Forever, page 6
He lifted his stare to meet her own. And then he abruptly got to his feet and returned to the bar with the glass and the bottle. He put them out of alignment with the display and came back to her.
Gus pegged her with his forefinger, like the thing was a gun. “You’re either lying to me or you’re lying to yourself. You’ve decided to sell, and I want to know where she goes.”
“I have made no decisions about anything, and in any event, I can’t promise you—”
“You’re going to tell me because you owe me that. It could be another five years before she comes back, and that drug is my baby, no one else’s. Not even yours.”
“And if hiring you isn’t my decision? Then what. Are you going to retaliate? Expose me? You’ve been just as illegal as I have in all this.”
“But I have less to lose.”
As he turned away and headed for the exit, she said sharply, “Don’t make an enemy out of me. Neither of us will enjoy what happens next.”
At the doorway, Gus paused and glanced over his shoulder—and for the first time, she saw the man, not the scientist. He was as tall as she was, which was saying something as she was six feet, two inches in heels. With his Afro adding even more height, and his shoulders being so broad, he was an imposing presence. This was not a news flash. What was a surprise was that for this moment, he took up so much space not because of his intellect… but rather because his hooded eyes and body were registering for the first time.
“I’ll say that right back at you, Phalen. You will include me in your plans, whether you want to or not. That’s where you and I are—and if that pisses you off, it’s okay. I won’t be in your face anymore after you sign her over.”
In the wake of his departure, C.P. pivoted around and stared out the window again. As her mind threatened to dissolve into chaos, she remembered what she’d seen on the security feed while she’d been on her phone call. Daniel had wandered out to the forest there a little while ago—only to come steaming back across the meadow in the wake of a beautiful wolf with a stripe down its back.
Or Lydia’s back, as the case was.
Reaching behind her, she hit the release under the desk, and as the monitor and keyboard elevated out of their hidden compartments on the surface, she faced them. With a sense of disassociation, she accessed her secured email, and called up the results of the scans that had been sent to her about twenty minutes before her call. She had to force herself to be objective, and it was a while before she was able to be.
It was such a shame, really.
Without a miracle, the patient in question was going to die. And there was nothing she could do about it.
SIX
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Daniel woke up to the scent of hot coffee. As he opened his eyes, he was astonished to be in bed—not because it wasn’t where he had started the night, but rather because it was where the dark hours seemed to have ended. The last couple of days had begun not with Folgers in his cup, but his head in the bowl.
“Hi.”
He rolled over onto his back because it was easier than trying to sit up. Lydia was standing at his side of the mattress, dressed for work with a mug in her hand.
“Hi,” he said.
“I’m heading out.” She took a sip. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Okay. Did you have a shower?” Stupid question. Her hair was wet. “I mean, you did.”
What the hell was he saying? His head was so damned fuzzy.
“You were sleeping really hard.” Lydia glanced down at the collection of pill bottles on the bedside table, the huddle of orange cylinders with white tops and labels the kind of thing that made his stomach roll on reflex. “Did you take some Ambien during the night?”
“No.” He stretched under the covers, his joints aching at the strain. “I didn’t.”
“What about the oral-morph, though?”
“Oh, well. That. Yes.”
In the back of his mind, he edited the conversation, changing the discussion from that oral suspension of morphine he took like water to what Lydia expected to accomplish during the day at the Wolf Study Project—maybe a quick review of her meetings, the winterization of the trails, perhaps a bet on when the first snowfall would hit the mountain properly. Then he dubbed in him reporting on…
Well, he didn’t have a job. And his old one had not been the kind you conversated to your wife about, anyway.
Not that she was his wife.
“—Daniel?”
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“Do you want me to call Gus for you? Or a nurse?”
Closing his eyes, he fought the urge to scream that he didn’t want anyone showing up in their bedroom unless they were on-site to fix the fucking Wi-Fi. He was so sick and fucking tired of—
“No,” he said evenly. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” She took her cell phone out of the back pocket of her khaki trail pants. “My ringer’s on, all right?”
Her hair was loose around her shoulders, but that wasn’t going to last. She was going to pull it back, probably on the way into work. The blond streaks had really grown out at the crown of her head, the new longer length not a style, but more because she hadn’t had any time to get it properly cut. In her WSP-branded fleece and white turtleneck, she was outdoors professional, down to her Merrells.
“You taking an SUV?” Which was another stupid question. “I mean—”
“C.P. says she doesn’t mind.”
“I’m sorry you hit that deer.”
“It could have been much worse. And technically I swerved to avoid the buck. What I hit was a boulder.”
“Right, sorry. It was a while ago.” When her expression subtly shifted, he frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s not important—”
“Tell me.” His voice was sterner than he’d intended. “Please.”
“It’s not important—”
“Lydia, at this point, there is so much unsaid between the pair of us, I’d really appreciate it if you’d just spit something out. Anything, really.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. That agreement he’d made about revisiting the experimental drug for her wasn’t sitting well, and they both knew it. No matter how many times he told himself it was just a conversation, with a guy he trusted, who wasn’t forcing him in any particular direction? He still didn’t want to fucking do it.
Lydia cleared her throat. “I, ah, I totaled my car just last week. It wasn’t that long ago, in a calendar sense, I mean. But that doesn’t matter.”
“Oh.” He rubbed his scratchy eyes. “Right. I remember now. Well, I’m glad you were okay.”
What the fuck was he saying?
“Airbags are a miracle.” She looked down into her mug. Then put it forward. “I would offer you some, but your stomach…”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you need help to get to the bathroom?” She nodded over her shoulder, like she was thinking he might have forgotten where the facilities were. “Daniel?”
“No, I’m okay.”
His heart pounded in the silence. And when she started murmuring things about being late, he nodded and said things back to her, good, solid things, spoken in a good, solid voice, neither too direct nor too lax. A normal voice.
And then she was gone.
It took him a minute or two to realize she hadn’t kissed him goodbye. And that made him pull the sheets way up under his chin, like he was a five-year-old in a bad windstorm, trying to be brave.
Disgusted with himself, he shoved the sheets down to his hips. He was naked, although not to be sexy. He got the night sweats, and generally speaking, it was more efficient to just throw off the covers and let the cool air work directly on the maximum amount of surface area. Looking down at his chest and his abs, he was amazed at how smooth everything was, his previous muscularity gone, his torso now like someone had iced him with cream cheese frosting, the pale skin rising and falling in waves over his bone structure.
With his shaking hands, he lifted the sheets off his pelvis. His sex was lying off to the side on his hip. With the rest of him having shrunk, the size of his cock was absurdly large and out of proportion. Even flaccid, it was still as thick as it had ever been, the blunt head a knot at the top that was no longer supersensitive.
The idea of touching the thing, of tugging and pulling at it, had as much appeal as digging a ditch with a golf club.
Cursing, he yanked the duvet back over himself. Then he looked across to the darkened screen of the TV on the opposite wall. The remote was on the bedside and he blindly reached for the only thing he’d been giving hand jobs to lately.
As the pixels, or whatever the hell created the picture, flared to life, the familiar setup eased him—oh, good. At Home with Dan was on.
To his surprise, QVC had proven to be very good company during the lonely days, the hosts morphing into colleagues—friends, even. He and Dan Hughes were especially tight, and not just because they shared the same name. He really liked the shows on home improvement, the ones that were about storage solutions and ideas about how to make spaces work better. He never bought anything, of course. One, because he didn’t own a house. Two, even if he had a mortgage or was a renter somewhere, he didn’t own enough shit beyond what fit into the saddle bags of his Harley. And three, his side hustle dying slowly kept him from making any disposable income, so there wasn’t much in his checking account.
And going into his savings to fund hoarding instincts violated financial disciplines he wasn’t previously aware of having.
But buying wasn’t the point for him. In his out-of-control world, the illusion that he could mail-order a shelving system and turn everything around was as addictive as the idea that he could light up a cigarette or sip some Jack and somehow reach back to the days when he’d been blissfully unaware of his mortality. He also liked the countdown of how much had sold of what, as well as the QVC price cuts and sale prices and the whole three easy payments of $16.84 thing.
And then there were the hosts. With their relentless cheerfulness and their this-is-my-home-welcome-to-it stage sets, everything was so sitcom perfect, nothing ever going wrong, only the positive, the glass half full, the optimistic consumerism, being offered like a platter of sunshine on a gray day.
Plus they were going into the holidays. So everything was Tom-turkey delicious and red and green festive.
As good ol’ Mr. Hughes’s reassuring murmur caressed over the details of a desk with a retractable keyboard tray, Daniel closed his eyes and had a thought that he needed to go empty his bladder. The fact that he felt no urgency at all might mean his kidneys were shutting down. Maybe that should bother him more—
His cell phone lit off with a shrill old school ring-a-ding-ding and he jumped. Slapping around the bedside, he got ahold of the thing, in case it was Lydia hitting something else—although at least this time, she was in one of C.P. Phalen’s armor-plated SUVs that could probably crash through a concrete wall and still go eighty on the highway—
He frowned at the number and then quickly answered. “Hello?”
“This is Alex Hess. You called me last night.”
* * *
On the other side of the connection, Xhex shifted her Samsung to her left ear and leaned back against the headboard of her mated bed. Almost immediately, she was distracted by the sound of the shower and glanced over at the partially open door into the marble bathroom. Between one blink and the next, she imagined John Matthew arching back and sweeping suds from his freshly cut hair.
Niiiiice…
Except then the labored breathing registered. The rasp was not subtle in the slightest, the kind of thing that even a human wouldn’t overlook.
“Hello,” she said with impatience.
Because she really didn’t want to be doing this. Thank you, Rehv. After the male had pulled his doom, gloom, and loom back at Basque, apparently he’d felt the need to tee up this contact again. But she’d already been flaked on once by whatever asthmatic vampire this was. Or was it a human?
She didn’t know, because the SOB hadn’t showed. And surprise!, she was even less interested in playing games now.
“Thanks for calling me back,” the hoarse male voice said.
In his background, there was the murmur of a TV, but then the chatter was cut off like he’d hit a mute button. The groan that came afterward suggested he was settling into a different position, wherever he was.
She tried to remember what Rehv had told her about the guy, but it had been how long? Six months? And back in the spring, she’d been on her way to some kind of existential crisis of her own so she’d been a little distracted.
“Look,” she said, “I’m about to crash for the day, so let’s get on with this—”
“I understand you have some information about… Deer Mountain.”
Instantly, she remembered ascending a trail, pine trees crowding in around her, the night so much more dense and dark than it ever was in Caldwell… as an entity like nothing she had ever seen before appeared in her path.
You have a disease of the soul. If you do not cure it now, it will destroy you.
“Are you still there?” whoever the hell it was asked.
“How about we start with an apology. I waited for you for an hour back in April—that view was nice enough, but not where I wanted to waste sixty minutes of my life.”
“I’m really sorry about that. Something… came up.”
“I’ll bet. But no loss on your side—because I don’t know anything about that mountain.”
Or what the hell she’d seen on it.
There was a pause. “That’s not what my contact told me—”
Coughing interrupted the flow of words, and it was a while before the choking was reined in. Naturally, Xhex twiddled her proverbial thumbs by recalling what that entity had said to her, the words nudging up into premonition territory, the whole interaction the kind of thing she had deliberately forgotten—
There is a path before you, my child. It will be long and dangerous, and the resolution of your quest is not clear at this time. But if you do not start… you will never, ever finish.
“I was told you could help me,” the caller finally resumed. “That you knew things.”
She cleared her throat. “You were misinformed. I don’t have anything to say to you about Deer Mountain—”
“It’s not for me. It’s for my… well, she’s not my wife yet. She’s… searching for her community, and we have reason to believe it is on that mountain.”
This was a human, she decided.
And didn’t that make her even less interested in getting involved.
As the scent of John’s conditioner wafted out of the bathroom, Xhex glanced again in the direction of the marble enclave. Clearly, things had progressed all the way to the end of his shower routine. The fact that he always did the same thing, in the same order, was like a metronome to cleanliness, a to-do list he checked off, and she liked that about him.
She liked everything about her male…
For no good reason, she considered how she’d feel if he needed help. And what she would do to get whatever it was to him.
“What kind of community are we talking about?” she asked even though she didn’t want to.
“She’s… not like me.”
“That tells me nothing, sorry.”
“She’s not like you, either.”
As Rehv had been the reference, maybe Mr. COPD on the other end of the phone knew he was talking to a vampire. But maybe he didn’t.
“She needs to be with her kind,” the man said roughly. “She needs… to not be alone in this world.”
Something in the tone made Xhex frown and sit up, her legs swinging off the bed. As the balls of her feet made contact with the antique Persian rug, she moved them back and forth, the feel of the wool brushing her callouses the kind of thing that she couldn’t decide if she liked or not—
All of a sudden, another memory came to her. It was clear as a bell, and was accompanied by a feeling of dread: Vishous staring at her with those icy eyes of his, the Brother’s voice low with warning as he’d told her he’d had a vision of her. After which he’d uttered a single word.
“Wolven,” Xhex heard herself say.
No pause now from the man: “Yes, she’s a wolven. And if you know what that is… well, I don’t know how you fit into all this or what your connection is to that mountain. But I’m running out of time and I need help, so I’m willing to grasp at straws.”
Caught in her own head, Xhex muttered, “If you’re short on hours, you should have showed up back in April.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about the—”
“I’m not interested in arguing with you.” She needed to snap out of this: Not her problem. “And I can’t help you because I don’t know shit—”
“I’m dying. And I can’t leave her alone in this world. I just can’t. Please… help me.”
Well… what the hell did she say to that.
Can of worms, she thought. This was a total can of night crawlers, everything a tangle of big, fat fish bait.
“I really don’t know what I can do for you.” Over in the bathroom, the water was cut off, the dripping loud, the sound of her mate flopping a towel around his body quiet. “Yeah, I did go up that mountain once. But there was nothing there other than rocks, trees, and pine needles on the ground.”
“No, there are other things on that mountain,” he said roughly. “I’ve seen them myself.”
“So then take your mate to the trail and find them. You don’t need my help.” She switched ears. “Look, I gotta go. Sorry. Good luck.”
She ended the call just as John Matthew appeared in the bathroom doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist.
You okay? he signed.
“Yeah.” She put her phone aside. “It was nothing.”
As her hellren stared across at her, she eased back down against the pillows. For a moment, she felt entangled, but then she just let that tension go—and the fact that it was easy to segue out of the unease meant the shit wasn’t that important… and besides, she was feeling better than she ever had lately. More stable, instead of less.
