"How you holding up?" Blay asked.
Standing on the porch of the cabin, Qhuinn breathed in and caught a hint of smoke on the air. Blay had lit up again, and much as Qhuinn hated the habit, he didn't blame the guy. Hell, if he were into that kind of thing, he'd have busted out the coffin nails, too.
He glanced over. Blay was staring at him patiently, clearly prepared to wait for a response to the question even if it took what was left of the night.
Qhuinn checked his watch. One a.m.
How long was it going to take the rest of Brotherhood to get here? And was this evac plan they were all rocking really going to work -
"I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind," he replied.
"I'm with you." Blay exhaled in the opposite direction. "I can't believe that he's..."
Qhuinn stared at the trees ahead of them. "I never asked you about that night."
"No. And frankly, I don't blame you."
Behind them, in the cabin, Rhage, V, and John were with Luchas. Everyone had taken their jackets off and wrapped them around the male in hopes of keeping him warm.
Standing in his muscle shirt and his weapons, Qhuinn didn't feel the cold.
He cleared his throat. "Did you see him."
Blay had been the one to go back to the mansion after the raids. Qhuinn simply hadn't had the sac to ID the bodies.
"Yes, I did."
"Was he dead then?"
"As far as I knew, yes. He was...yeah, I didn't think there was any chance he was alive."
"You know, I never sold the house."
"So I'd heard."
Technically, as a disavowed member of the family, he had had no rights to the property. But there had been so many killed that no one made any claims to the estate, and it had, according to the Old Laws, reverted to the king's ownership - whereupon Wrath had promptly given it in fee simple to Qhuinn.
Whatever the hell that meant.
"I didn't know what to think when I was told they'd gotten slaughtered." Qhuinn looked up to the sky. The forecast was for more snow, so no stars were to be seen. "They hated me. I guess I hated them. And then they were gone."
Beside him, Blay went very still.
Qhuinn knew why and a sudden awkwardness had him shoving his hands into his pockets. Yes, he absolutely despised talking about emotions and crap, but there was no keeping the shit down. Not out here. In private. With Blay.
Clearing his throat, he kept going. "I was relieved more than anything, to be honest. I can't tell you what it was like growing up in that house. All those people looking at me like I was a walking, talking curse on them." He shook his head. "I used to avoid them as much as possible, using the servants' stairs, staying in that part of the house. But then the doggen threatened to quit. Actually, the biggest bene of my getting through the transition was that I could dematerialize out the window of my room. Then none of them had to deal with me."
Even when Blay cursed softly, Qhuinn still didn't feel like shutting up. "And you know what the real head fuck was? I saw that love was possible when my father looked at my brother. It would have been one thing if the bastard had just hated all of us - but he didn't. And that just made me realize how locked out I was." Qhuinn glanced over. Shuffled his shitkickers. "Why are you looking at me like that."
"Sorry. Yeah, sorry. You just...you've never talked about them. Ever."
Qhuinn frowned and measured the sky again, picturing the twinkling lights of the stars even though he couldn't see them. "I wanted to. With you, that is. Not with anyone else."
"Why didn't you?" As if this was something the guy had wondered for a while.
In the silence that followed, Qhuinn sifted through memories he had never dwelled on, seeing himself. Seeing his family. Seeing...Blay. "I loved going to your house. I can't tell you what it meant to me - I remember the first time you invited me over. I was convinced your parents were going to kick me out. I was ready for it. Hell, I dealt with that shit at my own house all the time, so why wouldn't complete strangers do the same? But your mom..." Qhuinn cleared his throat again. "Your mom sat me down at your kitchen table and fed me."
"She was mortified that she made you sick. Right afterward, you ran into the bathroom and threw up for an hour."
"I wasn't throwing up in there."
Blay's head whipped around. "But you said - "
"I was crying."
As Blay recoiled, Qhuinn shrugged. "Come on, what was I going to say. That I pussied out and wept next to the sink on the floor? I ran the water so no one heard and flushed the toilet every once in a while."
"I never knew."
"That was the plan." Qhuinn glanced over. "That was always the plan. I didn't want you to know how bad it was at my house, because I didn't want you to feel sorry for me. I didn't want you or your parents to feel like you had to take me in. I wanted you to be my friend - and you were. You always have been."
Blay looked away fast. Then rubbed his face with the hand he didn't have the cigarette in.
"You guys were what got me through it," Qhuinn heard himself say. "I lived for the night, because I could go over to your house. It was the only thing that kept me going. You were the only thing, actually. It was...you."
As Blay's eyes returned to his own, he had the sense the guy was searching for words.
And God help them both, if it hadn't been for Saxton, Qhuinn would have dropped the l-word right then and there, even though the timing was stupid.
"You can, you know," Blay said finally. "Talk to me."
Qhuinn stamped his feet and bunched up his shoulders, stretching the muscles of his back. "Be careful. I might take you up on that."
"It would help." As Qhuinn glanced over again, Blay was the one shaking his head. "I don't know what I'm saying."
Bullshit, Qhuinn thought -
Without warning, V emerged from the cabin, lighting up a hand-rolled as he came out. As Qhuinn fell silent, he wasn't sure whether he was relieved the conversation had been forced to an end or not.
On the exhale, Vishous said, "I need to make sure you understand the consequences."
Qhuinn nodded. "I already know what you're going to say."
Those diamond eyes locked on his own. "Well, let's just open air it anyway, shall we? I don't sense any of the Omega in him, but if it comes out, or if I've missed something, I'm going to have to take care of him."
Kill me, brother mine. Kill me.
"You do what you have to."
"He can't go into the mansion."
"Agreed."
V put out his nonlethal hand. "Swear to it."
It felt strange to clasp the Brother's palm and bind his word on the contact - because that was what next of kin had to do in situations like this, and shit knew he hadn't been next to anything for anybody ever: Even before the disavowal by his family, he'd have been the last person to vouch for the bloodline.
Times had changed though, hadn't they.
"One other thing." V tapped the tip of the hand-rolled. "It's going to be a long, hard recovery for him. And I'm not just talking about the physical shit. You need to prepare yourself."
What, like they'd had a relationship before this or something? He might share some DNA with the guy, but other than that, Luchas was a stranger. "I know."
"Okay. Fair enough."
In the distance, a pair of high-pitched whines cut through the darkness.
"Thank fuck," Qhuinn bit out as he went back into the cabin.
Over in the corner, next to the drum that had been overturned, his brother was nothing but a pile of jackets, his twisted body covered by the makeshift blankets.
Qhuinn stalked across the floorboards, nodding to John Matthew and Rhage.
Kneeling down next to his brother, he felt like he was in a dreamscape, not reality. "Luchas? Listen, here's what's going to happen. They're going to take you out on a sled. You're going to our clinic for treatment. Luchas? Can you hear me?"
As the pair of snowmobiles tore up to the cabin, Blay tracked their progress from the porch, watching their headlights get bigger and brighter, the pair of engines dimming into steady purrs as they reached their destination. Oh...this was good: Behind one of them, there was a covered sled, the kind of thing he'd seen on TV during the Olympics when some skier had crashed through the ropes and been evac'd down a mountain.
Perfect.
Manny and Butch dismounted and jogged over.
"They're right in there," Blay said, getting out of the doctor's way.
"Luchas? You with me?" he heard Qhuinn murmur.
Peering in, Blay wathced as Manny bent over Luchas's body. Man, what a fucking night. And he'd thought the air show from a couple of evenings ago had been full of drama?
It's always been you.
Turning back to face the forest, Blay rubbed his face again, like that was going to help. And he wanted to light up another Dunhill, but the longer this took, the more paranoid he became. The last thing this situation needed was a squadron of lessers showing up before they could get Luchas out to safety.
Better to have a forty than a cig in his hands.
It's always been you.
"You okay?" Butch asked.
In the spirit of honesty, because that seemed to be tonight's theme song, he shook his head. "Not in the slightest."
The cop clapped him on the shoulder. "So you knew him."
"I thought I did, yes." Oh, wait, the question was about Luchas. "I mean, yes, I did."
"It's gotta be wicked tough, this whole thing."
Blay glanced over his shoulder again and got another eyeful of Qhuinn crouching next to his brother. His old friend's face was ancient in the beams of those flashlights, to the point where Blay wondered if he had actually seen it relaxed after they'd been together - or whether he'd been mistaken.
You were the only thing...actually.
"It is tough," he muttered.
And strange, too.
Right after his transition, he had looked for some sign that the way he felt about his friend was reciprocated, some clue as to where Qhuinn was at. But there had been nothing that he had been able to see - nothing other than abiding loyalty, friendship, and kick-ass fighting skills: Through the hookups they'd had with other people, and the training, and then the nights out in the field...he had always been on the far side of the connection he'd wanted, staring into a wall he couldn't get around.
That short time on this porch?
It was the first time he'd ever gotten a glimpse of what he'd longed for even more greatly than the sex.
Shit, for a treacherous moment, he wondered if there had in fact been an "in" involved when Layla had spilled the beans outside of his bedroom.
"They're moving him." Butch snagged Blay's arm and got him out of the way of the door. "Come stand with me."
Luchas had been properly covered now, a silver Mylar blanket wrapped around him from head to foot, nothing but the barest hint of his face showing. They had put him onto a collapsible stretcher, with Qhuinn at one end and V on the other. Manny walked alongside, as if he were not sure whether he was going to need to resuscitate things at any given moment.
Over at the sled, they transferred Qhuinn's brother and strapped him down.
"I'm driving him out," Qhuinn announced as he mounted up and gunned the snowmobile's engine.
"Slow and steady," Manny warned. "He's a fucking mass of broken bones."
Qhuinn glanced over at Blay. "Ride with me?"
No reason to answer that. He marched over and got on behind the guy.
Typical of Qhuinn, he didn't bother waiting for the others. He just nailed the accelerator and took off. He did, however, listen to the good doctor: He made a broad turn and followed the tracks that had been made, keeping the speed fast enough to make some time, but not so much so that they blendered Luchas.
Blay kept two guns out.
As Manny and Butch rode up beside them, the other Brothers and John Matthew dematerialized at regular distances, appearing at the sides of the two parallel tracks.
It took a hundred years.
Blay literally thought they were never going to get out of there. It seemed as though the high-pitched, whining engines, and the blur of the dark forest, and the brilliant white patches of clearings were going to be the last things he saw.
He prayed the entire way.
When the big, boxy hangar structure finally came into view, parked right next to it was the single most beautiful thing Blay had ever seen.
V and Butch's Escalade.
Things moved lickety-split from there: Qhuinn pulling up alongside the SUV, Luchas transferred into the backseat, snowmobiles reloaded onto the trailer hitched to the back, Qhuinn going over to the passenger seat of the vehicle.
"I want Blay to drive," he said before getting in.
There was a heartbeat of a pause. Then Butch nodded and tossed the keys over. "Manny and I will be in the back back."
Blay got behind the wheel, moved the seat to accommodate his legs, and powered up the engine. As Qhuinn settled next to him, he looked over.
"Put on your seat belt."
The male did as he was told, stretching the nylon strap around his chest and clicking it into place. Then he immediately cranked himself around to focus on his brother.
A feeling of single-minded determination set Blay's shoulders and tightened his hands. He didn't care what he had to mow over, take down, or leave grille marks on; he was going to get Qhuinn and his brother to the training center and into the clinic.
Hitting the gas, he didn't look back.