by Amy Lane
“Don’t let me fuck you up here, Teague,” she said softly, the pain on her face making her look so much younger. What was she? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? But not right now. Now she looked like a little kid doctoring her own skinned knee. “It’s always safe on the hill. We just have shit to do—you and me, we’ve got to get our shit done, because when we come unglued, it’s big shit. So let’s just get our shit done, and get back and rip off the band-aids and our intestines will spill where they may.”
“I’m…” he took a deep breath as they began to clear the underbrush together. “I’m not that strong,” he finished, so quietly he didn’t think she could hear him.
“Bullshit,” she snapped, proving that she could. “I can do it, you sure as hell can.”
They came out of the weeds and Cory stalked up to the few remaining werewolves—there were only four survivors, all held by angry vampires and kneeling—naked-- in the dirt and star thistle of the narrow service road.
“So,” Cory asked, her voice all business, “how many of you were there to start with?”
“Twenty,” one of them said softly, and Cory nodded sagely.
“Twenty. One of you is safe in the SUV back there, so how many of you did we let live?”
“Five,” said the same guy. Cory nodded and crouched a little lower.
“So…”
“Javier,” the kid filled in, and she nodded.
“So, Javier—does this sound like any kind of a good idea?”
The kid raised his eyes up to her—deep gold-brown, and fringed with black lashes—and spit at her. “It did until you got here, cunt!”
Cory laughed—actually laughed—and Mario dropped from the sky like a death-angel from hell. The vampire holding Javier backed off at Cory’s nod, and Mario strode up to the little shit and kicked him in the chin—and the game was on.
Cory and the vampires backed away, and Mario followed the kick to the chin with a solid left to the body. Javier doubled, spitting blood and saliva and rushed in with a shot to Mario’s chin that he easily dodged. Mario had a couple of inches on the kid, but as he muscled in and followed body shot with head shot, and the only sounds in their circle were the sounds of fists hitting flesh and the grunts and moans of Javier when that happened, Teague realized that Mario wasn’t winning because of a couple of inches.
Mario was winning for sheer rage.
Thud, smack, splat… the kid was a werewolf—they could see him healing even as he came back for more punishment—but Mario was a shapeshifter too, and Javier wasn’t making any of his shots.
Eventually, the other SUV came in behind them, and Javier took one too many hits to the head. He fell to the ground, bleeding, and looked up at Mario with indifference as to whether or not the next blow landed in his face or his chest or even his groin.
It was a kick to his chin, but it was the last one.
Panting lightly, Mario danced back and turned his face up to the night sky. His shirt had disappeared in trans, and he looked barbaric and savage as he howled—rage, grief, pain, glory—everything—into the sharp-cold-edged night. He howled again and again, as the vampires waited, as Bracken idled behind them, and Teague realized that Cory’s blue glow bled with every howl. When Mario was done he turned an anguished, tear-stained face to Cory and she nodded and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.
“Nick’ll follow you,” she murmured. Mario hardly heard her before he turned again and took off flying into the night. Cory trotted to the waiting car and rapped on the passenger window. Nicky opened the door and she hesitantly touched his hand before saying gruffly, “Follow him. La Mark too. It’s a dangerous night to be out. Try not to lose your cell phones, right?”
The two men got out of the SUV, but Max didn’t move to the front right away. He stayed right next to their new werewolf friend, and, in fact, called out as La Mark opened the door.
“Hey—can I have a vamp feed from this bitch? I don’t feel like holding a gun to him for the whole ride!”
Kyle grunted and slid in the side door so Max could move up to the driver side and take the wheel from Brack. Teague saw Cory exchange a long look with Bracken as he walked around the car. She reached out towards his wounded shoulder again and held back a keening sound, and then dropped her hand.
“Be safe,” she said briefly.
“You too,” he responded, and her lips twisted like it was a smile.
When they’d driven away, she looked up at Phillip and Marcus and then, inscrutably, back at Teague. “We’ve got to get going. Do me a favor, would you, and pull the other cars out, then wait for Lambent to torch the field. Make sure it doesn’t spread—it shouldn’t. Shit’s pretty wet right now, but we’re not that far from civilization.” She tapped her head. “Chat me up if anything hinky happens. We’ve got to get home.”
Five minutes into a really uncomfortable drive, after Teague had managed to get his shoes and his shirt and jacket back on by wiggling a lot on the front seat, Cory swore over the sound of the Mustang’s powerful engine. “I forgot my fucking iPod.” Teague heard her, and started searching for a station on Max’s stereo. Satellite stereo. He programmed The Scorpions, Metallica, Greenday, and JayZ into the search feature and let the screaming commence.
Cory’s shoulders relaxed for a couple of songs as they wound down 193, and then she turned down the music.
“Once,” she murmured, as though searching for the right story, “right after I found out what I could do, I was so angry. My whole world had been turned upside down, you know?”
Teague nodded. He did know.
“So there I was, locked in Green’s bedroom because… well shit was happening, and Green walked in to talk to me, and all this power rushed out of me and just knocked him on his ass.”
Teague thought he should laugh. It sounded like it was funny, but everything was locked down under that rapidly shrinking elastic band around his chest. She cast him a sideways look through the shifting shadows of a random streetlight, out in the middle of nowhere.
“Anyway,” she continued, “he walks into the room and I knock him down because I was pissed, but, you know… this was Green, and he tells me, You only wanted to hurt me because you didn’t know you could hurt me.” She swallowed. “Shit happened after that… you know…”
“Bad shit,” he filled in dryly.
“Yeah. Bad shit. But I never forgot that. Jack didn’t know he’d hurt you, Teague. Give him a break because he didn’t know he could.”
Teague’s breathing started to quicken and that band got tight… so tight… he couldn’t… he breathed. He powered through it. His face was locked down, impassive, and Cory turned up the music until their eardrums bled.
It was better than other things.
Katy
Ripped, Torn, Bleeding, and Naked
The whole hill heard Cory clattering down from the Goddess grove, calling for reinforcements.
For a moment, Katy was removed from it all. Of course, everything in the hill was related—and if someone was hurt, they all suffered, but really, what did the fuss have to do with…
Oh God.
Katy put down the needlepoint sampler she’d been working on and stumbled from her room, down the hall and across it into Jack and Teague’s room. Two hours before, Teague had stuck his head into the room and told Jack to get his ass in gear, they were going on a run. Jack had climbed out of bed with her and gone.
The bed was still unmade, messy, smelling of the three of them and their first lovemaking. Katy threw herself into it and lay there, scenting the sheets like the wolf she could be, trying to catch the moment their bodies had merged, and for a brief moment the three of them had seen, maybe, everything they were meant to be.
Green found her there, forty-five minutes after Cory left, curled up in the center of the bed in the dark.
“Oh… Katy! I’m so sorry, lovely… why weren’t you waiting in the common room with the rest of us?”
Green was… well, he was always
beautiful, but Katy was getting to the point where she could see past the beauty and into his weariness and his worry and the pain it cost him to hold his family together sometimes. This was one of those moments.
“I didn’t think,” she answered, and until she did she wasn’t aware that she’d been crying, soundlessly, as she’d clutched the comforter to her chest. The bed dipped and Green’s hand came out and smoothed her hair back from her face.
“You even cry prettily,” he said musingly, and she hiccupped and looked up to him with big eyes. It didn’t seem like a good superpower, but there was a fondness in the quirk of his lips and she wondered who it was that didn’t cry so pretty.
“They’re okay?” she asked now, because he was calm and quiet and bent on comforting her, so that was probably the truth.
He paused for a moment, and she sat up, puzzled. “They’re fine,” he reassured, drawing her to his side before he amended the statement. “Physically, they’re fine.”
Katy sniffed. “Que?”
Green laughed a little but not as though anything was funny. “Things went a little wrong, and… I’ll need details, but what I got from Bracken is that Jack lost his composure and Teague… well, for a minute he thought the worst. It… it wasn’t easy on either of them…”
Katy shook her head—Green was being unusually evasive. “Wait a minute. The worst, you mean for a minute…”
“Teague thought he was dead. It wasn’t… a logical thought. Jack was knocked out, but he was fine.” Green sighed, and looked into a distance she couldn’t see. “Bracken and Jack will be here in about ten minutes. Cory and Teague are a few minutes behind…” He grimaced. “I understand they both needed to get a handle on themselves.”
Her eyes sought his in the dark of this very plain, very masculine room. Both of their expressions were troubled. “It’s not gonna be a good night for either of us, is it, Leader?”
Green pulled her to his side a little closer and kissed her hair. “No, lovely Katy, it is not. I think you’d better plan on not going to work tomorrow—Bracken’s mother will take your place, right?”
Katy tried to smile, but she couldn’t. “Right,” she murmured, expecting Green to leave immediately—he had thousands of people to look after, now didn’t he?
But he stayed instead, just holding her in the dark, and she took strength from those moments. He was attractive, yes—like most of the hill, she’d been in his bed at one time or another, because that was where people bared their souls with their bodies—but more than that. Green was safe. Green was kind. Green was… easy. He was, in fact, all of the things that another human being—even the ones that Katy loved with all her heart—had no guarantees of being, even if they had intentions.
She was beginning to doze a little—it had been, after all, a long day—when they heard the voices down the corridor. Nothing was every truly private in the hill, was it?
“I don’t give a shit what she thinks she knows, she had no right to take him away before we had a time to…”
Katy winced—there was Jacky, getting all in someone’s face when he didn’t know everything like he should. She loved that boy, but he was going to need to be smacked some more before he was housebroken.
“Had time to what?” Bracken growled—they were close to the door now, and Green and Katy met eyes grimly. All things considered, it would probably be better to stay put and hear this out. “Had time to strip him naked emotionally as well as physically, because Goddess knows he’s loved what you’ve put him through so far!”
“What are you talking about… he knew what he was doing when he…”
There was a whirl and a thump, and Katy was pretty sure Green knew the sound of a body being thrust against a wall and held there.
“What he was doing when he changed? Do you really think so? Because I’ll tell you how this played outside of your delusions, puppy. You fucked up…
“The hell I…”
“YOU FUCKED UP. You led them right to us when you should have taken them out. You changed in the field when your alpha told you no. You engaged in a dogfight when there were guns on the fucking table. And when you got knocked out, Teague, your alpha, who’s supposed to hold it all together lost it. He didn’t change because it was the smart thing to do, he changed because he thought you were dead!”
Katy gasped and Green shut his eyes tightly. She shook her head at him and he kissed her forehead gently, and they both stayed as quiet as they could, and listened.
“He thought I was…” Well now—Jack hadn’t known that.
“Yeah—and he almost took her hand off—almost took her face off, if you must know the truth, when she was trying to bring him back. And she didn’t have to do that, by the way—only if she wanted him to live through the night, asshole!”
“Well if he was so worried about me, why the hell didn’t he stay when I was up and around?” Katy rolled her eyes, frustrated. Puppy indeed.
But this question—and this one only—Bracken seemed to have patience for.
“Jack, do you really think Cory doesn’t have some things she’d like to say to me? I was bleeding on the fucking field,”
Green sucked in a breath. Shit.
“Do you think that’s going to be it? She rolls in, saves our ass and we’re all happiness and sunshine? Who in the fuck told you relationships worked that way?”
Even in the bedroom, they could hear Jack swallow.
“He didn’t want to do it in public,” he whispered. Oh Glory hallelujia—Jacky got it.
“And neither do I,” Bracken muttered. They heard a thump as Jack was dropped to the ground and then stomping footsteps as he stalked away, and a moment later, Jack threw open the door of the room with a growl.
Green hadn’t moved, and neither had Katy, but now he stood up, kissed her forehead and moved towards the door. He stopped and gave Jack a thorough visual once-over, checking for wounds.
“Looks like Lambent did a thorough job on you, mate. Teague should be in shortly—I would imagine you’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Jack flushed, but it was hard for anyone to be angry at Green. Instead he looked helplessly at Katy, and she found she looked mildly back. She was irritated with him—yes—but more importantly, she was concerned for Teague.
He’d thought Jack was dead. Oh Goddess… she’d been worried, yes. But she had assumed… just knew the two of them would be okay. And he’d thought Jack had been dead.
Green ducked his head and left, and Katy shook her head at Jack, still huddled in the middle of their bed.
“How could you, Jacky?” she asked, and he jerked his head back like she’d slapped him.
“I didn’t do anyth…”
“Oh yes, yes you did, mijo.” She was pleating the crumpled sheet unconsciously, but that was fine—it took the place of pacing. “You promised him… everything in his whole life he wanted, and you told him it was okay—just fine, reach for it. And you blow him off out in the field, and he almost lose it all.”
Jack closed his eyes, suddenly pale and shaking and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Oh God. Goddess. Whatever. All that work…” The last three weeks, getting Teague to trust in them, to have faith… all of it, pissed away in a bad run.
Teague burst in at that moment and they didn’t even have time to say Shit!
He looked startled to see them, his dark hazel eyes rolling wildly a little, before that damned stoic mask of his slipped solidly back into place.
“You here, field mouse? I’d have thought you’d be in your room. It’s prettier.” He slipped off his jacket and hung it on the edge of one of the chairs and sat down and started to unlace his shit-kickers.
Katy nodded. Okay then—apparently emotional honesty was her job tonight.
“I was worried about you,” she said evenly. “I’m in here because I could smell us together—it made me feel better when I thought you guys, you know, you might be ripped or dead or bleeding or naked or something.”
Teagu
e’s jaw tightened and his fight-or-flight pulse throbbed hard in his temple. “Well we’re fine,” he said, and then toed his boot off with enough force to pop it halfway across the room.
“I’m sorry…” Jack started, and Katy smacked him as Teague’s other boot went flying all the way across the room.
Teague swallowed again. “Yeah… well… well I don’t think we can do any runs together. Not now. Not after…” He breathed deeply, and his shoulders shook with the force of it. The air pressure in the room was suddenly weighted, and every movement Teague made was quivering with the effort of moving through the things he did not say.
“Teague, that’s not fair!” Jack protested. “Ow, Katy, stop doing that!”
“I will not—you think what he needs to hear now is that you gonna go out and get yourself killed!” Oh! These damn men, acting like nothing happened, filling the room with this liquid air and all these words that should be hurled and screamed and shouted.
Jack rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to get myself…”
“The fuck you won’t!” Teague burst out, the words so loud in the thick quiet of the room that Katy’s chest heaved with the sharpness of her breath. Teague took another deep breath, his entire body trembling, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse and even. “You were in…” deep breath, “real danger tonight. I think… you know, it would be better if you went back to school. We’ve got a good life here. People to take care of you…”
“What about you, pappi?” Katy interrupted, and Teague suddenly jumped up out of the chair and stalked to the bathroom. When he came out, he had his running clothes, still damp with sweat from his morning’s run.
Beside her, Jack breathed, “Oh Christ, no.”
Katy stood up and moved decisively. If no one here could be smart about what was inside them, fighting to get out, she could. “Teague… I asked you a question. What about you? You say there’s someone here to take care of Jacky—what about you? We’re supposed to take care of you…”