Perigee - Chapter 21: Chapter 21

Well, Matt wasn't dead yet. That was something.
His shoulder felt like kneaded dough. Weak and tender, the kind of muscle pain that hits after a flu shot. He could still feel her bite and Matt feared what the wound might look like, but he'd kept it covered with his shirt and hadn't dared to peek beneath the collar. That was the plan, after all. Just keep it covered.
Violet had made them drinks afterward, and it seemed that existing within her vicinity made them protected. Preserved from the others for her own biddings. Despite her potent aura, Ricco still leered, all bloody from across the warehouse bar room. Violet paid him no mind and told Matt to do the same.
"You're human," she said, twirling a bottle of something surely disgusting in her hands. "And if you're with him, that means you're with Quentin. We don't pay much attention to the laws of the wolves, but we know better than to play with fire." Her eyes slid to the edge of the bar where Bailey lounged, tossing back his second shot. Blood crusted at his brow and Matt could tell by the way his jaw went hard that the brute had knocked something askew in him. "That one nearly burned the place down last time," said Violet.
"Bailey?" Matt asked.
"Yeah. Came to us when he was sixteen. Just like his big bad alpha."
"Bronx?" Matt choked the name out—a cruel gag from the after-sting of his liquor. He dragged a hand up the back of his hair, his skull a painful pulse beneath his fingers. "I don't get it, what is this place?"
Violet had started to pour him another drink, liquor tipping generously into his glass. "We're wolves who've abandoned our packs and our alphas. Few of us never had those things to begin with. Some call us rogues, some call us rats. Doesn't bother me any. And as for this joint, this is where the rats come to party. For ten sweet days, we live and breathe in the walls of this place, then we all go our separate ways."
"All of you?" asked Matt.
"Some of us stick together," she admitted. "We stay to our clans. Some of us prefer to be alone. Some of us don't have a choice between the two."
"What do you mean?" He tipped back the drink she'd served him, but this one was far stronger than the last and Matt turned away to let it fall discretely from his mouth and back into the glass.
"When you're claimed, you can't always escape that," Violet was saying. "Rats like to stake their claim on anything they can get their paws on." She reached across the bar then, and hooked Matt by the front of his collar. He swallowed down that awful taste. "Rats have no moral compass. We listen to our instincts. We do as nature tells us and that can be a jarring thing, so listen close. When you turn—if you turn—don't you step foot in this place again." Her finger twisted through the fabric, pulling him in harder until he felt the edge of the table push against his ribs. "You find a pack, and you stay away from green eyes. And if you decide otherwise—if you walk through that door again, you are mine."
Maybe that shouldn't have turned him on how he did, but when Violet freed him with a shove, Matt found himself tossing back his glass like the liquor would somehow quench the fire in him. But as liquor does, it only ignited it.
Eventually, Bailey passed him by with a slap on the side of the head and said, "Let's go." And Matt had no option but to sober himself, at least figuratively. He left a half-empty glass behind and slipped from his bar stool.
They waded through the haze, beneath flickering lightbulbs, beyond tangled bodies and out the front door, the same way they'd come. The men still gathered around that trash can fire, but their eyes weren't on Matt this time. They were leering at the shape in the shadows. A figure in the darkness that he couldn't recognize, but one that moved with a sharp, spry, familiarity. It was a man for sure, but the dark was a film that stuck to all the wrong places of his face, and Matt couldn't discern the profile—even once it'd stepped within the blanket of the lime green lights. Not until it was too close, slamming into Bailey, an arm barred across his throat.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Quentin gnarled, shoving him up against the warehouse wall—beneath those green cat eyes.
Bailey pushed his arm away, but Quentin had him by a fistful of his shirt, slamming him to the steel of a sedimentary roll-up door. "You told me you wouldn't come back to this fucking place. And to make matters worse, you brought him?" he said through his teeth, pointing somewhere relatively close to Matthew. "What the hell made you think that was a good idea?"
"Bronx, woah," Matt said. He wedged himself between them and gave Quentin a good shove back. "Hold up, he was trying to help."
Quentin pushed Matt away like he was nothing, but he didn't lunge for Bailey again. He hung back, and in the distance, Matt caught the lanky form of Nicon shift uneasily in the shadows.
"Get in the car," Bronx told them both. But before Matt could flinch in the direction of his Lexus, a broad set of shoulders careened between them, like a vulture stooping down from the sky. The salt-and-pepper man from the hotel room. The one that had left Bailey bunched up on the ground, against that glass sliding door.
Quentin's eyes went wide with recognition.
"You're leaving so soon?" That man asked—his voice all smoke and cinders. He moved like a panther on its prey and for a good moment, Quentin didn't look like an alpha. He looked like a mouse. A tiny, wounded one, all tangled up in the panther's teeth.
"God, what's it been?" the vulture asked, the corner of his mouth curling too sharp in places. A hard line bent in wicked ways. "A decade? It has, hasn't it? Ten years. Look at you, all grown up." His feet scuffed the gravel. He moved forward, Bronx moved back. Bailey tensed at Matt's side.
"I heard you came back around last summer. Came back for Ricco's boy. Sad I wasn't there, we could've had a drink."
Quentin was still moving back, and something rotten turned in Matt's belly. He'd never seen Bronx like this. He didn't like it a bit.
"Come on, kid," that country-coffee man said. A cold prickled Matt's arms, and when he turned, the men by the fire were rising to their feet—looking curious and antagonized, ready to advance on the situation like wild dogs to a wounded thing. Nicon still only lurked in his shadows.
"Gannon," Bailey snarled, a low, ugly sound. He shoved Matt, but it was gentle. A safe push away from those men by the fire.
That must have been his name. Gannon. Because the man glanced back, just long enough to take Bailey in. Then he was back on Quentin, sliding forward another step. "Sit down," he said. "Let's have a beer."
Quentin must have been terribly out of his element, because he jumped when his back hit the door of his Lexus. Something hard moved down his throat when he'd found himself trapped between Gannon and the car.
"I don't have business with you," Quentin said. He sounded his confident self, but Matt could feel it in the air. A static that made the hair on his arms rise. Something wasn't right.
"So let's make business," Gannon said. He brought a hand to Quentin's shoulder and the alpha wrenched away.
"Don't touch me."
"Don't touch you?" Gannon guffawed. Then Matt heard the loud crack of his palm before he realized how quickly it had met Quentin's face, his head turned to the side and the red welt of fingerprints stamped into his cheekbone. "Don't touch you?" Gannon said again. Then he had Quentin under the chin, assertive fingers digging at his cheeks. Quentin jerked his head away, Gannon jerked him back. Close, too close. Close enough to whisper something sinister in Quentin's ear—something too low for Matt to hear. Something that Bailey must have heard, because he was moving.
He cut the distance to Gannon, scooping up a slab of old wood from the ground. Rubble had been a decaying thing on the lawn, but Matt hadn't thought twice about it. He was starting to wonder how many broken bottles lay to waste there because they'd been cracked across a skull or gouged into a ribcage. How many times had Bailey been beaten to shit in this place?
Enough to know how hard to swing a rotten two-by-four, that was certain. Quentin gave Gannon a hard shove away, into the oncoming swing of the wood as Bailey bashed it into the back of his head. He reeled into the back of the Lexus, splinters and wet dirt stuck in his graying hair.
And then the men from the fire were prowling forward. All three of them, sharks to a drop of blood. Matt wished he had the nightstick his father had given him—or shit, the little bottle of mace he kept on his car key chain. But Matt had nothing. Nothing but his fists, and he wasn't very good at using those.
He ducked from the swing of the first man—aged and weathered with teeth lacking from all corners of his smile. He circled Matt in an eager fighter's stance, but Matt wasn't as much of an idiot as he looked. He didn't have the speed or the strength to take on a guy this size. His experience with Ricco had been a lesson in that. So Matt moved like a leaf in water, veering from those fists just barely, but enough.
It was hard to focus—to find Quentin and Bailey in the dark, while ducking and dancing and staggering back over the weeds and garbage, strewn across the gravel. When he did find Bailey, the boy was hunched over, trash-can-man beneath him. His fist was still mid-air when Matt caught it, and he heard the palpable thack of the hit. Then his knuckles came back up with a certain smear of red.
But he'd been looking too long. The man with missing teeth swung again, and Matt felt the nick of it on his jaw. This time, when he staggered back, it was into a body behind him. He hadn't time to look before an arm hooked around his neck, crushing him in. He fought the hold, but the arm went tighter.
Matthew's ears burned. His face went red. He clawed at the fading tattoos on the limb beneath his chin, but flail and flail as he might, he couldn't find the slack to breathe. Matt's world was tipping away. This wasn't how he wanted it to go; he thought he had time. The bite hadn't killed him yet, he had time.
Then that arm ripped away from his throat. Air spilled into his lungs. Quentin had his attacker by the hair, shoving the rogue down into the concrete. A kick to his stomach knocked an audible air from him but Quentin went no further. He looked to Matt, grazed him over for injury—that wild, unbalanced look in his eyes.
Ten feet away, Bailey had been bested—now the one on the ground, blocking hits with his forearm. Gannon had recovered from the rotten two-by-four and was stalking closer, that panther-man once more. And the rogue that Quentin had on the ground was struggling back up on all fours.
Matt didn't know what the hell was going on—just that he was caught up in the whole mess, and he was really starting to hate these fucking wolves.
Pop.
A gun. He knew that sound about as well as he knew his own heartbeat. Matt jumped, Quentin jumped, the man beating the living hell out of Bailey jumped. And Nicon stood there in the green-eye light, a silver pistol in his hand.
"Do you know how many sentinels it would take?" he asked, sounding light and airy as always. "To leave you all in a bloody, heaping pile, do you know how many it would take?"
Even Gannon had stopped and turned to him, but no one answered his question.
"I would bet you all of the money in my wallet that it wouldn't take more than two sentinels to do all that. To remind you all of your place among us." He gave his gun a lax tap against his shoulder and moved briskly forward. "We alphas, we may not be stronger than you. But our sentinels would tear you apart. I bet the silver in my gun on that."
Then he raised it to the sky and fired again—and with the threat of silver, every single one of them ducked to another loud pop.
"We'll be going now," Nicon said, looking Gannon in the eye as he did. And that wicked curl to Gannon's lips came back.
"Next time I'll buy you a round," he told Quentin. Something about him sat uneasy in Matt. It wasn't is face or the dark grays of his eyes—but the way the man looked so unbothered by it all. He didn't seem angry, he wasn't simmering with vengeance. He didn't even glance toward Bailey. In fact, he looked nothing short of satisfied as his broad shoulders swung back toward those jeering green eyes.
Once they were gone, once they were really gone, Quentin shoved the back door to the Lexus open so hard, it nearly shut again.
"Get in," he ordered.
Matt couldn't remember the last time he'd seen this much disappointment in the eyes of someone who wasn't his father.
He climbed into the back seat and sunk into the leather.
The ride back was silent. No radio. No words.
From what Matt had gathered, and by the way Quentin seemed so okay with Nicon just beside him, the Eastern Alpha was probably the one to snitch in the first place. Matt wanted to kick his seat like a child. It wasn't fair—he didn't know the Den was off limits. Obviously what he'd done there was a certain kind of unforgivable, but no one had to know about it just yet.
The wound was beginning to itch, and Matt rubbed at it through the cloth of his shirt. He wanted to shower away the stench of pot and get a full night's rest for once, but they didn't drive straight to the hotel like he thought they would. Quentin turned to the entrance of a park, and when a big yellow gate blocked their way, he whipped the car onto the grass beside it and shoved open the door. The rest of them stayed.
For a while, they watched him pace the grass, and eventually come to rest against the fence, staring up into the starless sky. All the while, Bailey had been looking bored, his head leaned against the window.
Eventually, Matt took it upon himself to step out of the car. He cut across the grass slowly—partly to stop moving if Quentin shot him any sort of look, but also because it hurt like hell when his shirt rubbed against the bite on his shoulder.
"What do you want?" Quentin asked, without looking away from the empty sky.
"My Wrangler's still back there—"
"I'll send someone to get it tomorrow." And as he watched a plane pass above, Quentin had started to dig through his jean pockets.
"What are you looking for?"
"My phone," he said, pulling out only an old receipt and his car keys.
"For what?"
"To call Jaylin."
"Why?" Matt asked.
"Because I—" Quentin took a deep breath. "Because."
Because wasn't an answer. Something was wrong with Bronx. Wrong enough that he needed Jay to cope.
Matt rubbed the cold from his arm and stepped closer. "What was with that guy?" he asked. "Why'd he freak you out so much?"
Quentin didn't answer. He just looked to the sky again, like he was listening. But there was nothing to hear aside from the wind in the trees, the traffic four streets over.
"I didn't mean to get you involved."
Matt jumped nearly out of his flesh to the sound of the voice beside him. He hadn't heard Bailey approach. And even if he had, those words didn't sound much like Bailey at all.
Quentin set his eyes on Bailey, and when he moved forward, it was like all the cold in the air moved with him. "Don't you get it?" he said. "I don't give a shit what you meant to do. You went into the Den—after the hell I went through to pull you out, you went back in again—and this time you brought a human." Quentin's voice was the kind of deep that echoed—made a few birds flee their branches. "If that's where you want to be, then go."
Bailey's face went sharp. All slender edges and dark eyes. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"What don't I know? You went back in, that's more than enough." Quentin swept closer—a breath away from Bailey, holding his gaze with something hurt. Something terribly wounded. "I'm done. I'm done with you." Then he gave Bailey a hard shove to the chest and shouted into the night, "I'm done with you!"
"Hold on, wait—" Matt groveled, sliding in between them. "Hold up, Bronx. He was only trying to help. I needed something and he—"
"If you needed something, you should have come to me. There's no good goddamn reason for you to be in the Den."
"Okay, sure," Matt said. "Yeah, that was my bad. But he didn't have anything to do with that." Bailey's expression hadn't changed. He was bristled, but no where near implosion. A child waiting for the scolding to end.
"It doesn't matter," Quentin said. That red hand print still stained his face. "It doesn't matter, I'm done. If he wants to go rogue, let him go rogue. I don't want him in my pack anymore."
"I'm your hound," Bailey said through his teeth.
"I don't need a hound that badly."
For once, Bailey's expression held something other than disdain or indifference. A faint crack of rejection.
Guilt rained down on Matt. Bailey really was only trying to help. He opened his mouth to beg Quentin to reconsider, but the door to the Lexus swung open, and Nicon was standing there in the moonlight, sharp brows creased in worry.
"Quentin, do you feel that?"
Quentin went quiet and lowered his head in focus.
Then Bailey said, "I smell mistletoe and deadroot."
"And gun powder," added Nicon. "I can tell you it wasn't from mine."
"Drive back," Quentin said suddenly, tossing the car keys to Matt. He gave a brief look around, but the streets around this place were dead and nothing could be seen beyond the shrubbery that bordered the park. He didn't bother to shed his clothes. Quentin took a step forward and burst into a smog of red rainfall. That wolf in him shook the stained clothes from its body and took off down the gravel path. Matt hadn't noticed Bailey and Nicon turning until a silver wolf was following at its hind—then that strange, long-legged form of Bailey tailing just behind.
Matt loaded into the car and followed.