17
Reasons and Reason
A week later, and Mason still hadn’t let the Judge thing go, though at least he’d kept his unhappiness about it to a minimum while we worked.
Twenty reaps in three different hospital wings later, and I was ready for a nap. It was nearing evening, but that fact was harder to tell in the hospital, since many of the rooms we went to were windowless.
Mariang was barely upright after her four reaps, so Danny secured a wheelchair for her to rest in. She looked so small, so fragile. I wondered if I would similarly diminish someday, and shuddered at the thought. I vowed to eat a whole meal when we broke for dinner, no matter how queasy my stomach felt.
“She’s done,” Danny ruled after coming back with a cup of juice for Mariang. It was the only time he’d left her side all day. “She should’ve been done an hour ago, but there were so many here. We never got to cover this much ground before you came along.”
I guess that was a compliment, but Danny doled those out so infrequently, I couldn’t be sure. “I can do a few more. Why don’t you guys go back to the car? We’ll meet you there.”
Rick volunteered to stay with us, while the other three guards went with Danny. “You sure you’re not too tired for this?” Mason asked me as we walked to the next door my gut pulled me toward.
“I’m fine.” I huffed and rolled my eyes at myself. “I know, Von. I own the dollar another jar,” I yawned, not caring that I’d jumbled my sentence.
“That’s eleven dollars just today. I think you have a problem, love.”
I leaned on Mason more heavily than I had at the day’s start. My limbs were weighted and moved out of sync from their proper working order. My lungs felt like they weren’t taking in any air that rejuvenated me.
The room was empty when we walked in, which I did not expect. We left Rick in the hallway to guard against… I forget. Something bad. “Well, that sucks. My gut led me to this room. It’s still tugging me to this spot. How could there be nobody here?”
“I smell something. Something sweet.” Von knocked on the bathroom door, which was halfway shut. “Hello? Anybody here?” He opened it all the way and switched on the light, then he gave out a fearful, “Ho!”
“What?” I moved toward him, but he shot out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him, his eyes wide and panicked as he tried to breathe through his mouth without inhaling the scent that was driving him crazy. I knew that look; he’d been chugging blood bags that looked like juice pouches and sucking on bottles of honey every day we had to reap in a medical facility. There was fresh blood in that bathroom. Though my half-breed blood was the most difficult flavor to resist, a full-human’s blood was still a temptation. Honey helped to curb the cravings in a pinch. “Von, what’s wrong? Breathe, sweetie. Breathe through it.”
Von’s fangs that I tried never to notice now gleamed at me. I tried to give him a smile that told him I believed in his ability not to vamp out and drain me. My forced bravery gave him faith in his self-control, and after a few more breaths through his mouth, his shoulders relaxed. “It’s uh, just something for Rick to see. Go fetch Rick, will you?”
“You’re scaring me. What’s in there?”
Mason moved past me into the bathroom and quickly backed out. “Get Rick. Now.” He pointed to the door, keeping his body between me and whatever lie in the bathroom that shocked him so.
I poked my head out into the hallway. “Rick? The guys need you in the bathroom.” Yeah, that sounded weird.
Ever the professional, Rick wasted no time with questions. Von waited in the hallway while Mason let him into the bathroom. I heard shouts of confusion and upset as Rick called someone on his phone. Then Rick and Mason were arguing, which finally culminated in Von coming back into the room, a half-drained blood pouch in his fist. His free hand rubbed my triceps to soothe me as he spoke. “There’s a man in there who’s on the verge of being dead. I need you to reap him quickly, and then we get the bloody hell out of here, yeah?”
“No.” Mason was firm as he stepped out of the bathroom. “She doesn’t need to see that.”
“It’s not about her, Mason. That man needs a peaceful death, what with the way he was attacked. We can give him at least that.”
“I can do it, Mason. It’s fine.” I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked in and saw a man in his fifties bound, gagged and beaten to within an inch of his life. I let out a tiny shriek at the bloody mess that was his body. Leg twisted unnaturally, multiple fresh stab wounds, and a bewildered look on his pale face that told me the pain had deranged him to the point where he couldn’t feel anything anymore. He exhaled labored gasps into his cloth gag, begging me with his eyes to get a doctor.
Mason kept one arm banded around my waist when I bent down to reap the soul that was too close to the surface. I barely had to touch him for it to leap into me, and then settle into Mason. The man’s body deflated, his pain leaving him in an instant. “Okay, out we go,” Mason instructed. “Go into the hallway and wait with Von.”
I hadn’t noticed it when I first entered. I guess the sight of the dying man was a bit distracting. On the mirror above the sink there was a message written in blood.
King Manaul,
If you don’t meet your quota, I’ll give you more souls to reap than you’ll know what to do with. Sama’s on the move. I’ll protect our people if you can’t.
Last warning.
“What the…” I was out of appropriate words, and definitely out of sanity. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the mirror, and then one of the body, just in case. “It’s starting. One of the councilmembers is trying to control us. Titus warned it was coming. I just didn’t think whoever would do this would start in on civilians. Don’t they know we’re ahead of the daily quota?”
Von shook his head. “That doesn’t matter yet. We’re still trying to make up for the months Mariang came up short. We haven’t broken even yet. We’re not even close.”
When two nurses passed by and gave me a curious look, Von’s hand brushed to them and did a mild pull. I knew he was taking away a little of their curiosity, so they didn’t ask questions, didn’t care that we were roaming about the hospital, and wouldn’t stop us. It’s how we were able to walk in and out of rooms with nothing more than a visitor’s pass.
Von met my eye and nodded. “Let’s go. Rick’s going to wait for our people to show up. He’ll keep the staff away from the room until our guys can clean it up.”
My hands were trembling, and my knees could barely support me after the long day of life-draining work mixed with the sheer terror from seeing the dying man mangled on the floor. “Could we have helped him? We’re in a hospital. Could we have saved him?”
“Once the soul is that close to the surface, it’s ready to leave the body. He’s dying no matter what. Hey, you okay?” Mason asked when I doubled over to catch my breath.
I probably looked ridiculous, but I didn’t have the stamina to stand properly, much less care what other people thought about it. I leaned on Mason. “I’m fine. Just a little… you know. Stupid hazards of the job.”
“You want me to fetch you a wheelchair?” Von asked. My answering venom-laced glare told him never to suggest that to me again. “Alright, how about I carry you?”
“How about you carry Mason? I’m not Mariang. I don’t need someone to… I don’t…” That last reaping was one too many. My vision was starting to blur, and my grip on Mason grew more desperate.
I didn’t mean to collapse. There was so much I didn’t mean to have happen in that moment. I expected a painful crash, but I was too tired to care. It never came, though. Mason caught me before I hurt myself and swept me up in his arms.
I didn’t want to feel safe. I didn’t want to feel anything. I couldn’t pull out my list of all the reasons I had where this sort of codependent behavior wasn’t for me. In that moment, I lost my list, my reasons and my reason, resting against Mason while he carried me like a princess to the parking structure.
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18
The Same Animal
I awoke in my bed sometime after the sun had set. The curtains were drawn, but I could see a sliver of the glowing moon peeking through, since the guys hadn’t shut my shades properly.
I glanced at the space next to me on the bed, relieved to find that Von was not there. I felt the steady breathing of Mason behind me. His warm and naked side was nudged up against my back, his hard human body not quite as snuggly as his wolf form. I made sure to keep silent, so as not to wake him. Since there were no witnesses and my childishness would not be known, I let the tears I’d had on standby well in my eyes and spill down my cheeks. It had been a lot of life change I’d been forced to endure in a short amount of time. I wasn’t sure if the worst part was leaving my job or taking a tortured man’s soul from him, but whatever horror pushed me over the edge, I was both thankful and resentful it got me there. I shut my eyes as I lay on my side and covered my mouth so no sound would alert the others who were squatting at my house that I was breaking down.
When I felt a large hand brush a few locks of auburn hair from the nape of my neck, I hissed and did my best to steady out my inaudible sobs. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“You’re crying.” Mason touched the tears on my face when I rolled onto my back to look up at him. He was bare-chested and wearing only a pair of jogging shorts, which I decided was my favorite thing on a guy.
Mason was a gorgeous man, and I was a childish wreck. Perfect.
“You don’t have to point it out. At least let me pretend I still have a little dignity.” I sniffled, trying to get myself under wraps. “Where are the new guards? It’s so quiet in here.”
“They’re outside watching the house.” He wrapped one of his zombie-crushing arms under my neck and leaned down to press his lips to my eyelashes, blessing my eyes one at a time. “There’s dignity in everything you do. Leaving the job you loved to save a world you know little about? Working so hard to save them that you passed out from exhaustion? Everything you do amazes me. And not once did you ask what’s in it for you.”
“I already know what’s in it for me.” I held up my fingers in a big zero. “Could you not be nice to me right now? I’m a mess.”
Mason’s eyebrows tented. “You want me to be mean to you?”
“I want you to never have seen me break down. I already feel too babied. Don’t want to add tears to the mix.” I swiped at my cheeks. “Seriously. Don’t look at me like that.”
My humiliation did not deter Mason from studying my face. “You’re like me.” He pressed his fist to his chest. “You understand taking care of people who can’t take care of themselves. It’s why you can’t forgive Judge.” He traced the curve of my cheek. “You’re good at taking care of people. That’s what you’re doing when you grant them a peaceful death, you know.”
“No. I’m nothing like as brave as you. You don’t cry like a baby at night. You don’t need someone to carry you to the c-car. That’s so embarrassing!”
“You don’t think there’ve been days I cried?” He traced the outline of my face, looking at me like… like… Beto had never looked at me with such reverence. “Hani, we’re the same animal.”
I wiped away an errant tear. “Where’d Von escape to?”
“He went to visit Penny for the evening. Now he’s out picking up another shipment of blood. He’ll be back.”
“So we’re alone?”
“Looks to be that way.”
I wasn’t sure what I was thinking, only that for once in my life, I wasn’t. My hand grew a mind of its own and reached up to touch the full lips I only ever wanted a closer look at. Mason was beautiful in that rugged way I couldn’t help but be attracted to. He wasn’t polished and didn’t quite fit anywhere, but somehow he fit perfectly in my bed next to me. “Mason?” I whispered, unsure how the dangerous ground I was walking on might hold me when the world shook us, as it inevitably would.
The adoring gaze mingled slowly with a lust for conquest in his stormy eyes as he snatched at my wrist. There was a shift between us I could almost grab onto, so thick was the connection that pulled me in. Alarms went off inside my head, warning me of the dangers of kissing someone I worked so closely with.
I ignored the alarm. I ignored the danger. I ignored Terraway and my world as I leaned up and stroked my lips to his. The second I made contact, heat flushed through my body like a jolt of something new and colorful. The incredible ripple unfolded throughout my whole body. I couldn’t just feel his lips on mine – I felt his lips everywhere. A million kisses effervesced all over my skin, peppering me in sensation from head to toe. I wanted more, desperately more. His lips were deliciously soft beneath the prickle of his facial hair – soft and unresponsive.
The stunned look on Mason’s face scared me when I pulled back, though I needed more of whatever that was. Had I read the situation all wrong? He blinked down at me with wide eyes that held so many conflicting emotions; I couldn’t pick just one to judge his mood with.
“I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have done that.” When he didn’t correct me, horror washed through my body, ice replacing the buttery heat. “Oh, man! What did I just do? I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I covered my face with my hands and rolled away from his half embrace, wishing for a genie to make what I’d done disappear. “I, um, I’m tired. I didn’t mean it.” I got up from the bed and all but ran into the bathroom like the inexperienced kid I was.
I should’ve expected the knock, slow and steady, but I jumped at the sound that broke the paced rhythm of my chagrinned heartbeat. I scraped at my hands with self-loathing.
“Hani? Open the door.”
“Please just go. Could we pretend like nothing happened? Because if we can’t, I’m not leaving this bathroom. I swear to you, I’ll bolt the door shut and straight up live in here.”
“You surprised me, is all. Open the door.”
“Please, Mason! I said I was sorry. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Honest. Come on out.”
“Promise?”
“Sure.” He tapped his fingers on the barrier between us. “You know, I could break this door down easy enough. You have no idea how strong I am. I’m only knocking to be polite.”
“Oh, fine. But I don’t want to hear a word about what didn’t happen out there.” I counted to ten before unlocking the door. When I saw Mason staring at me with wild eyes as he gripped the doorframe, I made to shut the door again. “You’re thinking about it!”
Mason caught the door and bunched his fist in the front of my t-shirt, dragging me out of the bathroom and into the empty living room before I could dart away. “Do it again,” he said, his voice low and gravelly.
Von was away, the guards were outside, and Danny and Mariang were in Ollie’s room. I wasn’t sure who we were hiding from, but his guarded cadence and body language told me he was on high alert.
“What?”
“That kiss. I felt it everywhere. Is that what it’s like to kiss a human? Or was that us?”
I melted at the state of his confusion. “You felt it too?”
Mason nodded, and I could see the entire whites of his eyes as he muscled his way through his own personal freak-out. “One more time. Please. I’ve never…”
I leaned up on my toes and kissed him again before I could chicken out. My hands cupped his face and stroked the scruff on his jaw. That same unreal bubbling sensation washed through my veins like a lust-filled energy drink. Beneath my closed eyelids I saw colors – actual reds and yellows that danced while flutes started playing, encouraging more and still more.
Three times I kissed him before his lips started to move with mine, giving up on resisting the passion that trickled in and slowly began to fill us both. As soon as his lips came to life, they picked up the pace like a feverish wave I saw coming but was powerless to run from.
I didn’t want to run. For the first time, I felt like I was ready for the more I’d
been living without. I wanted it, grabbed it by the naked shoulders, jumped up and wrapped my legs around it. The colors urged me onward, pushing my body to his.
I blame it all on the colors and the flutes that diluted my reality. It couldn’t be attraction or real, live feelings that whipped our LSD-laced makeout into a frenzy. It just plain couldn’t. I wasn’t a passionate kisser usually, but a nervous one who pulled away before I could get swept up in a moment too big for me to duck out of.
I lost myself completely in the kiss that I couldn’t help but crave still more of. His lips captured mine, drawing out a pathetic bleat from me that he swallowed and begged for another of. I melted into his kiss, falling hard and fast as the attraction swirled in both of us like a tornado, daring us to unleash its full wrecking force. I’d never made such scared and impassioned noises when kissing Beto. This was different. This was my Viking king who moonlighted as a zombie-slayer. Mason had desire deep in his bones. My legs were wrapped around him to hold him in place so I could indulge in more of whatever he had to offer.
Mason was my coworker. I knew I shouldn’t be attracted to him. I knew I should run.
But I stayed. I stayed and spoiled myself in foolishness. I’d skipped most of my opportunity to be a teenager, and it seemed with every kiss, I was devolving into a confused mess of hormones and emotions.
And hormones, if I didn’t mention those before. Holy cannoli, the hormones. I could feel the attraction rippling through me, unable to curb my passion to a more acceptable first kiss level.
“Do you feel this?” he breathed between kisses. The sound was husky and positively erotic. “It’s never felt like this for me before.”
“Me neither.” I gripped his skin, scraping his back with my nails. I caught his lower lip between my teeth and tugged. We were the same feral animal, indeed.
Something happened then that I couldn’t explain. My head started to swim and my senses started to scramble yet further. I tasted his lips, and they were colorful on my tongue. That same red and yellow danced in my mouth, painting our palettes with a cool sensation that set off more flutes, which played in varying octaves. My senses scrambled, and I found that I could taste color. I quickly learned that red had the flavor of Mason to it, and it was deliciously addictive. When his tongue teased mine, I felt it everywhere, like he had a thousand tongues to torture me with, and I had all day to let him.
Tremble (Terraway Book 2) Page 11