by Cecy Robson
“In hiding,” I assume.
“No, out in the open,” he replies, frowning. “They didn’t know what I was, and they didn’t care either.”
“What happened to your parents?” Gemini asks, his tone even. He isn’t as sympathetic to Johnny’s situation, but he’s always had a pack that’s welcomed him.
Johnny rights himself, anger marching like an army of resentful soldiers across his features. “They left me to help fight your supernatural war,” he says. “In case you’re wondering, they didn’t make it back.”
Gemini inhales deep, taking a breath. Johnny is telling the truth, if he wasn’t Gemini would call him out.
“How old were you?” I ask. “When you lost them?”
“Sixteen,” he says.
I almost tell him I was half his age when I lost mine. But I don’t know Johnny, and whether or not I can sympathize with him, my guard remains up.
“Sorry to hear that,” Gemini tells him. “This way.”
He secures Johnny’s arm again, this time, using more care. I didn’t have to mention my past, he knows it well, just as he knows that’s where my thoughts are now. “Taran, we need to return,” he says. “The others are waiting and the covens need to be informed of the Fate’s presence.”
His pace quickens when he senses me follow. I walk behind him with my arms crossed, lost in my memories and how close they mimic Johnny’s past.
Johnny glances behind me. “I take it you two are a thing?”
Gemini scowls at him, his grip tightening. “I’m just asking, man,” Johnny tells him. “I don’t mean nothing by it.”
“He’s my mate,” I say. I hurry to clasp Gemini’s hand, affirming our relationship and slightly soothing my wolf’s temper.
“But you’re not human?” Johnny asks, his voice lowering at the sight of Gemini’s nasty glare.
“Not exactly,” I reply. “I’m different. Like you.” I think about all the tats he brought to life. “Okay, maybe not like you.”
The corner of his mouth lifts into a smile. That smile quickly fades away when Gemini snarls. “He’s not doing anything,” I say to Gemini.
“No, but he’s thinking it,” he replies. “I can scent his attraction to you.”
I edge around him to speak to Johnny. “You never want to give a were the impression you’re challenging him or threatening his relationship.”
This time, Johnny makes quite the effort to keep his eyes off me. “Good to know,” he mumbles. “Anything else I might need to know about them?”
“You really don’t know anything?” I question.
“I know they don’t like my music,” he says, his grin returning.
“Which is how you’ve kept us from finding you,” Gemini reasons. “Hire bands that make more noise than music so those like us with sensitive hearing move away from you rather than closer.”
He adjusts his hold on my hand, steadying me as I ease through a stretch of harsh terrain. “Makes sense,” I concur. “The opening bands were too much for me.” I think about it. “Wait, I get how all that loud metal music would keep weres and anything with preternatural hearing away, but loud sounds don’t affect witches the same way. If anything, they should have been attracted to and sensed your magic. Why not?”
Gemini grinds to a halt and whips Johnny in front of him when he tightens up. “My mate just asked you a question,” he says. “I expect you to answer.”
I don’t like how aggressive Gemini is being with Johnny, and almost intervene. Except I don’t want to challenge his beast’s authority with prey in his hands, which is how my wolf sees Johnny. I also want to know what we’re up against, and as much as I pity him, I can’t be certain Johnny is on our side.
Not after the affect he had on Destiny.
“My crowd doesn’t do organic,” Johnny explains quickly when Gemini gives him a shake. “They’re not into nature and they’re not what you call granola.”
Unlike the witches.
He shrugs free of Gem’s hold when he loosens it. “I also don’t release my music. It’s concerts only.”
“So you hide in the open, all the while preventing anything magical from knowing you’re there,” I reason.
He rubs his shoulder again. “Something like that,” he says. He addresses Gemini, careful not to make direct eye contact. “Look, my people aren’t going to just let me go. I’m under contract. They’ll want to know where I am and who I’m with.”
Gem steps forward, looming over him. “If there’s anyone left, they’ll be dealt with. I assure you, no one will stop us from taking you.”
Johnny’s face blanches. “Did you kill them?”
Gemini doesn’t answer.
“What the fuck?” Johnny says. “They were just people, roadies. They weren’t going to do anything to you, asshole.”
I force myself between them. From one blink to the next, I’m suddenly off to the side. I barely felt Gemini graze his fingers over my hips when he lifted me, and only mildly felt my feet press to the ground. But here I am, back where I started.
“Tomo,” I plead. “Don’t hurt him.”
Gemini shoves his face into Johnny’s, forcing him back. “No human was hurt. Our job as Guardians of the Earth is to protect, not harm. That doesn’t mean we’ll allow them to harm us, or interfere with our duties. Tonight, those duties involve taking you back to our Den.” His gaze turns to steel. “And if you ever insult me again, you’ll be eating from a tube in your stomach.”
Johnny rises to his full height, attempting to appear tough. But there’s no stopping the quiver in his voice or his blanching skin from paling further. “Did you eat anyone?”
“I don’t eat people,” Gemini snaps, his patience wearing thin.
“Dudes!” Shayna races toward us, skipping to a halt when she sees Johnny and the mere centimeters separating him and Gemini. She lowers the ax she’s carrying to the side. “Destiny isn’t doing well,” she says. “She stopped bleeding, but we need to get her back, like, now.”
Behind her, Gemini’s twin wolf pads forward. His hackles rise and his feral eyes latch onto Johnny. He growls low and deep, lowering his head as if ready to attack the moment he gets the word.
My knuckles skim down Gemini’s spine. “If you allow your twin back inside you, will you be more pissed or will he help you calm?” His narrowing eyes tell me enough. I sigh. “We’re not all going to fit.”
“Fine,” he says.
Like black paint streaming across water, Gemini’s twin dissolves into his skin, becoming one all mighty being.
Johnny has had his share of surprises. A wolf, the size of a full-grown tiger merging with a man, was yet another he wasn’t prepared for. He backs away, almost falling against the curb.
“Let’s go,” Gemini says.
Shayna leads us to the closed off parking lot where a helicopter is waiting. The tour bus is gone, so are the other cars parked in front of it. Johnny may have “people” except it doesn’t appear they bothered to wait for him.
Bren and Emme stand a few feet from the copter doors, and even further away from each other. Even from here, I feel the invisible wall of emotion between them.
Destiny is sitting on the ground. The bun she fastened on the top of her head is unraveling and barely keeping her long hair away from her pale-as-death face. Her clothes are smeared with blood and she lost all the feathers she painstakingly threaded through her hair. It breaks my heart to find her like this, and while she’s no longer seizing or bleeding, she’s not in good shape.
“Did Emme manage to heal her?” I ask.
Shayna’s ponytail swings from side to side as she shakes her head. “No. Emme says she couldn’t. Whatever was happening just seemed to stop.” She blows out a breath, fluttering her bangs. “Tye’s hoping the witches can help her. He’s already alerted the Pack and requested they call for Genevieve’s return.”
“And how is Tye doing?” I ask.
“Not good, T,” she says, sounding sad. “D
estiny is his best friend.”
Yeah. She is.
Tye is crouched beside her, speaking quietly, his chin length blond hair swaying around his chiseled features. Worry tightens his brow, but here he is, doing his best to keep her calm.
He grins and says something that lights up her eyes. A soft smile plays across her face.
Until she sees Johnny.
Lightning crashes, shaking the earth. Shayna whirls around, her jaw falling open. “Was that you?” she asks.
“No, I—”
Another bolt of lightning illuminates the dark night, landing mere yards from where Destiny waits and rattling the earth.
Destiny screams in torment. She grips Tye’s arm, her body convulsing in violent waves as dark fluid pours from her eyes.
“Oh, my God,” I gasp.
Emme and Bren scramble to her side. I turn around to look at Johnny just in time to watch his eyes roll into the back of his head and his body collide against the ground.
Chapter Twelve
I open and close my right hand, my nervousness and fear agitating Sparky. She’s ready to release the full gamut of her power. And if it was up to her, she would have already blown the helicopter we’re in straight to hell.
But not before smacking us for being stupid enough to climb in.
My lips press tight as I shake out my hand. This rusty old copter is the last place my lightning and fire need to make an appearance. I need to think happy thoughts if we’re going to survive, like lambs prancing along a daisy-covered field or some shit.
I rub my arm when she jerks again. Evidently Sparky wants to roast the lambs over a spit and jab me in the eyes with the damn daisies for even suggesting it.
The loud, non-stop thrum of the engine does nothing to settle me, neither does the disjointed beat of the propellers.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
“No, Taran,” Gemini replies.
“Would you tell me if we were?”’
“Yes,” he says.
“Even if it was a brutal kind of death? With like, shattering bones and flying organs?”
He doesn’t even blink. “Of course.”
My face falls into my hands. Well, my man’s honest. I’ll give him that.
I take a breath, and then another, trying to settle my nerves, and maybe settle Sparky, too. She’s twitching like a dog wagging its tail, standing by the door demanding out. Except dogs, to my knowledge, don’t have the power to shoot flames when they pee.
I drop my hands. “How much longer?” I ask.
Bren leans forward from where he sits across from us, his forearms falling to rest against his knees. He rubs his hands together, his light blue irises giving away the alertness behind his stare regardless of the exhaustion ringing dark circles around the orbits. Having torn through his clothing when he changed, all he’s wearing are sweatpants. Aside from his moppy brown waves and scraggly beard, his skin is entirely exposed, not that he seems to mind. “Ten minutes later than the last time you asked, kid,” he answers.
“You can’t be serious,” I say, convinced time is somehow going backwards.
Gemini’s large hand cups over mine. He and Bren have been so intent on watching Johnny, they’ve barely acknowledge me or Emme. “I know I may be asking the impossible,” he begins. “But try and relax.”
My stomach leaps into my throat when the helicopter jerks unexpectedly. This isn’t the smooth ride we expected, the nice, modern, safe ride Tye was to effortlessly provide back to Tahoe. Oh, no. When lightning struck, the world literally moved, and Destiny tried to die, again, we thought it best to keep her and Johnny far away from each other.
Johnny groans from his position on the stretcher. I think the thick leather belts pinning him in place are hurting him, neither Gemini nor Bren used much care when strapping him in. But they didn’t head my warning or Emme’s. To them, Johnny is the enemy. The jury has delivered the verdict and the judges are toying with the idea of gnawing his arms off.
“We have to keep him secure,” Gemini insisted. “I don’t know what he’s capable of and I don’t want to find out midair.”
I’ll give him that one, but seeing Johnny like this is hard. Short of the creepy leather mask, the poor guy looks like a scrawny stand-in for Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs. Then again Hannibal did end up peeling that poor sap’s face off so who am I to complain?
I push the hair from my eyes, wishing this night would end.
Johnny fainted in Destiny’s presence. I was sure he keeled over and died. Hell, Destiny came damn close. Shayna and I performed CPR while Emme attempted to heal her. Emme insisted there was nothing to heal, that her body was shutting down. It wasn’t until Gemini threw Johnny over his shoulder and put some distance between him and Destiny that Emme managed to restart her heart.
Tye lost it, yanking her into his arms the moment she opened her eyes and carrying her into the helicopter. “You’re either in or out,” he growled at us. “But I won’t take the Fate.” His stare darkened. “And if he comes anywhere near her, I’ll feed him his fucking heart.”
He didn’t give us time to decide. The rotor blades started immediately after he settled Destiny in the rear, leaving Gemini and Koda to figure out a way home.
My fingers dig into the seat as we bounce yet again. This was the best they could do, an old army helicopter belonging to a friend of Aric. And because our luck wasn’t bad enough, that old friend was away on business and his wife didn’t fly.
The helicopter dips again. My knuckles blanch. I startle when trickles of blue and white smoke drift into the air and the smell of melting plastic wafts into my nose.
“Taran, do not set us on fire,” Bren tells me.
“I’m not doing this on purpose,” I say, groaning when I see my fingerprints singed into the seat.
I rub my hands together, not sure we’ll make it back to Squaw Valley before Sparky blows us out of the sky.
The helicopter jerks again, left, then right, and somehow up.
My stomach twists into knots, I swear to God creating a bow. “How long has Koda had his license?” I ask. It doesn’t seem like he took lessons very long.
“Not long enough,” Bren mutters.
His intense gaze skips to where Emme is sitting quietly beside me, the severity behind it softening as he takes her in.
The army helicopter isn’t one equipped to carry a large squadron into combat. If anything, it was probably used to transport supplies or possibly for surveillance. Each side is fixed with a row of five seats. The center is open and unobscured, and where the wolves placed Johnny. There’s plenty of room given our small numbers. But when we boarded, Emme chose to sit with me and Gemini.
At first, I thought she was rattled. Emme’s kind and gentle nature makes it hard for her to watch others suffer and I believed she was perhaps remembering those she wasn’t able to save. Until I saw her curl inward and realized how much it seemed to hurt her not to be with Bren.
I glance up, noting Gemini scrutinize the way Bren regards her. Like me, he knows something is up. The strain between them is worse each time they’re together, thickening the air like tar.
We collectively groan when the helicopter does another odd maneuver that’s more like a spiral than anything a helicopter should be able to do.
“Christ,” Bren mutters, scratching his beard irritably. “Did Koda actually get his license?”
I expect several loud growls from Koda telling Bren to screw off. Aside from the sound of the blaring engine and whipping blades, there’s nothing.
Bren straightens. “He doesn’t have a license?”
Gemini clears his throat . . . and that’s about it.
“No,” I say. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Tell me you didn’t shove us onto a plane with a wolf who doesn’t know how to fly.” I glance around, half-expecting us to burst into flames and fall from the sky. “I’m serious, tell me he has a license, a permit, something!”
Gemini works his jaw.
“Koda took flying lessons at a young age and accrued several hours toward his license. He was considered a natural and a gifted student by his instructor.”
“I don’t care if he graduated at the top of his class in airplane school or whatever the fuck. Does he have a license or not?” Bren snaps.
“No,” Gemini grinds out. “His instructor was beheaded during a mission to Indonesia before Koda could take the final exam.”
“Of course he was,” I say, pulling at the straps of my seatbelt and making it that much tighter. “Of course.” My hands slap against my lap. “So then what were all those fly dates he had just recently?”
“Lessons,” Gemini grumbles.
“Lessons?” I ask. “He was still taking lessons?”
“It was more like a refresher course,” Gemini adds when swears shoot from Bren’s mouth like fodder. “As I said, he was considered gifted.”
“By the guy who lost his head in Indonesia,” I remind him, clutching my right arm when she starts to tremble.
Bren’s attention bounces from the cockpit back to us when the helicopter dips yet again. “You stuck us ten-thousand feet in the air with some asshole—”
This time Koda does growl: loud, deep, and challenging.
“Your mother,” Bren growls back. He veers on Gemini. “Why in the hell did you think this was a good idea?”
“I never said this was a good idea,” Gemini says, meeting Bren with equal force. “But I trust Koda and we were out of options.” He jerks his chin in Johnny’s direction, tense with a heaviness I’ve never witnessed. “We have to get back to the Den. We have to figure this out.”
“And we will,” Bren replies. “If we live.”
Our bitching morphs to groans when the helicopter tips to the side and we bounce several times.
“Sorry, dudes,” Shayna calls from the front. “We hit some turbulence.”
“I just hope we don’t hit the side of the mountain,” I mumble.
“No shit,” Bren agrees.
I reach out and touch Emme’s hand. Her expression is as pained as mine. Gemini’s right, we have to figure out what’s happening, and maybe distract ourselves from this hellish ride. “Em, what did you feel when you touched Destiny? Did anything feel out of the ordinary?”
