FoM02 Trammel (22 page)

“Go ahead, dear.” Moore looked positively proud. “You’ve handled him before.”

“He and I have an understanding,” Lourdes said to Greer. “Whether he likes it or not.”

“We do, don’t we?”
she added so only Dane could hear.

“Touch me with that thing and we’ll both understand what your blood tastes like,” Dane snarled. Her mind on his made him want to claw at his head.

“Be my guest.” Greer stepped well back, irritation coming off her in waves.

“We’ve been through this before.” Lourdes stepped closer to him.
“If you let me do this,”
Dane felt as much as heard,
“I promise you will be glad of it. But pain will follow, and you cannot let them see that you
are not sleeping.”
She slid the stick between the bars.

Dane knew what it was to have her separate him from his will, and it wasn’t happening. His thoughts were clear and his muscles answered his commands to flex.
“What do you want for this?”

“Only what you do.”

Lourdes was slight, but she had the reflexes of a cat. The needle came at him like a snake, yet not so fast that Dane didn’t feel a splash of anesthetic on his skin before the point bit in. The pain was half what it had been last time, and he twisted, feigning the agony he’d felt before.

“You have to make them respect you,” Lourdes said, walking away.

The world swam and went gray. Dane slumped down with his head against the cage bars. Beyond the blurred clumps of his lashes, he could see that Moore held something in the palm of her hand. An artifact

with a blue light shining from it like an eye. She turned it toward him and murmured a saying. It made no sense to Dane, but he tried to remember it.

His magic crept back in like the rush of blood to a sleeping limb, and it took everything he had not to scream. Still, he brought his will down with all the experience of centuries, forcing himself to heal from the inside out. Nerves, senses, flesh. His blood turned toxic with dying bacteria, his heart faltered, his sight went dark; finally, his pain and the drugs were swept away as though by a single motion of a hand.

Dane’s back ached with the pressure of his wings yearning to spread. Fur crawled under his skin and his spine twisted as it grew too long for his body. The beast in him had to wait. It had waited for decades to be free until Ezqel had removed the curse and fixed his magic, it could wait again.

The pleasure of being whole made it impossible for him to hear what Moore said next. It felt like she had executed him with the word. The sense of ending was worse than the death he’d died at Jonas’s hands, because his body was still breathing and he was still trapped in this cage. Still failing. He was empty and limp, his heart struggling once more to keep his body alive without magic.

They were talking outside his cage, and Dane tried to make himself focus through the fear brought on by losing his magic. He wasn’t used to being afraid.

“I’d like to preserve a hybrid instead of keeping this one.” That was Greer. She didn’t like Jonas. She was his kind of girl. “We were afraid his offspring would be erratic this time, and we were right. They don’t have his malleability.”

“His ability to recover is unparalleled,” Moore said. “I’m loath to lose that. The others can keep them in line.”

“Perhaps the problem is with his marrow, the way he is now.” Lourdes’s voice was almost pained.

“I’m sure there must be severe errors when he is in the midst of mass regeneration.”

“You think it would improve if we healed him completely?” Greer seemed interested.

“She’s simply being sentimental.” Moore laughed at the girl. “I’m surprised that you’re so fond of the dog, Lourdes.”

“I don’t want him back,” Lourdes snapped. “If I did, I’d be pushing for you to replace him, or telling you he’s useless. I’m telling you to keep him. But stop making fodder for the incinerator just because you like seeing him in pieces.”

“Your notes suggest that his progenitors were excessively obedient,” Greer said. “Now we can’t keep them in line. She has a point. We don’t fully understand the alterations in the body during regeneration. His DNA may carry large defects or it may be susceptible to the influences of the host body.”

“We’ll discuss your manners later, Lourdes,” Moore said icily. “In the meantime, yes, Dr. Fallon, I will restore Jonas as well.”

“Thank you kindly. I’m going to give Dane a little more sedative to keep him under and do some work on him—I don’t want him to wake up while I have a bore in his bone.”

Another needle sank into him and the burn came on full force. He needed to hear. He couldn’t fall asleep. Strangle pole wires caught him around the neck and leg, and he was dragged over to the far side of the cage. There were several technicians as well as Greer there now, and they wrapped metal straps around his chest, hips and thighs, and locked him up against the bars.

As he started to fade, he saw one of them with a blowtorch, bringing it to bear on him, and he was helpless. Fire swept up and down his leg, a fan of blue that burned away his hair there and made his skin tingle painfully. But the flame moved too quickly to burn him and then it was gone. The wire around his neck made his breath whistle in his throat until he heard Greer’s voice rise. The wire loosened.

Something jabbed him in the lower back; the pain was shocking for such a tiny point of entry. Real pain. Something else, something smaller, sank into his flesh until it hit bone and began to grind through.

Sweat ran down his face and he could smell his own fear. The point of pain punctured the bone, and he heard them murmuring about extractions. They were sucking out his marrow.

Marrow
. The soul, said the fae, was anchored in the bones. There was something humans did, where they put marrow from one into another. Dane’s newly healed body was slowly succumbing to the injection; he couldn’t remember what was happening to him or why it mattered. His focus faded. From where he lay, he could only see his uneaten breakfast.

Don’t take it away. I’m hungry
. He remembered starving. Things became confused and he thought that time was now.
My food. Don’t take it
. Something was eating him. He was down to survival instinct, awake only because he was sure he would die if he didn’t protect his food.

“Don’t worry, Dane.” A woman’s voice soothed him. “We’ll be done soon.”

Done with what? Done with me?
The dark didn’t answer any of his questions.

When Noah woke, it was light in the room. He’d slept the rest of the night, and the aches and pains he felt were only from good things. For the first time in months, morning finally felt like something new.

Lindsay was gone but Noah knew he couldn’t be far, and the empty bed meant he could stretch luxuriously.

Rolling over, Noah discovered that Lindsay hadn’t gone far at all. He was curled up in the chair across the room, smiling at Noah’s antics. Everything dreadful about last night came back in a wash of awareness, but Noah tried to put it in its place so he could keep the mood positive.

“Want me to do that again?” He sat up and grinned at Lindsay.

Lindsay laughed and looked Noah over, toes to head. “Only if you push the covers off the rest of the way.”

Noah sat up and the covers moving triggered an agonizing itch on his right shin. Getting naked was supposed to be for Lindsay’s benefit, but he ended up shoving the covers off to scratch. The minute he did, he was itchy everywhere.

“This is wrong.” He scratched at his elbow next and gave Lindsay a narrow look. “Are you giving me a hard time?” None of his siblings would have hesitated, that was certain.

Lindsay’s eyes went wide. “Me?” There was a grin twitching at the corner of his mouth, but then he laughed. “No. Rajan said your skin would need oiling on a regular basis. Here, let me.”

Lindsay stood and crossed the room to pick up the blue bottle on the table near the bed.

“Oh, I’m sure you have no reason at all to make me itchy.” Noah stuck his tongue out.

“Careful, you’ll make me think you don’t want me getting my hands all over you.” For all his teasing, Lindsay managed to rub the oil in quickly and efficiently, starting at Noah’s feet and working his way up.

“Feel free not to think that.” Noah tried to pretend it didn’t feel good, but it did, it was almost like sex the way it quelled the itch and made his freshly healed nerves sing. It would have felt good on any day, to have Lindsay’s hands on him. His body was very happy about it, and Noah gave up on telling his dick to shut up about it by the time Lindsay was at his knees. He was outnumbered.

“I take it the oil is helping,” Lindsay said as he rubbed oil into Noah’s thighs and hips. His gaze flicked from Noah’s hardening cock to his face. “Or do you have a kink I ought to know about?”

“Yes, and quite possibly,” Noah answered, trying to cover all his bases.

It was mostly Lindsay’s fault, really. If one didn’t know what the fae were, one might say Lindsay looked like one. But to Noah, Lindsay looked like pure class on top of being gorgeous. Unwashed and worn down, he still seemed more elegant than most people did clean. Elegant was about the sharp bones and that skin that was nearly luminous and those wide eyes with the brightness of intelligence in them.

Lindsay’s hands stilled on Noah’s belly and his head tilted. “Oh?”

He started massaging again, working the oil into Noah’s tender skin, but it was obvious that Lindsay expected Noah to elaborate. If only Noah could remember what he’d been saying. He backtracked in his head, and laughed.

“I’m a bad person to ask about kinks. I just...it’s all pretty good.” If he had to think about sex right now, Noah was never going to be functional this morning. “If everybody’s happy, then it’s good.”

If he thought about what he used to like too much, anyway, he’d make himself melancholy. Before he’d ruined himself, before his magic had come to plague him, his body had felt like his home. Sex was magic of its own, something to share, to connect the lonely. He’d loved it and he’d been good at it—

sharing had always made him happy.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Lindsay’s slick fingers trailed over Noah’s cock, but he moved away to work on Noah’s neck and arms instead. “Roll over.”

“You’re a bad man.” Noah obeyed, sprawling out as far as he could. They had to get something done today, anything. Now wasn’t the time for playing or resting, as much as he wanted to soak in the sensations of being nearly whole again.

“I actually thought I was rather good,” Lindsay countered. He quickly finished Noah’s back, but lingered over his ass longer than was strictly necessary. “But you’ll have to confirm that some other time.

Kristan will be back soon.”

“And I won’t get to lie around and play rent boy all day.”

That was a rather sad thought, and Noah would have felt very differently about it a few days ago.

Whether it was the experience they’d gone through together or the magic Lindsay had used to save him, Noah felt like some wall in him had crumbled. He felt twenty-five again, not eighty-five—still sorrowful, but not afflicted by it. He could move forward without losing his past.

“Do you know what we need to do now?” Noah tried to focus on the practical, instead of on Lindsay’s strong, slim fingers sliding over his ass; his newly healthy body was obsessed with how good Lindsay could make him feel. “Other than bathe and find me something to wear?”

“I would love to
bathe
.” Lindsay made it sound like an orgasmic experience, the emphasis he put on the word. “No running water. We’ll have to find a truck stop or something. Kristan is going to pick up some clothes for you while she’s out, though.”

Lindsay patted Noah’s ass, letting him know he was finished. Noah couldn’t help but stretch all over again. Being free from pain was incredible, and now that the itching was gone, he felt relaxed and content enough that he was ready to go back to bed. However, he made himself sit up.

“Thanks.” He gave Lindsay a grin. “Hope you enjoyed that a little, at least.”

“I’d have enjoyed it more if we had time to finish what I wanted to be starting,” Lindsay shot back.

“Anyway, I know we need to find Ylli and Zoey, but I don’t know how. Cyrus is gone, so we can’t use the wind, and without some idea of where to look, I can’t use an illusion to pick them out of the masses. I’m not
that
good.”

Noah grabbed a sheet to wrap around his waist and got up to test his legs. Cyrus hadn’t foreseen them being separated and left alone? Noah couldn’t quite believe that. The way things had fallen out, everything that happened had been perfectly predictable—unfortunate and horrendous, but predictable. He paced over to the window and looked out, wracking his memory for an answer.

“Cyrus would have left some clues, just in case. I can’t see him letting all these years of work fall away. Cyrus was in this war that only he could see—in it to his ears—when my dad was my age.” Noah leaned on the sill, looking down into the narrow yard and dirty alley. “He was old, but...he was still with it, right?”

“Yes.” Lindsay stood near the window, staring out past Noah. “He was always very aware of everything going on around him. I knew he was old, but I never would’ve thought he was... Well.”

“We don’t do senile very well,” Noah said, dryly. “Please remember that when I get old.” He put his arm around Lindsay’s shoulders and gave him a little squeeze.

“Let’s worry about that when you’re actually old enough for it to matter.” Lindsay leaned into the embrace. “So. Any idea what not-senile Cyrus might’ve had in mind?”

Ironically, touching Lindsay made it easier to think. The bone-deep loneliness of separation from the people he loved had made Noah stupid with emptiness. Having his arms around Lindsay and his cheek on Lindsay’s hair calmed everything in him and let his mind work.

“You’ve done everything you can,” he said, sorting through their meager resources. “Kristan’s doing everything she can. There’s only me left.” Cyrus must have believed that no matter how they ended up separated, they’d have the means to reconnect. All Noah had to offer that the others didn’t was the old ways.