Chapter 10 Cora #3
The cohort had not moved. Not one of them.
I had read about cohort-stillness in the field reports Loren brought down from the council in his last six visits — the Vampyren-cohort-witness, the held breath that was not a held breath because the body did not need to hold the breath the way humans did.
I had not known what it looked like from inside.
It looked like this. The drum burned. The sky was open over the broken half-roof.
Veron's two-toned voice was quiet in his sternum.
Renn was at the senior position. Cruz had stopped cleaning the SAW he had already finished cleaning.
Sylvia's hand was resting on top of her field kit and her eyes were on the fire and the corner of her mouth was doing something I had not seen Sylvia's mouth do in the eight months I had known her.
Drew said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"That counts."
"It does."
"Mine. Yours. Ours."
I went still.
He had said ours.
He had said ours out loud.
The "ours" rule he had been holding for nine months, the verbal rule he had not violated once since I had known him, had just broken on a kiss in front of a cohort of five at a fire in a barn outside Sidney, Illinois, past midnight, with a Lucian named Veron sitting six feet away who had walked in from a tree line tonight and been welcomed to the count, two days from where a Vampyren named Hess was about to engage us in Urbana, eleven years from where a six-year-old named Talia had hidden in a bathroom and not been counted.
He said it again, in front of them: "Ours."
I leaned my forehead against his.
I closed my eyes.
I said: "Ours."
He did not move.
Then the cohort moved.
Renn did the Vampyren-formal nod. The senior-junior nod he had given Drew in Vegas and given Veron at the meat-pass an hour ago.
He gave it now to both of us at once, the senior-position-witnessing-a-count nod, a thing I had read about in field reports and had not seen done for a human pair before.
Cruz said, low, Tower. The Marine word he had been using for cohort-affirmation since Ch3 when Renn had asked him what the word meant and Cruz had said it meant I am at the wall, I am watching, the count is held.
Veron did the throat-line bow. The Lucian acknowledgment of a hand-pass.
He had given it to me an hour ago when I had said welcome to the count.
He was giving it now to the count that had just expanded.
Sylvia said nothing. Sylvia smiled. The thing the corner of her mouth had been doing for the last sixty seconds finished doing it.
It was the first time I had seen Sylvia smile in eight days.
I had not signed up to be the lead of a cross-species cohort.
I had signed up to bring six people home.
The cohort had happened anyway. Renn had told me at the Albuquerque cache that the cohort would happen whether or not I had signed the paper for Drew.
He had been right. The cohort was happening for Veron now too.
The cohort was the kind of thing nobody could plan and everybody could recognize when it was there.
The thing was there.
The thing was holding.
Drew did not move from where he was. The hand at my jaw came down to my shoulder. He held the shoulder for a moment. Then he stepped back.
He said to the cohort, quiet: "Thank you for the witness."
Renn nodded.
Veron's doubled-tonal voice went very quiet in his sternum. Quieter than it had been all evening. The harmonic-undertone-in-the-skull-hum did something I had no word for — settled, maybe, the way an instrument settles after a note has been played the right way at the right pressure.
Cruz said Tower again, softer.
Sylvia said: "Sit down, Drew. You have eighteen hours and a fight ahead. Eat something."
Drew sat down beside me at the fire.
He ate the dried meat she handed him.
I ate the piece next to his.
We sat at the fire. The cohort held. The drum burned. The Illinois sky was open over the broken half-roof. The four-second kiss was four seconds. The count was the count.
We slept by the fire that night. The team did. All six of us. Drew on his cot at my left, three feet apart, the carving on his chest. The Polaroid on mine. The chipped diner mug was on the floor between us. Empty. Ours.
We slept.
In the morning, the convoy moved out.
The sun was up over Illinois.
The carving was on the dashboard. The Steinbeck was on the cab shelf. The Polaroid was in my chest pocket. The chipped diner mug was in the cup-holder.
Veron was in the second truck with Renn.
Drew was beside me.
I drove.
The road from Sidney to Urbana was sixty miles.
We arrived at the southwest corner of the Urbana enclave at three in the afternoon.
What we found was not what we had expected.
I drove.
Drew was beside me.
His hand was on the seat between us.
The seat was not the cup-holder. The seat was not the dashboard. The seat was between us.
I did not take his hand.
He did not take mine.
The seat between us was the place we had decided, in a kiss four hours ago behind a barn in Sidney, was the place where the future would be.
I drove on.