And so Sklayne had given everything he could, that Trevarr survive the poisoning and recover quickly.
Brave, noble.
Hungry Sklayne.
“Come on,” the Garrie said to Trevarr. She was more shaken than she let on, her power tight in a roiling ball, her earlier warmth pulled into a huddle of self-protection.
A shame. Not long before, Sklayne had thought he would learn exactly which noises the Garrie made in mindless pleasure.
She asked Trevarr, “Can you make it back to the hotel? Maybe we can get up the back stairs without being seen. You know, since we’re such a mess but you’re all suddenly healed and since we really, really don’t want to be seen here with Bob.”
Sklayne.
Trevarr’s single-word directive came so indistinctly, so weakly, that Sklayne staggered under a sudden impulse to break away. Break the bond. Maybe in this moment, it could be done.
No more bond-mate. No more do this, Sklayne and don’t do that, Sklayne. Just Sklayne on his own, doing his own Sklayne things.
But...
No more hunting together, no more with that wild gleam in Trevarr’s eye, ineffable charge bouncing between them as their quarry ran to ground. No more atreyvo. No more of being with someone who knew Sklayne just that well.
Who rubbed his cat-shape ear.
Sklayne decided he was too weak to break away at this moment. Far too weak.
Especially when Trevarr, with that single word, offered him a gift. Take the spilled blood, he’d meant.
Tasty.
He swooped toward them, skimming over the Garrie and her gory hands, ignoring her noises of dismay and alarm. He wrapped himself around Trevarr — busy, busy with clothes and skin, with the outer edges of the healing wounds.
That hurt, he knew — felt Trevarr flinch. But the remaining injures were even cleaner now, infused with what passed for Sklayne’s saliva. He could have done the same for the Garrie and her torn hands, but... she wouldn’t have understood. She would have been frightened.
Or worse. As it was he felt her energy gather for an assault, but he was done, done, done, leaving a cleaner Trevarr behind as he peeled away.
“What the hell was that?” Garrie demanded. “And what is that thing?”
“Something that should not be here,” Trevarr said, distantly. Telling the truth, for what that was worth. But that contact had told Sklayne plenty, too. Trevarr needed safety. And rest. Time for Sklayne’s gifted energies to finish their job.
“Hey!” the dead man said. “Hey.”
Trevarr saw him not, but Sklayne saw him plenty — vibrating layers of color that couldn’t yet coalesce into anything sensible. The voice wasn’t a voice at all, merely a set of energy vibrations more properly meant for Sklayne’s kind. But the Garrie could hear it.
It meant, he thought, that the Garrie would hear Sklayne, too, if he focused intently enough.
“Hey!” the dead man said again. “What about me?”
That was the problem — the reason they were still here. This once-person body, lying here with Trevarr’s knives jutting from its flesh, waiting to be found by people who wouldn’t understand.
“Look, you can help me,” the dead man told the Garrie. “I know you can.”
“Another time,” the Garrie said. “Though I’m really not sure what you think I can do for you. You’re cohesive; you know what happened. If you have some unfinished business, you’re better off hunting up a good medium. I do the ghost thing really well, but I don’t always do the people thing so well. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“You were doing the people thing just fine with that man before the Hulk took over,” the dead man said.
“Look, Bob, I might be able to —”
“Oh, good,” he interrupted, his colors vibrating out so hard with relief so as to obscure his form altogether. “Put me back.”
A silence.
“Put you back?” the Garrie said, and her voice held a particular tone of disbelief.
“Yes! Look, I haven’t been dead long. And I’m right there. Look at you — look at the power you have. I can see it, you know. So you can’t fool me. Just put me back.”
“I think you overestimate the possibilities here,” the Garrie said faintly.
Sklayne perused the body again. Knives. Not quite everywhere, but enough of them. Damage. Not quite everywhere, but enough of it.
Nothing to go back to.
“You can do it,” the dead man said. “Seriously, I insist. And you know, I feel a pretty strong attachment to you.”
“Sure,” the Garrie said, suddenly sounding wary. “You would. That was pretty intense.”
“Then you know I mean it when I say I can make your life a living —”
The Garrie bristled. “Do you have any idea how fast I can take you apart?”
But the dead man snorted. “You already helped kill me once — that ought to have been enough for you.”
Sklayne felt the Garrie’s quick floundering panic at this truth, no matter that she hadn’t done the deed, or that the chakha had left them no choice, or even that the dead man had been too chemically altered to resist the chakha in the first place. Trevarr’s expression said that he knew those things too — there beside the Garrie, wiping leftover blood from his mouth and, because he thought no one was looking, grimacing at the taste of it.
Sklayne saw it all. The Garrie’s chagrin, Trevarr’s discomfort, the dead man’s ghost.
The dead man’s body.
Hungry Sklayne.
Fast, hungry Sklayne.
Oh, lovely snack. Oh yes.
The Garrie paled. She recoiled — and then straightened, determination oozing from her energies as she glared at the dead man’s shocked spirit. “If you want real help, I’ll do my best. But if you think that threats are going to get anywhere with me, then,” she said stiffly, “you’ll learn what’s enough for me.”
And, small person that she was, she nonetheless grabbed up the bloody butter knife, helped Trevarr to his feet, and bore most of his weight back to the hotel.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 22
Kehar: Not Quite So Long Ago
Nevahn opened his eyes to a scratching sound in the darkness.
Even a year after Ghehera had taken Trevarr away, it came as a surprise to realize himself alone. And it always came as a surprise to find the memories of that day burning so brightly in his mind.
The look on Trevarr’s face when he returned to the village, a crag antelope slung over his shoulders and his own blood splashed over a satchel full of the high-air herbs their healer had requested. His boot guards were fastened tight against the vipers of the season; his shirt torn where he’d fought off something with claws, his hair — as thick as a horse’s tail, kthai braids hidden within — unruly after days on the hunt.
Oh yes, the look on his son’s face. The knowing. The understanding. Solchran was done hiding him. Done trying.
And the acceptance that hadn’t been defeat at all.
Nevahn had never lost his curiosity about the lessons Trevarr had learned from his beloved daughter... or the lessons he might have learned from a kyrokha. But he’d never gotten the answers, either. He had only gleaned, over the years, that the combination had given Trevarr a certain strength in himself — and that if he seemed to have no true idea of his own nature, it was only because such things never came predictably, not even among the mudblood caste.
Rare as it was for races to intermingle, it did happen. But they never bred predictably or true.
No wonder Ghehera kept such tight rein on them.
Oh, yes, the look on Trevarr’s face. And the hint of roughness in his voice when he met Nevahn’s gaze and said the only two words he’d utter before Ghehera arrived — and then before they took him away. “I’m ready.”
Someone had taken the antelope from his shoulders. Emptied his satchel into an herb basket. Pressed upon him an extra shirt and a wrapped half-loaf stuffed with fruit-meat stew
. Even wiped his raw, scraped shoulder, spreading a little unguent afterward.
The smell of it stung Nevahn’s nostrils even now. Alone, here in the darkness of his small tidy home where one bed held his tired bones and the other lay empty.
Odd, for the unguent’s scent to hit his memory so strongly, these seasons later.
Cloth shifted against cloth in the darkness. Nevahn hadn’t moved. And now he couldn’t help but hold his breath, listening harder.
“You’re awake.”
The voice seemed a little deeper, quiet as it was. And there, in the darkness, Nevahn found a faint gleam of eye.
“My boy,” he said, stunned to hear the emotion behind his words. Mature he was; elderly he was not. But in those words he heard his age. His future.
“I’m sorry,” Trevarr said, as if he understood all that. “They watch me closely.”
“Are you safe here now?” Nevahn flung the bed’s gauzy covers aside — no need for weight this time of year, but the biting insects drew life along with blood.
The darkness made a faint noise that Nevahn understood as wry amusement. “They leave me alone when I’m healing.”
Nevahn heard everything in those words. He heard that his son had been hurt — not just at this moment, but often. “They test you.”
“They want to know what will break me.” Trevarr said the words matter-of-factly, just as he added, “My fathers did not raise me to break.”
Fathers. The moment warmed Nevahn. His son’s loyalty had never been in question. His emotions — those were harder to know, and never to be assumed.
“I would have come sooner,” Trevarr said, “but I couldn’t be sure of them. Now they think they’re sure of me. What they can ask of me, what they can do to me. What they have of me.”
“If I know you,” Nevahn murmured, “they overestimate themselves.” He didn’t yet sit up, or light a lamp. Trevarr hadn’t invited it, and with good reason. If Ghehera knew he’d come...
Even this village had its sympathizers.
And still he couldn’t help but ask, “Are you hungry? Are you well? Do you need tending?”
A rustle of movement told him that Trevarr had risen. “Not this time.”
This time. A flutter of hope filled Nevahn’s barrel chest. He’d learned early to parse Trevarr’s unspokens. This time meant there’d be a next time.
“Tell me,” Trevarr said. “Do they leave you alone?”
There were any number of answers to that one. “The Krevata?” Nevahn guessed, and shook his head — knowing Trevarr would see through the utter gloom of high dark tide and deep night. “Never quite, but they’re treading lightly. Still smarting. Ghehera?” He hesitated, looking for a truth that wouldn’t bring that gleam into Trevarr’s eye. Finally he settled on words that didn’t quite hide reality. “We know they’re watching.”
Trevarr made a noise in his chest, something deeper than Nevahn had heard before. He understood, all right. Solchran’s safety still depended on Trevarr’s cooperation. His willingness to do the things no one else could do, and to take the damage no one else could take.
Nevahn dared to ask, almost. “What,” he started, and then wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Trevarr had mercy. “I hunt for them,” he said. “The rogues. Or the ones such as I who have run.” He stopped, as if thinking on it, and then offered, “Sometimes across worlds,” as if that was a pleasantry.
“That sounds... good,” Nevahn offered cautiously.
Trevarr laughed outright, as muffled for the night as it was. “It’s interesting,” he said. And then, “I’m learning.”
Nevahn understood that, too. The things Trevarr learned weren’t likely the things that Ghehera thought he would. Or would be pleased to know he had.
He would have said so, given the chance. But the darkness emitted an ashy scent, a pleasant musky wood smoke — and revealed the faintest gleam of eye. The touch on Nevahn’s shoulder was so light he barely felt it at all.
And then he was alone again.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 23
Staggering Away from Trouble
Prudence with ignorance.
— Rhonda Rose
You fake it, you break it.
— Lisa McGarrity
I really, really don’t do people.
Especially not people who hulked out and attacked and died because of it.
Together, Garrie and Trevarr made their unsteady way to the hotel back entrance, using her key card to slip into a quiet stairwell. Just as well they had it to themselves, for aside from their generally ragged appearance, Garrie was still without a shirt. The light with claws had skimmed hers carelessly during its startling clean-up procedure; they had shaken out with a plethora of holes, small and large.
Sports bra. The fashion look these days, right?
Trevarr’s clothes had fared better. No obvious staining, no new blemishes. But his shirt hung loose and his belt, though threaded through the crisscrossed loops of his pants, flapped unbuckled. And his weight for sure hung all over Garrie’s shoulders as they made their way upward.
He stumbled at the top step at their floor; she braced against the doorway and pushed the handle to get them through, the key card gripped tightly between her front teeth. She was too tired, too precarious to do another balancing act while she plied the key card at their room, and so she plied her foot, bouncing it gently off the door.
“Lucia,” she said, a stage whisper around the key card. “Drew! Someone let us in!”
Sounds of conversation from the other side, murmurs and a short argument and then Drew opened the door a peek — only an instant before he threw it open to gape at them. “Shit!” he said, standing directly in the way. “Fierce shit!”
“Aiee, Dios, get it right.” Lucia appeared from the bathroom wearing urban black — break-in chic — hair gleaming and freshly sleek, a makeup brush in her hand. “Fierce is fierce, it just stands on its —” she stopped, saw them. “¡Mierda feroz!”
She pulled Drew aside and out of the way. “Get in here! Do you want someone to see you like that? Aiee, chicalet, where did you get that bra, at the Big Box?”
Garrie stood stunned, braced to support Trevarr. “Let me get this straight. I show up at the hotel missing half my clothes and hauling a shredded client, and you’re worried that my white trash budget is showing?”
Lucia drew herself up, clearly offended at the implication that she’d said such a thing as white trash. “We all know your sense of style is deeply impaired.”
“You think? I think we’re all lucky I wore a bra tonight at all. Because sometimes —”
“No!” cried Drew, covering his ears and his eyes all at once, elbows and hands and whatever it took. “No, no, no! You’re scarring me! Deeply!”
A hotel door down the hall opened; Lucia reached out to haul Garrie into motion, and by default pulled Trevarr inside, too. But she stopped short, her expression suddenly doubtful. “Is that... blood?”
Garrie guided Trevarr into the other room, where warmth lingered from the open window. She rolled him off her shoulder and onto the bed, where he sat stiff and precarious.
“Garrie!” Lucia said from the other room as she closed the door, sharply enough so even Trevarr took note in a blearily raised brow. “What — ?”
Garrie found Drew lurking just beyond the doorway. “Call Beth, tell her tonight is off.”
A stubborn light entered his eyes. “But... dire, blah blah, must act, blah blah, timing, blah blah...”
Garrie whirled on him, wobbling right on the sudden edge. “Look at me!” she shouted, spreading her arms in indication of herself. His widened eyes told her he saw it all — bloodied hands, stains still etched across her exposed torso, bruises and scrapes from the flinging and the sudden landings. She could feel every one of them, too. “Look at him! Do you really think this is something we should do tonight?”
Drew swallowed visibly as Lucia came up behind him, putting a steady
ing hand on his shoulder to add, “Also the beetles... the goo... the sky on fire...”
“Not to mention people being possessed in a way I’ve never seen before.” Garrie met her head-on, even bared her teeth a little, thinking of Bob’s hulk form. “The man who did this to us? Not only taken over, but changed. Physically. Twice as big, who knows how many times as strong. He whipped Trevarr’s butt.”
Trevarr jerked to offended attention. “Because of the blade.”
“He stabbed — ?” Drew started, but didn’t finish — because no, no, obviously Trevarr hadn’t been stabbed or he wouldn’t be upright and in one apparent piece. But he stopped, because then again... there was the lingering blood.
No one had blood stuck in crevices unless there had been much of it to start with. No one had blood in their — she followed his gaze, looked down.
“Well, crap,” she said. “In my belly button.” And glared at Trevarr.
“It’s yours, isn’t it?” Lucia asked Trevarr, accusation in her voice.
Garrie let the question sit on silence for a heartbeat. Then she said, “Look. You’re right. Whatever’s going on at Winchester House, it’s big. And it’s bad, really bad. But he’s not going anywhere tonight. And if I don’t go in fresh enough, what do you think happens there tonight?”
Lucia’s eyes widened; they reddened around the edges, because Lucia was nothing if not transparent. Drew floundered, and floundered some more. “I’ve never heard you talk like this.”
“You have.” Garrie swiped at her belly button. Nope, crusted into place. “Just not on this scale.”
“True,” Lucia said, but she didn’t relax any. “Quinn is front line before any of us even get there.”
We’ll notice soon enough if Quinn breaks way. She caught Lucia’s eye... didn’t have to say it.
“Yeah, we should call Quinn,” Drew said with relief. “He’ll know what all this means. Or he’ll find out.”
“He’s probably already looking,” Garrie said. “He might not know about our hulk friend, but he’s for sure heard about the amazing aurora activity.”
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