by Martha Woods
“I hit my head once or twice on the wall, but I don’t think it was hard enough to do anything. They didn’t hit me in the head at least, I probably wouldn’t have one left if that was the case.”
“Hmm, very fair point. Take a deep breath please.” Listening to the rise and fall of my back, there was no sound in the room aside from the short sighs of my breath, his every attention focused on trying to pick out something that was wrong about the process. “It doesn’t sound like it’s fully broken, but it’s definitely very badly cracked. Generally we would have to bind your torso to keep it in place to heal, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t be very useful to you right now, would it?”
“No, I need to be able to move properly, I’m not going to be able to do that if I can’t move my upper body properly.”
“I understand, I’ll give you some medicine for the pain and… please try and avoid anything too strenuous, and I think this goes without saying, but try not to get punched in your injured rib.”
I nodded, not exactly arguing with the prospect of not getting punched in an already agonizing area, and waited for him to pull out the needle and thread to take care of the most pressing issue. I never liked getting stitches, it always made me feel weirdly like a blanket for some reason, but I would much prefer it to leaking everywhere on my furniture and getting who knows how many infections in the process. Nothing sexier than gangrene.
I didn’t make a big deal of it, or at least I tried not to, I just sat there and grit my teeth as he sewed me back together and cleaned off what blood had leaked out of me before I’d stopped bleeding. I was surprised that I wasn’t feeling dizzy from the blood loss, but he just waved it aside by saying that witches could stand up to certain things like that, we had certain reserves that could be tapped in case of emergency or something. I’m going to be honest when I say that I was just too tired to pick it up completely, but it definitely warranted thinking about later on.
“Take it easy,” He said, helping me out of my seat and passing me a coat that he’d had waiting on the desk, “Just because you’re a witch doesn’t mean that your invincible, any more injuries and you’re going to be stuck in a bed, regardless of whether you want to be or not. There’s no use to you destroying yourself trying to fix everything.”
“Are those doctor’s orders?”
“Yes, those are doctor’s orders. Now that you’ve acknowledged that I’m a doctor I have those powers now.”
I snorted, waving goodbye as I stepped out of the office and walked out to the entrance, taking a moment to stand in the sunlight as it drifted closer and closer to late afternoon. After all the commotion that had been caused by us being injured I guess more time had passed than I thought, stitches weren’t exactly something to be done sloppily after all.
And now I was just realizing that I hadn’t driven my car here, so I was now without a ride unless someone was nice enough to offer me one. So I guess for now I’m just going to stand here.
“Heard you had a tough day,” Caleb said, stepping out from the entrance with a sheepish look on his face, “And now you’re all fucked up because of us.”
“You can’t blame me getting hurt on someone else hating you,” I said, “I’ve worked with enough people that have been hurt to know that the person to blame for someone getting hurt is the one who did the hurting, no one else.”
“Still, you can’t blame me for feeling bad right? Hell, they even ruined your shirt, that’s gotta be worth at least a hundred bucks.”
“Forty actually, it was on sale.” I shrugged, falling into the bench by the road. “See? No harm done then, just a forty-dollar shirt.”
He hesitated before taking his seat next to me, wringing his hands together and opening his mouth several times, closing it each time before he could force the words out. I was about to reach over and make him tell me whatever it was before he finally worked up the nerve to speak.
“Anthony and us were talking, about… this plan that we’re working on, and we got to thinking about… you know, what if things start going really bad? We heard about the hunters, and now you and Christine show up all torn up, it’s not hard to think that maybe there could be a chance that they could get lucky.”
“That’s all part of a fight,” I said, “But where are you going with this?”
“I… look, you know us enough by now to know that we care about this family of ours, I mean some of these shifters I’ve known since I was a little kid, if that’s not family then what is right? And I’ve seen the way that you dote on pretty much everyone in this alliance, there isn’t a single thing that you wouldn’t do to keep them safe, that’s just how you are. I mean you’ve got how many stitches in you right now? And you’re still going to go back to work.”
“Caleb. Where are you going with this?”
“If things go bad, if it looks like you’re going to take more losses and lose most of what you’ve tried to build here, just give us up. Not the shifters, I know you’ll never be able to do that, but me, my brother, and Anthony. We’re the leaders of this whole thing, we’re probably the guiltiest of anyone that they’d be after, that should be a fair compromise.”
“I’m not going to-”
“You don’t have to like it, hell you don’t even have to do it unless shit gets rough, I know I don’t want you to do it! But if it’s a choice between that and watching all of you end up dead on a street corner while we make it away then I don’t want that to be something that happens, I want to be able to stand tall and know that I did everything to keep everyone safe, that’s better than just… waiting for all of you to die for me.”
“I…” I sighed, rubbing my eyes with my fingers, “Alright, fine, I’ll consider it if we really have to. I’m not going to promise you anything, because this is something that no one should promise, but if it comes down to it I’ll do what I have to to make sure that all the shifters are safe, along with my people, ok?”
“Yeah,” He said, nodding and smiling, “That’s all I want, for you to consider it. I know that you’ll do what’s right, you haven’t let us down so far.”
I didn’t reply, I just sat there with my head in my hands trying to get some semblance of calm back in my brain. He seemed to notice that something was off, and I think that after a while he recognized that maybe ambushing me with yet another offer to sacrifice himself wasn’t exactly something that I needed right then, but to his credit he didn’t run away. He didn’t offer his hand either, just sat there to make sure that I wasn’t alone through any of this, that I could still think things through while having some sort of presence next to me.
“Do you ever regret it?” I asked, “Taking up the offer to lead? Sure your father was running things before, but you could have said no, you could have passed it onto someone else, people would have understood.”
“I guess they would have, I suppose… we were just afraid of letting them down. Dad had been such a good leader, we would have felt like disappointments if we didn’t try and step up to the plate. But even with all that… no, I don’t really regret any of it at all. There’s been a lot of rough moments, and we’ve had to deal with our fair share of shit, but I’m not gonna pretend like I haven’t loved taking care of everyone and trying to guide them through everything, even if half the time I’m stumbling over what the way to guide everyone actually is.”
I blew a breath of air out, taking a moment to consider my own position and everything that had led to here. “I don’t really regret it, I don’t even really miss what my old life was like when I really think about it, as time went on I was hating being a cop more and more even years before all of this. But… I miss that innocence, you know? Of not knowing about any of this, of just being able to walk down the street and know that the only dangers were the people that I saw around me. Good, bad, those were things that I knew and that I could be sure of, now I’m all jumbled up, I can’t tell a good guy from a bad guy half the time because now we’re all working together, and I’m honestly
not even sure what I am.”
“You seem pretty good to me.”
“Everyone seems pretty good to people that they help, for all you know I’m planning to conquer the world after this.”
“Well, being honest? I don’t think that’d be such a bad outcome, look at how everyone’s come together now to fight against this thing. You’d at least know how to run something if you took over, a bit of a step up from the people in charge right now.”
“Don’t flatter me too much, you might actually convince me to do it.” I leaned back in the seat, closing my eyes and looking straight up at the sky. “Go back to your brother, let him know that everything is alright for now and you don’t have to martyr yourselves just yet.”
“Alright,” He said, standing and placing his hand on my shoulder, “If you need a couple of martyrs though, you know where to find us.”
I waited until he was gone before I laughed, letting my body go limp before I passed out completely.
Chapter 6
Sleeping on a bench on the side of the road is maybe not the best place to try and recover from injuries, but having a phone shrieking into your ear and almost making you jump right down onto the concrete also isn’t the best way to wake up either. But that was where we were at, twenty minutes of sleep broken by Joseph’s name popping up on my screen telling me that someone either had some very good news or some very, very bad news.
Considering our luck lately, you can’t blame me for thinking it’s the latter.
“Hello Amy,” Joseph said, clicking his tongue in that way he only ever did when he was concerned, “I heard that you had a little incident before.”
“Joseph,” I sighed, “Thanks for calling, I was actually having a pretty nice rest, can’t have that lasting too long.”
“Oh of course not, wouldn’t want you to heal up too well now would we?” He cleared his throat, taking a few seconds to gather himself before asking, “Are you alright?”
“I’m… fine, more or less. I’ve got a lot of bruises, more stitches than I know what to do with, but I’m alive at least. It could easily have gone another way, I’m just glad that it didn’t.”
“As am I Amy, as am I. I wanted to thank you for the warning that you gave me after the incident with the hunters, I pulled my people together just in time to avoid a tragedy, it turns out that they were making a move on us just as they were on you, but the situation is now handled. From what I gathered from my brief chat with Alexis, the witches were much in the same boat, but they are all too deep in the city for the shifters to do anything too effective just yet.”
So they had been planning to hit everyone, that’s concerning to say the least. Not just because of the fact that all of us would have been caught off guard, that was a given, but for the fact that it means that they are just being absolutely reckless with their own lives. Four ambitious attacks in a single day? That’s a shocking level of overconfidence to say the least.
“Are Christine and the boy ok? We heard that apparently there was quite the scene when you all arrived, apparently she lost her clothes sometime in the commotion? Which I’ve certainly done myself once or twice, I’m sure, but it’s still cause for concern.”
“She partially transformed and destroyed her clothes in the process, it was… surprising, but it’s also one of the things that saved all of our lives. She’s resting up in her office, I don’t think she’ll be able to fight for another day or two, Archie is still young and inexperienced so you can write him off for at least a few weeks, but he managed to keep himself alive until we got there, you can’t just sweep that aside.”
“Certainly not,” Joseph said, “If my understanding of werewolves is correct then he’ll be celebrated like a warrior once he is recovered, I definitely have no objections to that.” We lapsed into silence, thinking of what we were going to do next to deal with this little problem that we found ourselves in. “Every one of my people is prepped to go, if you need us at all. None of us are going to argue with the path that you take, but I would strongly suggest preparing for inevitable violence. It’s not the path you wanted, but it’s the one that we find ourselves on right now.”
“I know, I know. Trust me, there was enough blood already today to convince me of that.” Glancing around me to be sure I was alone, I leaned into the phone and whispered about the plan to contact their leader, to try and work out some sort of compromise. “Tell me if it’s a bad idea.”
“It’s an absolutely terrible idea, why would it be anything else? He just attacked you today, on four fronts no less, why would he ever consider peace?”
“Except it wasn’t him who attacked us, it was her. And according to Claire when we spoke before, he was the exact opposite of happy about that. So I’m thinking that we tell him that we want to negotiate, but we use it as an opportunity to fuel that a little, to make him doubt her just a little more and throw him off his rhythm, who knows how he’ll react to that?”
“He very well could jump across the table and try to kill you for bringing it up, he’s insane.”
“He could, but we’re going to have a lot of our people there, and he’ll only have one. He’ll accept those terms because he’s exceedingly arrogant, but he’ll also trust that we won’t want to just kill him once he gets there. He knows that we would prefer to settle this peacefully, why would we just kill him and force ourselves to deal with the rest of them as well?”
“Hmm…” Joseph hummed, “That… could work actually, it’s still a completely foolish idea but it very well could work. We just need to make sure that our guard is up and that our patrols are thickened, if they try to attack us during the talks then we’ll fight them off and take the chance to kill him, then we can always tell the other shifters that his wife attacking us forced our hand. It could cause a civil war.”
“Just to be clear, you’ll only do that if she attacks us for real, right?”
“Sure I will,” He snorted, “You have my word Amy, I’m not going to touch him unless I really, truly have to. I don’t like to play around with garbage.”
“Well, good,” I said, “Now I think that I’m going to go home and try to get a few hours of rest, I was thinking about getting back to work but… I don’t think that would be a very good idea, now that I consider it.”
“No, it most certainly wouldn’t. Have a good night Amy, and please prepare yourself for whatever it is that Vincent and Damon are going to want to do once they see you, no doubt those two hotheads will want to march right on over to the forest and kill everything in sight for touching you.”
“Don’t worry, they’re hotheads, not stupid. I’ll keep them home, for tonight I think all of us could do with some relaxation. And… could you please send a car to take me home? I didn’t drive here and I think I might die if I have to walk home myself.”
Normally I liked to take the steps up to my apartment, it was good exercise and it gave me time to think about what had happened over the day, for better or worse. But today, with the aches in my bones and the itching from the stitches threatening to drive me insane, I was just glad that the building still had an elevator that worked. Being able to slump against the wall for the handful of seconds that it took to get me to my floor was just enough to actually get my head screwed on a little straighter, as well as to actually give me enough strength to walk the rest of the distance to the door without collapsing.
“Hello?” I knocked, reaching into my pocket for my keys but finding myself constantly fumbling until the door opened in front of me, barely able to give a grateful smile before I was pulled into a strong set of arms, my injuries screaming out in pain but the rest of me relaxing into the much-welcomed hold. “Nice to see you too.”
“You really like worrying us, don’t you?” Vincent asked, pulling me into the room and shutting the door behind me, guiding me towards the couch, “We got the call from Cara first, which was bad enough, but then Christine called us and told us what had happened out at the cabin. Though I’ve got to say
that I’m impressed that you were able to defend yourself, that doesn’t really… make all of this easier to see.”
Damon cleared his throat, making me realize that he’d been standing there the whole time and just hadn’t had the time to prepare himself. “We wanted to come and help but… well…”
“The sun,” I said, nodding along, “I know, it must have been killing you to not be able to do anything, but I’m glad that you didn’t. Things are already complicated enough without having to deal with one of you getting a really bad sunburn.”
“I wouldn’t really be able to fight in those coats either,” Damon said, allowing himself a small smile, “They kind of bind me up, I can barely walk down the street without falling down.”
“I know, you were pretty much waddling like a penguin the last time we walked out of here.” Relaxing into the couch, it was tempting to just pass out right then and there and give myself a few hours before we had to speak about all of this, it was hardly going to be a joyful conversation, especially when I tell them that it’s far from over, but it’s also not a conversation that I should delay for too long. They’ve gotten two calls about how I was in danger, they see me walk into the apartment looking half dead, the least I could do is give them some confirmation that I’m actually alright and not about to die on them, as tempting a feeling as it was with the way my bones just felt wrong.
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” I said, taking Vincent’s hand and reaching for Damon’s, “I just have a habit of ending up in danger don’t I?”
“It’s not your fault, from what Cara told us you were just walking along minding your own business before you fell into all of this, how could you have been able to tell that they were going to try and attack us all in one day?” Damon hummed, “Though the decision to go along with Christine was… a little more reckless, but what else could you really do? From what she told us the other werewolves had to stay behind to protect the shifters, and everyone else already had their own attacks to deal with. I’m not selfish enough to pull them all away from their own people to force them to baby you, you can make your own decisions.”