Dead Man's Stitch

by Meg Collett

  The look disappeared, and his jaw clenched.

  I wished I didn’t know him so well.

  “It’s not that I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” he grumbled. “I can just see now that hunting isn’t the only way to live. There’s worth in teaching too.”

  I threw up my hands. “You just care about Hatter right now. You’d think anything if it helped him adjust better.”

  Luke flinched, and I instantly regretted the jab.

  He didn’t speak, and I couldn’t. I went back to the bed and slumped onto the edge of the mattress, feeling like an asshole. Luke took a deep breath, unwrapped another caramel candy from his stash atop the dresser, and asked, “You’re not going to ask about the meeting?”

  Swinging my legs up on the bed, I scooted back against the headrest and leveled a dry look at him. This was better territory, one more manageable than his best friend completely losing his way. “I figured if it was important, you would tell me.”

  I let the smile pull at my lips. Luke liked my smiles, even the dangerous ones. And the smile took us farther away from talk of Hatter.

  “Did you stumble across some peace and Zen while you were trekking around in the woods?”

  “Nope. The monsters of the dark were fresh out of that, but I picked up some sunshine and happiness.”

  “That’s nice.” Luke sucked harder on his candy, and I was thankful I was sitting because my knees went weak. “Did you talk to A.J. and Squeak too?”

  “Don’t change the subject. You were talking about the meeting.”

  “I thought you didn’t care?”

  “So, nothing important happened? There just happened to be a guardian fucking angel with a hick accent and bad cowboy boots flying around in her helicopter, waiting to save us?”

  “Pretty much.”

  His cocky smirk undid me. With a snarl, I pulled my knees beneath me and sat up in the middle of the bed, ready to pounce. He knew it too; he turned to face me better.

  “Who is she?” I hissed, my fists clenched at my sides.

  “She said she heard Dean had left with most of the professors and she came by to see if we needed help.”

  “With a helicopter, a tiny army, and huge guns?” I said dryly.

  Luke chuckled. “I think everyone was too grateful she’d shown up to comment on her timing, but she didn’t know what she was flying into and she wanted to be safe. Apparently, she is very independently wealthy, though I got the impression she is estranged from her family. But she seems legitimate. She’s just here to help.”

  At his “what can you do” shrug, I scoffed. “But that doesn’t explain who she really is. We all have pasts. I want to know who she is today.”

  “Her name was right there in the yearbook.” He squinted at me. “Looks just the same as she did back then too. Those tight jeans—”

  I practically flew across the bed. He grunted as I collided with him, but he caught me cleanly, swinging me up so my legs hooked around his waist. I fisted my hands in his hair and crashed my lips to his. In one stride, he made it to the bed. We bounced against the mattress, his weight heavy on top of me, his hips pushing my legs apart. His hand was under my shirt, sweeping up my ribs and shoving my bra aside before I could catch my breath.

  He could steal the air right out of my lungs. He could suck the blood right from my heart. He could take it all and I would keep kissing him. He owned every part of me, and I loved it.

  The bastard knew it too.

  His breath was caramel laced against my tongue; his rough hand on my breast sent chills down my spine. I moaned into his mouth, and his answering smile tickled my lips. He angled his attention at my scarred jaw and down my neck to my collarbone and lower. He pushed up my shirt and found the soft skin of my belly. Deftly and mind-bogglingly fast, he had my jeans undone. But then, he did have a lot of practice getting my pants off.

  He tugged them off in one motion and tossed them over his shoulder. Bowing back over me, he resumed his attentions, drifting ever farther down. His stubble had grown out, and it prickled the tender skin of my inner thighs. His shoulders pushed my knees open wider, and his breath against me, against the hottest part of me, had me arching off the bed.

  Everything turned to white lights and shooting stars, and I could have been watching the northern lights fluttering across his bedroom ceiling.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth to muffle the noises he dragged from the deepest pit of my belly. He loved making me scream, but the other hunters in the barracks had grown tired of wearing headphones or earplugs to bed.

  With just his caramel-coated mouth, he brought me to the edge of my sanity again and again. He toyed with me, hanging me out over the cliff edge more than once just to hear me beg. And when he finally let me fall, I went headlong into the abyss.

  When I opened my eyes, my shallow pants lodged in my throat, he was above me, using his elbows to keep most of his weight off me. He pressed a kiss to my cheek, tender and sweet.

  “I love you,” he whispered in my ear, breath warm against my skin. He kissed the spot just below my ear that always turned my insides to molten lava.

  But this time, his kiss turned my eyes watery. The tears were streaming down my cheeks before I could process what was happening. I hiccupped, my lips quivering.

  Luke drew back, horrified. “What’s wrong? Are you crying?”

  “I … I …” I couldn’t speak for hiccupping, for gasping little, useless breaths of air. The tears tightened my aching throat, like I would never breathe right again.

  “Ollie,” Luke said, taking my shoulders in his big hands. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  His eyes searched my face, my body, down my legs. I felt his desperation. I never cried.

  “I’m fine,” I managed because I had to, because Luke was about to full-on panic.

  Luke Aultstriver, hunter god among men, had been reduced to a panicking disaster by a few tears.

  It was so sweet it made me cry harder.

  He scooped me against his chest like I was a waterfall of downy feathers. He tucked me into the nook beneath his shoulder, my face pressed against the curve where his shoulder met his neck. I had always said Fear University was my home, but this place, this curve, was my true home.

  “Please,” he whispered, his lips moving against the fine hairs along my temple. “Please, Ollie, tell me what’s wrong.”

  His quiet pleading only made it worse.

  I cried until his shirt, which he hadn’t even taken off, was soaked through with salty tears. When I finally ran dry and could do nothing but lie limply against him, he leaned back again to scan my face. He reached up and dried off a few straggling tears with a swipe of his thumb.

  He dipped his forehead against mine and let loose a long breath. “I can’t bear this.”

  “I don’t know where that came from,” I said with a shuddering breath.

  “If it’s about the meeting, I can talk to Mr. Clint. We can—”

  “It’s not about that. I don’t give a shit. Well,” I said, frowning, “I do. But that wasn’t it.”

  “Then why? What’s happening with you?”

  I heard the dread in his voice. The quiet knowing that something horrible had happened. Because that was what happened to us, in this place, with these people. It was one horrible act after another, and we were always just surviving. Just treading water and trying to keep from drowning in it all. Luke expected a blow from me because I always dealt them.

  But I shook my head and kissed his palm, holding the callused skin against my lips.

  “I love you,” I said against his hand. I lifted my eyes and found his gaze.

  He stared back at me.

  In the darkness of his room, his green eyes, like a moss-covered riverbed, gleamed hard at me. How could he burn me with a look? How could he cook my marrow and leave my blood out to dry? Should eyes be able to do that? It didn’t seem fair.

  The words, the reason for my sudden, unexpected emotion, poured
from me before I realized I was saying them.

  “It could have been you.” My throat tightened again, and if there had been any tears left in me, I would have started crying again. “That night when Hatter lost his arm, it could have been you. And all his suffering could have been yours. And Sunny and him and everything they’re going through …” I shook my head, suddenly overcome again. Luke’s grip tightened on me when I tried to pull away. Like it was shameful to say, I finished in a whisper, “That should have been us. We were the ones who were supposed to fall apart and struggle and lose our way to each other. We were on that path because we’re fighters and killers and hunters. Not Sunny and Hatter. They should be the happy ones. They deserve that.”

  A single tear rolled from my eye to my nose, where it hovered, ready to fall. Luke gently kissed it away then touched his lips to mine.

  “I love you,” I said in an even quieter whisper, because maybe that was the most shameful thing of all: that we had stuck to our love through the deepest, darkest parts.

  “Until the end,” Luke agreed just as quietly.

  At his words, fear washed over me, and I gripped his face tightly in my hands. “You can’t ever leave me, okay? You can’t. No matter what happens. You can’t leave me. I won’t survive this alone.”

  He took hold of my wrists, his touch steady, his gaze even. The calmest river on a sunny day. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  But even that reassurance filled me with dread.

  It felt like an omen. Like the words had set a series of events into motion that we could never take back.

  Deep in my belly, I felt a dipping, twisting flutter of acknowledgment.

  F I V E

  Sunny

  Six bodies formed a neat row in front of me. The dead aswangs’ chests were splayed from throat to navel and held open by metal clamps. They were naked and pale, emaciated with knobby joints and sunken cheeks. Garish purple bruises stood out beneath their eyes. But it was their feet that bothered me the most.

  Dirty and torn. They’d been barefoot. Even though it was August in Alaska, the nights got cold.

  That didn’t sit well with me. I’d cut them open and removed their organs, but the thought of their cold feet while they’d been alive had tears pricking my eyes.

  I really, really hated that they’d been cold.

  I cleared my throat before raising my eyes to the people—the alive ones—in the morgue with me. A small crowd had gathered before Nyny and me to hear our opinions on the bodies. The crowd included Mr. Clint, a handful of hunters, Luke, Ollie, the woman named Marley with the impeccable timing, and Hatter, who stood off in the back, near the cabinets; he hadn’t looked at me once, though I had a hard time keeping my eyes off him.

  The morgue smelled of chemicals and dead things, and I was starving. It had been a long night.

  “Um,” I started, feeling dizzy. My gaze darted to Hatter again. He was examining a bottle of cleaner. His empty sleeve was pinned to his side again, his shoulders lilting, and his jaw clenched tight enough to make the vein in his neck thrum.

  “Perhaps,” Ollie said with her arms crossed, “it would be better if she wasn’t here.”

  Mr. Clint sighed heavily. “Ollie, we’ve been over this. Marley is here to help us.”

  “She’s making Sunny nervous.”

  Apparently, Marley was here to teach, and she had experience in aswang biology, hence her presence in the morgue. She was also Mr. Clint’s old friend, which cleared her of suspicion in everyone’s eyes but Ollie’s.

  “I’m not nervous.” I stood straighter, my spine aching from the long night of taking apart bodies. They’d been in a different form until a few hours ago, and it was far harder to conduct an autopsy on a large wolf-life creature.

  “As I was saying,” I continued, stepping up to the closest body, a young aswang around the same age as me, “these aswangs aren’t normal. Presented with the symptoms of their erratic movements, foaming mouths, and white eyes, we thought perhaps rabies. And while their brains show some inflammation, which could indicate rabies, it was their liver failure that surprised us most.”

  “How so? Elevated enzymes?”

  My mouth fell open as I took in Marley. With her jeans and cowboy boots, she looked nothing like a woman who would know about liver enzymes. But then, who was I to talk? I still thought jeggings were cool, and Nyny—the smartest woman I knew—wore a unicorn onesie, clutched a gallon of coffee, and sported pink sunglasses. We were a ragtag group, every one of us. But just because Marley knew about aswang biology didn’t mean I trusted her. Maybe Ollie was making me paranoid.

  “The enzymes,” Nyny spoke up from her perch on the medical cabinets along the side of the morgue, “suggest a chemical imbalance, one not naturally occurring in rabies. The lyssavirus, which causes rabies, is spread by infected animals through scratches or bites. It wouldn’t affect the liver this way.”

  “You’re suggesting the aswangs were altered?” Marley asked.

  Nyny lifted a shoulder, the glittery horn of her unicorn costume bouncing atop her head. “I’m suggesting the enzymes are weird as shit and I need more coffee.”

  Marley chuckled. “Fair enough. Sunny, what do you think?”

  I bit my lip. My eyes slid to Ollie.

  Picking up on my hesitation, she intervened. “Suggesting they’re altered is a big leap. I’m not one for science, but there isn’t enough evidence to back up that conclusion. If these ’swangs came across something natural that put them in this state, then it could have affected their livers as well. Sunny, you said the autopsy results didn’t indicate rabies, right?”

  I chewed on a nail. “Not completely …”

  “Then it’s not rabies we’re dealing with. There could be a chemical spill or a disease affecting the wildlife on the island that the aswangs have come into contact with. It presents like rabies, but it also messes with their livers.”

  “Or …” Luke said, drawing out the word. He stood near Nyny and Hatter, his eyes staring dully at the floor. “It’s a disease Milhousse cooked up in his lab and used on these ’swangs before dumping them outside our gates. It’s too coincidental, Ollie.”

  He stared at her for a long moment before she sighed and said, “I found out last night that a cargo carrier docked in Kodiak with a bunch of empty oil drums.”

  Mr. Clint’s focus snapped to Ollie. “How did you find that out? And why are you just now telling us?”

  “Because I didn’t know if it was related! And I found out through my normal ways.” She glared right back at Mr. Clint. “There are reasons why I’m more than just a student around here.”

  “Of course it’s related! We know Dean and Milhousse are coming. Don’t be naive.”

  “I’m not naive,” she snarled, facing off against the stand-in president. “We have no way of knowing if Dean or Milhousse is even on the island!”

  “I think it’s safe to assume Dean and his mad doctor are on the island,” Marley said.

  I almost wanted to groan. She had no clue what can of worms she’d opened.

  Just like I’d expected, Ollie wheeled on her with, “And just why is that safe to assume?”

  “Dean has never been one to back down from high stakes. He took the students, professors, and everyone else somewhere safe, and then he came back with Milhousse to finish the job.”

  Ollie smiled at Marley. It was the lethal smile. The bad one. “Since you know so much, what job would that be?”

  Marley merely returned Ollie’s smile, but hers was feather-lined, almost sad. “You,” she answered quietly.

  Ollie fell silent. We all fell silent.

  High stakes, indeed.

  “I think that’s enough for now,” Marley went on, her voice serene. “Everyone has classes to attend or teach. So, let’s go about our day, shall we?”

  I didn’t know how Ollie held back from punching Marley in her perfect face, I really didn’t, but somehow, she managed. “If they’re coming for us,” she said
with a glare at both Marley and Mr. Clint, “no matter where they’re coming from, they’re coming with everything they have, which is a hell of a lot more than a few psycho ’swangs. Mark my words, these aswangs are different, and maybe we should be a looking at other coincidental factors about last night.”

  Her gaze remained steady on Marley as she spoke.

  “I understand you don’t trust me, Ollie,” Marley said. “But I promise I’m here to help. My family has connections with the governor. I’ll call him this morning to see if Kodiak had any authorized fuel shipments yesterday.”

  Ollie’s brows rose. “You have the governor on speed dial?”

  “Like I said, old family friend.”

  “How convenient—”

  “That’s enough, Miss Volkova. It’s time for class. You too, Sunny. Luke, Hatter, you don’t want to keep your Intro class waiting.” Mr. Clint turned a hard stare on Ollie and said, “I will be reminding the guards that students aren’t supposed to go beyond the gate without professor supervision.”

  Ollie stood with her arms crossed. With a low growl, Mr. Clint stomped by her.

  On her way out the door after him, Marley paused and said to Ollie, “Hope is a wonderful thing, but don’t let it blind you.”

  As she left, Ollie whispered something I was certain was foul language.

  She turned to Luke. “Want to escort me to class? Apparently, I need professor supervision.”

  “You don’t have to pick a fight with everyone, you know,” Luke said and popped a caramel candy in his mouth. He ambled toward Ollie.

  She smirked. “Oh, really? Cause I know of a utility closet on our way to Tracking. There’s something I could pick with you in there.”

  “Oh, gross, you two.” I cringed. “Get out of here.”

  “You think that’s gross? I walked in on them boinking like bunnies in the cafeteria’s walk-in fridge. It ruined chocolate milk for me forever.” Nyny breezed by in a swirl of lavender and blue unicorn onesie. She waved as she disappeared through the morgue’s door.

  “I feel bad we ruined her love for chocolate milk.” Luke took Ollie’s hand. He tugged her toward the door, clearly not feeling that bad.