Gutsy, page 9
Sage came over and plopped on the coffee table in front of me, leaning his elbows on his thighs. “Sage is a Satanist, and his magic practice is how I found him. He smells ever so faintly of sulfur because of it, and this difference in him allowed him to house me, where someone else wouldn’t have been able to do it. Him being a Satanist doesn’t mean much of anything as far as his scent goes. Magic, especially dark magic, changes a person’s. . . balance, their soul if you want to be eloquent about it. I’m telling you all of this because the fact he happens to dabble in magic and study it is your saving grace. He can help you. He has useful information about a lot of things, and he happens to think you’re in some deep shit.”
“Oh dear gods,” I muttered. “I don’t care what is going on, you’re banned from talking in the third person. You look like Sage, so you can’t do this to me.”
Snorting, he lifted my blood-stained key chain in his hand, dangling it in front of me. I lunged for it. In a spry move that shocked me with its speed, he rolled backward to stand on the other side of the table, and my heart raced. He dangled the trinket, giving it a little swing to taunt me, and my blood boiled.
“Give it back! It makes me feel good. I would have died without it these past three weeks. It was the only thing that let me keep getting out of bed!” I wasn’t certain why I thought that was the truth, but I felt it in my soul. “Hand it over.” I jammed my hand his way.
Sage raised the corner of his lip at me like a trapped dog, and the expression was so feral it made me stumble back a step. “The talisman is tied to this bloodbath, buttercup. If we burn it, I think your issues will clear up. Don’t be such a fucking doofus. I understand it has power over you, but wake the fuck up! You’re being really goddamned weird about this, don’tcha think?”
Noble skittered back into the room with a shirt and sweater draped over his arm. He nodded at me as I looked at him, and I tried to force myself to think rationally. My heart wouldn’t slow down. I hated watching Sage put my key chain in his pocket. I knew every swirl on the painted pattern, studied every brushstroke, imagined Pious’s steady hand making them. At times I’d even sworn I could feel his longing for me, which was ridiculous.
He must hate me because of the way I’d left things, which was awful, and not something I should be worried about right now. I ran a hand over my face.
“What does all this mean?” I asked, dragging my palm down my chest to my heart, where I gripped so hard I grunted at the pain of my own fingers.
Noble came over and tugged my hand away. “Stop!”
Glancing down to where his horrified gaze rested, red lines decorated my skin. My fingernails had torn my flesh and blood beaded in the shallow wounds. I’d barely felt it. My body tingled and pulsed like I could lift a bus.
“That man you were with at The Land of Oz? He had some serious vibes going on. I think you pissed him off and he whammied you. Maybe on purpose, maybe not.” Sage shrugged.
“Can you sound any more childish? Whammied?”
His good cheer melted into a mask of annoyance and he narrowed his eyes on me. “These things don’t always have easy explanations, okay? Sage is doing his best. Again, which of us made a snack of the help tonight? And not the good kind with tickles and cum.” He mimed spanking an ass, and Noble sighed.
“Tyler. . . .”
Noble’s easy acceptance of this craziness had me on edge. “So, we burn my key chain—” I hissed at the thought and my fingers twitched. “—and this all goes away?”
Noble bit his lip and glanced between me and Sage while he tugged at the strap keeping his eyepatch in place. “Can it be that easy?”
Sage shrugged. “Sure, why not? Magic can be simple.” His brows furrowed, though, and the way his smile now seemed forced made me certain he was worried.
“Magic?” Noble scowled.
Sage sighed and a genuinely cross expression settled on his face, complete with his bottom lip jutting. “It’s fucking frustrating explaining this to laypeople. Fine, you don’t like magic or woo? How about casting and uncasting. Unsending. Uncrossing—whatever. There are a thousand ways to talk about it, but it all equates to ending the fucking curse on Journey’s ass. Call it whatever you want, but the fact that I can be in Sage’s body with him proves that there is other stuff going on in the world.”
Noble groaned and rubbed the back of his neck as he stared at the box. “You know, I don’t like that I didn’t think of calling the police. Not once. What does that say about me?”
“Baby, I am the police,” Sage said with an obscene eyebrow waggle as he hugged Noble.
“Not anymore.”
“My head hurts,” I said after a moment, studying Sage. “You’re Tyler in Sage? With Sage? There are two of you in one—” I waved a hand at him. “—person? Body?” The differences in his demeanor that had seemed so bizarre previously, but hadn’t occurred all the time, made a twisted sense in light of these claims, but I really didn’t want to accept it all. If I started believing in demons, then what was happening to me?
What is happening to me? My head went light and I panted for air.
“Yep! Now you’re catching on.” He pointed at me with a cheesy wink.
Noble elbowed him, but Sage only shrugged.
I blew out a long breath. “I suppose if I’m willing to accept that as true, which I’m not necessarily,” I said in a rush. “I agree that burning my key chain might be a good idea.” I glanced at Noble. “Aren’t you worried? He tried to kill you.”
“No,” Noble said quietly. “It was Abe Walker, the last man who Tyler was inside, who attempted to murder me. It wasn’t Tyler’s fault.” He touched his eyepatch and winced.
“How do you figure?” I asked.
Sage patted his right pants pocket and grinned. “Fuck you, dude. I wouldn’t hurt my boyfriend. Let’s burn this talisman! But first we gotta get this bastard downstairs.” He kicked the box with the toe of his sneaker. “I don’t suppose you have a handcart?” He looked at me expectantly.
“Are you serious?”
He shrugged. “It’s gonna be you and me carrying him, buddy. Noble can’t help, and even if he could, I would say no to it. Anyone who notices will think this box contains solid wooden furniture. We don’t want to give them any reason to wonder about what might really be inside. We gotta treat this bad boy like it’s heavy. Small things could bite us on the ass.”
Feeling scattered in more ways than one, I groped mentally. “I think we could borrow one from the recycling room where we found the box.”
After some bickering, Noble went down to get the handcart, and it was a shockingly smooth process to get a body out of my building, then easy to get the box to my car. I felt like we could be going on any quick trip out of the city, and Noble even made coffee and put it in a steel thermos to bring with us. We took the time to bundle up in winter clothes. Sage and Noble shared smiles with each other as Sage tugged a glove over Noble’s “unhelpful hand,” and I had to turn away from the goo-goo eyes they made. Other than my discomfort around the romantic bits of Noble and Sage’s relationship, our preparations nearly felt fun.
Once we were on the road, we made a quick stop along the way for Sage to collect a few things from their apartment, and then we were traveling out of the city, taking the highway. Sage leaned up between the seats, pointing as he directed me along roads I wasn’t familiar with, and Noble bit his fingernail, glancing over his shoulder at him from the passenger seat. I pressed the button on the steering wheel for the heat and held in a groan as Noble’s tender aroma swirled around the space. He was so much sweeter than Eddie. I bit the inside of my cheek to distract myself. He smells like dessert. I didn’t pick up on Sage’s scent at all.
Noble cleared his throat and the sound startled me. With the heat running and the dark outside our windows, I’d been lulled into a false sense of peace, even with my mouth watering and a daydream of something sweet to top off dinner tugging at my attention.
“You’re not taking us to—” Noble shuddered. “—the Walker house?”
“Well,” Sage said softly and drummed his fingers on the back of our seats. “If someone finds the body out there, they might just think it was one of Abe’s that was missed.” When I glanced into the rearview mirror, some emotion had Sage’s lips twisted down to one side, and he looked like someone had given him a sucker punch to the gut.
Noble gasped but nodded. “That makes sense. I. . . I don’t know how I feel about going there.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, my heart hammering faster. “I don’t like the sound of all this.”
“Serial killer dumping grounds,” Sage said, not sounding the least bit concerned. His expression had smoothed out when I shot him another glance. “I’ll take you the back way, so no one notices us.”
I was fine on the highway and able to keep my hands sturdy on the wheel, but I got the creeps when we took an off-ramp to a road in the middle of nowhere, and then Sage directed me onto a dirt lane that went on forever. I was a city boy—give me a dark alleyway and I would be fine, even if I thought there might be a mugger hidden in there somewhere.
The countryside was unsettling in almost magical ways with the black skeletons of trees reaching for my car over the lane. Wind blew snow across the windshield and I was blind. The dim hope that this section of the barely beaten path we’d been driving on went straight let me keep myself together until the frigid mist cleared and I could see again. I didn’t like that there was no light. Nothing was truly dark in the city, not like this. One nice side effect of hyperventilating was that it distracted me from salivating over Noble. We’d been driving nearly three hours when Sage asked me to come to a stop.
“How do you know where we are?”
“I worked for the info,” he said vaguely and rubbed at his forehead. “Park here, anywhere’s fine.” He waved a hand.
“You mean just pull off the lane? The only thing here is an embankment going up and trees.” I glared over my shoulder at him, uneasy with the car stopped, even though no one had been behind us since my tires gripped icy back-road gravel.
“Yep!” He patted the top of my head, and I swatted at him.
I pulled as far to the side as I could manage and braced myself for the bumps along the edge that rattled the car. “If someone hits my Audi. . . .”
“That’s really what you’re worried about?” Noble asked sharply. “The car?”
Properly chastised, I shook my head and did as I was told, easing the Audi to a stop with my foot on the brake.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” Noble turned to hug me, and I held in a rapturous sigh as my stomach growled and I buried my nose against the silky warm skin of his neck. People had to have different tastes, and I was utterly convinced Noble would be wonderful, like warm cookies. My teeth tingled, and when I ran my tongue over them I swore they were sharper. What if I just. . . ? I set my teeth against his skin and sucked in another deep breath. He stiffened against me.
“What the fuck, dude?” Sage asked quietly, and I sat up abruptly, my heart pounding like a jackhammer.
Noble slapped his hand to his neck and gave me a wobbly smile that was full of confusion and fear.
“Sorry,” I whispered. I wanted to say so much more, tell him that if he could smell what I did, he’d take a nibble of himself, too. I let out a long, shaky breath.
Sage took a shovel out with him I hadn’t seen him load into the car, and the flash of metal in the rearview mirror along with his death glare let me know how close I might have come to my demise. Noble and I got out of the car at the same time, and I shuddered as cold wind hit me and sliced through my clothing while I studied the small trail Sage started along with his phone light on. The trees around us creaked as wind howled through the upper branches, making them sway so much they nearly touched the ground. I flinched as icy snow whipped into my eyes.
“Should we bring the box?” I asked.
Sage snorted. “We don’t need it yet.”
Frowning, I scrambled to follow after Noble, who trailed Sage closely. If I was perfectly honest, I was sniffing along after Noble’s delicate scent. The woods were dark around us, pitch-black and mysterious, and aside from the wind there wasn’t a noise to be heard—other than us.
Sage muttered to himself, and Noble breathed heavily, as if he wasn’t used to the hiking we were doing. I stepped after Noble, and soon the tips of my boots brushed the backs of his yellow sneakers.
“I wish you’d let me buy you boots, you twit,” I whispered, drawing a deep breath into my lungs.
Noble chuckled. “Not now.”
My stomach growled with a sharp pang, and I snagged his hand.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at me. I couldn’t see anything except the gleam of his pale eye in the shadows. “Are you okay? What was happening in the car—”
I shoved him off the trail against a sturdy tree trunk, and the damp bark bit at my fingertips as I trapped him in place, slapping one hand over his mouth. I stared into the glitter of fear in his good eye, which reflected the receding light of Sage’s phone. While my mouth watered, he grunted in question, still trusting me.
Still my friend.
Still my Noble.
I jerked myself away from him and stood with my hands out at my sides.
“Journey, what is going on?” he whispered. “Are you okay?”
A bright burst of pain on my right shoulder blade sent me to my knees, and Noble swore.
“I stopped!” I yelled, catching sight of Sage pulling back the shovel for another blow.
“You touch him again,” Sage shouted, jerking Noble to his side and away from the tree. “I will fucking kill you. I don’t care if you are his friend. He’s mine.” His harsh words rang in the dark silence of the sleepy woods and echoed back on us, and something inside me felt like it wanted to snap its jaws in answer. The desire to fight for dominance tensed my muscles, but I held it off.
I nodded as sweat ran down my forehead, cooling and giving me shivers.
“Are you okay?” Noble asked and reached for me, but Sage jerked him back another step.
“Walk ahead of us. Just stay on the fucking path.” Sage pointed the shovel in the direction we’d been heading, and I could sort of make out a trail through the brush.
Nodding, I got to my feet, but I didn’t like the way my mouth still watered.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Fuck you. Walk.” Sage’s steely tone didn’t waver, and Noble shot me an unhappy glance but didn’t contradict him. Hell, I must have scared him. Guilt churned in my stomach. Maybe his fear was good because I was fucking terrified.
After an interminable amount of time where my boots soaked through and my cheeks froze, we came to a large clearing. Snow began to dust down on top of my head, kissing my ears and cheeks with coldness. The familiarity of the frigid dots of flakes on my skin allowed some of the madness to leak out of my body and I felt more like myself. We walked out into the center of what would likely be a meadow come spring, and Sage jammed the shovel down into the snow. As he turned and crossed his arms, he heaved out a huge breath.
“I think you’re going to be able to dig through the ice, given how you had the strength to hold down our box buddy, Eddie.” Sage winked in a fairly ghoulish way, or maybe I was just feeling disconcerted with the suggestion of making a cemetery out of a woodland. “Start digging.”
“You’re insane.” I walked over and took the shovel. “You realize I don’t do manual labor, right?” With a sigh, I dug out a circle of snow. When I had a large section of the ground mostly bare, I jammed the shovel against the frozen sod. I began to jab at the ground harder. “It’s ice.”
“Put some muscle into it,” Sage called. “Noble and me’ll be right back.”
Ignoring him, I stabbed at the ground. There was a certain therapeutic quality to the burning that started in my muscles, and as I finally made some headway and tossed a few clods of dirt, sweat poured down my body. I began to break through the surface layer and piled up the earth beside the small hole.
I kept going.
At least an hour passed, maybe more, and slowly but surely the hole grew. Noble was doing something with Sage—collecting a pile of wood—in between staring at me working. They were bent over trying to block the wind while they messed around with a lighter when it occurred to me I had gone down at least three feet into the ground.
“Should I be able to do this?” I asked, blinking sweat out of my eyes for the second time tonight. “I’d always been told it was impossible to dig in the winter.”
Noble shook his head, the light from their twigs catching fire illuminating his profile but putting his face in shadow. A silly thrill of fear tightened my stomach.
“We can make that work. It’s shallow, but meh.” Sage shrugged. “Keep digging for another few minutes.”
I’d managed to go down another foot when the smell of woodsmoke tickled my nose. Sage had a decent-sized campfire going by the time I climbed out of the hole and tossed the shovel aside. My sweat had me wrinkling my nose because with whatever was going on with my senses, I smelled terrible.
“You’re strong. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do half of that in these conditions. You’ve definitely got something working in your favor that way. Let’s get Eddie,” Sage said cheerfully.
“Is a good mood how you handle stress?” I grumped.
He laughed. “No, I decided I’m fine with killing you. Clarity takes away bad vibes.” He opened his coat and flashed me a gun in a holster that sent a bolt of mortal dread to tense every muscle I possessed.
