FoM02 Trammel

by Anah Crow

  “He’s damaged.” Lindsay finished the sentence he had let fall short before. It didn’t stop him from being drawn to Noah in the least. Knowing Noah’s pain made him want to be closer to Noah, to give something—anything—to ease it a little.

  Dane shifted to lie on his side, sheltering Lindsay against him and kissing his hair. “People heal. If that happens, and you want him and he wants you... If it’s good for you, it’s good for me. Doesn’t change anything between us. Makes me happy, knowing you’re happy.”

  It wouldn’t be a concern any time soon, if the way Noah’s mind had felt today was any indication. But Dane’s understanding and reassurance soothed the last of Lindsay’s discomfort at being attracted in the first place. He snuggled up against Dane and closed his eyes, basking in how lucky he was to have Dane here, whole and well.

  “I’m happy now.”

  “So’m I. I’m a limited man. Nice to have something that’s no one’s business but mine.” Dane sighed into his hair.

  “Definitely yours.” Everything had changed for Lindsay since Dane had come into his life. He only hoped he could make that kind of difference for Noah too. “I don’t want to screw up what’s mine. I can feel him churning in the back of my mind. I can’t fuck this up, Dane.”

  “I felt like that with you,” Dane said. His fingertips tracing the line of Lindsay’s spine were soothing.

  “You’re not necessarily the one in charge, though. Let your magic work. Sometimes, that’s all you need to do. Listen to it. I listened to mine.” He growled softly and nipped at Lindsay’s ear. “It showed me the way to you. You were mine from that moment, when I fought Jonas for you and dug you out of that old dumpster. Before Cyrus gave you to me, you were mine. Being pissed at him just kept me from knowing it for a while.”

  Warmth blossomed in Lindsay’s chest, hearing that. “I’ll listen.”

  “Anything you need, though, ask.” Dane kissed his temple. “Anything. I’m at your service.” They were naked and marked with the stains of sex and sweat, but there was something formal lurking in Dane’s words, and he held Lindsay a little tighter.

  “Thank you.”

  Lindsay was beginning to understand, without knowing how, what that tone meant. He could sense it under his skin. He’d heard it when Noah spoke to Cyrus. He’d felt it when he spoke to the barre and it fell into his hand.

  Something was shifting, like Cyrus had picked up a weight and moved it from one pan of a scale to the other. Whatever it was, it was already done. Lindsay closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to Dane’s shoulder. The pressure this deep in the world of magic made it hard to breathe sometimes.

  They had a date planned for a few days from now. It would be a welcome escape to the surface of things. Time to breathe.

  Chapter Three

  Whomever Cyrus was waiting for, Lindsay wanted to thank her. The few months since Cyrus moved them to Atlantic City had been a revelation— this was how life was supposed to be. Safe, and comfortable.

  For the first time in his life, he felt like everyone else. The irony that he’d only gotten to this point by failing to be “cured” of his magic didn’t escape him.

  Their first date had come out of the blue. Lindsay was sitting across the table from Dane at a lovely French restaurant, trying to decide between the scallops and the salmon, before he grasped that this wasn’t part of his training. Dane didn’t laugh at him—well, not much. Lindsay had been too smitten with the entire notion to be even a bit offended.

  Tonight, they were off to a classic burlesque revue. He’d been reassured that real burlesque wasn’t all strippers and feathers. Lindsay was sure Dane would get a great deal out of feathers and fishnets and flashing breasts, but he wouldn’t be getting anything out of Lindsay later if Lindsay had to sit through that.

  Dane hadn’t disappointed him yet. Not once. Lindsay looked up as they were led to their seats and found luminous feral eyes on him. Always. The smile Dane gave him felt like a kiss. Lindsay had no idea how to be this happy. He was making it up as he went along, guided by Dane’s good example.

  The lights in the hall dimmed, and they were completely anonymous in the crowd, just another couple waiting to see the show. No one looked twice at them. Locals never came to these shows and tourists were more self-absorbed than most people. Even without an illusion to hide them—Lindsay couldn’t bear to use one and Dane never asked him to—they were as safe as they ever were.

  In the dark, Dane slid his arm around Lindsay and pulled his chair close. Safe and together. Lindsay let his head rest on Dane’s shoulder as the stage lights came up.

  The opening act was a comedian with bushy hair and a penchant for jokes that hinged on a knowledge of popular culture Lindsay didn’t have. He turned his attention to watching other people’s reactions to the humor instead, and found himself fascinated by the way some of them were only pretending to be amused.

  The tightness at the corners of their mouths and the shift of their eyes told him it wasn’t real. They laughed along with everyone else, but it was as much an illusion as Lindsay’s magic.

  Before the comedian had quite cleared the stage, a fog started creeping into Lindsay’s mind. He pushed it back to keep from losing himself to his magic. He hadn’t had trouble holding Noah’s mind before, but nightmarish flashes slipped in now, threatening to overwhelm him.

  When he reached for Noah to check on him, fear and rage and the taste of someone else’s magic on Noah’s mind filled Lindsay up until he could hardly breathe.

  “Something’s wrong.” They couldn’t get out of here fast enough. Lindsay’s heart was racing, and not just from Noah’s distress. He’d left Noah alone and something—someone—was hurting him. “We have to go. It’s Noah.”

  Dane didn’t ask any questions, much to Lindsay’s relief. “He’s a big boy, he’ll be fine until we get there,” he said quietly. “Breathe.” He led Lindsay between tables to the aisle. “Now you know how I felt in Mexico.”

  In Mexico, Lindsay had gotten himself in trouble by leaving Dane when they were being hunted.

  Noah was nothing but obedient and as vulnerable as a human now that Lindsay held his magic. There was no reason for anyone to hurt him except that he was Lindsay’s.

  Lindsay couldn’t keep Noah from defending himself any longer. He could feel Noah scrabbling frantically for magic that wasn’t there, trapped in the illusion Lindsay had woven to keep him safe.

  Clutching at Dane’s arm, Lindsay released the illusion that held Noah’s magic at bay. “He’s not okay. I have to be there now.”

  Night was coming down on the salt marsh behind the duplex where Cyrus had made his home. The house was set at the far end of a curving cul-de-sac, and the cheap fence put up by the builders had long-since rotted, listed, and eventually crumpled into the tall grass and sodden earth. Noah had heard Vivian mention the sad state of it to Cyrus once. Noah couldn’t hear the answer that followed, but the ancient mage’s tone had been tetchy and querulous enough that Noah could guess that no one would be mending the fence any time soon.

  He didn’t want it up—he liked looking out into the gray-green distance and letting his thoughts get lost. Lindsay was gone, but his magic remained. Noah could tell, when he failed to light one cigarette after another and each time had to resort to the only plastic souvenir lighter he’d been able to find buried among his dirty jeans. He had to do laundry. And he had to stop losing his lighters. As soon as his magic was his again, they’d be raining from every pocket and fold of his belongings for days, he just knew it.

  Missing his power wasn’t much of a loss. It felt like he’d returned to normalcy, wrapped in the cocoon of Lindsay’s illusion. He could have struggled against it, but he didn’t want to lose his newfound comfort. Every time his mind rose up as if to question the reality he saw, he made it soft, like he had learned to do when Rose was first mastering her magic. His sister would have been furious with him for letting someone walk around in his head, but it was everythin
g Noah needed right now. Only a lack of familiarity kept him from knocking at Lindsay’s door at night and begging him to keep the rest of reality away for a little while. Just long enough for sleep to come.

  In the meantime, Noah turned to the bottle. One bottle after another. They were all his friends. He opened another and filled his flask first before taking a drink. Before, he’d been drinking 151-proof grain alcohol. Now, it was scotch, and not the cheap stuff. Noah told himself that was progress and gave himself a drink as a reward. It brought him the numbness he was craving, though his sleep was still terrible and waking brought the fresh hell of a hangover every day. The dry heaves and screaming headache kept his mind off his troubles, though.

  If Noah had known Lindsay better, he might have brought himself to ask for help. But that wasn’t the whole of it. Dane had gone out on Cyrus’s business but his presence lingered. The last thing Noah wanted was to provoke the big creature, and if he came uninvited to Dane’s den, whether Dane was in the house or not, Dane would know it.

  Now that Dane was back, Noah had no intention of asking for more of Lindsay than he’d already been given. Ferals had their own ways and Dane was infamously territorial. Touchingly, Abram had been almost as concerned that the terrible manners of the mundane world would lead Noah to a sticky end at Dane’s claws as he had been concerned that Noah would embarrass the family in front of Cyrus and Vivian.

  It was comforting, in its way—its backward way, like not being able to use his magic—that Lindsay was bound to the feral. Noah hadn’t known how being given to someone like Lindsay would affect him, whether he’d be troubled and conflicted by Lindsay’s beauty and fragility. There was nothing fragile about Lindsay’s magic, and with Dane in the picture, Lindsay’s appearance and magnetism became irrelevant.

  Cyrus wasn’t as capricious as he seemed.

  In spite of how haphazard life here could be, Noah was starting to relax. Maybe starting to heal. He closed his eyes and leaned back on the steps. As much as he didn’t want to heal, as if Elle could never truly be gone as long as Noah carried the wound of her absence, it was hard to like the man he was when he was steeped in grief and mad with self-loathing. He was going to die or live, Rose had said sagely. Life meant healing. It didn’t allow a wound to gape. Noah could have his scars, but not the wounds.

  “They left you home alone?” Noah hadn’t paid attention to the back door opening, but he couldn’t ignore the sultry voice.

  “Hardly alone,” he pointed out. “Unless I’m hearing voices now?”

  “No, I’m real.” Kristan’s laugh was low and rich. Her voice and her name were familiar, but he’d avoided her enough that he didn’t know her face. “If I weren’t, I’d have my own cigarettes, wouldn’t I?”

  She sat down on the top step, close enough that Noah could feel her there, but not close enough to touch.

  “I guess you would.” Noah could take a hint. He handed her the pack with the lighter tucked into it.

  “Don’t lose that lighter. It’s my last.”

  “Is not.” Kristan took a cigarette and lit it—Noah heard the rustle of the pack and the scratch of the lighter. “There’s three in the drawer in the kitchen and I found one on the front steps this morning. Is that your magic? Spontaneously spawning flammables?”

  “Something like it.” Noah reached for the pack and she gave it up, trailing her fingers over his as she did. It should have irritated him, but maybe he was too drunk for that right now. He wasn’t sure he’d had that much, but he lost track of everything so easily. Lighters. Bottles. Days.

  “Show me?” She moved down to sit closer, leaning forward. When he opened his eyes, her face was inches from his. He could smell her tumble of brassy hair, sweet and warm, like violets at noon.

  “Would if I could, but I can’t.” He shrugged and sat up, picking up the bottle between his feet to take another drink.

  “Why not?” Her words stroked the back of his neck. Her fingertips followed, leaving cold trails behind. “Are you broken?”

  “Just got the safety catch on. Don’t want to burn us all in our sleep.”

  “Looks like someone closed the barn door after the horses got out, in that case,” she said, tracing the lines of healed burns on his scalp and down the side of his neck. “They shouldn’t have let you get hurt.”

  Noah wanted to protest—the touch was making his stomach churn—but his body wouldn’t move away. As much as he wanted to go, there was a heat in him that wanted to be closer. Every breath he took, it got worse, like his lungs were a bellows and his belly was a forge.

  “It was my fault.”

  It was all his fault. He’d been the one driving. The moment the pickup in front of him had slammed on the brakes, Noah knew he’d been following too closely. Another car had hit them from behind. He’d been turning to see why Elle was sobbing, to comfort her, when—in the rearview mirror—he’d seen the lights of the tanker coming up out of the fog, too fast to stop.

  “I’m sure it was an accident.” Kristan was so close now, sitting right beside him, her hand on his wrist. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Noah wanted to roar at her to stop, but he didn’t have the breath for it. Something in the back of his head was flailing with terror, trying to flee.

  “No,” he managed to say. “I don’t.” He watched his hand turn palm up, unfolding for hers to slide across it. Her skin was cool, like fine linen. When he pulled his gaze away so he wouldn’t have to watch, he looked into her eyes. They were the color of amethysts.

  “Maybe you want to not talk,” she said softly. He could hear the proposition in her words. All of her was a living, breathing proposition.

  No. No. Noah sucked in air to try to force it out as a word, but instead he leaned in and met her mouth with his. Her lips were lush and damp with anticipation. While his mind panicked and fought, grasping at anything to try to push her away, his body moved closer. He could feel the softness of her breast under his wounded hand. His mind howled with rage while his traitorous instincts pushed him on, toward things he’d never imagined wanting.

  Kristan slid her arms around his neck, pressing herself to him with a low moan, shifting to pin him down with her slight weight, her bare white thigh sliding between his to give him something to buck against as his body betrayed him. She was wearing nothing under her silky robe, and his hands were all over her tender skin. All he had to do was strip his fly open, roll her over and have her right there on the step.

  God, he was aching for her, wanted her trapped under him, wanted inside her. He was driven and desperate, like an animal. It had been too long since anyone had touched him like this, since he’d had anyone the way he wanted her. Noah was worse than drunk, he was drugged, and no matter how he clawed at the inside of his own mind, he couldn’t find the fire to burn himself clean.

  Something in him stretched thin and snapped.

  The fire exploding from his skin blew Noah backward hard enough that his shoulders dug hollows in the soft earth where he landed. He heard Kristan scream, a tarnished mockery of what he heard in his dreams, and he had to make it stop. Fire drove out of his raised hand like a battering ram, and he felt more than saw her standing on the steps just before the fire took her full in the chest and drove her through the back door.

  Noah could smell burning hair and skin. Rolling to his knees, he vomited scotch and fire, splashing the grass and leaving it smoldering. She wouldn’t stop screaming and he lurched to his feet, ripping fire out of nowhere with both hands to hurl it at her and ram it down her throat to make it stop. As his fire roared toward the house, with all his will behind it, he felt something terrible.

  Suddenly, everything was still. The oxygen was torn out of the air, out of him, and his fire died. He stood there, frozen, while the vacuum sucked the life out of everything. The world went black.

  The front door was standing open when they finally got back to the house. Cyrus stood inside, his face as dark and fierce as a brewing storm.
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br />   “Do none of you have any intention of doing what’s needed of you?” Lindsay wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Cyrus this angry. Before either of them could answer, there were footsteps on the stairs, descending.

  “I need a few things from the car.” The man who slipped past Cyrus was small and narrow, with dark skin and sharp features. “But I think she’ll fare better than the back porch has.” He gave Dane and Lindsay a nod as they stepped aside to let him pass.

  “In there.” Cyrus pointed to the living room. “Go.” His glare was enough to silence Dane for the moment.

  Lindsay followed Dane inside, heart pounding still. Where was Noah? Was he all right? Lindsay wanted to find him, make sure he was safe. Who was “she” that the man was talking about? He must’ve been a healer, why wasn’t he helping Noah?

  Too many questions, and Cyrus was definitely not in the mood to answer any of them. Lindsay would have to wait.

  “If the two of you wish to pretend to be human, you can go live among them,” Cyrus snapped. “I cannot be picking up the slack left by your inability to behave as one of our kind.” He poked a thin finger in Lindsay’s direction. “I expect ignorance from you, but I did not expect you to leave your student alone. Nor did I think you would leave him defenseless against the other magics in this house.”

  “What happened?” Lindsay had felt someone else’s magic on Noah, but he couldn’t tell whose it had been. She, the healer had said. Kristan or Vivian? “What the hell was she doing to him?”

  “All that matters is that I was forced to keep this place from going up in flames. The attention that would bring upon us would be catastrophic.” Cyrus’s eyes were alight with fury. “And if I could not have stopped him? I would have been forced to terminate the oldest son of an unbroken mage line. The consequences would be unfathomable. I cannot leave such a responsibility in careless hands.”

  “You made the choice, Cyrus,” Dane said quietly, wrapping his arms around Lindsay. “Both times.