“Move, atreya!” Trevarr shouted, and the thread of fear in his voice galvanized her. She bolted up and away — or she meant to. Instead she skidded out on the sparse natural gravel and went nowhere really damned fast, one leg shooting out from beneath her entirely.
Trevarr lurched upright, arm slung back in a stance that she couldn’t quite fathom — not until his hand flashed forward, releasing a blade, and the giant gave a sudden surprised grunt. Just as quickly Trevarr did it again — and again — and that third time Garrie actually heard the knife hit, an amazingly hollow, meaty sound.
The man toppled over right on top of her, heavy as an old sleeper sofa and just as dead.
Or at least well on his way. As she struggled under his weight, he gurgled slightly and drooled blood down her neck, which was right when she lost it.
Really truly lost it.
“Sonuvabitch,” she cried, her voice rising exponentially with each word. “Off off OFF!” and then the words degenerated to a wordless demand as she shoved futilely at the hot, sweaty weight of his huge body.
But even in that mindless fury, she felt the disorientingly unfamiliar breezes — and even while shoving at him, she realized that the brute had suddenly become less of one. He was, quite suddenly, no longer so much tremendous as he was...
Average.
“Hold there, atreya,” Trevarr said, strain in his voice, his words not quite right but the meaning clear enough. Metal snicked — that same sound from the parking lot. A powerful hum filled her from the inside out and gave her a whole new reason to fight for freedom, except it was over just about as soon as it started.
The man’s weight shifted, hesitated... rolled away. Garrie shot upward, colliding with Trevarr — only then remembering the sick feel in her stomach at the flash of the man’s knife and the sound he had made.
“He had a knife,” she told him, as if he didn’t know. “Did he get you? I thought he got you. We have to get inside... we have to get help... we have to call someone...” Which was right about when she realized that the blood on her hands wasn’t from her paltry thorn slashes or the dead man, but that it was warm and fresh and freely painted. “Oh, fark,” she said. “He got you. Oh farking fark, whatever it means.”
“Not something,” Trevarr told her, distantly, “that nice women say.”
“Are you — hey, are you okay?”
No. Apparently not. Because he made another unusual noise and she sagged under his weight — bracing herself, staggering, and just barely keeping his descent a controlled one as he folded to the ground.
Garrie flung herself down beside him, and the light — the inexplicable light with claws — moved closer. She scowled at it and its breezes turned gentler, the light softer — but she didn’t miss the anxiety beneath, the subtle rolling sparkle flickering through it.
“Okay,” she muttered to herself, and drew the deepest of breaths. She needed light; she had it. She wouldn’t question it. And Trevarr...
She gave his shoulder a tentative touch; his head lolled. Ohh, that was bad, bad, bad. Terrifying, in fact, to see this man of such intensity simply sprawled there, unresponsive to her prodding. She had to get someone —
But if she ran to the hotel while he spurted blood, that would also be totally bad.
Garrie bit her lip, forced herself to the practical — and if she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, she could maybe pretend not to notice. “Closer, please,” she told the light, and be damned if it didn’t respond.
Okay, whatever. Practical reckoner is practical.
She pushed Trevarr’s duster over his shoulder, found blood welling along the swell of his biceps. Ugly, but not ugly enough to put him on the ground. She patted his torso, quick motions that stopped the moment her hand landed sticky warmth. With growing urgency, she tugged his shirt free of the solid leather belt riding his hips.
Dark blood obscured his ribs, smeared across skin and pooled in the faint hollows of muscle and bone. Oddly dark blood, even in this light. Think about it later. It was enough to think about the wound tucked away at the edge of his ribs, blood leaking steadily outward from between neat edges. She thought about what she’d seen — the motion of the man’s hand, the twist as Trevarr fought to free himself — and rolled him over, pulling the shirt away from the strong muscles of his back.
And oh, look at that. Blood, pulsing freely from the depressed lips of a wound. She gave it a long, horrified look; she turned her glistening palm over and looked at that, shifting it back and forth in the light.
So much blood, so little time.
With her teeth suddenly chattering, Garrie tore herself out of her daze and fumbled at her shirts, peeling off the top layer to wad up and press against that worst of the wounds. Pressure first. She tugged at his belt, struggling with the unfamiliar prong and half-cinch arrangement, and finally pulled it free to thread back under his body — panting, swiping at her hair and remembering too late that she’d painted herself with blood.
Well. That was one way to get attention at the front desk.
She snugged the belt over her makeshift pressure bandage, wiped her hands down her remaining shirt, and considered the sports bra beneath.
Another way to get their attention at the front desk.
She skimmed out of that second shirt and tied it around his arm, ignoring the ripping sound as she pulled it tight. “Be right back,” she told him. “I’m gonna go for help. Don’t let the coyotes eat you.”
When she stood and stepped away, the evening air pressed cold against her exposed skin; the dark sky flickered with diminishing fire wheels, and the blanket pulsed gently beside Trevarr. Utterly alien; utterly insane. But when Trevarr made a noise, Garrie instantly wheeled back to him. “Hey,” she said. “Are you awake — oh, crap!”
His eyes rolled back behind half-closed lids, his jaw clenching shut and his back slightly arched, his body trembling. No longer unresponsive, but fighting — something — with everything that he had. Garrie grabbed his arm, as if that would do any good at all. “Hey!” she said again. “No!”
The light flared at her, pushing... wanting. She flung a sharp, wary gust at it; the light flickered in surprise and backed considerably away. Trevarr choked a cough and it came with red-black foam; the bandage at his side had already soaked through.
Garrie bit back a curse and scrambled to the dead man, yanking one of Trevarr’s knives from his torso — surprised at the effort it took but full of the fury to get it done. “What did you even do to him?” she snarled at the body. “And why?”
“Whoa, that dope was intense,” the dead man said, appearing beside himself. “Damn, I should have stuck with Motel 6.”
“But you didn’t,” Garrie said furiously, hardly skipping a beat as she cut the tail of the man’s flannel shirt off and ran back to plaster the material to Trevarr’s side. Not good enough. “Why the hell did you come after us? And dammit, do you have anything plastic on you? A baggie?”
“I didn’t come after you and him, I came after you.” He wasn’t at all formed yet, just a collection of energies hovering over the body. He asked, voice carefully expressionless, “Why would I have a baggie?”
“Oh, stop it,” she snapped. “If there’s a pot baggie in one of those pockets, tell me. It’s not like I’m going to snitch on you!”
Trevarr choked, spilling blood from the corners of his mouth; his hands curled into themselves, his body arching —
“Tell me!” Garrie demanded. “Or I’ll strip your body naked looking!”
“Hey, no!” The man’s energies roiled with offense. “Hey, come on! I’m not a bad guy, give me a little respect! That wasn’t me, I swear!”
“Plastic bag,” Garrie said between gritted teeth, her hand on Trevarr’s arm and feeling bundled wire-tension. “Do. Not. Care. About. The. Pot.”
The man muttered and grumbled and finally said, “Right front pocket.”
She dipped her hand in, bringing out all pocket lint and nastiness clingi
ng to the tacky blood on her hands — and a sandwich baggie nipped between two fingers. She fumbled it inside out, ignoring the dead man’s cry of dismay as dried leaf scattered across the ground.
“Sorry, Ghost Bob, but it’s not like you can use it.” She blew the dust out of the bag and knee-walked back to Trevarr, slapping the bag over the bubbling wound and leaving it there.
“But you — !” he said. “Someone might have — ! That was good stuff! And how do you even know?”
“I know a lot about dead people,” Garrie told him, more grimly than she meant to. And then she only half-listened to a long explanation of his actual name and how it fit into his family’s history — no, take it back. Really didn’t listen at all, not with Trevarr’s body stringing him up tight in constant tremors. The hovering light with claws crowded close, a reverberation no happier than hers.
“Bob,” she interrupted. “Ghost Bob. What did you do to him?”
“Eh? Oh. Er. Butter knife.”
She turned on him, one hand still on Trevarr’s chest. “Say what?”
He’d coalesced to some extent, reflecting his scruffy former self with some accuracy if yet without detail.
It made her wary, that. Most spirits idealized themselves, or forgot themselves, or sometimes even decided to look like someone else. When a spirit looked in death as that person had looked in life, she knew to listen up.
And this time, she didn’t like what she was hearing.
“Sad, huh? My grandma’s silver butter knife. That... demony thing got into me and hulked me out, and next thing you know, I’m sharpening up my grandma’s silver butter knife. Because it was there, I guess.” He sounded quite matter-of-fact about it.
Garrie began to suspect his good stuff had left a permanent post-living effect on him.
But the light with claws reacted to Bob with fluttery alarm, sending waves of that unfamiliar energy in her direction. Nudging her, she thought. Panicking. Looking at Trevarr, she felt some of that panic herself. The plastic held its seal, but blood glistened at the corners of his mouth and his panting breath came shallowly when his body’s tremors allowed him to breathe at all.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have to go. I’ve got to get help —”
The light flared in alarm and shoved, knocking her off-balance so she sprawled back on her butt. She snapped, “There’s nothing I can do! I’m a reckoner, not a doctor!”
“I’m dead, Jim,” Bob observed somberly.
“I — what?” Garrie barely spared him a glance. Trevarr made a gritty noise between clenched teeth and his fingers dug into the ground, and the light with claws pushed at her.
“You do something!” she cried to it, absurd or not. “Or else let me dammit get help!”
The light, flickering in its uncertainty, moved toward Trevarr. Hesitated, curling all its impossible claws at once. Afraid.
“Do it!” Garrie could only fervently hoped it was the right thing. “If you can help him, do it!”
The light hovered over Trevarr and... pounced.
Garrie startled; even Bob made a noise of surprise. The light enveloped Trevarr, wrapping tight and expanding to cover him from head to mid-thigh. Its silvery-pale illumination swelled to bright intensity; Garrie flinched, shielding her eyes. Please, let this not be a mistake. She could see nothing of him beneath that blanket of light, just his legs emerging from a rim of claws, thighs taut, boot heels digging into the ground.
Oh, please let it be the right thing.
After long, long moments, those legs went slack; the blanket went dim. Garrie could barely stop from throwing herself forward to peel the blanket off — but before she finished wrestling with the impulse, the thing floated away, a pale, feeble light with claws now limply riding the ethereal breezes.
Garrie didn’t need an invitation. She plunged back to Trevarr’s side, a hand on his chest — the other tentatively poking at the makeshift bandages, belt and shirts and then finally, when she couldn’t believe what she was seeing in this dimmer light, the plastic bag.
No more bleeding.
No more bleeding.
“Rhonda Rose,” she murmured out loud this time, “what have you not told me?”
Under her hand, Trevarr’s chest rose in an abrupt, deep breath. His eyes opened slowly — and after a scant instant, they went wide. But not in annoyance or pain or anger. No, they widened in confused alarm, turning him into a wild-eyed thing — at least until he fell back at the push of her hand against his chest.
“Easy, big fellow.” Her dry tone might have been more successful had her voice not been so unsteady. She swiped at the cut beneath the belt. Definitely no more welling blood; definitely healing well-started. “Ohh yeah. Rhonda Rose, you got some ’splainin’ to do.”
Trevarr frowned ferociously, started to form a word and stopped, then tried again. “What?” he demanded, as much as such a thing could be called a demand.
Garrie nodded at the impatient manifestation of their former attacker, not that Trevarr would see it. “Our friend Ghost Bob hulked out and came after me,” she told him. “And then you got in the way, and guess what, he’d been sharpening up Granny’s good silver butter knife —”
Wild again, just a bit, he tried to rise again — failed again, too. But he felt stronger under her hand this time, clearly looking for their attacker.
“Dead,” she told him, plucking her sodden shirts away from his skin. “Thus his new name of Ghost Bob.” His own shirt was a ruin, but could stay where it was. “He says something possessed him. I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell me — ?” She slanted him a quick if pointed look, unbuckling the belt to tug it free, coil it, and place it beside him.
He wasn’t quite ready to push her hands away when she checked his wounds again. But soon enough he’d have all his hard edges back in place. He lay there, remnant tremors passing through his body, a hitch in his breathing, but... Healing. Pretty much as she watched.
“When Bob was squishing me,” she persisted, taking advantage of the moment while she could. “He was still hulked out. You did something to change that.”
He closed his eyes, let out a slow breath. “You weren’t supposed to notice.”
“Hey,” Bob said. “What about me? I could use some help here. You can, right? Help me?”
“You don’t need much help, as far as I can see. Looks to me like your... state of mind... helped with your transition.” Then again, maybe his state of mind had also made it easier for the invading entity to get in. To attack them.
She sat back on one heel, the opposing knee jutting into the air and providing a handy resting spot for her chin. “Look, Trevarr, I get it. You’re not giving up your secrets so you don’t want me to get help, and maybe you don’t even need it any more. But you’re cold, if you hadn’t noticed —” and who knew if he had, goosebumps mixing with the tremors — “and I’m pretty much naked, if you hadn’t noticed —”
His eyes opened sharply, finding her; widened ever so slightly when they did. Sports bra, decent enough... if a guy with leather pants, boots, and oddball hand-crafted shirts that belonged in a Ren Faire was used to seeing such things at all.
“I thought maybe you hadn’t,” she told him. “Well, feast your eyes, such as you can.”
Stick-skinny. But recent years had helped; now she had shape enough. It was just... rationed.
Not to mention kept spare by the never-ending drive to push through the conflicting sensations of her world. She might have great abs, but the whole combination didn’t do much for curve and flow.
Trevarr, nonetheless, was still looking.
In fact...
She squinted at him, startled to notice that those dilated pupils of his weren’t quite — what — ?
He closed his eyes. Turned his head. A faint wash of unfamiliar breeze; he caught his breath on pain, his fist pressing into ribs. As she suddenly worried that she’d taken that impossible healing too much for granted, he looked back and there it was, that dist
ant cold edge of his back in place.
“You’re right,” he said. “We are too exposed.”
But not, she thought, to further attacks.
To discovery from those who might help. And who might ask questions along the way.
~~~~~
Stupid Trevarr. Stubborn Trevarr.
Once, just once and long ago, Sklayne had been too eager to help. To act. To use his immensely flexible nature to help Trevarr.
Yes, too eager... and then wrong.
An unfortunate combination.
And now, Sklayne could no longer step in to protect Trevarr when necessary.
Not even though Sklayne had now grown wiser, and understood that when Trevarr’s kind came together for mindless pleasure, their noises were subtly different from those they made when they came together for attacking.
He would not make that mistake again, so surely there had been no need to create glyph shackles. Right?
“Not right,” Trevarr had said, and bond-pinned Sklayne until invisible glyph shackles were welded into place, leaving them both strained and exhausted and not speaking to one another.
And so now Sklayne had been forced to watch Trevarr be hurt, doing nothing but giving the Garrie light so that small person might act as best she could.
Sklayne hadn’t anticipated her attack on the chakha’s ears. He wished it had been his idea.
He hadn’t anticipated the knife, either. Not that knife.
But Sklayne still had his chance to go home. Because the Garrie had acted, and Trevarr had channeled the chakha away, and then he had fallen to the ground like a cubling splayed out to die, letting his blood spurt out while poisons consumed him.
Stupid Trevarr. Stubborn Trevarr.
But Sklayne had fixed it. He might have purred for himself, had he any energy left.
Brave Sklayne. Noble Sklayne.
He hadn’t wanted to give that energy. He’d wanted to save it against this night when too many things happened. But the Garrie hadn’t understood Trevarr’s need, and even if she had, her energies likely would have killed Trevarr before helping him. Before healing him.
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