The Trouble with Fate (35 page)

“You’re probably going to break my heart,” I said, craning my head back to look up
at him.

“And maybe you’ll break mine.” His eyes were somber. “Are you ready?”

The stinging wind was at it again. It blew cold air over Merry’s grave and brought
moisture to my eyes. I nodded.

“It’s time I met your aunt Lou.” He pulled me toward the courtyard’s exit.

“Be nice.”

He didn’t say anything, but he did do that one eyebrow lift thing. He waggled them,
and I found myself smiling into his eyes.

“I mean it, Trowbridge, you can’t kill her.”

His eyes went from playful to alert in the space of half a second. He cocked his head
to listen. I strained my ears a moment longer and then heard it too. Running feet.
Staccato taps more than heavy Were thuds. We turned in unison across the commons,
toward the same set of doors that Trowbridge pushed through.

A Were was coming. Trowbridge lifted his nose to the air, and tested it. He pushed
me behind him.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to strain to see beyond his wide shoulder.

“Trouble.”

The heavy mullioned-glass doors opened for Cordelia, who, it turned out, could actually
run at a pretty good clip in two-inch court shoes. She skidded to a halt and thinned
her lips at the sight of our joined hands. “They’re coming. Mannus is right behind
me.”

Chapter Eighteen

Trowbridge slid a glance toward Merry’s grave and said, “We’ve got to lead them away
from this place. Now.”

And then we were running—sprinting across the flagstones, down another set of stairs,
steeper and shorter. I felt a shiver of cold as we ran past an alley. We entered a
cloistered passageway. He pulled open the first of several heavy oak doors lining
the cloister and then snapped a quick question to Cordelia. “How many?”

“Mannus, two pups, and a young bitch,” she replied, catching up to us.

“No adults?”

She shook her head, her mouth curled. “Not a one.”

If my mate had planned on taking us to a large classroom, he was out of luck. Behind
door number one was nothing more than a small stairwell. In front of us were eight
steps, each riser’s edge capped by metal, leading to a three-foot linoleum landing
and from there on to another set of stairs that ended at the second floor. Trowbridge
put a hand on the creaky, wooden banister and cocked an ear to listen. “Where the
hell are all the students?”

“Over there!” shouted a Were from the quad.

Trowbridge’s head whipped around. He stared out at the courtyard, and then yanked
the door closed. His eyes were feral slits. “There are too many,” he said to Cordelia.

“I’ll slow them down,” she replied. She turned and took a position at the foot of
the staircase.

Trowbridge grabbed my hand, and then he propelled me up those narrow stairs at a reckless
speed, pulling me hard with his hand and his will. I glanced behind us in time to
see Cordelia pocket her earrings. Her shoulders were braced.

There was no choice but to turn right at the top of the second floor. A squeak of
hinges echoed up the stairwell as the outer door opened again, and then I heard Cordelia
drawl, “Hello, darlings,” followed by that first smack of flesh hitting flesh.

Trowbridge yanked me down the short corridor. On the right, two small classrooms,
on the left a series of doors with names on them. He booted open Dr. Reznikoff’s office
door with one kick.

I had an impression of books, papers, and shelving, and the stale smell of old sweat.
There was a high-pitched scream from downstairs, and Trowbridge brushed past me to
struggle with the window. When it didn’t slide up, he leaned back and kicked it to
pieces. Wood and glass flew.

There was another scream, this one as piercing as my father’s cry when the wolf slashed
his belly, followed by the sound of people running up the stairs.

Trowbridge looked at the door and then at me. Blue lights spun around his pupils,
then his jaw hardened. “I’ll find you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, but he already had his hands on my waist and was lifting
me to the window.

“No!” I locked my hands behind his neck. “I’m not leaving you.”

But his hard fingers plucked them free, and then he picked me again, saying grimly,
“Yes you are.”

From behind me, I felt something sickening—waves of freezing air were coming through
the doorway. Numbing cold.

“Trowbridge?” I asked, suddenly feeling faint.

“I promised to protect you, remember?” he said, the blue comets in his eyes sharper
and brighter than ever before. “Put your legs through the window, sweetheart.”

Now he calls me sweetheart? Now?

I lost myself for an instant. Lost myself to disbelief and the arctic air that kept
coming, now harsher, more bitter. Trowbridge took advantage of my hesitation. I found
myself hanging from the window, held there by his grip on my wrists, with my feet
scrambling for purchase and the ground too far below.

I looked up at him, suddenly terrified that I’d never seen him again. He gazed back
at me and winked.

Then he let go.

I met the copper roof of the cloister passage with a thump, rolled, once, twice, before
I felt myself airborne, and thought,
This will hurt
, all in slow motion.

It did.

It wasn’t far to go, really. Maybe ten feet, but I landed on those uneven flagstones
that I had admired, left foot first. I heard the snap before my body registered the
breaking of my bone. I may have shrieked.

I went beyond my body, beyond sensation. My heart and eyes were on Trowbridge. He
was bent in half, with one leg out of the window, one hand on the remaining upper
frame. Someone grabbed his trailing foot. Another pair of hands took hold of his pants
and started to pull him back into the room.

He’s mine.

I pointed my hands at the window and closed my eyes, visualizing the inside. Papers,
a pen-littered desk, lots of heavy books. I called to my magic and hoped that it heard
me past the anxious panting of my Were.

My power burst from my core, poured itself into my veins, surged past the Were, plucking
parts of her rage and anxiety as it shot past her. Glee. Joy. Up it came, like a drug,
past my shoulders, down my white arms, bursting through the tight channel of my wrists.
My blood was Fae blood. My blood was Were blood. In that moment of desperate need,
the two became one.

Hedi’s boiling blood.

There was no pause for my talent to build.

It was my birthright, it was my magic, it was my will.

“Attach.” It jetted out of the tips of my fingers, not in bursts, but in a long malicious
whip of evil intent. There was no miscalculation of aim. Past my love’s head, through
the glass window, straight to the long wall of books.

Learn this. Do not hurt what is mine.

I didn’t seek a contact point. I took the room. The magic streamed from me, and instead
of splitting into separate strings of Fae power, it became a wet sheet that stuck
to everything in my mind. Books. Fat unreadable tomes; the heavier and denser, the
better.

I whipped my right hand in a vicious swipe.

“Storm.”

The books shot off the shelves, like academic projectile puke. As the first book left
the oak trim, I began to rotate my wrist, fingers curled. It felt strange, moving
that wet sheet of power. At first it was jarring, uncomfortable and wrong. But as
I got my balance, it got easier.

Move it in a circle, watch it twist like a rag in the sink full of water. It answers
my call. It is mine.

It felt good. So good. Giddy again. I shivered.

The Were let go of Bridge’s jeans. Now free to move, he twisted to kick the other
guy in the face. Four kicks, it took. And during it all, I kept up my maelstrom of
book retribution.

The anticipation of their pain made me forget my own, and caused my lips to twist
in pleasure. I was beyond such mortal things. Now re-formed, and conscious only of
my own lust for vengeance and power.

My mate didn’t lose his balance when he fell the distance between window and tin roof.
He landed like a cat, twisting in midair.

Not a cat, silly, a Were.

That struck me funny, and I threw my head back to whoop at my brilliance. Wondrous
to release the full promise of my Fae nature. Magnificent and glorious.

I called deeper, and knew myself to be strong as I stood and arched my back, and felt
no misery except the blissful, burning rush that poured from me. The shelves were
moving, tearing themselves off the wall, and they were striking the targets.

I heard yelps, and a cry.

A loud belly laugh of happiness escaped my lips.

Trowbridge leaped from the roof, and landed the right way.

Strong. Beautiful. Mine. I should share my power with him. Yes, what a good idea.

I reached my left hand for him, feeling my back arch and my buttocks clench.
I’m an electric wire. Hear me sing
. Even my abdomen felt tight as a drum skin. I was all bone, all skin, no fat or soft
tissue. A new Hedi. A Fae-Were hybrid of blood and bone. Incendiary. Burn it all up.

I was—

Trowbridge hit me, square in the jaw. My head snapped back, and my brain screeched
to a halt, and the magic line snapped, and I collapsed, suddenly empty.

He put an arm under my back, and as he did, my spine screamed. It felt broken, stretched
beyond possible. I pushed away from him with my hands, and that hurt more.

Trowbridge didn’t stop. He put his other hand under my legs and lifted me, and I thought
I was going to pass out. He spun on his heel, and then we were moving Trowbridge-speed.
Past a student cowering in one of the hobbit doorways, past the line of silver, circle-topped
bike posts that made me think of Celtic crosses jammed into the ground, past the woman—
oh, Cordelia, what have they done to you?—
lying bloody and splay-legged in the passageway.

Past columns, too fast and too many to count. Toward the alley.

I could hear them coming.

They were coming, they were coming, but where were we going?

Not the alleyway. Something was wrong with that dark passageway. What? I couldn’t
remember. It was from before I had become what I was.

But what am I now?

My temperature began plunging. No longer fevered. Cooling, cooling.

There were decorative gates between the two buildings, stretched across the alley.
Medallions of something bright suspended between brackets of dark wrought iron.

My teeth began to chatter as icy fear slid along my spine.

He put a hand to the gate and shook it, and grabbed the steel padlock fastened through
the lock and yanked it hard. It bent but didn’t break.

My chest felt heavy.

The Weres were close. I could smell the wrongness of them. Were and something else.
I rolled my head away from the specter of all that black wrought iron.

Had he forgotten the Fae of me?

There was no time left for the lock. No time left to pull open those hideous gates.
The Weres were here.

“Shit.” Trowbridge cursed.

He let me go, and let me slide to the ground, and then, oh Goddess, oh Goddess no,
he rested my back against the wintry-cool, sickening iron and turned to face the Weres
at the mouth of the alley.

I didn’t cry out. That would have taken too much air. From my throat came a rattle—a
strangled exhalation of lungs squeezed tight by fear and poison. He turned. “Hedi?”
Then he was on his knees again, saying, “Shit, shit, shit.” Pulling me away from the
hideous metal gate, curling his arms around me protectively. Over his shoulder, I
saw Stuart Scawens smile and take aim. What did it take to finish that bastard?

Stuart-the-unkillable threw something at my love’s unprotected back. It was pointed
at the tip, this thing that meant to torment my mate. Like falling from the roof,
I knew it would hurt.

Lou’s silver spike whistled through the air, and then Bridge’s head flung back with
its impact. I felt the echo. The unity. His anguish muted but real, right between
my shoulder blades. Pulsing. His thoughts with mine.

Get it out, get it out
.

My mate didn’t let go of me. Didn’t let me fall back against the decorative gate.
He held me tighter and said, “Shit,” one more time. He didn’t tremble so much as shake,
and with each tremor I could feel it: the strain, the poison.

Stuart was beside us, looking happy. With his gloved hands, he pulled Lou’s silver
spike out of my mate’s back. I almost thought for a second,
I forgive you.
Perhaps he saw the entreaty in my eyes; he bared his teeth and plunged it back in
deeper. Lower this time. In the lungs.

And we both screamed. We both shook, and clutched each other, and then our limbs weren’t
our own. They were something else, jumping like attached to electrodes, jerking like
they were overstretched.

Agony.

“Stop.” It was an old man’s voice. Thick. Furious.

Stuart’s gloved hand was still on the handle, I could see that. Saw him turn his head.

The old Were snarled. “Can’t you ever follow my orders?”

I heard footsteps, and knew my enemy came closer. I would not look into Mannus’s eyes.
Not as the poison sucked the Fae from me. He’d see the hate in my gaze. He’d know
that I lusted for his blood, that I craved to make him writhe and suffer. He’d boiled
me down. Down to pain, and hate, and fierce retribution. He’d caused the end of my
first life, molded the second, and now was there at the melting point of my third.

There would be no kindness, no hesitation when his time came.

“Take the spike out of his back, but keep it close. Put it in his pocket. We want
him weak, not dead.” I could feel his gaze on us. “Be careful with the girl. She’s
not one of us.”

The wrong-Were smell got closer. I didn’t want to gag. Show no weakness, I told myself.