Chapter 20 Tate #4
Tate wheezed, hardly able to draw breath.
He was bleeding. He was badly injured. He was likely going to die in this forest, because there was no way he could pull himself up and find a door now.
He reached out blindly, searching, feeling through leathers and linens until his fingers closed around Silva’s golden coin.
He didn’t care if he died.
All that he had set out to accomplish, he had. That was all that mattered. She would fly away and live her life and forget about him, eventually. His watch, he realized, raising the hand that still clutched the coin, had stopped ticking. He was out of time.
The sob that ripped from him was agony. He didn’t know how long he spent there, bleeding out on the forest floor, chest heaving, his tears cutting through the film of blood. Cutting through the blood enough for him to see.
See the stars winking overhead. See the moon tipped sideways, still cracked. See the writing on the sole of the shoe that swung above his head. It was Ainsley’s phone number.
Tate blinked. Forced himself to breathe.
It was Ainsley’s office number, written in marker on the sole of his boot, the only thing he’d had at the time he’d taken it down, years earlier, when he’d still been running the club in the city.
It was his boot. The boot he’d lost in the basement of the Plundered Pixie, the day the boggart had tried to pull him through the staircase.
Pulling himself to a sitting position was nearly impossible.
Dragging himself up the tree, shrugging off the weight of the body behind him, felt like it took a small eternity.
He reached up for a branch, screaming as he did so, certain he didn’t have a rib in his body left uncracked.
You’re probably going to puncture a lung the second you pull yourself up. This is the end, boyo.
For the first time since they had left the clearing together, the forest was not fighting him. Perhaps it knew. Perhaps it understood that its master had been brought to heel. His tether severed at last.
A good thing, because Tate knew time was, as always, not on his side.
They would come looking for him. Surely they had all heard that scream, they’d felt the way the ground shook and the moon cracked.
Tate had no doubt that the Frostbitten Queen on her icy throne in neighboring Winter had heard it, and was certain the fields of Summer had felt the tremor in the land.
They would come looking, and he needed to be gone.
You can die another day, boyo. Die in the fucking tree if you must, but don’t let them find you.
Once more, his height was an asset. Tate scrambled up the trunk, using the branches for leverage, stepping from one to the next once he was high enough.
His boot was tied to a rope, a rope that disappeared into the upper branches of the tree.
His whole body hurt. He’d begun to bleed freely again, and he could feel from the weight on his chest that he likely had punctured a lung. It was the hardest climb of his life, but when he heard those horns rising, Tate knew he had no choice.
Up into the branches, still trembling with ruby red leaves, red like blood, red like the blood pooling below.
Up, up, up, wheezing once he could no longer use the branches for footholds, his upper body strength the only thing he had left to rely on as he continued up the rope.
Up, up, up, until he was surrounded in something dark, like a chute.
Tate had no idea if he was climbing up to something more awful than the reality he’d just left, but it was the only option available.
He was at least able to use the sides of the metal chute for leverage, crying out more times than he cared to admit, stopping at one point, back against cold iron, his feet holding him in place, wondering if he should just let himself fall.
He had to be close. When he moved through an icy cold layer of water, he was certain he would drown, but he came out the other side quickly.
Everything was different when he did.
The mortal world had a sticky film to it, and Tate could feel it forming around him once more, the grip of Faerie pulling away like taffy.
There was light above. He was nearly there.
Nearly . . . And then nothing. The chute he was climbing was closed off, his rope tied to the top of it, saving him from whatever fate might have waited below, but trapping him within.
He didn’t know how long he was stuck there.
His back was on fire, his legs cramping, unsure of how much longer he could actually last, before he heard a noise. A heavy thumping sound, footsteps approaching, from somewhere above his head. He heard a low rumble, the sound of something dragging on the floor.
If he let go of the rope, he would fall. If he moved his legs, he would fall. He was broken and exhausted, and he was going to die in this hole with his old boot, and at the moment, he wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than dying on the forest floor.
“Help! Is someone there? Is anyone fucking there?” He dragged his nails down the side of the iron, scraped his heel as best he could without unlocking his knees, calling out weakly once more.
It worked. His head dropped back against the cold iron, exhausted, as a voice rumbled above him. He could hear something being dragged into place, heard the grind of metal and the grunt of exertion, light slowly opening above his head.
“How in the fucking stars did anyone get down here?” The rough voice demanded, panting a little once the hole was opened.
He pushed with his toes, arms shaking, certain he was about to drop like a stone through that cold water and land crashing through the branches at any minute. Arms wrapped around his shoulders, big arms, hot and strong, groaning as they pulled him up. Up and out.
It was Rukh.
The grizzled old orc looked as if he had aged ten years since the night Tate saw him last. It was Rukh staring at him, slack-jawed.
He was in his own basement, leaning against the well cap they had discussed permanently sealing more than half a dozen times, always finding something else in the old girl that took priority.
It was Rukh, and he was in the Plundered Pixie.
The sob that came out of him was like something tearing open, flinging his arms around the old orc, his legs failing him at last.
He was back, safe within his old girl, home at last.