Good lord, I hoped this worked.
My timing was spot on, but the landing wasn’t nearly as soft as I hoped. My chest collided with a solid mass of writhing fur, knocking the wind out of me once again. Though I was gaping like a fish, I knotted my free hand in a mass of musty pelt and scrabbled for purchase. I managed to get myself astride the beast and gripped its wide back as firmly as I could with my knees. Immediately, Cujo ground to a halt, which nearly succeeded in sending me sailing over its massive head. My face bounced off its thick neck. Blood filled my mouth and a metallic burn shot up my nose. I held on tight, retching from the combined stench of garbage-y, wet dog and the vile taste of the blood in my mouth.
The black dog squealed, spinning and lunging in a crazy dance as he tried to throw me off. I wrapped the arm attached to the hand holding the blade around the beast’s heaving neck. It was all I could do to not stab myself as I held on for dear life. I had never ridden one of those stupid mechanical bulls you see in hick bars in movies and such, but I had the feeling the ride I was being taken on was about the same.
“Almost there. Hold on!”
Gannon must have sighted us. While part of me soared at his reassurance, it did little to help me in that very moment. Cujo and I were getting too close to a wall for my liking. All I needed was for the dim light in that massive skull to go on and have him realize he could scrape me off his back like a barnacle. My nifty little Kevlar cat suit offered me some measure of protection in a fight, but it wouldn’t do dick against that tactic. I wheezed, “Hurry!”
I paid dearly for every jerk and whirl. I barely knew which way was up anymore and it felt like my teeth were going to rattle out of my head. I couldn’t see Gannon arrive, but I heard the thunderclap as he landed behind us. Cujo spun around, skittering to a halt when faced with my reinforcement. My head was spinning, my stomach heaving from my wild ride but there was no time for weakness. I took the shot.
I reared back and drove my blade down hard, aimed at the base of the beast’s skull. With a shriek, Cujo bucked and sent me flying, the blade ripped free from my hands. I tumbled hard, managing to protect my face as I rolled, but it wasn’t fun. Every bone in my body seemed to get jarred by the impact. The world around me dimmed for a moment, but I stopped short of passing out. Instead, I lay still, dirty water soaking into my hair; my chest struggling for each fiery gasp. My breathing was so harsh and heavy that it took me a few minutes to realize how quiet everything around me had gone.
I rolled my head to the side. Even that took Herculean effort. Gannon crouched beside the still mass of the black dog’s body, just a few feet away from me. He pulled my knife from the corpse and wiped it clean against the beast’s fur. Even as battered as I was, as close as I had come to losing that fight as I had, a strange trickle of pity welled up inside me. Cujo looked a lot less fierce, drained of that primal fury. He looked a lot more like a feral stray than a horrific monster. Now, in hindsight, the whole situation felt wrong. Unfair. I had killed him without ever a word spoken between us. It was the first time I had killed a fae that was more beast than human.
Was it still justice, if the killer hadn’t known what it was doing was wrong?
I closed my eyes. It didn’t really matter, did it?
Nothing was fair anymore.
~*~
“You’re upset.”
I didn’t even open my eyes for that question. Gannon, Mr. Magnanimous that he was, was driving me home after a quick pit stop to see Seana. She had fixed me up as much as possible, healing my cracked ribs and torn skin with tight-lipped disapproval. As usual, the good doc’s nasty green sleepy-time concoction had knocked me out cold but for once that had been perfectly fine by me. I had a hunch she had added an extra dose of pain killers to the mix. Even after I awoke, a pleasant fuzziness remained on the edges of the world. It wasn’t making me stupid, per say, but I had found it a lot harder to pay attention to the world around me until Gannon had spoken.
It was nice to not be bleeding all over his nice leather seats and I was thrilled to be able to take a reasonably deep breath without wanting to vomit, but I wished she had been able to do a bit more for me. I was as shocked as she was to learn that her Healing hadn’t been able to reach most of my ills. I don’t think anyone had expected my Gift to adapt quite so quickly, least of all me. That didn’t bode well for future hunts, unless I learned to stop getting knocked around so hard.
As it stood, I was exhausted, with muscles aching in places I hadn’t even been sure muscles existed before my wild sprint through the back alley labyrinth. Though my ribs were mending, my abdomen was a patchwork quilt of bruises and my right side ached like hell. I had gauze wrapped around both hands and half way up my arms, mummy-like, to protect the tender new skin Seana had coaxed over my raw, scraped palms. I felt every pot hole and rumble-strip the city roads had to offer with aching clarity.
So, no; I wasn’t exactly a happy camper. But upset? Considering I had insisted on being given the fae hunting responsibilities that had caused all my wounds in the first place, I couldn’t say that I was. I shrugged and gritted my teeth for the effort. “No, not particularly. Should I be?”
He didn’t respond. For a few minutes, all I could hear were the ambient sounds of the late night city around us. Curiosity got the better of me and I finally cracked an eye and rolled it in his direction. To say he looked pensive was an understatement. His dark brows were drawn down over his eyes, dagger-like; casting them in shadows. His jaw was set like stone with a slight tick being the only indication that he wasn’t carved from marble. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, as if we were driving in the Indie 500 instead of doing forty down a nearly empty street on the far side of midnight.
I scooted myself up to a more alert and upright position in the passenger seat, which took a hell of a lot more effort than I had expected. “Uh, are
you
upset, maybe?”
He shot me a glance, something troubled and strange flashing in those eyes before he turned them back to the road. The passing streetlights made it hard to tell, but I thought I saw that tick along his jaw get stronger. I didn’t need Mairi’s freaky mind-reading to tell I had hit a nerve. “Wait, are you upset with
me
?”
“You could have been killed.” The words were sharp and to the point.
My jaw nearly dropped. Had I heard him right? Could it be that Mr. Grim & Serious had been worried about me? About
my
welfare? Be still my heart! Something fluttered in my belly at the thought, making me feel all warm and silly inside. I quickly told the tittering teenager that apparently still lived somewhere in the depths of my soul (and the other lady bits that might be listening) to cut that the fuck out, fast. Those were not feelings I wanted to nurture, especially not about my hard-as-nails sparring partner. Narrowly escaping death could wreak all the havoc on my endocrine system that it wanted; I wasn’t going to be suckered into playing along.
Resisting the urge to coo and make puppy dog eyes at him was hard, despite my iron will. I managed to put on my best serious face as I said, “I appreciate your concern but…”
“Kaine was against you walking down this path from the start,” he snapped, giving me another lightning quick dagger stare.
I stopped, jaw sawing wordlessly for a moment as I fought to find my train of thought. “I know that, but you said yourself that I’m good—”
“It doesn’t matter how good you are if you’re reckless! We had an agreement and you broke it. You didn’t prepare for this fight and you weren’t ready for what you found. You put us both in danger.” The heat in his words made my ears burn. “On the hunt you are on my watch, under my command. You follow my orders and you do not ignore my leads again—are we clear? If you act that foolishly again, it will be your last hunt, whether you walk away from it alive or not.”
My mouth snapped shut with an audible clack. I swung my head around to stare out the dashboard, my face burning like the tenth circle of hell. Silly me. He didn’t want to be the one to disappoint his lord by losing their precious fae-detector. Why had I even thought for a single second his concern had been for any reason other than that? I swallowed hard, feeling my saliva slither down around the lump my throat, and ignored the hot sting in my eyes. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
I heard him heave a sigh. “Look, Caitlin, I—”
“Don’t.” The word shook. I gathered up my anger, letting it strengthen me. “You made your point.”
We lapsed into one of those terribly awkward silences I previously thought were reserved for the moments following a lover’s spat. Shit, even then some angry-resentment-nookie could be had to break the ice once the two parties were done hating one another’s guts. Not that
that
had a snowball’s chance in hell of happening. Smoldering good looks or no, my naughty bits had gone Hoth cold after that lovely little moment of brutal honesty, thank you very much.
The truth of it was that I had put us both in harm’s way. I knew that. I should have read that damn dossier. There was no good reason for me not to have. I had just been tired and lazy. I had put it off until later—like so much in my life—and later had never come. If I had done more than glance at the title of the stupid thing, I wouldn’t have been caught with my pants down in a dark alley, thinking that creature had just been some poor, harmless stray. I had been careless and lazy and thanks to that laziness one—or both—of us could have died. But I sure as fuck didn’t want him to know I was filled with guilt. So we endured the rest of the ride in silence. That was just about as much fun as you’d expect it to be. I wasn’t sure who I hated more: him or myself.
Thankfully it was only a few long, soul-sucking minutes later before we pulled up in front of my apartment. I wanted to bolt from the car in a grand, dramatic gesture complete with a car-rattling slam of the door. Instead, when I swung the door open and my feet hit the pavement, I nearly fell backwards into my so recently vacated seat, bowled over by a wave of dizziness. I caught the edge of the doorframe with my swaddled hand, realizing a second too late that it would have been better to fall on my ass. As fire exploded across my palm, I let out a paint-blistering string of obscenities that insulted the parentage of everything from the higher powers above to those of the nearby fire hydrant.
Gannon appeared in front of me, still wearing that peevish look of concern. He held out a hand. “Let me help you.”
God, how badly I wanted to be a mulish bitch and push his hand away, stalking into my apartment of my own accord. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even find the breath to speak around the pain of my poor, throbbing nerves. Swallowing my pride—and nearly choking on it—I let him steady me as I stepped away from the car. He shut the door, then looped one arm around my waist to keep me steady. I swung an arm around his shoulders to further balance myself, but man oh man, did I really just want to hit him upside the head with it.
It was a difficult journey, despite only being a few feet. I didn’t want to lean against him both out of bitchiness and because my ribs ached at the slightest touch, but holding myself rigid wasn’t much better. Every step up to the second floor was a nightmare. Visions of a hot bath and soft mattress spurred me on. The promise of being Gannon-free and able to let loose the torrent of emotions whirling around inside me was also a great motivator.
My willpower shriveled up and died when we finally reached my door. It was partially open, the edge splintered where it had been forced in and broken upon its own lock. I felt Gannon’s arm stiffen around me. He was on high alert immediately, while my brain got stopped up trying to process what I was seeing. He maneuvered me against the wall and said, “Wait here.”
I couldn’t do anything but listen. I leaned against the worn brick wall, suddenly numb to the pain in my side and hands. All I could feel was the wiggly-legged sensation that threatened to pitch me forward onto my face if I so much as moved a muscle. This couldn’t be happening. Not my home. Not my one safe haven. My mouth had gone so dry that I couldn’t swallow.
It was only a few seconds before he appeared in the darkened doorway, looking grim. “It’s empty.”
With him firmly grasping me at the elbow to help me keep my balance, I took a few teetering steps into the long hallway. Even from the door I could see the destruction of my living room at the end. The loveseat was tipped over, some of its cushions torn. Stuffing and papers and the remains of my destroyed treadmill littered the floor. My bedroom door stood open a few feet to my left. I made myself get there, stopping in the doorway as my stomach sank. The bed had been torn to shreds. My clothing was strewn across the floor. Here and there something metallic glinted among the mess. I had left my laptop on the bed that evening, when I left for the hunt. Now it was an expensive paperweight, with the screen shattered and the keyboard smashed in. I saw a few of the missing keys scattered here and there on the floor.
I started trembling so hard that Gannon once again looped his arm around my waist to keep me upright. I careened my head to look over his shoulder and into the kitchen across the way. Shards of glass and ceramic littered the floor in a crazy mosaic. Bits of dry pasta and crushed potato chips frolicked among them. A wretched, desolate sound somewhere between a wail and a moan forced its way up out of my throat. I felt like every muscle in my body was turning to water. “He found me.”