19 – Felines and Fiends and Fathers

Troy leaned against the wall of Remington’s clinic, his eyes half shut, his gaze on Blake in the hospital bed in front of him, the same one Graeme had been in for so long. Too late, he realized he was sleeping and it was only a dream of Blake in front of him. Troy levered his eyes open with effort. Wake. UP.

He woke up. Blake lay in the hospital bed in front of him, comatose, like he had been for the last 24 hours. There had been no more earthquakes. He had not had a chance to tell Trevor yet, but he would, soon.

Blake being in a coma had taken Troy’s mind off his mate for the first twelve hours, but now he couldn’t stop thinking about her, he couldn’t stop wondering if he should have gone to Mugshots already, found out her name already, tracked her down already. No, his wolf said, but for the first time in his life, Troy had doubts that his wolf knew all.

Troy heard voices from the other room. He crossed to the door, which was cracked open, and put his back to the wall near it, not needing to see, only needing a clear shot at everyone’s scent.

It was Trevor, Wade, Remington, and about fifty dozen cats. Troy didn’t mind cats so much anymore, in fact, he quite enjoyed Chelsea, but why Remington needed so many of them puzzled Troy.

A lone cat wandered in through the door crack. Troy had seen this cat before. He was mostly white, with a black and orange face.

The cat meowed at Troy, one short meow almost like a bark. Troy pushed at it with his booted foot. It hissed at his boot and dug furrows into it with his wicked little claws, then met Troy’s eyes as if to say, “how dare you, Sir?” Troy grunted at it, wanting it to go away so he could hear what was going on outside. The cat didn’t go away. It sat down on Troy’s boot, then lifted one leg straight in the air and began to groom himself. Troy resisted the urge to boot the cat across the room just to see how it would land. Instead, he toed the cat onto the ground and pushed it away with his boot again.

The cat stood and wound between his legs and boots, purring, but like no purr Troy had ever heard. Something was wrong with whatever the hell made that noise inside him, because the purring sounded sick, like a grizzly bear who thought he was a cat. “That you, cat?” he said. “You a grizzly?” The cat made that noise again. “Grizz,” Troy said nodding his head. “That’s you.”

Movement in the scents of the others made Troy shift his focus back out into Remington’s waiting room. They were coming his way. Remington was speaking.

“He’s stable, but I can’t get him to respond to any sort of stimuli. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I recommend we ship him out to a human hospital for an expert diagnoses, in case it’s completely unrelated to Khain.”

“Where? What hospital?” Trevor demanded.

Troy’s wolf leaned in close. Time to tell.

He’s part foxen, Troy relayed into all their minds, at the same time they reached the door.

Trevor swept into the room eyes wide, coming for Troy, a look on his face that Troy didn’t want to see.

“What, Troy? Say that again,” Trevor said carefully.

“Blake is part foxen,” Troy said.

“And you’ve known this for how long and never told me before why?” Trevor growled, getting right up in Troy’s space. Troy didn’t mind. Trevor was his brother.

“For always, since I first met him, me and Trent both, and because it wasn’t my story to tell.”

Trevor’s lip curled. “Eventine said he died last time when Khain attacked─just fell over dead where he was standing. I’m thinking maybe you should have already told me.” Trevor’s voice was tight, his hands curled into fists, his concern for his friend winding him up. “Blake stays here,” Trevor said in general. Remington threw him a dark look, but did not argue.

Troy didn’t say anything. His wolf was silent and his brother was pissed, and Troy didn’t know who to believe.

His wolf loomed. “Earthquake coming,” Troy said carefully.

Remington only stared, but Wade and Trevor moved quickly to Blake’s bedside, as did Troy. The ground started to roll under their feet, making the house crunch and squeak on the second floor and in the boards below their feet. The three wolves watched the ceiling and stayed close to Blake, ready to protect him if the walls started caving in.

The ground shook one more time, hard, then settled. Blake’s heart beeps stuttered once, twice, making Remington finally get moving to the heart monitor. When the line went wavy, Remington moved fast, running to a wall for a cart, wheeling it in close to Blake, shouting orders, the first one being, “Go find me a bear, right now!”

Troy ran to do it, but Conri was already pushing inside. The two males were an awesome team at the bed, moving like blurs until Remington snatched up the paddles from a real life defibrillator like the kind you would see on TV, and the electric noise whined through the room, making them all cover their ears and Remington actually shouted CLEAR! Then Conri shoved Trevor and Wade back from the bed, since they clearly didn’t know what CLEAR! meant, and Remington shocked Blake right through the heart! Troy jumped at the slamming sound it made, like maybe Remington had thwacked him with a two-by-four in the chest, instead of shocking him with the defibrillator. Blake’s body bent and jumped on the bed. Trevor winced and hovered.

Blake’s body twisted and shifted under the blanket, until his wolf lay in the hospital bed, dark and silent. The leads all dropped off his chest when the hair showed up. Conri dropped his ear to Blake’s fur-covered chest and listened. He nodded. “Started again, sounds strong. Shave him?”

Remington nodded, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Yeah, his entire chest, just in case.”

“I’ll do it!” Troy said. “Just get me a razor.”

***

Grey Deatherage scrambled to his feet in the total darkness of his tiny circular cell in the Pravus. The ground was shaking again. He knew from listening to Rex and Soren as they prowled about and spoke among themselves like thieves and brothers, that the quakes were not limited to the Pravus, they only started there.

Grey pressed toward what felt like the northernmost edge of his cell, laying his cheek against the cool metal. A sound came, like a great, groaning weight being ground across rock, telling Grey that Khain was consuming the angel again.

The angel. Azerbaizan. Grey called him Azer.

Grey wanted to call out to Khain, to scream at him to lay off the angel, but Khain would never trust him if he did. Grey had been in the inescapable cell for what seemed like years, but was probably around four months. He’d been trying to keep a calendar in his mind, but that was the thing about shit in your mind, you never knew if it was right or not.

The groaning sound came louder, the ground shook like they had been upended, and then the echo rolled through his prison. Grey had once overheard Rex tell Soren the echo meant the earthquake had reached the Ula, also known as the real fucking world. Grey was currently in the Pravus, which was Khain’s home, and no one knew if it really existed or not. Grey hated the Pravus like fire. It belched smoke and sulfur constantly and there was no water anywhere, ever and it made him feel pressed flat.

He missed the moon so badly.

Pop! Khain was gone. The air in the Pravus sucked into a vortex, then fell flat. The earthquake intensified for a few long moments, then stopped, only the echo sounding, until it too, died.

Grey slumped onto the floor, feeling his friend’s diminishment. He didn’t bother trying to call out to him. Azer had only spoken to him in his dreams since that first time when Khain had stuffed him into this hellhole.

Azer spoke. The words shone in Grey’s mind like a light. “Whew, that was a bad one.”

Grey whispered into the very air of the enclosure, knowing Azer would be able to hear him. “How much longer can you hold out?”

“That was it. The last time. The next time will break me, but it doesn’t matter, because they are coming to kill me tonight. Khain will try first, if he can’t hold the pendant, Rex will try.”

“Right,” Grey said, thinking furiously, trying to decide how he felt about all of this. Being in a dark hole for months wasn’t good for the thought processes.

“So you have to kill me now. I’ll get the demon to believe it. All you have to do is play your part. If you don’t, he’ll get all my powers, not just the one he thinks he wants.”

Shit, Azer was still on that? “And then what?” he said, unable to keep the animosity out of his voice. “You head over to Rhen’s meadow, take a breather?”

Lights flashed inside Grey’s cell, blinding him. He was a mole, now.

“About that,” Azer said, his voice terrible. “I think it’s time we have this conversation, because yeah, once you kill me, I’m dead for real.”

Grey didn’t speak. Loss filled him, and Azer wasn’t even gone yet, but then Azer launched into one of his patented angel-lectures and Grey didn’t miss him so much anymore. Rhen would be devastated when Azer died, and knowing that made Grey crazier.

“Didn't you think it was a bad idea to mess around with Rhen?” Azer said. “I mean look at you, stealing pendants, killing your own kind, binding young wolfen who have prophecy and influencing them to end their lives. Grey, what is wrong with you? No don't answer that. I know what's wrong with you, you are a simple wolf, a citlali, sure, a powerful one, sure, but still nothing but a wolf, and you're trying to have a relationship with a deae? She scrambled your brain cells. You're over there trying to make plans with a ball of string and two blind kittens rattling around in your head.”

“I love her,” Grey whispered. It was all he could say.

“Yeah, I get that,” Azer said, his voice making Grey weep. “Me too. I’m talking about way back when, before you loved her, back when you still had all your wolfy marbles, back before you crossed that line, back when you were still redeemable, pick your cliché- way back then, didn't some small, tiny, infinitesimal part of you think, ‘This could end poorly, maybe I should start a new a hobby instead’? She didn't force you.”

Grey shook his head, even though no one could see him. “You don't understand. In the beginning, I... I thought I was dreaming, and my dream-self always thought Rhen was sexy as hell, so, who says no to a goddess in a dream? Why would any single wolfen say no to a sexy, powerful female in a dream, goddess or not?” He stopped talking and took a deep breath, gathering the strength to tell the truth. “By the time I knew I wasn't dreaming, I was already in love. My marbles were gone and I hadn't found my blind kittens yet.”

Azer was silent for a long time. Grey thought he'd worn himself out. But then he asked one more question. “Is that what sitting in repose is like? Dreaming?”

Grey considered, but asked his own question “You know what dreaming is like?”

“Of course. All beings dream.”

“Even The Light?”

“Especially the Light.”

Grey could not comprehend that one. “Tell me what dreaming is like for you,” he whispered to his friend. Instead of telling, Azer showed him, but only for a mini-nano-second. A beam like light, but solid, blasted into Grey's being. Grey collapsed on the floor, knowing his brains were leaking out his ears. He floated…

He woke up a few minutes later, knowing everything all at once. Just before he imploded, Azer spoke, and Grey’s reality fell back in on him.

“You know, at the end of this, it's not just the wolves gone, it's Rhen gone, too.”

Grey rolled onto his back and retreated into himself, unable to move, barely able to breathe, fighting hard to get himself back under his own control.

“Hey asshole,” Azer said from Grey’s every cell. “I know you're supposed to be moonstruck and all, just struck dumb by that divine flower, but don't use your condition to ignore reality. Get real with yourself, Grey, before it's too late.”

Grey didn’t say a word. He couldn’t. His head rung like a bell, his body twisted on the ground.

Then Azer said what Grey would die not to know.

“Burton's cavorting with her, too, you know.”

Grey shook his head. No. He wasn't. No.

“He is,” Azer said. “Accept it, he is, and I haven’t seen him kill his own kind.”

Grey finally managed to speak. “Haven't you been paying attention?” he gasped. “Burton chose to let all the females die, to save the one, not that it did him any good.”

Light bobbed in Grey’s enclosure again. Grey ground the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Azer said like he was nodding. “Burton's gone his own kind of kookoo, but he's at least trying to do right.”

Grey pushed himself up into a sitting position. “What's right?” he groaned.

“Not what you’re doing.”

“Oh yeah, and how about you? Sleeping with how many women in order to make sure Rhen's shiften don't die? I never knew you could spell passive aggressive with only the letters A-Z-E-R.”

Azer laughed, chuckled low and deep, but then the laugh cut off abruptly, and Azer said, “Change your mind about your path in life. It’s not too late.”

This time it was Grey’s turn to laugh. “Ah, an angel’s life must be nice for you to be so naive. I’m not redeemable. I’m crazy, remember?”

Azer stiffened and Grey could feel it in his own body. “Heads up, the rest of this won’t be private,” Azer said to him in an undertone. “Be smart.”

Grey nodded into the darkness. He and Azer working together again. It was just like old times. But which choice would he take? The demon or the angel?

The demon, of course, even he know that was all that was left to him.