19
Warmth.
Not the fever heat my skin was before I blacked out, but a comforting heat that made me relax. I came awake sharply. No sense of time passed, no dreams, no memory of anything after blacking out. It was later, though. I knew because I was in my room at Polecats, under the covers of my bed, a woman pressed to my back.
I could feel her breathing, slow and even against me. The line of our bodies was unbroken. Her chest to my back, one arm laying across my hip light and tender. It felt very familiar and I knew who it was.
There had been many late nights and early mornings of talking with Tiff that ended in closed eyes and close embraces. Sleeping together without
sleeping together.
The comfortable companionship of two people who are attracted to each other on many levels, not just the physical one.
My relationship with Tiff was not something I had been expecting. I wasn’t looking for it when I found it. After losing my family, I’ve been celibate. There were lots of reasons for this. The pain of their loss was just too much to consider moving on, and the danger I am in almost constantly kept me from forming close connections with anyone. Because my life is absolutely insane, with monsters and blood and violence, Tiff and I did not have a “normal” relationship. She was in my life, we were close, and there was care and chemistry between us. But we had not been more intimate than hugs and holding hands.
Hell, we had only kissed once, last year when I was sending her away from danger the first time. She had laid one on me and told me I’d
better
find a way to survive and come back to her.
I did. And since then we had been slowly growing closer to each other.
Gently, I slipped out from under her arm, sliding slowly across the mattress. With a small whimper of protest she curled into the covers left behind, snuggling down, not waking. I watched her in the dim light of the room, sweetly sleeping.
I stood up slowly, taking my time to see what kind of shape I was in. My head hurt, but it was a low-level ache in my skull instead of blinding pain behind my eyes. The room did not spin or tilt. That was a good sign. Taking the few steps to the restroom was easy. I closed the door and my eyes before turning on the light.
Keeping my eyes closed, I felt my way to the sink. Slowly I cracked them open and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I had been cleaned up, washed of dirt and grime, but I didn’t have any extra stubble on my face or head, just the goatee I kept.
So I hadn’t been out longer than a day. If I had, there would be stubble. You just can’t shave someone who is unconscious.
There was a bruise going green that slashed along the left side of my skull, arching over my ear and disappearing around the back of my head. Several small cuts were scabbed up along my throat; I had no idea where they had come from, but they weren’t deep. I could feel bruises on my arms and chest, but none of them showed under my ink.
Lifting my arm, I looked down at my side where I had laid across the Were-shark. It had also been cleaned and covered with a thin layer of ointment. Rubbed raw from the sandpaper skin of the great white, it was pink and angry looking; the tattoos there were faint under milky new skin. It didn’t look like any of the injury had gotten to the subdermal level of skin where it would harm my tattoos. They would come back after it healed more and the skin turned back translucent.
Lifting my arm had pulled something on the other side of my back. It pinched, tight bites of pain in a line. I turned and looked. A gash started at the bottom of my ribcage, curved behind me, and ran up toward my shoulder blade. The edges of it were puckered together along a row of stainless-steel staples. They studded the wound like decoration every quarter inch or so. They pulled as I stretched, feeling like a long row of tiny teeth in my back. I had no idea what had caused that wound either. It was deep enough for staples. I could see the wound had sealed, the line of it angry pink instead of raw red. It would turn into one of my more gnarly scars.
Opening the medicine cabinet gave me two things I desperately wanted: ibuprofen and my toothbrush. I used both liberally and then stripped off the shorts someone had put me in and turned on the shower. I had been cleaned up, but there is only so much that can be done without a shower. The hot water would feel delicious on my bruises.
Making adjustments until there was a thick billow of steam, I stepped in. Water beat down on me, driving heat all the way to my bones. For a moment I stood under the shower, forehead pressed to the wall, and just let it roll over my neck and shoulders.
As I relaxed my mind wandered, moving around the events of the last day like a predator stalking prey. Charlotte was healed, and I was pretty sure the rest of the people injured in that room were too. Everyone except me. I never have been able to use any of the supernatural stuff I do to heal myself. Used to be I could only sense supernatural things, now I can manipulate it, but I can’t steal it or take it for my own use. I do heal faster than humans, but that’s a holdover from my encounter with that Angel of the Lord when I first started out. I am glad of it. It’s why my bruises were already fading and I had new skin over my cuts. It was also why I was able to move around without feeling like I was on the verge of death.
I was glad my friend was alive.
The power that healed her had come from Sophia’s babies. It wasn’t from her or me. I have used my ability to feel out a lot of lycanthropes, but the explosion of healing from her unborn children was something new. An anomaly.
And powerful.
Hot water washed over my head and neck, loosening muscles as my mind worked the edges of recent events.
Everyone wanted Sophia. The asshole Were-lion and his worse asshole Were-lion brother were both trying to get her. I could only assume it had something to do with her pregnancy. It’s been my experience when it comes to supernatural shit that if something looks like a coincidence, then it never is. So if the two brothers wanted her, then it was not by chance. It just seemed one wanted to kill her and one wanted to keep her.
They could both kiss my ass. I had signed on to keep her safe when Tiff and I rescued her the first time. She was now on the list of people I would stand in front of when scary shit came calling. If they wanted her, they would have to go through me.
I wondered where Marcus and his mate, Shani, were now. I didn’t like them and didn’t trust them. Hopefully they were in the wind like I told them to get. I doubted it. Trouble like them tends to stick around until the bitter end.
Marcus’s brother, Leonidas, was on a fast train to getting his ass dead. Him and all his crew, that is, whoever was left among them. I try not to kill lycanthropes. Most of their lives they are human. But when they choose to go rogue, they have to be put down. They are way too dangerous to be out of control or evil.
A Were is a package of scary fast and inhumanly strong tied together with a string of almost impossible to kill without silver. You
can
do enough damage to a lycanthrope to put it out for the count, but it takes more than most can dish out. A hand grenade would do the trick, or a flamethrower, but then you have to smell burnt hair for hours.
Leonidas had crossed the line, and so had every member of his crew. Boothe had said they were all stone-cold killers. I believed him after going up against them. They were pretty high on my shit list. Number one with a silver bullet.
I washed up using the bar of Irish Spring in the shower, scrubbing and rubbing away dirt that had been missed by whoever cleaned me up after I had passed out. I was not surprised to be safe, back at Polecats. My people were there when I passed out. They had obviously taken care of the situation. Tiff, Kat, Larson, and Charlotte would have kept Marcus and Shani from doing anything stupid. No matter how pissed they were at me for using their lycanthropy to help heal the others. I don’t know what it felt like on their end, but their anger had blasted through the connection clear enough.
I shut off the hot water even though I didn’t want to and stepped out of the shower. After drying off with my towel, I hung it on the shower rod and slipped back into the clean shorts I had worn into the bathroom. I shut off the light, giving my eyes a moment to adjust before stepping out. I needed to get dressed and find out what the aftermath to last night would be.
I couldn’t wait.
20
Tiff was awake and sitting up in the middle of the bed. Her hair was tousled, flicking out in kicks around her face. She was scrubbed free of makeup, leaving her features starkly clean. Big blue eyes closed, her cute nose scrunched up as she stretched and yawned. Both lithe arms lifted over her head, pulling up the edge of her tight, thin T-shirt to reveal the smooth, curved planes of her stomach. The low light of the bedside lamp glittered across the stone of her bellybutton piercing.
I sat on the bed in front of her and watched. Many, many times I found myself captivated by casual things Tiff would do. Whenever she was around, I was very
aware
of her. So whenever she did something like this, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She finished her stretch and leaned over, crossed legs still under the covers. Elbows on her knees, she tucked a tiny chin into her palms. Long fingers framed her face as she smiled.
“How’re you feeling, champ?”
I smiled back. “Not bad. Better than before I passed out. How long was I down?”
“About eight hours. Larson said you pushed yourself too hard with the trauma to your head. Your body shut down for repairs.” Her voice hitched at the end. A look passed over her face, wrinkling her forehead. She turned away.
“What’s wrong?”
Shaking her head, she wiped at her eyes. “I was just worried about you.”
I smiled at her. Reaching out, my fingers lightly touched her knee through the covers. “It’s all right, little girl. I’m fine.” My arm curled, flexing bicep muscle. “See?”
“Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t laugh this off. I’m being serious.” Her eyes flashed over at me, tears broke off and trickled down her cheeks.
My hands went up, palms out. “Hey, hey, I was just kidding.” Gently, I wiped a tear off her cheek. “I really am okay.” The droplet hung on my callused finger, shimmering between us in the low light. “You have seen me hurt before and I survived.”
She blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Not like this. You looked terrible before you dropped. Weak and disoriented. I have never seen you like that. I’ve seen you hurt, but not weak. And I have
never
seen you fall like that.”
Scooting forward, I pulled her over to my lap. She slid around, settling into my arms. Her head was soft against my shoulder. I held her, making low shushing noises while she cried quietly. Stress she had been holding since yesterday ran away like water. As she subsided, I rubbed her leg through the covers.
I felt like a dick when I leaned back so she would look up at me. I didn’t want to say what I had to say. Sometimes things have to be put on the record. You can’t ignore them because they won’t go away. They have to be put into the universe to make them real. And sometimes leaving things open makes them hurt even more when they happen. I tried to be as gentle as I could, keeping my voice soft as I spoke hard words.
“If you stick around, little girl, there will come a day that you will see me in worse shape than that.” She tried to put her head down against my chest again, turning away from what I was saying. My hand went under her chin, softly but firmly keeping her looking at me. She had to understand this. I would do her no favors trying to keep it from her.
“One day, you may have to watch me die. This is not a life that will end in sunset years and peaceful passing in the night as an old man.”
She pushed my hand away. “I know that. Just like I know that you don’t
want
to die an old man. You
want
to go on. You want to cross that line when you can.” Pulling back, she crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice was quiet, an injured bird hiding in a bush. If we had not been so close to each other, I probably would not have heard her. “I know there is nothing here you want to live for.”
A sigh left me. Dammit this was hard. Here before me was a wonderful woman who deserved a life full of love. And I did love Tiff, but my heart was a wound that never healed. It was always raw and open. Sore to the touch and bleeding if not ignored. The part I had to give was damaged, twisted because it was tied to the laceration on my soul. It would not stop hurting. And it was packaged in the life I had now, a life of violence and bloodshed.
I looked at her and realized that one of the things that made her so special was that she was pure. Everyone else in my life had been traumatized by evil in their past. Everyone. All the girls who worked the club, Kat, Father Mulcahy, Larson, Charlotte. Me. All of us had been dragged into this against our will.
Not Tiff. She had chosen to be here. Yes, I had taken her from a club owned by a vampire, but she didn’t know what he was at the time. He hadn’t had time to taint her with his evil.
She was a clean soul.
It made me ashamed to have involved her in my life as much as I had.
Blue eyes flashed at me. Her brow creased, full lips hardening into a line of anger. Tiff moved. Straddling me and pushing me back against the wall. One small fist thumped down on my chest, hard enough to get my attention. Hard enough to hurt. She loomed over me, finger pointing in my face.
“Oh, no, you
don’t
.” Her voice pushed through clenched teeth. Tears pooled in the rims of her eyes, glittering and shimmering, waiting for the one small thing that would send them tumbling down her cheeks. “Don’t you
dare
get that look on your face. You are
not
sending me away for my own good. I am a grown woman and I want to be here. I’m. Not. Going.
Anywhere.
” She leaned in, face close to mine. The tears had spilled and her voice was a fierce whisper. “The only reason I got so scared is that I love you, Deacon Chalk. I love you more than I have ever loved anyone or anything in my whole damned life.”
Then she kissed me.