Killing Time (36 page)

I simply lay still, basking in the miracle of sight after so long in the dark. The respite was excruciatingly brief, though. My other senses woke up all at once and I stiffened at the jagged pain of returning sound and taste and sensation and smell, on top of way too much visual detail to take in.

The ticking of air in the ducts. A dry bitterness filling my mouth, making me gag. The flutter of the almost transparent curtain. The weight of covers pulled up to my chin. The stinging scent of alcohol made sharper in contrast with the lingering musty concrete smell on the clothes I still wore…the sensory deluge was crushing.

Make it stop! Make it stop!
I screamed silently in the depths of my mind, my intellect and senses bound together in a miasmic, swirling nothingness that still, somehow, encompassed all of existence. I couldn’t comprehend it any more than I could wrestle myself free.

Unable to move or to cry out, there was no escape, no way to elude the…
everything
burying me, suffocating me. I thought I’d go mad from it. Then I thought maybe I actually
was
mad, driven that way by…by…

My eyelids fluttered closed and it all blessedly went away.

When I opened them again, I felt more connected to my body. The things it was telling me were comforting in their familiarity and my ability to understand—the smooth cool feel of worn cotton sheets, the crisp scent of disinfectant, the lumpy softness of an old pillow, the warmth of a masculine hand in mine.

I wanted my head to turn and felt a moment’s triumph when it did. On the right side of the narrow hospital bed I lay in was another just like it, holding a sleeping Koda. Our linked hands bridged the small space between the mattresses and I was careful not to move so I wouldn’t wake him.

My heart constricted at his pale complexion, the deep circles beneath his eyes. He looked like he’d lost weight and his proud features were haggard, the cheekbones far too prominent. His sweater was gone and white bandages wrapped around his ribs and belly, covering the long gashes the wendigo had torn in him. I no longer smelled the stench of poison, but Koda’s condition told me the fight to survive the injuries had taken a lot out of him.

The proof he lived filled me with such joy, I could barely breathe and I had to close my eyes again merely to focus on the effort. Air in, air out.
Koda was alive.
Air in, air out.
Koda was okay.

When I blinked my eyes open, he was watching me, a soft smile lifting the corner of his mouth. “That’s how I feel too. You’re alive.”

It took me three tries to speak, so dry was my throat. It felt like I’d swallowed half the Mojave Desert. “I’m still…transparent?”

He just smiled, tracing patterns on my palm with his thumb.

Gathering my strength for the effort, I sat up, having to clutch wildly at the bed rail to keep from falling.

“You need to rest,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of his bed.

“I need…” I cleared my throat, trying unsuccessfully to wet my cracked lips.

“Water?” Standing carefully, he lifted a full cup from the bedside table. With his arm braced around my shoulders, he held me steady while I gulped the delicious liquid down. No milkshake had ever tasted sweeter.

Rubbing the back of my hand across my mouth, I nodded my thanks and finished my thought. “I need to get out of here.” Making it to my feet, I stood trembling and clinging to the bed’s rail while the room swooped around me.

Koda set the empty cup back on the table. “I agree. It’s time we leave.” Moving like an old man, he began to unwrap the bandage from his ribs.

Which brought my gaze to my own arm. Uncertain, I picked at the tape stuck in the crook of my elbow. A long piece of clear tubing ran from beneath it to a bag hanging from a pole attached to the bed. “What is this thing on me?” I scowled, my instincts rousing to find myself tethered.

Koda tossed the last of his bandage on his bed and came carefully to my side. “It’s an IV.” At my quizzical expression, he said, “Intravenous feed.”

“Oh! Like in the TV shows about hospitals.”

He laughed but didn’t say anything as he removed the tape. He was moving slowly, but the jostling made the spot ache.

“Intravenous?” I thought out loud, beginning to freak out. “Wait. There’s something
inside
me?”

“Easy, Coyote. I’ll have it out in a second. Just stop twitching or it’ll sting.”

“I don’t care. Get whatever the hell it is out of me!” My skin was crawling at the invasion. My flesh had been marked by countless scars and the fae brand had been both physically and metaphysically burned into me. The idea that something was beneath my skin set my pulse racing. “Get it out! Get it out now!”

Koda took one look at me and reached a hand to my cheek, pulling me into a tender kiss. The suddenness of it totally threw me as I tried to shift mental gears from mind-blowing, creepy-crawly panic to the sweetness of his lips and the instant passion he always ignited in me.

Which I realized was the point when Koda pulled back a moment later. Holding up the clear plastic tube and a thin needle, he waved it at eye level and smiled. “All done.”

Rubbing the inside of my elbow suspiciously, I glowered at the smear of blood welling from a rather large hole. “Was that thing really necessary?”

Koda tossed the tubing to the foot of my bed. In a rough tone, he said, “You’d’ve died without it.”

The door opened and Ahanu walked in, stumbling to a stop to see the two of us on our feet. I was surprised to see that he’d cut his long hair to collar length. It was also uncharacteristically messy, like he hadn’t bothered to brush it. For days. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Taking my arm, Koda led me past his brother. “Leaving.”

Our sweeping out the door wasn’t as impressive as I would’ve liked since I was tilting right and Koda was tilting left. By leaning into each other, we maintained a more or less straight line all the way down the short hall, through the main door and outside across the tiny lot to his truck’s dusty back fender. At some point, somebody had moved the pickup to the clinic and I was wildly grateful we didn’t have to go in search of it. I didn’t think I’d get another three feet without doing an undignified face-plant. Koda didn’t look much better.

For once, the sense of swift pursuit didn’t bring either of us whirling around. I’m pretty sure we’d’ve both keeled over if we tried.

“The two of you are insane. You don’t even have the truck’s key,” Ahanu swore. Moving ahead of us, he opened the left back door and reached to give me a hand in. Instinctively, I flinched away from him, almost falling in my haste to evade his touch.

“Imagine that,” Koda muttered. “She doesn’t trust you.”

“I saved her damn life! And yours, in case you’ve forgotten.”

I layered steel into my voice. “I have not forgotten. Anything.” Head high, I braced against the pickup and made my way to the open back door, trying to make it look like climbing in wasn’t taking every bit of energy I possessed. That I was so weak, so vulnerable, in front of Ahanu was unbearable. I was also acutely aware that we were on the reservation still, surrounded by people who loathed my very existence. My instincts screamed at me to go to ground until I was strong enough to defend myself. The difficulty was, I had to get out of here first.

Koda got in beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me into his embrace. As much as I longed to melt against his body, to press my face into the crook of his neck and lose myself to the soothing comfort of his arms, I couldn’t drop my guard. Was literally unable to do it. Not with Ahanu’s anger and suspicion filling the truck’s cab. Not when we were still deep inside what my instincts insisted was enemy territory.

I felt Koda’s awareness, but kept my head up and my senses scanning for danger. That I was rapidly burning through what little energy I possessed was irrelevant to my screaming need for vigilance.

After flinging a medical bag onto the front floor board, Ahanu closed his door and started the truck. He drove us down the reservation’s main street toward the state highway, maneuvering the potholes and freely wandering dogs with practiced ease. His hard gaze found mine in the rearview mirror. “Your weapons are in the glovebox.”

The urge to lunge across the seat and arm myself had me fisting my hands in my lap. Apparently, Ahanu read me as easily as his brother did because he said, “You won’t need them. No one will prevent you from leaving.”

Refusing to acknowledge that he’d seen too much, I frostily looked out the window. “My compact with your leader is concluded. I will not restrain myself if anyone tries to stop me.”

“You can barely stand.” Ahanu sounded unimpressed, but his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

“I don’t need to stand,” I hissed, letting my anger and awareness surge free. I’d been pounded and tied and almost starved to death. I’d be damned before any of these people got near me again. Ahanu included.

“Sephti, relax,” Koda murmured. He gave me a tender look, cupping my cheek with his hand and breathing a kiss across my forehead.

Ahanu’s hard eyes were on us in the rearview mirror. He turned right onto the two-lane highway before suddenly slamming on the brakes and swerving to the shoulder. When the truck rocked to a stop, he flung open the door and stomped off onto the grassy verge.

“I’ve had enough—” I growled. Koda bowed his head and his sudden stillness brought me around to him. “What is it?”

He took a deep shuddering breath. “It is impolite to speak her name now. But Ahanu’s fiancée didn’t make it out of New Orleans that night, Sephti. He’s taking it even harder than I’d feared. I’m worried about him.” Koda scrubbed at his face, his expression haggard from grief and weariness. “She was…she was pregnant, Sephti.”

“Oh…no.” I squeezed my eyes shut and swore. Just because I was created sterile didn’t mean I didn’t cherish children. “Is that why his hair is short?”

Koda nodded. “It is a sign of extreme mourning.”

I chewed my lip and re-thought the last few minutes. Maybe I’d been way too focused on my own feelings to accurately read Ahanu’s. Maybe the emotion in his black eyes hadn’t been rage, but despair. Maybe his watching Koda kiss me hadn’t set off his disgust, but had been a reminder of his own agonizing loss. Maybe the way he was pacing up and down beside the truck wasn’t anger, but was a man on the edge of losing it and struggling desperately to keep everything inside. The short, messy hair. The wrinkled shirt with its coffee stain. The torn jeans. The bruises beneath his eyes.

Koda caressed my cheek. “He’s said some awful things, Sephti. Things he needs to apologize for. Although he hasn’t done anything to demonstrate it to you, Ahanu is a good man.” Blowing out a breath, Koda murmured, “He’s my brother. I’ve no right to ask but…could you be patient with him? Give him a chance to pull himself together?”

“You love him?” I didn’t have a true grasp of what the word meant, but I had an inkling of its importance to those who did. To Koda.

“He’s a pain in the ass sometimes. But yeah, I do.” Like it said everything, he repeated, “He’s my brother.”

It was a given that I would do anything for Koda. Especially when he was looking at me the way he was now. If he ever figured this out…

Chewing my lip like I had to think about it, I finally nodded. “Okayyy. But only because you asked me to.”

Koda’s smile told me he saw through the subterfuge. “You’ve won him over, by the way.”

I gaped at him. “Did the wendigo crack your skull? Why on earth would you think that?”

“Because underneath the grieving, he’s ticked. And Ahanu is always ticked when he knows he’s wrong. He’s just so stubborn, it’ll take him a while to admit it.” Koda settled himself more comfortably on the seat. “But he will.”

Giving him a dubious look, I resisted commenting. Exhausted, I rested my head against his shoulder, closing my eyes and murmuring happily when he tightened his arm around me.

I must have dozed on the ride home because, the next thing I knew, Ahanu had slammed on the brakes and only Koda’s grip kept me from sailing through the truck’s cab.

“What the hell?” I groused, righting myself.

“‘Hell’ is about right,” Ahanu muttered and a white-faced Koda nodded assent.

Following their fixed lines of sight, I looked out the windshield and froze.

I was acquainted with death in its many gruesome forms. But what had been done to the person staked, spreadeagle, to the cabin’s wall exceeded even the worst of what I’d witnessed. Birds had been at him and it was obvious he’d been here a while—maybe the entire time we’d been on the reservation.

“Do either of you know him?” Ahanu asked grimly, turning off the truck and getting out.

“No.” Koda joined him, reaching a hand to me when I eased down from the pickup’s four-wheel-drive height. “What about you, Sephti?”

“Yeah.” It was difficult identifying the hoarse croak as my own voice. My eyes insistently tracked over every horrific atrocity that had been done to the man’s body—given the amount of blood, while he still lived. And my brain was trying frantically not to catalog any of it. More ghastly memories, I didn’t need.

Koda startled. “Who—?”

“Tanner.” Without realizing I’d crossed the distance to the innkeeper’s brutalized corpse, I was standing three feet away. The nauseating reek of fae jasmine and Cian’s distinctive scent saturated Tanner’s body, leaving no doubt who’d tortured and killed him. “They must have tracked me to him. Dammit! How? I didn’t slip up! I know I didn’t!”

Koda’s arms wrapped around me from behind and I leaned gratefully into him, breathing against the rising frenzy. “Easy, Sephti,” he said in a soothing voice.

I nodded, willing the red haze from my vision.
Save the fury until I can put it to use
.

“You have no other marks that could be used to track you?”

I shot an arch look at him over my shoulder. “Have you
seen
any other marks?”

His eyes darkened at my less than subtle reminder of our extensive intimacy. “Point taken,” he said with a wry smile.