by Leigh Evans
Trowbridge regarded Mouse for a long moment. “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
“I wouldn’t take it unless I had to,” Mouse whispered.
“I got that,” said Trowbridge. “Go see if there’s still a stream on the other side of the rock. I’ll need enough water to wash my hands and rinse her leg.”
“Aye, Alpha.”
* * *
“Your brother looks like shit.” Trowbridge pulled the cork from the bottle of sun potion. The scent of the elixir streamed from the small bottle’s neck: flowers a day before the rot.
Though Lexi was still out cold, his nostrils flared.
I looked away.
Grim-faced, Trowbridge drizzled the juice over my dressing until the fabric bled. He studied the small rust puddle beneath my leg, then looked up at me. “I want you to take a mouthful of the juice before I go any further.”
That shocked me. “You hate sun potion. It subdues our wolf.”
“You’re going to bleed, sweetheart.” Trowbridge’s knuckles had grime embedded in their creases. “And it’s going to be god-awful when I tear this thing off. Your skin has already partially healed around it.”
“It won’t hurt. I can barely feel my leg.”
Alarmed, he pressed lightly on my foot. “Do you feel this?”
“No, but—”
“Shit,” he muttered. “Can you move your toes? How long were you in the trap?”
“Five hours? Six?” I wiggled my toes. “I’m not sure. I was in and out.”
“You will take the juice,” he announced.
“Trowbridge, listen. I—”
“Don’t argue with me.” He brought the bottle to my mouth. “I hate what this stuff stands for, but don’t ask me to watch you hurt when I don’t have to. Take the fucking potion.”
Would it help with the pain inside my chest? Would it lift that heavy weight that made me feel a hundred years old? Take away this nagging emotional misery?
His trap.
I took a mouthful. Let it bathe my tongue, fizzing slightly, then swallowed. Trowbridge watched me keenly, his head cocked, but the familiar buoyancy that generally followed a sip of juice didn’t turn my world all soft and muzzy.
After a few seconds, he raised his right hand. “How many fingers have I got?”
“A thumb, half of your index finger, a quarter of your ring finger, and—”
Scowling, he sat back on his heels. “A few fucking hits over a couple lousy days and you’re already building up a resistance. This shit is worse than fucking crack.”
“You’re cussing a lot,” I said mildly.
“Get used to it. I swear more when I’m tired.”
And even more still when worried, I thought, watching him irritably scratch at the mud flakes on his muscular forearm.
“The juice will kick in.” His fingers moved to his leg, where they began to drum a restless tattoo. “It always does. That’s why the Fae love this stuff.” He tipped back his head to squint at the ward. “At least the cloud won’t find us through the ward.”
“Jinxes.”
“What?”
“The clouds are called jinxes. According to Mouse, Helzekiel conjured up the first one about ten days ago.”
“But I was…”
Chapter Thirteen
Trowbridge was going to say that he was here in Merenwyn ten days ago, but he hadn’t been, not really. In the interim, he’d spent time in Creemore, and that muddled up time calculations beyond comprehension.
The two worlds’ time lines simply could not be stitched together.
Trowbridge scrubbed his face. “It is messing with my mind—knowing that only an hour or so has gone by in Creemore while meanwhile we’ve been…”
On the run for more than a day.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he said. “We’re here now. We need to live by Merenwyn’s clock and forget the rest.”
I nodded, albeit slowly.
He smiled at me, the weary curve of his mouth telling me that he recognized my reluctance to forget home. He changed the subject with more determination than finesse. “So, what else did the mutt say about the frickin’ cloud?”
“Mouse said that every morning the mother jinx gives birth to four small ones. They’re sent out to hunt wolves and they don’t return until they’ve found their prey.” I lifted my shoulders. “That’s it.”
“Only wolves?”
“It can’t track mutts. Only the full-blooded Rahae’lls and Kuskadors.”
“So it hunts by scent.”
“I think so.”
Mouse returned carrying his dripping shirt and a drenched wad of what looked like the wrappings he’d used to protect his sun potion bottles. “We have no cup nor bucket. But I thought you could use this lot to wash the crud off you.”
Trowbridge took the sodden shirt with a nod. Mouse stayed, shifting his weight on his feet, as Trowbridge began to clean his hands.
Without looking up, my mate said, “That will be all.”
Mouse nodded. “Yes, Alpha.”
Trowbridge waited until the boy was back beside Seabiscuit before he muttered, “I told him not to call me that.”
“He’s very curious about us.”
“He’s looking for a pack.” Trowbridge worked the cloth over his palms, then dropped the shirt. Gently, he retested the bandages wrapped around my ankle. “These wrappings are looser, but not by much.” His expression turned regretful. “Tink, we got to get this done. These dressings have got to come off and we can’t wait for the juice to kick in. We have to leave here. This ward might protect us from the cloud, but it also keeps us trapped. If Qae’s found my trail, I’ve led him right to you. You never stay long in one spot when you’re being tracked. I don’t want to walk out of this bowl of magic and find a surprise waiting for us.”
“Do what you have to do. I won’t feel a twinge of pain. Lexi took all of it last night.”
Trowbridge lifted startled eyes.
“No, that’s not the juice talking.” I gave him a bittersweet smile. It was time to tell him of the trap, and Mad-one and Lexi’s visit. “My brother came to me last night while I was in the trap and he assumed my pain.”
“He came to you?” repeated Trowbridge, his voice dipping into a dangerous drawl. “And he left you there? I’ll—”
“No!” I said, catching his arm before he could lunge for my comatose twin. “Not like that. He wasn’t really there. Not in body and form.” I winced, knowing I was going to have to try to explain something that I didn’t have a handle on.
Trowbridge looked up to determine if the Gatekeeper was within hearing distance. She’d been fluent enough in English to spew insults at me back at the Peach Pit, on our first introduction, before she’d turned on her heels and hauled her ass back to Merenwnyn. He jerked his chin at the boy who stood nearby, worrying the edge of a hangnail. “Mouse,” he called, “take the pony and the woman to the stream. Water the animal and watch the woman. Got it?”
Mouse brightened. “Yes, Alpha.”
When we were alone except for my comatose twin, Trowbridge resumed the interrogation as if it had never been paused. “Was the dickhead there or not?”
“Lexi’s voice was there; his body was not.” I crinkled my brow, remembering. “Though I could feel his hands, stroking my fur, and that was more than a little weird.”
“If he touched you, he was there.”
“Ghost hands, Trowbridge. That’s what it felt like.”
He swore under his breath.
“I don’t know how to explain what happened, but Lexi was able to talk to me through Mad-one. The important part is that he came when I called. And that he tried to make it better for me. I was … not good.”
“Big of him,” Trowbridge snarled. “Did the ghost-bastard happen to mention that the trap mauling your leg was his?”
“No.”
“Ball-less wonder.”
“I want you to listen to me, okay? Because what I
’m going to say is important.” I waited for his glare to turn from Lexi to me, then said, “Once we’ve done what we need to do here, I need to believe that we’re going home to Creemore. And I want the life that we should have had: you have your pack and me, and I have you and what’s left of my family.” I drew in a long, shuddering breath. “I want peace, Trowbridge. I never thought I’d want a quiet life again, but that’s what I want. And if you can’t put aside how you feel about Lexi … if you and he are fighting all the time … Creemore will turn into a new battleground.”
“He traps his own kind.”
“I know!” I hissed. “My leg is proof of it!” I stopped to swallow again, pushing down the knot that kept rising. Then I said, more calmly, “But when I needed him, Lexi tried to help me. He gave me the language—I understand Merenwynian now; didn’t you notice that?” I nodded in the direction of the Gatekeeper and Mouse. “And he sent those two to set me free.”
Trowbridge twisted to follow my gaze. “You told him everything about the Gatekeeper and the Safe Passage?”
“No!” I wanted to howl in frustration. “It wasn’t like that. We weren’t talking like you and I are talking now. It was a stream of conscious thing, with Mad-one acting as a conduit. The Gatekeeper issue was random. Either Lexi or Mad-one must have gone deeper into my mind and seen things I hadn’t anticipated them seeing.”
“Are you telling me you were mind-fucked by your own brother?”
I studied the fury growing on his face.
“No,” I said slowly, ice forming in my heart. “He didn’t ‘fuck’ my brain. Only mystwalkers can screw people’s brains without their permission. So if you’re talking about brain-fuckers, then you’re basically talking about me.”
“Bullshit,” he said, returning his interest to the bandage. “You’ll never get your kicks out of messing with people’s heads.”
“How can you be sure?” For once I had, if only briefly.
“Tink,” he said, teasing the edges of the wrappings. “A lot of us have abilities we wish we didn’t have. I’m good at killing. I didn’t know how good I was at it until I came here. I’m also a champ at warfare. That’s who I am now. But I don’t kill for fun and I never will. Does that make you want to run from me?”
“No.” My eyes burned.
“So … ditto. But I’m not giving your brother a pass for him going where he had no business going. And you shouldn’t either. He’s a predator. He took from you because he could. He’ll keep doing it. I keep telling you: the kid you knew is long gone. What you have now is a manipulative son of a bitch who you shouldn’t trust farther than you can throw. There was—”
“He felt remorse.” I touched my chest with my fist. “I felt it right here.”
“You felt what he wanted you to feel.” Mouth flat, Trowbridge took the bottle and poured another thin stream of liquid over the dressing.
“Yeah?” I jackknifed over my leg and pressed down on the gummy bandage. In response to the pain, Lexi moaned low in his throat, his features twisting. “He took my agony.” My gaze held my mate’s. “I told him I was lost and scared and he sent me the Gatekeeper.” I switched into my mother’s tongue. “I told him that I didn’t know the language and he gave me the gift of Merenwynian.”
A terrible flatness crept into Trowbridge’s eyes.
“I know he’s done some terrible things,” I whispered. “To you. To the wolves. To me. And I’m angry that he’s done them. Really angry. But I can’t hate him … and I can’t leave him here. If he’s a bad guy with no redeeming features, then none of this makes sense. I need to believe he’s salvageable.”
* * *
My mate studied my toes as if an answer lay in them. Then he shook his head. He lifted his gaze to mine. “You also need to hear this. It’s going to break your heart and leave a scar, but I’d rather tell you the truth and leave a scar than tell you a lie and watch you die. Hedi,” he said grimly, “there was ash in his fire.”
I stared at him in confusion. Ash? In what world was that important?
“Whose fire?” I asked.
“Your brother’s.” He softened his tone to the pitch a doctor uses when giving really bad news. “Lexi spent the night here. He made a fire, and he burned wood all night—there was too much ash for it to be a morning fire. Unlike you, he wasn’t injured, and he wasn’t lost. Oldbrooke Forest is not that big. If you know where you’re going, and how to get there, you can cover the ground pretty quickly. I’m guessing he could have reached you in three hours, tops, and done it without breaking into a sweat. He could have sprung you from the trap. Been the hero—the whole nine yards. But he didn’t.”
I felt sick. As if I’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with me and now it was stuck in my craw, like a fur ball. When Lexi had said he couldn’t come to rescue me, I’d understood that to mean that he was still in the Creemore portal, being healed of his addiction.
Because that’s where he was supposed to be.
Being healed. Getting over his sun potion addiction.
I stared at my twin, my brain searching for a plausible excuse. “Maybe Lexi crossed the portal last night, as soon I called for help? He traveled as far as he could to get to me, but he’d stopped when he realized that the Gatekeeper would get there first?”
Still in dreamland, Lexi’s arm was curled over his head as if to protect it.
“The geography’s wrong,” I heard my mate reply. “He’d have used the Creemore portal. That’s hours northeast of here. And he would have had to detour around the Faelands to get here, which would have added more time. No way could he have done all that and still burned a fire all night. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but when he was ‘talking’ to you last night, he was doing it from Daniel’s Rock.”
My hand went to the ball of Merry and Ralph. I felt a flash of heat and a flicker of cold and knew that I had touched both.
“There’s more,” he said, his tone heavy.
I didn’t want to hear more. I wanted my brother to still be redeemable.
“There’s always fur and crud left over following a Were’s transition. But there’s nothing here. Not in the cave, not anywhere inside this ward. Lexi didn’t change into his wolf last night. It was a full moon. The only thing that would stop the process would be a dose of sun potion. So, I’m thinking your bro might not be clear of his juice addiction.”
“What is Lexi playing at?” I whispered.
“I don’t know. But for both of our sakes, don’t put your trust in him.” He studied the sodden bindings; then tenderly—oh so gently—my mate pinched the end of the linen between his grimed fingers. “So you sure you don’t want another hit before I do this?”
“No.” I lifted my gaze to meet his. “I won’t feel it.”
Trowbridge’s gaze moved to Lexi. “Works for me.”
And with that my loving mate ripped my bandage free.
My twin cried out like a man who’d been branded with a hot iron. Chest heaving, he shot upright to a sitting position. For an instant he was awake.
He saw me. And I saw him.
Ashes in the fire, I thought.
My twin’s eyes rolled up toward a heaven he didn’t deserve to visit, and he fell into another deep faint.
Chapter Fourteen
Despite Trowbridge’s judicious use of light slaps and “hey, asshole,” Lexi’s slow crawl to consciousness was a frustratingly long process. When my brother’s eyes finally opened, he stared blankly at the sky for a long moment. His nostrils flared—the air was heavy with a perfume of rank flowers and bruised sweet peas. Then he rolled his head toward us.
Purple circles under his eyes, dots of sweat beaded his forehead. The illusion of health the old wizard had presented to us had disappeared when the old goat had stepped back to let my brother take his hits.
Lexi moved his jaw to test for breakage. “Your boyfriend sucker punched me.”
“It was your trap,” I said.
My brother briefly closed his eyes bef
ore reverting back to a study of Merenwyn’s unblemished sky.
I studied my leg. My skin had made an effort to knit together since the juka had been thoroughly rinsed from the wound. Healing was in progress. Holes that should be filled had. Though not completely, and probably the indents would always be there. An ankle bracelet I’d carry forever.
“The first fifteen minutes after you hear the snick of the jaws closing on your hind leg are pure, stark terror,” I said, my tone conversational. “It takes an hour or more for your wolf’s panic to ebb into exhaustion. That’s when you start thinking. You’ve really got two options. You can wait for the hunter to come to check his trapline—”
Trowbridge interrupted. “Which, if the lazy bastard is strung out on sun potion, could be a couple of days.”
“Or you can go for door number two,” I said. “You can chew off your own leg. All things considered, that’s the kind of internal conversation you don’t ever want to have.” Still no comment, except a tightening of my twin’s jaw, so I went for the lash. “Dad was a wolf. Would you have set your traplines for him too?”
“I can go back to sleep,” Lexi said quietly, “and you can find yourself talking to the wizard inside me.”
“You know, I’m not sure how much of a threat that is. I’m not fond of either of you right now. He lies. You lie. What’s the difference?” My hands curled into fists. “But since you’re here, why don’t you tell me how much time we have left?”
“For what?”
“Lexi, I’m done with games. I know, okay? Last night you weren’t communicating with me from some portal between this world and the other. You were here. In the cave behind you. Sitting by your fire. That’s why I heard you so clearly. Which means that we’re already out of time, or we’re almost out of time. So which is it? Are you and the old wizard a permanent couple? Have you seen three sunrises in Merenwyn yet? Or do we have some time left to get this thing done?”
