Of Innocence and Experience

Aspen Martin didn’t know anything about children. It seemed then a particularly horrible irony that he had been lumbered with one, he who had had only the most grotesque semblance of a childhood, who had spent so many of his younger years vacillating between desperate fear and the almost-escape of madness.

So he eyed the sleeping infant with more than a little trepidation, but covered his doubt with a bright, jagged smile.

“I suppose I should thank you,” his sister said in her soft, reserved way. Her voice had the icy arch of the Satiari enclave; an accent he had scrubbed from his own speech with a ferocity that surprised his tutors. He’d wanted nothing left of that place to taint him, no echo of it to slip from him – to reveal that he had not escaped, that he carried some part of it with him like a cancer to rise and subsume him.

He shrugged. “Why bother? We both know you had nowhere else to go.”

Her eyes narrowed, changeable as his own but matching, perfect where he was flawed.

Not so perfect now though, Clemmie. We both sold our souls, me for revenge and you for status, but my debts are paid now and I have it back. I found the better part of me, and she showed me what love was meant to be when it wasn’t wrapped up in lies and secrets and pain.

You still have to discover that.

“You can’t make this easy, can you?” she said, bitter and beautiful as she stood there with her arms wrapped about herself as if to keep from snatching back the baby. “Do you think I want to give him up?”

He looked her up and down, his tall sister. And to his surprise, he could see the hairline fractures in her composure; her make-up a little wobbly, her hands clasping her elbows with white knuckles, her jewellery mismatched.

“I guess not,” he said softly.

Her mouth trembled. “I wasn’t a very good sister, was I?”

“No.”

The word hung between them, livid as a bruise. He saw the flash of shock in her eyes. She hadn’t expected the truth - she had expected the sweet platitudes of the enclave, the slow poison of a white lie.

But he wouldn’t do it. He’d left that behind when he went to the Furies, who saw truth as another weapon, harder than steel, indestructible and more toxic than a lie in the right hands.

“Don’t...” She gathered herself with impressive speed. “Don’t punish him because of me, Aspen.”

He gaped, outraged. “Is that what you think I’m like?” he demanded.

“I’ve heard the stories. They talk about you on the enclave, Aspen, in dark corners where they think no one can hear. They say you killed a man because you didn’t like the tie he was wearing.”

“It was a long time ago,” he muttered. He didn’t do that anymore. In fact, he hadn’t killed anyone in years – not since Tam, not since he’d found a home and a family. He’d even let the double glazing salesman live (though he supposed leaving him to Mrs Slone’s tender mercies had been cruelty of a specific sort). “And it was a disgusting tie. Who wears neon green and orange?”

She looked taken aback. “You really did that?”

He met her eyes then and let the old, familiar madness fill up his face like a demon rising from the deep cracks of the earth. “I did a lot of things, Clemmie.”

A quick, fearful breath as she glanced away. “I thought...”

“It was lies? Yeah. Lots of people thought that.”

I showed them the truth. I carved it into them.

And then they believed.

He saw all those times through a crimson haze, understanding perfectly the rage that had driven him, and understanding just as perfectly that it was still there waiting, crouched like a toad in the back of his mind. He thought if Tam truly perceived what he had been, she would have been horrified – and yet if he weren’t that person, nothing would keep her safe. Not now Blue had left that mark on her.

Nothing stopped his enemies from killing Tam except for their fear of him and what he might do.

It was a comforting thought. He felt like her guardian angel, if one with intimate knowledge of the deep, heated circles of hell.

“I...” Clemmie licked her lips. “I heard something else. That you...you had a soulmate. A human one. And that you’re in love with her.”

He let the madness slip away, back into its lair. And he was himself again – this person he’d always wanted to be, planning to take his girlfriend to dinner and then kiss her under the crescent moon on the walk back until they were both giddy and giggling. “Yeah. I am.”

Whatever she saw in him then, it seemed to satisfy her. “I think I can understand how,” she told him, and her eyes slid to the baby and lingered there, and the love, the heartbreak he saw there made him reach out to touch her. Just a light brush of his fingers on her arm, but it was the first contact they had had in a decade.

“I’ll keep him safe,” he swore, meaning every word. “He’s my family, and I won’t let them have him.”

The Furies have taken enough from me. No more.

A brief nod – and she was turning, walking so fast that she was nearly running. He didn’t understand hwy until he heard a strange gasping sound – but by the time he realised she was crying, Clementine Martin was in her car, screeching out of the drive.

“Well,” he said, staring at the baby. “How hard can it be?”

~*~

His telephone conversation with Jodie Slone was brief, and as Aspen realised just what he had done by this point, panicky. He blurted out almost everything to her, and expected a thorough tongue-lashing.

“Well, you could hardly leave him to the wolves, could you?” was her comment. “I never thought I’d say this, my lad, but you’ve done the right thing. And I suppose at least it’ll give you practice for looking after your own.”

“I’m not having children,” Aspen said indignantly. “That’s Tam’s job.”

He heard something that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “I don’t recommend you tell Tamara that. I’ll come over when I get back from work and teach you how to manage this little present. In the meantime, try not to be too intimidated.”

“It’s a baby,” he said, disbelieving. “What’s it going to do? Cry at me?”

“Precisely,” she answered and hung up.

Aspen puzzled over that for several minutes. He’d already checked the internet for information about the baby, and from what he could gather, they didn’t do much. He’d heard babies cry before on TV, and hadn’t minded.

She was just trying to frighten him.

~*~

“Please,” he moaned into that red, scrunched up face. “I’ve fed you, I’ve changed your bloody diaper, I’ve sung and I’ve checked your temperature and there’s nothing wrong with you apart from the fact you’re a noisy little bastard and oh my god, why won’t you shut UP?”

He was reduced to begging a six month old for peace. A splitting headache had set up home in his right temple, fatigue slumped his whole body, and he wanted to cry, only that would just make this a duet and not a malicious solo performance. He’d fought off a banshee and taken down a whole street gang in one night. How could a baby be beating him?

And then, with almost divine timing, a pair of hands reached out and took the screeching weight from him.

“I take it you haven’t had much experience with children,” Jodie Slone remarked over the awful squalling as she settled the baby into the crook of her arm.

“I was one once,” he offered weakly, awed by her confidence. She didn’t seem at all fazed by the crying, or by the fact that its face was an alarming shade of puce.

Had she said “You still are”? He squinted at Mrs Slone, but couldn’t be sure; she might just have been talking to the baby.

And to Aspen’s stupefaction and utter awe, silence fell for the first time in nearly three hours. He stared at his nephew’s still, sleepy face which had an air of the angelic as he lay there, eyes slowly drifting shut.

“Close your mouth, hoodlum,” she advised. “He wanted to be held, that was all.”

“I was holding him,” he muttered defensively.

Her stare was withering. “Yes, like you’d hold a rattlesnake. He’s a person and he likes a bit of human contact as much as the rest of us. Good lord, didn’t anyone ever cuddle you as a child?”

“No,” he said meekly, and realised straight away that it was the wrong thing to say as shock filled her eyes. “Um. Well, yes, obviously,” he stammered, “I mean, just not...um...”

Her face said he wasn’t fooling anyone. And he was expecting sarcasm or sternness, for her to offer the same tough love she always had, but in that dark little room, in that empty night, she only looked at him with terrible wisdom, with gentleness – with a mother’s eyes.

“Oh, child,” Jodie Slone said in such a soft, sad voice that he was robbed of all his words. “Whatever did they do to you?”

He only looked back.

“I want to be a good parent,” he said. “Not like them. Can you help me, please?”

She smiled and some of the sadness left her expression. “Did you think you had a choice, hoodlum?”

~*~

Somehow, between Vaje’s calm presence and Jodie Slone’s constant visits, Aspen found that he knew the strange tricks of children. He was awed the first time he manage to soothe Zane to sleep, and didn’t dare move for the next few hours for fear he would break the spell. The burbling that had meant nothing at first began to take shape until he felt he’d understood a secret language, no longer needing Jodie Slone to explain why Zane was crying.

His diet was blood and milk; with his first teeth came a pair of tiny fangs, and Vaje got sent out to various pet shops to buy baby rabbits. The pair of them spent the next few weeks with chewed fingers as the toddler was liable to grab whatever was nearest.

When Zane took his first steps, Aspen found himself paralysed by fear; what if he fell on this or burned himself on that? For a few weeks the house was swaddled in foam and Aspen followed his intrepid nephew around, sure he was somehow going to crack his skull open on the sofa. The day he padded Vaje’s legs in case Zane crashed into his shins, the coyote finally pointed out that Zane was, in fact, half-vampire and could probably survive a collision with a juggernaut.

And suddenly it became apparent to Aspen that this small interloper had somehow become one of the most important people in his life.

When Zane said his first word, he gazed up Aspen with ever-shifting eyes and pronounced ‘Da!’.

And then, being Zane, he promptly vomited onto Aspen’s lap.

And Aspen was amazed to find tears pricking at his eyes – and then to find himself sitting on the floor howling out his lungs because suddenly he had a family that was his, and he wasn’t the cuckoo in the nest anymore: he was Zane’s father, and he was loved.

Vaje only sighed and patted him on the back, then when they had cleared up the mess, brought out some champagne he’d been hiding. The whole experience was halfway between astounding and mortifying.

~*~

Suddenly, his life, which had once revolved around politics and murder, became filled with new and hitherto unsuspected excitement. He watched with dismal certainty as a bunch of hyperactive kids trashed his house for Zane’s fifth birthday. The next week was spent trying to get jelly out of the carpet and trying to teach his irrepressible son how to ride a bike.

The week after that was spent teaching Zane not to try and run over Jodie Slone’s begonias. The week after that was spent replanting them.

When Zane was eight and hitting home runs with a vampire’s excellent eye and inhuman power, Aspen was in the stands cheering like a maniac. Although when he got into his first fight at school, it was Vaje who stepped in to stop Aspen giving Zane tips on how best to gouge out his opponents’ eyes.

He learned how best to stop tears and when to offer bribes; when to offer advice and when to change the subject; when to say yes, and when to say no, and what the consequences of getting it wrong were, such as cleaning poster paint off the walls because he hadn’t understood quite what Zane had meant by finger-painting.

And there were other, less noticeable changes that he couldn’t see in himself. Vaje didn’t tell Aspen, but the lamia stopped flinching every time someone he didn’t know touched him. Zane’s demands for hugs and attempts to try and beat up his father – no one thought of Zane as Aspen’s nephew – had done some good.

Nor did Aspen realise that he carried himself differently, as if he was no longer afraid of that eyes that glanced at him on the street with casual curiosity.

And now, when he smiled, it came as easily as if Tam were there, and though the shadows never quite left him, they weren’t as visible anymore.

He’d been an erratic leader. He was, Vaje concluded, an erratic father too. But a good one.

~*~

At ten, Zane was small and skinny and had developed ever-greater ways to annoy people along with his vocabulary.

“Da-ad,” he sang as he trotted into the garage. A pair of muddy feet appeared in Aspen’s eye line.

“What?” asked Aspen from underneath Iry Lupine’s battered old car. He carefully detached the last of the rusty old brake lines, and from the corner of his eye saw Zane reaching for the jack- “Don’t you dare!”

“Why not?” A dark head dipped into view. People kept saying that the resemblance between them was uncanny, but Aspen didn’t see it. His nose had never been that big for one thing, and he was sure he didn’t squint like that. “You’d be okay.”

“Squashed under a ton of metal is not ‘okay’,” he pointed out, having proved this theory twice already that month. Iry was getting decidedly grumpy about lifting his precious Chevy off Aspen. “What did you want?”

“There’s a lady at the door. She’s freaky.”

That didn’t narrow down the number of suspects much. “Freaky how?”

“She’s got no hair.”

He blinked. It sounded like Therese, only it couldn’t be. Still... “Okay, you’ve intrigued me. Give me a hand up, trouble, and we’ll see who our freaky lady is.”

He was dragged out from the car so fast he half-expected to leave scorch marks. Zane had a vampire’s ferocious strength and was at an age when he liked to show off.

“So, back from the-” he began and stopped when he saw who was at the door.

Not Therese. No, not at all.

“Hello Aspen,” Clementine said.

He stared. Someone had shaved her head without care. Cuts and stubble mixed in equal amounts, but that was nothing compared to the livid marks on her face, tattooed in a shape he knew too well. The sigils were uneven – she’d struggled probably, while they held her down and jabbed toothpicks into her skin. And anyone in the Furies knew her for what she was.

Traitor, it said. Do with this one as you will.

“They found out,” she said, haughty still, even with her ruined face and her ruined life bare to him. “They know I tricked them. They know you helped me.”

Yes. They would. “What do you want?”

“My son.”

“No.”

Her attention shifted past him. “I don’t think it’s your choice, Aspen. Let him decide for himself.”

Aspen half-turned. Zane watched them both with curious eyes while he gnawed on an apple. He looked the picture of innocence: feet dangling as he sat on the table, fingers grubby and hair perpetually disordered. “Told you she was freaky,” was his only comment.

Clementine didn’t look too pleased at that, but she persisted. “Do you know who I am?”

“Nope. Should I care?” he drawled in an almost perfect imitation of Blue. Aspen suppressed a hysterical giggle.

“My name is Clementine Martin,” she said mildly. “I’m Aspen’s sister.”

“Oh. You gave birth to me.”

Shock flashed briefly over her face. “I see your uncle’s kept you informed.”

You thought I’d lie, didn’t you? No. I know too well how lies can be used as leverage. I want him to survive this world and to do that, he needs to understand how bitter truth can be – but how strong it can make you if you have the courage to face it.

“Uncle Vaje?” Zane frowned. “No. Dad told me that.”

Her voice was pure acid. “And did your ‘father’ tell you why I asked him to take care of you?”

“Yep.”

She waited for him to offer anything else, but Zane was a master of laconic expression when he wanted to be. “Well, things have changed. My family know that you exist, and they will want to kill you. You’re a halfbreed and as my eldest child, you’re a danger to their empire. And they know you’re here.”

Interest flickered in his face. “Really? How’d they know that?”

“Someone told them. I want you to come with me – we’ll go far away, to Europe where they can’t find us.” Her smile had all the warmth of a crocodile. “I’m your mother, child. I’ve missed you. It was...hard to give you up. So hard. But now we can be together again.”

Zane eyed Clemmie from her bald, lacerated skull to her travel-worn clothes. “You’re not my mother. You didn’t want me.”

“I did want you, but I couldn’t keep you.”

“Well, you couldn’t keep me and keep your rich man,” he agreed. “Ain’t that how it was?”

Aspen blinked, unsure where Zane had gotten that nugget of information. He’d certainly never mentioned it.

“It wasn’t like that,” she protested. “You don’t understand – our family reputation was in tatters. The Furies had Aspen, father was half-mad, my mother killed herself rather than live...”

“Well, shit, life’s tough,” was Zane’s unsympathetic response.

“Language!” snapped Aspen automatically. “Where did you learn that?”

A faint flush stole some of the hardness from Zane’s face. “Um. A kid at school.”

“I don’t expect to hear you use it again,” he said coldly. “Or you can consider yourself grounded.”

“But Da-ad...” whined Zane, face a picture of misery. “You always tell me not to throw pity parties. How come she’s allowed to?”

Clemmie mouthed ‘pity party’ with a look on her face that suggested she found this every bit as surreal as he did.

“You asked for an explanation. Have the courtesy to listen to it,” he told his son.

“Listen to what? Her making excuses?” There was anger, real wounded anger in his voice. “I don’t know who she is, but she isn’t my mother. My mother’s a doctor,” he informed Clemmie. “She works in town, and she’ll be back later, and if she knows you’re here, she’ll be upset. So you’d better go.”

“Your mother?” screeched Clemmie. His sister was white with fury. “Your human slut, I suppose!” she hurled at Aspen.

“Don’t you talk about my mom like that!” screamed back Zane. “So what if she’s human? She still loves me more than you do!”

“And she’ll be carrion for the Furies when they come for you,” spat his sister. “As will you. I’m trying to save you – you’re my son-”

“I’m not!” Zane howled, jumping to the floor. He pointed a shaking hand at Aspen, who was awed by this precocious display of temper. “I’m his son! And if you don’t leave us alone, I’ll call my grandma and she’ll come over and kick your ass.”

“Zane,” he warned, fighting to hold in laughter. “It’s not nice to sic your grandmother on people.”

Zane turned his face up to him and suddenly Aspen saw the fear there, raw and vast and genuine. “Dad, don’t let her take me. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you.” Suddenly he had the weight of a ten-year-old vampire clamped around his waist. “I’ll be good, I promise. Please don’t send me away.”

Astounded, Aspen tried without success to peel Zane off him. “Of course I’m not going to send you away! Where did you get such a daft idea?”

“Uncle Vaje said...”

“Uncle Vaje was kidding,” he said firmly. He looked up and met Clementine’s eyes, changing like the sky from moment to moment and full of impotent fury. “I’d say he’s made up his mind, wouldn’t you?”

Her face contorted. “Then he’s no child of mine,” she proclaimed, her voice ringing with contempt. “Let the Furies have him.”

And from her mind, he caught a twist of sizzling thought that chilled him to the bone.

And then he struck into her mind, cleaving her defences apart like wood. In it, he saw the shape of her scheme, desperate, bold, clever as she had always been.

You were going to kill him yourself and use his death to buy back favour with your family. Nothing else would convince them of your loyalty.

And wordless, they stared at one another, and he saw that the years had only smoothed the edges from her cruelty, making it harder to see, camouflaged by her elegance and her carefully chosen oratory.

“Get out,” he said in a voice that was as dead and empty as the surface of the moon, unaware of the violence in his eyes that made her pale and step back. “Get out now.”

After she was gone, a muffled voice from somewhere near his ribcage said, “You said you weren’t going to do the scary voice anymore.”

“Special occasion,” Aspen muttered, watching her vanish into a silhouette on the horizon, a leper fleeing the mob until someone caught up with her and gave her the sorry death that was her only surety now. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Zane let go of him, and raised up shining eyes. The grin on his face was infectious. “I wasn’t scared,” he said with gusto. “Dad, that was awesome!”

~*~

“Busy day?” enquired Vaje when he dropped in for a drink that evening. The innocence in his voice made Aspen suspicious.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

The coyote took a long draught and when he put down the bottle, he had the look of a man who’d completed some distasteful but necessary task. “Who do you think let Clementine’s guilty little secret slip?”

“That was you?”

“She’d been ferreting out information about you, Aspen. She had your address. With the weight of her husband’s family behind her...well, no one in Pursang would take the contract, but Nightfire? K’Shaia? Yeah. They’ve got enough reasons to want you dead. But even if she gets her hands on any money, who’s going to take it now?” He gave a sleepy smile and Aspen was sharply reminded that for all his warmth and kindness, Vaje was still a Fury, still deadly in his own way. “I reckon even Malefici couldn’t have done any better.”

“But they know about Zane.”

“They’ve known about him since he was one,” he said, still unruffled. “I let slip that you were going to train him up personally. Intimate knowledge of a human environment – good camouflage for later life. They swallowed it whole. Idiots.”

“They’ve...always known?”

“He was no threat to ‘em. And by the time he is...” The shapeshifter nodded. “They won’t be able to touch him. You’ll make sure of that.”

He glanced over to the garden, where Zane was playing with one of his friends. “Yeah. I will.”

You’ll be my son in more than name. And I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.