Another Kind of Dead

Chapter Twenty-four

Kismet called at some point during the night to check in. I remembered muttering about needing my sleep, then hanging up and sleeping until morning. Getting up took a lot of effort, and I had to think hard to remember why it was worth bothering—Wyatt. He was out there, somewhere. And I needed to find him so he’d know I was alive.

It motivated me into the shower. The water sluiced off weeks of sweat and other things and helped me finally feel healed. I also got my first look at my left hand and almost started crying again. My pinkie was gone, severed below the knuckle, the skin healed over and the tendons repaired. A vivid reminder of Thackery’s daft theory that I’d regenerate body parts. He’d taken a piece of me, and I needed to return the favor.

I slipped into a pair of ill-fitting jeans and layered on a second T-shirt to help hold them up. I brushed my hair into a neat ponytail, then wandered into the kitchen. The apartment was still empty. It was silly to hope Wyatt would have come home during the night, and I felt the crushing weight of his absence in every inch of space.

Pasta wasn’t the breakfast of champions, but it was my only option unless I wanted a can of tomato soup. I boiled some macaroni. The carbs made me feel a little better. A little more human.

A cab took me across town. I’d found some emergency cash in Wyatt’s favorite hiding place—a sealed plastic bag inside the toilet tank, for grossness’ sake—to pay the fare, unsure of my destination until I gave the driver the address. It seemed the best first place to look for Wyatt.

Rufus St. James welcomed me at the condo’s front door, and I bent down to give him an awkward hug.

We hadn’t seen each other since his release from the hospital, and I’d never been to the place he shared with Phin. It was gorgeous, with dark wood floors and high ceilings. The furniture was mostly chocolate leather, and the wood mahogany and simply carved. All of the goodies I expected of a bachelor pad were there—minibar, stereo and gaming systems, wide-screen television.

Everything was spaced apart at perfect intervals to allow Rufus access with his wheelchair. His curly strawberry blond hair had grown out and tousled around his forehead. A few burn scars peeked out from behind his shirt collar, and his left hand was badly scarred. He looked otherwise healthy—color in his cheeks, a sparkle in hazel-green eyes also bracketed with worry.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked as he motored down the short hall to the living room.

I followed, taking in the carefully arranged décor as I went. “You can get me Wyatt on the phone.”

He snorted softly. “I would if I could, Evy. How about in the realm of breakfast foods or coffee?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” He circled around and indicated the sofa.

Look who’s talking. I slid into its plush upholstery with a grunt. “How’d you look if you’d been held captive and tortured for twenty days?” He flinched, and I sighed. “You really don’t know where Wyatt went?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. He or Phineas, as a matter of fact. Wyatt’s gone off on his own for a day or so before, but he always came back. He’s working on four days now without a word, and that’s just—”

“That’s what?”

Rufus shook his head. “I was going to say it’s just not like him, but he wasn’t himself the whole time you were gone. I think if he’d had proof you were dead, instead of uncertainty eating him up … He drank a lot but wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even Gina. We tried to get him to accept you were gone, and I think near the end he did, but he was just so—”

“Cold?” I offered the word Kismet had used.

“Yeah. So is that why you came over this morning? To make sure I wasn’t in cahoots and hiding it from Gina?”

“Kind of.” It was also better than hanging around the apartment alone, slowly going crazy.

“His room is down the hall, first door on the right.”

I nodded my thanks.

The door was shut. I turned the brass knob and pushed. The furniture in the bedroom was the same carved mahogany as in the rest of the house—a headboard, nightstand, and dresser, and thick navy area rug over more wood flooring. It was impersonal, except for the small pile of laundry by the corner of the made bed. I snagged a black short-sleeved polo, held it to my face, and inhaled the rich, familiar scent that was Wyatt.

I could almost imagine him standing in front of me wearing that shirt, his heart thrumming steadily against my breast as he held me tightly in his arms. You son of a bitch, if you’re out there doing something stupid …

A quick search led to nothing of note. Rufus had probably searched once. I did it for personal peace of mind. Whatever Wyatt had been planning, wherever he and Phin had gone, they’d been careful to leave no trace behind.

Rufus was in the kitchen watching coffee brew. Two mugs were on the counter, next to an assortment of sweetener packets. I sat on one of the stools and fiddled with the red ceramic mug nearest me.

“Didn’t find anything either, huh?” he asked.

“No.”

The pot gurgled the last of its water through the grounds. “What are your plans now?”

Plans? “Get back into fighting form, mostly,” I said. “I need to gain weight, rebuild my muscle mass. Frankly, I’ve needed to train since I got this body, only I haven’t had the chance.” It had been almost two months since my resurrection—a difficult concept to swallow, since I’d spent half of it unconscious for various reasons.

“You know, Gina said Tybalt made a similar comment to her the other week, about staying in fighting shape.”

I met Rufus’s hazel gaze. “Did he?”

“She says he’s found something to keep himself occupied but won’t tell her what. She got stuck with three rookies last week anyway, so she doesn’t see much of him.”

“Three?”

“Yeah, they’re graduating rookies earlier and without the usual pomp and circumstance.” Read: without fights to the death. “Because they’re several Handlers down, the working Triads are all getting extra team members.”

No wonder Gina and Milo both looked so stressed. I was glad for Tybalt, but also a little sad for Gina. She and Tybalt had been together for four years. In just a few weeks, she’d lost two of her longtime Hunters and had them replaced by green newbies. “Are you lending your sage wisdom to the rookies, too?” I asked, unsure just how to continue the conversation.

“I’m not a Handler anymore, Evy. And I never will be.”

“What?” I hadn’t expected that. Yes, he was recovering, but it was supposed to be a temporary setback.

“I’ll never walk normally again, so I can’t be out in the field,” he said with no ire in his voice. Just bland acceptance.

Christ on a cracker. “But you were a Handler for ten years. You and Wyatt were two of the first Hunters in the Triads and founding Handlers. You’re good at your job, Rufus. You can train—”

“No, I can’t.” He grabbed the pot and whirred over to the counter to pour. “Brass won’t let me. But it’s kind of weird to think that Wyatt and I are no longer part of something we helped create.”

“Weird?”

“Okay, fucked-up.”

I blew across the top of my steaming coffee, then inhaled its rich aroma. “Things fall apart,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I pondered that as I sucked down the scorching liquid, grateful for the heat in my stomach and the caffeine jolt that would accompany it. Rufus was out of a job. Tybalt and Felix and I were out of jobs. Wyatt and Phin were … somewhere.

Phin had come to me once with the very genuine desire to see his people—not just Therians but all Dregs—have a hand in policing themselves. He’d never get his wish of seeing Therians join the Triads, I knew that now. He had to see it, too. But the Triads were rotting from the inside out. Losing members left and right, breaking apart, betraying their own. With the experience Rufus and Wyatt had in training people to hunt, track, fight, and kill, we could be a new force to be reckoned with.

All I had to do was find my fucking boyfriend, tell him I was alive, and lay out the suggestion.

I scratched my fingernail across the smooth granite countertop, once again struck by the condo’s class. It wasn’t upscale by any means, but it wasn’t cheap. And Rufus looked completely out of place in its high level of comfort. The apartment he’d maintained in Mercy’s Lot was a hole compared to this (charitably, it had been a hole compared to almost anywhere else) but had somehow seemed more him.

My face must have given me away.

“What?” he asked.

“Just marveling at your new digs. They’re nice.”

His expression soured. “This is all Phin, trust me. But the wood floors are handy, and so’s the elevator. I’d have had a bitch of a time navigating the stairs at my old place in this chair. I only got upstairs that first time because of Nadia.”

“After everything you’ve been through, Rufus, I think you kind of deserve the break.”

“That’s debatable.” He fiddled with his coffee mug, and I wanted to reach out and hit him with it.

I déjà vued back to our conversation in the hospital when he’d thought he deserved execution for his part in the Owlkin massacre. He hadn’t wanted me to fight for his life. I’ve done some amazingly shitty things in my lifetime, Evy. You’d never believe it. Feels like it’s finally my time to pay up, is all.

He was stuck in a wheelchair, scarred for life, and unable to go back to his old job with the Triads—and the idiot still thought he had more than he deserved? What. The. Hell? “Well, I guess you’ve still got the market cornered on self-pity,” I said.

His glare didn’t dissuade me, either. I was tired, hurt, mentally wrung out, and bordering on a nervous breakdown. I was so sick of bullshit I could scream. “Look, whatever the hell you did that was so awful? Get the fuck over it, Rufus. Most of us don’t get forgiveness, and we don’t get punished by the people who deserve a shot at us. Life’s unfair, but we keep going. There’s no other choice.”

He managed to keep his expression neutral, but his voice dripped with sadness as he replied, “Evy, you have survived more hurt and pain in the last two months than any of your crimes could ever demand, and you haven’t stopped fighting. I admire that, and I admit that it shames me, too.”

“So do something about it.”

“Easier said than done, believe me. I joined the Triads to give my life purpose and focus, and I’ve tried to atone for my mistakes.” He tapped his fingers on the arm of his wheelchair and heaved a deep, resigned sigh. “But even if I found a way to forgive myself, he’d never forgive me.”

“He who?”

“Wyatt.”

If I hadn’t already put my mug down, I would have dropped it. He looked away, and I studied his profile, as if the slope of his nose and jut of his jaw would tell me everything I needed to know. It didn’t. Maybe if I weren’t coming off a three-week torture binge, half-starved and emotionally crushed, I’d be able to figure out the reference on my own. It couldn’t have been recent, and except for our mutual outpourings of pain in a motel room last month, Wyatt didn’t talk about the early days of the Triads.

“Rufus, you’ve known Wyatt for ten years,” I said. “What unforgiveable thing could you possibly have done?”

Rufus snapped his head up, hazel eyes lit with a fire I’d never seen before—more emotion than he’d ever displayed in my presence. For an instant, I expected him to leap from his chair and attack. Then the fire flickered out, replaced by the familiar hardness he’d had in place since his Triad died. His eyebrows furrowed together, and he seemed torn between a desire to shut up and to finally get something off his chest.

I didn’t want him to tell me, but I also couldn’t let him not. Not if it was about Wyatt.

“He told you how his family died.”

It wasn’t a question, and my mind flashed to Wyatt’s brother. Nicky and Wyatt had been two of the first Hunters trained by the Fey. Nicky’s death had been an accident, but I knew it still haunted Wyatt. He felt responsible, and he’d said nothing about Rufus being present during the fight that led to Nicky’s death. Wyatt pushed, Nicky tripped, end of sad story.

No, not that family. Their parents and sister died months before that incident, when a group of half-Bloods invaded their family-owned restaurant and proceeded to torture and kill everyone there. Two out-of-state bounty hunters had come in, killed the Halfies, then killed everyone else to eliminate witnesses. Wyatt said he’d caught and killed one of the bounty hunters.

Cold fingers raked down my spine. Acid churned in my stomach. My mouth dried out, and it took several tries to get my tongue moist enough to speak. “You know who the second bounty hunter is, don’t you?”

He flinched. Nodded. Misery and relief made a peculiar combination on his face as he prepared to hoist a years-old burden onto someone else. I wanted to flee the room before he could say anything else. One of Wyatt’s biggest regrets was never learning who that second bounty hunter was—a regret that still gnawed at him a decade later.

Indignation and anger on his behalf began to heat my chest. “How the hell could you keep this from him, Rufus? You have to tell him who.”

Another nod, this one resigned. “He’ll kill me.”

“He might beat you up, but he won’t kill—” Holy. Fucking. Shit. My brain stuttered and my vision grayed.

Rufus never looked away, and the depth of misery in his gaze reached into my chest and squeezed my heart into bloody pulp. “I couldn’t possibly tell him, Evy,” he said. “At first it was survival. Then over the years we actually became friends. After that it was impossible. How do I tell him the second bounty hunter was me?”

A dull roar in my ears blocked out all sound. The words I hadn’t wanted to hear rocketed through my mind and heart, and I was crushed under the weight of the secret I’d just been handed. Did I tell Wyatt when I finally saw him again? Did I force Rufus to? Did I keep it a secret, even though lying to Wyatt was the last thing on Earth I ever wanted to do?

Goddammit!

The front doorbell rang with a deep chime. I jumped, sloshing my coffee. Rufus frowned. He didn’t ask me not to tell, didn’t make me promise him anything about his confession. He just motored out of the kitchen to the front door. It creaked open. The voices were muffled.

I stared at my spilled coffee, willing my brain to function. I hadn’t wanted to know this, but it was too damned late to take it back. It certainly explained Rufus’s tendency toward self-loathing and punishing himself by pushing away external comforts. He said he didn’t deserve the luxury of this apartment, and the petty, vindictive side of my mind agreed with him. The rest of me didn’t know what the hell to think.

Moments later, Rufus returned with Kismet in tow.

“You’re up and about early,” she said to me as she put a box of bakery doughnuts on the counter.

“I’ve spent the better part of a month sleeping, so I’m not very tired,” I said.

“Touché.” She poured herself a mug of coffee and added milk from the fridge, seeming very at home here. Rufus helped himself to a glazed doughnut. He offered one to me. The sugary, fried ring made my stomach gurgle unpleasantly.

“You need to eat, Evy,” he said.

“Yeah, but I’m not eating that. You eat those every morning?”

“Just Sunday.”

It was Sunday? Good to know. I sipped at my coffee, keenly aware of how strange my situation was—having Sunday-morning coffee and doughnuts with two Handlers who had each, in their own way and for their own reasons, tried to kill me in the not-so-distant past. And now they were among the people I trusted most with my life. They’d also both recently experienced tremendous loss. Rufus’s entire Triad had been killed. Kismet had lost two long-term Hunters to crippling injuries. Add Wyatt’s losses to the list, and they were the Three Musketeers of Grief.

I stayed quiet while they ate their doughnuts and chatted about nonsensical things. Nothing work-related or even borderline important. A song she’d heard on the radio that made her laugh. The television movie he’d watched last night and made fun of out loud. It was so normal I wanted to scream.

“What are the Triads doing to find Thackery?” I asked when I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Kismet put her half-eaten doughnut down and steepled her fingertips, elbows on the counter. “His photo is out to the Metro Police. He’s regarded as a dangerous suspect, wanted for kidnapping and attempted murder. From what I hear, the Clans are still looking, and I’m going to assume so are the gargoyles. Everyone’s doing what they can.”

The response should have placated me. Instead, I got angry. “Doing what they can like before, when he had me?”

She bristled. “He was keeping you on the move outside the city, Evy. We did what we could. We can’t search the entire world. Thackery made it impossible to find you, and now that his mobile laboratory is destroyed, he’ll probably lie low for a long time.”

“Don’t count on it. Thackery’s entire life for the last five years has been dedicated to curing vampire infection in humans. It’s his driving force, and he won’t just curl up and hibernate until it’s safe to start over. He’ll resume as soon as he’s able.”

She stared, but my gaze never wavered.

“What do you suggest?” she asked.

“Don’t underestimate him.”

An awkward silence stretched out over the next few minutes as we sipped our coffee and avoided looking at one another. Until I couldn’t stand it anymore. “So tell me more about James Reilly,” I said. “You said he got a heaping helping of truth. Does that mean he’s working with us now?”

“Pretty much,” she replied. “We haven’t gotten an official okay from the brass yet, but most of the other Handlers are on board. We can’t keep Reilly quiet unless we kill him, which we aren’t going to do, so—”

“If you can’t kill them, recruit them?”

Her lips quirked. Rufus chuckled.

Kismet’s cell phone rang. She checked the I.D., then snapped it open. “Kismet.” Her eyebrows puckered. “Adrian, slow down, I—” She went perfectly still, her already pale skin taking on a frightening pallor. Her mouth slowly fell open.

I exchanged a look with Rufus, whose face reflected the concern and confusion that was ripping through my body.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, and hung up. “Fucking hell.”

“What?” I asked.

“Boot Camp is being attacked.”

“Attacked?” Rufus and I squawked in stereo. Again?

“I’ll call you with details,” she said, already on her way to the door.

Hell no.

I chased after her.

No way was I sitting this out.