Blacke and Blue

by Fiona Blackthorne

  Maria narrowed her gaze expectantly. “You have spoken to those who survived before. You have seen what happened tonight. You know the evil in men’s hearts. She knows it, too, now, but she doesn’t know how to think of it, or how not to think of it.”

  “Again, that’s therapy, not just some kitchen table chat,” Trisha replied, trying not to be irritated. She was the psychology expert here. What was this woman doing, trying to tell her what to do? Naturally, she’d talk to the girl, but she selfishly wanted to see Ger and Ian….and she wanted to sleep. Tomorrow would do for the girl.

  “You almost drowned tonight,” Maria said quietly. “You had nothing to hold onto.”

  Trisha remained silent and waited for the woman to finish.

  “Just…throw her the—what do you call it?—life preserver to hold onto. For tonight, Agent Blacke.”

  She took another long sip of the drink, concentrating on feeling it go all the way down to her belly, warm and sharp. Responsibility was such an irritating thing, and of course she was going to do it all along, but for once, she just wanted to be tired, whiny, and human, not FBI.

  The thought of Ger and Ian fighting through cold and death to save her struck her. They were human. Well, she had questions about Ger, but no, she couldn’t go there just yet in her brain. They had reached deep one more time for her, and for them, that had been the epitome of their humanity.

  Maybe the ice-cold Agent Blacke who forever fought the worst in humanity had to do some remembering about what it truly meant to be human in all ways. Oh God, it was way too late at night to be thinking about deep shit like that.

  “You said she is in the kitchen?” Trisha said with a sigh and lopsided smile.

  “Yes, but let’s have you take a warm shower first to clean up,” Maria said, smiling like the sun was shining from her soul. “You will have terrible hair in the morning if you do not get the salt and seaweed and mud out.”

  Trisha rolled her eyes and finished her drink. “This was really good,” she said, gesturing to her mug.

  “‘Oh, true apothecary!’” Maria proclaimed, then winked. “Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.”

  After a night like tonight, Trisha should have stopped wondering why things like a South American political dissident who made hot toddies, quoted Shakespeare, and had hideous taste in nightwear should have surprised her.

  She sighed and decided that, sometimes, life was just like that.

  * * * *

  Trisha wondered just how much longer this night could go. Or was it morning?

  The stove’s clock display read 1:24 a.m.

  At least the kitchen was warm and bright and empty except for the small figure sitting at the table.

  It was only that nagging, trudging sense of responsibility that made her drag her aching body, step-by-step, over to the kitchen table where Perk’s last would-be victim sat cradling a mug and staring off into space.

  Trisha sat down in the chair kitty-corner to the girl’s and studied her quietly, her mind snapping automatically into her trained evaluation process. Young woman, no more than 26, golden-blonde hair, hazel eyes, pale skin, pretty in a simple, refreshing way. A closer look revealed evidence of starvation and fading bruises. The young woman’s eyes flickered to Trisha, and she caught a glimpse of deep and terrible fear before an expression of neutral self-sufficiency swallowed up the evidence.

  “I’m Agent Trisha Blacke with the FBI,” Trisha said simply. “I’m so very sorry for what happened to you tonight.”

  The young woman stared at her, then nodded.

  “Marguerite Moyer,” she said, then bit her lip. “Actually, um, I…are you going to have to tell the authorities where I am?”

  “That depends on why you don’t want me to tell them.”

  Marguerite nodded slowly and stared into her steaming mug. Finally, she said, “I’m running away. From someone.”

  “Are you over eighteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any warrants out for your arrest?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s no reason at all I should inform anyone of your whereabouts.”

  Marguerite’s shoulders and chest lowered, as if she had been holding breath and tension for a long time.

  “What…” Marguerite started to say, then chewed her lip, as if struggling to find words. “What happened tonight? I mean, I kind of know, but um, I think I might have been hallucinating or something.”

  Trisha’s smile was tired and rueful. “I can tell you parts of it, but I don’t exactly know for sure myself. I promise you, though, that I will get answers, and when I do, I will tell you what I can.”

  Marguerite nodded and sat quietly. So Trisha told the young woman the salient pieces of the story about Perk Hawkins, the Butcher of Bangor, and the way they had tracked Perk to his house. The explanation was necessarily short, though, partly because Trisha couldn’t share information that was privileged to the investigation, and partly because there were too many parts that she herself just didn’t understand.

  She watched the young woman sit there, absorbing everything. She noticed that Marguerite sat almost unnaturally still, and that her face was a careful blank. Combined with the fading bruises and the fact she was running away, Trisha knew she had been in a long-term abusive relationship with either family or a significant other. Stillness was an attempt not to be noticed, self-preservation through sheer willpower to be invisible to the abuser. She felt a pang of sorrow for the long road back from trauma that Marguerite faced, now to be burdened with a new set of nightmares.

  “Were you on your way to Blue Moon?” Trisha asked gently.

  Marguerite shook her head. “No, I was trying to go to Portland, but I was trying to go by the back roads and hitch from there.”

  “Hitching is…” Trisha had to bite her tongue before adding the word “dangerous.” The amount of danger this girl had faced tonight made hitching seem like taking a risk on drinking milk two days past the sell-by date.

  Marguerite flashed a ghost of a grin at Trisha, and there was a fleeting second of a happy, cheeky girl before everything sank behind the bland, faintly pleasant mask.

  “How are your hands?” Trisha tried instead.

  “They hurt. The doctor used his one dose of painkiller on me while he stitched me up. I was really loopy for a while. Now, he gave me some Tylenol. It’s not helping much, but the warm mug helps. I’m babbling, aren’t I? I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. I’m sorry your hands hurt, but I want to tell you that you were incredibly brave tonight. Without you grabbing the knife, none of us would have had a clear shot at him. So, in a sense, we were trying to save you, but you saved us.”

  Marguerite flushed with the pleasure of the compliment and ducked her head.

  “I think you should go to bed,” Trisha said, standing up and feeling her entire body complain loudly at the movement. “We can talk some more in the morning.”

  The young woman looked up at her, and Trisha was again struck by the fleeting expression of fear that darkened her hazel eyes.

  “You’re safe tonight,” she said, an unexpected welling of sorrow and compassion for the girl rising up in her heart. “That won’t stop the nightmares, not tonight, and not for a while. But, it’s a fact. An absolute fact that you can hold onto…when you feel like you’re drowning.”

  Marguerite gave her a thin, pained smile but nodded. She made no move to rise from the kitchen table, and Trisha decided it might be best to let her be, to process and cope in her own way. For now.

  * * * *

  One step. Another step. Three more steps. Maybe sixty seconds, maybe forty-five, until she would finally be with Ian and Ger. Six steps to that door. The wood floor under her feet creaked, and her hands brushed along the cold plaster of the walls. The door. The knob.

  And then, heaven.

  They had been waiting for her, Ger sprawled out and dozing in a faded chintz wingback chair, his legs propped up on an incongruou
sly small, tasseled footstool, and Ian sitting on a love seat, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and fingertips pressed together in front of his lips.

  “Hey, guys,” Trisha croaked, uncaring of the tears that were running down her face. She was literally too full of happiness. She didn’t know what to do with it, where to put it. She just stood there in the doorway, knowing that they were all alive in this moment.

  In an instant, the men were on their feet and at her side, pulling her over to the warm fire and wrapping her in their even warmer embraces. Hands stroked her hair and shoulders, sought the sensitive skin at the small of her back, and traced her neck down to her hips. Kisses rained down on her lips, eyelids, cheeks, and throat. There was nothing that wasn’t touched and adored and petted.

  She turned from one to the other, wrapping her arms around them and resting her head against their chests, inhaling their scents and kissing them back. She was soon lost in nothing but their kisses, and she barely noticed that her pajamas had fallen to a pink floral flannel puddle at her feet. She couldn’t have said whether it was the lightness of her own happiness or Ger carrying her over to the bed that made her feel weightless.

  All she knew was that Ian then Ger entered her, filling her at the same time, stroking every part of her body, setting fire to what had been frozen, warming what had been so very, very cold for so very long, and reaffirming that they were all here, real, and alive.

  There were no words for what she felt when Ger thrust into her pussy, his movement making her back into Ian’s cock in her ass. There was no escape from the sweet torture of Ger’s fingers on her breasts, teasing her nipples with restless touches and flicks while Ian’s deft fingers found and stroked her clit to that burning place where all that had been ice was gone, fear, bitterness, anger, depression as insubstantial as steam in the sun.

  And when release came, it came in a wordless song and soundless sobs, shaking her like a sapling between oaks. They held her.

  And she held them.

  And they slept.

  Chapter 26

  Ger woke feeling like he had been beaten with a lobster boat. Made of iron. With a herd of elephants on deck. His neck was super tender and painful, but a careful prodding of it with his fingers revealed that it was at least whole again.

  He opened his eyes and looked over to his right where the two heads he loved best lay still and huddled together. Trisha’s flame-red hair had a gentler glow to it in the fresh sunlight that caressed the room. Ian’s hair showed darker glints of brown. Ian’s hand lay protectively on Trisha’s shoulder, and her head was snuggled into the hollow of his neck.

  Ger was laying on his back, one arm raised and bent underneath his head, the other hand still tentatively feeling his throat, remembering the moments where there had been nothing but blood and teeth and hate.

  It seemed so foreign to this moment of deep peace where all that he needed to do was slowly watch the sun rise up over the horizon and burn the edges of the ocean to white gold. He was glad the bed faced east so he could savor this sight and offer it his thanks for being alive, for living to see another day, for loving another day.

  “Hey,” Ian said sleepily. “Nice to see you still alive.”

  Ger glanced over at his brother and grinned, then moderated his smile, realizing how much his throat still hurt even from the small movement of his jaw.

  “Morning, little brother,” Ger replied in a whisper. “Same to you.”

  “I’m awake,” Trisha grumbled. “But if you guys are going to be Chatty Cathys, you had better have coffee for me.”

  And there it was, the joy of his life.

  There wasn’t one thing about this woman he would change, even the fact she was grumpy in the morning. He felt her squirm and stretch under the covers next to him, and his body reminded him that there were lots of ways besides coffee to improve his woman’s attitude toward mornings.

  He rolled onto his side and turned her face toward him, reveling in her clear morning-after-the-storm sky-blue eyes. He smiled at her, but she was hesitant in her smile back, a frown appearing between her brows.

  “What is it, love?” he asked, his expression mirroring hers now.

  “Um, last night,” she said, glancing away, then scooting herself up to a seated position with her back against the pillows and the sheet held around her chest. “I saw things…and I want to know what I saw, if I saw anything.”

  Ian shot Ger a warning glance, and Ger’s heart took an express elevator down to the pit of his gut.

  “You weren’t imagining things,” Ger said finally. “You weren’t hallucinating or dreaming.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Trisha said. “I couldn’t find any sign that I had suffered head trauma, and I’ve never had any neurological conditions that could prompt something like hallucinations.”

  He heard Ian laugh grimly at Trisha’s calm self-assessment, their woman still cool and clinical in the face of the impossible.

  “But,” she continued. “I guess I am still having trouble actually believing that men can, um, shift? Is that the right word? Shift into wolves. Just like that.”

  “Yeah,” Ger said. “I can see why that would be hard.”

  “Care to explain it? And why you kept that from me? Did you decide to keep me in the dark about that before or after you decided to seduce me?”

  Her words were a blow to his gut, but he knew he deserved every one of them. No matter what he had felt for Trisha, he should have waited until all this was over to explain to her what he was before he pulled her into his world and into his bed. He hadn’t lied, but he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming, either, and that was no foundation for trust. And without her trust, this would all be over before it had even had a chance to begin.

  “I don’t know if it’s worse that you lied to me as your…your lover or that you withheld crucial information from my investigation!” she added, her voice an icy contrast to the tears in her eyes. “You both put me at a serious risk by not telling me this from the get-go. Or, or at least from the point where you decided to fuck me. I might have figured out it was Perk sooner. That girl would not be traumatized with a lifetime’s worth of Little Red Riding Hood nightmares now. Sarah Hawkins might still be alive. Perk might still be alive and able to face justice.”

  “No,” Ian interjected, his face grave as he focused his gaze on Trisha. “Perk would have never faced justice alive.”

  “Are you kidding me? He’s not the suicidal type, not even suicide by cop. He would have—”

  “No,” Ian broke in again. “The pack would have handled him before he could ever come before a human court of law.”

  “Are you a wolf, too?” Trisha demanded, and Ger’s gut twisted at his brother’s sad shake of his head and “No.” The answer was so much more complex than that. Everything was so much more complex than that.

  Trisha waved her hands angrily and let them slump back into her lap, the sheet falling just enough that Ger caught a tantalizing glimpse of the undercurve of her breast. He looked up to find her glaring at him.

  “My, what big breasts you have!” he said, leering comically at her. “What? I am a wolf, after all.”

  Her glare wavered before breaking into reluctant laughter. Ian snorted and shook his head.

  “That wasn’t funny, and I’m still mad at you both,” she spluttered, trying to calm down.

  Ger sighed, but he felt just a little bit lighter still knowing he could make her laugh. He reached out and rubbed her knee through the sheet, the fragile, bony feel making protectiveness surge through him.

  “So,” he said slowly. “Here’s the story of Blue Moon and why men here are born werewolves—”

  “And why some aren’t,” interjected Ian. Ger looked at his little brother and raised his eyebrow, but he knew that there was no stopping Ian from interrupting and adding his own facts to the story. It was that police thing about him and getting the complete picture of the evidence.

  “In 1696,” Ger said. �
��A woman named Goody Barrows walked into the woods and never returned. She was a witch and somehow opened a portal of some kind that brought demons into this world, and—”

  “Whoa!” Trisha exclaimed. “Wait. Demons?”

  “Just listen,” Ian said. “Fit the theory to the facts, Agent Blacke.”

  She scowled at Ian but turned a cautious gaze back to Ger.

  “The demons almost destroyed Blue Moon,” he continued. “A man by the name of Aristide Molineaux, the ancestor of Robert, Declan, and Sean, did some kind of hocus-pocus that put a spell on the town. The demons were trapped within the borders of the town, and the men born of Blue Moon could protect the town from the demons. Apparently, as the story goes, Molineaux didn’t exactly know what he was doing, as he was mixing old alchemy with native practices from the Red Paint people that had lived here for who knows how long. So, his spell worked, but it meant that every male child born in Blue Moon would be a werewolf, or maybe shapeshifter is more accurate. And, those children would be bound by their wolf birthright to the town.”

  “I don’t…” Trisha’s voice trailed off, her eyes wide with unreadable emotion. Ger’s heart tugged painfully in his chest.

  “From sundown to sunup, no man born in Blue Moon could set foot over the border of the town,” he said. “To do so was to die. Instantly.”

  “Wait, so…you’re saying any boy born in Blue Moon for the past four hundred years has the ability to turn into a wolf in order to fight demons? And…that these demons were trapped within the borders of Blue Moon, and so were the men? That’s insane!”

  “It drove a lot of men insane,” Ian said. “Especially as the world got smaller with better transportation and technology. It broke a lot of families, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Trisha asked.

  “The curse forbade anyone from telling a newcomer about it,” Ian replied. “It was the curse’s way of making sure there were always enough boys being born in Blue Moon. But, after the boy was born, a lot of marriages broke up with either the father or mother leaving one parent behind to stay stranded in Blue Moon with the kid. Over the centuries, there were also cases where the mother would go into labor and run from Blue Moon so that the baby was born outside the borders. We get a lot of ‘mixed’ families like that.”