Kelly Meding - Another Kind of Dead

Clothing shifted, and I felt Phin move away. “The bastard will be unconscious for a bit longer,” he said, not to me. “I’ll sit with your other friend until he’s properly revived.”

I almost shouted for Phin to stay. Leaving meant I’d be alone with Wyatt, and I didn’t want that. Didn’t want to talk about what had happened, because it would hurt him. Didn’t want to flinch if he tried to touch me, because it would hurt him even more. He hadn’t attacked me. He didn’t deserve that hurt.

The door hinges creaked. No snap to indicate it had closed completely. Silence. Maybe he’d left after all. I hazarded a peek with one eye. No, Wyatt still stood near the door, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched. A stance of uncertainty. Attention firmly fixed on the floor by his feet.

“May I stay, Evy?” he asked the floor, and I wanted to cry all over again.

“You’ve never had to ask before,” I replied, opening the other eye.

“You’ve never been nearly raped by me before.”

The bleakness of his tone frightened me. That wasn’t what had happened. Was it? I shoved at the fog invading my brain, telling me to give up and just sleep the pain away. “It wasn’t you, Wyatt.”

He finally looked at me. Hurt and confusion warred with rage, all three compounded by whatever he saw in my face. “That’s not what your eyes say when they look at me. You know I’d never do that to you, right? You believe me?”

“Of course.” I untangled from the pile of blankets atop me so I could sit up, keeping one around my shoulders. My ribs protested the movement. I ignored the ache and tucked my legs so I was kneeling on the bed, a thin blue blanket folded around me like a cape. All I wanted was time alone to process this, but I couldn’t send him away. Not now. “Wyatt, please come here.”

He didn’t move, coiled so tight I thought he’d shatter. Even from a distance, I saw the faint vibrations in his arms and chest. He was shaking. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here again, that I didn’t protect you.”

He’d walked into a situation so similar to the way I’d died, and all my fear and anger were reflecting back from him tenfold. In his mind, he’d failed to save me once from misery and death. Now he’d decided he had almost failed me a second time. If the drug had worn off just a few seconds later, if I hadn’t moved as fast as I had—

No. No what-ifs about this one. I was fine. Shaken up and hell-bent on carving answers out of the thing in the other room, but fine. My broken wrist and bruised ribs and aching head would heal. The real Wyatt was standing nearby, proving to my trauma-addled brain that he hadn’t been the one to hurt me. We had survived our deaths; we could survive this, too.

“Wyatt, it wasn’t your f—”

He took two sudden steps toward me. I flinched away, heart racing. He froze, and I wanted to weep when I realized what I’d done. Grim acceptance pulled his mouth into a straight line, and, with curt precision, he pivoted and left the room.

I collapsed against the mound of blankets, too stunned to do anything but stare at the hewn door for a while, silent tears leaving hot trails down my cheeks.

The longer I lay in bed, the more rage overtook my anxiety. Rage at the stolen blood, at the assault, at the seeds of doubt the attacker had planted in me simply by wearing Wyatt’s face. I had to fix this, so I forewent a second shower in favor of acquiring information.

Two pairs of jeans, three of my solid-colored T-shirts, underwear, and a bra were neatly folded in one of the dresser’s top drawers—Wyatt must have gone back to the apartment. Curled on one of the shirts was my cross necklace, safe and sound. After struggling one-handed with the bra, jeans, and a T-shirt, and earning a few painful jostles to my wrist, I tried to smooth my damp hair into submission. The shorter locks around my face were stiff in places, darkened with blobs of dried blood.

Gross .

I couldn’t manage the necklace with one hand, so I tucked it into my front pocket, just grateful to have it near.

Three familiar faces and one agonizing copy greeted me when I entered the living room. David was sitting up on the sofa, flexing his hands and arms as the numbing agent wore off. He blushed and ducked his head. I wouldn’t patronize him; we’d both been fooled. End of story.

Wyatt was barely visible through the kitchen doorway, fiddling with something on the counter. His doppelgänger was tied to a wooden chair with bungee cords, a length of nylon rope, and a twisted bedsheet. The man (or whatever) was bleeding through the bandage on his neck. He had a knot on one cheek, likely from my whack with the pot, a bloody nose, and more blood splattered on his clothes. Most of the blood was a dark shade of red, and I recalled the bitter, oily taste of it. Our prisoner was definitely not human.

Phin had a second chair placed an arm’s reach away, and he sat there like a sentinel, shoulders stiff and back straight, full attention on his quarry.

“What is he?” I asked, stopping behind Phin.

“I believe he is a pùca, although he will not speak.”

“What the hell’s a pùca?” I cast a searching look at Wyatt, who shook his head. This one was new to both of us.

“A rare and distant cousin of Therians. Few are known or recorded in our history, as they are an antisocial sort. They prefer playing tricks and starting trouble to productively living in man’s world. I’ve never met one before, but it does explain his shape-changing ability.”

“He’s a trickster,” Wyatt said, joining us with a paring knife, a serrated bread knife, and a barbecue lighter. “That’s what you’re saying?”

Phin tilted his head, considering the word. “Yes, from your mythological texts, ‘trickster’ describes him well.”

“Not to me,” I said. “They didn’t teach this one at Boot Camp, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention in school.” After three full minutes of explanation from Phin that included names I didn’t know—Coyote of the Southwest, Loki in the Norse, Kokopelli and Zuñi, and a lot of others that blended together—I waved my good hand in surrender. “Information overload.”

“Apologies.”

“So why now?” My question was half directed at the silent doppelgänger, who hadn’t looked up from his lap since I’d entered the room. “Why would something that’s been unseen and unrecorded for decades suddenly show up, track me down, and suck marrow out of me?”

“Let’s ask the fucker.” The coldness in Wyatt’s voice was almost a physical presence. He switched places with Phin and was now directly across from the man wearing his face. The reflection was eerie in its sameness and in the differences. Wyatt exuded hate in a way I’d never seen and prayed to never, ever be on the receiving end of. The doppelgänger—pùca, trickster, whatever—still stared at his own lap, face bruised and bleeding, resigned.

“You should know up front that you’re going to die,” Wyatt said to his reflection. “The only thing you get to decide is if you die fast, or piece by piece until you’re begging me to end it.”

I shuddered.

“Who are you working for?”

The doppelgänger looked up. A crystal shard hung around his neck, swirling a lazy purple, tied with some sort of thin brown leather. “You know who,” he replied, and I understood why he had never spoken. His voice was like nails on a chalkboard, high and screechy and teeth-chattering.

“Say it anyway,” I said.

He didn’t look at me. Wyatt was questioning him, so his attention remained there. “A human male. His given name is Thackery.”

“Why?” Wyatt asked.

A blink. “Because it is the name given to him.”