His ethereal snarl made her toes itch. Dana-Bob flipped inside out on himself with a snap of energy, disappearing into a single point of nothingness.
“Wow,” Drew said. “He’s a fast learner.”
“He’s got resources,” Garrie said, somewhat grimly. She pulled herself back up into a more cheerful expression. “On the other hand, given what we face on that mountain, we’ve got plenty to keep our minds off him.”
Robin said flatly, “Oh, yay,” while Lucia carefully placed a size large containment bag on the counter just in case.
“Garrie,” Quinn said. “If this guy is really like Rhonda Rose, and he releases his inner asshole...can you take him down?”
Garrie lifted one shoulder, as casually as she knew how.
Quinn said, “I’ll look into it. And I’ll look into him.”
~~~~~
Some part of Garrie, asleep after candles and celebration, knew the solidity of her new porch, the comfort of the sleeping bag, the scent of cedar and juniper in dry canyon air.
The rest of her, falling into sleep and falling away from herself, went to Trevarr. His world, his experience. She felt herself go, and welcomed it.
Warm air, hard rock, dark spicy fog and the rich brown gleam of skin patterned with the finest scales...
And then a metal gauntlet descending.
Garrie twisted against phantom chain and rock, manacles heavy and harsh at her wrists, awash in pain that wasn’t hers. This is what they do to him. What she does to him.
Anjhela?
“Stop it!” she cried, and the words came out too garbled to recognize, not even close to her own native tongue. She withdrew, enough to regather herself. And then to step right back into it, once again pushing her personal resources out to Trevarr—knowing he had barely learned to absorb them, could take just so much but not more.
And then she sent more.
The growl of his reaction slapped back at her, twisting and stirring the darker things between them. It came with an unfamiliar despair, a certainty of breaking. His breaking.
And yet still not enough to save him, struggling against barbs of intertwined pain and pleasure—of fierce memories, the flutter of lash over copper-brown eyes, the grimace of pending ecstasy, the wild cries of completion and fingers gripping so hard—
Twisted to agony in a heartbeat, shifted to cruelty, copper-brown turned hard and cold and finger-claws digging deep.
Betrayal.
She didn’t understand it, she only knew it was more than physical pain and more than he could bear. More than anyone ever should.
Then she would do more than give.
She would take.
~~~~~
“Garrie! Garrie!”
Garrie thrashed out against the hands, screaming and choking, completely insensible.
“Ow! Chic!”
Fighting for her life, fighting for his life—
“Aiee Dios! Stop it!”
Imprecations snarled in an unfamiliar tongue—
“Lisa McGarrity, that is enough!”
Suddenly smothered and gasping for air and uncontrollable fury ebbing—
Ebbing.
Garrie said, “What the fark..?”
The tiniest peephole appeared in the soft material around her, revealing little more than darkness and the hint of a large brown eye. “Are you finished?”
But Lucia’s trembling voice didn’t match those arch words, and neither did her hands on Garrie’s shoulders—more of a comfort than a restraint.
Reality here, reality there...they jumbled together, leaving Garrie with fading streaks of pain and a lingering ache in her throat. The air hit her face crisp and clear. Pine. Cedar. Lucia’s faint citrus perfume. Garrie said, “What..?”
“Chic, you’re addled. Just lie still a moment.” Lucia moved, revealing the extent to which she’d flung herself over Garrie. As the stifling sleeping bag fell away from Garrie’s head, whiskers tickled her face, lingering only a moment.
*Sorry,* Sklayne whispered, speaking for the first time in days. *Sorry, sorry, small person.* A faint fuzzy tingle passed over her skin, like the world’s softest comfie blanket brushing by. With it went some of the haze, most of the pain...a good deal of the ache.
She wanted to ask where he’d been, what he was doing...what he knew and what he still hadn’t told her. Instead she lay in silence and let him minister to her, absorbing the caring from Lucia’s quiet touch.
Eventually realized two very important things. Because while she recovered in the arms of her friends, Trevarr was again alone in his pain.
And Lucia had buffered her.
“Did you—” she asked. “Shields?”
“Yes.” Lucia reached over her, fumbling for something...the faint click of a push-button and a flashlight beam flooded the night, revealing Lucia as disheveled as Garrie had ever seen her—long hair in complete disarray, clothing askew, extra blanket falling off her shoulders.
Lucia carefully propped the flashlight to reflect against the side of the house. “That is...I tried to do that. Did I?”
*Yes,* Sklayne said, his inner voice a mere quiet purr. *The Lucia person does well.*
“Sklayne says yes.” Carefully, Garrie said—discovering herself mummied up in not only her own sleeping bag, but Lucia’s. She disentangled herself, handing over the extra bag. Lucia immediately draped it over her shoulders, shivering in her Hello Kitty pajamas.
“He’s back, then?” Lucia pushed at her hair, clearing her face. “Sklayne?”
*Back,* Sklayne said. *Never gone. Just too thin to see.*
“Why?” Garrie said, immediately alert. “What did you do? To who? Where?”
“Is that something you really want to know?” Lucia asked. To judge by her dry tone, she had regained some equilibrium. But when she took a breath and held it, Garrie knew her next words would be much more hesitant, and they were. “Garrie. Chic. What happened?”
Garrie did more than just tug at the hair behind her ear. She scrubbed her hands over her whole head, trying to clear it. “Trevarr,” she said. “The things she’s doing to him...”
“She?”
Knowing without knowing. Anjhela.
Sklayne sat invisibly, primly, at her side. His mind-voice sounded like a hissing spit. *Ghehera. Tribunal. Anjhela.* And then, with a chiding tone, *Should not go there, the Garrie.*
“Anjhela,” Garrie echoed out loud. She shook herself off and pulled her own sleeping bag over her shoulders, sitting on the thin ground mat. “So Sklayne says.”
“Oh?” Lucia’s tone became positively arch. “And is there anything else he cares to impart, our wee little gato?”
*Not small,* Sklayne said. *Mighty.* And then, after a moment, a demand. *Tell her.*
“Not small,” Garrie repeated dutifully. “Mighty.”
“Aren’t we all,” Lucia said.
Sklayne emitted a small series of sparks, outlining his glass cat form, but he quickly settled. Far more subdued than Garrie had seen him in the past. *The Garrie hurt Anjhela,* he said with satisfaction. *Took from her.*
“I think,” Garrie said, translating this with her recent memories as a filter, “that whoever Anjhela is and whatever she was doing, I stopped it.”
*For now.*
“For now.” Garrie sighed. “I hope that means this isn’t going to happen again.”
“You hope!” Lucia laughed without the least bit of humor. The flashlight wobbled, throwing a wavering light across the wall, and she steadied it. “Don’t you ever do that to me again! And what if I hadn’t been here? What if it happens again and I’m not? And what is that gibberish all about?”
Garrie said, “But you were here. And what you did was amazing. There’s no way you could have used that shielding a month ago. Even a week ago!”
And at the same time, Sklayne said in a rather small voice, *Gibberish. Gave something . To you. The Garrie.*
Lucia, entirely unaware of this confession, smiled a small pleased s
mile at her success. And Garrie turned on Sklayne. “Wait, what? You gave me what?”
Silence from the invisible not-cat.
“What?” Lucia worried the ends of her hair, absently finger-combing a snarl.
“I’m not sure,” Garrie said. “Something to do with the gibberish. If he doesn’t fess up soon,” and she directed her words to the spot where he’d been, “then I’ll find a way to block his access to the solar panels.”
*Spptt!*
But the response came from everywhere and nowhere, and Garrie dismissed the problem of Sklayne for the moment, her thoughts returning to Trevarr. To Anjhela. To the Keharian Tribunal, a group of beings she’d never met but against whom she seethed with a whole-hearted and growing anger.
“The Tribunal,” she said. “Ghehera.”
“Trevarr’s people,” Lucia guessed.
“No!” Garrie snapped at her with an anger that had been building—all fear and fury over what she knew, with repeated and unerring intimacy, that Trevarr endured. “Not his people. But others from his world. The ones that have been behind everything since we got on that plane for San Jose.”
“We wanted more than what we had,” Lucia said, somewhat sadly. “We got it, didn’t we.” It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be.
“We had no idea.” Garrie drew a deep breath, jaw tense. “We couldn’t possibly. Just like they have no idea—”
She stopped, struck by thought...stuck there a moment, with the blooming awareness of right. Of potential justice.
“Chic?”
*Small person?* Sklayne reappeared—in full this time, complete Abyssinian cat in the splash of reflected light, long tail and much with the ears.
“What,” Garrie said, lifting her head to look at Lucia, “What if we give it back?”
“Give it...the mountain thing, the what did Sklayne call it? The kyrokha?” Lucia sent her a baffled look. “But how?”
Garrie shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t—”
But they had the storage echveria, full of stolen energy. And they had Garrie. She’d channeled the energy of a portal; she’d created a new Red Rocks vortex. She’d reached across worlds to find Trevarr—to help him.
There had to be a way.
“I don’t know,” she said again. “Yet.”
Lucia looked no less baffled. “But...then it’ll just be there.”
The flashlight fluttered and went out, and it took Garrie a moment to realize that Sklayne had not only sucked it dry, he’d done so inadvertently in reaction to the conversation.
Spirits help her, she was beginning to understand Mr. Small But Mighty.
Lucia picked up the light, thumbed the switch a couple of times, and gave up. “I know you did that,” she said to the night.
But their eyes would adjust. And Garrie clung to that small glow of inspiration, and the excitement it churned in her.
“Wherever this kyrokha thing is, it has to be dealt with,” she told Lucia. “But it doesn’t belong here, and I have no idea how to handle it. Ghehera started this mess...let them deal with the consequences.”
“But—”
Garrie didn’t even give her a chance. “I’m one person, Lu. One. With other things to do. And the kyrokha wouldn’t even be here if Ghehera had kept their bad guys on their own world.”
“This is true,” Lucia said evenly, sounding as self-contained as she ever did. “But they didn’t, because they didn’t care enough. So then they sent Trevarr here alone—and they didn’t expect him to live through it, and they didn’t care about that, either, as long as the job was done. Yes?”
Garrie nodded in the dark, resenting the obligation to agree with anything that weakened her own argument. Then she realized Lucia couldn’t see her. “Yes. Right.”
A contrite pale silvered glow appeared beside her, something shaped and sized vaguely like a cat.
Lucia’s expression in the artificial moonlight cast her face into somber shadow. “If you get that kyrokha thing back to Kehar, it’s probably going to be madder than ever.”
*Kyrokha.* Sklayne’s glow dimmed slightly. *Not bad. Just hurt.*
But Lucia couldn’t hear that, and she leaned forward, trying to find Garrie’s gaze in the whimsical light. “It’s going to hurt people there. Is that Tribunal going to care?”
“They’ll care if it’s in their way.” Garrie didn’t want to sit there any longer; she slipped out of the bag and paced across the porch in her long underwear, worn boards under bare feet. “Lu, you have no idea what they’re doing to him. No idea.”
“They suck,” Lucia said promptly. “¡Chale!—of course they suck! But what if you send this thing back, and the Tribunal doesn’t stop it, and other people are the ones to pay?”
*Kyrokha,* Sklayne’s voice came out sadder than he must have meant it to; he stood and shook, sending cold sparks flying. *Not bad.*
Garrie turned on Lucia in frustration. “I don’t know, Lu! But I don’t know if I can handle that thing here, either! It needs to go back to its own backyard. It needs to be in Gehera’s lap. And I need to be able to help Trevarr!”
*Kyrokha,* Sklayne said, not quite to himself. “Not bad. Never bad.*
Garrie turned on him, too. “But it’s acting bad! And don’t think I’ve forgotten about your part in the gibberish, whatever it is!”
*Spttt!* Sklayne disappeared with a pop, leaving them in darkness. Complete and utter darkness, just two insignificant humans in the middle of it all.
That felt just about right.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 18
Kehar: You Have Undone Us
Anjhela came back to her senses with a start, draped over Trevarr. The mendihar had retreated, aching with a stabbing cold she hadn’t felt since its bonding; dark rising fog lapped around her toes.
She’d done it again. Tried to break Trevarr, this time driven by desperation—this time in spite of new understanding of herself. But still willing to sacrifice him for the information she needed, because that was what she’d become.
But this time he hadn’t been alone in fighting her. This time, someone else had reached through him to fight back.
To win.
She shoved away from Trevarr with a snarl, trying to rise—felt the tremble of her legs, and sat abruptly again. Sudden panic suffused her at his utter motionless; she crept back to him, holding her breath—touching him. Beneath her hand, his ribs finally expanded. She dropped her forehead to his chest with relief, understanding one thing with finality.
Once he had been her strength. Now he was her weakness.
She didn’t catch her single tear before it slid from her cheek to splash against his skin. To her horror, he flinched from it. She met his gaze and froze, stunned at what she saw there.
Death. Retribution in waiting. The unmitigated ferocity of his other half, finally driven from hiding...
Looking straight at her.
She pretended not to notice.
“Good,” she said. “You’re awake.” Her hand still lay on his chest; she curved the fingers just enough to imply promise of the metal-tipped claws. But she wouldn’t talk about Trevarr’s unknown partner. She wouldn’t ask about the missing village. Not anymore. “Tell me about the sklarr.”
He lifted a lip. The exposed canine glinted sharp and predatory.
“The sklarr,” she said, keeping her voice steady.
His expression gradually faded, leaving only the memory of menace and destiny. Incredibly, a faint weary humor replaced it—there in the crook of his mouth, the corner of his eye. Incredibly, he pitched his voice to be no more affected than hers. “No one’s ever had a confirmed bond with a sklarr.”
“Must we play that game?”
“It’s your game,” he said.
“Only sklarr could have moved that village.” Multiple sklarr. The notion that the impulsive, curious little creatures had somehow managed to work together in any fashion gave her the cold grue. “It has been hunted without s
uccess—and more than one of our hunters have disappeared along the way.”
“It’s a dangerous world.”
“Fool.” She let her nails dig into his skin, then dragged them across his chest and down his belly, hard enough to raise red welts in their wake.
But her heart wasn’t in it. She was tired.
And he was right. This game was, at its heart, hers—and she didn’t want to play any longer. Not with him. Not with whatever and whoever continued to help him.
He made me. He can break me.
No. Never that. Not Anjhela in her prime, not Anjhela under control. Not Anjhela.
“If you had only given in,” she heard herself saying. “Back when we could have changed things for ourselves. We would be invincible. We would be together.”
“That, too,” he said, “was your choice.” He raised one manacle-weighted hand to cup her face with the intimate confidence of one who had already handled her body in so many ways, so many years earlier. For an instant, that body betrayed her, leaning into the touch.
But his fingers tightened. Not quite cruel, except in contrast. “As it was your choice to take what I once gave you and betray us with it.”
“Us?” she said, thinking of his unknown partner and her unknown power, and how she meant things to Trevarr that Anjhela never had.
He saw her misunderstanding and shook his head. “Us,” he said. “You have betrayed what we were. You have undone us.”
She jerked her face from his grasp, rejecting his words with vehemence. “Nothing can change what was!”
He dropped his hand across his chest, manacles clinking; his eyes closed. “I’m tired,” he said. “If you want to continue, do it without me.”
She should have done just that. She had the skill. She could send mendihar memories whispering through his mind, scraping loose everything from mild discomfort to horrifying agony.
You have undone us.
She found she had no heart for any of it.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 19
A Pleasant Non-Denominational Cleansing
Rhonda Rose
Oh, how Lisa flew.
I almost envied her, observing her growing confidence at the transition into what she had almost immediately dubbed Garrie View.
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