Wild Game (Codex Blair Book 4)

by Izzy Shows

  "He carried you?" Shawn's voice was sharp as a whip on my ears, and I avoided looking at him this time. "Why did he have to carry you?"

  I ground my teeth together to the point of making my jawbone ache. "I am not the patient, Shawn."

  "You look like you should be."

  I knew that, he didn't need to tell me. I knew, without looking in a mirror, that I looked haggard, that my skin was sallow, that my eyes bore the pain of my soul. Like I had gone through some sort of great ordeal, and that was exactly what had happened. I didn't need to be told how awful I looked.

  Kailan cleared his throat. "I would say I'm doing better, but it is hard for me to tell. I tried to See my leg, but I could not identify anything wrong with it, which does not feel true to me as I still have a limp and it aches now and again."

  "I could try to See it, if you want me to," I said, without giving Shawn the moment to speak. "It might be because it’s your own leg that it’s hiding itself from you." I didn't know if that was even possible, but it made sense to me.

  "Why are you saying that word funny?" said Shawn, cutting into the conversation.

  Kailan flicked his eyes from me to Shawn. "Because it has another meaning to us. To See something is to look beyond what is in front of your eyes and find its very nature. I told you, Blair, I don't feel comfortable—"

  "I wouldn't be Seeing you though," I said, cutting him off. "I would only look at your leg."

  He frowned, turning the idea over in his mind. I knew that he didn't like the idea of me Seeing him, but I figured as long as I didn't look at his face, it would be OK. It wasn't like I could garner any real information of him from his leg alone.

  "Let me look at it first, see how its healing, and then try your x-ray vision," Shawn said with a smile. He seemed to accept the nature of Seeing without any further questions, which was impressive to me. He had an open mind.

  Would he still have an open mind if he knew of the violence inside of me? No, probably not.

  The dark thought entered my mind, tainting the moment, and drawing my eyes down to my lap. I felt Shawn's eyes on me, as if he'd felt it the moment I'd looked away, but he didn't say anything.

  "I would agree with that course of action," Kailan said.

  I lifted my eyes to see the two of them looking at me, as if waiting for my approval. When had I become the Captain? "Yeah, that sounds good," I said, if only to move it along.

  Shawn walked over to where Kailan sat in the chair, placing his bag on the ground and kneeling in front of him. I saw the care with which he picked up Kailan's leg and smiled—it didn't matter to him that he'd just been told that Kailan had been strong enough to not only walk on his leg, but walk on it while carrying me. He knew the man was injured and was doing his best not to inspire any more pain. I watched as he inspected the wound, the skin having begun to knit together on its own now, though it was still a red and angry mark on the dark skin of Kailan's leg.

  "You definitely aggravated it by walking on it," he said, turning the leg a bit to get a better view. "I wouldn't have recommended it, but I don't know the circumstances, so I'm not going to judge you. Try to keep your weight off it as much as you can."

  Kailan didn't mention the excursion I had taken him on to find the location of the Utakar's attack and I appreciated that. It would have got me in trouble with the good doctor.

  Shawn passed a hand over the wound. "It's hot. There might be an infection, but I couldn't say more without taking blood."

  "No," Kailan said immediately.

  "No, I wasn't suggesting we do that. I'm sure your blood would draw quite the attention at a lab," Shawn said with a light chuckle. "I think you should let Blair take a look at it."

  I straightened up, wincing at the pain that came with the movement.

  "Hm." Kailan looked away from Shawn and me, staring up at the roof of my house. I don't know what he was studying, it was just a ceiling, but I guessed he was lost in thought trying to decide if he should let me. "All right then." He turned his gaze to me again. "But only look at my leg, Blair. I do not want you to See me."

  I kept my face impassive, but inside I was wondering why he didn't want me to See him. He had said that it was an intimate experience, but the way he had said it just then...it sounded like he was keeping secrets.

  Everyone's entitled to their own secrets. You haven't told him everything under the sun. I was reproachful to myself in my own thoughts, and took it to heart. I shouldn't pry as much as I did.

  Standing up, I limped over to the two of them, and Shawn helped me to take a seat beside him. He kept an arm around my back, something I would normally have shrugged off. I didn't like to be touched outside of specific occasions, no matter who it was. It spoke volumes to the amount of pain and distress I was in that I didn't push him away, but rather leaned into the embrace.

  "All right, let's hope this isn't as bad as it was the first time," I said, more to myself than to either one of them. Shawn didn't know what I was talking about, but Kailan did. He knew how bad it had been when I had Seen the Utakar's tainted ground.

  I trained my face onto his leg, closed my eyes, emptied my mind, and visualised that second pair of eyes opening.

  The change was immediate, the world was different, everything a swirl of pulsating colours. Kailan's skin, that which was not marred, glowed under my gaze. I saw a slew of marks that might have been tattoos if they had showed up under my normal eyes, but I had no idea what they could be now. I tilted my head to the side, narrowing my eyes as I looked on them. I wanted to decipher their meaning.

  Stop looking at him. Focus on the wound.

  Right. He didn't want me to See him, and I didn't want to trespass on the small amount of trust he had given me. I turned my eyes back to the wound, and saw a swirling mass of dark energy, black and green. It wasn't all that large and seemed to shimmer underneath the surface of his glowing leg. I could see that it had tendrils reaching out of the wound, but upon closer examination it looked like those tendrils were rather receding, not reaching. I leaned closer, hoping to glean more information, and reached out a hand to touch it.

  It fucking shocked me. I recoiled, grasping my hand with the other, and glared down at his leg. How rude.

  I closed my second eyes and opened my normal ones, looking up at Kailan again.

  "I think it's healing. I don't have the proper frame of reference, as I didn't See it when you were first injured, but it looks like it had been reaching outside of the wound to infect the rest of your leg, but it's not doing that anymore. If I had to, I'd say that what was reaching is dying off."

  "Very good," he said, his voice a soft murmur. "You take to the Sight very well."

  I all but glowed at the praise. Most of the time my teachers—Mal and Raven—were harsh on me. I understood why, they wanted me to work harder, and we didn't know what kind of timeframe we were on with trying to control the mark. I think Raven had told me I'd done a good job all of once in the two years that I'd known them, but it had meant a lot when they'd done it. Still, it felt really good to hear.

  "I'm glad to hear its healing. I don't know what we would have done if it wasn't," Shawn said, smiling at me. I grinned back at him, glad that he wasn't upset with me.

  A wave of exhaustion claimed me and I swayed, falling against Shawn.

  "I, uh, I think I need to go to bed," I said, my eyes closing of their own accord. "It's been a long day."

  "So it has," Kailan said.

  "Stay with me a minute longer, I'll get you there," Shawn said.

  "Don't mess with my stuff," I mumbled, opening my eyes to shoot a glare at Kailan.

  He chuckled. "Of course not."

  Shawn stood and scooped me up in his arms, carrying me out of the room and into my bedroom. He placed me on the bed, kneeling there to take my shoes off for me.

  "I can do that..."

  "Shush. You need to take it easy. I don't know what you got up to today, and if you don't want to tell me, that's OK. But let me ta
ke care of you."

  I smiled, shrugging out of my jacket and tossing it on the ground. I undid the button of my jeans and scooted them off, stopping to let Shawn pull them off my legs. I didn't have the energy to change, but sleeping in a T-shirt was different from sleeping in jeans. I curled up in the bed and closed my eyes, mumbling a thank you, expecting Shawn to leave.

  Instead, the bed dipped down as Shawn climbed in behind me, drawing me into his arms.

  "What are you doing? This...we have rules," I said, though I didn't have the energy to open my eyes. He stroked my hair, placing a kiss there.

  "I don't care. I'm going to be here for you."

  19

  Though my night was wracked with the usual nightmares, when I woke up my soul felt much better than it had the prior night. Shawn was gone though, the bed indented with the shape of his body and still warm. He hadn't left much earlier than when I'd awoken, and I was surprised that he'd been able to get up without me waking up. I must have been exhausted to sleep that deeply.

  I got out of the bed, shirked off my shirt, and went to the dresser to fish out fresh clothing. On top of the dresser was a note with my name on it. I grabbed it and flicked it open.

  Blair,

  I had to go to work, terribly sorry to miss you panicking that last night somehow changed our arrangement. Don't worry about it, babe.

  Shawn

  P.S. You snore.

  I had to laugh, shaking my head, and putting the note back in its place. Yet again, Shawn had known me all too well. If he had been here when I'd woken up I would have worried about how to bring it up, and already on the way to the dresser my mind had turned to the topic of how to talk to him about it. If he said not to worry about it, then all I could do was trust that nothing had changed. Shawn had never been anything but straight with me from the very beginning, so there was no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  I grabbed clean clothes and poked my head out the door, making sure that Kailan couldn't see me, and hurried into the bathroom. I put the clothes on the toilet and jumped into the shower, almost purring at the delicious feeling of hot water running over my back.

  I stayed in a little longer than was necessary, stroking the water down my hair and almost meditating. The roar of water sliding past my ears was enough to drive the thoughts out of my head for a moment, and that was too pleasant to pass up. When the hot water—Gods, I preferred it scalding—started to turn cold, I shut it off and climbed out, towelling off quickly and getting into my clothes. I stopped at the mirror for a brief second, scowling at the mess of platinum blonde hair, and dragged a comb through it. That done, I scampered out of the bathroom.

  "Feeling better?"

  I froze two feet into the living room and had to take a deep breath and remind myself that it was totally normal that someone else was in my house and awake and talking. I'd all but forgotten that in the solitude of my shower, and I still wasn't used to the idea of it. My house was my sanctuary, I didn't like the idea of someone else being there.

  Forcing a smile to my face, I relaxed my muscles and turned to Kailan.

  "Much, thank you." I walked into the kitchen and started to fix myself a cup of tea. "Do you want tea?"

  "Thank you, I would appreciate that."

  I grabbed another cup and threw a tea bag in it. It took a few minutes for the kettle to reach a boil, and then I poured the water over the tea bag in each cup. The delicious scent soon filled the air, and I carried both cups into the living room. It was nice to have a hot cup to wrap my hands around, the weather was getting colder, and I was going to have to think about turning the heat on soon. I was a terrible scrooge when it came to that sort of thing; I might be getting a semi-regular pay check now that I consulted for Finn, but it wasn't like I was rolling in money. And I was used to not having any money at all, which meant that most winters were spent without heat, bundled up in as many layers and blankets as was possible.

  Handing Kailan his cup, I took my usual seat in the chair next to the couch, as he had reclaimed the couch.

  "What's the plan for the day?" He lifted the cup to his lips and took a sip.

  I arched an eyebrow. That was a piping hot cup of tea that he had just sipped down like it was nothing. Must be nice to be a Fae and not need to worry about things like that, I guess.

  "Who says there's a plan?" I shrugged, nonchalant. "I don't always have a plan."

  He chuckled. "Your plan may not always work out, but you strike me as the type who at least tries to have one."

  He was right. I tried to keep everything as calculated as was possible, I didn't want to leave things up to chance. At the same time, though, I was hopelessly disorganized, as evidenced by the state of my house and car. But I didn't really want to tell him about my plan, since the first order of business was going to see Lillai about the wolf attacks, find out if she knew anything fishy that was going on in London. A newcomer just passing through that she'd taken notice of? Or a member of the community that just so happened to be a shifter.

  I didn't know how common that skill was, I didn't know a lot of things about magic, but I had to start somewhere.

  "You don't want to tell me," he said, his eyes trained on me.

  I pursed my lips. How had he known that? "No, not really. I have some things I need to check on, unrelated to the Utakar attacks. I know that it's important, but so is this."

  "Why don't you want to tell me about it?" He tilted his head to the side, eyebrows raised.

  "Because it's none of your business," I said. I didn't mean to be blunt, but that was the truth of the matter. He didn't need to know what I was up to outside of working on finding and killing the Utakar, and I didn't want him to get too involved with London while he was here. His stay was temporary. As much as I wanted to help him, he remained an unknown entity to me.

  I waited for him to insist on knowing all the details, but he nodded his head instead. "You don't trust me. I understand. I would not either were I in your position. Is there anything that I can know?"

  I pressed my lips together, twisting them to the side as I thought about it. Honestly, my plans for the day hinged on what Lillai had for me. If she didn't know anything, then I was going to be shit out of luck, and would have to start scrounging through the community on my own. I didn't want to do that, as I didn't have much in the way of pull there.

  I still didn't know what they thought of me, after everything that had gone down at the compound. I had been so busy with Mal and Lilith that I hadn't checked in with Lillai to see if I was a hated member of society now. To be fair, we had saved everyone, and as far as they knew the succubus was dead. They had all been asleep when Mal had taken her, thanks to Emily's God given magic, and neither Emily nor I had told them that she'd got away. She was locked up, which was as good as dead as far as I was concerned when it came to the city being safe.

  OK, so maybe it wasn't, maybe I was still anxious about her getting out and killing someone. But Mal wasn't going to let me hurt her, so I didn't have a lot in the way of options there.

  "It all depends on how things play out in the beginning. I'm sorry, but I just don't want to talk about it. If things change, if I don't have anything to go on for this, I'm probably just going to come home and work with Fred on some lore to see if we can find anything about the Utakar. I find it very hard to believe that something can just...exist without anyone knowing anything about it."

  "You think my people haven't tried to gain more information?"

  "Well, how long have you known about the Utakar?"

  He sighed. "You have a point. For the longest time, they were nothing but a tool mothers used to get their children to go to bed. A threat to keep everyone behaving, no one really believed they were real, but I'm sure you have something similar in your culture. Behave or the Utakar will get you when you sleep, that sort of thing. The idea of them has been around for as long as I can remember, but until I was attacked, I don't believe anyone had actually seen them."
<
br />   I drew in a frustrated breath. "Of course. That's helpful."

  "I am sorry."

  "No, I am, I didn't mean to take that out on you. I just...I'm going to have to find out something. How do you fight the unknown?"

  His expression sobered. "The truth is that you cannot. But that is why I came to you. From what I have heard, you do very well with the odds pitted against you."

  A bitter laugh escaped my lips. He had a point. The jury was still out on whether or not it had been a good idea to make a deal with Mal two years ago—Gods, I really needed to talk to him about it speaking to me—but it had carried me through the worst battle of my life.

  "I hope I don't disappoint you," I said, and drank the last of my tea. He finished his, and I carried both cups into the kitchen and rinsed them, placing them in the sink. I grabbed a power bar out of one of the cabinets and headed for the door, grabbing my gear off one of the chairs and strapping on the harness.

  "Help yourself to some breakfast, I have to get going," I said.

  He inclined his head, and I left.

  Time to get on with the day.

  20

  It didn't take long to drive to Lillai's shop, though parking was a bitch. I got out of the car, lifted my wands off the passenger seat and slide them into their respective holsters. My car, being the crapper that it was, took a few tries to get the door to successfully close. I ended up having to kick it shut just to get it to click.

  I walked into Lillai's shop, hearing the tinkling of bells that sounded my arrival, and walked up to the counter she was currently polishing.

  "Hey, Lillai," I said, going for a friendly tone. I hoped she wasn't going to be as antagonistic as she usually was. She didn't like me much, and had made no secret of it every other time that we had run into one another. You would think that being the person that kept an eye out for the magical community would garner a few good points with her, seeing as she was the de facto leader of the community, but you would be wrong.