bearings—every time he woke. There was never even a flicker of threat in any move Lindsay made or any
word he spoke.
Dane had come to understand that Lindsay had no idea that he could ask for what he wanted for
breakfast, or tell someone not to touch him when it hurt, much less that he could do terrible things to people
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on a whim. Lindsay had all the fortitude of a china doll. Dane knew the nature of dangerous things, and
Lindsay was not one of them.
Dane had been wrong before, though, and was reminded of it every waking moment. There was a
limit to his tolerance. No matter what Cyrus ordered, Dane had his own limits, and Lindsay would not
survive it if he ever proved to be anything but innocent of malice.
“One reaps what one sows,” Cyrus said at last, his eyes fixed on something far beyond the fire. Dane
had long since ceased to comfort himself with that platitude. If it were true, it would hardly bring him any joy when his own harvest was upon him.
Dane was shrugging into his big black coat, getting ready to escape the confines of the house, when
he heard Cyrus’s door open. Cyrus wanted to speak to him. Dane could tell from the creak of the hinges.
Years of familiarity could sometimes tell him more than his heightened senses. He pulled his coat around
him and put on his big boots, moving silently.
The truth was that Dane didn’t want to talk to Cyrus. He could smell the cold night creeping in the
crack under the front door and he was longing to be out in it. The ceilings of the house felt oppressively
low compared to the vaulted roof of the sky. The rooms were tiny and the air in them hot and listless. He
was crowded on all sides by the smells of others, by their lust and fear and anger. The night and his city
were waiting for him.
Cyrus’s feet were sounding one slow step at a time on the stairs when Dane pulled the front door
open. The wind frisked up to him like a puppy that had missed him, tugged his hair and his beard playfully, and shoved the door open farther so he could escape. Dane had one foot on the step, sinking into a soft,
white carpet, when the wind shifted to push him back.
“Leaving will not change what must be done.” The wind spoke with Cyrus’s inflection, as always.
Dane stopped and stepped back inside, closing the door behind him. “You don’t need me here.” Cyrus
was standing on the first landing, wrapped in a dark green robe, radiating disapproval.
“Who are you to say that?” Cyrus continued down the stairs and Dane could feel tension creep into
him as he made sure the older man’s bare, age-speckled feet found each step securely. “Do you know what
I know?”
“I know myself.” Dane was as trapped in himself as he was trapped in the house, confined to familiar
corridors and familiar corners, all of them too cluttered with memory for him to navigate with any grace.
Everywhere he turned, he was confronted with the present and the past and a future that was
indistinguishable from the other two.
“Precisely why I need you. You know yourself.” Cyrus stopped on the bottom step so he was eye-to-
eye with Dane. “He.” Cyrus pointed upward. “Does not know himself, and what he knows, he loathes. I
need you to teach him.”
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Tatterdemalion
“No.” Dane almost never refused Cyrus, not completely, but there was no way he was taking
responsibility for the fragile man-child he’d brought home from Washington. “He needs caring for.”
“You care for me.” Cyrus held out his hand and, without thinking, Dane took it to steady him as he
stepped down to the floor.
“Who’s going to do it if I’m busy with him?” Dane snorted indelicately. “Cyrus, find someone else.
Give him to Vivian, send him to Mona, I don’t care. Just not me.”
“You’re afraid.” Cyrus’s glittering black eyes narrowed and he glared up at Dane. “Frightened.” He
let go of Dane’s hand and headed for the sitting room, where there was a warm fire and a stack of recent
newspapers.
“Of him? He’s impressive, Cyrus, but he doesn’t scare me.” Dane followed slowly, stopping in the
doorway. His boots were caked in a dry layer of sewer slurry and he didn’t want to leave stinking flakes of it all over the sitting room carpet. “Gun’s useless if it doesn’t have a trigger, no matter how you load it or where you aim.” He was restless and he shoved his hands in his pockets to hide it.
“Not of him, per se.” Cyrus took a seat in a chair near the fire. “You know my meaning. Don’t play
the dumb beast with me tonight. Regardless of your opinions, I’ve decided that you need to be the one to
teach him. You’re least likely to be affected by his illusions. You’ll be a challenge and you can avoid
getting caught up in them.”
“No good can come of that.” Dane shook his head like a horse refusing the bit. “I won’t do it.”
“You will.” Refusing to indulge him with an argument, Cyrus picked up a newspaper and looked
through it. Dane waited. “Another suicide,” Cyrus murmured, reading the midsection. “They’re not even
front-page news. How long are our children going to die of fear and neglect, Dane?”
“Survival of the fittest,” Dane said roughly, shrugging it off. He’d seen their kind die in myriad ways
over the years. He told himself it didn’t affect him anymore.
“Lindsay survived his parents, two years in Moore’s hands, and an artifact the likes of which were
forbidden even in the time of Sumer. He killed hundreds to secure his own escape.” Cyrus peered at Dane
over the edge of the paper. “Has he not proven his fitness?”
“He’s a child,” Dane said stubbornly. He pulled his hands from his pockets to cross his arms over his
chest. “I’m no nursemaid.”
“He’s a man. You’re being the child here.” Cyrus shook the paper out and folded it up in his lap. He
folded his hands on top of the paper in turn and gave Dane a piercing look. “How long do you intend to
play the stray dog, Dane? Does being the beast that goes bump in the night amuse you so much that you
would do it indefinitely? This is not a fairytale, for all that you may be laboring under a faerie curse. It’s high time for you to stop playing the animal and start playing the man underneath the skin.”
Dane’s body was taut. He felt like he could fly apart at the slightest provocation. “I don’t play,” he
said flatly. “I am what I am. You found it useful enough in the past.”
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Anah Crow and Dianne Fox
“And now I need you to be useful in another way.” Cyrus gestured upward, as though Lindsay were
sleeping directly overhead. “He is yours. Yours to care for, yours to teach, yours to heal. You know how
this must happen. Keep him alive. They are still looking for him and will kill what they cannot have. When
he can take care of himself, he will no longer be your concern and you can slide back into the shadows.”
There was silence and Dane had no answer but to grind his teeth until his canines began to powder
with it. He was angry, angrier still that the undercurrent in him was fear. “My task is to care for you,” he said at last.
“So it is.” Cyrus picked up the paper and found where he had left off. “There will be fresh tea in the
kitchen. You may bring me some if it suits you.” He glanced up at Dane again. “I do not do this lightly,” he added. “I would not go without your protection unless I felt it necessary.”
That was irritatingly soothing to Dane’s ego. He took a slow breath to calm his fury and nodded.