Page 29 of Concluded
It was decided, then, that the coyotes would head home.It would take them a fair amount of time to get there, and in the meantime, Boone would take Spanos and Dee to a sheltered location nearby, where they’d wait for someone to fetch them with a vehicle.Dee was a little hazy about who would be driving that vehicle but didn’t ask.He’d find out eventually, if everything went as it was supposed to.
The coyotes barked a few times and then trotted away, leaving Dee with two nude companions.“How far to shelter?”he asked, looking doubtfully at Spanos, who seemed ready to collapse at any moment.
Boone shrugged.“About a mile.”
“I can’t carry?—”
“I’ll walk,” Spanos interrupted.“Let’s go.”He tried to stand, fell on his ass, and waved Dee away.When he tried again, he made it upright but swayed in place.
“Lean on me,” said Dee.This time, Spanos accepted the help, resting an arm across Dee’s shoulders.Boone took the other side, and they began their slow, painful way up the slope.They stopped after only about a hundred yards because Spanos’s bare feet had begun to bleed.Dee’s shoes were too small for the agent, so he ended up providing his socks for protection.
By the time they reached a small canyon, Dee and Boone were bearing all of Spanos’s weight.Dee wasn’t sure whether he was even conscious.Atop the canyon were two small structures of stacked stone.One of them was partially collapsed and the other mostly intact.Boone took them to the latter one, where they ducked inside via a low doorway.The interior was empty and there was no roof, but the ground was sandy and level.They carefully laid Spanos down.
“I’ll get supplies,” said Boone and was gone before Dee could question him.
That left Dee alone with Spanos, who had curled onto his side and looked like death warmed over.Dee had to give the guy credit.Judging from the freshness of some of his scars, he hadn’t been in tip-top shape even before Ashley got her claws on him.Then he’d faced torture, dehydration, and threats of a fate worse than death.But at least as far as Dee could tell, he’d held himself together.He’d calmly devised a plan when the coyotes showed up.And when it became clear that he still had a miserable walk ahead of him and would have to wait even longer for real help, he hadn’t complained.If Dee had been in his shoes—or lack thereof—he would have bitched nonstop.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”he asked.He waited a moment, and when Spanos didn’t answer, Dee cleared his throat.“You could wish?—”
“No.”
Dee didn’t blame him.Look where the fucking wishes had gotten both of them so far.
It was still chilly out, and now that they weren’t moving, Spanos had begun to shiver again.Well, at least Dee could address that without magic.“Do you want me to lie next to you?”he asked.“Body heat?”
“Yes.”
The ground in here was only marginally more comfortable than where they’d spent the night.But it felt oddly good to lie with Spanos’s back pressed to Dee’s front and Dee’s arms wrapped around him.The shivering faded away.
“You’re warm,” Spanos murmured.
“My normal body temp is slightly over a hundred degrees.Always has been.One of several metabolic quirks.I don’t often get medical care, but when I do, I always have to tell them about the weird shit—uh, not the wishes part—and they act like I’m nuts until they see for themselves.Once when I was in jail, the doc was talking about studying me, and I really didn’t want that.Luckily, I got released before he did anything.I’m no guinea pig.”
Dee wasn’t normally a babbler; he rarely had anyone to babble to, in any case.But now, rambling felt like a good way to distract Spanos from his miseries and distract both of them from worries about Ashley and her pals.Also, Dee very much needed to not notice that a man’s naked ass was nestled tight against his groin.If there was a Hell and he wasn’t already bound for it, getting turned on by helping a person in distress was surely a ticket to eternal damnation.
Damnation.He snorted.He’d never known whether his name was his mother’s idea, his father’s, or a joint decision.It had earned him scorn and jeers from teachers, classmates, and various authority figures, which wasn’t fair.He hadn’t chosen it.He’d occasionally toyed with the idea of having it legally changed, but that would involve interacting with legal types and a court, neither of which he was eager to do.
He used to wonder whether his name had been intended as an omen, or a warning.Maybe it was a comment by his parents on being saddled with a kid; neither of them ever said so, but he’d always had the impression that he wasn’t wanted.Maybe his parents just thought the name sounded cool.
“Do you have family, Agent Spanos?”
Spanos gave a rattling laugh.“Might as well be Achilles at this point.And no.”
“Why not?”
“Attrition and disinterest.”Spanos—no, Achilles—didn’t explain what that meant, or whether the disinterest was his own or other people’s.
Dee decided to change the subject.“That guy, Boone… he’s not, um, human?”
“Coyote shifter.”
“Is that like a werewolf?”
That brought another weak chuckle.“That term’s considered rude.But yeah.”
Objectively, Dee shouldn’t be shocked to discover that creatures out of horror films truly existed—not after what he’d seen, and not considering what he could do himself.But it was still deeply weird.“It’s not a full moon, I don’t think.”
“That part’s bullshit.And you won’t turn into one if they bite you.That only works with vampires.Some kind of virus, I guess.”
