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13. Rolling Thunder
"Sweat," Sky said, feeling a trickle on her forehead. Carlos wiped it away.
She went back to her work, ignoring the pair at the door who had ceased their posturing, at least for now. "I need the stronger glass," she told him. He pulled the magnifier away and replaced the end. She adjusted the distance and moved more flesh away.
She was nearing the tiny fragment of bone, but it was even more delicate work than she had anticipated. Holding steady, she carefully re-angled the glass so that she could see from another angle, and sliced another small cut in the muscle tissue around the tendon. If she removed too much, it would disrupt the general stability of the knee, so she had to find another angle.
"Sweat," she said again.
She was close enough to the fragment now that she should be able to extract it with a pair of 155mm tweezers. "One fifty-fives," she said. Like magic, they appeared in her hand.
Closing in on the fragment, she bit her lip. It was a crucial juncture. The fragment was so close that a single bit of pressure could push it into the delicate tendon. It could cut and snap away and Thunder would have to be put to stud.
As she approached with the tweezers, there was a sudden 'bang!' from out in the stable and a couple of stable hands laughed, calling to each other. Sky jumped so badly that she knocked the glass out of alignment.
"Fuck!" she swore. "Get them out of this barn!" she snarled at Carlos, who turned toward the doorway.
"I'll do it," Eric said. He flitted away, and Sky heard alarmed shouts and a banging door. Then he was back. "All done. You won't be bothered again."
She took a deep breath and reinstated the glass into position. "Blood," she said. Carlos patted the blood away from the wound and Sky bent forward again.
"Blood," she said, then "Sweat". Carlos took care of each in turn and she grasped the fragment with the tweezers. With aching slowness, she pulled it out, a millimeter at a time. "Basin," she said. Carlos held up a small shrapnel basin. She dropped the fragment in it.
"Sutures," she demanded. They were supplied. Slowly, carefully, she sewed the knee back up, careful to avoid pinching or pulling of the flesh.
Finally, aching but triumphant, she turned to Carlos. "I think we did it!" she squealed, hugging him. They jumped and hugged and celebrated for almost a full minute before she kissed him on the cheek. "You are awesome!" she told him.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves, both the excited and the fearful ones. "I'll clean up. You could use some sleep," she told him.
"Nah, I'll help. That's what you pay me for," he told her with a grin.
"Anything I can do?" Alcide asked, stepping in from the shadows at the doorway into the stable.
"What are you doing still here?" she asked. "You should have gone to bed hours ago."
He shrugged. "I couldn't have slept anyway. What can I do to help?"
"I changed my mind," Carlos said. "I'm going to bed after all." He walked away, leaving Sky floundering alone with Alcide.
"I have to put this stuff in that washer," she told him, indicating the industrial ultrasonic washer.
He helped her as she gathered and pre-washed things to go into the baskets. When she was finished, she pulled the mask and the lab clothes off. She knew that by industry standards, she overdid it, but she always felt that it was better to err at being too clean than the other way around.
As she put the dirty linen into the bin and started the washer, she finally had to turn around and face Alcide without the benefit of duty between them. He was standing with his arms crossed, watching her with a brooding look on his face.
"Thank you for the help," she told him.
"How did you get mixed up with Mitch?" he asked.
She sighed. "My parents introduced us. They really wanted me to marry him. I almost did. Now he owns the horses that I love, and I own the land he keeps them on. So I'm linked to him whether I like it or not. He left me the day after we signed the papers and 'celebrated' by having sex." She put quotation marks in the air around the word 'celebrate'. "Happy now? Is that what you wanted to know?"
"I'm just trying to help you," he told her.
"Well, I don't need help. It's not ideal, but the horses aren't mistreated, and I would do surgery on them anyway," she answered him.
She looked around, stretching. "I'm going to bed," she said.
"Alone?" he asked.
"What?" Anger rose in her.
"Is he making you-"
"How dare you? How dare you even insinuate such a thing to me? You really think I would let that man—any man—blackmail me into sexual favors? Have you lost your mind? I had no idea exactly how low your opinion of me was!"
He at least had the grace to look stricken by his disgusting allegations.
"That's my opinion of him, not you!" he objected.
"You know, I hear about how women have no internal monologue, but instead we have to say everything we think... but it's times like this when I wonder if you men even think before you say things. I appreciate that you don't know me very well, but I am frankly stunned that you would believe such a thing of me." She walked toward the door and he followed, opening his mouth to protest. "And before you say anything more, Mitch would never try to force me into sexual favors. He thinks I am disgusting and slutty. So don't worry, I won't be turning to prostituting for him anytime soon. Oh, and congrats on getting your man card back."
She turned away so he wouldn't see her tears, unaware that he could smell them anyway.
He stopped her. "Sky, I didn't mean it that way. I just want to protect you from him." He turned her toward him and she was enveloped in warm, strong arms.
She wanted to give in and let him hold her and cry hear heart out. Instead, she pulled away. "Haven't you noticed, Alcide, that every time you try to protect me, it just keeps going wrong? Why can't you just... I don't know. Put up with me. Or be my friend. Or something. Why always with the protecting bit? I'm twenty-eight years old. I think I've survived well enough without someone following me around and protecting me all the time. In fact, I needed less protecting before I met you than I have since you've been 'protecting' me!"
The look on his face wrung her heart. "Alcide, it's not this hard. It's not so very complex. I don't jump in bed with every man that I find attractive, or who finds me attractive." She put her hand on his cheek, "I'm not that person, Alcide. Whoever she is, you're going to have to let her go before you'll ever be able to get to know me."
She stepped back and put her hands in her pockets. "Let me go to sleep now. I just spent hours in surgery and I'm exhausted."
"Wait. There's something I have to tell you," he said.
"It can wait," she answered.
"But I-"
"Alcide. It can wait. Please. I'm too tired to deal with anything more this morning."
He nodded. "I'll walk you to the house?" She nodded and they walked quietly for a bit. "Sky, I'm usually much better at this. I'm really trying. It just seems like I can't do anything right around you, even though that's the only thing I want to do—what's right."
She nodded. "I know, Alcide."
"I really don't think that about you, Sky."
"Yes, you do, Alcide. First you thought I was kissing Eric, and then you thought I was letting Mitch blackmail me for sex. You really do think that about me."
"But I saw you with Eric."
"You don't know what you saw, Alcide." They stopped at a door to a guest bedroom. She turned to face him. "What you saw was him giving me the Goodfellas' kiss of if-you-fuck-me-over-I-will-kill-you. You know? The whole mafioso kiss on each cheek thing? That's what you saw. He was warning me of what would happen if I told anyone that the king has a witch illegally locked in his basement." She gestured at the door. "That's your room. Good night."
"But Sky, you did the same thing. You thought I was leaving because Mitch did."
She paused in the act of opening the door to her own room, "Do you not see the difference, Alcide?"
He shook his head.
She smiled sadly. "You did leave, Alcide." She closed her own door quietly behind her and laid her head back against it. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she dropped on the bed.
A quiet knock at the door made her sit up and try to get herself under control. She walked over, expecting to see Alcide. Eric leaned against the door frame.
"You are upset," he told her.
"You don't say," she retorted, sarcastic.
"You could marry me and then you wouldn't have to deal with any of this anymore."
She rolled her eyes. "Not that again."
He shrugged. "I thought you'd say that. You know, I could buy those horses for you."
She gasped. "What the hell is wrong with you people?" she cried. She slapped him. "I don't give a damn if you are a vampire! You have no right to treat me this way! Do I have 'prostitute' written on my forehead or something?" She realized that doors were opening down the hallway as she got louder and louder, Eric standing up now instead of leaning against the door. "Why are you people all convinced that I would fuck anything that moves just for some god-damned horses?" Her voice was positively shrill by that point, but she couldn't help herself.
"If it's any consolation," Mitch said from down the hall, "I never thought that. Only because I wouldn't let you fuck me for them."
She stared at him, open-mouthed. Finally, she said the only thing she could think of, "Oh, fuck off, Mitch."
She slammed the door behind her. She heard Mitch laugh and say, "I told you she was a nasty whore." There was a thump and a yelp, and she buried her head under a pillow.
Doors closed and she cried. Her door opened and closed. A weight pressed beside her on the bed. "Go away," she mumbled under the pillow.
"I was not indicating that I would only buy them if you married me and slept with me," Eric said.
She sat up. "Oh," she said, her voice as weak and humiliated as she felt.
"They have a good record of winning," Eric told her. "They would be a good investment for me. With proper care and a good surgeon on call, especially so."
"But then it would just be you in power over me, instead of Mitch. And Mitch doesn't want to have sex with me."
"We would be partners," Eric said. "Business associates. Unless you changed your mind about marrying me. Independent of the whole horse thing, naturally."
"I don't want to marry you," she told him.
He tucked a bit of her hair away from her face. "Because of the werewolf?"
She chuckled and shook her head. "Because of you, Eric. You're charming enough when you want to be, but you're an asshole in your own way."
He grinned. "It comes with age." Then he sobered. "I would never hurt you."
"No, of course not. Provided I walked the line and kept all of your sordid secrets and protected you from the prying eyes of the law when you chained people in your basement."
His eyes narrowed. "How did you know about that?"
She blinked at him. "I was being facetious... I thought."
His eyebrow flickered upward. "Well, there is that, I suppose."
"That's not really the life for me, Eric. I moved to Bon Temps thinking it was a sleepy little small town that needed a vet."
He grinned. "Imagine your surprise."
"Yes," she agreed wryly. "Imagine it."
He picked her hand up and kissed the back of it. "If you change your mind..."
"Good sleep, Eric."
He kissed her cheek again, and this time, she knew it was with something approaching genuine affection.
"Would you be angry with me if I bought the horses from Mitch?" he asked.
She shook her head. "If you promise not to abduct me and chain me up, I think I could live with it."
He grinned. "Only if you beg me to."
She chuckled, but he was gone. She shook her head and laid back, staring at the ceiling. In some ways, it would all be so much simpler if she could just say 'yes' to Eric. But every time she shut her eyes, she saw brown eyes and black hair and even felt the sweetness of fur under her hand.
Hours had passed since she had slept, and so sleep claimed her without her permission, and she found herself jerking awake, still dressed, when someone pounded on her door.
"Thunder's up!" Carlos called from outside the door.
She sat up, forgetting instantly that she was in the same clothes as yesterday. She bolted out the door, almost bowling Alcide over in her rush. He caught her and she clung to him for a moment, his body heat permeating her and turning her stomach into caged butterflies. His hands ran down her body as he caught her and then set her to rights.
She pulled away, not looking at him. She heard him following as she rushed out the front door and across the lawn. She found Lablanc with Casbolt's Thunder, and was pleased to see that he had helped the horse get up into traction.
"It's good work," Lablanc told her. "The x-rays show no damage to the tendon at all. I didn't think anyone could pull that off."
Sky smiled. "I'm pleased with the operation. Of course, it'll be months before we know if it was a success, but I think he's going to race again."
Lablanc shook his head and Sky felt renewed irritation.
"The whole water therapy business is unsubstantiated-"
"He will do the water therapy," she told him. "And he will be on grain and herbs—as much dandelions as we can get. Additionally, you will use sound therapy on his knee." When he looked ready to object, she said, "If you do not, I will find someone who will."
He suddenly backed off, and she realized that Alcide had walked up behind her, his arms crossed and a glare on his face. Leblanc stalked off, and she turned to look up at Alcide. "You're a bully," she said, but couldn't keep the grin off of her face.
"It helps being ten feet tall and a million pounds."
Reminded of a simpler time with him, she chuckled. "I thought you said you were eight feet tall and a thousand pounds."
"I was being modest. I hear women like that."
"Someone lied to you."
"Teach me, oh Wise and Womanly One," he told her.
She laughed openly. "You watch kids' movies!" she accused.
"I most definitely don't. You do. We watched that one together."
"You thumped your tail."
He winced and she stopped to look at him closely.
"Marrok thumped his tail."
They were somber now, and Sky realized something was wrong. When she had finished filling Thunder's manger with freshly mowed hay, she turned to him.
"You thumped your tail," she repeated, watching him closely.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Marrok did," he repeated stubbornly.
She narrowed her eyes, looking at him suspiciously. "Marrok is you."
He shook his head, his guilt obvious. "No. He's gone."
"What do you mean, 'gone'?" she demanded.
"I can't feel him anymore. He... he's gone."
"Oh god, because of what happened with me, isn't it? I'm so sorry, Alcide!" Then she stopped. "But you aren't, are you? You're glad."
"I'm getting used to not having to turn every full moon. To not having someone in my mind all of the time-"
"You got rid of Marrok?" she couldn't believe it.
"Not exactly. Not on purpose!"
"Alcide. He's a being. A soul. You can't just throw him away!"
"I didn't!" Alcide objected.
"Not exactly?"
"Not exactly," he agreed. "He went away on his own."
"Because of you. Because you blamed him when he acted like any animal would have when terrified."
"He killed you!" At the look on her face, he said, "Almost. And that's close enough."
"Alcide, even domesticated animals will hurt you when they're scared or in pain. Much less a wolf. You continue to ask me to be understanding of how you can act like I'm spreading my legs for anything that moves and all the things you say while 'protecting' me... but you can't forgive your wolf for being put into a situation not of his choosing? You and Eric, you did that to him. And... and your King. He didn't choose to be locked into a cell with a woman that terrified him. He was trapped and afraid. And now he's throw away like so much garbage."
He turned away. "I'm trying, Sky. I just can't forgive him."
"No, you can't. Not until you forgive yourself. It's yourself that you're the most angry with. You're punishing yourself by pushing him away. You feel like you should have controlled him."
"I never knew who I was without the wolf," Alcide told her. "Now I'm finding out."
"No, Alcide, you aren't. There is no you without the wolf, there's just you lying to yourself. Marrok and Alcide are two half of the same soul. When I was with you that night, I understood that. I saw you in him and him in you. Without all of yourself, Alcide, you are broken." She backed away from him. "He's part of you. If you choose to be half of a person, you will never know if you're loved because of who you are, or because of who you choose not to be. Anyone who loves you when you're pretending to be something you aren't, doesn't love the real you, just the reflection. And that's not real love at all. You're stealing that chance for real love from whomever you end up with."
She smiled sadly. "You're pushing me away, Alcide. You don't want to be loved as half a man. You could never love someone who could love you while you were less than your real self. You hid the truth from me and then you punished me for not seeing it, when you weren't even anywhere around me."
The sun crept behind a cloud and she shivered, wrapping her arms around her. She looked up at the sky and knew it was going to rain. Her blue eyes met his sad brown ones. "We're doomed without him."
She walked back toward the house, leaving him standing there in the grass. She didn't bother to tell him that she had loved the wolf first. If he didn't understand that already, then he might never get it at all.
When the storm rolled in and the thunder came, she shivered in her room, that same sense of impending malice settling over her again. Darkness crept in and Eric knocked at her door. He had... persuaded... Mitch to sell him the horses at a fair price.
"What's bothering you?" he asked.
"Something's terribly wrong," she told him. "I don't know what, and I don't know where or why... but something's wrong."
When his cellphone beeped, she jumped so hard she almost fell off of the window seat.
"The witch has broken her agreement and convened a circle," Eric told her, looking at her searchingly. "She has vowed a resurrection."
"I don't know what that is," Sky told him.
"It's bad. It's very bad. I must go. Alcide and Sam must return to Bon Temps immediately. You may want to stay here and avoid-"
"No," she said firmly, standing up.
He sighed. "I thought not."
And, in his usual way, he was gone. She doubted that he would be flying home that night. Unless vampires could fly on their own power, then maybe so.
She was packed in record time and had her bags at the front door even as Alcide and Sam came down the hallway. Carlos wasn't far behind, and unfortunately, Mitch followed close on his heels.
"Leaving so soon?" he asked smugly. "I sold your horses to your vampire lover," he told her, "and I made a killing off of him."
She finally got to do what she'd wanted to do for almost seven years. She kneed him in the nuts as hard as she could. The other guys stepped back almost as one.
"I never had sex with him. And if I never do, he'll still be a thousand times better lover than you are, you piece of shit. Get off of my property within the week, or I will have friends evict you in the cruelest possible manner." She bent down and looked at him. "Or maybe I'll come do it myself. You have no fucking idea how much I loathe you. And if you hurt a single one of those horses on your way out, let me make you a personal promise. There will be nowhere for you to hide. I will find you, and I will knock you out. When I'm done, you will be missing all of your skin and never be able to sit down or wear clothes or fuck again."
"You wouldn't dare," he said. "You're a bleeding heart-"
She took him by the hair and lifted his face to hers. "Do I look like I'm joking? As a general rule, I hold the life of human beings far over that of animals. But I make exceptions for human beings who don't qualify as human or animal. You are beneath both, and if you harm those horses, I will treat you like you have treated me for six long fucking years." She slammed his head back on the ground.
She stood up. "If I didn't have a plane to catch, I would beat the shit out of you. I've never hated anyone so much in my life."
He looked at Alcide, "You see what happens when you leave her?" He laughed weakly.
"You're a delusional asshole," Alcide told him. "I'll be back here in a week, and if you're still here, I'll get that chance I've been wanting to beat you within an inch of your life."
"I ain't scared of you, lumberjack," he muttered.
"Then you ain't very smart," Alcide replied.
Sky kicked Mitch again.
"Easy there," Sam told her. "Don't leave any marks." He took her elbow and led her out the door, while Carlos grabbed her bags along with Alcide. Sam went back in for his.
When they got out, Carlos burst out laughing. "You really have no idea how satisfying that was," he told Sky. "Though you know, I agree with him. I didn't know you had it in you."
They got in the cabs and went to the airport. The small prop plane took off as soon as they were on board.
Sky tried to enjoy the flight, but the sense of something horribly wrong continued to increase until she was jittery and skittish.
"Are you okay?" Sam asked her.
"Something's gone wrong," she answered miserably. "I can feel it."
He patted her on the arm. "We're landing soon. Maybe you'll feel better once we're back in Louisiana."
But Sky knew better, though she didn't say so out loud.