The Thing About Weres: A Mystwalker Novel Page 10

  My heart started slamming into my chest. I knew. Even if his scowling features weren’t distinct. Even if his dark hair was improbably long and Rastafarian.

  I knew.

  He’d found a way home. He’d come back to me—when I had all but given up. My left knee went out in relief and joy, and I sagged momentarily against my chains.

  Trowbridge, Trowbridge.

  They didn’t pause to calculate or reconnoiter the portal area. Without breaking stride, as one, the three leaped. Their images were frozen inside through the gates’ picture window for an instant. The Fae, to whom my mate was bound, had leaped with his head down, his free hand tight on the brim of his hat. My mate’s body was strained, tied between the Fae and the tug of the wolf’s leash. His face was taut, set in a fierce snarl. The little brown wolf’s body was extended, front paws up to its chest, its tail a plume behind it.

  And then I blinked, or the image shattered, and they plunged through the veil between this world and Merenwyn. Trowbridge landed hard, and braked harder—the misty floor billowed upward as the little wolf landed right by his heels. It went skidding toward the edge, to be pulled up short by the rope around its neck.

  But the guy with the bowler hat didn’t know that they had only a four-foot landing pad, or that Trowbridge would stop suddenly and brace himself. His feet kept going, but his arm didn’t. His reaction to having his shoulder almost wrenched from its socket was a stream of fluid, fierce, and incomprehensible Merenwynian curses. He half spun toward Trowbridge, his free arm lifted.

  Trowbridge bared his teeth into a triumphant sneer.

  Mine.

  Violence simmered between them, until the little brown wolf gave an anxious yawn, and tugged at its leash. They stalked over to the edge, and for a moment, stood, refugees from Merenwyn inspecting the lily pads. My mate’s forehead creased—I could almost see him thinking, where’s the freakin’ log?—and then he lifted his nose high to scent the air. His body tensed as he caught the smell of the pack.

  I’d have sold my soul to have a scent signature of my own at that moment. Hell, I’d have signed on for another bruising engagement with Karma just to watch his face break into joy when he caught my scent.

  The wolf snuffled at the fog and sneezed.

  Screw it.

  “Trowbridge,” I called.

  All three heads snapped upward, though I only really cared about one.

  One cherished face.

  A hundred quick impressions. His cheekbones seemed more pronounced and his curls were no longer finger-soft. They’d grown into long unkempt spirals of fuzzy hair that covered his face and blanketed the swell of his shoulders. One dense ringlet dangled by his eye, before he flung it out of his vision with a feral flick of his head.

  He had some beard thing going on, too, that I wasn’t overly keen on.

  As a matter of fact, in no way did he match the man who visited me in my dreams … and yet … you could strip Trowbridge down to a pair of rough trousers, you could daub him with mud, you could cover his lower face with a straggly beard, and he’d still be a work of art. My body would always recognize him—it was already tightening with anticipation.

  My Trowbridge. Here. Finally, mine again.

  Come to me.

  Free me.

  Across the mist, across the pond, across the gap of time and experience, our gazes caught and held. Sparks started to turn in a lazy circuit in his eyes. Little nameless comets with white-blue tails spun until his eyes glowed, and emitted a wide fanning beam of Trowbridge blue. There is no other way to describe it—it was a hue even deeper in tone than the waters of the Mediterranean.

  My heart—that poor organ that’d had such a workout over the last ten minutes—started to do another impetuous quickstep in my chest. I reached for an answering flare. Willed a spark to turn. Felt the burn.

  His flare waited for mine. A test … Oh shit. A test.

  Tears welled, blurring my vision.

  I’m out of juice.

  The flare in his sputtered out and died.

  * * *

  Trowbridge measured the distance, rapidly evaluating the number of feet he’d have to leap to get to me. Then, he looked down at the murky water. Grim turned to something fouler.

  “They pulled the log out last month,” I called helpfully.

  “Why are you tied to a tree?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  My true love shot me a hurried look that could be best described as enigmatic. He went back to frowning at the water. I probed inside myself, hopeful that I’d find a little something not used up so I could return a belated flare.

  Nothing, I’m dry.

  The Fae’s bowler hat sat low on his head, tilted so that it brushed the ear that sported the long dangly earring. He said something to Trowbridge in my mother’s tongue, to which my mate snapped, “You’re on my land now. We speak English here.”

  The Fae was about thirty, maybe thirty-five, with a long nose and a spill of blond hair that fell to his waist. With a tight frown, he noted, “The Black Mage’s men are expert trackers. We can’t linger here.”

  “I don’t intend to,” said Trowbridge. “We’re going to make a leap for it.”

  “Across the water?” The Fae had a light accent.

  “No, we’re going up there,” said my nonswimming boyfriend, with a toss of his head toward me and my tree.

  Disbelief crossed the Fae’s face as he examined the cliff’s crumbling handholds. His gaze roved the gathering place. Not much to see, really. Knox backing away from the cliff. A mostly empty field—from that angle it was doubtful the Fae could see Cordelia, Biggs, and Harry going through their change near the edge of the forest. A few mounds of clothing and a few clumps of shoes, all placed strategically far from any bush or tree. His gaze lit on me and indifferently moved on. Which was damn well annoying—hello, over here, chained to a freakin’ tree—but it was clear my damsel-in-distress situation wasn’t half as fascinating as Casperella. The Fae took in her ghostly awesomeness with the squint-eyed approval of a trophy wife looking at a pair of Jimmy Choos.

  “Move back, we’ll need a running start,” said Trowbridge. “We’ll go on three.”

  The Fae pursed his lips as Trowbridge crouched to slip the rope from the wolf’s neck. “I can bring the portal closer.”

  “How?”

  The blond gave a fleeting sidelong glance at the golden chain binding his wrist to Trowbridge’s. “I’ll need my arms free,” he said.

  “Not going to happen,” said Trowbridge.

  “As you wish,” Bowler-hat said with a cocky smile. He lifted his free hand and flicked his fingers—a mirror of the way I do—in the direction of the glowing green sphere above Casperella’s shoulder.

  His magic hit mine with a hiss.

  Trowbridge’s head snapped back in surprise. He fought for control, and then said in a thick voice, “What is that—”

  “You taste Fae magic through my skin, wolf. Nothing more.” The Fae with the hat, and the balls the size of melons, said to my mate, “If you cannot bear the feel of it on your flesh, you should release me.”

  “You’re not in Merenwyn anymore,” Trowbridge growled. “You take orders from me now, Shadow.”

  Bowler-hat retorted, “And you are not in Merenwyn anymore, Son of Lukynae. Call your pack. Show me that your leadership skills here are equal to those you claim in my realm.”

  White teeth flashed. “I don’t need to tell the wolves of Creemore that I’m home. In a few minutes, every one of them will have caught my scent and know that Robson Trowbridge is back.”

  The Fae grew stiller than a mouse facing a stout lady with a sturdy broom. “Trowbridge?”

  “Robson Trowbridge, son of Jacob, grandson of Stephen. Last of a long line of Alphas.”

  Bowler-hat offered his traveling companion his profile as he half turned toward the Stronghold ridge. He had a long nose. A little pucker appeared at his lip as he eyed the silver outline of the trailer. T
hen, his mouth firmed. He looked over his shoulder toward the gates then spared the full moon a quick, sharp glance. “Will you be able to hold against the call of the moon?”

  “I will hold,” Trowbridge said through his teeth.

  “If you change while I am bound to you, I will use this magic to smite you.”

  My guy lifted his lips, and growled, “Not before I smite you.”

  Trowbridge said “smite”?

  “There’s no time for argument,” said the blond. “Know that I could kill you with the magic I have seething in my hands. I could, but have not. Consider that. Perhaps I mean no ill to Robson Trowbridge and the Weres of Creemore.”

  He returned his attention to Casperella and my magic. A glittering bead of green swelled at the point of contact on the sphere bobbing above her shoulder. The Fae squeezed his eyes shut, his expression fierce as he concentrated. The hole widened, and then magic bits began to stream out of the ball in a thin, supple line of green fluorescence.

  Who the hell is this guy? It didn’t surprise me that I couldn’t see his magic—that was just an inherent fact about the Fae gift; you can only see the visual proof of your own talent—but the realization that he could see mine well enough to steal it was downright shocking.

  Thief.

  “No!” Casperella cried out, heartfelt and pathetic.

  Without remorse or hesitation, the Fae drained the ball until it was nothing but an empty sheath that turned itself inside out, before it, too, disappeared into the end of the rope of magic. At that, my friendly ghost dropped her hands and issued a faint moan. Casperella’s expression was tired, tragic, and angered all in one as she melted in front of us, thinning from a three-dimensional corporeal shape to something far more translucent. A moment later, her gray dress turned back into a shroud, her face became a blur of white, and then, with a final, silent sigh, she disappeared altogether.

  The Fae rolled his neck and with one fluid wrist flick of his right hand he sent a bullwhip of magic streaking toward me. I let out a high-pitched screech and turned my head away.

  Thud!

  Gad, I flinched from my own magic. Eyes squeezed shut, I waited for the pain. I had been dodging hurt all night; the odds were against me that he would miss. After the lapse of what probably had been two seconds, I whispered, “Four thousand.” It wouldn’t have hurt me, would it? “Five thousand.” I waited for my hands to heat, my skin to blister.

  “Six thousand.”

  No payback misery. No dizzy swelling of Fae inside me. No discomfort at all, actually, other than the fact that Ralph had chosen to burrow out from under my hair, and was using a loose hank of it to rappel to the top of my head. His little golden feet bit into my scalp as I cautiously lifted my cheek.

  Huh.

  “Who is he?” I said in awestruck tones to Ralph.

  A long cable of my magic was now wrapped around the trunk of the maple to my left.

  The little brown wolf nudged Trowbridge’s knee and issued a whine of distress. Bowler-hat bent his head—why? To pray? To focus? Then with a deep inhale, he began winding my magic around his hand like a rope, over and over his knuckles, winching the Fae portal—all wreathing mist and purple-pink lights—across the pond with every rotation of his large fist.

  Geez, this thieving Fae hadn’t needed to use any verbal commands like “Attach” or “Stick” or even a “Go get ’em, Tiger.” My full-blooded Fae mum had needed phrases to inform her magic of her wishes. “Dance,” she’d say to the water in the pond. And it would dance.

  This was some Fae, for all his dandified ways.

  “Hurry,” said Trowbridge.

  Knox tried to ghost past me, intent on making an exit before the Alpha of Creemore gave him an ass-thumping. Which just ticked me. “My mate’s back,” I called out to his retreating back. “He’s going to kick your bony ass.”

  It happened so quickly. Knox was there, halfway to his getaway, and then he was back—right in front of me—close enough that I could have licked the sweat off his upper lip. Ralph tensed on my head, as I shrank against my tree. “You really are mates.”

  I lifted a proud chin. “Told you so.”

  The NAW’s man leaned in closer. What? To whisper an insult? Then his shoulder flexed as he punched me in the gut.

  It hurt.

  “If I wasn’t tied up at the moment,” I said through my teeth, “I’d make you pay for that. Guess I’ll have to leave it up to Trowbridge to make you sorry.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, with a savage smile. “If you die, he will, too. Checkmate, bitch.”

  Checkmate? For a few seconds, I didn’t feel any major pain—my brain wasn’t registering my body’s cry. Instead, I wasted two seconds puzzling over “checkmate” and another couple taking in a lungful of air to scream, “Trowbridge!”

  Knox sprinted across the field, his focus on the path that led in the opposite direction of all those dangerous wolves waiting in the forest, away from the threat of the angry mate, and the strange Fae. He ran, all out, for the front of the house where his truck was waiting.

  He ran for his life a little late, I thought with savage satisfaction.

  Knox shouldn’t have flown across that field—he must have known better than to run from another wolf—but his arrogance had made him think he was bulletproof. Stupid and shortsighted. In the time Knox had rustled enough bile to punch a girl—one tied to a freakin’ tree—and flee, the portal had landed with its cargo. The little brown wolf perceived game sprinting toward escape, scented in that way that spoke of wounds and weakness. It had four legs, Knox had two; it wasn’t an even race. It flew after her quarry, leash whipping behind it. Its teeth caught the fabric of his jeans. The Were pivoted, leg kicking out, ready to hurt. It dodged, and then suddenly—spine twisting, jaws open—spun back at him. Snap. Its jaws clamped down on his arm.

  Take that, Were in Black.

  But he flung it off like it was a kid whining for attention and the little brown wolf became the little brown flying wolf. Its body cut through the air. It hit the ground with a spine-rattling jolt and a pathetic yelp.

  Trowbridge and the Fae went thundering past me—nice of you all to stop by—my mate’s long ropes of hair flying behind him, the blond’s a sheaf of wheat, as they tore across the field. Halfway across the pasture, the gold chain twined around their wrists fell away. The portal travelers matched momentum for a few more ground-eating strides before the Fae realized he was no longer bound and stopped running.

  My man kept going, two hundred pounds of male in hot pursuit.

  Knox made it into the tree line near the start of the path, but then he stopped, knee-deep in the vegetation, to shout, “I’m from the NAW!”

  “I don’t care,” Trowbridge snarled. “You stink of sun potion and my mate’s blood.”

  “You can’t touch me.” And then Knox—perhaps realizing that he couldn’t outrun Trowbridge—did the dumbest thing.

  He tried to stare down a true Alpha.

  I saw Trowbridge’s back stiffen, and the muscles on his neck tightened. What transpired between them—what exchange of power and submission flew between them before Knox turned to run again—I’ll never know.

  * * *

  I’m feeling odd.

  I lost my distance vision between one blink and another. The hurt in my belly was blossoming and unpleasantly—almost urgently—heating.

  No, I really don’t feel right.

  The stomach blow was hurting beyond all reason, as if Knox’s punch had been the match set to a pile of dry kindling ready to burn in my belly. Worse than heartburn. Its flames were growing; its burn spread outward.

  Pain. Down there. Below my boobs. I bent my head. Goddess, Goddess, Goddess! There was a handle sticking out of my gut. My breath caught in my chest—frozen between an inhale and an exhale—as I tried to reconcile myself to the sight. That can’t be good. You can’t live with a knife in your gut. I want it out. Somebody’s got to take it out.

  “He
lp,” I said, in a faint voice. I swallowed—the knife jerked—and called again, but this time far louder. “Help!”

  Tiny feet tap-danced on my scalp. A prickle of gold at my hairline, and Ralph dived off my head, zip-lining down to the end of his rope of gold to inspect the damage. A second before, I’d wanted someone—anyone—to pull it from my body, but now I was filled with fear. Fear that the slightest brush of touch would cause terrible pain. Don’t touch it, I thought, seesawing with fright. Instead, he swung below my bra—a bleat of red in the center of his amulet flashing like a cop’s gotcha lights—and then he hung, oddly still, studying the black handle that trembled with each of my shallow breaths. Something warm and wet trickled down my stomach.

  Fae smell like flowers when they bleed. Sweet peas were in bloom as my blood leaked from a terrible, horrible hole.

  My Were howled inside me.

  Someone’s got to pull the knife out.

  I opened my mouth to say that. As I did, I heard a scream, guttural and harsh, coming from the house. Was it me? No. I didn’t scream. Not even when Knox pushed that thing into me. Not me. Someone else. It didn’t matter who it was. Life had narrowed. To this tree. This pendant. That knife. Oh Goddess, look at the knife go up and down as I breathe.

  I was burning up, turning into a candle of pain, wordless in its flame.

  Ralph eased himself down to my skin. Too close to the bad spot. Move away from it! The Royal Amulet shifted quickly to find a better place, one right over my racing heart, and then he slowly lowered his pendant to my chest until his core was pressed flat to my skin. Prism colors swirled inside his stone.

  He was trying to heal me, just as Merry used to.

  A little late, but I love you anyhow, Ralph.

  A shadow moved just beyond the edge of our narrow, dark world. Trowbridge? Fear fluttered at my throat as the wrong man stepped close. Long blond hair, not black. A dandy’s hat, a clean-shaven jaw.

  Not my mate.

  The Fae’s eyes were shadowed by his bowler, his mouth pulled into a pensive frown. His long white fingers reached for the blade— Don’t touch that knife. I sucked in a ragged breath and opened my lips to beg, to entreat, to plead. Anything to stop him from touching the handle. The blade. My wound. But forming words had become complicated so suddenly. My tongue was heavy, my throat too dry. I’m so helpless. Arms bound to my side, bad thing in belly, Fae all around me. No Trowbridge. No Merry. Just my new best friend Ralph and this cold, strange Fae.