Free Fall. Laura Anne Gilman
casualness, Bonnie was bone-deep logical.
“Yeah.” Wren drank her coffee, and watched Bonnie mull over what little she knew, fitting the pieces together with recent history.
“You’re serious about this?”
“I’m serious.”
“Why now? I mean, no offense, Valere, but you were offered leadership shit back when this all started, back when it was just a bunch of random vigilantes and their pit bulls.” It had been mastiffs, actually, the ones Wren had seen, but she didn’t correct her. “And it’s not like you didn’t know how serious it was, that they wanted us all dead and gone and never-existed.”
“I couldn’t do it then,” was all Wren said, but after a minute, Bonnie seemed to get it. You could know something in your head, and in your heart, but that wasn’t the same as knowing it in your gut. Down where you can actually do something about it.
“So…how? You alone? Or you knock on my door and say ‘It’s time to do this’ and I’m supposed to fall in lockstep behind you? All of us are? On your say-so, you whose partner is part of the problem?”
“No.” Wren knew that Bonnie was just being devil’s advocate, and didn’t take offense. “Exactly the opposite.” She was still trying to work it out herself, so she was choosing her words carefully, trying not to get tangled up in her own thoughts. What had been so white-hot and clear walking out of the theater cooled slightly under rational considerations, but Wren knew she had been right, in that heat.
“We went about it the wrong way, before. We tried to organize, to become an army. A solid force of opposition.”
“And that’s not going to work?” Bonnie asked. “Then what the hell is?”
“You study any history when you were in school?” Wren asked.
“American history, I mean.”
“A little, I guess,” Bonnie said dismissively. “I wasn’t much for classes back then.”
“Me, neither. But I liked the textbooks. And some stuff stuck, even when I didn’t know it was sticking.” Never any of Neezer’s classes—she’d had no head for biology, and Neezer kept her away from any of the expensive microscopes, since her control back then had been for shit. But history had intrigued her.
“Back in the American Revolution, the British sent their troops in. They marched like they’d marched in Europe—straight lines and squared off formations, and bright red uniforms. Soldiers.”
“Yeah, so?” Bonnie wasn’t following, for once.
“The rebels were frontiersmen,” another, deeper voice said.
Both women jumped: they hadn’t heard P.B. come in. Wren had been expecting the usual tap on the window, forgetting that he now had his own key, now that he was staying with her on an official basis.
“They wore brown, to blend in with the forest and the crops. They shot from behind trees, lying behind rocks. They were snipers, not soldiers.” The demon paused, sounding as though he were lacking only elbow patches and a classroom to go into academia. “A lot of that’s historical legend, actually. But there’s truth in it, too. You thinking of turning us into snipers from behind mailboxes and fire hydrants, Valere?” Then he saw the bruises on her face and his oddly flattened, bearlike face went from amused to furious. “What happened?”
She had almost forgotten how bad she looked, even with the blood washed off. “Welcome home. I got jumped. Down in the theater district. Someone used the job as a chance to get me alone.”
“He dead?”
“All three of them are.”
“Good.” The thing about demon: they didn’t much give a damn about violence. Wren didn’t know much about the breed, and she knew more than almost anyone, from what P.B. had told her over the years. But the one thing everyone knew: the reason they made such good couriers for top-priority or dangerous packages was that a demon would kill you if he felt threatened, and feel no guilt about it. They didn’t have guilt.
“Silence?” Danny had come in behind P.B., taking the time to remove his coat and hang it up in the closet. He was dressed in his usual jeans and cowboy boots, with a baseball cap over his curly brown hair to cover the small, curved horns peeking out.
“From what they said, I suspect so. The plan was to take me out, and then come get P.B.”
Bonnie hadn’t known about that. Wren had almost forgotten, herself.
“And you killed them first. I never get to have any fun.” P.B. was being jovial, but his jawline gave it away, if you knew what to look for. Black gum showed against his white fur, like a dog preparing to snarl, emphasizing the polar bear–like appearance that gave him his nickname. He might be causal about killing, but he knew—they all knew—that Wren wasn’t. So there was more to the story that she wasn’t telling.
She twisted her mouth into an almost-smile, wincing when it hurt her face. “You’re still pissed off because I stopped you from interfering in an attack, last winter.”
“I remember.” He was looking at her, and she held his red gaze steady, until he was the one who looked away. But he didn’t seem displeased by what he saw, despite that. In fact, she almost thought that he looked…smug? “You said to hold off, because the Patrol was coming. You were right. Bart agreed, and it all came out right. Patrol power. Yay.” They had argued about that, at the time, and afterward. Clearly he still thought he had been right.
“The Patrols are still going on,” Bonnie said, starting to recover and regroup. “Not organized as such, but if there’s a problem—” a nice way of saying “if someone was attacked” “—they have help nearby, ready to come. Did you call?”
Wren nodded, remembering the voice that had pinged her when she called out. They hadn’t asked “what” but only “where.” A willingness to help. But it was after the fact. Too late. They were moving too slow, too late. They needed to move fast, like lightning. Like current.
“Fatae and lonejacks, yeah. Council has totally skedaddled.” Danny was dismissive the way only a Fatae could be about the Council. Neither group had much use for the other, even at the height of the Truce.
“It’s something,” Bonnie said, defensive. She was a member of the Patrol: all of the PUPI were, by order of their bosses. On-the-job training, if they were at the scene of a crime before anyone else. Before the evidence could be trampled by clueless Cosa who weren’t used to thinking beyond “fight or flight.”
“No more Council. No more lonejack.” Wren wasn’t looking at anyone when she said it, staring at something only she could see, off somewhere else. “No more Fatae.”
“Excuse me?” Danny looked at her, then looked at Bonnie, as though asking if the bruises on her face and arms were matched by a crack in the Retrievers’ skull. Bonnie shrugged, as at a loss as the faun.
“No more Cosa?” P.B. asked softly. She looked at him, and saw by his face that he understood. He knew the coldness in her core, the sludge in her veins. And he approved.
“More Cosa,” she corrected him. “Real Cosa. One family. Get us thinking like one beast, not three. Or we might as well just roll over and die now.” She finished her coffee, and stared down into the mug. It was easier to say than she thought it might be. “You were right, P.B., and I was wrong. We’ve been treating this—all of this, from the very beginning—like a personal attack, at worst like a hate crime. A private dispute that could be mediated, discussed. Like something that we could deal with like reasonable beings, patrol and protect and wait it out, and get away without getting our hands too dirty.”
“We can’t?” Bonnie was listening intently now, as was Danny. Wren turned to P.B., her eyes asking him a wordless question.
“You can’t deal with someone who doesn’t believe you have the right to