Chapter 30 Wasn’t Me
Wasn't Me
His chest hurt. Everything hurt, and it took more energy than he liked to stay upright. Of course, killing two sarnaki—never mind that one of them had been almost shredded by Jake’s gunfire, little brother had a distinct gift for projectile mayhem—was an achievement. He should have been overjoyed.
Instead, Erik wanted to sleep for a week, and maybe for another afterward. He might even have tried to, if there wasn’t the prospect of dreaming.
And if there wasn’t a lirai to save.
“Hello to you, too.” Jake beckoned him inside, glancing over Erik’s shoulder to check the hallway.
There wasn’t much to see—a rundown motel was no fit place for a lirai, but it was right over a tangle of water lines and jammed among high-waisted, frowning apartment buildings providing a variety of psychic cover.
It was the sort of place that charged by the hour or the night, with a marked preference for the more profitable former. “You look like shit.”
“Truth in advertising, bro.” The instant Erik was fully in the room Jake slammed the door, and the shields—probably placed as soon as they reached this imperfectly safe harbor—folded back into place.
And there, clean and whole, twilight eyes huge and her rippling dark hair a wild mess, Liv stood near the bathroom.
She was deadly pale, and for a moment Erik thought she might scream.
The oneiros at her breastbone was alive with deep coruscating colors; he hadn’t realized, inside the temple, just how much she hummed with invisible force.
Every scrape, puncture, slash, and slice on him drank in that power, the potential, and he understood more than ever why the spiders, the hellbeasts, the shadows, and the Mad God himself wanted that wine-bright, intoxicating drink.
To consume it.
Erik didn’t realize he was bearing down on her until she flinched, throwing up one small, perfect hand as if to ward off a blow. His bloody, filthy boot-toes dug into cheap patterned nylon carpet, and Jake’s hand closed around Erik’s left arm.
“Easy, big brother.” His Younger sounded only mildly concerned, but the vibrating tension in his grasp said that if Erik shrugged him off and kept going, things would heat up in a hurry. “Let’s just all calm down, okay?”
“Hurt,” Erik rasped. “Is. She. Hurt?”
Liv’s chin rose. “I’m fine.” The words trembled, but she wasn’t lying.
The display of sheer courage was just a little humbling—a civilian, facing horrors that would drive the regular nine-to-fivers into screaming until their throats gave out, and not retreating an inch.
Worse, with a potential’s sensitivity, she could sense the underworld and its predators—which might be how she was still alive, but probably also soaked her with high-grade anxiety every day of her life, tension she didn’t notice because it was so incessant.
“You… we need to get you to a hospital.”
Did she actually sound concerned? Erik bit back a terrible, harsh bray of almost-laughter.
“Won’t do me any good, but thanks.” You’re what I need.
It lingered on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed it just like he’d taken down the pain, the desperation, and the mounting rage when Jake’s trail—and hence, hers—faded and flared maddeningly.
Ignatius couldn’t be dead, could he? With sarnaki everywhere, the car burning, and a lirai to protect, the old man might have taken one too many hits.
Mourn later. Do your job now. Erik could find Jake because he knew all his little brother’s tricks, but the shadowbeasts might not be able to. And now, with both a younger and elder Son alive and in attendance, she was safe.
Or at least, safer.
Now, suddenly, he was aware of just how hurt he was.
Erik swayed, and she stepped close, grabbing his other arm.
Her bare palm met filthy, blood-streaked skin, the armor patches in his sleeve torn free.
“Come on.” Still pale as milk, she was also surprisingly strong, or maybe he just wanted to obey. “You need to sit down.”
The touch roared through him, a lirai willingly putting her hands on a Son. Without the muffling of sorcery, unconsciousness, or clothing it was a raw, unfiltered jolt, and his chin tipped up as his eyes closed.
“Do we have a first aid kit?” She pushed him into the room’s single chair, which creaked alarmingly under his weight but held up. “Band-Aids? Anything?”
“I’ll be fine,” Erik mumbled, but she wasn’t listening.
“He just needs a chance to breathe.” Jake’s chin had set and his hands were tense. “Go in and get changed, ma’am. We’ll move once the sun’s up.”
It was the best course of action. Erik sagged in the chair, beginning to believe he was still alive—and that she was, too. Jake was a bit battered, but he’d had time to bathe in that glow; she was putting out a lot of power for an untriggered potential.
The sooner she met the Flame, the better.
Still, she lingered, her hand still on him. “Wow,” she breathed, softly.
She didn’t mean it as an invitation, but his body responded anyway. Which gave Erik an entirely new set of problems.
“See?” Jake sounded almost kind, for once. “We heal fast. All he needs is time.”
Erik’s blood-crusted eyes refused to open. He wanted to surge up out of the chair, find the rest of the creatures hunting her, and murder them with all the savagery he could possibly muster. Kill, kill, and kill again until the world was cleansed and she was safe.
But that persistent softness against his arm was a shackle; he didn’t dare move for fear of disturbing it.
She was probably seeing the bruises fading in fast-forward, rips in skin and muscle closing up from the inside out, bits of glass or tiny rocks from when the sarnaki dragged him over pavement forced free.
The deep ache in his chest refused to quit, though—it had been close to piercing his heart.
Very close.
“Erik?” she persisted. “It looks like it hurts.”
“Fine,” he rasped. “I’m fine.” And if you ask again, beautiful, I’m not sure what I’ll say. He could handle getting stabbed with a sarnaki claw-spear, but she was about to undo him.
The touch faded, yet the glow remained. Without the Flame she was so much more vulnerable, sleeping or waking.
The bathroom door shut with a click. The shower chugged to life a few moments later, and he hoped there was at least a fragment of decent soap in there.
When he could force his eyelids up a fraction, irritated at the blood-crust, he found his little brother halfway between him and the bathroom door, shoulders tense and chin level.
“They knew our route,” Jake said, flatly, as if he expected a challenge. “Or they were watching every possible road.”
Which was a sobering realization. If Jake kept thinking like this, he’d make Elder status in no time.
“Looks that way.” Now Erik could relax a little, so he let himself sag, muscle by muscle. The chair didn’t creak again, but if it broke he might just sprawl in the pieces and try for a catnap.
The room was full of the heavy, heady fume of cleansing sorcery. Looked like Jake had been attending to their lirai personally. It shouldn’t have irked him; Erik should have just been happy to have found them and doubly happy she was cared for.
Jake was right. This was a lot of effort for the Mad God’s underlings to go to, even for such a high-value potential. A temple had been breached, Ignatius was missing, Control wasn’t answering, and if a Younger wasn’t suspecting his Elder—and vice versa—then neither of them were doing their job.
The walls here were paper-thin, other rooms full of activity despite the hour.
Faint mortal sounds ran through the building—showers running, low voices, moving bodies, and the hum of conscious normals.
Some were no doubt due at work before dawn; others were done with a long, hard, cold night.
The snow was showing no sign of letting up.
“It’s not me,” Jake said, harshly. “If it was, you wouldn’t have found us.”
Which wasn’t entirely true, but there was no point in saying as much. “I know,” Erik said quietly. But you have no way of knowing it’s not me. And this close to dawn, you’d be smart to wait for dark again. If it was you, that is.
Jake finally got around to asking one of the more important questions. “Where’s Father?”
“By the time I reached the wreck you were gone; there wasn’t a trail. Except yours.” Which meant the tactic of two in the car and one running sweep had worked as intended, even though Erik was lucky to have killed not just a single sarnaki but a pair of the fuckers.
“What was it?” Little brother was settling into the work now.
“Sarnaki.”
“But they shouldn’t have…” Jake’s face changed, the equivalent of a door slamming.
Erik watched his Younger realize that someone would have had to call the sarnaki to them instead of just covering routes out of town, and Erik had been out running perimeter with plenty of time to do so.
It was no use. He’d known as soon as he’d realized what he was fighting that it would end up like this.
“I didn’t,” he said, harshly. “I don’t expect you to believe me. But I didn’t, Jacob.”
The shower shut off. Maybe she’d only rinsed. The thought called up a series of interesting images, ones Erik didn’t have any time to pursue. Lucky hot water, getting to touch, to slide over curves and—
“It better not have been you,” Jake said, finally.
“Look, it’s possible they’re covering all the routes to the nearest active temple and just got lucky with sarnaki and hunting hounds.
Father might even have suspected; he knew we were being followed.
Maybe he drew them off. I didn’t have time to check; there were six or seven goatmen. ”
Erik nodded; he’d smelled the goat-things through the wet snow. Even that slight movement hurt, which was the surest sign the battle was over.
Or that things were about to get much, much worse. Goatmen were opportunistic, but also pursuit predators. The double-horned fuckers could have been chasing the SUV since the temple; the Sons’ escape route had been semi-rural in patches and hairy fuckers liked that terrain.
“It’s possible,” he said. Now his skin began to crawl, another sign that the fight was past and he’d survived again.
Once she was done, he’d go in and wash his face.
What strength he had left would have to be spent on his weapons and clothes; he was too tired for more sorcery unless they were attacked again.
“So what do we do?” Jake’s sandy eyebrows were hiked almost to his hairline. “Just… watch each other?”
“And get her to the active temple Father was aiming for.” That’s the important thing. We’re both going to be dredged to see if we had anything to do with this. Which would be painful, but utterly necessary.
“They already know where we’re going.”
“Maybe,” Erik said, listening to his lirai move in the bathroom—material whisper-shifted; she was changing into fresh clothes, and that was a deliciously distracting thought, as well. “You know what that means.”
“We’re all gonna die?” But a tentative, lopsided smile returned to Younger Brother’s face.
“Better.” To be an Elder was to pretend you knew what the hell you were doing; it was Erik’s lot in life and might steady both little brother and their exhausted, far-too-brave potential. “We’re going to have to be sneaky.”