from the Earth herself.” He looked at the vase in the center of their table and
touched a daisy. “Everything there was so…alive.” Roots curled out of the
flower stem, and sudden pea green shoots curled around Marco’s fingers. Three more
daisies flowered while she watched. “Alive on a level that you can’t even
imagine. Everything sang to us. But here…” he took his hand away. The daisies
tried to cling to him at first. Then they withered, petals falling, leaves
turning brown and disintegrating onto the table cloth.

“Our world is dead?” She asked, horrified.

He shook his head. “Sleeping. And like a dragon with a sore
tooth, it’s a good thing it sleeps. The undercurrents I can touch are…angry.

“But its slumber effects us, because the sources a Merrow
would use to shape shift are closed to her, and she wouldn’t have the personal
power to do it herself. Razielara and I, however, do. That’s why Raziel and I
are the leaders, and the others do what we say. If we don’t…” he pointed at the
withered daisy. “No magic for you.”

“Interesting.” Casey said. “I thought it was because you
could hurt them if you had to.”

“That too. But it’s more effective to lead with a carrot
than a stick.” Their salads arrived, and Marco smiled politely until the waiter
retreated again. He picked up the pepper and shook it. “Okay, your turn.”

“What?”

“Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know.”

She blinked. “Uh…like what? I’m a writer. What with Facebook
and Twitter, my life is, you know…an open book.”

He rolled his eyes. “Bad pun.”

“Very,” she agreed, and took a bite of salad.

Casey was a fantasy writer. She’d been marginally successful
writing about elves and magic and a world named Ambercross…and had been
flabbergasted three days ago to learn that it was, more or less, a real place.
She had some kind of connection to Faerie, and the world that Marco came from.
He hadn’t been very specific about her gift, maybe because he didn’t understand
it any better than she did, but he’d told her just enough to whet her appetite
for more.

The Faerie exiles in her world had latched onto her books.
According to Marco—who was the only Faerie she’d met so far who wasn’t actively
trying to kill her—most of Earth’s Faerie population were immortals exiled for
one reason or another. Immortals were more likely to live for centuries, and
the mortal types rarely reproduced. The only breeding populations were a
handful of dwarven settlements in places like Oklahoma and West Virginia, and
the Merrow colony in Scotland. And the Faerie-born missed their homeland,
passionately. Her novels were, according to Marco, highly fictionalized
versions of true events. Any news from home, from any source, was preferable to
no news at all.

Which meant that when one of the Faerie in Corpus twisted
off and began killing humans, Marco chose to protect her personally. And saved
her life when the Faerie actually did try to kill her.

But there was nothing about her life that he couldn’t
possibly know already. Even her divorce—nasty and physically abusive—had been
very, very public. And she couldn’t imagine someone as inventive—and bored—as
Marco not following every possible detail. So there really wasn’t much to tell.

“I’m almost forty, I have six books to my name, and you’ve
seen my house.” She shrugged. “You know every part of me.”

“Not every part.” He wraggled his eyebrows. “What about your
marriage?”

She shrugged. “I was married, he was an ass, he broke my leg
and I divorced him.”

“If he was an ass, why’d you marry him?”

She flicked hair out of her eyes and took the last bite of
her salad.

“Too personal?”

She shrugged. “You’ve told me world-shattering secrets about
yourself. I suppose…fair is fair, you know.” She sighed and pushed her plate
back. Two heartbeats later the waiter appeared with their food. He cleared the
salad plates away. “He wasn’t an ass when I met him. He wasn’t even abusive.
Jack was…God. Jack was great.”

“How’d you meet him?” Marco poured them both more champagne.

“He was the artist for my book covers. He said that he got
the ARC—advanced reader copy—and read it in one night. Which for Jack, that
says a lot. I don’t think I ever saw him read anything else in a week, let
alone a day. And the artwork? Oh my God, it was perfect.  He flew down to
Houston, we met at this Irish bar. The Mucky Duck.” She laughed a little bit.
“He had long hair and he tied it back with a zip tie. There was red paint on
every single part of his body. And he,” she stopped, her eyes distant and
dreamy as she remembered. Warm wood surroundings, neon beer signs advertising
Harp and Guinness. A slender young man with sharp blue eyes and long black hair
smiled at her over the lip of his beer. Within twenty four hours his warm lips
would be exploring more than personal history. “He was perfect.”

“Love at first sight?”

She shrugged. “Lust, I think. The love came later. Our
second date. He took me out dancing to this swing club. He couldn’t dance. At
all. We’re playing on the dance floor, and he looks over my shoulder, and he
sees this little girl. She’s sixteen, she had Downs Syndrome, she was crying
her eyes out, her mom was trying to comfort her. I would have kept going and
let them do whatever. But Jack…he went right over and asked what was wrong.

“Turned out, the most popular boy in school had asked the
girl out as a
joke
. She’d had her dreams raised and then shattered
because he and his sick buddies thought it’d be
funny
. And you know what
Jack did? He took that little girl out on the dance floor and danced with her.
He’s bumping around on the dance floor, and I don’t know what the hell he’s
doing, the girl’s doing something completely different…Marco, her smile lit up
the whole world. All her mom could say was thank you. ‘Thank you both.’” Casey
sniffed. It hurt, remembering this, but it also felt good.

“And then he hit you,” Marco said, dryly.

She closed her eyes and nodded. “We’d been married for
years. He got sick. Really, really sick. He had a stroke, and when he
recovered…” she trailed off. At some point she’d begun rubbing her right knee.
The deep, ridged scars from her last surgery could be felt through her
panty-hose. She put both hands on the table. “He became violent. I thought if I
were good enough, if I did enough, if I worked hard enough, I could fix him. I
could bring my Jack back.”

Their food arrived. Quail, steak and lobster. It smelled
divine. “And what happened?” Marco asked.

“He beat me with a rolling pin. Three times in the face,”
She touched her right cheek. There were about six surgical pins holding the
bones together. “Then he moved down. Shoulder.” She touched her right collar
bone, which had been snapped in two. “Chest.” Three broken ribs. “And he
settled in on my right knee.” Her right hand made a repeated motion, clicking
her little finger against her water glass. The water vibrated over. And over.
And over. “It had to be completely replaced. The bones looked like marbles.
When I came to in the hospital, I asked to be moved to another room so Jack
couldn’t find me. I knew if I stayed with him another day, he would kill me.”