Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's Greatest Hits

Except that it had, everything had changed, and Robin didn’t want anyone to know it. She shut down the cameras again, and removed fuses from half the monitors as well, blinding them.

“Lieutenant,” Rick said to her as she removed his pints from the incubator and prepared his supper. “Look at yourself. This isn’t like you. He has enchanted you.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she murmured, sliding his beakers of blood through the slot in the window.

Rick didn’t look at them; instead, he pressed himself to the window, palms flat against the plastic, imploring. “He’s using you. He doesn’t care about you, he’s only manipulating you.”

She looked at him. Not his eyes, but his cheekbones, his ear, the dark fringe of hair. Anything but his eyes. “Just like you would do, if I opened your door and let you seduce me?”

Which wasn’t fair, because Rick had never tried to seduce her, never tried to take advantage of her. Not that she’d ever given him the opportunity. But he’d always spoken so kindly to her. He’d spoken to her. Until now, she had never thought of Rick as anything but the elegant man who was supposed to be a vampire, locked in a prison cell.

“I’d never hurt you, Robin.”

Now when he looked at her, she flushed. Quickly, she turned toward the aquatics lab.

“Robin, stop,” he implored. “Don’t go in there. Don’t let him use you like this.”

She gripped the doorway so hard her fingers trembled. “I’ve never felt like this before,” she murmured.

She hadn’t meant for him to hear, but he was a vampire, with a vampire’s hearing. He replied, “It’s not real. Let it go.”

“It feels … I can’t,” she said. Because she had never felt like this before, she had never felt so good, so much before, it was like a drug that filled her up and pushed every other worry aside. A part of her knew Rick was right, that if this feeling was a drug, then she’d become an addict in a day and she should stop this.

The rest of her didn’t care.

When she reached the aquatics lab, the selkie hung on to the door of the cage, his dark eyes shining in anticipation. As soon as she’d given Marina her supper, Robin pressed the button for the lock.

Friday night.

Colonel Ottoman left a message on the answering machine saying he’d be back Saturday. So this was it, for her and the selkie.

She lay in his arms, on the rock in the aquarium. He played with her loose, damp hair, running his fingers through it. She held his other arm around her middle. He was strong, silent. He wrapped her up with himself when they were together.

She couldn’t let it end.

“We’ll go away, you and I.”

He looked away and laughed silently. He kissed her hand and shook his head.

It was a game to him. She couldn’t be sure what he thought; he never spoke. She didn’t know if he couldn’t or wouldn’t.

“Why not?”

He traced his finger along her jaw, down her neck. Then he nestled against the rock and closed his eyes.

She couldn’t hope to understand him. Colonel Ottoman was right, they weren’t even human.

His sealskin lay nearby, on the rock where he had discarded it. She grabbed it, jumped into the water, and swam to the door. He splashed, diving after her, but she climbed onto the catwalk and slammed the door shut before he reached her.

She clutched the skin to her breast. Glaring at her, he gripped the bars of the locked door.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t do this.”

He pressed his lips into a line and rattled the door.

She put the skin out of reach of the cage and pulled on the skirt and shirt of her uniform. All expression of playfulness, of seduction, had left the selkie. His jaw was tight, his brow furrowed.

Skin in hand, she ran to the main lab where she found a knapsack stashed under her desk. She needed clothes for him, maybe an extra lab coat …

“You know how all the selkie stories end, don’t you?” Rick leaned on his window.

“They’re just stories.”

“ I’m just a story.”

She smirked. “You’re no Dracula.”

“You’ve never seen me outside this cage, my dear.”

She stopped and looked at him. His eyes were blue.

“Robin, think carefully about what you’re planning. He has enchanted you.” The vampire’s worried expression seemed almost fatherly.

“I—I can’t give him up.”

“Outside this room, you won’t have a choice. You will throw away your career, your life, for that?”

The official acronym for it was AWOL, not to mention stealing from a government installation. Her career, as far as Robin could tell, amounted to studying people in cages. People who defied study, no matter how many cameras and electrodes were trained on them. The selkie had shown her something that couldn’t be put in a cage, a range of emotions that escaped examination. He’d shown her passion, something she’d been missing without even knowing it. She wanted to take him away from the sterility of a filtered aquarium and a steel cage. She wanted to make love with him on a beach, with the sound of ocean waves behind them.

“I have this.” She held up the knapsack in which she had stuffed the sealskin and left the lab to stash it in her car and find some clothes.

For all its wonder and secrecy, the center was poorly funded—it didn’t produce the results and military applications that the nearby bionic and psychic research branches did—and inadequately supervised.

She knew the building and video surveillance patterns well enough to be able to smuggle the selkie to her car without leaving evidence. Not that it mattered when Rick would no doubt give Colonel Ottoman a full report. She waited until close to the end of the shift to retrieve the selkie. He came with her docilely, dressed in the spare sweats she gave him.

Marina sat on her rock and sang, her light voice echoing in the lab.

The selkie lingered for a moment until Marina waved good-bye. Robin pulled him to the next room.

“Sir,” Rick, hands pressed to the plastic of his cell, called. The selkie met Rick’s gaze unflinching. “I know your kind. Treat her gently.”

The selkie didn’t react. He seemed to study the vampire, expressionless, and only looked away when Robin squeezed his hand.

Robin lingered a moment. “Good-bye,” she said.

“Take care, Robin.”

Impulse guided her again, and she went to the control box for the lock to Rick’s cell. She pushed the button; the lock clicked open with the sound of a buzzer. The door opened a crack. Rick stared at the path to freedom for a long moment.

Not lingering to see what the vampire would do next, she gripped the selkie’s hand and ran.

She smuggled him in the backseat of her car, making him crouch on the floorboard. Routine did her service now; the shift had ended, and the guard at the gate waved her through.

They’d be looking for her in a matter of hours. She had to get rid of the car, find a place to hide out, wait for the bank to open so she could empty her account. She could leave tracks now, then disappear.

Desperation made her a criminal. She ditched her car, swapping it for a sedan she hotwired. She kept the sealskin under her feet, where the selkie couldn’t get to it.

Two more stolen cars, a thousand miles of highway, and some fast-talking at the border, flashing her military ID and spouting some official nonsense, found her in Mexico, cruising down the coast of Baja.

She knew the stories. She should have driven inland.

They stayed in a fishing village. Robin’s savings would hold out for a couple of months at least, so she rented a shack and they lived as hermits, making love, watching the sea.