by Zoe Chant
“It wasn’t your fault,” he whispered, hoping that this time, at last, his uncle would believe him. “You did everything you could. I’m the one who failed. Not you.”
“I should have been there. I should at least have worked out what had happened to you sooner, rather than giving you up for dead.” Buck’s hands tightened on his shoulder blades. “But I’m here now. I won’t lose you again.”
The doctor made a polite, awkward cough. “I’m sorry to interrupt the moment, but we still need to continue with assessment and treatment.”
“No,” Zephyr said firmly, not letting go of Buck. He turned his head to glare at the doctor. “I’ve waited fifteen years for this, and I’m not delaying a moment longer. You can run more tests later, if you must. Right now, I’m going to speak with my uncle. Alone.”
The doctor hesitated. “Mr. Frazer?”
Buck broke the embrace, stepping back. He scrubbed a hand across his eyes in a quick, furtive motion. “What are you looking at me for? Man’s a full-grown adult, hard as that is for me to wrap my brain around. He can make his own decisions.”
The doctor blew out her breath, but didn’t argue further. “I suppose you two have some catching up to do. But Zephyr, if you start to feel tired or unwell, please use the call button straight away. Remarkable as your recovery seems to be, you mustn’t overexert yourself.”
“Do the staff here know?” Zephyr asked Buck, once the doctors and nurses had filed out, taking the monitoring equipment with them. “About what really caused my coma, I mean.”
“Some of them.” Buck seemed ill at ease now that they were alone. He circled the room, glowering at each piece of furniture as though searching for hidden assassins. “This hospital is run by shifters. The staff get paid sky-high salaries to keep their mouths shut about what they see here. Had to bring you to a place where the docs are used to weird crap. Otherwise you’d have come round to find tubes up your ass and a bunch of scientists in white coats staring at you like a captured alien.”
Zephyr watched Buck prowl the small room like a caged leopard. “Blaise said that you shot me with anti-shift serum.”
Buck had his back to him, but Zephyr saw his shoulders stiffen. “Yes.”
“Thank you,” Zephyr said, softly.
Buck didn’t turn around, but some of the tension drained away. “Wasn’t sure whether you’d shake my hand or punch me in the face. Lot of people been telling me that I made the wrong call.”
“You couldn’t have done anything else. You’d throw yourself into fire to save family. It’s who you are.” Zephyr knew that all too well, though how wasn’t something he could explain to his uncle. “Once you realized the truth about the Thunderbird, you would never be able to just leave me like that. How did you figure it out?”
“It wasn’t all at once. Little things just added up, eventually. Stuff I found out about your mom and her Storm Society, and Uncegila’s vendetta against them. It made me think things over. See events in a new light. There was always something of a question mark hanging over the night you… disappeared.” Buck cleared his throat, still not looking at him. “The fire didn’t leave much behind. Not enough to identify. Or bury.”
Once again, he saw the bright, fierce strike of lightning. Zephyr breathed out, letting the pain wash through him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t my choice. But even if I’d been able to wrest control away from the Thunderbird, I would still have had to strike. Uncegila was there, in a host body, along with her demons. All I could do was destroy them. I was too late for anything but vengeance.”
Buck turned at last. He came over to sit on the bed next to Zephyr, side by side, not quite touching. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, not looking at him.
“They were already gone when you showed up, weren’t they,” Buck said. It wasn’t a question. “Your mom and stepdad. Uncegila killed them.”
Zephyr’s throat hurt. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
Buck rested his forehead on his clenched hands, knuckles white. “Your mom called me that night. Left a message, asking me to get back home because something was sniffing around the ranch. If I’d listened to it earlier—if I’d got there in time—”
“Then you’d have died too,” Zephyr interrupted firmly. “And you wouldn’t have been able to save me later, with the serum. There was nothing you could have done that night, Uncle. I’m the one who failed. Not you.”
Buck shot him a sidelong glare. “You were a goddamn kid, Zeph.”
Zephyr held his uncle’s gaze. “I was the one who opened myself to the lightning. I was the one who entreated the storm to take me. It was my choice, and my failure. Mine alone. You have to let go of this guilt at last. It is my burden to carry. Not yours.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither backing down. Buck looked away first, but Zephyr had the sinking feeling it wasn’t a concession.
“I still should have been there,” Buck muttered. “Or at least figured out the truth earlier. Damnation, I tried to straight up murder you. Spent over a decade hunting you across the state, determined to bring you down. Came within a gnat’s crotch of succeeding, too.”
Zephyr remembered that incident. Unlike many of his memories as the Thunderbird, that one was crystal clear. The searing burn of the wounds inflicted by Uncegila’s hellhound pack. His blood, dripping into the dry dust of the hotshot base. His uncle, teeth bared, gun drawn, aiming straight for his head. It had been one of the few times he’d managed to overrule the Thunderbird’s instincts.
“You found a way to bring me home, even if only for a little while.” Zephyr touched Buck’s arm. “I’m grateful that we had this chance to talk. But you can’t use this serum on me again.”
“I couldn’t, in any case. There was only one shot, and the motherloving basilisk says he’d need demon blood to make more.” Buck looked at him sharply. “But you’re not going anywhere, Zeph. Your critter’s dead.”
“Blaise told me that’s what the serum was supposed to do. But I don’t think it worked.”
Buck tensed, as though ready to physically snatch him out of the Thunderbird’s talons. “You think that thing’s still lurking inside you somewhere?”
“Perhaps. I’m not sure.” Zephyr spread his hands. “I don’t have any sense of its presence at the moment. But when Blaise and I touched, I felt… something. A spark. And I think she felt it too. I can’t be certain, though. She fled before I could ask her about it.”
“Blaise ran away?” From Buck’s tone, Zephyr might as well have announced that she’d burst into an impromptu aria. “Horse feathers. That woman literally walks into wildfires for nothing but a modest pay check. She wouldn’t run away from motherloving Godzilla, let alone your zap-happy overgrown chicken. You must be mistaken.”
“I was there. I know what I saw. She let go of my hand and bolted from the room as though I’d transformed into the Thunderbird then and there.”
“That doesn’t make a lick of sense. Even if you had gone up in a pillar of feathers and lightning, Blaise wouldn’t—” Buck stopped, a strange look creeping across his face. “Hang on. You two were holding hands?”
“Um. Shaking hands.” His uncle definitely did not need to know the full, embarrassing details of that particular incident. “Technically, it was the first time we’d met.”
“Let me take a wild guess as to how that went.” Buck’s voice was flat as a pancake. “Blaise stared deep into your eyes, and you felt a profound, inexplicable sense of connection, as though she was looking into your very soul.”
Zephyr flushed. When Buck put it like that, it sounded ludicrous.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Buck lifted his gaze to the ceiling, with the expression of a man planning to storm heaven itself in order to punch an angel in the face. “Motherloving shifters!”
“Er,” Zephyr said. “Are you all right?”
“No.” Buck pinched the bridge of his nose. “Zeph, you did misunderstand. Blaise di
dn’t skedaddle because she was scared you were about to transform.”
“But why else would she run away?”
“I am not having this conversation,” Buck muttered. “Look, Zeph. You need to talk about this with Blaise, not me. But I’ve spent the last few years hanging around motherloving shifters, and I’ve seen this play out more times than I care to remember. Just trust me on this one. You don’t have to worry that Blaise somehow detected the Thunderbird.”
Zephyr knew better than to try to argue further with his uncle. “If you say so. But that doesn’t change the fact that only the Thunderbird can stop Uncegila. If there’s any chance I might still—”
“No,” Buck said forcefully. “I’ll beat the damn thing around the head with a shovel, if that’s what it takes. You’re free now, and you’re staying that way. I promise.”
“That’s not something you can do, Uncle. That’s not something anyone can do. Not even me.”
“I failed you once.” Buck gripped his shoulder, hard enough to hurt. “I’m not losing you again.”
The fierce devotion in that growling voice made Zephyr’s heart twist in bittersweet pain. He wished that he could offer his uncle words of reassurance. That he could promise that it was all over.
Maybe it was all over. There was no storm inside him now, after all. Only emptiness, and silence.
But when he’d looked into Blaise’s eyes… when the world had fallen away, leaving only the two of them…
He’d heard the sound of thunder.
Chapter 4
“So let me get this straight.” Joe leaned his elbows on the hood of the crew truck. “Zephyr spends three months in a coma without so much as twitching an eyelid, and the moment you walk in, he just happens to wake up?”
Blaise didn’t look up from the wheel she was changing. “Yep.”
“And you’re claiming that was a total coincidence?”
“That’s what I said.” Blaise grunted as she wrestled the wheel off. “Several times. Yet still you keep asking.”
“I’m just curious.” Joe adopted an expression of total innocence. “You know, trying to understand what happened. I’m having trouble picturing the scene. Maybe you could go over it one more time for me.”
Blaise gritted her teeth. Without answering, she tossed the worn wheel to one side, rather harder than she’d intended. A couple of B-squad crew members who were unpacking their gear yelped, flinching back as the tire bounced past.
“Sorry!” Blaise yelled. Wiping sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, she reached for the new tire. “You going to help with this, or just stand there making smart remarks?”
“I think we both know which one of those options best plays to my strengths.” Joe settled himself more comfortably against the truck, making the car jack creak in protest. “So, you went to visit Zephyr, and…?”
Blaise managed to get the wheel lined up, and shoved it onto the axle. The whole truck rocked.
“And,” she ground out, “Buck left, I sat down, and Zephyr woke up. So I called Buck, got the doctors, and left them all to it. End of story.”
“Blaise.” Joe shook his head sadly. “That is a terrible story.”
“Yeah, well.” Blaise began tightening bolts. “It’s what happened. Life’s not a fairy tale.”
“No, but that doesn’t mean you have to relate events like you’re being charged by the word. If you want someone to swallow a story, you have to sprinkle a little narrative glitter on top of the dry facts, you know.”
“Either you’re mixing your metaphors,” Blaise muttered, “or your cooking is plumbing new depths. Either way, next time it’s your turn to make lunch, I’m bringing my own sandwiches.”
“Your loss. Anyway, you need to work on your anecdote skills. Want to know how I would tell that story?”
“Words cannot express,” Blaise cranked the wrench, “how much I do not.”
Joe, unsurprisingly, ignored this. He gazed into the distance—or at least, across the parking lot—with a lofty, melancholy air, managing to look uncannily like a consumptive Romantic poet. For six foot eight of firefighter, this was quite a feat.
“I saw him lying there, still as a marble effigy marking a fallen soldier’s grave,” he intoned. He clasped both hands to what would have been his bosom, in a gender swapped alternate reality. “Such a sight would have moved anyone, but I felt more than mere pity. Even though we were strangers to each other, still a piercing arrow of grief struck me to my heart.”
“Someone is going to get a piercing arrow of grief to the balls, if he keeps this up.”
“On an impulse I couldn’t quite name, I reached out to him,” Joe continued, demonstrating his typical levels of self-preservation and wisdom. “Brushing the sable hair back from that noble forehead, I planted a tender kiss—”
Blaise broke the wrench.
Joe looked down at the now headless tool, and raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell us?”
Blaise shoved both halves of the wrench into her toolbox before any of their human crewmates could notice and ask awkward questions. “Are you sure you want to lose both kneecaps? Because that’s the way you’re heading.”
Joe dismissed this with an airy flip of one hand. “Aha, but I am now immune to your threats of violence. Guardian of the Sea’s Heart, defend me.”
Seren, busy filling in inspection paperwork nearby, did not even look up from her clipboard. “Not on your life.”
Joe took on the look of a betrayed puppy. “But you’re my bodyguard. My oath-sworn defender. You’re supposed to protect me without hesitation.”
“From demons and assassins, yes.” Seren flipped over a sheet of paper. “Your own idiocy, no. I have enough sense to recognize when a battle is a lost cause. You’re on your own in this one.”
Joe’s voice took on a sly, wheedling tone. “What if I offered carnal favors?”
Seren lifted one pale gray eyebrow. “And that would be different to normal… how?”
“I admit you have me there.” Joe rubbed his chin. A speculative gleam lit his turquoise eyes. “But I do enjoy a challenge. Well, now. We’ve never tried—”
“Guys.” Blaise rapped a fresh wrench against the truck’s hubcap. “I am right here.”
“My apologies.” Seren shot Joe a stern look, though a hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “We shall discuss this later, in private. Extensively.”
Joe grinned at his mate. Blaise wondered if she’d looked at Zephyr with such obvious, shameless adoration.
God, I hope not.
For a moment she thought she’d escaped, but no such luck. Joe shook himself free from his rapt contemplation of his better half, returning to his previous topic. “Admit it, Blaise. It’s obvious. Zephyr is your true mate, right?”
“Your courage,” Seren murmured, “is matched only by your lack of sense. Please try not to bruise him too badly, Blaise.”
Blaise tightened the last bolt with a savage twist. Standing up, she released the jack from under the car. “Okay. We’re done here.”
“No, we aren’t.” Joe confronted her, barring her path with his larger body. “Come on, Blaise. We’re not idiots.”
Blaise shouldered him aside, dropping her wrench back into her toolbox. “Could have fooled me.”
“Ouch. Okay, I admit, I left that one wide open. But seriously, bro. This total denial schtick isn’t going to fly.” Real concern shadowed Joe’s usually sunny face. “You can’t kid a kidder. I spent ages trying to claim that Seren was just my bodyguard, remember? You saw right through me then, and I can do the same with you now. It’s obvious that something’s up. I wish you’d talk about it.”
“And I wish we could leave you at base gestating your kid, and take Seren out to the wildfires instead.” Blaise hoisted her toolbox. “Life’s full of disappointments. Anything else need fixing, Seren?”
The shark shifter consulted her clipboard and shook her head. “All the other ve
hicles passed inspection. They’re in good condition, ready for active service. And thank you for the compliment.”
“Hey, it’s true.” Blaise meant it. She was going to miss Seren’s presence on the squad in the upcoming fire season, and not just because she tended to keep Joe’s wilder impulses in check. “I know you kinda fell into this job by accident, but you make a damn good hotshot.”
“She makes a damn good anything,” Joe said with unabashed pride. “Except, possibly, chef. Not that my astonishing mate has any faults, but let’s just say that only one of us wears the apron in this relationship.”
Seren inclined her head in an ironic little bow. “I must leave some fields to your expertise, my prince.”
“Yeah, well, don’t let firefighting be one of them,” Blaise said. “Leave Joe holding the royal baby next year and come back out on the front line with us. Between you, me, and Edith, we’ll show the boys how it’s done.”
“Perhaps.” Seren smiled, one hand curving around her midriff. Her pregnancy was still early enough that only the slightest bump showed under her crew T-shirt. “Who knows what the future will bring?”
“Me,” Joe said. He mimed zipping his mouth shut. “But no spoilers. Seren made me promise. Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re trying to change the subject.”
“No, I’m not, because there’s no subject to change. I’m not wasting breath on your ridiculous flights of fantasy.” Blaise shouldered her car jack. “I’ll be in the office if you need me. Rory asked me to help him with the paperwork.”
This was not even slightly true, but at that point, she was willing to invent anything up to and including complete liver failure to escape the conversation. As she hurried off, she distinctly overheard Seren murmur, “Leave it. She’ll talk when she’s ready.”
Don’t hold your breath. Blaise didn’t dare even think the words too loudly, let alone mutter them out loud. Mythic shifters could communicate telepathically with each other, particularly if they already shared strong bonds. Having known her literally from birth, it was all too easy for her friends to pick up more than she intended to broadcast.