Wrath and Bones (46 page)

Having given my warning, I hopped on one foot after a sleepy Declan to the tent, keeping my right sock dry. We tried to get warm under an emergency blanket. There was no pillow, and my neck felt cocked at a weird angle no matter how I tossed and turned and contorted myself. Declan was out like a snuffed candle, snoring away more delicately than Batten had; he only sounded like an asthmatic moose. Up close, he smelled faintly of whiskey, yesterday’s cologne, and the scent of his unique brand of preternatural magic, whatever kept him ticking away at his great age: the fragrance of anise and wormwood. As my heavy eyelids sank closed, I vowed that the next time I slept, it would be in a nice, warm, comfy bed, with no snoring
dhampir
in my face. 

I was almost asleep when I heard Batten’s low rumbling voice outside the tent.

“A gun?” Batten asked. “Unexpected.”

“Why’s that?” his female visitor said. My eyes popped open and I sat straight up with alarm. Sayomi.

Batten noted, “You didn’t shoot Baranuik.”

“I wanted to stop her, not kill her,” Sayomi said. “I’d rather you die.”

“Because?”

“I want her soul.”

“Mine’s no good?”

The Blue Sense flared hot under my palms; Sayomi didn’t like that one bit, but I had no idea why. I smelled fur. Folkenflik was around. How did he feel about Batten? On a subtle pump of psi, I Felt his conflict, but that wasn’t entirely helpful, since I had no way of knowing what it was over.

I overheard her purr at him and every thought flew out of my head except for kicking her in the throat. I crawled as quietly as I could to the zipper and began to slowly
tick-tick-tick
it open without shaking the tent fabric.

“You aren’t here to back her up,” Sayomi said. “Let’s be honest. You don’t care about the politics of the
Falskaar Vouras
or the ascension of a house. You weren’t meant to come at all, as I understand it. Rumor says, you were not her chosen Second. Yet here you are. We both know why.”

Batten said nothing.

“How long will you pretend to help her before you chase what you’re really after?”

Again, Batten was comfortable in his silence.

“You know, I met your grandfather,” Sayomi said.

The Blue Sense reported flatly and immediately:
lie.
I had to see what was happening. I laid one eye up against the tiny space I’d made in the zipper, closing the other eye, and the first thing I saw was my go-bag, way over on the far side of the fire. My gun was in it. My herbs were in it. All my stuff was in it. Dammit.

She continued, “Colonel Jack was such a generous benefactor.”

“Benefactor,” Batten said tightly. “You make it sound optional. Willing.”

“Oh, it was, in the end. The human body cries out for ms-lipotropin after being fed a constant diet of it.” She sounded smug. “He’d
beg
my master to feed from him. He shook like a virgin offering up her maidenhead the first time, but after a while, he would tremble desperately in his restraints like a junkie. And that’s what he became.” She moved further into the firelight and it shone on her glossy latex outfit, accentuating the puckered places the fabric had melted like slashes against her thighs. “He was our whore; our eager, whimpering whore.”

Batten faced this with what I thought was amazing restraint. He didn’t respond. What could he say? Sayomi was enjoying her position right now; there was no law here to punish her, as everyone in the town was still recuperating at the Stout Ginger Prince, and she could easily shoot Batten and get away, at least temporarily.

“Am I making you angry?” she asked, eager for a sign that she was.

“Where is he now?” Batten asked, as casually as you might ask if there were walnuts in someone’s homemade chocolate chip cookies.

“Dead,” she said, and the Blue Sense slammed me again:
Lie
. Either she didn’t know for sure that Colonel Jack was dead, or she knew for a fact that he wasn't, but either way, the lie was atop everything else in her thoughts. “He lived a very long time after you left him behind.”

“Left him?” His voice had dropped to deadly quiet, and I started to think I wouldn’t have to deal with Sayomi myself, because Batten was going to forget his law enforcement ideals and just shoot her right in the fucking face. His gun was right there in his holster. His backup gun was on his ankle. He made no attempt to reach for either, hands held loosely together, elbows on knees, shoulders relaxed. All of this was calculated artifice, I knew; Batten could go from
ho-hum
to
choke-a-bitch
in under a second and you wouldn’t see it coming. He could probably have his gun and fire off half a dozen rounds before she could react, unless she was well-trained, and I had no way of knowing that. Batten would know. Batten was studying her body, the way she held her weapon, the way she held herself, the placement of her feet, her choice of gun, her choice of footwear… it all told a story to his trained eye.

What he didn’t know was that Folkenflik was very close, and that I had no gun to back him up with. With a gun, I was a surprisingly good shot, considering my clumsiness at most things. Without a gun, I was a fairly bad shot, since bullets don’t come out of my finger-guns no matter how enthusiastically I pull my mental triggers. No matter. This bitch was not going to shoot my Second,
my
Kill-Notch. Something very like my Bond with Harry roared to life, but I didn’t spare a minute to second-guess it. That hunk of muscle and jerk-faced brains and badass attitude was mine.
Mine
. I would be damned if I was going to let her blow his hunky face off his hunky pants. Besides, I'd only gotten to fuck him five times, and that was some bullshit. I realized with an angry huff that Harry’s “permission ploy” had robbed me of several opportunities to play with that magnificent man-meat out there, and now this hose-beast was going to put him in the ground? Oh,
fuck
no. I grit my teeth and eased the zipper open some more, enough to get through in a hurry. I had it just about fully unzipped when there was noisy motion out by the fire. Sayomi shouted something.

I didn’t even look. I dove through the opening and somersaulted, rolling to my feet, ignoring the snow against one sock.  I was a flying flurry of limbs and braids as I cartwheeled toward my goal, bouncing to a stop between her and my Second. Batten had his gun aimed at her, but in a flash, it was aimed at the back of my head as I put myself where I needed to be. Both of them shouted angrily but I shut them up with a war cry, baring my teeth. It probably looked ridiculous, but it
felt
badass.

I showed her my fists and challenged, “Drop the gun, ya pussy, and face me like a real bitch.”

“Marnie, Jesus!” Batten planted a big hand on my head and tried to shove me down out of his way but I was keyed up and fast, and I rebounded.

Sayomi’s lip curled back and she fired her gun once,
brap!
Then twice more,
brap brap!
Her aim sucked so bad that I blinked with surprise. Then Batten’s left arm shot over my shoulder and hooked me around the face, burying my nose in the crook of his elbow as he took me to the ground. His right arm extended past me to fire back at her once. Our struggle fucked his shot and the bullet
ping-whapped
off of something in the distance. He growled and pressed me down; my face was in his armpit and my ridiculous brain spit out unhelpfully
, Brut?
He fired again, but Sayomi threw herself to one side in a duck-and-cover.

Using a mid-air spin-flip of my legs to add strength to my twist, I flung out of Batten’s over-confident hold on me and dodged his second swipe. Rob Hood would have been so proud. I pumped my small legs to close the distance between me and Sayomi. Grabbing my lanyard out of my shirt, I put the dog whistle between my teeth and started blasting on it as I pelted toward my target. Sayomi looked up just in time to gasp before my stocking-clad right foot hit her in the mouth.

I spit the whistle with a final
poot
and screamed in pain as her teeth hit my big toe.

Sayomi went “Mrf!” and crumpled further, hands cupping her mouth, eyes wide. I heard the tent shake as Declan flew out and I heard Batten snarling behind me, but mostly I heard the excited yip as Folkenflik joined the fray. I whipped around to see the white werefox lunge out of the shadows at Batten, and fumbled with the whistle again to
whoof-whoof
desperately into it, the only noise my whistling breath.

The werefox was already leaping into the air with too much potential to shift gears mid-flight, but he changed his mind about what he’d do when he got to the brawny human. He hit Batten in the chest, knocking him back, but rebounded off and raced across the icy asphalt towards me immediately. I wasn’t entirely confident in his intentions, so I scrambled to a snow pile and took a dive.

Folkenflik latched onto Sayomi’s defensively upraised forearm. She threw her arm out quickly, slamming him into the asphalt. This was the second time her Second had turned on her, and she didn’t like it one bit. She went for her gun and I realized too late that I hadn’t kicked it away from her. She shot Folkenflik in the rump as he took off into the shadows. Then she swung around and turned the gun on Batten.

His gun was already trained on her. They were in a stand-off. I didn’t dare move. She had bad aim, yes, but there was no guarantee she wouldn’t hit him, and I couldn’t be sure we could get him medical care close by. Grimston had been pretty far from the nearest town, if I recalled. My eyes darted from side to side, searching desperately for anything I could use as a weapon, when Declan spoke up from beside the tent.

“You’re out of bullets, Sayomi.”

Ah, the old Clue gambit, I thought. One plus two plus two plus one. Good one, Irish.

She proved him wrong by shooting at him. Declan squawked, a funny
bawk
noise that sounded more like a chicken being chased than a man felled by a gunshot. Batten fired one last time, but Sayomi had chosen to retreat, diving behind several nearby newspaper vending machines and a parking meter box before sprinting into the night.

I got up and tried to hobble to Declan, but my big toe really hurt from her chompers, so I hop-scotched to his side and dropped to my knees. “Where did she get you?” I panted.

“Nowhere, Dr. B. I faked a hit,” he said, sitting up.

Batten grabbed me by the arm and hauled me back to my feet. He was an inferno, eyes bulging. “What the fuck, Baranuik?”

I heard the name and put a finger in the air. “Firstly, I’d just like to say, it really irks me when you treat me like one of the guys.”

He blinked rapidly in my face. I swear to you, I could feel the breeze it created. “Why did you stick your nose in it?”

“She was lying when she said your grandfather was dead,” I said excitedly. “There’s a chance he could be alive.”

“She knows nothing,” Batten informed me tightly. “Only been his DaySitter for a year.”

I should have expected him to keep himself current on the workings of House Sarokhanian. “Okay, well, maybe she was just saying that to hurt you, but still, I had to do something. She was going to shoot you.”

“She’d never held a gun before in her life,” he barked. “I had this.”

“She had a werefox. I had the whistle!”

“Do. Not. Save. Me,” he said, enunciating every word carefully through what was only very thinly-controlled rage.

“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked, stunned, searching his face. “What wouldn’t I do for you?”

“Don’t do that again.”

“Are you nuts? That bitch could have killed you.”

“I’m serious.” He started storming away from me, though where he thought he was going was beyond me.

“Mark, I will always help—“

“I don’t need your help.” His voice rocketed up in volume. “I don’t want your help. Back off.”

“I thought we were beyond this. Why are you being stupid?”

Batten rounded on me and I wondered if this was what a first-time bull fighter felt like in the face of a pissed-off side of beef. “If you get one thing through your thick skull, Marnie, I want you to get this: you are never, ever to help me again. Got it?”

I was beyond speechless. This was more than machismo. This wasn’t dick-waggling ego. “Why?”

“Just tell me ‘yes.’”

“Just tell me why.”

“Say ‘yes,'” he demanded, quivering and red in the face.

“Fuck your ‘yes,’ and fuck you, too,” I said, stinging. “We’re a team, Kill-Notch. I’ve got your back. You’re not alone in this.
You’re
helping
me,
for fuck’s sake
.
The least I can do is help you, too.”

“Never again, Marnie.” He punctuated with a point in my face. “It stops now. I stop until you promise. You let me handle it.”

He meant it. There was zero give in his face. He would not be moved. I was speechless and beyond confused, blinking rapidly in the face of his assholishness.

I struggled to understand for one more heartbeat and then lied, “Fine. You want to handle your own fights, Mr. Balls-Out, you go right the fuck ahead. I’m out.”

“Damn right, you’re out.”

“Don’t talk to me,” I shouted. “I’m out, remember?”

“You’re out!” he agreed vociferously.

“I’m so out, you can’t even see me.”

“Just do this one thing for me, Marnie, and don’t be a bitch about it.”

My jaw dropped but I recovered quickly. “You can’t
seeeeee
me, dumbass. I’m an
invisible bitch
.”

His mouth worked for a second and then he blurted, “Tell it to your business cards.”

“At least I have business cards!” I yelled at his back as he stormed away into the dark. Granted, that was a lousy comeback, but “tell it to your business cards” wasn't going to make anyone's Top Ten list, either. Declan was watching us like a shell-shocked kid caught between bickering parents on the verge of a messy divorce, already deciding which parent he’d live with, and which one he’d play for extra cookies. I looked down at him as he tried to be still and unnoticed in the firelight.