Bren rubs his jaw, considering our choices. “Em, all this is not what I expected,” he says. “Except while I don’t trust them, I do trust you. We’ll try it your way.”
“Flounder,” he calls. “Hey. Flounder.”
“It’s Farrah,” I say, speaking low.
Farrah stops swimming. Her body remains very much post-coitus red despite the non-intercourse and despite the cold water. “You talkin’ to me?” she asks.
“You got it, fish face.”
“Bren,” I admonish. “That’s awful.”
He throws out a hand. “Come on, Em. It’s not like this gal doesn’t know she has gills.” He looks at Farrah. “You do know about the gills, right, Nemo?”
If fish could freeze someone with one look, Bren would be a popsicle. “Yes, wolf,” she snaps.
Bren continues, unaffected by the dirty looks and the way her googly eyes spin with annoyance. “If this bubble pops, or if my girl Emme here finds herself under water, you’re in charge of getting her to safety.” He points at her. “That means land. She can’t swim and if she drowns, you’re the one I’m coming after.”
“I don’t respond well to threats,” Farrah fires back.
A sense of ire encompasses Bren, warming the frigid air encasing us. He takes a step forward. Farrah stumbles away from Bren and all but scales the wall. “It’s not a threat, Dory. It’s a promise. You got yourself into this shit. You will get the person helping you out of it.”
Farrah nods, or at least tries to. Farrah doesn’t really have a neck.
Bren returns to his place at my side, rolling his eyes when Gerald and Merche resume their very audible exchange. “Damn. It’s like tuning into some twisted Discovery channel documentary. You sure they’re not fucking?”
I glance around Bren’s super-sized body. All of Merche’s limbs are flailing as Gerald sucks and pulls at the skin along her throat. “No, just feeding.” I tilt my head. “Can’t you see them from here?”
“Emme, it’s not that I can’t see them, it’s that I don’t want to like, ever,” Bren tells me flatly. “This shit is messed up two times past Tuesday. If I look, I’ll puke. Do you know how bad it has to be for a werewolf to puke?” He hooks a thumb behind him. “That bad.”
I’ll admit, that is pretty bad.
He bows his head low enough to drip water from his wavy hair. “Look, I need you to know something, all right?” He meets my gaze. “If anything happens to me, I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t tell you.”
You like me? Please say that you like me.
I reach for his hands and hold them carefully, surprised that I find myself smiling.
Bren doesn’t smile, his entire demeanor reflecting his sadness.
“Em,” he says.
And then nothing more.
I stroke his hands gently, waiting patiently for him to form his words. It’s a sweet moment, lovely. Perfect with the exception of all the gobbling Gerald is engaging in.
Gerald lifts his head briefly, spitting out fur before resuming his meal. Merche doesn’t seem to notice. She’s caught up in the moment, and all the pleasure she derives from having a vampire feed from her.
“Just tell me, Bren,” I say. The way he takes me in borders on magical. He’s never looked at me this way before. “You can tell me anything. You always could.”
He works his jaw, his disposition changing the more he takes me in. My body swells with warmth. Bren does like me. And it’s more than just as a friend.
I’m ready to tell him how I feel. He doesn’t let me, speaking quickly. “I tried to break out of that area we were in,” he says. “I beat at the walls and smashed through a few layers. Except all the damage I did led to more walls. That thing, whatever took you, it was too hard to track.”
I loosen my grip to his hands, doubting whether I read him correctly. “Then how did you find me?” I ask.
Bren’s broad chest heaves in and out. “My wolf,” he says. “He latched onto your presence and led me to you.”
I tilt my chin. This wasn’t what I expected. “I thought you could only track by scent?”
He shrugs, appearing nervous. “I did, too. Except, you know, it’s not like you’re some stranger whose aroma I have to figure out or distinguish from the other gazillion smells out there. I don’t have to get a sense of you like, I would a perp I’m assigned to track. You’re Emme. My, you know, buddy.”
“Oh.” I release his hands. “That makes sense.”
Bren starts to walk off, appearing restless, but almost immediately returns. “This whole place is like one giant maze, even under the layer we’re standing on. There are dozens, if not hundreds of passageways beneath us. I think it’s how the creature has survived Tahoe’s magic so long, it tried to burrow into the lake floor and distance itself from the water where the magic is more potent. The thing is, the lake found a way through anyway, it’s why the whole structure is disintegrating as fast as it is.”
“Oh,” I say, realizing how much worse everything is.
“The passageways the creature took you through were too narrow for my wolf. I had to swim through them in human form. It’s why it took me so long to find you. I kept popping up in the wrong spots. Good in a way because I was able to get air, but bad because you weren’t there.”
“It’s all right,” I say, recognizing how bad he feels. “I used the time to figure things out and formulate a plan.”
He strokes my damp hair. “Yeah. You did good, Em.”
My eyes widen as Bren releases a bone-rattling growl. I turn toward the water, the sense of evil and wrongness returning with a vengeance. “It’s Una,” I say. I back away from the water’s edge. “She’s coming.”
Chapter Fourteen
Emme
Bren snarls. He senses Una’s arrival, too. And he’s not alone.
Gerald releases Merche, spitting out chunks of fur as he jets to our side. His head flips flops from side to
