She’d got away. Vamp protected by her four lycans on the run back to their hidey hole. Weather favored them. I didn’t care. Bitch had half my knife lodged between her ribs and, shit, that felt good.
My arm wasn’t too bad. I ignored it. Did my job as backup battlefield medic. That’s what I’d been, a witch of all trades. And, apparently, what I still was. Master of none.
This was why they had Retrievals teams.
I was all but shoved into the elevator, into the van, into the precinct, into the break room. I guzzled coffee. Some arsehole put milk in it. It was so bad and I didn’t care.
My hands shook. I stood at the sink. Talk, shock, and horror rose and fell around me. I was pummeled by the rise and fall of the breakdowns happening around me, the conversations recounting waves of horror. I rinsed my arm under the tap of the big, communal sink half full of coffee cups and watched the water in them turn pink with my blood. Probably an occupational health and safety concern. But not mine.
My coffee cup was taken, the last of the dregs tipped out. When I glanced up the room lurched. Taig was there, sweat making the tawny hair on his head darker, the greys brighter. His eyes went to my arm and narrowed. But he just went over to the big urn on the wall that kept a police force worth of water hot and filled my cup. Added the coffee powder. Who added powder second? I watched, hypnotized. He came back over. Topped it off with cold.
“You’re good at that,” I said, and the words were a bit slurred. “Coffee. Making coffee.”
“I’m good at a lot of things.” That low, sexy voice or the hormonal roller-coaster made my mind go to all the other things he could be good as he offered me a cup. “Media’s requesting you. Richardson is stalling them.”
“Better keep them stalled,” I said, tiredly. The mug weighed as much as a lycan. Breaking bones. Ice in my veins. I breathed. No way was I functional enough to do much more.
“She will. Had to give ‘em something, though.” He shook his head, his mouth a grim line. “I told them we needed a team.”
I tried out a smile but it felt bitter. “Saying I’m not enough?”
His eyes zeroed in on me and seared me to my soul. “Never.”
My breath caught. My head spun. My heart thudded heavily.
“Come on. We can get basic first aid for that.” For a minute I thought he meant my wild overreaction, but his gaze went to my arm. “Actually, you wait here.”
I didn’t bother to reply. I hadn’t been strong five minutes ago. I was putty now.
Boneless.
The agony was immense. In my head. In my arm. In my ribs. In my knee. In my heart.
I lifted the coffee and some of it spilled down my front because who was coordinated, right? Black was the best for hiding spills. And blood. No one would know.
I walked over to a nearby chair at a table full of discarded cans of soft drink and fell into a chair. My coffee left a brown smear on the tabletop.
The arm injury meant my top needed to come off. But I just sat there, feeling the enormity of the task. I had to get my exhausted, battered arse home. Maybe I should do that first?
The options spun before me. I dug my phone out. The screen was cracked, but it still turned on. Just like me.
Approximately a million notifications pinged. I swiped them away so I could open up messages. Blood, watery from the rinse I’d given myself, fell on the table. More OH and S concerns for someone. Lilith. I needed Lilith. But when I scanned her texts the words just danced meaninglessly in my brain. I tapped reply. Words. Come on.
I could just call a taxi.
She’d skin me for not calling her, but, hey, later problem. Central police precinct, I managed to type. The next bit was harder. I should be polite. Not too…abrupt? Demanding? The only words that came to mind were ‘extraction required’, though.
Taig sat down opposite me. I squinted at him. “Extraction required. What’s that in,” I looked at my phone. “Human talk.”
“Come get me,” he offered, opening the big, bulky case of bullshit Western medical first aid. “Want me to type it?”
I considered the tub. I’d probably used the best of the kit Oma made me on Aspen a few hours ago. Fuck, what a day. “Yeah.”
Fucked if I was going to hospital. Not when I knew what their emergency room looked like right now.
I started working at my belt. He reached over, tapped a few words into the phone, sent the message. “That wasn’t broken this morning, was it?” he asked me. “Your phone.”
My belt fell heavily on the floor. A few people glanced over. I barely noticed. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, it was broken before we went to save the family?”
“Yeah, it was broken this morning, during that.” Why did he have to talk?
“I’ll put it in as an expense.”
I shut my eyes and started working my arm out of the sleeve but had to stop, open my eyes, and pull off my glove. My wand rolled in front of me, freed. “Get me a new top. This one has teeth marks.” I had insurance.
He didn’t say anything, just got out little tubes of salve and the gauze. I managed to get my arm out and didn’t care I was showing some skin, just flopped there while he silently treated the wound. “It’ll need attention,” he told me, when he was done. “That’ll hold you.”
“I like being held,” I said, my mouth working independently of my brain.
“Reckon we all deserve it, after that,” he said, quietly. “You saved a lot of lives.”
Sunlight on my skin. Bones breaking. Blood. Arcing. Pump, pump, pumping in time with his heartbeat.
Brandon.
The vamp could’ve taken her hostage and gotten out of there. Kid would’ve died, sure, but she probably would’ve been the only one. If I’d just let her go, that’s what would’ve happened.
The idea was agony.
Sensible, but agonizing.
My phone rang and I flinched as the noise pierced my sensitive skull. I needed to treat my burns. Elders, I needed my Oma.
“It’s Lilith,” Taig said. “I’m going to get it if you don’t.”
I just nodded and considered trying to get my arm back into the top. It was wet. Too much work. They could all just admire my right breast in my comfiest t-shirt bra. Or Taig’s skill with medical tape. No fucks given.
I didn’t try to turn his words into something that made sense, just wondered, dimly, how close I’d come to melting my brain.
Warmth, on my arm, then scratchy fabric that smelled of sandalwood. I opened my eyes. His shirt, was draped over me. The t-shirt he wore was sweat soaked. I closed my eyes again. Noise was everywhere, hammering at me.
My phone rang. He answered. The words meant nothing. My elbow was taken. I grabbed my wand out of long habit, a fistful of other stuff. There was coffee in my cup, still.
Shit was bad when I left coffee behind.
The sight of that roused me, a little, from my daze. I stood without support, folding the shirt over my body.
A thought occurring to me, I stopped in the hallway. “My belt.”
Taig lifted a hand. My belt dangled from it.
“You’re a gem.”
“I’d be a dead gem without you,” he said, casually, grabbing the door for me. The words smashed into my skull. I breathed through the pain. “Richardson will chase you for your report.”
“No, she won’t. I’ll get it to her before she needs to.” And she’d have plenty of admin to wade through in the short term.
He opened his mouth to say something but I held up a hand, my heart in my throat. Ahead of us in the hallway, the girl I’d ripped, twice, from the clutches of the vampire clung to her mother, with two stony faced officers behind.
“I don’t want to go in by myself,” the girl was saying, her hands white-knuckled on her mother.
“We won’t be long,” one of the officers said, opening the door.
“Can’t we just—” her mother began.
“It’ll be fine, won’t it, Eliza?” the officer said. “Come on, now.”
Taig stepped into my line of sight, his hand under my elbow, and propelled me a different way.
But my heart was left behind, bleeding.
That kid was about to be re-traumatized. I knew it. She knew it. Her mother knew it. Because of…what? Protocols to stop parents coaching kids? I felt sick. She’d been through enough. More than enough. What she’d seen knocked out people working in the field. She was a kid.
“That’s bullshit,” I whispered, horrified to feel tears burning my eyes. “That’s such bullshit. She needs…” I didn’t know what she needed. Fuck, I didn’t know what I needed.
“Yeah, it’s bullshit,” he agreed, grimly. “They do say all cops are bastards.”
I shot him a quick look, disoriented. “What?”
“We aren’t,” he went on, still quietly. “But our system, and what we stand for. It makes us act like it. And, as you know, plenty are very comfortable with that.” He dropped his shoulder to open a door. “Lilith’s out here. Keep your head down, you should get out without anyone noticing.”
Still disoriented I followed him out the door and into the sunlight. In the reception area, a camera crew and news anchor waited, with another few out on the footpath. My mouth went dry. Lilith fell in beside us, putting herself between the cameras and me.
I wanted to cry. Forever.
Lilith said nothing, just unlocked her car and went to open the door for me. “I got it,” Taig told her. “Get her out of here. They don’t have her face. Yet.” And he reached out to open the passenger door.
The world was spinning. Breaking. He was reaching for me. And it felt so good. So natural. I reached back and fitted into his arms.
His embrace was a little awkward. “Sorry. Was just…your belt. I was just putting it down. Had to, ah, reach around you.”
I heard my breath shake. “Then put it down.” A solid thunk from the car door shutting as Lilith climbed in. But his arms settled, firmer, around me, unhurried. I was hugged. The afternoon sunlight. That was why I was shaking. “It was you. With the silver bullets.”
“We all had them.”
He didn’t deny it, though. I’d put money on the fact that he’d had them loaded when they were needed. And I hated it. I hated lycans.
Some lycans.
“Get home, Rory,” he murmured, easing back. “Rest. Call me, if you want. I’ll be around.”
I didn’t have a choice—I almost collapsed into the car. “She pulled out all the stops,” he said, leaning in slightly with a hand braced on the roof of the car, his words directed at Lilith. They hurt my head. I just sat back and fumbled with the seatbelt. “It cost her. You okay with the aftermath?”
“Yeah,” Lilith said. “Thanks, O’Malley. Just her arm?”
“There’ll be more,” he said, the words matter-of-fact as he straightened. “But she’s in shock.”
“Fuck you,” I muttered, and was humiliated to hear tears in my voice. “I’m right here. My head hurts. I fucking hate lycans.”
Lilith’s brows rose as she started the car. “First time you mentioned it.”
“Shut up, witch.” It was a plea. I cringed as Taig closed the door, rapped twice on the roof. Why did people do that? And his shirt smelled like gunpowder and fear. But holding him felt good all the same. I curled up, put my hands over my tender ears. The charms had to come out. I hadn’t looked at the damage and I didn’t want to. Maybe I’d just call Dad. Oma. They’d bail me out.
Aspen was asleep on my couch when I got home. My broken window had cardboard stuck over it, but the debris was gone. “I took photos,” Lilith told me as I looked around dully. “For insurance.”
I didn’t even care. “You’re amazing,” I managed, somehow.
“Yeah, that’s me. Shower, or bed?”
My head swam. “Bed. I need healing. Later.”
She walked with me. “I can get Bernie. She can do it while you sleep.”
The thought made my skin crawl. It also made sense. Less time spent in recovery. “Dierdre?”
“Totally fine. Amor’s in the wind. Aspen’s got a mean streak, doesn’t she?”
I struggled to follow. “What?”
“She ripped into Clint.”
Tension ebbed away. I could imagine Aspen giving Clint the sharp side of her well-honed tongue. Falling down onto the bed made pain lance through me. I didn’t hear what Lilith said. How did my jaw hurt? My teeth?
“...your love potion,” Lilith was saying, the words calm as she tossed my shoes aside.
Love potion. I was loved up. “I don’t feel love drunk.”.
“Maybe you’re just not into me?” she asked, teasingly.
I opened one eye. “Sorry, but I’m straight. Proof sexuality isn’t a choice,” I added, curling up in my doona. “Bernie.”
She said something half amused and half exasperated. I listened to the rise and fall of her voice, content. The sound of my wand being set beside my bed was reassuring. Trust Lilith to know.
The pain was there, a huge, snarling beast. But I couldn’t quite get up to take anything for it. When Bernie arrived, smelling like vodka and lollies, I felt her magick with relief.
It beat the afternoon sunlight.
Lilith stayed with me until I was on my feet. Aspen stayed longer, eating junk food and binging our favorite shows from when we were teenagers, talking about happier yesterdays.
By the time she left, I was more than ready for my own space. I’d only just waved her off when my phone rang with an unknown number.
I eyed it off warily as I brushed some nacho dust off my hands from the plate I’d been stacking into the dishwasher and answered with a cautious, “Rory.”
“Hey. It’s Zane.”
My heart did a slow roll and I wondered if he could hear it through the phone. Zane meant Beo. “Hi, Zane.” Was Beo okay? The words crowded my mouth, suffocating me.
“I’ve got a few boxes of your stuff here,” he said, the words hesitant. “I, ah. Can’t fit them on my bike, or I’d offer to drop them off. And I don’t have anyone to help me carry them.”
I tried to sort through all of that and somehow breathe. “Aren’t you in New South Wales?”
“No. I’m staying. Keeping the territory.” He sounded a little puzzled. “Didn’t you… get the transfer info?”
I hadn’t. I could’ve looked, but I hadn’t bothered. “Why didn’t you go?” Then it clicked. “You’re defending the rift.”
I could almost see him shuffling his huge feet. “I, ah.”
“Alone, Zane?” I demanded, horrified. I knew the shit that came through those rifts. “Really?”
“I’ve applied to foster some young lycans,” he offered, sounding for all the world like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I’m Alpha, now.”
I closed my eyes on the bombsite that was my kitchen.
Beo was gone.
But Zane wasn’t. The world kept turning. I had a job to do, and he was one of mine.
“Look, I’m not working right now,” I said, my brain slowly ticking. “I can’t monitor the situation myself. But you’ve got my number.” And that meant Beo had given it to him, rather than deal with me directly.
Fucking coward.
My heart broke.
“Yeah, well,” he cleared his throat. “I’ve got some friends helping out, you know?” I didn’t, but the less I knew, the less I’d have to lie about later. “Anyway. Um. Couple boxes. They’re totally fine at my place for now, but if I get approved to foster…”
His apartment wasn’t tiny, but it didn’t have a lot of extra space. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll come get it.” I couldn’t call Aspen, even if she was twenty minutes away. Not to go get my stuff from a lycan. My car was depreciating in dad’s garage, a good two and a half hours to the west in Ballarat. “I’ll see what I can do, but I don’t have wheels. I’ll call you.”
“Yeah. Sure. No worries. No rush, like I said.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry, Rory. About…”
I waited for the swell of rage, but I just felt hollow. “It’s fine.” It’d be fine. “I’ll call you, okay? Set up a time.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He was quiet for a moment, then, “I’m free until six, anyway. I’m taking the classes, now.”
Hellfire, the guy was basically stepping into Beo’s life. Had he always lived in his shadow? Or was it some sort of sad hero worship? “I’ll do what I can. How many boxes are we talking?”
“One big one. Two smaller ones.”
How in the ever-loving fuck had I left that much shit there? “Okay.” Definitely not a tram job. “I’ll, um. I’ll try to organize something.”
Lilith had wheels and no trauma involving lycans. I hung up and reached mechanically for the stack of plates I’d been loading into the dishwasher. Lilith would be working. She’d also be happy to help out. And, fuck.
Fuck.
I took a breath. First, dishes. My head still ached but I had to follow up with Arthur, see when I could get back to work. Thrice cursed Clint had slowed me down long enough.
Lilith was as willing to help as I’d known she would be. I paid for her to fill her tank on the way, ignoring her protests. What else could I possibly do to acknowledge the fact she shuffled her work day around me without a second thought? I didn’t deserve her. Or maybe she didn’t deserve me.
The boxes weren’t too heavy. They fit into the back of her sedan, crushing a velvet jacket she didn’t seem concerned about. Zane carried them, then stood, a big, blonde lump with his hands in his pockets, looking uncharacteristically awkward. I waved goodbye, went to get in the car, and didn’t talk shop.
Then couldn’t. Just couldn’t.
He was still mine.
I climbed back out of the car idling illegally behind someone else’s carefully parked ute and walked back to him, reaching out for a hug.
Strong arms folded me in his chest in a way that was so familiar it was almost the same.
But he wasn’t Beo.
“I’ve got your back still,” I promised, into his chest. “You aren’t alone. Okay?”
He held me tighter. My ribs creaked and tears burned my eyes. I didn’t let them fall. “He couldn’t bring them down on you, Rory. He couldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you both.” I had no rage and no buffer, so I just held on as he let out a long, unsteady breath. He eased back before I was ready, but I forced myself to let him go. It felt like ripping off a bandage. “Thanks, Rory. For being here. For being you.”
Shit, it felt big. More than just a changing of the guard. And my heart hurt. “Call me. Promise.”
“Yeah.” He touched his forehead to mine. “You’re a good witch.”
Good was subjective. The sunlight felt more like afternoon than morning despite the time of day and I hurt. My bones hurt. “You’re okay, yourself.” I stepped back, gave his giant arm a bit of a rub. “See you soon, Zane.” He nodded and swallowed. “And wear your damn helmet,” I added, just to lighten things.
His smile didn’t ease the hurt. I turned, blinking the sun from my eyes, and jogged back to the car.
A few weeks ago, I’d defended his pack right here on this street. They’d replaced the broken signs and swept up the shattered glass. Buildings around were in various stages of repair, with windows still boarded up, walls still sporting cracks, fences still flattened. But there was no blood on the road when Lilith merged into the traffic and turned us homeward.
She put on a pair of sunglasses against the glare of the light on wet bitumen. “You okay?” she asked me.
“Yeah.” I was totally fine. “I mean, it isn’t like I’ve just, you know, been put on admin leave for doing my job.”
Her brows gave a sarcastic little quirk and she shook her head. “Yeah, that happened.”
“Not like I cut a woman’s throat, what, a week ago?”
She turned down the music. “Six days. Does she count as a woman if she’s possessed?”
I remembered her hair in my hands and the way I’d tipped back her throat. Deirdre had been hiding in the shower. I remembered the texture of the carpet, the generic painting smashed behind her. “She was a woman,” I said quietly. “Probably just like us.” I picked at a hangnail. Line of duty. Whatever. Shit, it wasn’t the first time. Blood, pooling. Bones, breaking. “And I got my arse kicked by a vamp three days ago.”
“Pretty sure it was the lycan pack,” she offered, warily.
“Who were there because of the vamp,” I shot back. “Who just mauled their way through all those fucking cops like they were paper cutouts.”
“Rory,” she said, doing a quick head check before merging, “you did the best you could.”
“Yeah, and that kid. Being dragged off.” I tried to breathe. The grief. Fuck, the grief. “I don’t know. I don’t know if the other wizards in power are all vamped. I don’t know if the faeries are in it to win it too. I don’t know if Amor is right now on Dierdre’s door, and I’ve got a box of shit I didn’t know I’d even left at a bloke’s place I’ll probably never see again and I,” I sucked in air, put my hands to my face. Tears. Burning, scorching. “I’m a fraud, Lilith. He knew it.” And the horrible, sick truth of it was agony. The words were so quiet—broken. I didn’t recognize them. I didn’t recognize myself.
Her hand rested on my thigh. “He was scared.”
“He was a coward.” But the words were a sobbed plea for validation. And a lie. “Oh, shit, Lilith.” And I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t. Around the pain. The tears. “He said.” Air. Agony. “And. And I.”
Her hand squeezed on my thigh. The car stopped. I didn’t see. Couldn’t. Anything. “Come here, witch,” she said, kindly, and I just fell into her arms. Just wept. All the grief. All the loss. It was too much.
She rocked us. The gearstick drove into my hip and reminded me of him. Of Beo. Of when he’d held me, of how he’d been so undemanding and kind. She smoothed my hair and held me close. I was caught in the flood, lost in the flow of Melbourne traffic inside the bubble of Lilith’s friendship. The grief was ripped out, but it was a bottomless well.
My bones were broken.
She passed me tissues and flipped off someone who lent on their horn, I think. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t tell her. What it all meant. How it all was some sort of huge force inside me I couldn’t control. Couldn’t ride.
I was drowning. But a small part of me knew we wouldn’t go under if I could just hold on to her.