Page 60 of Faun Over Me

The shadows detached from the trees, melting into the shape of what Cricket could only describe as a black bear crossed with a labrador. It loped up close, nostrils flaring as it inhaled Cricket’s scent. She froze, damned prey instincts kicking in once again, and the Hidebehind sneezed in her face.

“He will not hurt you,” Sanoya said. The Hidebehind grinned as dogs do, soft pink tongue lolling free. “But that tongue has a mind of its own, and you are both so … sweaty.”

25

Avery

Magic wasn’t real. Avery knew this; science proved it repeatedly, but through some art of luck or magic, the injuries Troy had caused only required stitches.

A lot of stitches, there was no denying that, but only stitches.

She stared at her leg, stretched before her in the bed, cleaned and wrapped in bandages, then glanced at the faun lying in a similar position beside her.

Cricket’s head rested on the pillows, her eyes closed, and long fingers interlocked over her stomach. A band of raw skin and worn down wrapped around the front of her throat. Avery blinked and looked away, unable to bear looking at the lingering proof of what they had gone through.

What they had survived.

Nurse Almaden had been quick, cleaning the wounds and staunching the blood flow enough to work whatever magic it was nurses were taught in medical school. Then she’d handed Avery a paper cup full of pink liquid and Cricket a handful of what looked like horse tranquilizers.

“To give you some time,” the hawkish inhuman had whispered, squeezing Avery’s arm and nodding at the cup. “The cops will be here soon. Sanoya and Mac will make a report, but I thought you’d like a few moments to …” She glanced at Cricket, who had her palm pressed against her mouth. She grimaced as she swallowed, then stared bleakly at Avery and the nurse.

“What?”

“I brought water for you.” Nurse Almaden gestured at the side table. Cricket shrugged and nestled against the pillows, lacing her long fingers together as she closed her eyes.

She hadn’t moved since.

After a few minutes, her breathing deepened, and the tightness in her features eased as the tranquilizers worked.

The pink concoction had eased Avery’s pain, letting her drift along, vaguely aware of flashing lights outside the window. Of voices in the main cabin, doors closing, stairs creaking, but she couldn’t grasp the passage of time. Couldn’t discern words from the hushed tones. So she drifted, glancing at Cricket every so often to keep rooted to the earth. To this room. She didn’t know how much time she had left at Elkwater. The summer, if she was lucky, but Avery had never been lucky. She had been driven and determined, and that behavior had led to a werewolf attack and identity theft.

But it had also led to Elkwater and Cricket sleeping beside her in this room, and she decided that was where she wanted to be.

The door creaked open, and Mac poked her head in, glancing at Cricket’s slumbering form and then Avery.

“Come on in.” She waved the director closer with a heavy limb.

Mac stepped inside, easing the door closed, and whispered, “I don’t want to wake her.”

“She’s so zonked; I doubt an earthquake and a stampede of elepanths could wake her.”

“Elepanths?”

“‘Kay, so I might be zonked too,” Avery said.

Mac smiled, though it was tight around her mouth and did little to relieve the weariness dragging at her eyes. She walked quietly across the room, skirting the creaky floorboard and perching on the bedside table. “How are you?”

“Tired,” she admitted. Mac nodded, sweeping a hand through her hair and staring into the empty air. “Sore. Mad.” Avery looked at her hand, scrubbed pink and clean. Curling her fingers to glare at the broken nails. A band tightened around her rib cage, squeezing out everything she’d been keeping safely inside like a Flintstones Push-Pop. Her eyes stung, and she clenched them tight, willing the tears not to fall when she couldn’t stop the words. “I’m so … so mad.”

Her shoulders shook. Once, twice, and the damn broke.

“I don’t know what I ever did to him,” she cried, her cheeks hot and wet with rage. “I’m a straight-A student, I got a scholarship to Messiah for music, I played varsity softball. Why would he do this?”

Mac was seated on the bed in an instant, wrapping her arms around Avery and letting her cry. All the anger and rage, the terror that she had felt in that glade, that she still felt with every tiny, unexpected sound, but mostly the anger at her father, Nathan Payne. She’d heard what Troy said in the glade, heard him tell Cricket that defrauding her, forging her signature, setting Avery up, and then hunting her had been her father’s plan.

The anger she had felt at the realization had fueled her swing, lending her more strength than she’d ever felt with a softball bat in hand.

How? How could a father do that to his daughter? His own flesh and blood?

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