THIRTY-SIX

Red was dying. I was struggling to process this thought, but it was hard to concentrate on whether or not I was being lied to and manipulated while I was standing in a cold room, surrounded by enemies and covered by nothing but gooseflesh. I squinted to bring Bruin into better focus, wishing like hell that I hadn’t left my glasses out in a field somewhere, along with my clothes. From now on, I really was going to have to switch to contacts, no matter how much they irritated. Or maybe Lasik. “Could I please get some clothing?” I asked, shivering.

“I vote no,” said Rocky.

“Here,” said the manitou woman who had been Ladyhawke, handing me a blanket. “I’ve seen enough of you naked with that one,” she added, pointing at Hunter.

“And I’ve cleaned your crap off the floor, Birdie,” I retorted.

“Good,” she said, with a toss of her auburn hair that momentarily revealed the scarred skin where her eye should have been. She looked like a woman, but when she opened her mouth I realized that she was a teenager. “You never deserved him, you know. I can’t understand what he ever saw in you.”

Wrapping the blanket around me like a sarong, I felt a little better. “Maybe I didn’t deserve him,” I said. “I came right out of a bad relationship, so maybe it took me longer to recognize what I had.” I went up to Red, and I realized how pale and thin he was. There were mauve shadows under his eyes that I did not recall seeing before, and it struck me that he looked older than he had just a few moments before. “Are you really dying?” I felt my throat close up.

Red nodded. “Don’t blame yourself, Doc.”

“But can’t someone do something? What if I take those marks now?”

Red smiled sadly. “It’s not the kind of thing you can do out of pity. And you can’t mostly want to do it, either. It’s kind of an all or nothing deal. I guess I should’ve explained it better, but I fucked up.”

I put my hand on his cheek, and my blanket slipped, forcing me to grab it. “You didn’t fuck this one up, Red. I did.” I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about what happened with Malachy. If it makes any difference, I know now that I would rather be with you. When the town started changing, I kept trying to get back to you. And every time something happened, I thought about things you had told me or taught me. And it finally became clear to me that if I had to live in a stone-age world, there was only one man I’d want living in my cave. You.” I took a breath and let it out as a choked laugh. “Take away all the trappings of the modern world, and it’s easier to see what’s really real.”

Red swallowed hard, like he was fighting back something bitter. “That’s nice, Doc. But you still don’t get it. I wasn’t off trying to save the town. I was busy handing over the keys, and trying to make it look like I wasn’t involved.”

“But why? What changed your mind?”

Red gave me a hard, direct look. “What you just said. Take away the electricity and the supermarkets, and I figured I’d look pretty good to you. Because you didn’t receive the marks. If you’d gone all the way, then I would never have …” He broke off. “If it makes any difference, Doc, I regret the hell out of it.”

“How charming. But it changes nothing,” added Bruin.

I pivoted and walked up to him, my heart pounding so fast it was difficult to speak. “Maybe not. Maybe I can make a deal. Can’t I ransom Red? I wasn’t ready to complete the bonding ceremony before, but I am now.”

“It’s too late,” snapped the hawk woman.

“But why is it too late? Doesn’t it mean more now that I understand what’s at stake?” I moved toward Rocky. “I don’t think it’s too late for anything. You don’t want the manitous to lose their ancient pathways. I understand that. I don’t know when you decided that it was all or nothing, but we don’t have to be enemies. We can work together.”

“Bullshit.” Bruin’s voice shook with rage. “You think I don’t know how it works? We make a deal with you, the next thing we know, someone new is in power and the old deal don’t fly no more.”

Rocky and Ladyhawke moved around to stand beside Bruin, and I looked past them, at Lilliana. A bead of sweat was running down her forehead; she was broadcasting. But was she working for me, or against me?

“What about Lilliana? She belongs in this reality. You can’t just hijack this whole town into another dimension, with all the people here inside it.”

“She loves me,” said Bruin smoothly, running his hand over her arm. “For me, she make this sacrifice. Don’t you, cherie?”

Lilliana looked up at Bruin, putting her slender, dark hand against his cheek. “I don’t want to lose my world,” she said. She called him a name I hadn’t heard before, something long, with little pauses in it. “I don’t want to live in permanent exile any more than you do.”

Bruin looked thunderstruck. “But you said … I thought …” His expression was almost comical.

“But there is another way,” I said. “You could trust us. Work with us.”

“Trust you,” sneered Bruin. “Do you know how many times I have trusted? How many treaties I have made?”

“I don’t know,” said Rocky, flicking Red’s switchblade open and shut. “I think she might be telling the truth.”

I held out my hand. “Let me have the knife, Rocky.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and there was mischief in his face, and seriousness as well. He was Red’s adopted son, all right. He threw the blade and to my shock, I caught it. I was doing pretty well without glasses.

“Here,” I said to Bruin. “Take it.” And then I went over the stone altar and clambered awkwardly on top of it. “You guys like sacrifice, right? Well, I’m ready to give up whatever it takes to make a deal.” Taking a deep breath, I reached out and pulled the ponytail holder out of my hair. Then, with only my long hair veiling me, I spread the blanket. This was high-stakes poker, and I figured naked sacrifice counted for more than sacrifice with a woolen blanket.

Bruin loomed over me. The knife glinted in his hand.

“What are you bargaining for?”

“For another chance. For the town. Here’s the deal. We keep your old paths open, and tear down anything that was built and we don’t allow anyone to build anything new.”

Bruin looked at the knife, considering. “And you would trade your life for this?”

“I will let you spill my blood.” But if my heart kept pumping like this, I could wind up spilling more than I intended. I tried to take deep breaths, slow my racing pulse.

Bruin took a step toward me. “Bleed you but not kill you? Interesting.”

I put my hand up. “Wait,” I said, my voice squeakier than I would have liked. I had given up trying to slow my heartbeat, but I wanted a little more insurance that Bruin wouldn’t go carving me up. “There’s one thing more. I get another chance to bond with Red.”

Bruin touched the tip of the knife to his thumb, testing it. “That is not up to me.” He hesitated. “I do not know if it is too late or not. You can try.”

“Okay, then.”

Bruin raised his hand high. Lilliana gasped but she didn’t say anything: Maybe she was expending all her energy on broadcasting peaceable emotions. Or maybe she was in shock. I was hoping for the former.

Red’s hand grabbed Bruin’s before it could come down. “No,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?” Bruin hesitated.

Red just held out his hand.

Their gazes held for a moment, and then Bruin handed over the knife.

This time, the hand that held the knife over me belonged to my friend and lover. “You sure about this, Doc? It can’t just be a scratch, you know. Not for this.”

“I understand.” In the past few minutes, he seemed to have aged years. In the flickering light of the torches, he looked like a cancer victim, or a prisoner of war.

Red turned my head to the side and raised the knife. And a horrible thought occurred to me. There was something familiar about the story Bruin had told me. Which wasn’t really strange. We were in the realm of myths and fairy tales now, where themes and motifs crossed the borders of different cultures.

At the end of the original fairy tale of The Little Mermaid, which my mother used to read to me at bedtime, the mermaid stands over her faithless love, the prince. Like Red, she had bargained away her long, magical life for a chance at an immortal soul. But the prince had married another, and the mermaid was doomed to die—unless she traded the prince’s life for her own, and sprinkled his blood across her legs, transforming them back into a fish’s tail.

With the moonstone still around my neck, I knew this was no fairy tale. If Red killed me, he could become Coyote again.

“I’m so sorry to do this,” Red said, and his voice had tears in it as he brought the knife up in a swift motion.

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be,” said a voice coming from the entrance to the Chapel, speaking in a low, flat, John Wayne drawl.

I turned to see the good sheriff, leveling a rifle at Bruin. Malachy, bringing up the rear, was covering the rest of the room with a gun. And it was Malachy, gaunt and sardonic, and not Knox, who took in the sight of Magda and the others hog-tied while I lay naked on an altar, covered only by my long hair.

“Thanks for the assistance, guys,” I said, “but I’m here of my own free will.”

“How embarrassing,” said Malachy. “And here we thought you were about to be filleted against your will.”

“Somehow, Mal, I ain’t convinced of the veracity of her statement,” said Emmet.

“It’s true, Emmett.”

“You know, that’s what my name means in Hebrew,” said the sheriff, giving me a level look. “Emmett means truth. Take away the first letter—you get death.”

I nodded, remembering how I’d recarved that first letter into his forehead. “He’s not going to take anything I can’t stand to lose.”

“If he does, he’ll stand to lose something of his own,” said Emmet.

Bruin growled. “Then it does not count as sacrifice.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting up. “Listen, everyone. Whatever Red does to me, nobody is to retaliate. Understand?” I looked up at Red. “I’m ready.”

Red shook his head. “Not yet.” Then he took my hair and gathered it in his hands, as if he were going to brush it, leaving me totally exposed to everyone in the room. “Lie down,” he said. I did, with my hair hanging down over the stone table, feeling a little less sure now that my whole body was revealed. I knew lycanthropes were supposed to be casual about such things, but I wasn’t. And then, at the last moment, I realized what Red was intending to do.

I sat up on the stone altar, shouting, but I was too late. Red had plunged the knife into his own chest. He seemed to fold in on himself as he collapsed to the floor, and I slid down beside him, desperately trying to assess the damage. God, there was blood everywhere, bubbling up from my hands as I held them pressed to Red’s wound. Glancing up at his face, I saw Red’s lips move, forming a word. But no sound came out, and as I looked in his eyes the light went out of them. Not all fairy tales end with happily ever after. Like the little mermaid, he’d chosen to sacrifice himself.

Screaming Red’s name, I checked for his pulse, and then frantically began doing chest compressions. I knew it was futile, but I ignored the voices telling me to stop, and fought the hands that tried to grab my wrists.

Until I realized that my patient wasn’t just alive; he was smiling.