Chapter 15
Tabby
The next morning, it is time to go.
“It is time we left, Father,” Krall says politely. “Perhaps you will visit us in Eclipse.”
“Perhaps I will grow wings and start to feed on berries,” his father responds in the extreme negative. “But you are always welcome here, my sons, and things will not be as they were. Change has come.”
He is right about that, I reflect as we leave. Change has come. I’ve lost something I’ll never get back, and so has Skor. Maybe it was never really ours to have.
Krall is driving. Skor is sitting beside him in the front passenger seat. Thorn and I are in the rear, lolling around and not wearing our seatbelts in a way that is making Krall threaten to pull the car over if we don’t start listening to him, but we don’t anyway.
“Do you think you’re going to run away again?” Thorn asks the question with a gentle, almost conspiratorial interest. He asks it softly, but the car is small and we all have the hearing of wolves, so I know the others heard it.
I shake my head. “I can never go back to the mountains. I would die there. I have been changed in ways that make me…”
I am trying not to sound sad, because I am not sad, but I am aware the words will have that effect.
“Weak,” I say, finishing the sentence.
“I never wanted to take your power,” Skor says.
“Yes, you did. Of course you did. You hungered for it. You couldn’t help it. Because you needed it. And maybe that’s what it was always for. I couldn’t spend my whole life fighting demons. Maybe I’ve fought enough of them. Maybe it’s time to be happy.”
“No fucking maybe about it,” Thorn declares, shoving a brown bag into my hands. “Take this. I got it for you at the gas station.”
I look in the bag, and I see a round piece of something like pastry covered in pink glaze and little bits of colored sugar.
“What is it?”
“A donut,” he says. “And there’s more where that came from, baby.” He grins at me with light dancing in his eyes, and I know for an absolute fact that this man will spend the rest of his life bringing me any kind of sweet treats I want.
We speed toward Eclipse, toward a bright future full of love and candy and babies.
Krall
Tabby fell asleep in the car. Now that car is parked on a roadside bay and we are standing in bushes nearby, where we can all keep an eye on her. That being said, none of us are currently looking in the direction of the car at all.
Skor is on the ground in front of us, bleeding from the mouth because that’s where I punched him. He’s going to be very bruised after this, assuming we suffer him to survive. I wanted to kill him so badly all the way to his home. I planned this moment a thousand times over.
It’s not as satisfying as I had hoped it would be. I don’t want to kill him. I want for him not to have done this in the first place. I want things to be as they were, when I trusted him with my life in spite of everything.
“Is this it?” Skor asks, spitting blood. “Nothing more? Don’t want to run me through with something sharp?”
“Not the fucking time for attitude,” Thorn growls.
“How are we supposed to trust you, Skor? You stole our mate. You plotted from the beginning to take her home and to sacrifice her. You’ve lied to us.”
“To be fair,” he says. “I don’t have another intergenerational curse to break, and I surrendered all magic when Tabby did. I’m not a threat anymore.”
“That doesn’t change what you did. The threat wasn’t the curse. It was you lying to us the whole damn time. You not having your powers doesn’t stop you being a lying sack of shit.”
He shrugs. “I know. You can kill me if you like. I don’t mind.
I needed to do what I needed to do, and even if you kill me, I am certain our bloodline will live on.
I left myself inside Tabby many times over.
Whatever she births will be part of me. You can’t get rid of me.
Not in any way that matters. I’ve done what I needed to do in this life. ”
Thorn and I look at one another. Skor is our brother, but he’s never been one for sharing his feelings or thoughts or being trustworthy. This is a new low, though.
“She loves you. She gave up her powers for you,” I say. I am weakening, and I hate it.
“I solved that problem for you, didn’t I,” Skor says. “No more worrying she’s going to give you away by doing magic at inopportune times. She’ll still be a wild thing. She’ll still walk all over him, and clash with you. We need all three of us. Her father was right about that.”
He gets to his feet and cracks his neck. “So if you want to take another shot, go ahead. But this time? I’ll hit back.”
Thorn growls. “She’s our baby. My baby. And you almost got her killed. And now you think you can just talk your way out of it?”
“I think I did what I had to do, and I think you’d do the same if you’d known about it. But you didn’t. Because you were babied.”
Thorn lets out a cry of rage and tackles Skor into the bushes.
I stand back and watch. I had planned to do this too, but he’s right.
I might have done a similar thing if it had occurred to me.
I like to think I’d have told everyone, but with our family on the line…
maybe I just would have done it. Hell, maybe some part of me knew what he was going to do and let it happen. That’s a dark thought.
“What are they doing?”
Tabby is beside me, awake from her nap and more curious than upset.
“We’ve been beating him for abducting you.”
“Oh,” she says. “Fair enough. Are you going to stop it? Thorn might kill him.”
I don’t stop them. I let them fight it out.
Thorn needs this. There can’t be any anger left between them.
The bushes rustle madly as the two of them shift and start fighting in wolf form, snarling, scrapping, tearing at one another.
There’s blood and fur and things of that nature.
It’s a mess, but nothing that won’t heal.
“I put money on Thorn,” Tabby says, leaning against me.
“Me too,” I agree, running my hand through her hair. “I’m sorry we didn’t protect you from him. You should never have had to go through what you did.”
“I should never have had to go through anything,” Tabby says. “But life is mostly about going through things.”
She’s so philosophical about her ordeal.
“Really. We want to keep you safe. It’s not for you to have to save us. Or to fix family curses. Or to have to wonder if you’re going to be abducted. I failed to protect you.”
“I didn’t need protecting.”
I slide my hand under her chin and make her look at me.
“No,” I say. “You didn’t. But you should have been anyway.”
A whine from the bushes indicates a victor has been discovered. A moment later, Thorn emerges. He is naked and he is bloodied. Not his blood, I think.
“I feel better,” he says. “Is there drink in the car?”
“Yes. Go on.”
A minute or two later, Skor crawls out. He is worse for wear, but alive, which is a better state than I would have left him in.
“You want your turn now?” He stands up and looks at me with an even expression. He might not have magic anymore, but he’s got the same dark soul. The real thing is, we need him.
“My turn?” Tabby laughs.
Skor snorts.
“You can all hate me as long as you like. But I’m going to look after my babies, and yours too, probably,” he says. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life, however long it is, looking after you, Tabby, and the pups we have. I promise.”
Thorn strolls over, still naked. People are going to make calls to the authorities.
The three of us stand in the bushes, next to some old, crushed beer cans.
“We are family. Do you understand? There are no loyalties outside this. Only to each other,” I say. “No captives. No vampires. No zombies.”
Tabby sighs.
“What?”
“It’s going to be boring,” she says.
“It’s not. It’s going to be an adventure like none you’ve ever had before.
It’s going to be full of love, in a new city, where every day there’s a new wonder, and you’re going to learn what it’s like to have babies and a family that loves you so deeply they won’t let you be eaten by monsters in the dark. ”
Tabby smiles, and I watch as her eyes go a little bit watery. When I met this woman, I thought she was too everything. Too young, too wild, too scrappy.
Now I know I love all those too’s. I can’t wait to raise a whole pack of little creatures just like her, and me, and Thorn, and yes, I suppose we have space for a few little Skors as well.