Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5 Read online

  “Why didn’t she go to a program,” Jace grunted, but Teague could tell he was softening. Jace had always had a problem staying away from his sweets, and here he was, chasing three-hundred pounds. Maybe Jace knew about addictions, even ones that killed you slow instead of pitching you off a mountain of high.

  He saw Jack throw Jace a vicious glance and tried not to sigh. The kid had an unexpected temper sometimes. He’d learned how to spackle and patch after the last time he’d called a job on account of keeping Jacky safe—Jack never threw a punch at a person, but the walls took a hell of a beating.

  “You need family to do that sort of thing, Jace,” he said now, keeping his eyes level with Jack’s so the boy would stand down. “You need people. You said it yourself—she didn’t have any people. Now she does. And they’re worried, and we’re their right hand.” He made a fist and put that tat on display. It was Green’s mark, and now was the time to flash it.

  “Well, shit,” Jace swore, but without heat. With grim humor and the air of a man mulling things over, he looked over at Jack, who was rather sullenly picking the label off his beer bottle. Jack didn’t like beer, but he knew better by now to order a soda in a dive like this. “If he’s this guy’s right hand,” a shoulder jerk at Teague, “what does that make you?”

  Jack’s eyes widened and he flushed, and Teague barely avoided spitting beer out his nose as Jack’s head swung around to Teague with a desperate panic in his eyes. Please, for the love of all that’s holy, brother, don’t tell this man that story.

  As though Teague would.

  “It makes him Green’s ass-kicking toe, Jace, now quit stalling. She’s not dead, but nobody—and I mean nobody leaves Green’s protection willingly. Do you have a line on her?”

  Jace grunted and sighed. “If he’s an ass-kicker, I’m my Aunt Susie, but I’ve got something that might help. You remember Mikey Daniels?”

  Teague grunted and tipped back his beer again. “Complete asshole, snorted his ex-wife’s paycheck every week, shared the leftovers with his teenaged son?”

  Jack made a little girl’s sound. “Ewwwwwww…”

  Teague nodded in complete understanding. “Like I said, there’s more human monsters than inhuman ones.”

  Jace had to concede the point. “Yeah, well word is, he’s got himself a hooker workin’ for free in his shithole, but the thing is, he’s done too much blow…he can’t get his damned pecker up, and the whole town knows it. He’s the most legendary limped-dick disaster in the history of Grim’s Peace.”

  Teague raised his eyebrows, and tried not to look concerned, but the truth was Mikey Daniels was mean and stoned and stupid, and at one time, he’d fancied himself a hunter. He’d have the right materials on hand—silver paint for the cage and the collar, and a big hunting knife—that’s really all he’d need. Of course, it figured that the one thing he could hunt would be a tiny girl with barely a month’s worth of practice in how to be something that wouldn’t have to take abuse.

  And Mikey was a gun nut, and tonight was the full moon.

  Teague blew out a breath on that last thought. “Thanks, Jace—is Mikey still out on Angel’s Fall?”

  “Yeah,” Jace grunted. “That’s a shitty drive on a night like this’un. You two might want to wait ‘til tomorrow.”

  Separate Ways faded from the jukebox, and in the silence between songs, the terrific bluster of the balls-out November storm raged around the squat little brick building that housed Dervish, but it wasn’t the storm that was bothering Teague. It was the idea of a panicked werewolf, tortured and in pain, on the night of the full moon.

  He met Jack’s eyes and decided that this call was up to Green.

  “Good advice,” Teague said out loud, in concession to Jace’s up and being human with them. “I’ll do my best to take it.” Faithfully replaced Separate Ways and Teague and Jace both cringed.

  Jace spat again, trying to regain some of his bravura. “Yeah—well while you’re debating that, you wanna do the public peace a favor?”

  “What’s that?” Teague grinned as he downed the last of his beer and eyeballed the icy, hostile regard of the rest of the flannel bearing rednecks in what used to be his favorite watering hole. He already knew the answer.

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  Jack was half way out the door before Jace’d finished the sentence.

  Teague caught up without trotting—something he was particularly proud of, since Jack was nearly 6’4” tall and Teague was a bandy-legged 5’9”. Damned kid—it also didn’t help that, at twenty-three and eight years Teague’s junior, Jack’s joints hadn’t started to creak yet.

  “Coming, old man?” Jack paused at the porch and hid a grin as he zipped up his fraying camo-fatigue jacket against the bitter wind.

  “Journey, Buttercup? Did you have to play Journey?” Teague pulled the collar of his beat-to-shit leather bomber jacket up around his ears and wished for a scarf or a hat or something, because the night was pretty damned vile. “Was there not a band on that play list that would guarantee we wouldn’t be a shoo-in for the ass and pony show at twelve o’clock?”

  “Just didn’t want you to get too cozy, there, cuddling up to the ex-wife,” Jack said back, but there was something in his banter that forced Teague to look at him soberly.

  “Not a problem,” he said, in a rarely serious moment, not sure why this would be so important to Jack, but not wanting him to have any doubts either. “Let’s just say that my half of the divorce settlement was the title ‘cocksucking faggoty race traitor’.”

  Jack let out a low whistle. “Nice. What was his share?”

  Teague grinned. “Notice that missing tooth he kept spitting through?”

  Jack grinned back at Teague then, his dark blue eyes dancing and worshipful. “Nice.”

  On that, they both ducked their shoulders and hustled through the wind-whipped rain, coming to a stop in front of Teague’s baby, a candy-apple-red/Ford-white Mustang fastback, circa 1970, with a 386 V-8, suicide seatbelts, wink mirror, and a stereo system that would loosen your fillings if you played Nickleback too loud. Teague insisted that this was the only way to play it. When they’d gotten in out of the rain and Teague cranked the engine and the heater, Jack asked, “Where to?”

  “Back to the hotel to call Green,” Teague replied tersely, squinting through the rain.

  “Teague—she’s in pain…”

  “Yeah—she’s in pain, she’s pissed off, and she’s still a werewolf on the night of a full moon…”

  “You’re not doing me any favors by protecting me!”

  “I’m not protecting you, dammit! If Green says go, we’re going!”

  “But why ask him in the first place?”

  “Because what I don’t know about werewolves would crash a computer, book-boy. You’re the one who keeps telling me that going in prepared doesn’t hurt, now drop it!” Teague huffed out a breath and hoped that Jack would, because the truth was, that two years ago, Teague would have gone to do the job. Of course two years ago, the job would have been killing the werewolf and not saving her, but he would have gone anyway. Hell—a year and five months ago he would have gone in alone to do the job, and probably gotten killed in the process. But a year and four and a half months ago, Jack Barnes had walked into a dive bar a lot like Dervish to tell Teague that his sister had been shot because she was a werewolf, and that Green had told him about a hunter who helped folks like Sara Barnes.

  Teague had been living in fear ever since.

  “Teague?” Jack asked now, pulling him from the past, where he’d met the eyes of a hurt kid through a dim room and bled a little at the thought of how that kid had gotten hurt.

  “What Jacky?”

  “You never did tell me why you switched sides.”

  “Why?” The kid had been tall, with a soft mouth and a flirty smile, and Teague’s first thought had been that he’d probably have to get his nose broken again keeping the roughnecks from breaking him into little pie
ces.

  “Why what?” Teague’s response had been short, designed to make the kid back off, but Jacky was surprising that way, because he rarely did back off, but he got aggressive so subtly that it didn’t look like he was being an asshole.

  “Why don’t you hunt them anymore?”

  Teague had needed to shut his eyes against a sudden vision of attenuated fingers, skating on the skin of his inner thigh, a hard body pressing along his back, and masculine kisses that tasted of a little boy’s dream day, running through the grass without a thought in his damned fool head. But Jack was waiting for an answer, and he didn’t have time to fight back memories or mentally wrestle an inconvenient hard-on, so he opened his eyes and gave a self-deprecating sneer.

  “Because Green talks sense, that’s why,” he’d said, but he and the kid both knew there was a lot more to it than that.

  And now, after letting the subject drop for the better part of a year and a half, Jacky was bringing it up again. But after a year and a half of seeing strange shit, weird shit, and shit the likes of which the two of them would never speak of again, Teague owed him a better answer.

  “Green saved my life,” he said after a weighted moment of listening to the rain. “He saved my life, and he forgave me for my past, and he offered me a way to live with myself when I’d been so damned wrong…” Teague remembered all of his old kills--every goddamned one of them. For the first one, the old man had been standing there, calling him a pussy and howling at Teague to just shoot the fucking dog cringing in the corner of the woods and looking so, so helpless—and that memory ripped his insides up like snow-tires ripped up roadkill. But it was the last one, the kill he didn’t make, when he was defending a man who had been dead for a hundred and fifty years, that woke him up in cold sweats, praying for forgiveness. He couldn’t talk about that, not right now. He swallowed hard, and tried to finish the thought.

  “Anyway, he saved my life, and now I owe him.”

  “How long do you owe him?” Jack asked soberly. “Are you going to be a hunter forever?”

  Teague shrugged and glanced at Jacky, trying to laugh him off. “Well, Jacky, if I bore you, you could always go back to school, get a desk job, and find yourself a sweet young thing to make you some pretty babies.” He’d been trying, off and on, to get Jack to finish his degree since Jack had signed on with him, saying he wanted to be one of the good guys, like Teague. Teague knew better—he’d rather the kid had something solid under his belt, something that it would be easier to do in his old age—something like alligator wrestling for example.

  “No,” Jack said soberly. “I may go back to school, Teague, but I’m not leaving you.”

  Teague flushed, his heart in his throat, because every time Jack resisted Teague’s attempts to push him out of the nest, his heart just hopped up there from fear that this time, Jack wouldn’t push back.

  “Appreciated,” he said now, gruffly, and considered the subject dropped.

  But Jack, damn him, wasn’t dropping shit. “Thanks for not telling him,” he said now, as Teague turned into the no-tell motel parking lot.

  Teague killed the motor and grunted.

  “No, seriously!” Jacky protested, and Teague closed his eyes and hoped this discussion would just go the hell away.

  “What was I going to tell him, Jacky?” Teague asked sourly. “That you’ve got a tattoo under your left nut with Green’s mark on it too?”

  “I still don’t know what it says,” Jack muttered glumly, and Teague breathed out hard in what might have been a suppressed laugh.

  Because the hell of it was, Teague knew exactly what it said, and he could remember the night they’d gotten them like he could remember the taste of Miller on his tongue now.

  Teague made the mistake of looking over at Jacky, in hopes that he had his hand on the door handle, and caught he the younger man looking back. Their eyes collided, connected, held, and both of them flushed, their breathing coming hot and fast, with embarrassment—or that’s what Teague told himself. It was absolutely embarrassment. He refused to believe that it was anything else.

  Like desire, maybe.

  Jack

  Marked

  They sat there, in the steamy silence of the rain pounding on the car, and Jacky refused to look away or back down. He remembered—he remembered and as much as Teague had been willing that moment to go away, Jacky had been willing him to remember it. And to repeat it.

  But you couldn’t say a thing like that to a man like Teague. You couldn’t walk up to him randomly and say, Hey, I know you’ve got thirty-one years of heavy-duty heterosexuality impressed on your red-neck backwoods good-ol’-boy psychological make-up and so do I. The fact is, I don’t give a shit about that anymore, and I think that maybe I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my whole life. And I’m pretty sure you want me too. And I’m also pretty sure you’re not as straight as you say you are. That last part was a guess, although it was a good one.

  No one who knew Green was as much of a redneck as Teague talked himself up to be.

  Green had come by about two weeks before Christmas to warn them that it might happen. Actually, it was more like he came to ask their permission.

  “I’m…consolidating my holdings,” he said with a smile, standing in their little two bedroom and looking around with the friendly, interested eyes of an involved parent. “There’s going to be a marking ceremony—you two don’t want to be there, believe me, but…but there will be repercussions.”

  Teague had blinked. “Repercussions,” he echoed blankly, trying to sort through all of the ways that word could be used.

  Green had laughed then, the sound rippling through the apartment, making the dust less thick and their crappy little live Christmas tree look suddenly warm and welcoming and classy. “Yes, brother, repercussions. I’m asking you to bear my mark. It means you’re mine to protect…”

  “But we’re supposed to be protecting you!” Teague interrupted, looking distraught. “We’ve been doing a good job, right? We haven’t let anyone down—we’ve brought ‘em back alive with every job, right?”

  Green’s smile had been so kind it made Jack’s throat tight, and they both regarded the shorter man with dignity, as his bare, vulnerable fear of failure was brutally exposed. With that smooth, practiced motion, Green took Teague’s hand in his own, making no pretense about shaking it.

  “You’re doing a bang-up job, mate,” he said softly, pulling the hand up to his chest. Teague just stood there, and Jack, who had seen what Teague did when cornered, saw the pulse that signaled fight-or-flight throbbing in his temple. “In fact, you’re doing such a good job, that I want you to be part of my family. The both of you. I’m here to ask if that’s good for you—because if it’s not, I’ll still trust you. But I won’t mark you with it.”

  “Family?” Teague asked, swallowing hard, and in his voice, Jack heard the echo of a hundred midnight stakeouts, and stories Teague had told by not telling, about a mom who had left him young and a dad who had wanted a hunting buddy, a whipping boy, a mind he could teach to hate and hate and hate, and a body he could train to shoot first and ask questions never.

  “Family, mate,” Green had replied gently. “For good and bad, you know. If anyone takes me down in this little community, I’m afraid you’ll go down too.”

  Teague surprised them both then, but Jacky more than Green.

  His dark-hazel eyes locked on Green’s in a desperate expression of hope, Teague went down on one knee in front of him. “If anyone takes you out, Green, they’ll do it over my dead, bloody body.”

  Green had inclined his head, as though he accepted such old-fashioned, formal fealty every day. He took Teague’s vow as seriously as Teague meant it, and Jack had loved Green in that moment, because he had given Teague something that Teague so obviously needed.

  “Absolutely, Sir Knight,” Green replied with only a ghost of a smile, and with that, he took Teague’s hand up to his soft, delicate mouth and placed a
sweet, intimate kiss on the inside of Teague’s wrist. Teague blinked when precise tongue reached out and touched his pulse point, and just like that, it was over.

  “If it all works, the symbol should just blow through you—like summer wind through a cotton dress.” Green held out a hand and helped Teague to stand.

  “Where will mine be?” Jack asked then.

  Green shrugged, and stepped forward, holding his arms out like an uncle asking for a hug. When Jack stepped into the hug, Green kissed him on the cheek, and stepped away. “Wherever you need it to be, I guess,” he said with a grin, and turned again to Teague, who was standing alone, the space around his body a shivering, lost space that made Jack’s chest hurt.

  Green turned to him and held out his arms, and Teague, shuddering, like a frightened puppy, stepped into Green’s hard, secure embrace. Green leaned forward there and murmured something in Teague’s ear that made Teague jerk back and look at him sharply. Green had grinned that gentle smile again, and then bowed and taken his leave.

  “What did he say?” Jack asked him.

  Teague shrugged, and murmured something inaudible, and Jack had wisely left it alone.

  Now, as the car’s heater faded and the chill of the night sunk in, Teague’s haunted eyes wouldn’t leave Jack’s, but damned Teague’s closed-off, macho-be-fucked mouth, he wouldn’t say a word.

  “The least you could do,” Jack said with a small, invitational smile, “is tell me what the damned thing says.”

  Teague blushed, hard--hard enough for Jack to see the flush hit his lean cheeks and the sudden sweat of embarrassment dew his brow. He took a shuddering breath and ran his hands through his spiky, dark-blonde hair, and physically wrenched his gaze from Jack’s.

  “It says there’s a wolf we need to track if it’s not going to get us killed and that you’re a total fucking moron for keeping us out here in the cold,” Teague ground out.