Another Kind Of Dead (23 page)

“That was for Felix,” he said, almost too softly to hear. He looked up, first at me, then past me. Up. His eyes bugged out.

I didn’t ask, just pulled the knife from the back of my pants and started to pivot. The mud made my move awkward, and the undetected third hound slammed into my left side.

The hound and I toppled to the ground and skidded a few feet, my knife buried in its guts. Claws slashed at my back. Teeth snapped at my face. I thrashed like a beached fish, desperately wrenching at the knife, trying to inflict maximum damage.

Gunshots popped. The hound screamed, deafening my right ear and numbing my senses. Silver flashed above us and sliced downward. Its weight collapsed on top of me, smashing me into wet earth. The hilt of the knife jammed under my ribs so hard I expected one or two to break.

“Come on, pull!” Wyatt’s voice was muffled, but no less welcome.

The body was lifted enough for me to scramble out and, finally free, collapse on the ground, breathing hard. Noxious blood coated my skin. My ribs were on fire from my left breast to the small of my back, and I could imagine the furrows that thing’s claws had left behind.

“Dammit,” I said. “Should’ve expected that.”

“Can you move?” Wyatt asked, kneeling beside me in the mud.

“Yeah. Any others?”

“None so far. Milo’s scouting around.”

Wyatt tried to be gentle about helping me stand, but there was no way not to disturb my new wounds. We limped into the cabin. He steered me straight to the bathroom, leaving a blotchy trail of mud, rainwater, and
gore behind. The hound’s blood felt like acid in my open gashes. I clenched my fists, grateful for the ache in my still-healing right wrist. It gave me something to concentrate on while Wyatt turned on the shower. He helped me undress with the clinical detachment of the Handler he’d once been, and then he left and pulled the bathroom door shut behind him.

I unwound the soaked and stained bandage from my wrist. The bone was tender and the skin angry-red, but the worst of the break had healed. It could bear weight. I let myself cry through the pain as the hot shower sluiced away the hound’s blood. Brown and red swirled down the drain together, and eventually the water ran clear.

Clean clothes waited for me on the back of the toilet. Underwear and bra went on first and with extra care. I twisted to look at my back in the mirror and wished I hadn’t. Four long scores went from just below my breast down across my left side and stopped at the small of my back. The gashes still wept blood, the edges jagged and swollen. Just great.

I opened the door and peered out. Wyatt stopped in the middle of what appeared to be impatient pacing. “I need your hands,” I said. Off his startled look, I added, “Not for that. Come here.”

He came in and closed the door. I presented my back, and he hissed. “Damn, Evy, those look bad.”

“No shit. Can you put some gauze on them so they don’t bleed through the last of my clean clothes?”

“Yeah … okay.” Wyatt opened the first-aid kit. “Hold your left arm up.”

I did, locking it across my sternum with my right. The healing ache was still present. How close to twelve hours had it been since my phone chat with Thackery? Maybe five hours? I’d lost track of time long ago and—“Shit!”

He’d pressed too hard on a tender spot in the small of my back, igniting spikes of fire that shot all the way through me. I inhaled between gritted teeth.

“Sorry.” He ripped strips of medical tape and applied them to my right shoulder for safekeeping. They tickled.

In the mirror, I watched his black hair appear and disappear behind me as he reached for bandages and tossed their wrappers. I hated how much practice he had at patching wounds. His fingers were warm, tickling in places, a little too hard in others. Each time he pulled a strip of tape off my shoulder, my skin tingled. The pain of that first touch had settled deep in my gut, where it was slowly tightening into something that squirmed at his touch.

I just closed my eyes and tried to ignore the rest of the process. The gentle presses of his fingers, the way they brushed over my bare skin as he covered my wounds. He traced lines across my ribs, testing the tape’s hold. Gooseflesh prickled my shoulders.

His hand paused in the center of my back, just below my bra clasp, then withdrew. “I’m finished, Evy.”

I let my left arm down, and sensation ran back into the starving muscles. Eyes still closed, I braced both hands on the edge of the sink and leaned forward. Just enough pressure to concentrate on. My left arm tingled; my right arm ached sweetly. My stomach quivered, fed by indecision and anxiety.

“Do you want me to leave, Evy?”

“No. Wyatt, I’m sorry I flinched.” The words flew out before I thought about them, and it was too late to take them back.

I felt air movement. Oh no, he wasn’t leaving. I turned and took a long step sideways, positioning myself in front of the door. He stopped short, hands clenched. Tension bracketed his eyes and etched fine lines around his mouth. His clothes were rain-damp, streaked with
drying blood and mud, both eyes still bloodshot. Behind his front of annoyance wafted a soft breath of fear.

“I’m. Sorry. I. Flinched. I hurt you, and I didn’t mean to.”

Surprise widened his eyes. “That son of a bitch used my appearance to attack you, used your trust of me to get close to you, and
you’re
apologizing to
me
?”

He was not getting to play the self-pity card this time around. No way in hell. “Screw that, Truman, and stop fucking blaming yourself. I know you, and I know you’d never hurt me like that.”

He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just stared at me from an arm’s reach away, emotions warring behind his black eyes.

“Come here,” I said firmly. He hesitated, then slid a half step closer. I glared. He moved again until a thin cushion of air separated us. I felt the heat of his body, the gentle puff of his breath on my cheeks. My heart fluttered. “Now hold still.”

I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to his, nose to nose. His breath dusted across my lips. I inhaled. No sour smell, no unfamiliarity. Just Wyatt—heady maleness, with the barest hint of cinnamon and tomato soup. “I can smell you,” I whispered, allowing my fingertips to skim his chest. “I can feel you. Not the trickster. You, Wyatt Truman.”

He shuddered, his breath hitching, catching. His eyes were closed.

“You can’t blame yourself every time someone tries to hurt me. You’re one man. I have enemies, and I always will. You cannot always be there to save me from them. Hell, you won’t always be able to save me from myself.”

He choked through a bark of laughter. No, not laughter. Something else, sadder. More desperate.

I flung my arms around his shoulders and pressed my face into his neck. He pulled me close, tight to his shuddering
chest, and I just held on, keenly aware of my near-nudity and how perfectly our bodies locked together. I pressed my lips to the pulse in his throat, parted them just enough to stroke it with the tip of my tongue. Tasting him. He shivered, his skin prickling.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Evy.”

“Under different circumstances,” I said, “that could be construed as an insult.”

“It’s definitely a compliment. You’ve been my life for four years.”

I skimmed a fingertip down his throat to his collarbone. “I haven’t given up on that happy-ending thing, you know. We just seem to have more dragons to slay than most.”

“Dragons?” His lips quirked.

“Metaphorically speaking. If dragons ever start spewing across the Break, I’m moving to Antarctica, I swear to God.”

He chuckled. “Not without me.”

Our mouths came together with a clashing of teeth and wrestling of tongues. His taste flooded my senses, so familiar and wonderful and
him
. His cheeks were rough, unshaven since the day before, a delicious abrasion on my skin. My hands locked at the nape of his neck. The towel around my hair was loosened, and the damp locks tumbled down around us. His body pressed against me, hard in all the right places, holding me against the bathroom door.

My wounded back hissed and sputtered, and I didn’t care. All I felt was him—a man who would give (and had given) up everything for me. He’d follow me anywhere and—I hoped—stay put and let me go ahead when I asked. And with Thackery’s deadline looming, I knew I’d be putting that dedication to the test. Wyatt would have to let me go alone.

He pulled back, eyebrows slanted curiously. “You tensed up.”

One of these days I’d learn how to control my body’s reactions a little better. Instead of telling him the truth and sharing my thoughts, I lied. “Back hurts.”

Worked better than a cooler of ice water. He backed off and reached for my clothes. I cleaned up a few smears of gore that had transferred from his shirt to my chest—a perfect reminder of just how fucked-up our lives were, in that his blood-smeared clothes hadn’t even fazed me. He helped me into my jeans, and as he tugged my shirt down over my head, I felt my wounds start their familiar healing itch-ache. I ignored my damp hair in favor of allowing it to air-dry in whatever wavy, tangled mess it chose. Wyatt helped me put on the cross necklace, and I was grateful for its familiar weight.

The living room was empty when we emerged. The cooler air chilled my skin and sent prickles across the back of my neck. The half car sitting in a dripping heap in the center of the room still impressed me. We’d done that—together.

I checked the clock on the wall—about forty minutes since Kismet raced down the mountain. Backup should be arriving any time now. Not that we really needed backup as much as transportation. And answers. Goddamn did we need answers.

We separated then, our individual actions needing no explanation—a testament to years of working together. Wyatt went to the front door, probably to check and see if anyone was coming. I wandered into the back bedroom, amazingly wide-awake, given the hour. Milo sat cross-legged on the floor with a bowl of melting ice cubes and a pile of dish towels. He folded a dozen cubes into one of the towels, then tucked it beneath the blanket, close to Felix’s body. Two similar ice packs bracketed Felix’s flushed face.

“It was the only thing I could think to do,” Milo said without looking up. His voice was tight, strained.

“It was a good call.”

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?” I circled around and crouched next to Milo. A soft twinge wormed through my back.

He looked at me, face clouded. “Cope with losing people you love?”

His question threw me. Milo and I had been very similar in team status—the newest members of our respective Triads. While Tybalt and I had left Boot Camp within weeks of each other four years ago, Milo had been a Hunter for just over a year. Felix and Tybalt had always been there with him, and now the future looked bleak for both men.

“You haven’t lost anyone yet,” I said. “Maybe Tybalt won’t be a Hunter anymore, but he’s alive. He’s strong. So’s Felix.”

Milo took Felix’s right hand in his and squeezed tight, a gesture of solidarity and comfort. My heart ached. I’d never offered that sort of support to my former partners when they were injured. Doing so felt like exposing my own weakness to them, and I hated appearing weak—to anyone.

My years in Juvie and hard training at Boot Camp had beaten weakness out of me and replaced it with hardness. Coldness. My survival instincts were slowly crumbling now under Wyatt’s persistent love and support—more powerful than the unwavering friendship I’d gotten from Jesse and Ash.

I let my gaze linger on Milo’s hand and the strong, anchoring grip he had on Felix’s. On the strain and barely contained grief bracketing Milo’s eyes—hooded eyes that gazed at his wounded partner with a scary intensity not dissimilar to the way Wyatt sometimes looked at me. I blinked.

The new observation only reinforced how little I knew about any Hunters outside my former Triad. Hell, how little I knew about
anyone
outside my narrow little world.

“So what’s our next step?” Milo asked after a few minutes of silence. “Break into Boot Camp and torture answers out of the people at R&D?”

“Nah. I plan to storm the front entrance.”

His mouth quirked. “You want backup for that?”

“I’ll take all the help I can get.”

Then the most beautiful sound I’d heard all day rumbled in the distance—engines. I scrambled outside to stand with Wyatt and was greeted by the glare of headlights. Three sets, all from Triad Jeeps. The first stopped just behind the half SUV, and Kismet tumbled out of the passenger door with a first-aid bag in her hand.

“His fever’s worse,” I said before she could ask.

She nodded and bolted into the cabin. Conrad Morgan climbed out of the first Jeep with his three Hunters in tow. One of the men I knew by face only—he’d been at Olsmill, battled alongside us to defeat the combined goblin/Halfie forces. The other male Hunter I glared at, and he wouldn’t look at me. Paul Ryan was a rookie, skittish, and had accidentally shot Wyatt once. I hated the kid on general principle. The third, Claudia Burke, a tall brunette Hunter with a scar that ran beneath her chin from ear to ear, was one of the only three Gifted Hunters in the Triads—not counting me—and was a limited telepath.

The other two Jeeps spilled out Adrian Baylor and his two Hunters. Baylor had lost one at Olsmill, then lost the replacement at Parker’s Palace. Either he’d run out of rookies or had refused to take another so soon.

Everyone who exited those Jeeps, save Kismet, stopped to stare at me and Wyatt, but mostly at me. While Kismet had probably told them I was still alive
(there had really been no way around it), seeing is usually believing. Baylor seemed amused. Paul Ryan looked ready to barf all over his shoes.

“The perimeter’s clear,” Wyatt said. “A third hound surprised us. All three have been neutralized.”

Baylor nodded. “Paul, Oliver, go help them get Felix into the Jeep.” The two Hunters trotted past us without comment. “Gina mentioned something called a pùca?”

“It’s dead. Milo found a couple of pieces a few yards into the woods. Did Gina fill you in on everything?”