Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5

by Amy Lane

  But if she hadn’t, she’d be hiding somewhere—behind some of the giant granite boulders, in the woodshed, behind it—about a hundred places for furry, panicky death to come tear-assing out, and Teague couldn’t see which one of them had paw prints leading to it.

  But Jacky had asked him a question. “No,” Teague repeated. “She wouldn’t have had her hands.”

  “Then how’d the beer bottle get shoved up his ass?” And the damned thing had shattered, too, during his feeble struggle for his useless life.

  Teague grinned, and it was unpleasant. “I’m thinking he did that himself, Jacky boy, right before Katy got out and he got fucked for reals.”

  Again with that little girl’s sound. “Ewwwwwww…”

  But this time Teague had to agree. “Ewwwww. Absolutely. But a lot of fun to tell his ex-wife.”

  “You think she’ll want to hear about this?” Jack looked in horror at the mess and the obvious pain the guy had been in as he’d gone out. Granted Mikey Daniels had been a warty, nasty, drug-ridden, whoring toad instead of a prince, but…

  “Oh yeah,” Teague smiled happily. “Bonnie’s good peeps—she’ll want to hear every last detail—she’ll probably even take out an ad in the local paper. It’ll make her year.” The smile faded and he bent his head to the task again.

  “Damn…” he murmured, sorting through the broken glass-topped table and the stuffing from the couch. The back door was open, and Teague peered outside to see if the stuffing had gotten tracked in any direction. It hadn’t. He turned then, the nape of his neck gone suddenly cold, towards the stairs coming down from the bedroom.

  The world froze, like a fly in an ice-cube.

  Jacky was crouched down at Mikey Daniels’ unlamented remains, and one pretty bitch of a pretty black she-wolf with yellow ends to her feathery outer coat was crouched on the landing, getting ready to leap over the railing, straight for Teague’s throat.

  Teague’s first thought was relief because, thank Whoever the fuck was in charge, she was going to hit him first. Jacky’s gun was loaded with tranqs—he might be able to stop her before he looked like Mikey there, but as long as she was chewing on Teague’s throat and not Jack’s, it was all good.

  He held out his hands, palms up, trying to show little Katy Garcia that she didn’t have to jump, didn’t have to attack him, that he wasn’t a raping fucker out to do her harm. Of course, a dim little voice in his head was whispering. Of course, you fucking, tore-up brain-dead moron, she’s still more girl than wolf. The woods would be scary to a little girl, so she hid upstairs like a kid in a closet.

  Jack saw him backing up, and followed his eyes, and before Teague could say, “No, Jacky, no!” he jumped up in front of Teague, in time for Katy to leap for Teague’s throat.

  The only thing that saved Jack’s life was that she hadn’t been expecting him.

  She ran into him snout first, so shook up that she had barely time to rake his chest with her teeth and rip his stomach with her back claws before giving a yelp and running away, and Teague let her go, falling to the floor on his knees, trying to stop the bleeding practically before Jack hit the ground.

  “Aww, fuck…” Teague was ripping his shirt off to tear up for bandages. “Jacky, you dumb motherfucker, she was going for me…”

  “Couldn’t…let…her…hurt…you…” Jack gasped, and Teague swore bitterly, even while he was ripping Jack’s shirt and pushing his jacket aside.

  “Better me than you,” he cried, pushing back tears and a scream that wanted to rip his chest out. “God—dammit Jacky…” He couldn’t finish that sentence. Just couldn’t. First he needed to make a pad of his sweatshirt, then he needed to tie it around Jack’s shoulders with strips from his shirt, then he needed to…oh, dear God…he needed to wrap strips around that lean stomach and tie those edges together so his…his…his innards were spilling out, and they needed to be held inside and…

  Teague’s breath was coming in pants and sobs, and his vision kept blurring, but, dammit, he was getting the job done. He heard a whine then, and he looked up towards the door, and saw Katy in the doorway, looking frightened.

  Teague didn’t know what made her come back. Maybe she had smelled something about them, something good. Maybe his panicked sobbing had stirred the human inside her. Either way, she stood in the doorway and whined.

  “Heya, Katy,” Teague said softly, thinking that he needed to get the triage kit from the car. “You’re not back for blood, are you girl? No?” Because she was just standing there, hovering, between the soft rain on the outside and the chaos on the inside, and before Teague left, he needed to know she wasn’t going to come and finish the job she’d done on Jack. “Now we were going to bring you to Green’s—you still up for that?”

  Another whine, and some serious uncertainty, and Teague just didn’t have time to sit there and gentle the poor thing inside.

  “Jacky,” he said, bunching up his jacket and shoving it under the boy’s head, “I’m going out to the car for the kit, you hear me?”

  “I hear you…I’ll come with…”

  Teague choked back a laugh. “If you think you’re walking now, buddy boy, you’re high.”

  “I…wish,” Jack grunted, and Teague stood up smoothly.

  “Katy’s here with you, right? If you can, talk to her, let her know you’re a good guy. I’ll be right back, don’t you be partying while I’m gone, hear?”

  “I’ll send…the dancing girls…away.”

  Teague dashed out into the rain and popped the trunk of the Mustang. Inside was the little battery operated refrigerator that Green had insisted they carry, complete with bandages, pre-filled triage ampoules, a telescoping IV rack, saline drips and three units of blood, replaced faithfully once a month. One of the units, marked X, was shapeshifter blood, because, as Green told them, once they were bitten by a shifter that was it—they were whatever had bit them. What mattered was surviving the bite—and shifter blood was just the thing.

  Teague didn’t think about Jacky being a werewolf. It was immaterial, actually—if Jacky lived, Teague would follow, wherever he went. If Jacky died, Teague would follow him into the dark.

  In less than a minute he was back in the house, at Jacky’s side, and Katy Garcia was gone.

  “Shit,” Teague muttered, packing the stomach wound with bandages and anti-biotic powder. “They’re going to have to send someone back for her.”

  Jack grunted and moaned, and Teague swore again, this time loudly, and then things got silent as he put his fingers up to take Jack’s pulse. It was strong, he thought. Strong and fast, but not thready. Good. He moved his hand to administer the morphine ampoule but Jack caught his hand as it rested on that strong neck, and tightened his fingers around Teague’s.

  “Don’t leave me, Teague,” he murmured. “Don’t throw me at a future that doesn’t exist.”

  “Anything, Jacky,” Teague murmured back. He framed that narrow face with both his hands, and leaned forward to place a solemn kiss on his partner’s brow. “You live, and I’ll do anything you ask.”

  “You’re the one who gives orders,” Jack murmured, and Teague broke away to finish his triage.

  “Damned straight I do. And I’m ordering you to stay with me, right?”

  But by then he’d pumped in the morphine, and although Jack answered, Teague couldn’t make out what he said.

  If anyone would have asked him, he would have said that it was physically impossible for him to actually lift Jack, who had five inches and about fifty pounds on him, plus the IV kit, and put him into the back of the Mustang.

  He even would have said it after he’d done it, and Jack was propped up in the corner of the seat, his long legs stretched along the back, the IV suspended from the hanger above the door.

  He went back for the triage kit, and to give Katy one more try, and then he was out of there, peeling away in a scatter of muddy gravel and roaring along Hwy 4 as though cops were some mythical creature, like the unicorn.

/>   He plugged the cell into speaker and hit auto-dial to Green.

  Later he couldn’t remember exactly what the high elf said, but he could remember feeling calmer, could remember feeling hope.

  When he reached the Placer County line, there was a Sheriff’s car was waiting there to escort him, sirens blaring in front as Teague followed along, talking to Jacky the whole time.

  He’d started talking almost as soon as his foot hit the gas, babbling really, talking things like what he’d do if he stopped hunting, about wishing he could live on Green’s Hill forever, about being Sean Sullivan’s punching bag for eighteen years and alone for the thirteen after that. He told him about his time with Green, about how Jacky didn’t have to worry, because Green would fix him up, show him what real love was, and then if Jack didn’t want Teague anymore, Teague would live with that.

  He told Teague that he wanted to get a cat, and hoped that werewolves could get along with cats, because he thought their little apartment was like a home, like a real home for the two of them, but that a cat would make it perfect, because that’s what real homes had.

  Oh God, he told Jack everything, hoping, praying, that the sound of his voice through the drugs would anchor Jack to the world.

  It should have taken him three hours to get from Mikey Daniels’ place on Angel’s Fall to Green’s Hill in Forresthill. In the end, it took him two.

  Green was waiting outside for them, and unlike Teague, when Green picked Jacky up it looked as natural as a father picking up his child. He detached the drained IV—Teague had stopped twice to hook up a new unit--and blew softly on the blood sopped bandages on Jack’s chest and stomach.

  Jack breathed in dramatically. His eyes popped open, and Green smiled into them. “Hullo, Jacky. Let’s go inside, and I’ll make you all better, right?”

  “Can’t leave Teague,” Jack murmured, and Green looked up and caught Teague’s terrible, panicked-fraught gaze.

  “That wouldn’t do, mate,” Green murmured to both of them. “You come with me, and I guarantee you, Teague won’t be left behind.”

  Jack nodded dreamily, resting his head on Green’s chest, and Green looked over his shoulder to Arturo, his second, whom Teague remembered well. “Arturo, could you get Mr. Sullivan…”

  “Clothes,” said the cop who’d escorted them in, walking from under the house where the garage was kept. “Don’t worry, Green, I’ve got him.”

  “There’s still a wolf out there,” Teague said, trying to think, trying to report, trying to be the only thing he could think of that would make him worth Green’s time.

  Green had already started towards the great house, wrapped around and sandwiched in between a great hill covered in oak trees, except for the crown. The crown of the hill had actually changed since Teague had been there last, but he could give a fuck how at the moment, and it was Arturo who answered him.

  “We know she’s there,” said the tall, South American elf, his copper-green eyes flashing sparks as he turned his attention to Teague. “We’ve sent some of her packmates to get her already, but we’re waiting for Brack and Nicky to go ride clean-up of,” Arturo spat, “that fucker’s rat-hole. We’re sending a special elf with them—a fire elemental—and he’ll burn the place down.”

  “The wolf’ll be all right?” Teague had to make sure. He didn’t know why she’d run away, but he knew she’d been sorry about Jacky. Given what he’d seen at Mikey Daniels’ place—and really, wasn’t the silver cage enough?—Teague couldn’t blame her for biting any hand that came near. He wanted her safe. That was his job; he wanted to see it through.

  “They’ll take care of her,” said Max-the-cop, next to him. “Come on, Mr. Sullivan—I’ve got some clothes in my room.”

  Teague got a better look at Max—late twenties, a little plus of six-feet, shaggy, center-parted black hair with bangs, and slightly crossed blue eyes. He looked like a smaller Jacky in some ways, and the resemblance was comforting. Together, they walked up the wooden stairs to the landing and then into the front room.

  It looked a lot like Teague remembered it—the white brocade couch might have been replaced, and the walls had been…Teague squinted, distracted for just a moment by the water-color-esque tinting of the living room paneling.

  “What is that?” He murmured, trying to put a name to the peaceful richness that the deep purple, olive green, and dark turquoise shadings the colors evoked.

  Max grunted. “That,” he said with a twitch of his lips, “is what happens when three men honeymoon with a sorceress and the goofy kid can’t keep her orgasms in check. I’ll be right back.”

  Teague blinked, completely at a loss, and sat down on the brocade couch, looking anxiously down the hall to where he remembered Green’s room to be.

  There were no sounds coming from there, no groans of pain or moans of ecstasy, but then, Green had managed to make that business as private as possible in the warren of rooms that made up the hill. Elves, shapeshifters, vampires, and whatever-the-fuck-else lived here, all under Green’s aegis, and that didn’t count the folks who opted to live ‘off-campus’ as it were. And somehow, all of them looked to Green, and Green managed to know most of them by name and face.

  And he’d remembered Teague. And helped Jacky.

  Teague wanted to weep with the simplicity of coming home.

  In a few moments, Officer Max was back with a T-Shirt and a sweatshirt. The T-Shirt smelled like cat and wildflowers, and the sweatshirt was gray with ‘CSUS’ inscribed on the front, but other than that, it was so close to what he’d been wearing at the beginning of the day that Teague wanted to laugh.

  And then he remembered Jacky, and the urge changed to ashes.

  Teague

  Lost in Green’s Hill

  Max left, and Teague was alone in the quiet of the day. He barely looked up when the group of young students walked in the front room and down through the hallway, looking so much like the life he’d wanted for Jacky that it was like one small sting in the riot of bigger wounds.

  His attention was almost piqued when one of them—a tiny girl with a riot of flyaway brown hair—returned, completely naked save for a pair of colorfulwool socks, morphed smoothly into a giant tabby cat without a word and curled into a ball at his feet, purring comfortingly. Surprised, Teague reached down and stroked her ears, and was rewarded by even more purring.

  Some of the students came out from the hallway, followed by Arturo who was giving orders. Teague frowned a little, when he realized the orders regarded Katy Garcia and cleaning up the mess at Angel’s Fall, and he looked up briefly, and then paid closer attention because the students were obviously not what they appeared to be.

  “And I said be careful, goddammit!” Snapped a short, stocky, plain girl with shoulder-blade length curly red-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was glaring at two elves with an expression that said she was used to being heard and obeyed.

  “Lambent, I’m not shitting you. I don’t give a pig’s liver if it is November, this area is fucking terrified of fire—you need to contain this fucker and make it burn clean or we’re starting a hill in bum-fuck Antartica and you’re our charter member, am I clear?”

  A slight, flickery-thin looking elf with a ‘go ahead and do me’ grin gave an elaborate bow. “My only wish is but to serve you, my harmonious, silver-tongued liege,” he said sweetly.

  “Go fuck yourself with a rabid porcupine,” the girl responded without batting an eyelash, and the elf (or so his curved, pointed ears and anime features proclaimed) laughed wickedly.

  “And you two,” she said, her entire demeanor changing dramatically, “you don’t screw around. You don’t take risks, you don’t pretend you’re invincible around the angry werewolf, you don’t drive fast,”

  “Is she serious?” Asked a mid-sized compact young man with dark roots and rust colored ends, and rusty freckles to match.

  “That is not the way to get me into bed, Nicky,” she snapped affectionately, and Nicky winked at h
er in return, even as she continued on what amounted to a lover’s nag. “And Bracken—you keep your temper and play nice with the locals.”

  “I won’t hurt them,” replied a behemoth not quite as tall as Green but broader across the chest. He had dark, shaggy hair falling around subtly pointed ears, a burning-pond-shadow glower, and a look in the face of the little plain girl’s nagging of such helpless, besotted passion that Teague had to look twice at the girl to see if they were listening to the same person.

  “Bracken…” she wheedled, and he grinned, pulling a reluctant smile from her.

  “Much,” he amended. “I won’t hurt them much. It’ll feel like a hangover, really—I’m getting better with the whole…” he made vague gestures with his hands.

  “Blinding Vulcan mind-fuck?” She supplied sweetly, and he grinned back. For a moment, they were the only two people in the room.

  “I’m almost subtle, beloved,” he murmured, moving into her and surrounding her with those broad shoulders.

  “You,” she grinned gently, “are as subtle as a backhoe on steroids.” She put her face up towards him, like a cat facing a sunbeam, and basked in the gentle kiss he started with. The kiss deepened, melted scorchingly until the golden-haired flickery elf looked at the rust colored man in disgust.

  “Can’t you do something about that?” He asked with a sneer.

  “When I get sloppy seconds and horny thirds? Are you shitting me?” Nicky responded smartly, and Bracken-the-behemoth reluctantly parted from the short, plain girl who apparently had the whole hill wrapped around her little finger.

  “Be safe,” she cautioned everybody, while Arturo watched on approvingly. “I’m sending some of the vampires your way when it gets dark—who fed from Katy last?”

  “Marcus,” Arturo supplied. “We already checked.”

  “Him and Phillip then—are they talking?” She asked, with a raise in her eyebrows.

  “When they’re not fucking each other and any girl they can talk into their bed,” Nicky replied, and she grinned at him.