Chapter Six
Oh. God,” I fell into bed, face-first, hours later, and wondered if it was a bad sign that I couldn’t feel it.
I did vaguely feel Cyrus stripping off my boots, the ones I’d taken from the girls’ haul, along with some ridiculously overpriced jeans and a shirt I didn’t know the cost of because they’d wisely taken the tag off before I saw it.
Fortunately, no one at the Corps knew a damned thing about fashion, so no one had so much as blinked when I showed up in cowgirl chic, complete with fringed suede jacket, and started demanding help.
Help they had most definitely not wanted to give.
It had been a fight, as our resources were already stretched paper-thin, and it would likely take a few more to cement things.
But for the moment, we had Silver Circle war mages crawling all over the five different compounds that Sebastian and Sienna had set up for clan children.
They were also being warded all to hell and would have Weres and mages guarding them until we could resolve this, and with five, there was no concentration of all of the kids in one place to draw anyone’s attention.
I hoped it would be enough, but I didn’t know, partly because I couldn’t hold onto a thought for more than five seconds.
“Go to sleep,” Cyrus said, kissing my temple.
It was all he could reach, but I didn’t have the strength to turn over. “’Kay,” I think I managed to mutter.
Then I was out.
The walls were stone or really hard-packed earth.
I couldn’t tell which because I couldn’t see them.
I could feel, and I could smell, but my eyes returned only boiling darkness, without even a sliver of moonlight.
Of course, maybe that was because I was inside—in a cave, by the feel of it—but one with no cracks to allow me to see out.
Just more rough walls, sliding under my fingertips as I slowly felt my way along.
Or scratching under them might be more accurate, because I seemed to have super-overgrown, very hard nails.
They were scraping up a lot of dust, which wasn’t good, as the air in here was already full of animal droppings, probably from bats.
And wasn’t that all I needed: bats dive bombing me in the darkness, and possibly getting tangled in my hair. I put up a hand defensively, and didn’t encounter smooth, well-conditioned strands, as I’d expected. But something else, something strange…
Dreadlocks? That’s what they were, as far as I could tell, and yes, they were growing out of my skull. Like the smell of unwashed body had my musk underneath it.
I smelled like dirty feet—and dirty everything else. And like I might have been bedding down with some dogs recently, or possibly pigs. Yeah, it had to be pigs; no dog I ever met reeked like that.
My feet were also bare, but the soles were so callused that I hardly noticed the sharp little stones I encountered from time to time.
I might as well have had on leather sandals…
to match my rags? I seemed to be wearing shreds of animal hide, mostly around my waist, and an excessive number of necklaces on top.
I gave up trying to figure it out and just kept inching forward, although I didn’t know why. Was I stalking someone, because I seemed like the sort who would stalk someone, only there was no one there. Just me and the rocks and some brittle twigs underfoot—that weren’t twigs, were they?
I was walking over bones and trying not to think about it, but it was a little hard when they kept crunch-crunch-crunching under my feet, like autumn leaves.
Only leaves didn’t make me want to nose around in there, drawn by the musty, meaty, pungent smell of half-decayed meat.
Just in case there was some marrow I could find to suck out and—
And okay.
Time to wake up now.
Sunlight was shining through the hotel’s sheers when I blinked my eyes open again. It was a beautiful day, one already partly over, judging by the angle of the light, and I was alone. But people were nearby; I could hear whispers coming from what I finally identified as the corridor outside.
The bedroom was separate from the main living area of the suite, but the door was open, and the whispers were loud. And from the snippets I caught, the conversation mainly focused on whether I should be woken up to deal with whatever was going on. I debated the question myself.
And then rolled over to test the waters and—
Sucked in a breath through my teeth.
Goddamn.
Just goddamn.
Everything hurt.
I’d been running on adrenaline and anger last night, not to mention panic over danger to the kids. But that seemed to have worn off, along with the happy, dappy joy juice the healer had given me, which had blunted most of the pain. It was not blunting shit right now.
After a moment, I managed to sit up enough to check myself out, and yeah. It looked like the healer, who had not been happy with my repeated assurances that I was fine, had gotten to me while I was out. And run amok.
I was covered in bandages under the robe that somebody had put me back in, presumably Cyrus. Not that I needed it. I looked like a mummy, with barely any skin showing.
“Don’t you dare!” Sophie said, in a normal voice, before slipping back into a vicious whisper again.
The door had opened and then closed just as quickly, as if someone had slammed it from the outside, so I assumed she was keeping people out.
Which would have been great except Sophie had a temper and an in-your-face attitude that did not play well with Weres.
Especially ones as keyed up as those around here.
I stood up.
And immediately plopped my butt back down again when the room went swimmy. I lay down before I passed out, falling backwards onto the bed. And watched the ceiling spin leisurely around and around while my stomach tried to decide between nausea and hunger.
Nausea won, although there was nothing to come up since we’d never gotten around to eating any of the expensive food in that other ballroom.
And I’d been so wiped by the time I got back from arguing with the Corps that I hadn’t even wanted anything.
So I just lay there, miserable, while the fight escalated outside.
“Lia!” Somebody yelled, but I didn’t know who. Couldn’t tell.
A shouting match started up, with what sounded like half a dozen voices. I tried to eavesdrop, but it didn’t work. My ears had gotten an upgrade along with my other senses after the Change, but I guessed that strength was needed elsewhere, because I wasn’t parsing one word in ten.
Gah, I thought, and sat up again.
The room stayed steady that time, if sullenly so, as if daring me to stand. So I did, because I like a challenge. And then promptly stumbled into a side table and barked my shin, in one of the few places that wasn’t already bandaged.
Motherf—
I hopped around for a minute, biting my lip, because Lupas were serene and in control and did not swear inventively at pieces of furniture. Instead, I limped around the bed, crossed the living room, and threw open the door to the hall. “What?”
And got a dozen pairs of horrified eyes back because I hadn’t bothered to get dressed, and my robe was sagging open, showcasing the mile or so of bandages.
Some of which had started to leak.
“Lia!” Sophie said, looking horrified. “What happened?”
“Nothing, it’s okay.” I pulled my robe shut and knotted it, not that that seemed to help. “Just haven’t had my shower yet.”
“Lia!” she said again, like it was the only word she knew.
And then everybody was talking, and pushing me back into the living room of the suite, and sitting me down on the expansive L-shaped sofa.
It looked like the whole clan was here, the boys as well as our newly minted pack of auxiliaries, with Jen on the phone to room service, before one of the guys—Jason of the red hair and Adam’s apple—took the phone away because “that’ll take all day, you know how they are!
” Meanwhile, Sophie was trying to put my feet up, Noah was explaining that he had told them they should take this to Cyrus, and Lee was pointing out that Cyrus was still in a meeting with the clan leaders to decide strategy.
I just sat there, feeling unwell, and letting it wash over me. Kimmie came in and sat down beside me, having not been with the others, and she was carrying a room service tray with a bunch of stuff on it. “Where did you get that?” Jason demanded.
“I decided to do something useful while you guys were arguing,” was the serene reply.
Kimmie would have made a good Lupa. For more reasons than one, I thought, as she fixed me with a gimlet-eyed stare. “Eat.”
It was not a request.
I ate. I was hungry, and in the battle going on in my stomach, nausea was now losing.
Maybe because hunger had just gotten some big-time reinforcements in the form of eggs Benedict, hashbrowns, a blueberry muffin almost as big as my head, and a mimosa in a 16-ounce Dante’s plastic cup with a grinning devil on it.
I eyed the latter warily, because I already felt like I had the world’s worst hangover, but figured what the hell.
Hair of the dog and all that.
Or maybe of the wolf in this case.
“You need to tell her,” Kimmie said while I mopped it all up.
“Tell me wha’?” I asked, my mouth full.
Everybody started side-eyeing each other.
I swallowed. “Seriously. What?”
“It’s… don’t get mad,” Aki said, which was never a good sign.
“Why would I be mad?”
“No reason,” Noah said staunchly. “We came to tell you as soon as we found out. We tried to tell Cyrus, ‘cause we figured you needed to rest, but he’s in that meeting, and four of Arnou’s biggest bastards are outside the door. They wouldn’t let us in!”
“Just sneered and said to go away,” Lee said. “Like we were nothing—”