Dyre Read online

  And it had nearly come to that, not so long ago. Sometimes, Des thought it might have been better if Nathan hadn’t spared her life that awful night. He looked at her. “Will this new Geas of yours allow Philomena to treat and monitor her through the Fever, or will you be assuming nursing duty as well as guard duty?”

  Des blinked and rolled her shoulders to release the tension in them. It didn’t work. “Phil’s in town?”

  Nathan cleared his throat and looked chagrined for a moment. “She is. She’s staying at the manor.”

  “She’s staying here? Why? Are you or Jake sick, or something?” Rolling her stiff shoulders again and taking a covert whiff of Nathan, Des’s eyes suddenly widened.

  Nathan didn’t smell of sickness. No, he smelled of flowers, bitter herbs, and something indefinably feminine, as well as his own musky scent, like iron and freshly-turned earth. He smelled of Phil, and of…sex.

  Des crooked a disbelieving eyebrow, and Nathan smugly crooked it right back at her.

  Ew, Des thought, shuddering. Then she put it aside for the moment. She had more pressing things to think about than Nathan’s sex life. And, if nothing else, it was a relief to know that of all the problems that plagued the Coulter family, physical illness was still not one of them.

  “Yeah,” she said finally, forcing away mental pictures of her father and her surrogate mother rolling around like a couple of wild animals. “Phil can check her out. She’s…uh, she doesn’t look like she’s doing too well.”

  “Mm,” Nathan agreed absently, frowning at Ruby once more. “The Council will have to be notified and convene before Full-Moon Waxing.”

  Des groaned. “There’s gonna be a Contest, isn’t there?”

  “Several, I should imagine.” Nathan looked at her. “Will you be ready to champion her by the Full?”

  Des skinned her lips back from her teeth and clenched her fists. “I’m ready now.”

  Nathan snorted, running a hand over his silvering dark hair. Des rarely saw him do that. He was probably worried about the Council having to convene. “Ready to fall down if you don’t sit down, child. Sit,” he commanded. Des immediately obeyed, perching on the edge of the bed, near Ruby’s right foot. Then, off Nathan’s indulgent, triumphant smile, she started to stand up again, but Nathan held out a hand, effectively halting her.

  “Now, stay. Good girl,” he added when Des remained poised between sitting and standing. Then he crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels as if surveying his handiwork. Finally he turned and strode out of Des’s room, every inch the master of his den.

  “Bite me, Nathan!” Des called childishly after him. That was all she could do besides sit. And stay.

  On the bed behind her, Ruby began to toss a little, and mutter. After a few minutes of puzzling it out, Des finally began to make sense of them.

  “Please, George…make it stop…”

  Des furrowed her brow in concern and took Ruby’s clammy right hand, muttering to herself, “C’mon, Phil, hurry up.”

  *

  “It lives.”

  Des started out of a half sleep she hadn’t even realized she was in, snorting and shaking her head. Then she winced at the ache of her tense shoulders and neck. That ache was making its way across her skull with no signs of stopping. “It wishes it didn’t. How’s it goin’, Phi—whoa! Is there something you wanna tell me?”

  Philomena Simms stood leaning against the door post to Des’s room, smiling and barefoot…and pregnant. The prominent bulge of her belly was easily visible in the simple white nightgown she wore. Between the gown and the bright smile, she seemed to literally glow.

  “Well,” she said, stepping into Des’s bedroom, fluffing her mid-length afro. “I let my hair grow out. Do you like?”

  “You’re beautiful,” Des yawned, though she meant it. “You and Nathan? Seriously? How long’s this been going on?”

  Phil shrugged, settling one hand on her stomach. “Almost two years, hon. Which you’d know if you bothered to keep in contact with the people who care about you.” She arched her graceful ebony brows and Des looked down at her hand. She still held Ruby’s.

  “I’ve e-mailed you guys a couple of times,” she said guiltily, nostrils flaring as she scented Phil: bitter herbs, flowers, sex, and Nathan. And the primal, tidal, indefinable smell of pregnancy. “You could’ve told me.”

  “Would you have wanted to find out about your father and I, not to mention your little brother and sister, via e-mail?”

  “Well, no.” Des shrugged uncomfortably. “I guess not. You’re having twins?”

  “Nothing gets by you, does it?”

  Des shook her head. “This is so weird. I can’t even process it on top of everything else. Maybe an e-mail wouldn’t have been so bad.”

  Making an exasperated little moue, Phil huffed. “I don’t believe in disclosing important personal information the same way robots try to sell me cheap Viagra and live porn. And since you absolutely refuse to get a cellphone—”

  Des shook her head once, implacably. “Those things cause brain cancer.”

  Phil rolled her eyes and crossed the room, suddenly brisk as business. “You need a brain to get brain cancer, dear. Now budge over and let me get a look at our new queen.”

  Chastened, Des let go of Ruby’s hand and scooted down to the very foot of the bed. Phil gingerly lowered herself to the bed with a small sigh, then took the hand Des had been holding. Her other hand she held over Ruby’s mouth, then placed it gently on Ruby’s head.

  Ruby moaned, but otherwise was still.

  Phil sat like that for maybe a minute before withdrawing her hands and standing up. “The first thing that needs to happen is getting her out of these wet clothes and into something dry and warm,” she said with a brisk air that didn’t quite hide the worry in her voice and scent. She threw back the coverlet, and Ruby began to shiver immediately.

  “Right.” Des stood up, only then realizing she hadn’t taken off her duffel. She placed it in the room’s only chair and shrugged off her jacket. Phil was already removing Ruby’s soaked sneakers and socks. Des bit her lip and pitched in.

  “How long since she was bitten?”

  “Um, maybe four hours?” Des sat on the bed and half-propped Ruby up, tugging on the shapeless black sweater she wore. A few seconds later it landed across the room with a sodden splat. A plain gray wife-beater soon followed it, leaving Ruby in a white cotton bra that hooked in the front. Des hesitated. “Uh—”

  “That, too,” Phil said absently as she went to work on Ruby’s black corduroys, skinning them down Ruby’s legs. “She’ll be lucky if she’s not fighting off pneumonia as well as the Fever.”

  Feeling another twinge of guilt, Des unhooked Ruby’s bra and tried to peel it off without looking over much. “It’s raining like a bitch out there, Phil. And I had to backtrack all over Creation just to confuse our scent-trail. And more cops were out tonight than usual, so I spent a lot of time crouching in alley-puddles with her, waiting for them to disappear.”

  Phil hummed and made short work of Ruby’s blue granny panties by simply ripping them off her. “Nathan’s turned the heat up in this wing, so that should help her. I’ve also got my Feverfew tea brewing.”

  “Yuck.” Des made a face. One of the few things she remembered from her own Fever was Phil’s cool, gentle hand on her head and the taste of Feverfew tea, like rancid mulch steeped in week-old rainwater. The former had been lovely, the latter vile.

  From the looks of Ruby, however, she had a lot more on her plate than some nasty-tasting tea. Her breathing was labored and fast, her chest rising and falling noticeably as she shivered and shook. Beneath those frumpy clothes, Ruby was all dramatic curves: ample, rounded hips, full breasts, and solid, well-shaped limbs. Then Phil was whipping the coverlet back over Ruby and tucking her in tight. When she looked at Des, Des blushed, knowing she’d been caught staring.

  “Des, honey, are you two…?” Phil lifted her eyebrows again, and her nostril
s flared. She was scenting Des, who probably still smelled like the pretty brunette from earlier, as well as the million unsavory scents of Lenape Landing’s secret ways.

  “What? No!” Des blushed even harder, scratching her arm just above the bend of her elbow. “I’ve barely even spoken to her. She was George’s friend. She used to come to read to him. She was just at the wrong place at the wrong time when the shit went down.”

  Phil’s keen, regal face softened as she looked at Ruby again. “Poor thing. She has no idea what’s in store for her. It’s a good thing she has you for a guardian,” she added quietly.

  Des sighed, shaking her head again. “Yeah, because that worked out so well for George.”

  “You did your best. And sometimes even our best isn’t enough. Some things are just fated.”

  “Fated? You wanna know what I was doing when that assassin shot George? I was doing some Hume-chick I didn’t even know.” Des turned away from the bed and shoved her hands in her pockets, balling her fists till her nails bit into her palms. “I was getting laid while George was getting killed.”

  This admission was greeted with silence. “You let the mission slip,” Phil said after a few beats. “It happens. But if you’re going to be any good to the new Dyre, you’ll need to stop blaming yourself and wallowing in pointless guilt. For the next few months at least, it’s got to be all about her.”

  Des clenched her fists even harder, till skin broke and blood began to leak around her nails. The pain was negligible. It was nothing compared to the pain that George had felt, or the pain Ruby would be going through for the next few days, so why shouldn’t Des bleed? It wasn’t atonement, but it was as close as she’d likely ever—

  “Stop that, Jennifer Desiderio,” Phil commanded. “Stop whatever it is that you’re thinking and doing that’s making you smell like blood and despair.”

  Des loosened her fists and took her hands out of her pockets so she wasn’t tempted to clench them again. Her palms were indeed covered in half-moon punctures that began to close even as she watched, till no evidence of them remained but the drying blood on her palms and under her nails.

  Disturbed for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, Des crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her bloody palms, and hung her head. “George’s death is on me. Another life ended because of something I did.”

  Phil sighed again. “Sweetheart, there was no malice in you toward him, was there? You weren’t hoping he’d end up dead as a result of your actions, right?”

  Des let tears well up behind her eyes, but she trapped them before they fell. “Intent doesn’t matter. What matters is the result. I caused his death just the same as if I’d shot him myself.”

  Another weighty silence.

  “Well,” Phil said softly. “Now that you’ve managed to take the weight of the entire Loup history of politics and murder on your shoulders, do you feel better? Do you feel more able to do your job as the blood-protector of the new Dyre? Because if you do, I’ll agree with you till the cows come home. But if you don’t, might I suggest you stop blaming yourself and start shouldering your new responsibility?”

  Des closed her eyes and forced back more tears. She hadn’t cried when her mother died ten years ago. Crying wouldn’t have solved anything then, and it wouldn’t solve anything now. Neither would feeling sorry for herself. She’d been focusing on her own needs when she took home that pretty brunette at the cost of George’s life.

  Thinking of Ruby—of the sobbing girl, the woman-Scent who’d tried to shield George with her own body, who’d done more to protect him when he’d needed it most than Des ever had—Des’s resolve hardened. She accepted her own culpability, shame, and guilt. Swallowed them whole and buried them deep down. Further down than her Loup, further down than the Incident. Buried it in the deepest, darkest well of her heart.

  “You’re right,” she murmured, standing a little straighter. “Of course, you’re right.”

  Phil settled her warm hands on Des’s shoulders, kneading and squeezing. “But before you can make it about her, it has to be about you forgiving yourself and letting it go. You made your mistake. Now learn from it. Don’t let yourself be distracted like that again. At least not while she’s still so vulnerable.”

  “Yeah.” Des nodded tersely then shrugged Phil’s hands off her shoulders. Forgiveness wasn’t what she needed at the moment, and it was more than she could bear. More than she’d ever been able to bear.

  “Look, I put some leftovers to warm in the oven for you. Why don’t you take a quick shower, get into some dry clothes, and get something to eat,” Phil said kindly. Des shook her head no, facing Phil again. She caught Phil’s look of concern and smiled wanly.

  “Thanks, but I shouldn’t leave her.”

  Phil rolled her eyes and made her sternest face, but it still didn’t hide the concern. “This is the safest place for her to be, right now. And in the fifteen minutes it’ll take for you to shower, dress, and bring a plate back up here, I promise you nothing bad will happen to her.”

  “But—”

  “You have my oath on it, Des.” Phil was already herding Des toward the door. “Trust me. You’re going to need to keep up your strength to defend her. Nathan’s already contacting the other Alphas so the Council can convene. He expects there to be no fewer than seven Contests.”

  “Seven?!” Des sputtered and froze, and Phil took that opportunity to shove her out the door and close it. The lock engaged.

  Holy fuck! He said several, not seven! The odds of me surviving not one, not two, not even three, but seven fights with seven Alphas or their champions are…fuck, astronomical!

  She turned and was about to start pounding on the door, when it opened again and Phil shoved a pair of her old navy blue sweats into her hands.

  “Oh, and by the time you’re done showering, the Feverfew should be ready, so be a love and bring up the kettle and a teacup. Thanks.” Then Phil closed the door and locked it again, leaving Des to lean against it and sag in complete exhaustion and something very like hopelessness.

  At least for a few seconds, anyway. But hopelessness was a luxury Des couldn’t afford with Ruby’s life in the balance, not to mention her own.

  Rolling her still tense shoulders again, Des turned left down the hallway, toward her bathroom.

  *

  Wiping the condensation off the bathroom mirror with her arm, Des took a good look at herself. Long, deceptively mild dark eyes watched her tiredly from a rather gamin face, fine-featured and square. Normally spiky blue-black hair clung damply to a high, clear brow and cheekbones that could cut glass.

  It was the Coulter face, all angles and not-unattractive sharpness. In fact, but for her pale olive complexion and diminutive build, she saw a feminized version of Nathan Coulter in the mirror, complete with the poker face and obsidian eyes.

  Des never had trouble meeting those eyes, even on her worst day, which this was definitely in the running for. She had no one and nothing to blame this death on but her own inattention. It couldn’t be explained away by the sly, slow sneak of rabidity—no two ways to look at the cause of George’s death.

  Des’s reflection looked suddenly grim and as forgiving as stone.

  You can’t make it right unless you know a trick for bringing Loups back from the dead. But you can get it right. There’s a new Dyre tossing and turning her way toward a life that she likely doesn’t want and can’t handle yet. It’s your job to guide her through and protect her till she comes into her own, the reflection whispered.

  “But what if she doesn’t? What if she never does?” Des asked it. Her reflection didn’t respond, merely watched her with those long, unreadable eyes. It was too much like being stared down by Nathan, so Des finally looked away.

  “If she doesn’t, then…well, I guess that means a lifetime of job security for me,” Des muttered wryly, a little nonplussed at the sense of freedom that accompanied the thought. The next few months of her life were going to be nothin
g but sleepless nights, days spent in training, and fighting for Ruby’s life and her own. Assuming she survived the Contests, the rest of her life would be spent guarding and protecting, fighting and killing.

  Fighting and winning, for nothing less would do, the Loup within growled. Des let it growl, let it come forward in their shared body and headspace and grin. It had no qualms about a life spent fighting and killing. And if it could do it for a cause that would allow its Hume-half to live with herself, so much the better.

  So they, Des and the Loup within, returned the wild, vulpine grin in the mirror.

  “It’s not like I was planning on doing anything with the rest of my life, anyway,” Des said, and she whistled as she toweled herself dry.

  *

  On her way back to her room, piled-high plate in one hand, teapot and teacup in the other, Des stopped at Nathan’s office. The door was ajar, but she knocked with the teapot anyway. “It’s me.”

  “Come in, Jennifer,” was the immediate, rankling response. And she did, biting her tongue against any less than diplomatic words. She nudged the heavy door a bit wider with her bare toes and slipped in.

  Whatever she intended to say died on her lips as she realized the man sitting with his feet up on Nathan’s baroque, antique desk wasn’t Nathan Coulter at all. This man was much too tall, his wavy, russet-brown hair was much too long, and he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts. On his feet were a pair of black socks and broken-in sandals. In fact, the only thing he had in common with Nathan Coulter was the same low, oiled-smoke voice and slightly scratchy timbre.

  “Well, fucking shit,” Des breathed, grinning and nearly dropping plate and tea implements, other worries forgotten as her heart leapt in her chest. All she could do for several moments was stand and stare.