by Amy Lane
“Good job,” Connor praised, and Green echoed the sentiment. Good job, indeed.
But that led him to their young werewolf.
“Okay, Connor. Good. We have a course of action for Dylan, but now we need to talk more about what happened to you. Because you’re our contact with the werewolves, and so far you’re the only one we’ve met who hasn’t been contaminated with the… the funk, I guess my people are calling it. Now, you told me you went to a party on your way through town. You got drunk, passed out, and you woke up when you were bitten, right?”
Connor nodded warily, and Green sighed. Even when they were in bed, touching intimately, Connor was intensely guarded. Of course, Green had bedded Teague Sullivan, and he knew that his alpha had some deep and lasting scars, so he knew Connor’s heart might be just as scarred as Teague’s. He’d let Connor set the pace when they were in bed, and he’d tried hard not to violate Connor’s trust by invading his dreams. But now that the boy was part of his household, it was time to go deeper into Connor’s transition and the conditions at the jail. The enemy had been given weeks to recoup. They were gearing for another attack—Green could feel it.
Connor shook his head.
“Man, you don’t understand. I… we were in this open field, and I guess there was something special about it. It was June, right, so summer solstice? Anyway, there we were, a bunch of drunk, horny strangers, and I woke up and there was this wolf just biting me. And I sat up and yelled, and he snorted and moved to the next person. So….” His eyes darted to Green. “Like I said, I bugged out.”
And that right there was where the lie was.
“Tell us the rest,” Green said softly. “Because that part you’re leaving out—the part between you getting bit and you getting rousted by the police? The part you left out when we first got you—that’s the part that’s probably got our enemy wrapped up in a bow.”
Connor shook his head. “I don’t even know if it was real,” he whispered.
Which meant it was very, very bad.
Green leaned forward and cupped the boy’s chin with his fingers. “Connor, I can go into your mind and take the memory from you—I’ve done it more times than you want to know. But if I do this, you will not have lived it. And if you don’t admit it happened, it will haunt you until your heart stops beating. And given that you have an extended life now, you don’t want to think about how long that will be.”
Connor grunted.
“I heard sex,” he admitted, because he was a strong boy, oh yes, he was. “There was sex—loud, noisy, embarrassing sex in the middle of the field. There I was—naked, blood dripping from my goddamned hand, looking for my clothes—and some chick, like, beautiful, like you guys, but… scrawnier. Almost used up. She’s getting the holy shit fucked out of her by the guy who’d dragged me to the damned party.”
Against all odds, Connor blushed. “I was a little pissed,” he admitted, darting his eyes to Dylan. “The guy told me he liked to party naked, and I was thinking, ‘Score!’—I hadn’t been with a guy in a while, and I like it. Makes a change. Anyway, so I’m pissed, ’cause apparently I’m not the only one who swings both ways, and while I’m hauling on my jeans, I hear this… this scream from where the sex was, and….”
Connor scrubbed at his face with a shaking hand, and Green moved so he was no longer adjacent to the young roughneck but was, instead, sitting right next to him. He put a comforting arm over Connor’s brawny shoulders and was gratified when Connor relaxed. Whatever this story was, it had nothing on Teague Sullivan’s worst day, but comfort was comfort.
“What did you see?” he asked quietly.
“My buddy, while he was just pounding away, someone had driven a stake through his shoulder. He was bleeding on her, and she had some sort of knife wound on her wrist, and she touched him with it and….”
Connor shook his head. “He was still inside her,” he whispered. “And suddenly he started to squirm—and this… I mean, he had tats anyway, but this was like watching a tattoo rip its way down someone else’s body, taking flesh with it. And Manny, he’s just shrieking, ’cause that shit had to hurt, and the chick… she starts to glow, and Manny is being ripped up from the inside out, and she’s just rolling around, getting off on his blood. And she glows and glows, and suddenly she’s not scrawny anymore. She’s getting rounder and more powerful, and the blood is just disappearing into her skin, and this guy’s body is becoming hamburger.”
Green’s bowels were freezing over. Soon it was going to be his lungs and throat. Oh, Goddess. This magic, this abomination—this was terrifying.
“When did it end?” he asked, but he knew.
“The screaming stopped,” Connor said roughly, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “He was… he was all blood and bones, and she wrapped her arms around him and… and came,” he said, his voice cracking. “He… his bones turned to dust, and she stood up, covered in… in him, and started to talk. It was… well, not any language I’ve heard, and suddenly all the sleeping people who’d been bitten, they started to change into wolves. They wake up and they start stumbling, rolling, running to her, and….”
“They licked her clean,” Green finished, because the boy had endured enough.
“Yes,” he choked. “And I ran. I had my clothes, and I knew where my car was parked, and I ran. And when the cop found me at the gas station, I was…. God, I was terrified. I looked guilty, and the cop called me in, and suddenly I had charges. Man, I didn’t even know the person I was supposed to have robbed, but I had charges against me, and the next thing I know—”
“You were in jail, waiting for your trial.”
Which meant that the justice system—or somebody in it—had licked blood off the wrong hand.
“Yeah.” Connor shivered.
Green kissed his temple and whispered, “Sleep, Connor. No dreams, my lovely, just sleep.”
Connor slumped on the couch, asleep and at peace for probably the first time since June, and Green spent a moment studying the young man’s strong jaw and wide cheekbones. A capable young man—apparently made of something stronger than the people around him, or he would have been an enemy and not an uneasy ally. Green stroked the dark blond hair from his head and kissed him on the forehead.
“We’ll tek care o’ ye, me bonny young lad,” he whispered, feeling protective and paternal. He often felt protective and paternal, but this surge of emotion was something he hadn’t felt since… well….
Oh.
Well, that explained the accent, didn’t it? His voice always seemed to come from the time he was reliving when he spoke, and this was a time….
Oh Goddess. He really was going to have to talk to his family. If they didn’t know, it would be riding him until the world broke. He stared sightlessly at the sturdy werewolf for a moment. When he looked up, Dylan was clinging to Connor’s other hand.
“That’s horrible,” he whispered, his face blotchy with tears. “That’s…. I played poker. I swear, Green, that’s all. It was nothing like that. It was so tame, right up until the cops showed up.”
Green nodded. “There’s more,” he said. “I already told you, my boy, there’s something in your mind that we need, Dylan—but not right now.” He pitched his voice a little louder. “Arturo, could you take the boy to his room?”
“Not yours?” Arturo asked, coming from his leisurely lean against the kitchen wall. “He’s going to need—”
“I put a balm on his mind,” Green said, because Goddess, it would be cruelty not to. “He’ll remember it, but through a veil for a while. The veil may grow thicker, and unless he’s triggered, it will keep him removed from it until he’s ready for it, that’s all. But for now, you and I need to chat.”
Arturo nodded and lifted Connor gently from the couch, moving extra quietly through the living room. Dylan watched him go with a troubled expression.
“Do you really think… do you think that happened?” he asked. Green knew he was covering for his initial, more s
elfish question.
“I have no doubts,” Green said, trying very hard to keep his breath from coming hard. Oh Goddess—this was so bad. “But what you really wanted to ask was do I think Connor can have two lovers who are not sharing a bed with each other. My answer is that the three of you can make anything work as long as you enter into the agreement with a good heart. But you need to make your decision soon, because while you and Cami may be able to take other lovers after Connor bonds with you, he will not. You will be his one attempt at love, and if you leave him after that, you have robbed him of his sexuality in the cruelest of ways.”
Dylan was apparently listening hard, because he blanched. “Jesus, talk about pressure!”
“You have no idea,” Green said blandly. “But it’s one you must face. Remember, kindness comes in many forms. If you can’t do it, best tell him now.”
After an audible swallow, Dylan nodded, and Green could only hope for the best. Of course, given what he knew of Cami’s strength and Connor’s will, he didn’t think there was a chance it would go smoothly. But of all people, Green knew that smoothly held no quarter over the needs of the heart. Roughly was better, if it meant all involved understood what they were getting into.
“I love him,” Dylan said, voice firming up. “It will work.”
Or maybe not rough at all. Green could hope. “But for now, Dylan, we need you to go through those pictures so we can see who attended your little party.”
Please, Dylan—have enough sense of tribe to get them through this now. If Green was right, they had a limited time before another one of those ceremonies happened and their rogue elf queen blood bonded a whole new passel of “funky” werewolves.
Dylan nodded and swallowed. “I… I’d like to lie and say I can’t remember,” he said apologetically. “But… you were right. I can’t lie. I feel… well, like hell when I do. It hurts. It makes me feel gutshot. I can’t explain it. Cami sucks at it too. She….” He grimaced. “She always thought there was something wrong with her. She was good at… at being a whore. She liked the sex, and her customers came back again and again because she made them feel good. But she couldn’t tell them it was good when it wasn’t—it was like she only got the people who weren’t awful, because the other ones wouldn’t come back.”
Green grunted, feeling sick himself. Oh, poor girl. All of the beauty of the sidhe’s gift of sensuality and truth, and this was how you were forced to spend it?
“Well, if she stays here, she’ll never be forced to do that again,” he said.
Dylan blinked those large green eyes at him. “Stay,” he chanted. “Like… forever?”
Green had no idea how long they’d live. That was the nature of the sidhe/human offspring. Some of them—usually the ones who found their sidhe relatives—would be immortal. Some of them would simply have extended life spans, three or four hundred years, with considerably slowed aging after puberty. Some of them would live a mortal’s lifespan, made longer or shorter by the same things that had plagued mortals since, well, mortality.
But it was uncertain where these two would fall. They had so many sidhe gifts that he was pretty sure their link with the werewolf would give them long years with their beloved, should they be lucky enough to have found him truly at last.
“As long as you wish,” he said softly. “We keep no prisoners here. We would extract a promise from you to keep quiet about this place, a geas if it became apparent you were hostile, but nothing else. You may go to school, find a job, even move away from the hill—but as long as you are loyal, you are always welcome back.”
Dylan nodded. “Your people are… I mean, loyal. It was hard—Cami and I had to listen hard to even hear people think about Green’s hill.”
Green smiled. “Well, we try hard to make it a place of safety, my boy. Being safe and cared for, fed and loved, that’s powerful magic right there. People never know how much until it’s taken away.”
Dylan shuddered and laced his long fingers. “It is magic,” he whispered. “I’ll do anything I can to help keep it good.”
“Excellent!” Green stood and took Dylan to the table. Lambent, knowing what was coming, had cleared a spot, so Dylan could sit and look at the tablet set out on top. “Now, here,” Green showed him, tapping on the tablet, “Arturo lined up a number of people who have ties to the police department and are known to gamble.”
“How would you know—”
Green snorted. “I have workers in every corner of the state, Dylan. Once they know what to listen for, they’re pretty spectacular at picking up on liars, con men, and thieves.”
Dylan blinked slowly, as though he was processing. “But most of the people there—I mean, I had to steal a suit from a dry cleaner to get into this game. It was a grift just to sit at the table.”
“Oh, my boy. Have you not learned that most of the people wearing those suits are the biggest con men of all?”
A corner of Dylan’s mobile mouth pulled up. “I knew I liked it here,” he said with satisfaction. With that he sat down and started shuffling through the mug book that Arturo had assembled from news clippings and press releases of the up-and-comers from around the area. And they hadn’t forgotten law enforcement—Max had been more than anxious to provide a few photos once he realized that the jail couldn’t have been infiltrated so thoroughly without a little inside help.
Green watched the boy for a moment, satisfied that he was bookmarking the pictures that at least looked familiar, then went to talk to Arturo, who had just walked back into the room.
“Are we good, mate?” he asked. Dammit, he’d actually had plans today beyond those two boys and random furry disputes.
Arturo looked around the nearly empty room and moved a little closer to Green. Ridiculous, in a way—most of the creatures who lived in the hill had superior hearing—but still, it had become polite to at least pretend not to listen when two people so obviously wanted to speak privately.
“He’ll be out for a while. But about the rest of the day—are you sure you want to do this yourself?”
Green grimaced. “You and I once traipsed all over the goddamned state collecting touch, blood, and song from everybody who owed us. You think I can’t handle an outing now?”
Arturo’s scowl was something to be feared—by other people. “That was before you became Danger Prone Fucking Daphne every time you left the hill!”
Green blinked. “Is that a name? I’m Danger Prone, and I’m fucking Daphne? Is it a direction? I should be fucking Daphne prone? Is fucking Daphne prone dangerous? What in the Goddess’s sweet womb does this have to do with me pretending to be a lawyer and leaving the hill?”
Arturo’s eyes really might have popped out of his head, except that Lambent, who had been so dutifully ignoring them in the corner of the room, suddenly collapsed on the floor, holding his middle and kicking his heels.
Arturo glared at him. “You were supposed to be ignoring us!”
“Goddess!” Lambent howled. “Of all things—even I’ve seen Scooby-Doo!”
Green grinned at him, truly grateful that he’d taken the cynical young elf in. “Does that mean you want to come with me?” he asked. Lambent’s glee stalled abruptly.
He sucked in a breath, and then another. “Me, go with you, on an op?” he asked, as though the concept were foreign.
“Well, Arturo would come too!”
“And Teague,” Arturo said grimly. “We need someone who can wield firepower.”
“We’re going to a lawyer’s office. What, you’re going to dress him in a black suit and make him wear sunglasses and an earpiece?”
Arturo flashed his silver-capped teeth as though the idea appealed to him. “It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?”
“You want one, don’t you? A black suit and sunglasses—fess up,” Green urged suspiciously. Arturo’s dreamy smile only confirmed that suspicion.
But then a headshake seemed to clear his mind. “No—I mean, yes, I think you should go in there with an assist
ant and a briefcase. I’d really love for you to have a bodyguard, and I think you might need me to roll his mind so he doesn’t remember you.”
“I can’t do it myself?” Green asked mildly.
“My way would hurt more. And couldn’t be traced back to you. So yes—I’d love to go.”
“Then what’s no?” Green asked. “Teague will be back in five, and we could be there and back in two hours. The offices are out on 49, so it’s not a problem.”
Arturo sighed and scrubbed at his face, then cast a look at Lambent. The younger elf was practically vibrating on his toes, he was so excited to go out with the grown-ups, and Arturo groaned theatrically. “Has it occurred to you that she will skin us all for doing this without her?”
Green felt his expression harden. “Has it occurred to anybody that she wouldn’t ask for a rope if she was drowning and we were all made of rope?”
Lambent grunted. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
Green and Arturo both snapped “No!” in unison, and Green met his second’s self-mocking gaze. “You know I’m right. We put all that responsibility on her shoulders, and she ran with it. And she’s not brain-damaged or incapable, but she’s tired. And she’s so fucking busy trying to prove that she can do it all that she’s not going to give herself a chance to be tired. She hates herself for it. This stupid errand has been riding her for two weeks now. But you know what? I made it a point to be at the jailbreak for a reason. She is going to be spending some time closer to the hill, and the rest of you are going to have to let me go. If we can’t make an appointment and roll this bloke’s mind, we’re no bloody use at all, are we?”
Arturo growled. “That’s a noble sentiment, leader. It is. But I was the one who scraped your body out of the underbrush this summer and flew you back to the fucking hill. Do you remember that? And you weren’t even part of it—you were out on your motorcycle, taking in the air! The reason royalty becomes isolated from their subjects is because somebody is always trying to kill them over one thing or another! If I have to scrape your brains off the road again, I will fade, do you understand me? And if Cory has to do it, in her condition….” He shuddered as though he absolutely couldn’t face the upshot. Green felt heat sweep him from the soles of his bare feet up to the top of his head and even his pointed ears.