Here, the nature of the rock made Ghehera’s scrying impossible.
And here, Trevarr had found and enhanced his safe place, which had a farking narrow entrance no good for bundles sptt!
Sklayne dropped the mass of greenery he’d gathered. He wiped unhappily at his stickied coat with both paws and tongue until spptt! temper got the best of him and he expanded himself as big as everything and anything, sharing himself with a rock or two on the way through and shedding sticky before he coalesced back into solidity.
Better.
A flick of his paw at a scurry bug in the wrong place at the right time, a gulp, and he strolled into the lair.
But oh, not far.
The energies hit him like a slap of water, both refreshing and drenching. And if he drank of them, he also stopped, crouched low... grew wary. His short tail flicked in annoyance and concern.
These energies, he was not used to. Not here, not anywhere. Rich and profound, a mixture of fizz and depth... an inexplicable tangle of Trevarr and the Garrie. His nose twitched.
Fizz.
His whiskers sprang forward to attention.
Fizz. Tangle.
It was nothing like the usual feel of Trevarr with the Garrie — the sweet tensions, the high crackle and pull... the constant undertone. This was loud and pounding and fizz and TANGLE —
And so, suddenly he knew. He scrambled into the lair with undignified haste, threading the narrow, winding neck of a passage and only coming back to caution just in time to avoid barging wildly into the lair.
It was never wise to surprise Trevarr.
After all, the tribunal had been trying to kill Trevarr for many years. Before, they had simply disguised their efforts as missions. Afraid of him and what he was, but too greedy to simply kill him outright. Needing to make use of what he could do, things that so few others could accomplish.
The travel. The work. The strength of the half-breed rekherra and the outward appearance that passed on so many worlds.
Not that Sklayne cared.
And he didn’t care about this, either. The way his tail puffed out, that was this silly body reacting to the energy. His back arching up to make himself oh-so-much bigger — that was this silly body, too. The silent hiss on drawn-back lips...
No. No. That was all Sklayne.
::Me.::
The important one.
Taking in the sight of naked Trevarr, on the rudimentary cot of this place, sunk into the furs. Naked the Garrie, atop him. And while Sklayne was familiar with Trevarr in every form, he was not familiar with this — to find Trevarr’s other lurking so close to the surface, yet still calm.
The Garrie’s form he knew not at all. Trevarr preferred partners of his own breadth and strength — he chose the mixed blood, when he could. And he chose strong beings with stout nature.
Usually.
But the Garrie looked smaller than ever — straddling Trevarr, flattened across his chest, her hair spiked every which way and its silver-blue streaks gleaming in lamp-glow. Laughing at something. Petting Trevarr’s chest — the pectorals, where the markings showed. Damp and sated and between the two of them, scenting this lair with body play and fizz and still breathing hard, so replete that Sklayne could not stop his cry of dismay.
::You left me out!::
Garrie started. She jerked half-upright, Trevarr’s hands lingering on her hips; she twisted to find him, and she squeaked when she did. She would have moved, then, sliding off Trevarr — but those hands stopped her.
“But — !” she said.
“Rude, little one,” Trevarr rumbled, enough lazy satisfaction in his voice so Sklayne only belatedly realized the danger behind his half-lidded gaze. “She does not know your ways.”
::You left me out!::
Klysar’s blood. A creature of importance did not sound petulant.
And yet he did it again, more of a whisper. ::Left me out.:: A twitch of tail, sullen at that. ::Important.::
The Garrie had stopped touching Trevarr. Her hands didn’t seem to know where to go, covering first her small, plump little breast parts and then down at the hairy place where she met Trevarr and then her face. “Fark,” she said.
Trevarr’s hand stroked her thigh. Never had Sklayne seen that. Never. Not the care. Not the tender. His stumpy tail puffed out again.
Trevarr reached down to the extra furs and flipped up one of the light, supple pieces. It covered the Garrie, pooling around her bottom and thighs. Trevarr tugged it into place, smoothed back the Garrie’s hair where it was spikiest behind her ear — such tugging she gave it — and ran his thumb over her lower lip. Still half-lidded, the silver gaze that suddenly seemed unfamiliar to Sklayne, suddenly made him uncertain. Beneath the furs Trevarr’s body shifted slightly.
The Garrie’s eyes widened. “Oh!” she said. “You didn’t! You wouldn’t.”
But when Sklayne went to check — to get a sense of Trevarr from the inside — he found himself blocked. ::Secrets!::
“Private,” Trevarr said, not looking away from the Garrie.
And that’s when Sklayne knew.
Knew for certain.
Things had changed.
Things that had been the same for so long, now weren’t.
Things that formed Sklayne’s world — his worlds — were no longer Sklayne’s to own.
In panic, he checked the bond. He meant it to be a sly thing, a subtle thing... just to feel it. To confirm that which had defined his life for so long.
Panic made for an accidental jerk.
Trevarr winced. He sat up on his elbows, his hair an unruly mess. “No fear, little one. It exists.”
It exists. But Sklayne sent back scorn. ::Mighty,:: he said. Not little. ::As big as the world.::
“When you want to be,” Trevarr agreed. And he sat, easing out from beneath the Garrie, his gaze caught on hers and something in their expressions that sent Sklayne into inexplicable longing. The Garrie sat tucked up with the fur around her, but Trevarr made no move to cover himself, perfectly comfortable — not just with Sklayne, as so many years had made them. But with the Garrie.
Things changed.
Best to pretend not.
::Brought behkma,:: Sklayne said, and licked around the thumb of his paw, giving the spur beside it special attention.
Prim and distant. Yes. Independent. Yes.
Trevarr frowned, but the Garrie sat straighter. “Is that it?” she asked. “The stuff you think will help—” She stopped her words, but her gaze cut to Trevarr.
Trevarr scowled, but could hide nothing. Not from Sklayne, who had known Trevarr for so long... Trevarr sick, Trevarr well, Trevarr strong. Easy enough to see skin too close to bone, to taste lingering hunger in what little of Trevarr’s self he currently shared.
::Eat,:: he advised Trevarr, a sniff in his tone. ::Kehar foods. While you are here.:: This hidden place was always ready for retreat, for hurt and tired and running and eating.
Trevarr made a noise that might have been agreement. It more likely meant We’ll talk about the behkma later.
Not without its risks, the behkma.
The Garrie said, “Where are my clothes?” And a look came over her face, and she tugged the hair behind her ear and said, “God, the inn. What a mess. What are we going to do? Those men. Oh, God, how could we have—”
“If there were deaths, then Huntington will take the bodies,” Trevarr said, with such implacable certainty that the Garrie’s eyes widened slightly. “He will not shrink from using these men as he did his dead partner.”
“That’s sick,” the Garrie said, remarkably indignant for a small naked person wrapped in furs on someone else’s cot. “Everything that man has done is sick.”
::Sick,:: Sklayne agreed.
“And I still need my clothes.”
“You may well be without them.” Trevarr stood, swept up his pants, stepped into them. Too loose, as they had become. And then her jaw dropped slightly, for although Trevarr held up her abbreviat
ed pants in one hand, in the other he held what was left of her two thin shirts.
Not much.
“Oh,” she said. And swallowed visibly. “I guess we were in a hurry.” And then winced. “Oh,” she said. “Your back. Did I—” But that thought derailed for another. “You were shot —”
“Touched by it,” Trevarr said, and put his side to the light so she could see the long dark furrow and bloodstained skin. Doubtful she could see the rest of it, the bruises blooming so vivid along his back and ribs, the little red marks from the Garrie’s fingers the least of it.
“Mow,” Sklayne said. A reminder. Of who he was, of what he could do. Of what he’d always done for Trevarr.
Trevarr glanced at him. “Yes. And the room where we fought.”
Sklayne essayed a purr. That was no chore, the cleaning. That was snack. That was challenge. Cleaning Trevarr’s clothes, also challenge. The slight mendings, the subtle reworkings of the substance of them. A matter of pride.
The Garrie’s clothes were beyond his abilities.
Far beyond.
“This trip,” the Garrie muttered, “has been really, really hard on my clothes.” She sighed, struggling into her shorts while still on the cot and under the fur, and then stood — a tentative quality to her movement, as if she was testing out her limbs anew. “Whoa,” she said. “Kinda... tender.”
Trevarr gave her a sudden, half-sided smile, one that stopped Sklayne’s grooming short. He moved to the storage trunk, digging there until he came up with his softest shirt — his oldest shirt, a thing of fine weaving and hand-stretched leather. He glanced at Sklayne. “Can you size it?”
Sklayne narrowed his eyes. ::Leftovers mine?::
“Yes,” said Trevarr, and Sklayne leaped so suddenly that the Garrie made a noise of surprise, recoiling slightly.
But then she said, “So that’s what he looks like here.”
Trevarr told her, “Sometimes,” which was true.
But the Garrie had a thought and wasn’t done with it yet. She crossed her arms beneath the supple fur. “You’ve got some kind of hold over him, don’t you? He’s hardly biddable, and yet he never truly argues with you. And back in San Jose, when you were... when you needed help... he acted...” she sought words. “Restricted. Bound, somehow.”
Sklayne, busy kneading leather and weave, absorbing and changing and refining, stopped in mid-motion. ::Mine,:: he said, full of alarm. ::Treyyy.::
The Garrie looked straight at him. “Sklayne,” she said, with an understanding that both humiliated him and astonished him, “you’re safe with me.”
Sklayne stared, nothing but his nose twitching. Pink nose, black at the edges, refined. Handsome nose.
Trevarr gestured at the shirt. “Finish that, please.”
Sklayne twitched tail instead of nose. He went back to the shirt. He may have accidentally left a hole in the shoulder.
Trevarr opened the cupboard that held the dried stores, pulling out sealed and warded jerky. “I cannot offer it to you,” he told the Garrie. “Now is not the time to experiment.”
“Not,” she agreed. “But can’t you bring some back with you?”
“Better to leave it here, in case of strong need.”
Yes. Because this was their lair. Their safety from Gheherra, which had served justice as exile.
Not truly justice. Even Sklayne knew that, for all he preferred not to understand Gheherra at all. The exile had been but the lash of frightened beings who hadn’t expected their rekherra pawn to survive, and now suddenly, truly, understood what they’d been trying to leash.
Not just strength, for others had that. Not just the advantages born of the rekherra for those who survived their own nature, for others had that, too. But all the things together, along with a single-minded determination and a knack for surviving the unsurvivable.
And of course, Sklayne.
::Me.::
He purred to himself. He didn’t care if Trevarr heard it. Trevarr would not bother to wonder.
Besides, Trevarr was busy. Chewing. Finding his shirt, pulling it on without bothering to tuck it in. Taking stock of his few weapons, with so much left behind at the inn. And ever watching the Garrie, who still waited for a response to her question about Sklayne.
“There is,” Trevarr said finally, while Sklayne pretended not to care, “a deep-woods clan of beings called skklar. They live in places nothing else can go. And they have an amazing facility with energies.”
“I noticed,” the Garrie said dryly.
“They can take different forms; you have seen this. They have few predators.” There, it came — a sudden misstep, quickly corrected. The first wave of price for the energy he’d used while playing with the Garrie.
But the jerky would help. And the behkma would dry quickly in the desert air of the Garrie’s home, and it would help, too.
Not that it mattered to Sklayne.
“What I don’t get is how come his kind haven’t taken over the world.”
::Too busy,:: Sklayne muttered, surreptitiously enlarging the hole in the shirt. ::More important things to do.::
The Garrie put a hand over her mouth, covering a smile with no success at all.
Trevarr sat in his roughly crafted chair, amusement at the corner of his mouth despite the weary nature of his movement. “Just so,” he said. “They are their own downfall. They are curious, and impulsive.” As the Garrie drifted closer to the chair, he pulled her right into his lap — owning her.
Sklayne was surprised that the Garrie didn’t seem to mind this. “So basically, the skklar are too distracted to take over the world.”
“They tend to live short, through their own folly. They also live remotely — difficult to reach. But if one can survive that journey...”
If one is desperate enough to try.
But Sklayne didn’t say it. He simply thought of Trevarr, those years ago — still lanky in form, not yet in any harmony with his other. Already being used by Ghehera.
Already knowing he would need more than he had to survive.
“Which you did,” the Garrie surmised. “Survive the journey, I mean. And you found Sklayne?”
“Mm,” Trevarr said, a thoughtful noise that seemed to be related to the way the Garrie’s hands slipped inside his shirt. “I let him find me.”
Trevarr, lying still at the edge of the clearing where Sklayne’s kind liked to play. For hours, lying still. What is it what is it what is it?
“You... caught him?”
“There is a bonding,” Trevarr told her. “A mutual thing. It creates structure. Prevents... impulsiveness.” He glanced at Sklayne. “For the most part.”
::Older now. Older than most. Older than any. Prevent impulses by myself.::
But Trevarr pretended not to hear. He tipped his head back to the chair, eyes closed; face weary but the rest of him... tucking the Garrie closer.
“We should be back there,” the Garrie said, a voice of worry. “There’s no telling what’s happening.”
Trevarr wrapped a hand around her waist, fingers spread... for all the world as if he was simply trying to absorb her.
Not smart. Sklayne was the one who could do such things. Not Trevarr.
But Trevarr was saying, “Atreya, this was needed. San Jose changed us both.”
“It definitely did,” the Garrie murmured, not entirely happily. But she put her hand over his, inviting it to cradle her breast on that side. Not with the twisting intense energy that had been spiraling around this lair earlier, but as a gift: this, too, was his place to touch.
Sklayne blinked at the sight. So very corporeal, the Garrie was. And this that she gave Trevarr was something Sklayne never could. He pinned his short tail for a quick, rough washing as she ceded Trevarr’s point. “We did have to figure out how to handle those breezes. I hope... I hope next time things get hard...” Her voice trailed away, and then she managed to pick up her words again. “I hope the breathing works. I hope I can do it.”
�
��You will do it,” Trevarr said. “We will.” And, for that moment, he rested his face against her neck.
Content.
Had Sklayne seen content from him before?
Ever?
He returned to his work on the shirt. He may have coincidentally mended the hole.
~~~~~
Lucia ran to the hotel room with a haste she never before allowed herself in public.
Because there was no flat-out running allowed. No unseemly stumbling, or tripping, or wild panic. She was her father’s daughter; she was well-turned out, and she knew better than to ever, ever let that public facade crack to reveal the simmering run of emotions always bubbling beneath her surface.
Whether they were hers or not.
But now, Lucia ran.
And Quinn ran beside her, emitting a surprised sound at her deer-fleet legs.
Because Garrie wasn’t answering her cell phone. She wasn’t answering her room phone. And Trevarr didn’t answer at the other room, either.
And when they’d gone to Robin’s small apartment over the shop, they’d found more than they’d expected.
Not Robin, no. Not any sign of Robin.
But Robin’s friend Nancy.
Sprawled on the apartment floor in a startlingly graceful arrangement of limbs and flowing sleeves. Still warm, still limp, eyes barely glazed over.
The room had tingled with a psychic aftershock that Garrie could have dissected in detail. But Lucia, reeling, could sense only that the woman had been felled by a clumsy ethereal attack during which she was likely not supposed to die at all.
And she knew the woman’s spirit was still there — still spewing her fear, her shock, her grief — and her warning. Robin, beware! Robin, they know your friends are at Journey Inn!
Quinn had hastily wiped their prints from the doorknob and frame and quickly, quietly, escorted Lucia away — down the same back staircase they’d used for their unobtrusive entrance.
“We’re okay,” he told her as she’d started to come out of it — gasping and trembling, upright only because he held her that way. They sat at the back bumper of the rental car, a block away from the store, and they gathered only the occasional stare from passers-by. “We’re okay, but we have to leave.”
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