The Problem with Promises (20 page)

I wanted to strip off my clothing, but I settled on unwinding my soiled wrist bandage and plunging my hands into a half-filled sink of warm water. That ball of woe rose in my throat again as I flexed my fingers and the water tinted rust. Silently, Trowbridge pulled the plug, then ran the taps and handed me some soap.

I lathered, finding a measure of solace in the act.

Rinse me of it. All of it.

The skin where the kid had gone pit bull was now smooth and almost unblemished. No blood, no spooky green light, no scabs. Four faint silver dots formed a half-moon pattern just above my wristbone.

“Almost good as new,” I told my mate, offering my arm for inspection.

“Mmm-hmm.” He tore a towel from the dispenser and handed it to me. A faint whiff of mortal clung to the T-shirt that he’d rescued from the back of the closet.
BUD’S PAINTING
(
FRESH’N UP YOUR WALLS
!) was emblazoned in rainbow ink on a V-neck that was made for a much smaller man. The jersey was soft; his body was tight. It was a nice contrast.

“I like that T-shirt,” I observed. “Brings out the blue in your eyes.”

“You’ve got some stuff on your face,” he said, tearing another sheet from the roll.
More blood,
I thought as he dampened it. Tenderly, he wiped the dried streak at my temple. Once wet, the sweet pea scent of my blood rebloomed. It was the gruff kindness that did me in. My eyes filled.

“Lift up your chin,” he said gently.

Obediently, I tipped back my head. He daubed and patted. Tender strokes. Loving touches.
You have this, Hedi, the mouse-hearted. Enjoy it. Take it. Hold it. It won’t last forever. Life will not go on for infinity and beyond.

My mate’s brows knitted together. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“You have a red mark on your throat.” His expression, though not thunderous, was definitely presquall as he eased my shirt aside to take a better look at my neck. “Another here. Son of a bitch … they look like fingerprints.”

“That’s where Itchy touched me.”

“They’re bruises?” he asked, perplexed.

“No.” I tugged my collar back in place, faintly embarrassed. Full Weres heal faster than I do. “They’re what’s left of the burns. They’ve healed, but my skin is so pale the marks will stay red for another few hours. They’ll disappear soon.”

“He burned you?”

“When a mortal man touches me … I burn.”

“Son of a bitch,” he roared.

It was an explosion of raw anger. One second Biggs was sitting, slumped and moody, on a dinette chair, and the next he was being dragged to his feet and pinned against the wall. Cheeks flushed, Trowbridge tightened his grip around the spluttering wolf’s throat. “You were responsible for the old cemetery road,” he said through his teeth.

The back of Biggs’s heels drummed a frantic tattoo against the wallboard.

“Where were you?” Trowbridge demanded in a low growl. “What happened?”

Incapable of speech, Biggs caught Trowbridge’s rock-hard wrists and tried to do a chin-up.

“You didn’t warn us,” said my guy. “You let bikers drive right into my territory and threaten my mate.”

“Trowbridge, you need to put Biggs down.” The hairs on the nape of my neck bristled, reacting to the simmer of violence. “He can’t answer you if he’s got a crushed larynx.”

“He’ll heal,” he snapped. Then perhaps to prove the point, the Alpha of Creemore tightened his grip until the tendons stood out white on his hands and Biggs’s throat darkened to puce.

“It’s enough, Trowbridge,” I whispered. “I’ve had enough.”

He put his face right up to Biggs’s sweating one. “She is my mate. My. Mate.” Jaw rigid, he held on for one last choking second before he released the younger Were. Biggs slid down the wall, boneless and gasping, his shirt pleating up behind him. Trowbridge stood over him with clenched fists. “If you’d been one of my Raha’ells, I’d have killed you for that.”

I’m tired of hearing about death. I’ve had my fill of threats, and fear, and violence. No more. I can’t take any more. I refuse to absorb one more thing.

“Cordelia needs to be taken home,” I said to Trowbridge wearily. And that’s when Ferris tried to turn the renovated garage into a set from the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.

*   *   *

The first bullet tore through the wall near Biggs. Anu darted, a yearling panicked by sounds that had no frame of reference in her world, but in her crazed panic she was going in the wrong direction, heading toward danger instead of out of it.

In that moment, she was Lexi.

Instinct kicked me. I hurled myself for a tackle and felled her. We slammed into the floorboards as bullets spat from an unseen automatic weapon, chewing up wallboard, sending pieces of wood and insulation flying.

Things fractured around me. Time, bones, thoughts.

My body dimly registered the crack of my knee hitting the floor, my elbow’s sharp protests, the clawing girl writhing beneath the cage of my body. Then a solid, heavy, muscular weight landed on
me.
Strong arms bracketed me, male thighs twined over mine, a hard jaw pressed my head downward until my cheek felt the imprint of the linoleum’s pattern.

“Stay,” he breathed in my ear.

Ferris did another sweep. I cringed under the abuse of the noise, a poor defense against the horror of Anu’s shrieks, the
chug-chug
of automatic fire, the thuds of things falling, the pings and zings. I saw a line of leaden slugs pierce holes in the table’s steel legs.

Trowbridge’s body—so warm, so hard with protective tension—gave a sudden series of violent jerks. He stilled on top of me. My hair stirred with his low moan, and then he breathed no more.

He was a dead weight, pinning me to Anu.

Tears flooded my eyes, stung my nose.

It can’t end here. Not like this! Not in this room!
His heart was silent …
please, Goddess
 … not doing its job of circulating oxygen, and magic, and life …
I’ll do anything
 … And yet … his heart did not beat. Not for the count of two, not for the space of three.

He’s still warm
 … I pressed my trembling palm against his chest. Was that a flutter?

“Mine,” my wolf howled.

I will not give him up. I will not let him die.
He was so heavy on top of me. I couldn’t lift him. I couldn’t squirm from beneath him.

Pinned.

“Please,” I whimpered to my Goddess.

“Please what?” said Ferris, setting his blue-plaid slipper on my mate’s shoulder.

My gaze swung up. “Let me help him,” I begged.

Ferris shrugged, then heaved with his foot. Limply, Trowbridge’s body rolled off me. I scuttled after him, Merry shining red. My mate lay on his back, one arm awkwardly tucked under his hip. His chest had a line of small round dots, like a rusting seam of rivets.

Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.

“Don’t move,” said Ferris.

“Shut up!” I screamed. “I need to listen!”

Trowbridge’s eyes were slits, but so, so very vacant.
He’s not breathing.
I forced his chin up with hard fingers. Clawed open his slack lips. Sucked in a deep breath, then bent to deliver to him the kiss.

Live …

I lifted my mouth. Felt my air trickle through his nose. Mewling in frustration, I pinched his nostrils, then blew again.
You come back,
I silently told him. His chest lifted—shallowly—with my borrowed breath.
Don’t you dare leave me here,
I warned him.

I did it again—a long harsh
heuh
that filled his lungs—willing his heart to restart.

Hoping—praying—bargaining.

Nothing.

“No!” I shouted, raising my head. “You don’t get to die first,” I said, threading my fingers together. “You don’t get to leave me here.” I lifted my fisted hands high, poised over the strike zone. “I die first!”

And with that, I hit him with everything I had.

Once, twice, three times I pounded.

Panting, and sobbing.

Please.
I flattened my palm on his chest.
Please.

His heart issued one isolated thud, as tentative as a timid puppy’s tail against the floorboards. “That’s it,” I coaxed, in a thick voice. “You come back.” Another flutter from his heart. Faint and weak as his body was testing the concept of life over death.

His breath warmed my lips. Very light, very shallow.

“Very touching,” said Ferris, sounding bored. “You do realize that they’re just ordinary bullets, not silver, right?”

The “other” stood over us. Smelling of meat.

His scent called to my wolf. To tear. To shred.

“I shall kill you,” I heard myself say flatly.

“He’s a Were,” he said, daring to smile. “They always come back. Guaranteed. Unless you take off their heads.”

Or gut their bellies. Or poison them with silver.

Ferris moved to the front door. A cautious man, he kept his body protected by the frame.

I slumped over my love, breathing hard. One hand a plea on his chest, the other fisted by my thigh. “Why did you do this?” I bit out when I could speak. “Why heal and then kill?”

“Because I always back the winner,” Ferris said, without turning. “You people are hot tonight. So hot you could burn my house down and everything I’ve got with it. It was a bad move messing with Liam’s club. And a worse one to stray from your pack when you’ve got all kinds of wolves looking for you. Whitlock’s people are all over this territory, and I don’t plan to become collateral damage.”

“Whitlock’s behind all this?” I flicked a glance to my right—Anu was on her knees beside us. She seemed shaken but otherwise intact. To my left, I could see Cordelia’s foot. Alive, too, I thought, noting its tension. “What does Whitlock want from us?”

“You.”

“He’ll have to take a number.”

“Here they are,” Ferris muttered, opening the door.

He stepped aside and two guys wearing boots and leather vests thundered into the room, carrying with them an explosive wave of bad energy, bike exhaust, and weed. One of them was a Were. He shouted to me, quite unnecessarily, “Don’t fucking move!”

And then he pointed his bang stick.

At me. At Trowbridge.

And at Anu, who was on her knees beside us. Rage born of fear twisted her expression and she rolled upward, screaming something unintelligible in Merenwynian. Low on problem-solving skills, the biker-wolf raised his boot.

Don’t you touch her!

I blocked the swing of his foot with my knee. A clumsy interception at best that just made him angrier. I’m not sure what portion of my face he was aiming for—mouth or jaw. What he got was my ear. My teeth clicked together under the violence of his blow and sheared most of the fur right off the side of my tongue. All was briefly blurred, both sound and sight.

Cover Trowbridge. Keep him safe.

Ear ringing, I slumped over him, covering him with my body. Merry scuttled to my neck, confused as to who to heal, who to defend. She rapidly cinched up her chain, turning into a choker at the base of my throat. I heard Cordelia shouting. Some part of me dimly registered that the flow of curses and threats came from a voice as deep and virulent as a gunnery sergeant’s. I turned toward that welcome sound.

I had words too—
Trowbridge is hurt
—but they lay on my bleeding tongue and expired. Right there on my spit. Because now, with my gaze slanted to the left, I could behold that which I hadn’t before.

Harry had lost his head. His body lay with one arm strangely akimbo, one leg bent at the knee. But his head … oh, his head. Where there should have been a mane of longish white wavy hair, where there should have been a grizzled jaw … there was ugly pulp and hideous vermilion.

He’s lost his head.

Sudden grief—its touch so cold and swift that it left my heart barren—caught up with my brain.

He’s dead.

My gaze jerked away from his body and rolled toward Cordelia. She was shouting, spewing swearwords and impossible suggestions as to who’d she’d fuck, and what she was fucking going to do, and how she’d fucking do it. The muzzle of yet another gun was pressed hard to her temple.

This can’t be happening. Not now.

Did I say that out loud? I’m not sure. But soon after that thought, despite the gun to her head, Cordelia changed the direction of her shouting. She yelled at me. Or to me. But whatever she said, I lost because language was slipping away from me.

No more of this. I can’t take any more of this.

Harry had lost his head. Trowbridge was down, with a line of rivets across his midriff. My mate’s blue eyes were half open and half closed. No flare of light. No spin of comets. Alive, but barely.

Get up. Get up.

Chapter Twelve

Into that nightmare entered a man bringing with him an arctic chill. Like the others, he wore a leather vest with a patch, but his jeans cost big money, and his slicked-back dark hair was fastidiously styled. He carried a crossbow and had a quiver slung over his shoulder.

No Robin Hood, this one.

There will be no mercy, because it is a quality he doesn’t possess.

His forehead was utterly smooth, his skin wrinkle-free. I got the sense that his body was a well-maintained vehicle for the brain that was working at top speed—accessing, cataloging, dismissing. He immediately focused on the back door. It was ajar, through which you could see the laneway with its rutted asphalt, and the sagging frost fence beyond it. The alley was empty—the open door the only evidence that once Rachel stood near it.

The new guy flicked his hand toward his grunt and said over Cordelia’s shouts, “Peanut, check that out.” Then he touched his ears, and told the wolf with the gun to Cordelia’s head to “Ryan, shut her up.”

Ryan hit her hard with his weapon. Cordelia crumpled without a sound. Anu cried out in fear and scrambled behind the couch.

My flare came in a rush, a torchlight suddenly flicked to life. So fast, with such a powerful surge of heat, that my head snapped back. Green light, electric and eerie, spun from me, bathing his features, highlighting his prominent cheekbones.