Part Six
Coalise didn’t stop to wonder again how she knew where she was going until she reached the village and automatically began skirting the houses. This lifetime-of-memories at her fingertips thing was really coming in handy; she was able to identify Scotch’s house easily even from the back, in the dark, and she knew which window was his.
She was walking toward it when she saw the bedroom door inside open and a shaft of light fly through the room. A female outline – Hey, that’s Kvyn! the new and improved half of her brain shouted – walked inside. Coalise dropped flat on the ground without even thinking about it, her face pressed into the grass.
The shapeshifters had excellent eyesight and hearing. She couldn’t take a chance on peeking into the window again.
But she’d already left Yared alone in the woods for more than an hour, and he was libel to hurt himself. Somebody needed to go out there and get him.
Aside from Scotch, who could she trust?
The answer was a classic absurdity from her life. She could trust Thursy West. Thursy would go out and get Yared, and she would heal whatever was wrong with him, and she wouldn’t turn Coalise in because she would want to protect Scotch.
And she only lived next door, which was mighty convenient.
Coalise began crawling through the grass, keeping her head down and her knees turned out so her legs wouldn’t wave around in the air. She didn’t know whether or not Kvyn was in a position to see her through the window, but she didn’t want to find out.
When she was back behind the circle of houses again, she climbed to her feet. Her pants were covered in grass stains and wet with cold dew, but her jacket was still intact. She crept up behind the Wests’ house and hunched on the back porch, trying to stay out of the light shining through the window.
She prayed the door wasn’t locked. She didn’t really want to knock and try to convince Thursy to let her in.
The knob turned easily in her hand, and the door swung out. Coalise tiptoed into an old-fashioned kitchen and closed the door again behind herself. Not only had the door been unlocked, it didn’t have a lock. She had forgotten that this was a shapeshifter village where crime was nonexistent and people mostly just walked in on each other.
"Hi," Thursy called from another room. "What took you so long?"
Coalise froze. Suddenly this plan seemed insane. She knew Thursy was a little high-strung, how she would respond when Coalise told her what was happening was anybody’s guess, and even though Coalise trusted her, instinct said to run.
"Yared?" Thursy called, her voice concerned.
Coalise walked quickly from the kitchen to the living room, and then into the doorway of Thursy’s bedroom. Thursy was sitting at her desk with a glass of milk in one hand and a half-eaten T-bone steak in the other. Her auburn hair was falling loosely over the shoulders of an olive green sweater and her lovely kelly eyes were focused on a television set on the dresser.
She was truly one of the most beautiful people Coalise had ever seen, without make-up and without decent lighting, and even with steak juice running down her fingers.
She was also one of the most wonderful people Coalise thought she might ever meet. Yes, she was over-sensitive and got hurt easily and could hold a grudge for ever, but she also loved harder and would go father for those close to her than Coalise had ever imagined going for her own friends.
She saw the figure in the doorway and her nostrils flared slightly, catching the unfamiliar scent. The glass slipped out of her hand and frothy milk splashed all over the table, soaking the TV Guide and dripping onto Thursy’s jeans.
"It’s okay," Coalise said quickly. "I’m a friend of Scotch’s."
Thursy stared at her. Then she threw the steak down into the puddle of milk on the desktop and Coalise felt herself being pinned against the wall.
It was a mild over-reaction, but Coalise should have expected that. Thursy’s hands were warm, and she smelled like fern leaves and natural soap. "Tell me everything," Thursy said.
Everything? You don’t want to know everything, Coalise thought, and realized with a start that before this was over, one of them was going to get hurt. Seriously, permanently hurt. Coalise didn’t know how to separate Scotch’s life from her own any more – if she had, would she have been worrying so much over Yared? – and even if she managed to walk away, every spare moment her mind was going to come back to the thought of him.
She didn’t want to hurt Thursy. It had been the foremost thought in her head when she disentangled herself from Scotch in the woods, and it was a heavily weighted thought now. But hovering just behind it was the knowledge that she wanted him with all her heart.
She actually laughed out loud at the thought, causing Thursy to scan the room quickly for a second source of danger. Imagine little Coalise Edison, who couldn’t even blow dry her hair without knocking out power for the whole block, finding perfect love.
The irony was lost on Thursy, who had begun to look as if she was thinking of just eating Coalise and asking questions later. "My name is Coalise Edison," she told her quickly. "I got lost, then I fell down a hole in the woods when the landslide began, and Scotch found me. He got me out of the hole, but I lost my keys so I can’t use my car. He told me to wait for him in the cave, and he would come back and help me look. While I was walking to the cave, I"-
She stopped. She was giving Thursy the abbreviated version already—could she just leave out what had happened to Kiria entirely? Thursy and Kiria were close, and more importantly, they were pack, but Coalise dreaded the look on Thursy’s face when she heard the news.
"While you were walking to the cave?" Thursy prompted. Her grip on Coalise’s wrists and neck loosened but she didn’t step away.
"There was an incident, and Yared got hurt."
Thursy’s entire expression changed. She didn’t care about Coalise any more, she released her so quickly the human girl almost fell down. "Where?" she asked as she walked into the living room.
Coalise followed. "In a clearing at the base of Mount Aurora. But listen, he wasn’t the-"
"Shh." Thursy held out her hand suddenly, and Coalise could almost see her puma ears perk up.
Coalise followed her line of sight to the back door just as it flew open.
Galdwyn leapt into the room in his cat form, recognizable to her only by memory. He took two giant strides across the room and pounced on Thursy while she was still taking her first step back.
Coalise saw Tish come through the back door with Kiria slung irreverently over her shoulder. Maple followed close behind them and shut the door tightly.
Thursy didn’t fight. Galdwyn had his jaws around her neck and could snap her spine with a single chomp. Tish dumped Kiria’s body on the kitchen counter, her head lolling crudely into the sink, and came at Coalise, who didn’t know what to do beside drop to the ground and cover the back of her neck with both hands.
Tish grabbed her under one arm and lifted her clear off the ground, wrenching her skin and nearly pulling her shoulder out of the socket. Coalise made a strangled yelping noise and Tish punched her in the stomach while still holding her up. She was insanely strong, and her eyes were completely vacant, and she scared the bejesus out of Coalise.
For a moment she looked to Maple for help, but the lamia girl was standing in the kitchen with her head purposely down. Her hands were busy filling syringes, and Coalise realized that she must have injected Yared earlier that day with something.
Galdwyn shifted out of his puma form and back into that of a slightly short, pot-bellied man with a very large chin. Despite his less than perfect body, he was still an oddly attractive man. He remained sitting on Thursy’s chest with one hand around her throat.
"If you call for help," he said, "I’ll crush your larynx."
"I won’t scream," she whispered. Coalise admired her poise, but it was only normal. Thursy took everything too seriously and with too much intensity, so she was pretty well used to dealing with situations of this caliber. Whereas Coalise was trembling so hard Tish’s entire arm was shivering.
Galdwyn glanced at Coalise. "Who the hell is that?" he asked.
"I don’t know," Thursy told him. "She just walked in a second ago."
"A human just walked into your home?" Galdwyn asked skeptically. "Out of the blue?"
"Yes. She said she lost her keys in the woods."
Galdwyn swore softly, and then brightened. "I think we can use this to our advantage," he said, and hit Thursy in the side of the head.
Coalise winced, and Tish shook her. Thursy blinked, her lips parting silently, and Galdwyn hit her again. This time she released a low moan, which ended abruptly when Galdwyn hit her a third time and she went limp.
Coalise couldn’t tell if he had killed her or not, but there were tears in her eyes. Thursy hasn’t done dick to you, she thought furiously, leave her alone.
Galdwyn obviously wasn’t listening. He had approached Tish and was looking at Coalise thoughtfully. "Why keep a human girl in your house?" he asked. "What would be the purpose?"
"Food," Tish answered in a perfect monotone. It was the first time Coalise had ever heard her speak.
"Food, yes. Although, if I were going to eat a human, I wouldn’t pick one so bone skinny. So maybe Thursy is going to fatten her up first." He smiled. "Tie her up and stick her in the basement. We’ll throw some empty soup cans down there, make it look like Thursy is fattening the calf."
Tish nodded and carried Coalise toward the hall. Well, Coalise thought, it could be worse. The basement can't be that bad. I might even get soup.
"Oh," Galdwyn called, "and make it look like Thursy’s had a bit of a nibble."
Oh, shit, Coalise thought, and her leg lashed out.
Kicking Tish was like kicking the wheel of a semi. There was an implication of softness but no result, and she barely even rocked on her feet. Coalise kicked her again and then wrapped one of her legs around the arm – it felt like an old and gnarled tree branch – Tish was using to hold her up.
The pain in her shoulder diminished and she tucked her foot in Tish’s armpit. Using it as leverage, she then bashed Tish in the side of the face with her heel.
Tish didn’t make a sound, but she let go. Coalise hit the carpet flat on her back and for a few terrifying seconds was utterly unable to inhale. The time window gave Tish a change to swoop down and slap her like a little girl disciplining her dolly.
Coalise knew then that she was going to lose. Every split second it took her to regroup was a split second to Tish’s advantage. While she was trying to recover, Tish was dropping down on top of her, no longer a human Amazon woman but now a massive puma with brownish fur and jaws that could have clamped around a basketball.
Now I’m in for it, Coalise thought, and jabbed for the eyes. Her hand missed and she managed to stick one finger deep in Tish’s right ear, which made her stomach turn. She had pulled it out half an inch when Tish suddenly rocked her head as if trying to flick Coalise’s hand away. Her
wrist hit the wall, Tish kept pushing, and something soft pressing against Coalise’s finger tore.
Tish howled. Although Coalise didn’t know it at the time, she would later learn that pumas are unable to roar like tigers and lions. The distance between the back of their tongues and their larynxes is very short, so the sound they produce is something between a whistle and a scream. The racket is considered one of the most eerie and frightening sounds any animal makes,
and dozens of Native American tribes created legends about the omen of the terrible howl.
Needless to say, Coalise was shocked. Blood was gushing out of Tish’s ear, her own ears were ringing and then buzzing with the force of Tish’s scream, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Galdwyn leaping into the hallway in his cat form.
First he snarled at Tish and smacked her in the face with one text-book size paw. Tish made a whimpering sound and rolled onto her back, and Galdwyn hissed at Coalise, who could only cringe against the wall.
And then he bit her.
She tried to scream but the sound caught in her throat. The pain exploded like a living thing throughout her shoulder. It scratched and bit and dug its claws inside her, beneath the skin where she couldn’t stop it. Muscle tore itself in half as it jerked to get away and nerves jangled like chimes in the wind.
It was possible that she passed out.
Each moment expanded exponentially but time itself shortened and was distorted, and somehow Coalise found herself on the floor of a cold, unfinished basement that smelled like dirt. She blinked, uncertain where the time had gone. She could hear Galdwyn and Tish moving around upstairs, things being knocked over.
She could barely think. She had to trust the wall to keep her sitting up, she was too weak to do it herself.
The wooden steps to the basement squeaked as Maple walked down them. The loose curls in her black hair caught the light from upstairs, but her eyes were mostly hidden by her bangs. She had a syringe in one hand.
She paused in front of Coalise, appraising her. "Do whatever you have to do," Coalise told her. She didn't think she could move her left arm, let alone fight.
Suddenly Maple was crouched in front of her, whispering fiercely. "I can get you out of this," she told her. "But you've got to work with me. The farthest I can take you is the highway, and you can't walk to town from there with your shoulder like that. Who can I call to come get you?"
Coalise stared at her. Up close, Maple's face was even more beautiful than Thursy's. Her eyes were an intense and impossible shade between blue and green and her mouth was a perfect bowstring.
But she was a vampire. And she was under Galdwyn's thumb.
Coalise wanted to say that Maple should call her house, but no way in hell was she going to put little Addison and Greco in that kind of danger.
"Tell Scotch where I am," Coalise said. "He'll help you."
"I don't think so. He's going have his hands full with Thursy."
She gritted her teeth. "Don't you dare touch Thursy," she said.
Maple rolled her eyes. "Look, you can either play the hero and have Galdwyn kill you, accomplishing nothing, or you can keep quiet and I'll dump you on the side of the highway. If you don't want to die of exposure and shock, you have to give me a number to call."
Coalise managed to reach into her pocket and pull out her wallet. "This is all I have," she said. "I just went to the bank, there's probably about a hundred and twenty in there. Please, tell Scotch I'm here."
Maple grimaced - beautifully - and stuffed the wallet into her jeans. "Humans," she muttered, and jammed the syringe into Coalise's arm.
The world went abruptly black.
When Coalise woke up, she had no memory of the last twelve hours.