by Leigh Evans
“Cordelia?” His deep voice was roughed by pain. “We need help.”
* * *
He’d grunted, “Fifteen minutes,” after passing me back the phone but Cordelia was late. We sat for twenty-four minutes, parked right by the pay phone (which I found and which did not have a nearby strip club), and I was getting tired of his remarkably effective stifled groans. You’d think he’d just heal and be done with all the twitching, and distended neck tendon stuff. It was tiresome and repetitive.
Almost as repetitive as the tape that replayed in my head. It didn’t matter how I played it; backward, forward, slow motion, or fast. The sequence always ended the same. First Trowbridge dodged the fist, then he grinned at me like we were the only ones equipped with swords in a rigged gladiator match, and then his face grew savage. He sent my would-be assailant across the room like a double D weighted paper airplane. Then he looked at me. There it was. That look. The one that said “all mine.”
Dad used to look at Mum like that.
Part of me was doing the hallelujah hand jive and part of me was searching for a manhole cover to dive down. Did he know that he’d given me “the look”?
“Your uncle can’t keep my aunt,” I said, trying to change the direction of my thoughts. “It’s wrong.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” He ineffectually smothered a hiss as he repositioned his leg. “While we’re on the subject of Faes and bad stuff, give me the amulets.”
“Uh-uh.”
“Do you know how many times you’ve defied me?” There was no anger in the comment; his question had been delivered with the same tone one might use for asking, “What year did the Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup?”
“Lost count.”
He blew some air through his lips and I caught a little eau de Jack Daniel’s. “A team of crack Were guns for hire couldn’t liberate your aunt, right now. He’ll have her surrounded by layers and layers of people. She’ll be deep in his territory.”
“Don’t you have a way of sneaking in there?” I asked with a frown.
He didn’t even bother to open his eyes. The guy who’d just given me “the look” pulled his lip down and let it stay that way.
“What were you doing here anyhow, if you have a job and life elsewhere?” I played with the brunette-colored hair extension. “Don’t tell me sightseeing. You came here without an invitation for a reason.”
Trowbridge’s eyelids lifted, and for a moment the interior was illuminated with a bit of an electric-blue fire before he shut them again. He fumbled in his pocket, but as he was reclining sideways in the passenger seat, with his blood-wet jeans clinging to his right hip, it soon became a battle of will to pull his wallet free.
My Were-bitch was unhappy. Deeply unhappy. If she could have pissed on me she would have. I’d hurt him. This, evidently, was a very bad thing.
“Let me help,” I said, reaching for him.
“Back. Get back.” He slapped his perspiring hand at my own. “Back in your seat. Just stay there.” He finally got his wallet out. His fingers were bloodstained, but the gouge on his knuckles was filling in. His thumb left a big wet spot in the middle of his credit card. His fingers kept slipping off the piece of plastic he was trying to pull out. “Shit.” He sighed, and passed me his wallet. “Behind the credit card, you’ll find a folded piece of paper. Bring it out.”
Trowbridge had a credit card? He had to be in really, really bad pain. He’d just given me his wallet. Who was the clever Were now? I unfolded the paper. It was a one-line e-mail from Rachel Scawens, dated one week ago: “I need your help.” I read it again, this time silently. “Rachel? Wasn’t that your sister’s name?”
His face was paper-white. “If you think the kid’s a jerk, you should meet my brother-in-law.”
“I thought all your family was dead.” Then I winced, because that sounded harsh and unfeeling.
“Rachel was already living out of the house with Scawens.”
“Then why are you Rogue?” I frowned at the large thumbprint of mustard on the edge of the crumpled paper. “I thought the pack chased you out. She could have vouched for you.”
“The pack did chase me out of the territory.” A pause. Then softly, “But first she told me to go.”
My Were took umbrage at that. I could feel her swell inside me. “She didn’t believe you had something to do with killing your family.”
“It looked bad,” he said with a shrug.
“So, she believes you now? Will she vouch for you? Tell them that you’re innocent?” I refolded the paper, and put it back in among the seventy-five dollars he had left. “You could be celebrating Christmas with the pack.” He didn’t seem overjoyed at that. I thought a bit, and then asked, “This e-mail … it’s not a trap, is it?”
“That occurred to me. So I called someone who I figured I could trust, before I went to Creemore.”
“Geezer-Were,” I said.
“Huh? Oh.” He grimaced. “You saw him with me. Anyhow, I found out what she wanted.”
“What?”
“Stuart,” he said with a huff of laughter. “She wanted me to take her son away from a bad influence.”
Impossible not to start grinning with him. “What bad influence?”
He bit the inside of his cheek before he said, “My uncle Mannus, the Alpha of Creemore.”
“And you’re giving me a hard time about my relatives.”
“Shut up, Stronghold,” he said without any heat.
“Back at you, Trowbridge.” But my voice had grown soft. Don’t be a sap, I thought. Only an idiot would allow a man to court her with insults.
* * *
The Taurus was getting cool. Thirty-two minutes had elapsed. He was still hurting and flaring Alpha blue whenever he opened his eyes longer than five seconds. He’d refused to wear Bob’s wraparound large sunglasses because of their smell. He had no problem, however, confiscating my own glasses.
And then, to make my evening complete, Lou came calling. A slip. A suck. A slide into her world.
* * *
Mannus Trowbridge’s shoulder-length gray mane is combed straight back. His clothing barely registers on me, other than it is comfortably rumpled. The calculation in his faded blue eyes is at odds with lips that seem permanently set on the edge of a smile.
Time hasn’t been kind.
He approaches at a slow amble, his mouth moving to an audio I can’t hear. I sit behind Lou’s eyes, and feel her fascination and trepidation stir as he comes closer.
He puts his hand on her arm, hands that have never used a shovel. No calluses. No roughness. Square-shaped, with nicely proportioned fingers. The middle-aged skin is smooth and unmarred except for the ink spot staining the pointer finger.
That ink-stained finger can’t seem to rest. It moves on her skin, stroking in a circular pattern that soothes the craving and adds to the ache.
And then the quality of the touch changes. She looks up at him. His mouth is still moving, still talking, still wheedling. But I can feel her fear begin, just a tiny spark of it, low in her belly, as the nail on that finger begins to elongate and sharpen on her arm. It keeps moving, in the same circuit on her pale flesh, but as it turns it leaves a trail, first of skin whitened, and then of skin brightened by blood.
Fear turns to terror.
“Kid?”
I could feel her scream bubbling up in my throat. Run. Escape!
I shoved the car door open, and streaked across the street, completely ignoring Trowbridge’s command to stay. Someone slammed on their brakes, but I kept going, even as Trowbridge yelled, “Jesus, you almost got nailed! Come back here, right now.” I skipped over the road like a squirrel trying to outrun a semi, and I didn’t stop until I found a stop sign to hold on to.
I could feel the ground under my feet again. Oh Sweet Heavens, Lou’s dreams were getting sharper. What if there was a hole in one of them? I’d find myself yanked straight back to Threall. I tightened my hold on the traffic sign. I was safe. The
post quickly heated against my bare hands. It’s the iron in it. My lids drooped. There wasn’t enough ferrous in the steel to make me ill, but the alloyed metal made me feel—I cracked a huge yawn—like I’d swallowed a sedative. A snooze-coaxing one at that. I should let go. But no … clinging grimly to that pole, with my feet sunk deep into this world’s wet soil reminded me where I was. Earth’s realm. Here, I wasn’t going to find myself stalked by a morally bankrupt mystwalker. Here, I was safe. I pressed my forehead against the rain-beaded sign.
Stay far from me, Mad-one.
“Stronghold, get back here now!” Trowbridge roared.
I lifted my head.
There was a burned-tire smell coming from the white 4x4 Jeep that had skidded to a stop dead center on the road. A tall woman got out of the vehicle, and I had a quick impression of shoulder-length red hair and a thin build stacked on a pair of heels. My nose crinkled at the scent of her—Were mixed with Obsession. Her back was to me as she leaned into the Taurus, revealing a bony ass that I wanted to kick. I straightened my spine, and scowled. Turn her back on me as if I didn’t count?
She looked over her shoulder with a severe frown and then said something to Trowbridge in a low, husky voice, before she straightened up, adjusting the hem of her jacket.
How many women truly sway? Trowbridge’s Cordelia did. She didn’t walk, or mince: she slinked, weaving like a vertical cobra, across the street, her silver slingbacks clicking on the pavement, and her head held strangely immobile and high. Not a drunken sway, no: a graceful, hip-generated one that said the owner of the shoes had all the time in the world, that nothing, short of breaking one of those glittering three-inch heels, would make this woman lose her grace or composure.
I’m a girl, I couldn’t help it. I checked her body over as critically as if she were Miss Southern Ontario and I was the squinty-eyed judge with a cellulite issue. Okay, she had me on height—who didn’t? But I won in the curves arena. Trowbridge’s Cordelia was a thin rectangle on very long legs. Her boobs looked wrong. Silicone, I thought, feeling a small measure of good will.
Had he ever given her “the look”?
The closer she got, the more my eyes started their preflare burn. I pulled Bob’s wraparounds off the top of my head and slapped them on as she reached my side of the street. Ice-cold eyes stared down at me from a fifty-year-old face. The owner of those eyes had made an attempt to hold back the evidence of time and gender with a careful application of thick foundation and liner.
“Bridge wants me to collect his Tinker Bell,” she said in a carefully throaty voice. The redhead studied me briefly, one side of her mouth pulled down. “If I don’t come and bring you back, the bloody man will drag himself across the street. Let’s hurry, shall we? It’s beginning to rain again, and my hair will get wet.” Her head turned before her hips did. And then Cordelia, who had possibly been born Carl, swayed her way back to Trowbridge. She stopped, perhaps unconsciously, right in the middle of the golden circle provided by the streetlight, and turned to flick me a glance over her shoulder. Her penciled-in eyebrows rose as her lips pursed. “Well? Chop-chop.”
I didn’t chop, but I sure as hell followed. It was too damn delicious.
* * *
Cordelia didn’t ask a single question. Not one. Not how Bridge got shot, or who I was. She had bony hands, with three blue veins and large knuckles that looked strange with the nail extensions and French polish. But everything she did with those hands was graceful. She brought out a blanket, which she passed to me. She lowered the seats in the cargo area, and then snapped her fingers for the blanket. I put it in her bony paw. With a flick of the wrist, she covered the back with the blanket, and then went to gather up Trowbridge.
She pulled his arm over her shoulder and helped him to his feet. “You in first,” she said to me. “Cradle his head, and keep him from rolling about in the back.”
I tried, but Trowbridge passed out on the fourth pothole on the Gardiner.
* * *
“Look, darling, I’m sure you think I can carry him up all on my own, but this is Ann Taylor, and you’re wearing rags, so will you put your bloody back into it? Help me with him. Hold up your side while I get the key in the door.”
We’d helped Trowbridge into the elevator, steadied him as it shot up to the eleventh floor. We’d got him down the corridor to the door of her condo. What we couldn’t do was to get him to go any farther. By that time, he was all Were and irrational man. The closer he got to passing out again, the more adamantly he held on to the door frame.
“I refuse to fight with him,” she said. “He’s all yours. I need to find some tweezers and plastic anyway. Drag him down to the dining room when you can.”
I put two hands on his back and shoved him into the apartment. Trowbridge’s shirt was mostly wet. Rain had done a bit, blood had helped, and sweat had taken care of the rest. All I wanted was to rip that torn, stained shirt off. It offended me, somehow, deep inside. The sight of it and the long, sleek muscles standing out on arms that were beginning to tremble, plus the stench of his spilled blood tainting his signature scent of the woods and wild; all of it bothered me.
I urged him a little deeper into the apartment then closed the door behind us. He’d gone from clinging to the outside door to clinging to the hat rack. Cordelia liked hats. Bridge’s fists were crushing the wide, soft brim of a bronze chapeau more suited for the Kentucky Derby than church. A veritable concoction of netting, faux roses, feathers, and ribbon. Who wore that stuff?
I tamped down on my irritation. “Come on.”
“Can’t go with her,” he said to me, through his teeth.
“Isn’t she safe?”
“I can’t control the flare in my eyes.” He ground the offending orbs into the crook of his arm. “They’re going off like sparklers. I don’t want to—”
“Let her see,” I finished. “Can’t you just keep your eyes closed? Maybe pass out again?”
He shook his head. A wet curl got caught up in his bristles, and stayed there, hanging onto his chin.
“The bullet is working itself out the wrong way.” Cordelia came out of a doorway with her hands filled with first-aid stuff. Bandages, scissors, long tweezers, and a knife. “Traveling up through the bone, rather than out of the flesh. Femur, I think Bridge said. That happens sometimes. The bullet will have to work its way through the hip. Painful, and sickening, if it’s silver-tipped. It wasn’t, was it? I’ve spread some plastic out on the table. Bridge, I’ll help you to lie down.”
I found myself stepping in front of him. One of his hands left its death grip on the hat rack to squeeze my shoulder. I had to spread my legs to keep from buckling.
“Bathroom,” he said into my ear.
“Trowbridge, I don’t want to help you—”
“He’s not asking you to hold his dick to pee, darling; he’s asking you to take him somewhere private to heal.” Cordelia approached us slowly, her knowing eyes sorting and calculating. “Well, well, how totally unexpected.”
“What?” I asked, looking between the two of them.
“Bathroom,” Trowbridge said, sounding sour. He nudged me to the door on the right, three feet down the hall. He had lousy balance, and I ended up being his two-legged walker aide into Cordelia’s tastefully gray-blue bathroom. It had a lot of shiny things in it: sparkly mirrors, and a glinting silver soap dispenser.
Cordelia placed the first-aid stuff on top of the granite counter. “Does she know what to do? She has to be very exact with the knife. Extracting a slug from a bone without causing more damage is not an easy task.” Her mouth thinned to almost nonexistent as she moved the white towels out of our way and looked around her spotless bathroom. “I should have brought the plastic in here.”
“Do?” I asked. Trowbridge was holding himself upright with a bloodstained hand on the wall. He’d gone from white to the type of gray that spoke of imminent collapse. I took a step backward just to be safe, but his fist was clenched on my Barry Manilow T-shirt
. “What do you mean ‘do’? The last bullet came out on its own.”
“The last bullet? Bridge, what have you been doing in the past few hours?” Cordelia’s gaze flicked to me. “How are you with a knife, darling?” She smiled, a patrician effort that didn’t warm her wintry blue eyes. “I can stay, Bridge. I can help you through this.”
He shook his head.
“You can trust me.” Some of her confidence slipped. “You have to know that.”
As Cordelia read his face, her mouth twisted. She turned away. I noticed the skinny white skunk line near her scalp as she bent over, searching for new towels under the sink. She passed me some ratty beige ones and a bottle of bathroom cleaner. “I want every bit of his blood cleaned up, afterward. And don’t touch the white towels.” Then she spun on her slingback silver heels and left the bathroom.
“Lock the door,” Trowbridge said. His head was tilted back against the wall. He was bracing himself with his good foot against the tile. “Hurry up.”
I turned to do so, and so I missed seeing his long slide down the wall. I heard it, as did the Were-bitch inside me. I could feel her twisting inside me in agitation. I stared at my fingers on the lock, until he let out his final grunt of pain. Then I slowly spun around.
He was lying on Cordelia’s white tile, his head near the toilet and shower enclosure. His bad leg was stretched out, but his good one was bent at the knee. He still had my glasses on. One lens was smeared with a thumbprint of his dried blood.
I knelt beside him. “We don’t need glasses anymore.” I took off my pair and reached for the ones covering his eyes. His hand caught mine. Warm. Hard. A little bloody, which generally would have made me puke, but it was Trowbridge blood, which made it precious as well as horrible. The gouge was still there across his knuckles from when he’d missed the bouncer and got the pole instead.
“I can’t stop flaring,” he said in a tight voice. “I can feel it.”
I picked up one of her white towels, rolled it into a long snake, and jammed it against the bottom of the door. “Flare, then.” I eased the glasses off his nose. He opened his eyes, and blue light, soul-searing, shone from them.
