DEZI

She gripped Chris’ hand tightly, hearing the buzzing whisper of his thoughts as they flowed through, around and over her, flapping against her own mind, trying to get in and be shared with her. She looked at him and smiled, liking the way he smiled back at her, a faint dimple appearing at the corner of his mouth.

Hanging tightly onto her other hand was the reason that she couldn’t be completely happy and free. Christine held on with a hard grip, as if she were afraid that death would creep up on her and knock her out of the air.

Dezi could feel the mistrust that flowed from the girl. Christine did not like her, the only reason she was even willing to follow her was the need to get to Lianndra. That need was so strong that Dezi could still feel the vibrations of it rebounding in the girl’s mind like a tennis ball bouncing everywhere. She felt something that made her think of the blue that was Lianndra’s eyes inside of the girl’s mind, the call that held her tightly in its grasp.

She could almost feel sorry for the girl who had no idea what she was getting herself into. Sometimes she wondered how Lianndra did the things that he did, but when she really thought about it, she didn’t want to know.

There was something about the allure of all of that power that made her shy away. It wasn’t something that she needed. She didn’t want to know what she would do with all that power--she had nasty suspicions that it wouldn’t be anything good. As they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

She would much rather be a freewheeling and dealing kind of spirit, wandering here or there, living off of Lianndra’s generosity and the fortune she had accumulated over the ages, growing old with a gracefulness that no one would ever see, young forever. She would be young and beautiful for all eternity, why mess that up with guilt and the problems that come with having to figure out what to do with her powers?

It’s a well-known fact that everyone wants what you’ve got and that people who are better equipped to deal with the problems of the world have a responsibility to help those less fortunate. She didn’t want all that trouble. She’d rather be an unfortunate herself, mooching off Lianndra for the rest of time.

It was a good deal that he offered for her service. She helped him out, kept track of the promising new recruits, made important phone calls and all in all acted like a secretary or business aid. In return he offered her access to his human bloodstock, use of his credit cards, the chance to travel all over the world with him, a place to spend her days and keep her stuff, and most importantly the protection that only a vampire lord could offer.

She knew that even with Donal’s blood flowing through her veins, she was not a master and never would be. She just didn’t have the right kind of cutthroat mentality, not to mention the amazing strength that was needed to keep a bunch of ravening monsters in line. She was more the first officer type, the ability to take partial responsibility but with the option to turn to a higher up with the impossible situations.

Lianndra was an introverted and introspective kind of guy, willing to look at his actions impartially then decide if they were right or wrong. If what he was doing was wrong, he was willing to change his ways and learn from the experience. She could do that up to a certain point, then she would start worrying if she was losing her sense of self, not to mention the fact that she liked holding grudges, something that a true leader really couldn’t afford.

Sure, Lianndra might not like someone, might even hate and fear them, but if it was needed, he would be willing to set his feelings aside and take them on as an ally. Take this whole situation with the Queen. She had pushed him past the point of no return, otherwise he wouldn’t have been bothering with her.

Few people knew it, but Tispith had been free for awhile, and even though he had kept an eye on her Lianndra had not interfered, not until she had gotten totally out of hand. Her insanity was obvious, what with that whole Chelsea thing, which was only the header to a bad situation.

Dezi had heard all of the horror stories about the Black Queen, but she had also met the bitch in all her psychotic glory, and she hadn’t liked it. If it had been up to her there wouldn’t have been an entombing, there would have been an execution. But back then she had been a nobody, just a bystander to the grand scheme of things, watching the movements and revolutions of the Council and not really having a say in the whole matter.

With Lianndra’s backing she was now more than she had ever thought she might be, and frankly she was happy right where she was. As an associate of Lianndra’s she was at the center of things, but at the same time she could take a step back and not have to worry that she would be blamed for the way things turned out.

She knew for a fact that Lianndra had been offered a post as representative to the Council of the Night, but that he had turned it down, deciding to be a neutral instead. He advised the big boys on what they should do, yet at the same time he didn’t have to worry about accountability. Anything they did was up to them--they didn’t have to listen to him, he wasn’t even really affiliated with the Council after all, now was he?

Sometimes she thought that there were more layers to Lianndra then could ever be peeled away. He had more power in the Council than most people knew, yet at the same time he didn’t have to worry about getting hung with the blame. He was one of the top masters of the vampire world, yet at the same time he might be considered a child by the really old ones and thus too junior to really be taken to the wall for the things that he did.

She could respect that, and she did, just as she was willing to turn to him for any help that she might need. It was a trade-off, her service for his protection, like the peasants and nobles of old. Before the whole situation had gotten out of hand, there had been a largely unspoken agreement: the peasants cared for the land and the nobles protected the people. Then that whole thing of peasant ownership came about and the nobles, the lords and masters, began to start thinking that they owned more than just the land, they owned the peasants themselves. After that the whole thing had gone to hell in a hand basket, and thus the birth of democracy.

Still, she rather doubted that Lianndra would ever be like that, he was just too idealistic to be a good slave driver. He was more likely to start a revolution himself than be the subject of one. That was why he earned the big bucks; he was willing to take the risks.

And much as Dezi didn’t want to admit it, she wasn’t. She was not willing to take the big risks and put herself in the path of true danger. She was too worried about her own ass to get involved in any major way, but at the same time she was willing to take orders and do whatever she could. Nobody ever said she was consistent.

She shook her head and smiled. She could be a real bitch herself. It was a good thing she didn’t want to be in a position of real power in the vampire world; she thought that maybe she would give the Old Ones a real run for their money. Those Elders were just a little too hoity-toity for her, and sometimes they needed a real kick to the head to get their brains working.

She tightened her grip on Chris’ hand and steered him off to the right, the three of them gliding through the air like birds. She tightened her grip on Christine’s hand as well, but not so much that she hurt the mortal girl. It would have been a sad state of affairs if she dropped the girl and Christine went falling a hundred feet to splat against the ground.

It was not a pleasant image, not to mention the fact that Lianndra would be a little annoyed at the loss of a new breeding line added to his stock. He was such a connoisseur of blood; such a snob when it came to vintage.

She smiled fondly, not even aware that Christine was looking at her at that exact moment and that her fangs gleamed in the moonlight and her eyes glowed brightly, hungrily.

The moon was her mother, the earth her father, and the human race couldn’t understand that; all they saw were monsters that hunted them, killed them, fed off of them. Some might have said that hers was a race of beauty, like humans compared to chimpanzees, so far beyond what once was that it was hard to believe that they all came from the same beginnings. Yet at the same time there were so many similarities, evolution unable to hide the ties that bound them all together as one.

Sometimes she thought about her life as a mortal and wondered how it would have turned out. She thought that perhaps she would have died young, raped and murdered before the age of twenty.

Though they liked to deny it, mortals were just as cruel and uncaring as vampires. They too fed off of the human race, not even wondering at the wrongness of feeding off their brothers and sisters, killing each other and feeling something akin to what vampires felt: a sort of aloneness that was at the same time a neediness to be loved.

Mortals killed their close cousins too, killing them with guns and poisons and traps. Putting them in zoos and caging them in, keeping them from rising above themselves. Vampires at least hunted to Feed, not just for the hunt itself, though as in all races and species, there were some that were cruel and sadistic, hunting not to eat, but to terrorize and torture.

There is a streak of evil in everything, even in the way that nature handled itself. Perhaps that evil was needed to balance out the rest of the world. If there were no storms, there would be nothing to cleanse the earth of waste. There would be a world filled with the dead and decaying, making the world poisonous for the living, killing the chances for a new future and a rebirth for the old.

Perhaps vampires were like the fire that raged across the mountainsides, clearing the forest of old and rotted plants and trees. In the spring there would be new growth and a chance for a better life. Perhaps that was a vampire’s place on earth: to clear away the old and decayed, to make a place for a new beginning.

Sometimes she wondered if she weren’t as deep as Lianndra, then she knew that she wasn’t. Hers was a minute introspection that passed like the tide, never to return in exactly the same permutation and not really to be worried about. Lianndra could hold fast to those ideas and beliefs; could clench those worries so tightly that he choked himself on them.

She was glad she wasn’t so very introspective. She was glad she could shed her worries and her guilt and just be what she was: a hunter and a predator. Mortals were her prey, and that was simply the way it was, for better or for worse.

LIANNDRA

"What do you want Bran?" he asked softly, not wanting to wake Ralph.

Bran stood for another moment. "Why are you really here?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

The young man thought. "I mean, I can tell that you’re not here just to get rid of the Black Queen. I can feel it. You’re strong; I think that you probably could have rid yourself of her at anytime that you wanted to," Bran said. "So, why are you really here, and don’t give me any bullshit reasons. One of the things about being a werewolf is that I can smell when someone is lying, and even though you’re not mortal I could probably sense it. We wolves are good for that sort of thing."

Lianndra smiled slightly, a wry twisting of the lips that made him look a thousand years old, no matter that physically he looked to only be a little boy. He had presence, and when he wanted he could make others feel the weight of all his years, the real ones and the ones that were simply pure knowledge and experience.

"You’re very clever, did you know that," it was more statement than question. He didn’t wait. "Do you really want to know why I’m here? The answer is simple: I was bored and I have nothing else to do at the moment," Lianndra said. "Sure, the world is my oyster and I have the money to burn, but sometimes I just want to get out and do something for myself and not just send one of my people to do it for me.

"You know what? Tispith is just an excuse for me to have a little adventure of my own, and who knows, perhaps she’ll beat me. Sometimes you just have to wonder about that sort of thing and then just go for it anyway. I have to know if there is more for me out there, a challenge that I can’t overcome," Lianndra said, "besides, maybe it’s my time now, who knows."

Bran looked at him in silence, then sank down next to him, settled his head on Lianndra’s stomach and closed his eyes with a sigh, like some kind of dog. His breath was warm against the vampire’s cool flesh. His head was a weight anchoring Lianndra to the world. "I’m glad you’re an adventurous person. I would have hated it if my master were a weenie; I need adventure, you know?" It wasn’t really a question, so Lianndra just lay there, idly laying his hand on Bran’s head and slowly stroking that soft, sun-streaked hair. He listened to Bran’s heartbeat and sighed, feeling the warmth radiating off the werewolf’s skin.

That was one thing Lianndra had always liked about lycanthropes: they gave off more heat than normal people. He liked the way they were able to warm his chilly skin just by being close to him, and their blood was tasty too.

He smiled a gentle smile and let his mind drift, his hand petting on its own. He vaguely heard Bran’s breathing even out with sleep and felt the werewolf snuggle in closer and more comfortably.

His eyes snapped open at a faint clicking sound, then he "oomphed" as a small puppy body hit him in the middle of the chest.

Bran groaned as he got a mouthful of black fur. He groaned again as that fur melted away to be replaced with the hot stickiness of a naked little boy who had awakened in the middle of the night.

"Jeez, how the hell can I sleep if you’re on my face?" Bran asked, sitting up. The sharp feral anger in his eyes quickly disappeared as he saw the humor of the situation, and he ruffled Daniel’s hair, making the little boy laugh, his serious face momentarily that of a normal child’s.

"Hi," Daniel said, laughing. "What are you guys doing in the middle of the floor? Why didn’t you guys come sleep with Mama and us? The pile’s nice and warm." Even after such a short time he was already speaking better than a child his physical age.

Lianndra laughed. "Sorry, but I’m not a puppy," he said. "I doubt the others would have really enjoyed my presence."

Daniel frowned, thinking about it, then nodded slowly. "I guess so. Mama don’t like strangers, and besides, you’re a little cold, even with our fur."

From the mouth of babes… Lianndra sat up, dropping the little boy from his chest into his lap. Daniel was almost as big as him, but he was about a thousand years younger.

He enfolded the boy in his arms and held him close, enjoying the heat radiating from that little body. He really did love lycanthropes--they were just so cuddly for a vampire with ice in his blood.

Daniel snuggled close and turned in his arms so that he was facing him. He looked up at Lianndra with those vulnerable little boy eyes that seemed so curious about the world, yet at the same time so adult and serious. He was a strange boy, that was for sure, thirty-six months going on thirty-six years.

"Are you afraid?" the little boy asked, his eyes wide.

"Why would I be scared?" Lianndra asked.

"Because you’re going to fight the mean witch lady."

Lianndra was stunned and no little speculative. "How did you know I was going to face Tispith?"

The boy frowned, his small face folding around itself in thought. "I don’t know, I just did."

Lianndra squinted at him. "How old am I?"

"Two hundred and twenty-one," Daniel said, not even pausing for thought.

Hm, interesting.

Blocking all thoughts in his mind, Lianndra looked deep into Daniel’s eyes. "What was my mother’s name?"

"Suzette Marchale de Voight, Countess of Cristelmaine, third cousin to the king," Daniel’s voice was chilly and distant, as if he were reading the words off of some far off teleprompter and as though they weren’t his words he was speaking.

Lianndra pursed his lips. It seemed that the crossing of a mortal dog with an immortal werewolf had a few benefits that had been heretofore untapped and unthought of. Perhaps there was another reason to take the boy home with him other than in kindness.

Sometimes he was a real bastard. A pedigreed bastard.

He smiled indulgently at the boy. "You’re really going to like my Beverly Hills mansion," he said, "it’s just the kind of place most people want to grow up in. You’ll have your own room, an education, friends to play with and any other things you need. And just maybe I’ll let you visit my place out by Las Vegas."

The little boy smiled happily, excited at the prospect of a bright new future and the chance to see a bit of the world.

Little did he know that the underground facility outside of Las Vegas had a fully functioning lab with over three hundred researchers, technicians and engineers, all focusing on different aspects of science. Meteorology, radiology, cancer research, botany, biology, genetic engineering, everything. There was even a special wing devoted solely to magic and weapons.

If Daniel ever visited the facility, he would have samples taken of his blood, urine, semen when he was old enough, organ tissue and any other samples that were deemed necessary for a full genetic analysis. For the past seventy-four years Lianndra had been on a hunt for the gene that gave people psychic powers. He thought that perhaps he had found it, but it was really hard to tell. Perhaps Daniel was the answer he had been seeking; the mystery might be close to being solved.

He smiled to himself. It wouldn’t even be a bad experience for Daniel to see the underground facility, what with all of the "cool" things in it. There were rooms and things for the scientists, but Lianndra also had his own wing of the facility.

There was a bedroom with a giant bed, huge walk-in closets filled with all the clothes he had collected over the years, an office with three computers, a sauna with a full-sized Jacuzzi and steam room and probably the best thing of all was his living room. It had a wall screen TV, a stereo with CD’s and a digital recorder. There was a hologram platform that let a person talk to people long distant direct. And there was a VCR and accompanying video library, whole video game systems from the Atari to the Digitron 700 which hadn’t even been offered to the mainstream human public yet; it was so new it hadn’t even been invented on this Earth and wouldn’t be for the next forty years.

People wondered how so many new inventions came to be invented so fast, not even knowing that most of them had been around longer than they had been alive, hidden in secret caches all over the world, all belonging to Lianndra. He had decided long ago that he would need money to be able to do the things he wanted, so he had set about making a fortune.

He’d been a little upset when the computer had come out before he was ready--someone on his staff had leaked the plans to the mortal government, which meant he had lost out on a very generous fortune. Heads had definitely rolled on that occasion, literally. Still, even though he had missed out on that opportunity, he had made up for it with all the computer and video games he had been putting out. He had whole teams of programmers hidden away cranking out arcade and video games. There was a storeroom packed with games that were going to be brought out over a set length of time that he had already planned out. He didn’t want technology to progress too fast, otherwise he couldn’t milk the situation for as much as it was worth, which was a lot.

Some people would have thought that Felicienne was rich, but they had no clue as to what Lianndra had hidden away in several thousand different banks all over the world. If someone had broken through the back wall of the closet just in his cottage in Scotland, they might have been surprised at the amount of gold bars that could be packed into such a small space. But what he truly liked about having money was that he could have anything, could do anything and didn’t really have to worry about the consequences of his actions, as long as they didn’t become public.

The best part of his underground facility out in the middle of the desert was his library, a place he visited as often as he could manage, which really wasn’t often enough. He had thousand year old manuscripts and bits of papyrus. He had a stone tablet with what were thought to be the first words of man scratched into its surface, not to mention the Ten Commandments he had gotten from his old friend David, who might have actually met Moses, not to mention Jesus Himself.

Sometimes he had to wonder about David, especially when he looked at some of the treasures his friend had gifted to him. He thought that perhaps David was older than recorded history, but he couldn’t really know; he didn’t want to ruin the whole mystery by asking him his age outright. Still, sometimes he wondered if David had a last name, or even what his real first name had been. From some of the ancient books David had given him, he had learned some of the names the man had used in times gone by: Cassius, Dafyd, Carlos, Michelangelo, Jean-Phillip, hundreds of names with hundreds of lovers to go with them.

David had millions of stories about past loves, from manic painters to Roman emperors to Scottish princes to Egyptian pharaohs; they had all worshipped at the altar of David’s love. They had given him gifts that were worth kingdoms, things that could have bought him the world if he had wanted it.

Lianndra had first found traces of David’s past when he had been flipping through a book David had given him. At the very front had been an inscription written in the first forms of Latin:

Another of David’s gifts that had surprised Lianndra had been a painting with a solid gold frame. The painter had captured David in all of his otherworldly beauty, garbed only in a dagger belted around his waist, his luminously white body gleaming under the shadow of a lacy-leafed tree that was long extinct. That in itself hadn’t been so surprising; what was, was when Lianndra had opened the back of the painting up and found a message written in yellow paint.

There was something about David that attracted the powerful and wealthy, as well as the tortured and starving artists of the world. There were paintings of him all over, in all of his different forms: as a mortal man, an angel, wearing the form of a woman, even as a saint blessing the masses, a halo shining about his fair head.

He truly was a beautiful person, with a brightness that shone like the sun and a darkness that was overwhelming in its intensity. There were paintings of him in the nude, fully clothed, or wearing the garb of mythological beings. There was one rather famous painting of him dancing in a meadow with thin and ghostly forms all about him, his shoulder length hair wild and loose, his arms raised and a smile hovering over his lips as if he knew some secret. At the same time, in the very center of the circling dancers, there was a sacrificial altar with a young maiden chained to it, blood flowing from her neck in a thin rivulet, a beatific smile on her lips. She looked as if she had just had a taste of the greatest sex of her life.

There were songs and poems about David. Ancient stories of an angel of light visiting young men and women during the night, offering them their heart’s desire. There were myths surrounding him that went back thousands of years, tales that had been passed down generation by generation.

Lianndra wondered how old David really was. Perhaps Tispith was not the first vampire after all? If she could have been Made, could not others have been around before her? It was a definite mystery.

Perhaps he’d call David, or at the very least leave him a message with his message service, a request for vengeance in case he was killed? He didn’t doubt that David could beat the Queen and all of her followers, be there three or three million.

He was self-confident enough to be able to admit that David was a thousand times stronger than he. The man was older than the hills and had all of the power of an avalanche, falling on his enemies unstoppable. The only problem was that David had a rather firm moral grounding on what was right and what was wrong. He didn’t like the thought of having to kill other vampires, while mortals were fair game, but he didn’t really enjoy killing his own people. Still, if he was pressed, he was the chilliest son-of-a-bitch in the world, a real monster, killing without compunction. There were legends about him, like the one about how he had once killed a city of ten thousand people to get to one guy. He could literally be labeled a natural disaster.

The only good thing about him was that it was hard to make him angry; the most insulting things might only make him give that amused look that made Lianndra go crazy. He was so mild-mannered and controlled that sometimes it was hard to tell what he was thinking, and his feelings were impossible to gauge clearly.

He was probably the greatest of vampire kind, but he didn’t really want the power that might come with the title, so he held himself in the background. There were some vampires that didn’t even know he existed; his legends were more well-known than his very reality. He was a ghost among his own kind. He was "He Who Has Always Been," mysterious and forever.

Some said that David had always been around, that there were ancient stories of a beautiful man who never died, an angel that had come to the world of men to teach them the heavenly knowledge. Lianndra had old books with pictures of a man that looked surprisingly like David. He had even managed to get his hands on an old cave drawing millions of years old. The man in it looked a lot like a man he knew, right down to that amused uplifting of his left brow.

There was a mystery that surrounded David, and if he had been sure that he would come Lianndra would call David and ask him for his help. As it was, he had to worry about the consequences of even trying to call on someone like David--once he was set in motion, there would be no stopping him.

Lianndra didn’t really want to go to Sleep and Wake up to find that Poulsbo and half of Washington had been wiped off the map. Calling David would be like using a sledgehammer to smash bugs. It was definitely overkill. Besides, this was his challenge and his town. He had to face his fears and handle his own problems, otherwise he would spend the rest of his life wondering if he could have taken the Queen and all of her minions on or if he had just been a total chickenshit.

Chickenshit summed up a lot of things in life: feelings, people, thoughts, plans and ideas. Chickenshit could probably have been applied to any situation; it was just one of those universal phrases, like mitigating circumstances and rational thought could explain away anything that cropped up.

Sometimes he thought that God had made a mistake, that creating the Earth had been a chicken shit idea, that maybe He had just been looking for a place to put His stuff and life was just a byproduct. That just about summed up Lianndra’s whole theory on life: it was a mistake.

Now he thought that perhaps he was going to make a mistake of his own, but he was just too uncertain to call in the backup that he might need. David was just a little bit much for the situation at hand; besides, he was probably already doing something, something wildly exciting he wouldn’t want to have disturbed. He was probably out seducing some multimillionaire for every cent he or she had and wouldn’t want to be interrupted.

Lianndra was just going to have to handle things on his own.

CHRIS

From what he had learned during his lessons, Chris knew that a sudden updraft could send a vampire right up into the atmosphere where the heat would fry even their almost-indestructible bodies. There are temperatures that no vampire could withstand and a new Made vampire was more susceptible to them.

He really didn’t relish the thought of being flash-fried. He could just imagine his ashes floating down to earth, probably ending up in someone’s water supply and being drunk by some loser who would choke to death on his remains. It was a chilling thought, that he could end up as nothing more than dust on the wind, fertilizing the flowers. There was also something vaguely comforting about the thought as well, as if he could return to the natural way of things. As if his unnaturalness could just be faded away and he would end up as just another regular person, as if he had never become a bloodsucking monster. Life could go back to some semblance of normal.

Just the fact that he could be comforted by such a horribly, depressing thing troubled him. He didn’t want to be comfortable with the thought of death; he wanted to never have to think and worry about it again. He wanted to live forever and ever and never have to worry about getting old and ugly.

Watching Dezi protect the mortal girl with her own impervious body made him realize just how different he had become. He was flying for God’s sake, something he had only been able to enjoy in dreams.

He felt as though he were living in a dream, a dream that was never going to end. Wonder and joy filling up his nights until that old life, that normal, boring, everyday life, just faded away to nothing. Because while he was here, he had Dezi--beautiful, smart, funny, wonderful Dezi. His dream lover and companion.

Even though he spent his days in a catatonic slumber, he figured that it was well worth it just to be able to look forward to forever. He would enjoy being able to see the centuries change, it was the same kind of thing as watching the leaves change color with the seasons. He had always liked the way the world changed in cycles, and he wondered if time affected the world in the same way. He couldn’t wait to see the future, to hop a spaceship and fly to another planet as easy as hopping a bus. Or being able to see the end of the universe, to watch the sun collapse in on itself and send out one last burst of energy that would envelope the entire solar system. Now that would be worth watching.

Chris looked over at Dezi and smiled, she was just so wonderful. He held her beautiful and graceful hand in his and felt as though he was holding the fate of the world between his clasping palm and fingers.

He could see the faint tracery of veins beneath her skin, like a map of the world or the loom of the Fates. She was a shadowy being of a shadowy world that existed alongside the world of Man, and he stood beside her a pinnacle of the new order.

They were the future of the world and they were the past, remnants of a forgotten age, an age that would never die. They were the true eternal summer, free and wild beings that wandered the world in tattered rags, able to be and do anything they wanted.

So this was love. This freedom and wonder, this ability to think with such liquid mercurial accuracy that seemed so slow and languid from behind his eyes. This was what he had been born for, this feeling of wonder and joy, this love.

Everything he might have ever dreamed of was here. He held it in his grasp. And she was beautiful, like a starry night, velvety black, yet backlit by the twilight glimmers of a trillion stars shining billions of light-years away.

This was the fruit of the tree of ages, the shining gems that gleamed from the branches of all the world’s hope. This was what life was, not the rat race and tangling of mortal lives, this, immortality and always being together. Knowing that you were one with another person, that with a glance your minds and your futures could be tied together in such a complex knot that you would never be free, yet knowing that you didn’t want to be.

This was everything, this ability to fly across the night sky with an effortless ease as if it were something that everyone and everything could do if they really wanted. They were children of the night, She was their mother and that was good. She protected them and hid them and held them safe in the bosom of the world that was their father.

This was love.

He smiled and held Dezi’s hand close to his heart, feeling a warmth that had nothing to do with body heat. This was love, and he liked it. This poetry of the soul that slipped from the tongue of his mind like water from a glass. This was everything tangled all together into one giant bundle inside of him. Love.