Sabrina's Clan (23 page)

She lifted her head, blinking, as Nyanther came to a halt.

“Shut the door,” Jake told him softly.

“You moved on fast,” Nyanther observed.

Jake looked down at Sabrina. “Told you he would say that first.”

“You did,” she said in agreement. She eased herself away from Jake and got to her feet. “You can start, as he’s already aiming at you.” She moved around Nyanther, slid the door handle out from under his fingers and closed the door.

He heard the lock click and looked at her as she moved over to the bench at the end of the bed and sat on it.

He had been confused many times in his life, more so in the last thirty years than all the centuries he’d been alive before. This was a different state. A novel one. He couldn’t guess what the two of them were doing. Humans were usually so transparent he could anticipate their every move—even the more complicated people like Jake and Sabrina.

Except now he had no idea what to expect.

The hairs on the back of his neck tried to stand up in a way he’d not experienced in a very,
very
long time.

The threat of the unknown.

His heart stirred and beat. Just once. It was a warning.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Funny, we’ve both asked each other that in the last few hours,” Jake said. He hadn’t moved from the bed. “I remember asking you earlier tonight, too. There’s a lot of stuff happening none of us seem to be able to get a grip on. We’ve decided to change that.”

Nyanther smiled, despite his lack of amusement. “You have, have you?”

“First up,” Sabrina said. “There’s one rule.”

“A
rule
?”

“Just one,” she assured him. “You don’t go out that door.”

He laughed. “Stop me.”

“Neither of us can stop you. The lock can’t stop you,” Jake said. “We’re not stupid, Ny. The lock is a symbol. And we’re asking you to agree to this. You don’t leave, no matter what happens or how much you want to go…and you will.”

Nyanther’s heart squeezed again. “I already want to leave,” he assured him.

“We’re both asking you to stay.”

“Why should I? You’ve promised nothing pleasant.”

“Stay because you love Jake,” Sabrina said softly. “Agree to this, as the last thing you will do for him.”

Nyanther dropped his gaze to the floor, unable to look at either of them. “You told her….”

“I told Sabrina everything,” Jake said gently. “She needed to know.”

“Why? It was between you and me.”

“There’s something I’ve learned lately, Ny,” Sabrina said, her voice still gentle. “Secrets can’t be secrets in this world we’re living in. If you take a deep breath and let go, you’ll find it comforting everyone knows the score.”

“Don’t call me that,” he ground out.

“Ny? Very well.” She said it easily, with no offense. “First, we need you to agree to this one rule.”

Nyanther shook his head. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking you to,” Jake said.

He turned to look at the flimsy door with its joke for a lock. “And if I don’t agree?”

They both stayed silent.

He looked back at them.

“It’s your choice,” Sabrina said.

“That’s it? No dire warnings about how I’ll never know what I’m going to miss out on if I don’t stay?”

Silence, again.

“Agreed,” Nyanther growled. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Tell me why you think you don’t belong in this world,” Jake said.

Nyanther shook his head. “Next question.”

“That’s the only one there is,” Sabrina said. “That’s the question we want you to answer…as truthfully and fully as you can.”

“I’ve already explained myself. As much as I intend to.” In the back of his brain, Nyanther wondered why he was getting so angry. Was it because of the sensation that these two had conspired against him, somehow? Jake was supposed to be his…well, he had been until a few hours ago—and that thought made his chest ache, so he shoved it away, too.

The fact is, they were ganging up on him. Yes, that was it.

“Tell me why you think you don’t belong here,” Jake repeated. His tone was level, devoid of emphasis. He even brought one knee up to rest his arm on, a casual pose that didn’t look studied at all.

“I told you already.”

“
I
didn’t hear it. Not from you,” Sabrina said. “I would like to hear it now.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Yes, it is,” she said, with the same controlled evenness of tone Jake had used. “I’m as much a part of this as Jake. The only reason Jake was in your bed and not me was because you thought you could keep it casual with him. You admitted you were wrong. So I would very much like to know why I am such a danger to you. Why do you think you don’t belong here, Nyanther?”

He blew out his breath and gave up on trying to control his heart. “I’m going to have to feed soon,” he warned.

“You can feed from me when you need to,” Jake said flatly. “You agreed you’re not leaving this room.”

“Why do you think you don’t belong, Nyanther?” Sabrina added.

Nyanther growled and turned on his heel, looking for somewhere to go. The door was right there. All he had to do was twist the handle, tear the lock aside and open it.

He couldn’t do it. He had agreed to this insanity, although
why
they were doing it was still far beyond his comprehension.

“Nyanther,” Jake said. “Answer the question.”

“I’ve already answered it!” He turned back again. There was nowhere to go. He was stuck here in this tiny space at the foot of the bed, looking at the two of them.

He realized this was their intention. They were going to batter him with their questions until he answered. Just the one question, in the end.

“You want to know why?” he asked.

“Yes.” They said it together.

“Because of idiots like you who drive me crazy with their interventions and their social justice and their political correctness and the complicated, moronic pointlessness of it all! Humans haven’t improved in two thousand years. They’ve not gone backward. They’ve evolved into something I don’t even recognize.” He halted, almost breathless and glared at them. Neither of them was reacting to his outrageous claims.

“Why?” Sabrina asked.

Nyanther swore. “This. This moment right here and right now. This is
why
. Because humans have lost sight of the basic equation. They fill their days with feelings and emotions and melodrama and
meanings
. Oh, what does it all
meeeeeaaaaan
?” He twisted the cry, making it sound pathetic. “Where did just
living
go to? When did being happy to have food to eat and shelter from the rain and cold become passé?”

His chest was heaving.

Still the pair of them sat serenely, watching him.

“Why?” Jake asked.

Nyanther screamed. It came from somewhere inside him, emerging as a howl of frustration, building up from his toes and erupting from his throat, straining the tendons and making his eyes ache.

Then he turned and rammed his fist into the wall.

The wallpaper tore and the drywall shattered, giving way so that his fist slammed into the drywall in the next room. That piece held. Just.

Breathless, he stared at the big hole his wrist was buried in. The flour-fine drywall dust settled on his shirt sleeve and wrist, making his skin look sickly gray.

Upstairs, he heard Damian stir. “What on earth?” he whispered.

“Leave them be,” Nick said. “They’re sorting things out.”

“Hell’s hounds…” Damian murmured, then was silent.

So there was to be no outside rescue, either.

Nyanther yanked his hand out of the hole, scattering bone-white pieces of drywall everywhere.

Jake and Sabrina had not moved.

He could almost
hear
the question in their minds.

“I’m tired,” he told them. “Tired of pretending. Tired of playing catch up.”

“Why?” Sabrina asked, very softly.

He sighed and looked down at the floor. At the boots on his feet. “Look at these,” he said, lifting his foot up on one side so the treads on the soles showed. “When I was a child, shoes were made from hides we cured ourselves, from meat we’d hunted ourselves. When they wore out, they were repaired, using more hide. Now I wear boots like this. The soles aren’t even rubber, anymore. They’re chemical compounds, invented by some technician sitting over beakers and spectrometers. The leather isn’t leather. There are insoles and insulation, padding to protect my feet. The processes, the development…the
history
behind every single part that goes into making them are something I by-passed. I didn’t get to find out except in hindsight. Thousands of people from around the world were involved in the making of these boots and the box they came in and the ship that carried them here. I don’t know a single one of those people.” He looked up at the pair sitting on the bed. “My mother made my first pair of boots.”

He looked away. His mother…how long since he had thought of her? She had died when he was still young, just turned adult in the eyes of the tribe. He barely remembered her. She had been roughly affectionate…it might have been love. She had never told him she loved him. It wasn’t a word or a concept that had existed then. Well, it might have elsewhere in the known world, but not in his tribe. Not for him.

The hot rush of feeling fountained up through his chest, grabbing his throat and burning his eyes.

“Why, Nyanther?” Jake pressed.

He shook his head. He didn’t dare speak.

“Why don’t you belong here?” Sabrina added.

He opened his mouth to reply. The words that came out shocked him. “Because they’re all gone.”

He had always known that. Of course he had. The history books had told him the last of the Pict tribes had been wiped out by the Scots clans. Anyone left after that would have been absorbed into the clan system.

The Selgovae were all gone, an extinct race, except for him. That was Damian’s fate, as well. He was the last of his kind, just as Nick could be said to be the last of his pure-bred Norman race, too. They were all of them lingering after-effects of history marching on around them.

For the first time he really
heard
himself say it. They were all gone. His mother, his sisters, his father, his uncles who he had hunted with. His brother, who had died even before his mother had. The vampire warriors who had initiated him into the blood…even they had not lasted through the ages.

They had all gone, leaving him stranded here in this time. Alone.

Sabrina had recognized his essential loneliness before he had. She had spoken of it on the stoop.

“There’s just me,” he breathed, absorbing the truth of it.

The pressure in his chest dissolved. He could breathe again. He looked up at Jake and Sabrina.

They were watching him, their calmness untouched.

“
Why,
right?” he said.

Sabrina nodded.

He sighed and hung his head. He had nothing more to give.

They were right and he was wrong.

The next four hours were pure torture. He paced. He shouted. He refused to speak. Three more holes appeared in the plaster.

Because they were human, Jake and Sabrina were forced to leave the room to eat, drink or use the bathroom. Only one would go and the other remained to keep asking the question and the word Nyanther grew to hate.

Why?

He tried. Each time they repeated it, he dug in again, searching for the elusive answer they were waiting for. Nothing satisfied them. He tore the roots of his soul out and offered it to them and they just repeated their question.

It was impossible for him to feel tired, of course, but as the sun rose, he could feel an aching in his bones that made his pacing slow and his energy to flag. Even sipping from Jake to offset the need to feed had not helped for long.

He rested his back against the wall, next to the bureau. Then he slid down, until he was sitting, his knees up in front of him.

Why?

He stared at nothing, grappling with the question. If no answer he had given them was the answer they were looking for, then they weren’t answers at all.

They were excuses.

Why was he making excuses? Why was he looking for reasons? What was wrong with the truth?

What
was
the truth?

Why did he not belong here? Damian didn’t belong in this time any more than he did, yet he was filled with a silent, bubbling joy for life that had sustained him for millennia. Nyanther suspected it had not even occurred to Damian he could end his life. Close off all that history and all those memories? Leave Riley and Nick and Chloe? Nyanther could almost hear Damian’s strident protests.

What was the difference between the two of them?

Well, he had by-passed all the history Damian had lived through....

Excuses.

Nyanther put his head in his hands and gripped it. Hard.

Why
?

Then he had it. He lifted his head. “Because I’m afraid,” he said aloud.

Jake sat up. Sabrina lifted her head, her eyes widening. Then they both scrambled off the bed and came over to him.

Jake crouched in front of him. “Say it again.”

Nyanther let out his breath. It felt like he was exhaling thirty years of stress. “Because it scares me. All of it. I’m a savage who wore rawhide shoes and hunted with a stone axe. Because my first car ride made me piss myself in terror. Because love is real, here.”

Jake cupped his face, his strong thumb stroking. “You found the answer.” His eyes were shining. He settled himself against the wall next to him, his shoulder pressed against Nyanther’s and pulled Sabrina down with them.

She came willingly. Her face was drawn with exhaustion. She smiled at Nyanther and kissed his cheek. “We’re all terrified little kids, deep down, you know.”

He held up his arm, out of her way, as she snuggled up to him and put her head on his shoulder. He looked down at her in surprise.

Jake was smiling. “What she really wants is both of us, Ny.
That’s
what you should be truly afraid of—a woman who knows her mind.” He sighed and put his head back against the wall.