The Trouble with Fate (15 page)

Even as I dodged death, I was still attached to the line of magic. It stretched thinly
between the machine and me, vibrating with tension. Rage fueled more power to surge
up my arm, burning my fingers, swelling my hands. Sickening power. I felt my stomach
knot with the tension of holding it, and then with a harsh whisper, I said, “Push.”
My Fae gift flew down the invisible cable of magic to hit the machine with such a
cataclysmic jolt that it ran a savage reverberation right back to my hand.

I yowled as the machine went shrieking across the floor, pleating up linoleum as it
sped toward the female Were. Fueled by my magic, the washer plowed into the girl like
a freight train. Her gun went spinning up on impact, and then she became the hood
ornament to the Christine of washers. Ornament and machine slammed into the corner
with a bone-crunching smack. I didn’t see it. I’d closed my eyes as she careened toward
the corner. When I opened them again, the wall was decorated with a fanning spray
of wet blood. The woman’s arm stuck up over the top of the machine, like a white broken
flag. I couldn’t see her head, just blood. Red on a white wall. Three sprays of it,
to be precise. And one long vermillion smear. Did she still have a head?

Don’t think about the blood. Don’t look at it. Don’t smell it.

I was still linked to the machine, like some damned creature in a Poe story, tied
to the scene of the crime by guilt and the supernatural. I couldn’t detach. The power
held on to me, and held on to the machine, and all memory of squashed boob was overlaid
by the horrifying misery of being held between the push and pull of my tethered magic.
I strained, as I desperately tried to cut myself off from it. Smoke started to curl
up from my fingertips.

“Oh Goddess.” I groaned, arching my back against the horrible sensation of being linked
and pulled and torn and burned. Merry scrambled over my chest and maneuvered into
a healing position. “Don’t,” I said, pulling her away.

I was deeper than I’d ever been before, practically bathed by the power that was no
longer adequately contained. It simmered and swelled inside me, a hard knot of unnamed
fury, ready to explode, multiply, and consume. The Fae part of me was lost. It was
just a speck, being squeezed by all that venom. Hunched over that machine, with one
hand holding Merry away from my chest, I let out a whine. I was burning. Outside and
in.

I plummeted deeper and then bumped into something. Something
other
, which had been locked deep inside. Another identity—a hot hungry implacable hunter,
one that liked being linked to that vengeful power—rose up, took a pitying glance
at the weak half Fae who was floundering, and reluctantly snipped the link.

Oh Fae Stars, the Were-bitch was loose inside me.

My knees buckled, and I slid down the cool surface of a washer. In the background
I could hear noises of men struggling. Grunts. The sound of bodies hitting the sides
of walls, dryers. The squeak of sneakers on the tile.

There was something “other” in my body. It was running up and down my spine. It was
stretching out my sore fingers, rippling under my skin. She was lean inside me, but
foreign. So foreign. She was also strong. I borrowed some of her strength to rise
to my feet, and then we three, the Fae that Lou had reared, the Were-bitch inside
me, and what was left of Helen Stronghold, stumbled to the front of the Laundromat.

Scawens was on the floor, facedown, not moving. Dead, I hoped. Trowbridge was still
on his feet, even though blood was dripping down off the fingers of his right hand.
He was using his left to hold the club across Eric’s windpipe. Eric was turning purple.
It would be over soon. Then Scawens got back unsteadily to his feet. He looked around,
grabbed a chair, and swung it in a clumsy arc down on Trowbridge’s back. Trowbridge
fell to one knee, but he didn’t let go of the weakly struggling Eric. There was a
long squeak of sneaker as Eric struggled to hold his balance. He lost it, and fell
backward, choking, onto Trowbridge.

Scawens shook his head to clear it, and brought the chair up high again.

“No,” I said.
Mine, mine, mine,
said my Were-bitch.

I pointed to the chair poised over Scawens’s head. Fae magic spun out, stuck to the
chair like a spider’s web, and held. Scawens tried to swing the chair, but to his
surprise, it seemed stuck solid to air. He looked up at the chair, and then behind
him, before the penny dropped.

Anger mixed with fear slid across his face. As the sweet stench of his fear spread
like a pool of dismay around him, the bitch inside took over my facial muscles. I
could feel my lips stretching into a murderous smile.
Kill,
she said.

“No,” I said. But my other hand was already reaching for the last chair. Magic caught
it before my fingers could and brought it to the air. Scawens turned, but he was too
slow. Much too slow. The chair hit him. And as he ducked to avoid it, hands defensively
over his head, the other chair followed. They weren’t much in terms of weight. The
bitch regretted that. But it was enough. It brought him down to Trowbridge’s level,
and once there, he fell victim to Trowbridge’s foot. The savage kick caught Scawens
under the jaw, with enough force to snap his head back. He went down and, this time,
stayed down.

I walked unsteadily to Trowbridge. Eric’s legs twitched as he hung on to his last
moments of consciousness. The bitch wondered why Trowbridge didn’t crush his throat.
The metal bar could do it. The bitch wanted him to. But Trowbridge just kept the pressure
steady, enough to render insensible, not enough to kill.

Mine, mine, mine
, said the bitch, feasting her eyes on Trowbridge’s snapping blue eyes. Lights were
shining within them. Blue irises surrounded by a ring of white-blue light. So, I hadn’t
been wrong before. His eyes shone. Just like an Alpha’s.

Or a Fae’s.

And with that, I remembered who I was. Hedi Peacock, almost all Fae. I slapped the
wriggling bitch’s paws off the controls.

“No,” I said, reaching toward Trowbridge. “He’s not yours. He’s not ours.”

Trowbridge was leaning far backward on his knees, his neck arched painfully as he
held the bar grimly across his opponent’s throat. I could smell Trowbridge’s blood.
The Were inside me gave a wiggle that felt like butterflies under my skin when I touched
his hair. My fingers slid through it. It was drying at the ends. I felt around his
bulging neck muscles for the chain. I grasped it, and I looked away as I pulled the
chain up and over his neck. He tried to snap his head to the side, but there was nowhere
to go, was there? And then it was up over his chin, and over his head. One long lock
clung to the chain briefly before it floated down.

“This is mine,” I said, in Hedi’s voice. “This is mine.” I held the amulet, and then
jerkily put it over my own neck.

Merry surrounded the amulet with her gold, wrapping herself around it with sinuous
grace, until it was hard to tell what was Merry and what was the other. I stumbled
toward the door like a drunk. My leg muscles felt odd. Weak, liquefied, like I’d run
too far. With every step, I lost another fraction of my strength. It took too much
effort to get to the door.

Metal scraped as I pulled the door open. I looked over my shoulder. The Christine
of washers was being pushed away from the corner by the dark-haired Were girl in a
one-armed display of power. She was alive, then. Maybe that would mean more to me
later. One of her arms appeared mangled. I could see bone, and tendons, and other
things I didn’t want to see. Her middle section was stained bright red. There was
more blood, red, visceral, disgusting, on her face. None of that seemed to make her
pause. She didn’t even do the “Oh my God, look at my arm!” thing that I would have
done. She just stared at me, and then at Trowbridge, much like the Akita I once saw
charge at a retriever.

I put one hand on the door frame to steady myself. Put the other into my pocket. Felt
for it, found it. “Trowbridge,” I called. His eyes were still on me. Had they ever
left me? I could feel the heat. The squirm inside. “Here.” I threw the alarm to him.
He caught it in midair with his wet bloody hand.

A second later, sound blasted through the Laundromat. Horrible noise. I pressed one
ear to my shoulder, and covered the other with my heated hand. And then I staggered
out and away from it all. The door swung slowly behind me. I took a step. Another.
Three lurching ones. I made it past a pothole. Past Biggs who didn’t seem inclined
to interfere. The Taurus looked farther away.

I put a shaky foot forward and fell to my knees. Then both knees sort of oozed away,
and I was on my side, lying on the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot. My head was
turned to the door, and so I had an unwanted hazy view of what happened next.

Trowbridge heaved Eric’s limp body off. He felt around in his jeans for his earplugs.
He jammed them in his ears. The girl behind the desk ran to the back of the Laundromat,
bent over in a crouch.

Things got blurry. I blinked and they got clearer.

The Were girl had made it out from her corner. She was heading toward the door, half
bent over, holding a broken hand to her ear. She was, in fact, glaring at me. I wondered
how much more pain she could inflict. My vision went grainy again.

Another blink. Trowbridge was prying her fingers off her ear. He held the sound blaster
right up to her head, and waited until she fell down. Then he grabbed the back of
her pants, and threw her into the bank of dryers with the same dispassionate enthusiasm
a baggage handler uses on luggage. Her impact made me swallow hard. And for a second
I could see with cold clarity.

He was a Were. Furless, yes, but still a Were. Robson Trowbridge, the much loved youngest
son of the Creemore Alpha, and beautiful Bridge, every girl’s grade school crush,
and even the Trowbridge of my recent disappointment—those guys weren’t in the Laundromat.
The Were was. His neck tendons stood out in long ropes, the lines beside his mouth
no longer looked like laugh lines, but like lines carved for intimidation. He picked
up the gun before moving toward Scawens.

I closed my eyes. There would be more blood. I waited for a shot that never came.
I opened them a crack.

With a muttered curse, Trowbridge pulled back his leg and kicked him again. He must
have aimed low. Scawens’s shriek was as high as the alarm.

Things got dark.

I thought I heard Biggs say, “You’ve got to hit me, man.” But that didn’t make sense.
Nothing in this day had made sense.

Then, Trowbridge was by me. I was too tired to lift my head. He stopped close enough
that I could study his bare knees poking through the new rip in his jeans. There was
a pause. He bent on one knee and yanked me up by one arm. I swayed. He had two faces,
and both of them looked mad. I reared back. The double vision settled down to one
very angry Were with gleaming blue eyes and black whiskers.

He looked furious enough to chew up fairies and spit out their wings. He bent down,
shoved his hard shoulder into my stomach and hoisted me up with a pained grunt. My
braid flopped down over my hanging head. In protest, Merry lightly bit my skin, as
she became squashed between his hard muscled back, and my flattened breasts. She’d
grown in size, my protective friend. What had once been a smooth warm lump was now
a big fat hot one. Was I destined to be burdened with two amulets now? One for each
cup?

I must have asked that out loud to Trowbridge, because I could hear him grunt something.
“Never mind,” I muttered to his ass, moving my head to the side so that I wasn’t staring
at the gun tucked into the hollow of his back. Things kept flickering in and out of
focus. I made a fist around his T-shirt, and tried to pull myself more upright. Bad,
bad idea. His shoulder pressed deeper into my stomach and the scent of his blood was
already making it cramp. I sank down again to rest my bouncing head on the small of
his back. With one eye, I watched his ass cheeks move in a smooth rhythm. He hardly
broke stride for potholes. In the distance, I could hear sirens. The cops were coming.

He stopped in front of the hood of Bob’s car. Roughly, he bent forward to roll me
off. My head smacked down on the hood. “Watch the car,” I said, but what came out
of my mouth was all muddled. He pulled Merry’s chain up from under my shirt, letting
her dangle from his fingers for inspection. She spun slowly, one fat ball of crisscrossed
gold protectively surrounding both amulets. He started to pull the necklace upward.

“Don’t do that,” I said, but was too late. Merry spat electric fire down the length
of her Fae necklace. Trowbridge hissed and sprang back as blue sparks jetted between
his fingers and her gold. “Ow,” I said weakly, feeling the heated metal char my neck.

Stars winked down on me. I twisted onto my side and heaved, but my empty stomach only
produced a weak dry retch.

“None of that,” he said, and grabbed me around the waist. My feet dangled as he carried
me around to the open car door. One slipper teetered off my curling toes and fell
to the pavement. He shoved me into the car. My head and ass bounced as I made a landing.
His hip followed mine before I even had a chance to figure out how to mount the obstacle
of the console. My backside received another impatient shove over it as he settled
behind the wheel.

“My shoe,” I complained.

One swipe at the pavement and the shoe went flying over my head. It bounced off the
window and fell between the door and the seat. “Put your seat belt on,” he said, clicking
his own in place.

“Huh?”

“Cops.”

I tried, but my hands blazed trying to fit the two pieces together. He muttered something
uncomplimentary under his breath, and then batted my hands away. That hurt. I told
him exactly why he was a misbegotten son-of-a-Were but my rant came out in another
incomprehensible jumble of words. He clicked the pieces of the buckle together, then
he turned the key in the ignition, and we were smoothly exiting the parking lot. We
made a left at the first light. We were traveling at posted speeds as the cop car
blurred past us, its roof flashing red warning lights.