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."You're not going to ask?”"Do you want to tell me?”"You have too many songs to name one," she replied with soft eyes, and he'd smiled gently, he thought.Something in his eyes must have troubled her though, because she'd frowned a little."A lot of living gets you a lot of songs!" She'd defended, and then turned away before they could continue.Now, she had a little line drawn between her eyebrows as she concentrated, and stood, shoulders back, carrying the lyrics with a subtle melody that was meant to depend on dreamy instrumental.He and Bracken sang the instrumentals for her, un-selfconsciously and clearly, so subtle as to blend behind her, their voices only emerging when the song called for back-up vocals.The walls of my memory divide the thorns from the roses…And suddenly, although his voice never faltered, he was seeing Adrian behind his shuttered gaze, as he'd first seen him, filthy matted hair, the fury of ten years of hell burning in his spangled eyes.My mind drifts away…we have only today…And now he was seeing Cory on that first night, plump, barely aware of herself as a power, or even as a woman, stoically cleansing the scene of a tragedy.She'd had no idea, none at all, of the joy and the pain that would follow, and her bravery had impressed the hell of him, just as it impressed him now.Heal me from all this sorrowAs I let you go…And abruptly he was there again, in the church, singing softly without even a flicker in his voice, and wondering if there had ever been any way to save Cory from the gradual alienation of her own species.And if there had been, would he have risked it? He listened to her now, as they sang together, her throaty alto stretching surprisingly as the song climaxed, risking a look at the startled, moved group of mourners that had caught their breath to hear beauty as it spelled their hearts in plain notes.He remembered the feel of her power, pulsing through the resisting bodies of nearly sixty vampires as they fought to save Bracken and Nicky, and he could feel still beneath his fingers the satin of her flesh as they moved in the night.Now I'm living, in your afterglow…And suddenly a wave of sadness crashed over him, foaming about his mouth and nose until he could hardly breathe, and when he had fought his way clear, it receded, leaving in it's wake a feeling of…transparency, of insubstantiality that was so comforting that Green almost stopped singing with fear.No.His body was offering to fade, to become transparent, to drift into nothingness until the hot breeze of a foothill summer blew through his precious temperate garden and carried even his memory away.It happened to the fey, even to the sidhe, when the weight of living became more than they could bear, but it couldn't happen to him.She needs me.He thought in panic, and the feeling passed, leaving his singing uninterrupted, the moment as though it had never been.But he would remember it, use it as goad—melancholy must never be allowed to take over, because once he had faded, he could never return.And his people needed him.Cory needed him—hadn't the last few days proved that? Being needed was all he'd ever lived for.The song wound down, their voices twining, releasing, until only Bracken's voice remained, trailing off in the final haunting vocal, and they were left in the stunned silence of the grieving assembly.There was no protocol for responding to song in church, Green knew, no relieving applause, no way of acknowledging that people had moved you, struck a chord in your emotions that still vibrated in your throat, and had done you good.So it was that in that awed quiet that they bowed slightly, and at Green's signal, moved out of the pew followed by their people, and, as they all hesitated and looked at him expectantly, followed by Davy's beloved as well.Green's people kept stoic faces as they caught sight of Kyle's mask of bloody tears, and hoped that the assembly would be still too caught up in the web of song and sadness to react.How could he show up here, among humans, and let them see that tell? It was more madness than Green and Bracken and their tell-tale ears and facial features—these could be explained away as deformity, or foreign visitors, but blood is blood, and every human who actually looked would recognize that the scarlet streaks down Kyle's face were the same vital element that his lover had lost all over the concrete outside her father's house in Stanford Ranch.Phillip and Marcus flanked him immediately, and Grace took position at his front, and together, the lot of them made a somewhat dignified (albeit mysterious) exit from the church.Cory glanced behind them once as they left, her gaze weaving in and out of her people behind her, and Green heard a barely suppressed snicker."What?" Bracken whispered as they cleared the great wooden doors."The minister," she murmured, "It looks like he swallowed his pet poisoned toad!”"Good," Bracken said darkly."Pompous prick…”"Let me go," Kyle said distinctly as they walked down the concrete steps to the sidewalk below and Cory replied, lowly and clearly, "We have business, Kyle.Wait until we find some shadows…”"We passed an alley about a block from the car," Nicky supplied, looking around nervously—the moon was just coming off of full, so it was brighter than the pinkish lights that lined the street and shadows were harder than usual to find.Cory nodded."You hear that? Just wait.”They walked quietly, past the two remaining news vans waiting for shots of the emerging crowd, past the white stucco houses, almost ridiculously tiny after the vastness of Green's home, many of them one or two bedroom, but with sweet, manicured flower gardens—monetary wealth with scant family size was Green's estimation.The promised alley was the sunken driveway to a detached garage on one of the larger properties, but there were thick seedless mulberry trees in both the lower yard and the upper yard, and the closest street light was four houses away— the darkness was both complete and eerie.The vampires looked more at ease than since the moment they walked into the church.Cory had turned to face the bereaved vampire when Kyle apparently lost all sanity and blurred past his escort to seize her arm, snarling, "I said le…" It was as far as he got before Bracken and Green grabbed an arm a piece and shoved him against the concrete wall of the sunken driveway
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