Venators, page 7
“Strange is in the eye of the beholder.” Tate stomped his feet, dislodging a sheet of dried mud from his legs that smashed to pieces when it hit the ground. “You’ll be safe, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Maybe it was the way Rune had wrapped her arms around herself, or the violent shiver that ran through her whole body, or the fear in her eyes. Whatever it was, Grey was struck with how small she looked.
“Come on.” He offered a smile that he hoped was reassuring and led the way.
As they walked, Grey had to grip his waistband to keep the weight of the mud from pulling his pants down around his ankles. He bought clothes so big that his belt already struggled to keep them up—without the extra pounds.
He shouldered and pushed branches out of the way, holding them long enough that they didn’t slap Rune in the face.
“So,” she said. “Tate’s blue.”
He burst out laughing. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“Do you think that’s normal over here?”
“Probably. Most likely it’s just different skin pigmentation. We have variations on our side too,” he felt the need to point out. “Just not . . . blue.” Grey almost tripped over a partially obscured fallen branch. “Watch your step.”
“You still haven’t explained how you know him.”
Grey hesitated, but he couldn’t see sense in keeping the story to himself any longer. “I was attacked on my way home from the library.” A lump formed in his throat. Somehow he’d thought it would be easier to tell this story, given the circumstances.
“Attacked by who?” Rune asked. “Tate?”
“What? No. The same things that came after us tonight. The goblins, at least, not the werewolves by the gate—I don’t think I would’ve survived them long enough for Tate to show up. He appeared out of nowhere, swords flying—a lot like tonight. Without Tate . . . I’d be dead.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Six years.”
“Wait, six years . . . Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure,” he said with thick sarcasm. When met with nothing but silence, Grey glanced back.
Rune’s eyes were cast down, her brows pulled together as she worked to puzzle something out.
“What?” he asked.
She still didn’t respond.
Distracted, Grey’s grip loosened, and his pants slipped over his hipbone. He hurriedly let go of the branch to grab them.
“Ow!” Rune yelped.
“Sorry!”
She scowled and rubbed at a bright-red welt across her cheek. “How about I take the lead since you’re busy trying to keep those pants up?” Grey blushed as she shouldered past him. “How did you manage to hold off those goblins until Tate arrived?”
Grey snorted. “I didn’t hold them off. I was thirteen. It was . . .” He nearly said the most horrible moment of his life, but that would be a lie. “. . . terrifying. I thought I was going to die.”
He stepped on a thick branch, and it snapped. His heart jumped, and Rune gave a little gasp, whirling. Seeing the stick under his foot, she glared.
“Whoops.”
She exhaled tightly through her teeth and turned to push forward, her hair flipping hard to the back. “But you’d never seen Tate before that?”
“No.” Grey ducked under the spiky reach of an overgrown bush. “You remember how fast he moved today. He seemed even faster then.” The mental image of blood on the white trim of his sneakers flashed in front of him. “After Tate killed the goblins, he gave me the orb, said to always keep it with me, and promised that someday he’d be back.”
“So you knew about all of this.” She motioned to their surroundings.
“Not . . . exactly.”
Rune scoffed under her breath. Next thing he knew, a branch came flying for his face. He ducked.
“Oops.”
The oops sounded less than genuine.
Grey straightened, scowling at Rune’s back. “I think Tate meant to explain it to me—at least, he looked like he was about to say something—but there was a scream, and he ran off.” That memory still stung a bit. He’d felt abandoned, left in an alley full of blood, dead alien bodies, questions, and his own personal grief. “That was the last time I saw him.”
“Where were you when it happened?”
He cleared his throat, trying to lighten his tone to something approximating nonchalance. “The alley near Elm and Pine. I’m sure you know it.” It wasn’t even a block from Rune’s house.
There was a stutter in her step. “Yeah . . . I know it. The scream you heard—was it human? Like from a little boy, maybe?”
Grey thought. “Maybe. It was a long time ago.”
“And it was right after that when you started wearing that trench coat of yours, wasn’t it?”
“Lay off the coat! I like it.” At least, I did. He’d worn it for so many years that the feel of air and leaves brushing against his skin was foreign and uncomfortable.
They came around a bend, and Rune jerked to a stop so fast he ran into her back. “Whoa.”
Stretched out in front them was something from a dream.
Hot springs dotted the ground, nestled in smooth stone hollows that ranged in size from bathtub to swimming pool. Wisps of steam rose from each basin, slipping through the air and melding together to cover the area with a glistening fog. Within the mist, small purple lights appeared and disappeared like brilliant fireflies, painting everything in a pinkish hue.
Rune’s shoulders relaxed, and she let out a deep sigh of pure wonder, walking from one pool to the next. She peeked around a bend where a piece of smooth gray stone taller than she was poked out from the trees. “There are more over here. I’m going to bathe where I can have a little privacy.”
Grey didn’t love that idea, and she must’ve seen the worry on his face.
“I’m filthy, Grey. I’m taking a bath.” She cocked an eyebrow. “In private.”
This world obviously held more dangers than the one they’d left, but he didn’t see how he could successfully argue that they should bathe together for safety. “Just . . . be careful.”
She turned, a familiar coy look on her face through the mist. “If I scream, come running.” But that look quickly fell away. “No, really. Come if I scream.”
He laughed. “OK.”
Looking reassured, she disappeared around the corner.
The mist clung to Grey as he walked, wetting his skin and eyelashes with a fine dew. He sat down on the edge of a pool. The markings on his arms swirled with the same pink and purple as the lights above, and he couldn’t help but smile at the irony. In an instant he’d gone from refusing to wear color to being a walking kaleidoscope. The new tattoo-like patterns were incredible, and he felt stronger just looking at them.
No way could he get out of these clothes as caked as they were, so he slid into the water fully dressed, boots and all. He yanked at the gritty laces through the water, then dumped the muddy sludge out of his boots and placed them on the side of the pool. He washed out his shirt and jeans, rinsing them thoroughly before laying them flat on the stones.
The water was now as brown as the river they’d walked through, so he left it for a different pool.
Picking up one leg, he examined the wicked bruises where the fae had pinched and grabbed. But there were fewer than he’d expected, and—even stranger—they seemed to be fading before his eyes. Maybe it was the mist. Squinting, he looked closer. They were definitely lighter than they’d been a moment before.
That was . . . interesting.
From the waist down, the heat of the water started to soothe the aches from the day. He lowered in, leaning his head back on the smooth stone edge to watch the lights dance. The logical side of his brain niggled, desperately sending reminders of what he’d seen in the last twenty-four hours, prompting the remembrance that he should be terrified. But he wasn’t. He was happy, giddy even. The truth was . . . he felt like he’d finally come home.
As soon as she was around the corner, Rune’s shoulders sagged with exhaustion. She didn’t know how many hours it had been since she’d slept, but it felt like weeks. Adding to the fatigue, her feelings were currently tangled up in a horribly intertwined ball of contradictions.
She wanted to believe this was all just a nightmare—they were still at the dorms, and Ryker had not been kidnapped by some hideous creatures—but she couldn’t. Everything was too real and fully fleshed out—sights, smells, sounds—including the nasty, jagged piece of fingernail left by a malicious fae. She jerked it from her jeans and flicked the yellowed nail to the side. Disgusting.
The blissful heat of the pool dissipated her thoughts the moment she stepped in.
Wrapped in a brief moment of contentment, she leaned back against the edge and stretched out. The lights flitted and danced through the mist, causing the markings on her arms to flare purple and pink. She pulled one arm out of the water and slowly turned it over, eying the strange patterns that danced across her skin.
Rune had always found the concept of tattoos ridiculous. These were pretty enough, a gently vining pattern . . . but still. She just couldn’t imagine liking something enough to keep it her entire life. She didn’t even like her clothes a few months after she’d bought them. She always wanted something new and different.
Dunking under the water, she scrubbed her face and hair before coming up. The itch that had plagued her entire life was numbed to as dull a roar as she could remember—peace was a blessing long forgotten. It was exciting and a relief. She’d been exhausted from fighting so hard just to feel . . . normal.
Her inner disciplinarian snapped a ruler across the back of her knuckles. No! This was all wrong. Neither excitement nor relief should be in her emotional repertoire right now. Although she’d finally done what should’ve been done years ago—walked away from her brother’s needs to worry about her own—she was unable to enjoy the new liberation, nagged instead with the knowledge that, in the end, their mother had been right: she hadn’t been there when Ryker needed her.
She’d jumped through that gate willingly enough, ready to race to the rescue like a delusional hero in an action film, virtual guns blazing. But now that she was here, it was terrifying. Her brother was on this side, with those things, and instead of wanting to find him, deep down a scared little girl pounded at the walls, wanting to run screaming back through that gate as fast as she’d arrived. What kind of heartless monster was she?
But would Ryker have come for you?
The question was whispered and nasty, yet she had no one to blame for the cruelty of it but herself. The uncertainty stung because she really didn’t know. Maybe? But it didn’t matter. She shouldn’t have left him. There were things she could’ve done—insisted Tate go back for him, asked Grey for help, grabbed one of the swords in Grey’s room, yelled a warning, something.
She sank farther down in the pool. The water slid over her lips and lapped just beneath the bottom of her nose. Remorse and shame, no matter how illogical, fed on empty minds and quiet hands—the longer she sat there, the worse she felt. The guilt sank down like a physical presence, and its unrelenting pressure spurred an early exit from her temporary sanctuary.
Without dry clothes to change into, she wrung out her shirt and pants, then stepped out onto a rock to wiggle back into them. The night air was chilly, and being wet from head to toe rapidly dropped her temperature. Shivering, Rune shoved back the mass of tangled brown hair that hung in her face and began combing through it with her fingers. Anxious to get to a campfire and dry off, she braided her hair while walking, turning her thoughts to the story Grey had told about the time he’d met Tate. But once around the corner, all thoughts vanished, and she pulled up short.
Grey stood shirtless in the middle of the pool, his back to her with his fingers clasped behind his head, staring up at the dancing lights. His tattoos—tribal and powerful—started somewhere below the waterline and flowed up his spine. They flared over his shoulders and down his arms, flickering deep pink and rich purple like dying embers.
But what had stopped her in her tracks was not his markings, but him. Without his baggy clothes, she could see what had been hidden underneath. He’d been working out for years—that was clear. His back muscles were perfectly toned, his shoulders tapering down to his waist like an inverted triangle. There was no part of his body he’d neglected. As an athlete herself, she knew exactly what kind of dedication went into that physique.
“What the hell?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Startled, he turned around, and she nearly fell over. The back was nice—the front was better.
“Rune!” He looked around like he wanted to duck beneath the water but instead awkwardly folded his arms.
Cheeks flaring, she tried to form sentences, but all that came out was an incoherent string of babble. “What . . . I mean, why . . . I . . . you—” She snapped her mouth shut and looked at him with utter perplexity.
He was gorgeous, especially with his wet hair pushed off his face. She’d seen the hints of his facial structure, but only when looking through and around the hair he always hid behind. She’d never suspected how truly handsome he was. Now she could see what she’d never noticed before—a strong jaw, deep-set eyes, and chiseled cheekbones.
“I don’t understand,” she managed to say.
He looked away from her and shrugged.
The only explanation that made sense came tumbling out. “Did the water do something to you? Have you seen yourself?”
Grey scowled, his fists clenched at his sides. “I don’t look any different than I did an hour ago.”
She opened her mouth to apologize, but he interrupted.
“Are you just going to stand there? I need to get my clothes.” He jerked his head toward the shirt and pants on the side of the pool.
“Of course, sorry.” Her eyes wandered down his abs to the water at his waist. Blinking, she shook her head and hurried toward Tate and the campfire.
Rune pushed at the encroaching branches, stumbling as her mind raced. She was stuck in a strange place, surrounded by creatures that weren’t supposed to exist and a man who had let her brother be taken. The only person she knew was Grey—he’d offered familiarity and a little security. But with every step and every question, she realized she didn’t know him at all—not even a little bit.
History Past
Grey pulled his pants on and cinched the belt as tight as it would go. It promptly slipped over the band and dug into his stomach. It was insanely uncomfortable but the only thing that would hold up his soaking-wet jeans. To make matters worse, the shirt didn’t billow around him like it usually did, hiding his body, but instead stuck tightly to his skin.
The heat of Rune’s gaze still burned, the way those brown eyes had roved over him. Part of him had liked it. A lot. But the other part had flared in anger. He’d always wanted her to look at him like he was something other than a science project, but no matter how much they’d talked, she’d never looked at him like that.
He wasn’t any different than an hour ago, inside or out.
Grey stomped through the thick undergrowth on the way back, taking his frustration out on every bush and flower. He roughly pushed a branch aside to see a crackling campfire with two small, piglike things roasting on a spit. They were only slightly larger than guinea pigs, with green skin, and all in all, they looked rather unappetizing. Even still, his stomach growled.
Rune sat opposite the flames, facing him. The shadows from the fire danced across her face, painting on a jagged mask. She wouldn’t look at him. She’d locked her eyes on the crackling logs, lips set in a tight, thin line.
Grey was a little confused. If anyone had a right to be angry, it was him. Sitting across from her, he scooted closer to the fire, hoping to dry out his clothes. “Where’s Tate?”
“Looking for more food.” She reached out and gave the roasting sticks a turn, curling up her nose at the two pigs. “He said to go ahead and eat these if they were finished before he got back, but they keep staring at me.” Rune looked up, and her rich brown eyes hesitated around his midriff.
Grey glanced down. The wet T-shirt had defined everything. He jerked at the extra fabric, pulling it away while arching his shoulders forward to further camouflage his abs. She frowned in confusion.
Desperate to talk about anything other than the question Grey knew she was dying to ask, he cleared his throat. “So, how are you doing?”
“I’m sitting on the outskirts of a black faery forest that’s filled with little demons. I’m great. Thank you for asking.”
The sarcasm bit, and Grey had the urge to pull his hair down and hide the way he always did. But it was still slicked back and useless. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.” She sighed and dropped her head into her hands. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.” She finally looked straight into his eyes.
For a moment, he felt like she was really seeing him—not his interests or his body, but him.
“Everything that’s happened is unbelievable and completely insane. I should be freaking out right now . . . but I’m not.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Which is bothering me.”
“Why?”
“Why is it bothering me?”
“No, why aren’t you freaking out?”
She held her hands out to the fire, turning them one way and then the other. “You know, my whole life I’ve had this crazy draw to everything paranormal. I tried to write it off—told myself that lots of kids were into that kind of thing and that I wasn’t weird. But I was different. I had this . . . It was like an itch, one I couldn’t scratch, an irritation that was always there no matter what I did. Nobody understood. The only time I didn’t feel like I was going to shimmy out of my own skin was when . . .” She bit her lip. “When I was talking to you.”
