Page 6 of A Very Armitage Christmas
“Above my pay grade?” Nate screeched. “Like any of us get paid anyway. You’re talking like this is some kind of business we’re running, or at least one that actually makes money, and not a half-trained shaman fucking around with —”
“Half-trained? You’re fucking one to talk! At least I havesometrain—”
“Arik, fuck!” Nate dived at me, tackling me to the ground. I tried to throw a punch, getting a glancing hit on his ribs, but he muttered a few words and lightning sprouted from his fingertips. I pulled power to defend myself against his attack — and realized he wasn’t hitting me back. He’d sprawled himself over me and shot his magic over my shoulder.
At something behind me, that snarled and thrashed and let out a horrible high keening as Nate’s finger lightning hit it dead-on.
I managed to scramble up, turning over to get a better look and getting halfway out from under Nate. Chest to chest, we both stared at the twitching, smoking thing a couple of feet away.
“Last I checked, bears don’t wear wrist watches,” Nate said, his voice high and shaky.
We both turned our heads, our eyes met, and we dissolved into helpless laughter. Nate collapsed, his shoulders shaking.
I levered myself up and offered him a hand, and we both inched a little closer. Definitely a human of some variety, definitely dead quite a while…but not so long that it didn’t have most of its flesh left.
“I think that might be one of —” I broke off, nausea rising up so quickly I had to swallow hard. I couldn’t say the name of the alpha who’d kidnapped me, then come back to try to take me again after I escaped the first time. Matthew had killed him, ripping him to pieces with his bare claws. I’d thought I’d mostly gotten over it, but the name stuck in my throat.
“The, uh, Nevada pack,” Nate said softly, with unusual tact. Gratitude rushed up to replace the nausea. Also more shame. Fuck, I hated that feeling.
“I’m really sorry I hit you just now.”
Nate shrugged. “No big deal. I mean, if you hadn’t had a zombie about to eat you, I probably would’ve tried to get in a hit or two myself. Understandable mistake.”
Not really. “It’s not a zombie,” I said automatically. Zombies had to be raised using a certain kind of magic that put them under the control of the caster, and I was so sick of people not knowing the difference. “I can’t believe I didn’t hear it coming. Or smell it.” I wrinkled my nose at the stench of decay rising off the thing on the ground. The cold helped, but only subzero temperatures could’ve totally killed that smell.
Heavy, pounding footsteps echoed through the forest behind us. Well, at least I’d gotten my head out of my ass enough to hear Ian coming.
“What happened?” he demanded as he skidded to a stop next to us. “I felt your magic, Nate.” And then he saw it. And smelled it, too, by the look on his face. “Arik, what the fuck did youdo?”
“Why are you assuming this is my fault?” I snarled, as self-righteously as I could manage under the circumstances.
Ian waved a hand at me, encompassing everything about me, it looked like. I sighed.
Yeah, okay. That was probably fair.
***
We got back to the pack house as the council meeting ended and the councilors spilled out the back door — just in time for Ian to dump the still-twitching revenant on the ground at their feet. Three of the councilors stopped dead, staring down at the body.
Matthew came out the door next, still smiling and glad-handing one of the older councilors, a stubborn old goat who always disagreed with anything Matthew wanted to do on principle, because Matthew was less than a thousand years old.
I stared at my mate’s handsome face, his dark hair and stubbled jaw and broad shoulders, his air of confidence and competence and easy strength — all the things I’d come to realize I might not be able to live without, even if I wanted to. And I willed him silently not to hate me. Not to be disappointed in me.
I’d never have admitted it out loud, but that scared me more than anything.
Revenants had nothing on the idea that Matthew might realize I was more trouble than I was worth.
I watched with my stomach sinking as his face went from friendly, to horrified, to absolutely blank, as the councilors all burst into some variation ofWhat the hell is this?
“Ian?” he said, in that serious, intense voice he had sometimes that made me want to roll over and put my ass in the air and beg. The councilors went silent like someone had muted them. “Something you want to tell me?”
Please, please don’t immediately throw me under the bus…
“You should probably ask your mate. I’m just the lucky bastard who got to carry the zombie. And now I need another shower. Jesus Christ, that smells bad.”
I winced. Obviously too much to hope that Ian could have a little tact.
“Zombie?” said Jennifer, usually one of the most level-headed and sympathetic of Matthew’s councilors. She turned to Paul, her cousin, who could’ve passed for her twin, and they both came down the steps, bending identical salt-and-pepper heads to peer at the rotting body. “Only one zombie? That’s not usually how it goes.”
