by Jocelyn Fox
“Said you were killed after a while. They had your picture in the paper a few months back. Real nice memorial service.” The clerk held Duke’s gaze. “Just awarded the first memorial scholarship, too.”
Duke took a breath. Well, that was one question answered…as if he hadn’t already suspected from the ragged shock in Ross’s whisper. The certainty in the clerk’s eyes didn’t brook any argument; he could deny it but that would only cement the certainty in the man’s weathered face. Sometimes the truth was the easiest option. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m him.”
The clerk nodded slowly, his hand disappearing, retrieving the cup again. He spat for a third time, sucked on the wad of tobacco in his lip for a moment, and then said sincerely, “Glad you ain’t dead.”
Duke managed half a grin. “Yeah. Me too.” He held up the bottled waters. “Thanks again.”
The clerk nodded silently and went back to thumbing through a hunting magazine on the counter, leaning on his elbows and thinking about how his wife would love to be the first with this piece of small town gossip. A small smile turned up one side of his lips beneath his grizzled mustache as he savored the victory warming his insides, kindled by the knowledge that he wouldn’t tell the nagging woman a single thing, and she’d never be the wiser.
Duke stepped out into the rising heat of a Louisiana summer day, the humid air wrapping around him with the familiarity of a lover’s hands. He swallowed hard, rubbing one hand over his chin. Eight months. They’d been gone eight months and it had seemed like a couple of weeks on the other side of the border between the worlds. Now he’d deal with the fallout. For a moment his mind strayed toward Ross, how it must have hit her when he’d disappeared, whether she’d moved on in eight months… he shook his head. No. Not now. Time enough for thoughts later, when they’d sorted some things out. One problem at a time. He squared his shoulders, glanced up at the sun and started hiking back toward the river, cutting through the long waving grass. When he was out of sight of the road leading to the gas station and its squat white building, he broke into a distance-eating lope, ignoring the protest of his sore body. Time enough for pain later, too, when they were all safe and healing and not out in the open.
He picked out the crooked tree that marked the curve in the river and headed toward it, sliding under the wooden slat of a fence in disrepair. The hum of insects increased as he neared the river, the scent of the swamp intensifying. Lucky they’d been thrown into a relatively remote little bend in the river. He let himself think about the reaction of the gas store clerk if he’d seen them thrown from the portal into the parking lot of the gas station. He winced. Lucky in more ways than one, although it had been a close call with Luca in the river. The big ulfdrengr was heavy and hard to move, but Duke had carried guys his size before, in training, with fifty pounds of gear added: vests heavy with loaded magazines and Kevlar plates, weapons outfitted with high-intensity lights and precise scopes, water and food and medical kit all added to a two hundred twenty pound man. Carrying someone that heavy compressed your joints, made you feel every stride in your knees, all the muscles in your shoulders and back straining to keep you upright in the fight against gravity. Back then, in the infancy of their training, he’d cursed the sadistic instructor who’d paired the smallest guy in the class with the biggest guy for buddy carries. But it had become a pattern, one that he’d learned to anticipate and even enjoy a little, in a weird way. Just like carrying the biggest weapon on patrols, carrying the biggest guy for casualty drills became a part of his path to earning the trust and respect of his fellow trainees and then his teammates. They had to know that he’d pull his weight, or carry theirs, in a fight for their lives, and the training had paid dividends several times even before he’d been thrown through a portal back into the swamps of Louisiana.
By the time he’d carried Luca to the bank of the river, the navigator – Merrick, his mind supplied – was there to help heave the motionless ulfdrengr through the mud and onto a dry patch of ground. His gray eyes wide, Merrick had watched as Duke slapped Luca’s pale face sharply, once, and then a second time. Duke dug his knuckles hard into the larger man’s chest, going for the nerve at the sternum that was enough to shock guys awake. In the back of his mind, he had wondered how much time had passed since they’d been thrown through the portal, since Luca had landed face down in the river. But he had a pulse. Duke had checked again to make sure.
“Come on, brother,” he’d muttered, Merrick hovering close by. He slapped Luca’s face again, lighter this time but still firmly, talking to him now. “Come on back, wake up.”
And maybe Luca had heard him, because he choked and Duke rolled him with quick efficiency onto his side as he coughed out the river water from his lungs. But then, as soon as the blond giant had dragged in a full breath, he’d come up swinging, landing a solid punch to Duke’s jaw that sent him staggering back for a moment, and fighting off Merrick when the navigator tried to intervene, the smaller Sidhe still no match for a Northman’s blind strength.
Duke had seen red and his body had flashed hot after that hit, instincts beaten into him over and over again taking control as he leapt onto Luca. The big man was definitely stronger and plainly well trained – he’d seen enough of his fighting to know that – but he was disoriented and still coming up out of the fog of unconsciousness. Duke had taken full advantage, sliding into position easily and locking his arm around Luca’s throat, snugging his elbow tightly beneath his jaw. And he spoke firmly into Luca’s ear, holding the choke at just this side of tight, not squeezing enough to cut off air but enough to let him know that it was a good grip that he couldn’t escape.
“I need you to calm down, brother,” Duke had said into Luca’s ear, “you’re confused and you wanna fight, but we’re not the enemy. Now you gotta calm down or I’ll put you out for a few minutes and I can’t promise you won’t wake up hog-tied like a calf at the rodeo.”
The big, muscled body straining against his grip slowly relaxed.
“That’s it,” Duke said into his ear, noticing, not for the first time, the intimacy of the chokehold. Some didn’t understand the bond between teammates, and this was only one of the countless experiences that tied them as close as brothers – their bodies, exhausted and straining against each other, with each other, in training or in combat. They joked that they knew each other better than most women knew them, even though the women got to know them in the biblical sense. Except Ross… Ross had always known him like he knew himself. She had reached into him and found the animal that raged in the cage in his chest, and stared into its eyes, unafraid. He forced himself not to think of her.
When Luca’s hands fell away from Duke’s arm, he had slowly released him. Both men rolled to their knees, Luca breathing heavily and Duke watching the larger man warily. Luca blinked those unsettling wolf-eyes and swallowed hard. His voice came out in a rasp. “Where are we?”
Duke had sat back on his haunches and chuckled. “Surprised you didn’t ask if we were dead. That was my first thought when I landed in your world.”
Luca, though still ghostly pale, had managed a grin. “You are both here, and while I don’t doubt you are valiant enough to earn entrance into the halls of the gods, I do not think the halls of the gods would smell like this.” He’d wrinkled his nose at the smell of the swamp. Merrick had given a little chuckle at the wry humor in Luca’s words.
“Gotta give that one to ya.” Duke had smiled grimly too.
Now, water bottles in hand, he glanced at the sun sinking toward the western horizon, lengthening the shadows. The grasses parted against his legs as he tramped through the thickening brush. The bottles of water from the gas station sweated in his hands. As he neared the tree, he caught a glimpse of movement up in the great reaching branches. He stopped, his eyes searching the foliage, but after a long moment he couldn’t find anything. Then Merrick dropped out of the tree to land a few paces away, gray eyes glinting in the shadows as he sheathed his sword.
“What are you, a damn panther?” demanded Duke. “What made you think it was necessary to climb into the tree and lurk there?”
“This is not my world,” replied the navigator, sliding through the shadows. Luca sat against the trunk of the tree, one knee drawn up to his chest and his eyes closed, though he opened one eye at the sound of their approach.
“Here,” said Duke, twisting open one of the water bottles and handing it to Merrick. The Sidhe passed it to the ulfdrengr without a second thought. Duke frowned slightly when Luca accepted it without protest, but he opened the second bottle and gave it to Merrick.
“I have a friend coming to pick us up at the gas station in about an hour,” he said, glancing again at the sun.
“Who is this friend?” asked Merrick, his voice carefully neutral.
“I trust her with my life,” said Duke, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
Merrick gazed at him with unflinching gray eyes. It struck Duke that he’d once thought Merrick looked young. His face was still youthful, but his eyes had aged in the war to save his world. Then a spark of humor glimmered across his expression. “And what’s a gas station?”
Duke chuckled. “I’ll try to explain on the way. It’s not far, but I don’t want to keep her waiting.” He watched Luca out of the corner of his eye as the ulfdrengr stood. A light sheen of sweat gleamed on Luca’s pale skin, and he put out a hand to steady himself on the trunk of the tree. Duke didn’t say anything, but the medic in him made a note. Then again, he thought, he’d felt sick for a solid day after traveling into the Fae world. He hoped it was just that.
Merrick saw Duke eyeing their weapons. Luca’s axes hung from their loops at his belt, one of them retrieved from the silt-thick creek, and Merrick still carried his own sword in the sheath at his hip, along with an assortment of daggers.
“It would not feel right for us to be unarmed in a strange world,” the Wild Court navigator said, one pale hand touching his sword hilt unconsciously.
Duke took a deep breath and then nodded. “If we run into anyone, just let me do the talking.”
“If their accent is as strong as yours, I doubt I’ll be able to understand them,” Merrick replied lightly.
Duke grinned. “You haven’t heard the half of it yet.”
They began walking through the long grass in the deepening gold of the evening light, both of them keeping a subtle watch on Luca. The ulfdrengr’s movements were somewhat stiff, but his face was stoic as he kept pace with them.
“So now,” said Merrick, raising an eyebrow at Duke, “I’ve read my fair share of texts on the mortal world, but none of them have mentioned gas stations…”
Chapter 5
Tess resisted the urge to scratch at the stitches across the top of her shoulders. Though the Sword remained silent, it appeared that the accelerated healing abilities bestowed on its Bearer remained intact. Two days of food and sleep had restored her body, with only a hint of soreness lingering in her muscles. Her hands had healed as well, the new red scars already fading to pink, layered over the silvery ripples from the Crown of Bones.
She’d tried to work a regular shift in the healing wards, queuing with the healers and their acolytes at the long table with all the supply satchels, but one of the younger healers had firmly told her that Maeve had explicitly forbidden the members of the Queens’ Company to work for at least three days. She’d sidestepped that edict by visiting her friends in the wards…and if she were to help their caretakers a bit, who would deny her that small task? So now she sat by Sage’s side, legs folded neatly beneath her and a leather-bound book in her hand. Every few minutes she glanced up to check the rise and fall of his chest as he slept, and every quarter hour she gently wiped the sweat from his brow. At the foot of Sage’s pallet, a pin held a small sheet of parchment in place; each shift’s healer wrote notes on this sheet in neat shorthand at the end of every shift. Tess had glanced at the record curiously, but her taebramh hadn’t helped translate the unfamiliar symbols. Perhaps her taebramh would start being useful again when the Sword decided to stop ignoring her, she thought sourly. After her initial surge of annoyance, she thought that she’d ask one of the healers to teach her the shorthand. She couldn’t depend on her powers to give her everything, she told herself firmly. Even the Bearer should practice some good old-fashioned studying every now and again.
“Lady Bearer.” The young Seelie healer who had charge of this row during the morning shift gave Tess a respectful nod. After a whispered conference with their superiors on the first day of her appearance, they’d accepted her presence. Maybe Maeve had allowed it because she could sense the Bearer’s restlessness, but Tess didn’t particularly care either way.
“Cora.” Tess marked her place in the book with a thumb and returned the nod. “How is everyone today?”
Cora unpinned Sage’s record from the foot of the pallet, her quick blue eyes reading the notes left by the healers in the hours since her last shift. “A few better, but just as many worse.” She replaced the record and delicately took Sage’s good wrist in her grip, counting his pulse just like any nurse would in the mortal world. Tess wondered if Luca had been injured and if he’d been taken to a hospital – would they be able to help him, or would their well-meaning ministration of mortal medicine kill him? The thoughts barely turned her stomach anymore. It was amazing how her thoughts had worn a well-trodden path in just a few days.
“What seems to be making them worse?” Tess asked. She shrugged her shoulders a little to shift the scabbard of the Sword. It pressed against part of the line of stitches and offered at least a moment of relief from the unbearable itching.
Cora pressed her rosebud lips together. She looked entirely too young to have experienced the horrors of war, but Tess could see it in her eyes. “For some, it’s the graveness of their wounds; for others, we think maybe poison laced the blades of the enemy.”
Tess looked at Sage. He hadn’t awoken during any of the time that she’d spent by his sickbed, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t continue to watch over him, just as she’d promised. Just as he’d done for her when she hovered between life and death after crowning Vell at Brightvale. “There’s no poison in his blood, is there?”
“None that I’ve been able to see,” Cora replied honestly. She paused and then continued. “It’s best that he keeps sleeping.”
Tess nodded. “I understand. It helps the body heal.”
With that, Cora checked the strip of linen at Sage’s wrist that protected the ampoule of anesthetic and sedative. It looked like a miniature bottle, shorn in half and filled with the liquid that kept Sage in his peaceful sleep, sealed against his skin with a word of healing magic by Maeve herself. Amber liquid swirled within it.
“Another day, maybe two,” said Cora, replacing the bandage and making a quick note on Sage’s record. She glanced at Tess. “It will be difficult, when he wakes.” She pressed her lips together again. Tess guessed that it was a habit when the junior healer was pushing the limits of her authority. “Would you like us to send for you when it’s time? I can pass the word to Verity, she’s the next shift…her relief is Faelan, and he would do it too, I’m sure of it.”
Tess tried to hide her surprised look at the mention of the other healers’ names.
“What, Lady Bearer?”
“Verity. It’s a very…Victorian name.” Tess tilted her head and contemplated the book in her hand. “Very Jane Austen.”
“I have very little idea what that means, and I do have others to attend,” replied Cora with a considering look. “I think it’s a family name, in any case.”
“I’m sorry,” Tess apologized quickly, “thank you for the offer. I’d very much appreciate it if you could let me know when he’s about to wake.” She paused. “And if it’s not too much trouble, is there a book on the shorthand you use to notate the charts? I’d like to learn it.”
A smile touched Cora’s mouth. “I’ll leave my handbook on the bedside table there during
my next shift. It’s a standard text that most of the healers learn during their apprenticeship. The section on shorthand should be enough.”
“Thank you,” said Tess earnestly.
Cora nodded and moved to the next supine figure, an Unseelie fighter with one leg bound from hip to ankle in a splint and most of his face obscured by a swathe of bandages about his head. Like Sage, a bandage covered the ampoule sealed to his wrist, but the liquid in the Unseelie’s vial was emerald green. Tess watched for a moment, resisting the urge to offer her help, and then turned back to the book in her hands.
Robin and Calliea had helped her gather a few books that outlined the history of the Great Gate. Tess had been surprised to learn that what seemed like enough books to fill a library had been taken from Darkhill and the Hall of the Outer Guard on the journey to the last great battle. Robin had informed her with a half-smile that most of the Scholars would only leave if they were allowed a stipend of books to bring with them. Some of the tomes had already proven useful, with old maps of the White City tucked among their pages. Tess wondered if the old Chief Scholar – what had been his name? Egbert? – of the Unseelie Court had indeed named Bren as his successor. She smiled slightly at the memory of her early days in Faeortalam, and then the smile faded as she silently recalled the number of her early friends, alive and vibrant in her memories, who had been burned on the funeral pyres of the war dead.
“I thought I’d find you here.”