Shadowed Lover
Page 26
“Need a hand?” Mateo asked with an easy smile. He lifted Drake’s feet and helped maneuver him into the car. He was taller than the width of the backseat, his knees bent to fit him in there, but it would have to do.
“Thanks,” she replied, walking back around the car. “How are you feeling?”
He glanced over at the house then back at her, his eyes morphing to an odd shade of violet-green. “Thankful?”
She knew exactly what he meant. Neve looked down as she shoved the toe of her boot into the ground. “I want to take my parents’ bodies with us.” Peering up, she expected to see a look of surprise on Mateo’s face, but he just looked resigned.
“It’s only right,” he replied. “But I’ll need some help.”
Leaving Drake and Sasha outside, Neve walked back into the mausoleum that was the former Yellow Eye Leo’s house. The smell of death was a perverse punch to her senses, and she took a couple of deep breaths through her mouth to stop the worst of it from tattooing onto her memories. Mateo led the way up the stairs, a hand pressed to his stomach like his injuries were still hurting him.
At the top of the stairs, Neve’s steps slowed, then stopped outright on the threshold of the bedroom where her parents had been murdered. Mateo, as if sensing her hesitation, turned around and approached her. His warm hands gripped her upper arms to hold her steady. She hadn’t even realized she was swaying.
“You can wait outside if you need to.”
She shook her head. “No. They’re my parents, and I’ll honor them in doing this.”
He gave her a nod and stepped back, his expression so unlike what she expected of him.
Straightening her spine, she walked farther into the room, determined. Her parents were just how she’d found them, her father on the right, her mother on the left. Walking behind them to untie the bindings, she hissed when she discovered they were coated in silver. That explained why they hadn’t tried to escape—the pain would’ve been excruciating.
Ignoring the way her fingertips burned, she teased the knot apart until the rope finally fell away. Her fingers and hands were raw, blisters already forming between the patches of skin that had been burned off. With the back of her hand, she wiped away the tears that had been silently falling since she’d started her task and looked up at Mateo.
“Give me your hands,” he said softly.
She did, shutting her eyes when his palm started to glow softly. Warmth spread through her, from her fingertips to her wrists, the burning sensation inflicted by the silver slowly easing away. When she opened her eyes, all she could see was slightly pinked up skin.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“You’re welcome.”
She returned her attention back to her parents. They’d both been shot in the back of the head, executed for what appeared to be no reason at all.
“Why did this happen?”
“I don’t know,” Mateo replied. “We’ll find out, though. Drake won’t rest until he has someone’s head on a platter.”
She bobbed her head and walked around so she was standing in front of her parents. She lifted her mother up, easing her onto her shredded shoulder. The pain lashed at her, but she gritted her teeth and took the burden. Mateo did the same for her dad, grunting a little with the weight of his charge. Together, they left the bedroom and went down the stairs once more and out the front door.
Mateo paused halfway to the van. “Do you smell that?”
Honestly, all Neve could smell was blood and death, but she turned her face to the side and inhaled more deeply. The wind was blowing at their backs, bringing the smell of—
“Gasoline,” she breathed.
Mateo cursed and started running to the van. Neve followed in her limping gait, placing her parents side by side in the back.
“Get to the car! Drive!”
She hobbled back to the Escalade and hit the let’s go button. The engine roared to life, and she hit the gas, the five thousand-fifty-pound steel cage and engine block surging down the drive. Neve kept her attention split between the road in front of her and the rearview mirror. She saw the van tear out after her, then a split second later, the pride house exploded in a fireball that engulfed the house and parked cars. The van swerved with the force of the impact, but the Escalade was buffeted from the worst of the blast. Her side mirrors showed nothing but intense red flame and black smoke.
As they came to the end of the drive, she didn’t bother stomping on the brakes, she just yanked on the wheel and sent the Escalade into an oh shit turn that kicked out its rear end. Thankfully, the road was quiet, and her crazy driving was only witnessed by a couple of cows at the side of the road.
And Mateo. She peered into the rearview mirror and saw him grinning and letting out a whoop. Shifting her mirror down, she checked on Drake and found his yellow eyes focused on her. But it wasn’t the man staring out at her—it was the beast.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice lower, more graveled, than usual.
“Someone blew up the house.”
His eyes glowed brighter. “Your parents?”
“We got them.”
Drake’s eyes shut once more and unconsciousness took him. The wound to his throat was still bleeding steadily, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been before Mateo had healed him. She got onto the highway where Mateo slid out of the lane behind her and surged forward. He guided the van past her then changed lanes so he was in front.
She followed him for a few miles then got off at Little Lake when he did, desperately trying not to think about the two bodies in the back of the van. He pulled into a run-down motel that looked like it had gone out of business in the seventies. He parked in front of the reception office and got out. Neve stayed in the car with Drake, waiting for Mateo to come back out again. It was only a few minutes later that he emerged swinging two sets of keys around his index finger like he hadn’t just fought for his life, moved dead bodies, then fled for his life.
Neve rolled down the window as he approached. “Room twelve,” he told her. “Park rear end in.”
She double-checked the room numbers as she went, finding that number twelve was at the end of the row. After parking the car, she glanced over her shoulder at Drake. He was still motionless. There was a tap on the window, and she jerked her head around. It was just Mateo.
“I got adjoining rooms,” he said, handing her a key. “I need to re-break Sasha’s leg to stop it from healing badly, and Drake’s wound will need to be attended to.”
“Can we spare the time?” she asked, thinking about her parents in the back of the van.
“Unless you want Drake bleeding out in the back of his own car.”
She bit her lip. “How long will we need?”
“At least six hours. Sash is going to be fucking pissed off with me, so the longer she has to recover, the better. Same for Drake. They need rest. Come to think of it, so do we.”
He had a point, but the idea of her parents in the back of the van didn’t sit well with her. She opened up the door to her room and took a quick look around. There was one king-sized bed and a few pieces of worn furniture to fill out the room. Stripping the bed down to the mattress, she tore the shower curtain off the rail in the bathroom and laid it out flat on the bed. Back outside, she opened the rear door and recoiled at the fresh blood that was pooled on the leather seat beneath Drake. Jesus.
“Mateo!” she called. “Help me.”
Together they moved him onto the bed, and Neve stripped the shirt from him. Scanning his body for any other injuries, she found some shallow cuts on his abdomen. Shifting her eyes up, she ran her fingertips over the strange mark over his heart.
“It’s our Shadow Mark,” Mateo said softly, startling her. He handed her a medical kit. “When you’re finished with Drake, come next door.”
Neve nodded, then opened up the kit and looked over everything. She needed to close up the wound, but she needed to clean it first. It wasn’t as if he was going to die of infectio
n or anything, but it would certainly speed up the healing process.
Opening the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, she slowly poured it first over the cuts on his stomach and then onto his neck wound. His eyes shot open as soon as the fizzing began, the muscles and tendons in his neck and jaw standing in stark relief. Working as quickly as she could, she grabbed the gauze and mopped away most of the solution and fresh blood.
The wound on his neck was large—large enough that even she knew it would need stitches. She rummaged around in the kit again, finding the surgical thread and needle.
She could do this.
Drake needed her to do this.
Opening the box, she prepared the needle and let out a breath. Squeezing the two sides of the wound together, she inserted the needle and pulled it out the other side, pulling the thread firmly, but not until it was too tight. She’d had some first aid training, but anything more than finding someone unconscious and putting them into the recovery position was out of her league.
She continued to sew Drake’s throat up, finally putting a knot into the thread and cutting off the excess. Taking a large pad of gauze, she pressed it into place, then tidied up. Draping a sheet over his body, she went and washed up.
After checking on Drake once more, she opened up the connecting door to find Mateo staring down at Sasha, who was now fully conscious again. Sasha turned her boxy feline head Neve’s way and growled.
“She won’t let me treat her,” Mateo said, sounding wounded.
“Do you know why she’d do that?”
He shrugged. “Probably because she’s in pain, and I’m only going to cause more of it.”
“How long before the damage is permanent?”
“She could have nerve damage right now, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is that it’ll stay that way. She’d be deformed, and the Trinity wouldn’t allow it.”
Wouldn’t allow it. It sounded like they’d rather put her down like a stray dog than keep her alive. Kneeling down, Neve looked into Sasha’s eyes.
“We need to do this,” she said, and the other female blinked. Pain bled into her stare—pain and…acceptance. “You will let Mateo do this.” She forced power into her voice like she’d heard her father do to younger, less experienced jaguars.
After a tense moment, she blinked again, more slowly this time, and Neve nodded. To Mateo, she said, “Okay. I’ll hold her down. You do it, but be fucking quick about it.”
Positioning herself over the top half of Sasha, Neve kept her eyes on her feline’s face but away from her teeth. A wounded jaguar always reacted badly.
“On three,” he said. “One…”
Snap!
Sasha jerked under Neve, almost dislodging her, but she rebalanced herself and stayed on. A low keening noise filled the room, and Neve felt Sasha’s pain like a sledgehammer to the chest. Looking up at Mateo, she watched his reaction, wondering if he felt it too, but his face was a mask of impassivity as he worked to set Sasha’s leg. When he was done resetting the bone, he wrapped the leg in a crisp white bandage, securing a splint in place.
He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “That should do it.”
“When will you know if it’s healed properly?”
“By the time we get back to Wyoming, we should know.” He paused, then added, “Will you let me treat you?”
The muscles twinged suddenly. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You had a jaguar tear through your back. Let me clean the wounds and bandage them, otherwise Drake will skin me alive for not taking care of you.”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “Okay.”
He gestured to the bed, which he’d stripped down to the bare mattress. She lay down, tensing when she felt Mateo’s hands under the hem of her shirt. Something cold pressed against her skin, followed by the snip, snip of a pair of surgical scissors cleaving her shirt in two. He sucked back a hiss when he pulled the two sides apart.
“Are you in pain?”
“More than you could know,” she replied in a soft voice.
To his credit, Mateo didn’t say anything more as he cleaned the deep gouges and bandaged them up. When he was finished, warmth flooded her, starting in her shoulders and trickling down either side of her spine. She closed her eyes as Mateo took her pain away from her, letting out a deep breath as the last slivers of it drained away from her body. A moment later, something was dropped beside her head—a clean shirt.
Heaving herself off the bed, she stripped her own bloody shirt from her body and murmured, “I should go and check on Drake.”
As she reached the doorway between the rooms, Mateo called, “Hey, Neve?”
She turned to look at him, rubbing her arms as she suddenly grew cold.
“Thank you.” His words were heavy, so much meaning wrapped up in them.
Bobbing her head, she turned around and walked back to her room.
35
Avah got off the elevator and let out a sigh through her nose. She was back here again. As she looked at the Portland Observer sign that was fixed on the wall adjacent to the elevators, she rolled her eyes. She hated this place all of a sudden. Maybe it was the hangover from traveling to Montana—one that had nothing to do with drinking too much and more about seeing that there were opportunities out there that could be hers if she wanted to reach out and grab them. All she knew was being back at the Boys’ Club made her skin itch. She didn’t want to face Andy with his nicotine-yellowed fingers, middle-age paunch, and sweaty face. She didn’t want to face another shitty reporting assignment where she was humiliated or forced to pretend like she was giving a shit.
At a snail’s pace, she strolled through the glass doors and into the hub of noise. People were talking, phones were ringing, and for the first time, she wasn’t energized by it. Weaving through the busy-busy to her cubicle, she dropped her bag on her desk and took a seat, before leaning her head back. Shutting her eyes, she tried to come up with her plan of attack.
What she needed to do was start looking for other jobs. The Oregonian was a safe bet, and she heard they’d been hiring lately. The din tapered off, and she opened her eyes only to see Andy steamrolling his way over to her desk. Looking down, she tried to figure out what to do. Dammit, her computer was off, so she couldn’t fake an email or any real work. On impulse, she picked up her desk phone and pressed it to her ear.
“…absolutely. Thank you.” Her eyes shifted up to the shadow looming over her desk. “Can I call you back?” she said. “Thanks.” She put the handset back into the cradle and gave him her best nothing going on here smile. “What’s up, Andy?”
“You goddamn know what’s up!” he roared.
She glanced away, seeing everyone’s eyes on them. Well, there was no way new conversations were going to spring up now. With a sigh, she turned her attention back to her boss.
“Actually, I don’t,” she replied evenly. “Why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to know.”
“The Great Falls Tribune?” he hissed.
She shook her head. “And…?”
“I’ve been getting reference calls!”
Ohhhhhh. “Ah.”
“That’s right, ah. I thought you were attending a family emergency!”
She winced this time. His yelling was hitting a few octaves higher at every turn. “Jesus, Andy, I’m sitting right here. You don’t need to yell so much.”
Her statement made him raise his eyebrows in disbelief before he let loose on another tirade. Man, she wished she hadn’t poked the bear.
She stood up and said, “I’m going to your office so we can talk in private, since you seem unable to keep your temper in check.” She delivered these words with complete calm and turned around to walk to his office. He followed her—just like she knew he would—and shut the door behind them.
“Are you leaving me, Avah? What the fuck?”
What, like they were in a relationship? “Sit down, Andy. You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm.”
“Now, I did go to Montana to interview for another job.” She held up her hand to stop him from talking. “But it was for a position I had no hope of ever getting. So, you see, it was a pointless exercise.”
“Why did you do it if it was pointless?”
Now it was her turn to balk. “Are you kidding me? You assign me to community fun runs and cat shows, and you wonder why I’m looking elsewhere?”
She actually couldn’t believe he’d asked her that. Did he think she enjoyed working those stories? She got it—the newspaper was a Boys’ Club—but it was 2020, for fuck’s sake. Weren’t they past all this?
He was probably telling whoever had called him for a reference that she was perpetually late to work, had a bad attitude, or slept her way around the office.
“You don’t like your assignments?” he growled. “Fine. Let me make it easy on you. You’re fired.”
“What?” she yelled. “You can’t do that.”
His smile was devious. “Sure I can. I’m your boss. I’ll give you two weeks’ pay, but you’re packing up your desk right now.”
Legally, he probably didn’t have a leg to stand on. All she’d done was seek employment elsewhere, and there was nothing contractually wrong with that. The thing was, she didn’t care. This was her out, and she was going to take it.
“Fine,” she replied, keeping the tears in check. She wasn’t crying because she was sad or being a girl. She was crying because she was goddamn angry, and that was the only way she could show it.
Turning away, she yanked open the door and stopped. Everyone got busy looking anywhere but in her direction as she walked back to her desk. Jesus, she suddenly felt like she’d done ten rounds with Tyson.