Bone Driven

by Hailey Edwards

  On my way past the chief’s office, I lingered in the doorway, expecting the framed newsprint to still be hung on the wall but knowing better. All of Timmons’ belongings had been boxed and dropped off at his house to make way for Jones.

  I earned a few raised eyebrows when I dumped my supplies in the shift office since there was no hiding who the equipment belonged to at that point. I made sure to get full credit for each piece then pocketed my slip so that I couldn’t be accused of stealing from the department on top of everything else. While I was there, I sat down with Sergeant Albertson and got approval to ride out my notice using vacation time.

  “Your comp and sick time will both show on your last check.” She handed me a printout, the last copy of the shift schedule I would ever receive, and it blocked out my name. “Take it up with payroll if the numbers are off.” Her hard eyes raked over me. “Good luck, Boudreau.”

  “Thanks.” I escaped out the front and sat in the Bronco while my heart slowed its racing then dialed Wu. “Just giving you a heads up that Rixton is onto me. He pressed me for deets, and when I withheld them, he suggested I not show my face down at the station.”

  His exhale tapered into silence. “I’m sorry, Luce.”

  “I dropped off my gear just now and cleared two weeks of leave through the shift office.” I dashed my fingertips under my eyes. “After that, I’m all done here.”

  “I’m in town if you need company,” he offered. “I can meet you wherever you’d like.”

  “You don’t want that. Trust me. I’m in a mood, and even I don’t want to be around me.” Wu reminded me of what I would never have with Rixton again, and I doubted I could keep a civil tongue when it would be so easy to lash out at him for helping land me in my current predicament. “Raincheck?”

  A fist pounding on my window shocked a curse out of me. A young girl, early teens, was hammering away, the front of her shirt drenched with blood, her eyes wide.

  “There’s a man,” she sobbed, her voice muffled through the glass. “He grabbed me when I walked past, and I… I…”

  “I have to go,” I snapped out to Wu. “There’s a situation here.”

  One I was no longer qualified to handle, but I wanted an outlet, and she had provided me one.

  “Who is that?” Wu demanded, his keen ears missing nothing. “Luce.”

  Ending the call, I slid out on the asphalt beside the girl and pocketed my phone. “Can you show me?”

  Her head wobbled on her thin neck, and she clasped my hand. As much as I wanted to snatch it back, I let the kid have her anchor while she hauled me to a shadowed nook between two buildings.

  Crimson flecks dotted the sidewalk, and a larger pool spread from under the head of a downed man. I was about to call for backup when I recognized his profile and dread ballooned in my chest.

  Forgetting about the kid, I ran to Santiago and dropped beside him. “Santiago?”

  “I don’t think he’s going to wake up,” the girl informed me. “I hit him pretty hard.”

  The comment snapped my head up, and I forced myself to look beneath the careful application of blood and grime, to see past the innocence to evaluate her as a potential threat.

  There was no way a kid had done this much damage to him. Meaning either she was charun, and I was screwed, or she had help, and I was still screwed.

  “With what?” Her empty hands gave me no clues. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. I’m calling this in.”

  “Mom won’t like it if you do that,” the child sing-songed. “She taught me to protect myself at all costs.” The wispy quality to her voice evaporated, leaving behind cold maturity. “Our parents share similar philosophies, it seems.”

  Twisting my upper body toward her, I carefully worked the cell from my back pocket. With one hand behind my back, I fumbled to mash redial before she caught on. “You must be Sariah.”

  “I am.” The girl plucked at the frayed hem of her cutoff shorts. “And you’re my auntie.”

  Using the family angle was low, but it was my own fault for exposing that weakness in the first place. “You hurt my friend.”

  “Your friend hurt me first.” She pushed out her bottom lip in a pout while pointing to her elbow, abraded and crusted with blood. “Want to kiss my boo-boo?”

  Eyes on Sariah, I pressed two fingers to the steady pulse at Santiago’s throat. “What do you want?”

  “I came to introduce myself.” She jerked her chin toward Santiago. “He tried to stop me.”

  “That’s it?” My eyebrows popped up into my hairline. “You expect me to believe you just wanted to say hi?”

  “I missed introductions.” She rocked back on her heels. “I was out playing, and Mom didn’t call me back in time.”

  “Here’s an idea.” Ending the call to Wu, I brought the phone out and dialed up Cole. Thanks to her charun senses, she would have heard Wu’s voicemail recording. There was no point in hiding my SOS now. “The next time you play, how about break out the sidewalk chalk instead of someone’s skull?”

  A short laugh shot out of her and ricocheted off the nearby buildings. “Okay, I’ll cut the crap.” Her demeanour shifted yet again, stretching the boundaries of what looked natural on the girl. “We need to talk. I hung out in that hospital forever waiting on you, but your human partner is a bulldog. He refused to give us a moment alone, and Miller caught up to me before I could go after you.”

  Recalling my brief interaction with Ivashov, I had to wonder if Sariah had been testing me by speaking Otillian. Unlucky for us both, I hadn’t understood a word she’d spoken, so whatever chat she’d wanted to instigate over Rixton’s head never happened.

  “I didn’t mind the change in venue. The swamp is quieter, and it leaves fewer witnesses.” That explained why she’d gone along willingly. It fit her agenda to use him as bait. “I’d hoped you would play knight in shining armor to Miller’s damsel in distress when my sibs and I ambushed him, but no matter how close I pushed him to the edge, he refused to call for help. He smashed his cell and tossed it in the water.”

  All those unanswered texts explained away at last.

  “I wanted to have this conversation on neutral ground, but that’s not going to happen. I see that now. You’re too well protected. But the fact remains I’ve got a proposition for you and intel you’re going to want.”

  “What kind of proposition?” Against my ear, the phone rang and rang and rang. “The only information worth the risk would be intel on the cadre.” Sariah knew where her mother and father were hiding, what their plans entailed, but she wouldn’t give them up easily. That left me with one tempting alternative. “You know when Famine is coming.”

  The call connected in my ear at long last. “Luce?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” She spun on her heel and walked away. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “We’ve got a problem.” As much as I itched to track down Sariah, to exact vengeance for Miller, I would never leave Santiago vulnerable. Even if he was an ass ninety percent of the time, he was my ass. “Santiago is down a block from the station.”

  “What happened?” A growl reverberated through my cheek where I pressed the phone. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” A chill danced in the exposed juncture between my shoulder blades. “Sariah paid me a visit.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” A feminine voice rose in the background, in protest or encouragement, I couldn’t tell. He snapped back at her using liquid syllables that poured through my ear. “Don’t move.”

  “What about Portia?” It had been her voice I heard. “You can’t leave her unguarded.”

  “I won’t leave you unguarded either.” Icy finality glazed his vow. “Thom and Miller can stay with her.”

  “I hate to break it to you,” I said while examining Santiago for injuries aside from the knock on his noggin, “but it’s going to take longer than fifteen minutes for them to get there and you to get here.”

  “They’re al
ready en route to the bunkhouse,” he explained. “They hoped that removing themselves from the equation might help smooth things over with Rixton.”

  Heart a lead weight in my chest, I sank onto my butt on the concrete. “That’s no longer a concern.”

  Cole remained silent for a beat too long. Sometimes his no-platitudes policy really sucked.

  “I have to go.” I tunneled the fingers of one hand through Santiago’s hair and applied pressure as best I could without stripping off my shirt or his to use as a makeshift bandage. “I need both hands for this.”

  Before I killed the connection, a bloodcurdling roar announced his dragon had cracked his chest wide open in a fit of righteous fury.

  “Head… hurts,” Santiago hissed. “You… good?”

  “I’m fine.” I kept my hand right where it was and dared him with a glare to fight me over playing nurse while I tucked away my phone. “It’s you that worries me. You got your brains scrambled, and you’re already one egg short of an omelet.”

  Glazed eyes narrowed on the mouth of the alley. “What did she… want?”

  “To introduce herself.” I repeated what she told me, doubt slathered on thick, burning the minutes until help arrived. “She played me like a banjo. She showed me a young girl with blood on her shirt, mentioned a guy trying to grab her, and I couldn’t get out here fast enough.”

  His lids drooped. “Sucker.”

  Irritated, I zinged him. “You suck.”

  Okay, so zing implied I had rocked the comeback when it was more of a pebble, but come on.

  A sudden heaviness in the air had me craning my neck to search for Cole, but his camouflage was flawless when he chose. There was no way to disguise the wind gusts, however, or the air displaced by his massive wings. Not to mention the deep-throated rumble that poured from his muzzle and helped me locate his exact position.

  Warm scales brushed against my outstretched hand, his lips plucking at the skin of my palm the way a horse might as it searched for a sugar cube. An inquisitive noise rose in his chest while he curled the length of his serpentine tail around my ankle.

  Headlights blinded me before I could raise a hand to shield my eyes, and I shot to my feet, placing my body between Santiago, the invisible dragon, and whoever had jumped the curb. Doors opened and shut, and Thom appeared carrying a med kit with Miller tight on his heels.

  “We need to get him out of this alley,” Miller said in lieu of hello. “Sariah cherry-picked her spot to make sure any stink you raised would bring the cops running.”

  “What are you doing here?” I almost tripped where Cole had manacled me. “I thought you guys were sitting with Portia.”

  “Cole texted us about Sariah.” Miller looked me over, his gaze snagging on the odd way I stood with my ankle cocked to one side. “We got a late start, so we were closer to you than the bunkhouse. I texted back to let him know we’d handle the pickup, but I got no response.” His nostrils flared as his chest rose and fell in quick pants. “Now I see why.”

  Thom, who had gone around us, was binding Santiago’s head with gauze when I turned to check on him. “The injury is minor,” Thom announced, “but he’ll heal faster in the water.”

  That bumped the farmhouse out of the running. “You’re headed on to the bunkhouse?”

  “That’s best for now, yes.” Thom met my eyes, his seeing too much. “You should go home too.”

  With no help from me, they loaded Santiago onto the backseat. Thom tossed me a packet of wet wipes to clean the blood from my hands then pulled away from the curb. I stared after them for a few minutes before noticing I had more company.

  Wu stepped from the shadows into a pool of light. “Did you really think they’d leave you unprotected?”

  The weight around my ankle tightened, assuring me I was far from alone.

  “Thom has two patients onboard.” Our medic was getting a workout these days. “They’re the priority.”

  “You’re the priority,” he corrected me with a shake of his head. “I hope you grasp that before it’s too late.”

  The air beside me wavered, a moonlight mirage taking shape, and in its place stood Cole dressed in his White Horse tactical gear. As usual, my heart gave a wild kick, the sight of him always good for my daily dose of cardio.

  The edge of Cole’s lip snarled up over his teeth. “We’re well aware of where our priorities lie.”

  “Are you?” Wu crossed his arms over his chest and plucked at his upper lip. “Sariah gained access to Luce. We could have lost her tonight.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Cole flinch as if struck either by the insult to the coterie or the thought of losing me. “Luce can take care of herself.”

  “Not yet, she can’t.” Wu dared him to disagree. “She’s too human, and you know it. You allow it. You all do.” His gaze dipped to my ankle, where I still felt the absence of the dragon’s tail. “No, you encourage it.”

  Cole chewed on his words before spitting out, “She needs more time.”

  “Does she?” Wu cocked his head in a birdlike manner. “Or is it you who needs more time?”

  “We’ve been over this, Wu,” I interrupted. “You admitted I’m my own person. No take-backs.”

  “You are Luce,” he agreed, “but you’re Conquest too. You won’t be whole until her echoes are silenced.”

  “How do you propose I do that?” I waited on him to enlighten me. “It’s not like I can hold a pillow over my head until she stops kicking. Suffocate her, and you suffocate me too.”

  “He wants you to harness her power.” Disgust thickened Cole’s voice. “He wants to control her through you.”

  Wu didn’t disagree, and that made me nervous. “I’m not going to be the one who opens Pandora’s Box.”

  “To win this war, we must use every weapon at our disposal.” Wu wasn’t talking to me. He was talking over me, to Cole. “Surely you must see that.”

  “What I see is a terrene that will rise or fall like all the rest. This is not my home, these are not my people, this is not my fight. I have already lost all those things.” Cole angled his chin away from me, unable to look at me when he said, “I will fight for this world, for these humans, because Luce asks it of me. I will bleed for her, not for you. You can’t win my loyalty. It’s already been given, and not to you.”

  “Conquest owns you.” Wu studied Cole for his reaction. “How do you know she’s not compelling you now?”

  Sickness writhed through my gut, tying my stomach into queasy knots that squirmed. “I would never.”

  “You might not realize you’re doing it,” Wu pointed out. “You have no idea what you’re capable of. None of us do. None of us will, if you don’t try.” He shook his head slowly. “How do you know what he feels for you isn’t a reflection of what you feel for him? How can you be sure? Unless you master your power, you’ll never be certain what’s real and what is the direct result of your will.”

  Giving Wu his back, Cole eased in front of me and cradled my face between his broad palms. I hadn’t realized I was crying, that more of my worst insecurities were leaking down my face, until his thumbs wiped away the moisture. He ducked down, putting our faces on the same level.

  “I have had a lifetime, several of them, to learn what it is to be compelled to love by Conquest.” The rasp of his calloused fingers across my cheeks soothed me. “I would recognize the taint of her in your voice, your eyes, your touch.” His thumbs strayed downward, toward my mouth, and they caressed that tender skin too. “Just as I would recognize you anywhere.”

  Vision blurry, I sniffled and wrapped my hands around his wrists to hold him in place. “Cole…”

  I’m sorry for who I am, for what I’ve done, for what I was and might be again.

  “Shh.” He lowered his forehead to mine, our breaths mingling, my heart racing. “I know.”

  Two little words, and they were starting to become ours, a means of acknowledging our soul-deep understanding of the other person like we trul
y were two halves of the same whole.

  A throat cleared on the far side of the mountain, but its echo carried to me all the same.

  Apparently, Wu was not a fan of PDA.

  “You should get back to Portia.” I held still, so very still, inviting Cole to linger though I knew he couldn’t stay. “I can get myself home.”

  Wu appeared in my periphery, his forehead pinched and mouth tight. “I’ll walk her to her car.”

  A low reverberation began in Cole’s chest and rattled through his throat as he raised his head.