by Selena Scott
They did just that, and on their way to the far field where they’d been practicing, Jack and Jean Luc filled Tre in on everything that had happened with Arturo the night before.
“You believe him?” Tre asked. “That he was actually worried about her?”
“Yeah,” Jean Luc answered slowly. “I mean, he seemed really freaked out. I don’t think he was faking it. If there was some kind of evil angle he was working, I couldn’t tell.”
“Me neither,” Jack shook his head. “But I don’t get it, either. I didn’t anticipate him becoming nice to one of us.”
“Yeah,” Tre scratched at his short hair, his fingers sliding over the lightning bolt in the side of his head. He smiled as he thought of Caroline pressing her lips there, the way she did before she finally fell asleep last night. “Caroline doesn’t seem to think he’s trying to kill us. She thinks…”
“What?”
“She thinks he might have been one of us at some point.”
To Tre’s surprise, Jack and Jean Luc weren’t surprised. They merely nodded.
“Yeah,” Jack finally muttered. “I was wondering the same thing.”
“Why?” Tre asked.
“Well,” Jack thought for a minute. “I think it was something in the way Martine and Arturo were acting last night. I mean, I know that she’s fought him before and that they’ve known one another for centuries. But when he was all torn up over Caroline last night, it almost seemed like they were friends or something. Like she fully understood where he was coming from.”
“There was definitely a camaraderie there,” Jean Luc agreed. “Something I’ve never sensed before.” Jean Luc glanced at Tre. “He let us in. Just for half a second. But when he was so freaked out over maybe having hurt Caroline, he accidentally let us into his feelings.”
“Wow.” Tre couldn’t even imagine what that might have been like. Being let into Jack and Jean Luc’s feelings was strange, but becoming more and more familiar. Jack’s feelings were passionate and usually tinged with humor. Jean Luc’s were slow and desirous, tinged with sadness and loneliness, much less so now that he was with Celia. Tre couldn’t even imagine what Arturo’s would feel like. Maybe rage tinged with deceit?
Tre took a deep breath, barely believing that he was about to say this out loud. “I was thinking… maybe we should try being nice to him?”
Jean Luc and Jack just sort of looked at him.
“I mean, look,” Tre tried, pacing in front of them, the long prairie grass getting trampled under his feet. “Aren’t you guys starting to get uncomfortable about the fact that the demon hasn’t tried for us at all? Like, we’ve evaded him completely twice, we stole his right-hand man. Don’t you think that he’s probably pissed and planning some fucked-up shit? Aren’t you getting freaked out with all this waiting and no way to prepare?”
“It is sort of an ‘all dressed up and nowhere to go’ feeling,” Jack agreed, his eyes on the sky and one hand scraping over his stubble.
“Exactly. But the thing is, we have a demon cheatsheet sitting in that house right now. Drinking our coffee as we speak, you know? We have to figure out a way to open up Arturo. We have to know what he knows or else we’re screwed.”
“You’re saying you want to befriend Arturo so that we can use him?” Jean Luc asked, his eyes in a thoughtful squint.
“Eh.” Tre paused his pacing and started stripping off his clothes. Later, he’d realize that he was so agitated, he was turning to his bear form to calm down. Something he had never done before. “Not exactly. I just think there’s a chance that befriending him might pop the top off the can, you know?”
The other two followed Tre’s lead with shedding their clothes, though Martine hadn’t even joined them for their training yet.
“That makes sense,” Jack said slowly. “Except for the part where Arturo isn’t someone we should ever think of as a friend.”
“Because you don’t trust him?” Tre asked. “Or because of his role as the demon’s right-hand man?”
“Well, son,” Jack said dryly. “Arturo hasn’t tried to murder the woman you love, the way he’s done for Jean Luc and me, so excuse us if we’re a little reticent to hold hands and skip down the road with him.”
“I’m not sure he tried to murder me,” Thea said from behind the men.
All three of them basically jumped out of their skins. And considering the fact that they were all naked at this point, it was quite a sight to see.
They whirled and there were Thea, Celia, Martine, and bringing up the rear, Caroline.
Tre hadn’t seen her since he kissed her awake this morning, slipped into her from behind, and held one hand over her mouth to silence her early-morning moans since he could hear Jack clanking around in the other room. After he’d ridden them both straight to a pulsing, sheet-grabbing ecstasy, she’d stretched and rolled over and requested another hour of sleep. He’d left her there in his bed.
And now, here she was, her hair brushed to a liquid shine, her hands in the pockets of her neat, classy trousers, red flats on her feet and that perfectly white T-shirt covering her breasts. The shirt that drove Tre insane for some reason. The one with the bow on one shoulder. He looked away from her quickly. She was too pretty in the sunlight. And though necessity had driven the group into more comfort with the men’s frequent nudity, Tre was pretty sure that comfort didn’t extend to boners. He searched the sky for airplanes and counted backwards from a hundred.
Jack smirked and threw Tre his pants, before sliding on his own. Jean Luc, lost in his deep, squinty thought, the way he frequently was, just kept squinting at Thea.
“What do you mean, Thea?”
“I mean,” she paused, looking back at the farmhouse where Arturo still was, and searched for words. “He said something to me last night. And at first I thought he was just taunting me, or playing mind games. But something about it rang true.”
“What did he say?” Jack couldn’t help but tug Thea forward so that they stood next to one another. The group, following their lead, knit together tighter. Celia swiped Jean Luc’s pants off the ground and handed them over, one eyebrow raised on her head. They exchanged some sort of silent eye conversation that ended in him restraining a smile and tugging on his pants.
“He said that if he’d really been trying to hurt us, this whole thing would be over. The demon would have one of our souls already. He said that the fact that the whole thing is still going on is just evidence that he wasn’t actually trying to hurt us.”
Jack’s eyebrows raised up so fast it was like they were snagged on fishhooks. “I’ve got about three pints of blood down the bathtub drain in Florida that are pretty scintillating evidence supporting the fact that he was trying to hurt us.”
“I know,” Thea sighed, raising her hands and letting them fall back to smack her thighs. “I can’t explain why I kind of believe him, but—”
“You believe him because he’s telling the truth,” Martine cut in. Her hands were on her hips, the morning sun slanting across her face, absorbing into her black clothing as if they were made of shadow. She looked beautiful and fierce and sad, all at once. “It’s something that I’ve been suspecting for a while.”
It was also part of the reason why she’d wanted to kidnap him in the first place, but she’d barely admitted that to herself. She wasn’t about to come clean to this entire group before she got her head on straight over it.
“You think Arturo has been… on our side?” Celia asked, perplexed.
“No,” Martine shook her head vehemently. “Definitely not. He’s not on anyone’s side but his own. Trust me…” She faded off and she, too, stared at the formerly white farmhouse in the distance. “I can’t explain more. It’s not my story to tell. But I think it’s deeply important that the six of you come to some sort of understanding with Arturo.”
“Martine,” Caroline said gently. “Will you please tell us why? As plainly as possible?” Caroline stepped forward and took one of Martine’s sti
ff fists from her hip and unclenched the fingers. Caroline squeezed Martine’s hand in two of hers. Martine blinked in surprise at the contact. Her movements were rusty, like Caroline was making her do something that she hadn’t done in centuries.
To the group’s astonishment, the demon hunter’s eyes went glassy for a moment. Tears gathered and fell before she reached back with one hand and pulled a worn scroll from her belt. She took a long breath, bowed her head for a moment, and when she came back up, she was the Martine that they all knew so well. A steely expression on her face, her strawberry hair a thousand colors in the sunlight.
“Just try,” she whispered. “You have to try.”
***
Which was how, three days later, the three men found themselves standing naked in the field yet again. Only this time, Arturo was there with them, arms crossed over his chest and a bored expression on his face.
“Carry on, then,” he told them, skepticism in every syllable.
Tre wouldn’t have ever characterized their little group as suffering from performance anxiety, but suddenly, the three of them were just kind of blinking at one another, trying to see who was going to go first, shifting for Arturo.
“Well,” Tre shrugged. “We’re already naked.” He took his shift at a run and it wasn’t more than a second or two before he felt Jack and Jean Luc go behind him.
Tre skidded out and trotted back to the group, feeling the crazy, zinging adrenaline that he was becoming more and more familiar to him.
“Huh,” Arturo said, cocking his head to one side as he eyed Tre. “Interesting technique.”
Tre would have liked to reply, but as he was currently a grizzly bear, English was a little bit beyond him.
Either way, it didn’t matter because seconds later, Arturo was shifting as well. There was no pomp and circumstance. Not even a deep breath. For a moment he was a man and then the next moment, he was a hulking, gigantic beast of a bear. This was no ochre grizzly. Even with the sun shining straight on him, he was a horrid, ash-like black. Just like his eyes, light seemed to disappear into him. He looked ugly and evil, with teeth the length of a baby’s arm and dead eyes. A strange scent emanated from him, like something that had just come out of the freezer.
“I’m only here because Caroline asked it of me,” Arturo’s voice sounded in the heads of the three other bear shifters. But it was almost like he was speaking on a strange frequency, one that came with a lot of feedback. The shrieking quality to his tone had the other men wincing automatically at his words.
“Now, isn’t this fun,” Arturo said, starting to pace sideways in his great bear form. “Shall we spar?”
Tre was extremely aware of the fact that they were supposed to be communicating in bear form because that was supposedly easier for Arturo. This whole thing had been Martine’s idea. “You’ll get through to him better if you’re all in bear form,” she’d insisted.
Now this twelve-foot-tall monstrosity with dead eyes and bad attitude was basically licking its chops in their direction.
Great.
With a bit of an internal shrug, Tre charged.
***
The attempt to open up Arturo did not go well. The three bear shifters had ended up with an array of wounds that had taken days to heal, even after their traditional warm water treatments. Arturo didn’t come away unscathed, either. As far as Tre knew, Arturo hadn’t left his room in two days.
Tre couldn’t believe how much he hated him.
Shall we spar.
Bastard.
What Tre hadn’t minded, however, was all the extra attention he’d received from Caroline due to his injuries. And due to the fact that they were now, for lack of a better term, boning down every spare chance they got.
Seriously. Tre hadn’t known that sex like this existed. His woman was hungry for him. Who would have thought that underneath that innocent, sweet, neat little exterior there was a starving sex goddess? Tre was more than happy to be her playground.
He was grateful for the distraction as well. Every day ticked down and it made him crazy with worry. Every night, with a sweaty, gorgeous Caroline panting next to him, the fear descended again. He was grateful, of course, that that day hadn’t yielded an attack from the demon. But he couldn’t help but worry about what tomorrow would bring.
It was in Caroline and Caroline alone that he could quell those worries. Even his bear form gave him no relief from the constant fear. And so he set about on his mission to drown himself in Caroline. He hoped he never found the surface.
As for her, she was really enjoying her time with Tre. This adventure was funny to her in some ways. The time moved so strangely. The stakes of each day were so high, and there was almost nothing to do to pass the time. No jobs. No life except for one another. So even though it had only been a little under two weeks since she and Tre had first slept together, Caroline felt as if it had been months. Maybe even a year.
Physically, their connection was brutally satisfying. She’d never in her life known pleasure like this existed. Tre was generous and demanding and creative and patient and everything she’d ever wanted in a lover. It was hard not to feel cracked like a peanut after every single time. When they were having sex, she could feel him open up, the energy of him, the core of him. It was like peeling a piece of fruit to get to the ripe innards. But then sleep would take them and when they woke up, there was friendly, kind Tre with his guard firmly in place.
She knew this was what he’d meant when he’d claimed that he wasn’t good for women. She knew that the guard he had up wasn’t a choice for him. It happened naturally. From necessity or nature she wasn’t quite sure.
Either way, she didn’t blame him for it. She didn’t wish Tre were different. Tre was Tre and she wanted him. It made her deeply sad to think that they probably weren’t destined to be together forever. She’d never be able to make it with someone who so firmly shut her out of his life, his story, his history. Eventually they’d have to part ways. She’d be devastated, she knew. But she also knew she could get through it.
If there was anything she’d learned from her divorce it was that you had to enjoy the good parts while you had ‘em and let people go their own way when they wanted to. The small fear in the back of her mind was that Tre didn’t actually want to. She couldn’t help but think that he wasn’t completely in the driver’s seat when it came to his anxieties and fears.
She could clearly see a world where one day, Tre pushed her away so firmly that there was no choice but to keep on walking. She could also see that world leaving Tre even lonelier than he was when they first met. It said something about Caroline that even in that scenario, in her heart of hearts, she would be more concerned with Tre’s pain than with her own.
No! She firmly reminded herself that she’d learned to put her needs up front. She’d spent far too long punting herself down the line for Peter. She needed to take control of her life and be strong!
But as the days marched on, Caroline found herself swirling farther and farther into Tre. The scent of him, the warmth of him, the taste of him. Every night she’d tiptoe to his room and knock gently on his door. And there she’d find him. Brushing his teeth, or reading in bed, or clacking on his keyboard. And every night, her heart lurched.
She wasn’t going to try and change him. And she wasn’t going to waste time wishing he were different.
All she could do was be grateful.
***
Jack and Jean Luc and Tre were scowling into their dinners, barely capable of raising their eyes to the other end of the table where Arturo sat.
“Did something happen on the playground that you boys need to tell Mommy about?” Celia asked, looking back and forth between them all.
“Baby, please don’t refer to yourself as my mommy,” Jean Luc said on a pained laugh.
Celia laughed hard then, and so did the rest of the women. “Fair enough. But what the hell happened out there?”
Seriously, the men were all acting like the
y’d buried a body this afternoon or something.
“Well,” Tre said, dropping his fork onto his plate. “In a nutshell, Arturo’s a raging bag of dicks.”
Arturo rolled his eyes and plopped his chin on his hand at the other end of the table. “Aw. Does it hurt your feelings that I don’t want to be friends?”
“Nawl,” Jack jumped in. “But it irritates the shit out of us that you know everything about this fucking demon and you won’t do shit to help us.”
“Why should I help you?” Arturo asked, leaning back in his chair and picking at his teeth. “Simply because I’m here? We’re not allies. No matter what Martine might think.” Arturo sat up from his chair and strode out of the room, stopping briefly to squeeze Caroline’s shoulder in penance for his behavior. But then he was gone.
“Martine,” Thea said, pushing her plate away. “Pretty sure we need a new plan. Our boys aren’t getting anywhere with Arturo and time keeps on ticking. I can’t imagine it’ll be long before we hear from the demon in one way or another. Don’t you think?”
Martine said nothing.
One by one, the group realized that Martine had gone desperately still. Her eyes were glassy.
Automatically, in a gesture that squeezed Tre’s heart, Caroline reached across the table and took Martine by the hand. “What’s wrong?”
Martine took a deep breath. “I was just really hoping that you’d all be able to make things work with Arturo without being backed into a corner.”
“What corner?” Jean Luc asked.
“I didn’t realize it until we were already on our way here.” She slipped her hand from Caroline’s and pulled a piece of parchment from her belt. They all recognized it. It was the map that had originally led them to northern Michigan. It had eventually wiped itself clean and led them to southern Florida a little over a month ago. And then they’d wiped and redesigned and led them all to Montana. However, the map that Martine was holding out to all of them was completely blank. “Mine wiped after Florida. But it never showed Montana for me.”