How It Was by T. S. Joyce

Chapter Eight

 

Today had been perfect.

Well, if she ignored the thirty-two notifications on her phone she’d gotten from not only Manning, but from the rest of his Murder, and even two council members.

The only text that really and truly mattered was one from Tory though. Manning must’ve let her use her phone. All it said was, hurry.

How could one day be filled with such highs and lows?

Caw, caw, caw!

Startled, Trina looked up from the glowing screen of her phone to the trees that lined the edge of the trailer park. A crow with blue eyes sat on a low-hanging pine branch. Ren.

Feeling like she’d been busted, Trina set the phone face-down on the porch stair beside her and waved.

Ren spread her big black wings and dove for her, changing just before she reached Trina. She landed with both feet on the ground in a plume of dark blue smoke.

“You always made that look easy,” Trina said, snuggling deeper into her hoodie.

Ren sat beside her on the stairs and straightened the red tank top that had magically appeared to cover her skin.

“Yeah well, I probably should’ve poofed myself some warmer clothes.” Ren crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the woods beyond. “You don’t have to leave if you don’t want to, Trina.”

“What?”

“Krome and Bron were talking about it earlier. They asked me what I think of you.” Ren nudged her arm with hers. “I told them you are a good one, of course.”

“I…” Words had completely left Trina’s stumbling brain. She wasn’t one of the good ones. She’d tricked Ren. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d tricked her into thinking she was good. Guilt was a canyon, long and wide, and it consumed Trina’s insides.

“I mean, you can’t stay for free. None of the new Crew does. They rent the trailers and have to pay the community bill on water and electricity. You would have to track down a job in town. Krome said this trailer is four hundred and fifteen dollars a month. It’s kind of rough around the edges, but it’s a place you can call home. If you want. You don’t even have to take on a roommate. You can just have your own space. I told them about Manning. About how he treated you. I think it would be good for you to have some space, you know? You could do some healing in this place.”

Trina looked behind her at the cream-colored trailer with the plywood front door that had mold creeping up from the bottom. One of the green shutters was lopsided, and she knew from fifteen minutes of effort last night that the main window beside the front door was painted open, and would let a mighty stiff breeze in when the weather got cold. There had been a house number on it a long time ago, but now only the last two numbers of it remained. 10.

“Anyway. I know you get scared off easy, so I figured I would fly out here and put that little grenade in your brain, and then back away slowly. You’re someone who needs to process, Trina. Maybe come find me when you figure out what a good idea this place is.” Ren grinned and twitched her pink bangs out of her face, then stood and sauntered toward the tree line.

“Krome and Bron weren’t the only ones who asked about you, by the way.” She tossed a grin over her shoulder. “Nuke did, too.” And then in the snap of a finger, Ren’s crow lifted off the ground, beating her wings against the cool evening air. She disappeared into the sky, leaving the blue-hued smoke cloud of her change to dissipate behind her.

Nuke had asked about her?

Trina swallowed hard and looked over toward Nuke’s trailer at the opposite end of the park. All she could see from here was his deck.

She could stay here.

Her phone vibrated beside her, and Trina’s heart dropped to the stairs beneath her.

If Manning didn’t own her, she could stay.

Trina ripped her gaze away from Nuke’s home and picked up the phone. Manning was calling. She’d already missed a dozen of them.

She accepted the call and said low, “I can’t talk.”

“Trina!” Tory sounded terrified.

“Tory? Are you okay?” she whispered, looking around the empty clearing quick.

“Please just do what they asked—” A gasp sounded and Manning growled out into the phone, “When I call, you pick up. When I text, you respond. Pull this shit again and your sister will pay, do I make myself clear.”

She hated him. Hated him.

“Don’t hurt her,” she gritted through clenched teeth.

“Information and I’ll let her eat and go to bed. She can rest. Clam up on me and her night will be fuckin’ miserable. I need you back in line now, Trina.” He wrenched up his voice. “I need you back in line!”

God, he sounded psychotic.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he murmured at a softer volume. His voice sounded off. Too calm, too gentle. “It’s just you’ve had me going crazy today, wondering if you’re okay.”

Lie. She could hear it in his voice. He wasn’t worried about her.

“Do you know what it’s like for me, Trina? You’re my girl. We were supposed to be married by now, but that bitch Ren ruined our wedding. You get that, right? She stole my wedding gift for you, and broke our tradition, and she ruined what was supposed to be a happy time for you and me.”

God, he sounded like such a snake. Such a manipulator. He would’ve made an awful husband. I’m glad Ren stole your amulet. She wished she could utter the words. She wished more than anything that she could, but Tory was at risk for any mistake Trina made.

She hated this feeling of being trapped.

“What are their names,” he gritted out.

“I want your word that you will let her rest. Put her in my room and leave her alone. Please.”

“Trina—”

“Manning! I’m worried to death over her. I’m here trying to do what you’ve asked, and I feel like I’m breaking into a hundred pieces. Give me your word!” She softened her voice and begged, “Please.”

There was a three-second pause before he told her, “You have my word.”

So why did that four-word combination also sound like a lie?

“So far there are just a few new members in the Crew.”

“All shifters?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“Names.”

“Tommy, Amos, and someone named Divar is coming later this week.” She couldn’t force Nuke’s name past her lips. Just couldn’t. Her heart wouldn’t allow it.

“Sounds light, Trina,” Manning ground out. “What are their animals.”

Trina glanced around to make sure the coast was still clear, and then stood and scrambled back inside the trailer. She cupped her hand over the speaker of the phone and whispered, “Ummm, avian shifter and maybe a werewolf? Or a big cat? And I don’t have a guess about Divar, I haven’t met him yet.”

“What else?”

“I…I don’t know anything else.”

“How many trailers are there?”

Chills rippled up her arms. She hadn’t said anything about trailers.

“H-how do you know about those?” she asked.

Manning was quiet. Too quiet. Too quiet, for too long.

“Manning?”

“Pass all of my tests, and Tory might live.” The line went dead.

She wasn’t the only spy here.

“Oy, stop!” Someone yelled. His voice cracked through the entire trailer, and dredged up her animal from where she’d been sitting quietly inside of her for days.

No, no, no, relax.

“Stop or you’ll kill him!”

Heart lurching, Trina threw her phone onto the recliner and bolted for the front door. Outside, it was dark, but there was a scuffle in the porch light of Amos’s trailer.

Tommy was out there, trying to pull Nuke off a man he had pinned to the ground.

“That’s my den! I challenge anyone for it!” the man roared from the ground, and then something awful happened.

Time slowed as the man changed under Nuke. Amos tossed a terrified look back at her, and his lips formed the words, “Stop Nuke!”

Her? She couldn’t stop anything. She had no control over a single thing in her life, so how could she control someone else’s decisions?

The man under Nuke didn’t make sense. His body formed something that didn’t exist. It couldn’t. He wasn’t a Bane brother.

A black grizzly bear ripped out of his skin. This was the part where Nuke should back off and concede that he was beat in this form. Only he didn’t. Before the bear shifter could stand up on his back two legs, Nuke grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him back so hard, the grizzly flew across the clearing and into a tree. The tree made a cracking sound on impact and pitched forward toward the trailer park, aimed straight for Nuke’s trailer.

“Tommy!” Amos yelled, pointing to the wobbling tree.

She knew what they needed. They needed power.

She had that. She could help save Nuke’s trailer.

Trina wouldn’t make it in time in this form, so without another thought, she changed. It was safe. No one was paying attention to her. Not with Nuke stalking the bear, and Amos and Tommy rushing toward the tree.

Amos was fast. He shifted to his bald eagle and back just in time to meet Tommy in the middle of where the tree would land. The needed to shove it hard to get it to land in the side yard but the branches wouldn’t make it so simple. Trina stretched her wings and pushed hard against the earth with all four legs, launched herself for a hole in the branches she could see from here. Time was tight. If Amos and Tommy didn’t hit it at the same time, this was going to be really bad.

Don’t think about it.

She beat her wings once and torpedoed to the bare part of the trunk. Milliseconds before she reached it, she changed back and screamed in effort as she shoved it as hard as she could, with every molecule of power she could muster.

The tree splintered at the force of her hands and lurched sideways. The gargantuan pine hit the corner of Nuke’s trailer and landed directly beside it with a tremendous crash.

Panicked, she searched for Tommy and Amos, but they were fine, although they were both staring at her with their mouths hanging open. Probably because her clothes were currently in tatters from her change, and she was standing her naked as the day she was born. Their matching expressions would be funny if a prehistoric rumble didn’t rattle the entire trailer park.

“He can’t change,” Amos said. “If he changes, we’ll all die.”

From behind Amos, Tommy told her, “We’ve already seen you.”

Shhhit.

Okay.

Okay.

Nuke couldn’t change, and maybe she could stop him. Maybe. She didn’t know how the fight had started, but she knew it couldn’t continue or the cost would be too big. The Crew would be blown apart, or worse…killed.

She bunched her muscles and let the animal have her.

For a moment there was freedom. There were wind currents, and dodging the trees in the forest, and not giving a single care who saw her in this skin. When had she ever had that?

She tucked her wings and zigzagged this way and that. The bear was on the run and Nuke was hunting him. God, he was fast, but he was easy to find. She could hear his snarl, and feel his presence. Whatever monster lived in him could fill the entire woods.

Trina pushed upward, above the canopy, and searched frantically for the bear. It was panting loudly, growing tired.

There.

She drew her wings in and dove for the earth.

This could get her killed. Everyone with half a sense knew not to stand between a predator shifter and his prey, but it was Nuke, and he’d showed her kindness.

She just needed him to remember that he could be kind now.