Heart of Briar. Laura Anne Gilman

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      And a solidly muscled pony, russet-coated with a black mane cropped short, was regarding her with deep brown eyes that were disturbingly familiar.

      Jan had been the normal horse-mad kid, but that stage had worn off years ago. Still, she couldn’t help but reach up to touch that nose, then slide her hand along the side of its neck. The pony lowered its head and turned slightly, as though inviting her to continue. Without meaning to, she found herself standing by its side, contemplating how difficult it would be to tangle her fingers in that stiff brush of a mane and haul herself onto its back.

      AJ let out a harsh, rude growl. “Martin, stop that. I swear, we should have left you behind, if that’s how you’re going to behave.”

      The pony shook its head and whickered, and Jan stepped back, the spell broken.

      She stared at it, and then at AJ, who was suddenly, bizarrely, the lesser of two weirdnesses. “That’s...oh, my god.”

      “No, just Martin.” AJ still sounded disgusted. “Don’t get on his back. He really can’t help himself then, and we need you intact.”

      “What?”

      “We’re— Oh, so help me, swish-tail, if you relieve yourself here, I’m going to pretend I don’t know you. Go do your business elsewhere if you can’t wait.”

      The pony—Martin—gave an offended snort, and the crunchy-snapping noise made her close her eyes, and when she was able to open them again, he looked human again.

      Looked. Wasn’t.

      Jan thought she might pass out.

      * * *

      The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the bench again, with Martin on her left and AJ pacing again, looking up and down the street and occasionally stopping to scowl into the gutters. Keeping guard against those...things from the bus, she guessed. Or whatever else was about to come bursting through the sidewalk, or popping out of a mailbox. As insane as it all had to be, as insane as she had to be, somehow Jan couldn’t doubt it, not any of it. Not after Martin had done...what he had done, and not with the memory of those moldy-looking fingers reaching up to where she had been sitting, forcing their way through metal to get to her....

      “They’ve always liked human meat.”

      Neither of her two rescuers were exactly knights in shining armor, but they had to be better than that.

      “No knight, but the steed,” she said, and a slightly hysterical giggle escaped her. Shock. She was in shock.

      “What? Oh. No.” Martin smiled, picking up the joke. “A sense of humor, that’s good. You’re going to need it.”

      As unnerving as the transformation had been, she still felt herself lean toward him, moving like a flower to follow the sun. AJ was unnerving and dangerous. He...AJ said Martin was dangerous, but instead she felt comforted. Protected. Safe.

      That was insane. Not human. Hello, not human!

      A were-pony? Jan closed her eyes, shook herself slightly, opened her eyes again. Martin was still there, watching her.

      Jan had always been a practical sort: she worked with what she could see. There was no way to believe— no way to convince herself to believe that this was a hoax or a prank, not anymore. She had seen Martin change form. She had seen AJ’s face, heard him growl, a noise that couldn’t have come from a human throat. She had seen...something tear through the bottom of a city bus as if it was cardboard.

      God, she hoped everyone on the bus was okay. There hadn’t been any sirens or screaming, so she had to believe her two rescuers—captors—were right, that it had abandoned the uptown bus the moment they left....except that meant that thing was looking for them.

      Why? What had she been yanked into?

      “Okay.” She breathed in and out once evenly, the way her doctor had taught her, calming her body, telling it to relax and stand down, and sat straight-backed on the bench, watching a squirrel balancing on the bike rack opposite them, nibbling at something. “Not human.”

      Martin nodded once, approvingly, and she heard a muffled snort coming from AJ, that they both ignored.

      “You know Tyler. You said something had taken him.... Something like those turncoats?” The thought made her cringe inside—maybe they were hurting him, maybe... Oh, god.

      “No.” Martin shook his head this time, the thick black hair falling over his eyes exactly the same way it had done in his other form. Somehow, that small detail made it make more sense in her brain. “Not them. We could have stopped them, if that were it. Or, we could have tried to stop them, anyway. They’re just...turncoats.” The way he said the word made it sound like a curse. “They’ve sold out their own kind.”

      “You...your kind...?” She made a gesture that was meant to indicate him and AJ, who was pacing again, but instead came out as a wimpy hand-circle.

      “Us, and you.” AJ’s muzzle twitched. “Look, there’s natural folk, you humans, and us, the supernaturals. That’s...there are different species, all scattered around the world. Some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t, some don’t come out much anymore. Mostly we get along because we ignore each other. And humans like to pretend we don’t exist, at all. It’s better that way. Safer.”

      Safer. Jan wondered if he used the word the same way she did. None of it mattered; she only wanted to know one thing. “What happened to Ty?”

      “Your leman...he’s....” Martin stopped and considered her, as though gauging how much more she could take. “Not much” was the answer, she suspected, but she’d do it, she’d deal with it. Her hand slipped down to touch her inhaler, reassurance, even though she didn’t need it just them.

      “We didn’t know about him specifically,” AJ said, his pacing taking him away and then back to stand in front of Jan. “We were tracking the preter, found her in time to see your leman being taken, two nights ago. We were too late to interfere, but we backtracked from there, found his wallet, and waited outside his apartment, to see who would show up. Three days, we waited!” He sounded annoyed. “We were just about to give up when—”

      Jan wouldn’t let herself be distracted. “Who. Took. Him?”

      Martin sighed. “For lack of a more useful term... Elves.”

      Chapter 3

      Tyler didn’t know how long he had been there, or even where there was. There were birdcalls in the distance, sweet and high. He tried to focus on them, reaching for the music that had always come naturally, but the voices in his ear were too loud. He did not know this language, although he tried to pick out words; when he was clearheaded he knew they did not want him to understand, that they were talking about him.

      He was not clearheaded most of the time.

      The chair was too soft, the air too thin; it all felt wrong, but he couldn’t say why, couldn’t put a finger on what bothered him. He tried to remember. He had been somewhere familiar, the smell of coffee thick in his nose, laughter and clatter around him, and then she had taken his hand, drawn it across the table, and spoken to him.... And then nothing, a sense of time passing but СКАЧАТЬ