by Anna Roberts
The heart came away in Charlie’s hand. Finally.
“And?” he said, staring at the cold lump of muscle. It was threaded with thick ropey veins and its shallow valleys were clotted here and there with yellow fat. Lyle had always gone heavy on the red meat. Once again Charlie wished his ghost were standing here to watch this; those sausage links weren’t so fucking funny now, were they, Lyle? Look at the mess they made of your old pump.
“There was nothing in Lyle’s place,” said Grayson. “Like something had come roaring in there and scared away everything living and dead. And when it was gone even the flies were afraid to come back.”
The hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck rose. He knew the roaring thing only as a prankster, a tipper of chairs and a smasher of plates, but he knew who had sent it. She was the only one who had that kind of mojo. All that time he’d thought Lyle had a cranky prejudice against wolf witches. They were a joke to him – nagging women, whiny bitches.
Except it was just like the swamp wolves; he mocked them because he was shit scared of them. Especially her.
“I got it,” Charlie said. “Get everyone in here.” He set the heart down on a blue plastic plate. Not exactly the silver platter on which Reese had everything else handed to him in his life, but it would do. Lyle’s heart was already turning the color of an old scab, and if Charlie breathed in through his nose he thought he could just taste the faintest, metallic taint in the back of his throat. He tilted his head, sure he could see a gleam in there, a thread twisting through the fat like silver spun through blown glass.
But it wasn’t. It was just the light shining on the wet.
He picked up the now pink cake of guest soap and scrubbed until the thing folded into a mushy half between his fingers. The label said gardenia but all he could smell was blood, bile and metal. Just another quack remedy in Lyle’s arsenal of potions. Nobody had noticed it there. And nobody gave a shit for wolf witches, pack spirits or those old stories about McBride. Perhaps if they had they’d have remembered that silver was as fatal to werewolves as arsenic was to regular people.
The door opened again and Charlie could hear Reese crying in the next room. Wah wah, I don’t wanna. Lyle’s evil, squinting eye stared back and Charlie imagined he could see disappointment beyond the sinking lid. Poetic justice, of a sort. He retrieved the red washcloth and covered Lyle’s face. “You did this to yourself,” he said, under his breath. “And if you see him? Tell him I said hi.”
He walked out of the bathroom, carrying the plate ahead of him. Reese covered his eyes when he saw it, but his exit was blocked. The witnesses had arrived – Lyle’s various underbosses and shitkickers. Big Jim, Mike the Bike, Psycho Dan.
Someone murmured behind them and the captains leapt out of the way. Reese kept on sobbing, like someone pretending to be a baby too young to understand. Everyone else fell silent.
The old swamper was barely as tall as Big Jim. He leaned heavily on a knotty cane, and either side of him - like bookends - were two youngsters. Their flat, blank faces were so similar that they might have been brothers. Or cousins. Or both.
“Stop crying,” Grayson whispered, but Reese didn’t.
“This ‘un?” said the old man, looking at Reese. His eyes were dark sparks set back against so many wrinkles that his crow’s feet had crow’s feet of their own. One side of his face sat higher than the other and when he spoke Charlie saw why; the old swamp king had a wolf sized fang on one side.
“That’s him,” said Charlie, and waited for the old man to catch the whiff of metal on the air, to cry out and cry foul and for all hell to break loose.
Only it didn’t. Instead the old man took his seat in the pleather chair, helped by the Deliverance twins. He folded his hands over the head of his cane, and as he did so Charlie saw that he had too many fingers, and a couple of them looked as though they had too many joints. All three had the same eyes, alive with an animal cleverness that made Charlie feel soft and trivial. They looked through Reese, like they could see he was weak and lazy and none-too-bright.
Deep down Charlie knew this was a farce; they’d never accept Reese as alpha.
Reese gagged as Charlie set the plate down in front of him. “I can’t...” he said, white to the lips.
“Do it,” said Charlie, staring back into those three pairs of black, gleaming eyes. He reached behind him, screening the motion of his arm behind Reese’s bulk. He heard Grayson’s breath hitch as he fished the gun from the back of his jeans, but the Brit sensibly said nothing. It was going to have to be under duress, but the swamp wolves didn’t need to know that.
Reese had stopped crying, as if on some smarter, unReeselike level he knew that his theatrical sobs weren’t going to get him out of this. Instead he sat still and white, like something carved out of lard. With a barely perceptible motion, he shook his head.
“Do it,” Charlie said, again. He nosed the gun against Reese’s flesh, pushing into where a thinner person might have felt the barrel against his spine. A new sharp smell joined that of death, and with ever deepening disgust Charlie saw liquid puddling out of the hems of Reese’s pants. There was no way the swamp wolves hadn’t smelled that; either way this went down they were fucked. The whole purpose of the exercise was for Reese to show strength, and the kid didn’t have any to show.
Charlie cocked the gun, letting everyone hear the click. Three pairs of black, beady eyes glittered back at him, watching, testing. “Do it,” he told Reese, in an undertone. “Or I’ll fucking shoot you right here.”
Reese picked up the heart with both hands. He was shaking like a landslide as he lifted the raw muscle to his mouth. He made a strange, soft, gagging batsqueak in the back of his throat and then - hallelujah and praise the fucking Lord - he sank his teeth into Lyle’s heart.
It squished.
*
Blue had never meant to fall asleep.
It was the same dream she often had, one that had always come in hurricane season ever since she was old enough to remember. She was sitting on the living room floor of the house in New Orleans, watching the weather forecast on television, staring at the time-lapse swirl of a storm as it moved closer to the gulf. It wasn’t so much the picture that was familiar as the feeling - the hopeless, helpless fear that this thing was coming. And nobody - not Mom, not prayers, not even locking the closet door and checking it three times - could stop it.
She told herself to wake up. Somewhere under her thin, curdled sleep was the awareness that she was in trouble and needed to deal with it, but her eyelids had gotten heavier and heavier and then...boom. Back in time. When she was little she had always thought the storms looked like poached eggs, when Regina spun the boiling water around in the pan but the egg wasn’t quite fresh enough. Wisps of white like whirling clouds. Oh, we’re not in Kansas any more - and you have to wake up.
The egg turned into a donut, sizzling and swelling in boiling fat. Slather of white frosting, pink sprinkles.
In her mind’s eye she saw red - liquid and glossy - and for a moment she thought it was raspberry sauce, but then she saw it all dripping down the side of a bath. Circling the drain of a sink. Blood. So much blood.
“Hitchcock used chocolate sauce,” said Gabe, who had appeared at her side from nowhere. “For blood in the shower scene. Red didn’t photograph dark enough in black and white.”
“Who died?” she said. A gore streaked shower curtain obscured the upper body, but she could see a hairy white arm dangling through the semi-transparent plastic. A kneecap peeked up over the edge of the tub, but Gabe had moved behind her and his mouth was on her shoulder, his fingertips working down under the waistband of her pants. And she knew that when he touched her it was going to be better than anything ever, better than weed, better than ice-cream, better than life. All she had to do to have him was sink a little deeper. Just give in. Just sleep.
She jolted awake as if she’d been dreaming of falling. Someone was moving around in the kitchen.
Her neck
cricked painfully as she straightened up; Gloria’s lumpy couch was not the most comfortable place to doze off.
Gabe stuck his head around the doorway. “Hey.”
“Oh shit,” said Blue, as she remembered just how thoroughly she’d screwed this up. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened...”
“It’s okay. She’s here.”
“Gloria?”
He nodded.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. As she set her feet on the floor she was aware of how much thigh she was showing; even the sudden weight of worry and wakefulness couldn’t completely still the muted thrumming between her legs. “I swear, she just gave me the slip...”
“I know,” he said. “She told me.”
“She did?”
Gloria came in, wearing a pair of fuzzy blue house slippers that were a little worse for wear. There were still splatters of dried mud on her thin, paper-skinned legs, but she was wearing her dentures and her hair had been scraped tidily back from her face. “You’ll forgive me running out on you,” she said. “I’m a sneaky old buzzard when I need to be.”
“Sure,” said Blue, but she was only making noises for the sake of it, because she had no idea what to say. Gloria’s entire demeanor was...different. Better. Fixed. Blue knew from the look on Gabe’s face that not only was he just as confused as she was, but he was relieved to discover that someone else thought this whole situation was just as nuts as he did.
“You’ll excuse me, babies,” said Gloria, setting down her purse on the coffee table and shuffling off towards the stairs. “It’s been a long night and I’m pooped.”
They watched her go.
“What just happened?” asked Blue, after they heard Gloria’s bedroom door close.
“I have no idea.”
“Where did you find her?”
Gabe shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it either. “She...drove to Miami. In her slippers. And walked into the police precinct where me and Joe were waiting.”
“I’m so sorry,” Blue said, again. “She was out of the door before I knew...Stacy’s kid was out on the lawn and she thinks he’s on drugs and - ”
He held up a hand. “- it’s cool. I got the jist of it from Gloria. Is there any coffee?”
“No, but I could make some.”
“Let me,” he said, and wandered into the kitchen. She followed, still not totally convinced he wasn’t mad at her for letting Gloria wander off like that.
Blue sat down on a rickety kitchen chair, her eyes still on him as he reached up to a cupboard and took out a French press. For some dumb reason her mind had snagged on that fragment of her dream and all she could think of - idiotically - was just how nicely made he was. Not bulky, but with a kind of compact grace all of his own - slim hips, solid back, strong brown wrists and forearms. He leaned heavily on the counter for a moment, peering out of the window, the weight on his arms bracing his shoulders under his thin, sweat-stained shirt.
“Has this happened before?” she asked, because she didn’t want to apologize again. It hadn’t helped the first four or five times she’d done it.
Gabe set the kettle to boil and turned around. “Has what happened before?”
“This. She seems...better.”
“She has lucid moments sometimes,” he said, and she could see the need in his eyes, the depth of his desire to believe that a miracle had taken place. And how much he knew he couldn’t let himself get his hopes up. “Although not for this long. It’s usually just five minutes here and there.”
“Do you know why she went to Miami?”
He licked his lips. “Well, yeah. She came to try and post bail, actually.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“Nope. Eli’s like, her nephew. Or step-nephew. Something, anyway.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize.”
Gabe raked his hair back from his face with his fingers. He looked terribly tired. “Small town,” he said. “Everyone is everyone’s cousin in some capacity. It’s like some serious Duelling Banjos shit down here.”
“Is he okay?” said Blue. “I mean, did they...charge him, or whatever?”
“He’s a person of interest,” said Gabe. “Whatever that means. They hauled him in for questioning, but I don’t know. They may haul him back. Obviously someone up in Miami PD has half a brain, because there’s no way Eli could have done what they said he did. No way. He would never hurt a woman. Not intentionally. He’s a huge slut, but you know - hump and dump is about as bad as he gets.”
“What is that he’s supposed to have done?”
He gave her a long, thoughtful look. “You probably don’t want to know.”
Right. The old Southern gentleman bullshit; treat the ladies like fine bone china. Even if said lady had spent three days in the Superdome after Katrina. “Do I look like that much of a delicate flower?” she said.
“I guess not,” he said, looking slightly taken aback at her prickly tone.
“So?”
He leaned back against the counter and sighed. “This woman,” he said. “The victim. She was one of Eli’s...girls, I guess. Like I say - huge slut.” Gabe swallowed. “They found her in the hallway of her home. Messy. Real messy. So bad they thought it was some kind of...animal attack, at first.”
“What kind of animal?”
“A dog,” he said. “They think someone set a dog on her and then...then finished her off with a knife.”
“Jesus,” said Blue. “And they think your friend did this?”
He looked as sick and sad and confused as any normal person should in the light of such awful things. “They were looking for motive. And it turns out she was...” He swallowed again and sighed. “Blue, this is horrible.”
“I told you. I know horrible. Go on.”
Gabe glanced up at the ceiling if he were trying to imagine himself elsewhere. “She was pregnant.”
The implication settled. He was right; it was horrible. “They don’t think - ”
“ - no. I think that’s why they let him go. She hadn’t told him. When they told him, it was the first he’d heard of it, so I figure someone must have believed his reaction. I doubt she was going to tell him. Like I say - he’s kind of a deadbeat when it comes to women.” He covered his mouth with his hand and she got up, afraid he was going to cry.
She touched his wrist and it was worryingly easy, the way they came together. He squeezed her firmly, like he was trying to keep it businesslike, brotherly, but then his hand got caught in her hair and she heard his breath hitch as their embrace subtly – but definitely – shifted gear. The dream resurfaced in her mind and her body cried out with the promise of the simple comfort she could offer him.
His other hand came up and brushed her cheek, the corner of her mouth. His tired eyes were wet and dark, his thick black lashes drooping as he leaned towards her.
“Don’t,” she said, suddenly self-conscious.
For a split second he stiffened and she quickly leapt to smooth it over. “I fell asleep on the couch,” she said. “My breath is horrendous right now.”
He laughed softly. “Oh God, like I give a shit,” he said, and cupped her chin as he leaned in and kissed her. His lips were dry from the sun but pillowy soft on hers, and when his tongue curled against hers she felt like her head was empty but for the small liquid noises of their mouths and a single, breathless whispered word – yes.
Knowing how much she wanted this turned out to be the thing that stopped her; there simply wasn’t time. In less than four hours she would have to be ready for work, and while she had no idea exactly how long she had slept, it hadn’t been nearly enough.
She leaned her forehead against his, his hand caught in the curls of her hair and their panting breaths mingling between them, humid and expectant.
“I should get back,” she said.
“Huh. That bad?”
She felt her facial muscles stretch into a smile that seemed to have nothing to do with her, like happiness – no, joy – w
as something you could catch with a sneeze. Or a kiss. “No. The opposite, actually. It’s just...” His thumb brushed over her lower lip and his eyes were dark and bright with wanting her. “Work. I can’t...”
Gabe untangled his hand from her hair and planted a soft, close-lipped kiss on her mouth as he stepped away. “Sure,” he said, and she was glad they were speaking the same language. He knew what it meant to have to work for a living.
“So I should...”
“...no.”
“No?”
“I’m not leaving Gloria,” he said. “And I’m sure as hell not letting you walk home alone. Oh, and my offer with the boatshed? Sorry, but I’m gonna have to withdraw that. Not with some maniac running around out there.”
Blue raised an eyebrow, amused. “Just so you know, you’re walking a very fine line between chivalrous and condescending right now.”
He sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just scared. And I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
His hair was flopping into his eyes and she wanted to brush it back, but she knew if she started touching him again she wouldn’t be able to stop. “It’s one murder, Gabe,” she said, sounding like a hardened city dweller even to her own ears. “Awful things happen all the time.”
Gabe didn’t budge. “There’s a spare bed upstairs. Get some sleep, and I’ll drive you to work in the morning.”
A bed. That was both the first and last thing she needed right now. And with him under the same roof. “Are you putting the moves on me, Gabriel?”
He smiled, baring his chipped tooth. “No. Maybe.” He giggled, a sound that was oddly touching. “A little. I don’t know.” They were standing too close together again and he drew himself back. “I will... take the couch,” he said, with a kind of joshing formality.
“It’s lumpy.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not helping here. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Yep.”
Gabe shook his head. “Go to bed, Blue. Second door on your left.”
“Okay. Goodnight. Or morning. Or whatever.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”