Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5

by Amy Lane

  Teague blinked and gave a thin smile of retribution, not even surprised at how fast I downshifted. “I want to kill the guy who just knifed me, Lady—and if I recall, he was the one shitting.”

  “Auuuugghhhh…” I wanted to scrub my gory hands through my hair and over my face, but I couldn’t. I was going to just stalk outside to the anteroom at the bottom of the stairs and before the vampire common room, when I heard Green clear his throat. This werewolf thing was my barbecue. I was Teague’s entre to the new world of the preternatural, and wolves got really confused with too many leaders. With a sigh, I looked around again at the odd assortment of frightened young men who had signed on for what they thought was an everyday gang rumble and who ended up the surviving members of a massacre.

  “You! Assholes!” I barked, “Are you ready to go get a shower and change out of those dumbshit clothes?” They’d come dressed as their own little brown and green gang—they looked like big fat dorkfish.

  They nodded hopefully.

  “Excellent. Nicky?”

  “Yes, my liege.” He bowed ironically and it was all I could do not to flip him a gore-crusted bird.

  “I want you and seven of your closest were-critter friends to escort these guys upstairs. They can wait in the anteroom for now, and as soon as the vampires wake up, let them know they’re breakfast.” The vampires would be able to keep track of the werewolves for a little while after the blood donation—it wasn’t a sure-fire security system, but these guys had never been fed from. They looked scared enough for it to act as a pretty darned good threat.

  Nicky nodded and trotted up the stairs—the better to gather suckers to help him—and I looked at the four saddest werewolves on the planet.

  “You! Assholes! Strip to your skin, leave your nasty old laundry in here, and meet us out in the anteroom.” I gave Macshitsyerpants a squeeze, just to hear him gurgle, and then I raised him up to the ceiling and dropped him, smiling with some sick satisfaction as he yelped to the crunch of an ankle bone. It would take that a good couple of hours to heal completely.

  “You! Dumbfuck! You get to stay here all night. And we’re not cleaning jack.”

  Teague was looking at me beseechingly, or I really would have killed the fucker. Bring a knife to a negotiation? He deserved to die just for being that ass-stupid. As it was I led the way outside of the anteroom to let the werewolves get naked, and just as I cleared the vault itself I was thrown into the side of the door hard enough to see stars.

  “What in the fu…”

  “What—you’re not happy that he’s got to serve you, you want to fucking get him killed too?”

  I glared at Jacky, wondering when my head exploded. “Jacky?”

  Suddenly Bracken was between me and Jacky, growling, which is never a good sign, and Teague was hauling at his partner’s arm.

  “Jacky, it was my own dumb-fuck fault, you hear me? She was throwing a shield up and I just…”

  “You say that, but you’re the one with the blood…”

  I reached behind my head to feel the bump back there--it felt like it was actually bleeding-- and Green got there in time to stop me.

  “Don’t want to mix Teague’s blood and yours, beloved,” he muttered softly, and I jerked my hands away. Don’t want to mix—no making vampire were-things, no having the were-critters bite the sidhe, no were-critter sorceresses or vampire sorcerers, nope, nuh-nugh, no thanks. We’d seen where that goes and it wasn’t pretty.

  He passed his hand over the bump on my head and it went away, and so did the pain, which was good, because if Bracken thought for one minute that Jack had really hurt me, he’d kill him, and then we’d be fucked.

  “Bracken, down boy!” I snapped, jumping into the fray. Bracken glared at me.

  “He hit you!”

  “He pushed me—it was an accident!” I hoped Brack would take it at that—it had felt more personal than that, but I wasn’t going to cry foul.

  “You!” Jacky turned away from Teague, who was gruffly ordering his beta out of the room. “You got him hurt—are you happy? Is there anything else you want from him? More blood? You fucking ghoul…”

  My eyes widened with shock—not so much at the harsh words, since I give out plenty of that on my own, but from the anger aimed at me. He closed in on me and grabbed my arm, shaking me, forgetting he was a werewolf and I was not. My head was smacking back against the wall, even though Green had my shoulders and was trying to keep me still. Jacky’s grip on my arm hurt but I fought the urge to throw up a shield. If Bracken knew how rattled I was getting, he really would kill Jacky, but ouch… dammit… I couldn’t focus and then… Teague jumped in and stopped the whole thing.

  He went wolf, and Jacky—bonded to him in his heart and probably in his body as well by now—went with him.

  In a heartbeat, even less, Jack was on his back, his furry body tangled in a puddle of jeans and a thermal shirt, whining in submission. Teague’s blonde hackles were up all along his spine, and his jaws were locked—without biting—around Jacky’s throat.

  Green, Bracken and I stared at the wolf tableau for a moment, shocked and saddened.

  Christ. What a fucking choice. It was one I’d never want to make—but it was also one that Bracken or Nicky wouldn’t force me to make either. We all loved Green too much to hurt him that badly.

  Teague growled and backed off, staring at Jacky’s puzzled, hurt wolf with fierce, ungiving eyes. This was his wolf’s decision—support the pack over his lovers.

  Jacky whined and bumped noses, and Teague licked him resignedly, and that much giving, that much forgiving, made him abruptly human again.

  He was much less assured as a man than he was as a wolf. He looked down at his mate, who was now human, lying on the floor, looking stunned and devastated.

  “Jacky…” he mumbled, and Jack looked away.

  Teague didn’t have a whole lot of resources in him to deal with a lover turning his back. In fact, he only had one. In a moment, he was a wolf again, hauling ass up the stairs for the main room, and I said, “Fuck!!!” and Green touched my face and the back of my head again, then said, “I’ve got him, you get this goatfuck!” and then he was gone. He breezed by Nicky who had returned and was looking at us with horrified eyes, and I squinted at him, wondering if it was the adrenaline or the tears making my vision so blurry.

  Then I couldn’t look at Nicky anymore, so I turned towards the goatfucker in question. “Nicky, help him up,” I said numbly, and Jack looked at me with unfriendly eyes.

  “You know,” I stopped for a minute to wipe my eyes with the heel of a shaking hand, “I could have grown old and died without forcing him to make that choice.”

  Jack dropped his glare, misery suffusing every line of his long, nearly unblemished body. “I thought he’d choose me,” he muttered.

  “He did,” I snapped, wiping my eyes again. Fuck. The blood on my hands was making them sting. “If he hadn’t done that, Bracken would have killed you.” I was deadly serious—I could feel Bracken’s entire body vibrating behind me. Jack had yelled at me—he had gotten in my face, he had grabbed my arm through my sweatshirt with bruising, supernaturally strong fingers. (Green hadn’t known about the bruises to heal them—they throbbed now under my sweatshirt and I made a mental note to hide them until they could be taken care of.) Nobody did that to me—not with Bracken at my side.

  Jack looked up, startled, and saw Bracken. My beloved’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in a horrible snarl, and he was growling, like a true wolf. Jack turned pale and looked at me, really looked at me. I am small—a lot smaller than he is—and my hands (and by now, probably my face) were covered in Teague’s blood. My face was cold, so it was probably pale, and all in all, I looked little and plain and human.

  And Jack had hurt me, and hurt me on purpose. I don’t think he was a dishonorable man, not at heart—Teague couldn’t love somebody like that.

  “I’m sorry,” he said weakly, gazing into space at something I couldn�
�t see. “I didn’t mean to…”

  “It’s okay,” I said automatically, but I wiped my eyes again and Bracken snarled, “The hell it is.”

  “All right, it’s not,” I sniffled. “But we’ve got other stuff to do. Jacky, get your clothes—Nicky needs to go find us some more wolves, go with him. If you don’t want to do that, go to the common room, or back to your bedroom or… hell, anywhere but right here, right now, okay?”

  “I’m so sorr…”

  “OKAY!” I was nodding, trying to get him to find his good sense and go. Clumsily, as though not actually seeing what he was doing, he gathered his clothes in front of his groin and did just that. I found myself hoping his good sense was wadded up somewhere in his jeans and boxers, because I certainly hadn’t seen it from where I was standing.

  As he wobbled his way up the stairs, I turned to the wide-eyed werewolf ‘negotiators’ who had come out of the vault in time to see most of what had just happened.

  “That gold werewolf,” I said with the strongest, angriest voice I had, “was your alpha. He just picked me and Green over his own mate.” I looked them in the eye, one by one, letting my fuck-with-me blaze out my eyes. “If you want to die slow, you can get in the ring tomorrow with your buddy in the other room. If you want to die quick, you can fuck with me today. If you’re set on choosing life? Then I suggest you do whatever the fuck I say, are we understanding each other?”

  Four heads—different heights, different hair color, different eyes. One motion: bobbing earnestly up and down, as they all agreed with exactly what I was saying.

  Green

  Mama Cory, Papa Green

  The sidhe treasured their parents—after a fashion.

  The fact was that Bracken’s family—parents and children, working in concert to support a leader, was the norm, probably from the race’s inception. It was one reason (among many) that incest was not a taboo for Green’s people.

  The leader was the parent. The people in the parent’s hill were the children. Having a taboo against ‘incestuous’ relationships would have doomed the race.

  Some sidhe broke away from their parents—Green had, when he’d been only fifty years old. For much of his life, he’d preferred to flit about the world. He would find a lover, usually mortal, and settle down until his mortal had died. After he’d mourned (always longer than the sidhe thought proper) he would move on.

  But Green’s first leaders had been compassionate and indulgent. As Green had started his own faerie hill, he’d remembered them fondly. They had played, broke bread together, made love, frequently and with great enjoyment. Green’s childhood had been a happy one.

  But he had learned very quickly that not all mortals had that sort of comfort.

  It had been a hard realization—and for a century or two, Green had avoided the human race as a whole, simply to avoid that terrible, aching pain that came with having lovers who had never been taught how to love.

  Eventually he learned the joys of teaching them how to love, a discovery that made all the greatest joys—and all the greatest pains—of his long life possible.

  When Cory joined the hill and became a lover to its two leaders, she had—unwittingly at first—assumed the job of the hill’s mother. (If he had asked Cory, Green was sure she would have said Grace, the very maternal vampire, did a fine job as hill mother, and her own services were not needed. Both Green and Grace knew that while Cory was still learning like a journeyman learns from a master, she was the true hill mama, down to her tough-love disposition.)

  And she had done a fine job mothering Teague. She had listened, given advice, kept him from the worst parts of himself, and, along with Green and Bracken, had stood back and prayed when it was time for Teague to confront his own demons. She had even chased him into the rain and forced him to forgive himself—a classic mother move if Green had ever seen one.

  Teague went to her when he was stressed, confided in her when he was confused, and valued her beyond measure.

  But boys—especially human boys—sometimes had violent, human reactions that women were not comfortable with.

  Sometimes a boy just needed his father.

  Teague’s heart had been screaming for a father since he was born.

  Green had snagged a blanket as he’d blurred through the house, and as he outstripped the wolf, streaking through the gardens to the South Placer hills beyond Green’s environs, he kept it tucked under his arm.

  Elves could move in what Cory called ‘hyperspeed’—Green thought of it as ‘blurring’ or ‘moving’—but he didn’t need his hyperspeed to keep up with Teague. He just needed to run, barefoot, fleet and graceful, across the earth that sustained him. He did, for several miles across the rough grass and twiggy undergrowth of the foothills, until Teague showed signs of flagging.

  Of course, Teague being Teague, it took a while. Even after his pace slowed he still pushed himself until his body strained and his fur was slicked against his lean wolf’s body with sweat and his breath came in ragged pants. Suddenly, just like a switch going out, his back end flopped to the ground as his front paws churned into the mud in front of them.

  Slowly, Green stepped out from behind the trees he’d been using for cover. He held the blanket spread out between his hands and waited patiently. Teague looked at him from miserable wolf’s eyes—green-hazel in color, like Teague’s as a man.

  Teague whimpered and looked away, and Green sighed, kneeling to the forest floor and wrapping him in the blanket. As Green’s arms moved around him, he felt the change, and as he stood, there was a short, scrawny, exhausted man wrapped in a blanket and being held like a child. Green walked back toward the hill and the house at an easy pace, cradling him like the little boy he’d never been.

  “He turned away from me, Green.”

  Green looked at him—they were the first words he’d said in nearly twenty minutes. His hair was plastered to his head with sweat, like his fur had been when he was a wolf, and he was pale—so pale. If Teague didn’t figure this out, didn’t find his balance with his lovers, Green had no doubt he’d make himself sick, just like Cory had before Bracken. Unlike Cory, Teague didn’t have any good memories to sustain him. As a package of flesh, he would probably catch pneumonia, get a fever, develop cancer—something physical that doctors would give a name to. As a supernatural being—even a werewolf—he would simply waste away.

  “He didn’t understand, mate. Give him time. He’s nearly as stubborn as you, right?” It was true—Green had no doubt. Jacky had a good heart under all that jealousy and selfishness. He’d never had a reason to look beyond his own needs, that was all.

  “How can he love me again?” Teague asked, and his naked, bleeding voice was all the proof needed that the man was at the end of a very short survival rope. “He thinks I turned against him… that I picked you over him… I… I’m no damned good at this.” That naked voice hardened, became bitter. “You should have never put us together, Green. I’m only going to hurt them.”

  Green sighed, looked around, and found a nice tree to lean against. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt—they might get damp in the November dew, but unlike last week, the afternoon had some thin, butter-colored sunshine to offer, and Green (like most elves) was seldom bothered by the cold.

  He settled himself in, cradling Teague close for warmth, and took advantage of his height and size in the same way he had for Jacky two days ago. His children—his lost, sad, wayward children. A good father needed to be there in the calm after the tantrum. All children would frighten themselves with the force of their emotions—even the fully grown ones.

  “How could he love you?” Green asked when he was settled. “How could he not love you—that’s the real question.”

  Teague harrumphed, some of his usual fight back in place. “I don’t even know why I’m asking you—I’m not sure why you love me, either!”

  Green kissed his forehead, exactly like he would have kissed a five-year-olds. “I love you because you’re str
ong, Teague Sullivan. You’re brave and you’re kind. I love you because you try, and because as sore has your heart is, you still haven’t given up on love. I love you because you defend me and mine, and because you simply are. Is that good enough?”

  Teague just lay there, wrapped in his arms, weeping silently in the cold November sunshine. “Bracken would have killed him.”

  “Mmm-hmmm. I might have killed him—I love you both, mate, but that’s my beloved he was threatening. You did exactly right.”

  “Why does he hate her so much?”

  Ah, there was the brave Teague Green had been looking for. It was a ballsy, necessary question.

  “Because he thinks she threatens your love for him.”

  “Why can’t he see?” For the first time, Teague showed some animation. He sat up, adjusting his body on Green’s lap, unconsciously snuggling into Green like Cory would. “I… I was nothing, until I met you. I was nothing before I came to work here. Doesn’t he see… I wouldn’t be the thing he loves if I didn’t have a… a family to fight for?”

  Green smiled at him, for the first time making sure Teague could see his expression-- the acceptance, the sober attention. Green wanted Teague under no misconceptions that he was loved and loved well. “You were most definitely something fine before you came here, Teague—but you’re right. Your belief in yourself, your self worth—it comes from serving us, form being a part of a larger purpose. There is no shame in that. Jacky—he’s always been an island, you see? A lonely boy, up in his own head. He’s never seen the world as something that could hurt him. You’ve seen it as chaos, Teague—you know the only way to keep your family safe from the chaos is to fight on the side of order. But maybe he’d know some of this if you spoke to him.”

  Teague grunted, and Green threw back his head and laughed. When he was done he looked at the stubborn little Irishman with sincere affection, and saw that he was blushing to the roots of his hair and couldn’t meet Green’s eyes.