Storm Season (31 page)

When he finally felt well enough to open his eyes and keep them that way, he was tucked into a bed with Tobias curled up next to him, one hand tucked under his cheek and the other resting on Jasper’s heart. His breathing was deep and even, and Jasper smiled softly as he took Tobias’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Hey.”

“You’re awake.”

Jasper blinked at the unexpected response and lifted his head so he could see Darius sitting in a chair next to the bed. A book was open on his lap, but he looked as though he’d been watching Jasper instead of reading it.

“Uh, yeah.” Jasper rubbed a hand over his face as he tried to reorient himself. The room was swaying and he didn’t recognize it, which meant it wasn’t the inn they’d stayed at in Shaleton. He couldn’t figure out how they could possibly have gotten anywhere else. “Where are we? What happened?”

Darius let out a soft snort. “Before or after you got knocked out?”

“After.” Jasper remembered most of the fight—the wind, the rain, the creature’s claws scratching across his chest, the stabbing pain as Tobias shouted for him from a distance—and he had no desire to be filled in on anything he might have blocked from his mind. What he wanted to know was how he’d gotten from the forest floor to this comfortable bed, and how they’d managed to get Tobias as well. “I remember fighting that… whatever it was. I just need to know how we got here, wherever here is.”

“Our train,” Darius said, and suddenly the swaying made sense. “The station master in Shaleton tried to tell us it was too dangerous, but we decided to risk it. Only the engine has any windows, and Carla had them fitted with overhangs when we bought the thing. We’re heading back to Brightam’s Ford, or as close as we can get before the tracks wash out for the season, anyway. As for what happened, that’s a long story.”

“I think we’ve got time,” Jasper said dryly as he turned on his side so he was facing Tobias. He let his gaze dart from Darius to Tobias and back again. “Is he all right?”

“He will be.” Darius shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with him, but the other two say—”

“Other two?” Jasper asked, cutting Darius off. There were only the three of them in the room. He assumed Carla was operating the train, but he couldn’t imagine who else could be onboard. “What other two?”

“The other two sacrifices being offered. It was Tobias’s sister and a friend of theirs.” Darius’s gaze flickered to Tobias as he settled back in the chair. “We couldn’t exactly leave them, not after everything he went through to find Samantha.”

“Right.” Jasper shook his head to clear the cobwebs from it. “What did they say about Tobias?”

“That he’ll be fine.” Darius leaned forward. “He just needs rest.”

A weight felt like it was lifted of Jasper’s shoulders and he breathed a sigh of relief as he nodded. “Good.” He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to fight back the weariness that was threatening to overtake him, and sighed as he let his arm fall back to his side. “That’s good.”

“He’s been awake,” Darius said, looking seriously at Jasper. “It was you we were really worried about. You’ve been asleep for almost a week.”

Jasper blinked, trying to reconcile the flashes of awareness with the passage of a week. He couldn’t. “Really?” It felt like a day had passed, maybe two. Not seven.

“Yeah.” Darius sighed as he sat back in the chair. “Some of it was drugs, but those ran out yesterday.”

“Drugs?” Jasper couldn’t imagine where his friends would have gotten any of those. They occasionally shipped some out to Brightam’s Ford from the west coast, but they were always the first things offloaded as Dr. Parks was usually out by the time the next batch got to him.

Darius nodded. “We took you to a doctor after we got out of that clearing. He stitched you up and gave us some medication to give you so you wouldn’t be in pain.”

Jasper blinked, trying to wrap his mind around that. “Wait,” he said as he pushed himself up to a sitting position and scooted back so he could lean against the wall behind the bed. It vibrated with the movement of the train, but it would keep him awake, and that was better than trying to figure this out while fighting off sleep. “You’re losing me. Start where I lost consciousness.”

“Tobias took that thing down,” Darius said in a strangely impressed tone. “Somehow he got free and found your knife.”

“He did?” Jasper remembered the knife flying away before he’d cut fully through all of Tobias’s bonds. “How?”

“I wish I knew.” Darius shrugged. “I didn’t see anything. I was on my knees in pain from his screams just like everyone else. One second I’m in agonizing pain and wishing he’d shut up, and the next, he’s silent and that thing was on the ground, bleeding green.”

“Then what?” Jasper leaned forward, his weariness forgotten as he got caught up in the story. “Did he kill it?”

“I think.” Darius pushed his hair back and slumped in his chair. “Tobias kept stabbing it. It was screaming—horrible noise, sounded like a tornado—and then it shriveled up. Tobias kept trying to stab it, but he couldn’t get the knife in anymore.”

“Sleet.”

“Yeah. Half the people cleared out right then,” Darius said with a nervous laugh. “And Carla and I were able to round the rest of them up. I think they were too stunned by their god or whatever they thought it was dying to protest. We cut Samantha and Aaron free, and Carla kept an eye on the Storm Quellers while I ran to the city and got the guards. They weren’t willing to upset the status quo when Carla and I got to Shaleton, but they couldn’t refuse to help when we had the Storm Quellers all tied up and rescued kidnap victims.”

“So the Storm Quellers are gone?” Jasper couldn’t quite believe it. They’d chased him and Tobias for weeks, completely uprooted him from his life, and forced him to do things he’d never have imagined before meeting Tobias. They’d also been indirectly responsible for his falling in love, but he wasn’t going to forgive them the things they’d done to Tobias because of that.

“They might be back,” Darius said with a shrug. “Some of the junior members of The Order turned on the leaders, but with that kind of power, they won’t go down easily.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Jasper agreed. They’d cause all sorts of problems, he was sure. Thinking about it, he was amazed that Darius and Carla had managed to round them up to begin with, even with the help of Samantha, Aaron, and the city guards. “By the way, how did Carla hold them off?”

Darius chuckled, the sound both amused and proud. “You’ve never seen her wield a knife, have you?”

“No.” Jasper hadn’t, and based on the look on Darius’s face, he didn’t want to. “I’ll just assume she’s scary.”

“Well, that and they were still stunned,” Darius agreed. “Plus, I think Samantha and Aaron talked to them, so they were all in pain. The leader tried to attack Carla before I left. She kneed him in the groin and knocked him out with the hilt of her knife. None of them wanted to mess with her after that.”

“I wouldn’t either.” That was a whole new side of Carla, and though Jasper was grateful, he was also glad he’d missed it. “So, then what?”

“That was it, really.” Darius shifted, uncrossing and recrossing his legs. “The guards took the Storm Quellers into custody, we took you to a doctor, and everyone who could talked to the magistrates. Once we were sure you and Tobias could travel and they didn’t need us anymore, we left. The train goes pretty well in the storms as long as we keep it slow enough to handle the curves on wet track, so we’re hoping to get to Brightam’s Ford before the rails are washed out for the season.”

Jasper sank down a little in the bed as he tried to process everything. “Huh.”

“Yeah.” Darius stood. “I should go tell Carla and the others you’re awake. You want anything while I’m up? I could heat up some soup or something, maybe.”

The moment Darius mentioned soup, Jasper’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that it had been several days since he could last remember eating. He assumed they’d managed to feed him somehow while he was drifting in and out of consciousness because he didn’t appear to have lost much weight, but he was definitely hungry now. “That would be great.”

Darius nodded and slipped out of the room, leaving Jasper alone with Tobias for the first time since Tobias had been captured in the forest. “Hey,” he whispered again as he gently stroked Tobias’s cheek with one finger. He didn’t want to wake Tobias up if he needed the sleep, but part of him hoped that Tobias would respond. Jasper needed to see with his own eyes that Tobias was all right.

Tobias stirred slightly, leaning into Jasper’s touch and smacking his lips a little. He settled then, and Jasper thought he might fall back into a deep sleep, but instead, he opened his eyes all the way and smiled softly when he saw Jasper looking down at him. He lifted his head, capturing Jasper’s lips in a soft kiss, and when they broke apart, Jasper smiled too.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as he leaned down to kiss Tobias again. He fully expected that Tobias would answer while they were kissing, but Tobias remained silent. He wrapped his hands around the back of Jasper’s head, holding him down, and slipped his tongue between Jasper’s lips. The kiss was desperate, with Tobias holding on until Jasper pulled back, gasping for breath, and then Tobias drew him down again, kissing him just as frantically as before.

This time, when Jasper disengaged, he gently untangled Tobias’s hands from around his neck and held them between their chests as he looked straight into Tobias’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

Tobias still didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled his hands free, rolled to the side of the bed, and fumbled for something on the ground. It was a pad of paper and a pencil, not at all what Jasper had expected, and neither was what he wrote on it.
No,
it read, the word sending a chill through Jasper’s gut.
I can’t talk.

“W
HAT
?”
Jasper blinked and sat up as he snatched the notebook from Tobias’s hand. The words on it didn’t change, nor did the fact that, despite their close proximity, Tobias hadn’t actually said a single thing to him. “What do you mean?”

Tobias shrunk back, looking as small and vulnerable as he had the first time Jasper had seen him. His eyes were wide, his lower lip trembling as he shook his head back and forth, back and forth, making his hair bounce on his forehead. He didn’t reach for the notebook or make any attempt to explain and that, more than anything, terrified Jasper.

“Sleet!” Jasper dropped the notebook, turned, and put his hands Tobias’s shoulders. “Easy, easy. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you.” Tobias stilled, looking up at Jasper with a pleading gaze that cut straight to his heart. “I’m sorry,” Jasper repeated as he slid one hand up to stroke Tobias’s cheek. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”

Tobias nodded and slowly reached for the notebook. His fingers shook a little as he curled them around it, pulled it up to his chest, and pressed it over his heart. Jasper watched, waiting for Tobias to write something, but when minutes passed without his doing anything but hugging the notebook to his chest, Jasper put his hand over Tobias’s and gently squeezed.

“It’ll be okay.” The look on Tobias’s face said more eloquently than anything he could have written or sent that he didn’t believe a word of it, but that didn’t matter. It still had the effect Jasper wanted. Tobias’s hand stopped shaking under his as incredulity won out over fear, and Jasper found himself able to smile down at Tobias despite the disbelieving look on Tobias’s face. “It will,” he promised, and then grinned wider as Tobias glared and yanked his hand out from under Jasper’s.

You don’t know that,
he scrawled, scowling at Jasper as he wrote. The words sloped sideways across the page and threatened to run off the edge toward the end, a stark contrast to the careful lettering with which he’d told Jasper he couldn’t send his thoughts.

“Yes I do,” Jasper said, stretching out on the bed again and pulling Tobias into his arms. “We’re safe. Your sister is safe. Darius and Carla are safe. That’s what’s really important. We’ll figure everything else out, all right?”

Tobias squeezed his eyes shut as he nodded, a tiny tear trickling out the corner of his eye. He wiped viciously at it with his fist as he pulled back and lifted the notebook and pen up once more.
It hurts when I try to say anything,
he wrote, once again using the neat letters he’d started with.
What if it doesn’t stop? What if whatever that creature did is permanent? I can’t—

Jasper stopped him by taking Tobias’s hand, keeping him from writing anything else. “
If
that’s the case,” he said, emphasizing the first word, “we’ll deal with it. There are things we can try, other ways we can talk. And this works just fine for now.” He met Tobias’s gaze evenly, doing his best not to let his doubt show. Darius had promised that Tobias would be all right, which meant they believed that this wouldn’t last forever, and Jasper had to cling to that, for both his sake and Tobias’s.

Tobias stared back at him for what felt like forever before he nodded and dropped the notepad and pen. Jasper hugged Tobias tightly before tilting his head up for a soft kiss. “I love you,” he said, his heart surging as Tobias deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue into Jasper’s mouth and letting his actions show what he couldn’t say.