Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

Anne merely continued gazing out the window. Grif joined her, staring until she was compelled to turn his way. Up close, the eyes roiled like an azure cyclone. “Why’d you interfere?”

Now she sneered. “Because I know what you’re trying to forget. You’re not human, Shaw.”

“So why help me, Anne? If I’m gone, Kit dies, and you’re back in the Everlast. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Glancing down at a rip in her silk blouse, Anne stroked the soft material with her fingertips, and frowned. “Katherine Craig will die anyway. But I can’t return to the Everlast unless you, the man who bound her to that fate, escort her there. She’s your Take, Shaw. And you’re mine.”

And he couldn’t Take Kit if he’d already been shipped back to incubation to heal from the trauma of yet another death. So Anne needed him alive and near Kit, but they couldn’t order him to harm her… and couldn’t stop him from protecting her, either.

“Of course… now you owe me.”

Grif tilted his head. “Which means?”

“If you were to speed things along, I wouldn’t forget the deed.” She tried on a smile, but it looked like a puzzle on her face, and Grif didn’t smile back.

“You mean kill her myself so you’ll play nice with me in the Everlast.”

“You’ve already killed her,” Anne said coolly. “You need merely to put her out of her misery.”

Grif turned away, but Anne was there, too, and Grif hadn’t even seen her move. “Don’t walk away from me.”

So he leaned against the thick bulletproof glass. “Were you trying to scare her at Chambers’s house?”

Anne smiled, mouth unnaturally wide. The flesh she was so regrettably trapped in wasn’t a perfect fit. She wore it like a sweater that was too tight and so her expressions bulged in places they shouldn’t. “To death.”

Grif began shaking his head. “No, I-”

“Kill her!” Anne yelled, and she lashed out with her fist, not at Grif-no, she couldn’t do that-but at the barrier that’d protected Tony for the last fifty years. The glass wall fell in a shower of sharp drops, and Anne jerked away, as surprised as Grif by the outburst. More surprised at the blood welling in her palm. She jerked back at Grif’s touch, but when he held firm, she allowed him to take hold of her arm.

“You catch bullets with your teeth,” he said quietly, “but you bleed when you break glass?”

“It’s this flesh!” she cried, the sound of mourning doves in her voice. “It’s a handicap! I am dying in here, can’t you see?”

Welcome to the club, Grif thought, releasing her arm. “That’s the human condition, Anne. As long as you’re alive, you’re dying.”

Shooting him a squalling, blue-stained glare, Anne pinched together her wounds. The skin melded where it touched, and she massaged it like clay until it was once again smooth and the blood was wiped away. However, Tony’s fishbowl was a mess. He’s gonna be pissed, Grif thought, huffing as he looked around.

“Nice job…” he began, but when he looked back at Anne’s face, a lone blue tear slid over her cheek, trailing wet stardust.

“This is not my nature,” she said, her powerful voice a mere whimper, a child’s despair carved on her smooth, perfect features. “This is not my way.”

Grif had never even heard of a Pure in need of comfort, much less seen one. But he understood.

“Come here,” he said, holding out his arm. When she only looked at it, he moved to her side, and drew her close. Anne stiffened, then suddenly slumped. It was the first human empathy she’d ever known. Grif guided her to the half-moon sofa, settled her back with a chenille throw across her lap, and a pillow tucked behind her neck. Telling her to wait, he raided Tony’s beloved wine rack, choosing the bottle the old guy had pointed out as his favorite, one he’d been saving for decades.

“It’s for a good cause,” Grif muttered apologetically, pulling the cork from the bottle. Only the best for a Pure. Yet he hesitated in handing the glass to her. “You said you couldn’t bear all five senses at the same time. Your eyesight is back…”

“My touch is gone,” she said, running her fingertips along the chenille, and then back up to the rip in her silk. Fingering the material, she looked genuinely sad. “I never knew a material thing could be as soft and cool as the wind.”

Blinking, she lifted her gaze to Grif’s, and nodded as she accepted the glass. Holding it on her lap, she said, “My sense of touch was acute when I arrived, but then it just went blank. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t feel things anymore, it was like they didn’t even exist. That’s when the colors flooded in.”

Anne leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Now I know why a rainbow is a gift. Oh, and the glorious dimension of everyday objects. I spent this entire morning studying a single rose.” She raised her head, and the blue depths of her eyes were wide with the memory of her first rose. “Did you know that life thrums through the veins of every petal? It’s so alive that humans try to wear its secrets.”

Grif lowered himself to the lounger across from Anne, and shook his head. He hadn’t known any of that.

“But the touch is gone. Textures mean nothing to me anymore.” She stared wonderingly at her palm, then said as if to herself, “And somehow… they mean more than before.”

“Because you can’t unknow your life’s experiences,” Grif said. This was his area of expertise.

She looked at Grif. “I must go home.”

Sighing, Grif leaned back in his lounger, then held up his glass. Staring at Anne through the dark cranberry stain, he said, “Do you know why people drink this? I mean, wine instead of beer or scotch or vodka? Or anything else?”

“I do not know why one would drink at all.”

Nodding once, he continued, “It’s because wine tells a story. If a bottle is properly stored, and this one was, you will taste a juice that is changed only in age. The rest remains the same as when it was bottled. All the choices the winemaker made in picking the grapes, and blending them, and storing them are in the bottle. You taste the fruit, but you also taste the wood of the cask as if it were a living thing-and, of course, it once was. You taste the storm that hit right before the grapes were picked, and whether it cooled them too quickly. You taste the earth… the way it was fed, when it was watered, and if it was healthy.

“All these things come together in a simple bottle, and when you drink it, a climate and a man you never knew, and a bit of mud you never actually stepped foot on, reveal themselves to you. It’s the personal history of the world recorded in a bottle. This one is the record of the year Tony was born.” He jerked his head. “Taste it.”

It was fascinating, watching a Pure experience sensation for the first time. She tried to hide the foreign emotions, but there was no controlling her surprise when the first drop of wine hit her lips. As her eyes fluttered shut and her throat hummed, Grif could almost follow its path as it rolled down her tongue, igniting the sweet and sour taste buds, before sliding into her throat, disappearing in a mysterious heat of knowledge in her belly’s core.

“Now that’s a story,” he said, lifting his glass in a toast when her eyes finally refocused.

For a moment, Anne didn’t move at all. Then, just as he spied more blue tears filling her eyes with liquid stardust, she opened her mouth and screamed. A raven’s rabid screech ripped the air, accompanied by bared teeth and bulging eyes. The cry blew through the room, elongating until there should have been a hesitation. Yet the moment when any man would have to draw breath passed, and the weight behind the spine-scraping pitch only increased. Lifting, the tonsil-ripping howl reached another crescendo, then snapped like a band into a numbing silence. Feeling a pressure grow above him, Grif looked up.