Originally Human

feral. "Oh, I do hope not."

    TRUTH spells were not safe to use on Michael. This time, the backlash lifted Cullen off the ground and slammed him against the west wall. Boards cracked, broke. He landed half-out, half-in, sprawled in the debris of the wrecked wall.
    My ears were ringing, though I hadn't heard a thing except for the wall breaking. I jumped to my feet. "Cullen!"
    Michael's hand snatched at me. "Wait. The roof…"
    I looked up. Things were leaning alarmingly. "Hold it," I told him, and hurried to Cullen. He was pale, motionless, and slightly bloody—but blinking thoughtfully at the sky now overhead instead of rafters. "Your boyfriend packs a punch, love."
    I exhaled in relief. "At least you don't have amnesia."
    "No, I remember well enough what happened." He pushed up on one elbow, winced. "At least one rib. It's a good thing I'm Lupus."
    There were scraping noises behind me, and a grunt. "I think that will hold." Michael sounded dubious. "The blow was unintentional, Cullen. I am sorry."
    "You have amazing reflexes, then." He took the hand Michael held out, grunting as Michael pulled him to his feet, and rubbed his side. "Or maybe… not reflexes. Defenses. Put there by someone else."
    Michael was very still. "You're talented. Given the tools you have to work with, extremely talented."
    "You're a construct, aren't you? Made, not born."
    "Yes."
    That one word dropped into the well of silence it created even as it was spoken.
So many words have power
, I thought dimly,
not just the magical ones
. My voice, when at last I broke the silence, was small. "Michael?"
    "I am sorry." His voice was remote. He didn't look at me.
    "And you've remembered more than you're admitting." Excitement radiated from Cullen like heat from a stove as he moved closer to Michael. "I only caught a glimpse—but there's so much inside you! Knowledge—vast amounts of knowledge. Power—"
    "Knowledge is power," Michael said sadly.
    Cullen stopped in front of Michael. "
What are you
?"
    "I cannot tell you." At last Michael turned to me. There was grief in his eyes, old grief and fresh, the raw mixed with scars from other earlier woundings. "Not
will
not, Molly. Cannot. The way I am made, some things are not possible for me."
    "You could have told me more than you have." I made it a statement, not a question. I was already sure.
    "When we met the state cop, much came back to me. Not everything—I am still in pieces, and they don't all fit together. But that I was made, not born… yes. I could have told you that."
    "You didn't trust me?" I whispered.
    He lifted one hand as if he would touch me, then let it drop. "The place where I've lived is a good place. Not a world as you are used to worlds, but there is much beauty, much to learn. But it is remote. Few are able to cross, and the others who live there are further from human than I am. I was… lonely."
    I swallowed hard. "Did you think I wouldn't understand loneliness?"
    "I wanted you to see me as a man. Not a thing."
    My breath huffed out. "Good grief, is that all? You
are
a man."
    "This is not the body I wore before I came here. Things there are much more fluid. I… borrowed the pattern for this body from a friend."
    I shook my head. "Great Mother of Heaven! You think I'm fooled by that delicious body of yours? I was pretty sure that wasn't your original form. Good grief—you scarcely knew how to walk when you first arrived."
    Hope woke in his ocean eyes. "You were supposed to assume it was my wounds hindering my movement."
    "I did, at first. But this is my area of expertise, Michael. If anyone in this realm or any other knows about men, I do. Made or born, you are definitely a man."
    "Then—you do not mind what I am?"
    "I started out human, then became something else, too. You started out something else, then got some human mixed in." I shrugged. "What's to mind? You're Michael."
    He whooped, grabbed me, and whirled us both around, kissing whatever part presented itself—my hair, forehead, shoulder. Quick, peppery kisses that stung life into me. Laughing, I seized his face in my hands, and kissed him back.
    Until hard hands thrust the two of us apart.
    "Good lord," Cullen gasped, one hand still on my shoulder, one on Michael's. "It's not that I wasn't enjoying the show. I can't remember when I've gotten this hard watching others kiss, being more interested in participating than spectating. But you were drawing down hard from the node, Michael—and Molly, I thought you