It didn't seem possible. It didn't feel right. And for mugging someone? It just did not seem possible. Even a week after the trial, even after Wicker Potter and his father had been found guilty. Even now, more than a week later, Carnegie was having trouble accepting it. He should have really gone to the trial.
Oh, the tiger wasn't an angel. But the tiger was good, good in a way that good people didn't like to think about.
"What's the matter, Carnie?" Tina asked as she ran her delicate human fingers up his fur-covered arm. Tina used to be his childhood companion, Tin, the boy next door. Now he was a she, cursed or blessed to be something other than what the gods had intended for her. But such was the life of all those who lived within and around the stone walls of Metamor Keep.
Such was his life.
He, himself, suffered life within the skin of a white arctic bear. Almost all his friends were covered in fur or feathers, some in forms so twisted they could barely speak or walk on their hind legs. Right now, what was on his mind was more animal than anyone else in the Keep, a creature who frightened him more than Misha and Rikkter combined. "It's your brother, Tina."
Tina pecked at his thin black lips. In shape, he was very human at that moment, not even having much of a muzzle, but he was covered in thick, white fur, so there was no reason for him to be shivering at her touch like this. "He's not your problem, anymore, my mate."
Carnie wished he didn't know her so well. He could tell she was almost as upset as he was. "We shared so much growing up." An impala leapt gracefully thru the forest of his mind. "Stuff you'll never know about." Oh gods, please never let her find out about that.
"Pish posh." She said amused. "I was a boy, once, remember?"
Sweet innocent Tina. "You were never like Wicked. You..." There are some things she can never know. "You just don't know what it's like to share being an... animal... with someone."
She sighed. "No, I guess not." She checked the pot of boiling water and stirred it. There was nothing in it but water, as far as Carnie knew. Maybe some salt. In their short marriage, Carnegie had put together a working theory that stirring a pot that didn't need stirring was a sign that he was in trouble. "I guess I'll never understand why you and the rest of the gang always looked up to my little brother like he was a god or something. He's only a little boy." she said to the pot.
He frowned. Nobody liked Wicked, not even his friends, but when you were with him you felt so alive... so right... things were simpler. You knew who your enemies were, and if Wicked said we could get away with something, we got away with it. "I don't know, Tina," he said lamely. "He's almost 15, now. He's old enough to have a job."
He relaxed when he heard her throw the fish pieces she'd been marinating into the pot. As an arctic bear, fish had become his favourite staple and Tina had taken to the usual female things with a passion, so she prided herself on knowing dozens of ways to keep him happy with food.
"Still," she said as she chopped something on the cutting board, "when you guys used to play with me and Clay, you never once entertained the idea to play with Wicker."
"It was different, then."
"You're a speciest, then, you're saying," she said as she placed the bowl of raw fish guts in front of Carnie. He hated to throw anything edible away. "Once you changed, you didn't want anything to do with me or Clay."
"That's not entirely true." Carnage couldn't look at her now. "Lars and I couldn't get Clay out of the house if it burst into flames."
"What about me?"
He forced himself to look at her. "I liked you as a boy, then I started liking you another way and it made me feel very weird. And then I changed and I felt you deserved better than... me."
This seemed to amuse her. "Your turning into a bear was no different than my turning into a girl."
"You think? You can have kids now. You're a real woman. You could fit in the world outside of the Keep. I can't. Not ever. Not unless I become a real bear... oh, wait, even then I'd be this white freak bear."
Tina's mouth formed a little oh and she touched his white fuzzy hands with her perfect pink hands and ran her pretty little thumb over his dull black-brown fingernails. Carnie find himself unable to look at her at that point. She had the hands of an artist. His belonged to a killer. He wasn't ashamed of what he was. He tried very hard not to be. But he did not want to hurt her. Not her. Anyone but her. "You're afraid I'm going to leave you," she said as if reading it off his forehead and he flinched.
"You will," he said with a choke. "You'll have to."
She came around the table and put her arms around him. "I'm never leaving you, never."
He was caught in the center of emotions and he couldn't tell her. He couldn't tell the only person in the world who meant anything to him and he was so very afraid. Wicked was in jail. Wicked was infallible and having fallen, Carnie knew the tiger was going to take them all down with him... if the universe didn't shatter with even more impossibilities.
"You don't understand...." He couldn't look at her, nor at her perfect pink hands that fascinated him so. Instead, he stared at the bowl of fish guts. She had sprinkled them with chives and some vinegar had somehow made them look like a work of art. It was too much for him. Carnie could feel his heart breaking and she hadn't even left him yet. "I'm not good enough for you; I know that now. I was fooling myself."
She put her cheek on the back of his neck and didn't say anything. Not for a long time. Then she squatted down at his side and gently turned his face so that he had to look at her and Carnie felt powerless to resist. "I love you, you know that's why I married you, don't you?"
Carnie snapped his head away and spoke to the bowl of fish guts. He felt as if it was his own guts in the bowl. "I know why you married me. I heard you tell the fishmonger's wife."
Tina gasped and Carnie, who was a murderer twice over, flinched to have caused her even that much pain. "What you heard," Tina said slowly and carefully, "was totally out of context, Carnegie. I was just trying to--"
Carnie slammed both hands on the table and stood up, slipping a third way into his full bear form. He growled and then snarled at her. He stomped away from her and, at the stove, he turned back to her, his voice a dead-on mockery of hers. "‘When my mother took off, I had to choose: Marry Carnegie or get trapped like Clay taking care of three helpless men.' HAH!" He growled again and threw some pots across the room. "I was the lesser of two evils, wasn't I? That's why you married me, wasn't it?"
He could hear her crying and he felt a thread to his heart breaking. "It wasn't... like that." She sobbed. She stayed by his chair, not moving. "Is that why you haven't touched me all week? Is that why you haven't written in days? It was just a thing women say, don't take it--"
"What? I knew it was true. I always knew it was true. I loved you too much to care. I wanted you." He paced the kitchen area wanting to run away, wanting to fling himself off some cliff. He could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. "Wicked told me, you know."
"Wicker?"
"Yes, Wicked! Wicker! Whatever his name is. He told me when to ask you. He told me what to say. He even told me why."
"I never told Wicker anything about my heart, Carnie." Her voice was almost pleading. "He was barely 14 when..."
Carnie cut her off with a fist threw the wall. Plaster dust settled as the big white bear morph got himself under control. "I had to understand you. you see. I was the hunter, and you were the prey. And when it comes to understanding prey, your little baby brother is second to NO ONE. No One!"
Tina stood slowly. "So, you're saying I was some sort of trophy?" Her calm was unnatural and Carnie waited for the tears to burst and for her to run away and never come back. But she simply stood there.
"Yes." He spat and then fell against the wall. "No... I don't know, Tina. I don't." He couldn't look at her, but he forced himself to morph back to as close to normal human as he was ever going to get again. "I keep thinking about all the times I've... been inside you and I have to wonder how many times you... thought to yourself, ‘This is disgusting, but it's better than picking up after my father.'"
She walked towards him and leaned against him. "Do you really think so little of me?"
He shook his head and then cried out, "NO!" He sobbed into the wall, trying to push himself into the corner, to make himself as small as he felt. "But I keep hearing this voice inside of my head..."
She slipped her arm under his shirt and scratched at his fur. "My mother leaving only encouraged me to marry you earlier, Carnegie Shoemaker. It was something I'd wanted for the last year, just like you wanted me. That's not the reason I married you, no more than Wicker encouraging you to ask me out was the reason you married me."
Carnie closed his eyes tight and tried to tell her everything. He pictured Lars leaping thru the woods and how beautiful he was and how good he looked and how much joy Lars had leading them all on the chase. He could even remember the taste of Lars' hot blood pouring over his tongue. "I'm not the lesser of two evils, Baby."
"Oh, Carnie." She said and held him tight as he tried to put a string of words together that would explain exactly how evil he was. But he was trapped by her love and he just couldn't hurt her anymore than he already had.
Eventually, she got up and paced the small quarters and then, with whispered words of concern and caring, she slipped out the door. Each parting word sent another dagger into his black heart.
An hour later, Carnegie had gotten control over himself and had finished seasoning the fish stew Tina had started, but couldn't bring himself to eat it. The heavy scent of fear still clung to him, as if it was in his clothes.
There was a knock at the door and Carnie opened it, half-expecting to find a messenger in the hallway with news that Tina would not be coming back.
To his surprise, it was Custard and Evil standing there. Evil was still in his Civil Guard uniform and the dragon morph looked like some sort of demonic authority figure. Custard wore unseasonably light clothes, but the coyote morph's thick blonde fur probably kept him almost as warm as Carnegie's white fur did. They both smiled, massive teeth showing. Smiles were sincere, if one really knew what the smiles meant.
"What are you two doing here?"
"Relax, Carnage. Eindah didn't want us working together, he's got no problem with us socializing." The coyote brushed past Carnie, not caring in the least about the daggers that shot from the bear's eyes as he did so. "At least, none he put in the form of a direct order. We were good boys while our Captain was gone on whatever wild goose chase the Duke sent him on, so I think we've earned a night on the town."
The uniformed dragon-morph blinked at the white bear standing in the doorway. "I have to go baby-sit that sailor Jaggs brought in yesterday. Punishment for letting Jaggs leap over the guardhouse." The Watchman whispered. "Are you going to let us in before I get in trouble for being late, too?" Carnie sighed and waved Evil in. As with Carnage and Wicked, Evil was a nickname that made a bit of dark joke of the young man's name. Elvis was the name the dragon morph had been given when he was still a young healthy boy hundreds miles away from Metamor Keep. Evil, on the other hand, was a name he had earned.
That was Carnie's problem; they had all earned their nicknames. The fact that Custard never had a nickname stick didn't make him any less of a danger to the Keep's grass-eating royalty. They were all going to rule someday, he knew that. Wicked had told him so.
"Did you go to the trial?" There was really only one trial recently that he could possibly mean.
"What? And risk ending up on the things to kill list?" The coyote gave one of his hyaena laughs. "You've got to be kidding!"
It sounded like a joke, but Carnie suspected that Wicked actually kept such a list. If he did, Custard would have seen it. Custard would be the only one to have seen it besides the big tiger morph who kept it. "We should have been there for support, don't you think?"
"Wicked doesn't want us seen together anymore. He needs us for when the shadow-king comes and he needs us in positions of trust and authority." Custard said with great weight as he stuck his muzzle in the soup pot and began to lap from the ladle.
"The shadow-king will fight the Carnivores for the right to the feed stock," This was from Evil whose whispering voice and smooth cadence made the words sound like a solemn prayer read from a Follower missal.
"Don't worry about Wicked," Custard said picking a fish bone from his pink tongue. "He knows what he's doing. He wanted to be arrested, y'know."
Now it was Carnegie's turn to laugh. As a bear, Carnie was capable of belly busting laughter, but this one was just a short bark of a laugh. "Now, I've heard everything."
"Think about it. Think about all the crap Wicked Potter has gotten away with in the last few months. Lars. His own mother. Not to mention getting the Lutins to attack caravans after they've left the Keep, rather than before. No one's ever caught on, not even the... spark-bringer." The coyote lowered another ladle into the kettle. It was best not to even say Lightbringer... she was a carnivore, true, but she obviously wasn't one of them. But she was powerful.
"I haven't been able to think about anything since they got fingered for robbing that fudgepacker!" Carnie tried not to shout, but it was so frustrating knowing his life depended on Wicker keeping his mouth shut. "Not in the Keep. And not letting the guy live... you know that's not his style."
Custard shrugged, flipping a wooden chair backwards and planting himself on it so that his tail was free to wag. "My point exactly. But he did it, y'know, he wasn't framed, although I insist that at the gatehouse."
"You should watch you mouth," Evil whispered, his voice a quiet growl.
At first, Carnie thought Evil was growling at Custard, but the silver and red eyes of the demon- dragon glared at the white bear, instead. "What?"
Custard waved dismissively at Evil. "Never mind him, he's just annoyed Wicked asked him to do research in the library. Insects, wasn't it?"
Evil's skin darkened for a second and he rolled his eyes, a disturbing effect with his mercury silver eyes floating over a mercury red background. "Know your prey." Again, it sounded almost rote and, at the same time, reverent. There was nothing Wicked had ever said that Evil couldn't repeat back without sounding like the Pontiff . The dead one. Back when he was still alive.
"We're going on a bug hunt?" Carnie was very confused. "Their arms just pop off."
"Focus, Carnage." Custard snapped his fuzzy fingers in the air, a trick Carnie hadn't been able to do since the Change. "Focus. It gives him an alibi for when Henrik dies, which should take place a week or so before Daedra'kema. He has to die before then so Wicked can face his True Father, you understand that."
Of course he understood that. He'd written that. He'd written much of Wicker's so-called insight and now no body was ever going to read it. Not ever. Not until they were all dead. Not unless Wicker turned out to be right about everything, and even then, it'd be gospel, not the fiction he'd intended. But when the Daedra talked to their children thru you, what was a bear to do? "Yes, but how?"
"The less you know, the better," Custard said. "But we came by because Wicked ask us to come here and to tell you not to worry. He has everything under control. He just needs you to do one little thing for him."
"Wicked really sent you?" Carnie was surprised to hear that. But, of course Wicked cared about him, he was the tiger's Oracle! Wicked needed him. "He knows I... doubted... him?"
"Doubt's a healthy survival tool, Carnage. Wicked's got no problem with that. Fear, on the other hand... never mind. Just write down what I'm going to tell you so I can forget it. The spark- bringer can't mind-rape it out of me then. Oh, and make nice with your wife, Wicked doesn't want his sister doing anything stupid, like turning you in."
Carnie went to say something and then stopped. Custard had just threatened Tina, but maybe it was just meant as a kind of friendly warning. He knew they all liked Tina, but Wicked had chosen him to be her mate. Then Custard was repeating what Wicked had told him to say and Carnie was suddenly too busy to really think about it anymore.
For the first time in over a week, Carnie actually felt the weight of guilt lift off his shoulders. Everything was going to be all right.
Tina was waiting for them in the hallway when Custard and Elvis stepped out of her room. The two Watchmen hesitated and conferred for a moment before approaching her. She had known Custard for years, Elvis about half as long, and they were her mate's best friends, yet sometimes it was like she didn't know them at all.
"How is he?"
Custard smiled sadly. "He's better. He's just all depressed... this thing with Wicker opened up the whole Lars thing for him again."
Tina was a little confused and the two noticed her expression.
"Did Carnegie ever tell you what happened that day?" The dragon morph asked ever so softly, his apparent concern making his voice as soft as silk. Tina thought it was a pity he was so horrific looking, people rarely took the time to stop and listen to him. He was so gentle, Tina could listen to his voice all day. "What really happened?"
Tina nodded, although she had always suspected Carnie of holding something back from her. Today had only heightened that feeling, which was why she had tracked down Custard. That Elvis was with him was a bonus. "My dad and Wicker had gone out on patrol... they didn't see any Lutins and you guys thought it'd be nice to play one last game of Predator & Prey before you got too old."
"Last game is right," Custard said gruffly.
Tina ohhed and put a reassuring hand on the coyote's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Custard." Custard pulled away slightly and shook his head. He motioned that she should continue and she did, the doubt in her voice that this was the whole truth turning every word into a question. "But my dad didn't do such a good job... did he? The place he told you was safe, had Lutins in it? Lars ran into them and they captured him? Made him fight for his life? Wicked actually rescued him? But it was too late, right? The Lutins attacked in full force and you only had claws and teeth to defend yourselves? All poor Lars had was his hooves?" The two friends nodded and she opened her hands in admitted defeat. "He never had a prayer, Elvis. Why would Carnie feel guilty? I mean, granted, someone died and all."
Elvis laid a scaley claw on Tina's shoulder. "But, Tina... Lars DID have a chance."
The silence hurt her ears and Tina found her throat catch, but she had no idea what the dragon meant. She looked wide-eyed at the coyote. "First, you have to understand, that Carnie and I decided we were going to let Lars win for a change. The last five games, your brother won. I mean, Lars was always a good sport about it, but... you know. We tried to let him get a big head start. Wicked reluctantly agreed... he thought we were being insulting to Lars."
Tina rolled her eyes. "That sounds like my brother, alright." Then she stopped short with a little o shape where her mouth used to be. "That's why Lars ran into the Lutins! You'd let him run ahead."
Custard nodded sadly. "Run right into the Lutins, he did. If we'd been closely tracking him, we could have gotten him away from them before they had closed in on him. Some win, huh?"
"Wicker caught their spoor first," Elvis murmured. "We split up calling for Lars... Wicker found him, tried to drag him down... to tell him... but Lars got away from him. When we found him, the Lutins had already set-up their battle circle. Lars was already exhausted and injured from being tagged by Wicker... he had no fight left in him." The dragon made a show of looking at the floor suddenly and Tina's heart went out to him. She hated making them relive this but she really needed to know.
She looked at Custard. "Is that why he blames himself?"
Now it was Custard's turn to stare at the stone floor. "There's more to it than that, Tina. You see, Lars didn't die cleanly. By the time it was all over, his guts were hanging out of his body and the flies were already... biting at his... insides." The coyote's paws worked into fists that pushed themselves into his sides. Tina was appalled to see he was actually pinching himself painfully and her heart went out to him. She remembered what it was like being a male; feelings were so hard to bring up and explain. It was torture.
Elvis, too, wasn't immune, he closed his eyes as tight as a clam and placed a scaley claw on the coyote's arm. Tina heard his throat catch as he squeezed for support, too. It was so hard for men to reach out; having only been a boy and never a man, Tina had forgotten this. Carnie would rather fight with her than face what happened back then. It wasn't fair, but who said life was fair.
"There's more, isn't there?"
The two men recovered and could not look at her. "You mustn't EVER tell Carnie what we are going to tell you," Custard said with a quiet and earnest gravity. "Lars didn't die right away."
Suddenly, the image came to her. The wet pink, grey and blue entrails hanging outside Lars as Wicked held him. It was an image she'd had for months. Wicker crying. He hadn't cried since he Changed. As horrible as Lars' death had been, there was a part of her the treasured that fact that there still was a little boy within the tiger morph. As tragic as the death had been, Wicker had, at least, learned to cry again. That meant something.
But now the image twitched and Wicker screamed as Lars took slow shock induced breathes, his ribs pumping out a little more of what was inside of him as he did so. What should have been a corpse screamed in agony and torment and Tina was sorry she was an artist with a vivid enough imagination that she could see the black flies walking across his insides like they were a pile of dung. She shivered.
"How long?" Tina gulped, picturing what it must have been like watching a friend die like that. Only the Lightbringer could have saved him... and Lars had been a Follower. He would never... "How long did he take to die?"
"He was begging us to kill him, Tina."
"Custard... how long did it take for him to die?" Tina felt like the Keep was changing beneath her. She was dizzy, but she couldn't back off from this. Her husband's peace of mind was at stake. "How long...?"
"Until Carnage ripped out his throat, alright?" Custard growled at her and Elvis pushed the coyote away from her.
Then the Keep did move and the motion sent her to her knees. Her stomach came up empty, its empty acid burning her throat in dry heaves as her husbands white head slowly imposed itself onto the image of Lars twisting in her brother's arms.
"We had no weapons," Elvis said softly. A thousand miles away where the Keep had sent him, and still the words reached her ears. "It was the only way. It was a mercy killing, Tina. Carnie was the only with the guts to do it."
Tina, of course, knew the Keep wasn't swaying, but the weight of what Carnie's friends said pressed down upon her. She steadied herself and met Elvis' silver and red eyes. The dragon's face held no emotion; because of the curse, it never would. Custard had turned away from her as he fought his own emotions down, flinching when a strangled cry escaped his lips. Not a human sob, but a sound that was the cross between a hiccup and the barking laugh of a hyaena.
This is what Carnie was trying to tell her. The gap between them. Sharing was hard enough for a man, but to fight past animal instincts or when your body wouldn't transmit simple human body language properly... She reached out to Custard and turned him gently towards her.
She took them both in her arms and held them. Elvis leaned on her quietly unable to cry while Custard finally surrendered to his tears. She had to be strong for them. She had to be strong for Carnegie.
Gods help her, though, when Custard started crying... it did almost
sound like he was laughing.