by Kathy Lyons
He paused to steady his breath. He didn’t want to remember this but knew that Laddin needed to hear it.
“In any accident, all we think about is finding the victim, stabilizing the bleeder while watching for fire, and getting them ready for transport. That’s it. Find, stabilize, transport. The sounds, the smells, and the noise—it’s all chaos. We put one foot in front of the other until it’s done. We don’t think about it, we do our jobs.”
He leaned back against the van bumper, blowing out the memories as he relaxed his body.
“And then it’s done. We’re back in the firehouse and no one’s talking or we’re talking obsessively. Depends on the person. Me, I’m quiet. Then I’d find the nearest girl and I’d plow into her as fast and as furious as I can. But that only takes a guy so far. Eventually you have a moment when it’s just you and your thoughts and suddenly you’re back there again. And this time you can’t shove it away. You smell it again, breathe it again, and the feel….” He shuddered. “I scooped gray matter off the pavement as we lifted his body onto a gurney. He was still breathing because the body does amazing things at times, but we all knew where it was going. We did our job and moved on.” He swallowed as the memory rolled through him.
Then he looked at Laddin, who had lifted his head off his arms. His dark eyes were barely visible in the shadows, but he was watching Bruce. And he was listening.
“I scooped part of a man’s brain off concrete, and it still haunts me.” He leaned back against the wheel of the van. “What you went through today was worse. A thousand times worse. And I’ll bet you never trained for that.”
Laddin lifted his head. “There hasn’t been time,” he said softly.
Bruce shrugged. “I’m not sure you can train for murderous fairies, anyway.”
Laddin let that hang in the air for a while. Eventually he relaxed his grip on his legs and set his chin on his knees. “I keep thinking this is like the rabbits, only it’s so much worse.”
Bruce frowned. “You’ve fought Monty Python killer rabbits?”
Laddin’s lips curved into a ghost of smile. “No. Normal, everyday kind of bunnies living out their lives in the woods.”
“And they attacked?” Bruce couldn’t picture it.
“No. They were normal rabbits.” He blew out a breath. “I ate them. We were running as a pack, doing something. I smelled them, dug around until they came hopping out, and then I….”
Ate them. Right. What the hell was he supposed to say about that? “Wolves will be wolves?”
Laddin shrugged. “Something like that. The thing is, I wasn’t really popular as a kid.” He held up his weird hand. “It was hard to play ball well with this. I managed okay and I had friends, but for baseball or basketball, I couldn’t be as good as the other guys. Even video games had extra challenges.”
And boys that age were all about sports. “No good at soccer?” He wouldn’t have needed good hands for that.
“Not good enough, and believe me, I tried. I never made it onto any high school sports teams.”
That was weird because Laddin seemed all about the pack. Unless…. “That’s why you keep talking about the pack. About how you love running around as wolves. It’s your team sport.”
Laddin nodded. “It’s the best. Sometimes, there’s a goal—find something, hunt something, I don’t know. But we’re all together, part of a pack even though we’re doing separate things.”
A team. And when a team worked well, there was nothing better. “A good firehouse is like that too. It works whether we’re fighting fires or hanging out eating barbeque.” But how did the rabbits fit in?
“I never had that as a kid. Not after peewee football ended. It was just my mom and me, and sometimes my grandmother.” He rolled his shoulders back and lifted up off his knees enough to look at Bruce. “Except for my mom’s rabbits in her lab. I would go there after school and she’d let me play with them. When I was really little, I used to fall asleep in a pen with three or four of them hopping around. And when I grew older, I would talk to them. If Mama was busy, I’d tell them about my homework, I’d practice my speeches.” He closed his eyes. “I told them I was gay before I told Mama.”
The rabbits had been his friends, his confidantes, and his pack. Lab animals who probably had a doomed life, but Laddin hadn’t cared. They were there for him when his mother was too busy. “Then you ate wild rabbits as a wolf?”
“Yeah.” He looked up, his expression haunted. “Bruce, they tasted fantastic.”
What a mind-fuck that had to be. “Finding it hard to reconcile the two? Childhood bunnies with—”
“Romping through the woods with my pack and eating whatever hopped into view. Yeah.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. And then today I was nearly killed by pixies. Cute little fairies that are on cereal boxes and children’s books. Those fuckers nearly did me in.”
And in a pretty awful way.
Laddin closed his eyes. “I can’t wrap my mind around it.” He dropped his forehead onto his arms again. “And now I can’t go outside because I’ll see the field. I’ll look out there and—”
“Remember?”
Laddin’s answer was a shudder. Bruce could relate. He was very grateful to have his back turned to that circle of doom where he’d been pinned down. He wasn’t looking at it, but he sure as hell knew it was there.
Bruce pulled up everything he knew about Laddin. They’d talked a little, shared about their before-werewolf jobs and lives.
“You’re an explosives expert, right? I bet your work area was meticulous. Everything in its place, everything under control.”
Laddin rolled his head until he was looking at Bruce. “Yeah. It’s demolitions. Careless people get killed. Disorganized people lose body parts.”
“We’re taught the same thing in the fire academy. Everything in its place. Everyone doing their job. Protocol, procedure.”
He stroked Laddin’s cheek. It wasn’t something he thought deeply about. He just wanted to touch the guy more than shoulder to shoulder. So he caressed the hard angles and rough five-o’clock shadow, then let his thumb roll over the man’s lips. He felt the fullness of it and the texture. Soft. Rough. Wet.
His dick jumped in hunger.
“It all goes to shit in the field,” Bruce said. “Not the protocols, of course, though that sometimes happens too. I mean the logic, the organization. The whole fucking system sometimes. We scramble to do what needs to be done, and after it’s over, we put it back together. Hoses where they belong. Equipment cleaned and reset. Supplies refilled, bandages restocked, and everything in its place.”
Laddin exhaled. “I worked on movies. If something went to shit, it was because someone fucked up. The demolitions were under control, the actors were only pretending to get blown to hell. And we didn’t have to put shit back together because I made sure it didn’t break in the first place.”
Bruce nodded. He understood because he recognized the appeal of adrenaline even when your life was exploding around your ears. “Today wasn’t a movie. No one had anything under control. And just like the bunnies, you both loved it and hated everything about it. Because it was messy, and you felt alive.”
“I fucking loved eating those rabbits. I want to do it again.”
“And you hate that about yourself too.”
“Yeah.” He lifted up off his arms. “What do I do?”
Bruce shrugged. He had no answers. “I’ll answer that if you tell me how I can find the damned demon and save the world.”
Laddin’s lips curved. “I haven’t a clue.”
“Right back at you.”
They waited a moment, their eyes connecting as Bruce’s body heated and swelled to an uncomfortable degree.
“Bruce?”
“Yeah?”
“I hate this barn. Want to go back to our room and fuck?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Then we’ll save the world, okay?”
“
Sure.” Bruce grinned, belatedly remembering something. “I brought sandwiches too. Want to eat first?”
Laddin appeared to consider that, then nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
Laddin grinned. “Nah. That’ll come afterwards.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Promises, promises. You better put your dick—”
“Where your mouth is.”
Bruce laughed—he straight-out laughed at the joke, which wasn’t a joke at all because he sure as hell intended to do just that. So he held out his hand, and Laddin took it. They hauled each other upright and headed around the van.
Laddin tensed as he stepped into the sunlight, and Bruce thought it was because he was looking out at the field. And maybe it was.
Or maybe it was something else. Laddin gestured at him, and his voice was weary and teasing at the same time. “Dude, will you put your pants back on? I mean I love the sight, but what if Lady Kinstead wanders by?”
What? Oh yeah. His sweatpants had fallen off when he’d shifted to wolf. But rather than grab the discarded garment, he pushed the joke, hoping to get Laddin to smile. “I don’t know. Is she into threesomes?” He really was joking. He wasn’t the least bit interested in sharing Laddin with anyone, much less his strange many-greats grandmother.
“Wulfric will cut off your balls for thinking that about his mother.”
Oh right. “I guess I’ll put on my pants.”
“Good idea.”
“Then you can take them off me when we’re in our room.”
And there it was. Laddin’s smile. “Or maybe I’ll rub one out while you strip for me.”
Now there was an interesting idea.
Chapter 18
PRETTY ISN’T PERFECT
THEY’D JUST made it to their bedroom door when Nero walked down the hall. For such a big guy, he moved pretty fast, but even so, Bruce could see the weariness in his walk, not to mention the livid bruise that still covered half his face.
“Bruce,” Nero said, “Wulfric wants to talk to you. That bedroom.” He pointed to the room down the hall.
Laddin stiffened. “About what?” His tone rang with hostile challenge.
“About whatever the fuck he wants. He’s the boss.” Nero didn’t like being questioned, and his tone made that absolutely clear. But Laddin didn’t back down. He was exhausted, reeling, and could barely stand on his feet, but he was ready to fight Nero for Bruce.
And didn’t that warm Bruce’s heart? And cock.
But he couldn’t let Laddin commit career suicide either, so he squeezed the guy’s arm. “I wanted to check on Wulfric’s wounds anyway.”
“He doesn’t have any wounds,” Nero said. “The cleric healed him.”
“Then why’s he still in bed?” Bruce asked. If he knew anything about men of action, it was that healed leaders didn’t hide in a bedroom away from central command. That told him that something wasn’t going well for Wulfric.
To his credit, Nero didn’t bluster. Instead his expression grew taut with worry. “Yeah. So go check him out, will you?” His eyes hardened on Laddin. “And you, get some rest. You’re so strung out, you’ve forgotten that you’re not in charge.”
Laddin flushed at the hit but didn’t back down. “I haven’t signed on for the full tour, you know,” he said grumpily.
“But you are on through the next full moon, puppy. So I suggest you get your ass to bed.”
Bruce wanted to help Laddin out. The guy was defending him, after all. But Wulf, Inc. was a quasimilitary organization. Laddin needed to understand chain of command if he was going to work inside its ranks, and Bruce wouldn’t do him any favors by interfering with that lesson. Though he did give Laddin a smile.
“I’ll be fine. And he’s right—you’re dead on your feet.”
Laddin gave in because he was smart enough to realize he wasn’t going to win, but he still shot Nero an angry look. Then he turned back to Bruce. “Fine. Check out Wulfric, but don’t take too long. I’m still your trainer, and we’ve got things to work out.”
“Roger that,” Bruce answered. There was nothing like being the new guy who got ordered around by everybody. He even knew that Laddin was doing it out of concern, but it had been a long time since he’d been the probie everybody pushed around. He hadn’t liked it then, and he didn’t appreciate it now, but he knew enough to let it go, so he headed toward Wulfric’s room.
What he saw when he stepped into the bedroom stopped him cold. If this was what Nero called “healed,” then Wulf, Inc. was in desperate need of medical personnel. And people with eyes.
Wulfric lay on his bed, barely moving. His long legs stretched out beneath a thin blanket, his sunken chest barely moved, and his face still looked as if it had been used as a basketball in an NBA game.
Then Nero stepped into the room and suddenly Bruce’s vision went wonky. Superimposed over that very ill man on the bed was the exact same guy, only healthy and vibrant. His eyes sparkled, his skin looked golden brown, and his face was movie-worthy for rugged man-of-adventure roles. And it was all a total illusion.
“This is Bruce Collier,” Nero said. “He helped us get you into the house. Feel free to beat the crap out of him for me if you like. I can make you something better for lunch while you do it. Want a steak?” He gestured to the uneaten sandwich on a tray by the bed.
Bruce stared at Nero and realized the man didn’t see the truth beneath the illusion. Wulfric wasn’t up to beating up an egg, much less a man. And he couldn’t eat a sandwich, steak, or anything that required chewing. His face was too swollen for that.
“No, thanks,” Wulfric said, his voice weak. “I’m not hungry.”
Nero frowned. “You don’t sound so good. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m doing fine—”
“But I could use some bone broth,” Bruce interrupted. “Or a smoothie. Even a sports drink would be great. And bring a straw, please. It’s the only way I can get it down.” He flashed Nero a weak smile. “It’s been a hard couple days, and my stomach is still feeling unsettled.”
Nero gave him a hard glare, but Bruce didn’t flinch. Then, because he was feeling pissy, he added an extra kicker.
“Laddin will never forgive you if you let me pass out from low blood sugar. And unless I miss my guess, you really need to make nice with the only paramedic around.”
He watched the muscle in Nero’s jaw twitch. The man didn’t like taking orders from anyone, but he didn’t argue, especially when Wulfric chimed in.
“That sounds delicious. Would you mind getting one for me too?”
Nero might tell Bruce to go get his own fucking drink, but he wouldn’t say that to Wulfric. So he gave his boss a clipped nod and stepped out. Bruce thought he’d slam the bedroom door, but he wasn’t that petty. Nero probably knew something was off with Wulfric, but he didn’t want to call out the mystical head of Wulf, Inc.
Bruce didn’t have that problem. He stepped closer to the bed and peered at the man’s bloody face. “You’re a mess, and they can’t clean it unless they can see it.”
Wulfric’s gaze shifted to Bruce. “I thought you might be able to see through the glamour.”
“The what?”
“Fairy glamour. It puts out an illusion that most people can’t see through.”
Oh right. Nero had mentioned that when they’d first arrived in the barn. They’d done something then to dispel the illusion, but obviously it had worn off because no one but Bruce could see the truth.
“So even magical people can’t see through it?” Bruce asked. Laddin had said that paranormal folks could see fairies, so a powerful werewolf like Nero should have been able to see through a fairy glamour.
Wulfric’s lip twitched up. “I see your brother isn’t the only smart one in the family. Let’s just say that this is an extra-strong glamour.”
That explained why Nero couldn’t see through it, but not why Wulfric felt he had to keep up the illusion in the first place. Thinki
ng he might as well get started, Bruce went into the bathroom and filled a basin with water. The first step was to clean out the wounds. Then he’d see what mess was underneath.
“I thought that cleric woman healed you,” he said as he came out with washcloth and basin. There was a basic first-aid kit by the bed, but it was nearly empty. He’d have to send someone for the full med kit, if there even was one.
“She did, but all magic requires belief,” Wulfric answered. “You should remember that.”
He would. “She looked like someone who believed.”
“She does. I don’t.”
Bruce paused just before dabbing at Wulfric’s face. “You don’t believe in magic?”
“Not really.”
“Aren’t you over two hundred years old? And a werewolf who uses a fairy glamour?”
Again, the guy’s lips twitched. “Irony is one of the few joys left to me.” And while Bruce stared at him, Wulfric’s shoulder lifted in a weak shrug. “They believe, and so the glamour gets stronger when they’re here. They want me healed, so her spell worked to keep me alive.”
“But you don’t want any of it?” He’d met many people who didn’t care if they saw tomorrow, usually the severely depressed and the elderly. He supposed a two-hundred-year-old guy would count as elderly, though the body he saw—even the injured one—looked to be around thirty years old. If it wasn’t for the swollen, damaged face, he’d seem as vital as anyone, even if he was on the thin side.
“I don’t believe in any of it. There’s a difference.”
Not one that Bruce could understand, so he focused instead on what he did know. He rinsed out the washcloth and held it up. “This could hurt a bit.” Or a lot.
“If I can use a fairy glamour, I can dull pain.”
Really? “I thought you didn’t believe in it.”
The guy’s eyes flashed with humor. “I believe in the hydrocodone I took an hour ago.”
