by Zoe Chant
The tendons at the back of his hands stood out and the muscles of his forearms bulged as if he was lifting some heavy weight, though he held himself absolutely still. If she was seeing him for the first time now, she wouldn’t think his eyes were sad. She’d think they were hot… passionate… hungry.
She could feel the beating of her own heart, quick and hard with desire, but it didn’t frighten her. She didn’t care if she dropped dead immediately after ripping his clothes off and having sex up against the wall, as long as she got to finish it first.
Ransom jumped off the bed. “Excuse me.”
He ran to the bathroom. Not even bothering to slam the door, he went straight to the sink, turned the cold water on, and stuck his head under the tap.
Natalie lay back with a groan. “You’re being sensible, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, walking back in. “Bathroom’s all yours.”
Sighing, she got up and splashed her own face. The truth was, cold water didn’t do much. It was mostly a signal of intent to oneself, a promise not to act on impulse. Self-restraint had never been her strong suit. But she thought of Ransom, and how difficult their situation was for him as well as her, and the flash of gut-wrenching terror in his eyes when she’d had to lie down in the dust at Tomato Land. He’d been through so much already. She couldn’t put him through any more pain.
When she returned to the bedroom, she found that he had managed a quick-change act of his own. His feet were still bare, but he’d switched out his pajamas for pants and a shirt. As he finished buttoning it, all the way up to the collar, she remarked, “Button-down shirts: the modern chastity belt.”
He gave a wry smile. “Think you’d be all right lying down with me?”
She climbed on to his bed and they lay down together, holding each other close. The sexual awareness of each other was still there, but there were other feelings as well, friendship and comfort and intimacy and tenderness. And most of all, love. Their shared love was like a cord binding them, silken but unbreakable.
His arms were strong around her, his body heat warming her down to her bones. The jittery urgency to go, do, hurry before it’s too late, which had driven her ever since she’d learned that she had limited time, began to melt away. For the first time that night—for the first time that trip—maybe for the first time since she’d seen that doctor—Natalie relaxed.
“About what you told me,” she said. “The enhanced intuition project. Jager. Apex. The wizard-scientists. You didn’t experiment on anyone but yourself. You didn’t kidnap anyone. You didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t even know any of that was happening. Exactly how is any of that your fault?”
She felt his body tense and his breathing catch. “I was responsible for the original process. It was Jager’s idea, but he couldn’t get it to work. I did that. None of it would have happened if it wasn’t for me.”
“You had no idea anyone was going to use it like that. That’s like saying that the guy who invented gunpowder so he could kill a deer and feed his family is responsible for everyone who’s ever been shot to death.”
“Gunpowder wasn’t invented for hunting. It was originally used for fireworks. It wasn’t until the tenth century in China that the first weapons…” He broke off, seeing her grin. “Okay, point taken. But—”
“But nothing! Ransom, you didn’t do anything wrong. You burned down your entire career trying to stop Jager. It’s not your fault he was too sneaky for you. If a soldier was killed trying to defend his position, and it got overrun anyway, would you say it was his fault?”
“No, but that’s different. That soldier did everything he could. I didn’t. I assumed I’d fixed things, and then I stopped looking.”
She gave a frustrated sigh. It was so obvious to her, but she couldn’t get him to see it. If it had been her…
Dust swirling around her ankles.
Ashes falling from the sky.
If you rub them between your fingers, they’re the same dry powder, like flour…
“Natalie? Are you all right?”
“Of course!” The brightness in her voice was tinny, false. A kind of lie. She’d never lied to him. So why did it feel like she was lying now?
Why were some stories so hard to tell? The facts weren’t a secret. It was something else… the feelings behind the facts?
Natalie couldn’t help shying away from that train of thought. Finally, she said, “Ransom, can I tell you a story?”
“Of course.”
She’d already told him what her childhood was like, more or less. And this particular story was so relevant to his situation. But the words didn’t come, and she didn’t know why. Then she remembered their play-acting at Ellisville High, and said, “Could I tell it as a kind of hypothetical story? Not about me, about a hypothetical girl?”
He smoothed back her tumbled hair from her face. His long fingers were so gentle, she had the irrational desire to cry. “Of course.”
She took a deep breath, and then the words came. “Once upon a time, there was a little orphan girl. For whatever reasons, this orphan girl hadn’t ever found a permanent home. When the story starts, she was ten years old, which is much too old to be a desirable adoption prospect. Parents want a baby or a toddler, who they figure won’t have been too damaged for them to fix.”
“That is so wrong!” Ransom burst out. “No one’s too damaged to deserve love.”
Natalie felt her eyebrows rise. “Yes, exactly, Ransom. Don’t forget you said that. Anyway, this orphan girl was living at a group home when some foster parents showed up. They had a big, happy family of foster kids, living in a big, beautiful house in the country. They showed her photos. And let me tell you, the photos looked great. Well, this orphan girl knew she was a troublemaker—she’d been told that often enough—and she knew this was her last chance—she’d been told that too. So she promised herself that she’d be good, and she promised those foster parents that too. So they took her away to their big, beautiful house.”
“What was it, really?”
“A big, beautiful house.” She sighed. “And the foster kids were only allowed in one wing of it, which needless to say was not one-tenth as nice. They weren’t even allowed into the rest of it. Our ‘parents’ ate steak with the money meant to support us, and we ate cereal with powdered milk. At the time I assumed the social workers were in on the scam, but who knows, maybe they were overworked and didn’t have time. Whatever. They never checked up on us.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “I mean, I believe it, it’s just terrible.”
“Now, that orphan girl didn’t think of telling the authorities. Literally: it never occurred to her. So she waited till the parents were out on a dinner date and the kids were unsupervised. The rest of the house was locked up tight, but you learn things in group homes. That orphan girl promised the rest of the kids she’d take the blame. And they all went outside, and she broke into the big, beautiful house and set it on fire.”
“Good for you!” Ransom blurted out. “Uh… her. Good for her.”
“Right. She felt pretty good about it. Especially when she broke into their garage and set their second car on fire too. Her only regret was that their other car was at the fancy restaurant they were eating at. Well, the social workers came and asked her why she did it, but she never even considered telling them the truth. It didn’t occur to her that they didn’t already know, or that if they didn’t know, that they’d care.”
“Oh, Natalie.” Ransom’s arms closed tight around her.
She blinked back a stinging in her eyes, and went on, “So she said she liked playing with matches. Luckily for that girl, she was only ten so there weren’t any real consequences. She was sent to a group home for troubled kids, which by then she was very familiar with, and knew she would never, ever have a real home.”
“Nat—”
She hurried on. “She didn’t follow up on the foster parents, to see if they were ever investigated or if they got a new hous
e and kept on stealing money meant for kids.”
“You were ten.”
“I’m not ten now.” With that, the stinging faded away. Now she was on safer ground, back to the only reason she’d been able to tell that story: to convince Ransom to set down his burden of guilt. “I could have checked on them at any time. But I never did. It never even occurred to me that I could, until right now. If they went on running their scam, am I responsible?”
“Of course not!”
She didn’t reply, hoping his own words would sink in.
“You’re not responsible,” he repeated. “You don’t think you are, do you?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t. So why do you?”
“Well—I was an adult—”
“I’m an adult now.”
Ransom neither argued nor agreed. Instead, he laid his cheek against hers and said, “You were so brave. And smart. And strong. You took all the responsibility. I wish someone had seen who you really were, and gotten you the home you deserved.”
“Merlin did. And really, I couldn’t possibly have done better than a crime circus for shifters.”
“True… How old were you when your parents died?”
“I was young. I don’t remember them.” Again, she felt on thin ice. The facts were one thing, but with the love that bound them, she could tell that he was about to ask about feelings. She changed the subject. “What do you think now? About Apex… the intuition project… Your hellhound?”
His reply was completely unexpected, but so Ransom that it almost made her laugh. “I think I should have actually researched what tincture of shiftsilver does. I found out about it when I asked my power how I could get rid of my hellhound. There’s a lesson in there about the perils of asking the wrong questions. What’s it normally used for?”
“It’s supposed to get you in touch with your inner animal. If you were unable to shift for so long that you lost the ability to do it, a drop of tincture of shiftsilver will send you down deep inside yourself, to find your animal and bring it back to the surface. Or if you’re having trouble controlling your shift, you can use it to talk to your animal on a deeper level. I don’t know much about it, actually. But I do know that you’re not supposed to use it to try to kill your animal!”
“Yeah.” He gingerly touched his side. “I wanted so much for that part of me to be gone.”
Natalie thought back to his story. “You were blaming yourself for everything before you got bitten. Would killing your hellhound even do anything?”
“It would let me stop seeing everyone’s worst moments.” He tilted his head back, gazing up at the ceiling. “But you’re right that it didn’t put those thoughts in my head. I always had them. Since I was a teenager, at least. Ellisville High was objectively terrible, but even at Sweetwater, I might’ve needed those therapy puppies.”
“You ever do any real therapy?”
He shook his head. “When I was a teenager, my option was Wayne the Weasel. In college and with the intuition enhancement project, I focused on work and used that as a distraction. In the Marines, there’s a lot of ‘real men handle things themselves’ still going around. Afterward... Oh. One last secret. I’d forgotten about this one. Roland didn’t just tell me to ask permission before I used my power. My other option was to talk to someone. He tried to give me the names of some shifter therapists. I walked out on him.”
“What do you think now?”
A familiar bitterness returned to his voice as he said, “Doesn’t matter if I said yes now. Now that I’ve told you everything, I couldn’t keep on hiding it from them if I tried to go back. And I couldn’t take it if they found out that I’m the one who invented the thing that ruined their lives.”
She wanted to say that Merlin wouldn’t blame him, but the words never reached her lips. Natalie too couldn’t ever see Merlin again, because there was something she couldn’t hide from him that she wanted him to never find out. How could she argue without shining a spotlight on her own decision?
Ransom sat up. “Can you give me back the tincture of shiftsilver, please?”
Suspiciously, she asked, “What for?”
But his gaze was clear and calm, not haunted and desperate. “I want to talk to my hellhound.”
Chapter 21
There was nothing Ransom wanted more than to stay where he was, holding Natalie in his arms and basking in the love that they shared. He’d imagined that seeing her face when she learned of his guilt would be the worst moment of his life, but she hadn’t blamed him or left him or stopped loving him. Instead, she’d held him closer, told him she loved him, and given him some badly needed perspective.
He couldn’t shake off the last six months of his life like Heidi shook water out of her fur, but for once, having a lot to think about made him feel better rather than worse.
He only wished he could do the same for Natalie. Her story had broken his heart, but though she’d accepted his touch, she’d steered hard away from his attempts at getting her to talk to him the way he’d talked to her. He could only hope that, like the boys in books who tamed wolves and foxes and skittish stray dogs, if he was patient and proved himself worthy of her trust, eventually she’d come to him.
And to be worthy of her trust, he had to deal with his hellhound. One way or another.
“The vial’s in your bra, right?” he asked. “Because you’re clutching your breast like you think someone’s going to steal it.”
She let go with a flicker of a smile, but even that quickly faded. “I don’t think you should do this. It’s too dangerous. You could die.”
“Have you ever heard of anyone dying from using tincture of shiftsilver to try to talk to their animal?”
“No, but you already pissed yours off!”
“I know,” he admitted. “But it’s something I have to do. And this time I won’t try it alone.”
Her hands were trembling as she lifted out the vial. “If it looks like it’s going badly, back in the tub you go.”
“If it does, feel free.” He unscrewed the vial, extracted a single drop, and recapped it.
She replaced the vial in her bra. “Lie down.”
“Good idea.” He lay down, dropper in hand, and looked up at her. He couldn’t take her with him into the cold and dark, though she’d be brave enough to go, so he tried to capture her image as she was now: rainbow hair tangled, opal-gray eyes both worried and trusting, lemon-sharp scent rising off her warm skin.
She took his free hand and held it tight. He could feel the strength of her dainty-looking hands, which could bear the weight of her own body and more. “I won’t let go.”
“I’ll come back to you,” he promised, and put the drop on his tongue.
Once again, he felt the whiskey heat sliding down his throat. Once again, he found himself in that cold and shadowy realm.
But it wasn’t quite the same this time. Ransom no longer wore scrubs and a lab coat, but a button-down shirts and pants. And his hellhound was already there, lurking in the shadows, only barely visible as a vast and looming shape. The twin flames of its eyes blazed like wildfires within the darkness.
“Hello,” Ransom said.
The hellhound snarled, but came no closer.
It took all of Ransom’s courage, but he sat down cross-legged on the floor. He’d be a sitting duck if the hellhound attacked him, but it was a position that was non-threatening without being one of surrender. He opened his hands, showing that they were empty.
Pitching his voice low and soothing, he said, “I read books about dogs when I was a boy. Boys with hunting hounds. Boys with huskies. Boys with terriers and retrievers and greyhounds. They all said a dog doesn’t care if you’re cool or rich or good at sports. A dog will love you just because you’re you. I guess I wanted that.”
The hellhound came a step closer. The smoke that surrounded it drifted over Ransom. He expected it to smell like sulphur and gunsmoke, but the scent was of wood smoke. If he hadn’t know what it cam
e from, he’d have felt very confident in guessing that it was from a campfire.
“I’ve been thinking about your power. You say it shows how terrible the world is. But I remember those women I saw at Tomato Land, the married couple. One of them used to be homeless. One of them lost her father. But when I saw them, they were happy and in love. Is your power really about how bad things can get? Or is it about how far we can come?”
The hellhound took another step closer.
“I love Natalie,” Ransom said. “I want to be worthy of her. I don’t ever want her to wake up and find me like she did. I’m not going to beat myself up about it, but it was wrong. I’m not going to do it again.”
The hellhound gave an uncertain whine.
Ransom kept his voice soft. Gentle. The hellhound was a part of him. It felt strange to be gentle with himself. “Come here. I promise not to hurt you.”
The hellhound laid his head in Ransom’s lap. Ransom stroked his head and ears and shoulders. The hellhound’s fur was short and sleek, as velvety as a puppy’s.
The first time Ransom had left that inner realm, the transition had been abrupt and violent. One moment he’d been struggling on the ground with his hellhound’s fangs at his throat, and the next instant he’d been drenched in freezing water. This time, the scene dissolved like a dream on a lazy Sunday morning, the hellhound’s soft fur becoming Natalie’s soft skin.
Ransom opened his eyes, and looked into Natalie’s.
I know her now, said his hellhound. His voice was still a growl, but one with a distinctly different tone. It used to sound like a dog throwing himself against a fence in an attempt to rip out someone’s throat. Now it sounded like Heidi or Wally having a friendly tussle over a ball. She’s our mate.
Ransom had never believed in mates. He knew that shifters believed that they could recognize the person with whom they were completely compatible, the person they would love forever until death did them part. But people believed in all sorts of things. Throw a rock into the stands at a football game, and you were likely to hit someone who believed that gluten was made out of aliens.