Chapter Twenty-Two – Kris

 

“I made coffee,” I called back over my shoulder from inside the wing of the warehouse Hunter had converted into his greenhouse. He’d just gotten out of the shower, and I could hear him padding around in bare feet. “Gonna need it, too. Four hours of sleep is enough to bring down any man. Or dragon.”

A mumbled “thanks” came from deep within the house as I turned my eyes to the fallen, desiccated, and decaying plants around me. In the greenhouse, which was the size of a large classroom, a sense of demise seemed to blanket everything. I could hardly tell what ninety-nine percent of this stuff was. Some varietals had dried up like flowers in the desert, while others had slumped down into their water trays and begun to rot.

I took a sip of my coffee. Wondered if I’d done the right thing, tried to reason I had.

Col. Harrington had always said some secrets were necessary. That the world would panic if it knew about supernatural creatures. That there’d be riots in the streets, that organized religion would lose control over people’s emotions and morals. That democracy would crumble as some of the creatures came forward to take their political rights and interests more seriously. That the less powerful ones, like the shifters at FMS, would be persecuted for what they were.

That people, in the end, would just fear them. Fear us. And there’d be pushes for extermination, regardless of our moral and ethical fiber. It wouldn’t matter if we’d never fed on humans, if we were just plain old working Joes, the way most shifters and other fantastical creatures were.

But were all my secrets necessary?

Didn’t Hunter have a right to Col. Harrington’s file? After all, the deal had been for us to find it together, after he’d helped me locate my old CO.

Didn’t some secrets do more harm than good?

I listened as the other dragonkin padded his way from the bedroom into the kitchen, what sounded like slippers on his feet muffling his steps. The sound of him pulling a coffee mug down, pouring black liquid from his French press. Because, of course he had a French press. No drip coffee for Mr. Jackson. I’d been up for the last thirty minutes or so, and had spent most of that time trying to find everything I needed to make coffee.

I took a deep breath, girded my loins, and turned to head back in. I ducked beneath the long, trailing tendrils of the dried up plants, down the rows with dead and dying vegetation to either side.

The stool at the kitchen bar being pulled across the hardwood floor, its feet scraping over the surface like some sort of eldritch creature of horror.

He’d found the file I’d left for him. Not just any file, either. But the file. Even now, he was probably flipping it open and reading through it, his eyes narrowing in anger as he realized I had had it the whole time. Maybe in his mind, I’d had it for this whole last year. Or maybe Harrington had just given it to me.

Either way, I hadn’t turned it over to him like I’d promised.

My heart’s beat increased. I walked down the hall towards the kitchen, the cup of coffee still warm, but not hot, in my clammy hand. I walked down the hall, past the paintings hanging on the wall, and the blurry flowers seemed to follow me as if I were the sun. Impressionists, all of them. Not as famous as Monet, and I certainly couldn’t pick any out off the top of my head, but I could tell from the color choices and subject matter.

I turned into the kitchen, my eyes down as I went for the coffee. Hunter was there, but I couldn’t look at him in his skin-tight undershirt, sculpted over his defined shoulders and pecs. Not directly, at least, while he was going over the file. All I could see was a peripheral of him.

Boyfriend vision is what I called it, the kind of checking out your surroundings you do while out with a significant other and an attractive person walks by. You don’t want to give them your full attention, in case you get caught, but you still want to see how good they look.

Behind me, the ruffle of pages flipping.

Still half a carafe left. I poured myself a touch more, just enough to warm the dregs already filling my mug. I carefully set it aside, my back still to the other dragonkin, and took a sip.

“How long have you had it?” Hunter asked the back of my head, a steel edge to his voice. Even with my back to him, his eyes felt like diamond-tipped safe drills boring into the back of me. “This whole fucking time?”

My mouth was dry, my lips numb. I shook my head, still unable to turn around. “No, not that long. Think I could do that to you?”

“Well, clearly you could do it for at least part of the time.”

I sighed, nodding. “Yeah, guess you’re right.”

“Since Alaska? Since the base?”

“Col. Harrington…he gave it to me when I left. Said I’d know best what to do with it.”

“And so, what?” Hunter asked, his voice rising a little. “You fucking sat on it for two days, rather than hand it over?” When I didn’t respond, he slammed his fist down into the phonebook-sized dossier.

I didn’t cringe. I didn’t react. It was going to take more than rage from him to do that. Not that his rage wasn’t well-placed. I’d be fucking pissed, too.

“Look at me, dammit! Why didn’t you tell me?”

I checked my breathing as, slowly, I turned to face him.

His face was as red as a tomato, his eyes as narrow as the sheets of paper he’d just been flipping through. His brow was so furrowed, so close together, you’d have been forgiven for thinking he had a unibrow. But somehow, even during three months of imprisonment, he’d managed to keep his eyebrows well-groomed.

I sighed, shook my head. “I fucked up. I really, truly, genuinely fucked up. Just, take the file. Go.”

“This is my house,” he said, leaning back and crossing his arms, the anger still plain on his face. “You should really be the one going.”

I sighed, rolling my eyes. “I mean, you don’t have to come to work today, or ever again. You’re off the hook; I can figure all this out on my own.”

“I’m leaving,” he spat. “You know that, right?”

“Fair enough,” I replied. Not wanting to take a step towards him, not for fear of him, but out of respect for his need for space, I turned and put my coffee mug in the sink beside me. I turned and headed into the living room, feeling Hunter’s eyes on me the whole time. I gathered up my backpack, slung it over my shoulder. I’d just change at the office when I got in. Who cared if they gave me crazy looks?

After all, I was going to be gone soon, too.

I stopped just as I was about to leave, and swung back around.

He was leaned back down over his file, both hands on his head as he read through his laundry list of criminal deeds.

I reached into my pocket as I walked up behind him, saying, “One last thing.” I put the bullet, an unspent one I’d pulled from a magazine of one of the men I’d killed the night before, down on the counter next to him.

“What’s that?” he asked, that snide edge still to his voice. “A reminder or something?”

“No,” I said, my voice quiet and as unthreatening as possible. “Nothing like that. It’s one of the bullets from the hitters last night. Notice anything different about it?”

“It’s not silver.”

“Look closer,” I said, my finger rubbing over the little St. George rune inscribed near the tip.

He leaned down to do as I instructed, and his breath caught in his throat. “You can’t be serious…”

“Deadly. I think it’s better if you got out of town, Hunter. They came for me, but they may be here next.”

A distant look entered his eyes. “Back when we first went into the bunker, do you remember what Harrington said? That his men had bullets that could slay dragons?”

I shook my head at the implication and his unspoken accusation. “He may have been talking about the same thing, but if you’re implying it was him, I think you’re wrong.”

“What makes you say that?”

I shrugged. “If it was the colonel’s men, we’d have been dead. You know that. Those guys weren’t amateurs, but they weren’t acceptable by the colonel’s standards.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment, his eyes distant. The rage at my betrayal seemed, at least for the moment, replaced by his curiosity about who’d taken a swing at me last night. “Who, then?”

My lips pressed into a thin line, and I shook my head. “I don’t know. All the big organizations, we smacked down while we were with the PRB. And why would foreign governments want to get involved with me, now? I’ve been out of the game for a couple years already. Longer, if you don’t count my time with the PRB running strictly paranormal ops.”

“There must be someone out there who wants you dead.”

“Come on, Hunter, I’ve been gone nearly two decades. And, besides, you’re forgetting: those older organizations didn’t even know what I really was. I was just an agent to them, no need to send out the dragonslayers to tilt with the maiden.”

“So,” he said slowly, letting the words hang for a moment in the air between us, “why are you really showing me this?”

“No more reason than what I already said. I want you to leave town.” I paused. “Look, I didn’t say thank you for last night. If you hadn’t come in when you did, I’d have been fucked.”

“A fruit basket would’ve done. Or a good bottle of scotch.”

My lip twitched a little, and I shook my head. “That’s beside the point. If those guys had come for you, do you think you could have done anything about it?”

He didn’t respond, just turned back to the file.

In spite of our earlier argument, I risked putting a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have my training, Hunter. You’re not combat personnel.”

“So that’s why you want me to leave? Is that why you gave me the file?”

I nodded at first, but then shook my head, before nodding again. “Kind of. Well, no.” I shook my head again as I took a step closer, my hand still on his shoulder. “Look, it’s complicated, all right? I just don’t want you hurt. I can’t bear the thought of it.”

He turned back to me, an uncertain look on his face. Not quite rage, just more like confusion. He waved a hand to the file. “Do you have any idea what irks me the most about this file? It’s barely half of what I actually accomplished during my career. To think, he was only blackmailing me with half the information.”

“Maybe he was trying to conserve the trees?”

“Maybe,” Hunter allowed. He sighed as he turned back to the file. “This is it, then?”

I went to move my hand, but it seemed unwilling to comply. All I could manage was a squeeze, but still my grip remained. This close, his smell seemed to push out the scent of coffee and dead plants, which still hung thick in the air. Something inside me stirred as I felt his shoulder move, felt the muscles twitch beneath my fingers.

I pushed it back down before he could turn back to me. Before his eyes could look into mine, and I made an even stupider decision than hiding the file from him. Did something I’d regret.

I bit my lower lip hard, trying to dispel my urges. “Guess so,” I said, as my phone buzzed in my pocket, letting me know my car had arrived out front. I turned to leave.

“Kris?” Hunter called to my back. He’d gotten down from the barstool and padded up a few steps behind me.

“Yeah?” I asked, eyes closed, not turning around or looking back in his direction. I knew that, if I did, I’d be asking him to stay at FMS. Or to come with me. Or something. Anything, just to keep him around.

“Good luck,” he said, his voice like a breeze rustling through the leaves of a forest on a spring day.

“Thanks,” I said, before clearing my throat. “You, too. And, Hunter?”

“Yeah?”

“Try and stay out of trouble.”

“Trouble? Moi? Unheard of.”

I couldn’t help but smile as I headed down the entryway to the front door to my waiting car, even if the pain from my heart tearing open was inconsolable.