by Kathy Lyons
“He’s still trying to do it, though. Because you’re his brother and because he protects people. He’s a fireman and a paramedic. And if he can’t help his little brother, then who the hell is he?”
“I don’t know,” Josh answered, his voice bleak. “I don’t know who he is at all.” And with that, he turned on his heel and walked away.
All Laddin could do was shake his head and murmur what everyone was thinking. “God, what some people do to their kids.”
Nero grunted an agreement.
Then a female voice spoke, the tone light and airy.
“The alpha human is often cruel.” Lady Kinstead floated into the kitchen and poured herself some coffee. As was typical for her, her clothes were a bit messy—there were even a couple of leaves in her hair—but she looked completely, stunningly beautiful. In fact, she was the embodiment of what Laddin thought a fairy queen would look like. Except according to reports, she was completely human and more than two hundred years old.
Nero cleared his throat. “Lady Kinstead, good morning. How is Wulfric?”
She smiled warmly at him. “Dying. As are we all.” Then she turned her ethereal smile to Bruce. “You got your magic!” she said happily. “Where is the demon? We must kill him, you know.”
Bruce cleared his throat awkwardly. It was nice to see that he was as affected as everyone else by the woman’s aura of vague mystical authority. She was bafflingly mysterious even when she appeared normal. After all, she was only sipping coffee.
“Um, yes,” Bruce said. “I know. But I haven’t found the demon yet.”
“Hmmm,” she said, putting her cup down. “Well, do it before Thursday. It’ll be too late to fix things after that.” Then she waved goodbye before wandering out the back door without shoes or a coat.
Everyone watched her until the door shut. Then they turned their eyes to Bruce, who’d folded his arms across his chest and was glaring.
“No pressure,” he quipped.
“No logic,” Nero answered. “Unless you’re holding back—”
“You seriously think I’d keep it secret if I had the answer to saving the world? That I’d wait until I had fame or money or, fuck, I don’t know what.”
“I’ve heard the tales from Josh.” Nero spat. “I know what you did to him as boys.”
Bruce leaned forward. “And I haven’t denied them. But even then, do you think I would hold the entire world hostage as some kind of sick game?”
Nero shook his head. “No,” he finally said. “Everything in your file says you’re a stand-up guy.”
Bruce jolted and his eyes narrowed. “You have a file on me?”
“Of course we have a file.” He pointed out the door. “She’s your great, great, great… I don’t know how many generations grandmother. I even looked at activating you instead of your brother, but you’re just a medic. He’s the genius.”
Well, that had to burn, but Bruce didn’t seem hurt by the comparison. In fact, he nodded. “I always knew he’d come out on top,” he said softly. “Brains beats brawn all the time if it’s given the time to develop.”
Laddin stepped forward. “That’s what your father wanted you to do, isn’t it? Keep Josh down so he never developed into the brainiac everyone saw coming.”
Bruce didn’t answer in words, but his shrug was eloquent enough. It told Laddin loud and clear that Bruce had no idea what had been in his father’s head but that the results were obvious. Josh did develop into a brain. And now as a werewolf, he had brawn too. Not to mention a boulder-sized issue with his brother.
So Laddin turned to Nero. “You done here? We’re both running on fumes. We need showers and a nap. You too, so—”
“Yeah,” Nero agreed. “We’re done. I’ve got to kick this up the chain of command, and that’ll take time.” Then he gestured down the hallway. “The room down there is emptied out if you want it. You’ll have to share, but it beats the barn.”
Given that the barn smelled of smoke and was open to fairies, Laddin didn’t argue—and he wasn’t letting Nero change his mind either. He grabbed Bruce’s arm and tugged him upright. “Come on. Let’s get washed up. You smell like a dumpster fire.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
They started walking down the hallway to the open bedroom, but Bruce slowed, then turned back to Nero. “What about….” His gaze moved to the window, then returned to Nero. “The pixies? We can’t just leave them out there.”
Nero grimaced. “We can and we will. I’ve already texted Captain M about them, and we’ll do our best to keep the area cordoned off, but there have been Earth fairies since there’s been an earth. We can’t kill or bargain with them. At least not easily. And they’re only going bad right now because we’re so close to the lake and that demon.”
“But what if someone else walks by? What if a kid—?”
“Most people can’t see or hear them. Only paranormal creatures like us get the show. And we know to give them a wide berth.”
Bruce nodded, though he looked like he wanted to argue. Laddin didn’t give him the chance. Instead, he tugged him farther down the hallway. “Come on,” he said. “You have no idea how much I want a hot shower right now.”
“I bet I do,” Bruce responded.
Yeah, he probably did. They found the room, and Laddin opened the door. The bedroom was small and had a queen-sized bed that would only fit one of them comfortably. It looked like heaven to Laddin, as long as there were no pixies in the vicinity. Especially since it had an attached bathroom.
Actually, the room was a converted closet, but it had plumbing, and that would do for Laddin. As for Bruce—
“This is great,” the guy said, relief heavy in his words. “Better than my first firehouse.”
Once the door shut behind them, Bruce let some of his feelings show. His shoulders sagged, his head dropped against the paneling, and his eyes seemed to be drawn to the bed. But he simply stood there for a moment, holding himself back, until he finally said, “The smell of smoke doesn’t bother me. If you’d rather be alone, I can stay in the barn—”
“We’ll make it work here,” Laddin said. “In fact, why don’t you take the first shower? I’ll go get our gear from the barn.” Actually, Laddin would grab his gear, because Bruce hadn’t come here with anything.
“I can wait—” Bruce offered, but Laddin held up his hand.
“Shower. Take all the time you want. Use up all the hot water too, if you like. I grew up taking cold showers because my mama was greedy that way. It’ll make me think I’m back home.”
Bruce smiled at that, and it was a measure of the guy’s exhaustion that he headed for the tiny bathroom. “If you really don’t mind.”
“I don’t. It’s the least I can do since you saved my life.” And it had been his life that had been saved. Not the others’. Bruce had chosen to sacrifice his firstborn child just to save Laddin.
That meant a lot, and Laddin intended to let Bruce know it. Afterward. After they showered and got some rest. After things settled and they figured out where the demon was. After they saved the world, Laddin would 100 percent find a way to make things up to Bruce. But for the moment, all he could offer the guy was a hot shower.
Fortunately, that seemed to be all Bruce needed.
“Thanks,” Bruce said. “And don’t worry about the hot water part. We firemen do it quick… and with a big hose.”
Laddin snorted. It felt good to banter with Bruce. At first Bruce hadn’t seemed like a bantering kind of guy, but in moments when he was too exhausted to maintain his grumpy demeanor, the man was funny and kind. Was this the person he’d be if he wasn’t carrying the weight of the things that had happened when he was a kid? Or when he wasn’t fighting fairies or fires or whatever he had to handle as a paramedic?
Laddin leaned against the door, waiting a moment before he left to get his things.
Bruce noticed. Of course he noticed. He was hyperaware, as most first responders had to be. “What?”
“Do you joke around with your firefighter pals?”
“What?”
“Make hose jokes and stuff like that? With your fellow firefighters?”
Bruce narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, sometimes, I suppose.”
“And now you’re doing it with me.”
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
Laddin smiled. “Hell no. I was just noticing.”
Bruce crossed his arms. “I wouldn’t read too much into anything right now. I’m not exactly on my game.”
“That’s when the real Bruce shows through.”
Bruce’s gaze canted away. “Yeah. Don’t look too close. You might not like what you see.”
There was a little extra weight behind those words, and it bothered Laddin. The man really didn’t like himself. Then again, that wasn’t a surprise. He’d all but shown up wearing a hair shirt. “I like what I see just fine,” he said. Then he grinned. “It’s the smell that’s the problem.”
Bruce straightened up and gave him a mock salute. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
Laddin nodded and waited until he heard the water start. He wasn’t worried that Bruce would bail—there was something soothing about the sound of a hot shower. He knew exactly what Bruce would do. He’d do what every person did—exhale in relief and let the water wash everything away.
He listened for a moment, letting the sound do for him what it was doing for Bruce—wash away the memories of this morning. And with that thought in his head, he went into the barn to get his suitcase. Besides, he should probably clean up a bit first. They’d all run straight for the fairy disaster. No one had bothered putting things to rights in the van or….
He opened the barn door and saw the mess inside. The van doors were wide open, the contents inside in complete disarray. The burns were clear, as was the small trench Bruce had made around where they’d been sleeping. And as Laddin looked, he remembered it all. The way they’d fought the pixies as firecracker bombs went off on Bruce’s naked body. He remembered the ropes that had cut into his flesh. And then there was the fire.
Everywhere he looked, he saw evidence of what had happened. Not just the horror, but the bedroll mashed into a wad because they’d been wrapped in each other’s arms. The trench around that felt like a desecration of sorts. Laddin looked across it all, the memories battering him, but it was all a delay tactic.
This morning’s horror was over, but it was going to haunt him. He stared at the bedroll because he didn’t want to look out the barn door. He remembered the pixie attack because he didn’t want to think about the cheese fairies. About getting pinned to the trunk of a tree and having words forced out of him. He felt violated and weak.
His throat burned, and he wished he’d brought a water bottle out with him. He forced his feet to move to the van. All he needed to do was grab his suitcase; then he could head back inside. Maybe he’d step into the shower with Bruce. Wasn’t that a lovely fantasy?
He tried to hold all those things in his head. The image of soaping up with Bruce. Of having the big guy put his wet mouth against him, on him, around him. He tried to think of happy things, sexy things, anything.
But it didn’t work, because no matter what he did, he had to look up. He had to step outside. He had to see the open field and remember.
And in the remembering, he broke.
Chapter 17
DISASTERS, SANDWICHES, AND PANTS
BRUCE DIDN’T linger in the shower. He knew Laddin wanted a good soak, and it would be rude to take up all the hot water. But when he came out, the guy wasn’t around. Knowing Laddin, he was probably cleaning up the barn, and though Bruce felt guilty for not going to help, he really appreciated the silence. He needed to process what had happened in the past two days.
He stretched out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling while his mind churned. Except the more his mind chewed on what had happened, the more he wanted to turn to Laddin. He wanted to talk to the man, ask questions about this magical world he’d landed in… and discuss the other thing. Whenever the world got too overwhelming for him, he turned to a good hot fuck to clear his mind. It wasn’t mature of him, but that had been his habit.
The problem now was that he didn’t want a good hot fuck. He wanted Laddin. And even more shocking, the idea of putting Laddin in the same category as any of his hundreds of distraction-of-the-moment girls filled him with disgust. Last night’s no-consequences sex aside, his relationship with Laddin had advanced well beyond the for-now category.
He knew what was happening. He’d been in enough serious relationships to recognize what he was feeling. First came friendship. He genuinely liked Laddin, which was hard to believe, given that he usually despised chronically upbeat people. But Laddin made him smile. A lot. And that was rare.
The next step was respect. Laddin had kept his head as he fought alongside Bruce against both sets of fairies, and more significantly, he’d stood up to Nero during that long interrogation. That took balls—anyone could see that Nero was Laddin’s superior officer. In addition, Laddin had seen things that no one else understood. He’d said what Bruce could barely articulate about his childhood—that he’d tried to run interference between his father and his younger siblings. Or he had for a while, until the day his father had cut his balls. At that point he became angry and mean. Like father, like son, right?
He flinched away from that thought and forced himself to chew on something else. He’d eaten the fairy apple. What did that mean? Could he really save the planet? Not likely. As a young firefighter, he’d envisioned himself saving whole buildings of people—imagined a grateful woman dashing into his arms because he’d put out a fire in her house, or rescued her aging parents from who knows what disaster. But even in those fantasies, he’d never saved a planet. He was a paramedic and a firefighter, not a superhero. And he sure as hell wasn’t qualified to solve this mystery. That was Josh’s territory.
He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Where the hell was Laddin? Why wasn’t he here babbling away about something? The guy was the perfect distraction—a sounding board and comic relief. He was also sexy, honorable, and he made Bruce feel like he wasn’t all that bad. The fact that a stand-up guy like Laddin found something to value in Bruce eased a pain inside him that he’d been carrying for a very long time.
And Laddin ought to be back by now.
Bruce got up from the bed. The apple had given him renewed energy. Hell, his brain was going like a hamster on a wheel. If anyone ought to be resting, it was Laddin, who’d had all the work and none of the extra fairy juice to handle it. So Bruce pulled on some clothes, grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the kitchen counter, and headed out to the barn to force the guy to take a break. Or at least to eat. Neither of them had eaten anything since last night.
He pulled the barn door open all the way before stepping inside. His nose wrinkled at the smell of smoke, but it was familiar enough to be comforting—like coming back to the firehouse after a long day. You could smell the day’s disaster, but you were still home.
“Laddin?”
No one answered, which was weird. He stepped farther into the barn and had a moment of remembered terror staring at the burn marks on the floor. He’d examined every single mark on his body from those fairies, and the memory of being pinned down while Laddin struggled alone to help him made violence burn in his blood. It was a visceral response that spiked his adrenaline and made him want to blow up the entire structure.
But he wasn’t here to relive his personal trauma, he was here to find Laddin, and so he forced himself to look away. He wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t going to remember anything. He was going to find Laddin, and they were going to fuck each other senseless to put a good spin on a lousy day.
So where the hell was the guy?
He saw Laddin’s suitcase closed up and ready for transport. It was right next to the closed van, and he knew for damn sure that Laddin had done that. When they’d left that morning, everything h
ad been open, burned, and messed up. So Bruce mentally pieced things together.
Laddin had come in, closed up the van, and gotten his suitcase. But something had distracted him, grabbed him, or turned him into magical goo. Panic rose quick and hard in Bruce’s body. And with the adrenaline already there, the change was quick and fast.
One moment he was a man looking around the barn, the next second he was on all fours as a wolf, sniffing for Laddin. Fortunately he found him quickly. The smell was so strong that his wolf mind wondered what was wrong with his human nose to have missed it. Either way, Bruce found Laddin huddled beside the front bumper of the van. He went straight for him and tried to burrow into his arms.
Except Laddin wasn’t letting him in.
He was sitting curled in on himself, his arms wrapped around his legs and his head buried deep into his knees. He was a tight knot of compressed energy held so hard that he was vibrating with it. Not shaking, but actually vibrating with how hard he was gripping his own body.
And Bruce couldn’t break in. He tried everything a wolf instinctively knew how to do to comfort someone. He nosed in, he blew his breath on Laddin’s skin, and he licked what he could touch. It didn’t help. That was how he knew that Laddin didn’t need an animal—he needed a man.
Bruce shifted again and was pleased to realize he did it easily. Apparently all he had to do was think about what Laddin needed and bam, his body accommodated his wishes. So now he was on all fours, squatting beside Laddin, as he spoke in the gentlest tone he had.
“Hey, Laddin,” he said. He didn’t expect a reaction and wasn’t surprised when there was no response. So he took a deep breath and started talking for real.
“My first multicar traffic accident was brutal. I suppose everyone’s is, but this one was bad. I’d seen street pizza before, but this incident was something I still have nightmares about. It was January, on the freeway. Someone was driving too fast on black ice and plowed into someone else, who ran into a truck, and then everything went to hell after that. My partner had a pregnant woman, DOA. I was cleaning up her husband, who wasn’t going to make it either, but I had to try. And everywhere you looked, all you could see was disaster.”