Close Enough to Touch Read online

  "You should go rest your leg," Leland said. "It can't be good for it, standing as long as you have."

  Byron hesitated, then lifted one shoulder in a weak shrug. "I'm fine. I'd rather keep you company."

  Leland considered his reasonable options—urging Byron to go; pointing out the nearby chair; calling Oberon back to make Byron rest—and discarded all of them in favor of something completely foolish. "You could rest here with me."

  "What?" Byron gawked a moment, then his face flushed red the way it used to when they'd first met. "Are you serious?"

  "Yes. Why not? We both need rest, this bed is big enough, and… I'd rather you keep me company too, and lying here is more comfortable than standing or sitting."

  Byron stared a moment longer, then bobbed an awkward nod and moved around the bed so his injured leg would be on the outside. After some shuffling and shifting, they finally settled together on the bed, pressed close and likely to overheat, but Leland didn't care.

  His stupid, traitorous, never-learned-its-lesson-heart liked having Byron so close. Relaxing completely, closing his eyes, Leland fell asleep to the sound of Byron's breathing and the steady beat of his heart.

  *~*~*

  When he woke again, Byron was gone, but Leland felt a thousand times better—not just since his showdown with the Prince, but since ever.

  He went to scratch his arm, and saw that instead of gauze and weird holes, he now had proper ports in his arm. Two small holes, filled with something that looked like someone had fit them with custom molded metal but was really some sort of artificial skin with conductors and other things. Something similar was used all over the medical world to administer treatments for various illnesses and disabilities.

  How strange to no longer be 100% biological. Not that it really mattered in the end. Plenty of people, with artificial limbs or implants to help with organs and such, weren't entirely biological either. It had never made them less human.

  Still, it was always different when it was no longer something that happened to other people.

  He pushed down the railing on his bed and swung his legs over the edge. When that small amount of movement provoked no negative results, he slowly stood and stretched thoroughly.

  Incredible. He felt more himself than he had since coming into his powers. After everything he'd done, he should be dead, but here he was better than he'd ever been.

  Tears stung his eyes, and Leland let them fall. He wiped them away as he headed for the door, and then, after a bit of wandering trying to find them, down a flight of stairs and into a bright, warm hallway. Stained-glass in the front door painted the floor with brilliant colors, and for a moment he just stood there in the sun-lit warmth and soaked it all in.

  Eventually, though, footsteps drew his attention, and Leland turned to greet whoever it was—and found himself facing not one but two strangers. They were perfectly matched in every way, from the way their springy, gold-brown curls were draw back into topknots; the handsome, softly chiseled faces with high cheekbones and broad, flat noses; and eyes of such a rich, delicate blue they almost looked violet. Their skin was a warm brown with yellow undertones. One was wearing a long-sleeved gray t-shirt, the other a navy blue t-shirt. Both wore jeans that looked almost painted on, and expensive-looking, slate-gray boots.

  "Let me guess," Leland said. "You're the ones everybody calls 'the twins.'"

  They laughed, then Navy swept him a ridiculous bow and said, "My name is Cabaletta. This is my brother Cavatina."

  "Pretty names. Italian?"

  "After a fashion," said the one in the gray shirt, Cavatina. "Our mother was a huge opera fan. Like, obsessed. There's nothing about opera that she didn't know. We're named after Opera terms, specifically, the parts of a two-part aria, which is an emotive solo piece written for a main character."

  Cabaletta rolled his eyes, but a grin tugged at his mouth. "He's the nerdy one, in case you couldn't tell."

  "He's the loud, annoying one," Cavatina added. "You can call us Tina and Cab. We are also…" they swept another bow, elegant and beautiful, and said in perfect unison, "Dual Scream."

  Leland had seen them mentioned on the news any number of times. Their specialty was malicious destruction of property. They were 8-level banshees, which put them in the same general category as the Prince, but where his voice manipulated and controlled, their voices tormented and destroyed.

  Banshees could produce sounds that would shatter glass, fracture cement or even stone, and induce strong emotions in humans, everything from a sudden onslaught of grief to a blinding rage. It depended on the level of the banshee and their skill.

  These two had the perfect storm of both. They were their own expensive add-on package to superhero insurance.

  "An honor to meet you. I suppose you already know who I am," Leland said with a small laugh. "I worked so hard to make sure nobody knew who I was, and now it's common knowledge."

  "Happens to all of us eventually," Tina said with a sigh. "Try being world-famous opera singers and also banshees. No real way to keep that a secret for long. Doubt we'll ever perform on stage again." His smile was sad, but then he shrugged, and it was gone. "Fancy a bite of lunch, my good Minder?"

  "Food sounds good." He fell into step as they resumed walking. "I thought you two were injured."

  "Eh, suffered worse," Cab said. He lifted up his t-shirt to display various patches of bandages. "Lots of stitches; my organs apparently wanted to be free of their fleshly vessel."

  "Please excuse my dumbass brother." Tina heaved an aggrieved sigh and gave Cab a shove across the kitchen so hard he practically ran into the fridge. "I was promised alfredo, I want alfredo."

  "Your sainted Italian grandmothers weep," Cab replied, even as he dug through the fridge and came out with what were presumably the fixings for fettuccine alfredo.

  "Blah, blah, blah." Tina vanished into what was probably a pantry and came out with a bottle of wine, a box of pasta, and a few other things.

  "Impressive amount of food for a last minute safehouse," Leland said, smiling. "Byron really does think of everything."

  The twins laughed, and Cab said, "Man, the others weren't even exaggerating: You really do have it bad for our resident faerie king. Alien Overlord. Faerie Overlord?" He opened the wine and poured three glasses. "That's—"

  "Don't say adorable," Leland cut in with a groan. "I've about had it with that word."

  Snickering, the twins let him off with winks and smirks, and then Cab set to work cooking while Tina caught Leland up on all the latest news.

  Leland took a bite of pasta that almost left him moaning. "You can really cook."

  Cab grinned. "One of us had to be good for something."

  "Don't let him fool you. He's only a good cook because mother got tired of his boredom leading to wanton destruction of her living room and garden. She made him learn to cook on pain of the dread Or Else. Then he worked in restaurants for a few years."

  "You weren't as much of a brat, I take it?"

  Cab snickered. "He was just sneakier about it. I got kitchen duty; mother put Tina to work helping with her sewing and knitting side business. If you need clothes adjusted or a fuzzy blanket for your couch, Tina is here for you."

  Tina dipped his head in a bow, not bothering to stop wolfing down pasta as he did so.

  "Where's everyone else?" Leland asked.

  "Sleeping or running errands," Tina replied before taking a huge bite of garlic bread. "Byron is trying to come up with a new plan, but the sad truth is that no matter what we try, we're probably walking into an ambush. Not to mention he doesn't want most of us involved until we're 'one hundred percent fit' again. He's worse than the nanny we had growing up, I swear."

  Leland gave him a look. "You know that's what he was, right? Before his ship crashed?"

  "Oh, right, I think Oberon did say something like that. Ha! The Nanny from Outerspace. Sounds like an awesome B-flick, doesn't it?"

  "I am many things," Byron said from the
doorway into the hall, one hand braced on a hip, head tilted as he gave them a look, "but a B-flick isn't one of them. I'm A-list in everything I do."

  Oberon laughed from behind him and stepped further into the room. Currently they were a short, chubby redhead with freckles, blue eyes, and wearing women's skinny jeans and a man's oxford. "Oh, no, your little romance here is so saccharine that it's not higher than C-list, darling."

  "Can we please stop making fun of me now?" Byron said. "Neither Leland nor I is enjoying the spotlight or the laughter."

  "Of course, of course," Oberon said lightly as they took the empty seat next to Leland.

  He finished his lunch and looked at them. "So do you look that way now just because or were you up to something?"

  "Up to something." Oberon stole his remaining piece of garlic bread and nibbled at it. "I was doing recon. It's looking increasingly like our best chance at getting Ariadne—and maybe the children, but don't hold your breath—is while they're en route to the new facility."

  Leland winced. That sort of operation almost never went well; a litany of news reports would tell you that.

  "They're moving her in three days," Byron said. "Dixie and I were able to figure out which convoys are the decoys and which is the real deal. That's the good news. The bad is that everyone at this table is what we have to work with. Dixie and the others are still too injured to risk. I don't even want you two involved, but I'm tired of arguing with you."

  Tina and Cab smiled, all teeth and menace. "It's not like we have to do much more than stand there and sing to fuck everything up. We'll be careful, Alien Overlord."

  Byron groaned. "Oberon, I hate you."

  Oberon shared the twins' smile. "Tell them the plan."

  "There's not much to tell. Standard smash and grab, for the most part. The convoy we're after heads out hours before the others, an innocuous rig that on the surface is transporting office equipment and other such miscellany—outdated stuff, according to the manifest, that's set for reselling, recycling, or dumping. In reality, it'll be transporting Ariadne and several other 'specimens.' I don't have any of my fancy stuff set up yet, so you'll have to deal with the old-school version." Byron pulled a folded rectangle of paper from a leather portfolio he'd set on the table. Unfolding it, he spread it across the table as the twins rapidly cleared away the dishes.

  "This is Balder Road. It's an old rail bridge converted for use by traffic, cuts right over Balder Kill, an old gorge carved out by the large stream at the bottom. The road isn't used a whole lot anymore, not since they put in the new highway. Mostly it's favored by trucks and the odd local who prefers the long way to highway traffic."

  Leland frowned, looking over the drawings, the jotted notes. "So we're going to trap them on the bridge?"

  "Yes, and lower everyone down to the stream below, then head downstream to where it joins up with the river. Much like the original plan, by river is our only chance of getting away. If we go back the way the convoy came, we'll just get boxed in by G.O.D. and local law enforcement. If we go the other way, we'll eventually run into the same problem. Not to mention going by road will lead us to areas that risk severe civilian casualties."

  "So how far down the river do we go?" Leland asked. "We can't just stay on it forever."

  "Eventually it'll take us into the mountains, the way we're going. From there, it's easy enough to get lost. This house isn't the only one I've got squirreled away in mountain hollows that even various gods have forgotten about. You've all got new phones; I'll send the details of the plan to them."

  Before Leland could mention he did not, in fact, have a new phone, Oberon set one on the table and slid it over to him.

  It unlocked as it scanned his face and retinas, and Leland saw that someone—likely Dixie—had set everything up for him, even pulled preferences and pictures and such from his previous phone. Sometimes it was downright terrifying having a living computer on the team.

  He tucked it away and rose. "I'm going to get some fresh air, if that's okay."

  "Don't wander into the woods," Byron said. "Otherwise you're fine."

  Leland nodded, thanked Cab again for lunch, and headed off, eager to find some quiet so he could process everything and prepare for what came next.

  *~*~*

  The morning was chilly enough to see his breath as he stood looking out over Balder Kill and the converted rail bridge where everything was about to happen.

  According to Dixie, who'd mustered up enough to coordinate everything from the house, and with Byron's help had gotten all their equipment up and running, there were roughly a dozen vehicles secretly playing escort. Mostly SUVs, but the rest was a mix of various types of sports cars and one food delivery van full of G.O.D. S.W.AT.

  There were also likely some nasty surprises waiting, but there was nothing they could do about that except be prepared for the worst and hope that was enough.

  "Base to Prism, comm check, over," Dixie's voice said levelly in his ear.

  One by one, everybody checked in.

  "Go for blue."

  "Go for red."

  "Yellow has you five by five."

  "Orange reads you Lima Charlie."

  Leland finished, "Go for green."

  "Comm check compl—"

  "Now, darling," an unfamiliar voice broke in. "You didn't let me have my turn." The words were said in a smooth tenor, with some sort of British accent that Leland couldn't identify better than that.

  Dixie's voice cut in cold as ice, sending a shiver down Leland's spine. "Who the fuck is this?"

  "We've a mutual friend who called me in as backup. I always enjoy being invited to an opportunity to kill Dogs."

  "Is this a mutual friend who is frequently hard to see?" Dixie asked.

  "That's the one. Is pink taken? No? Then pink has you Lima Charlie, base. I'm playing raptor in the northeast corner. I can see all of you, though purple might want to move back a couple of yards each. Pink over."

  Cab and Tina sighed audibly in the comms but offered no further argument.

  "There's a love."

  Leland bit his cheek to keep himself from asking more about the man. 'Playing raptor' meant he was sniping, and there weren't many people in the world who were able and willing to snipe G.O.D. targets. Only one person, in fact. Questions would have to wait, though, even if none of them exactly liked having some wild card show up out of nowhere. But if he was a friend of Matt's, he must be an asset. That would have to suffice for the moment.

  "Yellow to Prism, we have visual on the forward escort. Five vehicles, over." Byron rattled off the specs in rapid-fire lingo that Leland was barely able to parse. But disabling the forward escort wasn't his problem.

  "Base to Prism. Their comms have been re-routed. Begin stage one. Red, blue, over."

  "Go for blue and red. We're moving in."

  Leland watched from the tree he was hiding in as Cab stepped out of cover, poised on one of the boulders that framed the far end of the bridge. The five cars all slammed their brakes, people slipping out with guns, nearly all of them shouting into their comms.

  He pulled his ear protectors on right as Cab began to sing. In any other setting, people would have paid hundreds for the pleasure of listening to that voice. Right then, it only caused the guns to fall to pieces, reduced the comms to splinters, left the cars on only their struts, wheels falling and rolling away.

  Three of the figures charged the boulders, raising the guns they should've already had up. Then a cracking boom filled the air, and one of the soldiers went down with a hole in his forehead and a far larger one at the back of his head. The remaining soldiers hit the ground at the realization they had to contend with a sniper on top of everything else.

  "Green, you're up."

  Leland dropped out of his tree and approached the bridge so he had a clear view of everything. Then he lifted every last bit of debris and cowering soldiers up above and over the safety rails, where he then let it fall into the river far below. By th
e time he'd done that, Cab and Byron had secured the people and dragged them out of sight.

  "Stage one complete, over."

  Dixie replied, "Target approaching."

  Leland retreated to cover as Cab ducked back behind the boulders.

  A couple of minutes later, a large eighteen-wheeler crested the shallow hill right before the bridge and rode onto it. Easy to mistake it for an ordinary truck making a forgettable delivery before going on the next, and then the next. But it was rigged with air-cycling equipment on the top, like the cargo needed fresh air, and heat to keep the contents from freezing.

  It blew across the bridge going at least seventy, ten over the posted limit. Leland threw out a hand, palm out, and the truck slammed to a stop, the cab swinging up and out briefly from the force of the halt.

  "Prism, rear guard in ten and counting, over."

  Seconds later, the rear guard appeared, swarming up and around the stopped truck. The twins came out of cover on either end of the bridge, voices joining in a beautiful song that quickly reduced weapons and cars to rubble.

  Leland moved in, sweeping the latest pile of ruin and soldiers off the bridge. Once that was taken care of, he moved to the remains of the truck and tore away the doors—and was blown backwards, tumbling across the bridge, every bit of him bruised, possibly broken.

  He looked up and watched as the Magnificent Sunrise leapt neatly out, followed by the Prince.

  Leland pushed to his knees and threw his arms out, knocking them both off their feet, Sunrise slamming into a support beam, the Prince into the ground.

  Sunrise recovered first, surging into the air and throwing out bursts of searing light. Leland threw his hands up, palms out, and then snapped them out, sending the projectiles wild. But that was enough time for the Prince to come at him, and Leland couldn't handle them both, especially not now he was wounded.

  Then Sunrise went tumbling back, slamming into the ground, a wound in his shoulder as he struggled to sit up. Using the distraction, Leland threw the Prince into the bridge railings, enjoying the crunching sound his back made.