Cole did his looming thing again, in human form, standing well out of the splash zone.
I heaved again, but this time nothing came up but regret. “Hey.”
The porch groaned as he shifted his weight. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.” I shook my head, and my eyeballs swam in their sockets. “I’m good. I just…” I caught another whiff of my hair and barked out a wet cough. “It’s the smell. In my hair. Making me sick.”
Cole hooked his hands under my armpits and set me on my feet. I swayed without his support for the split second before he heaved a sigh and scooped me against his wide chest. Careful to keep his hands away from my arms and the delicate coils of metal between my shoulders, he carried me into the kitchen and sat me on the counter sideways so the basin was at my back.
After cutting the sink on, he held his hand under the stream until he appeared satisfied. One of his massive palms then cupped the back of my skull while his other pressed between my breasts, and he started lowering me down onto the quartz slab.
“What are we doing?” I tried focusing on his face, but his flat expression gave nothing away.
“Hold still.” He tugged the sprayer from its holder and started soaking my hair with water just shy of too hot then squirted half the bottle of dish soap onto my grungy curls. His strong fingers massaged my scalp, his short nails scratching in small circles that left me a puddle under his hands. Rinsing took forever, but I didn’t complain. And when he wet a cloth and scrubbed my face and neck clean, I didn’t fuss about that either. “I don’t know how to do that girly twist thing with the towel.”
“That’s okay.” I pushed upright while he fetched a clean towel from the bathroom, then I slid to my feet and twisted the sopping wet length up on top of my head. “Do you mind if I get out of these clothes?”
I got the feeling he wasn’t budging until I had been tucked in, which was fine with me, but I didn’t want to wear my uniform up to my room. I was too beat to shower, but I wanted pajamas all the same.
“Let me get your boots.” He knelt in front of me and untied the laces, and when his wide palm wrapped the back of my left calf to tug the boot off that foot, my remaining knee almost buckled. “Now the other.”
Once I was standing in my socks, he escorted me to the laundry nook, a former linen closet Dad had converted into a space wide enough to fit a stackable washer and dryer set. There he pulled clean clothes out of the dryer I couldn’t have reached without swaying like a palm tree caught in a hurricane.
“I’ve got it from here.” Cole took all of about two steps before turning his back on me and planting his feet, giving me a view of the muscles flexing in his shoulders while I struggled out of my clothes and into a matching tank and shorts set. “I’m decent.”
Without another word, he picked me up and carried me through the sheeting and up the stairs to my bedroom where he laid me down. I didn’t bother with cover, just rolled onto my side and basked in the luxurious sensation of having an actual mattress beneath me. The problem was, this position gave me an eyeful of the ancient rotary phone presiding over my nightstand, and its silent accusation kicked my heart into a quicker rhythm. I had left it behind, like anyone would steal the ugly thing, like it did me a damn bit of good having it three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year. And yet… having Cole and the phone in the same room together set my skin crawling.
No. That was ridiculous. I was not going to allow a hunk of avocado-green plastic to guilt trip me for having a man in my bedroom. Even if the silver tab on its dial glinted with disapproval under the lights.
I am never drinking this much ever again. Never ever. No way, no how.
“Sleep it off.” Cole stuck out his hand, and for a second I thought he was grabbing for the phone, and I forgot how to breathe, but he gestured at the towel. “I’ll be outside.”
Untangling the twisted fabric from my hair required great effort, and when I passed it over, our fingers brushed. With the phone in my periphery, the wires in my head crossed until the worst possible question popped out of my mouth. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
Cole stared at the towel concealing our hands like he was visualizing the pinpoints of heat where our fingers touched then dropped it like I’d passed him a bag of snakes. “No.”
He breezed out of the room and clomped down the stairs, slamming the front door on his way back into the darkness beyond the porch. I stared at the discarded towel until its blue and white stripes flashed behind my eyelids with each blink and even those stark lines faded to black.
CHAPTER THREE
Pounding woke me, and it wasn’t in my head. Or at least not all of it. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I touched a clump of tacky hair knotted at my temple. Raking my fingers through the mass didn’t help. The texture was dry and stiff like I had forgotten to use conditioner or…
Hazy memories from last night bombarded me, and I shot upright in bed.
Cole had washed my hair and put me to bed. And recalling that dredged up the reason for his kindness, and my gut twisted so hard I had to lean over the mattress and dry heave. Nothing came up. I was on empty. But the memory of those little teeth had etched themselves behind my eyelids, and there was no amount of blinking I could do to escape their silver glint.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The rhythmic thudding dulled the sharpest edge of my grief, a small mercy, and a headache blossomed when I stood, but I had to get up and investigate all the racket. Surely the crew wouldn’t have started without me. I hadn’t inspected the order or given approval. They had no right to begin without even verifying if I was at home.
I took the stairs two at a time and skidded to a halt in the middle of the living room.
War had smashed through the original bay window while in her true form, that of a colossal alligator-like demon, and taken a chunk of the wall with her. Turns out demons are good at demo. Interior design? Not so much. I had framed out the section in question yesterday so that all the guys had to do was anchor the supports, pop in the new panes, and go. I had planned on doing the trim on my own to save money, but it looked like I had missed the boat. All I could see were dollar signs superimposed over the energy rating stickers.
The front door had been propped open, not that the AC was running, but the violation of my privacy rankled. I stomped onto the porch, glared at the white pickups parked in the yard, and whirled toward the first stooped male figure I spotted with a snarl on my lips. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” He took another measurement and drew a pencil line. “Hand me that caulk gun.”
“Santiago?”
“Never mind.” He grunted, his dark brown eyes flashing with annoyance, and reached around me. “I got it.”
“I don’t understand.” All my indignation drained out of the soles of my feet as I stared at the back of his tanned neck. “Why are you here?”
“Word is Mommy and Daddy kissed and made up,” he said, his thin lips curling in a vicious smile, “so you’ve been granted visitation rights.”
Heat blasted up my nape, and I had to rub the skin to ease the sting. “I didn’t kiss anyone.”
“He doesn’t mean literally.” Miller joined us with a fresh box of screws in hand. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
Glaring down at Santiago, I noticed the slight hitch in his shoulders that told me he was laughing at me. I was tempted to reach down and yank his hair where the longish ends were starting to curl, black and glossy with sweat, above his collar. He and I had butted heads from the get-go, so I hadn’t expected a miracle even after we’d bonded during a late-night fishing trip, but whatever brownie points that had won me must have been lost during my weeklong absence.
“Hey, Miller.” I offered him a genuine smile that he returned. “It’s good to see you.” And since Santiago had stiffened on my periphery, I nudged his boot with a bare toe to include him in the moment. “Both of
you.” He grumbled about toe jam, but he didn’t move away, so hey, progress. “I still don’t get why you guys are here. I already made arrangements with a contractor to handle the installation.”
“We’re your coterie,” Miller said gently. “We’re here to serve.”
Serve. The word coated the back of my throat with bitterness.
“Santiago,” I snapped, “put the caulk gun down.”
“Nope.” He kept his bead even as he traced the seam where the window met the wall. “I have somewhere to be in an hour. I don’t have time to argue with you.”
“Miller,” I pleaded with him. “Let me pay you. Let me help you. Let me do something.”
“I told you she wouldn’t be pleased,” Thom said, sounding smug. “You invaded her me space without permission.” The tracker joined us on the porch and lifted a hand. A dead mouse dangled by its tail from his fingertips. “I brought you a gift.”
“Um, well, okay.” Gamely, I accepted the offering in the spirit it was meant. “Thank you, Thom.”
“I found a nest of them near the back door.” He tracked the pendulum swing of the corpse and wet his lips. “I took care of them for you.”
“I appreciate that.” I lifted the mouse. “Would you like to, ah, take care of this one too?”
His gaze flicked up to mine. “You’re not hungry?”
“No.” Not at all. Not even a little bit. “I’m not big on breakfast.”
“You’re sure?” He waited until I nodded before shifting to his demon form, a boxy tomcat with midnight fur and a nubby tail. And wings. Can’t forget those. His scarred face tilted up to me. “Mmmrrrrpt.”
“There you go.” I held it down until he took it delicately between his teeth. “Good boy.”
Stub tail held high, Thom trotted off with the mouse swaying from his jaws.
“He’s on patrol,” Miller explained. “We’re all safer with him far away from the nail gun. There was an… incident… when we were constructing the bunkhouse, and Thom is no longer allowed to operate power tools.”
“I’ll take your word on that.” There was one member of the coterie who had yet to show his face, but I would rip out my own tongue and beat myself to death with it before asking about Cole in front of Santiago. “How much longer do you think?”
“An hour tops.” Miller grabbed a thirty-gallon trashcan I hadn’t seen before and started bagging debris. “We have a new client interview this afternoon in Ridgeland.” He wiped his brow with his forearm. “We both need showers and fresh uniforms before then.”
“How long did all this take?” I joined the cleanup effort. “I’m not usually such a heavy sleeper.”
The crew I’d hired had quoted me thirty dollars an hour plus the cost of cleanup and the dump fees. I could pull that from the ATM on my way to work and drop the money at the White Horse bunkhouse for Miller and Santiago to split. I would pay myself back out of the refund I got from the installers. Assuming they paid up, given the last-minute cancellation.
“We’ve been here about two hours.” He shrugged. “Cole explained about last night.”
That brought me up short. “What do you mean?”
“He was on Luce duty.” Santiago filled in the blank, as though the information were a blade, and he knew just how to cut me with it. “He trailed you out to Hensarling Farms.”
A snarl twitched Miller’s lip up over his teeth, but the cat was already out of the bag, and I didn’t mean Thom.
“This whole time?” I aimed the question at Santiago, the one most likely to give me the full truth since odds were good the delivery was going to hurt. “You guys have been rotating babysitting detail?”
“War is still out there.” Santiago finished what he was doing and deigned to look up at me. “Famine is coming. Can’t you read the signs? Desiccated animals? Burning crops?” His lips thinned. “You’re worse than useless to us like this. You can’t take care of yourself, and you can’t protect us either. Of course we’re watching your back. You should be thanking us, not taking us to task because we’re doing our jobs.”
“What is it you want from me, Santiago?” A cold spot blossomed in my chest. “Do you want Conquest back? Is that what this is about? Are you hoping you’ll provoke me into a transformation that will end this world and us along with it?”
“No charun has captured Earth and held it,” he informed me. “We aren’t walking off this battlefield. The least we deserve is a choice in how we die.”
“Santiago,” Miller warned.
“No, let her hear this.” Santiago stood with lethal grace. “Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but someday soon this shell of yours is going to crack. When that happens, people are going to die.” He wiped globs of caulk from his fingertips with a paper towel he crumpled in his fist. “You aren’t here to save this world. You’re here to end it.”
Miller grasped my hand, one of the few places I allowed contact, and I squeezed him back for all I was worth.
“I can’t believe that,” I rasped. “I won’t believe it.”
“You’re Conquest —” Santiago began.
“No, I’m not.” I released Miller to face Santiago on my own. “I’m well aware you all think I’m a construct, that I’m not real, that I shouldn’t be treated as an actual person with thoughts and desires of my own. I get that, and I don’t blame you, but I’m not giving up on me. Her ambitions are not mine, and I’m going to do everything in my power to hold onto my identity. So thank you for watching my back, and fuck you for being so ready to bury a knife between my shoulder blades.”
For the first time since I’d met him, Santiago was rendered speechless.
Ever the peacemaker, Miller cleared his throat. “I think we should all —”
Santiago pivoted on his heel, hit the steps hard, and strode to the borrowed truck. He got in, cranked up, and spun gravel as he hightailed it onto the main road and out of sight.
I threw up my hands and watched him go. “And here I thought we were making progress.”
“You are,” Miller said on a sigh. “That’s the problem. Hating you is easy. It’s as reflexive as breathing. Liking you? Wanting to believe in you? Protect you – from yourself and what’s coming? That’s hard. Santiago doesn’t know what to do with those feelings, and he’s not the only one.”
The remembered sensation of Cole’s fingers in my hair tightened my lower stomach, and I jotted a quick mental note adding my name at the tip top of the list of people figuring out what the hell to do with their conflicting emotions.
“Wait. Let me get this straight.” I flexed my toes on the porch someone had hosed clean. “You’re saying Santiago passively hated me when we met, nothing personal, but now that he might like me, he actively hates me?”
Miller considered the quandary for a moment. “That about covers it.”
I couldn’t win with him. Could not win.
“I can finish up here if you need to go.” Santiago had finished the exterior work down to the trim while he was sniping at me. “I promised to call Rixton first thing, and I owe Sherry lunch.” I rubbed the base of my neck. “I need to call Uncle Harold too, let him know I’m better today.” Sensing Miller’s hesitation, I tossed in, “Thom can stay with me if he wants. He seems to be enjoying himself.”
The cat in question was chasing a bumble bee through a patch of wildflowers. Not pouncing or stalking. He flew after the thing as it visited each cluster of white blossoms.
“All right.” He left the trashcan for me. “I’ll come back for the tools later. You can leave them on the porch.”
With cement blocks filling the back-door slot and the bay window in place, I could actually lock the house for a change. “Hold that thought.” I ducked inside and palmed a set of spare keys off the hook and twisted an extra house key free. “There you go.” I pressed it into his hand. “I’ll put the tools inside the front door. I’m still getting looky-loos who want to see where the super gator attacked.” Vultures swooped past on occasion, bu
t those tended to steal moments from my life, not machinery off my porch. “I wouldn’t want them to run off with your equipment.”
Miller closed his fingers around the key like it was solid gold and diamond-crusted. “Here.” He reached in his pocket and returned the favor, removing a key from a black carabiner and offering it to me. “In case you ever want to come home.”
The metal hit my palm, and my heart gave a squeeze as I made a fist around the small token of trust. “Thanks.”
“Luce?”
Bone Driven Page 4
