Chapter Twenty-Two
Buck
I’d not gotten used to sleeping yet. Closing my eyes and losing control to a baser state seemed almost like shifting into something that didn’t have enough mind for me to use. Rather like shifting into animals, surrendering to my baser natures.
Dreams came to me, images of the past and present. Some were more pleasant than others, and funnily enough, some of my good memories soured from my renewed perspective. Memories of lust, rough sex with worshipers, spun in my head. I did prefer my athletes, as ollamaliztli, as a sport, made for very strong and agile men, much like Cliff.
I struck those memories down, willing the dreams away, as those pleasant times no longer mattered when I had a mate. Only our time together. And our time had only begun.
Darkness came after the lust, empty space welcoming me into warmth and soft breath. “Buck?” a tender voice called out, and I sought the source.
From another angle, my name echoed out again, swallowed by a shrill whisper of the wind. Buckling Stone! It called out to me, and I searched, untethering my spirit, to find the source of it.
Wait for him. The command in the voice made my eyes sting and my chest grow tight. It’s not your turn to see me again, son.
“Mother?” My heart fluttered and hope rose in my chest, only to fall again.
They need you .
But only one of them mattered to him wholly. “Cliff.”
Cliff
“Did you see anyone? Are you certain?” Brook paced Buck’s small home, jaw clenched. “There are agreements and witches know better than to fuck with the Drowning River. And it was not always my name, the Whispering Brook. I am flood and torrent.”
I watched the male pace, broad shouldered and red-haired. He was well-muscled, more developed in his arms than elsewhere, his chest built but stomach soft in the comforting sort of way. A little bit of dad bod looked good on his form, and I could objectively appreciate why River liked him.
Not knowing what else to say, I shook my head. “No, it was just us when we got here after the other night when we left.”
“Fuck. No telling how long it’s been laying in wait. If we’d caught it sooner, it wouldn’t have been a problem. There’s magic parasitizing his power in this land. Land and worship are batteries for gods and Buck is in power-saving mode, if you understand that?” Brook ran thick fingers through his loose mane of hair, the strands falling into place in a sweep as he did so.
I understood it perfectly. “We need to get him some more worship? Worshipers? Prayer? Offerings?”
“If we had time, sure. But River is going to have to charge him. We’re not flush on power, either. River has more than most, being that primal fear people have of death doesn’t go away in the face of cold rivers and lost victims.” Brook heaved a drawn-out sigh.
“So, you don’t have enough power to charge him? Can Storm help? Grim?” I paced the floor, wrapping my arms around myself as a shiver of fear flooded through me.
“Yeah. They’re coming in. Grim hates them, but he fears River more.”
I found myself listening to Brook, sitting calmly as hot tea ended up in my hands, cutting the winter’s chill. I’d forgotten it got cold, like part of me no longer noticed the inconvenience since it no longer hurt me. The contrast, though, was nice.
I didn’t flinch when sometime later Rayne arrived with Storm in a flurry, promising me that Vida was at home and well-protected. I barely took in anything else said to me, my mind lost in a whirlwind of Buck not waking.
Storm visited the bed, glancing over Buck’s face, staring into his eyes. He muttered to River, who nodded sagely. Warm hands roamed my shoulders as a familiar scent caught my senses. Eve. “Sup, dweeb?”
“He won’t wake up,” I caught myself saying, voice still wobbling.
“I heard.” It wasn’t Eve’s voice that responded, but Grim. His hand rested on my shoulder as well, gripping for the briefest moment before releasing. “I’ll offer what I can, considering I severed my ties. It’s not much for the time being.”
“Anything helps, you old hummingbird.” River’s snarl made Grim’s shoulders pinch, and he left to stare at Buck with the rest of them. For someone so small and chaotic, the other gods feared him very much.
I would have watched them unblinking until my eyes dried into raisins if it weren’t for Brook reaching over to grasp my hand. “It’ll be okay.”
A scrambling sensation on my calf drew my attention. I glanced down and blinked in surprise to see Jacque staring up at me, his big, dark, walleyes focused as much as something with wider monocular range could. “Where did you come from?”
“I brought him,” Grim said, earning a nod of approval from Eve. “Eve was rather insistent.”
“It was your idea, dingus.” Eve huffed and scooted over, finding a spot to sit on a kitchen counter nearby due to the distinct lack of chairs. Buck only had the three currently occupied by myself, Brook, and Rayne.
Grim ignored the commentary and turned away, but I didn’t fail to notice when Jacque went sniffing about the house, that he had his buttons here to use.
Buck. All gone. Sleep. Mad.
“You said it, buddy,” Eve said, much to the interested surprise of the others. Jacque wasn’t the talkative sort around strangers, often. Then again, among gods, I’m certain that a lil bunny with communication skills was perfectly capable of surprising them. There was magic, and then there was…whatever Jacque was.
“The hare can talk?” Grim’s question broke the silence of the others.
“Yeah. Buttons. He understands that we can understand him, so it makes the difference.” I drew my gaze from Jacque and his board to Buck, still lying in our bed. I didn’t even care that the place still reeked of us in that primal sort of way.
“Brook.” River turned away from the rest of them, all bearing dour expressions as he beckoned his mate.
I watched carefully as he approached, wearing a similarly sad expression, and I waited for the worst.
“Will it be worth it?” Brook’s soft whisper cut off when River muttered in response. “That’s all that matters. I’ll be right here.”
“I know you will be. You always have.” River reached up to take Brook’s face in his hands, pulling him down for a kiss that stayed soft, innocent even. I didn’t think River capable of a gesture so tender until he dropped one hand and gave Brook’s groin a nice palming. “A reminder for when I get back.”
Storm, Grim, and Brook all stepped away when River approached the side of the bed and slid his arms under Buck’s body, where he effortlessly lifted him and turned. With each step River took, he carried Buck closer to the door, his bare form somehow not as vulnerable or lewd as I would have thought. Like family caring for the infirmed.
“Cliff?” River paused at the door as Storm stepped forward to pull it open. I stood, but Grim gestured for me to stay back.
“I’ve enjoyed your company immensely. You aren’t afraid of me. And I owe it to Buck for not instilling that fear. And tell Dani it was a pleasure.” River stepped outside and the other gods followed.
Brook didn’t let me leave the house when I stumbled toward the door. His face could have been a mirror of my own as he turned and smiled, the expression not meeting his pallid blue eyes.
I halted when Brook wrapped an arm around my shoulders and cinched me tight, shushing me with a finger over his lips. He didn’t stop me from looking, though, as I turned my head and saw a new godbeast standing in the clearing before Buck’s cabin. Like all godbeasts I’d seen before, he was powerful, as big as any Clydesdale horse, and graced with incongruent features that drew memories of crocodiles and sharks with his teeth, a kelpie with his mane, but in the stead of six legs, he bore only two, front clawed things that blended into a body ending in the prehensile tail of a great fish. He lay on the ground, tail curled primly behind him as he stared down at what I hadn’t realized right away was Buck, limp in his godbeast form, chest heaving in shallow pulses.
“Buckling Stone,” the creature I inherently knew to be River said. Eyes like glowing sea glass stared down at the prone form. “You’ve torn apart who you are to shed the blood you wear. A luxury I will never have. For you embraced death, and I am.”
“What’s he doing?” I asked, my chest tense with a new level of sadness that weighed not only on my mate but on River as well.
“What he needs to.” Brook’s whisper held a broken quality to it, as if—
“No. He’s not going to die fo—”
“No. He will not die, but it will hurt. It will take time to recover. Many months, seasons. Maybe years. He wants to do this for you.” Brook seized me tighter as something shuddered in my chest.
River’s chest opened. Like a flower, it spread petals of colorless flesh, revealing at his core a complex sort of thing. The shape within appeared like a heart, but round, made of light, pulsing. Around the orb of light, a little red orb spun about, caught in an invisible current.
“What…” Brook’s soft whisper drew my gaze, his face twisting in confusion.
From Buck’s chest, a similar thing occurred, but much smaller, lacking the little red orbiting sphere.
River took a deep breath, and his chest opened wider, the orb flaring as distant chanting and whispers, even song, all muddled together, echoing from him.
Buck’s orb flickered, dimming as it shrank in size.
“Do not pass on me yet, bloodletter,” Grim said. His godbeast tramped by, feathered tail slashing the air, body like a large black cat, head just as elongated with the razor jaw. Were I any more coherent, I’d have taken in their strangeness, memorized the beauty in them. Compared to them, Rayne and I were such plain things, even Storm, drab and vengeful.
Storm opened his chest, the orb within him almost as large as River’s, but nowhere near as bright. And Grim, his too, was dim compared to River, but the chest of their bestial forms flowered open and twisting light unleashed, all drifting toward my mate.
“What’s the little red—” I watched as that tiny orb revolving River’s soul spun and followed the gently swirling energy like an ember. Each of the other gods watched, eyes tracking it with concern and alarm.
“A soul. Not his.” Brook steeled himself, chest shuddering. “I thought he released—child.”
Goose bumps rose across my skin, and I found myself reaching to hold Brook as much as he held me. I wasn’t sure what he knew, but small amounts of light drained from Grim and Storm, a gentle accompaniment to the torrent that River fed into Buck’s prone form, gently swirling the red ember that shouldn’t have been in River to begin with.
“Why is there a child’s soul— He isn’t pre—”
“No. That’s not the color of— Don’t worry. We’ll talk about it later if it’s Buck’s burden to bear.” Brook sniffed hard and pulled a hand to rub at his eyes, breath shuddering.
River’s forms cycled in the shadows of his light, the thin young male, the monstrous beasts lurking in his history, his godbeast and more all flowing about until the dirge silenced and a whisper took its place in the cold night.
The whisper and the gently flowing light morphed into River’s human guise, insubstantial like what a ghost or hologram would have been, his shadow the great godbeast he had only been minutes ago. Instead of the flowing shirt and leggings he always seemed to wear, he wore a pale cloth tied about his waist, the gathering of it draped front and back to cover his indecency. His face had been painted, a swath of red over his eyes and black markings down his cheeks and chin. His shoulders bore a flow of beads and gold, decking him from wrist to ankle as well, all adornments that shone on his bronzed skin. Bright blue eyes lifted to the sky as he stretched his hands out, cupped and tilted them. There, over his fingers, dripped water. The moment it touched Buck’s light, his chest shuddered, and body jerked. “Even a death god has life in him.”
River’s human form wavered like a mist, drifting away at the edges, dissipating a little at a time. A tiny whimper left Brook’s throat as River cast his gaze toward him. Their gazes locked for the entirety until he mouthed three words on lips that disappeared in a wisp. “I love you.”
Brook braced a fist and held it to his chest, standing tall as Buck gasped a shaking breath and opened eyes that glowed a violent blue, all the cold in them of a drowning river.
I regretted looking away from River, because in the time I took to watch Buck and back again, all the shadows had coalesced and gone, in its place a single strange shape, white as driven snow save for long black, spindly legs, a swaying elegant neck, and a red-masked head with black markings over a pointed black beak. A sandhill crane.
It spread its wings; the gesture shaky as black wingtips shuddered. The shadows swept around him and coalesced, blue eyes blinking, the only remarkable feature of the bird.
“River…” Brook tore away from me and rushed out as the bird collapsed into his arms. In Brook’s grasp, heavy breaths shook the bird’s chest.
Grim and Storm stood once more in their human forms, staring at the sight of River in bird form laying in Brook’s arms.
In Storm’s shadow lay the rumble of a storm cloud and Grim’s form showed a rainbow sheen of scales over a great fat snake. And where Buck lay, a slab of stone painted in layers of sticky blood faded back into somewhere deep in the shadowed forms of his being.
“Whatever witch cast this spell will pay. I have seen to it,” Grim hissed through his teeth before staring down Buck with a sneer. “Were you not in such a precarious state, brother?”
Buck bowed his head in submission then to Storm and River in turn, before standing on shaking legs.
“Use this gift well, brother.” Brook’s voice shuddered as he stroked the crane in his arms.
Brook turned his head toward me and I took it as a sign to approach one step at a time until I went to my knees before him. “What did he do?”
“He gave his human form up, destroyed it for you and your mate.” Brook stroked River’s sleek head where his nictitating membranes flickered over avian eyes in a slow blink. Before I could protest, Brook sighed. “He’ll have to gather the power to make another. Shedding his mortal form is a great sacrifice.”
“He can’t remake himself again?” I reached out and stroked over River’s head, hand shaking.
“Not the same. He’ll come back to us, but that body will not. Maybe he’ll be similar enough.” He offered me a half smile, and I bit back new tears until warm hands settled over my shoulders from behind. I glanced up to stare at Buck, gazing into wickedly blue eyes, a reminder of River’s sacrifice.
“Thank you,” I said, a whisper caught in my throat.
Brook steeled himself and nodded. “We may be thanking you at a later date. Be well, Buckling Stone and Weathering Cliff. We will return strong one day.”
And in a whisper of power, like water, they sank into the ground to return to their people and wait for River to regenerate.
I didn’t feel like I deserved what they’d just done.
But when Buck kissed the top of my head, my entire heart seized. “You saved my land.”
“I didn’t do shit,” I choked, pulling his arms to me as I turned and wrapped him in my embrace.
“You did well. Eve and I have work to do, and I’ll bear the debt of this for you.” Grim’s jaw tightened as Eve swept in and took his hand. “Whoever did this will die.”