"Sorry if I'm being an ass," Blay muttered, as the Brother shot onto the highway.
"You do not need to apologize for being worried about your boys."
Man, Tohr was cool like that.
As it was late, late at night, the Northway didn't have any cars, just a semi or two, the wired drivers of which were going like bats out of hell. The tow truck didn't stay on the four-laner for long. About eight miles later, they got off at an exit well north of downtown Caldwell, in a suburban area that was known for mansions, not ranches, Mercedes, not Mazdas.
"What the hell are they doing out here?" Blay asked.
"Researching those reports."
"About lessers?"
"Yeah."
Blay shook his head as they went by stone walls as tall and thick as linebackers, and gates of fine, wrought-iron filigree which were closed to outsiders.
Abruptly, he took a deep breath and relaxed. The aristocrats who were moving back into town were spooked and seeing evidence of lesser activity in everything around them - which did not mean that slayers were in fact jumping out from behind garden statuary or hiding in their basements.
This was not a mortal event. It was a mechanical one.
Blay rubbed his face and slapped the shit out of his inner panic button.
At least until they came out on the other side of the zip code and found the accident.
As they rounded a bend in the road, there were a pair of taillights glowing red at the side - far off the shoulder, and upside down.
The f**k this was just a mechanical problem.
Blay jumped out before Tohr even started to pull over, dematerializing directly to the Hummer.
"Oh, Christ, no," he moaned as he saw two sunburst patterns in the front windshield - the kind of thing that could only be made by a pair of heads slamming into the glass.
Tripping through the snow, he went for the driver's-side door, the sweet sting of gas knifing into his nose, the smoke from the engine making him blink -
A high-pitched whistle cut through the night from over on the left. Whipping around, Blay searched the snow-covered landscape...and found two hulking shapes about twenty feet away, clustered at the base of a tree nearly the size of the one the Hummer had gotten hung up on.
Scrambling through the drifts, Blay rushed over and landed on his knees. Qhuinn was sprawled on the ground, his long, heavy legs stretched out, his upper body in John's lap.
The male just stared at him with those mismatched eyes, unmoving, unspeaking.
"Is he paralyzed?" Blay demanded, looking over at John.
"Not that I'm aware of," Qhuinn replied dryly.
I think he's got a concussion, John signed.
"I do not - "
He went flying off the hood of his car and hit this tree -
"I mostly missed the tree - "
And I've had to hold him down ever since.
"Which is pissing me off - "
"How we doing, boys?" Tohr said as he crunched over to them, his boots crushing the ice pack. "Anyone injured?"
Qhuinn shoved himself free of John and leaped up to the vertical. "No - we're all just - "
At that point, the guy's balance went wonky, his body listing so hard that Tohr had to catch him.
"You go wait in the truck," the Brother said grimly.
"Fuck that - "
Tohr jerked the guy forward so they were face-to-face. "Excuse me, son. What did you say? 'Cuz I know you didn't just f-bomb me, did you."
Okay. Right. Blay knew firsthand that there were few things in life Qhuinn backed down from; that being said, a Brother the guy respected, who was more than ready to finish the job that a pine tree had started, was definitely one of them.
Qhuinn looked over to his ruined SUV. "Sorry. Bad night. And I just got light-headed for a split second. I'm fine."
In typical Qhuinn fashion, the bastard broke free and walked off, heading toward the steaming pile of previously drivable metal like he'd thrown off his injuries by force of will.
Leaving everyone else in his dust.
Blay got to his feet and forced himself to focus on John. "What happened?"
Thank God for sign language; it gave him something to look at, and fortunately, John took his time filling in the details. When the narration was over, Blay could only stare at his friend. But come on, it wasn't as if anybody would make that shit up.
Not about someone they liked, at any rate.
Tohrment started to laugh. "He pulled a hyslop, is what you're saying."
"Not sure I know what that is?" Blay cut in.
Tohr shrugged and followed Qhuinn's trail through the snow, motioning with his arm toward the wreck. "Right here. This is the definition of a hyslop - precipitated by your boy leaving his keys in the ignition."
He's not my boy, Blay said to himself. Never has been. Never will be.
And the fact that that hurt worse than any kind of concussion was something, like so much, he kept quiet about.
Off to the side and out of the glow of the headlights, Blay hung back and watched as Qhuinn crouched down by the driver's door and cursed softly. "Messy. Very messy."
Tohr did the duty on the passenger seat. "Oh, look, a matched set."
"I think they're dead."
"Really. What gave that away. The fact they aren't moving or that this guy over here has no facial features left?"
Qhuinn straightened up and looked across the undercarriage. "We need to roll it and tow it."
"And here I thought we were going to toast marshmallows," Tohr said. "John? Blay? Get over here."
The four of them lined up shoulder-to-shoulder between the sets of tires and dug in with their boots, locking their positions in the snow. Four sets of hands palmed the panels; four bodies leaned into the ready; four pairs of shoulders tightened up.
A single voice, Tohr's, counted it out. "On three. One. Two. Three - "
The Hummer had already had a bad night, and this right-the-wrong thing made it groan so loudly that an owl was flushed across the road and a pair of deer took flight on bounding hooves through the trees.
Then again, the SUV wasn't the only one cursing. Everybody was going George Carlin under the deadweight as they worked to pry free gravity's hold on all that steel. The laws of physics were possessive, however, and as Blay's body strained, all his muscles tightening against his bones, he turned his head and shifted his grip -
He was standing next to Qhuinn. Right beside the guy.
Qhuinn's eyes were focused straight ahead, his lips peeled back from his fangs, his fierce expression the result of total anatomical effort....
It was close to what he looked like when he came.