Changing

 

A Jack & Teague (&Katy) Adventure

 

 

By

 

Amy Lane

 

 

 

 

Teague

 

On Pain of Waking

 

 

 

Fucking dream.

 

Teague’s body was warm.  It was protected on either side by love.  His soul was whole—for the first time in his life, his soul was whole.  He had something beautiful to look forward to and good, good memories to build from. 

He had a home. 

And then the goddamned dream.  It had changed since the night before—maybe the fucker just couldn’t stand for him to be happy.

Whereas before, it would start like the real life moment where Katy bit Jack, now it started with all of them in flight.  The dream was chasing them—something was chasing them, and Teague pushed Katy and Jack in front of him and screamed “Go go go go go…”

Right into the jaws of the phantom fear.  It gnashed shadow teeth and Teague screamed, and then they were at his feet, bodies mangled, eyes blind, and Teague was on his knees in their blood, screaming his throat raw…

“Mmmm…” Katy’s voice was sleepy and petulant.  “Teague, pappi, don’t fuss… it’ll all be good in the morning.” 

Jacky tightened up against his back and there was a sudden blare from the clock radio on the nightstand. 

“What in the hell…?”  Teague muttered, and Kay rolled out of his arms with sleepy laughter.

“Nevermind, pappi, it’s time for me to go to work anyway.”

“Work?”  Teague echoed, feeling stupid, and Katy was picking up the change of clothes she’d brought into Jack and Teague’s room the night before as they were coming in from banquet.

“Yeah, Teague—it’s Black Friday.  Everybody gonna be there, even Cory and Bracken.  Hell—Grace went right from the banquet to the store, got it all set up!”

Teague squinted at her, trying to put this information into the world as he knew it.  He knew Grace had been working her ass off for Thanksgiving dinner—and it had gone off without a hitch.  He knew Cory and Bracken had been trying to negotiate a peace treaty with the scattered werewolf packs in Southern California during their week off of school, as well as handling him and Jack and their transition into their new lives as werewolves on Green’s hill. 

What he hadn’t known was that they actually had a day job.  (Or, in Grace the vampire’s case, a second night job.)

“Black Friday?” he repeated, feeling dumb.  “How busy are these people?”

Katy laughed and leaned forward to kiss him.  She was wearing a skimpy little cotton sleep tank with short satin bottoms in a bright blue that glowed against her dusky skin.  “They’re trying to make a living, here,” Katy murmured against his cheek.  “You don’t think they finance you and Jacky using trick money, right?  ‘Cuz Green don’t work that way.  You guys go off and shoot people, I stay in the bakery and make money.  Everybody’s happy.” 

Teague jerked his head a little and captured her full lips with his own.  Dammit—he’d been hoping to… well to consummate the growing tension between him and Jack and Katy.  He’d been told they had a short window to get busy so the three of them could be bonded mates, and, as a plump armload of Katy Garcia filled his senses—and her warm half of the bed—he thought a little hazily that he should probably take care of that sooner than later.

Katy groaned against his mouth reluctantly and pulled away.  “Oh, dammit Teague—now you want the sex?  Yesterday morning when we had all the time in the world, you get all embarrassed, but today, when I gotta go, you want the sex?”

“So sue me, I’m a dumbass,” Teague muttered as she hopped off the bed and trotted for the shower, but she wouldn’t hear of that. 

“Not a dumbass, pappi,” she corrected, “you just got lousy timing, that’s all.  Now go back to sleep—you don’t relax enough!”

And with that she was in the shower, naked, slick, soapy…Teague put his face into the pillow and groaned again.  Jacky chuckled sleepily and threw an arm around his shoulders and kissed his jaw. 

“Serves you right—you left us high and dry yesterday morning!”

“Real fuckin’ funny,” Teague groused.  He’d left them to go running in the rain, and Jacky laughed again.

“It is this morning,” he yawned, “when all is right with the world.”

Teague scowled at him, mostly to cover a smile.  “You’re so easy.  Feed you, fuck you a few times—you’re Mary-frickin’-Sunshine, ain’t ya?”   

Jack yawned then—a jaw-cracker—and Teague remembered that they hadn’t been in bed that long.  Thanksgiving banquet at Green’s hill was… memorable.  Nobody had gotten up and table danced but they’d sat up for most of the night, just telling stories.  Or rather, everybody else told stories and, for the most part, Teague listened.  After that, the shapeshifters had gone out into the waxing moonlight to change form and run.  It had been… fun… being a part of something that much bigger than he was. 

“I’ll be Mary Sunshine in another hour,” Jack was saying.  “Katy’s going to come home and nap—how ‘bout we get in some sleep now?” 

Teague stared at him muzzily.  “Sleep in?”

“Yeah, genius—sleep in!  Why, you got some big plans this afternoon?”

Teague shook his head.  “Naw… I got a run tonight, though.”  Picking up some werewolves from So-Cal at the airport.  It didn’t look like blood, guts, and danger, but Cory seemed to be on high alert.  Teague took his cues from her.

Jack groaned.  “I don’t want to talk about it… we’ll just fight again.  Go back to sleep… I’ll argue when I’m feeing more articulate.”

Teague was going to argue right then—he was.  What happened instead was that he managed to say “You have better things to…do…with…” yawn “your…mouth,” right before he fell asleep.

 

 

 

Jack

 

He Feels Those Scars…

 

When Katy got out of the shower, Jack was drowsing on his back, Teague’s head on his shoulder, as he ran his hand through the short dark-blonde hair that had grown just long enough to fall across Teague’s forehead. 

Being a werewolf speeded those things up, or Teague would have taken pains to cut it already.

“His daddy had long hair,” Katy said softly, and Jack’s eyes opened to focus on her.  She’d put on some clean jeans and long-sleeved garnet colored T-shirt to work in.  By the end of the day, they would both be covered with flour dust and chocolate icing, but now, in the morning, they were awfully pretty, glowing off her exotically dusky skin.

“Yeah?”  Teague’s father was a dangerous conversation—one best held outside of Teague’s hearing. 

“Yeah.”  Katy came and sat on Teague’s other side and reached across to stroke a slightly freckled cheekbone with her thumb.  “It was the same color as Teague’s, but he had Irish blue eyes—not like Teague’s at all.”

“Nothing about that man was like Teague,” Jack spat, his voice quiet with vehemence.

Katy looked at Jack carefully.  “Nothing but their DNA, mijo—you remember that.  Teague look in the mirror, he remember his daddy.  He feel his scars, he remember his daddy.  That thing that ride him at night—make him scream?”

Jack nodded—it didn’t even need to be said.  He remember his daddy.

“When will you be home?” he asked her.  He didn’t want to talk about Teague’s father—not now.  Not after assuring Teague that everything was right with the world.  Teague’s scars were proof that some things could never be made right—some parts of Teague would always remain broken.

“First shift gets off at noon—we’re back around one.”  Katy smiled and stretched a little further to brush Jacky’s cheek instead. “Why, you got plans?”

Jack smiled and met her sultry brown eyes—and flushed.  “I was thinking… you know.  Taking that first step into bonding…”

“What, no candlelight?” she asked, those warm brown eyes twinkling, and he flushed even more.

“You’re right,” he murmured, embarrassed.  “It should be a bigger deal than that.”

Katy shook her head.  “No—no.  It shouldn’t.  We’re wolves, Jacky—we don’t do marriage ceremonies.  We just mate, and it’s right, you think?”

Jack captured her hand.  “I think you’d look damned pretty in a wedding dress,’ he told her softly.  “I think Teague would think so too.” 

Katy blushed, and her smile turned shy, and she tugged her hand from Jack’s grasp and pattered away.  Jack was left with an armful of surly Irishman and a whole lot of possibilities.

He awoke nearly two hours later with one of those possibilities poking him in his back.

“Teague?”

“Mm?”

“You awake?”

“Don’t know.  You?”  He sounded barely coherent—whatever was poking Jack was apparently involuntary. 

Jack laughed roughly, and turned in Teague’s arms, tossing the blankets away and moving down his body to the bulge in his tighty-whiteys.  He’d done this before, caught Teague unaware, and Teague had been fairly traumatized by the event.  Jack was hoping… hoping…

He shucked the tighty-whiteys and took Teague into his mouth and Teague clenched his hair, thrust inside, and groaned. 

Oh yeah.  That was exactly what Jack was hoping for.  Teague moved inside his mouth, grunting raw want, and Jack used the misty sunshine coming in from the skylight to actually see Teague’s body up close as he hadn’t been able too in the dark.

He liked what he saw.  Teague’s stomach was hard and knotty—he would have needed just a little more fat for movie-star abs, but…mm-hmmm!  Jack’s hands ran down the side of Teague’s thighs, feeling the divots of stringy muscles at his flanks and buttocks.

There were scars—lots of them—but they were a part of Teague, and Jack loved them too. 

“Jacky, dammit,” Teague grunted, finally awake enough to protest, “get up here…”

Jack made “mmmm---mmm—mmm---mmmm” noises, then thrust his mouth to the root of Teague’s cock and hummed some more when Teague hissed and grunted. Teague started to wiggle, to move, and Jack let him.  When it got to the point where Jack’s knees were about even with Teague’s head, Jack turned on his side and pulled on Teague’s hip so he’d do the same, and then Jack threw his knee up and positioned his foot on the other side of Teague’s head.

It was awkward… right up until Teague’s mouth engulfed him back, and then it was heavenly. 

Jack lost himself in the give and take of the act, groaning and thrusting even as he explored and accepted Teague’s thrusts into his mouth.  Ahh… ah… fuck it felt so good… the twin charge of giving and receiving pleasure—of having power and being overpowered by Teague’s rough, skilful touch…

Teague’s slickened fingers rubbed up against his entrance, and Jack’s mouth went slack enough for Teague’s erection to slip out.  Jack fought against thrashing, found his head pillowed on Teague’s thigh, tried to caress and not paw at everything in his immediate reach…and… oh God… Teague’s fingers were inside and his mouth felt so good on Jack’s body…

“This…” he whimpered, “this wasn’t supposed to… you were supposed to… Oh, crap, Teague…” He convulsed then, locking his arms around Teague’s scrawny hips and clutching his lover’s body tightly to his chest, and his vision went dark and he came.

“Ahhh… Gods…” he hissed, when he could speak again, “that so wasn’t fair.”  Teague chuckled from between his thighs, and he flushed—this was a really awkward, ungainly position when you weren’t caught up in the moment, and this was not a part—or an angle—he’d ever really expected to see. 

Even so, as he moved his hips around, feeling his spend drooling from his deflating body, he continued to explore.  Teague’s rough command of “Jacky, get up here,” didn’t dissuade him in the least. 

“You never let me look at you!”  Jack protested, tasting Teague again from his new (less awkward) position between Teague’s spread thighs.

“I’m nothing to look at…” Teague grumbled, and then grunted irritably as his body responded, still taut and ready and seeking relief. 

Jack laughed softly and moved to plant kisses on the inside of that mildly hairy thigh, stringy with runner’s muscle, and Teague grunted again and tried to move away. 

And that’s when Jack saw them. 

He made a surprised sound, and that was a mistake, because the mood in the room shifted from playful and sexy to tight and defensive in just that half of a heartbeat.  Teague shifted on the bed with a jerk and swung his leg over Jack’s head, landing on the other side of the bed with both feet, even before he stood up.  He wiped his mouth self-consciously and avoided Jack’s eyes. 

“I need to go for a run,” he muttered, squinting at the clock.  “They’ll be back soon, and I want to be showered before I talk to…”

“Shut up, Teague,” Jack said, his whole body cold.  “Just shut up and just tell me about the scars.” 

Jack had thought he’d known all about Teague’s scars—but he hadn’t seen the ones on Teague’s inner thigh and well into the crease of his buttocks and around his opening.  They were thin and uneven… old scars.  Violent scars, on a man’s most tender area.  On anyone’s most tender area.

“They’re scars—I was young.”  Teague’s back was turned, and he was rifling through his drawers for new underwear and his running clothes.  He made a surprised grunt when he found them—the last either of them had seen, the clothes had been sopping wet and crumpled in a corner of the bathroom.  Jack didn’t know how it worked either, and at this particular moment he didn’t give a ripe shit.

“I get that you were young,” Jack said impatiently.  “What made them?”

Teague’s answer was muffled in his long-sleeved running shirt.  “A broken beer bottle—friend of my Dad’s thought it’d be hilarious, and…” swallow  “I was hungry.  I’d have done about anything for food right then.”   Teague shrugged from the doorway, his shoes still unlaced even as he grabbed the handle.  “I guess you can see that I did.” 

And then he was gone, leaving Jack in the emptiness of pain denied.

 

Teague

 

He Remembers

 

Cory wasn’t there to talk Teague out of his funk this time.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss the little sorceress until he was halfway through his second loop of the hill and she wasn’t there.  She’d been so good at being there, anticipating his pain, showing up as the friend he’d never expected.  Showing up for him had seemed like her superpower.

When he realized she was still at work, he felt her absence almost as sharply as he felt his own mortification. 

Dammit.  He’d managed to keep Jack away from those particular scars. 

He’d learned not to be ashamed of them—he’d been thirteen, the guy had literally dangled a cheeseburger in front of Teague, and Sean Sullivan had been drunk for two weeks.  Teague had eaten the last of the moldy bread above the refrigerator two days before, and had spent the day after that throwing up in the school restroom. 

It hadn’t occurred to him to ask for a free lunch.

And Teague thought he knew the score.  He’d seen girls give it up for his dad when he promised them cash—and he was so weak and shaky, he figured, well hell, how much worse could it be?

The next day he’d bled through is jeans in Algebra, and Sean Sullivan had been called in to sign the treatment release forms.

The beating he got when they let him out was worth it, Teague always figured, because at least the hospital had given him food. And Teague’s most important life lesson had been reinforced:  reach for nothing.  Hunger was better than getting your ass ripped to ribbons.  Even a dumb Irish motherfucker knew that, right?

He’d lived that lesson, too—right up until Jack had been hurt and then brought to Green’s hill and healed.  Suddenly everyone—Green, Cory, Jack—they were telling him to reach for what he wanted the most.

And it seemed to have paid off, until he was back in those memories.  Those memories could take moments like this morning, when Teague was good and happy and high with the pleasure of being there with Jacky on a lazy morning, and saturate them in blood and pain.

There was pressure building in Teague’s chest, a terrible tightness that threatened to overwhelm him, to flatten him, to level him on the ground and reduce him to that starving, shivering, bleeding child that he’d been back then.  But he couldn’t.  Jacky relied on him, Katy loved him…

But they were mortal.  Jack had almost died.  Katy was still ephemeral, a hope, a wish, a lovely armload of maybe. And both of them bled out in his dreams nightly, proving again and again and again that everything he reached for, everything he wanted, would eventually be reduced to a puddle of blood and pain.

The tightness increased, made worse by the panic of letting them down…he couldn’t.  He couldn’t.  He couldn’t… dammit… he had things to do, even if the careful regime of cleaning house and working out that had kept him focused as an adult had been swept away in the naked comfort of Green’s home. 

If nothing else, he had a goddamned task for Green and Cory—they were counting on him. 

He was needed. 

Gasping, powering through, Teague ran past the tightness, ran past the pain.  He’d be what they needed, he wouldn’t let anyone down, he’d never be that wretched child again…

As long as he could keep running. 

Jack

 

Rub Some Dirt On It

 

Jack hurled the paperback book at the door with enough force to break the binding. 

“Fuck!”

He’d showered, he’d dressed, he’d paced the room several times, and finally he thought he’d try to settle down with a book and get some distance from the emotional maelstrom currently pulping his insides. 

It hadn’t worked.

The door opened into a hurricane of book pages and Jack fought the urge to bury his face in his hands.   Green smiled gently at him and made a stirring motion with his fingers—the book pages swirled in a little cyclone and then arranged themselves into a neat pile.  Green picked the pile up and pulled the rubber band off the end of his queue to secure it, then presented the neat little package to Jack with a flourish.

“You may want to buy a new copy,” he advised as he made himself comfortable in the stuffed chair next to Jack’s.  It was Teague’s chair—Katy’s was on the other side.

“I’m afraid I borrowed it from Cory,” Jack answered and Green grimaced. 

“Well, in that case, I’ll make sure she gets one.  So, what did the book do?”

Jack scrubbed his face with his hands and groaned.  Green’s hand started rubbing slow circles on his back and Jack sank into the comfort without a thought.  Green—his first male lover, yes, but more than that.  Green was a healer—that was what the flesh had been about, and that was what Jack remembered about their brief, dreamlike interlude in which Green had saved his life.

“It wasn’t Teague,” he said honestly, and that comforting hand never stopped.

“Ah.”

“He’s out running.”

“I am aware.  I wonder that you don’t follow.”

Jack almost sobbed but kept himself solid. “I can’t run as fast as he can—I never could.  Not even as a wolf.”  They’d changed into wolves the night before and gone for a brief run.  Teague had stopped often to wait for Jack and Katy but the moonlight, the smells on the wind, had been so beguiling that it hadn’t rankled Jack at all.

Now he could only think it was some sort of omen.

“Well then, why didn’t you make him stay?”

“That sounds really fucking easy, doesn’t it?”  Jack snapped, and still, that comforting hand kept going. 

“What made him run, Jack—go ahead, tell me.”  Green had listened when they’d been together—all of Jack’s angsty bullshit about how Teague wouldn’t even let himself want, and Green had heard and counseled.  Jack considered holding all of this in… he did… he even took a breath to tell Green he’d be fine.

“Living with the walking wounded is like dancing in an emotional mine-field.”  Green’s voice was soft—typical, that Green wouldn’t just take one step forward, he’d go as far as he could.

“Yeah?”  A wealth of gratitude in that word—and not a little of hope.

“What bomb went off today?”

Jack swallowed and leaned his weight on his elbows.  It seemed so personal… until he remembered that Green had healed Teague once too. 

“The ones I wouldn’t see until I got really…” Jack blushed, all the way down to his fingers, which were the only things he could see.  “Personal.”

“Mmm.”  Green wrapped his arm around Jack’s shoulder then and pulled him in to lean like… like a friend.  “Adrian had scars like that.”

Jack’s breath caught.  “Adrian?”  He and Katy had seen Adrian the week before—a lonely, transparent presence, wandering the garden he’d created with the combined triumvirate of Green and the grumpy little college student who had captured both their hearts. 

“Mmmm…” Green’s voice grew far away and remote—insulating himself from the pain of a lover gone.  “He had those scars for a hundred and fifty years… they were a part of him.”

Jack shuddered from his position practically on Green’s lap.  “That’s a long time.”

He felt Green’s nod in his hair.  “It was.  It was a long time to carry them in his heart… they crippled him in a way, you know?”

Jack imagined he did know.  “How?”

“Kept him from leading—he was the best judge of character I’ve ever met.  Maybe the most compassionate voice when it came for choosing people who would fit in here… he was the one who invited your sister, you knew that, right?” 

“I knew…” Sarah had come to tell Jack that, not long before she’d been killed.  A good man offered me a way out of the life, Jack.  Offered me a home—a real home, where people take care of each other. 

“Yeah—but until Cory healed him, he just didn’t have that faith in his own heart to take all those fates in his hand and cry Follow me!”

Jack laughed a little, loving the shelter of Green’s arms.  “Does anybody?”

“Cory does.  Teague is getting there.  Think about it, Jack—think hard.  What were the odds that Teague was going to turn out just like his father?” 

In spite of Green’s fingers, running through Jack’s dark hair, Jack shivered closer into his arms.  “It… if he’d been anybody else…”

“That’s right.  His entire life has been an effort to change his pattern of behavior, so he doesn’t end up a monster.  And it worked, too, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.”  Jack had never seen Teague lose control of his temper, never beat someone outside of a fair fight, never… never try to rape a child with a broken beer bottle… The horror of what had been done to him made Jack shiver again.   “But… how is he going to get beyond… oh God… Green… the shit he’s been through… how’s he going to get beyond that and be whole…”

Green sat him up then, and Jack realized that he’d pretty much been sitting in the sidhe’s lap.  He tried to stand, but Green anchored his arm around Jack’s waist and forced him to stay.  “No—you need to look at me and hear me, Jack.  This is damned important.  Brother—your beloved will never be whole, you hear me?  Even when Adrian was healed, there were still parts of his heart that would never be replaced.  Even though Cory and Bracken and I are happy now, there are parts of us that will never be fixed after Adrian’s death.  This isn’t about being ‘whole’—this is about changing to adapt to those empty spots in your soul, right?”

Jack swallowed, then swallowed again.  It was, indeed, a hard truth to get down.  Teague would never be whole.  His damage would always be there, walking around in his battered skin. 

“Am I going to have to do this every time we get close to being close?”  Jack grated, so very glad that Green had kept him on his lap. Green shook his head no. 

“That’s my point, Jack—he’s going to change.  He’s good at it.  His whole life has been an exercise in changing his behavior to avoid being something he despises.  It’s your job to have faith that he can change.  It’s your job to make it safe for him to change.  He’s going to order you around—he’s your alpha.  You need to make him listen to you when it’s time to be his partner.  And…” Green looked away, embarrassed for a moment. 

“No!”  Jack protested, because he knew what was coming.

“I’m not asking you to give up on making runs with him for good, Jack—just until he gets used to the idea that you’re not helpless!” 

“I was never helpless, Green—that’s not why you sent me to him in the first place!”

There was a thoughtful silence, and Jack looked carefully at Green’s expression.  It appeared… self-recriminatory.  Angry.  Haunted.

“Silly me,” he said softly. He appeared to shake himself, and the look in the sidhe’s green eyes was wry.  “I’ll never regret pairing the two of you—don’t ever think I would.  But… it’s extremely difficult to know someone you care for is in danger.  As hard as it’s going to be for Teague in the next few months, I’m thinking you might want to take that off the table, that’s all.”

Jack’s sigh held all the frustrated disappointment of three-year-old told to postpone his birthday, and Green’s gentle chuckle did nothing to make him feel more mature.

“Look, Jack—if Teague decided to settle down and help Katy at the bakery full time, what would you do?”

Jack brightened.  “I think I’d like that!”  He would—he would have to ask Katy if he could do that anyway.  He was getting bored, hanging around the hill with nothing to do.

Green nodded, and Jack blushed—he had a feeling Green knew exactly how appealing that notion had been. 

“Teague would never think of settling down at the bakery,” Green said soberly, and Jack made a little sound that he didn’t want to identify. 

“No,” he murmured.  “No.  I guess not.” 

With a little push, Green made Jack lean his head on Green’s chest again, and he stayed that way, absorbing comfort, thinking quietly about things, for a long time.  Eventually, they stood up and Green kissed his forehead and left, leaving Jack alone in the room again with a pile of pages, a full head, and not a single plan of attack. 

He’d just about decided to go out and search for Teague himself, when Katy pattered in, smelling like cookies and covered with flour dust.  She took one look at him—and even he knew he looked sulky—and the empty room, and threw her purse across the room to tag him in the chest.

“What in the hell!”  She was a werewolf, and damn that thing stung!

“What did you say to him?” she demanded.  “You nagged him about the job, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t my fault!”  Jack protested.  “I swear, Katy—I didn’t…” he looked away.   He’d been replaying the moment again and again, and he couldn’t think of anything he should have done differently.  That one sound—the sound of surprise and of sympathy—there was no way he could have not made that sound even if he knew what was coming. 

“I saw scars,” Jack said at last.  “We… we had sex in the daytime and I saw scars.” 

Katy blanched and sat abruptly on the bed.  “Oh.  Those kinds of scars.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

Jack sat down next to her, not touching.  “Said he’d have done anything for food.  I don’t think he counted on the broken bottle.”

Katy rubbed her face and leaned against him, and he wrapped an arm around her and found he took comfort from giving her comfort.  “You knew it had to have happened, right?”

Jack hadn’t known.  But then, he hadn’t had a childhood like Teague and Katy’s either.  “The broken glass was a surprise.”

“Yeah.  The shit that surprises you… but yeah.  It’s a surprise.”  Suddenly she sat up and glared at him.  “And you just let him go?  How long’s he been out...”

“Running,” Jack finished for her.  “He didn’t leave the hill—his keys are still here. He’s been out running for…” he looked at the clock and swallowed.  “Two hours?”

“Two hours!  Jacky, you can’t let him do this!  You need to…”

“What—stop him?  What can I possibly do or say to stop him, Katy?  Help me out here!  We see something he doesn’t want us to see, and he takes off—you know that!  What am I supposed to do?”

“Anything!” she shouted.  “You say anything you have to!  You’re a smart boy!  You need to keep talking until something sticks.  Make him think running’s not the only thing he can do!  Come on, Jacky—you’ve got his heart in your hand…”

“Well so do you!”

“But you were first!  You were tightest!  Don’t think I don’t know that—don’t think I’m mad or hurt about it—goddammit, Jacky, use it!”  Katy glared at him, angry and sad and so many things Jack was pretty sure she couldn’t put a name to them all.  “You and me, mijo—we’re what he gots.  If we got to argue with him to make him better, then that’s what we do!”

She was right, Jack knew it.  She was right, Green was right… and Jack was stuck, wondering how he could use all this really fucking useful human insight to help make it right with Teague. 

He wrapped an arm around Katy and sighed into her hair.  She sighed back, then sat up and kissed him—a lover’s kiss—then broke off and moved towards the bathroom, gathering clothes from the dresser that Jack hadn’t known were there.

“Give me five minutes,” she said softly.  “I’ll take you to the were’s common room—you haven’t been yet.  It’ll give us something to do besides worry, right?”

“Right.” 

No worries.  Teague was out there, alone with his memories, bound and determined to make the world a better place.  No worries at all. 

 

Teague

 

Gentle Instruction

 

As Teague came sweating down the stairs and towards the kitchen, he had to pass through the main common room of the hill.  Cory and Bracken were there, sitting on the large couch, backs to the ends and playing footsies in the middle—and arguing fiercely. 

“Yes, I know I gave in… I just thought you guys would come to your senses…” Cory punctuated her whine with a little kick to Bracken’s large bare foot, which was in the way of her stretching out. 

“Are you kidding?  We let you go to work on Black Friday,” Bracken grunted, kicking her back.  “If that wasn’t taking your life in both hands…” he shuddered, and she kicked both feet in tandem until he bent his knees and glared at her.

“Let me?  Let me?  Bracken Brine Granite op Crocken Green… you didn’t let me do a goddamned thing.  Grace needed my help, and it wasn’t like I was out picking up a boatload of strange werewolves who may very well try rip your throat out!” 

With a grunt of outrage she swung her legs over the couch and stood up and kicked the couch with her bare foot—it must have hurt, but she didn’t wince—she snarled instead. 

“Let me.  I’m letting you put me in a fucking padded cage…”

“Gilded cage,” Bracken corrected with a scowl, and Teague wondered if ‘op Crocken’ meant ‘testicles’ or something, because the guy must have had balls of solid rock.

“Fucked up fucking cage of fucking bullshit!” she snapped.  “I’m fine.  There is no reason on the goddamned planet to put you out on the line and Nicky out on the line and leave me here…”

Bracken stood so fluidly it was like he didn’t move at all—he was suddenly looming over her and yelling in her face.  “Except for the fact that you almost died last year…”

“And so did you, asshole, and so did Nicky, and why doesn’t anybody remember that?”

“Because we weren’t the ones having a week long conversation with our dead lovers while we were in a fucking coma!” 

Teague was stuck, there in front of the refrigerator, like a poor Greek peasant who walked out of his hovel to take a leak and saw Hades and Persephone having a meltdown from hell. 

“I lived…” Cory said needlessly, but Bracken wasn’t listening.

“And we weren’t the ones who hacked up a lung for a month…”

“Two weeks…”

“And we weren’t the ones so weak by the end of Christmas that we needed an escort to run around the track!”

“The escort was your idea, genius!”

“And the one time you didn’t take me, you almost died again!” 

“That is an entirely different argument!” 

“It’s the same argument!” 

They were toe to toe now, which meant Cory had to tilt her head back so far she was on the verge of losing her balance.  “It’s not today’s argument,” she insisted, but she’d lowered her voice a little and Bracken’s scowl grew less severe. 

“No—today’s argument comes down to one thing,” Brack said on a low growl. 

“And what’s that?” she asked, and Teague was a second away from taking a breath of relief.

“Whether or not you mean to honor your promise to stay home for this one, dammit!”  Bracken had a fierce grin of triumph on his face—he’d gotten her where she lived, and he knew it.

“Awww.  Bracken, fuck you!”

She groaned and flopped down on the couch, and Brack snapped, “You can do the honors, beloved, as soon as we get back from the run.”  With that he whirled around towards the hallway, then started thumping up the stairs.  “I’ll be in the Goddess grove,” he called unnecessarily.  “Just in case you want to make up or anything!” 

“Bite me!” she called after him, but she had her hands over her eyes still and her voice lacked any real heat. 

Teague let out his sigh of relief and had taken a tentative step towards the hall and the hell away from the kitchen when she spoke up again. 

“At least get some chocolate milk and some leftovers, Teague—you’ve been out running for hours, you need to eat.” 

Teague froze, and because he’d been thinking about food the entire time he’d been an unwilling witness, he did what she said.  He came out of the refrigerator with a bottle full of chocolate milk and a plate full of food. 

“You want some?” he asked, pointing to the plate of leftovers, and Cory shook her head. 

“No thanks… I’ll get a soda later.”  She looked over her shoulder to the granite stairs and growled.  “Or maybe they’ll give me an IV to make sure I take my vitamins…” She shook herself and tried a gamine smile in his direction. 

“Sorry you got a front row seat to that—it’s been brewing all week.” 

Teague nodded.  “So I gather… you ever think that they might have a point?” 

She shot him a knowing look from her murky brown eyes.  “No, Teague.  I haven’t thought that even once.  A gilded cage is a padded cell to me—always has been, you know?”

“But it’s not a coffin,” Teague said stubbornly, and she grimaced. 

“Nice one.  Do me a favor and don’t give that to Bracken—he doesn’t need any more ammo.” 

Teague flushed and concentrated on making himself a turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce sandwich with the leftovers.   Jack had made dinner for them last year—it hadn’t been this good, but it had been Teague’s first.  He’d learned to love leftover sandwiches. 

He took a bite and swallowed, and asked into the silence, “Did you really almost die?”

“Yes,” she said shortly, making patterns on the counter with her finger as she sat. 

“How?”  Teague had heard some of the story the night before, but not all of it.  Given the way she shrugged now, he doubted he’d hear the full version from her either. 

“I… I made myself sick with grief.  Then some bad shit happened, and I barely recovered, then Bracken got kidnapped and I damned near killed myself trying to find him, and then some more bad shit happened and then we got attacked.”  She wouldn’t look at him and he had to wonder how bad it had been. 

“So, bad shit mostly,” he said dryly, and she quirked an eyebrow at him.

“In a nutshell.  How ‘bout you?”

He grunted and took a bite of his sandwich.  “Wha’ ‘bout me?” 

“What sent you out on a two hour run when you should be in bed with Jack?”

“Grnnsaadgghh…” She pounded on his back helpfully when he tried to choke on his sandwich, and he swallowed—hard—and glared at her.  

“I saw Green as we came in,” she said mildly.  “I think we’ve had the ‘this place is worse than high school’ conversation?”

He grunted and took a smaller bite of his sandwich.  “Yeah.”

“So?”

He swallowed.  “That thing that happened to you, where you almost died—it leave any marks on you?”

She flushed.  “Scars?  Yeah.  Ugly fuckers.  Make bikini season lots of fun.” 

“Yeah.”  He didn’t look at her as he said it, but she got it.

“Jacky saw your scars.  The kind of scars you can only see when you’re naked and too close.”  Her voice was low and sober.

“You see too much,” he muttered.

“So did Jack, apparently.”

There was a silence, and he looked without appetite at his sandwich and took a bite anyway. 

“Yeah.” 

“Would it help if I told you that he doesn’t care?  I mean he cares, because you were hurt, and he loves you, but it doesn’t change who he fell in love with.  He’s not going to see you any differently because he saw you… really saw all of you.  Would that help?”  Her hands were fluttering nervously, and he could see her looking longingly for her knitting. 

He grunted and gave her the leftover dish with sweet potato casserole instead.

“I’m not hungry,” she muttered, and he grunted again.

“You’re too skinny.” 

“Fuck you.”

“How do you know?

Blank silence.  Teague realized he’d switched topics a little fast. 

“How do you know it won’t change?” 

Cory laughed a little, looked down at the sweet potatoes and took a glum bite.  “I knew someone with scars like that,” she said quietly. 

Knew.  Past tense. 

“Adrian?”  He asked, seeing her push the bowl of potatoes away.

“You had doubts?”

No.  He’d only known her for a couple of weeks, but he already recognized that particular flavor of pain. 

“So… that was it?  You saw the scars, you said, ‘That’s no big deal!’ and it was all good?”  Judging by her lip curl, he sounded a little more hostile than he intended, and her next words confirmed that he’d managed to ping her already sensitive temper.

“No, Teague.  No.  That was not it.  First he had to tell me the worst thing he’d ever done.  How’s that?  And it wasn’t just a little worst thing—it was horrible, even if he didn’t mean to do it.  And then there was the whole ‘sex in the garden’ thing, and that was fun too—you know, because the whole world saw it and got to approve.  But you want to know what the best part was?  The really fun part?  The really fun part was when that really bad thing—the worst thing he’d ever done—came back and bit us all in the ass and he had to stand up in front of the entire fucking hill and tell them that he’d been an all-access-raping-post for half his childhood.  Wasn’t that fun?  I got to feel him tell that story, because I had two marks by then, and we got to share all sorts of whip-fucking-spiffy emotions, and there was Bracken, right?  His best friend since the asshole was spawned, and Adrian’s thinking Oh my God.  Holy Goddess.  Please let Bracken forgive me.  And you know the only good part of this entire intestinal swap?”

Teague swallowed hard and tried to keep his food down.  How could he?  Of all people, how could he have forgotten that everybody had a fucking story to tell? 

“There was a good part?” he rasped, and she let out a weary breath and some of the anger bled out of her scrunched-up, pissed-off face.

“Yeah,” she murmured, looking any direction but at him.  “There was.”

“I’m sort of dying here,” he confessed.  His chest felt raw.  “I’d really love to know what kind of good part could come out of that.” 

She turned towards him, finally, and her mouth quirked in a wry, compassionate sort of smile.  “The best part is that asshole—you know, that guy I just told to fuck off and bite me?”

“I know him, yeah.”  The guy was damned close to seven-feet tall with shoulders like a dump truck.  He was hard to miss.

“He didn’t even change expression.  He sat through the entire entrail-ripping confession with this look on his face of absolute worship, you know?  That shit that happened to Adrian when he was a helpless kid?  Didn’t change a damned thing.  Bracken would have gone to hell and back for him.  As it turned out…” It was a good thing she’d slowed down, because she literally tripped over the lump in her throat.  “…Adrian did it first.”

Oh God.  Teague felt like three or four buckets of grade-A fermented pig-shit. 

“I’m sorry…” he muttered.  “I shouldn’t have made you…”

Cory shook her head and wiped her face with the back of her hand.  “Your timing just sucks, that’s all.  You know—how do I convince you that baring your soul will help if all I can tell you is ‘bad shit happened’?” 

Teague felt a reluctant smile start.  “You do fine, Lady Cory…”

“Oh don’t start that shit… not you.  Not tonight!”  Her voice was bitter and she couldn’t even meet his eyes.

Teague blinked and realized they were on an entirely different topic.  He was starting to know how Bracken felt—That’s the same argument! With Cory, it all sort of tied in together, didn’t it?

“Why tonight?”

“Because asshole was right, that’s why!  I promised Green.”  She buried her face in her hands and scrubbed.  “Fuck.  I promised Green I wouldn’t go.  I…” She sighed, and looked at him with such miserable intensity that he put down his sandwich and looked back.  “I almost died last year because I wouldn’t accept their healing—any of them.  Because I was draining them dry.  I was so close to death that I was killing them.  And even when I was dying I wouldn’t take the last of their strength.  And they… they’ve let it go for the most part.  They’ve forgiven me.  I lived.  Water under the bridge, whatever.  Until this week, when everyone including Green has just lost his fucking nut over bad-shit-anniversary.  And… I owe them.  I hurt them…and I’m going to have to send you and Bracken and Nicky and a carload of everybody else to tail you because…”

Teague felt the answer like sandpaper on his heart.  “There’s only so many right ways to say you’re sorry.” 

She used both hands to push the tears back from her cheeks.  “You called it, brother.”  She tried hard not to sniffle and Teague looked behind him and found a napkin.  “Thanks,” she muttered.  “Have you been to the were’s common room?”

Teague blinked at her.  “No…”

“I’ll show you.  Katy took Jack there about five minutes before you walked in.” 

Teague laughed a little.  “I smell like armpit.  Can you wait ‘til I’ve showered?”

Cory nodded.  “I’ll be here,” she murmured, staring sightlessly in front of her. Teague patted her arm and felt useless, but she captured his hand and squeezed for a moment before setting her chin on her fists and staring out the window across the room. 

Teague kept walking, with a wistful look over his shoulder, and by the time he got to the granite stairs he decided he couldn’t do it.  He’d left her alone in the rain the day before, and it hadn’t sat well with him then. 

Sat worse with him now.

Quietly—on werewolf feet—he made his way up to the granite trap door and swung it open.  The speed with which Bracken turned to him—and his obvious disappointment when he saw who he was—told Teague more than he needed to know about how hard these two lovers could be on each other.

“I think she’d really like you to come down now,” Teague said politely, hoping Bracken didn’t rip his head off.  Werewolf of no, sidhe were quicker, stronger, and—in Bracken’s case—a hell of a lot bigger. 

“I’ll come down when she comes to her senses.”  Bracken grumbled.

“She’s there,” Teague said softly.  “I… I was going to shower, and she was going to show me to the common room…” 

Bracken had been pacing near the white marble bench with Adrian’s profile etched on the sides, and he looked up form his pacing and actually looked at Teague.  “Go shower and come get me.  I’ll show you.” 

And in the time between, the two of them could get a handle on their dangerous emotions.  He didn’t have to say it—Teague was only stupid about his own heart.

 

 

Jack

 

Rough Magic

 

Jack liked the common room—mostly because it reminded him of Teague’s favorite bar.  It was highly veneered dark wood with lots of brass, wooden tables and low hanging lamps.  They served beer by the draft and the bottle, and whatever was available in the upstairs common room to eat was there in the giant refrigerators behind the bar. 

Everything was free, and some of the rougher, more rowdy lower fey enjoyed serving and playing with the were-creatures—as well as bilking them at pool and cards.  Of course, no money changed hands. 

The room was fairly full this morning—a lively mix of were-creatures with some of the lower fey, with slightly higher ratio of men to women.  When he commented on the number of men, Katy had shrugged and taken a hearty drink of her milk. 

“Mostly lost people end up here, Jack.  Young enough that they can be found again, old enough to make a decision.  Most people that age, that lost—those are men.” 

It made sense to Jack, but he found himself thinking that even if they didn’t swing that way some men might find themselves in that position from sheer lack of female companionship.  But about midway through their meal, Katy looked up to the door and sucked air in through her teeth.  Jack’s whole body grew cold and he forgot everything but the man at the door. 

“Oh look, Jacky,” Katy murmured, trying for casual, “he made himself all pretty for you.”

Jack’s throat went dry. 

There was something vulnerable about Teague’s face, when his hair was wet and hanging over his forehead a little.  He was wearing a clean, long-sleeved T-shirt, khaki colored, with jeans, and was having what looked to be an uncomfortable conversation with Bracken.  Bracken turned to leave, and Teague looked straight at Jack, then caught the large sidhe’s shoulder and asked him something.  Brack looked out at Jack, shrugged and nodded, then took off. 

Teague nodded back and made his way to the table.

“Heya, pappi,” Katy said nervously, “good run?”

Teague shrugged and dropped into the open seat across from the two of them.  “Heya, Katy.” 

“Did you want something to eat?”  Jack asked without looking at him, and Teague shrugged. 

“Naw… had a sandwich in the front room.”  He looked around.  “I like this place though—my kind of ambience.” 

Jack managed a smile, and then he looked up and made eye contact with the stubborn Irishman and they both flushed.  The crushing reality was that nothing they had to say to each other was fit for a public place.

“What were you talking to Bracken about?”  Katy asked, filling in the silence of all the things the two weren’t saying.

Teague looked up, his depthless hazel eyes sparking for a moment, the look on his face almost like a happy kid’s.  “I… I was asking if Jacky could come with me to pick up the new weres.”  His expression changed to that of a chastised puppy, dropping off a large toy at the feet of his master.  “Would you like to do that, Jacky?  Come with me?”

Jack’s own eyes were wide as he looked at Teague’s diffident expression.  “Uh—yeah!  That would be great!”  He meant that, too—but he couldn’t figure out the reason for it.  “Uhm, why the change of heart?”

Teague shrugged, and his eyes went sideways.  “Well, you know, Jacky… there’s only so many right ways to say you’re sorry.” 

The wave of helpless anger swept Jack from his toes, up through his groin and stomach, and then to his face, which flushed probably to his ears.  He looked up at Teague, his lover, his beloved, and wondered how twisted Teague’s heart had to be to think he had done anything wrong. 

“You…” Jack gasped, and Teague looked gut-shot with hurt so he tried again.  “You don’t ever have to apologize to me for that,” he rasped finally, and then stood up, aware that his chest was pumping in and out like an Olympic swimmer’s.  “I can’t do this here.” 

He pushed blindly out of the room with Teague and Katy on his heels and he didn’t even have to ask them to follow him.  They all knew where he was going.

He burst in through the door to their bedroom and bent over, putting his hands on the bed and trying to breathe through the red veil in front of his eyes.  Teague came up behind him, and for once his touch on Jack’s back wasn’t sure, or possessive, or sexual. 

Teague’s hand fluttered, touched, lifted, touched again.  “I… I’m damaged, Jack.  I’m… fucked up… I don’t want to take it out on you… I…”

Jack whirled and pushed Teague back up against the wall by the front of his shirt, aware that Teague’s eyes were wide and shocky and frightened. 

“You’re perfect,” he rasped.  “You’re beautiful… you’re kind… you’re brave… you don’t ever…” Jack wiped his face on the shoulder of his flannel shirt.  “Ever… you don’t ever have to worry about what part of you I see, do you understand?”

Teague flushed again and turned his face away, but Katy was right there, on his side, glaring at him with the same fierceness Jack felt. 

“I’m damaged,”  he said softly, looking from one of them to the other.  “I might be too hurt to do this right—you need to face that, both of you.” 

“I’ll kiss whatever boo-boos you got,” Katy said levelly, close enough that Jack could feel the slight puff from her breath.   He shivered, Teague’s eyes darkened, and the moment changed.

Jack took Teague’s mouth hard, angry, frustrated, tender, and Teague groaned… and then took over.  Without warning Jack was propelled backward until he fell back against the bed, and Teague straddled him, bending down to kiss him again, and again and again.  Ah, God… Teague’s lips were hard and the stubble from his face was scratchy and his aggression felt heavenly. 

Teague made a surprised sound, and then he lifted up his hips and busy hands were fiddling with Jack’s fly and suddenly his pants were down around his ankles and coming off his feet with his shoes.  Teague swung away from him, and Jack wanted to clutch him closer as their kiss went on and on, but oh my GOD!

Katy’s mouth was on his cock, and he went from semi-erect to drooling pre-come before he could even frame the thought.

He ripped his mouth away from Teague’s long enough to say “Fuck!” and then Teague was kissing him again, and Katy was sucking, and her hands were doing amazing, squeezing, fiddly things around his base and his balls and…

“I’m gonna…”  Oh, and he was, he was going to come, and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t because he’d already come once but Teague hadn’t…

Teague interrupted the kiss to pull off Jack’s shirt, and then run his hands over Jack’s chest, and then lower his head to suck on a pointy nipple and…

Jack growled and stars exploded behind his eyes and he was coming apart under the two of them, exploding, coming when minutes before he’d been ready to cry. 

Katy crawled up the bed as he lay there, gasping like a fish, and he pulled her down for a kiss.  Her mouth was soft and lush and different from Teague’s, soothing after the roughness, calm after the storm, and wild with the taste of his spend.  She made a noise against him, a protesting noise, and Jack looked up and saw that Teague had stripped her pants off as well.  He was leaning over her back, kissing a sweet line down her spine, and his hands were pushing up under her sweater and under her bra. 

Katy gasped and whimpered, then touched foreheads with Jack.  “Baby, that feels soooooo good…” she moaned, “but we haven’t… you need… won’t you let us…aaaayyy!” 

Because Teague’s line of kisses had found it’s destination, and Jack knew that the man could please a body with his tongue and his fingers—he didn’t think it would be any less wonderful for Katy than it had been for Jack himself. 

Katy was vulnerable, bent over the bed, her bottom in the air and her sweet, slick sex was being invaded and tormented in the best, most passionate of ways.  She gasped against Jack’s mouth and wiggled and grunted as she tried to find balance on the bed, and Jack shifted on the bed to help hold her. 

“Auughhh…Teague…” She whimpered again and Jack felt her come apart completely, her orgasm shaking her soft body against him.  His sex stirred, aroused by her sounds and the sweetness of her body, but his needs weren’t urgent—unlike Teague’s. 

Teague’s hands were busy with his own belt, and he’d shucked his jeans before Katy realized what he’d planned. 

“Oh, pappi,” she panted, “let me see your eyes…ooohhhh…” 

Teague slid inside her and began to move slowly, his hands soft and possessive on her shoulders, her neck, her breasts.  She turned her head to look over her shoulder at him, to plead, to beg, and Teague captured her mouth with a sweet, desperate kiss. 

But still he kept moving, and Jack knew when the pressure inside became too much for Katy because she keened and fell forward, right into Jack’s arms as he sat up on his knees.   Jack just held her, her breasts pressed against his chest, his face buried in the hollow of her neck.

“Later,” he whispered, knowing what she wanted.  It had taken him nearly three weeks to see Teague’s eyes, to watch his face as they made love.  She would have to wait just a little longer before he bared himself to her that openly.  But in the meantime… in the meantime he was surging into her, thrusting hard enough that she bumped up against Jack with little grunts of pleasure, of excitement, of fierce reciprocation. 

And Jack peered through the curtain of her hair and looked up at Teague’s face, naked and beautiful.  Oh God… the way he was looking at them, when he thought no one could see him, the passion and fear and love that twisted his expression beyond pain, beyond yearning…

Jack swallowed a terrible tightness in his throat and held Katy tighter.  She keened and howled against him as her orgasm shook her, and Jack got a secret view of the man who loved them both, climaxing, coming apart, disintegrating, losing himself in her body and the torsion of his agonizing love. 

After Teague growled and gasped and buried himself inside her, throbbing and panting with completion, the three of them flopped limply onto the pillows, making contented, laughing sounds.  Or Jack and Katy were.  Teague was clutching Katy to his chest as though he’d never let her go. 

Katy’s eyes met Jack’s, over the shelter of Teague’s clenching arms, and their expressions sobered.  

“He’s good,” she mouthed, and Jack gave a quiet grimace and nodded.  He’d managed to love them both, see them to climax, and never reveal himself.   Jack’s heart felt full with what he’d seen, how much the two of them meant to Teague, the pain that cutting his love loose in the haven of their bodies had cost him. 

Jack kissed Katy then, willing her to simply accept for the moment, willing her to let it be, just for the moment, until he could tell her all the things she could not see.

Katy

 

All That Heaven Will Allow

 

           

            Katy dozed off between them for a while, but she woke up to feel the cold absence of Teague at her back. 

            “He went for a final meeting before the run tonight,” Jack murmured.  He was still naked and warm next to her, and she found herself snuggling into him for comfort. 

“I forgot…” she wiggled her head against his chest some more.  “Lucky Teague—made it easy to leave, didn’t it.”

“No,” Jack whispered, and he kissed her temple reverently.  “I know you didn’t see… he didn’t let you see.  The look on his face when he was inside you, Katy.”  Jack looked away, like that would keep her from seeing his overbright eyes.  “Damn, sweetheart.  It broke my heart.” 

“Then why not show it?” she asked disconsolately.  “Why not… shit.” 

Yeah.  She knew the answer. 

“We promised him he wasn’t too fucked up to love,” Jack told her.  “I’m still in—I can’t imagine a world where I wouldn’t stick to him like a burr in his sock, you know?”

She looked up at him and smiled just enough for him to know it hurt.  Teague had kissed her on the temple as he’d left.  She remembered that much.  Don’t give up on me, Katy.  I’ll make it worth it. 

“I can’t give up on him.  There’s too much promise of good, you know?  It… I know he loves me.  I know he loves us.  It hurts that he thinks we can’t love him back.  It hurts…”

“That he wants to apologize for being broken.”  Jack sighed and Katy sighed with him. 

“I tell you, mijo, we live in a place with werewolves, werecats, vampires, elves, fairies, and a vampire’s ghost.  You wanna know what I really want to see?  Seriously?”  His eyes were so blue, she thought besottedly, and fringed with the lushest dark lashes.  She wondered if Teague took in these details, the paleness of Jack’s skin, the way his hair fell over his forehead or the way the blood traveled over his cheekbones as he flushed.  Did Teague see all these things, or did he just see the way Jack loved him, and that made for all the beauty in the world?

“I’d love to know what you want to see,” Jack replied with a faint smile. 

“I want to see his daddy, resurrected, so we could tear that cocksucking ass-ripper to shreds.” 

Jack laughed, but there was no humor in it—only heartbreak.  “Yeah—you and me both.” 

They were quiet then, and Katy thought there were worse ways to spend time than trailing her fingertips over Jack’s flushed cheeks.  “So, what you two doing tonight?”

Jack blinked sleepily, and she felt bad.  He and Teague—they apparently had whatever they had too early as well.  “We’re picking up werewolves from the airport.”

“The So-Cal werewolves?”  Katy knew her voice got shrill but she didn’t care.  She scrambled to sit up, and then remembered she was naked, with Teague’s spend coating her thighs, so she managed to pull up a sheet.  “Like, the people that they dusted last week?”

Jack had an amused quirk to his mouth as he pushed himself up on an elbow.  “Hopefully these guys aren’t crazy.”

“You don’t be so sure, mijo… you don’t understand.  The So-Cal werewolves, they’re like the So-Cal gangs.  They’re scattered, and they mostly kill each other, but if they decide to gang up together, they can be dangerous!” 

“Does Cory know this?”  Jack asked, but he didn’t seem to be alarmed and Katy knew she wasn’t getting through. 

“Yeah—where you think I get my information?  It’s all through the common room!  We all know this!  You spend too much time holed up in here, mijo, and now it’s gonna get you killed!”

Jack sat up a little more, but he was a man so he didn’t seem to care about the sheet coming down to his hip.  “Katy, it’s a run—Teague and I were doing this for year and a half, remember?”

Katy’s face went cold.  Oh God.  “Jacky,” she said, a little too panicked to remember tact, “you know when I almost killed you?”

Jack grimaced.  “Vaguely.”

“You ever ask why I didn’t go for you in the first place?  You were bending over… your back was right there—your neck… you’ve been a wolf.  You know what it’s like to smell prey.  I watched you last night… you went chasing rabbits, you know the smell of something you can kill.” 

“Yeah, but…”

“But I knew I could kill you—that’s why I left you alone.  I knew Teague could kill me—that’s why I went for him.  You’re not a predator, mijo… you’re prey.  Teague not wanting to take you—I been thinking that just proved how smart he really is.  The fact that he want to take you now?  That just proves how stupid love can make a person, Jacky.  I don’t know how you survived for a year and a half, but I know some of the scars on that boy’s body are pretty fucking fresh!” 

The hurt on Jack’s face… aww shit.  Katy started to cry and she hated doing that, but dammit, this was not the sweet pillow-talk she had been imagining since she knew Teague Sullivan, man of her dreams, was here at the hill.  But then, she hadn’t counted on learning to love Teague and his Jacky, both together, either. 

“Are you saying I’m just a giant bunny, waiting to get eaten?”  Jack asked, still trying to process the terrible insult.  “That’s it, right?  You’re saying I’m a liability—I’ll get him killed!” 

Katy shook her head and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.  “I’m saying you got to think about what’s good for him, mijo, and not what’s good for your ego.  You think about it—you tell me, how many times that man took a hit for you?  How many times he say “It’s nothin’ Jacky—next time I’ll duck.”  How many times he step between you and the big bad-ass on the other end…”

“You weren’t even there!”  Oh Christ—she’d made him cry too. 

She took one of those big shuddering breaths, the kind that got in the way of breathing and came out in tears and snot.  “I don’t have to be there—I can see it on your face.  I can see it on his body… hell, I can smell it on your wolf.  You remember that scuffle he got into last night?  One of the smaller wolves… Teague had to snap and growl and Colin just shrunk into himself and skulked for a bit?  That was you, Jacky—Colin was going to jump your meat-ass, and Teague jumped in front.  That happen when you two were on runs?  Be honest.”

“I can hold my own in a fight,” Jack said mutinously, but something flickered in his eyes, and Katy knew, knew she was right. 

“Good to know that—because you been promising that man everything he’s ever wanted for his entire life.  Everything.  You see that?  And the whole reason he won’t look at us, even when he’s inside our bodies is that he’s afraid that’s going to get taken away.  What you think happens if you die?  What you think happens to everything he’s ever wanted his entire life?”

For a moment—she could see it.  For a moment, Jack understood.  They were sitting, facing each other, and she was still clutching the sheet to her chest.  Jack’s corner of it was down around his hips and she looked wistfully at the hipbone poking it’s way out from under the fine cotton.  She wanted to touch it.  She wanted to lay on him and touch him and explore his body the same way she wanted to explore Teague’s. 

But Teague was broken—he’d said it himself.  If Teague was broken, it was up to her and Jacky to make the bandage and stop the bleeding.  Jack was no good for that if he kept ripping Teague up again.  She’d never get to see Teague’s eyes on her, if Jack kept threatening to take away all that he’d built his slender, battered hopes on. 

“All I ever wanted,” Jack muttered, “was to be by his side.  Is that so much to ask?”

“Why you got to be there in the fighting, Jacky?  That’s not where your heart is.  It’s with him, sure—but not in the fighting.”  And the look on his face made her cry harder and she didn’t think that was possible. 

“I kept him alive when you attacked,” Jack said harshly, and Katy nodded even though she wasn’t sure her attack would have been any more lethal against Teague than it had been against Jack. 

“I know, Jacky,” she whispered, but she knew nothing other than that look of acceptance the one that had given her hope, had passed.  “It’s just… I know it’s hard, staying home.  Not being all ninja and shit.  You just got to trust that your man’s coming home, that’s all.  You think maybe you can do that for him, and not make him take you tonight?” 

Jack shook his head and stood up, moving restlessly.   He had a fine, lean ass, and that longing assaulted her again, the terrible, lean-gnawing want to touch these men, to claim them with softness, to shelter them from the jagged edges of the other’s heart. 

“We work together fine,” he said after a moment.  He got to his knees heavily and started looking for his clothes, and Katy was almost disappointed when he found them under the comforter at the edge of the bed.  “Cory and Bracken go out on runs… Marcus and Phillip, hell—even Nicky goes with Cory.  Teague and I—we can be the same thing.”

“You ever see Cory work?” she asked tonelessly, and Jack grunted “No,” as he was putting on his boxers.

“Me neither—but Nicky, he hangs in the were room, right?  The way he talks about her… it’s like she’s… shit—who’s that Goddess of war?”

Jack blinked.  “Bellona?”

Katy laughed through the terrible congestion all that crying caused.  “Yeah—her.”

“How do you know that?  I barely know that—and only because my twelfth grade teacher had a total obsession with MacBeth!”  Jack was wearing his jeans now and looking at Katy like she totally fascinated him.  Yeah, maybe—but not enough to stay home.  Not enough to not break Teague’s heart.  Not enough to hear what she had to say. 

“The elves here—they all got a hard-on for Shakespeare.  But it don’t matter.  Cory can fight, Jacky—Cory can fight and Bracken can make people bleed.  They’re like the perfect weapon together.” 

“If they’re so fucking perfect, why do they need Teague?” he demanded, and Katy groaned and flopped sideways.  If she was going to be left alone in this wretched bed, the least she could do is smell her two lovers while they still lingered on the sheets. 

“Don’t you see?”  Her voice was small, and she wondered if she could find words for this.  It was complicated—outside her immediate circle of knowledge, but something she’d seen on the night Teague had come to visit her in the garden.

There was something in him… beyond them.  Something that needed to do something larger, serve a larger purpose than just the things his heart wanted. Maybe it came from so many years of not daring to reach for anything himself, but Teague had learned to reach for something better for the world. 

“See what?”  Jack asked, throwing himself across the bed.  His finger came out and traced the damp tracks of her tears and she tried to smile bravely for him.  She failed. 

“I don’t got no more words for you, mijo,” she murmured.  “Teague’s bigger than you and me.  He just needs room to be bigger, and we got to hold him when he’s feeling small.” 

Jack smoothed his hands over her cheeks and through her hair.  He kissed her bare collarbone, the hollow of her neck, and the softness of her temple.  Katy clung to him and let him soothe her and sweeten her and hold her, but the whole time she was cursing her education, and how short it had been.  Jack—he knew who that goddess was.  Jack would know how to make this sound right even if he didn’t feel it in his heart yet.  She had so few words—oh God, if only she had more words, maybe she could make Jack stay.  If she had more words, maybe she could tell Teague he never had to say he was sorry.  If she had more words, maybe she could make this right. 

 

Teague

 

Bad-shit Stories

 

 

It was not a comfortable briefing.

“Okay—so Teague and Brack in the pick-up car...” Cory looked up with a squinty-eyed scowl from her position on the club chair and met Teague’s eyes.  He’d grimaced when she’d spoken and she held up her hands, palms forward.  “Teague, Jacky and Brack—are you sure?” 

No.  No he wasn’t.  The part of him that woke up screaming every night because he dreamed about Jacky in a puddle of blood was damned fucking sure that this was NOT the course of action he wanted to take.  But… There’s only so many right ways to say I’m sorry. 

“Yeah,” he said through a dry mouth and a razor-blade throat.  “Positive.”

She glared at Bracken and he glared back, speaking a language Teague could barely translate, only with their eyes.  “Okay—you and Jack and Bracken, car one.  Brack’s sitting in the back—he can look all pretty and mysterious that way, and they don’t have to know he’s a walking Ebola virus, right?”

Everyone in the room cringed, including Brack.  “Harsh…” Nicky muttered, and she scowled in his direction.  He ducked behind Teague who was not in the mood for his antics even a little. 

“Then we’ll have Marcus, Phillip, Lambent, Nicky, La Mark, and Max in the car tailing you guys, to make sure you get home.”

“Man, that’s crowded,” La Mark said tentatively, and Max sighed. 

“I’ll sit this one out,” he said resignedly, and La Mark perked up. 

“You sure, man?  I’d hate to…”

The stoic cop shrugged, although Teague could see it was killing him.  “Nah—you’ve missed the last two runs… nobody can party all the time.”

La Mark’s white smile in his dark-chocolate face was about one of the most hopeful, beautiful things Teague had ever seen.  “Thanks, cop-man.  I’ll try not to fuck this up!”

“Are we telling the werewolves about the other car?” Nicky interrupted, bringing everybody back to the task at hand.

“No,” Cory replied sharply.  “I don’t trust these guys.  We called Ellen Beth’s contact last week and suddenly he’s all kissy-face about working together?”  She shook her head.  “Our world is a helluva lot cagier than that especially in So-Cal where nobody will cop to a leader or a hierarchy.  Nope.  I smell trap.  We show them enough guys so they think they got power and we keep our eyes on them the entire way.  Everyone has following sprites, you hear me?  And when the vamps wake up, they’re feeding from everyone in the party.”

“Right not!”  Lambent scowled, and Cory scowled back.  Green put a restraining hand on her leg, and she sneered instead.

“Fine.  Lambent can get shanked by lowlife werewolves because he thinks he’s too rich to be vamp-food.  One way or another, boy, you’ll end up covered in digestive goo!”

“You can be a right bitch when you feel like it…” The ruddy-faced sidhe was turning even redder, and suddenly, he was glowing blue.

“I can be a right bitch when I don’t feel like it,” Cory said sweetly, and Lambent made a ‘gurk’ noise before Green cleared his throat meaningfully. 

Cory sighed and the glow went away.  Lambent’s baleful glare remained. “Everybody gets fed from—even sidhe.  I understand you guys taste like dessert—go with that.  The vamps feed from you, they link with you, I link with them, they track you—if anything goes wrong, we’ll have a…” her voice trailed off. 

“Well shit, fuck, cocksucking whoremongering oozing bitching rat’s ass.  Fuck.” 

There was a lot of uncomfortable shifting on Green’s nice white couches as it occurred to her that she wouldn’t be in the action to take immediate advantage of her mind link with the vampires. 

“Lambent, you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to come. Everybody else will get fed from anyway because I fucking said so!” she snapped, and even Teague winced.

“Absolutely, Lady Cory,” he said into the silence, and Green, Bracken, Nicky, Max, and La Mark shot him a grateful look, like he’d thrown himself on a grenade or something. 

Cory grunted.  “I’m gonna go ask Arturo about the cars and GPS—stay the fuck out of my way.”  With that she turned on her heel and stalked out, leaving the air quality considerably less chafing. 

“That was pleasant,” Teague muttered and Max sent a sideways look at him. 

“So was last year.  This is better.”

Ouch.  “Where’s Mario?”  Teague asked curiously.  He’d only just met La Mark, and he had an impression of a very young man just reaching the age where his shoulders grew out a little more than his wrists grew long.  Nice kid, but Teague liked Mario—he’d been good company the night before. 

There was a terrible silence at Teague’s question, though.  “Cory’s not the only one with a bad-shit anniversary,” Nicky muttered, and Teague’s eyes widened.

“Oh for Christ’s sake, someone needs to tell me what went down last year!”

All eyes turned to Green, who shared a kind glance with Nicky and shook his head.  “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to pass on story hour, children.  I need to go see if I can calm her down.”

“You might want to think about putting a leash on her while you’re at it!”  Lambent snapped, and suddenly he was shoved back, flat against the far wall by an invisible force, and Green’s long suffering smile was replaced by the haughty disdain of someone who knew his true worth. 

“Only if I can put a muzzle on you, mate—what do you say?”

“No, my Lord Green,” Lambent hissed through strangled voice-cords.  Green let him go and he landed heavily on his knees, muttering to himself. 

“I heard that,” Bracken said, his brow scrunched ferociously, even as Green made a graceful exit.  “Care to repeat it for the rest of the class?”

“I said,” Lambent growled, “that it’s just like the old country.  Some heifer tells me what to do while she sits back and drinks tea in comfort.”

Suddenly Lambent was surrounded by angry shape-shifters—and one really pissed off red-cap sidhe. 

“Do you think she wants to leave us here?”  Bracken snarled.  “We’re forcing her to stay.  If she got to go… risk herself, play flaming-power-bitch, she’d be in a much better mood!”

Lambent massaged his throat and glared up at Bracken, but something in the cold blue wall of hostility penetrated his ruddy ire.  “Why aren’t you letting her go?”

Bracken and Nicky looked at each other, and Nicky muttered, “Well shit.  Okay, you two want a bedtime story, here’s a bedtime story.” 

Lambent picked himself off the ground and looked up expectantly. The rest of the men around Nicky relaxed unconsciously, and gathered into a small group.  It was, apparently, a humanoid’s perennial response to a story. 

“Once upon a time,” Nicky said archly, “there was a real fucking old Avian.  Now this species doesn’t start aging until we get laid and mated, right? And then, we age along with whatever we bond to.  Well this guy was real fucking cranky, because he was like… six-hundred years old, and that’s a long goddamned time to not get laid.  So Goshawk, our Avian asshole, starts accruing powers as he ages—who knew how that worked, because seriously—who waits six-hundred years to get his rocks off?  Well this fucker did, and it turns out, he could be powerful like the elves—and because of his own personal glitches, he could feed off of other people’s memories.  So what does an uber-powerful psychopath with six-hundred years of repression want to do with himself since he can’t even whack off?” 

“World domination?”  Lambent said into the pause left by the rhetorical question.  They were all quiet now—even the people who should, Teague thought, know how the story went.  Maybe it was all in Nicky’s rapid-fire delivery—but Teague didn’t think so.  Bracken, Max, and La Mark were all watching Nicky in the same way Teague had watched Cory bare her soul. 

However this ended, it was going to hurt. 

“Bingo!”  Nicky snapped, putting his own finger on his nose.  “World-fucking-domination.  So he starts preaching Avian-supremacy, and our people… well, we’re used to being alone, and insular, so we’re pretty much fair game.  And those of us who just jumped off the hay truck from bumfuck Montana—well, we’re as blind and as prejudiced as anyone else, and we fall right in line.”

“We were all susceptible, Nick.”  La Mark’s eyes were closed in pain, and Nicky touched his shoulder before he continued on.  The bitter irony never even faltered.

“Yeah… you say that, buddy, but see—you just ran a blind attack on a fortress.  I mean, that’s hero shit, right?  You do a kamikaze suicide bird bomb on some place you’re told is pure evil—yay!  Me?  No… I’m a special kind of fuck-up.  I take the girl I think I love… this… haunted, fragile, anorexic looking girl who’s all eyes and half-smiles, and I bring her home to uber-Daddy, and uber-Daddy says…” his voice choked up then, and La Mark filled in the blanks. 

“I was there that night.  He said ‘Mind-fuck her like all the other bitches.  She’ll never know the difference.’” 

There was a collective intake of breath, and suddenly Teague realized who the girl—the fragile, anorexic looking girl who was all eyes—had been. 

Nicky rubbed his mouth.  “Yeah.  And I do—I steal her first memories of love.  And she almost fried me into an oil spot.”  His laugh was the first sign that he might have forgiven himself a little.  “If I’d tried to do it now—hell, even a month later—she would have known how to do it, too.” 

“You took her memories?”  Teague asked, remembering her words.  I was attacked. 

“And after I dodged her power-blast, I threw her into a concrete pole and left her for dead,” Nicky said, a death-rictus possessing his face in place of a smile. 

Max tried to lighten the moment.  “You were so surprised when she showed up at school on Monday.” 

Nicky shook his head.  “Yeah—with two fuckers who would rather kill me than look at me.  Thanks for not doing that, by the way.”

“Our pleasure,” Bracken murmured.  “Besides—you came in awfully damned handy when it was time to save my life.”

Nicky shook his head.  “No—that was all her.  I was a battery—hell, until we found you, I was the only thing keeping her on her feet.”

It was Bracken’s turn to look away.  “And by the time you found me, I was weak…”

“And she healed you,” Nicky said, although he and Bracken were both red-faced so Teague knew there was more to it than that, “and then, when she was sleeping it off, the uber-Daddy Avian-asshole tried to kill her.”

Bracken chuckled, but, again, the sound was nothing to inspire laughter.  “And she stole back her first kiss.”

Max rubbed his face with his hands then.  “And then there was the longest fucking week of…”

“All of our lives.”  Bracken finished.  “If Andres hadn’t crushed on her after one conversation, we’d be having…” he couldn’t finish that sentence. 

“We’d be having the same bad-shit anniversary Mario’s having,” Nicky finished pragmatically, and they all sighed. 

“Oh shit…” Teague said, putting things together.  “He… he was with the people sent here.”

La Mark nodded, and he managed to smile—a little, real smile.  “If it had been up to Arturo, we all would have died.  Green was in San Francisco, trying to… you know…”

“Keep Cory alive,” Bracken’s voice was definitely choked.

La Mark nodded.  “Yeah.  Anyway, lucky us, he called Green in.  But Mario’s wife… she… she wasn’t made for shit like this.  Mario was going to get captured and she just flew in and…”

“She broke her neck.”  Arturo was walking in looking behind him, to where two shadows were disappearing down the hallway.  “Bracken, Nicky—you should go to Green’s room and help clean up that mess, since you’re apparently done gossiping.”

“Is it gossip when you’re the bad guy, Arturo?”  Nicky’s face was pale and Max put a comforting hand on his shoulder.  Teague sucked in a silent fist to the gut—he’d been the bad guy too.

“You’re not the bad guy when you’re young, foolish, and misguided.”

Teague closed his eyes and turned away under the pretense of reloading his gun, since the gloves and silver shot were on the living room table for the briefing.  The task made it easy for him to reject that comfort as he’d been rejecting it in the two years since Green had healed his body and shown him the ignorance in his soul. 

“That is the truth,” Arturo said next to Teague’s ear, and Teague looked up to see that everybody else had scattered, leaving him and the big South American sidhe alone in the living room. 

“I’m not young,” Teague said gruffly. 

“To my people you’re an infant,” Arturo said with a faint smile.  “And now that you’re a werewolf, you’ve got another two, three-hundred years of living to go.  Your heart is still young, Teague.  There are many, many simple things it doesn’t know.”

“I’m getting a little long in the tooth to learn new shit.”  His guns were loaded.  Carefully he packed the silver shot and the cold iron tools for the gun into the vinyl carrying case Cory kept them in, and just as carefully disposed of the gloves.  An elf touching the gloves would get a cold iron burn.  A shapeshifter would get silver-poisoning.  The gloves were double- Ziplocced and thrown into the trash, and a special solution of gelled brine and herbs was applied like hand-sanitizer, and used to wipe down anything the gun equipment had touched. 

Teague applied himself to the task so studiously, he actually startled when Arturo spoke again.

“I was over three-thousand years old when I came here.  I was planning to take over the place and kill the weak leader who led with love.” 

Teague’s hand stopped their work, and even though he knew his eyes grew as big as a child’s, he still couldn’t seem to keep his expression impassive. 

Arturo smiled a little, and patted Teague on the spiky blonde head.  “Yes, little brother—we can all see how well that turned out, can’t we?  You changed sides in the preternatural world with one night in Green’s arms.  You changed species after a few hours in Cory’s company, worrying about your beloved.  You can change the pain in your heart with a little patience—I have every faith.” 

“That’s good,” Teague rasped, trying to fill the horrible blank of his mind with something, anything but the pain Arturo had just spoken of.  “Faith is good.  I gotta go get Jack. The vampires are almost up.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and was suddenly swung around to face Arturo’s copper-lightning colored eyes.  “Cory used to avoid my gaze too, Teague.  But then, she never was any good at running.”

Teague tried to crack a smile and a joke at the same time.  “Tell me about it—I’ve seen her on the track.”  Cory was many, many things, but graceful and coordinated were not among them.

Arturo didn’t even blink.  “You, my friend, run too easily.  As a wolf, you’re fearless.  But do you know how most wolves catch rabbits?”

Teague swallowed and shook his head.

 “Their hearts beat too fast in flight, and give out.  Your heart is strong, Teague—it’s not going to give out.  You should be ashamed to be pretending to be a rabbit, instead of the wolf you were born to be.” 

Teague swallowed, and made himself keep facing the man in spite of the rather personal nature of what he had to say.  The silver caps in the sidhe’s teeth flashed, showing Arturo’s smile of appreciation. 

“So what made Cory face you head on?”

Arturo laughed.  “I dared her to look at me, and then I touched her palm.  I had no idea she was a sorceress—she became elf-struck.  I almost killed her.” 

Teague’s eyes were going to bug the hell out of his head, they really fucking were.  “Well, thank God you didn’t!”

Arturo grinned and turned to leave.  “God has nothing to do with that girl, Teague—she’s pure Goddess.” 

Teague took a deep breath after Arturo had left, and thought about the little college student, the sorceress who seemed to hold half the hill together, and Green’s obvious dependence on her well-being. 

“Thank Goddess,” he murmured quietly.  “Thank you.”

If anyone heard, Teague never knew, but his heart felt curiously less burdened.

 

 

Jack

 

Don’t Look Up

 

 

Jack had forgotten how boring stakeouts could be. 

He and Teague sat in the front of the black Ford Expedition, drinking a thermos of hot chocolate and talking quietly as the car idled in front of the airport terminal.  As Teague said, when he’d pulled the vehicle out of a garage full of them, it wasn’t the Mustang, but at least it was a Ford.

Bracken sat in the back, his face remote and brooding, and Teague kept sending the guy sympathetic glances.  There was something going on there—one more thing that Teague knew and Jack didn’t, but that didn’t bother Jack too much. 

He was finally here—working with Teague.  It felt like a tiny victory in a bitter war.  Jack was a partner, an equal, a confidant…

Well, a partner, anyway. 

“So why is there a whole carload of guys behind us, pretending we don’t exist?”  Jack had asked this before, but he was trying to wrap his brain around the level of paranoia that the Lady of the House must be immersed in to think that picking up a bunch of werewolves was anything other than a taxi-job.

“We don’t trust these guys,” Teague said, sipping on his hot chocolate.  Jack already had his--it tasted faintly of coffee, but mostly of cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate.  Jack was pretty sure that if you could put protein powder in it without changing the flavor, Teague would try to live of the stuff.  “It seems like every brush up we’ve had with the So-Cal people has resulted in something bad.  The only exception was a group of folks who came up alone to get away from the sinkhole, and ended up… sucked in by something bad.” 

Teague’s voice had risen on the end of that ‘bad’ and he flickered a glance at Bracken.  Bracken grimaced. 

“Bad,” he said shortly. 

“Gotcha.”  Teague took another sip of the chocolate and Jack snorted.

“You’re just going to leave it at that?”

Teague shrugged.  “I’ve had my fill of bad shit stories today, Jacky.  I’ll pry into Bracken’s squishy underside some other time.”  Then, pitching his voice to carry, “That okay with you, Goliath?”

“Fuck off,” Bracken said without heat, and Teague gave him a little one-finger salute. 

They seemed comfortable with each other, and Jack resented the hell out of that. 

“Don’t tell me you actually shared your bad shit stories with the class.”  Jack sounded jealous and petulant and whiny and he knew it and couldn’t seem to do a damned thing about it. 

Teague, being Teague, didn’t let it phase him.  “Believe it or not, Jaqueline, my bad shit stories did not get top priority today.  Not everybody has a pressing need to see what color my insides are.” 

If Jack had ever doubted that Teague loved him, it was erased by the easy humor of that reply.  “I wouldn’t mind,” he said mildly, not sure what he hoped for. 

Teague’s face lost its easy expression.  His cheeks hollowed, his cheekbones stood out, and even in the dim light of the airport, his skin went almost as pale as Bracken’s. 

“Could you at least let me spare you that?” he asked quietly. 

Jack blew out a breath and gave the question honest consideration.  “Because what you put us through right now is so much easier?”

“Aw shit,” Bracken swore, bringing their attention to the task at hand.  “What’s he doing?”

La Mark had stepped out of the following SUV and was walking stiffly towards the airport like a guy who…

“Oh Jesus—is he taking a fucking leak?”  Teague snorted and Jack had to laugh too.  

“Well shit,” Jack said after a moment—there must have been a kegger of caffeine in that chocolate stuff Grace had given them, “I think I’ll do the same thing.  I can wait in there for the arrival—they should be in already and just getting their shit.”   

Teague all but whimpered, and Jack’s temper flared.  “What are they going to do to me in the airport, Teague?  Holy shit, stop being a mother hen!” 

Jack swore to himself as he stalked into the reception area, found the head and took a leak.  Damn—it wasn’t like he was helpless, was he?  He’d lived so far, hadn’t he?  He was still fuming when he saw the four men grabbing small duffels from the carousel. 

They were dressed a lot like gang members on a Friday night—supersized jeans, with even bigger T-shirts, layered on top of each other, and perfect, mint-condition baseball hats, all in coordinating brown and green. 

Jack’s inner wolf sat up and bayed, and as neared them and smelled the gun oil and cold knives in their duffel bags, he suddenly understood why Cory had been so paranoid—and why Teague hadn’t wanted him to come into the airport alone.

He put on a smile though, and started working on how he could warn Teague and Bracken that these guys weren’t on the level.  Even their smell was crazy off—werewolves and cologne… it was just wrong.

The young men were an eclectic mix of ethnicities—two Hispanic men, one white man, one black, and as they saw him approaching they had a meeting of eyes.  The white guy was the one who approached him—he had dirty-blonde hair, buzz cut under the hat, and a scraggly goatee.  Jack wondered what it took to make a beard look that bad on a werewolf—he knew Teague used to be able to skip a shave or two, and now he was shaving once a day to ward off stubble. 

“You Mr. Green’s bitch?”  The guy said, and Jack’s thin smile faded and died. 

“I’m someone else’s bitch.  I’m Mr. Green’s employee.”  He couldn’t make himself extend a hand, but that was okay—one wasn’t offered. 

The men grabbed their duffels, and Jack could see from the way they were patting them down that they were finding their weapons before they left the building.  No amount of positioning was going to change the fact that these guys would have a knife on him as he walked out, so he didn’t try. 

He led the way, jostled by hot-running bodies with cold intentions.  The other men didn’t talk, and as soon as he went from the yellow light of the terminal to the sharp winter darkness, he felt dirty-blonde-guy’s switchblade digging into his side. He looked anxiously at where Teague should be, hoping he’d been spotted. 

He was looking so intently for a sign from behind the darkened wheel that he almost missed another obvious sign of trouble. 

The following SUV was gone.  Dreamlike, he saw that La Mark was standing stupidly, staring at the empty space two cars behind Jack and Teague’s vehicle.  As Jack was hustled past him, his group of ‘guests’ strutting hard in their over-sized jeans, he and La Mark met eyes, and La Mark looked skyward. 

The implication seemed clear—La Mark would be in the air as soon as these guys passed him, and Jack took comfort in that thought.  He also, strangely enough, took comfort in the fact that a sweet-faced, brown-eyed vampire named Marcus had fed chastely from his wrist before they’d left that evening. 

Cory had watched the process impassively, and then clapped Jack soundly on the shoulder.  “They can track you this way,” she said softly, with what she’d meant to be a reassuring smile.  He’d been too busy fuming about being babysat to be reassured.  “If anything goes wrong, I’ll know where you’ll be.”

Now as he was shoved roughly into SUV, he started to understand her concern.  For the first time since he’d arrived at Green’s Hill, he took comfort in the fact that the Lady of the House stuck her over-sized nose into his affairs. 

Teague looked at the passengers forcing their way into the car and sneered.  “Jesus, Jacky—did you forget to flush?  I think some shit just got into the car!” 

Jack tried a shrug as he was shoved into the middle seat and up against the window.  “Well, you never know what’s gonna stick to your ass when you’re not paying attention.” 

Not paying attention was right, he thought now.  He should have taken one look at these guys and turned around and ran for the car.  Something, anything, other than walk up and try to shake their hands. 

“Yo!” One of the guys—not the blonde one who had challenged Jack but one of the African-American men with him—was sitting next to Jack and turning around.  He had a big fucking gun in his hand and was issuing a challenge Bracken. 

Who was apparently planning to be Green.  “Hmmm, yes?” he said, a very Green-like smile on his face.  “May I help you gentlemen?”

“Are you Mr. Green, asshole?” 

“Green’s the name on my college registration,” Bracken lied smoothly.  Teague jerked his head around in surprise.  Maybe it wasn’t a lie? 

“Who you talking to, when we got in?  You were on the phone!” 

Bracken smiled again, and even Jack, who didn’t know Bracken very well at all, felt the wealth of things not said in that smile.  “The little woman,” he said simply, and Jack was pretty sure Teague almost strangled on his own tongue.  

“Well, you make sure you hang up on the bitch, cause we got business to do!” 

“And where are you planning to do this ‘business’?”  Bracken evaded.  Jack recognized the evasion—did the werewolf see it?  The werewolf who didn’t know he was a dead man?

“Did you hang up?”  Well, maybe not that stupid.

“Do you see me on the phone?”  Bracken asked reasonably, and Jack revised his opinion just that quickly. 

“It doesn’t matter,” the white guy who’d muscled into the front seat barked.  “They’ll be dead by then anyway.  You,” he prodded Teague with his knife, “get the fuck out of here and go north on highway five, you hear me?” 

“Oh joy,” Teague muttered.  “Redding.”

“Like you’ll ever see Redding.  We’ve got silver-shot and we know how to use it.  And don’t worry about your other carload of guys—they’ll be meeting us there.”

Bracken eyed the guns and the knives and smiled with teeth that looked suddenly pointed in the dim light.  “We’ll be looking forward to it,” he said.  All of the werewolves flinched, and Jack hoped he remembered how to fight.

 

Cory

 

Being the ‘Little Woman’

 

Mario and I were supposed to be playing chess in the garden—but what I was doing was shoving little bits of hand-crafted gemstone around on a marble board and reliving my last few moments kissing Bracken goodbye.

We were in the garden in the waning light.  Green was at my back, as though he planned to force me to be the little grown-up and part on a good note.  I suppose part of me should have been insulted at that—hadn’t I learned enough to be trusted to always say “I love you,” when I said goodbye? 

Because the honest to Goddess fact was that you just never knew for sure if was really the last time you’d see your beloved on earth.  We all knew that on a painful, personal level, now didn’t we? 

 Bracken hadn’t looked in pain, or like he expected this to be the last time we’d touch.  He’d looked… empathetic and understanding.  These two emotions were so far out of his ken, I’m surprised they didn’t break his handsome, overbearing face.  He’d cupped my cheek and smiled sweetly—that smile that appeared sometimes and reminded me that his mother still thought he was her only child, the apple of her eye. 

“We haven’t made up,” he murmured into my temple.  I thrust my nose into the hollow of his neck and breathed in, trying to force his smell past my anxiety, past my resentment, past my resistance. The unthinkable was always right there, on the periphery of our mental vision, and if it happened, I wanted to remember this moment as lovely. 

“We’re not done fighting,” I told him, but my face was soft and the touch of his skin on mine was… breathtaking.

“When will we be done fighting?” 

I stood on tiptoe and tasted the salty skin at the back of his jaw.  Elfin sweat tasted different—sweeter—than Nicky’s sweat. 

“When you come back to me whole.” 

“Cory, you’ve been in checkmate for the last three moves.” 

I blinked at Mario hard, trying to clear the taste of Bracken’s parting kiss from my mind, and then looked at the board, trying hard to figure out what in the hell he was talking about.  Oh… oh there… I saw it. 

“I hate this fucking game,” I muttered. 

“Me too, oh mighty leader.  Why are we out here, freezing our asses off, playing it?”

“Because she’s hoping Adrian will show up,” Green said smoothly, emerging from the trap door like he was walking down a carpeted hallway to a ballroom. 

“Was not,” I lied without compunction. 

“That’s not attractive,” Mario murmured.  I stuck my tongue out at him. 

“He won’t,” I said with certainty.  Less than a week before, Adrian had kept Bracken, Green and I company until dawn.  However the vampire’s ghost energy exchanged translated into the real world, it had taxed him or pissed someone off or whatever.  I was hoping I might get a glimpse of him before school started up again in three days… but although that might be the limit of my hope, it was not the limit of my admitted delusion.  It sure would be nice to have Adrian here to kick my ass about the time I’d almost joined him. 

“Well then, why can’t we go inside and watch a movie for Chrissakes!”  Mario complained, and I looked at him in amused sympathy. 

“All you had to do was say so, idiot!  You know very well you’re getting coddled tonight… you can boss me around at will!” 

Mario hadn’t seemed to want to acknowledge that he was putting an end to his first year of grieving—and I didn’t blame him.  Bracken, Green and I had each other this past June, when we’d sat together in the darkness and mourned Adrian.  Mario’s wife’s family lived in Ohio—and they refused to speak to him before their daughter had died.  We were Mario’s family, and while I don’t think he wanted to be alone tonight, he certainly didn’t want to spend any more time than mental health demanded brooding over the loss of the woman he’d loved since her childhood. 

“Fine.  Lady Cory, Lord Green, accompany my sorry ass downstairs and watch a mindless action flick with me please.”  He was putting chess pieces away as he spoke, and I figured he was serious.  I stood from my place on the bench and gathered our blankets (because, hello, it was late November, and pretty damned cold!) and made to go in.  Green reached across the bench to rub my cheek with his thumb—to make sure I was all good—when the Marcus-and-Phillip show was suddenly playing in my head, featuring  panic in Technicolor and surround sound.

I saw through their eyes for a moment, as a group of young male werewolves in gang-style brown and green muscled their way into the SUV by subtly brandishing knives and guns.  Marcus looked in the rearview mirror for me, and I saw two carloads of the same guys pull up just as Marcus pulled away from the curb.  Phillip looked to his right, and I saw a group of similarly dressed men coming out with Jack, while La Mark, stood innocuously at the curb. 

I didn’t even have time to say Fuck before the cell phone in my pocket rang. I pulled it out and Bracken said, “Guess what?”

“You’re clusterfucked,” I snapped.  “When they get in the car, pretend to hang up and keep your cell phone open—as soon as you stop and the vampires are clear, they’re up in the air with the birds, and you guys can open fire on these fuckers at will.  Hang on, I’m coming.” 

“Love you.”

“You too.”  You dumb, arrogant asshole who thought bad shit only happened to me and all the karma-bitches on the planet would leave us alone as long as I was home. 

The vampires were giving me directions, and I put them on hold in my head while I handed the phone to Mario.

“They need me,” I said briefly.  “You in?”

A sort of fierce joy lit up Mario’s face.  “Fuck yes.”

“Listen and give us the info when we need it.  Keep our end muted—they think he’s rung off.” 

I hauled down the stairs like a wind of vengeance, with Green at my heels.

“Max, Kyle, Arturo… get in the SUV, they fucking need us fucking now!”  In my head I was giving the all-call to every available vampire—I knew there were ten at the very least, zooming on their way from places closer to the airport than we were.  Good.  The heartbeat thumping in my ears wasn’t singing a song of mercy, that was for goddamned fucking sure.

Max ran out of the room he shared with Renny buttoning his jeans commando style.  (Three guesses as to what he was doing with his night off!)  “My car, Cory—I’ve got the cherry light!” 

God bless the South Placer county police force and their old-fashioned cherry lights.  Max had smuggled one from work, and worked off a police band. 

“Great,” I snarled.  “I drive.”

I practically ran over Lambent on my way down the hall.  He’d disdained taking the vampire bite, so I’d kept him home—and I hadn’t called his name on my way down the stairs, either. 

But now, the snide, mocking lines of his mouth and forehead were gone, and he was all seriousness and business.

“I’m a healer if you need me, sweets.  Please…” Was that contrition?  His throat worked, and his grim blue eyes met mine.  “Please don’t leave me here while our people are up against it.” 

“Right,” I said sharply.  “You’ll take Arturo’s place since he doesn’t heal.  Sit in the back, don’t bitch about the driving and if I say ‘jump’ you ask ‘how high’ on your way up.”

“Fucking peachy.”  He saluted me briskly and trotted down the hallway after Max and Mario. 

I took a quick left turn—Max kept his weapons in the trunk of the car, I kept mine in my yarn bag, surrounded by crappy acrylic yarn I wouldn’t use to stuff a pillow.  Besides, I’d been barefoot, even in the cold of the garden. When I came out, hopping on one foot and lacing a tennis shoe, I ran into Green.  He was looking at me with a grim apology. 

“Don’t,” I murmured.  “Just… don’t.”

“I kept you here,” he said bleakly. 

“I agreed to stay.”  And then, because I had no words—none at all—I kissed him, hard and truly.  I would not leave on recrimination.  I would not leave on blame.  There was only one way we would ever leave each other, for this world or the next.

“I love you,” I said roughly.

“Be safe,” he murmured, but I was already running down the hall, my laces done double and my yarn bag hitting me in the thigh. 

Max knew the back ways to the damned airport and after flying down Forresthill road to Hwy 193 like a vampire running from the sun, he gave me quick, terse instructions down Nicklaus and towards I-5.  That area had become developed in recent years, but beyond the strip malls, beyond the close, rich suburbs that had been all in demand before the financial crash, there were still-open acres, miles of farmland, a flat horizon where the lights of civilization bubbled over into the night sky like oxygen in deep water. 

It was one of these big, blank properties of chest-high weeds that the vampires had been forced onto, using a slim, star thistle clogged service road.  I’d had to bail out of their heads as soon as they got there—they were fighting and I was driving, and, dammit, I didn’t want to kill us all before I got a chance to kill some of those ambushing, betraying, dead motherfuckers.

The directions Mario was getting via Brack’s cell phone confirmed my vampire sight, and Max killed the cherry lights and screamer a mile before the turnout.  I don’t know why he did that.  I didn’t try to hide our arrival by any stretch of the imagination—mostly because I knew what waited for us as we fishtailed to a stop next to the four empty SUVs—with the pile of dead werewolves next to them.

Marcus and Phillip landed next to me as we bailed out of the car, and I was aware of other vampires up above.  Every now and then a spatter of shots rang out, but semi-automatics were not accurate on their best days—I was betting these guys were amateurs.  The vampires seemed to be dodging the gunfire neatly, and I watched as the thick-shouldered, thick-browed Kyle swooped down and came up with a big ugly puppy in its arms.  There was a bite, and then a yelp, and then the puppy dropped limply to the ground—effective, non-lethal, but hardly permanent, and it took a hell of a lot longer than killing the damned dog dead.

“Where’s Bracken’s car—where’s Nicky!”  I asked, trying to keep the purely personal panic from my voice. 

“Nicky’s with Bracken and so’s La Mark,” Marcus told me gently.  “They got here first, so they’re deeper into the center of the field after I got us lost.”  I’d been in his head to see that—it had been sheer genius, pretending not to see the tiny side road and shooting half-a-mile clear of it.  I’d praise him later—now, things were urgent. 

“I don’t know what happened with the rest of the car, Cory. Teague had the guns… I don’t know what happened.  They’re using the SUV for cover and in the thick of it.”  He gestured towards the circling vampires with his chin.  “They’re keeping the wolves from moving in—all of them have silver knives and our guys are in the center of a brawl.”

“No guns?”

“A couple of people—some have silver,” Phillip said with military efficiency.  “They’re doing a good job of keeping the vampires away, but we managed to scatter them pretty quickly. Most of them have wounds—they’ve seen what Bracken can do, even from a distance, and they’re afraid of firing the gun because they can’t see well enough not to hit their own people.”

Marcus laughed, low and evil.  “Yeah.  That was pretty fucking awesome, wasn’t it?”

I nodded my head, catching the visual in the back of my head in a casual way as I scoped out the situation.   Standing on tiptoes, I got a partial view of the top of the SUV about a hundred yards away.

Everyone else was covered by the damned weeds—I got flashes of movement, but about all I could really see was Bracken’s head and shoulders—sort of—as he shielded behind the SUV door.  It was dark, with only the full moon and the ambient light from the nearest strip mall to illuminate him, but I got the impression that he was wounded.

Fuck.  Bracken… Bracken couldn’t get too wounded.  Unlike other sidhe who would heal most major wounds, Bracken would just bleed out.  I pulled my nice little 9mms out of my bag and as many extra silver clips as I could shove into the pockets of my hooded sweatshirt and jeans. 

I projected my next order to all of the circling vampires as I belted it out to the people listening. 

“Vamps, avoid the fucking light.  When I get to the center either drop flat to the ground, get above us, or stay behind me.  I’m getting to the middle of this clusterfuck, aiming out, and killing anything that fucking moves.”  

And then I charged my anger and my love and my fury in my chest, held out my hands and opened up a path of light through that chest high field of weeds.  There were two abrupt yelps as werewolves got caught in the shield I shot out, but I could give a shit.  As I jogged forward, I could finally see them—Bracken, Nicky, and La Mark, all crouching  back to back in the center of the field by the SUV.  Bracken’s arm and shoulder were bleeding, and he was holding a silver knife that looked like Teague’s, and Nicky was aiming a gun that was definitely Teague’s away from us.  La Mark was screaming something at a bristling mass of blond fur and teeth that was in the thick of the mother of all wolf-fights with what looked to be half the surviving werewolves.

Jacky lay at La Mark’s feet, naked like he’d changed and been injured.  He was not moving at all. 

Fuck.  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…

With a scream I threw a shield around the lot of them and parted the sea of weeds and enemies with my fucking anger as I ran to save their lives.

 

Bracken

 

The Righteous Ass-Kicking Vengeance of the Little Woman

 

It should have been over with.  Goddammit, it should have been over with about five seconds after we stepped out of the car and the first two werewolves near me dropped dead from blood loss.

I’d been subtle—the one next to me kept asking what was wet on the seat, his voice getting more and more woozy as the ride went on.  By the time the car stopped, he had just enough strength to slide out of the car, leaving a painless trail of liquefied intestine in his wake.  He stood up, dropped dead, and I brushed neck of the fucker who bent down to check on him.  His carotid burst into my hand and he dropped too.

 Teague had his guns clear of his holster before the first guy dropped, and he fired a point-blank silver round into the bad-guy nearest him, then I’d grabbed hold of the last remaining bad guy and shoved him, throat first, against the SUV.

“How many?”  I growled. 

“Man…you just dropped those guys…” He was a young man, Hispanic and by far the smallest of the four men.  I smelled urine, and wondered how he’d managed to be dragged into this little adventure.  Oddly enough, I didn’t care.  Motives were for Cory and Green.  Killing the fuckers with the motives—I was good at that. 

“How many?”  I repeated. 

The kid swallowed.  “Twenty.  Four with you, four in the other car, and two SUV’s full of guys.”

Teague was suddenly in the kid’s face.  “What in the fuck was your plan?  Take us out and… what?”

The kid blinked.  “Well… you know.  Take you out and take over.  You got a sweet setup, Mr. Green…”

I laughed.  “My name, dumbshit, is Bracken Brine Granite op Crocken Green.  You never would have gotten within twenty miles of Green.  As it is, if we don’t kill you in the next five minutes, my beloved will when she arrives.  You and your friends?  You just became a domestic dispute of cosmic proportions—and that alone is a reason to kill you.” 

“But my peeps…man, my people are com…”

At that moment, a car zoomed by the tiny entrance to this open space in the Bumfuck dimension and the kid watched it pass with sort of a last desperate hope in his eye. 

As we were watching that, two other cars—not as nice as Green’s—pulled into the field and unloaded more young men in brown and green. 

“Did you think the uniforms would impress us?”  Teague asked, and Jack snarked behind us.  I didn’t even want to look at Jack.  Teague would have disarmed three of these guys before they even got into the car—we could have arrived here ready to lie in wait and kick ass. 

But Teague was exceptional—and he hadn’t said a word of reproof to Jack during the entire journey.  I figured we could wait until this thing played out before we laid out some blame.  I figured this mostly because I would be ducking a lot of it from Cory, who was probably breaking every traffic law known to her race in order to get to me.

“Man… we just thought we’d get the fuck out of L.A.,” the guy whimpered, looking at the bodies of his friends and turning a sickly, clammy color.  I found I didn’t have the heart to kill him anymore. 

“Get in the car,” I grunted, frisking him.  I took his two big knives (silver coated—they had expected all their opponents to be were-creatures, thank Goddess) and I had Teague remove the cannon stuffed behind his pants.  “Maybe you’ll live.”

“But that’s… that’s like being a sitting…” 

He didn’t get a chance to finish—I shoved him in the SUV clicked the alarm.

The influx of new enemies had finally spotted us, and started running, some as werewolves and some as armed humans.

And vampires came swooping out of the sky to harry them.  A handful—three or four—seemed to be dodging the aerial attack.  Judging from the way the weeds seemed to be rolling towards us in the frosted dark, this would be our lot to fight. Teague readied himself with the gun, as cool as any mercenary, his eyes flat and happy for battle.

“Get behind me, Jacky,” he said softly, and Jack snorted.

“I brought my gun, Teague!”

Teague grunted.  “Did you let me load it with silvershot, sweetheart?  I’d hate for you to poke a hornet’s nest with a little girl’s baton!”

Jack’s muttered “Fuck!” told us all we needed to know.  Without another word he started stripping in the cold and when Teague turned his attention from the wolves—who were getting very close now, Jack was almost naked. 

“What in the fuck…”

“I’ve got more than one weapon!”  Jack protested, and then it was his boxers on the ground and a big brown wolf in his place.

I looked at Teague in shock and exasperation, and Teague started swearing—his face, which had been calm and emotionless, was suddenly bathed in the absolute stink of fear-sweat. 

“Goddammit, Jacky—you stay behind me, you hear?  It’s not just the wolves out there… do you see the vampires?  Do you think our other carload is going to be helpless?  It’s going to be a full-on battle, and the last thing they need is another goddamned fucking…”

One of their werewolves arrived, and instead of skulking outside in the grass, the dumb fucker threw himself at Teague, who would have taken him out, fear or no fear, except Jack threw himself in front and got into a wolf-fight with a junkyard dog.

Even the arrival of the other car—and the mayhem that Marcus, Phillip, and  Nicky started to inflict the minute they got out of it—didn’t distract Teague from the snapping yowl-fest going on in front of him.  When Jack got thrown, head first and bleeding, to the ground at Teague’s feet, his slender control over his panic, over the side of him that could, apparently, feel worry without reserve, poing-snapped.

We all but heard it, and in a second we saw it in the smooth transition from man to furious, angry wolf.  It was the only time I’d seen someone do that so well, he didn’t even get tangled up in his own clothes.

“Fuck,” I muttered, and Nicky fluttered next to me.  We heard the occasional random shot, but it seemed to be aimed above our heads, at the rest of Cory’s vampires as they milled around in the sky, looking for a target.  There was a ratting of gunfire and a sudden pain in my shoulder.

“Fuck!”  I was whirled back into the car, and in a burst of temper I held my hand out towards the direction of the gunfire.   I don’t know if it was the guy firing the gun or not, but a wave of gore exploded out of someone’s mouth, nose, ears, and bowels and I sidestepped as the wave splattered into the side of the SUV.

“Jesus, Bracken—are you okay?”  Nicky turned to me in absolute fear. 

“Fucking swell,” I snarled, and my shoulder felt like a big stinking acid pyre.  Nicky reached into his pocket and pulled out one of those little bottles of cold-iron cleanser that Green had started to make as we’d been forced to defend our larger territory.  Without saying anything and trusting that I wouldn’t make him hold me down, he forced me back against the SUV.  He had a were-creature’s strength—ripping my shirt was not a problem, and with a brief examination, he took the little bottle and dumped it onto my skin.

“It was a through and through,” he muttered, squeezing out a dollop onto his finger and poking it into the hole left by the bullet, “but you’re blistering, so I’m gonna assume it’s not silver.”  I gritted my teeth—the fire was gone, replaced by the normal excruciating pain of having your flesh invaded by a foreign object soaked in salt-water.   My vision went dark for a second, and I had to close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing for a couple of moments.

The wound was bad enough to keep bleeding without some help from another sidhe, but when  my vision had cleared, I could feel the wellness brought on by the cleanse.  I put my hand on Nicky’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Thank you, brother,” I murmured, and I was brought back into the battle by a snarl from Teague and a yelp from another goddamned enemy werewolf who was running away from Teague with his tail between his legs.

“Check Jack,” I muttered, not wanting to make the puppy bleed out.  Teague had seemed reluctant to bring his partner in on our little adventures—I could see why now.  I wondered how the two of them had stayed alive for so long, but one of the other wolves yelped and ran tearing into the brush and I stopped wondering. 

Teague really was fierce enough for two men. 

Nicky crouched down—he was pretty panicked--he’d lost his leather jacket and shoes in transition, and his brightly colored socks form Cory were now getting full of stickers.  He gave Jack a little pat and checked his eyes.  “He’ll be fine,” he said with certainty.  “He’s healing right now…still breathing, it’s all good.”

“Excellent,” I muttered.  “Tell Teague that!” 

I watched as one of the vampires picked up a werewolf, bled him and dropped him about twenty yards away.  I was irritated enough to stick my hand out and call the damned thing’s blood anyway, and there wasn’t even a whimper as his plasma spattered all the brush and long weeds between the dead thing and us.  Awesome—it was good when my power came in handy—not so great when I was afraid to stop the big werewolf fight in case I made Teague bleed out. 

 La Mark landed next to us in time to say, “Ewwwww…” And I looked up to realize that we had ended up in a little island, occupied by of three of our most vulnerable fighters, a werewolf on a mental/steroidal vacation, and me.  The walking Ebola virus. 

Fucking wonderful.  I continued to look for wounded wolves so I could suck their blood out from fifty feet away (which I was pissed off enough to do with ease, in spite of the wicked pain of my own wound) and Nicky picked up one of Teague’s abandoned guns and stood at my back, firing when a target made itself available.  He’d gotten off about five shots when he said, “Goddess I suck.  I really need to get out to the firing range with Cory!”

And then Max’s Mustang skidded into the once deserted field.  I was tall enough to see the doors open and the cavalry spill out.  Nicky got off two more shots as Phillip and Marcus landed to tell Cory what was going on, and I could see well enough in the dark to read the expression on her face. 

“I’m sure she’ll make sure you get out there,” I said mildly.   Nicky looked over my shoulder and swore.  She’d started to glow, and then she reached out with that deadly sunshine force-field and used it as a scythe.  There were two werewolf yelps and she was cocking her guns and heading for us with a face like the Grim Fucking Reaper himself. 

“Oh fuck.”  He punctuated the oath with a shot, and judging by the yelp, he hit his first target.  “She will never fucking let us live this down.” 

Teague snarled and I heard a bone crunch.  One of his opponents yelped and limped off into the blood-soaked violent dark.  Casually, I reached over Nicky’s shoulder and pulled the life-force out of the retreating werewolf with a vicious yank.   My shoulder pounded and my vision went a little skewed.

“Nope,” I said, my heart at my toes.  “I think the little woman is going to be making us into little men for a very long time.”

 

Teague

 

I Am Wolf

 

Jacky wasn’t moving.  Jacky wasn’t moving.  Not moving meant not breathing.  Jacky wasn’t moving.

Teague was violence. 

He was teeth, he was claws, he was death, he was blood.  He was the ravaging snarling ragged scythe that would reap the entire fucking world until the earth bled, the sky bled, the moon bled…

Bite snap chew rip tear shred kill bite chew tear kill shred kill bite kill claw kill bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed fucking bleed kill die I WILL FUCKING MURDER THE FUCKING WORLD!!!!!! 

Teague tasted blood and it was sweet, and the rage in his eyes was sweet and the dead and the dying fur and flesh in his teeth was sweet and all that was violence was sweet because Jacky was… Jacky was… Jacky was…

“HE’S ALIVE GODDAMMIT, HE’S ALIVE, YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER, COME BACK TO US!”

Strong arms grabbed him, strong arms ripped his enemies away and flung them over shoulders as though they were heaps of mud.  A hand—a cold hand with tendons and sinews like chilled steel cord—grasped his muzzle and held it shut, and there was a smell and a voice and Teague’s growling never stopped but his struggles to kill, to savage, to maim to hurt….

Eased their rampant hold on his body.

Someone was speaking—someone was shouting—and she was important… she was Teauge’s alpha and she was speaking Jacky’s name. 

“Jack’s alive!  Jack’s alive, Teague, but I need you!  I need someone who can shoot so knock this bullshit off and remember you’re a fucking human being, dammit!”

The blood haze eased up in front of Teague’s eyes, and he groped for words… groped for memories of what his alpha wanted. 

He looked down at the ground and saw a lovely wolf, a beta, his beta… his beloved… and then he saw him as he was, a tall, loose-limbed young man with dreamy blue eyes and a shy smile… the wolf breathed, the young man—his young man lived, and the tightness, the terrible suffocation of rage loosened it’s grip on Teague’s chest, and he stopped struggling…

And turned. 

The vampires dropped him and he landed naked on the ground in a crouch.  He could hardly look at Jacky, but he was very much himself.  His next words were crystal clear. 

“I need my pants and my fucking gun.”

Cory smiled, a terrible strain in her face and slapped his cheek lightly.  There was a patter of gunfire thirty or forty yards away, and she flinched and turned around to the others. 

When the hell had they gotten there?  Teague didn’t ask—he took one look at Jacky—watched his chest heave in and out, watch the wounds heal, leaving the pale skin unblemished—and then struggled into his pants. 

“Max—you armed?”

“Yup-yup.”  Max slid in a full clip and readied the gun to fire. 

“Nicky—give the gun to Teague…”

“Thank God!”

“Did I give you permission to speak?”  A barely leashed anger was there, ready to jump out and savage the throats of its loved ones, and Teague eyed her appreciatively.  She could barely even look at Bracken, and he was flat eyed and patient, cradling a bloodied shoulder, ready for the storm to break over his head.

“No ma’am.  Nope.  Sorry.”  Nicky could not have sucked up any more thoroughly, and her flat-eyed steely look was enough to make Teague damned glad he’d come to himself in time to help. 

But he wouldn’t think about what he’d been in the meantime.

Teague took the gun from a sheepish Nicky, checked the chamber and stood on the outer edge of the circle, facing out.  Cory and Max were doing the same thing, with the un-armed Avians and the two elves in the center. 

“Where’s Mario?”  Max asked. 

Cory looked up.  “See him there?”  Teague looked up and saw Mario, circling lazily in the light of… yeah.  Wait.  Where was the blue glow coming from?

“Yeah,” Max said. 

“Don’t shoot him.  He wants some action.  We’ll try to give him some.”   The blue glow intensified, and Teague realized that it was coming from her.  There was a bright blue glowing ball of nothing, hovering over her head, flickering with her emotions.  Well damn.  He kept forgetting she could do shit like that. 

“Lambent!”  she snapped, drawing Teague’s attention from the glow. 

“Yes, my liege?”   Lambent was right next to Bracken, wrapping his shoulder with the remains of Brack’s ripped T-shirt.

Teague risked a glance at the guy and saw that he was being snarky and sarcastic—but that he was also very sincere about serving.  Okay… good to know the guy could have your back. 

“Is…” Cory swallowed, and Teague knew what she was feeling, knew what she was fighting to stand upright and issue orders.  “Is he going to be all right?”

“I’m fine, due’ane,” Bracken whispered.  “Don’t worry about me.”

“I can’t talk to you right now,” she choked, still maintaining her crouch and staring out at the night, keeping them safe.  “I can’t.  Oh Goddess, you asshole…” She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

“Lambent?” she asked, with some more control.  Something moved out in front of the SUV.  She waited a moment, did something in her head, and then raised her gun and shot.

“He’s fine, luvie.  Your bird-man here got to him before the cold-iron could do more than piss him off.”  Lambent’s voice was almost gentle.  Jesus, thought Teague, how in the hell had the world gotten so fucked up?  “He’s still in the fight if you need him.”

She risked a look at Bracken, and the force of their eyes colliding almost shattered the air.  But her voice was crisp when she spoke next, and Teague was glad he wouldn’t be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

“Good.  Thanks Lambent.  Go help Jacky get on his feet—and be prepared.  We’re going to need clean-up, and I don’t think too many of these guys are walking away.”

  The elf’s voice went sinuous and greedy, and he said “Fire?” in the same way another man might have said “Heroin?” or “Gold?”

“Yeah, fire later, heal first, you hear me cave-man?”  Cory’s ice-cold gaze cut through Lambent’s heated lust, and the elf swallowed and nodded.  He dropped to his knees and touched Jack’s ruff, and Jack started to whine. 

“Teague!”  Cory snapped, and Teague pulled his attention to her with a snap.  “You want to get the fuck out of here?”

“Amen to that, Lady.”  He concentrated solely on her.

“Good—then listen to me and follow my lead.”   Her mind was abruptly elsewhere—Teague had learned to recognize that look.  It meant she was talking to someone else in her head, and it was obvious the conversation was fierce. 

“Bracken, can you do the voice thing that Green can?” she asked without looking at him.

“Probably not on command,” he told her, and she humphed. 

“Oh well…” and then the blue glow intensified around them—Teague recognized it as the shield it was.  Cory drew in a breath, firmed up her diaphragm, and shouted in a voice that carried.

“ALL RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU LISTEN UP!  THERE’S A LOT OF DEAD YOU AND A LOT OF LIVE US.  YOU WANT TO SURVIVE RIGHT NOW, YOU DROP TO THE GROUND, PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS AND FUCKING STAY THERE UNTIL I TELL YOU ANY FUCKING DIFFERENT, YOU HEAR ME?  FROM THIS MOMENT ON, WE’RE SHOOTING ANYTHING THAT MOVES!”

There was some serious rustling in the brush, and some of the dark forms that had been lurking beyond their site in the tall grasses disappeared from sight.

Others started to advance on their position. 

Cory led with the first shot, and then Max saw one and then Teague.  They fired carefully and precisely—all of them ignoring the enemy’s bullets as they bounced off her furious shielding.  Suddenly Cory barked an order, “Teague, hold.”  Phillip swooped in and disappeared into the weeds.   When he swooped out, he had a wolf by the scruff of its neck, which he flew off with to leave by the other cars.  Teague saw the gleam of a knife fall to the ground, and Cory said, “Teague, resume.” 

They continued like that, quiet, accurate, deadly, taking relatively few shots, but making sure that every shot was accompanied by a yelp and a silence.  Cory called for one or the other of them to hold three or four more times, and then she called, “Stand down.  We’re done.  The live ones are by the other cars, the dead ones are in the grass.  Jack, how you doing?”

“I’m fine, Cory.  Teague…”

Teague couldn’t even look at him, even though his legs went rubbery with relief.  “Later, Jacky,” he barked, still looking out into the gray shadows of the tall grass.  Someone—Nicky maybe—dumped the rest of his clothes into his arms and handed him his waffle-stompers.  He grunted thanks, but kept his back turned.

“We’re done here,” Cory muttered.  She couldn’t look at Bracken and Nicky either—Teague could see that.  Her jaw was working, her eyes were trying to squeeze shut—but neither of them could look at their lovers.  Not now.  Not when they’d so blatantly put themselves in danger. 

“I’ve got to go talk to the vampires,” she said to no one in particular.

“There’s a werewolf in our SUV,” Bracken told her practically, and she nodded.

“Deal with him.  You, Max, Jack—you guys take this car back.  La Mark, Nicky, Lambent—take the spare SUVs back.  Somebody besides Bracken drive, please.”  She glanced upwards.  “I’m gonna go let Mario beat the shit out of someone.” 

Bracken, brave soul that he was, risked putting his hand on her arm.  “Beloved…”

She turned a fierce gaze on him, and although he didn’t stagger back, he did blink slowly, as though he hadn’t been ready for the force of her undammed anger and relief.  Wordlessly her hand came out and feathered the gentlest, shakiest touch on his shoulder, it was as though that terrible glare had never existed.  But when she met his eyes and he managed to look sheepish, she shook her head in anger.

“Yeah,” she snarled.  “I thought so.  Give me some fucking space, Bracken Brine.  I don’t want to say anything we can chew on for a year, right?”  She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, and Jack took that moment to say weakly, “Teague?”

Teague still couldn’t look at him.   If he caved and looked, saw that pretty face with the fair skin and the dreamy eyes looking all hurt, he’d lose it.  He’d come apart here on the field and he was tired, so fucking tired of being naked for the whole goddamned world to see. 

“I’m going with her,” he muttered, and he knew it would hurt, knew it would be like a knife punch to Jack’s heart, but just like Cory, he couldn’t hold his beloved…  just couldn’t hold him.  Couldn’t check his fair skin to see that he was okay for real.  He couldn’t.  He had to hold it together, had to let that terrible blinding pressure in his chest squeeze all his emotions in and keep him from coming apart. 

As they stalked away through the path in the grass she’d apparently made when she arrived, he almost tripped on a young man’s body—it looked like it had been cleanly scythed in half by width.  Behind him he heard Jack repeat his name, “Teague?” and Bracken (grunting a little with effort—probably giving a hand up) said, “They need to cool off, Jack—Jesus, can’t you tell they’re trying not to strangle us as it is?”

Teague knew how the dead werewolf felt then, didn’t he?

“We can do this,” she muttered.  “We can hold it together until we get to the hill.  It’ll be safe to cut loose when we get to the hill.”

“Never safe,” Teague muttered back, and he was surprised when she stopped long enough to turn to him.   They were both short enough that the tall grasses covered their heads, and for a moment, he felt like he was in a safe, quiet closet.  The kind of place he used to hide from his father.  Cory was safe to him—she would protect him from the violence whirling around in his anguished heart.

“Don’t let me fuck you up here, Teague,” she said softly, the pain on her face making her look so much younger.  What was she?  Twenty-four?  Twenty-five?  But not right now.  Now she looked like a little kid doctoring her own skinned knee.  “It’s always safe on the hill.  We just have shit to do—you and me, we’ve got to get our shit done, because when we come unglued, it’s big shit.  So let’s just get our shit done, and get back and rip off the band-aids and our intestines will spill where they may.”

“I’m…” he took a deep breath as they began to clear the underbrush together.  “I’m not that strong,” he finished, so quietly he didn’t think she could hear him.

“Bullshit,” she snapped, proving that she could.  “I can do it, you sure as hell can.” 

They came out of the weeds and Cory stalked up to the few remaining werewolves—there were only four survivors, all held by angry vampires and kneeling—naked-- in the dirt and star thistle of the narrow service road. 

“So,” Cory asked, her voice all business, “how many of you were there to start with?”

“Twenty,” one of them said softly, and Cory nodded sagely.

“Twenty.  One of you is safe in the SUV back there, so how many of you did we let live?”

“Five,” said the same guy.  Cory nodded and crouched a little lower. 

“So…”

“Javier,” the kid filled in, and she nodded.

“So, Javier—does this sound like any kind of a good idea?”

The kid raised his eyes up to her—deep gold-brown, and fringed with black lashes—and spit at her.  “It did until you got here, cunt!”

Cory laughed—actually laughed—and Mario dropped from the sky like a death-angel from hell.  The vampire holding Javier backed off at Cory’s nod, and Mario strode up to the little shit and kicked him in the chin—and the game was on. 

Cory and the vampires backed away, and Mario followed the kick to the chin with a solid left to the body.  Javier doubled, spitting blood and saliva and rushed in with a shot to Mario’s chin that he easily dodged.  Mario had a couple of inches on the kid, but as he muscled in and followed body shot with head shot, and the only sounds in their circle were the sounds of fists hitting flesh and the grunts and moans of Javier when that happened, Teague realized that Mario wasn’t winning because of a couple of inches.

Mario was winning for sheer rage.

Thud, smack, splat… the kid was a werewolf—they could see him healing even as he came back for more punishment—but Mario was a shapeshifter too, and Javier wasn’t making any of his shots. 

Eventually, the other SUV came in behind them, and Javier took one too many hits to the head.  He fell to the ground, bleeding, and looked up at Mario with indifference as to whether or not the next blow landed in his face or his chest or even his groin. 

It was a kick to his chin, but it was the last one. 

Panting lightly, Mario danced back and turned his face up to the night sky.  His shirt had disappeared in trans, and he looked barbaric and savage as he howled—rage, grief, pain, glory—everything—into the sharp-cold-edged night.  He howled again and again, as the vampires waited, as Bracken idled behind them, and Teague realized that Cory’s blue glow bled with every howl.  When Mario was done he turned an anguished, tear-stained face to Cory and she nodded and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Nick’ll follow you,” she murmured.  Mario hardly heard her before he turned again and took off flying into the night.  Cory trotted to the waiting car and rapped on the passenger window.  Nicky opened the door and she hesitantly touched his hand before saying gruffly, “Follow him.  La Mark too.  It’s a dangerous night to be out.  Try not to lose your cell phones, right?”

The two men got out of the SUV, but Max didn’t move to the front right away.  He stayed right next to their new werewolf friend, and, in fact, called out as La Mark opened the door. 

“Hey—can I have a vamp feed from this bitch?  I don’t feel like holding a gun to him for the whole ride!” 

Kyle grunted and slid in the side door so Max could move up to the driver side and take the wheel from Brack.  Teague saw Cory exchange a long look with Bracken as he walked around the car.   She reached out towards his wounded shoulder again and held back a keening sound, and then dropped her hand.

“Be safe,” she said briefly. 

“You too,” he responded, and her lips twisted like it was a smile.

When they’d driven away, she looked up at Phillip and Marcus and then, inscrutably, back at Teague.  “We’ve got to get going.  Do me a favor, would you, and pull the other cars out, then wait for Lambent to torch the field.  Make sure it doesn’t spread—it shouldn’t.  Shit’s pretty wet right now, but we’re not that far from civilization.” She tapped her head.  “Chat me up if anything hinky happens.  We’ve got to get home.” 

Five minutes into a really uncomfortable drive, after Teague had managed to get his shoes and his shirt and jacket back on by wiggling a lot on the front seat, Cory swore over the sound of the Mustang’s powerful engine.  “I forgot my fucking iPod.”  Teague heard her, and started searching for a station on Max’s stereo.  Satellite stereo.  He programmed The Scorpions, Metallica, Greenday, and JayZ into the search feature and let the screaming commence. 

Cory’s shoulders relaxed for a couple of songs as they wound down 193, and then she turned down the music. 

“Once,” she murmured, as though searching for the right story, “right after I found out what I could do, I was so angry.  My whole world had been turned upside down, you know?”

Teague nodded.  He did know.

 “So there I was, locked in Green’s bedroom because… well shit was happening, and Green walked in to talk to me, and all this power rushed out of me and just knocked him on his ass.”

Teague thought he should laugh.  It sounded like it was funny, but everything was locked down under that rapidly shrinking elastic band around his chest. She cast him a sideways look through the shifting shadows of a random streetlight, out in the middle of nowhere. 

“Anyway,” she continued, “he walks into the room and I knock him down because I was pissed, but, you know… this was Green, and he tells me, You only wanted to hurt me because you didn’t know you could hurt me.”  She swallowed.  “Shit happened after that… you know…”

“Bad shit,” he filled in dryly.

“Yeah.  Bad shit.  But I never forgot that.  Jack didn’t know he’d hurt you, Teague.  Give him a break because he didn’t know he could.” 

Teague’s breathing started to quicken and that band got tight… so tight… he couldn’t… he breathed.  He powered through it.  His face was locked down, impassive, and Cory turned up the music until their eardrums bled. 

It was better than other things. 

Katy

 

Ripped, Torn, Bleeding, and Naked

 

The whole hill heard Cory clattering down from the Goddess grove, calling for reinforcements.

For a moment, Katy was removed from it all.  Of course, everything in the hill was related—and if someone was hurt, they all suffered, but really, what did the fuss have to do with…

Oh God. 

Katy put down the needlepoint sampler she’d been working on and stumbled from her room, down the hall and across it into Jack and Teague’s room.  Two hours before, Teague had stuck his head into the room and told Jack to get his ass in gear, they were going on a run.  Jack had climbed out of bed with her and gone.

The bed was still unmade, messy, smelling of the three of them and their first lovemaking.  Katy threw herself into it and lay there, scenting the sheets like the wolf she could be, trying to catch the moment their bodies had merged, and for a brief moment the three of them had seen, maybe, everything they were meant to be.

Green found her there, forty-five minutes after Cory left, curled up in the center of the bed in the dark. 

“Oh… Katy!  I’m so sorry, lovely… why weren’t you waiting in the common room with the rest of us?”

Green was… well, he was always beautiful, but Katy was getting to the point where she could see past the beauty and into his weariness and his worry and the pain it cost him to hold his family together sometimes.  This was one of those moments.

“I didn’t think,” she answered, and until she did she wasn’t aware that she’d been crying, soundlessly, as she’d clutched the comforter to her chest.  The bed dipped and Green’s hand came out and smoothed her hair back from her face.

“You even cry prettily,” he said musingly, and she hiccupped and looked up to him with big eyes.  It didn’t seem like a good superpower, but there was a fondness in the quirk of his lips and she wondered who it was that didn’t cry so pretty.  

“They’re okay?” she asked now, because he was calm and quiet and bent on comforting her, so that was probably the truth. 

He paused for a moment, and she sat up, puzzled.  “They’re fine,” he reassured, drawing her to his side before he amended the statement.  “Physically, they’re fine.” 

Katy sniffed.   “Que?”

Green laughed a little but not as though anything was funny.  “Things went a little wrong, and… I’ll need details, but what I got from Bracken is that Jack lost his composure and Teague… well, for a minute he thought the worst.  It… it wasn’t easy on either of them…”

Katy shook her head—Green was being unusually evasive.  “Wait a minute.  The worst, you mean for a minute…”

“Teague thought he was dead.  It wasn’t… a logical thought.  Jack was knocked out, but he was fine.”  Green sighed, and looked into a distance she couldn’t see.  “Bracken and Jack will be here in about ten minutes.  Cory and Teague are a few minutes behind…” He grimaced.  “I understand they both needed to get a handle on themselves.”

Her eyes sought his in the dark of this very plain, very masculine room.  Both of their expressions were troubled.  “It’s not gonna be a good night for either of us, is it, Leader?”

Green pulled her to his side a little closer and kissed her hair.  “No, lovely Katy, it is not.  I think you’d better plan on not going to work tomorrow—Bracken’s mother will take your place, right?”

Katy tried to smile, but she couldn’t.  “Right,” she murmured, expecting Green to leave immediately—he had thousands of people to look after, now didn’t he?

But he stayed instead, just holding her in the dark, and she took strength from those moments.  He was attractive, yes—like most of the hill, she’d been in his bed at one time or another, because that was where people bared their souls with their bodies—but more than that.  Green was safe.  Green was kind.  Green was… easy.  He was, in fact, all of the things that another human being—even the ones that Katy loved with all her heart—had no guarantees of being, even if they had intentions. 

She was beginning to doze a little—it had been, after all, a long day—when they heard the voices down the corridor.  Nothing was every truly private in the hill, was it?

“I don’t give a shit what she thinks she knows, she had no right to take him away before we had a time to…”   

Katy winced—there was Jacky, getting all in someone’s face when he didn’t know everything like he should.  She loved that boy, but he was going to need to be smacked some more before he was housebroken.

“Had time to what?”  Bracken growled—they were close to the door now, and Green and Katy met eyes grimly.  All things considered, it would probably be better to stay put and hear this out.   “Had time to strip him naked emotionally as well as physically, because Goddess knows he’s loved what you’ve put him through so far!”

“What are you talking about… he knew what he was doing when he…” 

There was a whirl and a thump, and Katy was pretty sure Green knew the sound of a body being thrust against a wall and held there. 

“What he was doing when he changed?  Do you really think so?  Because I’ll tell you how this played outside of your delusions, puppy.  You fucked up…

“The hell I…”

“YOU FUCKED UP.  You led them right to us when you should have taken them out.  You changed in the field when your alpha told you no.  You engaged in a dogfight when there were guns on the fucking table.  And when you got knocked out, Teague, your alpha, who’s supposed to hold it all together lost it.  He didn’t change because it was the smart thing to do, he changed because he thought you were dead!”

Katy gasped and Green shut his eyes tightly.  She shook her head at him and he kissed her forehead gently, and they both stayed as quiet as they could, and listened.

“He thought I was…” Well now—Jack hadn’t known that. 

“Yeah—and he almost took her hand off—almost took her face off, if you must know the truth, when she was trying to bring him back.  And she didn’t have to do that, by the way—only if she wanted him to live through the night, asshole!”

“Well if he was so worried about me, why the hell didn’t he stay when I was up and around?”  Katy rolled her eyes, frustrated.  Puppy indeed.

But this question—and this one only—Bracken seemed to have patience for. 

“Jack, do you really think Cory doesn’t have some things she’d like to say to me?  I was bleeding on the fucking field,”

Green sucked in a breath.  Shit.

“Do you think that’s going to be it?  She rolls in, saves our ass and we’re all happiness and sunshine?  Who in the fuck told you relationships worked that way?”

Even in the bedroom, they could hear Jack swallow. 

“He didn’t want to do it in public,” he whispered.  Oh Glory hallelujia—Jacky got it.

“And neither do I,” Bracken muttered.  They heard a thump as Jack was dropped to the ground and then stomping footsteps as he stalked away, and a moment later, Jack threw open the door of the room with a growl.

Green hadn’t moved, and neither had Katy, but now he stood up, kissed her forehead and moved towards the door.  He stopped and gave Jack a thorough visual once-over, checking for wounds. 

“Looks like Lambent did a thorough job on you, mate.  Teague should be in shortly—I would imagine you’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Jack flushed, but it was hard for anyone to be angry at Green.  Instead he looked helplessly at Katy, and she found she looked mildly back.  She was irritated with him—yes—but more importantly, she was concerned for Teague. 

He’d thought Jack was dead.  Oh Goddess… she’d been worried, yes.  But she had assumed… just knew the two of them would be okay.  And he’d thought Jack had been dead. 

Green ducked his head and left, and Katy shook her head at Jack, still huddled in the middle of their bed. 

“How could you, Jacky?” she asked, and he jerked his head back like she’d slapped him. 

“I didn’t do anyth…”

“Oh yes, yes you did, mijo.” She was pleating the crumpled sheet unconsciously, but that was fine—it took the place of pacing.  “You promised him… everything in his whole life he wanted, and you told him it was okay—just fine, reach for it.  And you blow him off out in the field, and he almost lose it all.” 

Jack closed his eyes, suddenly pale and shaking and scrubbed his face with his hands.  “Oh God.  Goddess.  Whatever.  All that work…” The last three weeks, getting Teague to trust in them, to have faith… all of it, pissed away in a bad run. 

Teague burst in at that moment and they didn’t even have time to say Shit!

He looked startled to see them, his dark hazel eyes rolling wildly a little, before that damned stoic mask of his slipped solidly back into place. 

“You here, field mouse?  I’d have thought you’d be in your room.  It’s prettier.”   He slipped off his jacket and hung it on the edge of one of the chairs and sat down and started to unlace his shit-kickers. 

Katy nodded.  Okay then—apparently emotional honesty was her job tonight. 

“I was worried about you,” she said evenly.  “I’m in here because I could smell us together—it made me feel better when I thought you guys, you know, you might be ripped or dead or bleeding or naked or something.” 

Teague’s jaw tightened and his fight-or-flight pulse throbbed hard in his temple.  “Well we’re fine,” he said, and then toed his boot off with enough force to pop it halfway across the room.

“I’m sorry…” Jack started, and Katy smacked him as Teague’s other boot went flying all the way across the room.

Teague swallowed again.  “Yeah… well… well I don’t think we can do any runs together.  Not now.  Not after…” He breathed deeply, and his shoulders shook with the force of it.  The air pressure in the room was suddenly weighted, and every movement Teague made was quivering with the effort of moving through the things he did not say.

“Teague, that’s not fair!”  Jack protested.  “Ow, Katy, stop doing that!”

“I will not—you think what he needs to hear now is that you gonna go out and get yourself killed!”  Oh!  These damn men, acting like nothing happened, filling the room with this liquid air and all these words that should be hurled and screamed and shouted. 

Jack rolled his eyes.  “I’m not going to get myself…”

“The fuck you won’t!”  Teague burst out, the words so loud in the thick quiet of the room that Katy’s chest heaved with the sharpness of her breath.  Teague took another deep breath, his entire body trembling, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse and even.  “You were in…” deep breath, “real danger tonight.  I think… you know, it would be better if you went back to school.  We’ve got a good life here.  People to take care of you…”

“What about you, pappi?”  Katy interrupted, and Teague suddenly jumped up out of the chair and stalked to the bathroom.  When he came out, he had his running clothes, still damp with sweat from his morning’s run. 

Beside her, Jack breathed, “Oh Christ, no.”

Katy stood up and moved decisively.  If no one here could be smart about what was inside them, fighting to get out, she could.  “Teague… I asked you a question.  What about you?  You say there’s someone here to take care of Jacky—what about you?  We’re supposed to take care of you…”

The smile he turned towards her was so ghastly it actually made her stomach churn.  “I’m fine, field mouse.  Don’t worry about me.” 

“Don’t worry?  Don’t worry about you?  Well, pappi, you want us not to worry about you, then you better start yelling or something, because right now, you’re scaring the living shit out of us!”  She reached out for his clothes and Teague jerked them back, clutching them to his chest.

“I’m fine,” he repeated, holding his running gear close, “I’m just…” deep breath, “just going for a little run… you know… sort of…” his whole body quivered with the effort of keeping his emotions in check, “sort of gear down after the job.”

“Teague,” Jack muttered, and the look he sent Katy was panicked and worried.  It felt like once Teague left this room, he’d never come back.  Katy had a very clear vision of him just running, running off into the night until his heart burst like a rabbit’s, until he fell into the earth and died under the weight of all the things he didn’t scream.  “Teague, keeping me home like a child isn’t going to make this any better…”

Teague’s shoulders jerked like he’d been shot.  His face was so pale that his faint freckles stood out in stark relief, and Katy turned around and smacked Jacky’s shoulder one more time. 

“Stop talking about that!” she cried, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.  “Don’t you see what it’s doing to him?”

“I’m fine,” Teague muttered, and Katy and Jack both shouted, “The fuck you are!” in tandem.

Teague tried another one of those nobody-home smiles.  “I’m fine.  You two… I’m fine.  I just need to…” another deep breath.  “I just need to…” he dropped the clothes and started pulling at the buttons of his flannel shirt.  “Maybe I’ll go running like a wolf…”

“No.”  Katy said, and she didn’t think she’d been as afraid for another person in her life as she was in that exact moment.  “No.  You’re not going running.”

“Jack… Jacky was… he can’t come with me on runs Katy,” Teague was still trying to sound reasonable, but his shirt buttons went flying over the room as he ripped them off with an impatient jerk.  “You… he was lying there… I need to go.”

“Teague, it won’t happen again…”

“Jacky stop it!”  Katy snapped, and Teague chest was pumping in and out like he’d just run a thousand miles. 

“I need to go…” he panted.

“Katy—it’s not going to happen again, I’ll listen to everything he says!”  Jack was almost in tears, like a little kid.

“I need to go…” Teague had managed to get his over-shirt off and his hands were hauling mindlessly at the neck of his T-shirt.  “I’ve just… he was lying there.  Katy—he was… he wasn’t moving.  I… need to…”

Katy grabbed his hands, started smoothing his shoulders, patting his arms doing anything she could to calm that terrible shivering that had taken over Teague’s body, seemed to be stuttering through his anguished mind. 

“You stay here, pappi… you hear me?  You stay here with us.  Just stay here…”

“Teague, I’ll be fine, just don’t tell me I can’t come with you…”

“I need to go…” Teague made an effort to rip free and Katy felt like a field mouse trying to cage a wolf.

“Goddammit, Jacky—you grab him and help me!  Grab him…”

Teague looked up at her, his face as naked and as raw as any expression she ever wanted to see.  That careful façade of ‘all right’ was lying in bloody shreds at his feet and he was trying to run away before she could bandage what was left and help him heal.

“I need to go,” he all but begged.  He took another step towards the door, his eyes haunted and lost and his body shaking with emotion he was trying not to let out.

“Katy, that’s not fair!”  Jack protested, and as abruptly as that, Katy was all wolf.

“FUCK fair!  Goddammit, Jacky, you tell him what he gots to hear!  You tell him anything, you hear me, you say whatever you got to, but just don’t let him go off running!  Not like this!  PLEASE Jacky… don’t let him leave us… not like this!  PLEASE!” 

Teague looked at her, almost like he was waking up from a dream.  “Katy… I’ve got to…you didn’t see him… he looked… Oh God… he looked… he can’t come with me… he… I thought he was…”

“I won’t,” Jack said, tears in his voice—he was giving in.  He was giving this up.  Katy heard it.  It hurt him, but Teague… he’d do anything for Teague.  “I’ll stay here.  You’ll never have to think I was dead…”

“Dead.” Teague looked up suddenly, and they could almost hear the ocean of reality crashing on him.  “I thought you were dead… I thought you were….oh Christ… oh…God… Jacky…” he looked up and Jack wrapped his arms around Teague and Katy tightened her grasp and Jack met his eyes, nodding, trying to bring him back to the here, the now, where they really were all right, when it was clear Teague had never let himself live the awful moment, the terrifying pain of…

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!” 

The next sound that broke his throat wasn’t human, wasn’t even wolf.  It was sheer, raw anguish, and he screamed it again and again and again while Katy pressed him into Jack’s embrace, both of them murmuring soft things into his ears, reassurances, kindnesses, apologies… whatever words their mouths could shape when their hearts were breaking for their beloved.

Teague fell to his knees, howling, sobbing, weeping, and his lovers held him and wept with him, telling him with everything they had in their hearts that he was going to be okay.

Cory

 

Fast Changes

 

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!”

My knees buckled as Teague’s anguished scream echoed through the doorway, and Green and Bracken caught me before I could fall.

There was never any privacy at Green’s Hill.  Everyone knew that.  But we’d seen Teague—we’d watch him struggle, in these past weeks, to learn to trust the world, to trust his lovers, to reach for things when Goddess knows the lessons he learned about not reaching for jack-fucking-shit. 

He hadn’t looked good in the car.  My people weren’t good with psychobabblebullshit, but if I had to put my finger on it, I’d call it a full-on-grand-mal-class-ten meltdown.  I’d never seen anyone with a whole skin fight so hard to breathe in my life.  It was like he was denying himself oxygen because he was afraid that even breathing would hurt. 

Oh Goddess—I remember a time when breathing did hurt.  When being alive felt like a violation of all that was holy.  A year ago… fuck, a year ago on this day, some fuckhead gave me the opportunity to not breathe for the rest of my life, and I almost took him up on it. 

Just like now, here, listening to a friend have a-fist-of-God-through-Hoover-dam breakthrough, Green and Bracken caught me before I could fall. 

Green whispered against my temple.  “He’ll be okay, luv.  He’ll be fine.  He’s like you—he’s tougher than he looks.” 

Category-six sobs were echoing through the corridor.  He had to be tougher than he looked in order to lay himself naked, to bare that much pain to the world. 

I took a deep breath, tried to hold myself together.  I let it out shakily.  Okay, so far so good.

Bracken was on my other side, so embarrassed he could hardly look at me, and I almost quailed with the unfairness of it all.  I could tell him “I love you.  Come back safe,” before he left, but now that he was here, whole and well, I couldn’t tell him how happy I was… how truly full-hearted and grateful I was, that all he’d needed was Lambent’s touch on his shoulder and a bail out?  I would have bailed out any one of us, and just been glad they were whole and well. I couldn’t do the same thing for Bracken?

Well shit… Teague had just followed me through life and death… I had to be as tough as he was, didn’t I?

Unlike Teague, I’d had an emotion-fueled hormone-dump sometime after my birth and before the present time.  I hadn’t had a howl trapped in my chest for over thirty years.  I didn’t need primal scream therapy. 

I looked at Bracken miserably, and the hand not helping to support my chunky ass came up to my wet cheek.  He skated his thumb softly over my cheekbone and I reached out and stroked his clean shirt and whole shoulder, and tried a wobbly smile. 

“I’m…” Shit.  Try again.  “I’m so, so glad you’re… you’re… okaaaaaaayyyyy…” 

Green relinquished his hold on me and let Bracken carry me down the hall, weeping on his chest as we went.   I could smell the sweat on him, the stone-and-sunlight strength that was peculiar to him, and feel his big hands under my body, holding me like he hadn’t just been wounded, and like I was no big thing.

“I’m sorry we left you behind,” he murmured.  “We’ll never leave you behind again.”

“’Kay,” I sniffled.  “Good.  That’s good.” 

Bracken kept murmuring things into my hair, as he took us down the hall into Green’s room.  We showered, the three of us (Bracken’s second of the night) and then I lay between them as they whispered sweet words that infused the rest of the night with the same message.  Green got up for a short time, and came back, holding me even as I told myself it was stupid to be cold for him. Near dawn, an exhausted Nicky crawled in next to Green to add his quiet tenor.

Teague and I weren’t so different—when all was said and done, when our lovers had soothed all our pain, all we wanted to hear was that we wouldn’t be left behind.

 

Teague

 

Shifting Skin

 

Teague didn’t sleep late.  Essentially he and Jacky made their own hours, but he never allowed himself to sleep late.  Sleeping late was a chance to get caught.  Trapped.  Beaten. 

When he woke up, stripped to his boxers and sandwiched between Jack and Katy, he didn’t remember where he was.  Late November sunshine was streaming in through the skylight window, and it was nearly ten in the morning. 

“Fuck!”  He sat up, his heart beating in his throat, his eyes rolling wildly around the room, and tried to scramble out of the bed.

He was blocked by a long, rangy body that practically pinned him to the mattress.

“Jesus, Jacky, get the fuck off me!”

“No going out today.  No running.  Green’s orders!” 

Teague glared up at Jack, squinting through sandy eyes.  “Green’s orders?  What the hell does that mean?”

Jack sat back on his heels and glared right back.  “It means that Green heard you screaming at three in the fucking morning, came in, touched your head and dicked around in there to keep you from having another goddamned nightmare.  Then he told us that you weren’t allowed outside until tomorrow.   They’re having movies in the common room at three—we’re invited.  You don’t get out of bed until then.”

Teague’s upper lip curled and he tried to be unimpressed.  “I’ve got to piss like a fucking dragon, Jacky.  You maybe wanna get of my bladder?”

Jack’s nose wrinkled like he knew exactly why Teague needed to get out of bed, but he shifted his weight anyway.  Teague looked to his side and saw that Katy was watching him skeptically.  He gave a snort of disgust as he was clambering out of bed and sallied with, “How many werewolves does it take to drain a lizard, anyway?” 

“You’re a fuckin’ smartass, you know that pappi?  You go drain that lizard—you can even wash him, it don’t bother me none.  I’m gonna go get you some food, so you take your time.”

Teague did take his time.  He stayed there, alone in his cocoon of steam and white-frosted glass, while the two of them came in to do their business and brush their teeth.  He stayed there for what seemed like forever after that.  In a lesser place, he would have run the hot water cold, but it didn’t here at the hill.  He finally came out of the shower, queasy and pruny, and figured maybe breakfast didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

He was unprepared for the repast waiting for him on top of the long, low dresser he shared with Jack.

Katy and Jacky were sitting down with little trays, halfway through what looked like Belgian waffles and half a Christmas pig.  Katy quickly swallowed what was in her mouth and gestured with her fork.  “Eat, baby.  It’s not going anywhere.”

Stunned, Teague did what she asked, but before he could turn around from the buffet, Jack was over his shoulders, adding more shit to his plate.

“Jacky…”

“Chocolate-chip waffles, Teague.  If God made a food named after you, these would be it.  Homemade whipped cream?  Sausage?  You got all this and you put toast on your plate…”

“I can serve my own food!”

“Not today.” 

Teague took the plate from him and growled, then sat in the stuffed chair to eat anyway.  He was unprepared for a tray to be moved for him and a glass of orange juice to appear at his elbow.  He scowled at both of them. 

“I’m fine!  Now stop hovering!  What—you think I’m going to turn into a little girl again before your eyes!”  In spite of himself a replay of the night before flashed through his head.  He’d dissolved, come apart, sobbed his heart out on the two of them until he couldn’t move from exhaustion. 

Oh God.  Goddess.  Whoever.  How was he supposed to take care of them when they saw that?  How were they supposed to depend on him when he was a stable as a cotton-candy boat-dock?

“Eat your food, dammit,” Jack muttered, trying to eat his. 

“I’m not a…”

“What—you think you need us once in a fucking while, and we’re going to stop loving you?”  Jack growled at him.  “Now for once… dammit, just once, would you stop worrying about us and eat your goddamned food?  It’s good.  I think Grace made it just for you—now eat.  We can have this out, fight, fuck, fume, whatever, but first, for the love of crap, just shut up and fucking eat?”

Teague shoved half a waffle in his mouth and chewed.  “’r ‘oo ‘appy ‘ow?” he asked petulantly, and was rewarded by Jack’s unwilling smirk. 

“Ecstatic.  Do you want another one?”

Well, actually, he did, but he wasn’t going to say anything.  He glanced sideways but stayed silent, and Jack stood up and came back with more.  He scraped it on to Teague’s plate and added syrup. 

“Thanks,” Teague grunted, but he couldn’t look Jack in the eyes.  Breakfast was finished in silence—mostly because it turned out he was starving and plowing through what was on his plate seemed easier than talking. 

He finished up and Katy stood up and took away his plate.  He sighed and shook his head.  “Katy—you don’t have to…”

“Jesus, Teague… just let me take care of you…”

He sighed and flopped back into the chair and wondered what to do now.  He didn’t have to wait long—all Katy and Jack had to do was stack dishes on the dresser and they ping! disappeared, and then Katy was suddenly sitting at his feet, leaning her head on his thighs.  Absently he stroked her hair, and then Jacky was behind him, kneading his shoulders, hard, and he grunted in spite of himself. 

“I’m not fragile,” he muttered, although he was enjoying the moment very much. 

“We know you’re not, pappi.” 

“I can take care of you…” Oh God, but that was a lie, wasn’t it, because Jacky had gone out and… and gotten himself hurt, and Teague had no one to blame but himself and…

“You always have,” Jack murmured, right in his ear.  Teague turned his head and Jack kissed him, leaning over the chair, and Teague… oh God… Teague couldn’t get enough of his taste.  He groaned, and pushed against Jack, not wanting to dislodge Katy, but she was…

Teague broke away long enough to gasp, because Katy was on her knees in front of him, pulling determinedly at the waistband of his sweats.  “Katy…”

“Shut up and move your hips!” she demanded, and he did what she said so she could slide his sweats and tighty-whiteys right down.  She was done and Jack captured his mouth again, and she… oh Goddess… Katy was…

He broke the kiss again, grunting, “Katy… oh God… Darlin’, you’re gonna make me…”

“What… come?”  Her little fist was wrapped around his erection, and it was delicate and firm, and then her pink tongue came out and stroked it, from base to tip, and Teague groaned again.  “

“Can we…” he tried to ask, but then she did that licking thing again, and then she took him all the way into her mouth and pulled, hard, with her fist and her suction, until he felt his crown hit the back of her throat. 

He couldn’t get away from her.  He tried to back away, to bend and grab her shoulders, but Jacky kept kissing him, kept blocking his every move, kept touching his chest, kept nibbling on his neck, kept making him crazy. 

“Dammit, you guys, let me…”

Katy let him out of her mouth and touched the little harp string on the underside of the head delicately with her tongue.  He shuddered and pushed his head against the chair. 

“Let you come?” she repeated wickedly, and his hips thrust of their own volition. 

“Let me touch you…” he begged, knowing that’s not what he wanted to say.  What he wanted to say was, Let me love you, but even now, when Katy was holding him so firmly, and tickling the underside of his testicles with a slender finger, he couldn’t plead that way. 

Jack knelt next to him and started placing tender kisses on his chest, then sucked a nipple into his mouth and nibbled just as Katy thrust her head down until he was in the back of her throat again, and he wanted them so bad… wanted to touch them, to worship them, to prove to them that he was worth it, that he would take care of them, make them happy, if only they would let him…

“Goddess, let me love you!” he said raggedly, and Katy gave his cock one last slurp and stood up, stripping off her clothes efficiently revealing wide, appealing hips and soft, pillowy breasts.  Teague stood up and was stopped by Jack, who stripped off Teague’s flannel shirt and his long-sleeved T-shirt and then… then while Katy scrambled up on the bed, Jack dropped to his knees and took Teague into his mouth too. 

“Jacky…” Teague’s hands pulled in Jack’s hair, and Jack didn’t budge—except to hold Teague closer and pull him in deeper.  “God…” Because Jack had learned a few tricks in the last weeks.  He’d learned to use his tongue when he pulled his head back, he’d learned to cup Teague’s balls in his hands and gently rub right behind them, and he’d learned to use his other hand to wrap around Teague’s base and squeeze in rhythm. 

Teague’s vision started going dark with the effort of keeping upright and not coming.  He looked at Katy desperately, and she grinned back, naked and blushing.  She’d moved so she was on her stomach, her face right next to his thigh, pushing up on her elbows and watching Jack’s technique with avid interest. 

“Katy…you and me…”

“Got all day, baby.  You think what?  You don’t get to me right now and I’m going home?”  Her hand came out and feathered a touch down the side of his flank.  “Got news for you, pappi.  I am home.” 

Jack’s hand, the one cupping Teague’s dangling parts, shifted, moved back to caress that sweet spot between places, and Teague looked at Katy’s sweet adoration and came helplessly in Jack’s mouth. 

He collapsed on the bed then, half naked and buzzing from the sex, and Jack climbed up behind him and Katy turned around to face him.  She tangled her hands in his shirt and helped him wiggle out of it and Jacky stripped down to nothing and suddenly Teague was…

Naked. 

Absolutely naked, and completely sheltered, cared for, swaddled in the flesh of his lovers.  He found he was shivering, mindlessly, and Jack pulled up the comforter to his shoulders and whispered, “We’re here.” 

“Right,” he said back.  “Know that.”  He was trying to be tough, trying to let them know he could take care of himself—take care of them, and they didn’t need to worry about him.  This was an anomaly, a glitch, a one-time moment of letting his guard down, that’s all. 

But Jack kept stroking his back and Katy, she looked into his eyes and rubbed his chest and his arms, and neither of them seemed to want anything from him, need him in any way but to love him.  He found himself sinking into them, letting their comfort seep through his bones.  He must have dozed a little, because abruptly he startled.  He almost managed to jerk himself right out of bed, but Jack literally held him down, where he shivered some more until Katy pushed her full mouth against his for a kiss. 

He broke away, blinking hazily into the sunlit room.  It was now past one in the afternoon, and the most he’d managed to do was shower and eat. 

“Don’t we have something to do?” he asked—a last ditch effort, to make this quick, to avoid the things crushing on his heart before he had another embarrassing episode of raw agonizing emotion.

“Yeah, baby,” Katy murmured against his mouth.  “You gotta keep kissing me—you owe me from yesterday.”

Her mouth was sweet and soft, and Jack was at his back, hard and warm.  He didn’t even stop to think about what he owed her or why, he just kept kissing, again and again and again.  His hand found a palm-full of soft breast, and he massaged it and rubbed the nipple with his thumb.  She gasped against him and threw her leg over his bare hip, sliding over his erection and taking him deeply inside.   Jack was rubbing up against him, his cock slick with pre-come, and sliding between the crease of his thighs even as he rocked slowly, deliriously, inside of Katy.

Her dark-cocoa colored eyes were wide and full of wonder as he moved inside her, and her lush mouth was parted slightly as she gasped out sexy little sounds of arousal.  

“Katy,” he said in wonder, tracing the tiny little spots along her cheekbone with his thumb, “you’ve got freckles.”

She blushed, and tried to hide her face in his neck, even as he thrust particularly hard, but he wouldn’t let her.  He kissed her again and pulled away, breathing “Oh, Katy, you are sooooo pretty,” through a tight throat. 

He was unprepared for her eyes to grow bright and spill over.  “I always hoped you’d notice,” she whispered, and he kissed her again, tears and all, and Jacky continued to thrust along his thighs, harder and tighter and…

“Go-od, Teague,” Jacky grunted, spilling along Teague’s backside in a hot rush.  Teague rolled Katy under him, so he could move faster and so he could see Jacky’s face, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed and the last of his come spurting over his sloppy hand.

Teague closed his eyes and tried to maintain some control, to keep it slow and good for Katy, but when he opened them again, she was still slick and warm around his body and Jack’s eyes were sleepy and half opened and between the two of them… Oh God… oh Goddess. 

“Jacky’s pretty too,” Katy gasped and then raised her heels up to dig into his ass and speed him on. 

“Oh God yes,” he blurted, and then he was pounding, thrusting, loving the two of them with every part of his soul.  He spilled into her and spilled again and again until he buried his face in her neck and groaned to the point of screaming with the force of the pleasure and the pain. 

They wouldn’t let him get up after that.  Jack got a washcloth, but Katy just kept him there, pulsing inside of her, while Jack cleaned up the spill on the backs of his thighs.  Jacky’s thumb brushed along the scars as they disappeared into the crease of his buttocks and Teague flinched. 

“Don’t,” Jack muttered.  “Don’t.  Not now.  Not after that.  Please.  Just trust us, okay?”

Teague sighed and Katy cupped his face with her hands.  “You can tell us the story if you want.  It might make it not so scary.” 

Teague bit back the impulse to say he was never scared.  Okay—maybe he did owe them some honesty, right?  “I was hungry,” he said softly, rolling away from her but pulling her up into the crook of his shoulder.  Jack slid in next to him and curled into his other side.  He reflected that he might be able to survive having the two of them in his bed.  He’d never in his life felt so warm. 

“That’s it?”  Jack asked carefully. 

“What can I say, Jacky?  My father was a sadistic motherfucker.  He liked friends just like himself.”  He looked carefully at Katy, and then away.  “Mikey Daniels was a hanger-on—you remember that.”

Katy shrugged against him, her fingers drawing firm and absolutely non-ticklish little designs against his ribs.  “It doesn’t surprise me, pappi. Someone’s got to laugh at your jokes, even if you’re a sadistic motherfucker.”

Teague chuffed out some air, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a laugh.  “Yeah.  Well, this guy thought the broken beer bottle was really fucking funny.  I… I bled out at school the next day.  Hey—at least the hospital fed me.”

Jacky stroked his hair away from his face and he realized it needed to be cut.  It didn’t stop him from rubbing up against Jack’s hand though. 

“Why didn’t they take you away from him then?”  Jack asked, and Teague shrugged.

“Lucky me—the one time I actually ended up in the hospital for something they could prove was abuse, and somebody else did it.”   Teague shrugged.  “It was a long time ago, you two.  I…I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It still hurts,” Katy told him astutely, and he curled into her, knowing Jacky would curl along his back.

“Yeah… yeah it does.  But I’m happy now.  Let’s just… you know.  Be happy now?”  Something was wrong with that, he thought, a little bit puzzled.  That wasn’t something he would have said a month ago.  But a lot had happened in that month.  He’d learned a long time ago that the world changed, and if you wanted to survive, you had to keep up with it. 

“I’m very happy now,” Jacky murmured thickly against his neck.  Teague shifted and turned his head, and was not surprised when Jacky met him in a sweet, hard, deep kiss.

“Me too,” Katy murmured.  Teague closed his eyes between them, and if they looked at each other, had some sort of secret eyeball-to-eyeball conference, he didn’t want to know about it. 

He’d just work on being happy now. 

 

                                                                        Cory

 

                                                            A Fellow Sufferer

 

I worked very hard to be productive that day, but the men weren’t going to let me do much out of bed.  It sort of irritated me, really, considering the fact that Bracken had been the one who was actually bleeding during the fight.  However, Green had stroked his sidhe-pale skin and given Bracken’s neck a sensual kiss, and pronounced Lambent’s work top notch.  Which meant, I guess, that my meltdown trumped Brack’s bullet wound, and don’t think that didn’t piss me off.

The third time I tried to sneak out to at least go see how our captive werewolves were doing, Arturo stopped me at the door and ordered me back inside and back to a sleeping Nicky.  Bracken and Green were taking care of it, he assured me, and I wasn’t doing anybody any good by doubting their abilities.

“It’s not that I doubt their abilities,” I sniffed as Nicky wrapped his arms around me and chuckled, “it’s just that I feel sort of responsible.  I mean, wasn’t I the one who thought this was such a swimming idea?”

“We all did,” Nicky murmured.  “Which means our brains can all simultaneously take a giant crap on occasion.  It’s kind of comforting, really.”

I glared at him.  “You are so weird.”

Nicky shook his rust-colored hair from his eyes and did his best Scar impression.  “You have no idea,” and then he giggled, his freckled cheeks squinching appealingly.  I socked him in the arm and grabbed a paperback book from the end table and immersed myself in the world of Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden.  Goddess, I loved that guy, but I couldn’t imagine how he accomplished everything he did with no sex to fuel his magic.  Or his soul. 

But I conceded to everyone’s wishes, and took a day off.  It felt decadent and fattening, but sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.  I mean, who needs chicken soup for the soul when you’ve got a big chocolate cream pie, right?

Which is how it came to be two in the morning and I couldn’t sleep.  Finally, finally, I managed to sneak away (from Bracken this time, who was sleeping in our bed—Green was back on duty in his own) and knit.  I was still working on Bracken’s Christmas present, and the deadline was getting nearer and nearer. 

So I was there in the living room when Teague came tiptoeing in, wearing the same sort of guilt on his face that I was wearing on mine. 

We met eyes and laughed. 

“Jacky snores,” he said defensively, and I shrugged.

“I’ve got no other reason other than that I needed some space,” I told him mildly.  It takes a while to realize that treating yourself well also includes being by yourself sometimes.  “Want some cookies?”  I gestured to the almost full plate next to me.  Grace had baked up another batch, just for Teague, mostly because I asked her to.  Half the hill had heard that scream last night, and the other half knew about it now.  He might never know that we knew about his pain, but we’d do our damnedest to make sure he never felt it again. 

Teague shrugged as though he hadn’t been staring at the plate with covetous eyes, and took one, then sat down at the opposite end of the couch to eat it.  “How’re the werewolves?” he asked with a full mouth. 

I stood and walked to the refrigerator for a bottle of chocolate milk for him.  “They’re locked in the crazy-vampire room,” I told him, dropping the bottle in front of him and moving the plate of cookies as well.   My stomach was still all porcupiney from that horrible roller-coaster drop of knowing Bracken and Nicky were in danger, Bracken’s wound, and then seeing Teague, locked in a death battle with five other werewolves.  I’d eat cookies later.  I wanted to recoup now.

“That’s it?”  Teague asked, taking a swig of milk.  “You just locked them in a room?”

I shrugged.  “It’s a steel vault with a door a foot thick. We gave them some food and a bedpan.”  And water, milk, soda, some pillows, blankets, a mattress, clean clothes, yadda yadda yadda.  We didn’t want prisoners--we just didn’t want to have to fuck with them when we were closer to killing them in irritation instead of doing something productive.  “Don’t worry—we’ll let them out tomorrow.  Today, I think everybody was just too pissed off to deal with them.  Tomorrow, we’ll do what we planned to do in the first place.”

Teague took another cookie as though he wasn’t aware he as doing it.  “Negotiate?”

I sat back in my couch corner and nodded.  “Damned straight.  Here’s hoping Darwin was right and the smartest survived, you think?”

Teague grimaced, but he smiled a little too. 

I picked up my knitting—I was at the mindless part now, where I just churned out a bunch of tiny, perfect (I hoped) stitches until I got to the waist.  Top-down construction—it had plusses and minuses, like everything else.  We sat in silence for a moment, and then I dared to ask. 

“You going to be okay, Teague?”

He looked away, thinking about the question carefully for a minute.  Then he met my eyes directly, and nodded.  “As long as Jacky doesn’t make any more runs with me, I think I’ll be fine.”

Well, I can’t say I agreed with him, but I can’t say I blamed him, either.  Jacky would survive.  The difficulty was to make sure Teague would too. 

“Good,” is what I said.  “We were worried about you.”

He couldn’t meet my eyes.  “Yeah.  Well.  I guess it was a helluva way to celebrate bad-shit day, right?”

That made me wince.  “I never wanted to pull you into our bad shit.  You have no idea how bad I feel about that.”

Teague shook his head seriously.  “Lady Cory—on your worst day, your bad shit is still some of the best shit to happen to me.  Almost.”

Except for two lovers who would die for him.  Almost indeed.

“Hey—you want to watch something?  We’ve got all seven seasons of Buffy?  All four so far of Supernatural?  Name your show!”

Teague grinned.  I could tell he liked Supernatural.  The tall guy must have reminded him of Jacky.  “Season one, Supernatural?” he asked, and I grinned back. 

“The pilot it is.”

I started the television and sat in the quiet and knit.  Soon I’d slip back into my bedroom with Bracken and nuzzle his perfect body while he slept, but for now, I was happy in my own skin.  Watching Teague wipe out a plate of cookies, I couldn’t help wonder if maybe he was too. 

Ten minutes in, Mario wandered into the living room, looking for cookies.  He and Teague sat on the couch, and the world was quiet for a little while.  Now wasn’t that a change?