Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5

by Amy Lane

  Green abruptly sobered. His voice slid into cockney territory—Adrian territory—and he clucked reassuringly. “Aye, Teague—I know. You and words—not friends, not so much, am I right mate?”

  Teague grunted, rolled his eyes and said, “No. Me and words aren’t friendly.”

  “I didn’t think so. Ye see, ducks, you and words—you’re afraid, aren’t you? You give too many words, you give too much of your heart, and that’s a bad thing, aye?”

  Teague nodded and leaned his head against Green’s shoulder so he wouldn’t have to meet eyes. “Aye,” he muttered.

  Green’s long-fingered cupped Teague’s chin and raised his angry, depthless hazel eyes. “The problem with that, luvie, is that this boy already has your heart. He and Katy—they hold it beating in their hands, aye?”

  Teague blinked at him slowly. “Aye,” he whispered despondently.

  “Well I’ve got news for you, mate. They’re going to keep breaking off pieces of it—especially Jacky—if they don’t know what it is they hold. Katy not so much—she’s softer, she’ll give and yield and you need that. But ye need yer Jacky as well, aye?”

  Teague swallowed—Green watched his Adam’s apple bob. “Aye.”

  “Well then—ye need to risk your words, mate. If they don’t know what it is that’s beating in their hands, they’re going to make some mistakes in the keeping of it, aren’t they.” It was a statement, in spite of the lilt at the end.

  “Aye,” Teague conceded, still staring at Green with wide, child-like eyes. “Green?”

  “Aye?” And Green tilted his lean mouth so that Teague would know he was aware of his accent and the way it went from cultured British to Cockney to Lake County to Wales and back.

  “Where are you, when your voice goes like that?” Teague’s voice throbbed with a need Green recognized.

  “Under the moonlight, ducky—with Adrian by my side.” Ah, gods—it even hurt to say. Cory knew—it broke her heart to hear the cockney in his voice, but sometimes, she all but begged him to break her heart.

  Teague nodded and leaned against Green again.

  “You ready to go back, mate?” Green asked, although his bottom wasn’t as cold and his body wasn’t as sore as all that.

  “No, Green. I’d… I’d really love just to hear you talk some more.”

  Green looked down at him, but Teague was relaxed, his arms crossed against his chest, a look approaching peace on his usually scowling face.

  “Aye, werewolf. We could sit here and talk. You up for some stories?”

  “Yeah,” Teague sighed dreamily. There was a space, and Green knew what was coming before he even said it. “Tell me about Adrian.”

  It wasn’t a hardship. Green and Cory talked about him freely now—no more of that horrible, heart-steeling silence before they mentioned his name. And Teague was so earnest—and he so rarely reached for anything.

  So Green started with their arrival in the foothills, and the hard ungiving land. By the time they’d met their first werewolf, Teague was dozing serenely on his shoulder, and Green was ready to move on. But he kept his gate steady and his footsteps silent, to give his poor werewolf a chance to heal.

  Jack

  Bruises

  Jack managed to get his clothes back on, and for an hour he followed a grim, angry Nicky around, pretending to be useful when dealing with the Southern California werewolves. Eventually, each of the ‘negotiators’ had a room—and two roommates who would sleep in resentful shifts. By the time they were done with the logistics, Jack had the feeling the new guys would have eaten their tongues rather than do anything to further piss off one little college student and her terrible fist of death.

  “You grabbed that chick?” said the last guy to get shoved into Nicky’s grasp by Bracken (who was standing in front of Cory like a sentinel of death.) “You may be dumber than the assholes who dragged me into this clusterfuck.”

  Jacky was starting to agree.

  This house, this operation, this place—it was all so much bigger than he was. These guys that he was housing—they had lost their friends trying to kill Cory and Bracken—and him and Teague. Jack had been so immersed in his own personal bullshit on the night they’d arrived and the battle went down, he hadn’t even comprehended how ugly the massacre had been.

  Now he was starting to realize how stupid his own actions were. If he’d taken control of the carload of guys at the airport, maybe fewer people would have died. Teague was right—Teague had been right all along. Jack wasn’t made for this paramilitary shit. He wasn’t good at it. He could take orders—he’d always been good at having Teague’s back—but he’d never been great at the battle itself, or thinking through the strategy or…

  Or apparently seeing the big picture.

  By the time the whole thing was sorted out, Nicky’s unfriendly glare had lightened up maybe one tenth of an iota. “You have possibilities to not be a complete asshole,” he said as he dropped Jack off at his own door. “Now could you stay out of the way and try not to hurt anyone today?”

  Jack turned bleak eyes to the guy who had carried off his wife’s orders with the crisp efficiency of an army lieutenant. “Too late. Damage done.”

  Nicky shook his head. “I hope you know—your guy saved your life today.”

  Jack blinked. “What do you mean?” and Nicky shook his head.

  “You know, you really must have been riding his coat tails for the last year and a half. I’ve seen Bracken kill before—and so have you. Do you remember the expression on his face?”

  Two nights ago, Bracken had been pissed. He’d reached out his hand with his teeth bared in fury and a snarl of irritation and literally grabbed the blood from his targets and yanked it across a vacant field.

  Jack had seen that expression not an hour before, right before Teague had turned wolf and taken him down.

  “Holy Christ.” He almost sat down, right there in the hallway.

  Nicky rolled his eyes in disgust. “Yeah, Jack—you know why we love Teague? It’s because he’s not convinced he’s the only person on the planet with problems. Katy should be home soon—maybe you should just go wait for her. I’m done babysitting.”

  Jack made his way into the bedroom feeling numb and used. How could he have fucked everything up so badly?

  He’d been eating in the were’s common room, making tentative gestures of friendship towards some of the people there, when a sort of electricity passed through the hill. A few moments later, Green had sprinted by, moving with some serious preternatural speed—Jack wouldn’t have been able to see the elf move at all if he hadn’t been a werewolf on occasion.

  In spite of the electricity—the group knowledge that something was decidedly up-- nobody moved. The pretty, dark-haired girl who had been talking quietly at the table next to Jack caught his apprehensive look. “Word will spread,” she said with certainty. “And if it pertains to us, personally, someone will let us know.”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when Nicky appeared and gave him a nod from the doorway. “He’s fine, but you may want to see for yourself.”

  Jack could hardly remember shouting at Cory after that, or Teague’s angry voice, pulling him away. Until Nicky had brought it up, he hadn’t been able to recall Bracken’s murderous expression—he’d been convinced that, just like in his dream, Teague had gone and sacrificed himself for the indifferent Lady of the House.

  He was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling when Katy came in. He was desperately trying to recapture the smell, the touch, the transcendent moment of making love that morning, when Teague reached up and held him so tight he couldn’t breathe, and actually asked for something.

  Stay. Please stay.

  Jack had loved that moment—it had been everything he’d ever dreamed about love.

  In this particular moment, thinking back on it, Jack hated himself so badly that he thought not hiding under the bed like a child when Katy walked in was one of the bravest things he’d ever done.<
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  “Heya, mijo,” she said happily, and then got a good look at Jack’s face and let loose a string of expletives that almost rivaled what Jack had heard out of Cory’s mouth. She finished up with, “What did you do?”

  Jack looked away—just like he had with Teague, and he had to admit it rankled. He had not known he was a coward, and now he couldn’t seem to escape the fact.

  “Don’t you do that to me!” Katy snapped. She looked wildly around for something to throw, since she’d already dropped her purse, but their room was bare and Spartan—even with their personal things it was still very masculine—very Teague. She settled for kicking the stuffed chair that Jack had started to claim as his, and then running up and grabbing his shoulders to shake him.

  “Don’t you do that! It took us weeks to put that man together, to fix him, to make his heart strong enough to not run away. I walk in here and you look like you knifed him in his damned heart. Don’t look away from me, pendejo—you gots to fucking own up!” She was right there in his face, and he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

  Jack rubbed his hand across his mouth and spoke to the far side of the room. “It’s just,” he said quietly, taking some of the heat from Katy’s angry flare, “that I don’t understand why he needs the hill. When it was just the two of us, he was okay, you know? Why couldn’t he have loved me then, when it was just us?”

  Katy shook her head and muttered something that sounded like, “I have no words.” Then she sighed and flopped on the bed next to him.

  “He… it may have seemed like just the two of you, Jacky—I know it did. But it wasn’t. Who were you working for, that entire time?”

  Jack shrugged. “Green.”

  “Yeah, mijo—and I know the first time you were ever at the hill was when I bit you. But Teague… he’d been here before. He knew what he was serving. He liked it that way.”

  Jack’s eyes widened considerably. Of all the dumbshit things that had never occurred to him. “But why?” He was whining and he didn’t care.

  Katy stood up and started to pace. Her mouth moved quickly, like she was talking in rapid-fire Spanish, but no words came out for a minute. “Why? Jacky, you dumbass—why not?”

  Jack opened his mouth in surprise, and she just kept going right over him.

  “I know you thinks you all anybody needs, but… damn! Jacky—here at the hill, you’re never lonely. Yeah, you’re never alone, but if I gets mad at you, I run out that door and there are a hundred people who will sit and listen to my problems. I want to go shopping, I’ve got a pretty plastic card that make all my dreams come true—and all I’ve got to do to earn it is go work at a place where people smile at me and make me feel like I do good, just to show up. I don’t even got to do that if I don’t want to—Green don’t make nobody work. We just do—because not one of us that these people haven’t helped in some way, and usually big shit, too. They don’t just fix your flat tire in the rain, mijo—they save your life! And it’s bigger than that—you know it is. Because there I was, trapped in some asshole’s silver cage, and you know, even when I was out of my mind, even when I thought you and Teague were the bad guys, I still knew that somewhere out there, help was coming. I knew help was coming for me.”

  She’d been pacing the whole time, and now she sank slowly down on the bed next to a speechless Jack, who was trying to make his brain wrap around the world she’d shown him. He’d been living in it, eating, drinking, dreaming in it, but he hadn’t known he was in it, not until now, when he saw how Katy fit in.

  “Even if they didn’t get there on time, Jacky—we all know about your sister, about Renny’s first husband, about Adrian. People die—people die here. I knew that. But just the idea… just the thought… that even if that asshole killed me, someone was on their way to get me.” She looked at Jack and he met her eyes for the first time since she came in. “Goddess, Jacky—do you have any idea what peoples like me and Teague would do, just to know somebody would be coming to the rescue? They don’t even have to make it in time. They just got to give a shit.” She shook her head and sighed, leaning against him, stroking his arm and trying to get him to understand. “That’s powerful shit, Jacky. That’s big fucking medicine, right there, you know?”

  Jack tried to imagine it. His parents had always had money—when his sister was doing drugs they’d thrown her into rehab after rehab, not once wondering if maybe what she needed was simply to know they’d come after her because they cared and not because they had to.

  For the first time since Green had come to his apartment and offered him solace, Jack thought about his sister. He’d been angry when she died—he’d thought her new people had deserted her, just as the two of them had been deserted by the people in authority for their entire lives.

  Now he wondered… seriously wondered. Were you scared, Sara? Or did you know someone would have your back? Did it matter? Did it make it easier, knowing someone had your back?

  And someone really did have her back, Jack realized. Jack was here, in the hill, the place Sara had told him would care for her. Green had come and taken care of the things she cared about, since her backup had been too late.

  The enormity of what Jack didn’t know assaulted him again, and he had a sudden flash to two nights before.

  They had been hijacked and ambushed, and not once had Bracken or Nicky or even Teague acted like they were alone. Bracken had been cocksure that help was coming—he’d been pissed off, because he and Cory were at odds, but he’d known she was going to save their asses.

  … if we don’t kill you in the next five minutes, my beloved will when she arrives. You and your friends? You just became a domestic dispute of cosmic proportions—and that alone is a reason to kill you.

  Teague had been wounded—and Green had healed him. Cory’s hands had been dripping with Teague’s blood—not because she’d been hurting him, but because she’d been tending to him. And Jack had stalked in and assumed the worst and he’d… he’d…

  He told Katy then, about what had happened, what he’d done. Afterwards he never could figure out where he got the words or the bravery to do it.

  When her hand cracked across his cheek, it was almost a relief.

  The stillness in the room then was suffocating, and he was a coward again because Katy broke it.

  “Jacky!” She was in tears, and so was he. “You turned away from him? How could you make him make that choice?”

  “Because I’m an asshole,” he muttered. He’d never thought he was, but God… the look of betrayal on Teague’s face came back to him again, and he thought he’d be sick. Before he could actually finish his thought, or say anything else, there was a tentative knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Katy said automatically. Maybe it would be Teague, or Green, or someone to make them feel better.

  But it wasn’t. Jacky was beginning to learn that atonement didn’t come cheap or easy.

  It was Cory.

  “Hi,” she said, looking over her shoulder like she was expecting someone she didn’t want to see. She closed the door behind her and dumped an armload of clothes on the dresser next to her: Teague’s, left on the floor of the anteroom. When she was done, she turned to face them, smiling weakly. “Look—I need to do this and then find Green before Bracken sees, okay? I just…” Her voice firmed. “Jack, I really think you need to see this—it might make dealing together easier, okay?”

  Jack looked up at her, his eyes still unfriendly. God, he hated himself for everything he’d done, he really did—but he resented her. He couldn’t help it. He looked at her and saw the person who put his beloved in danger. It wasn’t rational or kind, but there it was.

  Her mouth quirked up on one side, as though she knew exactly what was going through his head.

  “Right. See, here’s the thing.” She unzipped the hooded green sweatshirt she was wearing, revealing a plain, oversized man’s blue shirt underneath. It was, Jacky realized, way oversized—it was bunched at her middle and hung ne
arly to hear knees. It must have been Bracken’s or Green’s—and she looked so much younger in it.

  “How old are you, Lady?” Katy asked, echoing his very thought.

  Cory wrinkled her nose. “Why does everyone ask me that? I’m old enough to drink—how’s that?”

  Barely, Jack realized in surprise, and then she took the sleeve of the shirt--it went nearly to her elbows--and raised it up to her pale shoulders, and he forgot about how old she was.

  There were bruises on the back of her arm—four swollen, red-purple, blood-filled hematomas exactly the size of his fingers. The one from his thumb on the front was especially heinous, and he moaned a little in his throat. She lowered her sleeve and pulled up the other one, and there was an identical set of marks—but he must have pinched her flesh in his hand because the hematoma was raised in a wedge shape behind the finger-marks.

  Jack stared at her in horror.

  “I’m not a werewolf,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m not an elf. I can do some pretty cool stuff with my power, and I really do function as an excellent weapon. But there’s a reason Bracken and Nicky guard me. I chafe under it, and I give them shit, but the fact is, my physical body is just not that strong. I…” she blushed and shrugged. “I’m mortal and I’m weak. Bracken would have killed you, just to keep me safe from something like this, you understand?” She quickly put her sweater back on and zipped it up, putting her hands in the pockets like an ordinary street kid, using all that extra fabric as defense against the world.

  “Teague’s spent the last month getting used to jumping between me and anything threatening. He… he saved your life today. He jumped between us to keep me safe and to keep Bracken from killing you—it was all about keeping his family from being hurt, okay? You’ve got to forgive him for that.”

  Jack’s mouth was dry and he fought against darkness in his vision and bile in his throat. He’d done that. He’d laid hands on someone weaker than he was and…

  “Why didn’t you defend yourself?” he rasped, knowing his voice sounded petulant but God… she could have pulverized him. She could have squashed him against the wall like a bug!