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Someone was crying and it was Goran, kneeling in front of me while we held each other. His arms held me so tight it was almost hard to breathe, but I didn’t tell him to let me go, because I was feeding on him. It was awful and wondrous, and I realized there were tears running down my face. I could not contain all of his emotions without some of them spilling out. I held him and cried with him. Ipushed back his hood so that I could kiss the top of his head, put my cheek against the disarray of his brown curls.
I fed and fed and still there was no end to his grief. I thought when I fed that I would take some of his emotions and heal him, but that wasn’t how it worked. This new magic from Deimos found Goran’s pain and fanned the flames of it. I couldn’t take his pain away, but I could make him feel every drop of it while I fed. There was no healing to this way of feeding. Deimos was a night hag that could cause the fear he needed to feed on. I couldn’t cause the emotion but as long as I fed on it, the bad memories kept coming and they would keep coming, until I let him go.
I tried to step away, but he wouldn’t let go. He started to pray in a language so ancient that perhaps no one alive spoke it except him. He prayed to the bear goddess and her mischievous cubs; he thanked her for returning to him. He thanked her for the freedom to cry. I saw Mischa striking him again and again for showing any emotion. We hated Mischa but were afraid to die with him, so we could not kill him ourselves.
“If I free you from him, you can kill him,” I said.
“Free me from my bond and I will kill him for both of us.”
“I am the breaker of bonds,” I whispered as I raised his face upward to look at me.
“The Mother of All Darkness called herself that,” Goran said, and now he was afraid, and I fed on that, too.
“I drank her power down and I have become she, because Jean-Claude and Nathaniel, the tigers, and all the others are not here to keep me safe.”
“I will keep you safe,” Goran said.
“How?” I asked.
“Magic,” he said, and like so often when things go mystical I didn’t understand and I didn’t have time to ask, before Goran tried to save me for himself.
47
Goran whispered aprayer and I felt something stir, and once I would have said something old stirred, but some things are ageless. They always were and always will be; so long as one person remembers, they remain. But she hadn’t been waiting for someone to pray to her; she had been busy. She was there in the first cool morning in summer reminding us to eat and store and pack away food, because winter was coming. She was there in autumn reminding us to gather everything we could, to find our warm burrow, our snug house, our cave, our tree, our hole, our shelter. She was there when winter finally came in snow, ice, and cold, warning us to hide and find our safe space. Home is where you are safe, and if you are not safe then it is not home and you should seek it elsewhere, but first you must survive the winter. She was the warning to go deep into the cave dark with our stored food, our stored fat, with our bodies well-fed enough to last through the cold until warmth and new food returned, but there was wisdom in the quiet, healing in rest, dreams in the long sleep, power in the void that can only come from a solitary journey. No one can help you cross the great dark, but if you do, then you come back bearing magic. The kind that creates from the darkness and emptiness of space and time, where there is nothing but rest and quiet and nightmares and dreams that new ideas come, newinventions, new thoughts, new life. The great bear mother brings her cubs out of the winter dark, as we all should bring new things out of the silence and patience that is winter. It is not a time for rushing. Once, nature forced us to rest and think deep thoughts, but we have lost all that with lights that never go out, work that never ceases, stories and songs and art and fun that is never gone from us. No wonder you’re tired, she said, no wonder you are sad, you have lost yourself to constant movement. No animal can eat enough to go without rest, or ease, it is not sustainable.
I felt her touch my face with a huge paw, the claws combing through my hair, and then it was a hand touching my face so gently. It was the memory of my mother tucking me in at night when I believed the world was safe and I would never lose her. It was Jean-Claude cupping my face, staring at me with that soft look as he marveled that we loved each other. It was me letting him hold me so that I could let go of all the bad things and believe for a second that his arms were shelter from all winter storms. It was me staying awake so that I could feel Micah and Nathaniel asleep on either side of me and let the sound of their breathing, the weight of their bodies pressed against me, be my shelter and my safety. It was Richard returned to us, his arm trailing across the bed over Jean-Claude’s and Micah’s bodies to touch mine. It was Dev’s arm coming from the other side of Nathaniel, his hand scooping around me so that Micah snuggled closer to me in his sleep and Dev and Richard finally divided us all up, with Dev’s hand going low and Richard’s going high. It had taken months to finally be able to share the bed peacefully for all of us. It was adding Pierette to the bed and the laughter as we all tried to find a new spot. It was home.
The memories helped her start to rebuild what had been broken, but she needed more than thoughts. She was about reality, food and comfort, shelter, and warmth. Things that could be touched, tasted, smelled, enjoyed in that cozy we-have-enough-to-weather-the-storm way. Goran smiled up at me and it was a good smile, but it wasn’thome. The bear thought it was a good beginning. A spring that would bring cubs and fresh greens to eat, berries, and I was suddenly craving pie. I was craving blackberry pie. I hated blackberries in or out of pie, but Jean-Claude loved blackberry pie. When he’d given me the first two vampire marks I hadn’t realized it, didn’t even know what vampire marks were, but that day at lunch I’d ordered blackberry pie and was halfway through enjoying it when I realized I hated that kind of pie. I’d had no idea why I ordered it. Jean-Claude would explain later that a vampire could taste food through his human servant. Me tasting it that first time by accident on my part had been his first chance to taste it in six hundred years, give or take. I’d hated that he could use me like that, and then two years later, give or take, one of our favorite date nights was going to a restaurant so he could sit across from me while I ate. Part of the fun was picking the menu together and trading things he loved for things I didn’t so he could taste, and I could watch him enjoy the food. It was still one of our favorite date nights if it was just the two of us.
I could taste blackberries on my tongue and then I heard Jean-Claude’s voice:“Ma petite.”He was the first breath of spring when snow still lay on the ground and that day the wind touched your face and it was like a promise that winter would not stay forever.
I had been trapped in winter, freezing to death without any hope of spring. It seemed impossible that a vampire had taught me to open my heart up and believe that there was more than bloody crime scenes, executing vampires, raising the dead, and going home to cuddle my favorite toy penguin. Drink coffee and repeat. That had been it, my life was death, cold, and then I’d met Jean-Claude, and everything started to change.
Crocuses pushing their way up through the snow, that was the visual I had, but the bear goddess gave me one of the early spring ephemerals flowering beneath the trees before the leaves bring their shade. Spring beauties like white-pink stars across the ground, yellow trout lily, violets, pink lady slippers, three-petaled trillium, andthe first green shoots through the leaves, and the tight curl of baby leaves on shrubs. The first beauty and green food of the year.
I thought Nathaniel, but it was Richard who came next. Early spring full of storms to knock the petals off all the flowers, to shake the forest with lightning and thunder until even a bear would find a cave to hide in, or the thickest part of the forest where the bare branches interweave and form shelter for all.
Then darkness fell and all the spring greenery vanished. It was the Mother of All Darkness, trying to bury the world. She didn’t care if spring ever came. The Bear Goddess thought that was shortsighted if you wanted to eat. There must be life to feed upon. The Mother of All Darkness no longer cared about that, she just wanted to destroy it all and she would use me to do it. She liked this new me and offered me a chance to feast on the fear and despair of a world where vampires ruled over the humans and there was no one left to worship spring, or travel the void of winter and bring back new life.
“You are no goddess,” Goran said, “and you never were.”
“Goddess enough to destroy yours.” I realized it was my mouth that her words were coming out of, and that scared me. It gave the darkness power for me to fear it.
“My Goddess was not destroyed, she cannot be killed, what you took from me made me forget that, but the Great Bear Mother was only waiting for me to notice that she was there in every leaf, every berry sweet on the bramble; the night cannot conquer us, only our fear of the dark can do that.” Goran helped me to my feet and the touch of his hand, the sight of his maskless face helped remind me of spring and that the storm shall pass and there is shelter in each other’s strength.
“Here is your fear made flesh.” It was Mischa and he’d left his mask behind, too. He stood tall with his blond hair in disarray, bright blue eyes enraged. Anger was his first and favorite emotion.
“I do not fear you anymore,” Goran said.
“Then I will teach you anew,” Mischa said. I felt the shiver of hispower flow through the hallway, as the blue of his eyes filled up and over his pupils so they glowed like solid blue pools. I started to stare at his chest, avoiding the eyes, but the bear told me not to fear him. The darkness had made him strong, but it was Goran’s fear that had given him strength.
The Mother of All Darkness used my lips to say, “Tame your bear.”
Goran looked at me with terror raw in his eyes; I touched his hand and that awful power that Deimos had put inside me fed on it, but that was not what I wanted to feed on, or do. I wanted to help Goran. We were bears, they do not fear anything. Nothing is bigger, nothing is stronger, not if it walks on the ground and is solid enough to feel claws and teeth.
I saw my face through someone else’s gaze for a second and knew my eyes were black, but it was not the void of creation, it was the darkness at the end of the world when there is nothing left, not even despair.
I smelled the scent of his skin. Wolves running through the forest, the scent of pine, and blood. Richard was beside me, blood running down his face, but more of it on his hand so it was slick with blood. There was more blood on his bare chest, though I couldn’t see a wound. He smiled down at me and said, “Not my blood.”
