Howl for Me (6 page)

He laughed so hard, in obvious relief, that the pier and beam porch started shaking.

“I just didn’t want to do anything to upset you,” he said. “Your parents – and they
are
your parents – loved you more than I’ve ever seen two people love a baby. They didn’t care where you came from. And neither do I.”

For some reason, hearing Grandpa’s placid admission that I really was from somewhere
else
made it all very real.

“Poko didn’t say anything bad about them. He just kind of let it slip. He’s got me doing these exercises where I zoom around outside my body and look at things.”

“Your mother could do that, too,” Grandpa Joe said, softly, rubbing the bowl of his pipe with his thumb. “They knew all about you – your mom and your dad. I guess my old friend didn’t tell you that your dad was just as surprised, the first time he wandered in and saw your mom floating halfway between the floor and the ceiling?”

Nothing – and, I mean nothing – makes me stop eating a Rueben. But
that
? That got me to quit.

“You mean mom was... Really?”

“About all I can really say,” he said. “I can’t even pretend to understand all that stuff. All I know is that she was special, your mom.”

“Poko said that I had...”

I stopped short. I just couldn’t say it out loud. Fae blood? That I was the daughter of some Fae queen? No, it was just too ridiculous. Even in the face of werewolf packs at war,
that
was a step too far.

“Whoever it was that gave you to her, they chose her because they knew she understood,” Grandpa said slowly, his eyes fixed on his pipe. “Or at least, that’s what she told me. I never saw my girl so happy, never heard her act like that.”

“Wait, you mean... they just called you and said ‘Surprise! You’ve got a granddaughter!’? Really?”

He laughed.

“Yeah, something about like that. My Elsie always wanted a baby. Since she was a little girl, she wanted one, but somehow or another, it just didn’t work out. She and your dad tried for years, but gave up. Then, one day, she called me and said she had a dream about being pregnant. She woke up, had herself some morning sickness, and took a test. There you were!”

I shook my head, absently picking sauerkraut out of my sandwich and eating it, strand by strand. “That is...”

“You grew fast. R
eal
fast. The doctors were surprised, to say the least, but there wasn’t a trace of anything strange, at all, about your mom’s pregnancy. Well, except that she went zero to four months in about three days. The doctors just passed it off as her having an easy first trimester and not noticing.”

“Yeah, I’ll say,” I said, under my breath. “Easiest one in the history of the world.”

That morning had been my first run in with waking up at three to a stomach full of nausea. I kinda envied the whole magic pregnancy thing if it meant no early morning pukes.

“But, that was that. After that point, nothing strange, nothing at all. She said she could talk to you, though, but I suspect most mothers say things like that about their cute little parasites.”

He chuckled. Aside from calling Damon “Meathead,” his favorite thing in the world was calling babies “parasites.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m sorry. I never meant to keep it from you, especially after you started having your dreams. I knew that whatever thing your mom had was in you too, but it wasn’t until Poko told me the whole thing that I really understood.”

“I’m still not sure I do,” I admitted.

My stomach settled enough for me to take another toasty, sour, tangy, sweet bite.

“Funny thing is, that’s not what I was going to talk about. My present trouble is all about Damon and his brother.”

“You never cease to surprise me, Leroy,” Grandpa said. “Your mind is always on something I’d never guess. Well, tell me about that, then. Anything I can do to lighten your load.”

I half-smiled. “You sure you mean that? It’s kind of a pants load.”

“When’s the last time I didn’t want you to tell me what was bothering you?” he asked. “Lay it on me.”

I took a deep breath – a really deep one – and told him everything.

*

B
urning through the whole story about Damon, Devin and whatever was lurking in the swamp, took about three hours. It would have sounded absolutely insane to anyone who wasn’t my grandpa. In the forty years or so that he and Poko knew each other, Grandpa had seen enough to just listen and accept.

“Well,” he said. “I’m sure glad he’s got someone like that husband of yours on his side. I’d hate to think what would happen if it was anyone else in charge.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. I’m scared though. Not of Devin,” I caught myself. “He’s... Whatever. It’s the other thing. During today’s practice, I saw him and as soon as I did, Poko jerked me back.”

A worried look crossed my grandpa’s kind, hazel eyes.

“I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” he said, with a sigh. “I never got into any of that business of his, but I know if there’s something bad going on, he’s the one I’d trust to handle it.”

For a moment, we sat in silence looking off into the distance. The sun started to set behind the mountains. Purple shocks of dying light went creeping up and along the horizon. I thought about Damon for a second, out there, wherever he was, dragging his brother back to Fort Branch.

And that’s how I figured it’d happen, too. That’s the way it
had
to happen. If the two of them went toe to toe again, Damon would pound him into the dirt just like had the first time. Conveniently, I chose to forget how close it came to going the other way.

“Welp, Leroy. I gotta get some shut-eye,” Grandpa Joe said, as he stood up.

He tapped the salt and pepper ashes out of his pipe, then kicked the dusty pile between two of the boards of the porch.

“You okay with all this?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling up at him. “Yeah, I think as long as I’ve got Damon, and as long as everyone is safe, more or less, then that’s all that really matters, you know?”

He smiled, nodded, and went inside. It didn’t take long for the impending desert chill to send me in after him. I gathered all my stuff, went back to my old room and tossed my bag on the floor beside my old bed. When I sat, it squeaked.

Usually, the last thing I take off every night is the big, heavy, wolf-fang necklace Damon gave me months back. I grabbed the clasp at the back, but decided that being without it that night just didn’t feel right.

I lay back, head buried in the pillows, with light goose down blankets piled up around me, and focused on the pendant’s weight. The heft of the tooth, the cool of the steel chain, almost felt like Damon holding my hand.

The gentle patter of light rain on the impossibly hard, cracked earth outside my window was a welcome and extremely rare pleasure, but it was the perfect way to let me drift off. In my last moments of consciousness, I reached up and wrapped my fingers around the tooth, focusing all of my energy on that little trinket, that little reminder, of my husband.

Husband
, I thought, as I closed my eyes.
It’s real. It really is. Every dream I’ve ever had all came true.

But, somewhere in the back of my mind, in a place where hope and dreams and love never really managed to go, I knew it could all come apart. Like Poko said, or at least alluded to, something horrible was lurking on the fringes of our world. And Damon had ridden straight toward the danger.

Whatever Joram Blight was, and whatever he could do, it wasn’t going to be an easy path.

A bolt of lightning cracked outside my window and a roll of thunder shook me to the core. At almost exactly the same time, my phone buzzed on the nightstand. I flipped over and looked just long enough to see it was Hunter King, Damon’s best friend and sworn brother, calling.

I knew what it was about. He was coming for a visit in a couple of days, so it was probably just last minute preparation stuff, or him asking how much fresh meat we needed – Hunter’s kind of a funny guy like that. Either way, it could wait.

I closed my eyes, and rested my hand on my stomach, breathing in the cool, rainy air that drifted through my open window. Right before I succumbed to sleep, when my mind was flittering around the fuzzy edges of the real world and dreams, my fingers stirred and I grabbed the fang.

––––––––

T
he zooming of my soul through space never stopped being fascinating.

At first I tried to control my dream vision and focus on Damon. Shortly, I remembered what Poko said. I forced myself to let my heart go wherever it wanted, because I was sure that my journey would end with Damon.

The mountains of New Mexico, and the South Texas desert, spread out before me. All around, my spirit eyes were entranced with shimmering hues of pink and green and blue. The whole world, spreading out below me, was breathtaking.

Further to the east, I went, closer to both Damon and the devil. It was like my chest was getting tighter, my breath was hurting more... even though I didn’t exactly need to breathe, and I didn’t really have a chest.

This never got old.

It wasn’t like an airplane. Not at all. In airplanes, there are other people and lights and the noise of movies and clattering trays. Out here, up here, by myself, with only my own thoughts, I couldn’t imagine anything more peaceful.

Even with the coming danger, it was impossible to be blasting through the sky, ten thousand feet up, without falling into a little bit of silent repose.

Just as the intense, utter silence of the quiet dark began to lull me, something pulled me toward the east, but not as far as Louisiana.

Like a cannon ball forced through too-small of a gun, I blazed across the sky. From below, I heard someone shouting.

“I’ll rip out your throat, you self-righteous prick!”
Devin.
I’d know that voice anywhere. “I’ll kill you, then I’ll pull out your throat, just to make sure!”

The ground was coming up fast, like it always did. I closed my spirit eyes for a moment and felt all the tingling green around me, but refused to open them, knowing exactly what I’d see when I did.

“I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll rip and tear, and murder, and...”

Devin’s rage subsided, and I heard a snore.

Slowly, I opened one eye, and then the other.

Laid out below me was something I did
not
expect. Devin was tossing from side to side, in perfectly normal, human form, but in absolutely terrible shape. Covered in bruises and lumps and gashes all along his arms and neck, he scratched at a scab and then fell silent again.

It took a second before I realized that Devin, lying there, asleep in a sleeping bag underneath an outcropping of rock was, first of all, tied up, and secondly, not alone.

To his immediate left, about fifteen feet or so from the pair of tent poles holding the chains that bound him was someone I was a whole lot more excited about seeing.

With his fingers threaded behind his head, my beautiful, green-eyed husband was reclining, and dozing, shirtless in the moonlight.

Damon was lying in a pool of silvery light that streamed in from a hole in the outcropping. He always had good taste in camping spots, I thought, with a giggle. Briefly I remembered our lovemaking under the stars and how that had been only a few weeks before.

A shiver crept through my Fae spirit, and I willed myself to slide down to him, beside him. Instantly, I felt warm when my consciousness snuggled beside him, as though I were really there, in body as well as spirit.

I ran my fingers along Damon’s cheek, brushing his four days of stubble with the back of my hand. He shivered and stirred.

That shouldn’t have happened.

Can
he
feel me? How is that possible? When I’m doing this, I’m not really in a place, I’m just projecting. But somehow, he was acting like he felt my touches, my caresses.

A night bird, maybe a swallow in the cave above, let out a little chirp. For a moment, I really did feel like I was with him, so much so, that I leaned over and kissed his collarbone. I let my spirit’s lips trickle down his muscled chest.

I tasted sweat and leather, and the dust from the road. I ran my kisses, letting my lips trail gently down the line of his chest, and kissed his nipple.

Goosebumps washed up him, and he let out a soft moan, though he didn’t open his eyes. He was dreaming. Dreaming of me, I hoped.

I put my hand on his leg, feeling his thickness swell, and letting his heat warm my palm. Rubbing him slowly, I let him come to life, and listened to his moaning – his heavier, faster breathing, and smiled to myself.

Slowly, I unzipped his jeans, and ran my hand along him, down, then up.

I looked up at his face for long enough to see him smile, and then I took him in my mouth, teasing every inch of him, sliding the tip of my tongue in circles, all the way up.

More than anything, I needed to feel him inside me. It was security and safety and home, all rolled into one. I knew I needed to do it quickly – there’s never any telling how long I have before something snaps me back to my body.

I had to take advantage of whatever time we had. Smiling to myself, I pulled him free and aimed him between my legs. I gasped, soundlessly, as I led him inside. I moved against his body, driving him deeper and deeper with every motion.

Damon rolled his head from left to right, smiling up at me, but not opening his eyes. The sweetness on his face was just too much. I pushed down on him and leaned forward, sucking on his bottom lip and almost trembling as I pulled away.

Our slow movements got faster, deeper, more desperate and heavier.

He flexed his legs, pushed himself up to meet my movements as I drove downward onto him. Just before I threw my head back in climax, I felt him swell, and knew he was there, too.

Grabbing his hands, I swirled my hips and let all the breath out of my chest.

Tightness, and then relaxation, starting in my center and radiating outward, took every inch of worry and pain right out.

Damon’s lips fluttered like he wanted another kiss, and I could only imagine what was happening in his dream. I bent down, still shaking, and touched my lips to his.