by Amy Lane
Yearning
By Amy Lane
Book One
A Green’s Haven Novella
Featuring Jack and Teague
Prologue: Jack
Meeting Green
Green knocked on the door of Jack’s crappy student walk-up about two hours after Sara’s funeral.
The sounds of Journey were thundering through Jack’s blown out speakers, because it was Sarah’s music, and because it made him cry, but crying hadn’t worked.
Jack had gotten home and thrown his fist through the wall of his one-room apartment in an absolute fury. His sister had been shot in some redneck’s backyard, and no one seemed to give a ripe shit.
Oh yeah, mom and dad had foot the bill for the service, but Jack had been the only one to attend—Sarah didn’t fit into their little family picture once she’d revealed her drug use. And after she went the extreme route to get clean…well, mom and dad had been more than willing to pretend that Jack had been an only child.
But she’d been the one to help Jack through Algebra, who had told him to keep his grades up so he could be what he wanted to be instead of what they wanted him to be—she’d been the one person at his high school graduation who had mattered, even if she had sat somewhere far apart from mom and dad during the ceremony. Sara had been there for him, his whole life, even when the drugs had made her flaky—and after that, she’d kept visiting him during the feral hours of the night, just to give him hope that even the worst mistakes could be overcome.
Being the only one listening to a stranger saying empty words over a hole in the ground just pissed him off.
When Green had knocked on his door, he’d been nursing the scrapes and bruises on his knuckles and a serious case of resentment, but one look at Green and all that faded.
Green was taller than he was—by at least two inches, maybe three or four—and that didn’t happen often. He was also beautiful—satin shiny butter colored hair down to his hips, triangular features too delicate to be male and too bold to be female, and eyes that were greener than his name.
Jack, who had enjoyed a healthy, if conservative sex life and never questioned his gender orientation, not even a little, not even in his sophomore year in college when all the Liberal Arts majors thought they were bi, suddenly knew what it felt like to think another man was desirable. But when he shook hands with the beautiful stranger, even that disappeared.
There was a terrible, overwhelming sadness about this man, a fraught melancholy at odds with the apology and wry kindness in his voice.
“I’m so sorry we didn’t make the funeral, mate,” Green said, his voice definitely cockney. Jack didn’t yet know that the accent slid around, from London’s East Side to Lake County, almost to Wales, up to Ireland and back. It was at its barest cockney when he was upset, angry, or grieving himself almost to death.
“I thought someone would be there,” Jack said numbly. “She said she had people now…” His naked, hurt gaze hit Green’s, and Green took his hand as though to shake it again.
“She does have people now,” Green said softly, stroking the bruised skin of his knuckles. “We’re just… we’re a little wounded ourselves, Jacky—but don’t worry. Your sister won’t go unremembered.”
“She said,” all of Jack’s anger seemed to drain from his body like the pain from his hand, “she said that Adrian would look after her. Why wasn’t he there? Why didn’t he save her from that guy?”
Green’s pain was so excruciating it almost stopped Jack’s breath. “Adrian died, my boy, a week ago—about two days before your sister did, actually. I’m sorry—we were…”
Jack Barnes had loved his sister, but in a thousand years he didn’t think he could conceive of the pain that was vibrating from this intense, magnetic stranger.
“Grieving,” Jack said softly, and Green met his eyes and smiled, and the sun came out again.
“You’re a good lad, mate. Sara worried about you, you know—she seemed to think you were too much alone.”
Jack swallowed. “She taught me how to take care of people. Who do I take care of now?”
A faint glimmer of hope and a smile dawned on Green’s clean, sunrise features. Casually, he let Jack’s hand drop and leaned against the iron railing at the top of the plank landing, confident that it would hold his weight. “There’s always someone out there who needs you.”
Jack couldn’t go that way, not right at this moment, so he turned his thought towards the anger, to help keep him upright. “Why did he shoot her, Green? She was just… just a wolf—she wandered in someone’s backyard. We don’t shoot wolves anymore—why would someone shoot her?”
Green grimaced. “There is a group of men—hunters. They…they’re throwbacks, really, to the time when men could afford to think theirs was the only race or the only species that deserved to survive. They hunt… my people. The Goddess folk. I don’t know about this man in particular but I do know one hunter who’s through with it now—he thought he was doing something noble. All he saw was a monster.”
And Jack’s anger was abruptly back. “My sister?”
“Shhh… shhh…” Right there in the warped wood of Jack’s doorway, Green put his hands on Jack’s shoulders and tucked Jacky right into his chest like a parent would comfort a ten year old.
“What kind of monster would kill my sister?”
“Not all of them are monsters, Jacky,” Green murmured. “Some of them… some of them just need to learn better. Some of them even want redemption.”
“I just want to understand,” Jack whispered brokenly. Oh, Sara—she’d never thought she was pretty, with plain brown hair and plain blue eyes, but she’d made Jack feel important, and he’d thought she was the dawn itself, with the sun in her smile.
“We’ve got a hunter on our side, now—does that help to know? That there’s a man out there helping people like your sister? Keeping our folks safe from the outside?” Green’s voice didn’t rumble—but it did vibrate in his chest, and once again Jack was acutely aware of the attraction he felt for this person, this being, when he would have sworn that his body only responded to women.
“I want to help them,” Jack muttered, surprising himself. “I tried to go to back to school and I can’t. I…” And here he was, telling this beautiful stranger a thought he’d barely articulated to himself. “Jesus, I’m so damned lost.”
Green had nodded and stroked his hair gently, still a parent, in spite of all the pain Jack had felt radiating from the center of his chest. “Right then, Jacky. Well, you’re as much ours as your sister was, now, right?”
“Am I?” Jack asked, muddled from being comforted like this.
“Of course.” And just like that, Jack believed him. It had never been in Jack’s nature to question things—not even affection or good fortune. Later, he would realize that this was because Sara had given him everything he needed. Later, he would realize that someone without a Sara might not be so accepting of a Green. But right now, Green had a plan.
“ I’m thinking you’d like a purpose now, am I right?” Those eyes…oh, they did see straight to a body’s core and strip it bare, didn’t they?
“Oh yes,” Jack said, an entire ocean of ‘lost’ almost drowning him in its tears, just standing on the cheap metal landing of his crappy student apartment.
Green smiled again, this time a little wider. “I’ve got a friend you might want to look up. Your sister was killed by a hunter, and this one—he’s my ‘reformed’ hunter. He works for me now—his job is to keep the other hunters away from my flock, yes?”
The idea of Sara in her wolf form being a member of this man’s ‘flock’ made Jack smile in earnest. “I’d like to help,” he’d said
in a daze.
“Of course you would.”
Jack had stepped aside to let Green in then, and for a moment, he closed his eyes and let Green’s smell wash over him. Oh, God, that smell—green grass, good dirt, wildflowers and sunshine. The idea of touching that skin, being bathed in that smell, was suddenly the most amazing, comforting thought Jacky’d had since his sister’s last visit, when she’d been clean, sober, happy, and, yes, Jack had to acknowledge now, loved.
Green had come inside then, accepted a soda, and written a name, address, and favorite bar on a piece of paper that Jack had worried worn before he’d used the information. Then he’d shaken Jack’s hand and left.
It wasn’t until after he’d left that Jack had realized that his hand was no longer bruised or scraped, not even a little, and that he no longer wanted to throw anything through his wall.
Teague
Dreams of Green’s Hill
The pizza place looked like some sort of movie set from the 80’s—tacky shellacked tables, dark-glassed tiffany lamps, and a pool table in the middle.
It used to be Teague’s favorite place in the world.
But not anymore. He sighed, settling back against the grimy wall, grimacing at the ledge at the seat of the bench that cut through his jeans to his calves. He crossed his ankles, tilted back his head and closed his eyes, hoping that would make the whispers of his one-time ‘friends’ go away.
Traitor. Monster lover. Pansy-assed faggot. It was nice to know that the assholes he used to hang with really were that dumb. It made him feel better for ditching them all behind him, in the land of totally fucking wrong assumptions—it was good not to be the ass in this room.
“Teague, uhm, I don’t think this is really working.”
The voice was hesitant, soft, a warm tenor or sweet baritone, and Teague opened one eye impatiently to see his partner in hunting sliding across from him in the booth. “I was zenning, here, Jacky-boy, is there any way you could take all that fear somewhere else? You’re stinking up the place.”
Jack touched the sticky tabletop, a ginger disdain showing on his narrow face. “Oh now you’re just being mean.”
In spite of the not-so-subtle hostility brewing around the two of them, Teague found himself grinning. The dimples on his cheeks popped, the grooves around his mouth deepened.
“What’s the matter, Jacky-boy—this place ain’t as classy as the ones we usually haunt?”
Jacky’s smile from under his shaggy black bangs didn’t quite hit his blue eyes. “Aww, sweetie, you know I go anywhere as long as you’re buying.”
Teague chuckled, glad that Jack’s jitters had receded. Of all the places you didn’t want to get caught in with fear on your breath, Dervish ranked his top three, right under a vault with a rogue vampire kiss and locked room with a werewolf.
Teague went back to surveying the room under his lowered lashes, and he suppressed a grimace when one of the natives caught his eye. Well, shit, it was inevitable, wasn’t it? When they’d been partnered up, he and Jace had been in Dervish five nights in seven—Teague’d been the one to leave the partnership. Jace sort of got to inherit this shitbox, now didn’t he?
With a sigh, Teague looked over at Jack and nodded towards the (no shit, honest-to-god) jukebox in the corner. “Darlin’,” he hammed with a flutter of his murky green eyes, “go on over and pick us sometin’ sweet to dance to, would ya?”
Jack looked up and saw the beefy behemoth in sleeveless flannel lumbering their way. “You don’t trust me to play with the big boys?” He asked resentfully, and Teague threw him a look chocked full up with bite-me irritation.
“Buttercup, do you really want to be here when I get bitched out by my ex-wife?” Teague pitched his voice loud enough to catch Jace with it, and the guy’s face split with what would have been a winning grin, if his teeth weren’t stained with chew.
“Sweetie,” Jace said, his joviality as thin as the seat of his two-hundred-year-old jeans, “when you and I have it out, he’ll be able to hear it all the way in your faggot-trap in Sacramento.”
“Jack, do we live in a faggot trap?” Teague asked Jack disingenuously, his shit-eating grin begging Jack to play along.
“Uhm…” Jack pretended to think, “No. Rats, yeah. Rats, cockroaches, fleas, silverfish, pincer-bugs, spiders and stray cats get stuck there, but faggots are pretty much free to come and go as they please.”
Jace grunted, unwilling to concede that Jack had been funny, but Teague had to suppress an out and out guffaw. Their little two-bedroom apartment was actually snug and comfortable, cluttered with Jack’s books and Teague’s models and the occasional gun safe. He’d known Jacky would come through. And with that thought, Jack nodded briefly and stood up to put his coins in the jukebox, giving Teague the space he needed.
“What’re you doin’ here, race-traitor,” Jace asked bluntly the minute Jack was out of earshot.
Teague’s nose wrinkled. “Du-ude, could you sound any more like a nine-teen-fucking-fifties KKK leader? Next time I visit, I’m bringing the white pajamas for you, no shit.”
Jace snarled and spat brown juice through a missing tooth onto the plain board floor. “This ain’t funny, asshole. You used to be worth somethin’. You used to be the best damned hunter I knew, until you started working for the monsters.”
Teague’s grin turned hard, and his wide green eyes narrowed. “I just figured out that monsters are monstrous on the inside, not the outside. You know as well as I do that there are some damned ugly human beings walking around in pretty skins. A vampire that doesn’t kill nothing isn’t a monster, but a guy who wipes his feet on his children twice a day—that guy needs to be put down.”
Jace sneered and spat again. “I ain’t sayin’ there ain’t some vicious motherfuckers out there, Teague. You know I seen ‘em. I’m sayin’ that’s not our call to make. But monsters—we can see the monsters. Hell, from what I understand, you’re workin’ for ‘em.”
Teague’s eyes went flat, cold, and hard. “Green is not a monster,” he said quietly. There were maybe three people in the world who knew that tone, and Jace was one of them.
The sudden silence was so thick that not even the blare of Journey from the over-loud jukebox could cut it, although Teague did spare a wince for Jack’s selection. Really, Jacky? Journey? Are you trying to get the shit beat out of us?
“What do you want here, Teague?” Jace asked, the question an obvious backdown from the danger that was written all over his ex-partner.
Teague sighed, caught Jacky’s sideways look from the jukebox, and mimed drinking from a bottle. Jacky nodded and moved to the bar to get the two of them the house beer. This was their dance, even if it was Teague’s old floor.
“Katy Garcia.”
Teague watched Jace suck in a breath, and then think better of spitting again.
“Runaway,” he said roughly. “Bad family and bad veins. What you want with her?”
“Her family’s looking for her,” Teague said, thinking sadly of a pretty girl with dark, hurt eyes. He and Jace had grown up in this area just west of Angel’s Camp—their graduating class had been less than a hundred. Not many secrets in a town that amounted to little more than a busy stretch of a lonely county highway.
Jace laughed with no humor. “Her family’s her mama, and she’s been on the pipe since Katy was a field mouse. That girl ain’t got no family lookin’ for her!”
Teague’s voice dropped again, growing frosty as the beer Jacky was bringing him. “That’s not her family anymore.”
Jace swallowed and then coughed because he’d been so surprised he’d forgotten about the chaw in his teeth. “How in the hell would you know a thing like that?”
“She’s Green’s family…”
“She could be dead!” Jace protested, pale with the implication that the little slip of a thing he’d thrown coins at a year ago could be one of the monsters he did so love to hunt down.
“Green would know,” Teague said with absolute
surety. “Green’s people would know. She came here to say goodbye to her mama not more’n a week ago. Someone’s got her—and if they got her…”
“She’s probably in a shooting gallery—you know there’s a shitload of ‘em off the old county road!”
“No,” Teague said with absolute surety. “You don’t get welcomed into Green’s family with those kinds of problems. Or,” he held up a hand, making eye contact with Jace, which wasn’t hard since the other man’s eyes were wide and searching for some solid ground, “or, those problems go away, when you get introduced.”
“I don’t understand,” Jace said blankly, and Teague met Jacky’s dark blue eyes, as his smart partner approached with the drinks in his hands. Jack crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, and Teague fought the urge to laugh.
“When a human makes the change to family—either terminally furry or just plain terminal,” Jack said patiently, sliding in across from the two of them in the booth and folding his long legs under the short table, “it cleans out the blood. No addiction, no cravings…for Katy, it’s just the wind and the moonlight and her packmates. We want her to get back there, that’s all.”
Jace looked away from Jack, his eyes getting caught by something as he did. “Where’d ya get that pansy-assed tat?” He asked gruffly.
Teague resisted the urge to study the lime-bearing oak tree covered in roses that was inscribed on the tender inside of his wrist. The hard blue veins of his own flesh made up the oak-tree’s branches, and if he’d actually gone under the needle for it, that ‘pansy-assed tat’ would have hurt like a sonofabitch.
“It was a gift from a friend. Don’t change the subject.” He acknowledged the strangled bark of laughter from Jacky with a sideways glance. Jack flushed and offered him a beer. He took the cold bottle, slick with condensation, out of Jack’s fingers, somewhat reassured when their fingers brushed slightly. Jacky had his back. He tilted the bottle back, closing his eyes in satisfaction when the cheap beer—the only kind he drank, really—hit the back of his throat. Some things—good, simple things—you couldn’t rush.