Chapter 45 Bruno
brUNO
By the time Bruno got the lights on, Darius had found a tool box with a spool of paracord.
They went to work collecting weapons and phones and tying up the hands and feet of the attackers.
Roderick, Wendy, and Addison, decorated with several darts apiece, were made more comfortable.
They had shifted into their human forms when drugged and appeared to be slumbering solidly.
“She’s going to be okay?” Darius asked plaintively, as they put a pillow under Wendy’s head.
“She’s tough and her heartbeat is strong,” Bruno said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “She’ll probably be fine. You did great.”
Darius flushed and glared down at the floor, clearly not wanting to admit that he liked to hear the praise. “I’m not a shifter,” he blurted, as Bruno picked up chairs and swept up broken glass in the kitchen where a struggle had definitely occurred.
“Oh?” Bruno kept his voice neutral but felt triumphant.
“I know I feel like a shifter, but I’m not,” Darius said defiantly.
“And yet you still managed to help take down a home invasion and save your baby brother,” Bruno pointed out.
“You already knew!” Darius accused. “Why’d you let me think you didn’t?”
“I wanted you to tell me yourself," Bruno said kindly. “Are you up for going out with me to check out the vehicles in the driveway, or do you have to be a shifter to do that?”
“I can do it,” Darius sulked. He brightened. “I’ll go out the side door and come out of the side yard behind them!”
The two vehicles in the driveway—a van and an SUV—were both empty and idling. Bruno turned them off and took the keys before giving the contents a quick toss. They returned to the house better armed, and were met by Tara, who said plaintively, “We’re hungry!”
Clarice was on the living room couch, absolutely festooned with children.
Shane had fallen asleep in one arm and Zach was in her other elbow making sleepy faces and big yawns.
Lucy was snuggled up against one side, Gabby the other, and Gil was tucking a slumbering Amy under a blanket at the far end of the couch.
“I’d cook,” Clarice said with a quiet laugh, “but I’m a little encumbered!”
She directed him from the couch to put together the casserole she had planned. “Heat up the filling before it goes in the oven and it shouldn’t take that long to crisp up.”
Tara was happy to boss Gil into setting the table, and Roderick gave a start and tried to sit up just as Bruno began dishing out plates of steaming food.
“It’s okay,” he told Roderick, when the man was inclined to throw a clumsy fist. “We got everything under control.”
Roderick blinked in confusion, but nodded slowly, seemingly incapable of words.
Shane was buckled into a high chair and Clarice bounced a fussy Zach in her arms. “I’m not sure that’s a good first food for you, baby! I’m sorry I don’t have what you’re hoping for in my shirt!”
This statement inevitably went straight to the deeply evolutionary procreation brain processes in Bruno’s head and he was struck to the core by the idea of Clarice nursing their own baby.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted more children—Gil was an entire circus rolled into one loud boy—and he and Clarice hadn’t resolved their relationship into anything permanent enough to base a family on.
But there was something comfortable about the idea. Not quite instinct, but a gentle certainty of the rightness of it all.
Bruno got everyone settled and went to check on the knocked-out adults.
He and Clarice repeated the story as each of them woke up.
Vivian checked everyone’s vitals and sniffed one of the darts curiously.
“It’s not a standard tranquilizer,” she observed.
“Hunter’s guys used these on us before. Nothing FDA approved, but fast acting and shouldn’t leave much more than a headache.
Drink plenty of water, get some food in your stomach to absorb the aftereffects.
” She assured Addison that she ought to be okay breastfeeding and Zach was very happy to snuggle on the couch and suck hungrily as the kids finished their casserole and tried not to fall asleep in it.
They were equal parts exhausted and wound up, which was a potent cocktail for arguments.
Bruno, Darius, and Roderick took their assailants back to the room and re-dosed them with Vivian’s medical permission.
Wendy had taken five darts to the chest and had trouble keeping her eyes open to eat. Darius hovered over her until she suggested that he take a photograph because it would last longer.
Halfway through the meal, there was an unexpected tear in space, a shower of sparkles, and a roaring gryphon landed in the middle of the kitchen, wings knocking things off the counter and into the sink.
Bruno had put one of the mercenary’s guns—a real one, with bullets—on a tall cabinet and he was about to go for it before he recognized that it was Theo, teleporting with Darius or Jackson as his anchor.
“Dad!” Darius was already on his third helping of casserole. “DADDY!” Jackson echoed.
Theo melted back to human form and hurried into the dining room. “Juliette told me you called! Why didn’t you call me? I should have been here.”
Darius gave a groan of disgust as Theo tried to embrace him. “I’m fine, Dad, GEEZ. Your phone would have been shifted with you, so I knew a call probably wouldn’t go through.”
Theo looked around in alarm at Wendy, who was still swaying in her seat and blinking hazily. “Wendy?”
“He saved the day,” Wendy said woozily. “I got shot five times.”
“Tranquilizer darts,” Darius hastily added. “They were trying to take us alive.”
Theo did not look very comforted, but took the seat next to Wendy that Roderick offered him and got a piecemeal accounting of the home invasion with commentary from the kids.
Bruno kept the story superficial and let the kids play up their parts; it would help them process the traumatic events to put them in context.
Theo didn’t appear to judge Bruno harshly for hiding instead of fighting, and he clapped Darius on the shoulder for his quick thinking.
“You were lucky,” he observed.
“I’m lucky,” Tara whispered.
“I have a theory,” Bruno offered. “I think that kids are more connected to instinct than we are as adults. As we grow, we develop autonomy and self-control, and that can hinder our hearing of subtle magical suggestions. But they are still learning impulse control, and instinct is often just that. An impulse, a compulsion, even. As an adult, we’d try to analyze it.
They just…go with it. That’s why they were able to coordinate such a successful attack. ”
“What about you guys?” Clarice asked hesitantly. “Did you get what you needed?”
“We destroyed the lab, got about a dozen people in custody. No one was hurt badly. They’re just mopping things up now, making sure no one got away and getting rid of any information that might come back to haunt us. Juliette said to continue the low profile and to stay here another night at least.”
“Veronica?”
Bruno didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to pick up on Theo’s sudden awkwardness. “We found her,” he said flatly.
“She’s okay?”
“She wasn’t hurt,” Theo said, which wasn’t quite the same thing.
“I’m TIRED,” Gil declared.
Like a dam breaking, all the kids ran out of steam at once, and not one of them argued when Cherry, Addison, and Vivian started rounding them up for turns in the bathroom, carefully rationing what remained of the toilet paper.
Rather than leaving the kids alone under Darius’s care in the romp room for the night, they split them into rooms with adults and took turns keeping watch. Bruno and Clarice took the first shift to let the others hopefully sleep off the last effects of the tranquilizers.
The house went quiet at last, eerie and still.
“We’re going to be hungry tomorrow,” Clarice observed. “We’re really low on a lot of things.”
The safe house came with some games, so they played cards at the table to pass the time, and talked.
They started with safe subjects—Clarice worried for her cat and Bruno told stories about Gil.
They played a round of cribbage, which Bruno handily won, then switched to Gin Rummy and wandered into deeper topics as the hours stretched on.
Clarice told him more about her struggles with self-esteem as a middle child and Bruno confessed his guilt over his rocky relationship with Gil’s mother.
“I’m not perfect,” he said, honesty like a beast with claws on his shoulders as he took the card that Clarice had discarded. “I can’t blame Tracy for leaving. I’m still mad about it, but I’m not blameless, either. I feel worse for Gil. Like I should have tried harder, for his sake.”
“Gil has all the family he needs,” Clarice pointed out, choosing to draw a card on her turn. “You are a great dad. Need a queen?”
“When he was in danger, I might as well have been a possum playing dead,” Bruno said, voicing the shame that had been dogging him all night. He picked up the queen.
“If you hadn’t, you would have gotten drugged right along with everyone else and been no use to anyone.
Heroics aren’t always helpful.” Clarice might say she lacked confidence, but she was clear-headed and full of conviction when it mattered.
“Blaming yourself for doing what happened to be the right thing doesn’t serve any purpose.
I’m the queen of second-guessing myself, so believe me when I say it’s not productive.
Gil is okay. All the kids are okay. No one got hurt. You were a very good ball.”
Bruno had to laugh at the way she said it, the way he said it to Gil. “You are exactly what I needed in my life,” he said in wonder. “I do this for everyone else and it’s nice to have someone who’s there to tell me what I already know. There’s the last queen! I’m out!”
He only caught her with an unpaired two, and she took the following hand to catch him with two jacks, a queen, and a king that wouldn’t make a run.
It was the most natural thing in the world to put his hand across the table and rest it on hers.
“Are you my boyfriend?” Clarice asked shyly. “That’s what you told the men at the mansion.”
“I’d like to be,” Bruno confessed. “I’d like that a lot.”
“Me, too,” Clarice said. The poor light couldn’t hide her blush. She turned her hand over so that they were clasping and he could rub his thumb at the base of her palm.
“You didn’t wake me up,” Vivian said accusingly from the door to the dining room. “Roderick and I were supposed to take the second shift two hours ago.”
Bruno didn’t take his hand back, and Clarice didn’t either. Why shouldn’t he hold his girlfriend’s hand? “I didn’t realize it was so late,” he admitted. “And it’s good for you to get some extra sleep.”
Vivian made a grumpy noise. “I’m going to check in on our unwelcome visitors and give them another dose if they need it.
I hope Juliette gets some data on that knock-out drug; I’m sure it’s not good for them to be continually dosed, but I’m not interested in having them awake and with their wits about them before the agency gets back to take them into custody.
It’s probably less harmful than Roderick’s plan to hit them in the head every time they woke up, if not as satisfying. ”
She vanished as quietly as she’d come in and was replaced by the shadowy form of Gil. “Daddy? I’m thirsty.”
Bruno got him a glass of water and tucked him back into his pad on the floor in their bedroom. “You want to talk about what happened today?” he asked.
“Nah,” Gil said. He was unnaturally quiet, but when Bruno stood up to go, he protested, “DON’T GO!” with all of his usual gusto.
Bruno sat back down on the floor next to him. “I’ll stay as long as you want.”
He sat there, quietly bathed in the glow of a nightlight, until Clarice crept in. “I could sleep out here on the couch,” she offered diffidently. “If it’s too weird with Gil.”
“I like Miss Clarice,” Gil offered in a quiet mumble. “She can be your mate.”
Bruno rose to his feet to greet her with a kiss. “You’re part of our family now.”