The sunlight strobed through the leaves across my bare legs as we drove the last leg of our trip. My shorts were comfortable in the leather seat of the Porsche only because of the towel I sat on, but I had loved all the light the design of the car allowed in as we drove south.
Well, I say we drove, but Thomas hadn't let me behind the wheel of the car once. He had looked at me with that lopsided smile and said, "Sweetness, one of the pleasures I'm going to have on this trip is the opportunity to get the fuck out of Chicago and just drive. I'm sick of orange cones and traffic." And that was that. Of course he drove the 911 as well as he did everything else; effortlessly graceful, all his moves looking like they were in slow motion when he zipped around the American interstate loaded with SUVs, vans and pickups. It was like we were in a shark swimming circles around lumbering whales.
But now the trip was coming to an end, and the tension had built up in him since breakfast..I moved across and behind the stickshift and laid my head down on his lap and began stroking his knee. He did the same thing with my silver hair, and I felt his leg relax a bit. Thomas cleared his throat and said softly, "I'm glad you talked me into this. Regardless of how it turns out, I'm happy we made the attempt."
He looked down at my face intently then and said, "Unless of course he kills me. Then you get all the blame."
The last of the dirt road curved off to the right, but there was a private lane with a locked gate across it and a old sign that said with carved in letters, "Hog Hollow Farm" Thomas parked across the road and walked over to the gate slowly, then stopped a couple of feet from it. He stood there looking intently at the sign for a while then came back to the car. After he got in, he said, "It has some wards. I can't tell what kind or how many, but I got a distinct 'go away' feeling about it. Harry had the same kind of thing on his door, making someone feel unwelcome. If they persisted, then the destructostuff would kick in and likely kill someone that didn't have a talisman that he made for it. I guess we wait and see if the old man comes back."
I pulled another diet coke from the small cooler in the back seat and took a short drink, thinking. Then I relaxed the seat back and curled around the bottle, letting the cool soak through my shirt and bra. I closed my eyes to the sound of his slowly drumming fingers and went to sleep.
The door opened and I woke up to see Thomas unfolding out from behind the wheel smoothly and exiting the car. I sat up and saw him approaching a teenager, maybe fifteen or sixteen, sitting on a running red tractor of some kind, just looking at us from across the road near the gate. Thomas walked up to him and spoke a little and the boy looked at both of us, and after a moment, nodded and said something. Thomas nodded back.
He reentered the car. "The kid comes over every day for some chores and any other work the old man leaves for him. Not much in the area that boys that age can do to pick up extra money, so he's grateful for the scratch." Thomas looked at me steadily. "He's got standing orders to allow people in and offer courtesy, so long as he can keep an eye on them until the old man gets back. You feel like going in?"
I replied that we weren't doing anything productive parking in the road, so when the kid unlocked the gate, we followed the tractor inside.
The house was set back from the road a fair bit, invisible behind a screen of scrub trees and brush. The driveway wasn't paved, but it did have a flattened out gravel top that gave a loud constant crunching sound as we followed the tractor in. Once we got past the overgrowth, I saw that the way opened into a rough parking area good for maybe four or five cars in front of a two story white farmhouse, as plain and as lovely as any we had passed on the way here.
The kid pulled off to the left as we parked on the right and killed the motor on the tractor. Thomas and I got out and as I approached him, I saw that he had the look of the dark irish, with heavy windblown hair and eyebrows with a blunt pug nose and sharp lips. Not great looking, but passably dateable for a high school boy. He gave a wave towards the house and said, "The Old Man told me he doesn't care if visitors pass the time inside, but keep out of the second story and the basement. I have some ice to unpack into the kitchen, but then I'll be out of your hair in the barn and coop."
I looked past the house and wondered how I had missed the barn. It was as plain as the house, but oversized, stretched too far along the ridge with an attached pole barn on the side filled with hay and straw bales. It was definitely a working farm, and I was surprised that he only had the kid to pitch in while he was gone. I asked him about it.
"It's not so bad this time of the year," he shrugged, carefully looking me in the eyes. He had checked me out just like anybody his age, eyes flashing to the tits, and in my case, the long silver hair; but I gave him points for the effort he was putting into doing it just the once. "The worst thing is that he insists on using just the old time equipment. This tractor is the most modern thing on the farm, and it's older than my Dad." He shrugged again and spread his hands in a 'what can I do?' gesture.
Thomas and I exchanged a glance and he said, "At least let me take the ice up for you." The kid grinned and handed him a pair of ice tongs and showed Thomas where the slab had been stored behind the seat. It looked like forty pounds of ice, but of course Thomas set the tongs and slung it over his back effortlessly. We followed the kid through the porch and front door and as the two boys went past me into the kitchen, I stayed in the front room.
Bookshelves covered two walls, with a fireplace positioned oddly close to the open kitchen doorway. Where there weren't shelves, there were paintings and photographs, with that washed out sepia color that makes them look so old. The furniture blended into the wood floor, almost the same rich brown and looking stiff and uncomfortable. If there was a heart to this house, it wasn't here.
I sat in the rocking chair; with no cushions, it was the most honest piece in the room. There had just been a couple of quiet bangs from the kitchen while the ice was placed in the box, then some low talking murmurs. Thomas appeared in the doorway and said, his thumb hooking behind him, "I'm going to help the kid. I was sitting too long on the trip, need to stretch my legs."
"I'll stay here and put together some lunch, if the old man's got anything I can assemble." He came over and kissed me, with that cold fire he always has before he left out the back door. It was good planning that made me feed his demon before we left. We would be able to touch until he next fed from me… then my love would burn him. I cried about it sometimes in Lara's mansion, silently, so even the vampires around me couldn't hear. I knew that they would smell the tears the next day, but that's what morning showers are for. Hot water washing away cold sorrow.
I explored the walls, slowly shuffling around the room looking at the photos. Most were portraits, stereotypical grimm expressions on the men and women in the old pictures. It seemed that they were telling me there was no happiness in the past, that enduring life was the only way to live it. Or maybe they just had bad teeth.
Maybe Thomas and I were born too late. Neither of us smiled easily, there was too much sadness mixed with our love to express joy without a tinge of blues. Around Lara and her entourage I don't think I smiled at all.
The paintings were all landscapes, local scenery I think. It fit. They looked like they had all been painted by the same hand. I had acquired some art taste hanging with the Raiths and could tell that the artist was competent, if not too gifted. They were businesslike efficient affairs, likely done for the practise rather than inspiration.
There was a short hallway leading to the bathroom and a large bedroom and a single two-pane window at the end. I looked out of it to see Thomas and the kid with buckets in their hands walking towards the long, low coop. I sighed. Thomas would never get the chickenshit out of his clothes.
The hall only had three photos on the walls, a stark contrast to the front room. and the subjects were in color and obviously more modern than those in the front room. In one, a girl of about 11 was sitting at a dead campfire working on an old fishing pole, frozen in the act of stringing the line forever, a look of calm concentration on her thin, shadowed face.
The other two were of a boy; in one he stood posing with a smiling man in front of a theater, in the other he was alone and older, a tall lanky young man with his hands shoved deep into his pockets plainly not knowing that he was being photographed in front of this house. It did confirm that we were in the right place… it was Dresden.
I fixed lunch from cold beef and sliced tomatoes found ripening on the kitchen window shelf with slices from a baked loaf in the old tin breadbox. There was fresh raw milk and I poured myself a glass while waiting. The kitchen was as utilitarian as I expected, not much warmth here either. Very little of the bric-a-brac you see in most country kitchens, no framed cross stitch 'God bless our home.' or oversized spoons on the walls.
My man and his new friend came in soon after, and ate well. Thomas was smiling easily as he described the morning chores. The kid was mostly silent, just joining in when Thomas used him to clarify something. I just smiled back at Thomas and his ruined driving clothes. If he was having fun, I didn't want to interfere
They finished eating and went back outside to take care of the rest of the kid's list of chores. I went to the spare bedroom and took another nap. It was my vacation too.
It was going dark when I woke. I looked again through the hallway window and saw a flickering light with two dark figures sitting close to it. I went back to the porsche and retrieved my jacket from the back seat and walked out back towards the campfire.
I found a place next to Thomas and leaned against him. He and the kid were slowly heating up marshmallows at the campfire with sticks and Thomas handed me one. I pulled the gooey mess off of the sharp end and passed it from hand to hand, blowing on my fingers to cool them down
Thomas talked occasionally about something or other he'd done that day. Almost everything had been new to him; he's not a country boy, having been raised in the lap of luxury by the savage, treacherous animals of the White Court.
The kid pulled another marshmallow off his stick and popped it in his mouth, then laid the stick idly on his shoulder. Despite the light from the campfire, that side of it seemed in shadow, darkness flickering more often than illumination.
I think I noticed about the same time as Thomas. The kids' body thickened slowly, the stick in his hand growing out until the butt end was resting on the ground close to the fire, the upper section of the dark, heavy wood still comfortably on his shoulder. An old man's voice, gravelly but still infused with power came from the center of the shadow. "What are you really doing here, Raith?"
Thomas was stiff as stone. A long time passed while he breathed. The shadow was patient.
"Dresden let it slip." Thomas said slowly. "He knows how to keep a secret, but I lived with him for three years and he got used to talking out some things. He knows I can keep his confidence; he just forgot for a moment that this secret should belong to me too."
Ebenezer McCoy stood, leaned on the staff and sighed deeply. "That secret belongs to Dresden and I. Go back home and forget it. If the rest of your family finds out, I'll come for you, boy. Believe it."
Thomas also got to his feet slowly. He spread his hands out, palm up, not pleading but asking for some understanding. "I'm a Raith, and a monster. It's not what I chose, it was inflicted on me, a disease, a pestilence that keeps me from the woman I love. The family I've known is as cold as ice save for a sister that Dresden saved from our curse. Is it any wonder that I'm here? To look for more?"
McCoy shook his head. "I told that boy that you learn the damnedest things at the worst possible times. Understanding that you'll get nothing from me, just what the hell do you want?"
"Harry Dresden is my brother. I love him. He's the only man I do love, ever since my father first tried to kill me. He knows it, and knows that I'll back him up without hesitation to the bitter end. To any end.
Then I find out that he's not the last person of my blood. Not the last person that I may be able to… be myself with, not raise my defences because a sister might see some weakness and torture me with it. Or find out just how much Justine means to me and kill her for it."
Thomas sat again and put an arm around me. "I'm a monster, all right. But I'm not all monster. Harry's seen and believed that. I hope you can too."
Thomas looked dead into McCoy's eyes, almost daring a soulgaze out of the man. "If there's any chance at all to have a grandfather I don't have to hate, I'll take that bet."
The old man moved his gaze over the both of us. It wasn't warm, but it didn't set us on fire either. There's a thin line in there somewhere.
He turned towards the house and moved the staff in a following motion. "Put your things in the spare room. There's some work clothes that'll fit you in the wardrobe. We get up early around here, chores won't wait."
Thomas rose and pulled me with him. "Yes sir." There was a world of delayed questions in those two words, guarded hope and maybe.. something special.
So long as I didn't have to slop the hogs too.