Cole herded me into our room before Wu got a chance to say goodnight or ask for a clean towel to go with the shower he’d mentioned. As my heels scraped over the threshold, and I thought about him showering, I wondered how he would fit. After seeing him with wings as a natural extension of his body, I had trouble picturing him without them, but it was silly. He would just tuck them into whatever dimensional pocket or whateveryoucallit and that would be that. I could have let it go then except . . . “I have to go check on Wu.”
“He’s fine,” Cole assured me. “You saw him two seconds ago.”
Guilt sparked from his jealousy made me squirm. Having been a green-eyed monster earlier myself, maybe I should have relished paying him back, but I didn’t. He deserved better than tit for tat over each little hurt accidentally inflicted while we figured each other out. Retaliation was purposeful, after all, and I wanted a relationship, not a scoreboard.
“We got sliced up making our escape.” I held up my hands and clocked his grimace when it hit him one of us had to cut the glass from under my palms. My skin had grown over it during the flight. “He took the worst damage on his chest and stomach. He might be able to swing it solo, but we ought to offer anyway.”
“There’s a first aid kit under the bed.” Cole made no move to help me locate it. “I’ll shower while you examine him.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with?” I retrieved the medical supplies and dusted off the box, its seal intact. With Thom around, who needed mundane gauze, tape, and antibiotic ointment? “You could hold the flashlight for me.”
“I can’t be there when you touch him skin to skin.” A fine tremor rippled over him, the dragon gnashing its teeth. “I will tend to you when you return.”
Prolonged contact with Cole at the low, low price of him using a scalpel and tweezers to remove shards of pesky glass. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”
On my way to Thom’s room, I stopped by the kitchen and lifted an icy bottle of water. Maybe the cold would help numb him for what came next. With my hands full, I had to knock on the door with my foot. Wu opened on the third kick, sans feathers, and wasn’t that a pity. I would have loved to inspect them closer. Except that kind of touching might convince the dragon across the way to eat hot wings for dinner.
“We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes to do this before Cole gets out of his shower.” I held up my supplies then jerked my chin in the direction of the wrought iron patio set. Holing up in a bedroom with Wu was asking for trouble, but I fudged on my reason for the location switch. “This might get messy, so we’ll do it outside.”
Though, now that I thought about it, Thom thought Wu smelled delicious. He might not mind having avian-scented blood in his room. Maybe Cole had come to the same conclusion. Or maybe he picked Thom’s room because it opened onto the back of the house and was as far as he could put Wu and still claim him as a guest.
“Sit.” I would have a bruise tomorrow from using my hip to bump out a chair for him. “Holler if it hurts.”
“I don’t holler.” He did perch on the edge of the seat and lean back. “I’m surprised your leash stretches this long with a boulder like Cole tied to the other end.”
Feminine as always, I snorted. “I call him Mount Heaton. In my head.” I shoved his shoulder. “Let’s keep that between us.”
The idea of a secret lent his voice warmth. “Thank you for caring for me.”
Words shouldn’t carry such weight, but these did, and I wasn’t convinced he meant me playing nurse.
Undercurrents swirled and eddied between us, but I was too smart to wade into the deeps. I already had my feet wet with Cole. Whatever Wu meant, I would rather keep ignoring the implications. I was good at that and getting better all the time. Before long, someone would owe me a trophy.
“You’re welcome.” I cracked open the kit and performed a quick inventory. “Besides, you can’t blame it all on Cole. My fuse is shorter than Portia’s attention span when Santiago opens his mouth these days.”
“You’re learning to control your instincts. They’re new to you. Cole has had lifetimes to master his.”
Despite Wu viewing Cole’s behavior as adolescent, it cheered me. I liked drawing out his possessive instincts. Even now, when I owed him a scolding for endangering himself, I wouldn’t push him away again. I’d used up all my self-control the first time I tried to send him packing.
“Hold still.” I pulled out my phone and used it as a flashlight. “Stop clenching.” I smoothed my hand down the valley between his pectorals then lower, over his abs, and he shivered under my questing fingers. “The worst pocket seems to be here. Your skin has grown over the glass. I’m going to have to cut it out. Is that okay?”
“You can’t hurt me.”
“Wu, I don’t care who or what you are, some rules still apply. When someone cuts you open and digs around in the wound, it hurts.”
“All right.” His soft chuckle ceded the point. “I should have said—I can bear it.”
“I’m still sorry it has to be done.” I worried about the angle. It wasn’t great, even with him leaning back and me wedged between his thighs. On second thought, maybe the last part was what gave me the twitches. “Can I convince you to stretch out on the pier?”
“You’re the doctor,” he teased, sounding too pleased by half considering what I was about to do. “Perhaps I might suggest you straddle my hips to give yourself the best access.” He sank to his knees, then lowered himself onto the treated planks. Each of them scarred by claws and teeth. He crossed his feet at the ankles and rested his head on his linked hands. “I would suggest you straddle my face but—”
Crack.
The scent of blood hit me first, a testament to my heightening senses. Crimson smeared Wu’s face, weeping from the gash opened on his cheek and across his upper lip. At my feet, Cole’s tail writhed against the wood. I couldn’t see the dragon, but it was plain he could see and hear us just fine.
Taking my life in my hands, I stepped on his tail. “You’re supposed to be in the shower.”
An unapologetic rumble came from around the side of the house, in the direction of the bathroom.
The anger spilled out of me the second he wrapped his tail around my ankle. Just once. That’s all he could reach. I simply had no defense against him.
“I am such a sucker,” I murmured. “That doesn’t change the fact I need to treat Wu so he can shower. Hurry up, and don’t use all the hot water.”
The dragon growled uncomplimentary things under his breath but didn’t let go.
“I’ll make you a deal.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, my gut tying itself in knots in preparation for what came next. “I’ll let you take me flying if you do this one thing for me.”
A pleased hum, almost a purr, vibrated through his grip on me, and then he withdrew.
I stood there, hands on my hips, until the shower kicked on. It got me wondering if the flying thing hadn’t been the problem the whole time. Other men getting me airborne must be yet another no-no in his book.
Boys and their wing-measuring contests.
Standing over Wu, I nudged him with my foot. “You knew he was listening.”
“Yes.” His smile flashed pink teeth. “I did.”
That right there was the reason why I couldn’t take the heated looks he shot me too seriously. The man was a pot-stirrer, and I didn’t want him sticking his spoon in me just to piss off Cole.
“Males make me tired.” I sank to my knees and set to work, allowing a touch of soothing ice to rise enough to dull the edge of discomfort that resulted from knowing I was about to hack away at another person. I had promised the coterie to try and limit the old crutch, but it was reflexive. I wasn’t convinced I could quit cold turkey even if I wanted to attempt life unanaesthetized. “What would you have done if I hadn’t offered to do this?”
“The healing process would have pushed the glass out of my skin.” He twitched his shoulders. “Eventually.”
I uncapped the water and poured half over his chest to rinse away the crusted blood. “Bet that itches like crazy.”
He hesitated a moment. “It does.”
An itch was easier to admit to than pain. Gotcha.
“I’m going to focus on the big pieces. I see maybe seven that need to come out. Can you handle that?”
“You’re the one who’s procrastinating.”
Blanketed in the cold, I fell into an easy rhythm. I drifted a bit, aware but unaware, and I appreciated the buffer between me and the blood slicking my fingertips. It reminded me too much of Uncle Harold and how I had made him bleed too.
“Your scent changed,” Wu observed. “And now it’s altering again. Are you with me, Luce?”
“Where else would I be?” The fading tendrils of crystalline focus thawed, and I blinked first at the precise cuts and then at the handful of shards stacked in a neat pile. “Looks like we’re all done.” I poured the remaining water over his chest and down his abs. “There are tiny lumps, but if you’re sure you can eject those on your own, I need to go see a dragon about a rollercoaster ride.”
Wu pushed up into a sitting position while I cleaned up the mess. After testing his skin with his fingertips, he smiled at me. “That feels much better.”
“Glad to be of assistance.” And I was. He had saved my bacon. Granted, he had convinced me to throw my bacon out a third-story window first, but still. “See you in the morning. There’s got to be some remote work we can get done. We’ll be at each other’s throats if we don’t find some way to keep ourselves occupied.”
The thoughtful sound he made low in his throat almost convinced me he was about to say something inappropriate. I waited for it, ready to hear the punchline, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
Ah well. Maybe I had been projecting. Dirty jokes were Rixton’s wheelhouse, and he was irreplaceable. No one else had his sense of humor, so it’s not like Wu was the only one who couldn’t compare.
Wu’s sense of humor was of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety. Very dry. Sahara Desertesque. But I was learning to appreciate both his wit and his deft hand at hiding it behind a blank expression. Subtle. That’s what he was, when Rixton had always been more of a sledgehammer to the face.
“Santiago must have equipment we can borrow.” Wu stood and helped me put away the kit under the kitchen sink then tossed the trash. “With his help, we might be able to surveille the hospital. The news will give us an idea of what humans think is happening, but we need to discover the truth.”
“This is really our job?” I scratched at my palm, which was beginning to itch. “We cover up charun activity so humans don’t become suspicious?”
“We investigate charun activity so that we grasp its undercurrents. We must be informed, and that goes double during an ascension.” He scratched his jaw, annoyed when his nails encountered scruff. “Our reports determine the scope of what is required to insulate charun from exposure. Our work determines if there will be casualties and how many.” He let that sink in. “You’re in the place where you can do the most good.”
“Hunting my sisters does the most good.” I rinsed my hands one last time. “This is cleaning up the aftermath.”
“How bloodthirsty of you.” His eyes glinted in feral appreciation. “This is how the game is won. We must unmask all the players before we can determine their strategies and build our own.”
“I know, I know.”
Rixton taught me through example that being a good cop—a good detective—was ninety percent drudgework. These days, people left behind cyber trails rather than fingerprints. Following the breadcrumbs was a desk job. It was tedious and not at all what I signed up for, but there was no stopping progress, and we were making progress.
We were getting a bead on Death through tracking the corpses and those infected by them. Famine was behind bars. War was the only free agent, and Santiago had been hot on her heels even before Sariah joined us.
I patted my tender hands dry. “It’s just frustrating.”
“This is your first ascension, in a way,” he mused. “I forget that.”
“You want to forget.” He wasn’t getting off the hook that easy. “You want me to be Conquest.”
“No.” He turned to leave then stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “I want you to be more, better.”
I watched him go then cracked open a bottle of water and went in search of Cole. I didn’t have to go far.
“He’s right,” Cole said from where he leaned against the wall outside the kitchen. “Your scent changes when you go cold.”
“Let’s pretend you didn’t mention my scent again. I’m honestly developing a complex.” I offered him the bottle, and he took a long draw. “What makes you think I go cold?”
The coterie noticed when I slipped away, but I couldn’t recall ever explaining the sensation to them.
“You shut down your emotions, your expression. You’re a blank page and then someone else fills it.”
“You mean Conquest.” I waved off the water when he offered it back, unable to swallow past the lump in my throat. It’s not like I hadn’t figured that part out on my own. The calm wasn’t like a hit from a drug, it wasn’t physical. It was mental, sliding into a mindset with such vast experience that I drew upon that knowledge when I smashed into the boundaries that made me Luce. “You can scent her? On me?”
That must be what Wu meant when he claimed it was a partial shift.
“Only then, and only a little.”
A shiver raced down my spine that reminded me of one of Aunt Nancy’s old sayings. “Someone just walked over my grave.”
“You’re changing.” He polished off the water. “It’s to be expected.”
“I don’t want to change,” I admitted, “but I understand I have no choice.”
“You could stand with your sisters. You could refuse to take a stand at all. You could have locked yourself away after meeting us.” He sounded proud. “You chose to stand and fight. You chose to sacrifice a part of yourself to protect what you believe in.”
“I worry that the stronger these . . . urges . . . become, the harder it will be to ignore them, to stay me.”
“Wu wasn’t wrong when he said that all charun must learn to curb their appetites, especially when they’re inhabiting a terrene that’s not their own. The struggle eases, but the urges, as you call them—” he swept his gaze over me, “—they never go away.”
“So basically ‘Buck up, Buttercup?’” I exhaled on a laugh. “If charun toddlers can do it, then surely I can too. I’m a tad older than most of my classmates, but maybe I can blame a growth spurt for being the tallest kid in the room.”
Cole belted out a laugh that had me grinning in response. He was probably laughing at me and not with me, but I couldn’t resist him when tiny pockets of his soul exposed themselves. Or any other time, if I was being honest.
Maybe he was picturing baby dragons towering over me, gumming me to death in preparation for the day they sprouted steak-knife teeth. Unless they were born with teeth like other reptiles. Not that I had ever asked if Cole identified as reptilian. I figured it rated up there with questioning a charun about their true form.
Revising my mental picture of that imaginary first day of school, I winced as things got a lot bloodier a lot quicker than when I pretended they shared mammalian traits.
As his amusement waned, Cole gazed out on the horizon. “Lorelei is Convallarian.”
So was he.
A bitter taste flooded my mouth, and I couldn’t tell if it was a more intense form of jealousy because she shared biology with him, a home, a culture, or if it was a ragged form of grief that in recognizing those things, I had to accept the hand I had in destroying them. “Did you know one another before?”
“No.” His dipped his chin. “Her mother came through with the cadre during the last ascension. She barely escaped with her life. Lorelei was born here. She’s never seen Convallaria.”
“How did you find one another?” The NSB’s program made it easier for charun from the same terrenes to hook up, but Cole had avoided their facilities. “Is she registered?”
“No, she’s not.”
The strained note in his voice had me searching his expression. When I understood, I wished that I didn’t, that I could take it back, but the knowledge was mine to own now.
“She’s unmated.” The way his throat worked when he swallowed was all the confirmation I required. “She’s off the NSB’s radar, so that means she’s able to reproduce.” And he was male and also fertile. “She approached you. She wanted to mate with you.”
“She wanted a child from me,” he clarified. “She’s married to a demi of another species. They’re incompatible that way. They can’t have children.”
An icepick buried itself in my temple. That’s how it felt. And through the hole leaked . . . memories?
“Atru, Atru,” a breathless voice calls. “Atru, Atru, Atru.”
Hidden behind the planter, sheltered by its crown of fronds, I watch the small predator flare her nostrils as she homes in on her prey. Her head jerks toward me, crimson eyes as vivid as spilled blood, and she smiles.
She will make a glorious huntress one day.
“Atru,” she cries in triumph, toddling up to me. Her pudgy hands fist in my skirt. “Atru.”
“Luce,” Cole roared in my face. “Luce.”
“Give her air,” Wu ordered. “She can’t breathe.”
“She’s convulsing,” Cole thundered. “That’s why she can’t breathe.”
“What did you say to her?” Wu’s voice was a blade. “What did you do?”
He had no satisfactory answer for that, and his quiet pain ripped me back into the present.
“I saw her,” I sobbed. “I saw her.”
Gathering me in his arms, Cole pressed his lips to my ear and exhaled liquid syllables that splintered my heart into shards that wedged deep, that cut true.
“Forgive me,” Wu breathed low. “You must sleep now, Luce.”
Warmth spilled through me where his fingers brushed my forehead, and I ceased to exist.