Vaguely, I realized there were people gathered around us. A lot of them. I wanted to hide between Colleen and him, these two friends who I’d wanted so desperately to count on…but I hadn’t let myself. Justin was counting on me now. “Answer,” I whispered, pressing my head against his shoulder as I tried to think. I was so damn cold. So damn cold. “Important.”
“It is.”
I nodded jerkily. “No. Was outside my office.” Fear slammed into me as I made myself think. “Had packed up…went to grab some weapons. I called—”
Justin touched my shoulder. “It’s okay, Kit. He can’t hurt you now. Did he call you about a job or something?”
I shook my head. “No. Called…” my voice broke. “Called the Lair. They wouldn’t…” I plucked at my borrowed jacket as shame flooded me. It was done. Over. Done—and if I thought of anything else, I’d break. Just the answer. I could only think of the answer right now. “I called the Lair. I looked down…Dart in my chest…couldn’t move…Xavier…freelance witch. Everything went black and I woke up here.”
“And you didn’t come willingly?”
Hadn’t I just said that? Lifting my head, I stared at Justin and tried to figure out what he needed.
“No,” I whispered.
A hand touched my shoulder.
From the corner of my eye, I saw it. And flinched. Skin a warm golden brown. Strong, beautiful hands—
Desperate, I bolted.
Behind me, I heard a low, furious roar and I tried to block it from my mind. I had to get away.
I made it five feet before I crashed into a mountain.
This mountain was big, living and had hands that were gentle and soothing as he picked me up. “Easy there, Kitty,” Goliath said. “No reason to run now. You’re safe.”
I heard Damon snarling again.
Goliath, big, gentle Goliath growled, deep in his chest and then he turned away. “Come on, little Kitty. You need to get warm. Don’t know how long those stupid Banner boys are going to be, but you don’t need to be here for this.”
“Wolf,” Damon snarled.
Goliath covered one of my ears with his hand while I huddled against his chest and the thud of his heart beat against my other ear. Between that, and the thundering of my own heart, the roaring of blood crashing inside my head, I barely heard anything more than a rumble at first.
The words barely connected, anyway. At first.
Don’t you get it, cat? You’re scaring the hell out of her and she’s already scared enough.
Goliath was wrong.
Oh, I was scared.
But I couldn’t face Damon now.
I couldn’t face him…I couldn’t face myself.
I didn’t know if I could face anything, ever again.
* * * * *
Silver lights flashed.
I strained my head to see no matter how hard Goliath tried to keep me from looking. Part of me had to know it was done.
I don’t know how much time passed as he tried to protect me from it and I tried to see around him.
Finally, he looked down at me and asked, “You have to know, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
He sighed and carried me back to the fringe of the trees. “We waited here for hours, trying to get a lock on where you were,” he said softly.
Something made a weird thnk sound down by our feet and after about sixty seconds of rabid fear, I made myself look.
The tiger looked terribly vibrant against the snow. I flinched at the sight of him, but Goliath rubbed his cheek against my hair. “Doyle’s a tracker, Kitty. Almost as good as you. Never seen the like of it. He didn’t track you by scent. It was…” He shrugged. “It was amazing. I ain’t never seen anything like it.”
“Doyle,” I whispered. Closing my eyes, I turned that over in my head. “Doyle found me?”
“Yes.” He crouched down in the snow by the tiger and I had no choice by to stare at his face. Golden eyes stared back at me. “Everybody else was scouring Orlando. Nobody would listen to the kid and he showed up in Wolf Haven, roaring like a big, dumb….well, tiger. I go out there and he shifted, stared at me. Asked if I was the one who’d raised you.” He settled me on his legs and then reached over, stroked Doyle’s head. “Told him that he’d need TJ for that…that’s close, isn’t it, little Kitty? We were all looking, but he says everybody was looking wrong. So I say we were friends, sure, and he tells me he can find you but nobody is helping him. I tell him if he’s wrong, I’m gonna have me a tiger-skin rug.”
My gut twisted. “How…” The tiger sighed and stretched his weight out in the snow.
“He doesn’t know how, Kit. He just knew.” Goliath settled in the snow, unfazed by the cold, but it was starting to kill me. Shuddering, shaking, I huddled inside Justin’s jacket and tried to get warm, but it just wasn’t possible.
Doyle inched closer, pressed his torso against my exposed legs and feet. The relief was almost painful as pins and needles replaced the numb sensation.
Trapped—
“Tiger might as well do something useful,” Goliath said, his voice lazy and quiet. “Keep your feet warm better than I can right now. Once Justin is finished, we’ll find you something to wear, but for now…”
I latched onto the sane, simple presence that was Goliath. He’d pulled me through a lot. I could trust him. Shivering, I rested my head on his shoulder and stared at the house. “What are they doing?”
“Well…if we’re lucky, they’ll burn Jude’s ass into ashes,” Goliath said, a nasty growl edging into his voice. Then he shrugged. “We probably won’t get lucky. Jude’s an opportunistic son of a bitch and he knows all about survival. He knows he’s fucked and he won’t give them a reason to kill him.”
“What will happen now?”
I heard a branch crack behind us. The sound of it had me ready to bolt off Goliath’s lap. He let me and I would have tripped over Doyle, but the tiger shifted his long body, bracing me with his weight instead.
Three bodies—I counted them by their feet.
Two males. One of them, I couldn’t look at. Ever. I hunched my shoulders and focused on the pain in my frozen feet. I could handle the cold, but this was getting to be too much.
“Jude violated one of the major laws of the charter,” Colleen said softly. “He’s going to trial and if he wasn’t one of the one of the older ones, if he wasn’t one of the Speakers, he’d probably be a dead man walking. In more ways than one.”
I looked at her. She was safe to look at. Very safe.
Her eyes were dark, troubled. So sad. “As it is, he’s looking at confined jail-time. Decades of it, at least.”
“He’s going in a box,” I whispered.
A pleased smile curled her lips as she swung a pack off her shoulder. “If we’re lucky, he may very well leave in one.” She pulled a blanket out and approached me, moving slowly. “You need some clothes. I’ve got some if you want them…?”
I swallowed, jerking my gaze around. Where could I get dressed—?
Seemed a foolish thing to worry about considering I’d spent more than half of the past two weeks naked. They’d taken my clothes. My weapons. Their loss was an empty, jagged hole in me and I couldn’t even explain it.
My sword—it was a jagged, raw wound inside of me and I wanted to cry. Wanted to sob. Instead, I focused on the clothes that Colleen held.
Jerking my head, I whispered, “Yes.”
Goliath got up. “I think if Miss Colleen holds the blanket by this tree and I stand just here…” He turned his back. “Between the tree, my big self and the blanket, you practically have a dressing room, Kitty.”
I nodded again, took one stumbling step away from Doyle’s sturdy presence. I almost fell and those booted feet—they belonged to a man I couldn’t look at—moved in my direction. I backed away and sank my hands into Doyle’s fur.
“Doyle, why don’t you help Kit over here?” Colleen said quietly. “I think the cold’s making her legs stiff.”
Doyle s
tarted to walk.
I heard another low snarl.
Colleen snapped, “Shut the fuck up before I turn you into a toad.”
I flinched. From the corner of my eye, I saw him moving and I lunged for the solid presence of Goliath. Tucked away behind him, I sagged against the tree. Hide…I could hide here.
* * * * *
The problem with hiding behind a big, living mountain…the living mountain eventually decided to move.
I had clothes on. For the first time in too long. Colleen was a few inches taller than me and a lot curvier, but they were warm and clean and there was something terribly comforting about the scent of her herbs and magic wrapping around me.
I had barely finished shoving my feet into the spare boots before Goliath moved. And he moved fast, hard, and low.
“Not now,” he snarled as he caught Damon around the waist.
“Get the fuck away,” Damon growled.
I fell backward against the tree, arms wrapped around myself, staring at them.
His eyes cut to me and I sank to the ground, feeling like a cornered animal.
Hide…have to hide...
“Not now!” Goliath roared and he slammed a massive hand down on Damon’s head, shoving him into the ground.
Doyle rose and paced between us, that striped body cutting off my view.
“Kit. Come with me now,” Colleen said, reaching down and grabbing my arm.
I just huddled there. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
His eyes. I could still feel the weight of his eyes cutting in me.
Had he seen—?
I plucked at the high neck of the sweater, holding it up over my throat as I looked around, staring out into the night. At anywhere but here. The sweater. I needed something with a higher collar, something to hide what Jude had done. Needed it higher, had to keep the marks on my neck covered. He’d chewed me up, marked me well and good and I needed to hide it—
“Kitasa, come with me,” Colleen said again, dragging me upright and walking.
The men on the rocky forest floor were still struggling but despite Goliath’s massive size, Damon was getting the better of him. Come…yes. Colleen. Go with Colleen. That sounded good—
“Kit!” Damon rasped out. And his voice sounded broken. “Baby girl…”
I sobbed and nearly fell.
A hand caught me and I froze.
“I’m sorry, Kit, I just…”
Chang. I looked up and saw him staring at me. Just like all of them. Everybody. Staring.
Staring at broken, ruined Kit.
Carefully, I backed away from him, shaking my head. “Colleen. Get me away from here,” I whispered. “I can’t…”
Her arm came around my waist.
“I know, Kitasa. I know.”
* * * * *
Silence reigned in my head.
Colleen found us a sheltered spot in the trees and she cast a fire.
It didn’t burn from wood.
It hovered about the ground, spinning out of her magic and warming at least my body, even if it couldn’t touch anything else.
Her hands hovered over my ribs, my arms, my belly, careful not to touch any part of my skin as she checked the injuries she’d managed to coax out of me. “His healer is decent,” she said reluctantly. “There’s no lingering damage, no scars except…”
I twisted away from her and hunched up my shoulder, pulling the collar of the sweater higher to block them from view. In a broken, stilted voice, I whispered, “Can you get them off?”
“No,” she said softly. “They’ve already healed. The only thing that might remove them would be surgery and that’s not always an easy option with us.”
Us. Witches and aneira, others with bodies that were more than human but not quite something else. Our bodies didn’t take well to non-natural forms of healing. Sometimes it worked just fine. I knew one witch had attempted to have scars from an attack removed, and she’d arrested on the table.
She’d died because she wanted her scars removed.
I thought it might be worth it.
Colleen touched my hand. “Warriors learn to carry scars.”
The silence in my head had never seemed so terribly loud. “I’m not a warrior anymore,” I murmured. I’m nothing. My hand seemed to so terribly empty and I so terribly needed my blade.
“You are,” Colleen said, her eyes flashing in the firelight.
No. I wasn’t. And the emptiness of my hand was just more proof of that. I twisted my wrist, popped it, longed for that reassuring weight, but it was just…gone. And in the back of my head, the music that had always comforted me was so painfully silent.
I’d never felt more alone, more empty in my entire life.
Unable to think about that, I shifted my gaze back to Doyle.
The tiger was pacing ever closer, like he was trying to work up the courage to come up to the fire, but not sure he was ready to do it yet.
“How long are we going to be here?” I stared at the house where hell had held me trapped. Where it had broken me.
“Until they convince Jude to leave without a fight.” She drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them. “We can start to head out. Anytime you’re ready. We’ll have to walk, but we can do it. Quickest way out is by heli, but we didn’t want to make the noise, so we hiked in.”
I shuddered. Walking through there didn’t bother me. But I was very much bothered by the idea of walking away from here without knowing that he was locked away.
Colleen shifted her foot over and nudged me with her toe. Just that light touch made me want to cringe and I think she knew it. I also think that was why she did it. To show me she could touch me and that I wouldn’t break.
But she was wrong. I was already broken.
“If you have to see him in the box, then you have to see it. It won’t take any more than a few hours at best. Banner doesn’t have the kind of patience for prolonged…debates,” she said the word slowly and with relish. “If he fights too much, Justin will just issue the kill order.”
Banner.
“How is Banner involved?”
“Kit…” She stared at me. “Sweetheart, almost everybody got involved. Once we knew what had happened…” She shrugged. “The Assembly, in general, wouldn’t come after him, but they took a clear step back when we told them we were coming after you. Es told them that Whittier House might be ended when we were done and if any of the vampire clutches had a problem, they could take it up with the whole of the Order of Witches.”
I pressed my face to my knees.
They’d come for me.
“Justin knew something was wrong first,” she said.
Branches crunched.
I tensed, but managed not to flinch as I lifted my head and watched as she came to sit down next to me. “He went looking for you after you didn’t call him back,” she said quietly. “He found your car. Your phone. It was only the next day. I…”
A taut silence fell before she finally said, “Kit, I’m so sorry. He told me that you’d mentioned something about Damon and…he said you’d fought.” She swallowed.
I could feel the pain in her, but just hearing his name was a bitter strike inside me. “It’s over,” I said woodenly.
Her hand caught mine as another one of those roars ripped through the night. I started to shudder and she tugged me close. “Shhh. Come on, Kit. Anyway, I told him that maybe you’d taken off for a few days. Gone to Wolf Haven and he told me to get bent. You don’t disappear without your phone, your car. So we started looking. Called Goliath. TJ. They hadn’t heard from you, so they start looking. You know TJ and she won’t leave, but she’s tearing up the internet and Goliath is tearing up central Florida. He’s the one who went to Damon.”
“He didn’t need to bother.” I turned my face into her neck. “No point in him pestering the Alpha with this—”
“Kit—”
Colleen’s voice hissed out my name and she shoved me behind her.
“That big fuck didn’t need to bother me?” he growled. “No point in pestering the fucking Alpha?”
I inched away, dropping my gaze to my knees.
Hide…have to hide…I eased backward, slowly bit by bit, only to freeze when he roared and slammed a fist into the frozen earth.
“Damn it, Kit.” Something that might have been tears glimmered in his eyes. “Did you really think I wasn’t coming for you?”
The scars at my neck throbbed. Burned. Marked…ruined…
It’s over, baby girl…
The words sounded in my head and something that might have been the first flickers of anger tried to rise, but under the grief, under the fear, the shame, those embers only flickered, then they died.
Staring into Damon’s eyes, I shook my head and forced the words out. I needed him to get away from me. Now. “There was no reason for you to come. It was over, remember?”
“Baby girl…” He reached out a hand to touch me.
The sight of that hand made me flinch. Strong, beautiful hands…and even the thought of being touched by him, by anybody now filled me with fear.
Broken. Ruined.
Bitterness well inside me and I surged upward. He moved with me and I was trapped. Trapped between the warmth of his body and the trees at my back and everybody gathered around us. “I can say it now.” Now that nothing stopped me, the words came spilling out of me like poison. “The job’s done. Nothing binding me or tying my throat into a knot if I try to speak the words I’d wanted to say from the beginning. I was trying to save you.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I know. Kit, I’m sorry—”
“You’re sorry?” I stared at him, shaking my head. “You’re fucking sorry? I had a couple of days at the most and if I didn’t find them some justification, Banner was going to put an execution order out on you. And I couldn’t say anything because I’d been bound. I couldn’t say a word. My lungs froze up and it was pain on end just to think about saying any of the words burning inside me…but oh, okay…you’re sorry.”
Night Blade (Colbana Files) Page 24
