by Leigh Evans
The back of Biggs’s heels drummed a frantic tattoo against the wallboard.
“Where were you?” Trowbridge demanded in a low growl. “What happened?”
Incapable of speech, Biggs caught Trowbridge’s rock-hard wrists and tried to do a chin-up.
“You didn’t warn us,” said my guy. “You let bikers drive right into my territory and threaten my mate.”
“Trowbridge, you need to put Biggs down.” The hairs on the nape of my neck bristled, reacting to the simmer of violence. “He can’t answer you if he’s got a crushed larynx.”
“He’ll heal,” he snapped. Then perhaps to prove the point, the Alpha of Creemore tightened his grip until the tendons stood out white on his hands and Biggs’s throat darkened to puce.
“It’s enough, Trowbridge,” I whispered. “I’ve had enough.”
He put his face right up to Biggs’s sweating one. “She is my mate. My. Mate.” Jaw rigid, he held on for one last choking second before he released the younger Were. Biggs slid down the wall, boneless and gasping, his shirt pleating up behind him. Trowbridge stood over him with clenched fists. “If you’d been one of my Raha’ells, I’d have killed you for that.”
I’m tired of hearing about death. I’ve had my fill of threats, and fear, and violence. No more. I can’t take any more. I refuse to absorb one more thing.
“Cordelia needs to be taken home,” I said to Trowbridge wearily. And that’s when Ferris tried to turn the renovated garage into a set from the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.
* * *
The first bullet tore through the wall near Biggs. Anu darted, a yearling panicked by sounds that had no frame of reference in her world, but in her crazed panic she was going in the wrong direction, heading toward danger instead of out of it.
In that moment, she was Lexi.
Instinct kicked me. I hurled myself for a tackle and felled her. We slammed into the floorboards as bullets spat from an unseen automatic weapon, chewing up wallboard, sending pieces of wood and insulation flying.
Things fractured around me. Time, bones, thoughts.
My body dimly registered the crack of my knee hitting the floor, my elbow’s sharp protests, the clawing girl writhing beneath the cage of my body. Then a solid, heavy, muscular weight landed on me. Strong arms bracketed me, male thighs twined over mine, a hard jaw pressed my head downward until my cheek felt the imprint of the linoleum’s pattern.
“Stay,” he breathed in my ear.
Ferris did another sweep. I cringed under the abuse of the noise, a poor defense against the horror of Anu’s shrieks, the chug-chug of automatic fire, the thuds of things falling, the pings and zings. I saw a line of leaden slugs pierce holes in the table’s steel legs.
Trowbridge’s body—so warm, so hard with protective tension—gave a sudden series of violent jerks. He stilled on top of me. My hair stirred with his low moan, and then he breathed no more.
He was a dead weight, pinning me to Anu.
Tears flooded my eyes, stung my nose.
It can’t end here. Not like this! Not in this room! His heart was silent … please, Goddess … not doing its job of circulating oxygen, and magic, and life … I’ll do anything … And yet … his heart did not beat. Not for the count of two, not for the space of three.
He’s still warm … I pressed my trembling palm against his chest. Was that a flutter?
“Mine,” my wolf howled.
I will not give him up. I will not let him die. He was so heavy on top of me. I couldn’t lift him. I couldn’t squirm from beneath him.
Pinned.
“Please,” I whimpered to my Goddess.
“Please what?” said Ferris, setting his blue-plaid slipper on my mate’s shoulder.
My gaze swung up. “Let me help him,” I begged.
Ferris shrugged, then heaved with his foot. Limply, Trowbridge’s body rolled off me. I scuttled after him, Merry shining red. My mate lay on his back, one arm awkwardly tucked under his hip. His chest had a line of small round dots, like a rusting seam of rivets.
Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
“Don’t move,” said Ferris.
“Shut up!” I screamed. “I need to listen!”
Trowbridge’s eyes were slits, but so, so very vacant. He’s not breathing. I forced his chin up with hard fingers. Clawed open his slack lips. Sucked in a deep breath, then bent to deliver to him the kiss.
Live …
I lifted my mouth. Felt my air trickle through his nose. Mewling in frustration, I pinched his nostrils, then blew again. You come back, I silently told him. His chest lifted—shallowly—with my borrowed breath. Don’t you dare leave me here, I warned him.
I did it again—a long harsh heuh that filled his lungs—willing his heart to restart.
Hoping—praying—bargaining.
Nothing.
“No!” I shouted, raising my head. “You don’t get to die first,” I said, threading my fingers together. “You don’t get to leave me here.” I lifted my fisted hands high, poised over the strike zone. “I die first!”
And with that, I hit him with everything I had.
Once, twice, three times I pounded.
Panting, and sobbing.
Please. I flattened my palm on his chest. Please.
His heart issued one isolated thud, as tentative as a timid puppy’s tail against the floorboards. “That’s it,” I coaxed, in a thick voice. “You come back.” Another flutter from his heart. Faint and weak as his body was testing the concept of life over death.
His breath warmed my lips. Very light, very shallow.
“Very touching,” said Ferris, sounding bored. “You do realize that they’re just ordinary bullets, not silver, right?”
The “other” stood over us. Smelling of meat.
His scent called to my wolf. To tear. To shred.
“I shall kill you,” I heard myself say flatly.
“He’s a Were,” he said, daring to smile. “They always come back. Guaranteed. Unless you take off their heads.”
Or gut their bellies. Or poison them with silver.
Ferris moved to the front door. A cautious man, he kept his body protected by the frame.
I slumped over my love, breathing hard. One hand a plea on his chest, the other fisted by my thigh. “Why did you do this?” I bit out when I could speak. “Why heal and then kill?”
“Because I always back the winner,” Ferris said, without turning. “You people are hot tonight. So hot you could burn my house down and everything I’ve got with it. It was a bad move messing with Liam’s club. And a worse one to stray from your pack when you’ve got all kinds of wolves looking for you. Whitlock’s people are all over this territory, and I don’t plan to become collateral damage.”
“Whitlock’s behind all this?” I flicked a glance to my right—Anu was on her knees beside us. She seemed shaken but otherwise intact. To my left, I could see Cordelia’s foot. Alive, too, I thought, noting its tension. “What does Whitlock want from us?”
“You.”
“He’ll have to take a number.”
“Here they are,” Ferris muttered, opening the door.
He stepped aside and two guys wearing boots and leather vests thundered into the room, carrying with them an explosive wave of bad energy, bike exhaust, and weed. One of them was a Were. He shouted to me, quite unnecessarily, “Don’t fucking move!”
And then he pointed his bang stick.
At me. At Trowbridge.
And at Anu, who was on her knees beside us. Rage born of fear twisted her expression and she rolled upward, screaming something unintelligible in Merenwynian. Low on problem-solving skills, the biker-wolf raised his boot.
Don’t you touch her!
I blocked the swing of his foot with my knee. A clumsy interception at best that just made him angrier. I’m not sure what portion of my face he was aiming for—mouth or jaw. What he got was my ear. My teeth clicked together under the violence of his blow and
sheared most of the fur right off the side of my tongue. All was briefly blurred, both sound and sight.
Cover Trowbridge. Keep him safe.
Ear ringing, I slumped over him, covering him with my body. Merry scuttled to my neck, confused as to who to heal, who to defend. She rapidly cinched up her chain, turning into a choker at the base of my throat. I heard Cordelia shouting. Some part of me dimly registered that the flow of curses and threats came from a voice as deep and virulent as a gunnery sergeant’s. I turned toward that welcome sound.
I had words too—Trowbridge is hurt—but they lay on my bleeding tongue and expired. Right there on my spit. Because now, with my gaze slanted to the left, I could behold that which I hadn’t before.
Harry had lost his head. His body lay with one arm strangely akimbo, one leg bent at the knee. But his head … oh, his head. Where there should have been a mane of longish white wavy hair, where there should have been a grizzled jaw … there was ugly pulp and hideous vermilion.
He’s lost his head.
Sudden grief—its touch so cold and swift that it left my heart barren—caught up with my brain.
He’s dead.
My gaze jerked away from his body and rolled toward Cordelia. She was shouting, spewing swearwords and impossible suggestions as to who’d she’d fuck, and what she was fucking going to do, and how she’d fucking do it. The muzzle of yet another gun was pressed hard to her temple.
This can’t be happening. Not now.
Did I say that out loud? I’m not sure. But soon after that thought, despite the gun to her head, Cordelia changed the direction of her shouting. She yelled at me. Or to me. But whatever she said, I lost because language was slipping away from me.
No more of this. I can’t take any more of this.
Harry had lost his head. Trowbridge was down, with a line of rivets across his midriff. My mate’s blue eyes were half open and half closed. No flare of light. No spin of comets. Alive, but barely.
Get up. Get up.
Chapter Twelve
Into that nightmare entered a man bringing with him an arctic chill. Like the others, he wore a leather vest with a patch, but his jeans cost big money, and his slicked-back dark hair was fastidiously styled. He carried a crossbow and had a quiver slung over his shoulder.
No Robin Hood, this one.
There will be no mercy, because it is a quality he doesn’t possess.
His forehead was utterly smooth, his skin wrinkle-free. I got the sense that his body was a well-maintained vehicle for the brain that was working at top speed—accessing, cataloging, dismissing. He immediately focused on the back door. It was ajar, through which you could see the laneway with its rutted asphalt, and the sagging frost fence beyond it. The alley was empty—the open door the only evidence that once Rachel stood near it.
The new guy flicked his hand toward his grunt and said over Cordelia’s shouts, “Peanut, check that out.” Then he touched his ears, and told the wolf with the gun to Cordelia’s head to “Ryan, shut her up.”
Ryan hit her hard with his weapon. Cordelia crumpled without a sound. Anu cried out in fear and scrambled behind the couch.
My flare came in a rush, a torchlight suddenly flicked to life. So fast, with such a powerful surge of heat, that my head snapped back. Green light, electric and eerie, spun from me, bathing his features, highlighting his prominent cheekbones.
I heard a click.
“Don’t shoot her,” he murmured to his boys.
His voice is too steady.
The world narrowed to him and me. His pupils contracted. His smile—that lopsided peculiar lift of lip and cheek muscle—turned into something almost feral. I tensed my neck muscles, then slowly, with a deliberation to match his, I lowered my chin, and nailed him, dead on, with all the power of my flare.
Bend to me.
I put everything I had into it. If he’d been a Were like Ryan, he’d have fallen. If he’d been spooked by the supernatural, he might have shot me in fright. But he was none of those things. He didn’t even blink—even against the strand of hair teasing his lashes.
The man with the crossbow has got iron on him, I realized. A lot of it. Buried beneath that vest, underneath that denim jacket. Its drugging poison was a wave of numbing icebox air curling toward me. The real stuff too. Cold iron, or as close to pure as one could hope to find in this modern world.
My Fae sensed it and the soulless quality to his steady gaze.
“I’d have fun with you,” he mused.
“No,” I said, my flare licking his face. “You wouldn’t.”
He raised his arched brow another eighth of an inch. “Don’t be too sure,” he said, unzipping his jacket.
Neither Merry nor I was ready for it—though I should have been because the entire world had received the memo about Hedi Peacock. Small and round, doesn’t like blood, has issues with a certain type of ore. The guy with the crossbow wore a big iron cross around his neck. Antique looking. Ornate and heavy. He walked toward me, holding the cross like a shield against my light, as if I was the bad vampire, and he was the good guy with the stake.
“I’m not a bloodsucker. I’m a Fae,” I said.
“It’s a multipurpose tool,” he answered, sinking into a crouch in front of me.
He was too close. Polar air streamed from the crucifix. Merry shivered at my neck. My face stung, my belly contracted. Anu let out a whine, birthed from the back of her throat. She scrambled away from both of us.
“What would happen if I touched you with it?” he mused.
A tear slid down my cheek. “Get away from me.”
He leaned forward. I could smell his breath—he liked mints and parsley. That was the last linear thought I had before he rested the cross against my skin.
That was when I should have gone ballistic. To the bottom of my empty heart, I wish I could say that I punched him, kicked him, or even flattened him with my flare.
Maybe before you act with courage, you need to think of yourself as a contender. You need to believe that you’re a superhero that Marvel hasn’t yet inked. You need to be confident in your ability to win.
I was none of those things. In the face of the iron radiating from his grasp, my flare winked out, and my Fae went shrieking downward into my belly, her cry as awful as the rasp of claws on chalkboard.
He smiled. He had a wide mouth and a good jaw, but the devil roamed this world when that killer smiled.
For a shattered moment, defeat stung and I allowed the iron to tinge every thought with despair. I lowered my head and curled myself over Trowbridge, hardly able to breathe because the loss—oh Goddess, the loss! It’s accumulating. Rising like dirty floodwater inside me.
Trowbridge’s hand didn’t come up to cradle the back of my head. His lips didn’t turn up. His eyes remained vacant. He lay beneath me, unresponsive.
Wake up.
The guy with the cross and bow said, “You’re a little thing for so much trouble.”
There was no answer to that. The iron … it’s making thinking so difficult. It’s robbing me of me. Stealing essentials from me. My confidence, my hope, my grit.
“Are you going to give Liam a problem?” he inquired. He used the edge of the cross to comb my tangled hair.
A trail of ice scored my scalp. “That depends on who Liam is,” I said, bile rising. Trowbridge’s mouth was slightly open. His breath was gentle on my chin.
“I’m Liam,” he said pleasantly.
Of all the bad guys I’ve met tonight, he’s the worst. Evil should have a smell, but I couldn’t pick it off him. His body was permeated with hair product and the faint sweetness of dope. He looked human but he was missing a few ingredients that the best of the mortals carried.
I knew him to be hollow. A mind without empathy.
“Don’t hurt the others,” I said quietly, my dull gaze fixed on Merry. She’d slid onto Trowbridge. “Don’t,” I whispered. Don’t call attention to yourself. Not now. Wait.
“What?”
“Leave them alone.” I swallowed. “Please.”
“Okay,” Liam said easily.
I felt his gaze on me but I didn’t lift my eyes to confront him. I didn’t want him to have a reason to pull me away from my mate. Until Liam dragged me from Trowbridge, he was mine to hold, mine to protect.
That was the least I could do.
Liam rose. His heel ground into the linoleum as he pivoted for a slow three-sixty to take in the bullet holes and the body. “I told you to keep them here, not shoot them,” he said to Ferris. “You could have killed her.”
I glanced up. They definitely wanted me alive. Why?
“They were getting ready to leave,” Ferris replied stiffly. “I had to slow them down.”
Liam did something so mundane, I couldn’t believe how it stoked my fear. It was the simplest mannerism—he dropped his chin to study the medic from under his dark, satanic brows. That’s all he did; he simply considered Ferris, like he was a shark and the medic was the tourist who’d strayed from the boat. “You don’t have the proper appreciation for life.”
Ferris licked his lip.
Liam gestured to Harry’s body. “I hope that’s not Biggs.”
Biggs?
My disbelieving gaze swung to the kitchen to where Biggs crouched behind the pathetic protection of an overturned chair. He’d wrapped his arms around his lowered head and had kept them frozen there. Waiting for the aftershock.
I eased myself into a sitting position. “What do you want with Biggs?”
Liam followed the direction of my eyes. “That’s him?” He crossed the room, his crossbow dangling from his grip. “Hey.” He prodded the cowering wolf with his weapon. “Where’s the stuff you promised Brenda?”
Biggs slowly dropped his arms. Indecision and muted defiance flickered across his features. He tried to buy time. “What?”
Liam cocked his head. “Brenda’s expecting Knox’s stuff. I’m here to accept delivery. Where is it?”
“Biggs,” I whispered, appalled. “What did you do?”