by Cari Z
“I don’t know.” It was hard to speak with any sense of enunciation or force; Devon had to rely on his body remembering where his tongue was supposed to be, the shapes his lips should take, to make the words come. He’d had no idea that losing his sense of touch would be so…complete. So consuming. Not just an inability to feel things outside of his body, but a lack of connection between all of his body parts. He could probably bite his own tongue off and not know about it until he choked on the blood.
There had been a few times in his history when Devon would have given anything not to have felt what was happening to him. It turned out that the grass was always, always greener on the other side, and Devon thought right now that pain, even excruciating pain, would have been better than this awful numbness.
“Devon.” Rio sat down next to him and wiped a tissue across his mouth. “Hold this in place.” He lifted Devon’s hand and set it over the tissue, then disappeared into the bathroom. He came back with a washcloth, and Devon caught the scent of the rusty water soaking it as Rio gently cleaned his face. He set a hand on Devon’s chin and turned his face from side to side. “Not too bad. How are we going to keep this from happening again?”
“I don’t know,” Devon said. He wasn’t sure if his voice was thick because his lips were swelling or because he wanted to cry, but either way he sounded weak, needy. He was neither. God damn it, he’d survived for years almost entirely on his own before his dads had found him, and he’d worked over a dozen solo operations with Safeguard Systems since they’d brought him on, not to mention the ones where he had been a part of a team or on call for back up. He shouldn’t be so disturbed, or even if he was, he shouldn’t let it show. He was strong, he could handle this.
Rio framed Devon’s face in his hands and lifted it. “Dev.”
Devon clumsily batted his hands away. “I don’t fucking know, Rio!” That was better, more forceful, at least. He looked away and put Maggie down, a little afraid that he was going to squeeze her too hard and not even realize he was hurting her. “Are you done packing?”
“Yeah.” Rio knew when to back off. It was one of the things Devon both appreciated and bemoaned about him, but right now Devon was definitely feeling appreciative. “You ready to go?”
“I just want to get out of here.” Out of this old, dated hotel room in this sweltering city, full of stupid, gullible people. For the first time in a long time, Devon thought he might just count himself as one of those gullible people, those sheep. Lynlis had played him, and he hadn’t even thought anything of it until it was too late.
“We can go, then. Let me get the bags into the car and I’ll be back for you.”
“I can get there myself,” he informed Rio tersely. Rio didn’t reply, just shouldered their duffel bags and crossed the room, opening the door and letting in the heat. Maggie followed him outside to the truck, a bouncy ball of careless orange fluff, and Devon envied her constant serenity.
Fine. So, getting to the truck. He could do this. Devon bent forward a little and thought about moving his arms. He was pretty sure they were pressed to the bedspread, and a glance down confirmed that. Springs creaked under the pressure as he pushed to his feet. Whoa—instant vertigo. He sat down again almost immediately. Shit. No, no, he could do this. He just had to do it very, very precisely.
Devon stared down at the floor as he stood again, his eyes firmly on his feet. He couldn’t feel the pressure, but he could tell by the way the soles of his feet wobbled from side to side that he wasn’t balanced. He stumbled over to the nearest wall and got a hand on it, then slowly traced his way toward the door. It was rather like reverse blindness, having to rely solely on his eyes because his body couldn’t tell how it was moving or what its individual parts were doing. A temporary paralysis. Temporary, he reminded himself.
Getting to the door was an achievement. Getting to the truck was going to be harder, because it was twenty feet away and there was no helpful wall around to cling to. Rio sat on the back hatch, drinking a bottle of water and giving Maggie sips from what he poured out into the palm of his hand.
“I’d rather you didn’t watch,” Devon informed him coldly, trying to hide how absolutely terrified he was of failing in front of Rio. He had done too much of that lately.
“And I’d rather you didn’t crack your head open on the pavement. Think of me as a bumper guard.”
Devon rolled his eyes. “Children’s bowling references now? Really? So classy.”
Rio waved his free hand expansively. “Hey, prove me wrong, hot shot.”
Devon looked at the distance between them. One curb, some weedy tufts of dry grass and a few feet of cracked pavement might as well have been the Grand fucking Canyon for all the confidence he felt.
“Any time now.”
“Shut up.” He could do this. He had to, now that he had an audience. Fuck, but he wished he didn’t have an audience. Ha, if wishes were weapons, Devon could rule the world. Now he was cribbing catchphrases from Rio, that bastard.
“Still waiting.”
“Well, feel free to fuck off if you’re getting bored.”
“Devon.” Rio set down the water bottle and looked at him squarely. Devon could tell his partner was about to say something kind and reasonable and mature, god forbid, so he straightened his back, let go of the doorjamb and started walking before he could convince himself not to. He made it to the curb and just kept going, wobbled hard when he hit the ground but managed to stay upright for another few feet before he saw the ground heading for his face and knew that he was taking a nosedive. He tried to move his hands in front of his body, but he couldn’t tell if they would get there in time—
He was caught a few inches before he hit the asphalt. Rio pulled him upright and held him in close to his side, and he did it all without even looking Devon in the face, for which Devon was extremely thankful. Rio steered Devon around to the passenger side of the truck, helped him sit down and buckled him in, never meeting Devon’s eyes, just getting the job done as impersonally as he could. By the time he was in the driver’s seat and starting up the engine, Devon felt composed enough to look at him.
“Could we leave the radio on?” he asked, trying to be casual but knowing there was an edge of desperation there that he just couldn’t eradicate from his voice. The thought of silence made him want to squirm.
“The radio’s broken,” Rio said gently, “but I’ve got some tapes we could play.”
“Tapes.” Devon rolled his eyes. “Nice, grandpa.”
“Keep up with the smart mouth and I’ll lose every one of them except for Kenny G.”
Devon was sure he shuddered at that. He wanted to, at any rate. “Tapes are fine.” The motel disappeared in their rearview mirror, and Devon resolutely hoped that it was the last time he ever saw it. At this point, he’d be stoked to never return to Las Vegas. He wouldn’t, unless he absolutely had to. Or unless Lynlis didn’t hold up her end of the deal.
Shit, it had barely been a few hours; how was he supposed to handle being this way for days? Devon sat back against the seat, swallowed thickly and focused on the sounds of the Meat Puppet’s song, “Lake of Fire.” Honestly, he might have preferred Kenny G at this point.
Chapter Twelve
Rio felt an odd sense of helplessness as he looked at Devon. That the cambion was suffering was clear; the deal he’d made had left him far worse off than either of them had thought he would be. The fact that he’d had to be the one to make the deal bothered Rio. He truly believed that he didn’t have a choice in the matter, that it would have been a bad move, possibly a game-changing move to let Lynlis have that kind of access to him, but that didn’t make him feel better about unloading all the responsibility onto Devon’s shoulders.
Devon was chewing on his lip again. Rio reached out and used his thumb to tug it out from between Devon’s teeth. Devon didn’t even look at him. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Clearly the music wasn’t providing enough of a distraction. Devon looked exhauste
d, strung out from coping with the situation, and if he kept going the way he had been, the kid would gnaw completely through his lip by the time they got to the California border. Rio was supposed to fix things; he was supposed to know how to handle any situation. He needed to handle this, and somewhere deep inside, Devon wanted him to handle it. He didn’t have to be listening to Rio’s scratchy tapes right now, Rio was sure the kid had an iPod in his brand new stash of goodies that Rio didn’t want to know how he’d procured. Devon needed to be soothed, and Rio was terrible at being soothing, but he’d make the effort for Devon. Rio turned the music down and drew a breath.
“I got caught out in a sandstorm in the middle of a desert one time,” he said, a little surprised that this was the first thing to come out of his mouth. Honestly, this was the best he could do? How soothing was a sandstorm? But Devon looked interested, desperately interested, and so Rio kept talking.
“I was cut off from the rest of my team, and when the wind really started to pick up, when it got so bad that I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face anymore, I knew I needed to take cover, but there wasn’t anything there, not a tree, not even a damn rock. I figured I had to wait it out, so I sat down and wrapped my jacket—” my surcoat—“around my head and my hands. The sand was pretty fine, but the wind was whipping it up so hard that a few minutes later my whole body stung from the impact. After a while though, I just got numb. The storm kept up for hours, and I just sat there with my eyes shut and my hands over my ears, completely dead to the world. I didn’t even feel it when it stopped.” Rio smiled a little grimly at the memory. “It took a village kid coming over and poking me in the face before I snapped out of it.”
“Where were you deployed?” Devon asked curiously. Rio noted that he wasn’t clenching his hands anymore, or biting his lip. Good.
“The Middle East, where else?” he replied. “I can’t go into details, Dev.”
“How long did it take for you to start feeling better?”
“It took about a day for me to recover, altogether. My shoulder points were the worst, I kept banging into things.”
“Tell me about it,” Devon sighed.
Rio chuckled. “I could tell you all sorts of things.”
“You really could. I’d listen. I mean,” Devon’s smile was split between self-deprecating and pained. “You’re easier to listen to than anything else you’ve got in your car, Maggie notwithstanding.” Maggie gave a little yip from her perch between the seats when she heard her name mentioned. “It’s better than nothing.”
Rio wasn’t sure why Devon didn’t just ask for what he wanted right out. The kid had never had a problem demanding Rio’s time and attention before. Then again, Rio had never been with him when he’d been so helpless before either. Even when he’d broken into the Pearly Gates to rescue Devon, the cambion had already been out of the cell before Rio had even gotten to him. He’d never thought Devon was the type to let pride get the better of him, but if Rio knew anything, he knew that no matter how much time he spent with someone, he never learned everything there was to know.
“Sure,” he said after a beat, and he knew he didn’t imagine it when some of the tension left Devon’s shoulders. “I can talk. You’re gonna be begging me to shut up after a while, though.”
“I doubt it.” Devon glared at his left hand, lifted it, and made a waving motion at Rio. The gesture must have looked close to what he was intending it to be, because he gave a little half-smile and said, “Go on, then. Tell me a story, Daddy.”
“Oh, you did not just go there,” Rio said, elaborately disgusted for Devon’s sake. “Hell no, c’mon now, we’re sleeping together—you don’t get to call me Daddy. That’s just wrong.”
Devon’s smile was real now, and Rio mentally patted himself on the back. “You’d be surprised how much some people like it.”
“The abyss that is the human psyche never ceases to amaze me,” Rio scoffed. “Are you going to shut up and listen to me or what?”
Devon shifted awkwardly in the seat until he was facing Rio. One of his legs was at a bad angle; Rio reached over and adjusted it before it fell asleep, not that Devon would notice. Devon started fisting his hands again and Rio knew he had to put a stop to that. “Do this.” He splayed the fingers of his free hand apart and waited for Devon to copy him. Then he picked up Maggie, put her squarely in Devon was lap and folded his hands down over her back. Devon looked a little panicked.
“No, I don’t want to hurt her,” he protested.
“You won’t. Start squeezing too hard and she’ll bark at you. Let her sit with you, Dev. She likes the companionship.”
Devon looked reluctant, but he nodded after a second. “Fine.” His eyes were locked on Rio’s face, like if he looked away he’d never see him again. “Talk.”
“Talk, talk…” Rio drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for inspiration to strike. “I ever tell you about the time I worked as a sailor?”
“No.” That smile came back, so sweet Rio wanted to bottle it and save it for later. “Were you a pirate?”
“You just can’t wait to think the worst of me, can you? No, I wasn’t a pirate. I got stuck in northern Russia after a particularly bad job, no good way out, no back up. I hired on to a cargo ship crewed by a bunch of Norwegians, and a crazier group of guys I have never seen assembled in such close quarters. I sailed with them for two months, trying to make my way back to New York, and by the time I finally made it, I’d been stabbed twice, shot at once and gotten royally drunk pretty much every night.”
“Sounds like a fun crowd.”
“You’re telling me.” Rio kept talking, went on to humorize a series of events that, at the time, hadn’t been funny at all. Devon laughed occasionally, and Rio laughed with him. It was amazing how the passage of time could make the rougher moments in life feel so much smoother, almost like the pain that accompanied them had never happened. Rio was grateful that his mind worked that way; not all of the folks he’d met in his own situation had been so lucky.
He talked, and Devon watched him and eventually slept. It was a balm for both of them, his ability to relax and let go, because when Devon relaxed, Rio’s own sense of guilt lifted a little. He kept talking even when the cambion was asleep, not saying anything of import, just keeping the sound of his voice in the air. He recited some of his favorite Italian poetry, starting with d’Alcamo’s Contrasto, then moved into The Inferno because, well, it was a classic, right?
Rio had worked his way through quite a bit of Hell by the time he had to stop the truck and gas up. Devon woke up as soon as the engine turned off, and Rio helped him out to stretch his legs and let Maggie do her business. There was no attempting to walk by himself this time; Devon quietly let Rio take the lead, and he didn’t even blink when Rio made him stop in the station’s restroom as well. It stood to reason that if Devon couldn’t feel his body, he wasn’t going to know when he had to go, and that could lead to problems that neither of them wanted to deal with. They cleaned up, Rio grabbed some juice and a bag full of snacks in the shop, and then they were on the road again.
It was dark by the time they got to California, and Rio could tell that the lack of a view was bothering Devon; his breathing became shallower and Maggie couldn’t stay in his lap without nipping him every five minutes or so. Rio reached over and turned on the cab light.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“Tell me another story.”
Rio glanced over at him. “How many stories do you think I have?”
“More than you let on.” Devon looked down at Maggie, who was more content to lie in his lap now that his hands were stuffed in his pockets. “Tell me how you got Maggie.”
“It’s not that interesting a story,” Rio warned him, but Devon was starting to do that stubborn pouty thing with his lips, which was kind of funny because Rio knew he wasn’t doing it consciously. The kid pouted on instinct. Amazing. “Fine. Maggie belonged to my neighbor
before she belonged to me. Alma was a little old to be taking care of a young dog, even one as small as Maggie, so I’d come over a few times a week and take the puppy on a walk, let her play outside, that kind of thing.”
“I bet she loved it.”
“Everyone loves a little freedom,” Rio said. “Not that Alma wasn’t good to her, she just…she moved at a slower pace. I did a few minor repairs on her house sometimes, made sure she had enough food socked away. We were good neighbors.
“I couldn’t convince Alma to get rid of her damn throw rugs, though. She said Maggie liked to sleep on them and that’s why she kept them, but they tended to bunch up, and she was walking to the kitchen one day and fell. She broke her hip.”
“Oh no.” Devon’s eyes were wide. “Oh god, did she die? Did she die alone and leave Maggie there with her corpse, and by the time you came by to check Maggie had already gone mad with hunger and started eating her?”
“For the love of God, Dev, you need to lay off the Steven King,” Rio begged, fighting down the urge to laugh. Devon didn’t need to think Rio was laughing at him, even when he wanted to so badly. “No, she managed to call me before an hour went by. I took her to the hospital, but after that, Alma decided it would be best if she went into a nursing home, so she asked me if I’d take Maggie. Alma’s husband was long gone and she didn’t have any children, and she didn’t want to send Maggie to the pound unless she absolutely had to. And Maggie, well, she is kind of cute.”
“Just a little,” Devon teased, and Rio was pleased to see that his eyelids were drooping already.
“Yeah, a bit. Plus she’s small enough to do pretty well traveling around with me, and she’s good company on the road.”
Devon frowned. “But what if something happened to you? Not that I’m intimating that something ever would,” he added quickly, “everyone knows you’re a badass, but if something did happen, and you were in the middle of the desert like before, or alone on an island or something, what would happen to Maggie?”